Yes reach definitely better than oldtown Gotta make Tyrell work for that 5th barrel

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I will take what is mine with Fire and Love and give it back with desire from above. No need to shove. It's just LOVE.

Well my personal opinion is that the tyrell´s biggest weakness is that people really don´t have no idea how to play with the house.

Adding a second ship in the start and giving reach/oldtown a barrel would make it a much more potent house.

Adding a better margaerye for taking sea areas would in my opinion be too powerful and big change from the original game.

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fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me

Yeah, the difficult part with Tyrell is that they are already incredibly strong - potentially.  It's not weak cards that hold them back from being able to take on Greyjoy or Lannister or Martell in a head-to-head match up.  The cards are quite strong as it is, the problem is abysmal starting track positions* that leave them unable to do anything at all until the Westeros deign to cooperate.  And starting track positions are the hardest to adjust without completely unbalancing the rest of the game.  For example, every time I see the suggestion of taking the blade away from GJ at the outset, I shake my head at how utterly screwed that would leave them.  With Lanni able to muster ships immediately, the ironborn would be completely on the defensive from the start, and that is a position they are designed to suck at.

Relating this back to Tyrell, I think giving them a Victarion/Salla style supercard for sea battles has the potential to take them from a position of weakness to one of overpowering dominance.  Even the extra ship has that potential, imo, by way of removing their primary vulnerability, i.e. a rush attack at sea.  Necrarch keeps saying how it doesn't completely protect them from a turn 2 rush, but I don't buy that.  Yes, technically Martell can field a 4 str attack to overwhelm a 3 str defense, but doing so requires putting all of their muster points into ships, sending all of them out on the attack, and using their best card all while forgoing any CP at all for 2 straight turns.  I am already nervous about putting all my eggs in a naval basket as Martell when Tyrell only starts with 1 ship.  With 2, I can't imagine I'd ever risk it.

Anyway, my point is that while Tyrell's disadvantage is clearly demonstrated over years of results, I think the nature of their design is that they start with deep handicaps and can grow incredibly strong if they manage to get their feet under them.  Changes that are geared toward protecting them from having those early handicaps exploited and always having a chance to find their footing risk flipping them from a clear underdog to an overwhelming favorite at a stroke.

So in the interest of suggesting other buffs that might seem really minor but I think could shift things significantly, another that occurred to me is to change the starting knight/footman in Highgarden into 3 footman.  This would allow for Tyrell to spread out faster, not having to choose between Oldtown/The Reach/The Arbor and planting a lot of seeds to grown strong quickly if and when the Westeros cards decide to cooperate. Or they could even use one to challenge Martell at Starfall, and play some wilier games there without risking quite as much of their meager land forces in the process.


*and proximity to Doran

Interesting, ser Hodor. To keep in mind.

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

And that is why the Model for Green is “Growing Strong” - Ser Hodor you are absolutely right. You seem to always have Great perspectives when it comes to strategy and house Analysis. Thank you for being awesome. The 3 footman approach I never thought of and could definitely work

Last edited by Mandy Storm on 2021-Dec-07 23:00, edited 1x in total

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I will take what is mine with Fire and Love and give it back with desire from above. No need to shove. It's just LOVE.

Completely agree with you Ser Hodor.

Giving the extra ship basically ends Martells meaningful chances of going against tyrell early. In theory this should establish southern alliance in almost every game and make the game more repetitive. Well anyway as a martell you should not attack tyrell in that version.

With a common lannister-greyjoy alliance. It would also mean martell needs to be cautious of bara since Stark is not going to give bara any pressure at all.

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fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me

I really really like the idea of splitting tyrells Knight into 3 footmen. This way we can take the reach oldtown and the arbor t1. Taking oldtown with a Knight means that knight won't be anywhere useful (bar a muster) unless you chain march into dornish marches which costs you 2 power tokens for not cp'ing and 1 to leave in oldtown.

I have to ask though, just how viable is the t2 martell rush? In my experience martell just gets backdoored by baratheon and neither tyrell or martell have a very fun game.

That being said I agree the game needs to be dynamic and think greyjoy losing the blade for example is a terrible idea as listed above. The issue I do have with the t2 martell sea rush is the fact that when no clash/muster comes up tyrell just has to eat it. The best player in the world could play tyrell and not change that.

Also of interest as an experiment is the random start tournament I've recently been a part of. In almost every scenario tyrell is vulnerable early game regardless of starting location or neighbours.

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Not today.

