Rommel Dias Saraiva
ABSTRACT
Game balancing is one of the most challenging features to be implemented in a typical game design process. Approaches for evaluating and achieving game balancing include extensive playtesting - which typically requires several iterations of games with subtle adjustments in the components and adopted strategies that resemble brute force - and algorithmic solutions that use qualitative and measurable design goals when developing game components. The literature contains examples of methods that employ artificial intelligence to generate maps in computer games that offer balanced and fairness of starting conditions for the players. The use of such methods for tabletop games, however, has been scarce in the academic literature, for the best of the authors’ knowledge. This paper investigates the application of the ant colony optimisation metaheuristic to generate content and improving game balance for two well-known tabletop games, namely, Terra Mystica and Settlers of Catan. The resultant configurations satisfy complex game-dependent requirements while optimising a model for game balancing. Moreover, the results showed to be promising when compared with existing game maps and setup.
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