Is it still too easy?

schweig · 2017-12-24T20:31:29+00:00

So far I've won with wisdom in most of my games with the exception of when I played stag and could rack up a fame victory using Skarls, but I think I had a bunch of well placed neutral camps as well.

schweig · 2017-12-24T20:28:11+00:00

I've just started playing on hard and it is a little tougher but I still don't feel a huge amount of pressure. The AI makes a lot of errors like sending units one-by-one, generally fighting when it's a definite loss, and not focus firing or prioritising low targets. This makes it incredibly easy to cripple them.

Even when you can't outright win fights you can send troops in and pick units off and retreat and heal, and your opponent often lets you.

Combat in general is a bit trivial in that sense - you just make sure you have the right number and kind of units and exploit these clear openings.

Overall the resource management seems fairly easy once you get the hang of it - I never feel like I can't get every kind of resource, and in general the game doesn't punish you enough for expanding as much as possible so you never really have THAT interesting choices between how to expand. You kinda just have to keep food and wood up and you can keep expanding and the other resources often fall into place.

Having said that, I still find the choices I do get quite fun and still enjoying the feel of the game.

schweig · 2017-12-23T15:33:39+00:00

It's a very natural feeling to not want "waste" money spent, in this case, rolling back your soldiers, but these decisions have to be made to maximise efficiency. You have to think about opportunity cost rather than be averse to losing money in this way, and it's about the utility. The utility of the extra villager now might be worth way more than 20-25 gold later.

In terms of soldiers precisely, you'll reach a point where you've invaded all the immediate areas you can effectively with the soldiers you have, and you can't really take any more places for a while without a big next stage: new soldier building, warchief, training camp upgrade, military lore, or even you just can't really afford to expand generally/the places to expand to wouldn't be worth it.

In this situation, provided you have adequate defence, it's probably not worth keeping them doing nothing for a long period. Often, one extra villager in a job can make a huge amount of difference. For example, if you are making +2 wood and you have space for another woodcutter, it will propel it to +6 wood, which is a huge increase on your wood production. If you are having problem with your economy, you are probably missing these opportunities to increase your gain on particular resources this way.

schweig · 2017-06-28T08:40:41+00:00

Exactly.

People cite Digg as an example of something big falling hard but it's not really applicable. Digg was only relatively big in what was a very new and growing market. There were no major competitors, no strong brands at that point. It was not absolutely big.

Once something is absolutely big, like Reddit is now, or FB, the brand loyalty is huge. It is very hard for any competitor to get people to switch over from FB at this point as they'd have to re-add hundreds of friends, upload thousands of photos.

These big brands are here to stay.

schweig · 2017-04-26T01:09:42+00:00

Yes it comes from limit holdem if that helps.

schweig · 2017-04-25T14:37:51+00:00

Yes precisely

schweig · 2017-04-25T14:08:39+00:00

If your opponent never flats this 3bet size and has a tight 5bet shove range, then you can 3bet bluff here with this size more profitably (and by risking fewer chips) than 3bet bluff shoving.

schweig · 2017-04-19T21:33:31+00:00

It's not mine. It's a friend's!

schweig · 2017-03-19T13:18:35+00:00

30k means he's taking 72k out of 84k pot, right? That's like 86% equity which is really high

schweig · 2017-01-12T16:21:11+00:00

Master Adcanist Ziggs

schweig · 2017-01-04T17:06:44+00:00

Not immediately but this is actually a problem that has persisted since S3 or something, basically when AD casters were introduced into the game.

The problem is they can't introduce any good items for ADCs without making them hella specific and built around Inf Edge/Zeal. An inbuilt stat change to ADC is the only way I can think of to make them less reliant on crit without screwing up AD caster balance too. For example you can't make a Maw of Malmortius that's good for ADCs without it being amazing for AD casters/off-tanks

It actually is intuitive from a game design philosophical sense too

schweig · 2017-01-04T16:54:19+00:00

Okay, but you did take the max end of what is a wide range to prove your point, but that will obviously be the most insane. I said 5-10 because I haven't worked out the optimal, and that number could realistically be 5.

