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AoS Army Harmonizer

samheim said:
when designing a complex game like AoS. Whats important is not really the points value of the movement compared to the saving throw. Whats important is that every army follows the same points scoring methods.
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Are you familiar with the Age of Sigmar Battleplans in the Core Rule book and General's Handbook 2019?
 
ya movement is by far the best stat in the game it's why skinks do so well inspite of being so week they just dance circles around every one. it's also why gotrek is just meh he can't aply the power he does have
 
LizardWizard said:
Are you familiar with the Age of Sigmar Battleplans in the Core Rule book and General's Handbook 2019?
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Yes I have seen the Battle plans in the core rule book. But I have not read GHB.

Battle Plans could be factored in either the game or the table object. The truth is that anything is possible with software.

The only question is cost and time it would take to develop.

In software development, you would divide your application, so say, 1 team would be responsible for developing how the table component would work.

Another would be responsible for the game, another for miniatures etc etc.

If you do it right, the team making the table won't really need to know anything about the miniatures and vice versa. The people working on the miniatures would just need to know that the table works in a certain way when they interface with it.

In the manual system, the person writing the tomes, is probably responsible for to many rules. So the problem becomes that he doesn't really understand well enough how what he is working on in say battlion's will be reflected in the rest of the system.

It would make more sense to give the responsibility to writing battalions to the same person, as then that one person would hopefully have a much deeper understanding of how to balance the battlions of all the different factions.

Compartmentalisation. In software this is no big deal at all. Its software 101. Every developer who works in a team will be using these techniques weather they understand why or not.

With board games like AoS you can see that they adopted some software principles like "Keywords". But when you think about it, GW is the premier table top games company.

What they are trying to do, is basically reinvent the wheel without knowing it. They are trying to work out software development principles to rules writing without knowing it. It won't seem like that to them though, because they are doing things in a more pen and paper way (or word docs).

It will feel they are pioneering board game design. That may even be true. But these problems with complexity have existed in software for as long as software has existed. As such many amazing minds have already solved all the hard problems. All you have to do, is copy their techniques and it works and everybody thinks your a genius.

The wrong way, is to start inventing your own solutions and think your genius!
 
I believe there was a miscommunication.

I meant to say that all armies do score points in the same manner. However, if your exposure to battleplans is limited then it would explain why you feel AoS is so unbalanced. Most of the game's balancing heavily relies on battleplans.
 
samheim said:
In the manual system, the person writing the tomes, is probably responsible for to many rules. So the problem becomes that he doesn't really understand well enough how what he is working on in say battlion's will be reflected in the rest of the system.

It would make more sense to give the responsibility to writing battalions to the same person, as then that one person would hopefully have a much deeper understanding of how to balance the battlions of all the different factions.

Compartmentalisation. In software this is no big deal at all. Its software 101. Every developer who works in a team will be using these techniques weather they understand why or not.
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That is purely speculative. What little information is available of GWs process does not seem to reflect your opinion.
 
Erta Wanderer said:
ya movement is by far the best stat in the game it's why skinks do so well inspite of being so week they just dance circles around every one. it's also why gotrek is just meh he can't aply the power he does have
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I would guess skinks are good because movement + low cost. So they have more fast moving wounds, and lots of models.

Where as a Dragon would be a trap, even if it can fly and has large movement because its only one model and has higher cost.


The reason why I thought a harmonisation process would be a good idea is this. Because its a real time thing. If you used software to balance armies, when writing rules. I think it would help with overall rules and balance.

But if someone takes all fast expensive units, and someone else takes all tanky units, the game may become unbalanced again anyway.

The real time adjustment of the stats, would make 2 very unbalanced armies have a more interesting game. I don't know how well it would work in practise though. But it's all about trying different ideas to see if they work or not.
 
samheim said:
I would guess skinks are good because movement + low cost. So they have more fast moving wounds, and lots of models.

Where as a Dragon would be a trap, even if it can fly and has large movement because its only one model and has higher cost.


The reason why I thought a harmonisation process would be a good idea is this. Because its a real time thing. If you used software to balance armies, when writing rules. I think it would help with overall rules and balance.

But if someone takes all fast expensive units, and someone else takes all tanky units, the game may become unbalanced again anyway.

The real time adjustment of the stats, would make 2 very unbalanced armies have a more interesting game. I don't know how well it would work in practise though. But it's all about trying different ideas to see if they work or not.
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I feel the exact opposite of this to be true. I would much rather build an army then let a program solve it for me.
 
LizardWizard said:
That is purely speculative. What little information is available of GWs process does not seem to reflect your opinion.
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Yes I am speculating based on my knowledge of building complex systems. To me it makes sense. They are working with some complexity, and they are trying to come up with solutions to manage that complexity.

The clue is "Keywords"

The Keywords are what you would name your classes in software. But if you look at software, you don't choose those keywords that GW would choose.

In my diagram (made for laymen to understand) my Keyword is miniature. Its generic. So I can use it over and over again. The model created by the miniature object will carry a label for its name, when it goes in. Like "Saurus Warrior".

Everybody in the world who faces these problems with complexity will eventually find out, its all been done a million times before.
There are people who are experts at solving these problems.

Imagine how complex, a banking system is compared to GW AoS? that's why there are these experts, because there is so much money involved.

