Please please can we have some option to nerf Hali B???

[laggercat]

Hali B is so much stronger than the other wonders. There is no skill in playing with Hali B - its mostly just join-the-dots. There is zero satisfaction in winning with Hali B - don't kid yourself that you won because of your good decisions. Its just a very poor design in an otherwise amazingly well designed game.

We need some option here on BGA to nerf it. I don't care what it is. Anything. I am not asking for a permanent change for everyone, just an option for when you set up a game to make Hali B weaker. Please!

[Lumin_S]

The good news is that this option already exists. When making a game and choosing options, make sure you select Game Version: Old Edition

[laggercat]

Hali B is just as strong in the Old Edition.

[Lumin_S]

While trying to find sources for my response, I realized that you are the one who's accumulated so many statistics on 2nd Edition. So a big thanks to you for the threads here: viewtopic.php?t=22114

Can you share the statistics that support Hali B being as strong in the Old Edition? To me, balance is sufficiently described by the range in win% from worst to best at the common competitive player counts (3, 4, 5.)

My recollection is that I've seen statistics showing the range being smaller in Old Edition. However after some searching across BGA, BGG, reddit, and google, I haven't found a good data set on Old Edition win % by wonder. Perhaps you are more informed than I am?

[btrieve]

all-Day side only (no night boards) agreement among players. The point disparity among Wonders seems to be lesser in an All-Day setup. Every player has to choose Day side (on a Choose wonder side option). It's not automatic, so everyone has to voluntarily choose Day side (even if they could choose night side).

Or a voluntary pre-game agreement whoever gets Hali has to select the Day side (or game will get abandoned). But these are not guaranteed to work as some players queuing might not even read the game description or chat box and not follow the setup.

[Wonderful Plays]

Hali B is just as strong in the Old Edition.

This is factual and I second the motion to nerf Hali B somehow. Give us the option to play A side only even.

[6element]

I disagree that Hali B is OP in the classical edition. It is only strong against incompetent opponents, competent opponents destroy it quite well.

In a way, against competent opponents it might be easier to play with Babylon B, which is perceived as weak by many.

So, the main point is - there are at least two opponents. Two are usually stronger than one.

[Wonderful Plays]

I disagree that Hali B is OP in the classical edition. It is only strong against incompetent opponents, competent opponents destroy it quite well.

The data from the strongest tournament we had for old edition says otherwise. It was the best wonder in average place and in the 1st place percentage and in the lowest last place percentage.

In a way, against competent opponents it might be easier to play with Babylon B, which is perceived as weak by many.

The data places Babylon B lower, I personally like the wonder.

So, the main point is - there are at least two opponents. Two are usually stronger than one.

This is of course true, you can't win for example 3 player game where both opponents target you. That's just a nature of 7 Wonders.
Still the issue is in the most popular competitive mode we have on the side it's not all about playing for the win. And a lot of the times letting Hali go is the better choice for the arena points instead of trying to fight it and getting below it anyway.

I can see some of the stuff about Hali B be a tiny bit weaker in the old edition, but the overall strength stays the same, because the non green, non red strats are weaker. Generally I'd still say old edition has worse balance. I think for a lot of people playing only old edition the perception of balance can be skewed, because they are mostly playing old vs people who play both. So they have some slight advantage in playing old edition, because of experience and the freshness in the meta, this leads to slightly higher win rate and confirmation that this edition is better, where in reality most people moved on to the new edition and the real competition is there. I still like to play old edition from time to time, but every time I do this I go back to the new one after a few games.

[Lumin_S]

I disagree that Hali B is OP in the classical edition. It is only strong against incompetent opponents, competent opponents destroy it quite well.

The data from the strongest tournament we had for old edition says otherwise. It was the best wonder in average place and in the 1st place percentage and in the lowest last place percentage.

In a way, against competent opponents it might be easier to play with Babylon B, which is perceived as weak by many.

The data places Babylon B lower, I personally like the wonder.

Could you please share these data sets? Thanks.

[Laplace_314159]

I agree that in many/most cases if Hali is in and esp if they have access to at least one other differing commodity via trading initially the only way Hali doesn't win is someone(s) steals enough science cards so they don't win. But because they themselves won't have enough science cards either to dominate and essentially gimp themselves from taking other higher point cards they basically take themselves out of the running for first.

And psychologically, most people are playing to win and "not to be in last place" so they will hope that SOMEONE ELSE falls on their sword to prevent Hali from winning. But everyone else is thinking the same thing so no one does it thus giving Hali the victory. And this makes things just unfun.

A simple fix which IMO would mitigate a lot of the Hali imbalance is to simply change Hali's built in commodity to...not a commodity (and maybe not even Brick. Maybe Ore). This would mean the only way Hali gets all sciences in Age I on is to get extremely lucky with the timing and/or getting trade money. They can probably eventually get a full 1-1.5 sets in Age II if they work for it, but it won't be as much of a shoe in as before.