Parley Hatch
277c158378
DEEPFALL: a tabletop game mashing up 9 loved games (SmashUp, Dragon Rampage, Blood Rage, Catan, EverQuest, Daggerfall, Eye of the Beholder, Quarriors, SmallWorld). Core fusion = SmallWorld decline + Blood Rage glorious death -> three exits (Cash Out / Press On / Worthy End) under a rising Maw that collapses a reikhelm dungeon floor-by-floor. - deepfall-core: pure deterministic engine (vendored ChaCha8, 11 tests) - deepfall-sim: balance-by-bot sweeps -> CSV/JSON - analysis/analyze.py: stdlib ASCII heatmap (no deps) - DESIGN.md (rules + post-critique revisions), FINDINGS.md (9-iteration balance journey), README.md - reikhelm-core/examples/sample_dungeon.rs: dumps a real generated board Method: adversarial design critics -> build -> simulate -> tune. 9 iterations compressed combo spread 77.8 -> 32.5 pts (all 36 combos viable). Fixed deep-content lockout (value rises with the Maw), the multi-collapse feel-bad (1 collapse/round cap; feel-bad now 0.00/game), and dead combos. Open finding: Cash-Out and Worthy-End are substitutes for a glory-maximizing bot. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
157 lines
8.3 KiB
Markdown
157 lines
8.3 KiB
Markdown
# DEEPFALL — Simulation Findings
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What the balance-by-bot rig actually said, after 9 tuning iterations over ~thousands
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of seeded games per sweep. This is the honest post-mortem: what the design got right,
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what the sim broke, what I fixed, and what's still open.
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The deliverable was never "a perfectly balanced game." It was: **design a mashup,
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then let a simulator tell me the truth about it.** It did.
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---
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## 1. The headline
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Final config (`configs/default.json`), 2000 seeds × 24 seat-permutations per strategy
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sweep, 2000 games per combo:
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| Metric | Result | Verdict |
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|---|---|---|
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| **Game length** | 10.9 rounds (10–11) | ✅ in the 8–14 target band; the Maw ends it cleanly, every time |
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| **Victory margin** | 13.7% of winner's score | ✅ tight — **no runaway leader** |
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| **Feel-bad rate** (Taken w/o Last Stand) | **0.00 / game** | ✅ the one true feel-bad is fully designed out |
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| **Deep content reachability** | only **6.5%** of deep-floor claims by round-1 parties | ✅ the deep game is *not* decided at game start |
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| **Combo spread** (best − worst of 36) | **32.5 pts** (8.1%–40.6%) | 🟡 every combo viable; still a soft Lineage/Calling tilt |
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| **Strategy band** | WorthyEnd 46.7 / PressOn 25.8 / Balanced 24.8 / CashOut 2.8 | 🟡 aggression is the strongest line; pure passivity is weak |
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Three of the design's central promises held up under simulation — **no runaway, no
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elimination feel-bad, and a living deep game**. Two things stayed stubborn — the
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draft has a soft power tilt, and the four play-styles aren't a flat band. Both are
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understood (below), not mysterious.
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---
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## 2. The three biggest things the sim caught (and the fixes)
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### A. Value and time were correlated → the arc fizzled and the back half ran away
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Room glory was `base × depth` and the Maw eats deepest-first, so the richest rooms
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scored *earliest*; the game crescendo'd in the middle and ended on its cheapest floors,
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and the Worthy-End catch-up valve closed once the deep floors were gone. Both critics
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flagged it before a line of code ran.
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**Fix (the single best rule in the game):** on collapse, a fraction of each room's
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*unclaimed* value **rises to the floor above** as "refugee plunder." The Maw's frontier
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is now always the swelling hot zone, all the way to Floor 1. The data confirms it: the
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claim distribution is **non-monotonic** — Floor 4 (162k claims) draws *more* than Floor 3
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(96k), because value pools wherever the frontier sits, and Floor 1 draws the most of all
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as everyone converges for the finale. The endgame crescendos instead of fizzling, and
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margins stayed tight (13.7%).
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### B. The deep game was nearly a game-start-only contest
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A fresh party from the Cash-Out loop entered at Floor 1 and physically could not reach
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the deep live floor before it collapsed (the balance critic walked the move-math). So
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the Decline loop would have fed you parties that could only farm shallow rooms.
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**Fix:** re-entering parties insert at `max(1, frontier − 1)`. Result: only **6.5%** of
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deep-floor claims come from round-1 parties — i.e. **93.5% of the deep game is played by
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later-drafted crews.** The Decline loop stays relevant the whole game.
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### C. The multi-collapse feel-bad
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`while accum ≥ 1.0` could eat two floors in one round late-game and Take a "flee next
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turn" party with no Last Stand. **Fix:** cap one collapse per round (carry the
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remainder). The feel-bad rate is a flat **0.00** across every config tested since.
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---
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## 3. The balance-by-bot trajectory
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Each row is a tuning pass; the simulator drove every decision. Regressions are left in
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on purpose — they're the method working (a change that *looked* good and the data
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vetoed).
