War & Peace (Winner: mr_chopper)

[Hugiboo]

Another question:

"how is the winning faction on a map worked out? is the winning faction anybody in the same team as the games winner? or is it the faction with the most regions?"

The winning faction is determined by the winner of the game. The exception is that Neutrals are essentially each their own faction. When planning the scoring, I expected that the winner of the game would tend to dominate the map, so the effect of having one player dominate but an opposing player win (because of troop count) was an unexpected side effect of the 20 round limit. This will have to be addressed in the future, but I don't think it is right to make rule changes during the tournament, so it will have to remain this way for this tournament.

[protogenitor]

Can we get a score update?

[Hugiboo]

I'll be updating the standings & sending the next 4 game invites sometime in the next 2-3 days. I'm moving on Saturday, so this week & Christmas is going to be a bit crazy for me; but I'll get it done. In the meantime, are there any suggestions for rule modifications for future installments of this tourney or one like it? This is my first tournament, so it's been a learning experience; but I'm planning to do another one like this & eventually I would like to try it with a few other maps. I've already had some good suggestions & I've noticed a number of things that should be different myself. I'll start a list here:

Planned Changes
- no fog (easier for diplomacy & makes the games more interesting to me)
- sequential turn order (freestyle makes for fast games - which is why I used it - but adds an unfair element; you are punished for having a life & not sitting on the computer waiting for your turn)
- should include connected empire for losing faction
- should not encourage players to lose game to take advantage of extra points available to losing faction


Is there anything else you've noticed? Did the rules make the game feel balanced? Does it seem like certain country choices or factions have a greater advantage or handicap?

[protogenitor]

One thing I noticed was that with the current rules your not working with your Allies but against them because you are competing with them for places for the next round more than with the opposing faction.

i think the battle fields and sea battles should score points if your faction wins or loses the game to make them more important.

A good way to encourage the factions to fight would be to make it so that you score points for holding an opposing factions country (1/3 of the points value, same as they lose?).

In the current system your home country isn't worth enough in points to make it a high priority in the game. I'd personnaly have your home country score 3-5 times its bonus value to make it really worth crossing the whole map for.

Personnally I'd not give people a set country for all games. I'd give them out randomly per round. Then make it so that the the top scoring people (plus the Immunity winners) go through no matter what faction they are in. Then in the next round hand out new countries again.

Just a few thoughts, they may not be any good but I thought I'd share anyway.

[Hugiboo]

One thing I noticed was that with the current rules your not working with your Allies but against them because you are competing with them for places for the next round more than with the opposing faction.

i think the battle fields and sea battles should score points if your faction wins or loses the game to make them more important.

A good way to encourage the factions to fight would be to make it so that you score points for holding an opposing factions country (1/3 of the points value, same as they lose?).

In the current system your home country isn't worth enough in points to make it a high priority in the game. I'd personnaly have your home country score 3-5 times its bonus value to make it really worth crossing the whole map for.

Personnally I'd not give people a set country for all games. I'd give them out randomly per round. Then make it so that the the top scoring people (plus the Immunity winners) go through no matter what faction they are in. Then in the next round hand out new countries again.

Just a few thoughts, they may not be any good but I thought I'd share anyway.

I didn't want to make the alliances too tight; it's not really a team game. A little bit of backstabbing is an important part of diplomacy (though I don't advise breaking promises). The main reasons for competing within your own faction for a spot in the next round were 1) to maintain balance in case one faction had an unfair advantage & 2) to maintain a balance between Napoleon vs Coalition & Neutral teams in the 2nd round. Perhaps a greater incentive than sharing their country bonus is needed.

For the battle fields & sea battles, I agree. I was worried that the winning faction would rack up so many points, that I used the battles to give the losing side something if they could manage to get some. However, since the games only go to 20 rounds & it's trench (which I think works well as a way to encourage strategic point grabbing - just that there are some bugs in the point system), the "losing faction" doesn't seem to need as much help as I expected.

I also think increasing the home country's value would be a good way to get people to go for it, but there needs to be balance between the 5 value ones & the 1 value ones. Maybe a "point value + x" would be more appropriate so as not to widen the value too much. I favour selecting one's preferred country over random assignment. Some other possibilities are allowing trades (maybe too complicated), or allowing players who have eliminated someone to claim that country as a second or maybe more bonus country (this would have to be done carefully as it would tend to encourage elimination). It could be done with no starting territories, then whatever is held is claimed & can be taken away... I wish I could do 16 player tourney, it would make things much simpler.

