Zerg Hex Forum

Community Edition was around a while back and that didn't gain as much traction. I don't see how a ZH2 would gain more.

Note the math for spires: (200 + 20) * 3 = 660. The proposed change of 250/810 would be a strict nerf: (250 + 10) * 3 = 780 < 810.

The biggest problem, as others have voiced throughout the forum and in this post, is late game. IMO If anything, allowing multiple concurrent omegas to be spawned will already go a long way in preventing high ground turtles with uncapped italis.

+1 making drones cheaper. Easier for me to force terrans into making a shock instead of reaper + farm.

Cool stuff.
I've only read your eco part, so I will only address that.

1 - Please don't follow the pretentious economics bullshit of calling your model's first order conditions "laws"
1 - Your model will be much more meaningful if you made it independent of supply count. Until you make it capable of emulating a more realistic scenario, where your already simplified parameters are spawners and spires only, all these results fail to be robust to any perturbation, because under the restrictions of your assumptions, the next move is dictated strictly by your supply number. An already more realistic case is to make your supplies worth 45 each, which introduces imperfect supply usage. How should we manage our growth policy then?

2- Your first order conditions already don't hold,  because the marginal eco growth provided by both spawners and spires depend on the count of the other. You're currently treating x and y as purely exogenous variables, where in truth they're deeply endogenous; you shouldn't treat implicit variables as explicit.

3 - Ignoring (2), I really like what you did, making spawner and spires depend on the supply count, and then finding their convergence! Now that I think about it, it makes sense that the upper bound would be below 4, since at the stable what matters is the number of buildings, and the tradeoff is 1 spire vs 3.75 slowlings. I think you might have forgotten to include that each spire increases income by a flat rate of 30 (or maybe you did, and I just suck at reading).

5 - I don't know if you've taken macroeconomics yet, but it's been verified (to the extent that economics can) that economic growth is exponential (hence why macroeconomic estimates are usually presented with a log link). You could definitely try some curve fitting, but looking only at the tail values, given how quadratic and exponential functions are decent approximations of each other at small values.

8 - Income growth is quadratic and mineral bank is cubic? It doesn't make sense that your unspent resources grow faster than... your only source of income. If we focus only on the economy part of the game, then let's suppose building a spire, a spawner, and supply+ are all abstracted as buttons. Then according to that perfect machine, your eco bank should be a thresholded function of your income. Meaning that the absolute upper bound of your mineral bank is the cost of the next supply + some overflow (since spawner and spire both cost less than the lowest supply upg). Did I perchance misunderstand mineral bank for unspent resources instead of lifetime income?

I just want to reiterate that I find it hard to believe that eco isn't exponential. The game economy is best modeled as a partial differential equation of spawners and spires, (both of which are implictly defined by the order). Even if we made either spawners or spires a form of numeraire, or even the net supply formulation, your ODE's growth is strictly dictated by your current endowment. Any ODE that satisfies any form of y' = y is an exponential function.

This is a really cool thread! Does your current code roadmap allow for eventual curve fitting? I'd love to be proved wrong, cause a non-exponential economy would be really interesting to see.

'slow clapping' what a gold comedy u guys got here going... actualy made me log in on forum first time in 4 months or so

1 there is a "slight" difference between "leaving game which u think is unwinnable" and "leaving a game which is unwinable"... first one is done by people like mwhahhahaha that after failing at literaly everything for 20 min start flaming me for 2 min then leave the game so I can win it 4 min later... in a way I suppose he was right- it truly was unwinnable for zerg before he left...
second one on other hand is something u may be little less familiar with as its probably little above ur experience thershold but play few thousands games more, gain little more  wr and u too will be quite accurately conclude that for example playing zerg with 10-27 ally when there is sorceres on his side is nothing but a waste of time

2 as for leaving bc of f2 before 2:15- it has nothing to do with stats or challange tbh... quite opposite, its a pinnacle of stategy - zerg uses aaaaaaaaaaaamazing and totaly prooooooooo strat that only true micro gods can pull off aka press 2 buttons, aclick mid so I counter with equally demanding strat of pressing 2 buttons and giving zerg exactly what he wanted- 1 less terran in 
game... "he didnt want dead eco with it"? och well, then maybe in next game he will think a little longer before giving terran incentive to leave when it is better for terran team if one of them leave (which is btw totaly *ed just as early capacity u want unlocked)

I can only discuss point 2, and I absolutely agree. In fact, leaving is a dominant strategy. There is no point in playing when 2 people per side can just leave and **** Z over. I'd be happy if both of the terrans on my side leave before 2:15 all the time. There is absolutely nothing Z can do to stop me from rolling them when they're set back to ~100 mins per minute.  Since you already know that leaving early is the best move, why do you ever stay in a lobby? Does this entire thing take away from the fact that leaving should reflect on your score the same way that leaving at any time after 2:15 does? You're an absolute pain to deal with throughout the entire match, but can we stop pretending like you have nobler motives than "waaah I can't snowball Z because I'm being F2'd as mid, waaaah"

If your approach to teaching Z how to play better is to **** them over in the hopes of them understanding the issue (which will never happen), then why are you complaining about my desire to have capacity unlocked? At least be consistent with your unhelpfulness.

