War #11 - Planned Changes (Work In Progress) (Discussion)

[Zawadx]

Everything you see in this thread is subject to change.

Starting this one early so we can get War going soon after Trial ends good rules with feedback from the community.



Current Plans for War #11

• Market price rebalancing
• Increasing discards to 24. For all rounds.
• Transmutation Changes
• Granting Relics for excellent round performances/changes to awarding relics
• Super Event Cards
• Auction Revamp
• Alchemist Role
• Small rule changes, listed out below

Spoiler for Market Prices:

Here is out first effort to understand the market and see how it can be improved. Still a work in progress.

Spoiler for Discards:

To shorten War from 16 rounds to a more suitable 10-12, our options are to either reduce the number of initial points for vaultbuilding, or to increase discards per round. Since having a larger and more flexible vault makes for a more entertaining event, we think increasing discards per round is the more suitable method for shortening War.

Round	Discards from deck	Discards from vault	Total Discards	Salvage
1+	15	9	24	6

• "Vault discards" can also be picked from the losing deck.

The distribution of discards from deck and vault might be changed. Thoughts?

Spoiler for Transmutation changes:

To limit the influx of powerful cards from nothing, which invalidates market, transmutation ratios will depend on market prices. Current baseline is 1:1 for cards costing 60 or less, 1:2 for cards costing 70-150, 1:3 for cards costing 160-290 and 1:4 for 400+ (sofree). This is only a rough baseline, do you think it could be distributed better?

Following kaempfer's excellent suggestion, a similar system might be implemented for salvages too. Then raw salvages will increase.

Spoiler for Granting Relics:

Rather than having Event Cards as the only real way to obtain Relics for the late-game, a system for rewarding teams that perform very well (either 4-1 or 5-0 in a round) may be introduced. Or more features added. Still a work in progress

Spoiler for Super ECs:

ECs that encompass multiple rounds. They will have interesting mechanics, possibly serving as a testing ground for future wars. Regular ECs may interact with super ECs, to make them more interesting. Since the main focus is on cool mechanics, they will aim to provide more options rather than changing the core of War.

For example, a hypothetical super EC might let dead teams target one alive team each round for a normal discards match for rounds 7-9. Round 8 EC might interact with this by giving every team member +2 upgrades for every ghost team beaten last round. (note that these examples are never gonna happen because they are horribly imbalanced).

Current plan is to have one super EC affect 3 rounds every three rounds, splitting war up into separate epochs, with potentially no more super ECs in the endgame. This wold leave no normal round without a super EC, do you think this needs to change? Thoughts on the length of a super EC?

Spoiler for Auction:

Blind auction, starting bids, favorites and bans the same as war 10. Only 1 day of open auction, then raises start getting more expensive by 2 points every hour. This hopes to stop the practice of waiting for the deadline and then ninjabidding, which makes auction slow and forces generals to be around for a specific time. We hope to lessen the problem by diluting it.

Battle bidding was flawed before, maybe returned with fixes. Is it needed? The dynamic will be different with hourly deadlines, would that be desirable?

Generals will NOT be locked from voting if they currently have a full team of 4 soldiers. After auction ends, generals will take the players they have max bids on, in descending order of bids. While this might result in a player being bid on but not ending on a roster, we don't expect this to be an issue. Player substitutions will also be more open to account for this.

Still undecided on maximum bids, and locking players in after 24 hours of not being bid on. Thoughts?

Spoiler for Alchemist:

Inspired by mrpaper. This role allows you to transmute more freely, aiming to help bottom teams who don't receive useful salvage often. With the current transmutation changes, this would perhaps decrease the transmutation level by one for each bracket.

