Pythia v1.3 - visual aid helper for 7 Wonders BGA

[Tisaac]

so you can focus on the only thing that matter : strategy.

@Tisaac: You must accept that memorization and simple value calculation of cards is an enjoyable game aspect for many players. If strategy is the only thing that matters to you, that's ok, but it is absolutely a matter of taste.

What about showing info known on a card at Hanabi ? Cheating again ?

Yes, cheating of course. Memorization is undoubtedly one core mechanic of Hanabi. To give an even better example, take the simple game "Memory" where you have to find pairs of matching cards. It's based entirely around memorization and a tool "showing data you should know" would completely kill the game. Including memorization into a game is a tool of game designers, you can like it or not but it is a thing.

Couldn't agree more ! All this memorization things is just a matter of taste. I personally don't like Hanabi here because I think memorization is part of the process for this game, but I really don't think that memorization is important in 7Wonders (at least not for blitz games).

I still don't understand the analogy with chess or Santorini, this tool don't compute anything in advance, nor displaying you "this is good or bad". Even the guild argument make no-sense : sometimes a good player will not play the guild that gives you the most point (discarding for others peoples, earning gold that you need to build the last step of your wonder, ...).

I not arguing about the fairness, of course this won't be faire if only some people have access to it. I was more arguing about whether this would improve the overall level of player or simply kill the game.

[yellososus]

It calculates for you which cards are still in the pool from what you've seen. How is that different from calculating moves (what would happen).

[Tadachini]

The updated version calculates the points guild cards would give. That's already showing which is better and which is not. Picking per se the highest point guild card is not the skill, it's a trivial decision. It's determining/calculating how many points the guild card would give, that is the skill.

So you got a workers guild and you spend 4 seconds counting all brown card of your neighbours with your finger trailing the screen. And you call that a skill? A 5 year old kid can do it, really. And building the highest point card is not the way to win the game, everyone knows that.

Here is how I see which skills are required to be a top 7W player.

1. Know how to play your wonder to its fullest strength
2. Know when to build war and how many wars to build
3. Know how many resource cards you need in Age 1 and Age 2
4. Memorise which resources are needed for each card (so you can build 2S to unlock Library for example, or 2O for Dispensary).
5. Know which card to stash and when
6. Know which card to discard and when
7. Know which market/commerce building is better and when
8. Know how to play science and which wonders and situations are best for science play
9. Know against which neighbour you should be playing during the game
10. Prioritise building cards that contribute to your strategy and will not return to your hand
11. Or sometimes prioritise cards that will make your neighbour's life harder
12. Know with which player you should be trading (it's not always the cheapest option)
13. Memorise movement of red and green cards
14. Be lucky with cards and starting hands

So you easily have more than 10 skills required. Most of them require knowledge of strategy and understanding game mechanics, and only a few require memorisation. Pythia helps with memorising green and red cards and some math stuff by making your life easier. But you still have to possess all other skills to win the game.

Pythia doesn't tell you which move is the best one (and will never be able to). It helps with math and memorisation, that's it.

In Arena, each turn you have around 2 minutes to make a turn. That's plenty of time to do all the math and memorisation, most players are done with their decision in 5-10 seconds anyway. When you play a physical board game with your friends - timing is unlimited at all, you can consult game rules, check chains and think as much as you want (but also annoy your friends for being a slowpoke).

To give an even better example, take the simple game "Memory" where you have to find pairs of matching cards. It's based entirely around memorization and a tool "showing data you should know" would completely kill the game. Including memorization into a game is a tool of game designers, you can like it or not but it is a thing.

Your example is way off. The entire game requires only 1 skills - memorisation of pairs. How can you compare 7W to that? How about we take a neutral game as an example?

In Carcassonne, each card layout can be seen only a few times in the game. Imagine a tool would tell you that this specific layout has been all used up. Or that in remaining 37 tiles, only 2 cards have it, which gives you 5% to draw the tile you need. I think this is much closer to 7W than Hanabi or Chess. Will this be cheating then? Carcassonne still requires a ton of other skills to be the king of the game, and memorisation is just one of them. Same for 7W, it is just one aspect of the game.

