Conquer Club

It's a New Year folks. Let's not dig up past history and move ahead in a spirit of goodwill.

Tout le clan se joint à moi pour vous souhaiter une joyeuse année 2019: que la santé, l'amour et la réussite vous accompagnent dans tous vos batailles

Donelladan wrote:@joecoolfrog, you do play a lot of classic style risk ( sunny, escalating, and maps with no special feature), but you are kinda the exception in the clan world.
My point being we are way past the point where clan world can be considered close to real risk and allowing more trench or not isn't going to change that.

That +what caff said. Or by the same token we should have a restriction on maps with autodeploy, killer neutrals, bombardment and/or one-way assaults for instance

loutil wrote: Further, he did basically use it as an excuse as he claimed we did not agree to the change so we could "get an edge by restricting our choice of homes". Not sure how else to interpret that comment.
Finally...you guys lead off complaining about the dice. Both in games and here in this thread. When the dice turn in your favor you switch to complaining that we tried to gain some advantage over you by not allowing the rules to be changed. I would have expected better, but that is just the way I choose to see the world. When in doubt...be nice.

Usually people who don't give any arguments don't have any good ones, and that's the amount of arguments I saw in the CAT forum. Don't think making the leap to thinking you oppose that rule because you'd rather play weakened opponents is unreasonable. If you used the rule in bad faith, consider it an excuse if you want.

rockfist wrote:

It'd take divine intervention for you to win.

But I understand, if you lie to yourself, long enough you may believe your own lie and since you have to believe you can do something in order to do it, I'd do the same in your position. But deep down, you know, its still a lie, even though you don't dare admit it.

you cant spell believe without lie in the middle

I understand you have to blame something when you lose. If I had to bet I’d bet we will be 13-9 in trench games against you this war. We were 11-9 against you in trench last war.

Donelladan wrote:
@loutil
good to know dice turned in our favor, so we did have bad dice in the first set ?

And saying that you refused trench to get an edge by restrictring our choice of homes might sound like an excuse to lose the war to your ears, but to me it sounds like the pure truth.

Has anyone tried to argue that you did not have bad dice early? I think the only things I read were that people thought the complaining about it was bad form.

You are entitled to any version of this story you want. But, we certainly had NO discussion in TOFU about restricting your choice to gain an advantage. The only discussion was about past issues ( which have been expressed enough ) and my direct assertion that trench games take longer to play. Not sure what proof you have that suggests otherwise? I researched my own games and discovered clear evidence that they take much longer to play.

Here is some of what I wrote in the discussion thread in the TOFU forum:
The idea that trench games do not take longer than non trench seems absurd to me. I did 2 checks on maps I frequently play. WWI Galip and Kings II. Both of which I have played often trench and non trench. Here is the data:
Galip trench games average 17 rounds per game. Non trench average only 10.8 rounds.
Kings II trench games average 19 rounds and non trench average 14 rounds.

Extreme Ways wrote: Don's argument takes into account time of starting and time of finishing. If you're playing me on poly, trench will take longer because regardless of win or loss, I will run my clock down because I usually dont want to see the game come up again. If you're playing someone that plays fast, the last X rounds will essentially be drop/end asap.

Again, I find that absurd. My Galip clan games that are non trench take on average 19 days to complete. While I did not check all my clan trench Galip games, a large sample resulted in an average completion in 33 days.

Chariot of Fire wrote:Correct me if I am wrong but there is a rule in place for CC8 that restricts the amount of trench games, is that right?

This rule is not one made by TOFU but by general consensus.

So how/why are we suddenly the villains in this story? We haven't tried to deviate from the established rules at all.

If a clan asked me "Hey can we make all our home games trench?" I'd say "Sure, if we can make all our home games quads".

I think a lot of people seem to have lost touch with the original board game and its beautiful simplicity that gave birth to this site in the first place. Let's not deviate too far from those origins.

Peace and love everyone. Genuine wishes for a great year ahead xxx

The original rule of the board game is with trench, just saying.

joecoolfrog wrote:

Chariot of Fire wrote:Correct me if I am wrong but there is a rule in place for CC8 that restricts the amount of trench games, is that right?

This rule is not one made by TOFU but by general consensus.

So how/why are we suddenly the villains in this story? We haven't tried to deviate from the established rules at all.

If a clan asked me "Hey can we make all our home games trench?" I'd say "Sure, if we can make all our home games quads".

I think a lot of people seem to have lost touch with the original board game and its beautiful simplicity that gave birth to this site in the first place. Let's not deviate too far from those origins.