I honestly don’t get why you d want to overpower Tyrell even more. It’s already the strongest house after gj. None of you has significantly weaker Tyrell stats, so what stats do we base ourselves on for balancing? It’s true that Tyrell is a more difficult house to play, as they are the only house that can easily pick a fight with any other house, which makes their play more complicated. But once you got the hang of it, it’s actually one of the easiest houses to win with.

Yes, Martell could possibly come for you, but so can bara with Martell and Stark (both bad idea, but so is the martell rush in general) and Greyjoy with Lannister and Stark (alread In Round 1). I don’t see the benefits of changing too much. Personally I take more pride in a difficult victory than in an easy one. Lannister and Tyrell are the most challenging (hence my favourite) houses to play, why would we change that? To make the game more accessible? It’s an advanced strategy game, no?

My point is that the imbalance is a part of the beauty of this game. The fact that every house has its typical weaknesses and strengths. The fact that Tyrell and Stark come to help when Lannister bashes on gj. The fact that bara has to make sure he doesn’t get isolated in the centre and therefore has to be on the lookout for allies. The fact that martell sometimes has to turtle and wait for his chance which might never come.

Every possible individual choice of any player, brings FAR MORE imbalance to the game than the fact whether Tyrell has an extra unit or a better house card.

That said, I’ll come with some arguments:
-change fm into knights: that brings a very strong imbalance to the game in the centre of the field (giving them the possibility to hoard pt AND take Reach). So strong that it would force martell to do the rush and gj to ally lannister. Bara is usuall slow to take up his place in midfield. Imagine lanni being under pressure and tyrell getting some musters and all the space to grow too strong to stop in just a couple of rounds.
-change house cards: Tyrell has already a very powerful deck. It would just overpower them even more in late game.
-give them an extra ship: I already feel a bit reluctant towards the extra ship for Lannister (if gj comes with Vic, it just fucks your supply and the way to expand for Lannister is anyway on land and by fighting a lot). If you make a house like Tyrell not needing to worry about their defense early game. You just give them the freedom to go harder on land and grow strong faster. This weakness on sea gives Tyrell the incentive to want to ally martell and giving him Shipbreaker Bay in return. Or to ally bara to sandwich martell and share the burden of Doran. It also gives gj the freedom to try to establish dominance, before getting sandwiched by 3 houses.

The deal with Tyrell is that you have to expand to grow strong. Giving them extra weapons to turtle better (like extra barrels) just goes against their dna.

I would like to bring something else to your attention though: when I started on this website, I had to negotiate at the beginning of every south alliance, who got Starfall and who got Prince’s Path. This still seems logical to me. If you really feel like you should have extra territory as Tyrell, you can just negotiate it?

Last edited by Strongest_Gallic on 2021-Dec-09 13:18, edited 1x in total

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‘Cause Caesar said so…

I don't understand what you're saying.  Tyrell is both the most challening house and the easiest to win with?  How can that be true?

And of course all of us have appreciably weaker win rates with Tyrell.  That's been consistent on sitewide basis for years.

The most challenging to learn (it took me a while to get my winrate up). The most challenging diplomacy-wise (most possible opponents) and strategically (the most versatile house cards). Once you know how to play them it goes way easier. I knew a player (Cornie4ever) who had over 70% winrate with Tyrell. Also BranisStannis has over 60. For both of them it’s their best house, better than gj. To me personally it’s still average, but I’ve been improving a lot and find it gradually easier to win with them.

The site stats take a lot of beginners into account. Tyrell and Lannister are definitely more difficult to play with, but according to me that doesn’t mean they need change. They just require more effort.

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‘Cause Caesar said so…

Hi Gallic, have a look at the stats for Tyrell in the Loiaf, in the WCh or in the World Cup. They are BY FAR the lowest house around, with Lannister above them and the other four far better.

That is actually even worse at high level than at a lower one, which is opposite to Lannister who is probably the worst house for beginners.

As for the fact that imbalance is part of the game, it's true, but when you enter a game knowing that the probability to win the game is about a third of GJ's at top level, well...

That also kills possibilities, like random houses tournaments (one that gets 3 times Tyrell is probably less gonna win than 3 times Grey) or a specialized team tournaments (I play 6 times Stark, my teammate 1 plays 6 times Lanni, etc.) as you know that your games will most likely fail.

To sum up my thoughts, the goal around this thread is to slightly rebalance, but without breaking the game dynamics as it is working well like that. And anyway, the changes here will ALWAYS be an option, not something imposed to people willing to play vanilla. I do believe such a solution exists that can make which is probably the house I consider the funniest to play more playable at top level.

