Good explanation berickf.  I added a section to the wiki page for Invention to help clear this up.  It's called "Espionage Details" and it's under the Technologies section:

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=boards:invention:invention#technologies

williamthewizard - please let me know if that helps.  Feel free to edit it yourself if you think it is still confusing. 

I have a few comments on the new version - I have to say, I'm not enjoying it as much as the old one.

First off, the elimination bonus.  I'm not sure if it's just because I haven't played very many games on the new board yet, but the elimination bonus seems to be way too powerful.  20 troops on turn ~4 is huge, and a turn 4 or 5 elimination is not unheard of.  The bonus also can hurt one player for a different player's mistake, which I feel like rarely happened in the old invention. An elimination is already extremely powerful due to the extra tech and positioning it gives; I guess I'm not sure what the reasoning was for the extra bonus.

My second complaint is that blue seems to have lost the only advantage that more-or-less allowed it to compete with the other nations.  Before, blue could grab an early satellite and Jet on turn 1 or 2 and proceed to use the info from satellite and the extra troops from around the map to grab an early kill.  I found that generally, if blue didn't get a turn 3-6 kill, its chances of winning fell drastically.  In this new version, blue hardly has any civilization bonus at all.  You can't get jet+satellite early anymore, and thus it's much harder to get an early kill.  Also, blue doesn't really make any use of the new +2 to home country green tech, making its late game comparatively worse than it already was.

These are just my initial thoughts after a few games. I'll be sure to play some more to get a better feel for how everything works in this version.  But so far I've already had a game end in 3 turns and one end in 6 turns, which seems a little ridiculous to me.

Insubordination wrote:

I have a few comments on the new version - I have to say, I'm not enjoying it as much as the old one.

First off, the elimination bonus.  I'm not sure if it's just because I haven't played very many games on the new board yet, but the elimination bonus seems to be way too powerful.  20 troops on turn ~4 is huge, and a turn 4 or 5 elimination is not unheard of.  The bonus also can hurt one player for a different player's mistake, which I feel like rarely happened in the old invention. An elimination is already extremely powerful due to the extra tech and positioning it gives; I guess I'm not sure what the reasoning was for the extra bonus.

My second complaint is that blue seems to have lost the only advantage that more-or-less allowed it to compete with the other nations.  Before, blue could grab an early satellite and Jet on turn 1 or 2 and proceed to use the info from satellite and the extra troops from around the map to grab an early kill.  I found that generally, if blue didn't get a turn 3-6 kill, its chances of winning fell drastically.  In this new version, blue hardly has any civilization bonus at all.  You can't get jet+satellite early anymore, and thus it's much harder to get an early kill.  Also, blue doesn't really make any use of the new +2 to home country green tech, making its late game comparatively worse than it already was.

These are just my initial thoughts after a few games. I'll be sure to play some more to get a better feel for how everything works in this version.  But so far I've already had a game end in 3 turns and one end in 6 turns, which seems a little ridiculous to me.

I appreciate the feedback.  In test games we often had very long stalemates, so the elimination bonus was supposed to address that.

I think one problem is that you get very different games depending on players play style.  If you are playing with 4 players who are all very familiar with Invention, you are more likely to get a little more conservative play, while I find newbs are more likely to be more aggressive, so you end up with earlier eliminations.  In the original Invention, it seemed to me that getting the 1st elimination was often a death wish, as both remaining players would quickly gang up on you.  A lot of the good players hang back, waiting for someone else to make an elimination, and I wanted to make it worthwhile to be that person trying to get an elimination.  Also, when games go long, units pile up and suddenly 20 units doesn't seem like that much, when everyone has 100+ units on their laboratories.

This is not to say that the 20 unit elimination is the right value.  I'm perfectly fine cutting that in half.  Maybe increase the assimilation % a bit to compensate.  Frankly I had been working on the 2nd edition on and off for about 2 years and was just ready to be done.

Blue gets 2 extra units in their flask to start.  I too liked that blue had a chance to get to Jet early on, and it is less likely in 2nd edition, but still possible with a small amount of luck.  How about if I also reduced the neutrals in satellite & jet by 2 for blue?  Is that going too far?

>Also, blue doesn't really make any use of the new +2 to home country green tech

Not sure what this means.  Are you referring to the fact that blue's nation is only 3 territories + the capital?  So they are getting 8 a turn from that tech, while Green & Yellow get 14/turn from the same tech? 

