HOF-IV Ideas/Quartermaster's Critique

The staff and I can't complete the construction of HOF-IV until the game actually comes out, but we can also get some prep work done, at least toss ideas around and discuss them amongst ourselves beforehand. So, two questions:

1: What ideas/suggestions do you have for the IV-HOF? Major, minor, whatever. Also, since this is kind of an assessment of where we're at now, complaints and critiques of the current HOF are valid comments!

2: The Quartermaster's Challenge-The Cartographer's Challenge will be based on this event. What do you think can be done to make the Challenge structure better?

Since this conversation pertains to an HOF that doesn't currently exist, utmost candor is acceptable, and indeed even preferred.

This is what I said in the thread HOF IV Teaser

MeteorPunch said:

My concern for the HoF (which I will start when CivIV comes out), is equality in expansion packs and patches. When the game is first released, it may be mired it bugs and exploits that won't be caught until later. I don't think it's fair to compare diffent patch versions anymore than it's fair to compare Vanilla vs C3C. I think the HoF should compensate for different versions.

The CivIII HoF has picked up steam in participation in the last few months and interest will fall once CivIV is released. I wouldn't expect these changes in the HoF now (it is almost hindsight), but for CivIV, it would be great to be prepared to set up different comparisons between versions/patches.

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Also a new suggestion to add regarding the quartermasters. Some type of small recognition should be given to people who can simply submit a game of each type, without the stress of having to be a number 1 position. On one hand I certainly wouldn't want to see the HOF as an archive of every game played (fairly), and I wouldn't want to put the curators to too much work. But it is incentive for those who don't have the skill to put up a top-performing game and feel a sense of accomplishment.

good job, btw, Superslug and Dianthus.

MeteorPunch said:

Also a new suggestion to add regarding the quartermasters. Some type of small recognition should be given to people who can simply submit a game of each type, without the stress of having to be a number 1 position.

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I'm not sure I follow. The #1 games certainly get ranked higher, but any game within the HOF tables will qualify. Have you looked at my Quartermaster's ranking? Not many #1's, so I'm near the bottom, but I'm on the list.

superslug said:

I'm not sure I follow. The #1 games certainly get ranked higher, but any game within the HOF tables will qualify. Have you looked at my Quartermaster's ranking? Not many #1's, so I'm near the bottom, but I'm on the list.

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That is a miss-understanding by me then... Do they have to be top 10?

I'd like to see the OCC (One City Challenge) added to HOF-IV. Not only is OCC an interesting variant, one can play an OCC game in a reasonable amount of time.

MeteorPunch said:

That is a miss-understanding by me then... Do they have to be top 10?

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Yes, they have to be top 10 for Quartermasters. We *could* show submissions outside the top 10 based on what's in the database, purely for interest. For space reasons we wouldn't want to commit to archiving the games that don't appear in a top 10 position, but just storing the information in the database shouldn't be too onerous. Note that currently the information is there, just not presented on too many pages. I.e. on the player stats page you can view *all* submitted games for a player, not just the ones in the top 10.

bluejay said:

I'd like to see the OCC (One City Challenge) added to HOF-IV. Not only is OCC an interesting variant, one can play an OCC game in a reasonable amount of time.

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Would you want to duplicate all existing tables for OCC? (I.e. tables per victory condition, per mapsize, per difficulty level). Or could the number of tables be reduced in some way?

One thing that will be an interesting challenge is the three timelengths for games, short, normal, and epic. It will be interesting to see what exactly they mean, and if there becomes a standard game length most people play or if there has to be 3 separate HoF tables.

Congratulations 'slug on becoming the Civ 4 HOF Chief. With your dedication and that of your team, success is guaranteed!

Also, congrats to Mistfit for joining the HOF Team......your enthusiasm and humility are good qualities to be aired in the HOF forum!

With regard to Rules for Civ 4 HOF, some thoughts:

1. We don't know how long or how many patches it will take before Civ 4 is "stabilized", so I like the idea of a small number of tables, perhaps using the Patch Number to separate tables.........especially if you're using "Firaxis Rules".

2. Allow multiple entries from Players until a table is filled.......then limit the number to 2 per Player. I still think it's a shame to see so many empty slots in the Civ 3 HOF Tables and multiple entries might encourage more Players to "Take A Shot" at an existing score. The QC certainly encouraged Players to fill more slots......more ideas like that would be good for participation.