Spoiler for Rule Changes:

• Masters who chose to not be general may participate as Soldier instead.
• Minor mistakes like a wrong mark will not result in autoloss anymore, but instead can be fixed with a small penalty. The fix should be for only something minor, like the mark. Exact wording is not yet finalized. Any suggestions on what to cover/not cover, and under which conditions?
• Team boards will have modify rights for whole team, yay!
• Salvage/Transmutation happens after Discards. Gdocs will be updated to make this happen.
• You may not share team secrets with community members/accounts outside of your team. However your forum account may be a hydra with multiple people: as long as none of those people have another forum account they are considered a valid part of your account for War. Please notify Warmasters beforehand if this is the case.
• Teams will face at most 2 generals in a round.

This is not a final list. More stuff will be added as we work on them.

Feel free to post your thoughts about any or all of these points, but please keep your feedback constructive.

[worldwideweb3]

I dont like Round 1 starting with 24 discards and carrying on. It's good to have a first few rounds to get used to it. Also, i prefer 14-16 round war over a 10-12 personally. Will add more stuff here as i read.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

I dont like Round 1 starting with 24 discards and carrying on. It's good to have a first few rounds to get used to it. Also, i prefer 14-16 round war over a 10-12 personally. Will add more stuff here as i read.

Lol www3 basicallu word for word copying what I said in chat

[kaempfer13]

market prices: quite a few I dont agree with, but thats better to say in the thread.
Discards: vault discards are too high (and i wouldnt go higher with deck discards either, at that point you may as well go "discard the deck and enough cards from vault to loose 24 cards total"). over a third of the discards will be 30 point cards that were never dusted off. Besides this war promises to be shorter anyway.
Transmutations: i think I like it.
Relics for winners: I dont think the number 1 team needs more help, usually 1 or 2 teams crystallize to be the contestants for rank 1 and everyone else is just messing around to do the best they can, I wouldnt exacerbate that.
Super ECs: awfull example. Even if you find a good way to balance out a slightly unbalanced Super EC with an EC that interacts with it, all those ECs interacting with it should be known to everyone as soon as they have to make a decision relevant to that interaction. Best to try to make all ECs and their interactions roughly fair. Personally I dont mind more strategic aspects, so long as they are fair. Not sure whether a breather between super ECs would be good or bad, depends on their overall success I guess. I wouldnt go over 3 rounds in duration.
Auction: Inb4 raises that are 2 points to small cause drama. Also, there should be a limit to how many bids you can place, not being able to go over the auction limit with all winning bids (regardless whether youd actually take them) may be enough.
Alchemist: I feel like transmutes are the most important after a loss streak. With Alchemist you still need to win to patch up your vault. Since this seems to be the part where you address roles, I'd suggest a slight buff to trios and tinkerer. I think they should count all pends as in-element if your mark matches your element (would also prevent some niche errors by making them legal)
Rule changes: not sure whether we should allow someone to take a title and then not live up to it, even though they had at least some time. salvage discard order is nice to clarify, not sure if this is the order i prefer. Agree with rest.

[Blacksmith]

So a lot of things I like here. But a few things I have some thoughts about.

1: These changes should be made to war 11# and not to war 10# imo.

2: Market price rebalancing.
Good

3: Transmution changes.
Good

4:Granting Relics for excellent round performances/changes to awarding relics
Sure why not.

5:Super Event Cards
Sure why not. But you really have to try your best to balance them. 3 rounds seems legit. Maybe it's not as important the first 1-3 rounds?
I wouldn't mind if they allowed changes in the game mechanic. Like allows you to play decks with 40% in element or force team to 70% in element, increase salvage for 3 rounds, or allow you to play with x extra uppdrages for 3 rounds, or less uppgrades for 3 rounds etc etc.

6: Auction Revamp
The auction prices needs to triple in comparison to last war to make any sense at all. I really like a cost increase every hour but you will need some kind of count thingy otherwise people will do misstakes. Allowing generals to bid on any number of players seems fine as a long as the generals have a budget to afford all the people they bid on:
Don't allow generals to bid on someone if they already have spent all their points. If a general loses one player to another general the generals points will be free to spend again.
I don't like locking in players after 24 hours. It's better to end the auction when generals can't afford to bid anymore. That could be done by increasing the cost increase for every hour.

