TBS Snowballing, Map Painting, Blobbing: Solutions

[Joined on the 4th of July]

A non-shit AI's behavior past a certain point in blobbing would be begging to be annexed peacefully rather than wasting time on pointless resistance, lol.

But what ultimately matters is that AI does not buy the game. AI does not derive enjoyment from winning it or something. AI is only there to entertain the player. It is there to lose. And the whole point of an AI programming is to make it so that it loses gracefully and gives the gamer an excuse to pat himself on the back over being so smart and gud player over overcoming a "challenge" (which wasn't really there to begin with).

Player doom stacks are approaching AI's capital and the smart AI decides to think outside box by blue-screening player's computer and corrupting the save game. The immortal vampire lord in charge has been effectively cut off from contact with his minions and the terrifying map-painting juggernaut has become helpless. Victory for the forces of AI! Humiliated player admits defeat by uninstalling the game. Then he goes to Metacritic and gives the game a zero, but that's a weak consolation.

 

[Norfleet]

A non-shit AI's behavior past a certain point in blobbing would be begging to be annexed peacefully rather than wasting time on pointless resistance, lol.

That's the concept behind the Domination victory. At some point when you dominate a goodly portion of the map, or possess an overwhelming score advantage over the nearest player, the game assumes you are a runaway blob and declares you the victor to save you the tedious mop-up. Sometimes the AI is so bad that this can happen with no shots fired.

Victory for the forces of AI! Humiliated player admits defeat by uninstalling the game. Then he goes to Metacritic and gives the game a zero, but that's a weak consolation.

Alas, this is probably considered a defeat for the developer. And that's who REALLY needs to win.

 

[sovijus]

Actual "physical" presence of a player character in a game world would solve this problem far more elegantly. Together with other characters or some sort of mechanic simulating organizational structure of various facets of an empire (army, administrative aparatus etc.). Add to that non-instant execution of orders through simulating how much time it will take to accomplish certain tasks, plus simulating communication appropriate to technological advancement. Sort of combining Mount & Blade: Warband and Crusader Kings and expanding considerably on that.

Though the scope is probably beyond your capabilities.

Is that last part like an insult or do you mean individual game developers in general?

If the player is localized, what's left is basically just AI control since the player couldn't give anything but the most general commands due to the time scales. Then you are stuck with how most AI are shit at strategy. Although this is a separate issue from the one I address. Still it would be interesting to design a game around player locality, I did some work on an RTS previously that did some stuff with that concept.

I meant that you probably will lack resources to implement what I was suggesting.

AI control or automation isn't necessarily bad, especially if you do "personality" AI, something similar to Civ series. It doesn't need to be good, just competent with some quirks to make it interesting.

What do you mean that it doesn't solve the issue? I'm not quite following you. If you mean player character localization, then yes it does solve it, at least partially, and more elegantly than just arbitrary time limit on turns. According to your blog post time limit should make it difficult to manage large empire and successfully expand it. Well if you are localized character somewhere in one corner of your empire you cannot know what's happening in the opposite one, at least not immediately. And you can have access to just local detailed information, as opposed to having 21 century level intelligence reports on all your half a world spanning empire as a medieval king. Maybe I did not explain this point correctly, but when I say that player character is "physically" present in game world, I mean that you, as a player, are also limited by his POV.

 

[MoLAoS]

Actual "physical" presence of a player character in a game world would solve this problem far more elegantly. Together with other characters or some sort of mechanic simulating organizational structure of various facets of an empire (army, administrative aparatus etc.). Add to that non-instant execution of orders through simulating how much time it will take to accomplish certain tasks, plus simulating communication appropriate to technological advancement. Sort of combining Mount & Blade: Warband and Crusader Kings and expanding considerably on that.

Though the scope is probably beyond your capabilities.

Is that last part like an insult or do you mean individual game developers in general?

If the player is localized, what's left is basically just AI control since the player couldn't give anything but the most general commands due to the time scales. Then you are stuck with how most AI are shit at strategy. Although this is a separate issue from the one I address. Still it would be interesting to design a game around player locality, I did some work on an RTS previously that did some stuff with that concept.

I meant that you probably will lack resources to implement what I was suggesting.

AI control or automation isn't necessarily bad, especially if you do "personality" AI, something similar to Civ series. It doesn't need to be good, just competent with some quirks to make it interesting.

What do you mean that it doesn't solve the issue? I'm not quite following you. If you mean player character localization, then yes it does solve it, at least partially, and more elegantly than just arbitrary time limit on turns. According to your blog post time limit should make it difficult to manage large empire and successfully expand it. Well if you are localized character somewhere in one corner of your empire you cannot know what's happening in the opposite one, at least not immediately. And you can have access to just local detailed information, as opposed to having 21 century level intelligence reports on all your half a world spanning empire as a medieval king. Maybe I did not explain this point correctly, but when I say that player character is "physically" present in game world, I mean that you, as a player, are also limited by his POV.

No I understand. But its not enough and its probably more infuriating than my turn time limit to players. Also it couldn't help games with magic or gods or even high technology. Still as I said there is some possible fun there just not sure how much.

 

[mondblut]

A non-shit AI's behavior past a certain point in blobbing would be begging to be annexed peacefully rather than wasting time on pointless resistance, lol.

That's the concept behind the Domination victory. At some point when you dominate a goodly portion of the map, or possess an overwhelming score advantage over the nearest player, the game assumes you are a runaway blob and declares you the victor to save you the tedious mop-up.

I am implying a particular nation vs nation encounter, not "fine, you won, we the AI UN are bored with you, pls uninstall". Like, you know, the czechs in 38. Wut, the german blob is gonna paint us grey? I, for one, welcome our new german overlords. You know the drill.

Sometimes the AI is so good that this can happen with no shots fired.

Fixed.

 

[MoLAoS]

I'd like to note that solving the immortality problem is necessary but, not sufficient, to solve the blobbing issue in games. You need immortality, near omniscience, imagine playing Paradox games without the ledger, time freezing, a league of other gods, and infinite redos.

You can't "solve" the immortality problem, though, since solving this would involve killing the player. The only way you can really resolve this is to make this a core aspect of the game: Instead of "history, as directed by humans", "history, as directed if the King were actually an immortal vampire lord".

Removing each bonus will somewhat but not totally give the AIs more of a chance.

But that's not the problem. The AI has all those bonuses, too. The AI is also immortal. The AI also knows everything, probably more so than the human does. The problem is that the AI is stupid.

Being immortal would not help a human if they had 10 seconds to move and the AIs each did as well, scale the time up to a good number and try not to have a shit automation system.

The shit automation is an important part of blobbing. The automation is shit because the AI is shit!

Changing the player's game capabilities helps as well, although some randomness might make players rage about luck. If your empire relies on godly stats, and you lose them, and you have a time cap, adapting your playstyle to account for new stats within the time limit may not be possible and you would bleed land to rebellions or wars.

That pretty much just eliminates all of those things as viable elements of the game. If you can't depend on them, they aren't worth anything. And yet we blob anyway.

Why? Because ultimately, blobbing is the entire point of the game. Do you really think anyone plays the game for the sake of remaining exactly as they were when the game started? To precisely walk through the motions of real history exactly as things actually happened. That is not why we play these games. Sending things off the rails is the entire point. Blobbing isn't actually the problem at all. The problem is really more basic: The fact that the AI cannot keep up with the late game, because the AI is terrible at the game. Stacking super-bonii onto the AI does not make it less terrible, it just delays the blobbing while making the early game a frustrating annoyance because at that stage in the game, you don't have any pieces to play with anyway. And so the player resorts to various cheese tactics, as he must in order to survive against an opponent that is cheating as outlandishly as it does...and in the end, you still hit the blobbing stage, where the AI's advantage has now been overcome and no longer has the ability to oppose you as you paint the map.

It's all a single root cause: Shit AI.

The goal isn't for the AI to win, its to keep the game interesting for a longer period. The difficulty curve of the game is how large an empire a player can maintain.

 

[Destroid]

There are a lot of 4x games out there that possess all the traits you describe, however they are web-based multiplayer games that run in real time whether you are logged in or not, and generally require attention once a day or so. There is no technical reason you couldn't use such a mechanism for a singleplayer game, although it might annoy players greatly who don't have access to the internet at all times, or who simply dislike the obligation of logging in every day to make sure everything is going smoothly. Personally I suspect a time limit in a singleplayer 4x would be intolerable for me.

On blobs and collapsing empires, this is more the domain of grand strategy since in civ/moo style 4x being the biggest baddest blob is the objective of the game. Magna Mundi mod for EU3 ramped up the difficulty significantly and rapidly expanding empires could easily find themselves stalled either by bad boy or quelling endless rebellions. CK2 also can see kingdoms fall apart (especially at the point of succession) although everyone knows how to get around that these days, I think the general problem is that Paradox games in their official state are set at a very low difficulty, rather than the underlying systems are incapable of representing the features you desire.

Procgen is always good, although I don't think it solves the issue you raise of crowdsourcing strategy, since the start state rarely has a drastic effect on your strategy in moo/civ style 4x. Ironman in 4x is excellent and I've been playing this way for years now, although it might be tough on new players to a game. I suppose you could solve this by letting people savescum on lower difficulty settings if you have them.

I don't think it's right to consider 4x like civ and moo in the same light as grand strategy like paradox, they are significantly different kinds of games with different problems.

 

[RK47]

web-based multiplayer games that run in real time whether you are logged in or not, and generally require attention once a day or so. .

To be brutally honest - I find them very engaging. They have a lot of those running around and it's very, very simplified. Yet the concept of 'things happen when you're not around' makes people who can devote a lot of time possess superior advantage. People simply can't compete if they're not around to adjust to the situation. Cooperation is very stifled since players are not online at once.

I won my first session once and found my opponents simply devoted less time than me.

YES LOGGED IN JUST IN TIME!

 

[Destroid]

web-based multiplayer games that run in real time whether you are logged in or not, and generally require attention once a day or so. .

To be brutally honest - I find them very engaging. They have a lot of those running around and it's very, very simplified. Yet the concept of 'things happen when you're not around' makes people who can devote a lot of time possess superior advantage. People simply can't compete if they're not around to adjust to the situation. Cooperation is very stifled since players are not online at once.

I won my first session once and found my opponents simply devoted less time than me.

YES LOGGED IN JUST IN TIME!

Design issues. The simplest solution is to switch to turn based with turns running on regular intervals.

 

[wwsd]

This bugs me about CK2. With bigger kingdoms or empires (self-forged or from the start), nothing can really stop the player. A queen succeeds to the throne who is possessed and a heretic? No problem, just a fun opportunity for the player to try and convert Europe to that heresy. The new emperor is fat, arbitrary, and has <10 for all stats and 3 diplomacy? No problem at all. Sure, rebellions happen, but they're never an existential threat. It's great for rubbing the player's ego.

CK1 ultimately isn't that hard either, but at least it has Realm Duress. When you have rebellious vassals, one of them might break free and "try to spark a civil war", giving you a trait that makes everyone hate you, fucking with your stability, etc. Even if you get all your vassals to like you again, it takes some time to lose the trait, and in the meantime, others may grow to hate you and rebel as well, taking more stability. To be honest, it is still usually possible to manage all this, and it usually just delays your eventual expansion, rather than stopping it. But it's an interesting mechanic where there is actually a growing momentum against the player. It's too bad that the AI is too rudimentary to grasp it. Still, compare this to CK2, where, barring determined action by the player, even the AI HRE tends to become a fully centralised blobbing machine.

 

[Norfleet]

There are a lot of 4x games out there that possess all the traits you describe, however they are web-based multiplayer games that run in real time whether you are logged in or not, and generally require attention once a day or so.

Heh. I've played those in the past. They definitely don't require attention "once a day or so". Rather, they require CONSTANT VIGILANCE. I've written entire data analysis tools for those kinds of games, fed through a real-time feed of everything I, or my allies, sees. The alliance was pretty much driven by me since I, well, I NEVER SLEEP, and the resulting setup I had for playing it looked like the command center for NORAD.

To be brutally honest - I find them very engaging. They have a lot of those running around and it's very, very simplified. Yet the concept of 'things happen when you're not around' makes people who can devote a lot of time possess superior advantage. People simply can't compete if they're not around to adjust to the situation. Cooperation is very stifled since players are not online at once.

Plus, they tend to get mad at people like me, as I NEVER SLEEP.

 

[RK47]

The new emperor is fat, arbitrary, and has <10 for all stats and 3 diplomacy? No problem at all. Sure, rebellions happen, but they're never an existential threat. It's great for rubbing the player's ego.

Uh actually this is a big problem.
I'd love to see you just handwave it away with a large treasury and high retinue doomstack but as a fledgling empire it's not that easy to dismiss.
For a long established dynasty ruling over a somewhat stable empire, sure, no problems.
Cautious players will benefit more in CK2 than daring ones.

 

[Norfleet]

Yes, if you knew what you were doing, you'd have gotten him killed off before he got to be Emperor, as part of your carefully controlled Kwisatz Haderach breeding program. That, or turned him into a priest, disinheriting him. Is the current meta still Crusader Pimps, pimping your way across the genius women of the known world?

 

[Emily]

Yes, if you knew what you were doing, you'd have gotten him killed off before he got to be Emperor, as part of your carefully controlled Kwisatz Haderach breeding program. That, or turned him into a priest, disinheriting him. Is the current meta still Crusader Pimps, pimping your way across the genius women of the known world?

you might as well just go out and cheat at that point.
Minmaxing a CK2 game is pointless, as the game is too easy as it is already.

 

[Ulminati]

web-based multiplayer games that run in real time whether you are logged in or not, and generally require attention once a day or so. .

To be brutally honest - I find them very engaging. They have a lot of those running around and it's very, very simplified. Yet the concept of 'things happen when you're not around' makes people who can devote a lot of time possess superior advantage. People simply can't compete if they're not around to adjust to the situation. Cooperation is very stifled since players are not online at once.

I won my first session once and found my opponents simply devoted less time than me.

YES LOGGED IN JUST IN TIME!

Design issues. The simplest solution is to switch to turn based with turns running on regular intervals.

Ultracorps (used to be on the MSN gaming zone, then steve jackson games bought it) had that. Same basic concept as Neptune's pride (RKs game in screenshot). But ships only moved once per tick. And games would have either 1 or 2 ticks per day. Everyone set up their research/production/fleet orders. Game would go down for 20 minutes at a set time, then all turns were processed simultaneously.


Anyway, best way to stop blobbing is internal strife. Something akin to CK2, but harder to game. Have a blob consist of multiple factions with you as appointed dear leader. As you get bigger, the odds of sub-factions growing big enough to tear free grows.

 

[Norfleet]

Anyway, best way to stop blobbing is internal strife. Something akin to CK2, but harder to game. Have a blob consist of multiple factions with you as appointed dear leader. As you get bigger, the odds of sub-factions growing big enough to tear free grows.

Many games actually have this mechanic. The thing is, if you're doing a good job, they won't WANT to tear free. Life in the Empire is great. We love the Emperor, etc. And since the player always wants his empire to thrive, he will always do well for the empire. In the real world, running an empire is WORK, and the Emperor might just want to hit on bitches and get drunk off his ass. In the game, well, running the empire is entertainment. The player *IS* doing what he wants to be doing. So the empire will be run well. And the player doesn't die...

 

[Trash]

Hohoho, lots of people here who simply cannot think outside of their comfort zone. CK1 made blobbing a challenge by adding the whole 'manage a dynasty' thing (CK2 ruined this by making realms and dynasties too stable) The TW games have often tried to add endgame challenge through a massive enemy alliance or civil war. Large scale wargames often have turn limits or specific victory conditions. EU: Rome did a wonderful job by making your own generals and governors the biggest threat. Blobbing is not a holy grail. It's simply a cliche.

I'd prefer to give a massively and rapid growing player empire some of the challenges the historical empires had and let the player toy with them. Have the conquering emperor die and let the player deal with less than ideal ofspring and uppity vassals. Increase corruption and ineffectiveness of a growing administration. Civil wars tearing itself apart. Growing outside resistance. Lots of fun to be had besides simply painting ze map.

 

[wwsd]

The new emperor is fat, arbitrary, and has <10 for all stats and 3 diplomacy? No problem at all. Sure, rebellions happen, but they're never an existential threat. It's great for rubbing the player's ego.

Uh actually this is a big problem.
I'd love to see you just handwave it away with a large treasury and high retinue doomstack but as a fledgling empire it's not that easy to dismiss.
For a long established dynasty ruling over a somewhat stable empire, sure, no problems.
Cautious players will benefit more in CK2 than daring ones.

The problem with a "fledgling empire" is that by the time you can form an empire, your kingdoms are already powerful and entrenched enough. Then it's just a matter of getting rid of gavelkind ASAP (if you haven't already, or if it still exists within some of your kingdoms), and you're set for four centuries of steady expansion or crazy blobbing, whichever you prefer. I actually forgot all about creating any retinues until my empire (Hispania) was founded. My vassals alone were enough to beat any internal challenge and win the Reconquista by 1160, and the only reason it took that long was because I focussed on the other Christian Spanish kingdoms first, while the Muslim realms were all fractured. Only by the time the 13th century rolled along, I figured it might be nice to have a retinue. Well, at least they did one thing right in limiting retinue size (you need to have quite a big blob to get more than 10,000) and making it more time-intensive and expensive to grow them, but at that point, it doesn't really matter any more.

I honestly quite like CK2, but I just haven't found any particularly challenging situations at either the King or Emperor level (below that is a different matter, but also a different kind of challenge, obviously), but maybe it will happen at some point. Maybe if you inadvertently breed an inbred retard with zero points in every skill and some terrible vices. Then you just have to ignore the millions of opportunities the game throws at you to have him killed or disinherited and perhaps then you can get into some real trouble. In this game (the first one that I saw through to 1453), I actually started imprisoning and murdering my sons just to see what would happen, but of course by that time I was too powerful for anyone to stop me anyway.

 

[Johannes]

Anyway, best way to stop blobbing is internal strife. Something akin to CK2, but harder to game. Have a blob consist of multiple factions with you as appointed dear leader. As you get bigger, the odds of sub-factions growing big enough to tear free grows.

Many games actually have this mechanic. The thing is, if you're doing a good job, they won't WANT to tear free. Life in the Empire is great. We love the Emperor, etc. And since the player always wants his empire to thrive, he will always do well for the empire. In the real world, running an empire is WORK, and the Emperor might just want to hit on bitches and get drunk off his ass. In the game, well, running the empire is entertainment. The player *IS* doing what he wants to be doing. So the empire will be run well. And the player doesn't die...

That's not how the real world really works. If life is good under your command, most likely you're not extracting as much resources from your subjects as you could. From a province's perspective, an ideal ruler is one that gives them free stuff instead of shipping their produce to capital, and doesn't conscript their sons. And giving free shit to people often a very short term solution to please them (they'll just get entitled to it), government policy alone cannot make a people prosperous. And distributing wealth throughout your provinces equitably, instead of amassing it to your capital and armies, also makes your vassals more powerful and therefore harder to appease.

 

[Whiran]

http://axiomsofdominion.blogspot.com/2015/03/snowballing-map-painting-blobbing.html

I read your blog post. As best I can tell you are advocating time limits on turn-based games.

You wrote this in particular:

The goal of the time cap is that smarter players, or simply more experienced ones, would be able to make more and better decisions within the time limit. Compare to games such as RTSes or MOBAs or shooters where players with twitch skills have the advantage.

My question to you is: does your hypothesis pan out? There are many turn based games that have time limits out there. Have you looked at them? Have you done any background research to see if you are on the correct path?

There are even books that have chapters dedicated to this concept of imposing time limits on turn based games. Have you read up on the subject? Did you check into their research and their views?

 

[Johannes]

As a rule, fuck time limits on how I can do my turn. Simply because I want to relax if I play a TB game - if I want to go take a shit, get a cup of coffee, alt-tab to check codex, whatever, I want to do it. I play an RTS if I want to put my constant attention itno a strategy game.

 

[MoLAoS]

http://axiomsofdominion.blogspot.com/2015/03/snowballing-map-painting-blobbing.html

I read your blog post. As best I can tell you are advocating time limits on turn-based games.

You wrote this in particular:

The goal of the time cap is that smarter players, or simply more experienced ones, would be able to make more and better decisions within the time limit. Compare to games such as RTSes or MOBAs or shooters where players with twitch skills have the advantage.

My question to you is: does your hypothesis pan out? There are many turn based games that have time limits out there. Have you looked at them? Have you done any background research to see if you are on the correct path?

There are even books that have chapters dedicated to this concept of imposing time limits on turn based games. Have you read up on the subject? Did you check into their research and their views?

I am not aware of any games in the genre I am using that do this. Most games I can think of have player imposed time limits and the time limit exists to let players deal with reallife in multiplayer games. Time limits exist so that the game gets played, to keep people from quitting and so forth, rather than my purpose. There may be games that do what I'm suggesting but I've never seen them and I've played almost all the major games in my target main genre and surrounding genres.

 

[Sranchammer]

Id be happy with just a game that focuses on one nation only. Sort of like Centurion.

Trying to cure blobbing with a ton pf AIs doesnt sound feasible yet

 

[MoLAoS]

As a rule, fuck time limits on how I can do my turn. Simply because I want to relax if I play a TB game - if I want to go take a shit, get a cup of coffee, alt-tab to check codex, whatever, I want to do it. I play an RTS if I want to put my constant attention itno a strategy game.

I understand the sentiment and I often ran strategies in TBS that require a lot of time. However, Real Time Strategy, even with pause, wouldn't simulate the same concerns as I would like to deal with. Real time games often lack real though about long term strategic goals, and general end well before such goals could even be needed beyond your initial one. Its not like the game runs constantly. For instance taking a shit would probably require a sort of semi closed screen to deal with. Like if you hit pause you can't see anything that is happening and the game has tons of data to sort through so if you can't see the actual data you can't really exploit the extra time. I mean its not perfect, players could do a lot of stuff to dodge the limit if they really wanted, like screen caps of major screens or something, but its better in my opinion than allowing unlimited time with full access to data.

 

[MoLAoS]

Anyway, best way to stop blobbing is internal strife. Something akin to CK2, but harder to game. Have a blob consist of multiple factions with you as appointed dear leader. As you get bigger, the odds of sub-factions growing big enough to tear free grows.

Many games actually have this mechanic. The thing is, if you're doing a good job, they won't WANT to tear free. Life in the Empire is great. We love the Emperor, etc. And since the player always wants his empire to thrive, he will always do well for the empire. In the real world, running an empire is WORK, and the Emperor might just want to hit on bitches and get drunk off his ass. In the game, well, running the empire is entertainment. The player *IS* doing what he wants to be doing. So the empire will be run well. And the player doesn't die...

That's not how the real world really works. If life is good under your command, most likely you're not extracting as much resources from your subjects as you could. From a province's perspective, an ideal ruler is one that gives them free stuff instead of shipping their produce to capital, and doesn't conscript their sons. And giving free shit to people often a very short term solution to please them (they'll just get entitled to it), government policy alone cannot make a people prosperous. And distributing wealth throughout your provinces equitably, instead of amassing it to your capital and armies, also makes your vassals more powerful and therefore harder to appease.

Certainly various aspects of life often suck time away from management, but this is somewhat cured by a larger than natural world. What parts of their holdings they focused on was a real life issue that affected rulers. Spend too much time one place and lose out elsewhere.