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[Brendan]

I heard that evil genius was total crap but I didn't play anything other than the demo. Did they patch it up or something?

It's great unless you think that games are Serious Business. The game is comedic the whole way through, right down to the cartoon violence and how your minions torture prisoners by dancing like Michael Jackson, among other humorous methods. and there's a lot of spy movie humour. Think of it like Dungeon Keeper and Austin Powers' love child.

As for Battle for Wesnoth...when I first played it, I hated luck. It seemed to me like luck foiled my every strategy; I became convinced that the game gave the AI favorable rolls on the random number generator that dictated how much damage they could do to me and how much I could do to them. I quit in frustration.

But later I came back to it (a few months ago) and read up on luck in the forums. The random number generator has been proven multiple times to be fair, even tweaked so that it gave a good distribution. I decided to plan for the worst rather than for what I expected. It feels more realistic, using overwhelming force and making contingency plans, and luck doesn't bother me anymore.

I think the real reason why luck bothers people so much when they're playing Battle for Wesnoth, though, is because it's right there in your face. Attacking tells you the probabilities of the enemy hitting you in counterattack, the probability of all of your shots missing, and so on, and with all that information in your face to begin with it stings a lot more when you lose what seemed like a sure bet. And sure, you'd notice if you lost what seemed an impossible gambit, but people don't tally those. So when you get all worked up when the random distribution of damage demolishes your forces, it's really gambler's fallacy in action.

I think that a proper combat system should not be so random. Basically the whole game is all about luck. The complexity of the game is also very low [personally I dont like simple games] + strategically its not a real challenge at all...but again, this is my subjective opinion only.

It's actually a lot more complex than it may seem, at first, but it's mostly a strategic game. While there is a slight 'rock-paper-scissors' element to it (mostly through terrain bonuses) it's not like other strategy games where you have units A through Z, where A is the 'Unit Z' killer and B is the 'Unit Y Killer' but Y is the 'Unit A' killer. Anything can attack any other unit effectively, but some units have weaknesses (like no ranged attack) which can be exploited.

[ricemastah]

I just going to say that when a computer has a 30% chance of hitting you with a charge and has 2 attacks I would like to be confident enough to assume that really only one should hit. If even, but when I play Wesnoth I really don't feel safe enough to make that assumption. And that is not right

EDIT: That is not to say that I don't like the game. It is actually quite enjoyable

[Magnnus]

I just going to say that when a computer has a 30% chance of hitting you with a charge and has 2 attacks I would like to be confident enough to assume that really only one should hit. If even, but when I play Wesnoth I really don't feel safe enough to make that assumption. And that is not right

EDIT: That is not to say that I don't like the game. It is actually quite enjoyable

It seems perfectly right to me that that you shouldn't feel safe about that attack. Think about it realistically: If you have a knife in your hand and your opponent has a knife in his hand and you can attempt two jabs at your opponent before he is able to counter attack, but you have a very low chance of hitting your opponent with either jab (30%). Would you rather take the risk of attacking, which would kill you opponent if you succeed, but leave you off guard when your opponent has a chance to counter attack. Or would you rather play it safe and either act defensively or run.

Of course the scenario is not not a perfect correlation, but I always find that it helps to relate something unfamiliar to something familiar. Regardless the moral is that when there are great consequences for failure, even a good chance is not enough.

[Ashery]

I just going to say that when a computer has a 30% chance of hitting you with a charge and has 2 attacks I would like to be confident enough to assume that really only one should hit. If even, but when I play Wesnoth I really don't feel safe enough to make that assumption. And that is not right

EDIT: That is not to say that I don't like the game. It is actually quite enjoyable

So you have a 0.09 chance for both to hit, 0.42 for only one, and 0.49 for none.

So a 9% chance, 1 out of a 11 would hit twice. That's not *that* unlikely. Certainly not an ideal situation, but one that'll happen relatively often.

[Angellus]

Again, Wesnoth is not for everyone. It might follow the KISS rules but sometimes that is what people want. When you play it you can almost hear the dice rolling in the background.

An example of a hex based that doesn't on luck and more tactics and stats is People's General from HOTU. Its the same genre as Wesnoth but has tanks and jets and stuff.

For good ways to spend time there are a lot of free options. Wesnoth was one, Soldat is worth a shot, Savage 2 has a free trial, and they do free events every now and then. Uh... go sift through Home of the Underdogs for some golden oldies. Master of magic, Master of orion, XCOM 1 and 2, and 3 but that one is hard to configure. Most of the HOTU stuff needs dosbox though.