7:Alchemist Role
I don't like this role. it's basically removes the thing we tried to solve with increased transmution cost. I'm very much in favor of roles though.

8:Salvage/Transmutation happens after Discards.
I don't see the benefit of this. With last years role we were allowed to discard cards we salvaged, which seems fair. This just makes things more complicated.

9: High discard from round one is good. The first 3 rounds are a bit tricky since you know less about your opponent and some of your players might not know how things are runed. However I don't think thats argument enough to make the first 3 rounds test rounds as it has been previous wars. The discard don't have to be 24 though maybe 16-20 is enough, even if 24 is fine with me.

[mathman101]

Everything you see in this thread is subject to change.

Starting this one early so we can get War going soon after Trial ends good rules with feedback from the community.



Current Plans for War #10   Time Travel War???

• Market price rebalancing
• Increasing discards to 24. For all rounds.
• Transmutation Changes
• Granting Relics for excellent round performances/changes to awarding relics
• Super Event Cards
• Auction Revamp
• Alchemist Role
• Small rule changes, listed out below

Spoiler for Market Prices:

Here is out first effort to understand the market and see how it can be improved. Still a work in progress.

no complaints

Spoiler for Discards:

To shorten War from 16 rounds to a more suitable 10-12, our options are to either reduce the number of initial points for vaultbuilding, or to increase discards per round. Since having a larger and more flexible vault makes for a more entertaining event, we think increasing discards per round is the more suitable method for shortening War.

Round	Discards from deck	Discards from vault	Total Discards	Salvage
1+	15	9	24	6

• "Vault discards" can also be picked from the losing deck.

The distribution of discards from deck and vault might be changed. Thoughts?

The discard amounts look ok, but I would suggest starting this at round 2 or 3 instead of 1. Give at least 1-2 rounds of lower discards (even if higher than previous war starting discards) to slowly ease back into war.

Spoiler for Transmutation changes:

To limit the influx of powerful cards from nothing, which invalidates market, transmutation ratios will depend on market prices. Current baseline is 1:1 for cards costing 60 or less, 1:2 for cards costing 70-150, 1:3 for cards costing 160-290 and 1:4 for 400+ (sofree). This is only a rough baseline, do you think it could be distributed better?

Following kaempfer's excellent suggestion, a similar system might be implemented for salvages too. Then raw salvages will increase.

No complaints

Spoiler for Granting Relics:

Rather than having Event Cards as the only real way to obtain Relics for the late-game, a system for rewarding teams that perform very well (either 4-1 or 5-0 in a round) may be introduced. Or more features added. Still a work in progress

Last war I beleive WMs had discussed this, and we decided not to use it due to the "rich getting richer" style of rewards. If it can be balanced right, I could see it working for 5-0, but personally I am not a fan of it.

Spoiler for Super ECs:

ECs that encompass multiple rounds. They will have interesting mechanics, possibly serving as a testing ground for future wars. Regular ECs may interact with super ECs, to make them more interesting. Since the main focus is on cool mechanics, they will aim to provide more options rather than changing the core of War.

For example, a hypothetical super EC might let dead teams target one alive team each round for a normal discards match for rounds 7-9. Round 8 EC might interact with this by giving every team member +2 upgrades for every ghost team beaten last round. (note that these examples are never gonna happen because they are horribly imbalanced).

Current plan is to have one super EC affect 3 rounds every three rounds, splitting war up into separate epochs, with potentially no more super ECs in the endgame. This wold leave no normal round without a super EC, do you think this needs to change? Thoughts on the length of a super EC?

2 or 3 rounds seems like a decent amount of time for a Super EC. any more than 3 would make it overly long and not enough change and flow. I think interactions between the Super EC and regular EC could be a nice addition, but I don't think it is needed for all 3 or 4 Super ECs made. maybe just 1-2 of them, and have the remaining Super EC's be their own standalone epicness in addition the the standalone round EC.

