(March 12th, 2014, 10:29)Catwalk Wrote: WhiteMage, what is the reasoning behind your rules?
I stated it earlier that I can write a book about this.
Here is the oversimplified version:
First I established why I like this game. Answer: challenge; re-playability; desire to use the full extent of the game's options; use my full knowledge about the game and my brain power and finally narrowly lose or narrowly win against a formidable opposition.
After playing just 1 game, I realized that although this is a great game compared to other Turn Based Strategy Games out there, these are not possible due to the poor AI and the long list of exploits, and a few other factors.
So next is to establish a small set of self imposed rules that will approach the goal of having a 50% chance of winning.
I took meticulous notes of my played games and performed post-game analysis in a short form making it as quantified as possible. A few key variables: main reasons why I lost or won the game, personal fun factor of playing that specific game, observed specific AI weakness, observed overpowered game features and exploits, proposed rule change for my next game to make the game more interesting.
Kyrub's 1.40m was a major help and I would never consider playing on a lower version due to those would make the games instantly boring for me and in general are easier to win.
A few example observations, which I successfully addressed with my rules:
1. Overpowered scouts in early game. Solution: scrap them. Require all ship designs to have weapon, which makes early scouts medium size.
2. Overpowered biological weapons. Solution: ban them for my use.
3. Overpowered first colony ship. Solution: scrap it. Require all ships to have weapon.
4. Overpowered use of transport to take technology from opponents, boost economy, manipulate election results, remedy negative random events. It also required a lot of micromanagement. Solution: ban transports. It also has the positive side effect of helping enemy espionage attempts of turning my planets against me: I can't take it back with transport.
5. Low utility of capturing Orion. Solution: make it required to capture Orion and integrate it into score, so it will not be done when I only have a few enemy planets left. This gives dilemma if I go for Orion early or against the enemy.
6. I micromanaged planet infusion too much that lead to boredom. Solution: limit it to one per planet each turn. (Currently I consider 1 per turn.)
7. AI is generally weak in diplomacy. I tried to limit it in various ways, but was not successful in achieving desired result. Also, I was too successful in exchanging techs and doing espionage. Banning tech exchange proved too much. Solution: lower number of AI players from 5 to 4. (I currently consider 3.) Using with the rest of my rules, winning against 5 opponents is easier than against 4.
8. Winning by election was too easy and too boring. It also loses a lot of potential extra playing and fun. Solution: Make it required to conquer galaxy and ban winning by election.
9. AI is generally lost on huge maps and I can dance around AI and kill it. Solution: disallow huge galaxy.
10. AI is generally passive and weak. Start final war as soon as possible and integrate that into the scoring function rather than declare an arbitrary deadline to start final war, which is not equally applicable to different games.
11. I don’t want to become a specialist who plays and replays similar games in any regard. Solution: make new games as random as possible. If repeated strategy is observed during game play, then try to counter it with new rules.
12. I was a competitive chess player and taking back move was not allowed. This taught me to make a good game to be maximally cheat free, non-ambiguous, and non-forgiving. Competition is good in chess and in all sports. Without that, interest is lacking. The only way a competition is possible if players play by the same rules. Whatever move I make in chess, MOO, and any other game is final. I accept my mistakes, even randomness, misclicks, losing colony ship to Orion, forgetting to change my planet's ship production, etc. For the sake of competition, data collection, and preempting future arguments, others should do the same.
Main iterative phases: observe, explain, fix problem through rule design.
I am adamant about finding rules that are applicable to all situations, nonambiguous, easy to understand, easy to remember, and small in numbers. (Quite the opposite of stated Imperia rules IMO).
I think I found an ideal set of rules and I observed that small Galaxies are harder to win than large Galaxies for reasons stated above. So further tuning may be needed, but I need more data. All of my decisions are based on data and not on theory alone. A tournament performed on my current rules would provide me more data, even though few players are available. I may have overlooked something. Maybe there is an exploit, which is so strong that someone can use it to win with P>75%, etc.
