Praetor duels

[Buffoon]

I hope the current system of praetor duels is just a placeholder. It is very boring and nebulous really. Every praetor pretty much seems the same.

The original system of dueling was one of the most fun parts of the game. I loved how you chose actions for each segment of the round, and each praetor felt very different. Please bring the old system back!

I will say that I LOVED the demo. I'm so glad that this remake was very similar to the original. The original was a very unique game even to this day. I loved it.

I hope the final game will have many starting options (difficulties, AI players, etc)

[DragofLord]

So I would like to add to this discussion that Praetors can be stolen from a vault, but it requires a divination to pierce (assuming I understood what I was seeing when I used the spell). So keeping things in your vault safe is done largely by building prophecy resistance.

[Eccy]

I agree with the premise that current Praetor duels are way too boring and under-climatic. The original SI had a system with rounds in duel which you set for him to determine your strategy during the duel. It felt really like a fight, and was very satisfying to watch later on (even if mine died I can adjust the strategy for the future),

Duels now are just about one strike. Not as close to be interesting to the previous mechanics.

[intelligent worker probe]

My main think I dislike about the Praetor duels, summarized:
* rock paper scissor (with some slight weight advantage - on higher level Praetor and/or bribing the judge)
* completely useless manuscripts -> why even bother buying and training, if your Praetors dies in a single dice roll anyway? Currently it only clutters the bazaar with options no one will ever buy (except the AI)
* no experience and/or levels for praetors or/and no way to train your Praetor to become better/stronger
* no strategic value (example/idea being "champion of hell" giving you +1/+2/+3 prestige per turn)
* sudden death, maybe let them get wounded first? Praetor wounds could be permanent.
* easily get stolen (maybe add some resistance / trainable manuscript to increase chances of defense?)
* suggestion/idea: disallow Praetors who are attached to combat units -> does not feel logical for a Praetor to be in 2 places at once
* all of the above make it hard to create an emotional attachment

I think the main cognitive dissonance of players are the wrong expectation, because
* the normal/current battle are (nearly) completely deterministic with a brilliant combat system,
* while the Praetor duels are more like rock-paper-scissors -> that reward the player with the most amount of (disposable) praetors -> so its more a numbers/economy game (who can afford to lose more of them without impacting combat capability).

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Here's a short list of my problems with Praetor Dueling:

1) How it works is not explained well enough.

Drakken の投稿を引用：

Geez, its like there's an Encyclopaedia entry just for explaining how Preator Duels work.

Yes, there is an encyclopaedia entry on Praetor Dueling, and it tells the player just enough to trick an optimist into thinking they understand how it works. The Dark Lord is in the details, as they say, and the details are lacking in this case.

Consider this comment from above:

Nikratio の投稿を引用：

In any case,t here are actions like "cancel the opponents action" - but how does that interact with the rock-paper-scissor mechanic?

I don't feel like this got the attention that it deserved, so allow me to give a specific example, to illustrate the woeful inadequacy the EI entry for Praetor Dueling:

Imagine a duel in which you choose an Orb technique that states it cancels your opponent's technique. Your opponent chooses a Skulls technique that states that if the praetor is defeated they are not banished (or "executed", as the EI dissonantly refers to it).

Does your opponent's Skull technique cancel your Orb technique before it can cancel theirs? Or does your technique's effect of canceling your opponent's technique cancel your opponent's Skull technique before it can cancel your Orb technique? Does your opponent's protection from banishment take effect before the cancellations are considered, or is it cancelled when your technique cancels theirs, in the case that your cancellation takes place before their cancellation?

Not only does the EI fail to explain how this situation is resolved, it also fails to list the moves that each Praetor starts with, and it fails to list all of the techniques available in the game (and how they function, and how they interact). The knowledge it imparts is less "encyclopaedic" and more like a pamphlet you might find in the arena lobby - ie something designed to impart just enough information to help an observer to have a sense of what is going on, rather than imparting enough information for a participant to actually make good decisions about how to play the game.

