Black Boxes and Stat Calculators

Matt0088:Taking the short discussion in the NES idea thread to this one, a couple ideas regarding FoE.

1. A idea I had a while back, inaccuracies with the stats. To give a more realistic feel as being a leader of a nation, the stats posted on the front page can be inaccurate, anywhere frfom 20% under or over the actual number. This would be a bell curve. Heck, if you implement this, you don't have to even tell players, because how will they notice? Just more fun for you the mod. May make the game events more decisive, with players acting on incorrect decisions resulting in bad outcomes. The effort to write the update was sufficiently difficult that I did not have the time to play around with people's stats. For FoE players, who only saw what was posted and had little or no idea what lay underneath, I felt the uncertainty was already sufficient. You may adjust or change my rules and stats anyway you like to make your game work for your style of modding.


2. Speaking about decisiveness, and I'm going in about what I've read in that FoE Discussion Thread towards the end(I've only read some updates), make casulties in battles etc. I mean, lots more casulties. Although this is straying from realism, it (should) be increasing player interest. I mean, although I love the realisticness, I don't if it takes 500 years and 10-15 updates to get something military done. To LINESII, it has highly unrealistic casulties, but is anyone complaining about that, no. Also in LINESII, things happen mcuh quicker, like in 1-4 updates, the Great War in it was only 4 and about 200 years, A Great WAR. I have only modded two games so I am not as experienced or skilled at updating as most of the rest of this forum.

3. Lastly, regarding updating, although your updates are quite nice, they should time a large amount of time to do. My thought was to cut the length per event/issue/war down. Like to PureNES levels, or even to LINESII level. The latter is still awesome even thought the update length is shorter for the sizze of the NES compared to others. Yes, the could be shorter, but I do tend to get carried away and add things I don't need to or that shouldn't be there. Experienced mods know better.FoE uncovered my preference for a historical setting where I can use real history as a crutch in updating as I did in BirdNES 1. I did not have that in FoE and it clearly showed.

1. I thought/presumed that you would be able to implement inaccuracies via excel, using it only for player visable stats. So you wouldn't have to spend any time on working it out, excel could! Of course I can be just yabbering away if excel can't do this...

2. I'll get more in this after I completely read all the Manonash update. And besides Birdy(Is it okay that I call you birdy?), you modded one of the best NES ever in your first try. So you are a great modder who just ventured out of his comfort zone, to try something new and great and was at least partially succesful.

3. Your updates are still awesome!!!
Edit: This length per issue/event in this BirdNES1 update is absolutely fine for me:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5093102&postcount=568 Don't know about others though.
This is also good:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5900411&postcount=5545
And to bring my LINESII example: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7127888#post7127888

Matt0088 said:

1. I thought/presumed that you would be able to implement inaccuracies via excel, using it only for player visable stats. So you wouldn't have to spend any time on working it out, excel could! Of course I can be just yabbering away if excel can't do this...

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I just don't see and real advantages to mislead players taht way. If stats say a plaeyr has 5 EP to spend and he really only has 3.5, then when he writes orders to spend 5, as mod you have to figure out how to fix it either by choosing youself how to cut his orders or pming the player and letting him do it. With 30+ players that would be a royal pain with little play value.

Yes, I'm sure Excel could be made to alter stats by some random variable.

You can simply ask players to rank there spending orders, so you can spend that 3.5 on what he/she wants most without any problem. I was just going for more realism, becuase leaders in 650 B.C didn't know that they were going to have exactly X amount of soldiers of that thiss trade route is going to make X amount of money. But then again, I can see this be rather problematic.

What do you think about the update links I provided? Just trying to give you idea of what satisfys me for updates. But like I said earlier, that just me talking, I can be yapping my mouth if the majority of other people disagree with me and of course if you perfer to write longer updates...

Matt0088 said:

What do you think about the update links I provided? Just trying to give you idea of what satisfys me for updates. But like I said earlier, that just me talking, I can be yapping my mouth if the majority of other people disagree with me and of course if you perfer to write longer updates...

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From what I've seen updates are very much a product of the mod's style. Iggy crams tons and tons of great stuff into his updates and they are quite excellent. I cannot write like that. I need to create a larger narative to wrap around the specific events which is why I use my own characters to talk about the events of the update. In BirdNES 1 the Verner family became that voice.

Birdjaguar said:

From what I've seen updates are very much a product of the mod's style. Iggy crams tons and tons of great stuff into his updates and they are quite excellent. I cannot write like that. I need to create a larger narative to wrap around the specific events which is why I use my own characters to talk about the events of the update. In BirdNES 1 the Verner family became that voice.

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Yup, I saw that in your writing. You had Sinope and his successors in Manonash, The person in Manipur who I've forgoten the name of who was recording the first 1,000 years of history. That's a great writing technique, that takes some time. Unforunately, the only non-negative towards you method I can reallly suggest is to... well... kill a cradle.

To get to more positive but a tad forgotten topic, I still think that you can speed up the game, through more decisive action. Making more casultiies, more destructive or constructive actions, wonders/project complete faster, policy, or orders overall have more effect etc.

