Balance Issues

[Guest]

I have been involved in 3 games so far, and 2 of them were won by empire builders with no real competition from anyone else. The 3rd game was won by an empire builder, but it was actually a close game with a berserker.

Both of the games that were won far and away by the empire builder felt like the other players did not have a chance to win. At one point in the game, most players are under 2000 points, and when we learn about an empire builder at 5000, making 500+ points a turn. At this point, there does not seem to be much most players can do to prevent the empire builder from winning.

From this experience, it seems like the empire builder imbalanced. Am I wrong? Do the other roles just take more experience to play well?

[drwr]

It's a good question, and I've been wondering that myself. It's certainly true that Starweb has never been the most evenly-balanced game in the world. Still, it seems that on the official Starweb roster Empire Builders don't win more than their fair share of games (I believe that honor tends to go to the Merchants and Berserkers).

I suspect that the strong preference we're seeing for Empire Builders winning games is due to our large population of relatively inexperienced players. In a game where players mostly leave each other alone once they encounter each other, the Empire Builders will generally win easily.

It is possible to prevent a runaway Empire Builder from winning: you just have to capture most of his or her worlds. This is actually not very hard to do, if you're organized and hit him with a bunch of little fleets all at once, spreading out as quickly as possible over his territory. Focus on making as many worlds neutral as possible, by firing at I-Ships, P-Ships, rather than on attacking the orbiting fleets (which don't contribute to an Empire Builder's score). If several players cooperate in this attack, the poor Empire Builder really doesn't have a chance.

Of course, if you keep an Empire Builder's empire from growing overly large in the first place, you never have to face that problem.

So I think, as our player base gets more experienced, people will begin to get smarter about suitable preventative (and reactive) defense against an Empire Builder's victory, and the Empire Builders will eventually tumble from their seemingly insurmountable tower.

Then there will be a new character class that will seem to win every single game.

David

[drwr]

I just went through the database archives to see what character classes have historically been winning RSW. I pulled up all the games (including private games) that involved at least two players and that played to completion. If I didn't screw it up, here are the top three character positions at the end of each of these games:

Code: Select all

barker5a
      Empire Builder      Score=6511
      Merchant            Score=6063
      Pirate              Score=4140
      
combined2e
      Merchant            Score=9058
      Artifact Collector  Score=8277
      Empire Builder      Score=7712
      
dilemma3q
      Berserker           Score=12261
      Pirate              Score=8510
      Empire Builder      Score=1571
      
dramatic2n
      Apostle             Score=7634
      Berserker           Score=2556
      Empire Builder      Score=1387
      
frame2e (2-person game)
      Pirate              Score=4369
      Empire Builder      Score=3787
      
lives5v
      Empire Builder      Score=7291
      Merchant            Score=6896
      Artifact Collector  Score=3029
      
poster4x (2-person game)
      Empire Builder      Score=8456
      Apostle             Score=8381
      
wheel3q
      Empire Builder      Score=8577
      Empire Builder      Score=4740
      Apostle             Score=2539
      
winning9g
      Artifact Collector  Score=11924
      Empire Builder      Score=5798
      Apostle             Score=2407

By this analysis, Empire Builders have indeed won 4 out of 9 games, but in most of those they had some real competition nipping at their heels. And, in fact, each of the character classes has won at least one game.

David

[rob]

Ah, that first post was me. I forgot to log in.

The game data says much. I look forward to playing a game where an empire builder doesn't win.

[drwr]

Newsflash! There was a longstanding bug in there. Empire Builders were earning almost twice the points they should have been! Yikes!

See this post for more information.

David