2) Cancellation mechanics overwhelm the more subtle aspects of the process.
The effect of canceling your opponent's technique is so dramatic that trying to do anything else is inferior (unless you are trying to lose). Having all of your decisions revolve around that one goal feels like it strips away any subtlety or treachery from that process that it might have had (if designed differently). You need to submit a Praetor that you believe will be able to cancel your opponent's technique, you need to be looking for a Praetor that has a strong cancellation technique so that they can be your go-to duelist, and if you are going to use manuscripts to improve a Praetor's suitability as a duelist then you need to be looking for a cancellation technique to upgrade them with.

The reason it becomes so important is that if you aren't canceling your opponent's technique then they may cancel yours. Your other options are eliminated because cancellation is both the best offense and the best defense. The result is that all other choices are inferior, and that is boring and unsatisfying.

3) Bribery turns the process into just another tribute = victory mechanic.
Naturally, if your opponent makes a bad decision then they can lose regardless of what happens with bribery. If everyone is playing equally well, though, then you have each cancelled the other's technique, and your Praetors' strengths alone are the determining factor... before bribes. Praetors come in strengths from 1 to 5, and if your opponent has fielded a strength 1 Praetor they are probably going to lose... but again, assuming your opponent is as competent as you they are likely fielding a Praetor that is no more than 1 point stronger or weaker than yours.

Then bribery comes in, and the impact can be huge if there is a disparity of Charisma between the two archfiends. Several of them have Charisma zero to start, and others have one or two (and raising Charisma from one to two is not that hard). The result is that it is a very common occurrence for a Charisma zero archfiend to be sending a Praetor into combat with Praetor belonging to an archfiend with a Charisma of two. If team zero has a two-point advantage before bribes, but loses the bribe, suddenly they both lose their Praetors (and team zero lost the most, because their Praetor was better).

If you happen to know your opponent's exact Charisma when the duel takes place then you might be able to identify situations where losing the bribe won't hurt you, and that's a great position to be in. Most of the time, though, you won't have that luxury, and so even if you have a clearly superior Praetor you're going to have to throw a bunch of tribute at the fight just to protect your investment. The reason for this is that the swing range of the bribery outcome is equal to your Charisma plus your opponent's Charisma. So, for example, if you each have Charisma three, the swing is six: assuming everything else is equal, if you win the bribe you win by three, but if you lose the bribe you lose by three.

In a competition where a one-point advantage would otherwise be a big deal, that kind of shift from the outcome of bribery just blows away everything else. Reconsidering the example above, if you were ahead by one before bribery (instead of even) then winning the bribe would mean winning the duel by four, but losing the bribe would mean losing the duel by two. At higher Charisma levels the situation is even more extreme, to the point that a rating one Praetor with the winning bribe can easily defeat a rating five Praetor. In other words, as the game goes on, with everyone doing everything they can to maximize their chance of winning duels, and giving them credit for having done so effectively, soon all that matters is who throws the most tribute at the outcome.

That seems to me like a sad death for what could have been an otherwise interesting interaction.

4) The details of what transpires in the arena are hidden from the participants.
It makes some sense that casual bystanders might not perceive the full details of what goes into determining the outcome of a duel. The actual participants, however, should have some greater insight into the process and should receive a more detailed report of what transpired.

Currently, as a participant in a duel, all you learn is the outcome. Who won, who lost, who was banished, etc. You don't see what technique your opponent played, or how your two techniques interacted with one another, or the outcome of the bribery, or what the final damage totals of each side were. I assume that this is intentional, leaving the winner potentially overconfident and the loser potentially confused. I see some value in that, but I see greater value is allowing all of the details to be known to the participants.