I've told my wife and kids that I'm going to our place in Mexico as soon as Civ 4 is released for at least a week's "Civ 4 Pilgrimage"!.......Just hope it isn't released at Thanksgiving or Xmas!

Dianthus said:

Would you want to duplicate all existing tables for OCC? (I.e. tables per victory condition, per mapsize, per difficulty level). Or could the number of tables be reduced in some way?

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Based on Civ3, some are probably impossible with only one city, such as Sid Conquest on Huge maps.

Obviously, Domination won't be possible, but all the others are possible and of interest. A complete duplication of the tables other than Domination might take too much space. Since this is a variant, maybe tables that are only 3 deep instead of 10? Only some of the victory conditions and difficulty levels? I don't know what would be best, especially since Civ4 isn't available.

Although I see some problems with the QM challenge (such as doing only one histograph game, but 5 sizes and 8 difficulties..), I think it is about ok.

Concerning the actual HoF, IMO we should also incorporate some table of the real top players (I'm not included) who actually play each other online, and give them some sort of ranking - they do beat human players.. although I don't know if this is or will be feasible.

Other than that, I'm proud of this HoF in every possible way (except sexually )

Well, I wasn't actually around for it, but I know Civ3 Duel Zone had a whole ladder system up and running, trying to find some sort of ranking for PBEM players, but there wasn't quite enough activity to really keep it all moving and to be able to create a fair ranking. Surely someone who was part of it could give better details, but I don't know how often they drop in here. Oh, maybe Darkness could shed some light on the matter.

I smell a goldmine brewing! As we on the staff post comments and questions, please don't assume we're expressing favor or disfavor towards any particular idea. At this point, this thread is a brainstorming session at it's purist.

MeteorPunch said:

That is a miss-understanding by me then... Do they have to be top 10?

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In addition to what Dianthus posted, I do feel compelled to point out that all HOF games are top 10s. And don't worry about your misunderstanding. The fact that it happened shows that we could have explained QC better. Very insightful, in fact, and why I opened this thread.

bluejay said:

I'd like to see the OCC (One City Challenge) added to HOF-IV. Not only is OCC an interesting variant, one can play an OCC game in a reasonable amount of time.

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OCC is definitely a popular variant. I wonder though which variants should be considered and which not?

MeteorPunch said:

One thing that will be an interesting challenge is the three timelengths for games, short, normal, and epic. It will be interesting to see what exactly they mean, and if there becomes a standard game length most people play or if there has to be 3 separate HoF tables.

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The short game setting reeks of Accelerated Production, so I won't be at all suprised if we decide to flat out ban that setting for standard HOF play. Then again, once the game comes out, we may decide otherwise.

The normal versus epic debate I expect to be the most lively discussion after release. If both are allowed, do we double the tables? Do we run two Cartographer's Challenges? If both are allowed for the CC, how do compare the two?

EMan said:

2. Allow multiple entries from Players until a table is filled.......then limit the number to 2 per Player.

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Thread was open four hours, thirty minutes before EMan chipped in his usual point. I win the staff betting pool.

boogaboo said:

Although I see some problems with the QM challenge (such as doing only one histograph game, but 5 sizes and 8 difficulties..), I think it is about ok.

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Critique of the QC is one of the things I'm fishing for in this thread. If you have any urge to rant, I beg you to do so!

boogaboo said:

Concerning the actual HoF, IMO we should also incorporate some table of the real top players (I'm not included) who actually play each other online, and give them some sort of ranking - they do beat human players.. although I don't know if this is or will be feasible.

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Interesting idea. The HOF is an online competition in it's own way, so I'm not sure this would be too far off base.

Ok, slug, since you requested...

The one thing that bothers me on the QM challenge is the inequality between the "quarters"..

One histo game is not so hard to do (as I did my large cheiftain game and one can do a smaller size and pass).
On the other hand, all difficulties is hard, since you have to beat Sid, and do 8 games.
All sizes kind of looks stupid, since there is no real challenge except the map size.

I don't know how to solve these inequalities.
Perhaps we should make a harder demand on the histo games.. like qualiying only number 1,2 and 3 spots, and dropping the lesser games.

Perhaps even a better idea would be a minimum score per {victory type/difficulty/size} so even some HoF games wouldn't count for QM.

