(it's long but it's a good read. Bear with me
)
I am laughing at your suggestion
I seriously doubt it, KGB. If so, it has to be a nervous laughter at best. You've lost track of solid argumentation and skidded in the realm of puny ad personam for some time now. You've been presented with sound arguments like my pointing to the fact that the idea of a calculator as a seperate tool involves certain level of commitment (therefore preventing it (or at least limiting it to some extent) from being overused) or Chazar's comparing Warbarons to chess during the discussion on the amount of needed randomness and what you do you just ignore them, or pretend you don't get them, or pretend you can just laugh them to silence. Well, you can't. You have to prove them wrong.
It's like saying you can voluntarily pay more taxes to the state if you think you haven't paid enough taxes.
Now here we have a nice example of this eristic tactic. I hardly see any analogy, really. And believe me - I'm trying
. But to show you how unsound it all is let me follow you through with this example.
Who would ever do such a thing?
Well, I'd think there are plenty of people out there doing that already. And for a multitude of reasons of which most can be boiled down to foolishness and naivety, I guess. You'd probably like a specific counter-example so I'll give you precisely that. Did you hear about Agnieszka Radwańska? She plays tennis and she happens to be from the same country as me. Well she decided to pay her taxes home which basically equals deciding to
voluntarily pay more taxes to the state. Call it genuine patriotism or genuine naivety, whatever. QED.
That's why each game needs a fixed set of rules
Why, I thought it was my point :>. Nevermind, let's move on to the earlier post. Now, that is a sight to behold, cause it consists mainly of two paragraphs and in one you flat out contradict yourself and in the other, at last, you made me understand what lies at bottom of your agenda.
1)
But in actual game play I am *long* past the point of needing to input units and run simulations to get an idea of the battle result. I can predict within 10% just about every battle or certainly 90% of the battles I am involved in. So the idea that the game will turn into chance if you hide all the numbers is flat out wrong. Experience will tell you which battles you are likely to win and which ones you aren't.
But you've earned all this mind-boggling, clockwork-precise experience with all of the numbers still being available, right? So pray tell me, on what will this experience be based in case of new players when you switch off the numbers?
2)
I think a manual calculator where you manually select units and enter strengths is the stupidest of all the ideas. Who wants to spend 10 minutes entering units? I'll tell you who, serious hard core players who are desperate for any tiny advantage and players with a LOT of free time on their hands (typically teenagers). I especially don't have a lot of time to waste entering units into a calculator as I find that I already spend 30-60 minutes a day playing turns in several games. Being forced to spend another 20-30 minutes entering units into a calculator is not something I look forward to.
Read it through carefully, people. I've got enough balls to state it - what KGB defends so fiercely is his own, personal feeling of entitlement. He's just
entitled to have an edge. He earned it and he likes it. And hell he
will not part with it easily - at least not with no casualties involved, the very game be damned. If that's what it takes, he'll propose a change which is basically going to break it.
Because that's what it is, KGB. I compared switching off battle numbers to FOW - one of the points you chose to ignore. When you switch off those numbers, but still leave players some means to reveal them - then it works like FOW - it becomes a good way of throwing in some randomness to make the game more interesting and challenging. But if you switch them off absolutely and irrevocably it's just a permament FOW. It'd be a rather dumb decision game design-wise to say the least and it won't work.
For those who've followed closely this argument through the other thread (I hope there are any
) there's this curious hole in your reasoning. You seem to attach so much import to those precious odds. You and LPhillips act like they are everything. Like there's no more strategy and thinking involved beyond them. You even went so far as to invoke poker as a example of just how important they are. Bring on a calculator, you say, and there's no point in the ladder!
Wait a minute...what?
Well yes, you say. You take out player's experience in calculating odds and everybody plays the same level. What do you need ladder for? Right. Well, folks, read on what KGB actually answered Chazar to his nifty argument.
Chazar wrote:An experienced Warbarons player has learned from numerous battles how the odds are (roughly). A Warbarons beginner who is brilliant at strategy games in general has a bad disadvantage there: the beginner needs play hundreds of game before he can become competitive - he does not need to get better at strategy, he just need to memorize the odds in order to be perceived as better - is this really what you want? I dislike games where you have an advantage just by tedious unintelligent memorizing. If a player is good at strategy, then he should also have a good chance of winning a game without going through dozens of hopeless games first.
KGB wrote:This comment makes NO sense. I have never ever come across any strategy game anywhere that allowed newbies to compete with advanced players (can you name one?). I consider myself an above average strategy player but to say that I should be able to sit down at a Chess board with Gary Kasparov and have a good chance to win is absurd. But you are saying that in effect, I should be able to sit down with Kasparov and get a chess computer to help me play against him so that I can have a good chance to win.
What's wrong with this answer? It's a perfect strawman
. Of course, you can't simply sit down with Kasparov and win. Ding-dong! That's the point. Because you've got no odds in chess, therefore there actually
is something more in games that counts. Then WHAT is KGB talking about? Well, he's not addressing Chazar's point, that's for sure...
Well, I told you. You've got it in plain sight in this post, but I'll say it once again for good measure: a sense of entitlement.
) enough not to use it extensively.
. Stay tuned.