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Hi privateer4hire.
Sorry about the delayed responce.
Some games are developed with competative play in mind.Therfore the game play is paramount in development , and quantifiying in game capabilities in a easily determined way is important.

Maximising the amount of game play and reducing the number of written rules.

Thane Games established the formulae to cover the comparitive effectivness of in game units in AoA.(PV loading on charactiristics, etc.)
Then they established the synergistic factors.
(With the help of thier gamers and 8years playtesting.)

A reasonably accurate PV allocation method is just ONE IMPORTANT step on achiving provable levels of balance.This just get all ellements/units costing to effect ballanced against each other across all armies.

The other important step is rigourous playtesting to identify synergistic factors, which can be removed or compensated for.

WHFB and 40k are developed with driving minature sales as a core directive.
Therfore this drives down the amount of game play and increaeses the amount of written rules.(Focus on strategic list building not in game action.)
The individual elements/ units allocated the PV by the established practive of 'best guess'.
Then after limited play testing of limited options, these values are revised by the opinion of who shouts loudest...

WHFB and 40k are NOT developed for ballanced competative play.Therfore have NO provable level of balance, just varying personal opinion.

I think rock paper scissors is probably the most balanced game possible.

WHFB and 40k are NOT developed for ballanced competative play.Therfore have NO provable level of balance, just varying personal opinion.


QFT. Personal Opininion is very important. And if say, a person hated GW, they might be very critical and put up lots of negative posts about it, and throw out little adverts for a game that hardly anyone, anywhere, plays.)

Sorry, I'll stick with the horribly unbalance, overpriced, flawed, awful, and yet surprising fun game that all my friends play vs. the nearly perfect, divine inspired, totally balance game that no one plays.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Given the obscurity of AoA, how is it *provably* balanced?

Has WFB, much less 40k, effort gone into breaking AoA?

Does AoA have the same level of detail and options present in 40k, much less WFB?

If AoA really were so good, how come nobody plays it?

I'm actually a fan of AoA. I don't play it because it's frankly more work than I'm willing to put in to drum up opponents. WHFB and 40k, I can walk in virtually any LGS and get a pick up game. AoA, not so much.

All armies are built on the same points system. Ability to deep strike (similar concept but more like dwarf miner kind of thing) costs the same for any army unit. You can play with the lists provided OR you can stat up the models you have to give them the special abilities you want. If, for example, you want goat-mounted dwarf cav in your dwarf army, you can field 'em. As for balance, I think that's got a high subjective factor.

I also like that a stat means roll that or under (IIRC). So if your WS equivalent stat (we'll call it Melee because I can't remember) is a 5, you roll appropriate number of d6s for that unit and rolls of 5 or lower are hits. Similar concept for wounding. No tables to look up for that sort of thing. I also like that Magic builds. I can fire a level 1-ish so-so spell every turn OR I can save my magic juice and blast off a couple medium stuff every couple of turns or go for one big whammy.

Other than production values and an ingrained, ready-made audience and a virtually complete line of minis made specifically for the game, GW's core games have nothing on AoA. Unfortunately, those factors are the difference btw you having to convince, cajole, connive to get people to play and just playing a GW product.

privateer4hire wrote:All armies are built on the same points system. Ability to deep strike (similar concept but more like dwarf miner kind of thing) costs the same for any army unit. You can play with the lists provided OR you can stat up the models you have to give them the special abilities you want. If, for example, you want goat-mounted dwarf cav in your dwarf army, you can field 'em. As for balance, I think that's got a high subjective factor.

If that is the case, then without question, AoA is inherently flawed and unbalanced. Just because there is a points system and a formula, that doesn't mean that the points correlate with performance.

To the extent that AoA players act like Forgeworld and only use the point systems for things provided by third parties, the system will produce acceptable results. And most likely, the system works great for all sorts of casual play.

The moment large numbers of people deliberately start to game the system for competitive play, it will start to show weakness and flaws. The idea that such a system (not tested with extreme rigor) would be balanced is laughable. At best, you have the equivalent of choosing the top units from every WFB Army Book and combining them into a single army. At worst, AoA's balance fails the corner cases and produces a Daemons+ type army.

carmachu wrote:

Durandal wrote:It is interesting to see which armies have very consistent performance.

