Faeria Economy - Part 1

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#1

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Greetings

Disclaimer*

I´m starting this guide trying to explain what is economy, tempo & quality of cards in faeria, this is going to be a long way but i promise to update this guide with new findings and feedback from the community ASAP.

Economy in faeria

Faeria is a deeply economic game basically ´cause you, from start to end, are continuosly making choices of investment, taking risk and trying to controlling it to your side of the balance.

i´ve noticed other guides talking a little bit about the faeria cost of cards and other relevant topics but i want to be exhaustive as possible with this guide and describe some guidelines to really understand how you are transforming 1,2, etc faeria into something else in the board that makes grow your economy.

First i want to introduce some values for you, some of you may disagreee the weigth i´m giving to each of the items but trust me i’ll be more than happy to hear your feedback and arguments about the topic. here you have:

Faeria = Money

Power wheel

  • Faeria = 1***f***
  • Draw = 1***f***
  • Y,G,B,R land = 1***f***
  • Neutral land = 0.5***f***

This are only for yellow cards i hope to add the other decks progressively.

Card attributes

  • flying = 0.5***f***
  • aquatic = 0.5***f***
  • jump = 1***f***
  • range = 1***f***
  • haste = 1***f***
  • charge = 0.5***f***/per box (i.e 2 charge creature equals 1 f)
  • dash = 0.5***f***(same as charge)
  • move = 1***f***(i.e flash wind)
  • life = 0.5***f***(i.e life+2 equals 1***f***)
  • 1power+1life = 1***f***(i.e campfire)
  • 2power or 2life = 1***f***
  • deathtouch = 1-2***f***( it depends of the faeria cost of sacrificed creature, cheaper sacrifices are more f )

Quality Equation or Tier

So here you’ll have my first aproximation to meassure the quality of a card by itself.

Tier(T) = ({power+life}/faeriaCost)+cardAttributes

here you have and example of why windstorm chargers are so broken:

[Card=310]Windstorm Charger[/Card]

windstormCharger T = ({2+4}/3f)+ chargeX2 (1f) + gain+2/+0 (3f).

windstormCharger T = (2f) + 1f + 3f = 6f

windstormCharger T = 6f … and thats why you can lose so easily against a well played windstorm charger as it is capable of doubling its faeria cost ´cause of its attributes.

This is just the start of a long topic and i hope to end this guide and i´ll be adding info about strong cards before introducing the synergy concept & tempo (@luuu90 i´m talking to you, i hope to write to you soon cause you can explain tempo better than me).

Hope you enjoy this intro to the guide and use the formula to build better decks. if you want to see a practical example of a deck build with the formula you can take a look at my Y Flying mid-range/control, i´ve introduce the charger to a flying control to take advantage of charger quality.

Have fun!!!

2 Likes
#2

This is some quality data gathering. I’m personally not sure what the application for it is yet, but I’m interested in seeing where you take it from here. Looking forward to Future updates

#3

I think it’s a really good idea to have a discussion/guide of what makes powerful cards powerful, how to spot and use them, etc. but I think that the straight economic approach has some issues.

I’m guessing you’ve taken neutrals and coloured cards without abilities as a baseline, which I think would be the way to go but there are a lot of card elements that are very difficult to categorize without context. Land cost seems like the most obvious to me, Thyrian Golem is an amazing deal under your system (7.5 value for 5) but this is balanced by requiring 5 forests, which means it can’t run well in many decks.

Synergy based abilities are also very difficult to ‘price out’ in this manner, windstorm charger being a great example because in a deck with zero events there is a lot less reason to run it whereas strong stats for cheap will always be useful. You rate it’s pump ability as adding +3 faeria worth, but I’m not sure how you got there, and I think it’s hard to rate accurately because it’s strength depends on the strength of the cards that you’re using to facilitate it (like how sac outlets vary depending on how cheap and useful the sacrificed creature is).

Overall, I think a discussion of why powerful cards are as powerful as they are, and why some cards are weak even though they might not seem it, but I think that a purely mathematical discussion approach is less preferable than a hybrid math/strategy discussion approach.

1 Like
#4

hi there vaalhallan & Boss Smiley thanks for the reply, basically right now i´m working on two indicators that i hope complement the base equation. those 2 indicators are one corresponding to risk wich include land requirements, or effects that require particular conditions(attack a god, (draw a event or having enemy pieces on the board think about doomsday for example.) the other indicator is Synergy which rely on how card atributtes generate faeria, think about how drakkar being a 2/4 creature and 4 cost faeria needs a least 1 flying creature draw to obtain the (+1/+1) 1 faeria cost bonus to really make it worth you’ll need 2 flying creatures draw. So a good example of synergy will be drakkar/iona’s smile wich automatically acomplished drakkar objective and even better for each drakar you have on the board but we can go further with sunsilk faerie reducing the risk of the sunsilk faeria of dying before draw an event and obtain the (+3/+1) 2 faeria cost bonus . so as you can see risk and synergy are things that seems correlated. i´m trying to make a whole equation that take in account those indicators as factors wait for it i would like to hear your opinion or suggestions about this guys.

#5

Hi.
i always liked this approach in hearthstone, good idea to do the same in faeria!
I would like to point out a few issues in your post though:

  1. the units are chose inconsistent, 1f is used as faeria cost and value/faeria cost (the cardattributes). If you assign f as faeria cost then the attribute things should read 1/f. In your example you end up with 1/f + f + f and suddenly switch the 2/f to 2f.
  2. i would put the cardAttribute value inside the bracket and also divide it by the faeria cost, otherwise the cardattributes are x times more valuable for creatures which cost x times more faeria.
  3. this also leads to your extreme evaluation of the windstorm charger. Since you did not divide the value of gain+2/0 through the faeria cost it generates as much value as a +9 higher attack would give. That is obviously nonsense. I guess your intention was to put it inside the bracket than it would generate as much value as +3 attack which would be more reasonable (still not sure about that).
  4. your conclusion is confusing as well, the charger is not doubling the cost, but rather provides 3 faeria of value/1 faeria cost according to your calculation.
    So in conclusion i would rather suggest:
    value 2 attack + 4 life + 1 for charge + 3 for gain+2/0 gives overall 10 value
    10 value/3 faeria cost = 3.33 value/faeria cost
    other creatures like syland warrior would have
    3 attack + 6 life/ 5 faeria =1.8 value/ faeria cost, which is clearly worse. (but does not have land reqs)
#6

Hi there Werezerg i also noticed what you were talking about the units and i was just today iworking on a new formula and i found one that seems pretty interesting and i think improves my formula and the one you are suggestion let me update the formula for you on the main post and let me know what do you think.

#7

I don’t understand what this is useful for, but you did obviously put some efforts in.

Also, your approach doesn’t take into account the board. It’s a well known fact in chess that where the piece is placed on the board greatly affect its value (they call this concept “piece activity”). The same concept exists here in faeria. The value of charge X is NOT proportionnal to X, as a well positionned charge 2 unit will dominate the relevant parts of the board almost as well as a charge 3 unit. Also, we can in normal conditions make only 2 lands max per turn, so we allways have the option to let our charge 2 unit move to the max of its reach, while we may not have the opportunity to use the full charge 3 of a creature even if we needed it (think magnus).

You also didn’t take into account the land requirement in the evaluation of a card. It is extremely important as the less land requirements and the more easily you will be able to place your creature on an active tile (the more the game goes on and the more areas of tension exist on the board, often tactically preventing to drop creatures there). Dash is a very strong ability in this regard. You can’t really compare it to charge as they affect the board in a very different way.

tl;dr: I think you are missing way too much variables to get to anything useful.

#8

Greetings DougteurFou i’ll try to reply to every point you made; this guide is useful, as the description says, to throw light on this questions "What makes a deck good enough to be competitive? how can i determine the quality of a card by itself and how can i understand synergy between cards? " also “In this guide i’ll try to explain and invite to an open debate about the creation of indicators that make clear for all of us what determine the quality of a card, deck and why the meta is well… the meta.” So as you can see this is useful ´cause you can build better decks, understanding the quality of the cards itself that compound a deck witch basically could explain the current meta.

your second point about piece activity has never implied in this approach and for a good reason: this guide is about economy rather than strategy, or tactics, even if this concepts have a direct impact over them, i.e this concepts improve how you approach to tactics an strategy cause this concepts let you understand what are you investing on the board and what are the possible rewards of playing that card; by the other hand this guide as not referring to strategy and tactics implies the player knows how to use the card in an optimal way (that´s the reason why this is an intermediate-advanced guide and not a basic guide but can help beginner players a lot though)

your third point about land requirement is answered here “this formula does not includes land requirements but i’m working on a risk indicator to add to this formula that not only includes land requirements but also includes specific conditions like attacking a god, be patiente i´ll make it public as soon as i can so we can improve it together .” and here “the units i take for card attributes are based on reviewing its cost trough all cards (neutral & colored) trying to be the less arbitrary as possible. some units are easy to calculate as power or life with 0.5f value or +2 life to player with 1f value; taunt, charge dash, deathtouch and other attributes are a little bit tricky but i´m taking a first approach comparing is value on differrent cards; i´ll write a whole chapter about this.”

