ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

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Netherlands Goodspeed
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ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Goodspeed »

Hi all,

It's time for another balance poll :smile: While the new state of balance hasn't yet been given enough time to fully settle, we are still curious where you all stand when it comes to civ balance after a couple of months of being able to play around with the new changes.
Please don't vote unless you have played games on the patch. In any case, this result will be mostly based on speculation based on the changes, and like last time it will be interesting to see if results from the same poll months from now will be different at all. For example last time when we had just released the patch Ottomans were considered a top 3 civ, and in the poll months later they were suddenly bottom 3 despite the polls both being about the same version.
The previous poll was back in May this year, its results can be viewed here. Note that poll was about EP 1, this one is about EP 2.

The new form: https://goo.gl/forms/Ibsn6pnVz6xhyles1
Results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

This is only with 1v1 in mind, as teamgame balance is very different. No worries though we do intend to address team balance as well, as we did in EP 2.0.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by momuuu »

Do I rate the best civ 10 or just rate the civ compared to a hypothetical civ that beats every other civ?
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Goodspeed »

Use the scale however you want, as long as it's not just 1s and 10s. The differences in interpretation of the scale even out after many responses.
Personally I would make tiers and start at 5 for the average civ then 6 for the tier above that and 4 for the tier below that etc. The scale allows 10 tiers but realistically you will have less.
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Austria KINGofOsmane
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by KINGofOsmane »

japan second best civ lol?
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by EAGLEMUT »

KINGofOsmane wrote:japan second best civ lol?


@chrisie
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momuuu wrote: ↑theres no way eaglemut is truly a top player
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Italy Garja
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Garja »

There are the usual biases due to temporay popularity of civs, but overall it's not that bad so far.
Notably:
- Russia, Dutch and Spain are now randomly considered better than French when they used to be dominated by such civ;
- Ottomans are very likely one of the civs that would grant the highest win rate with the same strats as the RE patch, but they're not popular, so they're considered shit;
- Ports, as ugly as the 80f change was, they're not better than any other civ unconditionally.

I suspect most of votes so far had team balance in mind.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

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Post by knusch »

Garja wrote:- Ports, as ugly as the 90f change was, they're not better than any other civ unconditionally.


maybe u think ports r fine, coz u pay 90f for your vills ;)
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Garja »

Corrected
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Hazza54321 »

surprised dutch isnt top
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by momuuu »

My opinion:

Tier 1 (rated with 9)
Aztec, Brits, Ports
Tier 2 (rated with 8, very close to tier 1 imo)
Dutch, Japan, Spain
Tier 3 (honestly might rate those tier 2 or tier 1 too, its too close, rated 7)
Russia China
Tier 4 (could be that I'm overestimating nerfs here)
France (6)
Germans, India (5)
Tier 5 (shit)
Iro (3)
Sioux (2)
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by zoom »

Hazza54321 wrote:surprised dutch isnt top
Oh please!
:chinese:
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by lordraphael »

no way that french is that low in the tierlist. On the other hand theres no one decent playing fre at the moment so im not surprised.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by gibson »

Just looking at this makes me think that the average pr of person voting is probably around 10. No way french is all the way down to 9. German at 11, thats just way way to low. Otto at 10 is also too low. Port is definitely not 1. Dutch at 3 is too high. Spain at 8 is too low. Russia at 4 is probably too high too, considering that their change saves them only 90 food through the first 7 mintues of the game and than 3 stre in age 3. It feels like half the people voted based off of team balance and than half the the remaining people used a random number generator.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by zoom »

lordraphael wrote:no way that french is that low in the tierlist. On the other hand theres no one decent playing fre at the moment so im not surprised.
:salt: :salt: :salt:

An unqualified guess on my part, is that French are just above average on this patch. I don't know what you think, precisely.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by zoom »

