Graphs

[Lewin]

As you might know we are working on graphs for game results in both single player and multiplayer. The system is working nicely, now we're trying to find the best way to visualise the data. Wares is especially problematic, showing 28 lines on a graph is a bit overwhelming, so we've made it only show wares that were not zero for the entire game, and there are checkboxes to hide any of the lines shown.

We still can't decide how to visualise wares (aka resources) for multiplayer games. At the moment it only shows your own, we'd like to show everyone's, preferably with a way to compare them. For example you could see how the food stock of each player compared to each other varied throughout the game. If we put all of the data together, that's 28*8 lines (28 resources, 8 players = 224 lines!). We could show 8 different graphs with resources for each player separately, but then you can't compare them between players. We could also show 28 graphs, one for each resource, with one line for each player (e.g. one graph to compare stone stocks between each player, one for timber, etc.) but 28 graphs is a lot, and how should they be selected? (a drop down box with 28 options?)

We'd like to hear your ideas, opinions, suggestions, etc. regarding all this. Sketches/mockups of layouts/designs would be especially appreciated. What info do you want to see in graphs? What do you want to compare?

Below are screenshots of some of our ideas. The data sets are pretty uninteresting because I just played around on my own for a short time with speed up on, they don't show proper games.

Singleplayer:







Multiplayer:

[The Dark Lord]

First of all I would like to remind you that 'Soldiers lost' and 'Units defeated' is very deceiving. In my opinion 'Units defeated' should be 'Soldiers defeated', as that provides a proper display of kill/death ratio. Personally I'm less interested in the amount of citizens I killed. Furthermore, I'm in doubt if recruits should be considered 'citizen' as well, because they are likely to become soldiers. That means they are counted twice: both in 'Citizens trained' and 'Soldiers equiped'.

I'm guessing the wares graphs show the wares that currently 'roam' through your village and are not necessarily in your storehouse. I approve of that, but it means that the amount of most wares will be between 0 and 20 most of the time. Especially wares like coal, iron ore, gold ore, corn, tree trunks, etc. will be very low and maybe unnecessary to show in a graph. On the other hand it could be useful to analyze and improve your gameplay. For example, if I see in the graph that my coal is at a constant amount of ~40, I could conclude that I didn't have enough serfs to empty my coal mines completely. You may notice things that you might not see during the game.
All in all I suggest to show all wares for all players, but as you said: the question is how?
I think a list with all the wares would be best, so you can easily compare the different amounts players had. Clicking on one of the wares would obviously show the graph of the chosen ware and the lines of all players in it. It might be necessary to play some proper games to see how the scales of the graphs are working out (for example: if you'd play on a map like The Tyrant, where one of the players starts with 300 stones (or Oasis Struggle where everyone starts with 9000 stones) the graphs may become just a straight line. Maybe it is an idea not to use the X-axis as 0 for the Y-axis, but as the lowest amount of that ware during the game (so if I'd use the Oasis Struggle example: the Y-axis would start with something like 7000).

Last but not least: what else I'd like to see. I'd love to see a graph per player that shows how the selected player built up his army over time. I made a very bad drawing with bad scales which makes it a bit cramped but I think you'll get the point.

The time on the X-axis starts with 60 because I think it would be best to start it when peace time is over. If you'd show those 60 minutes too it will be hard to see everything after it because the lines will be pushed together.
Furthermore maybe some funny things, like 'favourite soldier', 'longest road', etcetera. Those don't require graphs though.

[Piko]

I think only those wares should be in statistics: stone, timber, gold, wine, loaves, sausages, fishes (or maybe all food will be as one - food whose gives less energy will gave less points), horses, maybe also other weapons. Other wares aren't important enough to be in graph.

Colours of wares on graph should be less similar.

And also should be options to determine whose players/wares will be visible on graphs (graphs becomes illegible sometimes).

[Krom]

@TDL: I'm not that good at writing, so please forgive me my shortness. Just some quick thoughts:
- Base stats are taken from KaM and we are looking forward to make them better. Some values are clearly seen on charts, so maybe they can be removed. Some values can be changes, and some added. Post your reasoned ideas! )
- Wares graph shows total existing amount, that is in Stores + in Houses + in serfs hands.
- Problem with 9000 stone is that all the wares share the same Y axis, so lowest value is 0 and highest 9500 ... Solution - you can temporarily hide stone with a checkbox on left, not perfect but works. Y scale is updated according to shows charts.
- You mean a chart of players force, showing how much did he staked on footmen archers and horses? Thats an interesting idea, I like it )
- Funny facts are also interesting, I like that

[Private.NL]

I really like the graphs.

Y-axis: I think making an option to show certain resources is best. I mean to say that if you click a resource it will be showed / won't be showed. So every player can select what he wants to see. The Y-axis should be able to change it self to the values that are being showed in the graphs. This has got the big advantage that you can also see the low resources when having like 9000 stone in storehouse in the beginning.

X-axis: I also think that people should be able to make there own X-axis, so the can see how it is after 30 minutes when having the first farm for instance.

[Shadaoe]

Tickboxes to show/hide certain wares are interesting, you could also make "groups" of wares (e.g. "Food wares" (containing all the food wares of the game)) and each group would have a specific graph showing only the wares specified for all players, it would reduce the number of graphs quite lower.
We can imagine groups of "Construction wares", "Weapons and armors" (or "Soldiers equipments", because it may include horses), etc ...

[Bo_]

I think it ain't necessairy to show al wares, even with checkboxes. I mean I realy don't care how many trunks, somebody had, or pigs, flour and skins.
Maybe categories? Like food:
It shows how good a player's economy is on long-time.
Then maybe also gold chests, and weapons?
It wouldn't make the graphs less useful and it wouldn't be such a mess in 8p games.

And does the amount of wares show the amount of wares a player has right now or the total amount during the whole game?

[FeyBart]

Graphs and all that look pretty cool. Would this be just for multiplayer, or also for single player? In single player, it might also be useful for examining the AI's behavior, for example.

[Lewin]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I'll write here when we've made some more progress.

Graphs and all that look pretty cool. Would this be just for multiplayer, or also for single player? In single player, it might also be useful for examining the AI's behavior, for example.

There is a different set of graphs shown for singleplayer, which hasn't been decided on either. We don't want to show the AI's wares because in most missions they get like 9000 food, gold, etc., but showing army size/house count/etc. is planned.

[FeyBart]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I'll write here when we've made some more progress.
(...)
There is a different set of graphs shown for singleplayer, which hasn't been decided on either. We don't want to show the AI's wares because in most missions they get like 9000 food, gold, etc., but showing army size/house count/etc. is planned.

Maybe you could show a normal line for wares minus the starting wares, and a dotted line for all the wares combined?

[Krom]

Thinking about it it looks like showing the amount of wares carries wrong sense. I'll explain:

When you have strong and balanced economy your wares are at minimum, everything made gets used soon. You don't have overproduction, you just balance on the edge effectiveness. So that means Pro player graphs will not go very high. On the other hand players who tend to produce more then they need and play long/defensively will have their graphs rocket-high. Now looking at 2 charts next to each other - which seems best, one that is in 0-50 range or rocket-highing to 1000?

Maybe wares chart should display wares produced, not the wares existing at time. This way it does not matter how many wares your Store had at the beginning - all wares start at 0. And Pro player charts will climb much more rapidly than bad players.

[Thomas]

When you have strong and balanced economy your wares are at minimum, everything made gets used soon. You don't have overproduction, you just balance on the edge effectiveness. So that means Pro player graphs will not go very high. On the other hand players who tend to produce more then they need and play long/defensively will have their graphs rocket-high. Now looking at 2 charts next to each other - which seems best, one that is in 0-50 range or rocket-highing to 1000?

Yeah, think so too. You will never know who was actually better at a time.

Maybe wares chart should display wares produced, not the wares existing at time. This way it does not matter how many wares your Store had at the beginning - all wares start at 0. And Pro player charts will climb much more rapidly than bad players.

That is why it would be better to show it that way, that you can see when each player reached let's say 500 produced gold chests. Good idea Krom

[Danjb]

First off, I'm loving the graphs, great work there.

If anyone has played Age of Mythology, I think that has a fantastic stats screen after each game, complete with graphs, so some of what I'm about to say is based on that.

As you said Lewin, trying to show all resources for all players on one graph would get messy. But it seems a shame to cut out certain resources from the graph. My suggestion would be a dropdown box that lists each resource, so that when you select a particular resource, the corresponding graph will be displayed (so only one graph is visible at a time). If you really want to go all-out, you could also have checkboxes to show / hide lines for specific players.

Furthermore, there could be a "Total" checkbox; when checked, the graph would show the total of the selected resource that has been produced over time. So, the graph would be flat in places but would always go up, and never down, because every resource produced adds to the total, and when a resource is used up it is not subtracted from that total. I hope this makes sense! When the "Total" box is unchecked, the graph would show the amount of the selected resource stored at each point in time, so it will go up and down according to how the quantity of that resource varied throughout the game.

[Krom]

@Danjb: Could you please post AoM results screens for reference?

[stijn263]

These graphs are used in Age of Conquerors. (I guess AoM is similar)

Score
Military
Technology
Timeline

I like the timeline graph in AoC