Well I'm DYING to know .... is BTS GOTM starting next week ??

Erkon said:
Seriously, I think that making the challenger level a pre-requisite for eptathlete awards is the only way to make that option attractive.
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I have thought about it before.
In GOTMs, players occasionally get fastest-finish awards 'for free' when no other player goes for that victory condition. This problem will probably stay as long as low participation remains an issue. Now with two players of similar skill, one playing the Contender save and the other playing the Challenger save, the Challenger handicap is so significant as to almost guarantee a faster finish for the first player. So 'free wins' will be just about the only way you can get an award on Challenger. If a strong player happens not to be aiming for the eptathlon at the time and picks Contender, you're toast; if no strong players choose Contender and your victory condition, you get a free win. It depends very much on luck and very little on your actual skill.

The proposal would only be viable if we had enough people competing that several would choose Challenger in each VC, every GOTM.
But of course the Challenger-Contender relationship would then become exactly the same as the current Contender-Adventurer relationship (you want to win something, you play Contender, you want an easier game, you play Adventurer), stripping a third difficulty level of any purpose.


AlanH said:
Have you checked out the Global Rankings system? That rewards frequent submissions.
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Many players do not care about the global rankings. Something that readily hepls you in-game would be a much better incentive. Like an extra scout at start, or minus 4 turns from your finish date.
 
Balbes, I was probably not as clear as I thought I was...

My* idea is that awards will only go to challenger saves. So, the earliest victory submitted from the challenger setting will get the award, even if someone based on a contender save is quicker.

The BotS series is an opportunity to adjust/correct/improve/perfect the award system**.

As you stated, there is a similar mechanism already with adventure-contender saves. Perhaps it's time to remove the adventure save, and instead set the average game one level lower. Then we have one save for those who just want to play the game, have fun and learn something. The other save is for those who actually want to beat the competitors.

* I don't claim this is my own idea, perhaps it's already presented elsewhere...
** It's not bad today, but it could be improved.
 
The BOTM "eptathlon" (anyone want to rename it?) will include a new Religious VC for the Apostolic Palace diplo victory, and I agree that we should replace the Time requirement with a requirement for a Gold medal.

The suggestions for changes to the other aspects of the classes and awards are all interesting - keep them coming.
 
Count me in for one who would like to see the Challenger saves made more attractive. Let all awards be exclusive to the elite class. Which in effect would mean remove the Challenger saves, increase the difficulty of the Contender saves one notch, and make Adventurer available to anyone who wants. :crazyeye:

Since we're discussing... has any thought been given into making a Jason scoring equivalent for Civ4? It seems rather ridiculous that the top scorers have 5-10 times the score of some of those who gain fastest finish awards in non-military VCs. Seems to me the benefit of playing for score is a bit too high, just as was the case with milking in Civ3.
 
The XOTM Debate
I see three issues here: How to schedule all three XOTMs in a 'month,' how long each XOTM should be, and how long between starting a particular type of XOTM. Currently, there is a 2-week overlap in which you might be finishing one game and starting another. This overlap seems to work reasonably well, so we could aim to maintain such an overlap. This would mean starting a new XOTM every 6 weeks, with that XOTM lasting a month, as the name implies. This gets the results back on the usual timetable (Erkon's issue). It does not address Daviddes' issue, unfortunately. It presents a new problem, however, that may bother people who don't play one or more of the XOTMs, because it means they have to wait longer between XOTMs.

The Challenger/Contender Debate
1. Can't change the award system. What is, stands.
2. This is a civ community. The XOTM is a friendly competition and ideally, all of us can participate and enjoy it, right? There will always be vast differences in skill level. Three levels of difficulty attempts to address that. Once expert players have become eptathletes, there's no real honor gained in duplication. Honor-to-be-gained resides in winning at the highest level, against all odds. Balbes appears to have come close recently. The only problem I can see here is that maybe Balbes (nothing personal, please) is not used to getting second place. Otherwise, he put in a great effort and maybe next time he'll pull it off. Meanwhile, those of us who still haven't achieved a first place in one of the categories have a better chance, because the Balbeses, that is, eptathletes, in our community have moved on to a bigger challenge and continue to pave the way for the rest of us. Eptathletes who are only motivated by the competition continue to play at contender level and the rest of us have to just suck it in and get better.
 
Balbes said:
So 'free wins' will be just about the only way you can get an award on Challenger. If a strong player happens not to be aiming for the eptathlon at the time and picks Contender, you're toast; if no strong players choose Contender and your victory condition, you get a free win.
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I submit that making the challenger version different ONLY by setting it at a higher difficulty level (why not???) may give a player of your calibre an advantage, just as in CivIII. Even if it only levels the playing field, it doesn't enable the free-win scenario.

