Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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 Posted:
Dec 06, 2019 - 23:52 |
 
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I love theory crafting, and discussing balance issues, and identifying why you can't just change things.
I love looking at the rosters, and trying to identify why game designers think those teams make good gameplay, and why one particular design gets chosen when it doesn't seem to be balanced.
I loved looking at the team creation guidelines, and trying my hand at building teams - and realizing just how easy it is to use those rules to make ridiculously good teams.
I want to build a league where everyone gets to design their own team.
So I'm trying to build a much more comprehensive set of rules than the current team creation guidelines.
I currently have ~60 rules that appear to be followed. I've identified a few areas where I'd like to simply change the current rule (for instance, I would allow the ogre team to have 0-8 ogres, although I'm not planning to incorporate the new rules like disposable player.)
There are two teams that I am unable to identify the rules to build them.
The first is Chaos Pact Renegades, which should come as no surprise - they were designed with a very different thought process to most teams.
Much more surprisingly, the second team is Skaven. I feel like I'm probably missing a reasonably obvious thing here, but for the moment, I am missing it. However, I can get very close to what they are, so this is one of the things I'm hoping to figure out with others input.
I'm also having trouble with Treemen and Slann Blitzers, but I know exactly what I want to do to recreate them, I'm just not sure how to word the rule so it can be used in general on new designs and creations.
All other teams I can identify seemingly reasonable rules for how the teams were designed, and modify those rules for use in a customizable league as I'm suggesting.
I'm looking for 5-10 individuals who might be similarly interested. This would start out as only pm discussions, or discord chats. But if consensus could be found for rules and how to build teams, I would eventually actually build a league for people to play their own customized teams.
Note, many of the current teams can't be built exactly in such a setting. The rules to allow things like wardancers or chaos dwarf blockers allow for much more abusive players - to allow full customization I also have to penalize people who design such players.
That is not to say that you couldn't have a wardancer, but it wouldn't be identical to the current player.
If you're interested in such discussions, please leave a message here, or send me a PM.
I'm in EST timezone in case you want to find me on discord. |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Dec 15, 2019 - 02:31 |
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I've had a few people contact me.
The core of what I'm proposing is that human linemen would become 60k. This seems to give enough granularity to appropriately price units worse than them. It also allows elves to become more expensive, without making a big change in the ratio of players that can be purchased by elves vs humans. (Right now 50k to 70k is 1.4 humans per elf, and elves get an advantage from that. With this change, we can make it 60k vs 90k and now it's 1.5 humans per elf).
The baseline cost difference means I give out an extra 10k per game to anyone who plays a game (and doesn't forfeit or concede).
This means that elves end up being able to replace players at about the same pace they can now, while cheap teams (undead types, humans) get a boost - which due to expensive mistakes really just means that it might encourage some cheap inducement purchases more often for those teams.
My proposal under this system before the ogre Spike reveal had been to reduce snotlings by 10k (relative to human linemen). Given the recent change to snotling (effectively making them cost 20k less) I think this system has some merit, although obviously the disposal player change is bigger than what I was suggesting. |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 01, 2020 - 22:15 |
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Burnalot
Joined: Aug 02, 2003
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Jan 02, 2020 - 03:16 |
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Quite a bit of work you done there, good job! |
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If Jah is by my side, how can I be afraid? |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 02, 2020 - 03:36 |
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Thanks.
Aside from Chaos Pact Renegades which has obvious problems (it really doesn't follow any of the rules that the other teams use), I'm interested in any feedback on Dwarves and Chaos Chosen. Those two teams aren't particularly fantastic at winning (except at very low tv for dwarves and very high tv for chaos), but they end up rather overpriced anyway, and increasing the cost of teams when they aren't clear winners in general seems bad. So I've made a proposed change to both rosters but ... ehhhh. I really didn't want to actually change core rosters if I could help it.
Feedback or thoughts would be very nice.
Also thoughts on Treemen in general, and whether Halflings should get 3 or 4 of them would be good too. (I had initially planned on giving them 4, and goblins would get 4 trolls, but then goblins can't even GET 4 trolls and can only have 3. So should halflings only have 3 as well??) |
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selfy_74
Joined: Sep 03, 2010
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Jan 02, 2020 - 12:03 |
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I'd suggest that Goblins are also a bit of an outlier, because of the number of single positionals they have (6 plus trolls and gobbos). Only having skimmed through your rules I'm guessing that you suggest only 3 trolls so that it doesn't go over 8 positionals? I think that somewhere in the original team creation guidance there was a rule stating max positional type (4, I think off the top of my head) and the Goblin team (as with Pact) breaks this rule. |
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Selfy_74: Verified Stunty Leeg Master
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selfy_74
Joined: Sep 03, 2010
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Jan 02, 2020 - 12:05 |
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I'd be happy to test 4 Treeman Halfling teams for you if required.
Edit: Off the top of my head I don't see 4 Treemen being overpowered. Check out some of the SL teams like Skinks with 4 Krox etc. What it will do, though, is change the tier of the team and that might not be what you want to achieve. Having said that, all the other teams have changed to, so it might be necessary.
