For the last month and a half Randy Buehler has been streaming weekly vintage Magic matches from an event called Vintage Super League. It's basically 10 famous Magic players (some from the Hall of Fame, some current active pros, some famous from the vintage tournament scene itself) playing in a round robin tournament. They can switch vintage decks every 3 weeks and all of the matches are played on Magic Online and streamed through Twitch. The production values of the stream have evolved over time and they've now got it set up so you can see the cards in hand of both players live. They also bring in 2 people for each game to comment on the games as they're happening, or to comment on previous games in the event, or the metagame around the event, or just to tell stories of days gone by. I'm finding it to be very entertaining to watch, and more people should check it out. Tuesday nights, or there are VODs available on Randy's YouTube page.
Randy is at 2-4 after 6 weeks and made a comment on stream this week about how he's now more worried about making sure he doesn't come last as opposed to trying to make the playoffs. (Top 4 advance, with ties broken by playing more Magic because who doesn't want to see more games of vintage?) With almost half the field advancing my gut feeling is a winning record should be good enough a reasonable chunk of the time. 2-7 is probably tied for last but I'd think 5-4 is probably tied for 4th. I wanted to verify that gut feeling, and what better way to do so than by turning to good old Sports Club Stats? (That's a website that simulates the results of a league by 'playing it out' hundreds of thousands of times. I've used it with Blood Bowl leagues and liked looking at the numbers it generates.) So I took the liberty of building a league on there...
I set the tiebreakers up to be 'playoffs' but I'm not experienced enough with the system to know what that means. If 3 people get to 6+ wins and 2 people get to 5-4 how is it going to treat the chances of making the playoffs for those people? 100%? 50%? Adding up all of their numbers gets me to exactly 400% of everyone making the playoffs, which is exactly 4 people in every scenario. So my guess would be if the simulation results in a tie it assigns that as a proportional berth in the top 4. Meaning the numbers it gives are not the odds of making it to a play-in game, but the odds of making it out of a play-in game. So the odds of making it to a play-in game are understated. I'm also not sure if the weighted odds make more sense in a league like this or the 50-50 odds. Especially given the players can change decks every 3 weeks I don't know that your chances of beating currently 1-5 Bob Maher are significantly better than your chances of beating currently 5-1 Steve Menendian. (The weighted system assumes that because someone is 5-1 they're a harder match and has them win more of their games going forward. It's often a reasonable assumption to make, but maybe not here.) It's interesting to look at both numbers, anyway, though for now I'm just going to go with 50-50.
According to the site Randy's 2-4 position will get him down to 10th place 9% of the time. Most of those are 0-3 finishes, but he can actually get to 4-5 and still finish 10th. On the other side he makes it up to 4th place (or higher) 5% of the time. Almost always from 3-0 finishes, but there are chances to get there even with a 2-1 result. What surprises me most is that the 3-0 finish is only good enough for a top 4 spot 38.5% of the time. I'm guessing the weirdness with the play-in game really takes shape here. It's hard to imagine 5-4 being a clean break to the top 4, especially with 2 people already at 5-1 and 2 more at 4-2. But I can't think of a way to make the site handle this gracefully, so we're stuck with what we have. Just know that the odds have to be better than 5% since 5% is the number after simulating the play-in games from any ties for 4th. And if you consider 3 or 4 way ties for 4th you could end up with a significantly bigger number than just 5%. (A 2 way tie for 4th cuts out half of your advances, but a 4 way tie cuts out 75% of your advances!)
The bottom line? The last 3 games are still super relevant even for someone at 2-4. Getting to 5-4 isn't guaranteed to make the play-ins (looking at Steve Menendian I can find an entry where he gets to a 6-3 record and comes 5th) but it's definitely still live. People roll a 20 on a d20 ALL THE TIME!
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Attacking The Leader
Back before WBC this year I spent a week in Pounder's basement and we played quite a few games with Robb who was also living there at the time. One of the games we played was Chicago Express, which is a relatively short economic train game. You start the game off by buying shares in different train companies and then you take actions to sell off more shares or to make the train companies improve themselves. The companies spend the money invested in the shares to get better and as they get better the shares become worth more. After a set number of actions all the companies pay out dividends which provide the players with more money to use buying new shares in the companies. Player money is only ever spent buying shares, is only ever earned through the dividends (there is one way to get a bonus dividend payout for a company when it gets to Chicago), and is the only thing that matters when it comes to winning the game.
In our game through a combination of not knowing the game so well and/or misplaying we let Pounder get into a very good position. He was the sole owner of two different train companies while Robb and I were stuck sharing a company. I think Robb and Pounder were sharing a 4th company and the 5th company had yet to appear on the board. Because the only thing that actually matters in the game is personal money and Pounder was set up to make the most money thanks to owning so many shares he was on the fast track to victory. His only downside was going to be that he had a limited number of actions to spend making companies better so he was going to be stuck earning base value for some of his shares while Robb and I could use our actions making a single company really good. We'd have to split the benefit but if we're able to use twice as many actions on making it better that's reasonable. We'd also be sure to get the 'connect to Chicago' bonus. Pounder was set up to win for sure, but if Robb and I worked together one of us might be able to take him down. Probably me since Robb had that extra share in the 4th company that surely wasn't going to get any better since Pounder had two other solo owned companies to work on, but maybe later turns would see shares sold of other companies that would change that fact.
Instead Robb decided that since I had nothing else to do with my actions I was going to be forced to make our company better and he'd stick the work on making it better solely on my shoulders and went off to make his company with Pounder better. This meant Pounder got the benefit from 1.5 improvement actions to Robb's 1 and my .5. Pounder ultimately won. We got into an argument over if Robb should have been working with me or not. My stance was Pounder was in a good way and would win if he got extra help from either of us in the early game. Economic games are often snowbally so you need to reign in the leader. Maybe not beat him up the whole game, but reign him in a little after he had such a good initial share phase and then reevaluate the board on the next turn and adjust. Both Robb and Pounder disagreed because they hate playing games where frontrunning is punished because it encourages smarmy actions to disguise if you're actually winning or not in order to trick the other players into reigning in someone else.