[yellososus]

Your example is way off. The entire game requires only 1 skills - memorisation of pairs. How can you compare 7W to that? How about we take a neutral game as an example?

How about a chess opening? Are you okay with people using an opening book? It is still just a memorazition. Also even if it is just one part, why are you stripping the game of it? It is still cheating.

[Tadachini]

How about a chess opening? Are you okay with people using an opening book? It is still just a memorazition. Also even if it is just one part, why are you stripping the game of it? It is still cheating.

Of course, this is how you learn until you have them memorised down to a muscle memory. If you are talking about tournament setting - this will not be allowed by tournament organisers. But also if it would have been, those players who cannot memorise an opening strategy would not stand a chance anyway. If I were to play against Garry Kasparov with an opening book and all strategy tips in front of me - I would lose 10 out of 10 for sure.

[Tisaac]

Your example is way off. The entire game requires only 1 skills - memorisation of pairs. How can you compare 7W to that? How about we take a neutral game as an example?

How about a chess opening? Are you okay with people using an opening book? It is still just a memorazition. Also even if it is just one part, why are you stripping the game of it? It is still cheating.

Because I think is really sad to say that people with poor memory can't be great strategist. As Tadachini pointed out, I believed this game require a lot of skill that shouldn't be restricted by some lack of memory. But of course this is a matter of taste and some people would say that this game is only about memorization (and my advice to them would be to try other games in this case...).
Your example of opening book has nothing in common with the tool here : such a book actually tells you how to play against specific opening whereas the tool here tell you nothing about what you should play ! You have to be a good player to know what to do with this data.

[6element]

People keep "not getting it". It is simple - if everybody on a table is using P*, it's up to them. IMHO it make the game too different from real-life 7W (too many skills important wouldn't be necessary), but it is indeed a matter of taste.

The important part is - if some opponents are secretly using P*, while others don't - this is plain and simple cheating. Thus, any ranking "earned" with the tool should be nullified. That's it.

[dschingis27]

To give an even better example, take the simple game "Memory" where you have to find pairs of matching cards. It's based entirely around memorization and a tool "showing data you should know" would completely kill the game. Including memorization into a game is a tool of game designers, you can like it or not but it is a thing.

Your example is way off. The entire game requires only 1 skills - memorisation of pairs. How can you compare 7W to that?

You took my words out of context. I wasn't comparing anything. This was my response to the posts by Tisaac which gave the impression that strategy is everything in games and memorization counts nothing. I wanted to argue that this is not true because a game exists that is entirely based around memorization and it is enjoyed by people. Hope that's clearer now.

In Carcassonne, each card layout can be seen only a few times in the game. Imagine a tool would tell you that this specific layout has been all used up. Or that in remaining 37 tiles, only 2 cards have it, which gives you 5% to draw the tile you need. I think this is much closer to 7W than Hanabi or Chess. Will this be cheating then? Carcassonne still requires a ton of other skills to be the king of the game, and memorisation is just one of them. Same for 7W, it is just one aspect of the game.

Yes, it is still cheating. As you point out yourself, it IS one aspect of the game. For you and me, it is an annoying part of the game. Conceptually, I am very much on your side, I would enjoy 7W with Pythia enabled and you made an accurate list of skills required for the game.

But it is not for you and me to decide which aspects of the game can be left out. Developer guidelines are there for a reason and BGA policy is to respect the games as they are. In a very unlikely worst-case, this tool could lead the publisher to decide that 7W shouldn't be played on BGA anymore because it is not played as intended. If the publisher and BGA admins can be convinced that an add-on like Pythia is a great variant of the game and it can be enabled and disabled, great! But this conversation has to happen before release of a tool like Pythia.

