Comments on: Three Moves Ahead: Episode 8 — Symmetry and Asymmetry

By: Erez

Erez — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:05:52 +0000

This topic, for me, is extremely interesting. I had a go, at the time, on designing chess variants (shameless plug: http://is.gd/1d8Ty).
At first, I played with the usual symmetrical piece design, but eventually, I created an asymmetrical variant called “TreeLeaders”. This was inspired heavily by Archon, a chess-like computer game with two non-similar armies.
One thing I have to admit, though, is that even after playtesting and integrating some players comments, I can’t really say how balanced it is, mostly because I have no idea on how *to* balance some of its pieces.

Some of them are different variation of the similar piece (the chess rook and the Chinese cannon), but others are truly “out there” pieces, some of which I invented, that were not similar, or balanced, by anything on the other side.

OTOH, in chess, unlike a computer strategy game, placing pieces enables some balance. For instance, placing the rooks at the corners takes away some of the power of those overbearing pieces, or the location of the queen places it under threat very early in the game. Using similar placements, I was able to force some balance, while also matching up pieces. Similar to the symmetry of sides in regular chess opening, I placed matched-up pieces in the same opening places.

By: FhnuZoag

FhnuZoag — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:41:33 +0000

I think the important thing that you missed was that the social engineering values in Alpha Centauri weren’t numerical bonuses, but rather levels that meant dramatic changes in mechanics.

For example, the Gaians’ +1 to Planet is huge, because the distinction between 0 and 1 means that Gaians can capture mindworms, while other factions can’t. (Unless they spend a lot of research and resources towards this.) So, this explains why Gaians interact with fungus and don’t keep a large standing army – because while for the others, the fungus is a scary place where mindworms randomly appear to wreck their stuff, for the Gaians, the fungus is a source of free units, and in fact units that you can send to root around in the fungus to find even more free units, and these units ignore almost all technological differences.

By: Alan Au

Alan Au — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:51:15 +0000

The talk of asymmetric games reminded me of this classic Sirlin post, where he talk about introducing asymmetry into otherwise symmetric games: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/rock-paper-scissors-in-strategy-games.html

He’s actually quite engaging to talk to, especially about the strategic considerations of competitive play.

By: Troy

Troy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:07:20 +0000

The problem with Relic’s patching cycle is that the changes are often radical and one-sided. Though balance is a good thing, Relic’s pattern (best seen in the original DoW and Company of Heroes) requires far more adjustment on the part of the player than Starcraft’s patches. (Though, to be fair, Starcraft is a much simpler game.) Company of Heroes is already past patch 2.1 — Starcraft only 1.6 ten years after release. Relic is more frequent and more dramatic in its patches, I think.

Also, Starcraft’s first three patches fixed exploits, but did nothing about race balance – that wasn’t touched till 1.04 – meaning that Blizzard was studying the issue for almost a year before they did anything to it. The only other race balance patch was 1.08 – all others were to fix bugs or exploits. You could argue that exploits are also about balance, but they are arguably more about game design qua design – playing the game as it was meant to be played.

The professional Starcraft leagues in Korea also make it a bit of an outlier in RTS support and updating.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:09:02 +0000

One quick response, as I’m listening to the podcast at work. You guys talk about the way DoW2 is being balanced and patched and how there seem to be so many changes and nerfs… but have you gone back and looked at the Starcraft patch notes? It’s considered one of the most balanced RTS games currently, but over its life it has had all kinds of fairly radical (at the time) changes made to it as responses to overwhelming strategies. In order to keep an RTS balanced, I think you have to be willing to made whatever changes necessary. I don’t even really play DoW2, so I don’t know exactly, but if they’re patching regularly and changing things, I can’t imagine it being a bad thing.

By: Howard

Howard — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:58:35 +0000

As a good example of a symmetrical game would be Igo (Baduk), not only are both sides running by the same rules, all the game pieces are exactly the same(they’re just stones after all)