Powers are chosen by an algorithm wherein you are less likely to get a country you have played more often than other countries.
I was unaware of this, and strongly approve! (When you play with the unmodified board game, there is no such algorithm, as I’m sure you know). It would suck to draw Austria or Italy time after time, especially since you wager score to play.
Yeah, that’s why the algorithm was implemented. It used to not be that way. But that algorithm helped the balance a lot, and makes the expected value level out very quickly as opposed to taking hundreds of games to do so.
Ah, but there are algorithms for assigning players when using the physical board game. Take a look at this 1998 article from The Diplomatic Pouch. Scroll down for methods of assigning powers using maximin, minimax, or other optimization based on players making ranked preference lists.
Edited for clarity to replace the word “actual” with “physical”.
I was unaware of this, and strongly approve! (When you play with the unmodified board game, there is no such algorithm, as I’m sure you know). It would suck to draw Austria or Italy time after time, especially since you wager score to play.
Yeah, that’s why the algorithm was implemented. It used to not be that way. But that algorithm helped the balance a lot, and makes the expected value level out very quickly as opposed to taking hundreds of games to do so.
Ah, but there are algorithms for assigning players when using the physical board game. Take a look at this 1998 article from The Diplomatic Pouch. Scroll down for methods of assigning powers using maximin, minimax, or other optimization based on players making ranked preference lists.
Edited for clarity to replace the word “actual” with “physical”.
Replace “actual” with “unmodified.”