16-12-2000 12:50									#1
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There appears to be a flaw in setting up PBEM's (not a bug, as it can be corrected) that sets a game up at a difficulty level whereby the starting player starts at that level but the following players are at different difficulty levels.

This was first noticed in Chiron Winter I over at ACOL, and has since been identified in our Nato Unravelled 2 games.

I ran an audit of my games with the following result

ACT031 - thinker - I'm Librarian
ACT039 - transcend - I'm librarian
AXT022 - transcend - I'm Ok at transcend
AXT029 - transcend - I'm Librarian
AXT030 - transcend - I'm Librarian
AXT031 - transcend - I'm OK at transcend
JMRVX - transcend - I'm OK at transcend
NU1 - transcend - I'm librarian
NU2 - transcend - I'm Librarian
OktoberFist -transcend - I'm Ok at transcend
RP1 - librarian - I'm Librarian

The three italicized games that I am OK in are non scenario or CMN'd games, suggesting that this is a flaw just with a scenario built challenge game.

This is obviously a game imbalancer as regards the cost of mineerals, drone control, etc and prolly renders all these games meaningless as they are hopelessly unbalanced against the starting player )in AXT029 one player actually had a -8 cost to change)

Check your saved games, and see if indeed your level is the same as advertised at the games first posting on the turn thread.

The only cure is to restart witht he difficulty flag forced on all factions (Tau Ceti can give a fuller explanation based on his sterling work to rescue the Chiron Winter games at ACOL)

Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.

Googlie



[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited December 17, 2000).]

	16-12-2000 17:33									#2
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I can confirm most of what Googlie has said. I suspected things could be wrong after the same problem showed up in both Chiron Winter and AXT029, and have been checking the saves for the old games. Sure enough, they are hit too. I have been testing various things and trying to find causes, and was going to make a post about it when I had some more info. Well, here is what I have so far:

Basically any game that was started from a scenario suffers in one of three ways (that I have seen so far, with a couple of special cases): 1) Everyone is put on Librarian level (hereafter referred to as All Lib), 2) First player is on Thinker and the rest on Librarian (Th-Lib), 3) First player is on Transcend, rest on Librarian (Tr-Lib).

The tournament games affected are the following:
ACT028 (Thinker): Th-Lib
ACT031 (Thinker): All Lib
ACT034 (Librarian): Tr-Lib
ACT035 (Transcend): All Lib
ACT036 (Librarian): Tr-Lib
ACT037 (Transcend): All Lib
ACT038 (Thinker): Tr-Lib
ACT039 (Transcend): Tr-Lib (Special case 1)
ACT040 (Transcend): Tr-Lib
AXT029 (Transcend) Tr-Lib (Special case 2)
AXT030 (Transcend): Tr-Lib

Apart from these, ACTs 029-033 all suffer from Tr-Lib, but I believe they are dead anyway.

Earlier ACT games are not affected, nor are other AXT games, as those are not based on scenarios.

Special case 1: mark13 has reported an SE change cost of 40 in ACT039. That is strange, as he is not the first player and his faction was on Librarian in the save I have.

Special case 2: RedFred got an SE change cost of -8 (!) in AXT029, indicating that his difficulty is one level below citizen. This is, however, the only game that includes the Planet Cult.

I have not been able to figure out what factors cause which version of the problem.

I am really sorry about all this, but it never occurred to me to check that the game actually used the difficulty level I had told it to use immediately before. And no one seems to have noticed until now...

As for solutions, nothing can be done to fix this from within. I will leave the decision on what to do to the players of each game; If anyone wants a restart/new game, I will provide it, if they want to continue as it is (many of them have played quite a number of turns now, after all), they should do so. At least the All Lib games treat everyone equally.
[This message has been edited by Tau Ceti (edited December 18, 2000).]

	17-12-2000 00:41									#3
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I guess no one else seems to care (or maybe couldn't decipher the topic heading )

I note that ACT038 is proceeding as though nothing has happened.

Don't players realize the tremendous long term impact that a diff of 3 vs 5 makes? DIFF permeates everything in smac.

Ah well, control what we can control, eh? - at least my games will have the discussion as to what to do.



G.

	17-12-2000 00:56									#4
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Sorry all - just tested it again - in ACT039 it did indeed cost me 24 credits, I was confusing it with another game....

Apologies again.

	17-12-2000 02:47									#5
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Yeah, I'm the player who drew the short straw in AXT030 you'll be pleased to hear Googlie. Very glad of the excuse for my piss-poor performance in that game ...

I won't be asking for a restart on that one, unless everyone else wants to do so. I believe you, jschwab and Deimos are all on the same level, so you are evenly matched at least. We've played quite a few turns, so like I said, I'm willing to play on although I might perhaps request that I don't lose a point in the tourny when I get trashed

But if making an allowance in the scoring is not acceptable to people, I'll play on anyway.

What the hell. I like a challenge.

(gulp)

	17-12-2000 03:03									#6
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Tau, I think I may have nabbed the cause of the problem....

When you create a scenario, one of the options on the scenario menu is 'force difficulty level'. I think a bug in the game causes this to activate by default, on whatever difficulty level your last SP game was. In which case, the first player of the game plays on that difficulty level. The difficulty level you select when you reactivate the scenario to play it is the difficulty level everyone else plays on, from what I can summise.

