hungrytales wrote: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.
What exactly do I have to prove wrong and I am not even sure what you want me to prove? And why is it ME who must prove something wrong? Why isn't it YOU that has to prove something right? just curious why I must prove something here.
Your idea of lessening the use of a calculator by making it a pain in the ass to use is not exactly a great method of lessening the use of a calculator. I can for a fact guarantee it won't lessen the use. All it will do is make someone else write a better one that makes it easier to use and thus makes calculators more likely to be used because they will be simpler to use. The entirely history of humanity has been one long journey to continually improve pain in the ass things and make them easier. So all that will happen is that those with more time to spend playing Warbarons will be able to use the calculator more often.
hungrytales wrote: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.
Good for her even if she is dumb. I guess its true that once you get rich enough you don't care any more (Warren Buffet appears to be another such person). And a poor example on my part since it's unrelated to sports/games/contests between people. So lets look at a more realistic example.
It's perfectly legal in Tennis to use wooden rackets. Or in golf to use Wooden Clubs or in the Tour-De-France to ride a mountain bike you buy for $100 in a store. That's really an example of voluntarily handicapping yourself in a contest between people. So can you find someone doing such a thing? That's the equivalent of what you'd be doing in Warbarons.
hungrytales wrote: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.
Except that you've misunderstood what I meant. More to do with English language than your personal understanding because the language is ambiguous. When I say 'each' game, I don't mean Warbarons itself but EACH INDIVIDUAL game you play. As in there are overall fixed rules to Warbarons but there are individual rules for each game chosen by the game creator in the Options page.
hungrytales wrote: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?
AI Games? Surely you are not above playing a practice game or 2 with the AI.
Fun Games (non-ladder) where you can turn on the numbers instead of hiding them.
You seem to feel that a player should be able to instantly jump right into ladder play and compete with anyone on an even footing. That's just not realistic.
hungrytales wrote: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.
Alternatively I read this in another manner. You feel entitled to have a calculator work out all the combat mechanics for you. Whether it's because you don't want to spend the time to learn all the mechanics from experience or because you simply feel that part of the game isn't that important or some other reason. It cuts both ways my friend and neither of these 2 paragraphs is any more right than the other.
My personal view is that the more areas a strategy game has to separate skill from non-skill the better. By automating out one area of the game (combat) you are reducing the number of ways to separate skill and non-skill.
hungrytales wrote: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.
I'd still like to know what you mean by 'it won't work'. As in what, the game will be horribly broken? I doubt that. War 2 didn't show a single number in the combat screen. At it was a best seller and much beloved game. So I happen to have a very relevant example of how it most definitely DID work just fine.
See, back before you came aboard, there was a big discussion about FOW. Originally Warbarons didn't have it at all and many players from War2 had never seen it even though all the DLR/War4 players had. So many of the War2 players were sure the game would be totally broken and completely unplayable with FOW. Except that once it was in the game and they played with FOW a few times and learned to deal with it they loved it. They'd virtually never go back to non-FOW games (you can see how many games have FOW vs Non-FOW in the game lobby).
However, FOW was left in AS A GAME OPTION. So when you setup a non-ladder game, you have the option to play a non-FOW game (are you aware of this?). Some times there are such games played and I play them on occasion because it keeps things interesting to play different types of games. This is why I said, hiding the numbers CAN BE A GAME OPTION for non-ladder games. So when you play non-ladder games you are free to turn on the option that displays the numbers and you can avoid joining games where the numbers are hidden.
hungrytales wrote: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!
The point of retaining such a skill, and make no mistake understanding the mechanics and estimating odds is a skill, is to provide more ways to separate the top players from the average players. For example one of LPhillips skills is fast expansion. He uses that to help him win games by getting more cities earlier than his opponent. We can eliminate that skill entirely by changing the game to simply not have neutral cities but instead make all cities owned on turn 1, dividing them equally between players. This would cut that area of skill out of the game and take away an advantage he gets from being a top expansion player. Or we could remove entirely the ability to buy new production (make it like Warlords I) and only allow what you get in the cities you capture and remove the skill of knowing when/how/where to buy production.
The point is, Warbarons consists of becoming a master of MANY different skills. Some of which are combat odds/game bonuses, initial expansion, hero management, gold management, scouting, pillaging/buying production, moving/vectoring armies, middle game play, late game play and probably a few others than don't quite fit into any of those categories. I personally LIKE having lots of different skill areas in a game because it gives me a chance to figure out where another player isn't strong skill wise and exploit it. At the game time I always find areas of my game that need improvement. Most players seem to prefer more/new areas to learn like for example spell casting rather than reduce/marginalize existing game features just because they aren't good at them or don't like them. This is why games have options.
hungrytales wrote: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...
Not sure what a strawman is. A cultural reference of some kind I assume?
I used Chess because Strach who started the thread mention he played Chess so it was by point of reference if Strach was still reading the thread. However, I can just as easily change it back to Poker, where there are odds, and say that there is no chance I can sit down at a table with a top Poker player and beat him head-to-head. He'd read every tell I made and he knows the odds 100X better than I do because he is an expert and I am a casual player. Now if I was sitting in my room where he can't see me so I can leap in the air and shout YES when I get pocket aces and can consult a computer for betting odds etc then suddenly my chances to win heads up increases DRAMATICALLY. The reason is simple. I've removed elements from the game where he is an expert (reading tells, computing odds, making bets) in order to reduce the complexity of the game to allow me to compete by mechanical means. That is essentially what the calculator is doing. It's removing elements from the game in order to allow Newbies to compete with Veterans.
I'll repeat it again in case since you chose to ignore what I wrote:
1) Hide all values in ladder games - no one is forced to play the ladder. Ladder games already force FOW on and hide all the city/army/gold/hero information and I don't seem to see you whining about these things.
2) Show everything in games with the AI and provide and automated calculator for learning for Gold/Silver members.
3) In Fun games allow the person who sets up the game to select whether the numbers are hidden and the manual calculator (drag/drop units) can be used. That way some fun games can have the numbers + manual calculator but you can chose to turn off the numbers/calculator if you want to.
I fail to see how this doesn't give newbies a chance to learn and provide something for everyone.
KGB
P.S. Out of curiosity can you give me a background on your strategy game experiences. Just curious what games (board and computer) you have played a lot of and enjoy. Might help to understand where you are coming from with your arguments because it doesn't appear you ever played any of the prior Warlords games.
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