Matt0088 said:

To get to more positive but a tad forgotten topic, I still think that you can speed up the game, through more decisive action. Making more casultiies, more destructive or constructive actions, wonders/project complete faster, policy, or orders overall have more effect etc.

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I have built a little model for resolving battles that I will post here shortly. By using this I think wars will be more decisive. It will take me a bit to get the Excel file posted. It is free and available for all. Comments welcome.

The attached Excel file is my first pass at an automated combat calcualtor. It is in Office 2007 and has active macros and VB functions. To work, macros must be active. If they are not, you will see #NAME in the RNG cells.

Questions and comments are welcome. Basically, you enter the two army strengths and whatever modifiers you want to create an Attacker Advantage number. That number is made into a percent: 1=10% 2.5=25% etc.

Then you acrtivate the RNG and the % it rolls is added to the Attacker Bonus %. If the total is over 100% the attacker wins. If not, he loses. The model has notes and explanations.

I included two models, one for armies and one for naval battles. have fun and let me know how it works for you or ideas you have for making it better.

Files removed; new files posted on November 24th here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7481352&postcount=83

Would you be able to make a 2003 version? I'm all 2003 over here.

Matt0088 said:

Would you be able to make a 2003 version? I'm all 2003 over here.

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I will see if I can save it that way and preserve the macros, if not, do you know how to use thm in 2003?

Birdjaguar said:

I will see if I can save it that way and preserve the macros, if not, do you know how to use thm in 2003?

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Never heard of macros before in my life, by I will go off and see if 2003 has it and use the help function to LEARN it.
Edit: It has macros, and looks like some programming/formula thing.

Matt0088 said:

Never heard of macros before in my life, by I will go off and see if 2003 has it and use the help function to LEARN it.

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I posted a 2003 version, but don't know if it will actually work in that form. Open it up and see if the RNG cells have: =staticRAND()/1 or #NAME.

Birdjaguar said:

I posted a 2003 version, but don't know if it will actually work in that form. Open it up and see if the RNG cells have: =staticRAND()/1 or #NAME.

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They have =staticRAND()/1. Thanks for about the fifth time on this thread Birdy! Will comment later.

Matt0088 said:

They have =staticRAND()/1. Thanks for about the fifth time on this thread Birdy! Will comment later.

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When you recalculate the RN does it change?

Birdjaguar said:

When you recalculate the RN does it change?

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Yes, I deleted the 1 and wrote it back in and got 71%, with the original number being 26%. Question, what would I do if I would want to implement, say morale, into the spreadsheet? Also, what do you consider "General" to be/represent?

Matt0088 said:

Yes, I deleted the 1 and wrote it back in and got 71%, with the original number being 26%. Question, what would I do if I would want to implement, say morale, into the spreadsheet? Also, what do you consider "General" to be/represent?

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The various lables and numbers in the yellow cells are how you get to customize the calculator for your game. this was my list:

Troop strength: how many men per side
Troop Mix balance: if one side should get an advantage or disadvantage because of the type of troops they have. An army of Mongol cavalry might get an advantage when fighting an army without any horsemen.
Weapons bonus: Muskets versus swords maybe or horsemen against pikemen
Military leadership If you have a stat for leadership, you could enter those.
Troop Quality Again, this could be a stat for training or quality
GeneralIf an army has a general of some reknown, then you might tilt things to his favor.
Defense Walls or fortifications might favor the defense, but if an attacker has some skill or equipment to offset typical defense, enter those here.
Supply:If you game uses supply as a factor in war, ill supplied troops might get a negative here.

Oops, I forgot morale. You could have a morale number that goes up and down based on success in war. An army might start with 0 and add +.5 every time they win a battle or war. If they lose, maybe they get a -.25. You would just enter the current value for each army and it would flow through the calculations.

Birdjaguar said:

An army of Mongol cavalry might get an advantage when fighting an army without any horsemen.

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Quibble: not necessarily. Ranged units, such as foot archers, have with few exceptions (and those few being the main times in history when steppe horseman-dominated polities have carved out empires) been able to outrange horse-archers, and formed infantry has always been able to resist a cavalry charge even in the days of "cavalry's supremacy", e.g. at the Battle of Tours, or Legnano.

Dachs said:

Quibble: not necessarily. Ranged units, such as foot archers, have with few exceptions (and those few being the main times in history when steppe horseman-dominated polities have carved out empires) been able to outrange horse-archers, and formed infantry has always been able to resist a cavalry charge even in the days of "cavalry's supremacy", e.g. at the Battle of Tours, or Legnano.

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Point noted. I leave the specifics of how to score the various armies up to the players themselves. Did you download and try it out? I would like your opinion of its practical use in a game.

Birdjaguar said:

Point noted. I leave the specifics of how to score the various armies up to the players themselves. Did you download and try it out? I would like your opinion of its practical use in a game.

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My WinRAR free trial ran out, and I'm cheap. Lemme get something else to open it up, then.