Lots of stuff.

Savage 2 is bloody great :XD (I have had a free account trough a game reviewing podcast I participated in, but they killed the account ...)
Waiting for it to become cheaper, or myself to have more money available

[grukobok]

As for Battle for Wesnoth... Are the Civilization games bad because there's luck involved? Is X-COM bad because there's luck involved? No. Risk management is a part of these games, as it is in Wesnoth.

I think it also fights the slippery slope effect prevalent in less luck-based strategy games, like Starcraft (Which also has a luck element in that there is a chance to miss units placed in certain locations, but it's a very minor one), where win or loss is often decided the moment one side makes a slight mistake, which creates a small advantage, leading to greater and greater advantages until the side loses. In Wesnoth, mistakes matter - there are ways to exploit them with minimum risk to create advantages that lead to an economy superiority, and sooner or later to victory. But if the disadvantage is small, some smartly thought out high-risk-high-gain bold moves and luck on your side later suddenly YOU'RE in front.

He wasn't saying luck is bad, he was saying too much is bad. If you read his post, he said that winning/losing was random, despite their stats. How can you make a strategy when everything is random? If all units have a 50% chance of killing the other, what is the purpose of having offensive/defensive units? Where's the fun in that. I love details - the kind that can kill you when you miss them. I think he must be wrong about his assessment, but you're also wrong.

How you can make a strategy when "everything is random"? Have you ever even played the game? If not, stating that I'm wrong is a pretty bold move.

The random elements are restricted to the distribution of traits (small boni, like extra HP or slightly faster movement) for certain units upon recruitment, part of the algorithm that determines if an attack hits (highly dependant on terrain type and how well the unit defends on the terrain type, it's rarely a 50% chance), and... um... well, if you choose a random faction or a random leader the result is random too, of course. That's all that's even remotely "random" about the main game.
Unit stats, like HP, XP needed for levelup, special abilities, resistances, defense on the terrain types, movement (how many, across what terrain), attacks (How many different kinds? Ranged or melee? Blade, pierce, impact, fire, cold, arcane? Is the attack poisonous or magical or has it any of the other special attack effects?), the units further up the upgrade tree, recruitment cost... Then of course the map layout doesn't suddenly change at random throughout a match, featuring the same terrain at all time... The result of the mixture of these predermined factors and the randomness - surprise surprise - is a game of strategy, with plenty room for skill, and mistakes or overlooked details.

Some people don't like having to dick around with five different resources, so they prefer Command and Conquer to Age of Empires. Similarly, if you don't like having to consider the possibility of failure for an attack, or the fact that sometimes you will just be too unlucky to win even if you do your best, you won't play Battle for Wesnoth. Claiming it is not a strategy game because it forces you to consider things in your strategy that you'd rather not want to consider, however, would be unfair.

Alright, loook, I'm not here to argue with you. What you said was wrong. You took his statements to mean that any luck in a game is bad. Then you went on a long winded tour of the reasons luck should be in games - which is off topic and pointing out what most of us already know. That's just wrong. His assessment was that there was too much luck in wesnoth, not that there was luck. Youl should have corrected him and said that his assessment of the luck dynamics in wesnoth were wrong. You could have simply told him, "Winning/losing in wesnoth is not totally random. Things like a unit's race and where the unit is located can influence its defensive and offensive capabilities. If you don't like wesnoth, atleast give a good reason why." That is why I told you that he is probably wrong about his assessment. I told you in my reply that I doubt that wesnoth is as random as he asserted, but please don't misunderstand what someone posts and then write several defunct paragraphs to incite hostilities.

Peace, bro. Wesnoth is prolly a great strategy game, but I've already tried it myself. It just doesn't have the kind of detail and breadth I'm looking for. I'm fine with luck in games. Few games out there approach what I"m interested in so there's only several that I can think of. After having delved into the DF site and forum, and having made my first attempts at building a fortress, I'm pretty sure DF is one of them. Some others that I like are Daggerfall (they randomly generated the entire map, but I wish they had improved on this tehcnique instead of dumping it when they made the sequels), Nethack (it's a great system, but a good rpg needs a world not just a game - compare diablo to oblivion), Conquest of the New World: Deluxe Ed., Moo 1/II, Majesty: Gold edition. There're some others, but I'm most interested in games that seek to become -worlds- with a non-linear feel to them - especially when they're RPGs. I hate plot-driven gameplay. I hate being in a box and told what to do.