I can't say I disagree with that stance, because I hate when a game encourages you to sandbag. But I didn't think that argument actually countered my argument either. I think Chicago Express, as an economic game, is designed such that the individual players have to be constantly evaluating who will win if 'standard' actions are taken and then shifting off the standard actions to stop that from happening. You either do that or the first auction phase determines victory! Really I think it means Chicago Express is a game that we shouldn't be playing because we don't like to work in game states that it creates.
A similar situation came up in our one Civ V game which is nearing completion. It was a four player game where I was stuck on my own land mass, Matt was stuck on his own land mass, while Dave and Robb shared a third bigger land mass. Dave was a strong early game civ and was certainly the player between the four of us with the most knowledge of game mechanics at the start of the game. He very quickly eliminated Robb and started snowballing his strong early game position into a really dominating position. He became allies with most of the city states and then declared war on Matt and I which meant Dave had a stranglehold on votes at the council. He made way more science per turn than either of us. He even went so far as to switch which tech he was researching so that he didn't enter the renaissance era (which would give us spies) until he was able to get almost all of those techs one after the other. It was inconceivable that either Matt or I could win a diplomatic victory before him, or a science victory either. A culture victory was theoretically possibly but his large culture gain from getting so many wonders coupled with his declaring war on us (and therefore removing a lot of tourism multipliers) made that practically impossible.
This meant Matt and I were backed into a corner. There was no way either of us could hope to win without Dave losing his capital. Taking Dave out would open up a chance for one of us to win in any of the ways (including militarily) but if Dave didn't die neither of us could win. Even taking his capital alone probably wasn't going to be good enough since he still has a vote lead over Matt, his culture still exists to block my tourism, and his replacement capital could just start working on spaceship parts long before we'd be able to do so ourselves. Taking Dave's capital slows down his path to victory but our own paths probably require him to die completely unless we're going for a military victory. (Once either of us take his capital then anyone losing their capital would have the other one win.)
We both acknowledged this was the case and then set off to work together against Dave. Talking about how to vote at the council, trade routes, trading luxuries, research agreements... We didn't work together optimally (Matt built a constabulatory to slow down my spying on him and I researched the same techs as he did instead of diversifying for optimal spying for example) but we put in a pretty good showing of it. I don't know about Matt but I also made a lot of sacrifices as time was winding down to try to hurt Dave at the expense of my own board position going forward. (I sold all my research labs and public schools so I could afford to rush buy more units and pay upkeep on those I'd built. I also sold all of my subs once Dave was no longer in a position to build boats even though doing so means I've lost control of the sea against Matt in the short term.)
We ended up capturing Dave's capital the exact turn he was about to win the game by building the last space ship part. We knew we had this many turns and saved a bunch of suicidal bombing runs for the end just in case, but we did it. Dave was understandably annoyed at this, since he was the heavy favourite to win the game almost the whole way through but he was barely denied at the end. He asserts that I am going to win the game now (an assertion I agree with, for what it's worth) and that because of that fact Matt shouldn't have worked with me. Matt should have spent the final few turns before Dave was eliminating setting up a sneak attack on my capital so that if I pulled off the miracle on my own to stop Dave then Matt could have taken me out right away and won instead.
It goes back to the age old question of what should 3rd place do? Let 1st place win by standing aside? Work with 2nd place to make sure 1st doesn't win even if it means 2nd wins instead? For me I continue to assert that ganging up on 1st is often the right thing to do, especially early in a game or if the game has variable length. We're going to get at least an extra 6-10 turns out of this Civ game and it could go much longer than that. Matt has the fast track to a diplomatic victory once Dave is eliminated since he was getting 2 extra votes each failed UN meeting. My tourism win is going to come home before that can happen, I think. But it was obvious that neither Matt or I could win until Dave lost his capital and it was really tight on making that happen as it was. I don't think either of us could have afforded to divert much off of what we did or Dave would have won.
My big problem with the argument that Matt shouldn't help me because I'm a 'clear 2nd' is that it encourages me to sandbag my second place position in order to get Matt to help me. If 2nd and 3rd only work together when they each think they're the one in 2nd then you need to hurt yourself (and therefore help 1st) in order to keep up appearances. But I acknowledge that it's the same argument against ganging up on 1st. If Dave had sandbagged his own position then maybe he isn't such a clear 1st place and we don't work to stop him?
It's hard to say what should be done. Maybe we have the same problem with Civ V that we have with Chicago Express. Maybe it's a game that just fundamentally has a kingmaker problem. I strongly feel that if someone has a big lead they need to be held in check by the other people working against them in this sort of game. Otherwise a small early game edge is a guaranteed victory. I don't want to play a game where we concede to the person who builds the great library. On the other hand I also don't want to play a game where building the great library is a bad idea because it just gets you killed.
I do think Civ V has enough catch up mechanics going on that someone can get ahead without it being a guaranteed victory. But really all Matt and I did was making use of those mechanics to keep pace as much as we could with Dave and we're still ending up facing accusations of kingmaking. The winning odds in this game were probably something like 90%-9%-1%, but Matt and I only get our 1% and 9% chances to win if we go all in on working together. I guess the problem is if the winning odds in this game were actually 90%-10%-0% what is Matt supposed to do? If you're certain you can't win then you basically have to choose who does. Some people advocate for standing aside but I will always assert that not taking an action is an action itself. Games can have kingmaking positions in them and you can't just ignore them. Often I'll see people advocating for improving your position, which generally means 3rd beats up on 2nd and you kingmake for 1st instead. Oddly enough in this specific game Matt both improved his position and kingmade for 2nd since I'm pretty sure most people will look at the end state of this game and say Matt came 2nd if I end up winning. Sometimes people want you to improve your own score, which works way better in a Euro board game with victory points to earn than it does in a game like Civ V, but I guess there's a score number in that one and you can certainly work to make it bigger. Like by taking Dave's cities! (Though taking my cities might have been more score efficient since I sure haven't been defending myself at all!)
