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Incentivizing aggressiveness!

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Telc
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Heyho (hope this is the correct place to put this)

This is mainly about >2 person strategy games but should also be applicable everywhere else.

Some time ago I had a game of Twilight Imperium with some friends (4 players total). What happened (only roughly explained):
One guy got aggressive early, two others allied against him and the 4th player stayed calm and developed his position. While the aggressive player had some success early on, he couldn't stand against the others. Then: the 4th player very calmly took the central planet without provoking any war and had peace agreements with everyone. Suddenly he was so far ahead that even allying against him would not have worked.
The aggressive player did win nothing from his early aggressiveness. The winner said afterwards (and I think he was correct) that it just doesn't make sense to attack other players since there are enough neutral planets and fights only cost ressources.

So the problem is: How to reward aggressive behavior in strategy games?
What mechanics can you use.

For example risk uses the card-getting thing and somehow it is a norm (and not seen as aggression) to conquer at least one territory each round.

As a theoretical discussion example and to make my point more clear let's take "neutral-risk" (it doesn't exist), which follows normal rules but:
evey player only has say 5 territories which leaves plenty of neutral territory. This neutral territory can be captured without fights. Why should someone attack another player now (in the beginning, later on he might need to to fullfill his mission): It is always better to just make a peace agreement with your neighbors and divide the territory in a fair way, then attack later when you have huge armies and can maybe backstab someone. This could lead to a quite boring game! But everyone who makes an early move against the other players will be "the aggressor" and he not only looses units in the fight but also gets many enemies on the table, while the others just slowly take over neutral territory. So no gain for the aggressor.

How do you get action going early on in "neutral-risk" = how to incentivize early aggression?

So while this might be a bit confusing, and neutral risk maybe is not the best example, I still hope for nice comments!! :D
thanks!

Mads321
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Replace abundance w. scarcity = war!

If you look at the fundalmentals of war (any war), one part always has something the other part wants - or maybe neither have it, but both know of a limited supply, and therefore fight over it.

What you are describing is a situation of abundance. If everyone has enough space and access to whatever they need easily, there will be no need for agressiveness.

But let's say all the units in your game needs to have access to water, but there is only a small waterhole in the middle of the map. And it's obvious to everybody, that there is not enough water for all. So someone will die of thirst, and it's less likely to be the one who is the most willing to survive (agressive) - or at least that's what you'd think..

If we take your description of the 4 player game, where the less agressive player won, it would be the same as the 3 guys fighting over the water, while the 4th guy quietly started drinking the water, and in this case won (survived), while the others died.

This would not have happened if all four started fighting, so the obvious answer is not that hard to figure out.. Why did the quiet guy win? Because he had access to what he needed. Simple as that. If the game wanted to reward the most agressive player, this would have been accounted for. Maybe a simple rule saying something like "while any players are engaged in fighting, all non-fighting players loose X (ability, resource or something else).

Or maybe the game would just make sure that the winner of any fight, would be plenty rewarded to have advantage enough to win, unless anyone else starts fighting.

Maybe the winner of the first fight will get a great bonus of some sort, then the winner of the next fight a lilttle less of a bonus, the third even less etc. This is when it starts to become a sport - and in my opoinion that's the thing you should be aiming for. Everyone would need to "get in the game" to have a chance at winning. The ealier mentioned tactic, of waiting for everyone else to obliterate each other, simply wouldn't work in this case.

Dulkal
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I don't think it is just

I don't think it is just about availability of resources. It also has something to do with risk vs. reward.

In TI, if you lose a battle, you suffer large losses. If you win, you don't really gain that much from it. Planets are acquired exhausted, facilities on the planets are destroyed before you get them etc. The sum of any war is always negative, and almost always negative for both parties.

If you want to incentivize aggressive behavior, you need to improve the results of fighting, on either side. Make winning more rewarding, or losing less painful.

