Page 1 of 1

A balanced way of fixing starving strategy in stone age

Posted: 26 August 2018, 11:06
by mark93193
Here, we make an estimation of points made by feeding and not feeding in a four people game.

In a typical four people game, 10 rounds are played. Let's say a community of 5+x people would make 18+3x points per round (without considering the food). So, a player who feed their people would make 18*10=180 pts, and a player who bears children and do not feed would make 18+21+24+27+30+33*5=285 pts. But since this player have to bear children in the first 5 rounds, the player would get a negative 6*5=30 pts by this. Hence, this player would get 285-30=255 pts.

Here comes the feeding part. A player who do not feed would get 10 pts penalty in round 3 to round 10. So, non-feeding players will score about 255-10*8=175 pts in the end. A player who feed their people will averagely get a farmland every 2 rounds. Let's say the player get farmlands in the 1,4,5,8,9 rounds. A unit of food is worth about 2 pts. So, the food burden for this player is about 8+8+8+6+4+4+4+2=44 pts. Another burden for this kind of players is some ways of getting farmlands cost resources, and some give away things (resources,tools,farmlands) to your opponents. Let's say this kind of burden is worth 15 points. Now, note that we have 12 units of foods starting from the game, giving a positive 24 points to the player. So, feeding players will get about 180-44-15+24=145 pts in the end.

Non-feeding players have about 30 pts advantage in this game(or at least for a 4-people game). This is typically true due to my experience. So, in conclusion, by punishing the player with 10+30/8=14 pts for not feeding per round will make the game balanced. I suggest that the site gives us 2 different choices to the game, with one being traditional, and the other being balance.


Disclaimer: I do not dislike the starving strategy, but rather, I won too much game by just using this strategy. That's why I think this should be fixed. Maybe my model is somehow oversimplified, but it makes sense and actually correspond to real game.

Re: A balanced way of fixing starving strategy in stone age

Posted: 26 August 2018, 11:08
by N_Faker
There will be no changes to the Stone Age game mechanics, unless you are able to convince the publisher.

Re: A balanced way of fixing starving strategy in stone age

Posted: 26 August 2018, 12:08
by mark93193
So, how do I contact the publisher to e-mail this article? And, are you (N_Faker) the manager of this website?

Re: A balanced way of fixing starving strategy in stone age

Posted: 26 August 2018, 12:28
by N_Faker
https://www.hans-im-glueck.de/en
mark93193 wrote:And, are you (N_Faker) the manager of this website?
... I'm not.

Re: A balanced way of fixing starving strategy in stone age

Posted: 26 August 2018, 19:33
by Cappie
In my opinion you are making way to Much assumptions About the pointscoring without any real data backing that up.

Re: A balanced way of fixing starving strategy in stone age

Posted: 26 August 2018, 21:26
by GDC
People whining about starvation not only don't understand Stone Age, they don't "get" boardgames.

They also don't understand it will never change since the author wanted this strategy to be valid.

Re: A balanced way of fixing starving strategy in stone age

Posted: 27 August 2018, 03:28
by Liallan
That just made my day... another post on the starvation strategy.

I'm going to make a guess that the publishers are already aware that there are people who don't like that strategy.

I might suggest you utilize your time instead to learn something about the site. Like that if you go to the Games menu, you can find the publisher for anything that is here. And under your name you can find Help that leads to the FAQs (https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!doc/Faq), and at the very bottom are the two admins of the site. Most of the people responding on the forums are just community members, which is fairly typical for a place like this.