Spoiler for Auction:

Blind auction, starting bids, favorites and bans the same as war 10. Only 1 day of open auction, then raises start getting more expensive by 2 points every hour. This hopes to stop the practice of waiting for the deadline and then ninjabidding, which makes auction slow and forces generals to be around for a specific time. We hope to lessen the problem by diluting it.

Battle bidding was flawed before, maybe returned with fixes. Is it needed? The dynamic will be different with hourly deadlines, would that be desirable?

Generals will NOT be locked from voting if they currently have a full team of 4 soldiers. After auction ends, generals will take the players they have max bids on, in descending order of bids. While this might result in a player being bid on but not ending on a roster, we don't expect this to be an issue. Player substitutions will also be more open to account for this.

Still undecided on maximum bids, and locking players in after 24 hours of not being bid on. Thoughts?

Last war I think I had received more negative comments then positive about locking players after 24hrs. In theory it seemed great before war, but it did not go as well in practice. For Gens with more than 4 max bids, I think all extra bids should then go to the Gen with the second highest bid on those extra players to avoid the risk of players not making it into a team. Also that could add strategy on which 4 should be your highest, based on who had the second bid below you. I have no complaints to max bids being kept the same or changed.

Spoiler for Alchemist:

Inspired by mrpaper. This role allows you to transmute more freely, aiming to help bottom teams who don't receive useful salvage often. With the current transmutation changes, this would perhaps decrease the transmutation level by one for each bracket.

no complaints

Spoiler for Rule Changes:

• Masters who chose to not be general may participate as Soldier instead. no complaints
• Minor mistakes like a wrong mark will not result in autoloss anymore, but instead can be fixed with a small penalty. The fix should be for only something minor, like the mark. Exact wording is not yet finalized. Any suggestions on what to cover/not cover, and under which conditions? I would say make it explicit to deck mark not any cards, and can only be fixed before the second game is played. if game 1 was played before changing mark, G1 is an auto-loss
• Team boards will have modify rights for whole team, yay! no complaints
• Salvage/Transmutation happens after Discards. Gdocs will be updated to make this happen. no complaints
• You may not share team secrets with community members/accounts outside of your team. However your forum account may be a hydra with multiple people: as long as none of those people have another forum account they are considered a valid part of your account for War. Please notify Warmasters beforehand if this is the case. no complaints

This is not a final list. More stuff will be added as we work on them.

Feel free to post your thoughts about any or all of these points, but please keep your feedback constructive.

Opinions/suggestions highlighted in yellow

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Rule changes: not sure whether we should allow someone to take a title and then not live up to it, even though they had at least some time.

The only time this rule is relevant is where a master is unable to be active at the start of war, which is the most important part for a general. Given our slim playerbase, it seems nuts to disallow a master to sign up for auction if he can't be a general

(for example, if war were to start in august while I am on honeymoon, i would be unable to general, but I'd still be able to sign up as a normal player)

[Zawadx]

Added another small rule: "Teams will face at most 2 generals in a round." We decided we were ok with a team having to face 2 generals several times or consecutively, but not having to face 3/4 generals in one round.

One of the reasons I'm more comfortable with super ECs is that they can be changed with response to feedback as the rounds go on. SO if the first super EC is too strong for everyone, we can adjust and make them more mild in future. Note that super ECs will still try to be as balanced as possible, but might not be mild. My main goal here is to make additions to the rules, not just simple tweaks.

Discards: vault discards are too high (and i wouldnt go higher with deck discards either, at that point you may as well go "discard the deck and enough cards from vault to loose 24 cards total"). over a third of the discards will be 30 point cards that were never dusted off. Besides this war promises to be shorter anyway.

So you're suggesting less than 24 discards?

salvage discard order is nice to clarify, not sure if this is the order i prefer.

The reasoning here is that Discards after Salvage provides even more benefits to the top teams, and allows them to simply throw away useless salvage instead of having to come up with interesting ways to use them.