I'd really love to hear more feedback on the 2nd edition.  I played a ton (really a ton) of test games with it, but I'm hampered by only seeing the play style of myself and the relatively small group of testers that I work with.   Now that it's released, I'd love to hear from a broader segment of wargear.   

So do the rest of you agree with Insubordination?  What do you think of my proposed changes above?

I tend to agree with you Oz that as players gain experience that they temper their aggression.  New players to the board might experience a few quick games at first, but, when they realize that the aggressive style of play costs them more games then it wins them they will also learn to defend their capital and grow their nation.  So, as far as elimination bonus and absorption are concerned I find that for the typical game they are adequate as far as I have experienced.

As for blue's benefit of being able to potentially reach satellite and jets quickly, that is definitely a benefit they enjoyed in the first version which is reduced in the second.  You could tweak that a little if you wanted to give them a slight blue tech leg up if you wanted?  Maybe just 1 neutral off of each though?

As for the health tech, I'm not at all sold on making it any easier for blue to pass the +2 on the home country any quicker simply because by being smaller they do gain the ability to get a science boost quicker as well, and, to me, that is their offset?

Ozyman wrote:

I appreciate the feedback.  In test games we often had very long stalemates, so the elimination bonus was supposed to address that.

I think one problem is that you get very different games depending on players play style.  If you are playing with 4 players who are all very familiar with Invention, you are more likely to get a little more conservative play, while I find newbs are more likely to be more aggressive, so you end up with earlier eliminations.  In the original Invention, it seemed to me that getting the 1st elimination was often a death wish, as both remaining players would quickly gang up on you.  A lot of the good players hang back, waiting for someone else to make an elimination, and I wanted to make it worthwhile to be that person trying to get an elimination.  Also, when games go long, units pile up and suddenly 20 units doesn't seem like that much, when everyone has 100+ units on their laboratories.

This is not to say that the 20 unit elimination is the right value.  I'm perfectly fine cutting that in half.  Maybe increase the assimilation % a bit to compensate.  Frankly I had been working on the 2nd edition on and off for about 2 years and was just ready to be done.

Blue gets 2 extra units in their flask to start.  I too liked that blue had a chance to get to Jet early on, and it is less likely in 2nd edition, but still possible with a small amount of luck.  How about if I also reduced the neutrals in satellite & jet by 2 for blue?  Is that going too far?

>Also, blue doesn't really make any use of the new +2 to home country green tech

Not sure what this means.  Are you referring to the fact that blue's nation is only 3 territories + the capital?  So they are getting 8 a turn from that tech, while Green & Yellow get 14/turn from the same tech? 

 

I'd really love to hear more feedback on the 2nd edition.  I played a ton (really a ton) of test games with it, but I'm hampered by only seeing the play style of myself and the relatively small group of testers that I work with.   Now that it's released, I'd love to hear from a broader segment of wargear.   

So do the rest of you agree with Insubordination?  What do you think of my proposed changes above?

Yeah, different playsytles are definitely going to change the game.  I actually loved the fact that an early elimination in the first version was a tradeoff -- you had to weigh the pros of the kill (tech, troops, one less opponent) with the cons (you'd become a target).  Now, it seems that the pros of a kill will almost always outweigh the cons.  Even if you get ganged up on the next turn, you still have at least a whole super-continent's worth of troops to use. 

In the late game, though, I agree that it can get a little stale.  Is it possible for the elimination bonus to ramp up as the game goes on?  I feel like that would be the best of both worlds.

As for blue, what I was really trying to say is that it feels like both blue's early game and late game are worse than in version 1.  Late game, the difference between blue's max green tech troops and all the other civs is even higher than it was, and early game, it is harder for blue to blitz.  Out of curiosity, what was the rationale behind switching blue's civ bonus from -2 on the sciences?  Green, yellow, and red all stayed the same.   

Can't believe I never responded to this.  I guess I just got busy with xmas.

>Is it possible for the elimination bonus to ramp up as the game goes on?  I feel like that would be the best of both worlds.

I completely agree.  It's not possible currently.  A long time ago I made a suggestion that you should be able to give cards instead of units for an elimination bonus, which could act like a ramping bonus, but that was never implemented.   I guess the assimilation bonus kind of ramps as the game goes on.

What I've done is reduced the elimination bonus from 20 to 10.  I also increased the assimilation bonus from 60% to 67%. 

I also changed the blue advantage.  Now blue gets 1 less neutral on all the blue techs to make it easier for them to get to flight, etc.

Rather than decreasing the # of units blue starts with in their flask, I increased every one else's, to make it a bit more possible for everyone to get to advanced flight if they want. 

This is just in the dev version for now.  I'm going to start a couple of dev games, but need some playtesters.  If you want to playtest, post here or PM me. 

Send me dev links and I'll play.  I recently tried the new version with blue and... didn't enjoy it.

Invite me.

I'm always game for a little invention, invite me!

I think the advanced flight may be a little too easy to get to. If the second player can be eliminated by the first player before second player even gets a second turn it may be a little too easy.

Here is the scenario of what happened. Blue went first. Blue went for the advanced flight and managed to transfer men to Japan so he had a stockpile of 43 men three steps from Green's capital. At this point Green was basically eliminated regardless of what decision he made on first turn.

As soon as Green saw that blue had the stock pile of men green had to go into full defensive mode. Green was nowhere near blue to slip in for the quick undefended kill. Green was unable to reach the advanced flight so was limited to defending with only what was initially near his capital. Due to poor initial random board setup placement there was not much available to transfer to the capital. Even with getting 22 in the capital and 16 in the territory outside the capital blue was able to easily eliminate green on the first turn of second round.

I realize that this was lucky placement and conditions that allowed this victory and Blue would most likely be quickly eliminated from most games with this strategy. However, having the possibility that the second player is basically already eliminated after the first player takes their first turn based on the random setup of the board seems like a design weakness.

That does suck.  How come blue didn't put 35 units in his capital?   How many players were in this game?  Do you have a link to the game?  Could green have stopped it if they had gone for missile?

What are the odds of 43 getting through a mystery number territory of unknown number, then through 16 at D6 v D7 then through 22 at D6 v D8... It sounds to me like Blue was lucky to accomplish what he did and if he had failed he was screwed... So, a high risk move to say the least. 

Link?

I went to Ozy's dice generator...

Unknown mystery territory, we'll assume perfection and move 42 forward, leave 1 behind.

Against 16 D6 v D7 the attackers should on average lose 19.76, so 21 move forward (1 stays back).

Against 22 D6 v D8 the attacker should on average lose 35.65, which 21 isn't, so, Blue loses, dumb play, got lucky!!!

So, Koosh, you might be over thinking a really bad move and poor strategy on the part of blue!  This play fails a lot more then it succeeds.

Ozyman wrote:

That does suck.  How come blue didn't put 35 units in his capital?   How many players were in this game?  Do you have a link to the game?  Could green have stopped it if they had gone for missile?

It was a team game with four people so it was a little imbalanced anyway. I played green. I started with missile but by the time I hit Japan I did not have much left to take out 43 men. If I could have gotten probably two more men to my teammate we could have probably taken out blue in the first round. Like I said, that strategy will get you eliminated more often than not. It just seems like it could be balanced a little better.

Blue did drop another 9 on the Japan territory on the beginning of his second round. I looked at the dice. He was incredibly lucky.

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/447794

Not complaining about my loss at all. It was a gutsy move that was incredibly lucky. I thought the odds were in my favor to hold blue off and stay in the game. My teammate just missed eliminating him first round. Just tossing the idea out there.

He should have put all those troops on his ally, red, at the same distance, then onto himself.  Not that it didn't work anyways, but, it shouldn't have worked and would have had a higher success rate from red because only one player would be able to react to the inevitable.

Haha, well I think the logic there was Blue could leave his own capital undefended because if he quickly grabbed another capital he would not risk being knocked out of the game as easily. If he gave his men to Red it could have easily been a one on one game after the first round.

Koosh - what do you think should be changed about invention to prevent this in the future?   Not saying I'm changing anything, but I'm curious if you have any ideas.

Ozyman wrote:

Koosh - what do you think should be changed about invention to prevent this in the future?   Not saying I'm changing anything, but I'm curious if you have any ideas.

Make satellite cheaper and Advanced flight more expensive... ;-)

Ozyman wrote:

Koosh - what do you think should be changed about invention to prevent this in the future?   Not saying I'm changing anything, but I'm curious if you have any ideas.

Honestly I have no idea. I was just putting the idea out there. I have not played that many games to really give a fair solution or even make an informed decision that is a problem that needs a solution. As a fairly new player on this board it seems like someone could lose interest in the board very quickly if they only get one or two turns before they are eliminated. It is hard enough to understand all the semantics of the board if you can never play long enough to figure it all out.

Make satellite cheaper and Advanced flight more expensive... ;-)

+1