lackattack wrote:After reading the feedback from the Initial Troops announcement, I decided to see for my self how lopsided games really are when Initial Troops are set to Manual. The results are not what I expected, and I need some smart minds to help me understand what's going on, so that I can make the right changes to improve things.
I ran a script that went through all recently completed games, and counted how often the first player to take a turn won the whole game. It then calculated the increase in wins over what would be normal if all players had an equal chance. Here are the results:
Sequantial Automatic: +31%
Sequantial Manual: +26%
Freestyle Automatic: +0%
Freestyle Manual: +29%
With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??
It seems clear that Manual Troops gives an advantage to the first player in Freestyle games, so to prevent manipulation I should put in a "double turn block" against the last player to deploy initial troops. But why does Manual Troops give a slight disadvantage to the first player in Sequential games??
Preface 
Alright, I was already halfway through my explanation, when I realized that this is not just for 1v1 games, however, my explanation will still apply, because the effects are the same in multiplayer games, except maybe less influent.
Also I did a little Game Finder search and found that 66% of the manual deployment games is 1v1 anyway, so I think (I hope!) my explanation is valuable:
1v1 effects
So in 1v1 games, there is a struggle between 2 effects:
A) The player who goes first can decrease the amount of deployable troops the second player gets, by breaking bonuses and taking territories.
This creates situations where player 1 gets 4 troops for 12 territories, but brings the second player back to 11 or 10 territories.
B) The player who goes second has the advantage of being able to
react to the first player. Here is a little example of this:
Let's say player 1 invested a lot of troops into taking every single territory of a bonus. the second player only has to take one of these territories to break the bonus, and he can then possible take another little bonus for himself.
Manual <-> Automatic
Another important thing to note is a difference about Manual games compared to the classic Automatic ones.
In Manual games, all troops are deployed in big stacks. That's why going first is an even bigger advantage in manual games; you can get the auto-attack off. In the big numbers that arise when you deploy in big stacks, the attacker dice have a significant effect.
Comparison of game settings
Now let's look at how these 2 effects work in the different settings.
Sequential Automatic:
Effect A is obviously very strong. Player 1 will bring the second one down to get a little less armies. Usually, because the game is sequential, Player 2 will only be able to bring the situation back to equal. Player 1 will then again have the advantage of going first. This explains why the player to go first will win a lot more games than the player to go second.
Freestyle Automatic:
This is where it gets interesting. The effect of going first is smaller, because often the other guy is already present when the "first player" goes.
Also, effect B is bigger. Player 2 broke player 1 and also took a continent for himself. And what's best, in the round after, player 2 can usually go immediately when player 1 starts. There you go, the player who went second has an advantage.
Apparantly in Freestyle Automatic, these 2 effects cancel eachother out perfectly. (I am so going to use this in the next discussion about freestyle vs sequential
)
Sequential and Freestyle Manual
The reason I took these two together is because the effect in going first is determined by the same simple thing; being the first to strike the opponents stack.
I don't completely understand how going first in Manual is less of an advantage than in Automatic. I would expect that just autoing your opponent would give a higher winning % than when you play a slower game in Automatic... but apparently my expectations were wrong
lackattack wrote:With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??
My answer to this, as I explained above, would be that when Automatic, when in a freestyle game, the advantage of going first is smaller because opponents often are present quickly after the first player goes. also the remaining effect is cancelled out by the ability of the second player to react to the first player and for example claiming a bonus the next round after player 1 starts but before he's able to break it!
Although English is not my mother language, I hope I have made myself clear and also I hope I have kept it at least a little compact.
Please discuss
Cheers, KP