BT, SW, DH and WH all have very tight groupings. That is perhaps more interesting then which army does better. Most other 40k armies have a very large variance. What is it about these four that make them so repeatable? Is it lack of codex choice or a general lack of various strategies in the codex?

for the DH and WH its there are fewer players of the armies, and less chance for bad players. Or rather less overall number of players to make the data swing wildly....

I have not bothered to look at the power calculations for sample size, but a larger sample size would only give us more confidence about the complete set. Note the Beastmen players vary much more then the brets, but both have a small sample size. You really can't separate out player skill without a larger data set and army details. For our purpose though we could make some assumptions that player skill is limited by army selection, and that all players at the tourney have some degree of skill. Looking at the Fantasy data most armies have similar variances, so that would tend to support the idea that player skill across factions is at a similar distribution.

By GW's own admission some armies have more limited tactical options. Others are much more wide open. For instance you won't have an assault heavy list with dwarves, or long range Lizardmen gunlines. In 40k it is a bit more flexible. With Tau and Necron with limited assault options while demons are more close combat oriented. This should have an effect on the army's performance as the player is limited in what strategies they can use, and the relative power of their army in its element. What the data shows is that some armies may be very good in their narrow area, but when outside it they do poorly. Others are generalists that can do well with multiple play styles or in multiple game types.

For game balance I would think you would want the latter, lest it degenerate into rock paper scissors.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:All armies are built on the same points system. Ability to deep strike (similar concept but more like dwarf miner kind of thing) costs the same for any army unit. You can play with the lists provided OR you can stat up the models you have to give them the special abilities you want. If, for example, you want goat-mounted dwarf cav in your dwarf army, you can field 'em. As for balance, I think that's got a high subjective factor.

If that is the case, then without question, AoA is inherently flawed and unbalanced. Just because there is a points system and a formula, that doesn't mean that the points correlate with performance.

To the extent that AoA players act like Forgeworld and only use the point systems for things provided by third parties, the system will produce acceptable results. And most likely, the system works great for all sorts of casual play.

The moment large numbers of people deliberately start to game the system for competitive play, it will start to show weakness and flaws. The idea that such a system (not tested with extreme rigor) would be balanced is laughable. At best, you have the equivalent of choosing the top units from every WFB Army Book and combining them into a single army. At worst, AoA's balance fails the corner cases and produces a Daemons+ type army.

It's not really designed as a competitive set (though I've seen small group tourney discussions).

Agreed that large numbers of people gaming the system will break it just like they have 40k and WHFB and every other system frankly. As you point out, the fact that a Daemons army exists as an example shows that brokenness exists and even abounds. What I've read about GW game design for points is they go with what 'feels' right----an eyeball estimate of a unit's value. Don't really see how that's going to be any better than a formula system.

AoA does have some limits imposed in army building that prevent you from fielding all elites (equivalents), monsters, etc. Again, it's not perfect but it's still a good set of game rules.
One other thing that's kind of cool, for example, is 50 goblins won't necessarily run because you killed 4 gobbos and they only knocked down 3 of your better but fewer human troopies. The mass of the unit is taken into account when you're figuring out if a unit decides to head for the hills.

There's nothing wrong with (objective) points or (subjectives) "feel" - both will give perfectly adequate results for non-competitive play, and either makes a great starting point for competitive play.

What's a problem is holding either up as some sort of golden, untouchable standard for something as complex as a WFB/40k.

I'm pretty sure GW will take a decent whack at "fixing" WFB with the new edition, and I'm pretty sure outnumbering will be more than just a +1.

Hi all.
My point was all the games I know of that are developed for ballanced competative play, have a CONSISTANT and defined way of achiving provable levels of balance.(Some developers print this in the rules book for the gamers to use if they want.)

I simply mentionted AoA as it follows the basic tennants of 'development for ballanced competative game play.'And is more likely to be known to the people on these boards than the more obscure games I play...
Yes Thane games is NOT a multimillion pound multinational company , but THEY TRY to produce the best game they can , working with its fan base.

Rigorous playtesting IS ALWAYS very important.
(Something GW seem to have forgotten perhaps?
Jervis Johnson states that NO possible set of army configurations would yeild a win loss ration worse than 60/40.Yet he openly stated they dont get chance to playtest every possible configurations....so how the **** can he be so sure of the 60/40 results....thats right its just his opinion... )

I was simply trying to de-bunk the theory that you can prove ballance in a sytem by looking at the net results of limited recorded samples .

As PV and composition lists in WHFB and 40k are TOTALY subjective, then no amount of objective study can prove the level of imballance to a finmite amount.


