Bid to have first move

[smursh]

On many maps going first can give a big advantage.

I would propose that prior to the first turn starting each player get to bid a portion of there starting gold to move first. This would be given to the other player as compensation for going second. In the event of a tie move order would be random as in the current system.

[LPhillips]

This has been previously suggested and liked by some members of the community.

[Moonknight]

Although I understand the need for this, I'd fear that it will be just an additional penalty for newbies. It also gives the advantage to the second player who joins (if the first player is not undercover) knowing how much a certain player may have wagered in the past.

I would always wage 1 gold, and against newbies who don't know the importance or didn't know it was possible to wage, I'd always get to go first with just losing 1 piece of gold. Even if there was a limit of 100, it still wouldn't fix this. If you get up to a minimum of 250+, then you get into the area of not having enough starting money for a hero, which might also be a penalty for newbies misguaging the need for gold on the first turn to get a hero.

[piranha]

Perhaps garvisus idea to simply give 50 gold per startposition later could be an idea that we can add in 0.9.

[KGB]

Giving +50 gold per player is not the way to go IMHO. That means player 8 would get +650 starting gold. On a lower income start (say around 700) that extra 650 is a much much bigger advantage than the penalty for going last. You'd essentially be gifting players in the 6-8th spots with a free 2nd hero or Gryphon/Elephant/Pegasi production vs Lt Calv/Elf production. Even though I know someone is going to say well then just scale the amount based on the starting gold. But the problem still is that well done maps don't need extra money for going 2nd or 3rd (or need so little it doesn't matter) while other maps definitely need it and may need more than 50 per spot. So now you just are unbalancing balanced maps by giving free gold to some players.

I think bidding for starting order is the right way to go. Newbie's will just have to learn how to bid the same way they learn everything else in the game. By trial and error/experience. If you bid so much that you can't afford a hero that's your fault. Besides bids will be based on map, starting gold, number of players in the game etc so I doubt there is anything meaningful that can be gleaned by being the 2nd or 3rd player to join a game.

KGB

[smursh]

You also could have a minimum bid, say 10 or 15 gold with 5 gold increments. You still could bid 0 however. This would prevent just bidding 1 or 2 gold.

[Moonknight]

As long as it is a prompt when joining the map and it clearly shows how much the starting gold amount is I guess this would be fine.

If the assignment is truly random, I don't think it's necessary for the laddering system. Law of large numbers will even things out and over the long run you'll start 50% of the time and you'll go second 50% of the time.

[KGB]

If the assignment is truly random, I don't think it's necessary for the laddering system. Law of large numbers will even things out and over the long run you'll start 50% of the time and you'll go second 50% of the time.

Actually I would think it matters more than ever for ladder games. Many of the 1v1 maps have advantages of going first. And while it may be true that over the long run you start 1st 50% of the time if the top 2 players play 5 head to head games and 1 of them starts first 4 times it matters. With bid for turn order you now completely decide how important it is to you to go first on a particular map.

KGB

[piranha]

There wont be any bidding in 0.9.

But we could add something like this:

Extra gold per start and mapsize, a percentage based on your starting gold.
5000, K =16 = 5%
>= 5000 && < 7500, K = 22 = 4.5%
>= 7500 && < 10000, K = 28 = 4%
>= 10000 && < 15000, K = 34 = 3.5%
>= 15000 && < 20000, K = 40 = 3%
>= 20000 && < 25000, K = 46 = 2.5%
>= 25000, K = 52 = 2%

This will only be on games with separate turns then. Not the simultaneous game mode.

[KGB]

Piranha,

If I read that right then on a 100x map (10000 squares) with 8 players the 8th player will get 3.5*7=24.5% extra gold. So with a 1000 gold start the 8th player would get roughly 1250 gold.

If there is no bidding in 0.9 I would prefer there is no extra gold given out. Or at least have the option to allow a player to volunteer to go last. There are many maps that don't need any boost for going later in the turn order and I'd be glad to get an extra gold boost.

KGB