[grukobok]

I just going to say that when a computer has a 30% chance of hitting you with a charge and has 2 attacks I would like to be confident enough to assume that really only one should hit. If even, but when I play Wesnoth I really don't feel safe enough to make that assumption. And that is not right

EDIT: That is not to say that I don't like the game. It is actually quite enjoyable

It seems perfectly right to me that that you shouldn't feel safe about that attack. Think about it realistically: If you have a knife in your hand and your opponent has a knife in his hand and you can attempt two jabs at your opponent before he is able to counter attack, but you have a very low chance of hitting your opponent with either jab (30%). Would you rather take the risk of attacking, which would kill you opponent if you succeed, but leave you off guard when your opponent has a chance to counter attack. Or would you rather play it safe and either act defensively or run.

Of course the scenario is not not a perfect correlation, but I always find that it helps to relate something unfamiliar to something familiar. Regardless the moral is that when there are great consequences for failure, even a good chance is not enough.

Agreed. It's possible that a unit facing a superior foe should experience some kind of terror or foreboding. If the odds were something like 15% chance that you'd hit, why sit and die? I'd run! Lol. That would take some of the pain away rather than always having weaker units attack and sometimes getting a lucky hit/cheapsot. It's kind of like inferior mobs in an rpg that attack you rather than fleeing - it gets very annoying after a while.

[Silfir]

It was not my intention to incite hostilities, I'm sorry if anything was understood that way. You're right that I misunderstood him in that there's too much luck, and you were right for pointing that out. Which is why it's beyond me why you suddenly stated things like "Units have a 50% of killing enemy units, where's the fun" or "Not everything should be random", in other words, suddenly YOU were actually stating what I thought he stated before, and now I did exactly as you said and explained the various reasons why Wesnoth is NOT "all about luck".

The word you should've used isn't "wrong", though. I misunderstood him, which doesn't make my statements "wrong", but "not applicable" or something like that. That's probably what rubbed me the wrong way in your post. I'm fine with being wrong and told so, but I'd prefer it if it happened when I, y'know, actually was wrong.

Silfir, you should try out civ4 bts [if its possible with the ffh2 mod], and compare it to wesnoth.
You will notice how random Wesnoth combat is compared to that.

Civilization IV? Last I checked, units had HP, and who hit whom during the combat rounds was dependant on the strength of both units, modified by terrain, unit types, and multiple factors - and a random number generator. The game gives you probabilities for winning, and often enough I've had units with 90% chance of winning get brutally slaughtered. There's not really much difference at all - only of course that CivIV only shows the results, not the process itself, and combat is followed through until there is a loser.

If you invade an enemy city, don't you bring twice the number of attackers as there are defenders in the city, precisely BECAUSE you need them in case things don't turn out your way?

(Not sure if the mod you named - I do have Beyond the Sword - changes things about this...)

[grukobok]

It was not my intention to incite hostilities, I'm sorry if anything was understood that way. You're right that I misunderstood him in that there's too much luck, and you were right for pointing that out. Which is why it's beyond me why you suddenly stated things like "Units have a 50% of killing enemy units, where's the fun" or "Not everything should be random", in other words, suddenly YOU were actually stating what I thought he stated before, and now I did exactly as you said and explained the various reasons why Wesnoth is NOT "all about luck".

The word you should've used isn't "wrong", though. I misunderstood him, which doesn't make my statements "wrong", but "not applicable" or something like that. That's probably what rubbed me the wrong way in your post. I'm fine with being wrong and told so, but I'd prefer it if it happened when I, y'know, actually was wrong.

Silfir, you should try out civ4 bts [if its possible with the ffh2 mod], and compare it to wesnoth.
You will notice how random Wesnoth combat is compared to that.

Civilization IV? Last I checked, units had HP, and who hit whom during the combat rounds was dependant on the strength of both units, modified by terrain, unit types, and multiple factors - and a random number generator. The game gives you probabilities for winning, and often enough I've had units with 90% chance of winning get brutally slaughtered. There's not really much difference at all - only of course that CivIV only shows the results, not the process itself, and combat is followed through until there is a loser.

If you invade an enemy city, don't you bring twice the number of attackers as there are defenders in the city, precisely BECAUSE you need them in case things don't turn out your way?

(Not sure if the mod you named - I do have Beyond the Sword - changes things about this...)

*cries*

Maybe I didn't word it right. I was trying to explain to you how he might have felt. Re-read the first paragraph. If he really did feel that things were too randomized, then I felt you needed to understand where he was coming from. So I tried to explain why it would be bad if things were too randomized (i wasn't saying things were). I'm sorry I didn't explicitly say that I was trying to explain his point of view (not mine - that's why I said that I doubted his assessment). Maybe, having understood where he's coming from, you could help get some sense into his head instead of going off into other territory.

