views on playing defensive in MP

[Velensk]

No game is perfectly balanced. Even Chess, the iconic strategy game, is believed to have significant P1 advantage. (I have no idea how you would rebalance chess though )

It's definitely possible to make a balanced game. The problem is that making a 'balanced' game is less important than making an interesting one. Tic Tac Toe and a coin flip are both balanced (one in the sense that if you know what you're doing you cannot lose and the other in securing as close to 50% odds of winning as you can hope for).

There's an interesting little video on this by a youtube channel called Extra Credits, called perfect imbalance. I recommend it. But I think this video misses a point on talking about why we balance games in the first place. It's because, in a competitive environment, people frequently really care about winning and don't want to lose for any 'unfair' reason. This can become a case of infinitely chasing your tail trying to define what an unfair reason could be as opposed to what is an actual part of the play and trying to win. For just about any interesting game there's no simple calculation for pure advantage. In Wesnoth although we can abstract the reasons why any match-up might be imbalanced we cannot ever give any kind of all encompassing answer for how all potential dynamics, counters, strategies, and principles work together to form a definitive advantage (even given one decent map let alone many). Our understanding of this is as much based on intuition and experience as reason. I suspect this is the reason why I'm less hostile towards the rebels vs undead match-up than many, it's because my experience as the undead player has been one where I remember mostly dividing and conquering to hack woses apart but having much more trouble achieving the free mobility I need to do this against players who don't go heavy on woes early but rather wait until later (and consequently I have a time window where I can still break them).
-Because balancing is actually more about helping people with the perspective that the game is unfair as opposed to a pure calculation, there's a purpose in making balancing changes even against perfectly counter able strategy. The problem is, that the more 'fair' you make things (understanding that fair is frequently a loaded word) either in the subjective or the pure calculative sense, the less variety and options you leave. Wesnoth has actually seen this. I've been playing since before 1.0 and as long as I've been playing the factions and units have been slowly getting more and more similar/put on a more similar scale (The changes to the saurians and the footpad being the only exception I can think of off the top of my head, the latter being made specifically because of the footpads/ulfs vs undead dynamic and the former because of a similar specific dynamic that existed vs loyalists, thus both being more 'unbalanced' to counter an existing imbalance). The higher level units have gotten closer in power to the lower lvl units, the ranged units have gotten closer in price to the melee units, the scouts with exceptional defensive abilities have been slowly losing them (hard to balance things that move fast and don't die easy in wesnoth). There are still notable bumps in the general layout but you'll notice that these units are also frequently balancing issues despite being overpriced for their general utility (ulfserker and horsemen being notable). It's hard to make what these units do 'fair' for both sides given the wide variety of situations that can occur. Despite this, I think you'd find wesnoth to be a less fun and exciting game if it lost these units. Then there's some kinds of unfairness that there's really nothing you can do about without changing something fundamental (like moving first in chess).

I think honestly that this kind of thing is part of the reason that a lot of the older competitive players get tired. Once you've already trodden out the battles long enough that you have firmly built your opinion/intuition for the lay of any given match-up or situation there stops being much point other than to see who can react to the random factors better (which can be plenty fun as well but is in a sense just another subgame within the game). Since they're trying to win, any perceived disadvantage is grating and competing at Wesnoth takes a lot of mental energy. It wears down on you and the exploration that sustained it stops coming at as noticeable a rate.

Personally, I think the best answer is to take a relaxed approach to it (part of the reason I've never really felt comfortable with games being played for huge amounts of money) and to accept the fact that, like in life, things will be unfair or at least seem so. The point is that you keep learning new things and having fun while you're at it. Sure there are things that are genuinely are unfair (again given a set of criteria for fair) and should be changed to make the experience more enjoyable but in any static situation you will eventually get to the point where you've learned what you will and at that point it doesn't actually matter if it's unfair or who it's unfair for; either you enjoy the exercise or you don't and if you don't it's time to move on to the next thing. Wesnoth can to some extent create an endless variety of next things with different maps, different match-ups, different eras (this is part of the reason I'm into designing those) and the like (even ignoring all of the odd situations battlefield chaos can put you into) but even then there's only so much you can do in a grander sense. As such, although I in no way regret the time I've spent on wesnoth (save perhaps many hours of futilely trying to get testing for some project or another) it's not the only game I play and I frequently go long times without playing much at all. It's never stopped being fun permenantly because there is so much potential depth to it and so much variety but even if all its imperfections could be more perfectly revealed than our perceptions allow, it wouldn't matter much to me at this point.
-It's good to try to make the game more fair but I think it wise to remember that it's the potential for unfairness (as opposed to unfairness itself) that keeps a game alive. In wesnoth you won't ever really be able to stomp that out as long as there are far too many variables to account for. When the potential for unfairness turns into unfairness, that's when it's important to remind yourself that it's just a game and there wouldn't be much of a point if it weren't there and then if the issue is generally applicable and something that can be fixed maybe you can try to do so.