Part of the whole RPS game is learning how your opponent plays that game, and trying to use that to predict what they will do next, and trying to prevent your opponent from learning how you play (or tricking them into drawing the wrong conclusions so that you can use their confidence against them later). It seems odd and detrimental to have an RPS mechanic as part of duels but then cut out that core aspect of the gameplay by keeping the players in the dark about how their opponent is playing the game - especially since that subtle dance of prediction, deception and trickery is so perfect for a game set in hell.

Giving the participants information about what transpires in the arena to determine the victor would add another dimension to the game, introducing some delicious and spicy notes into otherwise bland fare.

[Strill]

I agree dueling skill manuscripts are really unimpressive. I'm pretty much never happy to get one because what skill you use is just really unimportant, which is not a good state for the game. The dueling skills just get cancelled out all the time, so you have to prioritize unconditional damage, like the praetor's level, the altar of ash, bribing, and Andromalius's ritual.

The plentiful sources of unconditional damage, and the irrelevance of the rock paper scissors mechanic also means that it's literally impossible to win a duel as the underdog. You absolutely have to get into a military conflict and kill or steal the praetor first.

Even if the rock paper scissors mechanic were more important, however, the high lethality of praetor duels still means dueling manuscripts are junk, because they get wasted the first time you fail. In a game where you aren't andromalius, and therefore can't guarantee dueling victory, spending 3 or 4 actions to buy/find manuscript parts and then use them to learn a single dueling skill is just a terrible waste of resources over just buying a better praetor.

Thinking things through, a lot of my criticisms of the dueling system, such as high lethality and the ability to guarantee victory, also apply to military combat. The main difference is that military has several additional layers of interaction to find an advantage, such as rituals, stratagems, support, special cantons, and farming abyss striders. Military also has more incentive to invest heavily in a legion to cap places of power, which can be done risk free. Reformation also incentivizes you to use manuscripta on your starter legion, since manuscript buffs come back with the legion after they die. Perhaps dueling manuals would be more useful if there were analogous systems for dueling, such as some alternative way to benefit from praetor dueling, like dueling vs npcs? And dueling would certainly have more depth if there were dueling rituals.

Cassander の投稿を引用：

I think the duel system is definitive but incomplete: the Crown moves are missing and so is praetor level up (which I didn't see mentioned anywhere but should be a logical necessity since even the buildings can level up)
I agree that "one move and done" doesn't feel grandiose but making the duel take more turns is a bad solution, since it destroys the strategic value of dueling, the fast prestige.

Praetors do level up, it just takes way more victories than anything else in the game.

[MegaHeat]

Making it multi round - a best of three as someone suggested - allowing the praetor to pick manuscript/move options on each of those three turns - would be a simple way to make it a little more interesting.

[Strill]

I wonder if the fight were multiple rounds, and won by cumulative damage, if it might work better. Pulling off one of those "double damage vs skulls" might swing a fight, although with the poor odds of that happening, it might need to be triple or quadruple damage.

[Strill]

Lemme provide a cost-benefit analysis to explain why dueling manuals are bad. To start, the only dueling manuals worth even considering are the ones that cancel an opponent's move. Most of them take three fragments, plus one order to equip. In practice, it will take even more than that, becuase you'll be spending tokens buying some fragments from the bazaar, and some of your Find Manuscript orders will be duds.

To complete a manuscript, you'll need:
* 3 orders to successfully get the fragments
* 1 order to use the manuscript
* 2 or 3 orders for bazaar costs, and failed Find Manuscript actions

That means that for the cost of obtaining and playing a single dueling manuscript, you could have gathered tribute 6-7 times, and gathered between 18-35 tribute TOKENS. Imagine what other things you could be doing with that much tribute, and how little the dueling manual benefits you compared to bribery, raising charisma, and buying better praetors, and it becomes clear why dueling manuals are a huge waste of time.

The same is not true for military upgrades, because they let you get places of power, which in turn lets you rank up and get more tribute faster, and you don't have to risk your legion to get these upgrades.

[Chan]

Thank you so much for this! It's really, really helpful. I've noted everyone's points down to chat to the rest of the team. :-)