SFR, Inc.

[cliffwiggs]

I'm starting this thread because my goal is to make sure that no single daemon design wins more than 50% against every (most) designs.

I know there is a tendency that what beats you is 'broken', so this thread is a place to discuss that in a statistical way.

That being said, I'm sure that it'll be possible to make a 'worst' daemon, some body parts are better suited as support units and not as primary. For Example: if you make an all brain daemon and then complain you can't win...

There are over 48,000 purebred daemons that can be made out of just 13 body parts. Not all of them can be 'winners'. The exact number of possible daemons is a topic for another thread.

The last thing I wanted to mention here is some stats about rolling 13 3-sided dice. Through the magic of computers, I can test roll 13 dice , 10 million times in under a minute. Here are the odds of getting a specific face on 'X' of 13 dice.

Favorable Dice	exact %	NoMoreThan%	Atleast%
0	0.51308%	0.51308%	100%
1	3.33754%	3.85062%	99.48692%
2	10.03194%	13.88256%	96.14938%
3	18.35388%	32.23644%	86.11744%
4	22.94799%	55.18443%	67.76356%
5	20.68933%	75.87376%	44.81557%
6	13.77886%	89.65262%	24.12624%
7	6.88733%	96.53995%	10.34738%
8	2.57574%	99.11569%	3.46005%
9	0.7192%	99.83489%	0.88431%
10	0.14442%	99.97931%	0.16511%
11	0.01897%	99.99828%	0.02069%
12	0.00166%	99.99994%	0.00172%
13	0.00006%	100%	0.00006%

[/table]

Lots of numbers what do they mean? Suppose I have an all lung monster. Each 'Lung' gives me two minuses, thus if I can get 7 lungs in one roll, you have 14 minuses and I would win. atleast 7 favorable out of 13 is the 8th row down and the last column. So that would only happen 10% of the time.

Personally, I would not design a daemon that only won 10% of the games I played in. Thus I would not consider that a broken daemon. would you?
_________________
Multiplayer Champion Gencon11/Battlefest Champion(tied) GenCon10/World Champion GenCon07/National Champion Origins05/Intermediate Champion GenCon02/Novice Champion Origins99

[chuckpint]

But with an all lung demon, it's a little more complex. Since the other two sides are plus and minus, if a third of them (i.e. 4) come up lungs, and a third of them come up minus, you have 12 minuses at the other player. So one more than the average (since it's somewhere between 4 and 5) is all you need to win. So you need to extend your model to show all that as well.

Next question is: what is threshold for broken? 50%? 40%? I'd say that if a daemon could win 50% or more of the time on the first turn, it's broken. But anything that could win more than 40% is going to get called broken by many.
_________________
You can never have too many dice.
First Place at the first ever Daemon Dice sealed starter tournament.
Battlefest tied for first GenCon 2012
Single Race Champion GenCon 2008-2009, Sealed Box Champion GenCon 2007,2009,
My collection is 21,500 Dragon Dice, 20,000 Daemon Dice, and others (too many to count).

[cliffwiggs]

This is a generic table for any 'ICON'. So you could say the same for Stingers, etc. that math is the same.

[AC]

Of course, any X% chance first-turn victory scenarios as presented (from a full daemon) are going to be a subset of those instances in which one's foe has generated zero minuses during the initiative roll.

I'm not sure what popularity to assign each die so as to create an appropriately weighted baseline for comparison, but given a daemon composed of 1-each of the thirteen dice listed in the rules so far (assuming I'm reading the rules right) the average first-turn minus an acting player will suffer is 3.33. Since a) one cannot suffer a partial result, and b) we are talking about the losing initiative roll, we may safely round down to a 3, which will be the result about 24.39% of the time (65.48% of results will be from 2-4). Only 1.95% of the initiative rolls of this theoretical daemon would result in zero minuses and the potential for the first-turn loss at the X rate.

Would it be reasonable to assess a threshold of concern for "broken" given expected penalties (-3 or whatever is more accurate), accepting that one in a hundred games [against a theoretical average foe] being a washout is probably not going to be too upsetting?

[cliffwiggs]

[chuckpint]

I need to double-check my website. I thought a lung had a plus and a minus. I'll post if there are changes.
_________________
You can never have too many dice.
First Place at the first ever Daemon Dice sealed starter tournament.
Battlefest tied for first GenCon 2012
Single Race Champion GenCon 2008-2009, Sealed Box Champion GenCon 2007,2009,
My collection is 21,500 Dragon Dice, 20,000 Daemon Dice, and others (too many to count).

[cliffwiggs]

[AC]

[cliffwiggs]

[piMaster]

Lungs have two pluses. There, now we can move on.

[cliffwiggs]

[chuckpint]

Ok, I posted as a sticky a table of all the body parts and the sides on each. Yes I verified each one against real dice.
_________________
You can never have too many dice.
First Place at the first ever Daemon Dice sealed starter tournament.
Battlefest tied for first GenCon 2012
Single Race Champion GenCon 2008-2009, Sealed Box Champion GenCon 2007,2009,
My collection is 21,500 Dragon Dice, 20,000 Daemon Dice, and others (too many to count).

[cliffwiggs]

[cliffwiggs]

[cliffwiggs]

Note: Since these games are generally so quick (quicker than most other games). I recommend that in a tournament setting you play every round as two out of three. That will greatly reduce the 'magic' roll from knocking a good player out in a single elimination format and will discourage that type of build.


_________________
Multiplayer Champion Gencon11/Battlefest Champion(tied) GenCon10/World Champion GenCon07/National Champion Origins05/Intermediate Champion GenCon02/Novice Champion Origins99

[Dolus]

[cliffwiggs]

FYI - for anyone who ever claims this game is simple with no decision points... Try to write an AI for it. It gets very complex very quickly.

Some things are simple, but others are deceptively complex.

or maybe I'm just suffering from aspartame poisoning and can't concentrait.

Even something like applying defenses is easy for a human, but fairly complex for a computer when you start dealing with dodges and deflects and pluses and how to optimally use them...
_________________
Multiplayer Champion Gencon11/Battlefest Champion(tied) GenCon10/World Champion GenCon07/National Champion Origins05/Intermediate Champion GenCon02/Novice Champion Origins99

[Dolus]

Just have it make assignments randomly and hope for the best.

[cliffwiggs]

[Dolus]

I'm curious about your results for stingers.

With a 13-stinger army, you'll have an average roll of 8.67 for initiative, which is the highest average you can have. So either they're going first, or their opponents are likely to be rolling very few dice on their first turn (since both faces that count for initiative are minuses).

On each turn, each die that gets rolled is either a minus or an attack. Since a successful stinger will stun one die, and stun/wound at least one more die before poison wears off, each non-blocked stinger (while the stinger will be lost), will take at least 2 dice with it.

The stinger has no way of recovering dice or blocking attacks, which is bad, but seems very powerful as an aggressive single-die strategy.


I feel like once you get an attack on such an army, you can take out their dice quickly and easily. But if you don't go first, or don't apply several minuses on their first turn, you will have a difficult time coming through. But looking into the racials for the breeds, this could change things. Since there is immunity to poison...