Peace and love everyone. Genuine wishes for a great year ahead xxx

This is the crucial point , people on the whole joined this site because they loved playing Risk. Membership has fallen greatly over the years and that im sure is partly because specialisation has taken the site far away from its original roots. Were I looking in for the first time today im sure I wouldn't recognise many of the games as RISK related , no doubt many newbies feel the same and simply dont bother coming back.
As they say , be carefull of what you wish for , it wont be much fun just playing amongst yourselves.

This has always been a moot argument for me. What hooked me up to this site was the amount of maps and settings to explore. Old timers often like to find new things on the site when they come back.
If someone wants to play only sequential flat rate sunny 4 player games on classic, well he can.
"Oh I don't like that restaurant anymore where they keep serving my favourite dish. Those bastards made a menu with a broader choice, not going there ever again, it attracts people that would eat food I hate"

I like your analogy although that wasn't really Joe's point. He was saying that for a newcomer it's somewhat overwhelming, rather like that time you've been in a restaurant and looked at a menu that had so many choices but in a foreign language so you just didn't know what to choose. The chef had the last laugh when you ordered Rocky Mountain Oysters because you love seafood. It's the same minefield for a noob on this site, although I'm convinced they've changed the dice algorithm so even a virgin on this site could beat an experienced player (e.g. me, right now) because strategy has gone out the window in favour of distorted dice results.

@loutil, I'll skip the dice part, I think we discussed that one enough.

loutil wrote: You are entitled to any version of this story you want. But, we certainly had NO discussion in TOFU about restricting your choice to gain an advantage. The only discussion was about past issues ( which have been expressed enough ) and my direct assertion that trench games take longer to play. Not sure what proof you have that suggests otherwise? I researched my own games and discovered clear evidence that they take much longer to play.

Here is some of what I wrote in the discussion thread in the TOFU forum:
The idea that trench games do not take longer than non trench seems absurd to me. I did 2 checks on maps I frequently play. WWI Galip and Kings II. Both of which I have played often trench and non trench. Here is the data:
Galip trench games average 17 rounds per game. Non trench average only 10.8 rounds.
Kings II trench games average 19 rounds and non trench average 14 rounds.

Extreme Ways wrote: Don's argument takes into account time of starting and time of finishing. If you're playing me on poly, trench will take longer because regardless of win or loss, I will run my clock down because I usually dont want to see the game come up again. If you're playing someone that plays fast, the last X rounds will essentially be drop/end asap.

Again, I find that absurd. My Galip clan games that are non trench take on average 19 days to complete. While I did not check all my clan trench Galip games, a large sample resulted in an average completion in 33 days.

KCII and Gallip might be different.
I wasn't taking specific maps in the examples I posted previously, I was taking entire clan war.
The argument that allowing more trench games would make wars longer, and therefore this competition, doesn't hold imo, because if you look at both semi finals of this competition, the longest games were no trench games.
This is what I posted in the CAT forum :

LHDD vs OSA
trench game 10,3 turns in average / longest games 15 ,15 et 12 rounds / 40 days
no trench game : 9 turns in average / longest games 21,21 and 14 rounds / 53 days

For TOFU vs S&M :

S&M vs TOFU :
Average length of trench game : 13,75 turns to finish (13 games),
Average length of no-trench game : 9,75 turns to finish ( 42 games).
longuest no trench game = Conquer Man, 52 days, Conquer Rome 54 days
Longest trench game = 1982, 38 days, USA2.1 = 37 days

And it must be noted that you started to play lot of escalating games in TOFU, which wasn't so much the case before ( at least not during our CC6 semi final two years ago, I don't follow all your other wars), and escalating no trench is, obviously, the fastest setting. Most clans don't play, no stat I am making the assumption from the top of my head, lot of escalating games so differentials in turns length would probably be less, just like in the LHDD vs OSA wars.
But, if we are specifically talking about length of wars, in regard of the CC9 competition, then what matters is in how many days the games are finished, not in how many turns. And clearly, at least on those two case, ( and as well during the CC6 semi LHDD vs TOFU because I checked) the longest games were no trench.

And yes, probably somes maps are way longer in trench, for example spanish armada trench is way way longer than spanish armada no trench, sames goes for feudal epic.
But with the current restrictions of 50% trench games, those extreme case of long trench games can already be played so going to 100% isn't going to make a difference.
And in general trench games are decided faster, even if there is a cleaning time that takes several turns, because game is already over, people play faster. Which is why even if you need more rounds to finish, it takes less days. And that's what matters.

loutil wrote: The only discussion was about past issues ( which have been expressed enough )

You mean one game ? because I am reading a plural here.
And no FFS we weren't holding you hostage.
There is two different argument rockfist is having about it.
One that we run the clock. Two that we weren't conceding and because it was trench you couldn't finish it.
So first we can run the clock in no trench game just as good as in trench game. Did we do that ? No, so why the hell would we run the clock in a trench game only ?
And we weren't conceding because there was a chance to win the game. I really don't see the problem there

You finally advanced your stack in front of ours, we lost and then we gave up. Just as it should be. Really no reason to give up before you made that move.
rorke's drift in that matter is a really special one, such a situation ( the one rockfist described in his post) just cannot even happen in 99% of CC map, and even on rorke's drift it's pretty rare.