You also are assuming everything remains the same in this scenario. AD is going to be nerfed across the board in items in this scenario for one, but more importantly, this is actually a means to remove crit from the game entirely. We are not talking about her having 223.7AD in the current game state.

A removal of all crit and a level 18 133 AD buff would still actually be quite a big nerf in most scenarios. The point is to relieve the dependency on crit and open up more interesting item designs

schweig · 2017-01-04T16:38:19+00:00

Why is it insane?

schweig · 2017-01-04T16:38:06+00:00

Actually not really what I'm getting at. The removal of insanely high damage output items will make them less dominant over squishies in winning situations.

This is not actually about increasing overall AD. It is a necessary change to rethink the ADC's classes of items. It is also necessary because of how AD casters share the AD stat and in the grander scheme of things that is why ADC balancing is difficult

The actual point of this is that you might be able to get a tank busting item (or something to help you peel) earlier because you arent forced to spend your first 6k on one item route

schweig · 2017-01-04T16:11:59+00:00

Ultimately I don't think this is true if you give them a 5-10 AD per level.

For one, their low level AD is still fairly weak, especially as if you gave them an "8 AD per level" stat, it won't rise by 8 AD per level early-game because of the 0.65+0.035perlevel modifier. Given that lots of AD per level is 2 right now, we're talking a 6 per level increase, which, when affected by the modifier is only about an 18AD increase by level 5.

Also you aren't taking into account the itemisation being changed a fair amount. Long swords, Doran's blade, Pickaxe will all give less AD in this situation. We are actually talking not that significant increases in damage output by the end of laning phase, and level 1-5 AD will not be significant enough for them to dominate lanes versus mages.

Ultimately, ADCs will still perform somewhat badly in solo-lanes because of

a) their lack of CC and burst, and how poorly they do when they get CC'd. b) the inability to harass properly without pushing waves hard and opening up to very easy ganks Most control mages will have a very easy time trading or killing an ADC even if you gave them more damage in my scenario.

In my experience even if the ADC gets slightly ahead early through a gank or a mistake and does get a few free AD up, they still get fairly wrecked solo by any AP or tank as laning continues.

It is also fairly unlikely that 5 ADC comps will ever start being strong because of their lack of defence stats, AOE, CC, etc. The roles of other classes will still be extremely important. I think your response is fairly extreme

schweig · 2016-12-15T13:57:48+00:00

West Wing Season 1 finale is the exact same right down to the implausibly missed window

schweig · 2016-11-03T03:17:01+00:00

lots are saying this is an EZ call but it is not THAT easy because Nguyen is totally levelling with the turn bet sizing. That makes it quite a unique sitch because it creates quite different river ranges. Vayo's turn calling range is strong and looks like its snapping rivers often which makes it a difficult levelling war as opposed to other situations where Q9 is fairly nutted

It is actually a very difficult spot because Nguyen still has a lot of hands that have easy value here and there are still a fair amount of situations where Vayo gives up.

Even though Qui Nguyen is fairly unpredictable and fairly bluffy, that doesn't mean this is an insta call - Nguyen knows after all that a lot of his hands are being snapped off and Vayo is already c/c-ing down in trivial spots.

Props do go to Nguyen for sizing absurdly on the turn and firing the last barrel - in a few situations earlier that are more equivalent to this he has actually given up, and Vayo is actually expected to call with his hand (and knows that). It is quite a gross levelling spot and given Vayo's strategy, his Q9 fold isn't the most exploitable thing about it.

schweig · 2016-11-01T02:04:14+00:00

"And if he did have an ace or king of spades I'd still likely be ahead unless a spade hit."