And yes, you were wrong. Having misinterpreted his post, you went on a long rant about how games should have luck - most of us already know that. You should have just stuck with "Wesnoth isn't as random as you're suggesting."

[Sean Mirrsen]

I like Advance Wars, if only because it's like chess - you always know what kind of damage you can deal and receive.

In RTS games, simple RNG-based systems suck, and direct "always hit" a-la the 'crafts are too widespread and make for extensive micromanagement during combat. Supreme Commander was going to change that trend, but eventually fell to it as well. TA is still the only RTS where careful selection of forces and planning mean more than micromanaging skills.

[Deon]

FFH2

Fall from heaven is a very nice mod. Though it's MP strategy is totally unknown for me , because I'm used to regular Civ4 =).

[grukobok]

It's not only with the Small Cave in ADOM (a place where the first thing you find is a scroll of warning stating "Time is working against you" - that's pretty forgiving in my eyes!). Killing hundreds upon hundreds of some monster species can lead to an "Über"-version of said monster that does hundreds of damage per hit. It's often experienced with worms, jackals, and battle bunnies (gremlins after several thousand).

It's buggy - the effect, though intended is not supposed to be that brutal. As it is it discourages people from killing the same type of monster over and over and over again to get more stuff (the process called "grinding"). Whether this is a good thing or not... Your mileage may vary. I like that aspect. ADOM is a strategy game anyway, not a grinder.

As for Battle for Wesnoth... Are the Civilization games bad because there's luck involved? Is X-COM bad because there's luck involved? No. Risk management is a part of these games, as it is in Wesnoth.

I think it also fights the slippery slope effect prevalent in less luck-based strategy games, like Starcraft (Which also has a luck element in that there is a chance to miss units placed in certain locations, but it's a very minor one), where win or loss is often decided the moment one side makes a slight mistake, which creates a small advantage, leading to greater and greater advantages until the side loses. In Wesnoth, mistakes matter - there are ways to exploit them with minimum risk to create advantages that lead to an economy superiority, and sooner or later to victory. But if the disadvantage is small, some smartly thought out high-risk-high-gain bold moves and luck on your side later suddenly YOU'RE in front.

Silfir, I'm referring to this post. He wasn't saying luck is bad, he was saying he thought there was too much of it in wesnoth. You corrected him in a later post, but you still seemed to have the same interpretation of his post.

[Tormy]

FFH2

Fall from heaven is a very nice mod. Though it's MP strategy is totally unknown for me , because I'm used to regular Civ4 =).

Its awesome in MP...also its hellish hard in SP at Emperor+ diff level. The AI is literically recruiting huge armies and making quite nice strategical moves with them. Example in my last game, in what I managed to ally with 3 other AIs, so it was me + 3 AIs vs. 4 AIs [1 AI had 3 vassal AI civs]...so in that the other party has declared war. In 2 turns my ally AI's city was under attack by ~320!!!!!!!! units. It is insane, but awesome also. Also about the intelligence of the AI. After like 20 turns has passed after the war broke out, and my ally AI [who had 2 vassals] signed a peace with the other party. Even after peace, the AI is stationing huge number of units near the borders. I am really amazed by the BtS AI so far...

[Deon]

I don't know, I easily beat AI on Deity with a few civs. There are anti-AI strategies which can't work against human player.
If you don't give AI place to expand and use AIscrewing strategies (like with cheaterish Balseraphs) you win.
Of course I play on <= Standard maps on Deity.

[Tormy]

I don't know, I easily beat AI on Deity with a few civs. There are anti-AI strategies which can't work against human player.
If you don't give AI place to expand and use AIscrewing strategies (like with cheaterish Balseraphs) you win.
Of course I play on <= Standard maps on Deity.

Im not exploiting the AI. I normally expand, and let them expand also. Try that, and you will have a very hard time to win even. In fact if 2 AI will declare war on you, you can hit the restart button asap. 
Also have you been using the FfH2 mod + BtS 3.17? The AI is much better in BtS than it was in vanilla Civ4. I doubt that you can exploit the AI in that. When I first had contact with an AI in my latest game, it had 5 towns already and much bigger military compared to mine...and I was scouting quite fast. [I play on huge maps with 9-10 AIs]. Actually in FfH 2. mod you cannot scout that fast, since the max scout range is 2 / turn afaik, at least for the orcs.