For example, set contender at the dificultly level where the AIs don't get a worker and set the challenger at the level where they do...hmmm...

EDIT: Frankly, I think being able to compare results of the same map played at different difficulty levels would be fascinating and might advance our knoweldge of the game.
 
Niklas said:
Let all awards be exclusive to the elite class. Which in effect would mean remove the Challenger saves, increase the difficulty of the Contender saves one notch, and make Adventurer available to anyone who wants.
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So, would it mean switching to a two-class system, which has been proposed a number of times since the beginning of the Civ4 GOTM project?

Personally I like the idea of "Play Challenger for extra bragging rights". However, in reality you don't exactly get tons o' praise & admiration heaped on you for winning on Challenger which may be a part of the problem. And the awards you get - they look and are exactly the same. Why don't we create slightly different graphics for "Conquest" and "Conquest with the Challenger Badge", and so on, like they have in the military? Then, somebody looking at your trophy case would be impressed right away.
 
Balbes said:
Many players do not care about the global rankings. Something that readily hepls you in-game would be a much better incentive. Like an extra scout at start, or minus 4 turns from your finish date.
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I don't play most months. Do you really want a system where I get an in-game bonus for making a phony submission every month, just by opening the 4000 BC save and then retiring?
 
DaviddesJ said:
I don't play most months. Do you really want a system where I get an in-game bonus for making a phony submission every month, just by opening the 4000 BC save and then retiring?
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Yes, I think it would be ok. The GOTM essentially operates on an honor system as it is, so I'd count on people refraining from exploiting the system like that. At any rate, the bonus is intended to be nowhere big enough to give the player a significant advantage. Just a nice little perk.
 
Balbes said:
Yes, I think it would be ok. The GOTM essentially operates on an honor system as it is, so I'd count on people refraining from exploiting the system like that.
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Why would an honor system keep me from submitting the 4000 BC retirement? Are you implying that that would be dishonorable?

I guess I would have to see your guidelines on which kinds of submissions are honorable or dishonorable.
 
Funny. In another thread they were discussing # of submissions as a criterion of success of the GOTM. Then I started thinking, maybe I should submit all my abandoned games, just to show support for the admins and all their hard work. I don't even pay attention to the rankings you guys are talking about. So then I think, hmmm, maybe I shouldn't submit them after all.

I think I care more about supporting the community than what other people think about me and possible questions about why I would submit those games.
 
I suppose to have moved something... nice! :)

Lot of ideas, some good, some less, but ideas are what we need to improve and make more attractive the GotMs. :)

What i don't understand is why a good player as DaviddesJ - a player that post a lot and doesn't play too much - sistematically destroys (or try to) any good idea or critic someone puts on the table. :confused: :crazyeye:
 
BLubmuz said:
What i don't understand is why a good player as DaviddesJ - a player that post a lot and doesn't play too much - sistematically destroys (or try to) any good idea or critic someone puts on the table. :confused: :crazyeye:
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It's my evil nature. I live only to frustrate your brilliant suggestions.
 
DaviddesJ said:
Why would an honor system keep me from submitting the 4000 BC retirement?
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Simple: if you're submitting that game with the explicit purpose of qualifying for the frequent-player bonus in the next game, then don't do it. If you have another genuine reason to submit a 4000BC retirement (though I can't think of any at the moment), you're OK to do so. As one can only guess about the player's reasons for submitting, that's where honor enters the equation.
 
Balbes said:
Simple: if you're submitting that game with the explicit purpose of qualifying for the frequent-player bonus in the next game, then don't do it.
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If it's not ok to submit more games in order to gain the benefit, then how can that benefit possibly increase participation? I thought that was the goal.
 
Um, not quite so. I was thinking about giving the 'shadow' players some incentive to submit the games they have lost or done poorly in. In order to increase participation per se, as in attracting entirely fresh players, I'd rather go about marketing the whole gotm thing to the users in other sub-forums of this site.
 
Balbes said:
Um, not quite so. I was thinking about giving the 'shadow' players some incentive to submit the games they have lost or done poorly in.
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I see. I suspect most people who finish the games do submit them. But I think there are a lot of people who don't bother to finish, I guess you could get them to submit retirements.

The flip side is that you would discourage some occasional players from participating because they would feel they are starting at a penalty to the frequent players.
 
@Balbes: If the only reason to encourage more players to submit badly played games is to give the impression of higher activity levels, I think there's a better way to do that.

I can simply publish the number of unique players who download each game, as opposed to the total players who submit them. That would provide a better measure of the overall popularity of each game than giving an artificial incentive to those players to contribute a few more submissions.
 
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