Posts from Let's talk about our Red Rush strategy...

It's hard to believe that color affects the quality of the map generation. Isn't that overkill?

It's like going to a casino in a red shirt and the chip lands correctly :). If I wear a blue one, the suit won't go my way.

But perhaps I don't know enough.

Confirm how reliable the info is in Post 764.

You generate 50 templates on 2 identical towns. For example, Castle vs Castle. And for each generation, you record the main respawn parameters. The most critical one is the number of roads excluding ГО. Then the number of treasure spots. It's also useful to count the number of various cons, beehives, and banks. Although they appear all over the map, so this is less critical.

If memory serves me right, the red one had +50% more roads and +20/30% more for the other indicators.

Granted, this was on TE, meaning the respawn content is a bit different.

Okay, Pyre, can a red rush with control resolve the situation on 8mm6a in the third week? Or in the fourth?

Absolutely. There are plenty of examples. The main point is that you benefit from the mana increase/doubling in the captured castle.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. The main problem with those arguing against red rush is that they reason theoretically and forget to provide obvious counterexamples. For example, it was said that Pete collected statistics on match results. First, I immediately asked an obvious question – about the "average temperature in the hospital," and whether that means there won't be any losses in borderline situations? There's still no direct answer. Second, shouldn't they explain how exactly this statistic was collected? What if it turns out that the sample of games included cases where red rush was banned in at least half of them – precisely those where it would have been critical? Don't these nuances deserve to be mentioned directly? Why do I have to pry them out like I'm doing now? And with such statements as Pyre made, it just makes you sad. Okay, he wrote it, no problem. He's looking for arguments. Well, then, think about it for 10-30 minutes and delete or clarify it. Because counterexamples are obvious. You can simply remember them by going through the most popular scenarios, of which there are only 10-15 (Jebus, 8mm6a, M200, 3-4 weeks). p.s. In my opinion (as someone who is still in bad shape and doesn't claim to have a lot of gaming experience, but still has some experience) – the fact that red always goes first balances out all the arguments in favor of blue that were mentioned above, and red rush can play a role as a simply devastating argument in a fairly large number of cases, against which, with sufficient skill from the opponent, nothing can be done. In WT, everything is balanced by trading for color; you can pressure your opponent with tempo, balancing the odds, but in SoD, there is no trading

You are also theorizing :)

Practical reasoning, however, should go in the following direction — count the number of games where red rush decided the outcome. And by "decided the outcome," I mean it allowed the red player to salvage a losing position.

On HeroesWorld, red rush is banned almost everywhere, so you have to look at games from other sites or tournaments where it is allowed. For example, the current tournament on Diamond — a very contact-heavy L-shaped template.

I skimmed through the reports and found only one report mentioning red rush:

herolwy (red, barb, Dessa, Dessa) def ~no1_knows_me~ (blue, castle, Valeska, Ivor) diamond 211

Here, blue was red-rushed twice — first on 121, then on 211. The impact of growth on these fights is not mentioned, nor is an overall assessment of the situation.
But let's assume it played a role.

In the remaining 49 games, red rush either did not occur or was not mentioned in the reports.

Besides, the overall color balance is 26-23 in favor of blue.

So, have you proven that a red rush strategy doesn't work on Diamond difficulty?
Or that it doesn't matter on Diamond difficulty whether the red rush rule is enabled or not? (and therefore it's better to add it to avoid a situation like in the mentioned game)

And how do we understand what relevance this research has to Jebus, 8mm6a, and m200?

P.S. This is even without considering the caveat "or he was not mentioned in the reports," which casts doubt on the entire study.

So, you've proven that red rush doesn't work on Diamond, right?
Or that it doesn't matter on Diamond whether the red rush rule is enabled or not? (and therefore it's better to add it to avoid a situation like in the mentioned game)

And how to understand what relation this research has to Jebus, 8mm6a, m200?

p.s. this is without taking into account the caveat "or he was not mentioned in the reports," which generally casts doubt on the entire study.

This was not a proof, but an example of the correct direction of research. The same can be done for other tournaments; the logs are available.

As for "not mentioned," it's hard to imagine that a game-deciding tactic would not be mentioned in the report if it contained anything other than just a header. But for the sake of experimental purity, such reports can be discarded; there aren't many of them.

Generally, who makes the decision to change the rules? Does Pit for LM do it alone, or does he need to get general approval from someone else?

What specific points constitute the "correct direction of research"? For me, it primarily consists of the following points: 1) Only the opinions of highly skilled players should be considered (i.e., the sample should include reports from the later stages of tournaments), or it should be a survey of opinions (even if private) of players who have demonstrated skill in the past. 2) For this specific question, the course of games on specific templates, under certain rules, should be studied separately for each template, with red rush allowed. 3) Specific games, specific game situations should be considered; no statistical studies should be used as arguments at all. Statistics can be a reason to investigate a question, but it should be investigated under a microscope with specific examples. And I keep repeating – this is the path that Blizzard uses to balance its games. Their example is worth considering as a model. Yes, they have Battle.Net, where they collect statistics on millions of games. And, according to their technical director, they collect all sorts of statistics, how many units and which ones are built, how the results of games depend on the units built, and they hope that this will help them someday, but when it comes to changing something in the balance, they carefully study the opinions of the best players in the world ranking and watch recordings of specific games. (!)

