Monday, February 23, 2015

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Balance, or "Why Cosmic Encounter and Through the Ages Are The Same"

Balance in games is a tricky thing with shifty meaning. For some people (or games), "balance" means offering each player the same opportunities to gain advantages and win. Everyone gets the same pieces and initial starting situation, and from there what matters are the choices the players make. Abstract games like chess tend to feature this kind of balance; if one side got more queens or even pawns, the game wouldn't be "fair," right? Even if there are random elements, like a series of cards that could come up in an order that favors what one player did over the others (say, the actions available in Agricola), it would still be fairly easy to call such a game balanced because everyone began with the same circumstances and ability to set their plays up to take advantage of such a situation.

For other people (or games) balance means that even with different opportunities, the players still have an equal chance to win, although they may go about it in different ways. Even subtly different starting situations can creating significantly different strategies by forcing the players to evaluate the next available options differently. In TtA, if I have a single cards that once allows me to build a cheap/free farm, I might begin valuing expansion more than other players because it will essentially be cheaper for me to do so, which means needing to worry about my civilization's Happiness before the other players... and I'm sure that tomes could be written about how the goods and buildings and actions that players compete over in Puerto Rico are all affected by whether you start with Indigo or Corn. Big changes cascade out of small changes.

Either way, these games are still "balanced," but the further that you stray, the more significant that these differences are between the initial player set-ups and rules that they must follow, the more likely there is to be some sort of wild imbalance.

If there is a word with a trickier implication than "balance" in games, it has got to be "imbalance." So many times, the first thought that players have upon seeing something that is obviously strong or advantageous is to label that particular thing "imbalanced" (perhaps using a less kind synonym such as "broken" or "bullshit"). I'm just as guilty as any other player of doing this, because, to be frank, sometimes those obviously strong or advantageous things are imbalanced. No matter how much effort or play-testing a game designer puts into a game, there is a chance that a number will slip by that is slightly too big, or a single space on an assymetrical board will give Player A a huge advantage over Player B... Take a look some time at all the hand-wringing discussion online about whether chess is "imbalanced" because one of the two players (white) goes first.

That said, I'm not trying to argue that because imbalance is unavoidable, game designers and players shouldn't care at all. Getting the options in a game as balanced as possible is probably one of the main goals of creators, one of the reasons that they spend so much time on rules and processes, and that tends to make for better, more enjoyable games. What interests me for the moment, is not simply that imbalance is inherent and can be minimized, but how it is minimized.

There seem to me to be two kinds of balancing mechanisms in games. The first kind is what I've been discussing above: intrinsic in the rules are painstakingly crafted options which, even when they provide players with different starting conditions (assymetry), those conditions are tested against one another to provide for as fair a competition as possible. If suboptimal decisions are made, a player will lose, but it won't be because they didn't have access to the more optimal decisions. Even a game like Yomi or Blue Moon, where the players each have an entirely different deck of cards, the players can be considered to be playing a game where there is intrinsic balance; I may not know how to beat someone playing the Midori deck with the Jaina deck, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

The other kind of balance, then, is one where despite wildly varying options, some of which could easily be labeled "imbalanced" aren't limited by the rules of the game. Instead, the players of the game, who have some amount of skill with the rules and options, can assess the ones that are "broken" or "bullshit" and work with the other players to limit the effectiveness of those options. Essentially, the rules not only provide a framework for playing the game, but also a framework for reining in outliers and extraordinarily strong combinations or plans. In contrast to the above "intrinsic" balance, let's call this "extrinsic."

Some examples are in order.

Cosmic Encounter is game that has been a constant struggle for me. The basic rules and processes of the game are right in my wheel-house. It's negotiation heavy, and relatively straightforward (i.e. "do this to score a point, do this to draw cards, etc) so that the negotiation and deal-making can be the main focus of play. There is direct conflict without it being spiteful, there are reasons to create and break alliances, and you can actually choose to share the win with helpful players (or stab them in the back at the last second).

Where CE has always baffled me, though, is what made it unique when it was first published over 30 years ago, and what makes it so often imitated, is that each player is given a special ability that breaks the rules in one way for them only. Because the game has existed for so long, there are hundreds of official powers, and probably thousands of fan-created ones. This one thing in the game has been a massive inspiration to many, many players and designers... I want to say that even Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering, has credited CE with being one of the main inspirations behind his most well known game (but I can't give you a source on that, so don't ask).