I am sure the dev team do the very best they can.They seem to be using an 'evolutionist 'method of development at best.
(And a marketing focused method at worst.)

'Evolutionist' development is simply to make random changes and guage and keep any improvments, If you have a VERY LONG time for development,this is the MOST effective way to create optimum performance.(As synergy effects are buit into your results.)
The only down side is you never know exactly what is going on, some things that appear to do nothing much at all, turn out to be more important than you thought.

'Constructionist' development simply builds the required effects from known simple sub systems.This is MUCH quicker and you KNOW exactly what each sub systems effect should be on the entire system.

The evolutionist method is being tested in developlent of electronic systems.
One system used 20% less components the equivilent 'constructed system' and was 99% efficient.
But took 235 generations to achive basic fucntion and 4195 generations to achive optimum performance.

The constructed system achived basic fuction on 1st generation, and achived 95% efficiency on the 11th generation.

The point is do you want a wait 200 times longer for something to work , and 400 times longer for a slightly better efficency?
When a 'generation' takes 10 minutes yes,but when a 'generation' takes 5 years probably not...

What realy baffles me is, when the people that make the game say they develop it for relaxed narrative play, why do some people think its suitable for competative play? And then try to prove levels of balance that were NOT a primary concideration in its development.

Hey, I bought the AoA rulebook yesterday, what are the odds. Looks decent. Then I tried getting to the online resources mentioned, and found out that the game website is dead, the developer's website is dead, and the franchise had been bought by some small UK minis company that basically left it to rot.

I do have to say that he idea of a points system being more balanced than an "eyeballing" system is laughable. Yes, there's a formula with points values for every ability. But those values were "eyeballed" in the first place. It's not like you can mathematically calculate their real in-game worth.

Hi lord blackfang.
We have had our copy of AoA a few years now.(So I didnt know about the current situation,)We have been using the rules for ancient and fantasy battles.And in all that time of using AoA with the 14 sample army lists and our own creations, we have not found any noticable imbalance.

You said...
'I do have to say that he idea of a points system being more balanced than an "eyeballing" system is laughable.'

Well there you go, the last 200 years of scientific assesment and formula definition did not happen. We still just use best guesses and have the technology of the 1900s then?

SOME game developers have an educated guess at how things work, put a theory forward to define in game ratios, PLAYTEST revise , PLAYTEST, revise , and repeat untill the theory fits the results they get from playtesting.
(Early versions of 40k and WHFB did have a basic formula for PV allocation, but it was flawed.And rather than fix it , GW just gave up. )

This is done for basic elements of interaction in the game.

Then the game is constructed from these basic elements, and at each stage of construction synergistic ratios are checked.
And when synergistic annomalies are found they are either circumentes, (not allowed in the game ) or compensated for in some way.

IF all units have thier in game worth defined in the same way , (calculated from an established formula/ accurate comparison from extensive playtesting .)
Then when play testing ALL possible army compilations , any synergistic annomalies can be identified as ALL element units are at a know and proven worth.

Eg unit A is worth 100 pv.
But if 2 units of A are taken they become far more effective.(in game combined worth 300 PV.)
And if 3 units of A are taken they become incredibly powerful.(in game combined worth 900PV.)

GW would probably cost the unit at 150pv as it is the average in game effectivness of the unit ,(if the average number of available units taken.)
So a player taking one unit A has an overcosted unit.
And a player taking 3 unit As, has a game breakingly under costed units.

Game developers can either curcumvent the annomalies by limiting the number of these types of unit, eg 0-1 chioce.(Not good for minature sales...)
Or by tying them to a control unit,' one unit A can be taken per unit B taken'.(Where unit B compensates for the synergistic increase in worth of unit A)

Or by simply adding the synergistic increase into the costing.
1 of unit A 100PV.each.
2 of unit A 150 PVeach(1.5 multiplier.)
3 of unit A 300PV each(3.0 multiplier.)

The point is, to get better balance in any system rigorous testing and assesment is NEEDED.

I belive there is a major flaw in GW playtesting.

Currently WHFB and 40k are games about UNIT interaction.
However GW assign (guess) PV at the model equipment level,and revise from (limited) army level playtesting.
TOTALY missing out the MOST important UNIT level , the level of interaction!

GW plc think that WHFB and 40k are 'good enough' for their target demoghraphic.
But are not suitable for ballanced competative play because they are not playtested enough.

TTFN
Lanrak.

Lanrak wrote:GW plc think that WHFB and 40k are 'good enough' for their target demoghraphic.
But are not suitable for ballanced competative play because they are not playtested enough.

And AoA, with probably less than 1% of the total WFB+40k activity, *is* "playtested enough" for "balanced competitive play"?

The sheer paucity of experience with AoA pretty much means that it cannot be proven to be balanced. Again, what group out there is actively looking for and exploring rule exploits in AoA?

OTOH, if AoA were as balanced as you say, would you be willing to put your money where your mouth is and throw down a cash paying challenge with the sample lists against custom creations? Your opponent builds a custom list, and you randomly select one (or two) of the 14 sample lists (preferably with some required units selected at random). You play two games, and if he wins both, you pay out at least $100. He he likes, he can require you to play a 3rd game against a randomly-selected sample army, double or nothing. It's a blind matchup in that neither of you know what the other will be playing, so if AoA really were as balanced as you say, then the opponent's custom list would not have any systemic advantage over any of the sample lists. Actually paying people will break AoA. Just, right now, there's nobody to play AoA against, no tournaments, so no prizes and no incentives to bother trying to break it. Put $100 (i.e. a GW Battleforce) on the line, and that all changes because now people are incented to break the game. The 3rd game for double or nothing further incents them to break it as badly as possible.

Yeah, 40k and especially WFB have balance issues in competitive play. But that's because there are prizes that incent people to break them. In most casual games, 40k and WFB are fine. And indeed, 40k appears to be adequately-balanced for competitive play as well. If we didn't have tournaments, people would claim 40k and WFB to be just as balanced as AoA.

The point is, to get better balance in any system rigorous testing and assesment is NEEDED.

I belive there is a major flaw in GW playtesting.

Currently WHFB and 40k are games about UNIT interaction.
However GW assign (guess) PV at the model equipment level,and revise from (limited) army level playtesting.
TOTALY missing out the MOST important UNIT level , the level of interaction!

GW plc think that WHFB and 40k are 'good enough' for their target demoghraphic.
But are not suitable for ballanced competative play because they are not playtested enough.

TTFN
Lanrak.


And yet, for all it's horrible flaws, the game is doing fine, and 'Better' games like AoA is dead and rotting. Dead Game and no support is somehow better?
But you're having fun with your dead game, and at the end of the day I wish you well with it.

Why you feel this need to keep bashing on GW is the confusing part.

Link in OP wrote:
An independent, quantitative measure of “skill” independent from tournament standings eludes me.

The obvious way of accounting for skill would be to track the performance of individual players through multiple tournaments; using the same, or different armies. Once compiled, such a data set could be used to approximate the skill of individual players by laying it against the previously acquired ANOVA set. Essentially, all you'd have to do is determine the variance between the player's results, and the mean results for the army being played; eventually taking the average of all such results for all armies played by a given player. Time consuming, but not difficult.

Hi all.
Can I remind people of the title of the thread?
Statistical annalasis of the balance in WFB and 40k.

Annalasis of limited interactions with limited selections from those available in a system , is not going to give you any real indicator of the amount of imballance in any system.

And my own personal preferance for playing competative games to see if my skills are improving .Require a little more assurance than 'well we thought the points values were about right when we wrote them...'

I only used a AoA as an example to show it is possible to give the gamers slightly more confidence in a systems balance than purely subjective assesment.

I dont feel the need to have to prove the level of balance in the games I prefer to play. The developers give me enough objective evidence to re-enforce my confidence in the system.

Perhaps the competative gamers of GW core games desire to try to prove the level balance in a sytem which is NOT optimised for compative play says more about them than any thing I could?

Mikhaila.
So pointing out the flaws in the way GW try to ballance thier core games is 'bashing them'?
I thought it would be seen as a valid topic for discussion.
Some gamers enjoy playing WHFB and 40k.

Some gamers try to assign far more importance to playing WHFB and 40k than is needed or desired perhaps?
'...the games are just the icing on the cake...' according to Jervis Johnson.
Some thing entertianing to do with the citadel minatures you buy from GW plc.

When the developers of a game say ' the most important rules is the rules are not all that important' I often wonder why ;-
A, people pay money for something that is 'not all that important',
B, having payed money for something that is 'not all that important' , they try to find some way to justify thier investment beyond the scope of the product.

