What types of maps/settings have least luck?

[The Neon Peon]

Okay, we all know that luck is a huge factor, but not as much on some maps and settings as others.

For example, a doodle earth assasin game has way more luck as an 8 player escalating on classic. I wanted to know what everyone basically thinks on the different maps/settings based on luck in the gameplay.

I am pretty sure that 8 player escalating on any decently sized normal map takes spot #1, but what about the other stuff?

My opinion: 5 player, freestyle (casual), no cards, chained (adjacent works too) seem to be fairly even and take a long time to complete. no cards allows the game to be based entirely on dice and skill (rather than dice, skill, sets), and no cards enables you to have more troops on the map (generally), focusing more on the placement of troops. the reason I say 5 player is because it is a fairly balanced concept of power. if two people are stronger than the rest, the other tree keep a check on them by attacking the stronger to preserve he game until they can emerge on top, and if three players are above the rest, then they keep themselves balanced fairly evenly, and the other two mainly fill in the positional gaps between borders of the three making sure that no two get over focused on each other (4 people ahead of the rest rarely happens). in 4 player games, you lose the ability to balance 3 players because there is only one minority which will always be a neusance to one or two of the players, but not the third, and in three player games, there will never be an even balance of power. 6+ players makes the game a little too unstable because it is hard to get a bonus with that many people and those who do instantly take control of the game if they can keep it.

any comments or other setting/maps you think are luck-proof?

(P.S. I know I have played few games on these settings, and have played on similar settings most of the time, but I have looked at several of the other games that were like the ones I was in, and it seems that this is fairly constant, other than the several games where an idiot joins and suicides into anyone.

[Herakilla]

assdoodle is all luck, from the drop to the fact that any roll you make can quite literally mean the game. it has way more than 8 man sec

[gdeangel]

It's been a while since I've seen this discussed - it used to come up a lot... but I like the twist about the number of players mattering. But just remember that even if you have a nice balanced 5 player game, at some point it is going to have to wind down, and that means managing a 4 player game in most cases.

IMHO - and ignoring 1v1 which is it's own special animal - it always will come down to the law of large numbers. You can't take the luck out of the game, but you can try to set it up so that everyone more or less should get the same luck over enough turns, rolls, cards, etc. As a result you want to go big - bigger map = less luck. But then you hit a problem which is that the first move has a larger starting deployment and can roll through you easier to start picking up territory bonuses on the other players. So that means having more players in the game to reduce starting territory bonus. And probably not unlimited fort, although if the map is big and there are enough players it shouldn't matter that much because continuous chains are less likely.

So I'd say 8 player on a large map... chained or adjacent...

[edbeard]

I would say escalating single games have less luck than no cards

escalating is all about placing yourself to be able to take out someone and turn in and hopefully take out someone again and turn in until you knock everyone out. it's also about blocking others from being able to do the same.

no cards games are more dependent on where you start in the map. if you get a good drop you'll be ahead (though if everyone plays 'smart' you'll end up in a build game). escalating doesn't matter so much where you drop.

[The Neon Peon]

I would have to disagree with the fact that no cards are based on drop.

In one of my 5 players, we got down to a good 3 player match up with the most powerful in the middle, but neither of the other two of us could reasonably attack each other (we could if we really wanted to, but it would make us weak against the third). In the end we went for about 10 rounds of back and forth action, each of us rarely having more than 6 troops on a border left after a round. but one of the other players, who had started out with only 2 territories connected, and the others not even close to each other, managed to use this struggle (which we were basically locked in, as one person was getting twice the bonus of the other two, but unable to ever hold it for long) to get from having three territories (no where close to each other) to owning about half of the map.

(Thanks for the comment guys, keep them comming0

I prefer medium sized maps to larger ones like 2.1 for some reason. It feels to me that on the huge maps, people are disconnected from each other and only are able to do something about to people directly near them (for example, I would hardly have the chance to do something about europe and asia if I held south america). But that is just a personal preference.

[gdeangel]

I would say escalating single games have less luck than no cards

escalating is all about placing yourself to be able to take out someone and turn in and hopefully take out someone again and turn in until you knock everyone out. it's also about blocking others from being able to do the same.

no cards games are more dependent on where you start in the map. if you get a good drop you'll be ahead (though if everyone plays 'smart' you'll end up in a build game). escalating doesn't matter so much where you drop.

You also are assuming that in the esc scenario, the other players in the game know what they are doing. I have found that nearly every esc. game comes down to a certain amount of "swing for the fences luck" where A suicides into B and does not fully kill B but makes them a sitting duck for C (and you are D). And that can happen even if you are playing smart and running interference between A and B. You can say that the game came down to A's lack of skill, but, actually, that's really just bad luck. If A had rolled rockets and taken out B, then run the table on you, that certainly would be a case of luck!

[The Neon Peon]

assdoodle is all luck, from the drop to the fact that any roll you make can quite literally mean the game. it has way more than 8 man sec

sorry, said them backwards in the first post. edited.

[Incandenza]

Myth: no cards games are the most skill-based
Fact: by eliminating cards, and the strategic implications thereof, not only is a major skill-based concept taken out of the equation, but the drop and dice become that much more important. Plus, with no incentive to kill opponents, many will pull up short and allow a defeated opponent to grow a huge stack.

Myth: escalating games come down to suicide runs and hangings every time
Fact: that's like saying basketball sucks because every time you play against four-year olds, the ball keeps hitting off their feet. There is an art to escalating: positioning, blocking, calculating odds, knowing in turn 1 that by turn 8 you'll be trying to eliminate a certain player, etc.