PS. As for the Martell rush, that's a hot discussion : some like it like that, some don't. As for myself, the problem is a bit like the v1 Grey rush on LP : it cannot really be countered, and even if Tyrell manages to push out Martell, he is so late in his development that whatever he does, if the others play decently, his win probabilities are really low. Hence the second ship option : it makes the Martell rush more expensive - has to put all eggs in the same basket and pray for non-adverse cards - but still the option exists. Anyway, has to be tested to get data on games and people feelings after a few games to see how it goes, the few test games were positive but that's not enough.

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver

PS. As for the Martell rush, that's a hot discussion : some like it like that, some don't. As for myself, the problem is a bit like the v1 Grey rush on LP : it cannot really be countered, and even if Tyrell manages to push out Martell, he is so late in his development that whatever he does, if the others play decently, his win probabilities are really low. Hence the second ship option : it makes the Martell rush more expensive - has to put all eggs in the same basket and pray for non-adverse cards - but still the option exists. Anyway, has to be tested to get data on games and people feelings after a few games to see how it goes, the few test games were positive but that's not enough.
I don't know that the Lanni/GJ comparison works (maybe I need the "V1" rush explained), as the Martell rush can be "countered" by any Muster or Clash card coming up before turn 3, which is as early as Martell can make a meangingful attack on Highgarden.  I can't imagine more than 25% of games fit that bill.

And sure, the option to rush in still technically exists even when it costs more ships and better cards, without the ability to actually wipe out all sea opposition as you go.  But I would argue that what is already a risky option becomes untenable for high-level players at that point.

The trouble with balancing this dynamic, imo, comes from how the risks are not symmetrically distributed, on account of it not being a 2 player game. It's easy to fall into the trap of evaluating it in a vacuum, where from Tyrell's perspective the sea rush means a guaranteed disaster - even if the cards come up to foil Martell's plans, it doesn't automatically put Tyrell in the driver's seat.  So the consequence of Martell's failure is not, in the immediate sense, flipping the tables and exposing their key holdings to plunder from Tyrell. Rather, it is leaving them completely exposed to Baratheon with no meaningful gains in the west to show for it.

I think the effect of this is that, when looking at things from Tyrell's perspective, you can add a lot of buffs without feeling like you are putting them in a position of overwhelming power, or where they can beat back an early assault and not be any the worse for wear.  So they still feel vulnerable enough that the situation seems roughly "balanced".  But when you switch over to Martell's seat, the risks have only risen while the rewards are a little harder to get to, and it starts to make turtling look like the only sensible option.  Which in turn only makes Baratheon more conservative, and unlikely to make any early play for the Narrow Sea  even if Stark fails to defend it.  And on a global level, I am for tweaks that would induce less turtling in games, rather than more.


PS: You're point about random position games is a good one.  I always thought that was a fun concept to try out, but rendered sort of unplayable by how completely screwed Tyrell's beginning track positions leave them when moved to any of the other positions, which are exposed to sea attack right from turn 1.

Last edited by Ser Hodor on 2021-Dec-10 15:43, edited 1x in total

And of course all of us have appreciably weaker win rates with Tyrell
Hmm maybe not all of us

Anyway, I might be the wrong person to judge how Tyrell is too "difficult" house to win.

I kind a like the idea of splitting the knight into 2 footmen. I don´t know what people like to start as tyell Taking oldtown and arbor is by far the best strategy. I am not sure if weaker or even more experienced players know that. So splitting the knight to footmen should help players that go for reason unknown for reach as their preferred option to get reach and arbor both.

Still I don´t see the second ship as much of a problem. Would allow also earlier aggression towards north even without mustering.

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fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me

I told you, BranisStannis. I went to Reach because I got bored going to Arbor all the time and I like some change from time to time
I definitely regret it though. Arbor it is from this day till eternity.

If changes have to me made, I think the ship is the most interesting option.

@Necrarch: I didn’t want to necessarily oppose against the idea of change. I like the discussions to try to improve a game. In the end the adaptations on thronemaster compared to the board game definitely made it better, if you ask me. I just wanted to emphasise how imbalance is the basic element of most games and how beautiful it can be. I wonder how the makers stand on it and whether they had foreseen/aimed for the level of imbalance between houses.

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‘Cause Caesar said so…

Ah, no problem with that. The game is asymmetric and meant to be, and that's a good thing. However, I think the current gap is a bit too harsh from my point of view against the Rose and the Lion.

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Judge
LoI&F: Seasons 10 and 11 King
France WCup team
2021: Bronze
2022: Silver