So I am in 3 games that are now down to 3 players - and have been for awhile. 

Basically we are at somewhat of an equilibrium - no one is really strong enough to take out another.

I don't think I have anything to gain by being the aggressor except to get the games over with.

Any general thoughts on this situation?

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1259p1/The_dreaded_crab_game

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1838/Stalemate_resolution

Can't remember who, but someone recently mentioned an open discussion to reduce unit counts.  I guess everyone could reach an agreement to each attack with N units next turn, evenly split between both other players.  

IMO, that's an unsatisfactory resolution. 

My personal opinion, is that if stalemates happen often it's a map flaw.  The group I play with seems to get ourselves into a stalemate I'd say, >25% of the time, which IMO is too damn high.   I don't know if this is just related to our play style.  Several of us play fairly defensively, but those of that play more defensively also win more often, so I think we are playing well.  It's just that in many maps it's better to have your opponents attack each other, while you sit back and watch, so if you can encourage that behavior, it's great for you, but can be bad for the game overall.

In my experience, large maps with no fog are especially susceptible to this.  I think some of it must be my groups play style, because we seem stalemate on maps that otherwise have pretty good reviews.  Not to pick on Mario, Civil War and Mobs of New York, but these are our current stalemates.  These maps all have good reviews in general, but I don't see how other groups don't stalemate all the time also.  Check out these games:

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/85187

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/85959

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/110031

I personally think there should be some option for a 'stalemate bomb'.  Something where the wargear engine determines their is a stalemate and takes some action.   There are a couple ways this could be done. 

I hate stalemates

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1603/Terminating_a_game__Point_calculation_issue

These are difficult situations becuase often the decision to attack an opponent, evenly minimally, will result in retalation which leaves the 'uninvolved' played with an upper hand.  So, the tendency is for no one to attack.  What will sometimes break the tie is someone cashes two sets of cards in subsequent turns.  So, the strategy may be to wait until it happens that the cards fall your way.  If you get a wild card you can plan better for this; if you are sitting with five cards and don't need the wild card for your first set, you know you will be cashing two turns in a row and can position your units accordingly.

Relevant:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/

Nice reddit thread.  Almost 3000 posts in 9 hours.  Already spawned it's own community with 6000 subscribers.

Ozyman wrote:

 

I personally think there should be some option for a 'stalemate bomb'.  Something where the wargear engine determines their is a stalemate and takes some action.   There are a couple ways this could be done. 

 

One possiblility is to have a map limit the number of armies each player is allowed to use.  Similar to Houses in Monopoly....if you need more, you better sell one from somewhere else, or upgrade to a hotel.

Back to risk: 

Just as a continent of a certain size produces certain bonuses, it stands to reason that certain contenents can only support up to a certain size standing army (I believe this feature is already available in WG, but is under utilized on most maps).

Another proposal:

Build some kind of attrition aspect into the game.  This could be implemented by changing the value of your next set based on the amount of resources you already have in play.  This could go even further to provide a negative set value and a player would have to choose where to remove armies from the board.

A simple way to implement negative sets is to change the set series.  In a game where sets move 4, 6, 8, 10, etc.  perhaps they start counting down after a certain number.  Perhaps a reasonable number of sets could be chosen by the map maker (maybe one set per territory), before the sets start diminishing in value along the same patter and eventually go negative.....

Lynxkewl wrote:

A simple way to implement negative sets is to change the set series.  In a game where sets move 4, 6, 8, 10, etc.  perhaps they start counting down after a certain number.  Perhaps a reasonable number of sets could be chosen by the map maker (maybe one set per territory), before the sets start diminishing in value along the same patter and eventually go negative.....

Card sets can already 'ramp' up to a different rate of change after hitting a certain turn in value.  An upcoming feature will supposedly allow a negative 'ramp' value, which should allow map makers to do what you are describing.

It should already be possible using factories to have a map that has a 'bomb' whereby after a certain number of turns something happens, like there is a -1 every turn applied to every territory or maybe just some territories, or something.  Might be a bit complicated, and clunky, but it would be interesting to try out.

Lynxkewl wrote:

 

One possiblility is to have a map limit the number of armies each player is allowed to use.  Similar to Houses in Monopoly....if you need more, you better sell one from somewhere else, or upgrade to a hotel.

Back to risk: 

Just as a continent of a certain size produces certain bonuses, it stands to reason that certain contenents can only support up to a certain size standing army (I believe this feature is already available in WG, but is under utilized on most maps).

