Civ 5 will soon be released and I would like to invite everyone to share their ideas and proposals on how we can improve the way we run the Game of the Month competition.
It really depends upon what your goals are.
Do you want to get a ton of people playing?
3) Market the GOTMs more. Although there is a good bunch of folks playing GOTMs, I'm surprised that more people don't play them. I've tried to plug them here and there on the Strat forum. Why not just make a sticky thread in the strat and general forums about GOTMs - what they are and why you should play them.
Now's the time to act--talk with Fireaxis and see what you can do about a promotional deal, such as including a leaflet in boxes of the game telling them about this web site. Perhaps a more realistic achievement would be to get a link on their official web site that points not only to this web site but directly to the forum that you set up for the game.
Do you want a lot of spoilers and/or high-quality spoilers?
To me, the essence of the GOTM is formed by the write-ups, not the awards. I want to compare my game rather than some arbitrary score. In the BOTM most participants now skip the first spoiler thread, others don't write about their game at all. That has made me lose interest, and I expect that I am not the only one.
I agree with Ribannah here. If you think back to the games that you've played, where you learned the most was probably when someone directly commented on your spoiler, and where you likely also learned a lot was from someone else's well-written spoiler.
If you want to encourage this behaviour, then reward it in some way.
I also prefer 3 spoiler threads to 2, so that each phase of the game - opening, middle game and endgame - can be discussed. The first cut-off point should be around 1000bc, not 500ad.
Too often, I find myself floundering in my game in that 1000 BC to 500 AD part of the game. It would be wonderful to be able to discuss your opening play and get feedback from others on how to recover from a bad situation, when it is not too late to try for some things that you might otherwise not think to do, such as learning a tech like Civil Service earlier in the game.
Simply by having the spoiler threads and then having some players willing to participate in these discussions, giving feedback on how others have played, can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more feedback that people give on each others' games, the more likely that they are going to do the same for someone else the next time around. Perhaps you need some dedicated staff members to give a lot of comments for the first few games, just to get the ball rolling, so part of the "reward" here is that you can hope to have some staff, and later experienced players, providing feedback on your gameplay.
What kind of submissions would you like to encourage?
In some of the immortal or diety games, I frequently see early on that I don't have a path to victory. But I do have an opportunity to survive and even thirve, even if not #1 (or 2 or ... 6
). Our current system actually penalizes continued play in terms of points in the score globals (not winning is always a 0 in speed). So you get better points by resigning after some number of turns where the decay function really sets in.
da_Vinci makes a great point about "hanging in there," and I agree with the sentiment, so it would be great if we had a way to encourage more losses to be submitted.
At the same time, I think that we want to encourage people to submit their retirements, as a partially-played submission is better than no submission at all.
Basically, if you want a system that rewards players for playing and submitting, no matter what their result, then you need to offer them some sort of a reward for doing so.
Therefore, I wonder if we can institute a "minimum" value in the scoring for submissions, within reason.
For example, instead of getting 1.2 points in the Global Rankings' Score table for a loss, we set a "minimum" value of 5 points for a "valid submission." Then, we define what it means to be a valid submission.
In terms of a valid submission, someone submitting a retirement at 4000 BC is just trying to beat the system. So, perhaps submitting a loss (post 1000 BC?) or a retirement (post 500 AD?) can allow a player to receive this "minimum" point value.
At the same time, to discourage the behaviour that da_Vinci is discussing, where a player "retires early" just to get higher points, perhaps we can set a maximum of 5 points in the Global Ranking Score for a retirement.
This way, we can encourage players who see their situation as being hopeless but where they still have time left in the month to complete the game, to keep trying and play forward--they may get more than the 5 points minimum if they submit a loss instead of a retirement. At the same time, if a player has run out of time, as long as they made a reasonable effort at playing the game and made it "reasonably far into the game" before retiring, then they are encouraged to submit their retirement, as well.
In summary: a Retirement can receive a maximum of 5 points in the Global Ranking Score. A Retirement that occurs before a certain date (500 AD?) will receive the lowest value of the actual score achieved or 5 points.
A Loss that occurs after a certain date (1000 BC?) will receive the highest value of the actual score achieved or 5 points. A Loss before that date will simply receive the actual score.
The numbers (dates and the "5 points" number) are up for debate--it's more about the idea of encouraging more "within reason" submissions, as well as encouraging more players to "play out a loss," which is where the "5 points" value might need to be tweaked so that a Loss can actually be higher than this value. Alternatively, perhaps the numbers can be altered to something like 3 points for a Retirement or 5 points for a Loss, etc.
Do you want to make the playing of the Challenger Saved Games more Popular and hence encourage more Top-tier Players to stick around?
A standard save, and another save a lot harder for past winners.
But not just any win. If a player has won a fastest cultural for example, for them to get another fastest cultural they must use the 'harder' save. But that same player can still take the standard save and win fastest space victory. The elites could still have their bragging rights, to see who can win the 'harder' save Eptathlon, but the 'no spreadsheet losers' like myself, might be able to compete for a lower level award, and then really try my skills with the higher level award.
Neilmeister has a great idea here.
I will tell you, as a once-regular Challenger Difficulty player, that it was frustrating when very few people chose the Challenger saved game.
However, what could have made it more worthwhile was a bit more "recognition" for having taken on the extra difficulty challenge.
The Global Rankings table could certainly do with some red text colouring of Scores where a player chose a Challenger saved game. There's no need to colour the Adventurer saved games blue, as they already get penalized in Score, so there is no need to call attention to the fact that a player is taking the easier game. But those who do take the Challenger saves usually do so partially due to bragging rights, and the more visible that you can make the fact that someone attempted a more difficult challenge, the more participation that you'd get.