It's obviously something that people really like, but the first couple of times I played the game, I didn't understand. Some of the powers are interested, but some of them are absolutely, undeniably more powerful, to the point that I couldn't understand why they were ever included. Take the Virus power. Normally, I add the number of ships on my side to my card, and you add the number of ships on your side to your card, and the highest total wins. The Virus doesn't add. The Virus multiplies. And so, with the vast majority of cards (even uselessly bad ones), can simply and flatly win any battle, even if all the other players oppose them in a single effort. Sounds strong, right?

Well, it is. And there are countless other similarly powerful abilities that players can use in the game. The key thing that I was missing was that the Virus is not just powerful. It's supposed to be powerful, and it's supposed to be obvious to everyone that it is powerful. And once all of the players recognize how powerful it is, that's when the "extrinsic" balance can come to life. The true beauty of the mechanisms in Cosmic Encounter is that they allow all of the players to gang together to deal with the problems that the Virus presents. As a team opposing the virus, we can simultaneously work to score points, exclude the Virus from extra scoring opportunities, eliminate the points they have, reduce their effectiveness, and if I'm really sneaky, I can actually sneak in the back door, help the Virus player, and we can share the win together.

So, where the rules give one player an obvious "imbalance," they also provide a way for attentive players to deal with that imbalance. It changes the dynamics of the game, making it an almost entirely different experience.

While Cosmic Encounter is one of the best examples of this kind of "extrinsic" balance, there are others. Through the Ages features something that I feel is similar, but far more subtle. In this game, players compete to develop a civilization with strong economics, technology, population, culture... and military. But something that often happens with new players is that one player chooses to develop a strong military, leaving their infrastructure to waste away, barely advancing anything on their board. This player can then use the massive power differential to sweep in and take whatever they want from the other civilizations without fear of reprisal, even to the point of causing 100 point swings (or more) in the last turns of the game.

In other words, while everyone else is building and developing, worrying about keeping everything running and generating the points they can, one player is running around smashing it all with a hammer and they come out the winner. It's almost as if they've played a different game than the other players.

Now, obviously, the solution is for someone else to build military strength. But then they are sacrificing the science, food, happiness, and points that they could be getting to do so. Their effort to stand up to a monstrous army lead by Napoleon means that both of those players are unable to get ahead, and then another player wins. I think you can probably see where this is going. Those players with a strong military will always prey on those players without, and in doing so, perhaps even the field. But if one player gets ahead, they will start wrecking everything...

Some people don't like the way that it works. Some people don't like Cosmic Encounter. I can understand in both cases why. The intrinsic mechanisms of the game, the rules as they are written, suggest that Through the Ages is an economic engine building game. You take a small number of resources, spend them to develop your production, and use the increased output to improve production even more, branching out, diversifying, and scoring points along the way. But then there is this guy with the military hammer... it's not fun to have something you've built wrecked, and the game is hard enough without that sword hanging over your head.

But is it? The imbalance created by one player being able to hoard military strength and unleash it to devastating effect can only be balanced in Through the Ages by the players interacting with one another in ways that deepen the experience. And once the full cycle gets running, of keeping military strength close, tackling people who sacrifice too much of it to get ahead, implying dangerous outcomes for other players, the game flourishes. It is an aspect of the game that runs parallel to the rest, forcing players to learn and alter their play, instead of simply crouch over their personal board and ignore everyone else. It's quite a thing.

Does it belong in every game? Obviously, no.

A great many games are good because they are simply balanced, with rules that provide depth and challenge, and the "intrinsic" balance forces the development of certain skills. And of course, a game that would appear to have "extrinsic" balance can in fact simply be poorly designed and play-tested, without a fully developed system to allow for extrinsic balance; the obviously powerful thing is the obviously powerful thing, and whoever gets it first wins. It seems of great importance for players and designers to consider this aspect when assessing a game, either for their own enjoyment or for the enjoyment of others.

On a final side note, I think there is a fun middle ground, where a precision balanced set of mechanisms, like those in En Garde or Schotten Totten, have a small number of significant but "imbalanced" abilities or cards (like Flash Duel or Battle Line) that greatly increase the depth of the game. I have a lot of fun finding the perfect moment to use a seemingly minor one-time-use power to maximize its effect and turn the game around (or simply send myself well into the lead). That kind of positive feedback for creative use of the game's options is always a memorable moment.

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