1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?

[hako]

I do like the idea with the ladder, duels will be great, and we can play them much faster that standard PBEMs, just to agree some hours and you can play lots of turns each day...
Only question, who's gonna arrange this legaue

[Gandalf Parker]

It sounds good but I suspect we would end up proving that there is rock-paper-scissors balance in the game. Without other nations to affect the ups and downs in the game, some combos would be pretty pre-decided. Especially since it would only represent the results of that nation on a small map which is very different.

What Id like to see are competitions of Ulm-vs-Ulm and Ermor-vs-Ermor. But that would be such an unusual situation that they would have to change their tactics and it wouldnt prove much.

Maybe someone could create a ladder mod that gives us a single nation which can support everyones play style, and use it as a standard base to test each other.

Or possibly, ladders of Player-vs-AI with a final score being recorded so that player A's score of Ermor-vs-AI could be compared against player B's score of Ermor-vs-AI. Use a very generic AI. Maybe a modded one using indepts.

[Maltrease]

I think if both people agree on map types you can come up with some fair matches. You might counter a strong bless rush nation vs a "take time to develop" nation by making indies relatively weak, and set the provences to 80 or 100 (for 2 people).

With b0rsuk's idea you would have 1 person pick all the variables for both nation and then let the second player pick the nation they want to play.

While a mirror match (with a mirror map) would be the ultimate balanced test it doesn't sound nearly as fun to me.

Another idea that might be a lot of fun is to have each person pick 2 nations. So its a 2v2 but each person controls their 2 sides. This might work out some of the rock paper scissors issues while still eliminating the unpredictable nature of diplomacy.

The nice thing about a 1v1 duel is even if you have a hard time cordinating a time to play together you still get to take 2 turns at a time.

[Saarud]

Great idea. I'd love to see a ladder of some kind. I think all of your ideas are great even though it sounds abit boring playing against an identical matchup.

I'd like more the concept of each player chosing a nation and then starting two games one with your choice of nation the other with your opponents choice of nation, playing both games at the same time and the first to lose either game lose the match.

Whatever system used what would be the most fair game settings all around?

edit: Perhaps starting with random nations would be a good idea because I think some people specializes in certain nation with bless rushing and that doesn't show anything about the skill of the game. Also playing random nations can be fun as you could get nations you don't often use.

[mathusalem]

Saarud, I don't like your solution, because it's force Fire 9/ Water 9 bless rush strategie

[Blofeld]

MA Ermor vs MA Pythium seems an interesting match.
Majority of their troops are the same, with variations in sacreds, elite infantry and lizard cataphracts.
Mages and reanimation make an obvious difference betwwen them, and the background story is perfect for a believable civil war scenario.

[Saarud]

mathusalem said:
Saarud, I don't like your solution, because it's force Fire 9/ Water 9 bless rush strategie

You have a point about F9W9 bless rush strategy but this applies to all 1v1 games. I think with the right settings this can be evened out abit (unless you play Vanheim that is ). It should be a viable strategy but not the only one.

[Maltrease]

I played out the duel over the weekend. It was very interesting. While my opponent (Neifelheim) won almost every major confrontration I was able to win most skirmishes and take over the majority of his lands. With the ability to use call of the winds to rapidly bring in reinforcements for beseiged fortress and to take low PD lands being a large key in the victory.

Probably the biggest turing point is when he attacked with his uber SC god (with beserk) but a lucky arrow pegged him before he could cast the crucial "mistform" buff and he was promptly destroyed by a group of flagrents.

Interestingly he didn't go with the Air9 bless or even use his nations sacred troops (they are very expensive resource and gold). What turned out to be incredibly effective were the skin shifters. With 70 hp (35 in both forms) it takes a good solid 3 thunderstrikes to take one out. An unbuffed (with items) Eagle King can cast 3 thunderstrikes before being fatigued.

As a big plus the shifters don't take any resourcs so a sloth 3 scale is possible, however that wasn't fully apparent when the game began so he was only running Sloth 1.

Two castings of Call of the winds would always take out a PD of 6 (only 3 giants for Neifelheim). If he increased the PD higher (7 or more gives a different message for scouts) then I would bring in an eagle king and some archer chaff to take it out.

Was a fun game... I had thought I had lost before taking his god out in that lucky battle. If we played the same two nations again I'm not sure the result would be the same (although I've got several new ideas to try the next time around).

[alexti]

I'm surprised by that result. Sure, Caelum's raiders can be annoying and eagle kings or serpahs can easily take care of Niefel's PD (no point buying more than 1), but he could just park Niefel Jarls everywhere (with Air-9 bless). There's not much Caelum can't do about that. Lightning doesn't work, favourite magic bows (vision foe, pierceer) miss too often to be practical. And in a single combat eagle kings (even fire-9 blessed) can't match a Niefel Jarl. And to make things worse, Niefel's regular army is better as well...

[Maltrease]

Well the the short nature of the conflict prevents a Niefel Jarl in every provence. Air-9 is 70% shock resistance, so alone is not enough for a Jarl. Of course a Jarl with Air 1 or a ring of lighting resistance takes care of that soon enough.

A lone commander is not enough though. A batch of Iron Crow would quickly kill a loan Jarl. You would get 16 attacking per turn if he was fully swarmed, and the last 10 would likely hit with an average damage slightly above protection.

I'm certainly not saying that Caellium would triumph in a rematch, but it was a lot of fun taking advantage of the various strengths. Big battles almost always went in his favor, but moving three provenes a turn would let me avoid the big battles and attack him everywhere else.

Also with a pretender design you could do things like forge wands of fireballs. Even 5 scouts with skull tailsmans would probably defeat a lone Niefel Jarl.