I'm off to check it, gimme 15 minutes....nope, apparently not. I think it may have something to do with that though - it is a real pain in the arse....
[This message has been edited by mark13 (edited December 16, 2000).]

	17-12-2000 05:18									#7
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Actually, setting that flag is the way to get around the problem. And I do not start very many games on Librarian, so I doubt that has anything to do with the difficulty level the game assigns. I was wondering if it could be because the AI plays on Librarian, though.

I still see no system in which games get All Lib, Th-Lib and Tr-Lib.

	17-12-2000 06:11									#8
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Well it seems I am on transcend in ACT038. Waiting to hear from the other players in the game. Guess if nothing else it will be a challenge.

Hobbes

	17-12-2000 12:11									#9
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Being a player in ACT038.....I guess I'm a non-caring, as if nothing has happened player.

I played a turn from that game earlier today and new nothing of this problem. Some of us can't live on Apolyton 24\7, but I don't think we should be accused of not caring or ignorance. I'm all for fair starts and that's what I thought the tourny was providing. It seems like a waste of 3 months of play now, but it's definitely not balanced if everyone is not on the same difficulty level. I'll have to check what level I'm on and what we are suppose to be on, to be honest I didn't pay that much attention in the first place.

	17-12-2000 13:09									#10
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Tau Ceti mentioned two of my games (ACT031 and ACT035), both of which are all-lib, so I'd say we just continue them. Actually, I had noticed that they were not on transcend level because of the lack of drones and lower SE costs, but I'm in more games and after a while I usually forget at which level they were supposed to be.

	18-12-2000 13:49									#11
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You can add ACT040 to the list and I imagine the previous game ACT021, but I wouldn't know because I was the Gaians and started the turns. As far as I know AXT031 is OK, though I'm the Gaians in that one too and may have very well started that one. All three of the above games should have been Transcend.

	18-12-2000 18:15									#12
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ACT040 is already on that list. ACT021 was not affected, as I did not put it through the scenario editor (I started doing that later). AXT031 and all other SMACX games except 029 and 030 are OK, for the same reason.

On the other hand, I can now confirm that ACT034 suffers from Tr-Lib. It has been added to the list above.

I now offer not a solution, but an alternative to a restart: That the player at the higher difficulty level can choose to play on, but not lose any points or count as defeated for tournament scoring purposes should he lose. See also the Tournament announcements thread.

	18-12-2000 20:02									#13
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Stuntman19:

I didn't mean my comments I guess no one else seems to care and Don't players realize to be pejorative in any way.

It seemed that some were, perhaps, just shrugging and saying "No big deal", (as many have aleady done), without, perhaps, fully thinking through the implications of getting reaearch three turns later than anyone else, drones at a faster clip, and units/facilities built at 120% the cost of fellow players.

As Tau Ceti says, usually only the starting player is affected, and if his fellow players can cus some slack (say by offering 2 for 1 tech trades, occasionally gifting credits, etc, then the gam can be internally balanced somewhat. And if that player should lose, TC has conceded that this will not adversely affect the tourney score.

Most of my games are continuing (but I seem not to be a starting player in any of them)

(and part of the reason for the tone of my post was my own stupidity in messing up the topic heading such that PBEMers would just skim past it, not understanding what the thread was about.)

Thanks to MarkG for responding to my request so promptly to edit some clarity into it.



Googlie

	18-12-2000 20:31									#14
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Googlie: What is this increased unit/facility cost you keep talking about? AFAIK, neither construction cost (in minerals) or hurry cost (in credits) are affected by difficulty level for human players...?

And are you sure that tech cost is affected? It is one of the few formulae that are not in the datalinks, and I have not played enough lower-level games to know.

	19-12-2000 10:56									#15
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TC: - not specifically tech costs - my language was sloppy there - it's tech turns rate I'm referring to.

Prima gives the techturn rate as:

technology discovery rate =[11+(DIFF x 4) + ((Techs x 6)/5) - (Turns/8) - (Most techs/5)] x techs x worldsize

where:

DIFF = citizen at 0 to transcend at 5 (common formula)
Techs = # techs you ahve already discovered
Mosttechs = greatest # of techs discovered by any one player
Turns = # elapsed turns in the game
worldsize = the factor according to your worldsize

Thus for a transcend difficulty player the first set in the equation {11+(DIFF x 4)} will equal 31 whereas for a Librarian it will equal 23.

turns, mosttechs and worldsize are constants for all players

each player individually controls # techs (by refusing trades for techs you are not going to use immediately)

Eyeballing the formuls, the effect would seem to diminish as the game progresses, as the # techs replaces the DIFF as the dominant item in the equation.

Command center maintenance costs, drone control, and ecological damage also use DIFF as a factor.

And you are right on the production costs (I think)

Prima says:

Human: You always pay for production in rows of ten, modified by your SE choices (against the AI)

Computer: plays against humans based on DIFF

I wrongly assumed that the DIFF carried over to PBEM games where there were different DIFF ratings - checking my various games I always have rows of ten for minerals and nutrients, regardless of my DIFF level.

It seems that the player on Transcend level will suffer a penalty in the early game re rate of tech advances, in the middle game thru drone problems being harder to control than for the others and in the end game re ecological problems being harder to mitigate.

Maybe a win bonus for such a player would be more appropriate than not counting a loss?

Googlie

	19-12-2000 10:58									#16
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I know that in Civ2 tech cost increased with difficulty level. I don't know about SMAC, but I would be very surprised if they had changed this.