Game 18068956 Here no trench, 4 months game. Does it mean we should ban waterloo, no spoils or quad ?

Rorke's was just 3 months and it was the longest rorke's drift trench game we ever played. Exceptionnal case.

Betiko
I believe that at its peak this site had around 18,000 participants , now its around 5,000 so it would seem that new members are thin on the ground. Now I have proposed that one of the main reasons might be that it no longer attracts RISK fans , which overwhelmingly were the original base.
You however seem to think that the specialisation and variety now in vogue is a boost for the site , so how would you explain the huge fall off in players over the years ?
Im not being confrontational , I would simply like some viewpoints.

rockfist wrote: You guys sat about 116 times in that war. If we exclude people who went AWOL or went on vacation it does drop to about 97 times. I say about because I may be off slightly in my count. To me that is dragging a war out. To my way of thinking allowing you to play all trench games affords you the opportunity to drag things out even longer. I’ve stated earlier I should be 11-5 in trench games in wars against you so it’s my annoyance at how long you can make them take not fear of losing that makes me not want to play a whole bunch of trench against you.

Stop bragging about your personal ratio, I'll probably have a 100% win ratio on trench in this war, but this isn't rockfist vs Donelladan is it ?

I've got no time to count the number of times we sat in games.
But seriously ?
You are just accusing us to run the clock below 2 hours so that we can sit people ? Feel free to accuse us of cheating sure for something that happened two years ago and that no one ever complained about.
Already replied that shit concerning rorke's drift game, just not the case, I won't bother with checking why we needed some sitting in other games in that war two years ago.

But stop throwing mud please, that's seriously really really low.

Jeez guys, why are we still arguing? I tried writing a civil/friendly post in honour of the New Year and people are still at each others' throats.

If you want to blame someone blame me. I'm not very fond of trench as games tend to be decided too easily/quickly coz of daft drops and/or dice. As someone who has historically taken on a majority of 'away' games I'd be pissed off if they were all trench.

To the best of my knowledge we simply complied with the rules pertinent to CC8. Any talk in other forums of amending the rule in future (e.g. CC9) has no bearing on what has taken place in this tournament and is thus irrelevant.

I apologize if we didn't accede to your request to allow "all trench" in this final, but then why would we play to your advantage? We simply carried on in the same format, compliant with the rules, that has brought us this far.

"Hey Mr Federer, great to meet you in the final of this pool tournament. Wanna play for $1,000?"
"Only if we play tennis instead"
"Doh, OK!"

Anyway, I'll ask again, can we just please be civil?

@Don

Good for you winning 100% trench.

No, I believe we played 1v1 in clan poly on your maps. This is a team competition. I've posted our team stats as well.

I had that information already. It wasn't something I did now.

You had time to look at all the completed games in wars to see how long they took Which I did not have time to do and still don't have time to do.

Hey COF, I am not really arguing about your refusal to let us play more than 50% trench games in this war, but rather taking up again the debate I had with rockfist in the CAT forum.
I thought that was pretty transparent.

Ofc there is also the side argument about that war two years ago, but speaking of LHDD side we're pretty shocked about that piece coming from you, we had no clues there was hard feelings remaining from this war, nor that you though we were intentionally slowing down, but I can't accept the accusation of poor sportmanship.

There were and are no hard feelings on my end. You did what you did and you were entitled to play it like you did. We are entitled to vote about expanding trench how we vote. But, it is not fair to say that we have no reason to believe you might use the possibility of all trench games to employ a stall tactic. How can you possibly know what someone else believes?

betiko wrote:

Chariot of Fire wrote:Correct me if I am wrong but there is a rule in place for CC8 that restricts the amount of trench games, is that right?

This rule is not one made by TOFU but by general consensus.

So how/why are we suddenly the villains in this story? We haven't tried to deviate from the established rules at all.

If a clan asked me "Hey can we make all our home games trench?" I'd say "Sure, if we can make all our home games quads".

I think a lot of people seem to have lost touch with the original board game and its beautiful simplicity that gave birth to this site in the first place. Let's not deviate too far from those origins.

Peace and love everyone. Genuine wishes for a great year ahead xxx

The original rule of the board game is with trench, just saying.

This isn't true. Just sayin' I've been playing the original board game for over 50 years.