your fourth point about this being useful well you can give a shot to your decks or meta decks and evaluate with this formula their quality i have a data base that i will share when is finished containing all cards their tier and a lot of information, i am a programmer and my intention is to improve the deck builder for beginners (that’s another reason more why this is useful) i have just published 1 deck in this guide as a tangible example this deck is not in the meta as a convention but it took me to god rank with ease when i never played that deck before so i think i’m doing something right even the limitations that you pointed out and ,trust me, a lot more that i’m addressing right now. so if you want something practical i invite you to catch the data base on github https://github.com/abrakam/Faeria_Cards aply this formula and create new decks or evaluate exiting ones for your own use. Finally i want to say that every suggestion that improves the formula is welcome really really welcome! so thanks for your comments i´ll continue doing my best to imporve this formula and its indicators.

#9

Hi AcidFox,

didnt see the update, the forum post didnt change i think.
So here a few comments:

a) i still think the formula should look different. Value/cost makes a lot more sense, value-cost will overvalue big creatures. E.g. if a 4f creature will give you 1f extra value i would say the card is about as good as a 8f creature which gives you 2f extra and not any worse. It is more important how much extra f you can generate per faeria not per card. Although the value of the card should not be ignored as well, and there is an easy solution how to make a logical formula which gives you the extra value/investment taking the value of the card into account and avoiding the problem you mentioned. You just have to add +1 to the faeria cost, since the value of 1 card is roughly 1f, now you will no longer divide by 0.
b) suggested formula:
(life+attack+cardattributes)/(faeriacost+0.5*land req.+1f for the card)
That is an easy and logical formula, you can tweak prefactors to your liking but i am convinced this should be the basis.
c) as much as i love formulas as a physicist, i do not think this is useful for anything more than a rough estimate of the value of a card taken in a vacuum without taking the situation into account. So you can generate some tier list for pandora for example. But people still need to use their own brain to evaluate situational cards and it will never be realistic to apply this to strongly situational cards or even entire competitive decks, there is way too much to consider.

#10

Werezerg Hi! i wanna give to you a gift is a copy od the whole faeria card database with the current formula v2.0 u really appreciate your feed back so with this tool i think you can help me a lot my email is cahernandezac@gmail.com if you can share a gmail with me i’ll be glad to share my work with you.

#11

I’ve seen similar discussions made a few times on the Faeria Discord server. But never with such enthusiasm and math behind it, with a little help I think you could make a comprehensive formula that gives card values. Unfortunately I’m not great at math so I’ll leave you with a warning, the power wheel is not the end-all be-all towards creating this formula, there’s far too many factors in the game-state to make “1 faeria = 1 card draw = 1 special land = 2 neutral lands” true even half of the turns you could choose one of those options.

It’s dependent on land placement from both sides(early on land placement is considerably more important than any other option, also when the opponent is threatening to make their first aggressive land),
matchup from both decks(an all neutral deck would have no need of special lands, also vs a slower deck it’s more important to double neutral early to try and get aggressive lands),
hand size and quality(quality is a little vague but that’s what we’re working to fix right?) from both players,
current board advantage(This also affects whether a slower play like a verduran force is better than a faster play like a flame burst)

And probably a few other factors I can’t think of, so always keep in mind how often an ability could be used or a 1attack or health statline will matter or how much a card costs or how it’s uses coincide with card advantage(failed experiment + lore thief is a 1f two card cycle but it’s harder to pull off than just using shifting tide, at the same time against anything but a red deck lore thief on it’s own can often collect twice to make it cost 1 overall making it easier to use and better than the FE + lore thief combo)

Finally some people might think these factors wouldn’t affect the formula, but when these factors account for more than half of all turns played in each game, I would say that it should at the very least be accounted for.

Edit: I think the hardest part of this will be comparing each card’s uses(Factoring in literally everything) to each other card’s uses in the game, considering that eventually there will be new cards with new stats and new costs and new uses to compare to.

#12

Hi AcidFox.
I’m sorry, your answer didn’t convince me at all. All you said was “this is useful and good because it is useful and good”.
If you manage to use your formula to refine existing decks, I’d be impressed and I’d change my mind. This just seems like a tool to watch things that already work, and doesn’t help to build something new that works. In other words, it doesn’t seem to me useful at all for a player, it might be useful for an analyst, I suppose, if for some reason an analyst needs a formula to know if a card is good…

The problem is faeria is not a game of card quality, it’s a board game before being a card game. Your card’s quality directly depends on what the card is achieving on the board. I’d rather have a ruby fish double collecting over a windstorm charger on the wrong side of the board.