[Tadachini]

You took my words out of context. I wasn't comparing anything. This was my response to the posts by Tisaac which gave the impression that strategy is everything in games and memorization counts nothing. I wanted to argue that this is not true because a game exists that is entirely based around memorization and it is enjoyed by people. Hope that's clearer now.

Yes, now I get it. Sorry for getting them out of the context there.

But it is not for you and me to decide which aspects of the game can be left out. Developer guidelines are there for a reason and BGA policy is to respect the games as they are. In a very unlikely worst-case, this tool could lead the publisher to decide that 7W shouldn't be played on BGA anymore because it is not played as intended. If the publisher and BGA admins can be convinced that an add-on like Pythia is a great variant of the game and it can be enabled and disabled, great! But this conversation has to happen before release of a tool like Pythia.

I reached out to admins last week but they have not replied back to me. I would very much like to cooperate with them, so if they said Pythia is against the rules or the spirit of the website - no problem, let's take it down then. If you know BGA admins - please reach out to them too.

I doubt the publisher is interested in such things though, they get license fee every year and the main regulation is that no one should use their intellectual property or trademarks illegally, which is not the case here. And even if this worst-case scenario happens, there is always a notice and a statement "remove this add-on or we don't renew our license" of some sorts. Such things never happen from one side over night, big businesses are slower and always try to avoid all extra paperwork, and license revocation is essentially expenses and billable hours for lawyers.

[Tadachini]

Hey everyone. I went through most of the issues brought up in this thread and wrote an FAQ in a form of a mini-interview. I have also added it to the first post. Happy to answer other questions and analyze other comparisons of Pythia to cheats and hacks.


FAQ
Q: Isn't this cheating?
Not exactly and also depends on how you define cheating. Pythia will give you an advantage by doing math and memorisation for you, so players who don't have Pythia will not have this advantage, that's clear. But Pythia doesn't hack the game engine, doesn't give you unlimited coins or resources, so it is not a cheat. It uses publicly available game information and displays it to you in a convenient way. So it will help you win more games if you know what to do with all this data. Listen to your heart and make a decision yourself if you want to use Pythia or not.

Q: Isn't it like an auto-aim bot for FPS games
It is not. Auto aim bot locks on the target and modifies the game state without any player interaction, which essentially means an aimbot is playing the game parallel to the player. Pythia is not changing the game state or playing the game for you, it simply shows more information in the user interface. You can argue that changing the interface is the same as playing the game instead of the player, which is a way of looking at things I guess. But FPS game requires instant reaction, lagging for 3 seconds will get you killed. In 7W, you have from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to make a decision in real-time games, so speed is not the issue here.

Q: Isn't this like a wallhack then?
Nope. Wall hack allows you to see through walls in shooter games. 7W equivalent would be to see all discarded cards and cards stashed under the wonder stages. Pythia cannot do that so it's not the same as a wallhack.

Q: Isn't this like playing chess with an opening book?
Far from it. Opening book shows you exactly which moves you should make during an opening and provides you a specific strategy you should follow. Pythia does not and cannot do that. It enriches the interface so you could rely on a complete board picture, but the final strategy and moves are always in the hands of the player. Pythia has no recommendation features and will never have them in the future.

Q: I still think it is unfair, should I use it?
Of course not. If you don't like it - simply don't use it.

Q: Will I know if someone else is using Pythia and vice versa?
No. Pythia runs entirely in your browser and no one else can detect it. You can publicly announce in the chat that you use Pythia if you want, it is up to you.

Q: Have this been approved by BGA admins?
I reached out to them, but they didn't reply yet. I will post an update once I have an answer.

Q: Does it break any licensing laws of the publisher?
I don't know. If you are in touch with game designers - please connect me to them and I will discuss it personally.

Q: Ok, last question. Why did you create Pythia?
I think 7W is one of the best board games available, it has huge replayability and a lot of fun built in. But doing math and memorising all the things is not fun, in my opinion, so I decided to use technology to help players who think the same.