7:Alchemist Role
I don't like this role. it's basically removes the thing we tried to solve with increased transmution cost. I'm very much in favor of roles though.

It is only one deck in a round however, with the tradeoff that you can't use other roles to enhance your chances either. Of course what might happen is that good teams can use this quite often, while weak teams are forced to use roles to increase their chance of win instead of small advantages like this. But considering the tradeoffs and limited use I don't think this will remove the fix that increased transmutation costs provides.

[Blacksmith]

Added another small rule: "Teams will face at most 2 generals in a round." We decided we were ok with a team having to face 2 generals several times or consecutively, but not having to face 3/4 generals in one round.Good

salvage discard order is nice to clarify, not sure if this is the order i prefer.

The reasoning here is that Discards after Salvage provides even more benefits to the top teams, and allows them to simply throw away useless salvage instead of having to come up with interesting ways to use them. Discard is usually quite easy for teams with lots of cards and hard for the bottom teams. I don't think switching the orders will make any big difference for the top teams since they won't have any problems to discard anyway. And besides they can just discard the cards they salvaged last round. For the bottom teams however discard can be harsh and then it might be crucial to get to discard your salvage right away.

[ddevans96]

Thoughts (only read the OP in depth):

-Discards should not immediately be 24. At least the first round should be 12 or less. Even if they start at 24 in the second round that'd be fine.
-Salvages being increased but weighted based off market price is a very good idea.
-Relics for good rounds is good, but 4-1 and 5-0 should give the same amount of relics. Only giving it to 5-0 is going to lead to a rich-get-richer situation, whereas 4-1 can be gotten by almost any team if they're performing better than expected. This is a good way to reward weaker elements.
-I think something that should be considered for auction is 1-2 rounds of draft and then the rest auction. I know draft wasn't popular but a hybrid system has some strong points - it immediately gives generals a lieutenant to bounce off strategy with, it doesn't lose all the suspense auction has because there's more than 12 players worth drafting, and it could benefit weaker elements by slightly mitigating superteams.
-Alchemist good. Flexibility good. I like teams being limited to facing two generals for the same reason.
-I'm fine with Masters not being General and participating as a Soldier - times have changed, we want activity above all else - but they should be restricted from their element. EDIT: I should say why I think this - you can basically choose the person you appoint as General to be on your team and agree that they'll get you. That should be treated as a loophole, the auction system is supposed to prevent anyone from choosing the team they're on.
-Wrong mark should have never counted as an autoloss in the first place, so good.


As for hydras - I'm strongly opposed to them, as last War indicates. I think they're full of abuse possibilities, pose unnecessary complications, create unfairness, and are generally against the spirit of War. If I were more active here I'd die on that hill. But I'm not, so instead I'll try to be productive.

If they're going to happen, it needs to be public knowledge. Generals need to know that they're buying two people instead of one, so bidding can be fair. Players need to know they're interacting with multiple people. Also, I think it should be limited to 2 people per account, but if not, that number needs to also be public knowledge.

Related, a question - is the forum account required to also share only one game account for the purposes of War, or can each member of the hydra have their own game account? If multiple game accounts are allowed, those need to all be public too - I don't really think they should be but I wanted to ask regardless.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

I agree with everything dd said, except I don't see why Generals shouldn't be allowed to pick Master-cum-soldiers of their own element, because the reason dd gave makes no difference which way round it is. If the Master was the general, they'd simply 'agree' to go for the vet they would have chosen, it doesn't stop other teams trying to get them too, i don't see how any advantage is gained by this

[TheonlyrealBeef]

Added another small rule: "Teams will face at most 2 generals in a round." We decided we were ok with a team having to face 2 generals several times or consecutively, but not having to face 3/4 generals in one round.

I'll more thoroughly read the rest later, but I think there is one fundamental flaw here: what if team ranked first can send 3(or more, just not enough opponents) decks, with ranks 2, 3 and 4 each having 1 deck? Do you want 2 matches with only 1 of them involving the top team? It's a fringe case, but it can make or break the end result of war.