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The new system removes strategy and promotes luck and aliances.
GerMANic wrote
at 5:33 AM, Sunday February 11, 2007 EST
First off I would like to point out that I have problems with the game other than just the scoring so don't skip reading this post.

I noticed that in the begining of games the dice stacks are are more even now. Thus it is hard to find any territory in the first round that you have a decent chance of winning against. This removes strategy because when you are forced to only attack territories that are close in dice count to yours and you can't string together a large number of territories that you can take to get reinforcements with then the game turns into a luck fest with the person that either gets the luckiest attacking rolls or the luckiest defense rolls winning because the other people who lost have weak territories with hardly anyreinforcements first through second round. So by this point unless there is a powerfull alliance between the 3rd and 4rth largest people the game is pretty much over. And if you have an very unlucky game and your enemy defends a lot against you you get negative dominance points just because you couldn't get any good attacking rolls. Thus this game rewards one thing and one thing alone, luck. If I play a smart game of take and hold (can't do that anyway because there are hardly any stack size differences early game now) I will get bad dominance points unless I am lucky enough to get good rolls and take first or second place.
This new system also only makes alliances more of a problem than before because they now just slowly whittle down all the other players and kill everyone elses dominance rating. So when one person is super big or there is a big alliance the only thing you can to do not get raped point wise at the end of the game is to go kamikazi and hope to achieve a good dominance rating since trying to take and hold territories and get decent stacks will only kill your dominance points in a long game where a pathetic alliance between the two largest people slowly destroys you.
I could write more about this but this post is long enough. In conclusion the new system rewards early luck and alliances between the two largest people and it punishes the idea of taking and holding small numbers of territories in the first few rounds and working the advantageous stacks.

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fuzzycat wrote
at 5:05 PM, Sunday February 11, 2007 EST
Scaldis Noel, I guess this is a weakness in the new system.

My idea would be: A final surrender button! The moment you surrender you are given score for place and your current AS. You are out of the game. You countries are going to neutral (gray), and gain no longer dice.

So if you dominated, and are going to be killed, you see that you are certainly loosing the game, you can make a final surrender already. Before loosing too much AS.

The current flags will not do, since if there is an alliance against you, they might not let you flag out. And after having you reduced to 1 size, they will wait quite some rounds. Until they kill you with a much lower AS. You can't suicide.

Another idea would be the possibility to be able to "set individual countries free". Turning them to gray. If you set them all gray you loose in that moment. This could enhance strategic possiblity in the game opening, to be able to get free of single dice fields, "dice drains", which you have to balance out, with your danger, it might otherwise be soon have been your only backup.
elganso wrote
at 7:23 PM, Sunday February 11, 2007 EST
Update... my question was already answered in this post:

http://aplayr.com/kdice/kdice/forum/topics/got%20a%20question%3F%20%20%28new%20scoring%20system%29/

Bottom line -- it doesn't matter when you die in the above scenario, your dominance points, obtained before the other 4 players died, can't be taken away from you.

Thanks Ryan... after playing for a while today, I really like the aggressiveness the new system brings out in people.
Cronus6 wrote
at 9:32 PM, Sunday February 11, 2007 EST
I just wanted to make a final post/observation on all of this.

It seems that the majority of players like the hyper-aggressive gameplay, and that seem to be what Ryan was going for.
It's his game, and he's done an excellent job working on it.

In regards to truces and the "social" aspect of Kdice : In the last 3 games I've played there has been absolutely ZERO chat.
Earlier today people were still asking for truces, but getting no responses at all.
Frankly there is no (perceived) benefit to truces now, so there is NOTHING to talk about.

The new system not only killed truces but killed the often maligned chat box as well.

This is not meant as a criticism. As I stated above Ryan has done a great job developing this game. It's merely an observation about the social aspect (or current lack thereof.)

Since I prefer a more conservative gameplay style I think I'll look for something else to play. Maybe I'll finally get around to trying Gpokr.
KDice - Multiplayer Dice War
KDice is a multiplayer strategy online game played in monthly competitions. It's like Risk. The goal is to win every territory on the map.
CREATED BY RYAN © 2006
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