Board Game Arena

Thanks for the response on this.
Your reaction sounds as good news for the 7w community, since most are against it (clearly showing in this topic).
It would be 'ok' as a variant, open to anyone, but it's not needed.

Concerning the tools it offers now: showing 'playercards' is clearly cheating and should not be allowed in any case.
Honestly the other features don't add that much. 'War scores' is a 2nd on the list concerning the saved time it offers you, to not have to calculate this score for yourself.
The 'leader runnerup' and 'guild points' : those are ok. That won't worry anyone if it get's added, but it's not needed...

Thanks for the response.

The only thing that makes sense to me is the guild points.

Runner-up & Leader will just lead to more frustration.
Adding current military points is more confusing to average player and really not neccesary.
Showing hands is outside the spirit of the game.
Showing what can come in your hand is totally outside of the spirit of the game.

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑01 August 2020, 08:51 We don't understand why tool's developer did this

Hi there! I am the developer of Pythia, and I would be super happy to talk and explain my motivation. I have already sent you my contact details over PM a few weeks ago, I will do it again in case they got lost. Happy to chat over email or jump on a video call to discuss if some parts of Pythia can be integrated into BGA. That would be really cool!

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑01 August 2020, 08:51 The publisher/designer may disapprove this.

The publisher and designer approved the existing 7 Wonders adaptation. What if they decide that 7W + Pythia extension is not a correct implementation of their game, and threaten BGA to remove the authorization to have the game here?

If the publisher and designer disapprove the new adaptation - the answer is very simple, I will delete Pythia and that's it.

Again, glad you have posted here, I hope we can collaborate.

I still think that one main benefit of an "open cards" variant is the much enhanced accessibility for turn-based games. The memorization aspect is already stripped away in these. While taking notes CAN be fun, I doubt that it is fun or meaningful for the majority of players. Showing all "known" cards would be convenient to have a strong focus on strategy/tactics. For me, this is definitely within the spirit of the game.

Marking the leader and adding future military points to total score are matters of taste, could lead to confusion for some people, and will be appreciated by others. Ideally these are options.

dschingis27 wrote: ↑05 August 2020, 10:22 I still think that one main benefit of an "open cards" variant is the much enhanced accessibility for turn-based games.

Totally unnecessary. The ability to replay "last move" or even from the very beginning of the game is already available. I guess, no amount of 'sugar coating' can make this hack avoid being called what it truly is - a cheat.

Can we have it deleted? Fortunately noone is installing it, but it would be nice to have this resolved.

Pythia v0.7 released!

Please go to https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/406492-bga-pythia and reinstall the script to update it.

New features

• Cards Worth. In addition to guilds points, Pythia now calculates how many coins and points commercial cards will bring you: Vineyard, Bazaar, Haven, Lighthouse, Chamber of commerce, and Arena.
• Stability measures. In the light of the upcoming 7W release, Pythia has a new safety mechanism. If the game structure suddenly changes or something else goes wrong, Pythia will not break your game and will simply stop working.

What happened to keeping your word and deleting it?
Very dissapointing.

This helper must give a huge advantage, as surely most of us do not memorize all cards each move. I have not used it.

There are 3 scenarios: 1) everyone uses it, 2) none uses it, and 3) current mix of users and non-users. Scenarios 1 and 2 are way better than current as it seems we are playing two different games.

The next, natural step would be a big green arrow showing you the optimal move. In nearly all cases the best decision is objective, we just dont spend time calculating it. Given enough time and after defining probabilities/expected values anyone could code this as an update. Later the winner every time would be decided by who gets the best hand, with ZERO agency of players over the game.

Motvind wrote: ↑19 August 2020, 16:26 The next, natural step would be a big green arrow showing you the optimal move. In nearly all cases the best decision is objective, we just dont spend time calculating it. Given enough time and after defining probabilities/expected values anyone could code this as an update.

Not sure if that was sarcastic/ironic. If not, then you are vastly underestimating the complexity of 7Wonders. Coding an engine that calculates the best move is unimaginably more difficult than simply coding a script showing information that even humans can memorize.

I guess that "hard-coded engines" with simple predefined algorithms would perform not so good because many decisions depend on what you expect of your opponents. As humans, we can quickly develop some intuition about playstyle and skill level of opponents in a given game. So the engine would need to be fed with a huge database of games on different skill levels in order to be succesfull in practice. I think the only way to make it possible is a fancy AI training procedure. Definitely possible but requires an awful lot of work.