[The Neon Peon]

Myth: no cards games are the most skill-based
Fact: by eliminating cards, and the strategic implications thereof, not only is a major skill-based concept taken out of the equation, but the drop and dice become that much more important. Plus, with no incentive to kill opponents, many will pull up short and allow a defeated opponent to grow a huge stack.

Myth: escalating games come down to suicide runs and hangings every time
Fact: that's like saying basketball sucks because every time you play against four-year olds, the ball keeps hitting off their feet. There is an art to escalating: positioning, blocking, calculating odds, knowing in turn 1 that by turn 8 you'll be trying to eliminate a certain player, etc.

Interesting. I never thought about no cards that way, though I just finished one three player where we spent 22 rounds or so just attacking to weaken each other (rarely conquering), and then one person made the smallest error giving the game to me. That is what I like about no cards, one small error and you are out, though with a lot of colonel, I can see how it would become a match where all that happens is that troops are built up. (though I would probably be trying to get a truce with someone by round 5 to keep that from happening, but people usually refuse, though eventually it leads to some minor diplomatic actions in round 15.)

[Robinette]

Myth: no cards games are the most skill-based
Fact:





Myth: escalating games come down to suicide runs and hangings every time
Fact:

[Incandenza]

Eloquently visualized, madame.

[Zemljanin]

Myth: The worst enemy of Good Player is randomness of drop, dice and cards

Myth: If you have less random events, a game is more fair (this one is already mortally wounded by Incandenza's sword)

Fact: If you have more random events, each of them is less important and variance is less deadly. Things are more fair and even more predictable...

Fact: Randomness of drop, dice and cards is acceptable, since it is fair. True enemy of good player is randomness of human stupidity, since it isn't fair. (Don't know whether I need to explain)

I'll list some worst enemies of Good Player:

1) Other players' cooperation (whether it's legitimate or not)
1.a) Essential flow of this game - tendency to stalemates if everyone plays at least decently
(I put these two together, since 1.a is often caused by 1)

2) Better players (they're actually beneficial in more than one way - but if you look literally and narrow your view only to outcome of one single game - they're really nasty enemies)

3) Randomness of human stupidity

And some remedies (I am talking only about standard, sequential):

A) The best cure for 1 and 1.a is multiplayer escalating game. However, you'll still very bitterly suffer from 2 and 3...

B) The best cure for 2 is fogged 8p Doodle assassin. If undeserved victories make you happy and undeserved defeats don't make you unhappy - it's an ideal game for you!

C) The best cure for 3 is multiplayer, flat rate, adjacent, on some deep map (I warmly recommend 8p Battle of Actium)...

(I prefer the cure C - since I don't want protection from 2, and 3 is much more disgusting /to me/ than 1)

If I need to argument something - just ask!

P.S. Actually, the best cure for all mentioned enemies is 1-1 game, but first move is unacceptably (for many) significant

[OliverFA]

I would say escalating single games have less luck than no cards

escalating is all about placing yourself to be able to take out someone and turn in and hopefully take out someone again and turn in until you knock everyone out. it's also about blocking others from being able to do the same.

no cards games are more dependent on where you start in the map. if you get a good drop you'll be ahead (though if everyone plays 'smart' you'll end up in a build game). escalating doesn't matter so much where you drop.

You also are assuming that in the esc scenario, the other players in the game know what they are doing. I have found that nearly every esc. game comes down to a certain amount of "swing for the fences luck" where A suicides into B and does not fully kill B but makes them a sitting duck for C (and you are D). And that can happen even if you are playing smart and running interference between A and B. You can say that the game came down to A's lack of skill, but, actually, that's really just bad luck. If A had rolled rockets and taken out B, then run the table on you, that certainly would be a case of luck!

And that is the reason why escalating games depend a lot on luck. You are the poor D guy and get killed, nor because you have a worse skill than the player who killed you, neither because you played bad. It happens only because of luck.

Also, in such kind of situation, when C cashes two times (one for his own set and another one for B set) it is not important how well D deployed his armies, because he will get killed anyway.

[OliverFA]

Fact: If you have more random events, each of them is less important and variance is less deadly. Things are more fair and even more predictable...

It depends on the impact of a single random event. Is not the same the randomnes of getting a 10 army set in flat rate World 2.1 than the randomnes of getting a set in escalating Doodle. The second case has a lot more impact, making luck much more important.

[BadMoonRising]

[quote="The Neon Peon"]I would have to disagree with the fact that no cards are based on drop.

In one of my 5 players, we got down to a good 3 player match up with the most powerful in the middle, but neither of the other two of us could reasonably attack each other (we could if we really wanted to, but it would make us weak against the third). In the end we went for about 10 rounds of back and forth action, each of us rarely having more than 6 troops on a border left after a round. but one of the other players, who had started out with only 2 territories connected, and the others not even close to each other, managed to use this struggle (which we were basically locked in, as one person was getting twice the bonus of the other two, but unable to ever hold it for long) to get from having three territories (no where close to each other) to owning about half of the map.

(Thanks for the comment guys, keep them comming0


Keep in mind you are speaking of one game. I like your self must remember that exceptions do not make the rule.
Drop is the most important aspect of a NC in the first few rounds. One needs to pick and choose very carefully where they are gonna make their base of power. If one is spread out vs having two to three countries close by ot together can make the difference between not winning or making an early exit. Combine that with taking a bonus first or second turn and it makes an even huger difference.