[Hugiboo]

Ok, invites are sent. Last time I randomized the players, but this time I just grouped them by their factions. I don't think this will cause any problems, but it should make it a little easier to keep track of who's in your faction.

Merry Christmas everyone!

*Edit* Of course it won't cause any problems, it's freestyle not sequential. Duh.

[Hugiboo]

The question was asked; if you achieve victory conditions before the 20 turn limit, do you get credited with "elimination" for all your enemies.

The answer is no. It's technically not elimination, & not what I had in mind for that bonus, plus it would be a penalty to get credited with eliminating your allies, if you have them. I will consider adding a bonus for victory before 20 rounds in future tourneys because it is a significant achievement.

[Hugiboo]

By the way, I might not be able to get the scores updated for a week or 2. We moved just before Christmas & it will take a while to clear a path through all the boxes & set up my desktop. I will most likely wait at least until games 5-8 are all complete.

[Hugiboo]

Hey all, sorry about the long delay. I was hoping to get the new house relatively unpacked enough to get the new scores up closer to the end of the games. Anyway, I found my computer & carved a space for it from the surrounding boxes. Since the game chats have been archived, I will post game results here:

Game 5:
BIGBLOO: 4
Wizz00: 4
giannikas: 4
HOWITZERHAL: 8
curiousone1: 2
J-Bone: 16
Loose Canon: 12 (winner)
grady12345: 21

Game 6:
caesarmik: -1
donelladan: -1
rgrjoey001: 0
srdjoni: 3
protogenitor: 3
whydelilah: 7
AdamKeith: 13 (winner)
mr_chopper: 7

Game 7:
Wizz00: 7
giannikas: 0
srdjoni: 6
HOWITZERHAL: 2
curiousone1: 4 (winner)
whydelilah: 1
Loose Canon: 1
AdamKeith: 0

Game 8:
caesarmik: 8
BIGBLOO: 3
donelladan: 11 (winner)
rgrjoey001: 4
protogenitor: -1
J-Bone: -1
grady12345: 1
mr_chopper: 0

[Hugiboo]

wookie1 has replaced whydelilah, representing UK.

[Hugiboo]

Pressure is on in the immunity games; there is a marked difference in communication.

Update on ideas for tweaking tournament

Planned Changes
1. sequential turn order (freestyle makes for fast games - which is why I used it - but adds an unfair element; you are punished for having a life & not sitting on the computer waiting for your turn)
2. should include connected empire for losing faction
3. should not encourage players to lose game to take advantage of extra points available to losing faction
4. revise points for holding battle sites to not encourage losing the game to advance in the tournament
5. revise points for holding own country to increase incentive to try to hold it

Possible Changes
6. no fog (easier for diplomacy & makes the games more interesting to me)
- I'm having second thoughts about this - one benefit of fog is that it is hard to know who is going to win based on troop count; which is bound to be the determining factor in most games with a 20 round limit; and I think the 20 round limit is important because otherwise games will go forever, & also it gives the losers a chance to stay alive & get points. Any thoughts on whether this would be a good change or not?
7. greater/different incentive to help "allies" than sharing country bonus and/or revise scoring so not directly competing with allies for advancement placement
8. allowing trading regions or benefits to holding other regions and/or eliminating other players - would have to be handled carefully so as not to get ridiculously complicated - not sure this would work - possibly starting without home region & claiming by holding the region.

Any other ideas or comments on the above?

[Hugiboo]

I was just updating the scores for round 9 when I noticed an anomaly in my data; the total for each game didn't equal the total score for some players. It turns out, moving the lines around for ranking purposes ended up messing up my list of scores for each game. Since I couldn't tell if there were any mistakes, I re-checked each game & found a few minor errors in my calculations. The only one that seems to affect the rankings is for curiousone1; I appear to have counted battle sites in a game that you won, where they were not eligible to be counted. The result is that you've moved from 1st in the Coalition to 4th. I'm sorry, unless you beat wookie & get at least 3 points in your last game, it looks like you will be eliminated. On the other hand, wookie or protogenitor will be advancing now, when they otherwise would have been unfairly eliminated.

[curiousone1]

Argh. The scoring system is a wee bit complex - which is ok. But difficult to assess where we are at. Looks like I need to win the immunity game!

Thanks for the update - and also for organizing the tourney.

[wookie1]

so, which players will go through here?

[merch313]

Tourney active

[Hugiboo]

Round 2 is complete. grady12345 & mr_chopper have advanced to the final. Thank you everyone for participating. I've made a couple of adjustments to the scores since posting earlier this morning (missed 5 points for grady, then noticed in game 3 I gave 10 points too much to grady). I welcome any comments & I hope to do this again.

