Beta Gauntlet VII

Newcomers are as usual always welcome. Just be advised that HOF Beta Rules do apply, in addition to these settings.

• Difficulty: Noble
• Mapsize: Small
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Speed: Quick
• Submitted on or before: March 24th.
• Civilization: You must play as Montezuma
• Setting: OCC must be checked.

Victory Condition:
You may submit games for any Victory Condition. As multiple Gauntlet entries per player are allowed, you may submit different Victory Conditions. (Per HOF rules, a game must be submitted for the first Victory Condition achieved. Subsequent victory accomplishments will not be recognized.)

Determining the winner:
As we on the staff approach the construction of the Quatromaster's Challenge, we need a system of ranking game of differing natures (including different victory conditions) versus one another. In HOF-III's Quartermaster's Challenge, the sorting mechanism was HOF table rank first, score second, submission date/time third.

While that system is tested and proven in it's strengths, we'd like to at least consider alternatives rather than maintain the status quo blindly. As such, this Guantlet will have it's victor decided via the following formula:

At the conclusion of the Gauntlet, games will be sorted into the various Victory Conditions and the average turn number finish of each VC will be calculated. Then, the fastest turn finish from each VC will be taken and divided by the average turn finish for it's VC. The number one game farthest above it's class average will be declared the winner.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let the Gauntlet begin!

OCC again!?! Yes!! I'm assuming the high activity of the last gauntlet suggested another OCC game.

Hopefully have more time for this one. Only managed to finish one game for the last one. Looking forward to playing. No clue yet what victory to go for.

This should be a fun one, gl all.

Methos said:

No clue yet what victory to go for.

Click to expand...

Go for Domination. It's easy under these settings.

superslug said:

At the conclusion of the Gauntlet, games will be sorted into the various Victory Conditions and the average turn number finish of each VC will be calculated. Then, the fastest turn finish from each VC will be taken and divided by the average turn finish for it's VC. The number one game farthest above it's class average will be declared the winner.

Click to expand...

Could you dumb that down a bit? i know theres atleast 1 stupid person here that doesnt know exactly what that means

Divided by the average turn submitted for this gauntlet, average for HoF or what?

pooLarized said:

Could you dumb that down a bit? i know theres atleast 1 stupid person here that doesnt know exactly what that means

Click to expand...

No one may actually know what it means just yet, we haven't done something like this before, so my explanation may be lacking.

pooLarized said:

Divided by the average turn submitted for this gauntlet, average for HoF or what?

Click to expand...

Averaged for submissions to this Gauntlet.

Here's an oversimplified example:
We only get SpaceRace and Diplomatic wins for this Gauntlet.
The best Space win is 1800ad, with the average of 2000ad.
The best Diplomatic win is 1900ad, with the average of 1990ad.
Since the Space win is further ahead of the space average than the Diplo is, the Space win would be the Gauntlet winner.

Does that help?

Huh. I'm not certain I like this formula.

Whats to stop me from submitting all my loser games, just to drag down the average and make my Really Good(tm) game look better in comparison? I mean, these gauntlets are largely on the honor system as it is, but I'm not seeing any rule against manipuating the scoring system to help your rank or to hurt someone else's.

- Bill

BlueRenner said:

Huh. I'm not certain I like this formula.

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Good! No, seriously, the whole reason we're doing this formula in this Gauntlet is so everyone can give us their opinions, so please, speak your mind! This is an experiment. Single VC's will continue to be the standard of future Gauntlets.

BlueRenner said:

Whats to stop me from submitting all my loser games, just to drag down the average and make my Really Good(tm) game look better in comparison?

Click to expand...

We have thought of at least that. To prevent that, we'll be taking the best game only from each player in each VC, not multiples.

BlueRenner said:

Huh. I'm not certain I like this formula.

Whats to stop me from submitting all my loser games, just to drag down the average and make my Really Good(tm) game look better in comparison? I mean, these gauntlets are largely on the honor system as it is, but I'm not seeing any rule against manipuating the scoring system to help your rank or to hurt someone else's.

