opportunity cost – GameAnalysis.net

[SupCom] Heaven critiques a replay

Supreme Commander YouTuber Heaven reviews a replay and in the process addresses key cross-game ideas. Topics raised include efficient resource gathering strategies, harassment, prophylactic (i.e. preemptive) defense against predictable threats, opportunity costs of idle or ill-chosen units, the importance of converting an advantage into a greater one, and unit efficiency improvement via increased alpha-damage of massed lower-dam units.

This particular map, Loki, has trees near the players' starts that can be reclaimed for energy, allowing construction of power generators to be deferred. However, not all reclaimable trees are created equal: some are actually "tree groups" that can be sucked up by a single reclaim action and contain more energy, while others are less efficiently-reclaimable single trees:

[AoE2] Losing map control forces painful investment into towers

Here we have an Age of Empires 2: Rise of the Rajas match between top-tier players TheViper and Dogao, with commentary by ZeroEmpires and EscapeAoE. A few key moments in the commentary stood out.

Suffering from economic raiding, TheViper identifies cost-effective spots for watchtower placement. One tower in particular stands out as being in range to protecting three different resource patches, apparently netting good value from the wood and stone invested in the structure:

Unfortunately for TheViper, Dogao's harassment is able to continue due to a vulnerable angle and an exposed second wood patch. TheViper is forced to invest in more defensive watchtowers on a small tree cluster that will be quickly exhausted. Down the line, the opportunity cost of constructing those towers will hurt, as villagers mining stone for towers are not gathering food or gold for teching up:

[OTC] Opening tactic of temporary chems investment: a good idea poorly executed

In this clip from an Offworld Trading Company tournament, player adorfield recognizes that the neutral colony’s modules are consuming chemicals, gradually increasing the market price. Adorfield bought 60 chemicals early, knowing that he could sit on them for a period and then sell them at a profit.

This is, on its own, a sound plan. However, the plan should have been aimed at selling the chems as soon as the profits were enough to let him buy the HQ level 2 upgrade for additional tile claims. Instead, adorfield did not sell his stockpile, locking up thousands of dollars that needed to be used to jump start in the critical moments of the opening. The plan actually delayed his development rather than accelerating it.

Meanwhile, an opponent with unstifled development was able to use their faster HQ level 2 claims to snatch away the high aluminum tile adjacent to adorfield’s base. In this moment we can see how the error snowballed against adorfiel and seriously hampered his opening. Yes, the price of those chems will continue to rise, which does provide some benefit, but waiting for the price to rise further came with an enormous opportunity cost of upgrading later than his opponents.

[SupCom] Early aggression in an FFA hurts both participants relative to the other players

YouTuber and commentator Gyle notes early in this free-for-all that many players try to avoid early conflict. This idea crops up in other games with FFAs as well. Two players conflicting early burn resources on aggression while the noncombatants are free to instead invest in their economies.

And indeed in this case despite one player coming out on top, both of the two fighting players end up clearly behind the others in terms of mass income.

[EU4] Reman’s Paradox analyzes the new institutions mechanics

YouTuber Reman's Paradox demonstrates a high level of game knowledge backed up by data in this assessment of the new institutions mechanic in Europa Universalis IV. He also takes the laudable step of making his data and code available for others to use.

Below, I've pulled out four short sub-clips in which Reman raises ideas that may be relevant to thinking about other games.
Continue reading

[AoE2] Overview of the Aztecs

YouTuber Spirit Of The Law conducts an excellent review of the strengths and weaknesses of the Aztec civilization, backed up by tests and mathcrafting. I've included the full video here, and below it I've pulled out a couple of small clips that I may want to reference later.

[Dom4] Sy on strategy and pretender design for LA Agartha

Dominions 4 is a turn-based fantasy wargame where the player is a god over a nation of worshippers, contesting with other pretender gods for the spot of top dog (er, top god?). Sy, a multiplayer Dominions veteran, walks us through his strategy in "I Equip My Heavy Crossbow" (game admins usually choose unusual names for the games they run). Sy's nation is Agartha, a race of cave-people. I've pulled out a few salient areas below, but the whole video is densely packed with more. First, Sy reviews why he considers Late Age Agartha a strong early- and midbrevity-game nation: