Principles and Doctrines

[Killer595]

yeah, what caphriel said. sorry about that. maybe you'll find some good in some of them, at least. don't think they should be taken as truth on any level, because even if it appears mostly true there's fallacious reasoning in every one of them, and that's the point of it. sorry if you assumed i actually still played by such things, as i said they turned out to be wrong, but i know other players sometimes play by the same reasoning, and that's why it's here. if this is the wrong place for them, be more specific in your initial topic. i'll repeat one more time, since you seem to think that i still play by such reasoning, it was faulty and the point was to expose it as faulty reasoning. i do not play by those rules, and nobody who is attempting to be good should play by them.

[Greep]

I'd just take out faux-principles altogether. They're a nice concept, but pretty confusing to most. And essentially you can reword just about any faux-principle to make it a doctrine. If you have to correct half the people replying, most likely they will be intimidated into not submitting anything.

[Velensk]

The purpose of the faux principle is not to instruct but rather to describe. It's not some idea I pulled out of nowhere. I don't know why people get confused by them and it is impossible to remove them (though I could ignore them).

The ideal use for them is to describe a relationship. This is things like this unit counters this unit. You could put this into doctrines however in general I would prefer doctrines to be broader in scope to limit the incredible number of them. People reading doctrines should not have to go sorting through dozens of unit counter lists and things like that.

Of course this is all assuming I get around to doing something with this.

[Killer595]

it's easy to see why people get confused. faux-principles = fake principles or faulty principles, implying that they are deceptive but generally incorrect. this is the mindset i had when creating my post. don't try to argue semantics in a community involving many who have difficulty speaking any english at all.

[Greep]

How about calling it "Laws (principles), theories (faux-principles), and Generalizations (doctrines)"? Less ambiguous, and more or less the same thing.

Edit: actually not sure if this topic is even a good thing. I wouldn't want wesnoth to get overanalyzed like chess, with 50-page explanations on why some 3 move opening is refuted.

[Velensk]

Because with the exception of laws they are incorrect ways of referring to them and thinking about them. Doctrines are not generalizations they are instructions. Faux-Principles should not be theories though I suppose they could be.

To give you an example let's say that we have the faux principle "Dark Adepts counter heavy infantry" This is testable and can be confirmed or refuted if you give a solid definition for "counter" and you would probably be confirmed to be true in a generic situation. It's not really a theory as it can be tested it merely describes a relationship.

However it is not a doctrine as it does not tell you how to play. You could translate it into a doctrine pretty easily but it is not in and of itself anything. However it is also not a law/principle as it is not always true. At day in the middle of a lake the heavy infantry would have much better odds of winning.

You are correct that we could ignore this step however I do not see any reason to do so. If it is confusing then by the time I do anything with it I'll have figured out a better name for it.

[Caphriel]

it's easy to see why people get confused. faux-principles = fake principles

This is probably the biggest source of confusion.

[abbeytallbert]

In my opinion, you missed the distinguishing point between the faux principles and the principles...

By
Abbeytallbert
Bestofcolleges in US

[Lone_Isle]

Hello Velensk. How would you formulate the need to have your units be able to reach each other so as to defend each other when attacked? A kind of group cohesion that determines whether you should say, attack that elf archer in a forest with drake fighters, depending on how much nearby backup it has?

[CMaster]

Because with the exception of laws they are incorrect ways of referring to them and thinking about them. Doctrines are not generalizations they are instructions. Faux-Principles should not be theories though I suppose they could be.

To give you an example let's say that we have the faux principle "Dark Adepts counter heavy infantry" This is testable and can be confirmed or refuted if you give a solid definition for "counter" and you would probably be confirmed to be true in a generic situation. It's not really a theory as it can be tested it merely describes a relationship.

Well, this is exactly what constitutes a theory in physics: It is an assumption about the world that may be tested for correctness and be used to calculate the outcome of future experiments, if confirmed. If there's nothing to test, it may still be a theory, yet it would be quite useless and philosophs would write tons of literature about it, each quoting one another, each introducing taller assumptions...

I think, the concept of faux principles is a very usefull one: It draws a line between the underlying game mechanics and the deduced reasoning that relies on assumptions, most of which concern the map (like: Most fights take place on dry land). On the other hand, they still contain too much detail for making up a sound strategy.

Maybe you could simply call the faux principles propositions. If I read my dictionary correctly, this would contain the fact that faux principles are not true in all circumstances but are still usefull in most situations. (I'm not a native speaker myself, so I might have missed something about that word...)

[Velensk]

Hello Velensk. How would you formulate the need to have your units be able to reach each other so as to defend each other when attacked? A kind of group cohesion that determines whether you should say, attack that elf archer in a forest with drake fighters, depending on how much nearby backup it has?

Give me some time. I'll write you a docterine for this.

EDIT: CMaster, although proposal is a technically correct usage it is awkward. A proposal generally refers to one of two things. Most commonly a proposal is when someone suggests a course of action(as in you propose to someone that you marry or you give a proposal to your commander about the best way to carry out a mission). Somewhat less commonly it is used when someone gives an untested explantion (such as you propose that the reason the universe's expansion is accelerating is a result of nothingness pushing it appart).


EDIT
Faux-Principle: Units tend to be stronger in groups.
Fayx-Principle: Generally try to achieve more gold in kills than you do in losses factoring in income from captured villages.

Explanation of why this is and doctrine based of it.
A group of units gives a much greater threat of counter attack than a single unit a group has much more ability to attack than a single unit. Groups also allow you to create walls of ZoC to protect units or locations. As a result except in certain situations it is best for units to try to form support groups that are all or almost all within each others movement range and to move units in these groups.

