[GS Event] TAG Semi Finals - Match II

[Isenbard]

Same story, away most of the week

[Jadli]

well, yuo guys back now?

[Isenbard]

will do all twc turns today

[Isenbard]

Syracuse: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...II_Srcs_13.sav

[jimmy_dude]

Extension, should finish tomorrow if not tonight

[jimmy_dude]

Due to an extra long turn for another hotseat I will need another day or two for this

[jimmy_dude]

Sorry for the delays, I had to play several turns at once the past few days and I had long work shifts the past two days which meant I didn't have much time to play this last week. I did most of the turn tonight and will finish it tomorrow.

[jimmy_dude]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_6F...ew?usp=sharing sparta
Screenshot folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...mv?usp=sharing
Thebes and Chalkis taken with ballistas

[Chieftain Khuzaymah]

Sigh.... We really hoped it wouldn't have come to this, but sadly it has...

Well played jimmy, you worked on a good attack there for a couple of turns. Sadly, we have to object to the move made to attack our fleet. And here is why..
On turn 11, Syracuse sunk a fleet of ours with a mercenary ship (with 1:3 odds not to forget, but that's another thing to digest). We looked back at the saves of the hotseat and realized that we could have seen that coming. A mercenary ship would spawn there at turn 12. We weren't very happy about it, but it happens.
So, in order to make sure there would be no more surprises, we started testing naval scenario's more extensively...

Turn should be up by early tomorrow. Let's just say this turn required extra testing, given what just happened with that merc ship. Gotta love small scale naval AR.

What we figured is that not all mercenary ships are predictable as to when they are available. (Red flag 1: Unfair advantage to players first in turn order?) Funnily enough, we tested specifically the island of Naxos. Not only did we figure out that they spawn at random. But Sparta does not even have a chance of hiring a mercenary ship at Naxos, while Thrace does. (Red Flag 2: So that means Thrace has a free ship any turn it wants? Sparta can't steal it anyways).

We approached Jadli with our concerns about a random spawn of a mercenary ship and we proposed a rule change. We proposed that a mercenary ship should not be able to extend the attacking range of all existing fleets.


Quote from discord; 19-06-2021:

joerock22 — 19-06-2021

Hi Jadli. First off, this is not to complain about anything that is happening in Tag Team now. Chieftain and I just noticed something that could happen in the future which does not seem fair to us.
After testing, it appears that there is some randomness to when mercenary ships will spawn. The saves below were generated using the initial hotseat save, the one with no passwords input yet. Looking at Naxos region (there is a Thracian army standing there on the T15 save), you can see this variation. Sometimes the ship spawns on turn 20, 21, or 22. There may be a possibility of it spawning earlier or later as well.
This presents a problem. We and Team 1 have been putting jostling hard for naval position the entire game. We often put our fleets just out of range of the other’s fleets – so our fleets can reach the ZoC of the enemy fleet, but cannot attack it. Neither side wants to give up a single tile of position, because we realize how important every sea tile can be. In particular when siege weapons can be brought into position to capture settlements (such as Athens). Ofc, mercenary ships spawning can throw a wrench into this. Suddenly the merc ship can extend the attacking range of the main fleet, and one side can lose its entire fleet due to a single merc ship popping up at random.
The reason this is unfair is because the losing side is likely to be us, due to us being later in the turn order. Team 1 can check whether mercenaries have spawned and can use them to their advantage before we even get a chance to see them. It’s a massive advantage in terms of naval positioning, because we will have to move our fleets back at least one tile for a lot of turns to be safe, allowing Team 1 to slowly advance with his ships and push us back. Solely because they are first in the turn order and can see the merc ships before we can.
To address this unfairness, I would propose a modest rule change: ‘mercenary ships may not be used to extend the attacking range of other ships on the turn they are hired.’ This puts Team 1 and Team 2 on equal footing with regards to naval positioning.
And just to be clear, we are not trying to overturn Syracuse’s recent naval win where he sunk a full stack of troops using a merc longboat. That was a mistake on our part not anticipating the spawning of that ship. And of course, it was also a healthy dose of broken small-scale naval AR…but that’s just Medieval 2 for you.Thank you for considering this. Here are the test saves I was using:

We did a lot of testing specifically for the island of Naxos, which was also used in this case to hire a mercenary ship. The save we used was the original hotseat save that the match started playing from, and we were worried about turn 20,21, 22 or anything like that. Now it already was available on turn 13, somehow.
Question: If you cannot specifically test for something? How can you anticipate that what cannot be tested?

Feel free to check for yourself:
Turn 15, no mercenary ship available on Chalkis or on Naxos: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WwU...ew?usp=sharing
Turn 3, to see for yourself, all the way until that turn 15 save, no mercenary ship pops up: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-va...ew?usp=sharing

Whether a mercenary ship spawns at random or not, if a mercenary ship extends the range of your fleet, it unequivocally benefits those who come first in turn order.

We feel that what happened here is unfair. It's not jimmy's fault, he played well. But we warned the admin about this unbalance a couple of weeks ago, but the admin didn't take it seriously then. So here we are again for a 2nd time, now publicly, expressing our concerns, formally complaining about extending the movement range of an existing fleet with a mercenary ship.

[joerock22]

From my own perspective, this is incredibly frustrating. I spent hours of my life testing the availability of mercenary ships, specifically in the region of Naxos, specifically with Trace as the faction recruiting them. In no scenario did a mercenary ship spawn on Naxos earlier than turn 20. I ran many tests from my Turn 3 starting point, as well as the Turn 15 starting point, all based on our original hotseat save.

There is a point where a game feature is so random as to be impossible to test properly. I believe we have reached that point with mercenary ship spawning times.

As explained above, this random game feature works heavily in favor of the team that is earlier in the turn order. It is true that being first in the turn order is always an advantage. But there are rules in place to address this (not being allowed to move defeated units, for example). Recruitment of mercenary ships to extend attack range is just as big of an advantage, as shown by this absolutely crushing battle.

I also agree that Jimmy played well, but so did we. We made the same moves that he did, carefully positioning our ships just out of each other’s attack range. So Jimmy did not outplay us. He simply took advantage of being first in the turn order, and being able to recruit mercenary ships before we could even see them spawn. I don’t blame him for doing this, since there is currently no rule prohibiting it. But the fact is that we told the admin this was a problem over a month ago. Therefore, this critical imbalance needs to be addressed, and the battle needs to be disallowed.

[jimmy_dude]

Ok so let me address this:

This move didn't happen because I got incredibly lucky. Basically, there's a little known feature where whenever you disband mercenaries who would be normally be available in that province, they will always be added to the mercenary pool and respawn at the start of the next turn. Some time ago, I discovered that this also works with merc ships if you disband them off the coast of a province where they are available in the unit pool. When I saw that you were keeping the main Spartan fleet just out of range of the Thracian ships, I figured that I would catch you off guard if I forced a mercenary ship to spawn early, after which I could use my MP boosted general to hire one able to reach you. You are correct in that the naxos ship almost never spawns before turn 20 (I think it spawned turn 22-23 whenever I tested), but what I did was I hired the merc ship that just spawned in Ephesus region last turn, and immediately moved it to the coast of Naxos region and disbanded it, which guaranteed that it would respawn in the merc pool next turn, and that's exactly what happened. I had to check the descr_mercenaries file to make sure they could spawn, since I realized that there was no merc ship pool for mainland Greece, so doing it there would not have worked.

While it's an advantage to the first player for sure, if one knows about this feature it's at least a predictable one, so I don't think this is overpowered since had you expected me to do this, you could have retreated your ships one tile and waited for more ships to arrive to force me back eventually. Usually when I'm playing hotseats where I am later in the turn order I always keep my main fleet one tile further back from the enemy, or I keep my ships in ports and find other ways to advance, since I assume a merc ship will be present for my enemy to hire. While I agree in that this definitely advantages the player first in the turn order, I think in this case this advantage is offset by Sparta having a superior unit and ship roster, as well as a richer starting region in Greece. In any case, I'm fully against retroactively banning stuff like this, since if it were banned earlier on for example I would not have thrown everything at Greece knowing I wouldn't have a naval advantage and I would have instead concentrated forces elsewhere such as in Lydia, though I am definitely open to discussion on banning mercenaries in the finals if I make it that far. Hopefully you at least see that this move was only possible due to good planning, and not crazy luck.

[joerock22]

Ok, so now I understand how the merc ship spawned in Naxos. It was essentially created there by the player instead of spawning naturally. This is highly abusive. You are purposely creating a situation where you can take advantage of the fact that you are earlier in the turn order than we are. We cannot use this trick since you will be able to spot any mercenaries we "create" this way. You are creating the exact imbalance that we complained about. I have never used this trick in a hotseat and I never will. It's an exploit, plain and simple.