And to Don - OK, cheers. I hadn't fully grasped that was what it was about.

joecoolfrog wrote:Betiko
I believe that at its peak this site had around 18,000 participants , now its around 5,000 so it would seem that new members are thin on the ground. Now I have proposed that one of the main reasons might be that it no longer attracts RISK fans , which overwhelmingly were the original base.
You however seem to think that the specialisation and variety now in vogue is a boost for the site , so how would you explain the huge fall off in players over the years ?
Im not being confrontational , I would simply like some viewpoints.

A few things: everybody ends up being bored by games. The fact that some people here have been playing on this site for over a decade is exceptionnal.

I never bothered to look for it but... I have no idea about other risk websites... maybe the competition is better than CC now or has better marketing. What is for sure is that the interface is old. We all play CC from phones or tablets at some point and this is not made for it.
I don't know either how the board game is selling... is it growing or declining in sales throughout the years? What about age groups?

When I first came around I was just looking for a risk website.... and the depth of the site made me stick around. I can hardly see how it could make a majority run away, doesn't make much sense to think so.

Chariot of Fire wrote:

betiko wrote:

Chariot of Fire wrote:Correct me if I am wrong but there is a rule in place for CC8 that restricts the amount of trench games, is that right?

This rule is not one made by TOFU but by general consensus.

So how/why are we suddenly the villains in this story? We haven't tried to deviate from the established rules at all.

If a clan asked me "Hey can we make all our home games trench?" I'd say "Sure, if we can make all our home games quads".

I think a lot of people seem to have lost touch with the original board game and its beautiful simplicity that gave birth to this site in the first place. Let's not deviate too far from those origins.

Peace and love everyone. Genuine wishes for a great year ahead xxx

The original rule of the board game is with trench, just saying.

This isn't true. Just sayin' I've been playing the original board game for over 50 years.

And to Don - OK, cheers. I hadn't fully grasped that was what it was about.

I'm pretty sure that the actual original version of the game (la conquete des mondes, which was french and before it was sold to hasbro) was played in trench. I seriously doubt you've ever played the original game since it wasn't sold in the UK with the same rules. Maybe I'm wrong, can't remember where I saw it.... but remember someone pointing out that trench was the rule of the original game. It was pretty strange to see that the game was sold with different rules on different continents. As always, brits had different rules than their continental europe friends.

You'd be surprised how many French games I play mon ami. Half my family went to universities in France so we've had an affinity for the country all my life.

I thought perhaps you were thinking of Diplomacy (similar to Risk! only better) wherein only adjacent territories may be conquered. I don't remember the original rules to La Conquête du Monde but I played it

Can someone explain to me how LHDD, or any clan, stalling out trench games in any future Conquerors Cup games would benefit them?

If the rankings for the next tournament are being picked, not having the loss on your record so you get a higher seeding might be one reason.

rockfist wrote:If the rankings for the next tournament are being picked, not having the loss on your record so you get a higher seeding might be one reason.

Higher seeds don't matter much. Only the top 8 get seeded and everyone else is random. If your around this late into the competition you will be top 8.

To prove my point that seeds don't matter you guys got #1 seed and got us (ATL ranked 12th) S&M are 3rd seed and got VNM who are ranked 17th. LHDD are second seed and got RGV(19th) / ID(unranked).

Caymanmew wrote:

rockfist wrote:If the rankings for the next tournament are being picked, not having the loss on your record so you get a higher seeding might be one reason.

Higher seeds don't matter much. Only the top 8 get seeded and everyone else is random. If your around this late into the competition you will be top 8.

To prove my point that seeds don't matter you guys got #1 seed and got us (ATL ranked 12th) S&M are 3rd seed and got VNM who are ranked 17th. LHDD are second seed and got RGV(19th) / ID(unranked).

It might not matter much on who you face in the first match up, but certainly the difference between 1,2,3,4 etc matters because it determines which clans you must go through and which side of the bracket you are on

IcePack wrote:

Caymanmew wrote:

rockfist wrote:If the rankings for the next tournament are being picked, not having the loss on your record so you get a higher seeding might be one reason.

Higher seeds don't matter much. Only the top 8 get seeded and everyone else is random. If your around this late into the competition you will be top 8.

To prove my point that seeds don't matter you guys got #1 seed and got us (ATL ranked 12th) S&M are 3rd seed and got VNM who are ranked 17th. LHDD are second seed and got RGV(19th) / ID(unranked).

It might not matter much on who you face in the first match up, but certainly the difference between 1,2,3,4 etc matters because it determines which clans you must go through and which side of the bracket you are on

Although that is true most of the tops clans are going to be a real hard fight as long as they are focused. The ones at the top tend to be focused more often but imo anyone in the top 7 have the ability to beat anyone else.