In finalizing Takteek, mrtool and I had an idea to use dice to determine the outcome. Basically, there would be one die for each rank. If a 3 attacks a 2, 3 six-sided would be rolled by the attacker and 2 six-sided dice would be rolled by the defender.
The idea is a sound one that I hope we get to test tonight.
However, I thought that it made sense to give the defending piece a small advantage. The reason being that in many pre-modern battles, a weaker force could defend against a much stronger force. One extreme example comes from Rome's conquest of Britain. In one battle, the Romans were outnumbered 10 to 1, yet emerged victorious.
One idea was giving the defender an additional die. Another idea was giving the defender eight-sided dice to use. I compared these two scenarios with the default rules using an attack by a 2 piece on another 2 piece.
Under normal rules, the attacking piece will win outright 44.3673 % of the time, tie 11.2654% of the time and lose outright 44.3673% of the time. In English, both pieces have an equal chance of winning or losing (where a tie is considered losing because both pieces are demoted).
Adding a die to the defender, the attacking piece will win outright 15.2006 % of the time, tie 6.9444 % of the time and lose outright 77.8549 % of the time. In English, the defending piece has a huge advantage.
Allowing the defender to use eight-sided dice, the attacking piece will win outright 27.5608 % of the time, tie 8.5069 % of the time and lose outright 63.9323 % of the time. In English, the defending piece has a big advantage.
Thinking about this, I would lean more towards the eight-sided dice option, but the advantage still seems pretty large. It makes attacking with pieces with a rank of two almost useless. If you have a piece that has little more than a 1 in 4 chance of winning, presuming it attacks a piece with a rank of 2 is pretty dismal. Then again, they would serve as useful scouts, finding out the rank of the opposing piece.
Adding another die to the defender is definitely out. That's just too much of an advantage.
In a perfect world, I think the defender should use seven-sided dice. The advantages are smaller, but still significant enough. However, I don't have the money to purchase seven-sided dice at 5$ each. Besides, the goal is commonly available materials. Eight-sided dice are not as common as regular dice, but not very hard to get (and they tend to be inexpensive if you forgo the 733t dice used by role playing gamers).
Anywho, just a post to let everyone know that Takteek is not dead.
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