JohnHwangDD.
You posted...'Yeah, 40k and especially WFB have balance issues in competitive play. But that's because there are prizes that incent people to break them. In most casual games, 40k and WFB are fine. And indeed, 40k appears to be adequately-balanced for competitive play as well. If we didn't have tournaments, people would claim 40k and WFB to be just as balanced as AoA.'

So with out the level of competative play found in tournaments , WH and 40k function ok ,as the relaxed narrative driven games they are developed to be !
But when played outside the scope of the games development they fail to meet expectations.
No news their my friend.

You are absolutley right about if you did not have tournament play people could cliam WHFB and 40k were as balanced as AoA.
BUT the difference is the developers of AoA can show objectivley how ballanced AoA is. (and do openly.)
The claims of WHFB and 40k would STILL just be based on subjective opinions.

Which is sort of my whole point.
You can not get sound statistical annalasis based purley on subjective opinoin.

Happy gameing,
Lanrak.

@Lanrak: "YOU LIE".

The AoA developers may *claim*, but cannot *prove* balance. Can they *prove* that every single cost factor is exactly and perfectly balanced? Can they prove that every single factor for each individual unit has been perfectly costed and balanced? Can they prove that every possible combination of units has been reviewed and perfectly accounted for?

I would submit that no, they can't, so any such claim of perfect balance can be properly met with extreme skepticism. Now if you have actual proof, hard data to share, please do so. Otherwise, those claims are merely empty words.

Furthermore, I sorely doubt that AoA covers the same scope as WFB with its various Wargear and Special Rules. If it did, one could use AoA to perfectly recreate WFB with complete balance. Given the vast hand-wringing over WFB balance issues, one imagines that it would have been done by now, so where is it?

Finally, if the AoA system were perfectly balanced, why the Veto rule? If you were correct, then the system wouldn't allow people to create unbalanced units, so the rule is redundant. The very presence of such a rule means that the designer rightly knows that there are limits to the system balance, and that going outside the system can reveal problems and exploits. Yet the creation system is supposed to be integral? Which is it?

HI JohnHwangDD.
Before acusing me of lying, why not actualy read my post,and see what it says?

I agree there is NO 'absulote proof' of anything. Just varying levels of evidence tied to assiciated theories.We simply assume the theory with the most evidence to support it, is most likley the best one to pick.
(And true perfection, of any sort, is always persued and NEVER achived.We can get 'near perfect' though!)

So 'absulute proof of perfection' is nonexistsnt.

HOWEVER, I simply stated that games that have been developed using 'objective assesment' ,have more evidience supporting thier theories of balance , than games based purley on subjective opinion. And as such a system based on subjective opinion can not be effectivley annalised , where as a system based on objective assesment could be.


Many games have extensive playtesting to determine the relationships between in game performance and characteristics etc.These allow consistant methods of PV allocations and composition methods to be applied aross the entire game.
These games tend to be developed with game play in mind, so use the least amount of game mechanics and resolution methods , to deliver the most amount gameplay with the minimum amount of rules.

Any game that gives the user acess to thier method of PV allocation and composition etc,tends to give confidence in the developers proirity to game ballance.(In my experiance.)

WHFB and 40k are used to maximise sales of new minatures to GW plc target demoghraphic.And all the 'Special Rules and equipment options' are developed to inspire customers to buy the new minatures.!(Exclusive rules and equipment make new minatures more inspiring /interesting .But the down side is over complicated rules !)

Why would any one interested in maximising game play, add unesissary -counter intuitive and abstract rules?

AFAIK, the option NOT to play an opponent is a right of every gamer.(Veto.)

Just because the game might be 'balanced' , doent mean it would be a 'fun' game .As 'fun 'is subjective, based on the opinions of BOTH gamers.

Some match ups simply dont 'float your boat'.So why bother playing a game you know wont be THAT enjoyable ?
(I want to enjoy playing the game, not just adding numbers to a W/L/D list .)

(Anecdotal evidence ;- I know several players who PREFER to use thier WHFB minatures with AoA rules.If GW plc did not operate an insular marketing strategy, many more GW gamers probably would use alternative rule sets.)

If you feel compelled to use a game developed for relaxed narrative play , in a competative way.
ACCEPT the fact it may not deliver the results you want.
DONT try to suggest it CAN be used in a competative environment effectivley.

IF you want to play games in a competaive way ,I simply suggest you try to find rule sets developed for ballanced competative play.

Anything that states 'The most important rule then is that the rules are not all that important!...'Probably should not be concidered ideal for competative gameing.