The good news is that, anybody can go and read their books and find their solutions. Then just copy them!
 
LizardWizard said:
I feel the exact opposite of this to be true. I would much rather build an army then let a program solve it for me.
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Yes, in that case the game is really just about choosing the most efficient units. This then means everybody ends up using the same lists, and some models never get to see the table top.

You end up having a lot of redundant units, nobody wants to use. The game becomes more about finding out what's best.

Even totalwar suffers from these problems. And people play the online multiplayer the same way. Counter picking, power builds.

To me, it makes for a very poor experience. I want to play with a fluffy all ghoul army. Or just treeman and dryads.

But I am going to loose if i take this.

Depends what you like I suppose.

Most people seem to agree that Warcry is far better then most of GW's games though. I think its more fun, because at that small scale, and when just starting off, its possible to keep thing more balanced, and thus, the games become closer and more exciting.
 
I was not referencing key wording. I was speaking to your speculation about employ task allocation in the creation of rules within Age of Sigmar. Jervis Johnson has a done a few interviews within the past couple of years talking about the various rules overhaul and the implementation of systemology to their rules writing. You should watch some of them. They are extremely interesting.
 
samheim said:
Yes, in that case the game is really just about choosing the most efficient units. This then means everybody ends up using the same lists, and some models never get to see the table top.

You end up having a lot of redundant units, nobody wants to use. The game becomes more about finding out what's best.

Even totalwar suffers from these problems. And people play the online multiplayer the same way. Counter picking, power builds.

To me, it makes for a very poor experience. I want to play with a fluffy all ghoul army. Or just treeman and dryads.

But I am going to loose if i take this.

Depends what you like I suppose.

Most people seem to agree that Warcry is far better then most of GW's games though. I think its more fun, because at that small scale, and when just starting off, its possible to keep thing more balanced, and thus, the games become closer and more exciting.
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This has not been my experience. There is certainly enough wiggle room in the game's rules that two well intentioned players can fairly easily create balanced armies that are capable of playing against each other.

Even at tournaments there is plenty of space to take non-optimal units. The whole reason I collected Khrone was because I wanted to make Chaos Warriors, one of my favorite models, work in a competitive environment.

AoS's battleplans do an amazing job of balancing the game. It is true that not all armies are equal. This isn't chess after all. However, most armies, even the really, really, really bad ones, are capable of getting wins. I have a buddy who plays KO occasionally. KO is considered one of the worst armies in AoS. He still manages to win over 40% of his games with KO even when playing them against the top armies.

On a side note, you should check out the army drafter in the new GHB2019. You might really enjoy adding in some randomized army builds.
 
Wow, something just hit me!

Remember when AoS was released? none of the units had points values!

This means that they didn't build the game around points values. The points system was implemented after the game stats were.

Which means, why or how possibly could the game ever be balanced at all!

Someone who knows, someone at GW, needs to tell them I will require 2 payments of 1 million pounds. They can make the first deposit at 7pm Tuesday the 5th of November at Liverpool street station. I will be wearing pink shoes and they are to say "Arn't the flowers in Thorpe-le-Soken town hall, blossoming this year ".

After they have made the first payment, I will begin work on fixing this nightmare. I feel its my moral duty, people are out there trying to play a game based on no foundation principles.

Someone needs to build process of establishing true values as soon as possible. Looks like I am the only person we know, who has a shot in hell of pulling that off.
 
samheim said:
Wow, something just hit me!

Remember when AoS was released? none of the units had points values!

This means that they didn't build the game around points values. The points system was implemented after the game stats were.

Which means, why or how possibly could the game ever be balanced at all!

Someone who knows, someone at GW, needs to tell them I will require 2 payments of 1 million pounds. They can make the first deposit at 7pm Tuesday the 5th of November at Liverpool street station. I will be wearing pink shoes and they are to say "Arn't the flowers in Thorpe-le-Soken town hall, blossoming this year ".

After they have made the first payment, I will begin work on fixing this nightmare. I feel its my moral duty, people are out there trying to play a game based on no foundation principles.

Someone needs to build process of establishing true values as soon as possible. Looks like I am the only person we know, who has a shot in hell of pulling that off.
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I am so confused right now.

You shouldn't build the games rules around unit's matched play points. MPP are used to equalize units who rules are already determined.

Adding another spoke isn't exactly reinventing the wheel.
 
With @NIGHTBRINGER here, I must follow to input my thoughts.

on paper an army harmonized might be a good idea, but there are some huge problems. For one a unit may seem limited to a machine, but a person can find an unorthodox method to use them, like how we all thought knights were crap cavalry but realized they are fast and effective heavy infantry. This is something a computer can’t account for at the moment.

another problem is that army points work well. In general they so far have not lead to any one faction being truly unbeatable. Even FEC terrorgheists could be brought down by good shooting, from things like razordons. Making a program that accounts for all matchups would be time consuming and impractical.

ultimately there is a better thing that could be done here, and that is to evaluate how powerful each model is and it’s potential uses and synergies, that is much more attainable then an army harmonizer.
 
Lizerd said:
Your content for GHB 2019 was excellent and very helpful, you did a fantastic job.
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the spells/artifacts? thanks those are easier then units you just have to figur out when they would be helpfull if at all. evaluating a buff is much easier then the complexity that is units
 
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