True; unit count limits are currently available on a territory by territory basis.  I used them when I ported King of the Mountains over here because over on TOS, players were camping units on mountains and huge stalematish games with hundreds and even thousands of armies on a single territory were being played. 

Another proposal:

Build some kind of attrition aspect into the game.  This could be implemented by changing the value of your next set based on the amount of resources you already have in play.  This could go even further to provide a negative set value and a player would have to choose where to remove armies from the board.

This is too fundamental a game changer to be viable for most boards.

A simple way to implement negative sets is to change the set series.  In a game where sets move 4, 6, 8, 10, etc.  perhaps they start counting down after a certain number.  Perhaps a reasonable number of sets could be chosen by the map maker (maybe one set per territory), before the sets start diminishing in value along the same patter and eventually go negative.....

I think properly thought out card sets are the key to addressing the problem, but first let me say that I think there's no way to completely avoid a crab game if players are bound and determined to play them.  I.e., if there are three defensively minded players at the board, all of whom refuse to take advantage of opportunities to take each other out, you're going to end up with a stalemate.

I think Colossal Crusade increments by 1 from 4 to 50 and then resets.  I don't doubt that this works reasonably well because it is likely to create an imbalance at the reset point, but I have to say that I'm not a fan of it because I hate the thought of being caught on the short end of that stick.

Even if it was possible, having boards that increment up and then down would not be a good determent because balance of power is not affected when everyone is subject to the same global economies of production.

If I think a board I'm designing is prone to stalemates, I put in a healthy escalation of cards because I believe it is the best way to induce aggressive play. For instance, in Anarchy card bonuses start incrementing at 5 units and then ramp to 10 at a certain point.  In Dev play it became apparent that this was necessary because there was so much natural production on the board.

interested in one thing, when a situation occurs that the game is in stalemate... Can the system be made to let say after 100 turns are completed, (if there is no winner) the game is declared as a draw and the points are divided to players who are remaining. Or say that the winner is the one who at the moment have the most units?

I'm not mapmaker and don't know nothing about how you create games, but this seems to me that could be fine solution to prevent endless games and also to encourage players to be more aggressive as the game nearing the end...

Vidoviti Milan wrote:

interested in one thing, when a situation occurs that the game is in stalemate... Can the system be made to let say after 100 turns are completed, (if there is no winner) the game is declared as a draw and the points are divided to players who are remaining.

This can't be done with the current designer tools.  Regardless, dividing the points is a bad idea; it would throw the win/loss column and things like h-ratings into chaos.

Or say that the winner is the one who at the moment have the most units?

This is not a bad idea in that some designers (like me) would probably take advantage of such a designer feature, but not for the reasons you might think. Regardless, the great majority of designers would not use it, nor would designers be likely to incorporate such a feature into existing boards.

If nothing else, then every game should  have to have a structure that increases card values. maybe a bad comparison, but in texas holdem poker blinds are growing constantly, and actually forcing players to play and not to be passive. 2,4,6,8 is reasonable but later 2 units incarase is not helping too much so than should be some bigger jump from 50 to 60,70,80...

There are lots of things you can do as a designer to help keep crab game from happening.  Monotonically increasing card scale is neither necessary, nor sufficient.

Ozyman wrote:

There are lots of things you can do as a designer to help keep crab game from happening.  

..such as?

Monotonically increasing card scale is neither necessary, nor sufficient.

I'm having trouble understanding exactly what you are saying but I believe I disagree with your comment about an increasing card scale being insufficient.  The stronger the scaling, the tougher it is to play passively. I believe a strong scale is probably one of the best deterrents a designer has to control the crab game.

By monotonically, if you mean without a change in the increment, I would agree that such a scaling "may" have less and less influence in later rounds with many boards, especially those with a lot of on-board production.

"VM" wrote:

If nothing else, then every game should  have to have a structure that increases card values. maybe a bad comparison, but in texas holdem poker blinds are growing constantly, and actually forcing players to play and not to be passive. 2,4,6,8 is reasonable but later 2 units incarase is not helping too much so than should be some bigger jump from 50 to 60,70,80... 

There is a designer option to increase the scaling amount when the bonus value reaches a certain value, which is what I believe you are referring to.  There isn't a way (nor should there be) to "force" designers to implement something like this.  However, if you feel strongly that a certain board really needs it, you could ask the designer to update the board, perhaps with a scenario, or you could include your opinion as criticism in a review, maybe along with a note that you would be happy to raise your rating once the board has been updated.