TTFN
lanrak.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Reecius wrote:

NO_SUCH_LUCK wrote:chess is perfectly balanced

Nope, it is not. If you go first you have better odds of winning.

No game is perfectly balanced that I know of.

Correct. Playing white is a clear game advantage over playing black. White is categorically superior to Black, and this can be demonstrated convincingly from a statistical standpoint.

Although some master level players would argue that black actually enjoys a slight level of advantage, based on how the first moves are largely predefined. Black will know by the second move or so what white is doing and can react accordingly.

JohnHwangDD wrote:I'm pretty sure GW will take a decent whack at "fixing" WFB with the new edition...

This word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

I am sorry but without him showing his math, I cannot look at his charts without questions. Where is the hard data numbers, formulas, etc. Interesting but very dubious figures to say the least.

@Lanrak: Please Google "YOU LIE" for proper American context.

As I noted, having an objective system is meaningless. All it means is that the results will be consistently wrong in the same way. I thought that VDR put that to that whole notion to bed.

And as I noted, if the designers really had faith in their PV calculator, no "veto" rule would be necessary.

So which is it? Is AoA really balanced, or does it only pretend to be so? I say the latter. It gives the illusion of balance among those who are too ignorant or unsophisticated to determine otherwise, in the absence of mass field testing with actual monetary values on the line.

If you want to say otherwise, SHOW ME THE MONEY.
____

@Pipboy: The analysis referenced by the OP is easily repeatable in SPSS (or any other statistical package / toolset), so you can easily check it yourself.
____

efarrer wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:Correct. Playing white is a clear game advantage over playing black. White is categorically superior to Black, and this can be demonstrated convincingly from a statistical standpoint.

Although some master level players would argue that black actually enjoys a slight level of advantage, based on how the first moves are largely predefined. Black will know by the second move or so what white is doing and can react accordingly.

Sure, and some people also say that Ogres and O&G are "competitive" relative to Daemons...
____

George Spiggott wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:I'm pretty sure GW will take a decent whack at "fixing" WFB with the new edition...

This word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Oh, it means what I think it means.

I look at it like this: GW honestly wants players to enjoy their games (in a mushy, touchy-feely, feel-good sort of way), and WFB can't really get any worse. Even if only half the stuff GW change actually works, the game will be better for most people overall.

That said, I'll be getting my WFB8 rulebook late, after others show that WFB plays better, as I'm not even playing WFB at all right now.

JohnHwangDD wrote: The analysis referenced by the OP is easily repeatable in SPSS (or any other statistical package / toolset), so you can easily check it yourself.

I can check using a package, but if he got his hard data wrong before putting into a statistical package then it can still check out but still be wrong. I ran into that a couple times when I took statistics in college.

What was sampling size he used, what was criteria he use to breakdown the systems into numbers that he could use for the math? Was his breakdown of the systems biased toward one army book over another? Eventhough he used a 95% acc rate for the analysis, without seeing the hard data breakdown and the math it is still hard to take the analysis at face value.

Why don't you ask the question, or run a parallel set based on the same publicly-available source data that he references?

I would if I had the time (other research papers to write before I can breakdown the strengths and weaknesses of every army book). All I am just saying is that I wish that when people that post these type of analysis they would just give the math so we can check their numbers. What he posted could be 100% correct but even with one number off the enitre analysis could be completely wrong. This is why I do not put much faith in political polls or any polls at all. Without the hard numbers it is hard to know if the numbers are correct even if they use a low error figures.

JohnHwangDD wrote:...as I'm not even playing WFB at all right now.

I thought you didn't play fantasy for the same reason that I don't play it (and other 28mm 'regiment' games). Because it's a bad 'miniatures game' with ranks of models without purpose, and not because of any internal game balance (or lack of) issues. The new edition won't 'fix' that.



He's still unconvinced.

In general, that's right, although, if WFB is played as a pure high Fantasy game - Heroes, Wizards, Skirmisher, and Monsters with little to no block infantry, it's not so horrible.

But if this were the case, then GW ought to drive the message home:
1. limiting Rank bonus to +2 instead of +4, while requiring at *least* 120mm frontage per Rank,
2. bump Flying movement to 24".
3. expand WS table from 2+ (WS > 2x enemy WS) to 6+ (WS < 1/3 enemy WS) so Heroes dominate even *more* strongly
4. Large Targets count double for outnumbering
and so on.

