Is there a "best number of players" for a game?

One difficulty I've been seeing is that racial balance can change
dramatically depending on how much maneuvering room there is.

For example, consider the Rebels on the default map with 30 players or 4
players.

In a 4 player game, the Rebels would have a giganormous advantage -- they
can hyp around and claim an entire galaxy's worth of natives because there's
so much empty space between the players, it's easy for the Rebels to find
the natives and get there first.

In a 30 player game on the same map, it's much more likely that the natives
will get spotted early by the various players and the Rebels won't get
nearly as many.


Lizards are the opposite. In a big, open map with few players, they have to
drive a long way to find someone to fight. They need prisoners to really
get their economy going and that's hard to do in a big map with a lot of
empty planets. In a crowded game, they can very quickly get to fighting
their neighbors and have a good chance of making a big economy.


There are map SIZE issues to think about, too!

Robots will be deadlier in a small map. If you wanted to do a small game
and made a map with a 400 light year radius, that means a big Robotic insect
nest in the middle of the map could steal colonists from every planet in the
galaxy and a Gun Zero would cover a huge percentage of the map. Whereas in
a big map, there's a lot more room to grow your empire away from those
effects.


If there's one thing I'd like to see VGAP4 do, it's make an effort to
balance these kinds of issues. Games of this type always have a degree of
luck and randomness, but I think it's a bit excessive here. There are too
many too huge advantages that some races can get under the right conditions.


----- Original Message -----
From: "KlingonKommand" <Paul.DeleteThis@nurk.fnord>
Newsgroups: alt.games.vgaplanets4
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 3:12 PM
Subject: Is there a "best number of players" for a game?


> I've been wondering:
>
> do games with, say, more than 20 player always end unsatisfactorily?
>
> I.e: because once an alliance of 5 people forms, they're unstoppable...
>
> Or there are too many dropouts...
>
> Or the map is too large for anyone to win in less than 130 turns
> (obviously this ain't necessarily so, depending on victory conditions)
>
> Of course lots of players gives more opportunities for diplomacy.
>
> I thought this would be an interesting thought to kick around, among the
> community. I'm sure we all have an opinion on "the ideal number of
> players"...
> --
> Paul Honigmann
 >> Stay informed about: Is there a "best number of players" for a game? 

Yes and no to the question of is there a best player limit for a game.

It comes down to player ability, both yours and those you are playing
with in the game.

Diplomatic ability, ally limits etc.

Racial abilities etc.

I for one, very much like VGA planets 4's extremely varied race
strengths
and game outcomes, provides much more playability in the game and
for a much varied outcome each time you play the game.

Solor Explorer 17 just ended at turn 60( At almosts-and ensured total
annihalation of opposing races), was a huge map with 30 players.

Player ability( many players were new), dilplomatic ability(many large
NAP's were formed + ally limit was 2) and actually racial strengths( Eg
4 Borg players ) were the
huge factors involved with this outcome.

I wouldn't change a thing, well maybe alter the odd race slightly and
bug fixes when found.

Cheers.
Lee.
 >> Stay informed about: Is there a "best number of players" for a game? 

> I thought this would be an interesting thought to kick around, among the
> community. I'm sure we all have an opinion on "the ideal number of
> players"...

I tend to design my games for 8 - 12 players. Ideally, I feel that 6
players probably yields the most consistently "fair" starting
positions, but that's a little too small for most players' taste and
there's poor racial diversity with so few.

Why do I think 6 is ideal? Because the starting positions can be
arranged in a perfect hexagon, meaning each player is equidistantly
placed from their two closest neighbors and the center of the map, and
your most distant neighbor is at most twice as far.

But games of 8 - 12 players can come very close to my ideal placement;
everyone can still be relatively close to everyone else without making
the map ridiculously crowded. With more than 12 players then you're
basically forced into using "spaced"/"crazy" start positions and larger
maps, which have many negative results:

* Warp drive races become less viable due to large distances
* Players are less likely to interact with everyone else
* Unequal starting positions; some start on the edge, some in the
center

- Roger
 >> Stay informed about: Is there a "best number of players" for a game?