This is a board designer suggestion. It would probably be a rarely used feature, but the board I'm working on would be much easier to design if I could select negative bonus modifiers (e.g. -1 or -0.5).

Are you talking about the per territory bonus?

Yes, the per territory bonus. I have a crazy idea for a board that penalizes you with a negative bonus the more territories you control.

You might try just modifying it in the xml directly, and uploading it.  There's a decent chance the engine supports it, but the gui interface won't allow you to enter it.  I think that was the case with fractional card bonus ramp.

Interesting. I already used a workaround with negative continents per territory, but it might be too steep of a negative. I'll take a look at the xml and see what happens.

I've thought about the same thing. Let us know if it works.

You could mimic it with continents, but it would take a lot of continents. You would probably want to generate them with a script. Let's say you wanted -1 bonus for every 3 territories held. You would need: a -1 continent for every combination of 3 territories and then a +3 continent for every combination of 4 territories, etc.

So I finally got around to trying this out. I edited the xml directly to make a -1 bonus modifier for each 3 territories controlled. However, the game engine doesn't seem to like it much. You can see the results on v2.1 of Dolmahce Sarayi: http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/6298. The game engine just treats the -1 as a +1, it seems.

Korrun wrote:

I've thought about the same thing. Let us know if it works.

You could mimic it with continents, but it would take a lot of continents. You would probably want to generate them with a script. Let's say you wanted -1 bonus for every 3 territories held. You would need: a -1 continent for every combination of 3 territories and then a +3 continent for every combination of 4 territories, etc.

Factory Combinations would be a great feature.

Korrun wrote:

I've thought about the same thing. Let us know if it works.

You could mimic it with continents, but it would take a lot of continents. You would probably want to generate them with a script. Let's say you wanted -1 bonus for every 3 territories held. You would need: a -1 continent for every combination of 3 territories and then a +3 continent for every combination of 4 territories, etc.

kjeld - if you want me to run a script on this for you, figure out the math/algorithm you want & send me your xml and I'll write a script.

Ozyman wrote:

Korrun wrote:

I've thought about the same thing. Let us know if it works.

You could mimic it with continents, but it would take a lot of continents. You would probably want to generate them with a script. Let's say you wanted -1 bonus for every 3 territories held. You would need: a -1 continent for every combination of 3 territories and then a +3 continent for every combination of 4 territories, etc.

kjeld - if you want me to run a script on this for you, figure out the math/algorithm you want & send me your xml and I'll write a script.

I feel like this might result in a number of continents that would break the game engine, no? 71 choose 3 alone yields 57,155 possible combinations...

Kjeld wrote:

I feel like this might result in a number of continents that would break the game engine, no? 71 choose 3 alone yields 57,155 possible combinations...

Exactly - @O, isn't it much easier and efficient to have 'combinations' code in the body of the WarGear Engine?

Combinations are necessary for many of my board ideas and, in just about all cases, the number of factories required to work it into the xml is staggering - in the millions for some.  It just doesn't seem like it would be all that complicated to include as a designer feature. After all, there is already a win feature (# or % of territories to win) that uses what is essentially combination finding code, right?

57k continents is a lot.  I have a board with 4k continents, but 57k+ is probably extreme.

I think -  it would definitely be easier for us designers if Tom implemented some sort of n choose m mechanic for continent bonuses.

I don't think it's as simple as the #/% win conditions though.  Those always work on the entire board, not a subset, and I don't think they actually require combination finding code - just count up the # of territories a player holds. 

I think more complicated than the engine logic is going to be how do you present this information to the player in a simple to understand way in the board explorer.  Which also would be great, because as is, there's no real way to figure out from the board explorer what those 4k continents are doing.

Ozyman wrote:

I think more complicated than the engine logic is going to be how do you present this information to the player in a simple to understand way in the board explorer.  Which also would be great, because as is, there's no real way to figure out from the board explorer what those 4k continents are doing.

It's already too hard to figure how factories work on many of our boards (I'm talking about yours and mine) just by looking at the explorer.  The days of simple continental bonuses are gone.  All that should be required is a clear explanation of how the board works in the description.  There are less factories in a board like War of the Roses than you might think (only a few hundred), but very few players on this site could figure out how the board works by looking at the factories alone.  It's just too complicated.  Combinations are rather easy to explain.  Example.. You only need more than half of territories in a continent to receive the continental bonus. E.g. 4 of 7

That's 35 possibilities for that continent only, and it can't even be done currently with factories.

That's not that hard conceptually, it's just work for Tom designing/building the interface in the designer and board explorer.

Ozyman wrote:

57k continents is a lot.  I have a board with 4k continents, but 57k+ is probably extreme.

I think -  it would definitely be easier for us designers if Tom implemented some sort of n choose m mechanic for continent bonuses.

I don't think it's as simple as the #/% win conditions though.  Those always work on the entire board, not a subset, and I don't think they actually require combination finding code - just count up the # of territories a player holds. 

I think more complicated than the engine logic is going to be how do you present this information to the player in a simple to understand way in the board explorer.  Which also would be great, because as is, there's no real way to figure out from the board explorer what those 4k continents are doing.

The existing code probably can't be reused if we are going for a combination continent. But if you just went for a "x bonus for every n territories in continent" then it would be similar. Then it could be a #/% of a continent (very similar to a #/% of the entire board) so it wouldn't have to be n choose m. It is also the same as the per territory bonus only on a subset.

I started writing up the code to mimic that for one of my boards (which currently you would have to do with n choose m number of continents). But it looks like (with around 70 territories) it would take my computer a couple days just to generate the xml file, so probably would break wargear if I tried to upload an xml file with several million continents (assuming it would even let me upload the file).

A small number of territories in a continent should be fine with factories. Like under 10. Either way some sort of combination continent or per territory continent would be a lot easier to make and a lot easier to understand. It would definitely be nice for the user to have it noted in the continent menu (but there are a lot of other things that currently are not notated well in the continent menu like factories). But it wouldn't be hard.

The per terrritory in a continent bonus could just be notated the same way as the territory bonus.

For example: 7 territory continent called North America. with +1 bonus for every 3 territories. Bonuses listed under Continent Bonus below the board:

"+0 0/3 [North America]" (probably just leave this one off)

"+0 1/3 [North America]"

...

"+1 3/3 [North America]"

"+1 4/3 [North America]"

...

"+2 7/3 [North America]"

The combination continent could be notated similarly. But I'm not sure if the combination continent would be practical. Just generating the tuples for a large number of territories can take a few minutes in python. Having it built into the engine instead of in the xml file might not actually be any faster.

By the way, by setting the per territory bonus to +1 per 2 territories, and making every territory a -1 bonus continent, I am able to simulate a -1 per 2 territories bonus. Can't make it smaller than that, sadly, but at least it's better than -1 for each territory.