- Bill

Click to expand...

well im guessing they count only the best submission from each player? ...nevermind superslug already answered

what im wondering though is what happen if theres only 1 submission for a certain vc

superslug said:

Here's an oversimplified example:
We only get SpaceRace and Diplomatic wins for this Gauntlet.
The best Space win is 1800ad, with the average of 2000ad.
The best Diplomatic win is 1900ad, with the average of 1990ad.
Since the Space win is further ahead of the space average than the Diplo is, the Space win would be the Gauntlet winner.

Does that help?

Click to expand...

yeah i was mainly unsure of whered you get the average from

Hmm. Fair enough.

How do you intend to deal with Time victories?

I think this is a good idea in theory, but I think leaving it totally open for all six victory conditions is a mistake. Nobody will ever have any idea where they stand... you would have to provide some sort of system to run the math and show who is actually ahead, every time someone submits a new game.

I think it would be much better to limit this to two victory conditions: one violent, one peaceful. They'd compliment each other and it would reduce the complexity of the "who is ahead?" problem by several orders of magnitude.

However, I'm really not sold on this as a fundimental concept... it means that the winner is determined not only by how well they do, but also by how badly people perform in their category. The alternative is to just cover your bets and excel in every victory condition... but that idea just hurts my head.

- Bill

i dont think its that bad of an idea and i cant see how theres actually 6 vc possible

cultural and domination can be ruled out i think. cant imagine anyone getting small enough landmass to win on domination with occ. im guessing score is out too since youre not very likely to achieve score victory faster than the average person.

if anything about this hurts my head its the thought of another ooc gaunlet of map regeneration.

I think this could be interesting. Like pooLarized mentioned, you can't achieve cultural at all with OCC and I don't think you can get domination on anything except Duel sized maps with OCC (will check this later). There is no such thing as a score victory. The score section of the HOF is for the highest score, it won't actually trigger victory. Time victories will all be 2050 AD so I would imagine they are self-excluded. Unless you sort them by score.

So that only leaves conquest, diplomatic, and space race victories. There should be a nice spread of finish times for each of the three conditions. It won't be easy to see how well you are doing in comparison to the other victory conditions but you can see how well you are doing for each victory condition in the thread.

Well, this should be interesting. Failed to submit for the last guantlet due to illness, should be able to try this one. Looks like fun. I wonder if you can win by Domination on a small map.

Hmm, perm alliances should allow for both cultural and dom wins. Its gonna take a lot of work to set up an AI culture win though.

Quick speed should be interesting.

true, i forgot about perm alliances. i guess domination is possible then. if anyone manages to set up a cultural win though, i think that should be an automatic #1 spot

Hmm, I wonder... perhaps Louis as the perm all target, gift him all the techs, since Louis is wonder happy. Rush on to the UN for the civics. Grab evey religion early and spread them ALL to Louis. Winning the guantlet would be completely out of the question, of course, but it may be possible.

I just finished a conquest victory at 320 BC, but I can't submit the games since I don't have the start file. (I forgot that when you regenerate the map, it does not change the automatic save of the start).

Open the autosave and regenerate again until you get the position you used. It seems to create the same positions it did before.

pooLarized said:

what im wondering though is what happen if theres only 1 submission for a certain vc

Click to expand...

The #1 of that VC would obviously equal the VC average. It would automatically fail to beat any #1 from a VC that has more than one submission.

BlueRenner said:

How do you intend to deal with Time victories?

Click to expand...

If we actually get any, they'll be ranked by Score.

BlueRenner said:

I think this is a good idea in theory, but I think leaving it totally open for all six victory conditions is a mistake.

Click to expand...

It's a one time thing for purposes of testing this formula and gauging reaction to it. Having a single specific victory condition is a centerpiece of the Gauntlets, and that's not going to change!

BlueRenner said:

However, I'm really not sold on this as a fundimental concept... it means that the winner is determined not only by how well they do, but also by how badly people perform in their category.

Click to expand...

Couldn't that also be restated as saying the winner is determined by how much better they were than the games in their category?

Big_Ben said:

The score section of the HOF is for the highest score, it won't actually trigger victory.

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Correct, while we have tables for Score, it's not recognized as a Victory Condition for this Gauntlet.