[Eagle_11]

What competition you think can exist in a chance based environment, do you think like "omg look at how the dice favoured player1's side, how professional of player1" ?

[Velensk]

Easy. The player who plays better can set the odds up to be vastly in their favor. This does not mean that the person who plays better will always win but if you've watched enough head-on games the outplay isn't hard to see, even in higher level games.

[iceiceice]

What competition you think can exist in a chance based environment, do you think like "omg look at how the dice favoured player1's side, how professional of player1" ?

When I watched grand finals of world cup 2014 in Rio, I was mostly thinking to myself "man the Brazilians have just been devastated by this slight north-easterly breeze in the stadium"

Then I turn on ESPN2 and its those crazy "professional poker players"...

In a different direction, if you believe what Nate Silver says in an ESPN documentary about the famous Chess match Deep Blue vs Gary Kasparov, there was a crucial point in game 2 where the computer made a strange move which somehow gave it an advantage... The story is that the search algorithm failed to converge in time and was going to run out of time, so it made a panic move to avoid losing. But the move it choose seemed very random to Kasparov and it spooked him enough that he conceded, although they say he could have fought to a draw.

Link here, there's also some articles on fivethirtyeight.com if you are interested.

[Rya]

I guess it is a bit of a problem in Wesnoth's design itself. It kind of rewards defensive play. If you are Elf and just stick to forest or Dwarf and just stick to mountains and hills or any faction and stick to towns, then everybody attacking you (probably from a lower-defense field becaue you positioned yourself properly) is at quite big disadvantage. So you can just stick around where you are strong and wait until your opponent gets impatient and attacks and then it's quite easy to turn the scenario to your favour.

I think it's quite possible to write asymmetric multiplayer scenarios that are fun and fairly balanced. A scenario where a number of players have to defend a castle while the other group tries to conquer it in a limited amount of turns can be fun and balanced (it will take a while and a lot of testing until it's balanced but it's possible to eventually have a good result). I don't think that this is what most competitive players seek, though.

Other things I could imagine is changing the game system itself to reward active attacking more. Right now the only real advantage of an active attack is that you get the first hit, maybe there need to be more advantages like one extra hit or one less hit received as retaliation. Or remove the base income, make villages matter more (and place most of them at the conflict hotspots) and maybe reward gold for attacking ("If two units battle for the first time in that combination, the attacker gets x gold.").

[Jabie]

Wouldn't a king of the hill scenario stop this? Just put several objectives in the middle of the map on different terrain types. If you're holding an objective you get 1 point. Get a ceratin amount of points and you win.

[Implementor37]

I don't think that playing defensive is a problem. In my experience, playing defensive does make it harder for your opponent(s) to attack you, however, it comes with a significant disadvantage: villages. In order to play defensively, you need to concede villages to your opponent. This gives your opponent more gold, and over time, more/better units. As a result, I've found that playing an entire game defensively does not pay off. Instead, there are specific times where defensive play is called for, especially because of TOD. There is nothing wrong/inconsiderate about pulling back Undead into a defensive position during the day, or retreating with Drakes during the night. This is expected strategy--in fact, its actually encouraged. Official Undead Strategy and Official Drake Strategy promote defensive play during certain TOD. A sustained defensive will not benefit a player in the long-run because he would lose too many villages, leading to a gold/unit deficit. Short-term (2-3 turn) defensives, however, are encouraged based upon the TOD.