7WD in Numbers

[silentProtest]

there is no pin function (that functions automaticaly or can be used by majority) - So I will be bumping the most useful posts/discussion - hope that is fine.

No, it's not.

As in - "it's not fine" ??
why though ? the marked threads are repositories of knowledge about the game, and can help people to get better, or at least better understanding of the game. You want it to get lost in obscurity ?

Well, if the mods or admins here say that, fine, lets make it a less useful site/forum

[Jellby]

If the threads deserve to be pinned, let the mods/admins pin them (there are pinned threads in other subforums, so it's possible). Artificially bumping threads just because you feel they should be in the front page looks like bad etiquette to me. If the threads are useful, they can be located by searching, they're not lost.

[silentProtest]

If the threads deserve to be pinned, let the mods/admins pin them (there are pinned threads in other subforums, so it's possible). Artificially bumping threads just because you feel they should be in the front page looks like bad etiquette to me. If the threads are useful, they can be located by searching, they're not lost.

Oh, cool, I will do that. Also agree about the etiquette; But with bad tools, etiquette becomes way less important to me^^

Also it's news to me that topics on the game page (where you see 5 under "Forum") can be pinned, thanks for the hint

PS: search isnt that useful/powerful, so I wouldnt imagine that a lot of people do that; and those who do, would find all relevant things if they key words do not match (but the meaning does)

EDIT:
out of those, whom should I write ? their functions are so descriptive....

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[silentProtest]

Im sorry - I tried - I wont be writing to ALL Admins and mods, to make THEIR platform better - bump

[Shield For Your Eyes]

Thank you very much for all of this work! i do think it would be most interesting to look at 500+ rated players (or maybe 400+ if you feel sample size would be an issue), as the Divine Theater in particular stands out as a wonder with a shockingly low winrate relative to how highly the top players rank it. It does give a lot of room for less experienced players to make mistakes, so i think it would do better if you only look at these higher-rated games.

One thing i think of in particular is collecting enough resources to build the Theater in Age I when you're guaranteed to get Ra from it - this is not a play the average person would ever think of, but in my studying replays i've seen the best players pull that off a bunch!

[lexicam]

I'm a numbers guy so I really enjoyed this analysis.

Not sure if the OP is still reviewing replies, but a few thoughts based on the data / follow-up ideas:
- I was surprised that for the Pantheon expansion the Science win condition did not happen more often. I felt like for me it was over 50%.
- For the standard variation, I'd be curious to see if the win condition distribution is different for when the first person wins vs the second person (in age 1). I feel like one of the ways you need to pivot as the second player is to go more for science / military, but not sure if the data shows that.
- I once tracked 100 of my games - starting position, opponent's ELO, and game outcome. I found that I started second in 59 of those 100 games, which is somewhat of a statistical anomaly. I also was significantly worse as second. I think I won 80% of my go-first games, but like 40% of go-second. So way above average for going first, and slightly below average for second. I don't think I successfully found that pivot for second.
- One of the interesting pieces of data is that Artemis is selected first / deemed most powerful - but it has a below-average win rate. I think one way to reconcile it is that people mis-use it - overpay for it too much in age one just to get a certain card or age 2 start. And when that is their only replay wonder they need to be more careful. I for one will usually take Piraeus first.
- There was a different thread that stated that Pantheon is a near-perfect expansion except for Ra. A lot of people disagreed, but I for one do agree. I've won without it and lost with it - but don't like how it both impacts the balance and the overall game dynamic. I wish it was instead something like 'swap a wonder' and work similarly to the Library where you can swap one of your wonders for 3 random unused wonders. I also would imagine that if Ra is removed, that the starting position could become quite balanced. Usually the second player makes more Pantheon placements, which overcomes the fact that they are more limited in their card selection in age one.

[michaelHastriter]

Ok RA in age 1 is fun to play against. I think it is interesting but suboptimal. Here are 2 games where I first saw this strategy back in 2022 and in the first game it was so unexpected!

Game 1
https://youtu.be/l18D1SuIkoA
Game 2
https://youtu.be/FNaLm60Uo_Q

RA is the best God for Pantheon (no Agora) in general but not worth spending a bunch of money and loosing a foothold in science. 3 to 8 coins in age 2 for sure. but 8+ coins in age 1 plus sacrificing a very useful divine theater wonder to steal a less good wonder... I'd rather just block or steal RA in age 2.

I think I'm on the side of keep RA in the game because I don't feel it is overpowered. Just the best in most situations.

Also if you are playing with expansions pick Artemis over Piraeus. 12 coins immediately is so much better than potentially saving 12 coins with gray resources.

The reason why the Piraeus win rate is higher than Artemis is because 2 reasons

1) people build Artemis too early cause they are greedy and impatient and then they get to age 3 where everything matters and have no extra turns and their opponent has 2 still
2) The player who takes Artemis grabs it first usually if divine theater is not out and so the 2nd picker gets the 2nd best and 3rd best wonders leaving Artemis Player with a terrible one like Lighthouse or Pyramids. Often this is 2 good wonders vs 1 Temple of Artemis and 2 vs 1 is no good.