Certainly, encouraging more participation overall should be a goal, and getting more visibility for those who took the Challenger saves will certainly encourage more top players to keep playing, as they'll have more people to compete against directly.
I do like the idea that Neilmeister presented in regards to having to win "extra copies" of a Fastest Finish Award or a Medal by taking the Challenger-equivalent saved game. Not only does doing so encourage a strong base of elite players to stick around and compete with each other, but it offers casual players more of a chance to "steal" an award from those players who are "playing below their level" by repeatedly competing for duplicate Awards and Medals by choosing the easier saved game version.
If you can find a way to recognize those who played the Challenger save on the Awards and Medals pages themselves, such as by having a slightly different-coloured icon, or an icon surrounded by a red border, or an icon with a red "letter C" on it (or "P" for "Predator" from Civ 3), more players will be likely to compete at this additional tier.
On that note,
I have been boycotting the Challenger games recently, as I really dislike the idea of playing the games at a higher difficulty level--doing so often rewards a player if they are going for a Victory Type that requires a lot of tech, such as Diplo or Space. To me, that situation defeats the entire purpose of taking on an extra Challenge when someone actually chooses to play the Challenger level save simply to get an ADVANTAGE over other players.
I much prefer the Challenger saves that have more creativity and indeed present a CHALLENGE to the players, such as "your Warrior wandered off and married a tribal princess, so you don't get to start with one" or "too bad, so sad, the 4 Forests around your capitol burned down" or "your military advisor got into a heated argument with your domestic advisor and only one of them left the room alive--all of your ploughshares have been beaten back into military weapons and thus you have 'forgotten' the Agriculture technology."
Here's a quick idea: annual awards not for any players--but rather for game creators.
To godotnut's list, we could add "Most creative set of Challenger save conditions (that are actually achievable)."
To get more competition for a particular award?
I'd like to see more competition. IMO there are not enough players for tiers or even for the current system of competition. What is the value of a Fastest Cultural Award (or a Gold medal) when you were the only one aiming for Culture (or Points)?
I don't think that we really need to change the model here.
A lot of participation comes from players who read the pre-game discussion thread (and perhaps could read a 1000 BC thread, if we go back to having 3 spoiler threads) and aim for a Victory Condition that no one is actively pursuing. I've done it before and I think that you will find that more players fall into this category than do players who want everyone to compete for the same award.
However, I challenge players like jesusin to USE the pre-game discussion threads even more actively to ANNOUNCE their plans for a chosen victory condition. We've had several successful "side competitions" this way, without any of the participants really expecting to see a "special" Award--the fact that they competed against others, got to compare their spoilers, and got to directly compare their results is often reward enough. At the same time, by a top player announcing how they will attempt to win the game, it gives the other players who ENJOY chasing after less-sought-after awards a chance to decide upon a DIFFERENT victory condition.
So, I don't think that much needs to change here from a staff perspective, but the players can certainly affect things in a positive way, by challenging other players to join them in their quest for a victory condition--some will enjoy the competition and some will enjoy doing their best to avoid the competition, which actually pleases both camps of players while not affecting the actual awarding of Awards and Medals, which is a good thing, as I believe that competing (or intentionally not competing) in such a side-challenge is "reward enough," without us needing to create a special set of Awards or Medals. If you want a special set of Awards or Medals, go and play the Challenger save. If you want major bragging rights, set up a side competition AND take the Challenger save, but DO NOT FORCE others to take the Challenger save in your side competition--then you're setting up the level of challenge that you truly seek, while other players can decide for themselves how they'd approach the situation--same Victory Condition with or without the Challenger save or different Victory Condition with or without the Challenger save.
To get more new players playing more than once?
In addition to the awards, I would like to see two new acknowledgement sections added:
Welcome to GOTM, where all players who submitted a GOTM for the first time are listed.
Personal Best, where players who have achieved a personal high score (in GOTM competitions) are listed.
These ideas are pretty nice ones. It'll be tough to do for the first XOTM... "welcome, everyone... you're all new and you've all achieved a personal best!"
After the first XOTM, though, it'll make a bit more sense to implement these kinds of ideas.
I do see the value in regonizing when a player plays for the first time when there are only a handful of new players in a month--it makes that player feel special, giving them their 15 minutes of fame. Even for XOTM 2, where there are 50 names to list, people will appreciate being named, but the staff have to be extra vigilant not to miss a single name or else you could equally upset some people who did not get recognized!
Essentially, you want to recognize the players for doing what they are able to do--it's always annoying to hear about "oh, Player X has played with us in all 10 of the first XOTM games," as many players reading that didn't know about the competition until, say, XOTM 8, and thus can only feel bitter about it. But, every player has a "first" game, so every player can RELATE to another player playing their first game and thus all players--new players that get recognized for being new and older players that have been around for a while--can "relate" to a congrats being passed out for a new player participating.
A "personal best" type of a deal might be harder to quantify--what do we base it on, points in a game--which may not be comparable across games? Relative ranking in the results table? Achieving an Award for the first time? I, personally, think that the staff already do a pretty good job in this regard in the first couple of paragraphs of the Results and Congratulations threads--perhaps we can just ask for the staff to put even more effort in terms of recognizing some of the moderate-level players. Of course, the more players that you regonize, the more hard work it is for the staff, but it is a subjective method of potentially bringing recognition to more players than those that won the Awards. I especially appreciate it when the staff go out of their way to say that "Player X won their first ever Medal, a Silver Medal," which takes more effort than simply repeating the names of players that won Awards and Medals that month.
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(which is NOT always provided or preplayed to prove by the game makers), and all the fun stuff it's supposed to have INCLUDING special events and huts... 
