Posted: Sun May 10, 2020 3:22 pm Post subject: Best nations to choose including dynasties
What do you guys are the best nations to choose?
Of course the board matters, but let us just discuss the nations on their own.
My top 5 is:
1. Rome
2. Japan
3. Persia
4. Mongolia
5. Egypt
Bottom 5:
1. Portugal
2. Greece
3. Vikings
4. China
5. Poland
Some things to keep in mind are that these are all 4-player games, and there's one rule change, which is that Korea's starting ability only grants it one architect per golden age, not two.
I mostly agree with what the stats show. Persia is very strong. Korea without the nerf is also very strong. Mali and America are quite weak. The one I disagree with most is Poland. I think it's stronger than its showing in the tournament would suggest. I'm not the greatest player or anything though, and still fairly new to the game.
America is far more powerful in 5er than in 4er, because Democratic Republicans hit in basic situation 2 persons (so the action is twice as good), there is more dynasties to affect (I mean more players means more opportunities) and books give more points. Just to say that player count and difficulty level affect quite much to nations powers.
Can you explain the spreadsheet? Is it saying that no one who took SunTsu came first, and if you took the Sphinx, you only won if you were the third or fourth player?
LordChambers, will you explain the tables on the right of the Season 3 stats sheet? What do the 3’s and 4’s mean under Sun Tzu and Sphinx?
My guess is that “4†means 4th choice of nation, thus first to act during the action phase, not 4th in initial turn order. Just a guess though.
This season, in one of the matches where I had last choice of nation, I took Sphinx with my first action and won with an 8-point lead, I think in large part because Sphinx:
It means that in Main and Open Divisions combined, 5 people who finished the game 2nd picked Sun Tzu.
Among these players, two were the first to go on first round (we can assume they picked Sun Tzu first thing), one was second to go on the first round, and two were 3rd to go.
I am surprised noone who picked Sun Tzu won the game during S3.
Sten wrote:
Can you explain the spreadsheet? Is it saying that no one who took SunTsu came first, and if you took the Sphinx, you only won if you were the third or fourth player?
Noone who took Sun Tzu came first indeed. But your logic for the Sphinx is backwards. It's not that the Sphinx is somehow better for 3rd or 4th player, but that picking it first thing as if it was a top priority wonder may actually hurt someone, especially with a more aggro board.
I mostly agree with what the stats show. Persia is very strong. Korea without the nerf is also very strong. Mali and America are quite weak. The one I disagree with most is Poland. I think it's stronger than its showing in the tournament would suggest. I'm not the greatest player or anything though, and still fairly new to the game.
I've been keeping stats of tournment matches since this. I recently updated my stats and ran my analysis script again, and I remembered back to when I posted this.
As good as Poland maybe seems like it should be, it's empirically bottom of the barrel. Like worse than Mali and Arabs bad. At least for 4 player, which is what all my stats are for.
And I don't think Persia is particularly strong in 4 player either. I think it's actually a relatively overrated nation at 4. I think it is quite strong at 3 though because there's more turmoil/player each round. And America can be pretty decent.
Here's a BGG post where I link to my GitHub repo with the analysis scripts and logs:
In my experience now though, while nation selection can have a big influence, the player is the biggest factor, even among regular tournament players at or near the top tier. I think that's a testament to the game design. It's far from perfectly balanced, but it's good enough.
Joined: Jan 07, 2018 Posts: 18 Location: Europe - GMT+1
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2023 9:53 am Post subject:
Logitude wrote:
LordChambers, will you explain the tables on the right of the Season 3 stats sheet? What do the 3’s and 4’s mean under Sun Tzu and Sphinx?
My guess is that “4†means 4th choice of nation, thus first to act during the action phase, not 4th in initial turn order. Just a guess though.
This season, in one of the matches where I had last choice of nation, I took Sphinx with my first action and won with an 8-point lead, I think in large part because Sphinx:
I never noticed this thread. Little bit too late to answer, but if anyone cared, I can explain the numbers.
There have been arguments, that Sun Tzu is a game changer, and so is Sphinx, and picking it equals winning the game. (The argument wasn't this explicit, but close enough to it). So I set out to measure the players' performance, when Sun Tzu or Sphinx appeared in 1.A and were bought in the 1st round of actions. (i.e. 1st action of each player). So not in later rounds, nor in I.B
The table indicates the finishing position of the player who had bought any of the two cards, and what pick number was used to purchase the card.
1 - first action of the 1st player
2 - first action of the 2nd player
3 - first action of the 3rd player
4 - first action of the 4th player
The table shows, as Mwak correctly assumed, noone, who picked SunTzu in his first action of the game, went on to win it. (Noone denies, that Mr Tzu is a good advisor, but broken? come on, now..)
The table also shows, that there were many 1st place finishers among players, who picked Sphinx as their first action. !st place finishers are only either player number 3 or 4. And why that is you ask? My theory is, that if you have the 1st pick, it's because you have the worst of the 4 nations in that particular game. (sometimes true, sometimes not). And the weak nations are weak for a reason, they either don't have a military, or they don't have a stability building, or are generally weak (oh hello, Arabs). So they use their 1st pick to improve on that, while player 3 or 4, playing a much better civ, has a solid military or stability starting card, so they can invest in a card like Sphinx and do well. The Sphinx going 1st overall resulted only in 2nd place once. Twice after being picked as first action of player 2.
What I was taking away from the stats at the time only confirmed what I had assumed long before that, is that some nations cannot compete against others under almost any circumstances. (Arabs, how you doin'?) Bad military, no stability, starting dynasty is unusable, when you don't have a building supporting the growth, no reasonable book production to get you out of the book deficit you start with. Arab's first action will never be buying Sphinx, simply they have too many other holes to fill. But Persia or Korea and a few others can afford spending 1st action on a card like Sphinx, because they have much better synergy of their buildings and dynasties.
You can post new topics in this forum You can reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
