First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

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Pistol Star
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Joined: 11 October 2016, 02:41

Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by Pistol Star »

This player has a near 50% win rate. But he/she nearly exclusively plays training games and training games always end up with a loss in terms of win rate whatever the outcome of the game was. A shame if you ask me. It should be changed by BGA. But I agree with you that a player should first proof his/her skills via rating before suggesting serious balance issues of the game.

No offense, but I also disagree with Jamesnmca's ideas of balancing the game.
FSKFSK
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Joined: 12 January 2019, 07:22

Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by FSKFSK »

That's the advantage of playing on the Internet. With a lot of games played between good players, it's possible to find balance issues that the designer of the game didn't imagine.

If it turned out that, in games between two high-ranked players, the first player wins more than 55% of the time, that would suggest a rebalance is needed.

The analysis would need to be done by the BGA admins. Looking at the statistics page for a handful of players isn't going to yield useful information. The only way to do it right is to consider ALL games where both players are considered experts.
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Le007n
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by Le007n »

All the posts here seem to say one of two things; first player is overpowered; Replay wonders are overpowered.

The truth in my experience is, neither of these statements are true

Starting a game, do I want to be player one? Yes of course. If I don't get it, is that game over? Not at all. I generally get the advantage in age two when the resources are stronger and I can start to control things

Do I want more replay wonders then my opponent... same question... Same answer

The only games I felt were more like swimming upstream was when you got the perfect storm of both these things.

Player one gets one replay wonders in the first draft, then three come out on the second. Therefore leaving a 3-1 advantage to player one in this area

This then means player one not only gets more goes, they can flip the order at the end of age one and still have first pick in age two or save these wonders to control the board on the later ages. (A replay in age three is very powerful to get first choice of cards at the end of the age)

If you really wanted to change this aspect of the game and 'balance it' you just need to prevent this scenario.

I think Chris Me came close to what I would suggest as a solution with a slight tweak

With the way bga does the drafting in two sets you could simply give player two the choice of whether they wanted first pick on the first set of cards, or if they wanted to wait and get first pick of the second set (don't give player one this choice as Chris suggested as gives them even more power than current)

This is a common pattern in a lot of standard deck card games where you can take or pass to your opponent

If the first set of four wonders had one replay, as player two I'd likely take. The worst you should ever really get is player one having 2-1 replay wonders if you gambled wrong. 3-1 should never feature

This I believe would work well as a house rule. The key being not to let player two see both sets of wonders before deciding if they want first or second pick so they have to make this decision. The revealing of the second set of wonders then kind of mirrors the whole card turning and reveal process in the game :)

As with many other suggestions, it's very unlikely ever to change here but thats my thoughts
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Chris Me
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by Chris Me »

You are right !

With my proposal, we would avoid to have 1 player with 3 replay wonders against only 1 for the other.
With your proposal, this combination would also be impossible for player 1 (3 replays player1, 1 replay player 2), but possible for player 2 (3 replays player2, 1 replay player 1), but this last combination is acceptable because that would be compensated by the advantage being the first player.

So yes, I fully agree with your proposal !
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frankenStain
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by frankenStain »

hey awesome suggestions, gotta try it soon irl (since second player getting 3 extra coins is a little more boring of a solution..)
... but am actually writing to kinda hijack the topic and point out that the first player advantage is mostly a vanilla and "only pantheon" problem - no such thing in agora+pantheon, if someone wants to try.... ;)
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drsteelhammer
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by drsteelhammer »

I would be surprised if the winrate isn't 60%+ for the first player in Elite games. However, I think the expansions fix this issue or atleast mitigate it. (Haven't played much Agora, but the Pantheon tokens make the first age not as painful for the second player)
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Le007n
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by Le007n »

Close. Its around 55% so not quite as high as you might think based on my findings
Both Pantheon and stand alone Agora surprisingly have a very slightly higher first player advantage (based on a smaller, but proportional to plays set of data). Having both expansions reduce it by about 2%, so still an advantage but closer to neutral!

Don't worry, I'll expand upon why I say this in the near future ;)
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discombob
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by discombob »

I've played a lot off line, and have never been overly concerned about a first player advantage.
I beleive once you throw in Pantheon, going 1st in the 2nd round is critical to get 1st shot at the gods, and then assuming no military and no play agains, actually going 2nd seems to be the advantage here.
However, once you throw Agora into the mix with Pantheon, thats a big 1st player problem, as it adds an odd number of cards to the rounds, resulting in the 1st player being 1st in both 1st and 2nd rounds (assuming no military or play agains), so we were thinking of houseruling only if playing with pantheon and agora
Sujiro Kimimame
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by Sujiro Kimimame »

I think second player has an advantage on Wonder picking, since they get to pick 3 of their Wonders in a row (pick 2 from first draft, then pick 1 of the second draft) - this allows them to mismatch the opponent's wonders and synergize their own

Going first on age 1 is very good, though, to the point where it overwhelms the Wonder advantage of the second player
If I were to guess, I'd say this advantage is between 55 and 60% winrate for the first player

I think if the Wonder picking phase came after laying down first age this would be mitigated.
Maybe throw 1 extra coin to the second player and remove 1 from the first (like, 7/5 instead of 6/6) too
This is actually significant since with 5 coins you can't get a 1-cost resource, a 3-cost commerce and a 2-cost science symbol without burning something. You also can't get two commerces.

I'd guess this would bring it closer to 50~53%
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michaelHastriter
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Re: First player advantage at 7 Wonder Duel - Statistics

Post by michaelHastriter »

frankenStain wrote: 09 January 2022, 03:26
Jamesnmca wrote: 04 January 2022, 17:33 The biggest balance issue in the game is getting extra turns, either through going first and having greater board manipulation, or through Wonder extra turns which compounds the prior. One simple change to weaken the first turn is that the starting player only gets 6 gold. Giving +1 gold to the 2nd player would allow them to instantly drop a Wonder, which the game designers seem to want to avoid.

You can't really do a lot to weaken an extra turn, and given that so many games (at high ELO games about 65%) end with a military or science victory just adding 1-2 VP or Coins to other cards and/or reducing those on extra turn wonders won't really do much. A few wonders at the extremes of benefit might benefit from those changes, for example Pyramids and Colossus could gain 1-2 VP; Piraeus and Appian Way could lose 1-2.

What can be done is restricting what can be done with an extra turn. One simple change is to prevent chaining wonders. The other is to change the turn order for future ages in the case of a military tie to be the person who has constructed the fewest wonders. This removes a lot of the last turn manipulation, and will generally favor the player who has taken the fewest extra turns since any player who knows what they are doing will try to maximize their extra turns.

This will by no means totally fix balance, but it will move the needle in the right direction.
no offense, but "22 Games • 1 Victories • 27% wins" - not too sure how serious we should take that suggestions ... [just didnt want to seriously dissect every point and bad idea...]
SAVAGE! ...but necessary 😀
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