An idea to help Roze

[Yitzi]

It occurred to me that one of the reasons that Roze tends to be on the weak side is that in a typical game (2-4 human players), she doesn't get full benefit from her techshare ability.  Thus, I would make the following proposal: Instead of techshare 3, Roze gets techshare X/2 (rounded down), where X is the number of human players in the game.  (For a full 7-player game, this becomes no change at all.)

[Flygon]

Agreed. This is a good idea.

[ete]

I agree with the spirit, but in practice it could have some annoying affects with the system you lay out. Most clearly, with two human players, that's TechShare 1 (2/2=1)? Roze instagets everyone's tech?



Let's think what would be reasonable, for all human games. Bear in mind that 3/6 is the natural proportion of other players having the tech she normally needs to get the tech.
Current formula (with a minimum of techshare 2 to prevent brokenness):
<no. other players>: <techshare> (%foes for techshare)
6: 3 (50%)
5: 2 (40%) (perhaps 3 (60%) would be better?)
4: 2 (50%)
3: 2 (66%)
2: 2 (100%)


Now.. that's ignoring AI. And for this, AI should not be ignored, imo. Even though by midgame humans will be far ahead, in the earlygame there are enough options that the AI will probably end up feeding her a lot of tech if there are several of them, especially if they trade with human players. Basically: great idea, but needs careful implementation otherwise it'll be huge. Especially in AI heavy games or those with five or six human players.

Edit: hm, I'm pretty sure techshare 1 would be clearly broken, but I guess I could be mistaken. Would be interesting to try and vaguely balance that kind of faction actually, as a custom project.

[Yitzi]

I agree with the spirit, but in practice it could have some annoying affects with the system you lay out. Most clearly, with two human players, that's TechShare 1 (2/2=1)? Roze instagets everyone's tech?

Yeah, for a 2-player game it's pretty much impossible to have a techshare that's neither too strong nor too weak.  Not sure what to do for her there, except maybe not play 2-player games as Roze unless it's against Zak.

Let's think what would be reasonable, for all human games. Bear in mind that 3/6 is the natural proportion of other players having the tech she normally needs to get the tech.
Current formula (with a minimum of techshare 2 to prevent brokenness):
<no. other players>: <techshare> (%foes for techshare)
6: 3 (50%)
5: 2 (40%) (perhaps 3 (60%) would be better?)
4: 2 (50%)
3: 2 (66%)
2: 2 (100%)

Yeah, I think it might be better to just say "reduce it to 2 if there are 4 or less human players".

Now.. that's ignoring AI. And for this, AI should not be ignored, imo. Even though by midgame humans will be far ahead, in the earlygame there are enough options that the AI will probably end up feeding her a lot of tech if there are several of them, especially if they trade with human players. Basically: great idea, but needs careful implementation otherwise it'll be huge.

Point.  Perhaps AI players count as half?

Edit: hm, I'm pretty sure techshare 1 would be clearly broken, but I guess I could be mistaken.

It really depends on the opponent.  Against Aki, it'd be broken.  (Zak is weak against Roze anyway, due to being easy to buy out.)  Against Domai, it's going to be far more limited.

[ete]

hmm.. so like: reduce to two if (human/4)+(AI/8)<1? That could work. I'll make a table to see what that looks like in detail later. At a glance, a single player game would look like: 1/4+6/8, so give techshare 3, so it could work pretty simply.

I wonder how practical a version of this which adapts mid game as people are eliminated would be.

[Yitzi]

I wonder how practical a version of this which adapts mid game as people are eliminated would be.

Quite a bit more difficult, and might make Roze too powerful.  One of my design goals was that if made for a standard game (7 players at the start, all roughly equal in capability) it would follow the normal rule.

[ete]

hm, right. I'm guessing you're proposing this be a change implemented in the faction text files, rather than doing something in the code like saying "If techshare 7, use techshare <formula>" and editing roze's file to 7?

Anyway, formula table. I've set this up so it shows all possible combinations of AI/Human factions (including those with fewer than 7 starting players), and lets you edit the values in the formula (highlighted in yellow) to see what the changes do instantly. Feel free to play around with values. There's also a comparison sheet if you look to the lower left, so you can easily flip back and forth to see the changes from any alteration in the formula. Enjoy

And, not sure if making her ability have use into the later game is a bad thing honestly. This'd be I imagine something to go with the package of your mod in general, and bringing roze into the competition a bit more by letting her use her ability once there are fewer people around feels like a natural way to do it.

[Yitzi]

And, not sure if making her ability have use into the later game is a bad thing honestly.

With fairly even players and unconstrained alliances (and a nerf to nerve gas) there'll probably be most factions still in play until very late in the game.  Well, unless a momentum player gets lucky, but Roze will have trouble then no matter what.

[ete]

If most players are still around then this changes nothing. It just lets her remain competitive if some players die, but I guess then you've got annoying tactics like letting someone live just so Roze's techshare does not get boosted, so yea. Probably not worthwhile.