I donno. I think if you're against kingmaking game states you can work to avoid games that have them, especially games that have them as a core element like Chicago Express. I think Civ V is probably more on the side of having kingmaking game states than it is the side of avoiding them... So maybe it's not actually a game we want to play? I guess we probably need to have a few more games get closer to the end of the game to find out? I do think Civ V can get into game states where ganging up on the leader isn't good enough. I think Dave had guaranteed wins earlier in this game if he plays differently, for example if he built a lot of mid game boats he could have crushed me when I was way behind on tech. But with more experience we probably just become better at recognizing those game states and have to start collaborating earlier and earlier? Time will tell!
In our game through a combination of not knowing the game so well and/or misplaying we let Pounder get into a very good position. He was the sole owner of two different train companies while Robb and I were stuck sharing a company. I think Robb and Pounder were sharing a 4th company and the 5th company had yet to appear on the board. Because the only thing that actually matters in the game is personal money and Pounder was set up to make the most money thanks to owning so many shares he was on the fast track to victory. His only downside was going to be that he had a limited number of actions to spend making companies better so he was going to be stuck earning base value for some of his shares while Robb and I could use our actions making a single company really good. We'd have to split the benefit but if we're able to use twice as many actions on making it better that's reasonable. We'd also be sure to get the 'connect to Chicago' bonus. Pounder was set up to win for sure, but if Robb and I worked together one of us might be able to take him down. Probably me since Robb had that extra share in the 4th company that surely wasn't going to get any better since Pounder had two other solo owned companies to work on, but maybe later turns would see shares sold of other companies that would change that fact.
Instead Robb decided that since I had nothing else to do with my actions I was going to be forced to make our company better and he'd stick the work on making it better solely on my shoulders and went off to make his company with Pounder better. This meant Pounder got the benefit from 1.5 improvement actions to Robb's 1 and my .5. Pounder ultimately won. We got into an argument over if Robb should have been working with me or not. My stance was Pounder was in a good way and would win if he got extra help from either of us in the early game. Economic games are often snowbally so you need to reign in the leader. Maybe not beat him up the whole game, but reign him in a little after he had such a good initial share phase and then reevaluate the board on the next turn and adjust. Both Robb and Pounder disagreed because they hate playing games where frontrunning is punished because it encourages smarmy actions to disguise if you're actually winning or not in order to trick the other players into reigning in someone else.
I can't say I disagree with that stance, because I hate when a game encourages you to sandbag. But I didn't think that argument actually countered my argument either. I think Chicago Express, as an economic game, is designed such that the individual players have to be constantly evaluating who will win if 'standard' actions are taken and then shifting off the standard actions to stop that from happening. You either do that or the first auction phase determines victory! Really I think it means Chicago Express is a game that we shouldn't be playing because we don't like to work in game states that it creates.
A similar situation came up in our one Civ V game which is nearing completion. It was a four player game where I was stuck on my own land mass, Matt was stuck on his own land mass, while Dave and Robb shared a third bigger land mass. Dave was a strong early game civ and was certainly the player between the four of us with the most knowledge of game mechanics at the start of the game. He very quickly eliminated Robb and started snowballing his strong early game position into a really dominating position. He became allies with most of the city states and then declared war on Matt and I which meant Dave had a stranglehold on votes at the council. He made way more science per turn than either of us. He even went so far as to switch which tech he was researching so that he didn't enter the renaissance era (which would give us spies) until he was able to get almost all of those techs one after the other. It was inconceivable that either Matt or I could win a diplomatic victory before him, or a science victory either. A culture victory was theoretically possibly but his large culture gain from getting so many wonders coupled with his declaring war on us (and therefore removing a lot of tourism multipliers) made that practically impossible.
This meant Matt and I were backed into a corner. There was no way either of us could hope to win without Dave losing his capital. Taking Dave out would open up a chance for one of us to win in any of the ways (including militarily) but if Dave didn't die neither of us could win. Even taking his capital alone probably wasn't going to be good enough since he still has a vote lead over Matt, his culture still exists to block my tourism, and his replacement capital could just start working on spaceship parts long before we'd be able to do so ourselves. Taking Dave's capital slows down his path to victory but our own paths probably require him to die completely unless we're going for a military victory. (Once either of us take his capital then anyone losing their capital would have the other one win.)
We both acknowledged this was the case and then set off to work together against Dave. Talking about how to vote at the council, trade routes, trading luxuries, research agreements... We didn't work together optimally (Matt built a constabulatory to slow down my spying on him and I researched the same techs as he did instead of diversifying for optimal spying for example) but we put in a pretty good showing of it. I don't know about Matt but I also made a lot of sacrifices as time was winding down to try to hurt Dave at the expense of my own board position going forward. (I sold all my research labs and public schools so I could afford to rush buy more units and pay upkeep on those I'd built. I also sold all of my subs once Dave was no longer in a position to build boats even though doing so means I've lost control of the sea against Matt in the short term.)
We ended up capturing Dave's capital the exact turn he was about to win the game by building the last space ship part. We knew we had this many turns and saved a bunch of suicidal bombing runs for the end just in case, but we did it. Dave was understandably annoyed at this, since he was the heavy favourite to win the game almost the whole way through but he was barely denied at the end. He asserts that I am going to win the game now (an assertion I agree with, for what it's worth) and that because of that fact Matt shouldn't have worked with me. Matt should have spent the final few turns before Dave was eliminating setting up a sneak attack on my capital so that if I pulled off the miracle on my own to stop Dave then Matt could have taken me out right away and won instead.
It goes back to the age old question of what should 3rd place do? Let 1st place win by standing aside? Work with 2nd place to make sure 1st doesn't win even if it means 2nd wins instead? For me I continue to assert that ganging up on 1st is often the right thing to do, especially early in a game or if the game has variable length. We're going to get at least an extra 6-10 turns out of this Civ game and it could go much longer than that. Matt has the fast track to a diplomatic victory once Dave is eliminated since he was getting 2 extra votes each failed UN meeting. My tourism win is going to come home before that can happen, I think. But it was obvious that neither Matt or I could win until Dave lost his capital and it was really tight on making that happen as it was. I don't think either of us could have afforded to divert much off of what we did or Dave would have won.