#13

DoigteurFou bro! i reply to all your queries if you didn´t find it useful it is not because this it’s not (i saw tangible results of this and other people saw it too) i pointed you out towards improving the formula thanks to testing and im pretty sure you didn’t even download the github database is not enough to say you’re wrong and i am right also is not enough to attack something particular or specific with a lot of generalizations, i invited people to make improvements about this formula and their empirical experiences about this and i´ve received positive feedback and specific limitations that im addressing right now. i hope to update the guide as soon as possible with the updates. as i told you before i know that faeria is a board game and involves a lot of variables im working on this for everyone and for free and im remain open to opinions and suggestions hopefully that help us all advanced with this task instead of just complaint about it´s limitations

#14

Sulphur im taking note of all you are saying thank you so much i really appreciate your suggestions. Werezerg im taking in account your points a) valu/cost vs value - cost, b)your suggested formula (il play with it on my database and see how it behaves) and c) the situational game im making a faeria BOARD economy to complement the current guide.

#15

Okay, let’s answer spcifically then:

So as you can see this is useful ´cause you can build better decks, understanding the quality of the cards itself that compound a deck witch basically could explain the current meta.<

No it would be useful it it fulfilled this objective, but it didn’t yet. And the criticisms I offered you are explanations as to why, in my opnion, it doesn’t yet fulfill these objectives. Your answer here just says it is useful ebcause you are convinced of your work, which is not a bad thing in itself. It is not, however, a valid jsutification of anything.

your second point about piece activity has never implied in this approach and for a good reason: this guide is about economy rather than strategy, or tactics, even if this concepts have a direct impact over them < (and all the text that follows)
And this is the reason why I don’t see how these formulas can be anything useful to a practical player at high level: it doesn’t take into account 75% of wins or loses a game. and i’m sorry but what a beginner player needs to get better is not a formula to assess cards, but practice.

your third point about land requirement is answered here "this formula does not includes land requirements but i’m working on a risk indicator to add to this formula that not only includes land requirements <

This is exactly my criticism, it’s not included. The fact that you will do something in a future work doesn’t magically make this article and formulas useful to the practical player. Maybe it will, in the future, but as of what was presented to me it isn’t.

i have just published 1 deck in this guide as a tangible example this deck is not in the meta as a convention but it took me to god rank with ease <

Is that your justification for the worth of this approach? Reaching godrank? Last month there were almost 900 godrank players for a number of active players around 1500.
But okay, if you “feel you are doing something right” when you play it it’s likely scientific enough to reject every point showed to you.

I didn’t want to answer specifically to your whole post because I didn’t want to sound harsh. Your work and dedication is admirable and I find it encouraging that we still have people interested in the theoric aspects of games. However if you stay blind to every point brought to you, and keep working without a method, I’m afraid you will have a very hard time getting somewhere concrete with your work.

I’m talking about the method because Faeria is a board game before everything, and economy is only one of the aspects that dictates how the game go. If one wants to theorize the game, he needs to first make an attempted lists of the elements all of the game that need to be modelized, and then modelize them in an accurate order. For example, in faeria the amount of ressources you get is dependent on the state of the board. It means you can’t have a description of the economy in faeria only looking at the cards and not taking into account board states. Even moreso if your goal is to be able to “rate” full decklists.

Now I’m sorry, I won’t answer anymore because I don’t want this discussion to become a fight. I have explained my points and have nothing to add. You may delete this message, or dismiss the information I included there as me being an ass, or ignorant, or whatever. Or you could try to understand if maybe there is at least one sentence that might be helpful to you. In any case, I have no control over what you will do with my message, I let it up to you.

#16

DoigteurFou i´ll try to address your suggestions i don´t now if you read the updates to the guide but i think im answering to some of your complaints, and yep nobody is fighting i hope you came here someday and pick something useful for free, meanwhile ill continue working also for free to give something useful to the community. have fun!

1 Like
#17

I suggest introducing the concept of ‘The cards ifself being a resource’. I propose giving each card a -1f, in order to better calculate its value. For example when you use flash wind, its not actually free, you may have only used 0 faeria but you’ve also used the ‘card itself’ which you had to draw using 1f (the power wheel you mentioned). With this theory, it could be said that every turn you get 3f and a draw(1f) a total of 4f, and when you use a card you use its cost+innate cost(1f). Again with the flash wind, it seems to be 0 cost but in my theory you add its innate value, becoming 1cost. And just as in your guide this equals the value calculated by your mechanics. So in order to accurately calculate its tier list you should take a -1f to your mechanics.
P.S. This also explains why Yellow Events is so strong, for they use multiple cards to gain its innate resoure (1f per card) + the faeria they have accumulated so far in a single turn, effectively gaining faeria advantage over the enemy

#18

I’m interested in the fact that you said only “Part 1” Is there a part 2? I’m interested in the link :smiley: