Hi ,
maybe i write something here what is already known, in this case , sorry for that. Its hard for scenariodesigners to find the rigth ballance for a scenario what gives every player the same chance. In some scenarios the designer gave to one site much more power to make the scenario historical corectly. If you play such a scenario online the player on the weaker site has no chance.
But there is a easy solution for this problem.
For a few weeks i play onlinescenarios in the panzerliga, a community of ww2 and modern war players. When they play a scenario online they play it simultaneously on both sites. If a scenario is bad ballanced the player on the strong site will always win but
the better player win by less rounds !
This works perfectly. If you play in this way online every scenario good or badballanced can be used for a onlinegame.
Ballance in onlinegames
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Micha63
- 1st Lieutenant - Grenadier
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Ballance in onlinegames
Last edited by Micha63 on Sun Jan 22, 2012 9:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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stockwellpete
- Field of Glory Moderator
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- Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2010 2:50 pm
This is an interesting question, I feel, Micha. 
First of all, let me just say that FOG does have a "paired game" facility that allows players to play a scenario twice at the same time using the opposing armies. So, for example, my Pavia 1525 scenario is very tough for the French (but not impossible) so I usually play that as a "paired game" so my opponent has a chance to be the Imperialists too.
But I think that there are two basic choices for a scenario designer - do they try and re-create history as accurately as possible, or do they try to make a good wargame that is a good representation of the historical period. There was a scenario designer called Maximvs who did some Romans in Britain battles and he tried to make them as accurate as possible - the result being that some of them were a bit one-sided. But when I helped him play-test his superb Spartacus series, the emphasis was very much on playability and creating agood wargame that was both fun and historically informative.
I am someone who very much follows the second approach and tries to make a good wargame - something that players will hopefully return to time and again to try out different strategies and tactics. So it follows from this that a serious historian could easily make lots of criticisms of my scenarios because they are, in places anyway, historically inaccurate. To give one good example - one of my favourite scenarios is the Battle of the Yellow Ford and it is set in Ireland in the 1590s during the Nine Years War. It is a very good scenario, even if I say so myself, because I return to it quite often to have another game. The way I have made it is to use a standard 40x30 hex battlefield and deployed the units as you would do in a normal FOG battle. In reality though, the battle should be fought on an 80x20 hex battlefield (not possible in FOG) because the English army was still deployed in column when it was attacked by the Irish. So even though I took a lot of care to get the units right and get all the named characters included in it, what I have actually made is a long way from the historical truth. I am quite comfortable with that, other scenario designers might take a different view.
My last point is that I make scenarios entirely for two-player games - I actually have no idea how my games work in single player. I expect that the human player easily beats the AI nine times out of ten.
First of all, let me just say that FOG does have a "paired game" facility that allows players to play a scenario twice at the same time using the opposing armies. So, for example, my Pavia 1525 scenario is very tough for the French (but not impossible) so I usually play that as a "paired game" so my opponent has a chance to be the Imperialists too.
But I think that there are two basic choices for a scenario designer - do they try and re-create history as accurately as possible, or do they try to make a good wargame that is a good representation of the historical period. There was a scenario designer called Maximvs who did some Romans in Britain battles and he tried to make them as accurate as possible - the result being that some of them were a bit one-sided. But when I helped him play-test his superb Spartacus series, the emphasis was very much on playability and creating agood wargame that was both fun and historically informative.
I am someone who very much follows the second approach and tries to make a good wargame - something that players will hopefully return to time and again to try out different strategies and tactics. So it follows from this that a serious historian could easily make lots of criticisms of my scenarios because they are, in places anyway, historically inaccurate. To give one good example - one of my favourite scenarios is the Battle of the Yellow Ford and it is set in Ireland in the 1590s during the Nine Years War. It is a very good scenario, even if I say so myself, because I return to it quite often to have another game. The way I have made it is to use a standard 40x30 hex battlefield and deployed the units as you would do in a normal FOG battle. In reality though, the battle should be fought on an 80x20 hex battlefield (not possible in FOG) because the English army was still deployed in column when it was attacked by the Irish. So even though I took a lot of care to get the units right and get all the named characters included in it, what I have actually made is a long way from the historical truth. I am quite comfortable with that, other scenario designers might take a different view.
My last point is that I make scenarios entirely for two-player games - I actually have no idea how my games work in single player. I expect that the human player easily beats the AI nine times out of ten.