My big problem with the argument that Matt shouldn't help me because I'm a 'clear 2nd' is that it encourages me to sandbag my second place position in order to get Matt to help me. If 2nd and 3rd only work together when they each think they're the one in 2nd then you need to hurt yourself (and therefore help 1st) in order to keep up appearances. But I acknowledge that it's the same argument against ganging up on 1st. If Dave had sandbagged his own position then maybe he isn't such a clear 1st place and we don't work to stop him?
It's hard to say what should be done. Maybe we have the same problem with Civ V that we have with Chicago Express. Maybe it's a game that just fundamentally has a kingmaker problem. I strongly feel that if someone has a big lead they need to be held in check by the other people working against them in this sort of game. Otherwise a small early game edge is a guaranteed victory. I don't want to play a game where we concede to the person who builds the great library. On the other hand I also don't want to play a game where building the great library is a bad idea because it just gets you killed.
I do think Civ V has enough catch up mechanics going on that someone can get ahead without it being a guaranteed victory. But really all Matt and I did was making use of those mechanics to keep pace as much as we could with Dave and we're still ending up facing accusations of kingmaking. The winning odds in this game were probably something like 90%-9%-1%, but Matt and I only get our 1% and 9% chances to win if we go all in on working together. I guess the problem is if the winning odds in this game were actually 90%-10%-0% what is Matt supposed to do? If you're certain you can't win then you basically have to choose who does. Some people advocate for standing aside but I will always assert that not taking an action is an action itself. Games can have kingmaking positions in them and you can't just ignore them. Often I'll see people advocating for improving your position, which generally means 3rd beats up on 2nd and you kingmake for 1st instead. Oddly enough in this specific game Matt both improved his position and kingmade for 2nd since I'm pretty sure most people will look at the end state of this game and say Matt came 2nd if I end up winning. Sometimes people want you to improve your own score, which works way better in a Euro board game with victory points to earn than it does in a game like Civ V, but I guess there's a score number in that one and you can certainly work to make it bigger. Like by taking Dave's cities! (Though taking my cities might have been more score efficient since I sure haven't been defending myself at all!)
I donno. I think if you're against kingmaking game states you can work to avoid games that have them, especially games that have them as a core element like Chicago Express. I think Civ V is probably more on the side of having kingmaking game states than it is the side of avoiding them... So maybe it's not actually a game we want to play? I guess we probably need to have a few more games get closer to the end of the game to find out? I do think Civ V can get into game states where ganging up on the leader isn't good enough. I think Dave had guaranteed wins earlier in this game if he plays differently, for example if he built a lot of mid game boats he could have crushed me when I was way behind on tech. But with more experience we probably just become better at recognizing those game states and have to start collaborating earlier and earlier? Time will tell!
Monday, September 29, 2014
Long Live The Queen!
Yesterday I went looking through my list of unplayed Steam games looking for something I could play left handed. Long Live The Queen is a life simulator game and I figured that was going to have no fast clicking required so I gave it a shot. There is certainly nothing real time at all in the game, so it was good on that front. But was it good on the fun to play front?
Short answer: Yes. Very much so. It runs pretty typical for a life simulator; each week you get to make 3 choices and your character evolved based on those choices. Throw in 'random' events to direct what choices you 'should' be making each week and you're set.
The game feels relatively short. There are only around 40 weeks in the game and only 2 of your choices each week actually increase your stats. So you only get 80 chances to level up. Contrast to my first introduction to the genre, Princess Maker 2, where you played 6 years with 3 choices each month so you got 216 chances to level up. PM2 had a fatigue mechanic so you'd have to spend some of those 216 chances on the 'rest' action so it isn't quite that extreme. But it also let you go on a dungeon crawl with some of your actions. PM2 certainly felt longer, but LLtQ still has a lot of substance. It helps that the story of the game is pretty interesting with a lot of medieval style political intrigue going around. There are also a lot of skills...
There are four primary types of skills (social, intellectual, physical, and mystical) with 14 categories of skills within those types. Each category has 3 skills. Each week you get to pick two skills to level up (it can be the same skill twice) and you spend 5 days earning skill points in those categories. Each day you earn a base of 2 points which is then modified by the type and category modifiers listed on the screen at the start of the week. So if I wanted to earn points in ciphering I'd earn a total of 7.1 skill points with my current setup. On the other hand if I wanted to get better at dancing I'd get a whopping 22.9 points. One of those is a much bigger number than the other one!
There are 3 ways to change the rate of skill point acquisition. One is based on your dominant mood which is determined by where you sit on 4 different axises. (Angry/Afraid, Cheerful/Depressed, Willful/Yielding, Pressured/Lonely) Your current mood gives you +1 to 2 or 3 categories of skills and anywhere from -1 to -3 to a larger list of categories. Right now I'm afraid and that makes it easier for me to skill up agility and faith skills and harder to skill up royal demeanor, weapons, intrigue, and military skills.
The second way is by learning skills from that skill category. 1% of the points earned in a given skill get applied as a bonus to future learning in that category. Including prior learning done for the same skill!
The third way is by learning skill from that overall skill type. .1% of the points earned in a type carry over to other skills of the same type. Again, learning a given skill will increase the rate at which you learn the same skill.
After playing the game a few times you start learning when certain events are going to happen and what skills you might need to succeed at the event. (You might get ambushed by bandits at one point, for example. You need a high amount of reflexes+archery skill to dodge an incoming arrow. Otherwise you get shot and need a high amount of battlefield medicine or you'll kill yourself trying to remove the arrow. Even if you pass that skill check you need a high amount of composure or meditation or you alert the bandits that you're still alive and get shot more times. Fail and it's game over; you're dead.) So you know what you need to do, but you want to get the +1 bonus because when you need to get 70 points in something you'd much rather start off earning those points 15 at a time than 5 or 10 at a time. Especially with the bubble forward mechanic since the additional amount earned is a percentage of the initial amount earned! This means you need to manage your mood properly to shift between different moods with different category bonuses. (Which is what your third action each week goes towards... You do something on the weekend to modify your mood.)