'the fuck's "adjusted???"
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Goodspeed »

gibson wrote:Just looking at this makes me think that the average pr of person voting is probably around 10. No way french is all the way down to 9. German at 11, thats just way way to low. Otto at 10 is also too low. Port is definitely not 1. Dutch at 3 is too high. Spain at 8 is too low. Russia at 4 is probably too high too, considering that their change saves them only 90 food through the first 7 mintues of the game and than 3 stre in age 3. It feels like half the people voted based off of team balance and than half the the remaining people used a random number generator.
Goes to show how hard it is to get a proper grasp on balance. Effects of changes are often overestimated, but at the same time if the entire community thinks a civ is very good it tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy; people will play the civ more and find its best builds, and try hard to find counters to everything rather than going "oh I can't beat that because my civ isn't good enough".
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Goodspeed »

zoom wrote:'the fuck's "adjusted???"
The adjusted scores are for a better comparison to the previous poll. In short it adjusts the civ scores according to the difference in average deviation between the 2 polls.
If the avg deviation is 1.00 in this poll and was 2.00 in the previous poll, the "from norm" scores of the civs will all be multiplied by 2. So if Brits are +1 from the average and they were +2 last poll, and the average deviations are 1.00 and 2.00 respectively, the +1 is adjusted to +2 in order to better represent the difference in strength between Brits in the last poll and this one. In this example if you were looking at the unadjusted scores you would think Brits are -1 weaker than last poll, but relatively they are the same strength which is where the adjusted score comes in.

In this case the previous poll had an average deviation of .95 and this time it's .83, which means the "from norm" civ scores are adjusted slightly upwards (or downwards in case of negative).

Hope that was clear :hmm:
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by momuuu »

gibson wrote:Just looking at this makes me think that the average pr of person voting is probably around 10. No way french is all the way down to 9. German at 11, thats just way way to low. Otto at 10 is also too low. Port is definitely not 1. Dutch at 3 is too high. Spain at 8 is too low. Russia at 4 is probably too high too, considering that their change saves them only 90 food through the first 7 mintues of the game and than 3 stre in age 3. It feels like half the people voted based off of team balance and than half the the remaining people used a random number generator.

Or the balance changes are overestimated while the balance has actually gotten really close. My ratings from india (5) to ports (9), two unchanged civs, is from one tier to another in previous tier lists I made. In other words: I think the balance is closer than ever before.

Dutch is OP though :chinese:
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by zoom »

Goodspeed wrote:
zoom wrote:'the fuck's "adjusted???"
The adjusted scores are for a better comparison to the previous poll. In short it adjusts the civ scores according to the difference in average deviation between the 2 polls.
If the avg deviation is 1.00 in this poll and was 2.00 in the previous poll, the "from norm" scores of the civs will all be multiplied by 2. So if Brits are +1 from the average and they were +2 last poll, and the average deviations are 1.00 and 2.00 respectively, the +1 is adjusted to +2 in order to better represent the difference in strength between Brits in the last poll and this one. In this example if you were looking at the unadjusted scores you would think Brits are -1 weaker than last poll, but relatively they are the same strength which is where the adjusted score comes in.

In this case the previous poll had an average deviation of .95 and this time it's .83, which means the "from norm" civ scores are adjusted slightly upwards (or downwards in case of negative).

Hope that was clear :hmm:
Not at all but thank you very much!
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by zoom »

Goodspeed wrote:
gibson wrote:Just looking at this makes me think that the average pr of person voting is probably around 10. No way french is all the way down to 9. German at 11, thats just way way to low. Otto at 10 is also too low. Port is definitely not 1. Dutch at 3 is too high. Spain at 8 is too low. Russia at 4 is probably too high too, considering that their change saves them only 90 food through the first 7 mintues of the game and than 3 stre in age 3. It feels like half the people voted based off of team balance and than half the the remaining people used a random number generator.
Goes to show how hard it is to get a proper grasp on balance. Effects of changes are often overestimated, but at the same time if the entire community thinks a civ is very good it tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy; people will play the civ more and find its best builds, and try hard to find counters to everything rather than going "oh I can't beat that because my civ isn't good enough".
More than anything, I suspect it comes down to human psychology being prone to assigning significance strictly from emotion and intuition, so whatever reasoning is made often has a relatively light impact on the perception. This is particularly evident by the prevalence of outlier votes, despite logic dictating that balance is more or less improved; especially compared to RE.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Garja »

There was bias with the first votes, now there is even more confirmation bias.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by zoom »

Garja wrote:There was bias with the first votes, now there is even more confirmation bias.
Do you think people analyze the results before voting..?
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Garja »

Ye I think some do. But it is mostly the word of mouth that leads to confirmation bias.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by WickedCossack »

I'm always amazed at how high brits get rated every patch. I suppose it's because they can be competitive in every match up but I still think they lose most of them even if it's only slight.
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Re: ESOC patch balance poll #3 (1v1)

Post by Goodspeed »

Brits are secret top civ. At this point though I'm starting to suspect no one will ever be good enough to lame them to their full potential.

:hmm:

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