Goodspeed wrote:Ok @
Garja I guess I will try to explain the reasoning one more time even though the food crate change is not going to be in the patch. We may change crates in another way though so it's important for you and everyone else to understand why China's current crate situation is a big problem, and while there is no ideal fix we should look for the lesser evil. I hope I manage to convey my thoughts, because I find this is not at all easy to put into words.
Where we are ultimately in disagreement is that you, for some reason, consider China's crate history relevant to whether it deserves the additional food crate. I'm getting deja vu here so I think I probably argued this already somewhere else, but anyway, what I see is very simply a civ which gets no random crate. Looking at purely the current state of affairs, that's what anyone would see. What you see is a civ which was balanced before but had issues with consistency, so they fixed the random crate to wood to make it more consistent. You then argue that since they got this free wood crate where other civs only get this in 1/3 of spawns, they don't deserve the additional random food crate that other civs get.
A civ "deserves" whatever crates make them balanced. There is no magic truth when it comes to which crates a civ should or shouldn't get, and
the history of its crate start is not relevant to its current situation. Which crates a civ "deserves" depends entirely on their position on the balance scale, which is decided by a lot more than just crate starts and it changes with time.
The meta changed and we changed things in the patch which means balance is completely different from where it was back when they made that decision. Their reasoning, and the fact that China's crate was effectively fixed to wood, is no longer relevant. The current situation is that China lacks a random crate, which is neither good for them nor bad for them. Understand this if nothing else. It's not good for them or bad for them, it's just not balanced, because China's strength is
based on the crate start of the opposing civ (therefore based on pure chance). It is that opposing crate start we should be comparing to.
So what is currently the situation?
China's crates are fixed. What are they fixed to?
Doesn't matter. What matters is the difference between the opposing civ's possible starts.
Other civs get the following random crates:
100w in 1/6 of spawns
100w + 100f in 1/6 of spawns
100f in 1/3 of spawns
100c in 1/6 of spawns
100c + 100f in 1/6 of spawns
So you can have 2 spawns where in one of them, China's opponent has 100w and 100f in random crates. In the other, they get only 100c.
In which of these spawns would you rather be the China player?
Please note how huge of a difference 100w+100f vs 100c is. Take a second here to imagine the impact if we took away 100f+100w from any civ's crate start and replaced it with 100c. They would instantly become unplayable.
They would lose every match up. This is a much bigger balance issue than I think anyone currently realises. This makes sense, because over many games the issue is not prevalent. I doubt anyone ever played China and after losing thought "damn, I lost this game due to the other player getting a wood start (therefore an early TP) and ageing up 10 seconds before they normally would because they also got an additional 100f". No, they think they lost because of this and that mistake, or their opponent outplaying them or China being a shitty civ. Same thing but the other way around when they win because the opponent started with just the 100c.
The problem is that in any given map spawn, China can start with a big advantage or a big disadvantage (or neither, in about half of the spawns).
Do you understand that China's own crates are not relevant to this point? All that matters is that they are fixed and therefore cause the above imbalance.
The proposed change would mean that China would get the additional food crate in the 2/6 cases where the opposing civ also gets the additional food crate. The first spawn in my example above would then be more balanced. There, the opponent still gets 100w and 100f but China also gets +100f. In the second spawn, there is no change. Still not ideal, but it balances the crate spawns without messing up the consistency in China's start that ES wanted to accomplish by fixing their wood crate. The situation would then be:
Other civs get:
100w in 1/6 of spawns
100w
+ 100f in 1/6 of spawns,
China gets +100f100f in 1/3 of spawns
100c in 1/6 of spawns
100c
+ 100f in 1/6 of spawns,
China gets +100fAnyway, moving on.
We're currently considering removing a wood crate, adding 100f and adding the random crate(s). This would be a slight buff, so we'll have to consider ways to compensate.
The impact would be, compared to China's current 200f 300w start:
In 1/6 of spawns they get +100f (other civs: 100w)
In 1/6 of spawns they get +200f (other civs: 100w + 100f)
In 1/3 of spawns they get +200f -100w (other civs: 100f)
In 1/6 of spawns they get +100f +100c -100w (other civs: 100c)
In 1/6 of spawns they get +200f +100c -100w (other civs: 100c + 100f)