I don't have anymore ideas on this right now.. perhaps later

But the time requirement for one decent histo game is quite a bit longer than 8 tiny conquests, or 5 chieftain 20k games on 5 map sizes. So I'm sort of coming around to histo games being ranked solely on score. But that brings up another question: what happens if a table (say huge-sid-histo) is full, which it seems to be on the way to? Going by the histo tables, a 60k huge sid game ranks much higher than a 6k game on a smaller, easier map, but if the 60k sid game is the 11th best, only the 6k game is eligible, despite being the worse game according to the ranking system.

sanabas said:

But that brings up another question: what happens if a table (say huge-sid-histo) is full, which it seems to be on the way to? Going by the histo tables, a 60k huge sid game ranks much higher than a 6k game on a smaller, easier map, but if the 60k sid game is the 11th best, only the 6k game is eligible, despite being the worse game according to the ranking system.

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Sorry for the delayed response, but you kind of answered your own question. If the player's next best game is 6k, then yes, under Quartermasters, that's the one that would qualify.

But that's inconsistent, and why I bought it up. According to the histographic part of the QC, histo games are ranked purely on score. So a 60k game is clearly considered more impressive than a 6k game, so surely the 60k game should qualify for the histo table.

On the other 3 parts of the QC, games are ranked purely on how they compare to other similar games, so if it doesn't make the top-10 tables, it's considered not worthy of being a qualifier for the QC anyway. But a histo game that doesn't qualify for the top-10 games should still be considered worthy of being a QC qualifier, because by the QC rating, it's better than a lot of other games that qualify.

Basically if game A qualifies for QC, and game B is better than A, then B should qualify too. That's the case for the other 3 sections, but not for histographic games. It's not an issue now, because the tables aren't full, but it might be later. I'd suggest that the histo table on the QC shows the highest scoring histo game submitted by each person, even if it happens to be the 11th-best huge sid score and so isn't on the tables.

Apologies if this post was repetitive, I need sleep.

I will admit that ranking the Histographic event was a complicated task. Early in the testing, it had the same ranking structure as the fastest finish events (hof rank first, score as tiebreaker). That of course resulted in the #1 Chieftain milk outweighing the #2 Sid milk. While #1 Chieftain requires a great game, it doesn't really compare to even getting on the Sid list.

Figuring out the FF event ranking system was tough enough, so for Histographic we just went with good old Firaxis points.

Why not remove Firaxis bonus, and assign a bonus to histographic games as the HoF sees fit? Instead of the 1-8 multiplier scale, go 1, 1.005, 1.015, 1.03, 1.05, 1.065, 1.08, 1.10. It seems abotu fair to me. The difference in difficulty for all intensive purposes is not great between Chieftan and Warlord, and only slightly larger between Warlord and Regent and then Regent and Warlord. A bigger jump at Emperor because of the unhappiness at size 2, and perhaps the gap should be even larger considering this. Demigod is not all that much harder nor Deity, and then another large leap for Sid. Some tweaking will probably be necessary, to take into account some factors that I may have either overlooked or underestimated. I think a system like mine allows outstanding lower level games to achieve a decent, if not stellar, ranking, while also continuing to reward those who take on the hardest levels. But with this, no longer will a mediocre game at higher levels outclass an outstanding game at lower levels.

Here is what it would do to the Histographic ranking:


So, I would say it still needs a bit of tweaking. Perhaps the difference between Chieftan and the other levels needs to be larger, because a good Chieftan game, like say the one DaveMcW is working on, would be able to blow Moonsinger's Sid game out of the water. Which, perhaps it should. I haven't milked enough to know for sure. But just looking at it, I think this ranking is much fairer than the current one. It would be nice if players like Svar who have multiple entries could chime in and say what they feel the quality of their different games was, and if it is right in his mind that his Regent game is above the Monarch and Warlord ones.

Also, note that Demigod refers to PTW Deity as well, but for simplicity's sake I used Demigod. Though the Chieftan games are a bit high, I am overall fairly satisfied with the results, as I know Monarch has been one of the most competitive tables, so seeing a Monarch game close to the top feels right.

bed_head7 said:

But with this, no longer will a mediocre game at higher levels outclass an outstanding game at lower levels.

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But, IMHO, a medicore game at higher levels should outclass an outstanding game at a lower level.

For what reason? An outstanding game is an outstanding game, and I am not suggesting that games that all be treated equally, as difficulty level is a factor. Difficulty level should not be THE factor though, and I think claiming it should be is an extremely difficult position to defend.