Examples of goals that may not require groups:
Village stealing. Not that groups cannot help with this task however if you are engaging in village stealing you may need your other forces elsewhere. A village stealer can be efficient and distracting on it’s own without these extra forces which you may wish to be attacking with on another front.
Village guarding: Having more units around might help you guard multiple villages or build zones of control that prevent him from running around you however if your purpose is to guard a single village from a small number of aggressors or a village stealer then a single guard is all that is necessary. Against larger numbers of enemies a group is definitely preferable.
Surveillance: If you just want to see what your enemy is doing you don’t need more than one unit per front.
Some types of threats can be carried out by a single unit. If a unit can reach two enemy villages on its turn and his foe only has one unit to either guard them with or attack the first unit then it is impossible for the guard to stop this unit from being able to stop the first unit from stealing a village (barring the possible effects of the units ZoC) unless he can kill that unit by himself this turn (a situation that does not frequently occur).

For most situations especially any where fighting may occur though it is best to have large groups of units. It is almost always worthwhile to get your units together in groups before any time when you will be wanting to either threaten or intimidate.

Evaluation of threats: Consider the situation where at day there is a slightly wounded elvish archer in the woods within reach of your full health clasher and fighter. More units that you have will be able to reach the area the turn after this one but other elvish units have been following the above principle and are in reach of the elvish archer you are considering attacking. How would you figure out if it is worth attacking the archer.
In general this is the procedure I would suggest you follow:
->Start by figuring out how likely you are to succeed at whatever you are trying. This doesn't have to be something exact like 74.7%; it can be general terms such as likely, not likely, probably, almost certainly, or anything as long as you get a fixed impression of how likely it is. Remember that most plans will involve many combat rolls however not all plans fail if a single combat result fails to yield expected odds.
-In the case of the above scenario the goal is simple: to kill the archer. In order for this to work out of his 7 attacks 3 of them need to land at 30% cth. This is not great but not absolutely unlikely
->Figure out generally what will happen if you succeed. The archer will be dead. The fighter and the clasher will be in the hexes next to where the archer was and probably slightly wounded from the archers sword.
->Figure out what will happen if you fail: The archer will still be alive (though hopefully more hurt). Your fighter and clasher will be in the hexes next to it and probably slightly wounded by the archers sword.
->Consider the implications for next turn for both scenarios.
-In either case if you attack you’ve committed at least two troops to the area and he can send reinforcements to the region. It will be dusk next turn.
-With the success scenario you can move up your reinforcements to be in range to fight next turn. Your enemy can then attack you with the two fighters and a shaman. One of those can take cover in the woods. He could slow down the clasher then attack it with it’s sword with a fighter from the woods and run another one around to trap the clasher or perhaps he could slow down the fighter while trapping the clasher and picking at it with his bows in either event leaving both the fighter and the clasher unable to retreat or kill likely to kill a unit and thus effectively marked for death unless reinforcements arrive to save them. However this would involve committing more troops to the fray as the time of day is turning against you.
-If you fail to kill the archer then he could either retreat it to healing or he could use it to help him counter attack. Between the archer two fighters and the shaman he could probably defeat one of your drakes without taking too much damage assuming the shaman hits. This too would involve him placing many of his units out in the open and possibly vulnerable to whatever reinforcements you can get to the area.

->At this point you make a judgment call: Do you think that it is worth risking whatever happens if you “fail” for whatever happens if you “succeed” at the success rate you calculated. There no set odds that are ideal for so much gold worth of kills. Experience is the best thing for helping you make the right call here but even at this point high ranking players have very different styles and amounts of aggression. Experience will also help you know how to use your units to maximize your odds and minimize the consequences of “failing”. The gold cost of the units is a decent guideline for how valuable they are and how worthwhile it is to trade for them. This isn’t a perfect example and in some matches units are a greater or less threat than their cost would indicate however regardless of how useful the unit is their cost is how hard it is to replace them.
-In the case of the above mentioned scenario it would probably not be worth it unless you know for sure that with the reinforcements you can bring you can gain an advantage over them with the reinforcements they can bring.

Now in some circumstances your goal could be much more loosely defined than “kill this unit or capture this village”. It could be “do damage to his army” or something like that. For the former you could either break it down and do that process for each kill or you could just generally define for if your offense goes well or if it falls flat with general odds for the entire encounter. During your evaluations be careful when predicting your opponents movement. Different players can have radically different styles and if your plan relies overly much on them acting a specific way then it could fail because of that. In the above example and entirely probable outcome for the entire encounter might have been that the archer survived and ran away for healing while the fighters and shaman didn’t come close enough for the reinforcements to attack them this turn but moved to cover the archer. (Now admittedly this isn’t that bad a result for the drakes it means that they had a chance at killing the archer and the only cost was a few points of damage from the sword)

[CMaster]

EDIT: CMaster, although proposal is a technically correct usage it is awkward. A proposal generally refers to one of two things. Most commonly a proposal is when someone suggests a course of action(as in you propose to someone that you marry or you give a proposal to your commander about the best way to carry out a mission). Somewhat less commonly it is used when someone gives an untested explantion (such as you propose that the reason the universe's expansion is accelerating is a result of nothingness pushing it appart).

I am fully aware of the meaning of proposal, so I wouldn't propose it, right? This is why my proposal was proposition...

[Velensk]

I was implying that this not what we are looking for.

Stop looking for words. If I do change my current useage I will simply shift the word principle to the faux-principle concept and use laws for the principle concept.