We've had the chance to play with the 0% luck combined with Straight Round for more than 5 months now and I'm curious about the opinion of competitive players on how they (dis)like it.

Personally I don't see any reasons to play with (16%) luck. All it does is force you to gamble a lot on 3v2 attacks early on. Even a 2v2 can be possible and could change the game. (eg. turn 1 bonus) In addition, the remaining units play a huge role as well in the early stage of the game. If player A fails a 3v2 and player B succeeds and has 2 remaining troops, an serious advantage is already created, which has nothing to do with the personal skills.

There are already other luck factors in the game (first pick and move order) so that I think games will be better off with 0% luck.

I understand that for casual play, a luck factor is more consistent with the original board game, however, I'd like to know what you all think about it for ladder games or competitive games/tournaments.

cheers

I prefer trying to eliminate the other luck in the settings. 0% is good for 3v2 attacks, but I prefer 16% for all other attacks.

and why is that? So you can fail a 7v4 sometimes?

I've never failed on a 7v4 attack I absolutely needed to take. I adjust my play to fit the settings and the importance of the move.

sure, that's awesome. But I still don't know why you want to have the luck being a factor. The 3v2's are obviously the most common attacks that matter when it comes to luck playing a role.

Absolute certainty on every move makes the game too fixed. It then becomes a mathimatical game of guessing what the enemy will do with exact precision and based on the calculator. I don't want to make every move based on the calculator. Now, I rarely look at the calculator. 0% luck and I'll have to look every turn I am next to the enemy and make my attacks based on how much I think the enemy will deploy so my attack wins 100% of the time.

Also, 0% luck makes defense a bit stronger. Guess wrong on the attacks and it is more costly.

And that is truly awesome.

I don't like 0% straight round at all.

Actually not at all because (even if in just a few templates) sometimes no luck is necessary.

But the more I keep playing this game, the more I think that luck on picking is decisive for every competitive game, without luck the development is plain and who has first picks win the game. (Just think to enc 3v3 about islands)
Paradoxically in my opinion 0% luck increases and not dicreases the overall game luck.

Plus I still think that the luck management is a necessary skill for being a good player and in this way you just cut off that kind of skill.

I know sometimes it is frustrating, I just remember a semifinal live tournament in wich I had 12 points down of cumulative luck for the whole game, but I just accept the luck as a part of the game in a fatalistic attitude.

In the end if you want to have a fun no luck game there is always chess.

I like a little luck- sometimes it costs you, sometimes it helps you, it's "luck" remember?!?! ;) I normally find 32% to give you the best of both worlds. Just one guys opinion.

I do like Chaos' V map with 0% luck though. The map's size, balance and strategic points work well with 0% luck.

I'm testing the 16% luck combined with straight round, it seems to guarantee the 3v2 attack (with 2 left over) but for bigger numbers, there is some luck. 7v4 is also guaranteed but 6v4 is luck dependent. 2v2 always fails (which is def a good thing).
Is this better as a setting?

The best of both worlds: certainty vs neutrals (of 2 and 4) yet varying levels of luck vs enemy.

I didn't know straight round was what I needed to get it. I'll try it out and probably use it as my standard settings from now on.

No.

If 3v2 always hits then expanding is both cheaper and more efficient which totally changes the way the template works. It will also reward sitting and calculating endlessly over brilliance and intuition. 7v4 should be 100%, players should not be expected to hedge against a 2% chance of getting screwed over. I think 2v2 hitting sometimes is totally accpetable. I like the idea of more predictability at a much larger scale though. Too often one player has a much larger stack and the other an income advantage with little room for tactics; those situations should be resolved by luck less imho.

I don't think this will add much more calculating as there is still luck involved with larger numbers. Intuition remains just as important and all the usual tricks still apply.
If you think expansion becomes too fast, lower the base income, but I'm personally fine with a slightly faster expansion. This will also open the game for slightly larger maps. I would actually even prefer 4 starting spots tbh.

Why do you want these changes? I feel like there is a lot of anti ladder settings sentiment and I don't know why. Everyone seems to have a different problem. It isn't perfect but is a total overhaul necessary?

no luck in 3v2s will add a huge emphasis to calculating because your calculations will not become less and less accurate the more turns into the future you are predicting. I will be able to make my picks and for each combination plan exactly how every turn will go up until I bump into an opponent.

