7WD Strategy vs Luck

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TakaCoyote
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Joined: 30 December 2020, 14:27

7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by TakaCoyote »

Have been playing 7WD now for ~100 games. My impression is that when the cards fall “best” for your opponent you’re just poop-out-of-luck, at least I am.I enjoy the game very much. I do not win a lot. Watched many vids on YT, read many strategy guides. In at least 70% of the games I’ve played the “luck of the card fall” has won for my opponent.
Not sure if I’m ready for 7 Wonders, willing to give it a go.
Question: is it more strategic than 7 WD, less luck reliant?

I’m not particularly unlucky nor am I super lucky. So I like games that require more of a a strategic approach.
Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of nuance in 7WD, just hate getting my butt handed to me on card draw.
MoiMagnus
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by MoiMagnus »

First, I'd note that 7W and 7WD play very differently. It's like comparing two different games that use the 52 cards decks. Sure, you will recognise the cards, the symbols on it, and there are some common concepts (cards have costs, blue cards give victory points, you need to collect green cards, etc) but they have nothing in common in term of tactics and strategy.

For example, one of the major difference between 7WD and 7W are the resources: You have 7 different resources instead of 5, and you can only buy the resources you don't have if at least one of your neighbour has them (and you're limited by how many they have). This means you actually have to plan for your resources otherwise you could be sat on a pile of gold you cannot use because nobody around you has the resource you need to buy the cards you want.
TakaCoyote wrote: 24 January 2021, 18:34 Question: is it more strategic than 7 WD, less luck reliant?
It depends what you call "luck".
(1) 7 Wonder has far less luck IMO. But there are still some.
(2) The luck is 7 Wonder is much less significant in impact as you have no coin-flip for victory: science, military, civil, all of that give you points in different ways, not immediate victory.
(3) But there is much much more chaos than 7WD. Despite lower level of luck, that doesn't make the game more predictable because you're dependent on what all the other players are doing. There is a lot more work in anticipation of what the other players are doing.
Last edited by MoiMagnus on 25 January 2021, 21:55, edited 1 time in total.
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TakaCoyote
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by TakaCoyote »

Thank you. A very comprehensive reply with a lot of good information. Much appreciated.
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Wonderful Plays
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by Wonderful Plays »

MoiMagnus wrote: 24 January 2021, 19:12 First, I'd note that 7W and 7WD play very differently. It's like comparing two different games that use the 52 cards decks. Sure, you will recognise the cards, the symbols on it, and there are some common concepts (cards have costs, blue cards give victory points, you need to collect green cards, etc) but they have nothing in common in term of tactics and strategy.

For example, one of the major difference between 7WD and 7W are the resources: You have 7 different resources instead of 5, and you can only buy the resources you don't have if at least one of your neighbour has them (and you're limited by how many they have). This means you actually have to plan for your resources otherwise you could be sat on a pile of gold you cannot use because nobody around you has the resource you need to buy the cards you want.
TakaCoyote wrote: 24 January 2021, 18:34 Question: is it more strategic than 7 WD, less luck reliant?
It depends what you call "luck".
(1) 7 Wonder has far less luck IMO. But there are still some.
(2) The luck is 7 Wonder is much less significant in impact as you have no coin-flip for victory: science, military, civil, all of that give you points in different ways, not immediate victory.
(3) But there is much much more chaos than 7WD. Despite lower level of luck, that doesn't make the game more predictable because your dependent on what all the other players are doing. There is a lot more work in anticipation of what the other players are doing.
I agree 100%. Less luck, but sometimes feels like you have less control, because this is a multiplayer game not 1v1.
For me 7w is more replayable than duel.
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Pistol Star
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by Pistol Star »

TakaCoyote wrote: 24 January 2021, 18:34 Have been playing 7WD now for ~100 games. My impression is that when the cards fall “best” for your opponent you’re just poop-out-of-luck, at least I am.I enjoy the game very much. I do not win a lot. Watched many vids on YT, read many strategy guides. In at least 70% of the games I’ve played the “luck of the card fall” has won for my opponent.
Not sure if I’m ready for 7 Wonders, willing to give it a go.
Question: is it more strategic than 7 WD, less luck reliant?