[BIGBLOO]

On the whole I enjoyed this.

Still not quite sure about Freestyle. If you get caught by a double dunt hit it can be a real b*tch, but I think that on the whole it is probably a better option than sequential - most definitely faster than waiting for ever for each turn to be taken.

I think some of the scoring needs to be reconsidered - because it was shown more times than you would think - the largest land owner was not necessarily the largest troop holder. So hoarding becomes the name of the game - yet the site is Conquer Club, not Stockpiling Club. It doesn't seem right NOT to be rewarded for conquest.
I also think the scoring allocations for battle sites, territories etc could be re-considered.

I would play this again without doubt because my negatives are genuinely minimal, and were far outweighed by an extremely enjoyable and fast paced competition.
That said - if the scoring system held as now I would most certainly opt for a Neutral country to start from rather than one of the two "sides". The scoring potential (win or lose) seems to be somewhat better than as an "also ran" to a "team" victor

[BIGBLOO]

And Thanks Hugiboo.

For trying something completely different and for enduring all the queries, questions and complaints that I sure came your way from all of us at some point or other.

Well Done and congratulations on an excellent effort

[Hugiboo]

Thank you all for participating.

Congratulations to mr_chopper for a come from behind win with 2 immunity wins to squeeze into the next round & what I can only assume (since it was fog of war) was an exciting final match. He wins a lifetime vacation on the Isle of Elba (disclaimer: not a real prize). Congratulations also to the runner up, grady12345, who played a very strong tournament, dominating the scores in both the first & second rounds.

Thanks to everyone else who participated to make my first tournament a success and thank you for all your feedback. If you have any final comments, feel free to reply to the PM or post them on the thread. I will send an invite to all of you when I decide to try this again, or you can let me know if you'd rather opt out.

[Hugiboo]

On the whole I enjoyed this.

Still not quite sure about Freestyle. If you get caught by a double dunt hit it can be a real b*tch, but I think that on the whole it is probably a better option than sequential - most definitely faster than waiting for ever for each turn to be taken.

I think some of the scoring needs to be reconsidered - because it was shown more times than you would think - the largest land owner was not necessarily the largest troop holder. So hoarding becomes the name of the game - yet the site is Conquer Club, not Stockpiling Club. It doesn't seem right NOT to be rewarded for conquest.
I also think the scoring allocations for battle sites, territories etc could be re-considered.

I would play this again without doubt because my negatives are genuinely minimal, and were far outweighed by an extremely enjoyable and fast paced competition.
That said - if the scoring system held as now I would most certainly opt for a Neutral country to start from rather than one of the two "sides". The scoring potential (win or lose) seems to be somewhat better than as an "also ran" to a "team" victor

Thanks for the feedback. I'm also conflicted about Freestyle. I think it might get tedious to wait for so many players, especially with 8 player games. Also fog of war. At first I regretted it because I couldn't see what was going on. Then I thought maybe it was better because you couldn't just sit back confident in your troop count; but then again, seeing the troop count might be less secure after all because you would be more of a target.

I will definitely revise the scoring; I want to make more incentive to hold your own region & some kind of benefit for holding others (connected empire bonus was too small and probably should have applied to everyone). I was aware that the scoring would encourage less conflict; I was actually hoping to limit it somewhat to allow players to stay in the game & collect some points even if they didn't win. My idea was that this would help keep the Napoleonic era feel of vassal states (ie. not total domination in war). I actually thought players would play more strategically & go after the battle sites & naval battles more, try to hold their region & help their faction; but I guess fog of war & the fact that you aren't credited with battle sites if you win hampered this purpose. I think it would be more strategic if these were fixed.

I thought that the neutrals would have a disadvantage without allies, but the battle site benefit was probably overkill, especially when everyone else had less motive to go for them. Making the battle/naval sites more balanced I think will change this a lot; I don't know if it will be too much. Ultimately it's not going to be equal all around, and that's part of the appeal for me. It's not equal, but different players may have different advantages, so choosing your player is important as well as strategy, which might change depending on who you choose. I think the immunity games helped balance any major inequalities, but I think next time it would be better if the final game had more players, then the scoring would be relevant to more than just the one player who's destroying everyone else in points.

Any ideas on how to best balance the 3 factions?

[mr_chopper]

thanks for a great tourney, hugiboo!

[mr_chopper]

great tourney...i look forward to defending my title!