And I don't want to hear that "Sparta could have moved its ships back." Sure, and then Thrace gets catapults in range of Athens. This was a chess match on the sea. Every tile is crucial, as you well know. I also don't want to hear that "Sparta is OP." The only reason Sparta was able to (barely) hold on in a 1v2 is because Egypt is providing a lot of support. These points have nothing to do with the exploit.

[jimmy_dude]

I'm not sure why this would be considered an "exploit", since it seems to me that the game's devs clearly intended for disbanded mercs to be able to respawn the next turn, so this is just me using every feature and advantage due to the turn order at my disposal. I have already used this feature in multiple past hotseats to make sure merc ships are present when I need them. I've always considered this to be a useful feature that very few people even knew existed, but not an exploit since it was clearly an intended feature by the devs and not banned in the rules or any hotseats.
As I said earlier, I agree that this gives the first player a further advantage so I am open to banning mercs in the finals, but that being said, I know there are a couple advantages the players last in the turn order get too, such as making income from contested settlements and some more advanced scouting techniques that are only possible when having the final turn in the order. Regardless of this, I think it is wrong to retroactively cancel moves that are not banned in rules or in other hotseats especially when I have done similar moves in the past without issues, though obviously my opinion is biased. Let's wait to see what Jadli and others have to say about this.

[joerock22]

The game's devs intended a lot of things that are not suitable for hotseat play, such as allowing players earlier in the turn order to move defeated armies. We have rules to prevent such players from using those unbalanced mechanics.

I really need to retire from hotseating again if this is the kind of shady that goes on.

[Jadli]

Jimmy, I assume that the ship that you disbanded in Naxos was full crew, or was it depleted?

(Will answer to the rest later)

[Chieftain Khuzaymah]

While it's an advantage to the first player for sure, if one knows about this feature it's at least a predictable one, so I don't think this is overpowered since had you expected me to do this, you could have retreated your ships one tile and waited for more ships to arrive to force me back eventually. Usually when I'm playing hotseats where I am later in the turn order I always keep my main fleet one tile further back from the enemy, or I keep my ships in ports and find other ways to advance, since I assume a merc ship will be present for my enemy to hire.

So if we knew about this, we should have 'just moved our fleet 1 tile back' ?
And then next turn? You move yours 1 tile forward. We have to move it 1 tile back again?
And the turn after? You move yours 1 tile forward again. Do we have to move it 1 tile back.... again..... ?

That is exactly the point. Sparta is completely made of coastal settlements and because of a game mechanic it has to surrender 1 tile at sea every turn? That is devastating....

Let's get 1 thing clear. Our fleet was in the position you defeated it since turn 10. We were there first and you didn't even have a ship that could get next to our fleet. So we are in position first, then all you have to do is put your fleet just out of range, knowing we cannot use the same game mechanic as you, and you can start pushing us back 1 tile every turn because 'one can know about it' ?

Is that because of smart gameplay by Thrace? Or is it because of a certain game mechanic?
Can Thrace use this mercenary ship mechanic to extend the range of it's fleet? Yes
Can Sparta use this mercenary ship mechanic to extend the range of it's fleet? No
So we have to surrender, say, 5(!) sea tiles in 5 turns, because we can know about a mechanic which only 1 faction can use in this match up?

Does that sound like something that needs to be addressed in the rules? To me it does and we proposed that several weeks ago.
Again, I'm not for banning mercenary ships at all. I don't have a big problem with 'creating your ship' where you want it. I have a problem with the turn order favoring one faction to get that ship before the other can and then extending the range of your fleet every single turn like that, while the other player can only sit and watch (and retreat)

We wasted a bunch of single ships over a lot of turns which we positioned in range of your fleet so that our fleet could reach yours. You defeated those every turn so you can hold your position right? Can we also prevent you from reaching ours?

[jimmy_dude]

Replying to Jadli, the merc ship had full crew when disbanded

I agree that once everyone knows this feature exists, it is a decent boost for the first faction in the turn order. That point is clear. However, I still don't think it's unbeatable since with good boat placement, you could have both stopped my advance and kept your main fleet safe. All you would have to do is retreat the main fleet back one tile, but leave one or two single ships right on the edge of my main fleet movement, so I would be forced to use a mercenary ship in order to reach one. If this were done you would keep the main fleet safe while I would eventually run out of mercenary ships to use with good placement of single ships in places where I wouldn't easily be able to disband the mercenary ship to rehire it the next turn. This would also put considerable financial strain on my faction as well since I'd have to pay the money to constantly disband and hire mercenary ships to keep this up, and using this method you would stop any real progress from it. If you had known of my plan and retreated your main fleet one tile and left two small ships just barely out of range of my other ships, I would not be able to advance since even if I were to try and use the mercenary ship, I would have to leave more ships and generals exposed as well as having to rehire and disband it, and I would likely only sink one of them meaning my main fleet wouldn't be able to advance. Had you defended this way I probably would have to try some alternate plan because the sea would be a stalemate, hopefully it makes sense why.

We can discuss this more once Jadli replies with his full thoughts.

[Chieftain Khuzaymah]

I see what you're trying to explain, and it makes sense if you look at just 1 turn. But it is not a solution for fairness, because a hotseat is not just 1 turn.

You can simply move single ships forward as well in range of Sparta's single ships. Then Sparta is forced to trade off those single ships to maintain the position of the main fleet, or retreat everything once again. So because of your option to hire a merc ship and extend the range of your fleet, you can force Sparta to trade.

Anyway you slice this, Thrace dictates the game. The reason is that Thrace has naval options that Sparta doesn't, and that shouldn't be.

I talked to joerock about this as well. I can understand you don't feel that you did anything wrong, and I don't blame you for thinking like that. It's just an unbalanced situation. If you don't agree, then I'd happily switch sides and we play with this advantage. Whether everyone is aware of it or not, we can still exploit the advantage (if we would be first in turn order, or if we would be Thrace vs Sparta).

[Jadli]

Replying to Jadli, the merc ship had full crew when disbanded

Was asking cause I was recently told about another bug by other modders and I was going to add it to the official list of bugs and exploits. The filling of disbanded units into normal recruitment of units of course also works as well, but you can see the effect only from the next turn as well. However, its quite broken, as it appears that even when you disband a completely depleted troop, it still adds a full unit to the recruitment pool next turn (which might mean a lot in some mods).

(btw, curious how are regions determined regions at sea, as there are none... just a sea region. I suppose you have to disband it just by the coast?)

Nevertheless, thats not the case here, so no bug was used (a unit is supposed to be added to the local recruitment pool when disbanded...), hence jimmy definitely did not exploit the game... instead, he once again proves his knowledge of the game...

Anyways, thats not really the issue here...

To clarify, in descr_mercenaries.txt you guys can see that the replenish rates of each merc pools are not strictly given, but within a small interval (usually something between 0.02 - 0.2), so I suppose that explains why in the first turns it corresponded pretty well to the tests by joe and Chieftain, but later it starts to diverge from their tests (as the difference can potentionally get larger and larger every turn)

In general, this is nothing new. That players first in turn order have always had some advantages, that has been known, including the access to the mercenaries. The messed up turn order is one of the main flaws of M2TW hotseating, and not sure what am I supposed to do about it here, thats how it has always been, and players later in turn order have to cope with that in every HS that has ever existed (though, there are some advantages to being later in turn order as well, but smaller ones)... Plus, I was of course aware of all these features when setting up this scenario. There are many merc pools, so players late in turn order can also often get mercenary ships. Maybe they should have been removed entirely? Well, who knows... Also, I kind of intentionally chose some factons to be first in turn order...

No rules should be changed or added (till the finals) unless its absolutely necessary (as it would complicate things), and this is not... as I said, thats how it has always been in every HS. For the finals we might add some rule regarding merc recruitment, if there are any in a mod that will be used. And of course, the decision on winners is not just blind count of settlements or somth, but taking into account all that happened, such as who was first in turn order, who had more difficult factions, and so on.... So really sorry joe and Chieftain , I really appreciate your enthusiasm about this match, but I dont think there is much that can and should be done about this right now

[joerock22]

I understand that decision, but I don't agree with it. I'm not going to repeat prior arguments, since we've all said our peace at this point. I guess I just have a different conception of fairness than a lot of people. I am confident that if this came to my attention back when I was serving as admin of hotseats, I would not have allowed it. I would have erred on the side of trying to make the game as equal as possible for all players, regardless of position in the turn order.

Despite my ample frustration, I will help my partner finish this tournament, however far we make it. If it was just me playing, I would seriously consider resigning in protest; that's how strongly I feel. But I will not abandon my partner.