One question I've been having is if I'm better off focusing on one category in a week or if I should spread things out. The reason it's a question for me is the bubble forward bonuses only apply to the next week so the second thing you choose this week isn't impacted by the first thing you choose. If you only want to spend 2 weeks on 2 skills in different categories you're certainly better off splitting it up, but is that true when you're working towards a specific goal like getting at least 25 in herbs, 25 in poison, and 60 in battlefield medicine while also picking up conversation skills? If you're putting 8 weeks into conversation and 8 weeks into medicine should you split things up?
If you do 4 weeks of just conversation followed by 4 weeks of just medicine you end up with 141.3 points earned in each category. This gets you 30 in herbs, 33.3 in poison, and 78 in battlefield medicine which meets our criteria. Note that taking out half of the last week only gets us 57.5 points in battlefield medicine which means we haven't hit the 60 we want.
If you split things up and do 8 weeks of a mix then you end up with 145.8 points in each category. This gets you 30.8 points in herbs, 34.3 points in poison, and 80.7 points in battlefield medicine. Note that skipping the last week only gets us 58.9 points in battlefield medicine so we don't get to drop a week.
But what if we learned some intellectual skills in the past? Having as little as a .058 bonus makes it so 7 weeks puts us at 60 points in battlefield medicine. That means having earned 58 points in any other skills, which if you do it when they're worth 15 points per week is only 4 weeks worth of learning. That's easy! But it you have a .132 bonus you get it done in 7 clumped actions, which is only 3.5 weeks of actual time.
From playing it feels like skills only care if they hit a multiple of 10 (you get a little message describing what you've learned at each 10 points) and while it's definitely more efficient to learn 2 skills from different types each week if you can often that extra efficiency won't matter at all. Every now and then it will be critical. Finding two different skills you want to work on that have the big +1 mood bonus can be tricky, so it does feel like it will sometimes be optimal to focus on a single skill and will sometimes be optimal to spread things out. Spreading out should be the default case unless you're in a hurry to get something specific learned on a deadline or if you need to shift moods and will lose your bonus too fast. I like that this is how it shook out.
The game has some checklists with 39 achievements, 11 ways to die, and 24 ending fragments to 'collect'. I like collecting things so this game has some replayability for me for sure. I've already earned my Steam cards but I'll be going back for more... I've even started writing down when events happen and what my stats are for each success/failure so I can try to work out an optimal path... Of course I say that but on my last playthrough (where I took that screenshot) I didn't make it to the end of the game because I'd boxed my skills into a corner and couldn't get through an event without dying. I figured out now what I could have done... I needed to agree to marry some guy early on in the game so that after my fleet lost a battle I could run away to live with him when my castle came under attack (I wasn't strong enough magically to kill the enemy king off in a dual). Live and learn!
Short answer: Yes. Very much so. It runs pretty typical for a life simulator; each week you get to make 3 choices and your character evolved based on those choices. Throw in 'random' events to direct what choices you 'should' be making each week and you're set.
The game feels relatively short. There are only around 40 weeks in the game and only 2 of your choices each week actually increase your stats. So you only get 80 chances to level up. Contrast to my first introduction to the genre, Princess Maker 2, where you played 6 years with 3 choices each month so you got 216 chances to level up. PM2 had a fatigue mechanic so you'd have to spend some of those 216 chances on the 'rest' action so it isn't quite that extreme. But it also let you go on a dungeon crawl with some of your actions. PM2 certainly felt longer, but LLtQ still has a lot of substance. It helps that the story of the game is pretty interesting with a lot of medieval style political intrigue going around. There are also a lot of skills...
There are four primary types of skills (social, intellectual, physical, and mystical) with 14 categories of skills within those types. Each category has 3 skills. Each week you get to pick two skills to level up (it can be the same skill twice) and you spend 5 days earning skill points in those categories. Each day you earn a base of 2 points which is then modified by the type and category modifiers listed on the screen at the start of the week. So if I wanted to earn points in ciphering I'd earn a total of 7.1 skill points with my current setup. On the other hand if I wanted to get better at dancing I'd get a whopping 22.9 points. One of those is a much bigger number than the other one!
There are 3 ways to change the rate of skill point acquisition. One is based on your dominant mood which is determined by where you sit on 4 different axises. (Angry/Afraid, Cheerful/Depressed, Willful/Yielding, Pressured/Lonely) Your current mood gives you +1 to 2 or 3 categories of skills and anywhere from -1 to -3 to a larger list of categories. Right now I'm afraid and that makes it easier for me to skill up agility and faith skills and harder to skill up royal demeanor, weapons, intrigue, and military skills.
The second way is by learning skills from that skill category. 1% of the points earned in a given skill get applied as a bonus to future learning in that category. Including prior learning done for the same skill!
The third way is by learning skill from that overall skill type. .1% of the points earned in a type carry over to other skills of the same type. Again, learning a given skill will increase the rate at which you learn the same skill.
After playing the game a few times you start learning when certain events are going to happen and what skills you might need to succeed at the event. (You might get ambushed by bandits at one point, for example. You need a high amount of reflexes+archery skill to dodge an incoming arrow. Otherwise you get shot and need a high amount of battlefield medicine or you'll kill yourself trying to remove the arrow. Even if you pass that skill check you need a high amount of composure or meditation or you alert the bandits that you're still alive and get shot more times. Fail and it's game over; you're dead.) So you know what you need to do, but you want to get the +1 bonus because when you need to get 70 points in something you'd much rather start off earning those points 15 at a time than 5 or 10 at a time. Especially with the bubble forward mechanic since the additional amount earned is a percentage of the initial amount earned! This means you need to manage your mood properly to shift between different moods with different category bonuses. (Which is what your third action each week goes towards... You do something on the weekend to modify your mood.)
One question I've been having is if I'm better off focusing on one category in a week or if I should spread things out. The reason it's a question for me is the bubble forward bonuses only apply to the next week so the second thing you choose this week isn't impacted by the first thing you choose. If you only want to spend 2 weeks on 2 skills in different categories you're certainly better off splitting it up, but is that true when you're working towards a specific goal like getting at least 25 in herbs, 25 in poison, and 60 in battlefield medicine while also picking up conversation skills? If you're putting 8 weeks into conversation and 8 weeks into medicine should you split things up?
If you do 4 weeks of just conversation followed by 4 weeks of just medicine you end up with 141.3 points earned in each category. This gets you 30 in herbs, 33.3 in poison, and 78 in battlefield medicine which meets our criteria. Note that taking out half of the last week only gets us 57.5 points in battlefield medicine which means we haven't hit the 60 we want.
If you split things up and do 8 weeks of a mix then you end up with 145.8 points in each category. This gets you 30.8 points in herbs, 34.3 points in poison, and 80.7 points in battlefield medicine. Note that skipping the last week only gets us 58.9 points in battlefield medicine so we don't get to drop a week.
But what if we learned some intellectual skills in the past? Having as little as a .058 bonus makes it so 7 weeks puts us at 60 points in battlefield medicine. That means having earned 58 points in any other skills, which if you do it when they're worth 15 points per week is only 4 weeks worth of learning. That's easy! But it you have a .132 bonus you get it done in 7 clumped actions, which is only 3.5 weeks of actual time.
From playing it feels like skills only care if they hit a multiple of 10 (you get a little message describing what you've learned at each 10 points) and while it's definitely more efficient to learn 2 skills from different types each week if you can often that extra efficiency won't matter at all. Every now and then it will be critical. Finding two different skills you want to work on that have the big +1 mood bonus can be tricky, so it does feel like it will sometimes be optimal to focus on a single skill and will sometimes be optimal to spread things out. Spreading out should be the default case unless you're in a hurry to get something specific learned on a deadline or if you need to shift moods and will lose your bonus too fast. I like that this is how it shook out.
The game has some checklists with 39 achievements, 11 ways to die, and 24 ending fragments to 'collect'. I like collecting things so this game has some replayability for me for sure. I've already earned my Steam cards but I'll be going back for more... I've even started writing down when events happen and what my stats are for each success/failure so I can try to work out an optimal path... Of course I say that but on my last playthrough (where I took that screenshot) I didn't make it to the end of the game because I'd boxed my skills into a corner and couldn't get through an event without dying. I figured out now what I could have done... I needed to agree to marry some guy early on in the game so that after my fleet lost a battle I could run away to live with him when my castle came under attack (I wasn't strong enough magically to kill the enemy king off in a dual). Live and learn!
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Bridge Match 3 - Board 16
Board 16 - Dealer West - EW Vul
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard 2001
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ Q 9 7 ♥ A 5 ♦ 5 4 2 ♣ Q T 9 6 3
West opens 1 club, partner overcalls 1 spade, and East makes a negative double. I bid 2 spades, West bids 3 hearts, partner passes, and East goes to 4 hearts. I feel like they've got to have overbid here but I don't know if doubling makes sense. Doubling pretty much only serves to break ties when the same result happens at other tables. Costing us points if they make, earning us points if they go down. I don't really see a line to make setting them really likely, so I pass.
Partner leads the T of spades.
T-3-Q-K. Declarer cashes another spade. 2-4-A-7. Then he draws some trump. 4-5-T-J. Partner shifts to a club. 2-4-Q-K. I sure am glad I didn't double! Declarer draws more trump. 2-K-7-A. Hurray for crashing honours. I throw declarer on board with another club. 3-7-8-A. Declarer draws more trump. 8-6 of clubs-3-6. Ok, so it wasn't that our honours crashed... It's that partner thought it more likely declarer was trying to steal a trick than that I started with Ax of trump. *sigh*
Anyway, declarer has the top 3 diamonds so he's actually up. Making 5.
One table played 3NT just in. Three tables made 4 hearts. One table played 3NT up 1. The remaining three played 4 hearts up 1. So we get a whopping 2 MPs. Taking our legitimate 3 heart tricks would have been 9 MPs instead.
Captain Jack agrees with me all the way! I feel like either he shouldn't like my play of low from Ax of hearts or he shouldn't have run out the K on the second round from KJ6. I also think his hand is pretty smelly for an overcall of any kind...
Ranking after board 16/60: 5/16 with 54.91%
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard 2001
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ Q 9 7 ♥ A 5 ♦ 5 4 2 ♣ Q T 9 6 3
West opens 1 club, partner overcalls 1 spade, and East makes a negative double. I bid 2 spades, West bids 3 hearts, partner passes, and East goes to 4 hearts. I feel like they've got to have overbid here but I don't know if doubling makes sense. Doubling pretty much only serves to break ties when the same result happens at other tables. Costing us points if they make, earning us points if they go down. I don't really see a line to make setting them really likely, so I pass.
Partner leads the T of spades.
| NORTH ♠ T | ||
| EAST ♠ A 3 ♥ 9 8 7 4 ♦ A T 9 7 3 ♣ A 4 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ Q 9 7 ♥ A 5 ♦ 5 4 2 ♣ Q T 9 6 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1♣ | 1♠ | Double1 | 2♠ |
| 3♥ | Pass | 4♥ | Pass |
| Pass | Pass | ||
| 1Negative | |||
T-3-Q-K. Declarer cashes another spade. 2-4-A-7. Then he draws some trump. 4-5-T-J. Partner shifts to a club. 2-4-Q-K. I sure am glad I didn't double! Declarer draws more trump. 2-K-7-A. Hurray for crashing honours. I throw declarer on board with another club. 3-7-8-A. Declarer draws more trump. 8-6 of clubs-3-6. Ok, so it wasn't that our honours crashed... It's that partner thought it more likely declarer was trying to steal a trick than that I started with Ax of trump. *sigh*
Anyway, declarer has the top 3 diamonds so he's actually up. Making 5.
| NORTH ♠ J T 8 6 4 ♥ K J 6 ♦ J 6 ♣ J 8 2 | ||
| WEST ♠ K 5 2 ♥ Q T 3 2 ♦ K Q 8 ♣ K 7 5 | EAST ♠ A 3 ♥ 9 8 7 4 ♦ A T 9 7 3 ♣ A 4 | |
| SOUTH ♠ Q 9 7 ♥ A 5 ♦ 5 4 2 ♣ Q T 9 6 3 |
Captain Jack agrees with me all the way! I feel like either he shouldn't like my play of low from Ax of hearts or he shouldn't have run out the K on the second round from KJ6. I also think his hand is pretty smelly for an overcall of any kind...
