Are detailed formulas still 'in'?

playshogi · October 29, 2002, 02:03

Alan promised a long time ago, that very detailed formulas about every aspect of the game would be included in the online encyclopedia. I hope there will be no more guessing and begging about what actions have what effects. For example, no one ever did find out what factors drove the spying game in MOO2.

vmxa1 · October 29, 2002, 02:47

Well he provided that stuff in the guide for Moo1.

Xentax · October 29, 2002, 10:24

Um, I don't think there are "exact" formulas in the game, manual, or the encyclopedia.

I'm sure a strategy guide will document it, and I'm sure that the relevant excerpts will make their way online.

Of course, such information is probably less than 100% accurate by the time of release, and wouldn't be accurate beyond the first patch, either.

So, I guess you can put me in the camp of people who wish that at least some such formulae were documented in-game.

Grumbold · October 29, 2002, 10:44

I think knowing exact formulas is a bad idea. If things like spying were a science then the CIA would have statistically calculated how to get sufficiently accurate information about the entire world. Life just isn't like that.

Xentax · October 29, 2002, 10:58

Well, in most cases for MOO3, even the exact formula WOULD be ok, because there's one or more "rolls of the dice" in most if not every formula.

So, even though the formula is exact, what you'll get on any given use of it won't be known, only the range of possible outcomes given the current values and modifiers.

playshogi · October 29, 2002, 14:04

Grumbold wrote: "Life just isn't like that."

I'm not looking at MOO3 as a simulation of life. It's a game and I DO want to know the variables affecting a particular choice I might make. For example, in Civ3 everyone hated cultural flips, but after people learned the formula involved people could plan for it intelligently. I don't care much for games where these kinds of formulae are kept like "trade secrets" of the producer.

Grumbold · October 29, 2002, 14:50

I'm not averse to knowing that if I send 10 spies then at least one ought to get through. What I hate is games that tell you "attempting X with Y has a 47% chance of success and if you add 1 more you have a 49% chance of success". Being told your chance is very poor, poor, average, above average or good would be as far as I'd want it to go.

vmxa1 · October 29, 2002, 15:04

I do not want the game to tell of my chances of sucess, just tell me how things are calculated so I can make a decision. Simple things like combat is resolved by inititive going first or attacker going first or def, what ever it is and then a rough idea of the means of determination (att - def x abc yields y chance of a hit and if hit z damage or what ever they use.

moomin · October 29, 2002, 15:31

This really is a question of gamer mentality. I find myself eager to read up on formulas, but prone to disregard them entirely in the name of enjoyment. On the balance, I'd rather have them.

MariOne · October 30, 2002, 06:08

Grumbold, if the game provides you with a formula, you are free to ignore it anyway and enjoy the game the way you like.
If the game doesn't provide it, those who instead like to know the maths behind will have no chance to enjoy the game the way they like.

Even in the race creation, each attribute has its cost, and you'd like to know exactly how many point it costs to bring your growth from 0 to +1 or from +2 to +3.
Or would you prefer there that the interface tells you
"you still have lotsa points to allot"
"you're almost there"
"you gotta give up on something"
"this would make it too easy!"

huh?
I thik it's the same concept...

Grumbold · October 30, 2002, 06:37

You can't ignore a deterministic formula because knowing them will be crucial to victory (like the civ3 culture flip, where a miscalculation of 1 unit can see an entire army lost instantly when a city you have just captrured rebels.) If the odds always retain a healthy random factor and you're not precisely sure what the % chance was in the first place then I find it easier to actually immerse myself in the game rather than just number crunch. The same would apply to race creation, should MOO3 have custom point buy race picks, i.e growth of 'strong,normal,poor' not '5%,4%,3%'.

Strictly imo, your milage may vary. This is why I'd rather play Close Combat than, say, Diplomacy.

playshogi · October 30, 2002, 14:07

I'm not sure I understand you. If the formula is provided you say you can't ignore it because it's crucial to victory. OTOH, if it's NOT provided, you'll enjoy the game more? Wouldn't it still be crucial to know it? The only reason for not providing the formula is 1) to handicap the human player to make up for a weak AI and 2) to prevent scenario makers from making really great scenarios.

Grumbold · October 30, 2002, 15:02

If a formula is deterministic (do x and it will always work) then you can play to absolute efficiency by following those rules. If all you know is that X has a better chance than Y, but Y may still succeed, it is more fun because you have to gamble and take risks. In MOO1/2 you pretty much always knew Ship A would beat Ship B if it did it once. A planet with 10 population and a bank always produced 100 gold because its economy was utterly static with no variables. In Close Combat all the smart money would be on a Tiger knocking out a T-34 but you could never afford to get blase about it. Is that better?

Sikander · October 31, 2002, 02:50

Good points all around. I'll have to line up in Marione's column. I like to be able to analyze the game on a deep level, so having the formulae available somewhere is wonderful. However I do agree with Grumbold that the use of complex formulae and random elements makes the game come alive much more, and in fact for me enhances the experience by shading my calculations and forcing me to hedge my bets. I prefer wargames to chess for this exact reason.