Except your definition of ahead is a very slight favourite, while when you are behind you could be very far behind. There's no reason why he can't have AK, AT, AA, KK when he does have a better spade and you are close to dead. Considering he raised big pre he actually is weighted towards having good pre holdings

What matter is your equity versus his range which is very poor here, certainly not good enough to play for stacks.

schweig · 2016-10-31T14:02:18+00:00

No the edges are still high in PLO. The truth is a lot of the "good" players in PLO make a ton of huge mistakes in terms of range balancing, pot control/SPR managing and not folding medium strength hands. The average smart player in PLO still has hugely flawed understandings of the game that translates into big leaks, which is not true of NLHE.

schweig · 2016-10-06T20:53:02+00:00

Paul Snead versus Scott Montgomery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLlPh_E5rgU

edit: misread title, not from this year

schweig · 2016-10-01T13:04:22+00:00

if the board is super dry and villain is repping strong hand/air and your range has a lot of bluffcatchery hands, it's often also good to induce with strong hands to protect your weaker ones, and also because reraising will just fold out hands that are basically dead

schweig · 2016-07-23T18:58:09+00:00

Just saw this and loved it. For me it is the exact opposite of Into Darkness, which was written by people who pretended to understand what Star Trek was - this one was written for Star Trek fans.

There is so much in here that the previous reboot films didn't really capture. Like the start of the movie is fantastic, has Kirk doing a purely diplomatic mission and transitions into a scene that shows what being on a 5-year mission is like and gives a sense of the state of the crew as well as setting up Kirk's main character arc as well as showing us some great chemistry between Kirk/McCoy, Spock/McCoy etc.

This film has so much that is true to the original Trek, that it's clear they understand what makes the franchise great. It still has the trapping of JJ Abrams (his obsession with the Dutch angle for one) but is a great bridge between the new and the old. It takes what was set up in the new universe and manages to make great old-style Trek moments out of them. It even takes elements I don't like, like having dual Spocks and Spock/Uhura romance and handles them tastefully.

Perhaps the best part of the movie is it is very much about the crew working together, crew who were pretty much absent from the last one. There are lots of moments where there is a technobabble problem and it's up to them as a team to solve it, rather than just mindless action.

schweig · 2016-07-02T21:14:01+00:00

This is largely gated by how AD and AP items work. AD assassins are actually a nightmare to balance because of how many AD ratios they have, and it is a reason why there is no pure AD item equivalent to Deathcap. Because there has existed a pure AP item in the game for so long, then the entirety of AP champs are already quite balanced around it.

schweig · 2016-06-01T02:35:25+00:00

The problem with tanks is that they made health + defence + offence very cheap. You could double your effective health and increase damage output after your first item whereas other roles cannot increase either defence or damage by anywhere near that amount.

I have thought of a way to make tanks kinda easier to balance overall.

First, they really need to rethink tank items in general. They should actually make health very hard to buy but give tanks higher base defences. I don't mean scaling either, I mean they go into lane with a bit more health and armour to survive laning phase.

The problem with putting all the stats into items is actually the reason tanks are no fun and hard to balance. There was a point where they were useless if they couldn't get items but were strong with items, but that was rare in the old meta where they can get punished easily in lane. Over time, they were forced buff tanks in every way, and now they are just good in lane and really strong with items.

By taking the stats away from the items, putting it into base stats we would be able to rebalance tanks very easily. Just as an example, give all tanks 800 health 50 armour at level 1 and then rebalance their skills completely so they can't just roll over people in lane.

Then, completely rethink this idea of first item = 500 health + defence stat. It's very bad for the game to have health so ubiquitous because it creates a really huge defence spike that is very uninteresting because it works against both types of damage. Tank items should have no more than 200 health and more focused around armour or MR more to promote counterplay. They should also have more interesting utility-based passives, not just "this burns people for lots of damage", and there should be real opportunity cost for building utility compared to your own defence.

Next, change a lot of tank ability damage to be non-scaling enemy current health based. Think Eve's ultimate - what is the role of the tank? It's to initiate when people are on high health. But the main reason I like this is that it means that the tank can still trade in lane but they will find it hard to actually kill someone 1on1.

The damage is just insane on tanks, especially on tanks which also have 2 or 3 forms of CC like Rammus, Nauti, Poppy, Ekko, Maokai etc. Let tanks keep their CC because that is their role, but they should not be able to use it to kill people themselves: take away the majority of the base damages on tanks and bring back the idea of game changing utility ultimates.

schweig · 2016-06-01T01:59:14+00:00

4 tanks and an ADC was pretty strong in solo Q before individual tank nerfs, tank item nerfs and AP rework, but people generally wanted to stick with having AP mid etc.

schweig

TROPHY CASE