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| Iter | Lever changed | Combo spread | Weakest combo | WorthyEnd / CashOut strat |
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|---|---|---:|---:|---|
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| 1 | initial design | 77.8 | 0.5% | 41.6 / 1.8 |
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| 2 | sub-linear depth; neuter `ignore_threat`; mixed combo field | 59.8 | — | 44.8 / 0.0 |
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| 3 | Champion-recruit Wardancer; Cautious plays the frontier | 46.5 | — | 44.8 / 3.1 |
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| 4 | half-strength Fallen markers | **56.2** ⚠ | — | 44.0 / 3.5 |
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| 5 | revert Fallen; cap marker overflow; raise dividend | 47.2 | — | 37.0 / 5.0 |
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| 6 | bots compare worthy-vs-bank payouts | **55.5** ⚠ | — | 38.5 / 4.2 |
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| 7 | Wardancer +1 marker strength; revert dividend | 43.4 | 4.9% | 46.1 / 2.8 |
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| 8 | Dvergar −1 Cunning; Wisp gets a Warrior | 35.9 | 5.0% | 45.4 / 2.8 |
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| 9 | Dvergar −1 Faith (gentler); trim Reaver | **32.5** | **8.1%** | 46.7 / 2.8 |
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Net: combo spread **−58%** (77.8 → 32.5), weakest combo **×16** (0.5% → 8.1%), and the
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dead cells (Sylphid ~1%, Wardancer ~0.3%) all revived into the playable band.
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The two ⚠ regressions taught real lessons: half-strength Fallen markers (iter 4) handed
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Warden's ×2 markers an immortal hold and spiked it to 56%; and making bots *compare*
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exit payouts (iter 6) — correct in itself — exposed that Wardancer's whole value was a
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rare conditional, which is what forced the iter-7 fix.
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---
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## 4. Final combo heatmap (focal combo as Balanced vs. a mixed random field)
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```
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Reaver Lorekeeper Wardancer Hierophant Warden Prospector
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Dvergar 40.6% 33.7% 18.4% 32.5% 30.9% 31.6%
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Wisp 20.6% 15.9% 11.9% 14.5% 14.4% 14.2%
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Revenant 17.3% 13.9% 8.9% 12.2% 12.7% 11.7%
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Gnoll 31.7% 28.7% 9.6% 23.9% 24.4% 24.8%
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Sylphid 23.3% 18.8% 12.4% 15.0% 15.3% 14.6%
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GolemBorn24.9% 20.4% 8.1% 19.6% 19.1% 32.0%
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Lineage avg : Dvergar 31.2 Gnoll 23.9 GolemBorn 20.7 Sylphid 16.6 Wisp 15.3 Revenant 12.8
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Calling avg : Reaver 26.4 Lorekeeper 21.9 Prospector 21.5 Hierophant 19.6 Warden 19.5 Wardancer 11.6
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```
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(Mean focal win-rate sits below 25% because the focal always plays the generalist
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Balanced bot while the field includes the more aggressive WorthyEnd/PressOn strategies —
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so read the *vs-mean* column in `combo_winrates.csv`, not the raw 25% line.)
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---
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## 5. What's still open (and why)
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### The Cash-Out vs. Worthy-End substitution (the deepest finding)
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The strategy band stays lopsided (WorthyEnd 46.7%, CashOut 2.8%) for a structural
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reason the sim made undeniable: **for a glory-maximizing agent, Cash-Out and Worthy-End
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are substitutes** — both convert a doomed party into points. So *every* lever that helps
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the safe banker (e.g. the depth dividend) directly nerfs the martyr, and vice-versa.
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They sat on a trade-off frontier across iterations 5–10: I could balance the *strategies*
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or the *Wardancer calling*, but not both with the same `worthy_factor`.
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The intended differentiator — Worthy-End's **denial** (the Maw salts your held rooms so
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no rival inherits them) — is real in the rules but **invisible to the bots**, because a
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win-rate maximizer doesn't model the opponent's loss, and you mostly salt rooms you were
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soloing anyway. *This is the headline design lesson:* the two exits only become a true
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triangle (not a binary) when denial is made to **matter to your own score** — e.g. score
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denial explicitly (gain a cut of the value you deny), or make Worthy-End pay on
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*cumulative* depth dived across the whole game (rewarding a play-pattern banking can't
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copy). That's the first thing I'd prototype next.
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### The soft draft tilt
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Dvergar (threat-reduction is just broadly useful) and Reaver (loot-on-claim is a
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flywheel) sit on top; Revenant and Wardancer sit low. No combo is dead (worst is 8.1%),
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so the draft is *spicy, not solved* — acceptable for a Small-World-style game where some
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combos are stronger — but a shipping version would want Dvergar's hook costed harder and
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Revenant's Dread-to-Mettle made to actually pay.
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### Pacing variance is too tight
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Game length is 10–11 rounds with almost no spread. Real push-your-luck wants more
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variance in *when* the Maw breaks through. The `maw_dread_push` and `press_dread_push`
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knobs are the levers; I'd widen them and accept a 9–14 spread.
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---
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## 6. Reproduce
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```bash
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cd deepfall
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cargo test # 11 tests: determinism, pacing, no-double-count
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cargo run --release -p deepfall-sim -- --out out --seeds 2000
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python3 analysis/analyze.py out # the heatmap above, no dependencies
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```
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Every number here is a pure function of `(configs/default.json, seed)` — same input,
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same output, on any machine.
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