Saber Cherry · November 1, 2002, 18:39

Grumbold,

You're just talking about random variables in the formulae. If you knew the (possibly complex) formula or algorithm that determined a Tiger or T-34 winning a battle, that would not make the battle deterministic, since the algorithm would have random variables in it.

Generally speaking, I abhor games that force uninformed decisions such as: Build a bank to increase money, or build a lab to increase research. Which is better to build? How many? Is either one useful? Who knows.

However, if it says a bank increases tax revenue by 25%, or gives you 5% interest per turn, that gives the player a deterministic formula... and makes the game better. I have seen games that did not provide this information, and they are... bad.

Your stated problem seems to be with deterministic formulae, and I just demonstrated how they are essential. However, you also implied that you dislike knowing any %chance of success. This is not deterministic, since its outcome cannot be predicted unless the percentage is 0 or 100. These formulae are also essential in many cases. For example, in MOO1, there was a ground combat formula, where each soldier rolled a number (rand()%100)+bonuses. The numbers were compared and the lower soldier was killed.

As such, if you had +100 bonuses compared to the other person, you would only need to send 1 troop; and if you had -100 bonuses, no number of troops could succeed. And if you had -20 bonuses, you would know how many troops to send to have a good chance of victory. Without the formula... what good is a +10 to troop power? Who knows. Either way you gamble and take risks, but without the formula, you're playing blindly, and might invade with a 0% or 1% chance of victory. And a game that encourages players to do stupid things is bad. You might as well send random numbers over and over until you succeed... at which point you might as well be a monkey mashing the keypad for infinite time, or until you discover the formula through brute force.

Even things like laser weapon damage are formulae. A laser did 1-4 damage. In other words, 1+rand()%4. But if this was taken away... you would just choose "Laser", "Phasor", "Megabolt Cannon". And which is better? Well, of course the one that sounds coolest. Or maybe the cheapest. But again, without formulae, the cost and space of the weapons should not be revealed, either... they would just be "kinda big" or "pretty expensive".

At any rate - MOO1 and MOO2 had published formulae in the game, integrally part of the decision-making process. Removing them would be crazy, and would singlehandedly make the game bad.

-Cherry

vmxa1 · November 1, 2002, 19:31

So true Cherry, except Moo2 was not as concise about what the value was for some thing. But civ3 is horrible about telling us the value of structures. I need to know how much I will get from a lib/universiy and under what conditions it will be useful. I mean putting a university in a pop 4 town is not productive, but they do not give you any means to determine that. In Moo2, they say a Holo will boost morale 20% or what ever it does, you can figure out if you have enough production to make it worth doing on that planet.

Saber Cherry · November 1, 2002, 22:16

Yes, I had a lot of problems with the Civ 3 structures. Especially things like the "Coastal Fortress", where nobody ever figured out what it did, what it was supposed to do, or if it even did anything

The first and only game I played, I built a bunch of them, just to be safe!

However, those problems did not bother me overly much since I gave up on the game as a waste, pretty soon. So it no longer has the power to frustrate me

Of course, if they had given me a formula to determine when the "Multiplayer patch" for the original Civ 3 would be out, I never would have bought it in the first place...

vmxa1 · November 2, 2002, 04:34

Coastal forts fire only when an incursion of two tiles takes place. The AI is aware of that an does not traverse two tile, so it does not draw fire. In short the coastal forts only values to as a prophylatic.

Grumbold · November 2, 2002, 19:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Saber Cherry
You're just talking about random variables in the formulae. If you knew the (possibly complex) formula or algorithm that determined a Tiger or T-34 winning a battle, that would not make the battle deterministic, since the algorithm would have random variables in it.

Generally speaking, I abhor games that force uninformed decisions such as: Build a bank to increase money, or build a lab to increase research. Which is better to build? How many? Is either one useful? Who knows.
-Cherry

Yes, I'm talking about a random element. Any formula that loses a modest random element becomes utterly deterministic and I detest them. Troop combat in MOO is pretty fair, because its not easy to get a bonus above +90 over your opponent, so at least a 10% chance of an unexpected result remains. If you've got +100 and aren't badly behind in other areas, you've won the game. Its research formula is deterministic in generation (a planet with x scientists and y improvements will produce z RP's) but the 'breakthrough' chance retains a significant random element. Perfect!

In other areas there are formulae with zero randomness. Farmers always produce exactly the same food. Planets generate precisely the same wealth. If you knew that a bank produced a significant boost in wealth but it varied between 15 and 25% per turn, you'd still build it. The dedicated player will still make plans based on the average or likely outcomes, but will have to stay flexible. I'm not advocating an information black hole because I hate uninformed decisions too.

Saber Cherry · November 2, 2002, 23:07

That's good, I guess we both feel the same way then. But I like it when my opponents make uninformed decisions

Grumbold · November 3, 2002, 20:08

You can gloat even more when they make informed but dumb decisions