Ranking after board 16/60: 5/16 with 54.91%
Friday, September 26, 2014
Bridge Match 3 - Board 15
Board 15 - Dealer South - NS Vul
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard 2001
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ 9 8 ♥ Q 3 ♦ K Q J 8 ♣ A Q T 9 2
I open 1 club. It gets passed around to East who makes a reopening double. I bid 2 clubs to eat up some space and it gets passed around to East who bids 2 spades. That also gets passed out.
I lead the queen of diamonds.
Q-2-3-A. Declarer decides to draw trump. K-9-4-5. A-8-6-T. He shifts to a heart. A-3-4-2. Back to trump. 2-T of clubs-4 of diamonds-J. Partner cashes another trump. Q-3-2 of clubs-5 of hearts. Then he fires out a club for me. 8-7-Q-4.
I decide to cash some diamonds. K-9-7-6. J-8 of hearts-5-T. We need one more trick to set them. My A of clubs will be that trick but I don't need to take it now. I can pressure him by making him ruff a diamond first. 8-9 of hearts-6 of hearts-7 of spades.
Now declarer plays a low club. Either he has the K and I can safely play low because he has another club or partner has it and I can play low. So I play low. 3-9-J-7 of hearts. I get just my ace. Down 1.
Everyone played 2 spades. 2 made, 6 went down 1. So we get 9 MPs.
Captain Jack doesn't like my 2 club bid. He wants me to bid 1 diamond instead. I just wanted to eat up extra bidding space since I thought with my hand that the enemy was going to play a major partscore and I wanted to make it less likely they'd find the right one.
Ranking after board 15/60: 4/16 with 57.62%
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard 2001
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ 9 8 ♥ Q 3 ♦ K Q J 8 ♣ A Q T 9 2
I open 1 club. It gets passed around to East who makes a reopening double. I bid 2 clubs to eat up some space and it gets passed around to East who bids 2 spades. That also gets passed out.
I lead the queen of diamonds.
| WEST ♠ 6 4 ♥ K 9 8 5 4 ♦ 9 4 2 ♣ J 5 4 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ 9 8 ♥ Q 3 ♦ K Q J 8 ♣ A Q T 9 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1♣ | |||
| Pass | Pass | Double | 2♣ |
| Pass | Pass | 2♠1 | Pass |
| Pass | Pass | ||
| 1Strong | |||
Q-2-3-A. Declarer decides to draw trump. K-9-4-5. A-8-6-T. He shifts to a heart. A-3-4-2. Back to trump. 2-T of clubs-4 of diamonds-J. Partner cashes another trump. Q-3-2 of clubs-5 of hearts. Then he fires out a club for me. 8-7-Q-4.
I decide to cash some diamonds. K-9-7-6. J-8 of hearts-5-T. We need one more trick to set them. My A of clubs will be that trick but I don't need to take it now. I can pressure him by making him ruff a diamond first. 8-9 of hearts-6 of hearts-7 of spades.
Now declarer plays a low club. Either he has the K and I can safely play low because he has another club or partner has it and I can play low. So I play low. 3-9-J-7 of hearts. I get just my ace. Down 1.
| NORTH ♠ Q J T 5 ♥ J T 7 6 2 ♦ 7 5 3 ♣ 8 | ||
| WEST ♠ 6 4 ♥ K 9 8 5 4 ♦ 9 4 2 ♣ J 5 4 | EAST ♠ A K 7 3 2 ♥ A ♦ A T 6 ♣ K 7 6 3 | |
| SOUTH ♠ 9 8 ♥ Q 3 ♦ K Q J 8 ♣ A Q T 9 2 |
Captain Jack doesn't like my 2 club bid. He wants me to bid 1 diamond instead. I just wanted to eat up extra bidding space since I thought with my hand that the enemy was going to play a major partscore and I wanted to make it less likely they'd find the right one.
Ranking after board 15/60: 4/16 with 57.62%
Thursday, September 25, 2014
One Handed Board Games
I went out today to play board games with the hope that I could do so without using my right hand at all. I had to take a harsh veto stance against games that would require shuffling or drafting but with 14 people that didn't feel like such a big deal sine other people could play Dominion and I could play a different game instead. It ended up working great. Turns out I can play board games with my left hand a lot easier than I can type or use a mouse!
I ended up learning lots of new to me games. Amerigo, Enigma, Navegador, Istanbul, and Infarkt. 4 completely new, one I'd played once before. Navegador was a 5er this time so I didn't get to see about the 3er issue but I did manage to win without buying a single factory so going all colonies can't be too terrible!
I ended up learning lots of new to me games. Amerigo, Enigma, Navegador, Istanbul, and Infarkt. 4 completely new, one I'd played once before. Navegador was a 5er this time so I didn't get to see about the 3er issue but I did manage to win without buying a single factory so going all colonies can't be too terrible!
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
League of Legends Worlds Week 2
At 5am tomorrow morning the last two groups at Worlds will get started. Both of these groups include teams from Europe and North America which I suspect means I'll enjoy watching the games more. Not because the games will be higher quality or anything but because I'll recognize the names more often in these games. Both from watching a lot of the regular season games and because of the fantasy LCS game that ran. I'll be cheering for LMQ in no small part because I had XiaoWeiXiao and Vasilli on my team and grew to root for them in the regular season. They're being predicted to come last in their group but maybe the underdog will come home!
I've finished both seasons of Heroes and my wrist still hurts so I'll be happy to have new things to watch. Huzzah!
I've finished both seasons of Heroes and my wrist still hurts so I'll be happy to have new things to watch. Huzzah!