Vidoviti Milan wrote:

If nothing else, then every game should  have to have a structure that increases card values. maybe a bad comparison, but in texas holdem poker blinds are growing constantly, and actually forcing players to play and not to be passive. 2,4,6,8 is reasonable but later 2 units incarase is not helping too much so than should be some bigger jump from 50 to 60,70,80...

The reason why it works in Holdem is that there is a fixed amount of chips for a given tournament. Risk is much more analogous to a situation in which blinds increase AND the total number of chips increases as the tournament progresses.

The closest I've seen to the Holdem analogy is territory unit limits and increasing cards. The most severe form I've seen of this is

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/For+the+Love+of+Smurf

Increasing cards offers defensive possibilities (often neglected by weaker players) that can lead to stalemate positions. With aggressive multi-continent bonuses, constant cards on Colossal Crusage encourages a leverage win. Europe has increasing cards and can stalemate. CC doesn't. It's just not as simple as increasing versus not increasing.

M57 wrote:

Ozyman wrote:

There are lots of things you can do as a designer to help keep crab game from happening.  

..such as?

Increasing Fog is the easiest one.  If you can't see who is in the lead, you can't all work to drag them back down.

Lots of tight choke points, because it allows you to more easily defend an area, so it makes it more worthwhile to try and expand your territories because you will be able to hold them.  Also makes it more possible to deny other players the opportunity to earn a card.

Higher sided dice, or dice modifiers to make it more worth attacking.

Elimination bonuses to encourage taking players out.

Max unit territory to force players to expand or waste units.

Allow players to hold more than 5 cards to get a bigger turn in bonus & with card capture on also allows a bigger payoff for an elimination.

Similarly, allow players to hold units in reserve to appear weaker than they are, reserve capture increases payoff for eliminations.

Don't have huge numbers of territories, because when you have a lot of territories it makes it harder for one player to move into a dominant position before everyone else gangs up to weaken them.

Monotonically increasing card scale is neither necessary, nor sufficient.

I'm having trouble understanding exactly what you are saying but I believe I disagree with your comment about an increasing card scale being insufficient.  The stronger the scaling, the tougher it is to play passively. I believe a strong scale is probably one of the best deterrents a designer has to control the crab game.

Monotonically increasing - I just meant card turn in value is always going up, not back down.

You can still play very passively with a big card scale.  In fact if cards are worth more than continent bonuses, players will tend to just attack enough to get a card, and that is it. 

In most cases, I agree an increasing card scale helps with stalemates, but it's not a panacea.

of the three original games -

1 has resolved b/c of escalating card sets and card capture- I was able to pull off an elimination and not put myself in a weak position and finally won.

1 is in terminating discussions - this board has no choke points and no cards - unless two of us explicitly join to eliminate the other (which I don't see happening and don't like doing) its not going anywhere.

The other may be in it's final stages.  I was never the equal of the other 2 players, but powerful enough that I kept them balanced.  I could have pulled off an elimination last turn, but it wasn't worth it - which is one problem with  rotating card scales - everything needs to work out right for an elimination to happen and move the game along.  One of the other players is strong now, but instead of attacking I am sitting back and seeing what happens.  Probably not the best strategy, but I think it is my only chance of winning.

----

There was some talk awhile ago about a dynamic elimination bonus (increases somehow as the game goes on) - which could be a very useful tool to avoid stalemates I thinks.

Amidon37 wrote:

There was some talk awhile ago about a dynamic elimination bonus (increases somehow as the game goes on) - which could be a very useful tool to avoid stalemates I thinks.

Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but I once suggested being able to give players some cards as an elimination bonus.  At least if you have an increasing card scale, this kind of works as an increasing elimination bonus.

Amidon37 wrote:

There was some talk awhile ago about a dynamic elimination bonus (increases somehow as the game goes on) - which could be a very useful tool to avoid stalemates I thinks.

This should work, but I'm thinking Ozyman's solution is a bit more elegant.  On the other hand, O's solution won't work if the cards don't scale properly. It would be nice to have either or both solutions available to designers.  Really, I like them both.  Neither of them should be particularly hard to code, right?

M57 wrote:

Amidon37 wrote:

There was some talk awhile ago about a dynamic elimination bonus (increases somehow as the game goes on) - which could be a very useful tool to avoid stalemates I thinks.

This should work, but I'm thinking Ozyman's solution is a bit more elegant.  On the other hand, O's solution won't work if the cards don't scale properly. It would be nice to have either or both solutions available to designers.  Really, I like them both.  Neither of them should be particularly hard to code, right?

I like that.

Should these kind of solutions be available to designers or should they rather apply to the whole site on all games ?