Lot's to think about there. |
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Selfy_74: Verified Stunty Leeg Master
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 02, 2020 - 13:55 |
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Yup, the Treeman change is a result of my own experience playing against grandfathered ogres - in articular, I found playing against 8 ogres a far more enjoyable matchup, as the opposing coach, so I wanted to allow ogres to have 8 ogres by default. This in turn suggests that all stunty teams could do with extra big guys without breaking the gane. My experience as an underworld coach also favored this.
Secret league is another reason I like this change, but as you mention about my rules, secret league also has a lot of changes, do it's hard to say exactly.
I'll try to take you up on that halfling testing!
As for the original guidelines, I've completed discarded some of those rules - max number of positional types is one of the rules I currently don't have implemented. But yes max positionals is the goblins 'issue'. |
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spelledaren
Joined: Mar 06, 2004
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Jan 02, 2020 - 17:43 |
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I’ve read a lot now. It is interesting, but a lot to digest at a first pass.
The results for current rosters make sense to me, which is encouraging. I’ll try some variants of teams and see if I understand. |
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FUMBBL! |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 02, 2020 - 18:05 |
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Yes, right now is very much draft status. Once it's complete, I would expect anyone interested in joining to work with me to create their roster. As long as they're going with something based around current teams (except chaos pact) they should be close to start and I would help them with any necessary tweaks, without expecting most people to learn all or even most of the rules. |
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Gaurhir
Joined: Aug 03, 2018
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Jan 02, 2020 - 20:36 |
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On Pact - why not let them have a Chaos Dwarf, Beastman & possibly even a Bloater?
Always thought Pact that has Dark elf, goblin and skaven but no obvious Chaos players make no sense |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 02, 2020 - 23:48 |
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Because the goal of the first draft is to make comprehensive rules that can be used by all existing teams. Unfortunately, pact break those rules - they simply can't have 3 big guys..
Hmm. Unless they're built on the undead model of 2 STR 5 players, and a big guy. They still couldn't have the dark elf renegade in that case but at least it's close?
Thoughts?
As to making your own version of pact, that's exactly what this league is about. So you could absolutely make your own version of the team, but currently we don't have a good basis for the actual pact team. |
Last edited by Nelphine on Jan 03, 2020; edited 1 time in total |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 03, 2020 - 01:32 |
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Ok, walking through the whole process to do chaos pact:
They're using undead model which is to have 2 Str 5 players, and they also have a big guy. This means they can't have a +Agi player, but we'll ignore that for now.
That means they could have up to 4 players with MA 7. They only have 1, so they have 3 players that are below max speed. That means they can have 3 players with M on doubles (all the Str 5 players). They have 2 STR 5 positionals, the dark elf, the Skaven, the orc, and a goblin, so they are ok on number of positionals.
Costwise, they haven't given anything up like underworld or other teams have. All they can say is they didn't take skills, but many other teams chose that, so that doesn't justify anything extra.
Therefore, their linemen should be 90k (30k undercosted, as bad as wardsncers, which is ludicrous of course - they're nowhere near as good as wardancers, but almost all other existing players get all skill access for free through other choices - pact simply haven't done that in any meaningful way).
Similarly their goblin, orc, dark elf, and skaven all have M access - but they have animosity to counteract that and therefore are correctly priced. The big guys are all overpriced, as seen on other teams with the same big guys. They should have 60k re-rolls. The minotaur has too many non negative skills and so I guess we could say they increased cost of refills by 10k to fix the minotaur but that seems extreme.
In the end, everything works out, except the linemen are:
6338 GSPM 90k (+30). Everything else lines up.
I guess there's an argument to be made that if your str 5 positional have big guy style negatraits, and all other positional have animosity, then the team can have 1 player with agi 4.
So overall, it kind of works out, except the linemen are ludicrous.
Total team cost: -30 -30 -20 for the str 5 players and big guy, 0 for the other positionals, 0 for re-rolls, +30 for each of 6 linemen.
Total: +100. Should really be around the +40 mark, so if the linemen lost 2 access types, strength and passing, the team would be reasonable and actually -20 overall cost.
I'd probably want to do something else to justify the 70k rerolls but I'm not sure what. |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 03, 2020 - 02:36 |
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Actually, +10k rerolls could justify P access on linos (as it's the access that's the worst on numerous players). As with other such types of accesses, it would also apply to the big guy. We choose the minotaur as the big guy, who promptly gives up P access in return for starting with a 4th non negative skill.
Then our linemen are GSPM and only 80k (+20). That brings the team overall to +40, which is.. well it horribly hurts the minmax teams, and the team really doesn't warrant a price increase based on its success rate, so I'd probably still remove S access on the linos making them 6338 GPM 70k (+10), and the overall team cost would be -20. |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jan 03, 2020 - 03:57 |
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Oh, actually, all 4 of the renegades get +10k price over the existing roster due to other rules (increased cost of agility, increased cost of MA 7, increased cost of AV9 on a str 3 player, increased cost of dodge on AV7 players when most of the team isn't AV7). That would make the team +20 even losing S access on the linos, probably still not where we want the team.
So instead of the 70k re-rolls giving the linemen P access, we give 4 positionals M access (also goes to the big guy, so still gets used to give minotaur the extra skill it starts with) for free. Then the suggestion is to drop both P and S on the linemen, and make them 6338 GM 70k, and the overall is still -20. |
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