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Bridge Match 3 - Board 14
Board 14 - Dealer East - None Vul
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard 2001
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ J 8 3 2 ♥ A Q 5 4 ♦ ♣ A Q J 8 4
I open 1 club in second seat. Partner responds 1 heart, Walsh. I only have 14 points but I have a void so I think this is worth an invitational 3 hearts bid. Partner passes it out.
East leads the 5 of spades.
I have 2 spade losers, a club loser, and an extra diamond trick that won't help anything. I also have some number of heart losers, probably 2. Something needs to go away, hopefully one of the round kings is onside I guess. Let's see when I get in to play cards... 5-2-K-4. A-Q-6-3. 7-T-9-8. Well, spades split 3-3 so I have an extra useless trick with the 13th spade too. I need to get trump drawn. 2-7-Q-J. The J is a little worrying... What do I do if hearts split 4-1? Lose 2 hearts I guess and there's nothing to do about it. So I might as well find out. A-7 of diamonds-3-8. Well, I have no entry to board to finesse a club or anything unless I want to ruff my high spade. I should either cash the spade and hope he ruffs or just throw him in with a trump.
I don't have any real reason to hold onto my own trump, do I? I guess he can draw all my trump and throw me on board with a diamond. Then if the club finesse loses they can cash a bunch of diamonds. That seems bad. I'm better off hoping my spade gets ruffed I think. It doesn't as East pitches a diamond and West pitches the 9 of clubs. That's a little scary. Pretty sure my club finesse isn't going to win.
Do I want to cash out for down 1? I just need to give up a club right now and then I can win 2 more clubs regardless of their leads back. Or I can assert West is false carding? What are other people likely to be playing? 2 or 3 hearts most likely. Going down at all is bad if a bunch of people stop in 2 hearts. Eh, I want to make so I'm going to pretend. I fire around a heart and West pitches a lower club this time. East draws the rest of the trump and West pitches another low club. East leads a low diamond to West's Q. If I take this I lose 2 more diamonds. I'm pretty sure East had no clubs to start so West is currently sitting on Kx of clubs and 2 diamonds. Yeah, I'm boned. Unless they botch the communication I either cash my A of clubs and give up 3 tricks or I let them take all diamond tricks to end. Boo. I win this and play a club to my A. They're up. Down 3.
Lots of different results on this board. 2 hearts made, 3 hearts went down 1, 4 hearts went down 3, and their side went down 2 in 2 clubs and made 5 diamonds. All told we got 5 MPs. If I'd just given up the club I'd have picked up 3 extra MPs. I knew I should have done that...
Captain Jack disagrees with my 3 heart bid because my hand is too strong for an invite. He wants me to splinter with 4 diamonds! He also disagrees with my trump play at the end and wants me to give up a club trick. Good call, Jack.
Ranking after board 14/60: 4/16 with 57.14%
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard 2001
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ J 8 3 2 ♥ A Q 5 4 ♦ ♣ A Q J 8 4
I open 1 club in second seat. Partner responds 1 heart, Walsh. I only have 14 points but I have a void so I think this is worth an invitational 3 hearts bid. Partner passes it out.
East leads the 5 of spades.
| NORTH ♠ Q T 4 ♥ 9 6 3 2 ♦ A T 9 ♣ 6 5 2 | ||
| EAST ♠ 5 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ J 8 3 2 ♥ A Q 5 4 ♦ ♣ A Q J 8 4 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | 1♣ | ||
| Pass | 1♥1 | Pass | 3♥ |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| 1Walsh | |||
I have 2 spade losers, a club loser, and an extra diamond trick that won't help anything. I also have some number of heart losers, probably 2. Something needs to go away, hopefully one of the round kings is onside I guess. Let's see when I get in to play cards... 5-2-K-4. A-Q-6-3. 7-T-9-8. Well, spades split 3-3 so I have an extra useless trick with the 13th spade too. I need to get trump drawn. 2-7-Q-J. The J is a little worrying... What do I do if hearts split 4-1? Lose 2 hearts I guess and there's nothing to do about it. So I might as well find out. A-7 of diamonds-3-8. Well, I have no entry to board to finesse a club or anything unless I want to ruff my high spade. I should either cash the spade and hope he ruffs or just throw him in with a trump.
I don't have any real reason to hold onto my own trump, do I? I guess he can draw all my trump and throw me on board with a diamond. Then if the club finesse loses they can cash a bunch of diamonds. That seems bad. I'm better off hoping my spade gets ruffed I think. It doesn't as East pitches a diamond and West pitches the 9 of clubs. That's a little scary. Pretty sure my club finesse isn't going to win.
Do I want to cash out for down 1? I just need to give up a club right now and then I can win 2 more clubs regardless of their leads back. Or I can assert West is false carding? What are other people likely to be playing? 2 or 3 hearts most likely. Going down at all is bad if a bunch of people stop in 2 hearts. Eh, I want to make so I'm going to pretend. I fire around a heart and West pitches a lower club this time. East draws the rest of the trump and West pitches another low club. East leads a low diamond to West's Q. If I take this I lose 2 more diamonds. I'm pretty sure East had no clubs to start so West is currently sitting on Kx of clubs and 2 diamonds. Yeah, I'm boned. Unless they botch the communication I either cash my A of clubs and give up 3 tricks or I let them take all diamond tricks to end. Boo. I win this and play a club to my A. They're up. Down 3.
| NORTH ♠ Q T 4 ♥ 9 6 3 2 ♦ A T 9 ♣ 6 5 2 | ||
| WEST ♠ A K 7 ♥ J ♦ K Q 7 2 ♣ K T 9 7 3 | EAST ♠ 9 6 5 ♥ K T 8 7 ♦ J 8 6 5 4 3 ♣ | |
| SOUTH ♠ J 8 3 2 ♥ A Q 5 4 ♦ ♣ A Q J 8 4 |
Captain Jack disagrees with my 3 heart bid because my hand is too strong for an invite. He wants me to splinter with 4 diamonds! He also disagrees with my trump play at the end and wants me to give up a club trick. Good call, Jack.
Ranking after board 14/60: 4/16 with 57.14%
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