The Agressive/Protective Open Game Showdown

[Sero Sed Serio]

well, I see you fall down to personal attacks. Goodjob

He didn't personally insult you. Not even once.

 

[gfm]

well, I see you fall down to personal attacks. Goodjob

Ofcouse my assertion has no meaning for you, as you always switch events off. So, it is actually YOUR opinion that is based on no experience what so ever.

I will give you just one example of balancing effect of events.

Slave revolts.. How many times they disrupt my wanders building plans.. or research plans... ( when you capital going to revolt)

which make me mach more careful when switching to slavery.

I fail to see how slave revolts balance the leader traits (or any other event/quests for that matter). And I definitely can't see how disabling events would destroy "base balance of traits" since traits were around earlier than events.

It is almost impossible to compare two games, due to the myriad random factors (AI tech choices, religion spread), some of which can have a big impact on the diplomatic situation. Why would we add some more randomness ?

Worse, enabling quests actually favors some traits : Creative leaders have an easier time completing the Ancient Literature and National Sports League quests, for example. Why would we bias our choice towards one trait or the other ?

As for me, I play with both huts and events on for flavor, but I'm pretty sure they would only hinder an unbiased, fair comparison of traits.

 

[Mutineer]

you just made the point for me, giving an example how random even can effect easier/harder some trait.

My example was how random even make slavery a bit less attractive.

 

[gfm]

you just made the point for me, giving an example how random even can effect easier/harder some trait.

My example was how random even make slavery a bit less attractive.

I said that the traits were created and playtested before the inclusion of events and that they add unwanted randomness in game meant for analysis.

Slave revolts can hose you, whether you're Financial, Protective or whatever. So how does it balances the traits exactly ? We're trying to go for repeatable results here, and I fail to see how your arguments are directing us towards repeatable results... with random huts and events.

 

[pi-r8]

I said that the traits were created and playtested before the inclusion of events and that they add unwanted randomness in game meant for analysis.

Slave revolts can hose you, whether you're Financial, Protective or whatever. So how does it balances the traits exactly ? We're trying to go for repeatable results here, and I fail to see how your arguments are directing us towards repeatable results... with random huts and events.

slave revolts make spiritual a bit better, because you can use it to switch in and out of slavery to decrease the risk of slave revolts.

 

[iggymnrr]

Imaginative as always! But I have to confess that financial combined with, arguably, the best UU in the game will rather mask the drawbacks of aggressive/protective.

 

[CornPlanter]

The problem nobody mentioned in this thread is that players skill and game knowledge matters so much more than traits. Especially when the traits are aggressive vs protective. If better players took Pro, and not so good players took Aggro, results would "show" that Pro is so far ahead of Aggressive... In my opinion this is more important than huts on or Financial leaders.

Anyhow this is an interesting idea, looking forward to results

 

[TheMeInTeam]

well, I see you fall down to personal attacks. Goodjob

Ofcouse my assertion has no meaning for you, as you always switch events off. So, it is actually YOUR opinion that is based on no experience what so ever.

I will give you just one example of balancing effect of events.

Slave revolts.. How many times they disrupt my wanders building plans.. or research plans... ( when you capital going to revolt)

which make me mach more careful when switching to slavery.

1. I am attacking your ridiculous argument (and it is a woofer), not you. You are a very good player, probably better than me, but that's irrelevant to this discussion. You might not like the tone of my response, but at the same time I don't like that you ignored the first round of counter-arguments concerning a mechanic that was never balanced.

2. If you are claiming I don't have experience with events, you were not active during the year or so on the forums where I kept them on . I have > 100 games of experience with events, again not like that actually matters when we're discussing balance.

Your only counter-argument I see here is that slave revolts balance actions. There are two problems with that argument:

a) Despite slave revolts penalizing slavery, the hit is not sufficient to change the fact that slavery > other options for so long. As a result, this particular event punishes the player for behaving optimally, but only arbitrarily. ESPECIALLY in a game set to compare traits (neither of which are spiritual), one person getting revolts and the other not (or even the same person only getting revolts for one trait) only adds noise to the intent of comparing the traits.

b) Slave revolts are USUALLY a very benign event overall (excepting rare cases where you get 3 of them within 30 turns). Other events are not. For every slave revolt-type event we have, we have one that is an instant game over or adds tremendous winning potential. PRO axes with shock or cover on every damned one are going to outperform AGG axes for example, and it's not like player skill affects those happening. I believe you know the archer event, which can kill you about 5 turns after the first worker is out. There are also events that FORCE the player to DoW on an AI (triggering any and all defensive pacts) AND giving the AIs tanks, and one that completely kills every single naval unit in a tile. Surely you aren't going to claim that skill can overcome losing 100 land units, 25 transports, and 20ish battleships/destroyers when the AI is near culture or space?

Moreover, you actually claim I don't have experience via winning and losing to these ? My first emperor win ever was diplo using the "best defense" +3 diplo with ALL civs event quest. I've lost to insta-dows and archer uprisings etc and won off tower shield abuse too.

Granted, the most game-breaking superpower positive and negative events can get tweaked in the XML to have balanced pre-reqs or not exist, but that is ALSO a change in the rules. My assertion is that the chances of these things adds noise to the comparison between other game factors. Your assertion that these things somehow add skill or even challenge has not exactly held up in rigorous discussion.

It certainly has yet to show any value for events being included in THIS format!

 

[kamex]

I find the forest burning down event quite nasty, when you haven't any gold from goody huts and get forced unhappiness it can be devastating. The once I had this event on my starting city 4 times within 40 turns (marathon). Ruined the game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I find the forest burning down event quite nasty, when you haven't any gold from goody huts and get forced unhappiness it can be devastating. The once I had this event on my starting city 4 times within 40 turns (marathon). Ruined the game.

You aren't alone, but I got really tired of the "use binary research" (as if anybody does that before writing) "save gold while delaying pottery and writing", or "adapt" (as if there's anything you can do other than suffer a significantly weaker position and hope you're good enough to overcome a significant handicap on the difficulty in question).

Yes, 3x or 4x forest fires pre writing are absolutely devastating if they force you off of power tiles and can hinder expansion enough to matter on high levels. Very improbable (in my games with events on, I only had it go off fast enough to stack 3 whip once), but just another "screw you" that doesn't actually add things to the game.

One of the aspects of "fake difficulty" is that the outcome of the feature is not reasonably determined by player actions. Many events are a prime example of this aspect of fake difficulty, because the hit regardless of player actions and cause minor hindrance or benefits. How often does a forge burning down = loss? Almost never, but if it causes just enough slowdown that the player falls short at a critical point later in the game (say, by 1 turn or something), you have to wonder if that random, garbage damage early on mattered or not. Maybe it didn't, maybe it did.

Actually even that is grounds to pull events from a trait comparison game (noise in analysis), but in normal gameplay these things seldom matter. There are enough game-breaking ones w/o modding to justify turning them off outright though. Instant game-overs not based on player actions is not fun and definitely not in the spirit of a turn based strategy game.