This is an even more correct approach. But it's also more complex. If you have the time and desire, give it a try. So far, all I've heard from you are general, abstract arguments about how things might be. I'm not arguing that a rush strategy might work in certain situations. The question is how often these situations occur and how well the blue side can counter them. My opinion is that these situations are rare and usually happen because of a mistake by the blue side. And that's what I'm trying to explain.

And, by the way, I try to read the reasoning carefully.

I asked a question a little above – is it true that a justification has been found for the Diamond map so far?

Perhaps it's not worth simply calling 15 years of tournament practice "spherical reasoning" (I'm not referring to myself), as a result of which the rule prohibiting red rushes emerged. This is at least inaccurate. There are already many lessons learned behind this rule.

I'm listening carefully to your reasoning.

I asked a question a little above – is it true that I've managed to provide justification for Diamond so far?

I outlined the general logic in my previous posts; it's universal for all templates.

For Diamond, I simply confirmed my thoughts with statistics from a specific tournament.

If you want to seriously argue, you'll have to add more depth to your own posts. Because in questions that don't allow for strict proof (and the question of balance certainly is one of them), the principle of "more right than" applies. That is, the point of view with deeper and more well-developed arguments is considered more correct. The point of view itself may still be incorrect, but no one will ever know.

If you believe that the arguments presented by you or Dima Surmay are more in-depth than mine, then further discussion doesn't make much sense.

I completely agree with the last message. Okay. And, strangely enough, now it's time for me to provide a practical argument instead of disappearing. Regarding the Diamond tournament. How would the game statistics change if the rule prohibiting red rushes in this tournament were in effect? We are comparing two scenarios - with the rule and without it, right? Then, instead of criticizing one of the scenarios, we should compare the two. How would the game results change if the rule prohibiting red rushes in this tournament were in effect? Would it be the same, but in one specific game, red wouldn't have red-rushed blue with an overpowered strategy against which nothing could be done? Then, what's the point of playing without the rule prohibiting red rushes? If the presence of the ban has as little impact on most games as its absence, except for individual overpowered situations where blue is simply doomed?

Okay, Pyre, can a red rush with control resolve the situation on 8mm6a in the third week? Or in the fourth week?

The probability of such a situation is very low. And in such a situation, it's no longer the red rush that decides the outcome, but the control.

How would the game statistics change if the rule prohibiting early rushes in this tournament were in effect?
We are comparing two scenarios – with and without the rule, right? Then, instead of criticizing one of the scenarios, we should compare both.

How am I supposed to know?

The situation here is that these scenarios are inherently unequal. The ban on early rushes creates a number of controversial and inconvenient situations, so it is up to the proponents of the ban to justify why it unbalances the game.

The proponents of allowing early rushes only need to show that it doesn't create a significant imbalance.

For example, Amulets of Fortune decide the outcome of far more games, even though they are not present in every game, unlike the first days of the week. And Amulets are not banned – they are part of the game.

There are quite a few factors in Heroes that have a much greater impact on the game than early rushes. I already wrote about this when we were discussing Mullich and level 4 specialists – you should ban things that decide 1 game out of 30, not things that change the gameplay and on which the game is built from the start or over a long period.

For example, color trading initially appeared not in random maps, but in fixed maps, where knowledge of the map and the opponent's location allowed players to build a game around an early rush on 121 or 131 from the start. That is, in those maps, color was a gameplay-defining factor, so it had to be balanced through trading.

In random maps, it appeared as a trend and also to avoid predictable castle pairings. Initially, only castles were planned to be traded, and color was just an addition. And practice has shown that color trades are quite symbolic; much more is paid for a castle in unequal pairings.

The main problem with red-rush is that for every 1 real red-rush, there are 10 "red-rushes" where a hero with growth runs into the opponent's scout hero or an empty castle. It is precisely for this reason that the idea of allowing red-rush is being pushed, and not at all out of a desire to help red. That is, to make the flow of the game more natural and less burdened by rules.

IMHO, an event that occurs in 1 game out of 50 can be safely ignored. Because out of those 50 games, with more or less evenly matched opponents, at least in 30 of them the outcome will be determined by some details of the layout that do not depend on the player's skill, but are merely created by the whim of the generator. How red-rush is worse than the rest in this regard is not very clear. A correctly sized Griffin Conservatory on the path or a conveniently located Dragon Utopia with control significantly outweigh the effect of a red-rush.