That is, simply stop pretending that WFB should be about blocks.

HI JohnHwangDD.
Sorry about my tardy responce.

You posted...'As I noted, having an objective system is meaningless. All it means is that the results will be consistently wrong in the same way. I thought that VDR put that to that whole notion to bed.

And as I noted, if the designers really had faith in their PV calculator, no "veto" rule would be necessary.

So which is it? Is AoA really balanced, or does it only pretend to be so? I say the latter. It gives the illusion of balance among those who are too ignorant or unsophisticated to determine otherwise, in the absence of mass field testing with actual monetary values on the line.'

Just to get this right , PLEASE correct me If I am wrong.

You state that a system using objective assesment to define function in a CONSISTANT way , is inferior to a system using subjective opinion ?
(Annalogy)..By your statment ,If every clock in the world is running 10 minuites fast , this is worse than every clock displaying a random time ?

And the fact that the games of 40k and WHFB are so abstract (mainly due to marketing driven development ,) developers are unable to put a method of consistant PV allocation onto them,because they dont do not understand thier own system sufficiently.

This DOES NOT mean other games that are written with a different development method, can not have thier more straight forward relationships identified by objective assesment !

Game play goes beyond the amount of ballance required for 'balanced competative play'.

To ENJOY PLAYING the game BOTH players need to be of the same opinion of what makes a 'fun' game.And as 'fun' is totaly subjective ,NO developer can or should dictate your playstyle or who to play.

40k says players should agree on how they treat the rules , '...as sacrosanct or mere guidelines...'
Other rule sets say that both players should agree to the oponents force composition /army build .

What do you think is the greatest hiderance to players , working out how important the other player thinks the rules are, and the individual intepritations of an ambiguos rule set?

Or just playing or vetoing an oponent based on thier selection of units?

I find it laughable that you can accuse people you dont know of bieng ignorant and /or unsophisitcated.
As its you and other GW gamers trying to prove levels of ballance in game systems developed without serious concideration to well defined rules writeing , let alone game ballance.

TTFN
Lanrak.,

JohnHwangDD wrote:In general, that's right, although, if WFB is played as a pure high Fantasy game - Heroes, Wizards, Skirmisher, and Monsters with little to no block infantry, it's not so horrible.

But if this were the case, then GW ought to drive the message home:
1. limiting Rank bonus to +2 instead of +4, while requiring at *least* 120mm frontage per Rank,
2. bump Flying movement to 24".
3. expand WS table from 2+ (WS > 2x enemy WS) to 6+ (WS < 1/3 enemy WS) so Heroes dominate even *more* strongly
4. Large Targets count double for outnumbering
and so on.

That is, simply stop pretending that WFB should be about blocks.

This is right.

It is this which turned me off WHFB in the first place (1st/2nd edition.) There was no real point having any normal troops since you could defeat the whole enemy army and still be beaten by a couple of heroes or a wizard. It would have worked much better as a big RPG skirmish than the tabletop wargame it was pretending to be.

Of course GW's objective is to maximise sales of models, which demands big blocks of troops.

@KK: thanks. I remember how WFB5 Empire could take an Emperor Dragon to eat nearly all of the army points.

Tho with WFB being mostly plastic (even Steam Tanks), GW might be able to move away from RnF, as they make the same profit on Stegadons as Saurus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Lanrak: If every clock runs fast with variable rate of 25 to 26 hours per day (AoA), then, no, it's not really any better than people periodically adjusting their clocks based on when the sun rises and sets (GW). The AoA variable rate works fine for small steps (the predefined armies), but gets horribly wrong for anything big (hence the need for a veto rule). The GW resets bring things back to center, but not transparently. Proving that either system is somehow better at a macro level has not been done, only claimed by you.

Let's be very clear here: You are the one who made a completely unfounded and indefensible claim of AoA being well-balanced, based entirely of the author's self-justified claim of balance. You haven't shown or provided details of this, despite being asked. Nor have you been able to clarify or demonstrate how this balance manifests in the macro sense. All you've been able to do is say that there's a calculator, with no basis for demonstrating that said calculator is in any way correct.

I, on the other hand, have noted that the author is aware of his calculator not being perfect, hence requiring a veto rule. You choose to gloss this over.

Until you can speak intelligently on this topic, rather than just emptily bashing GW, perhaps you should just step away.


As it is, nothing is being gained here, so I'm done unless you have something of actual value to add here. Have fun playing AoA.