About capacity:

There are valid use cases that can **** T over massively. I don't see why I should be forced to pay 800 mins to unlock A1 just so my ally and I can get 60 upgraded strikes to punish greedy terrans, all because you guys think that the best way to have new Z get better is to change game mechanics -- with can be circumvented, instead of providing ways to teach the new players???
There was literally a solid month where a silver league player kept on hogging Z and kept losing, then claimed that T was imba because he never managed to win. We told him that eco is king when he had 10 Z games, and 130+ games later he still never made spires. Do you think this kind of player is rare? Do think that guy wouldn't have saved 800 minerals just to then get capacity?

If we're going to be arrogant pricks trying to decide what is good for the rest of the playerbase, then can we address the root of the issues instead of trying to apply a bandaid?
Let's face it, a zerg that is tempted to capacity upg their spawners at the start is the not the caliber of ally that you want. You're **** already. You can't stop a toddler from hurting themselves even if you put them in an inflatable castle. Maybe they won't be able to set their eco back 5 minutes, but do you think that will magically improve their decision making 10 minutes into the game?

Quote from: BigNoob on July 28, 2021, 04:20:17 am

Should we discuss whether early leaver penalty needs change? The argument about letting Terrans play ought to apply to Z as well.

I think the very early leaver penalty should be reduced. Right now it encourages trolling, people who leave very early just to spite the zerg.  Only eliminating one extractor instead of both would be a good start.

And it should count as a loss no matter when you quit.  A lot of players are record **** who join lobbies, see whether or not they think they can win, then quit before 2:15 over and over.

I agree with the losses counting no matter what. W/L seems to be the best proxy to gauge who's reliable on the team, and I was confused the other day to see Adam have a 10-0 score on Terran when he babyrages all the time and leaves when he can't have a walk in the park against Z. He left cause he couldn't be bothered to deal with 1 no micro F2 on mid from a **** Z with < 20% win rate lmfao.

As for the penalty, I personally would prefer a heavier income loss with no building removal. Having to wait for 600 + 220 minerals with reduced income and flat tax only to get the 1st spire back just feels like a convoluted way to say "**** you, zerg".

Quote from: BigNoob on July 04, 2021, 10:28:25 am

why are you guys so obsessed with forcing a playstyle down zerg's throat? There are legitimate scenarios that involve a few capacity upgrades which can punish a terran who's spread too thin too early.

I really can't rationalize your obsession as anything other than some inability to understand that new Z who aren't shown the ropes properly will play badly and overspend on capacity. If the problem with capacity is that bad Z shoot themselves in the foot, then just teach them. If they're not listening and your ego can't handle it, then just leave and move on.

No one is forcing you to do anything. If you love capacity so much, play the original version of the game.

Ah yes, the classic "if you don't like it, don't stick around" reply when you're trying to get visibility for a new project. I was going to stick with the original anyway, because I'm not going to help build traction for a map with changes I disagree.

They can be combined with adv. batteries

That's very valid. I don't remember which map had it, but I remember playing a map which only allowed vote kicking if someone has been inactive for X minutes, which means that AFK trolls can't just start game then go do whatever. They'd need to keep checking the game. And even then, if the person were dedicated enough, I think after N afk warnings it should be fair game to just kick them whenever. If that doesn't work then I don't think further mechanisms will be worthwhile.

I think that should address the issue of being voted out because you're a toxic teammate and not because of gameplay.

Another tangential issue but I think kicking should be allowed if an ally is intentionally feeding animals. I've lost very saturated bases and even then I didn't trigger the global warning. I've yet to encounter a situation where the global feed lock was triggered without direct intent. Of course, these are anecdotes so do with it what you want.

Honestly, I think my only problem with early hydras is the lack of regen delay which Rick suggested a change to. Regen delay won't change much in larger skirmishes, so it's really just for cheeses.

Thinking back... yeah late game hydras still don't scale well (because of their range?).

Unrelated but I'd like to see how it giving hydras Frenzy would change the dynamic maybe locked behind A4