I’m not particularly unlucky nor am I super lucky. So I like games that require more of a a strategic approach.
Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of nuance in 7WD, just hate getting my butt handed to me on card draw.
I think we just have to look at the arena standings right now and in each of the past seasons in order to see which game has a greater "luck factor" (variance). The higher the average rating in the top 10, top 5, top 3, etc. the less the game is reliant on luck. Luck only plays a role when it comes to small sample size. At a certain big enough sample size there is no more luck present in the ratings.
I have just looked at all past arena seasons and also the current running arena season in both 7 Wonders and 7 Wonders Duel.
It clearly shows a higher average rating at 7 Wonders Duel.
I wonder what the highest ever achieved arena rating at 7 Wonders was over so many seasons. In the only finished season so far on 7 Wonders Duel I had achieved a 2001 rating at my peak. The 2nd highest other player had 1954 and the 3rd highest was at a 1949 peak rating.

I don't think we can use ELO as a reference on how much skill is in each game because of 2 reasons.
The average ELO rises the longer a game is around.
7 Wonders is around for much longer. So 7 Wonders had much more time to come closer to it's real ELO ratings at the top level.
7 Wonders Duel had only been around for 4 months now and the average ELO is still greatly increasing. My highest ELO in 7 Wonders Duel was 649.
The best way to earn ELO on this site is to play against average+ players because one player cannot fall below 100 ELO regardless of how skilled that player is. The true skill level of a 100 ELO player could be pretty much anywhere between 100 ELO (extremely unlikely) and minus a couple hundred ELO ratings. But winning and losing against a 100 rated player still gains and loses the same amount of ELO as this player was truly a 100 skilled player. Therefore it grants one the most value to play exactly a 100 ELO rated player on boardgamearena which I think is far from ideal.
Top players can use this fact to their advantage and greatly increase their rating with this trick ultimately making ELO ratings rather pointless.

I am not a good 7 Wonders player at all but I think it shines best at the 3 players count. Then it creates the least chaos because all players are exactly next to eachother and there are no players interfering from outside your direct neighbours.
Military will be balanced with 3 players but maybe it would be overpowered?
Even at 3 players it is still not a zero sum game though and any third player can (heavily) unbalance the game in a way, thus (greatly) improving one other players chances of winning and (greatly) decreasing all other players winning chances in a game where even small edges are often decisive.
Also because of the odd number of played ages there is a great imbalance between how often who passes the cards to who.
I do think that there are great advantages and disadvantages due to this factor as well. I guess any player would want to receive cards in age 1 and age 3 from the least skilled player, but I could be wrong about that. Like I said..I am a 7 Wonders noob :)

In 7 Wonders Duel there is a quite hefty first player advantage, but that is not always true when the 2nd player gets the better wonders either by luck or by the first player not knowing which wonders are the best at this unique game set up (factoring in progress tokens and other factors like turn order, playing styles, skill levels, etc.)
You wrote that in at least 70% of your games the luck of the card fall has won the game for your opponent.
You only won 6 out of 58 games. I don't think you are good enough to evaluate that often whether you lost by luck or not.
Remember there are 3 ways to victory and you often don't need to compete in one of the 3 ways in order to win. If you nearly always only put all your efforts and wonders into trying to win in the civil victory path your opponent can usually easily counter you in one or even both other areas of the game.
The big advantage of science and military are that they can end the game right away and make any points, resources, coins and built wonders rather pointless.
Maybe it seems to you that the one card your opponent needed showed up and let them win the game only by pure luck but there have been other moves before by both players which led to give your opponent these (multiple) (instant) winning chances.
When you analyze a chess game with an engine the engine will tell you how many missed wins you had and how many blunders you made on the way.
I am certain you missed a lot of winning moves and you gave your opponent many opportunities to create winning moves.

My best win streak at 7 Wonders Duel on boardgamearena were 75 consecutive wins.
7 Wonders Duel definitely yields a great variance but even my rather rare losses were often just (greatly) misplayed by myself. I am very, very, very far from playing perfectly in many of my games. I pretty often even play very, very badly.
We still play against humans and humans make a lot of mistakes in this game.
So the player who makes the better decisions usually ends up being victorious regardless of luck.
Last edited by Pistol Star on 03 February 2021, 12:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Wonderful Plays
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by Wonderful Plays »

Pistol Star wrote: 01 February 2021, 06:07 I think we just have to look at the arena standings right now and in each of the past seasons in order to see which game has a greater "luck factor" (variance). The higher the average rating in the top 10, top 5, top 3, etc. the less the game is reliant on luck. Luck only plays a role when it comes to small sample size. At a certain big enough sample size there is no more luck present in the ratings.
I have just looked at all past arena seasons and also the current running arena season in both 7 Wonders and 7 Wonders Duel.
It clearly shows a higher average rating at 7 Wonders Duel.
I wonder what the highest ever achieved arena rating at 7 Wonders was over so many seasons. In the only finished season so far on 7 Wonders Duel I had achieved a 2001 rating at my peak. The 2nd highest other player had 1954 and the 3rd highest was at a 1949 peak rating.
That is simply not true and here is why:

1. There are diminishing returns for ELO for multiplayer games. That's why 3P 7 wonders has higher arena peak than 4P 7 wonders.
2. Assuming we would have the same number of players for both games and they played the same amount of games per player, there would be more games played in 7WD (just because it's 2P vs 4P) so the swings in ELO are by nature higher for 7WD.
3. The ELO system and Arena system by extent are not designed for multiplayer games. 2nd place in 3P game should be an equivalent of a draw, but you loose more ELO than a draw, because it counts as a win and a loss.

To put it more into perspective: Imagine a game of War (completely random, no player agency). 1 million computer bots playing it each 1 million times on BGA. The ELO and Arena scores would be throught the roof.

I think the difference between 2P and multiplayer games is too great to really compare, but what I like to assess, when playing a game is when two experts meet, what feels like it has greater impact: the play or the "order" (luck?) of the draw.
To phrase it differently if I'm very good do I have a room to outplay and do fun stuff or am I just playing from worse position and all-inning.

This is where the multiplayer game is better (for me personally), because it's not just win-loss. In 3P game in a tough position I can try to be 2nd, in 4P game I even have: win, small win, small loss, big loss instead of win - loss. That leads to very few big losses at a high level and makes playing those games more fun for me.

There is also an aspect of 7WD that lead to its succcess, but I think also leads to a good, but not great replayablity is the sudden victory conditions.
It feels very fresh when you play it for the first time, but in game nr 100 it is really frustrating.

Let me explain on the examples:
7Wonders what goes throught my head in the early game in 4Player game:
- Who is in green, how the red schema will shape up, should I play a low resource game, how to position myself strategically do have the best picks coming to me in Age3, do I have access to all resources, should I hide against this player, how I can manipulate the opposing player to play reds, etc

7 Wonders duel:
- Who has resource advantage? Me -> play defensively and try to win on blue. Opp -> where can I all in? Red? Green? Both? + pyramid manipulation stuff.

This is of course a simplification, but it feels like I have a lot more options to think about stuff in original 7W and that's because the paths in 7WD are not intervined with each other enough. Because of the ability to buy resources from the bank and the card throws being not a bad play if you all in on red or green it just comes down to the card distribution. What frustrates me the most is 3 unknown card each age. In A1 it's ok, in A2 it's frustrating in A3 it becomes unbearable. There are games where the green victory is not possible from the start and you don't know it.

I also have to take argument about win streaks. In Abyss I have currently 17-0, reached #1 ELO and I still think the game is very random, my opponents just haven't reached good enough level to take advantage of my bad luck. In 7WD the problem is that you can count the percentages for certain situations and it feels coinflippy.

I did a series on my channel when I try to guess the moves from the replay, I did one for you PistolStar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_7d8G1DLQ and I have huge respect for your level of play and your knowledge of the game so let me end by saying this:

I think 7WD is a brilliant game, for 100 hundred plays. I was dissapointed that it doesn't let me enjoy thousands of plays like regular 7 Wonders did. The main reason for that is that it feels coinflippy and a lot of the times you can feel who is winning but you have to still sit throught age 2 and age 3.

I hope this rambling makes at least some sense:)
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Chris Me
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by Chris Me »

Hello,
my opinion is that on 1 game, the luck plays a big role in 7WD.
Especially in the initial set up : who is the first player and the number of replay wonders for each player.
Usually, based on these parameters, I can already guess if I have big chances to win or not...even before we start the age 1 !
And you can also be really lucky/unlucky with the hidden cards even if you try to anticipate and "measure" the risks/probabilities.

Because of that, my personal experience of the last 2 months in Arena mode, is that I have beaten top10 players and lost against much less ranked players. I have the feeling that the initial set up had more impact on the result of the game...than the ranking of my opponent. I have now started to record some stats in order to validate this feeling. For instance, I am falled from 8th position in the Arena to...300th these last 2 weeks partially because I was second player on 18 of my 20 last games.

BUT I think that on a big number of games, the first ranked players are the best players. They will more often (not always but more often) find solutions or the good strategy to win, even in less favorable set up,...
This cannot be by random that pistol star is two times in a row number1 in the arena.
In conclusion, I am convinced that I could win against pistol star on 1 game with a good set up for me, but not on an average of 10 games.

So yes, for me, the result of 1 game is a combination chance/strategy, but to reach the top ranking in 7WD is definitely strategy !
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Pistol Star
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by Pistol Star »

@ Wonderful Plays

Thank you for your thoughts and pardon me for the late reply. I was writing a reply a long time ago but then got busy with something else and then my whole post was lost and I was away for vacation :D Man, was I tilted :D

1. Wow. So if let's say 3 players (1800, 1700 and 1600) are playing against eachother and let's say the 1800 gets the 1st place, 1700 gets 2nd place and 1600 gets 3rd place. Then isn't it that 1700 will score 0 Arena Points and 1800 wins arena points just like he/she won against both 1700 and 1600 imaginary 2 player games? Let's say it gives the 1800 player 15 Arena Points vs the 1700 and 10 Arena Points vs the 1600 player. Isn't 1800 then scoring 25 Arena points and the 1600 is losing 25 Arena Points? I would call that fair. I hope it works like that.

2. I don't understand that point. Let's say there would be a total of 4 players in both player pools.
Then in order to have everybody play 1 game in total it would be even. If everyone wanted to play more games in total it would also work out evenly.
Let's say everybody wanted to play 100 times. Then the 7 wonders players would each have 100 games. Total of 400 played games.
In 7WD it would be the same case. 4x100=400

3. Why should a 2nd place count as a draw? It should count as a win and a loss imho. The 2nd lost vs the 1st and won against the 3rd. If the 3rd was the highest ranked player the 2nd ranked player usually earns ELO. If not s(he) should imho obviously usually lose ELO. It depends of course on the rating of the winning player. I don't see what's unfair with that.
If let's say 3 2000 ranked players play against eachother and there is a winner, a 2nd place and a 3rd place. Then it should be a draw for the 2nd ranked player imo and I would be surprised if it wouldn't count as a 0 ELO change for that particular player.

Why should it be frustrating after game 100 to have sudden victory conditions?
I find it much more thrilling to play 7 Wonders Duel because of that. Every game is different and ends (very) differently to the previous game.
Thrills everywhere. But 7 Wonders is always the same. It ends always in a civilian end game. Every decision we make is a pure civilian decision.
In 7WD we have to evaluate at so many points in game where we stand in all 3 winning conditions and we have to often reevaluate and can turn green into red attacks or green into blue attacks. red and green double attacks. red and blue double attacks.. at some point we will usually see which of the double attack will become the final attack. that will usually happen during age 3. I find that really awesome. Of course we can also launch very powerful and mostly secure winning single attacks if our opponent let's us. It might also often look like a single attack and it is in reality a hidden double attack. Most top players are most often at least double attacking in reality.
Yes, it can be sometimes frustrating when we have these rare games where we can't do much vs another very highly skilled player, but that is the case in 7 Wonders as well. Some Wonders are just so much stronger than other wonders. Seating position plays a role as well and the luck of the cards we get to choose from. But I love these challenges and love to find ways how to win in very difficult positions. At the end of the game I want to be able to say I have played in a way to maximize my slim winning chances. It feels like a win already when I got like 50 or 60%ers and didn't make it. The other player made mistakes to give me these chances. So I feel like I outplayed my opponent and I am happy.
Most board games just play to the final round and then scores will be tallied. I find that quite boring compared to the fresh way of how 7 Wonders Duel works. But don't get me wrong, I love euro games and I also like 7 Wonders :D I usually find civil games in 7WD much less fun than instant win conditions. Even after game 1750 or so now.

Ok. Let me tell you what goes through my head in each 7 Wonders Duel game.

First the game begins with the player order. That is important in our overall strategy.
Then with the evalution of our opponent. We can look at his stats and see that players ELO and more importantly their win percentages on blue red and green. This information is huge as well.
Then the progress tokens. Evaluation of the progress tokens.
Only then Evaluation of the Wonder picks keeping in mind all the previous factors. I can assure you that imho nearly everybody on every level picks wonders often wrong.
Then the 2nd round of Wonder picks is where it especially gets interesting as we have all the information of all the wonders being in the game together with all the other information we have gathered thus far.
Picks can drastically change in the 2nd round compared to the first round and we can have very decisive picks here which can increase/decrease our winning chances by a ton. Wonder Picks are not set in stone. Especially in the 2nd round.
One very, very important factor is to think about the rule of only 7 wonders being played. So we have to evaluate which 3 wonders are likely the best combo in this particular game for us and for the opponent. Also which other combos exist of any 3 wonders we might have with our and their picks when the game turns out to be played out in a different way than expected with the information available thus far.
Does our and their setup of wonders means we should mainly focus on 3 wonders (most often that's the case) or push under certain circumstances for 4 wonders? etc.

Then we evaluate the pyramid considering all the previous factors once again. Which cards are visible and therefore in the game?
We see 12 out of 23 total cards which are already in the game (that's a lot of immediate information) and who would get which card if nobody used an extra turn. Also huge amount of information.
Your seemingly first thought at the early stages of 7WD is flawed imo. We usually don't know until the end of age 2 who has a resource advantage (money should also be considered as an extremely important resource) and that is by far not the only factor considering if we can play on blue or not. The big points will be scored in age 3 in blue, green and red. Green and red can potentially score infinite amount of points. It is rarely correct to focus only on blue before at least the end stages of age 2.

From that point on we have to constantly reevaluate our position in the game. Further understanding the opponents game plan, tactics and their overall playing style/thought processes. That way we can often also manipulate the game in a way to provoke mistakes in our opponents game because we have a good understanding of how the opponent thinks about the game and where they show their biggest weaknesses in understanding. Then we attack these weaknesses.
I find that very interesting :)

You can also often create complex positions (mostly during age 2) where the opponent is likely to commit a big or even game losing mistake. The more complex the position the more likely it is that the opponent makes a mistake.

Another thing we have to think about at many stages during the game is the rule of only 7 Wonders. This is imo another very interesting aspect of the game which is thrilling at times and needs a lot of early preparation as I stated above.

The 3 unknown cards which are not in the game also add more thrill to the game imo and I don't think this rule is any bad. Yes, sometimes it can be frustrating, but imagine you would know the overpowered card is in one of the last 2 hidden places. That would be absolutely awful. This game is very much a probability game and that makes it very interesting for me. I don't take many chances though. I think people worry too much about 40% chances of a particular card to be in one of the last 2 hidden cards in age 2 for example. We still miss 60% of the times and lose a whole extra turn for the trial. I even find it often not correct to play the extra turn for the overpowered card even if we knew the card was there.
The cost to reward gap is way too large except it is our only chance to win.

Thanks so much for your youtube video where you guessed my moves. Very appreciated. I loved the video :)

I hope everything I wrote was understandable as well :D
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Pistol Star
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by Pistol Star »

Chris Me wrote: 11 February 2021, 22:36 Hello,
my opinion is that on 1 game, the luck plays a big role in 7WD.
Especially in the initial set up : who is the first player and the number of replay wonders for each player.
Usually, based on these parameters, I can already guess if I have big chances to win or not...even before we start the age 1 !
And you can also be really lucky/unlucky with the hidden cards even if you try to anticipate and "measure" the risks/probabilities.

Because of that, my personal experience of the last 2 months in Arena mode, is that I have beaten top10 players and lost against much less ranked players. I have the feeling that the initial set up had more impact on the result of the game...than the ranking of my opponent. I have now started to record some stats in order to validate this feeling. For instance, I am falled from 8th position in the Arena to...300th these last 2 weeks partially because I was second player on 18 of my 20 last games.

BUT I think that on a big number of games, the first ranked players are the best players. They will more often (not always but more often) find solutions or the good strategy to win, even in less favorable set up,...
This cannot be by random that pistol star is two times in a row number1 in the arena.
In conclusion, I am convinced that I could win against pistol star on 1 game with a good set up for me, but not on an average of 10 games.

So yes, for me, the result of 1 game is a combination chance/strategy, but to reach the top ranking in 7WD is definitely strategy !
I think most 300+ ELO rated players overrate extra turn wonders a bit when it comes to winning chances.
Also they underrate some wonders greatly and overrate others greatly.
So it seems that the wonder setup alone still needs a lot of skill and not as much luck until the majority of people would find out which picks are when the best. I do doubt that to ever happen though. Even some top ranked players choose wrong wonders time over time imo. And no wonder picks are set in stone. I see many games are often mainly decided with the wrong wonder picks and I don't mean the obvious mistakes like taking a non extra turn wonder over an extra turn wonder. I mean the ones which are not as obvious at first sight but way more decisive than people realize.
Obviously I also rate the extra turn wonders highest at nearly every wonder pick but depending on other factors they are I would say not as deciding as people think.
Next factor is deciding which card to take on turn 1 of the game. That is often not that clear of a decision. Even not for me. So people commit big mistakes there as well.

I agree on turn order to be another important factor when it comes to winning chances.

I also agree that sometimes people can become very (un)lucky with the hidden cards even when they play perfectly. But over the course of a game the luck of hidden cards should more often than not pretty much even out I would say.
And many "lucky" hidden cards at later stages of the game are in fact not lucky but just the result of previous bad decisions by the other player.
If 1 player plays in a way that many types of cards are great for them and the other player plays in a way that only some types of cards are great for them then it also isn't lucky when the player who can use many different kinds of cards hits one or several of them.

I agree with the rest of what you wrote :)
Last edited by Pistol Star on 26 February 2021, 04:55, edited 1 time in total.
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BoardNoremac
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Re: 7WD Strategy vs Luck

Post by BoardNoremac »

I am no where near an expert and only played 4 games. Of course the game has quite a bit of luck to it but that is because "most" games with very little to no luck just aren't fun for the worse player...

We have played 4 games of 7WD but have played lots of other board games in real life. I actually feel there are quite a but of fun strategies to try out with just the base game. There was a weird phenomenon that happens though where if someone is going military/science the last age 100% can feel like you lost because of luck. Even though there were tons of things that could be done throughout the game to counter the situations.

Overall the game definitely has a lot of "feel bad" moments where
-If I just had that card turn face up I would have won.
-He got so lucky that that every face down card is what he needed.
-That first pick wonder was way better than mine!
-Military just feels bad for both players in my experience. In the last age if you flip of a 3 military for the opponent they either take it and ruin the military players win or the military takes it and wins.

I do enjoy the game and will play it occasionally sometimes. It is just hard for us to play 2 player competitive games like this though. Losing just always feels bad in these types of games. There is a lot of counterplay in the game which is fun. It kind of feels like 50% of my turns are just taking/selling what my opponent wants lol.
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