When I said expansion will be too fast I wasn't necessarily talking about the first few turns. At the moment expanding whilst in contact with an opponent is an advanced strategy, making 3v2s always sucessful and with 2 leftovers to boot will make it a necessity. Is that what you think strat 1v1s are lacking? both players spreading across the whole map and a greater emphasis on the importance of expansion space late game...

4 spots is interesting, what appeals to you about the idea and how do you think it will change the game?

The ladder settings changed over time (for better or worse) so I don't see why we can't discuss some new ideas here? This is not based on 'anti ladder' sentiments, where do you get that from?

Changes can bring new strategies, play styles etc to the game. You will never please everybody. But without change, it's the same crew doing the same things over and over. A lot of games are now very repetitive.

I have no problem if the majority believe that luck should play a role in risk kind of games, instead of being more like chess. In chess you can calculate every option, yet it never happens for obvious reasons. I do think it's the same in this scenario. There will be some more planning in the early game, but then you will rely on intuition, tricks, etc... to win the game.

My main points remains: I don't see why you should succeed a 3v2 where the other fails it. Games are too short and the importance of the early game is too big. While luck should balance itself out, it doesn't work that way when advantages accumulate. Having that turn 1 bonus is not the same as succeeding a 3v2 on turn 8.

I've played several games with 4 starting spots and I think it offers more strategy, such as counter-picking, gathering intel, securing safe spots and it avoids the early 'I'm screwed by picks' better. Also, the fighting is earlier, which is the most interesting part of the game for me.

But don't take it wrong, this is an open discussion. I think it's a good time now to hear opinions, there were seasonal ladders with no luck and several tournaments, so a lot of players should have some opinion by now.

Chaos' maps are good for 1v1s. I don't think his ideas are limited to or even focused on Medium Earth games.

As it is, I can only last 5-20 ladder games before I get bored with the ME ladder. Real-time is more exciting than multi-day. Team games are more strategic than 1v1s. Changing maps and settings every so often is more interesting. How many members are there? 500+? Yet the number of people on the 1v1 ladder is at about 120? I think ladder participation would increase with a Random Map ladder. Lots of people talk about boredom with the current map/settings. We all thought the seasonal ladder was created to address this. But it's only been ME, East Asia with strange neutral settings, ME, ME, Chaos' good map with good settings, and now ME again.

I'd like to see a Random Map 1v1 ladder. Two ways to make that fun: (1) Create 3-5 acceptable army/card settings and select 5-8 good 1v1 maps. Just as opponents are selected at random by the system, maps and settings for each game could be. Changing the maps and settings so that the same map and the same settings are not used twice in a row would add the variation that would make a ladder more enjoyable.

(2) Fixed Maps/Settings:

1. ME
2. The New ME (with straight round, 16%, no cards)
3. East Asia & Oceania (1v1 ladder settings)
4. A Chaos map -- whichever map/settings he thinks is most enjoyable
5. Europe (I got a fun one with 7 cards given right away and adjusted bonus values)
6/7. Sze's (6) Ancient Greece and (7) Turkey
8. I think Anciet China is a fun/strategic 1v1 & have 3 different templates that are somewhat popular
9. Imperium Romanum (5 cities worth 0, no cards, 3-4 starts)

if u want 0% luck pls go and plat with some kind of mathmatical equations, if u want to play this kind of game pls add some luck to it

Chaos: You don't play on the ladder, or in any of the 1v1 ME tournaments I've seen and you've been vocal before about alternatives to the ladder settings before, am I wrong in assuming you don't like them? I wasn't sure what you don't like about them so I asked =).

It seems that you don't like people being handed unearned advantages by the luck modifier? Changing to straight round has some ugly unintended consequences. The fix that occurred to me was to put a modifier in place to give players who had been less lucky than their opponent lots more luck in the following turns.

Imho a game of war is not war without luck.. often in war plans don't work out or if they do then not in the way predicted... it is that unpredictability that makes a war game fun

Something I'd like to see: Ratings are adjusted based on who gets first pick. Why not add accumulative luck to the ratings equation? I win and have more accumulative luck, your rating isn't affected as much. You win and I have more accumulative luck, your rating goes up a bit more, mine goes down a bit more.