[silentProtest]

Ok RA in age 1 is fun to play against. I think it is interesting but suboptimal. Here are 2 games where I first saw this strategy back in 2022 and in the first game it was so unexpected!

Game 1
https://youtu.be/l18D1SuIkoA
Game 2
https://youtu.be/FNaLm60Uo_Q

RA is the best God for Pantheon (no Agora) in general but not worth spending a bunch of money and loosing a foothold in science. 3 to 8 coins in age 2 for sure. but 8+ coins in age 1 plus sacrificing a very useful divine theater wonder to steal a less good wonder... I'd rather just block or steal RA in age 2.

I think I'm on the side of keep RA in the game because I don't feel it is overpowered. Just the best in most situations.

Also if you are playing with expansions pick Artemis over Piraeus. 12 coins immediately is so much better than potentially saving 12 coins with gray resources.

The reason why the Piraeus win rate is higher than Artemis is because 2 reasons

1) people build Artemis too early cause they are greedy and impatient and then they get to age 3 where everything matters and have no extra turns and their opponent has 2 still
2) The player who takes Artemis grabs it first usually if divine theater is not out and so the 2nd picker gets the 2nd best and 3rd best wonders leaving Artemis Player with a terrible one like Lighthouse or Pyramids. Often this is 2 good wonders vs 1 Temple of Artemis and 2 vs 1 is no good.

games replays on bga if anyone needs:
https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=92384516;
https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=92384516;

first off, I do not want to be mean, but just got kind of an culture shock; I might be somewhat direct.
Ive got 2 points. 1 about those games, which might be not relevant; also thanks for sharing, michael. 1 about the discussion in general; I will mark it so you can skip to that.

Those were horrible moves. In general it is hard to say that with definity, but those are so far away from optimal that they are clearly bad moves. Little analysis of to why that is:
game 1: https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=92384516;
getting the yellow 4 before clay was actually right, since you Need 1-2 yellows from age 1 to get by with gods and other expenses; 4 yellow, the gray cards are, in most cases, the best; but not for every game, because card values/tiers are highly volatile from game to game.
He got even luckier with the yellow clay, which he needed to build. With two top tier wonders vs piraeus he was clearly ahead, maybe just needed to fix timing problem, by artemis at some point or clever card opening.
The way one goes about building theatre->Ra in age one is with some sub set of those [yellow wood,1-2 wood, paper, glas, 4 yellow, senate: -1gry/brown, free wonder res., +2 money].
michael, made a little blunder, his opponent made an insane blunder by using yellow clay for artemis; did not bother to watch futher.

game 2: https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=92384516;
here the unimaginable, insane blunders by both players - first players gets knossos, with +2 blue token open, with white card on the bottom.
First has to take that - that is not even a discussion.
Second has to block that if first did miss that - also not an discussion.
It blows my mind that this could be missed on any level.


Here we come to the bigger point

If we are talking about game balance, in a competitive setting, what is the relevance of players that make random, fundamentally bad moves? I actually do not understand this. Can anyone explain ??
I do get that there is probably not enough data from only the best players, and elo is not sufficcent to know about the skill in the game, because of random factors during a game, or the setting one is in when playing, etc. etc. ; But one could still use some cutoff number to compare to ignore, imo, trash data in the stats. The question about the treshhold is prob. complicated. My guess would be that the cut-off point for both expansion players should be 450-600 elo; choose your magic number

Edit Note: balance in a non competitive setting/game is just homogeneously distributed randomness, with no thought needed, since one can not assume, any thought needed, only any moves done. At least this is my believe/conclusion; comment/correct me if I missed something.

Edit: I do not disagree about what michael said after "Game 1: Game 2:" btw; purerly talking about those games, leading to my second point above, because they are not relevant/representative as single examples, but might show, with which data stats might be, lets call it, corrupted.

[michaelHastriter]

Love the directness and forgot all the terrible moves I made there
Agreed these are not good examples/justification to keep RA. Just wanted to show how easy building RA in age 1 is to do but that doesn't guarantee a win at all. Spoiler: I won both games even though I played terrible moves.

Good point that if we are both playing bad then does it really count as data. I'm sure when Repos was playtesting 7WD with new players, Pyramids may have been a good choice for playtest groups with 5 plays or less under their belt. I taught my nephews this game and their early games always ended in points so Pyramids was pretty important because neither player seriously went for military or science so I'm sure when the game came out if there wasn't BGA level playtesting all the wonders seemed fairly even. Maybe 2 Tiers of wonders A Tier and B Tier. But when experts play the over a thousand games they can figure out....wow... ok... there are 6+ different Tiers for 12 wonders and they are not balanced... but I'm not sure that means the game is broken with those top tier wonders. Similarly, Divinities (RA) being in a whole other tier does not make the game broken. But I'm no expert. I'd be interested to know from a 600+ ELO vantage point if any expert feels like RA needs a change to fix a broken game or if the game is not broken.

[silentProtest]

Imo about 7wd A+P, Ra isnt OP, in that sense that he has to be banned from the game or completely rewritten ; think that is the opinion of most top players. But yes Ra is very strong and can, in synergy with other things, make the game.

About 7wd P you should probably ask peace/kofpeace, since he has the high score in 7wd and 7wd P. Got a feeling that Ra matters there a whole lot more.