As an example, take Eclipse. In Eclipse, you also have space empires fighting. But after a fight, both the winner and the loser get to draw VP tiles, and when a planet changes hands, both the winner and the loser get to produce resources from the planet in the same round. The result is obvious: Combat is much more frequent.

Mads321
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Dulkal wrote:I don't think it

Dulkal wrote:
I don't think it is just about availability of resources. It also has something to do with risk vs. reward.

- when boiled down, these are strongly connected to each other.

(abundance) Many and easily accessible resources = low risk, high reward
(scarcity) Few and hardly accessible resources = high risk, low reward

Not that anything your are saying is wrong - not at all! It's just a layer on top of my point i guess.

What I think is the difference between how players will utilize this (use judgement to decide if fighting is doing them good or bad), is a matter of how clear it is to them what the (most likely) outcome of the fight will be.

In your example of the game Eclipse, where both the winner and the loser gets to produce resources from the planet in the same round, the outcome (reward/loss) is quite clear, so this is what causes the judgement from the players to engage in fighting. No matter the outcome, they are still rewarded with the resource they need, so why not just go for it? Although they are still faced with a potential loss, fighting is rewarded with access to resources, making it maybe medium risk, medium reward at worst. So it's not difficult for the player to decide to fight.

Depending on what you want in a game, fiddeling with this is bound to have the effect of more or less agressiveness from playes. It depends on what you want.

But back to the question of how to induce agressiveness early in a game, I don't think it's enough to make the risk of fighting less. I agree it could be a way of making more fighting take place overall, but not particularly in the beginning of the game. In this case, 3 players could still be fighting with each other, while the 4th player silently grabbed enough resources to be able to claim victory.

Therefore the risk/reward ratio needs to be off balance (or at least during the start of the game). If the first aggressor could claim enough resources to win the game, if noone else is fighting during the rest of the game, it becomes pretty clear to the non-agressive player, that he/she MUST fight to have a chance at winning.

larienna
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Quote:So the problem is: How

Quote:
So the problem is: How to reward aggressive behavior in strategy games?
What mechanics can you use.

Unfortunately, TI 3 does not reward players for attacking which makes war useless. If you fight aggressively, you are going to lose the game ... but have fun.

There are various ways to promote conquest. A common idea is to give victory points to each planet/territory controlled. Many games like Britania, Viktory 2 and Eclipse use this system. Either the points are cumulative for each turn or they are fixed when under control.

Eclipse also award victory points in different matter. For example, the more ships you destroyed in a battle, the more chances you have to score points (So epic battles could be worth points).

In my game Fallen Kingdoms, Players could upgrade their cities and that gave the player points when under control. So in this case, development stay on the board when conquered so that players could take advantage of it. As the board develop, some parts of the board would worth more points to control and players would fight more for it.

You can also add conditions that if you control an opponent's home world or capital, you get extra points. That promotes the idea of rushing to the home world.

So the idea is to give player point for what you want them to do. If you want player to focus on tech research, than give points only for that. In TI3, they did not care about war, so they did not give any points for it. Instead, they thought that making boring objective cards was better. So they gave points for doing that instead of war.

lewpuls
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Turtling

Turtling (which is what the fourth player did) is only practical when the turtle can gain more by sitting, than the others can gain by fighting.

In the course of discussing "The Three Player Problem", in the book Tabletop Analog Game Design, download free from http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/tabletop-analog-game-design, I also discuss problems such as turtling and sandbagging.

In terms of the water hole analogy, if the players who are fighting can get some of the water as or before they fight, and the 4th player cannot gain access to the water without fighting, you have solved the problem. In other words, if players gain access to more resources than they lose by fighting, the turtle falls behind as he stays out of the fight. If players get none of the water until they've finished the fight, surely they'd be foolish to fight when one player can sit on the sidelines.

Telc
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Wow these are great

Wow these are great replies!!! Thanks very much!

And keep on posting!
Will add some other questions/ideas tmrw!

Orangebeard
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The Edge

In the Vampire: The Eternal Struggle card game, they used the concept of "The Edge" to encourage agressive play. If you successfully attack your opponent, you take control of the Edge. If you still have the Edge at the start of your next turn, then you earn a reward. It's a not a big deal when the Edge changes has hands frequently, but if players start turtling, the one with the Edge will soon have enough power to tip the balance back in their favor.

Keep in mind, the players only needed one successful attack no matter how minor the damage to obtain the Edge.

As this applies to your game, maybe there could be some kind of similar system that rewards attacks on other players, but does not reward attacks on neutral territories.

Telc
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okay, let's take this

okay,

let's take this hypothetical game:
let's call it "AgStra" (for aggressive strategy game)

4 players, many neutral territories, some give ressources, ressources are used for building armies, armies fight after some arbitrary rules, battles cost ressources
Aim: => I want to have aggressive gameplay and simplistic rules

Given the current discussion I need
a) to limit ressources (maybe add highyielding ressource territories but only 3 of them)
b) Gaining control of resources should not entail any costs (like building a mine or something)
c) some reward system for fighting (not only for winning fights

Okay, what do you say about b? c) must be made easy... what are possible benefits you get from the rewards? how could this work in AgStra?

Mads321
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Goal of the game?

Can you tell us what the goal of the game is? How do you win? Is it:

o The player who controls most territories (first to x number of territories or most after given time frame)?
o The last player standing who wins the game?
o Other?

If there is no defined goal, coming up with a solution to your problem is pretty much shooting in the dark.

Thanks.

Telc
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The player must control x

The player must control x territories...

This is a rather hypothetical example. I want to learn some general things from this thread whicht might help me for my own game.

Mads321
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How about this: When fighting

How about this:

When fighting over a territory, in stead of just losing your units when fighting, you could add a mechanism so that winning players could take (wounded units?) prisoners after the fight is over. The winning player could then put the prisoners to work in the mine, thereby making the mine more effective, providing more of x resource pr. round.

This way, the more units someone has in a territory to protect it, the more an opponent could gain from taking it over.

I think this should be quite easy to balance, and would make the game a bit more agressive.

It would also make the most fought over mines the most valuable over time.

Telc
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sounds cool but this leads us

sounds cool but this leads us to the next problem:
Inofficial Alliances!

In the increasing mine model two players could ally and conquer the same mine all over again (and retreating troops afterwards)....
If you give vicoty points or something similiar for conquering territory you get the same problem....

I love discussing here, so much input!!!

Telc
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sounds cool but this leads us

sounds cool but this leads us to the next problem:
Inofficial Alliances!

In the increasing mine model two players could ally and conquer the same mine all over again (and retreating troops afterwards)....
If you give vicoty points or something similiar for conquering territory you get the same problem....

I love discussing here, so much input!!!

Khoril
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what do you think about

what do you think about change the situation? something in the game (on the board? on the goals?) change and players must therefore committing aggressions.

ReluctantPirateGames
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Fighting Incentive

Here's an idea that springs from the ancient idea that war "turns your boys into men."

After a battle, any units remaining become "Veteran" units. These could be powered up in some way, probably not in terms of brute strength, but more strategically. This would benefit both players, but would more strongly benefit the winner, who of course would have ended the battle with a larger number of survivors. This system could be extended further (Recruits - Soldiers - Veterans - Special Forces), but that might be going overboard. Either way, when you "produce" units, however that's done in this hypothetical game, they always start out as the lowest rank, and have to be battle-tested to move up.

Just a quick thought: Perhaps some neutral territories can produce a limited number of higher level units from the get-go. Just another pseudo-resource you could have floating around in the game.

Telc
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I could imagine a mission

@Khoril

I could imagine a mission that says "whoever conquers territory xy gets reward z"

What do you have in mind?

@Rel

This sounds nice!! Will think about implementing it. Thank you!!

Mads321
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Another version and a new idea

ReluctantPirateGames wrote:
Here's an idea that springs from the ancient idea that war "turns your boys into men."

After a battle, any units remaining become "Veteran" units. These could be powered up in some way, probably not in terms of brute strength, but more strategically.

Another version of this that doesn't reuire as much tracking as what you propose, is to simply have a winning unit get a bounty on their head that would increase for every successfull battle the units has in a row. This way, in stead of an other player thinking "oh my, it's a veteran unit - I'll get my ass kicked", they would more likely think "If I beat this guy, I'll get a bonus!"

Then ask yourself which is more agressive. I'd say the bounty, but the upgrade to veteran etc. could also be implemented as well, since the player with the veteran units would also be more agressive, thinking "I've got a veteran - I'll beat his ass!".

So maybe both could work at the same time and potentially double the agressiveness? But could turn out to be very complicated to keep track off..

In addition to my recent post, I had some other thoughts:

When gaining "slaves" from another player, the winning player would simply keep these, and choose to deploy them or not - use them in the mine right away or keep them for later use - which would make sense, because maybe the fighting is not at a mine location.

You could even make a prison-location for each player. This would make for some interesting choices; Do you reinforce the prison because someone is approaching it, and you plan on using the prisoners right after you capture your next mine, or do you plan on getting enough prisoners out of the fight you are getting into, that you can afford to lose what you have in your prison?

And if you could do both (keep what you have in the prison and gain more prisoners), you would be able to put maybe close to double the amount of prisoners to work at the new mine.

- again, I think this would be quite easy to balance, as players would want to balance it themselves (if they can - ie. go for both keeping the prisoners in the prison, while also gain more prisoners when fighting, if it's possible of course).

Khoril
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Telc wrote: I could imagine a

Telc wrote:

I could imagine a mission that says "whoever conquers territory xy gets reward z"

maybe. you have a mission (take the resource) and you reach it; after the location of the new mission is in another place. you have to be aggressive to get the new location.

Khoril
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aggressive meter

in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3ed there is the Stance Meter for mesure the attitude... you can use something like that?
each turn without attacking the Stance Meter goes down and the player is less efficient to do the actions. if he attacks recovers efficiency

lewpuls
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Some of the suggestions about

Some of the suggestions about rewards for fighting are kludges like the kludge to encourage fighting in Risk (the cards). "Kludge" as in it has nothing to do with the real world, it's just a mechanism invented to solve a problem. Veteran status, on the other hand, does have something to do with the real world, but may be hard to track.

If your game is a "war game", that is, involves an economy that allows players to produce new units, you should be able to use the economy to encourage aggressiveness. If it's a "battle game," with only an order of battle and no economy, then some of these other methods may be needed.

Telc
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war game

The game I would have in mind is more a "war game" where economy is the basic problem.

But this is the question: Is making resources scarce enough? Few ressources actually makes alliances even more powerful since you don't want to fight. (since battles just got more expensive (less ressources on the map..))
Is there another solution concerning ressources then or do you have to use other methods (kludges)?

lewpuls
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Type of economy

Another question is whether you have a maintenance economy or an accumulation economy. In the former, there's a limit on how many units you can have, often because you have to pay for existing units (maintenance) before producing new ones. In the latter, you can build up huge armies (as in Risk) because there's no practical limit. The latter encourages turtling, the former discourages it. There'd be lots of turtling in Axis and Allies if it was more than two-sided. (No way to turtle in a two-sided game, at least one would hope so.)

JustActCasual
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Resource Arc

I think it's true that scarce resource is a good way to encourage aggression, but it is problematic in that it provides strong incentives for defense as well...if you already have the scarce resource you are encouraged to turtle. A good way to solve this problem is to produce a scarce resource arc over the course of the game, so players are encouraged to shift their aim at different resource sources as the game progresses.

We've talked a lot about creating incentives to aggression, but the other side of the coin is creating disincentives to defense. A depreciation of the territory's value over time held would be good, or the extreme measure of only losing troops on defense (like Smallworld).

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