Player Community

Over the past two months, one of the tasks I have been working on is to carefully review the participation patterns of players in the Civ3 GOTM.

One major thing that this review has led us to recognize is that each individual player in the GOTM games is a part of a bigger community that extends beyond just the wants and needs of any one individual person. We have developed this player experience recognition system based on the ranks of Tibetan Monks to help us emphasize the enlightenment that comes with playing more games under a variety of conditions which empowers the individual players to look at the game with a broader perspective.

We would like your comments and feedback. Do you have any suggestions of ways that we can provided better recognition for players when they achieve promotion to the next higher level of "enlightenment"? Should we add more history around the Monk levels?

Here is the link to the page formatted for the GOTM website:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/roster.shtml

You know I like it: I even changed my profile for you...

(yes, I changed the avatar too, but that's another story).

that's great ; experience is clearly different of efficiency, but it is link...

When Civ2 GTOM (the oldest) would have it ???

Great idea. You obviously put a lot of work into this. I really appreciate your dedication.

Great work

Eventhough I'm still a novice, every novice will advance some day ;-) ;-)

Wow! That's a lot of players...
After GOTM 17 I'll be a novice too....

I can't wait to make the next list , even with my loser submission GOTM17. I'll see if I can be the first lama without a win. Actually I hope I don't get that title, but we'll see.

>15 lama
>10 khenpo
>5 bachogwa
>2 drapa
>0 novice

Aren't there 7 levels of elightenment ?

How do you pronunce those? Also, some recommended shorthand for khenpo and bachogwa would be useful (eg kpo, bwa).

There is a significant body of learning that goes with those levels - maybe our GOTM lamas can recommend some text to meditate on.

Alamo,

Perhaps the first piece of text that I can recommend that you meditate upon would be found at this link:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/gen/submit.shtml

A key part of all activities for the GOTM is some form of active partipation in the process. Submitting the games not only helps you to document your own personal progress toward "Enlightenment" but it also enables other players to share things with you from a common frame of reference.

Don't meditate on that page too long or you will miss out on your current opportunity to take the first step on your exciting personal journey.

That's nice and dandy, but if we give too much attention to one religious faith and not another, other religious people may be sad, too. Just like the other topic, if we reward people with a good herd of happy cows, people who don't have time to raise cows will be sad. After having say that, I like those levels of enlightenment!

Damn! I wanted to be the first Lama. Congrats to Donsig for being the sole Lama. Just a question, are these titles a prefix or suffix? Should it be Khenpo Hergrom, or Hergrom Khenpo?

Kudo
~~~~~~
Very interesting idea. It makes sense to have some sort of ranking/enlightenment system so players have an idea of the experience level of other GOTM players. I like the idea and since Cracker delights in creating challenges for all difficulty level players, how well a player can play in standard or edited civ3 games can be worlds apart from play experience with GOTM games.

Raspberry
~~~~~~~~
I am extremely dismayed and disgusted by the association of the players skills levels with a particular thread of religious thought. The key focus of Civ is to be a-religious, neither pro a particular religion nor anti religion. I would never aspire to be a "lama" or "khenpo" or "bachogwa" or "drapa".

Just as this forum is not a venue for political discussions, neither should it be a venue for religious discussions. Consider how careful Firaxis was in not using difficulty labels that would be keyed to any of the world religions.

diety
emperor
monarch
regent
warload
chieftain

The only label that is at all religious is "diety" and my guess is they on purpose chose diety instead of "God" or "god" because it is more abstract.

Besides the Buddhist labels, I would expect players from different religions to argue for better labels.

Christian
~~~~~~~~~
pope/president
archbishop
bishop
priest
lay worker


atheistic Humanist
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
macro evolutionist
reason advocate
skeptic
isolationist
student

Islam
~~~~~
Gabriel
Michael
Izrail
Cherubim
Guardian angel


Hindu
~~~~~~
brahman
karma
atman
yoga
seacher

RECOMMENDATION OF A-RELIGIOUS LABELS
====================================
Doctor of Civ
Master of Civ
Bachelor of Civ
sophomore {@ GOTM University}
freshman {@ GOTM University}


I would much rather be called a Doctor of Civ than a civ lama.


-- PF

military ranks would work
private recruit E!, Private E2, PFC E3 (or specialist 3), Corporal E4 (or Spec 4), Sargant E5, Staff Sargant E6, Sargant First Class E7, Master Sargant E8, (Command) Sargant Major E9. Then 4 grades of Warrent offficer, two grades of Lieutenant, Captain, Major, LT Col., Col, 5 grades of General (brigadier, Major, Lieutenant, just plain, and General of the armies (5 star, some armies use Marshal, but General Marshal didn't want to be know as Marshal Marshal.)

I am not as familiar with Naval ranks, but they would work too.

Originally posted by cracker
Perhaps the first piece of text that I can recommend that you meditate upon would be found at this link (submit page)

Click to expand...

A valid point, most honorable master. Unfortunately I have reloaded GOTM17 and by now deleted it. I do solemly swear to the forum that I shall do my best to submit GOTM18. I'm caught almost caught up in the tourney (vet rank), so I'm ready. It is less than a week to the release of GOTM18, I pray.

Weird to see that I'm a Scholar and Moonsinger and Bamspeedy are only Monks! But next month there'll probably be a huge 'graduation' of Monks to the next rank since I've seen most of those names time and time again...

But there are a also lot of names I've NEVER seen on the lists before--so they must have been in GOTMs 1-8 or so...They've gone off to explore the world in search of enlightenment, but will they ever return? I personally am on a quest to 'ken' MOO3 but I'll be here for CivIII since it STILL stacks up as a great game; but when do we give the old guard up for lost? Maybe two lists for active and inactive?

I know this is just a participation list, but maybe you could also factor in the amount of posts people have made. Limit it to just the GOTM board if you need to, but in general they're the ones who have given the most back to the community and deserve the higher accolades...Actually, since this IS just a participation list, posters have demonstrated a very important kind of participation! At the very least maybe a sub-rank based on posts to order you within the ranks...

(Aside to Moonsinger, why haven't you posted on the MOO3 board in the Other Games section here? We could use your help! <g>)

I am extremely dismayed and disgusted by the association of the players skills levels with a particular thread of religious thought.

Click to expand...

How do you deal with the Sistine Chapel, then? And Cathedrals? Last time I checked, there's only one religion in the world that has 'cathedrals.' Nor was J.S. Bach a muslim. There are countless examples of the various biases in Civ -- I think it's a bit strange to reference Firaxis as a motive for your objection, though I think the objection stands well-enough on its own.

That said, I fail to see how titles from the military or from academia are somehow inherently less biased or socially-constructed (or offensive -- I know I'd be less than pleased to receive a military title) than titles based loosely on a religion; though I guess it's obvious that people are much more easily offended by religion than anything else, because it is traditionally considered so seperate from other equally culturally-specific aspects of society.

It's all going to be arbitrary, any way you slice it -- since the goal was (apparently) to choose titles that best reflected a certain experience and 'enlightenment,' it seems like Tibetan buddhism is as good a choice as any, due to those same associations. If I saw someone being called a Doctor of Civ, I might wonder what they wrote about for their master's thesis... 'The deconstruction of AI behaviour in the post-modern age: a neo-Marxist analysis'?

Whereas this way we get to make up amusing phrases like: "what is the sound of one warrior fighting?"

Originally posted by pterrok
(Aside to Moonsinger, why haven't you posted on the MOO3 board in the Other Games section here? We could use your help! <g>)

Click to expand...

No offend to the loyal MOOers, but I like Civ3 better at the moment, especially after Cracker has been adding all those special little things into the game. May be I will come back to MOO3 after they release the first patch.

Originally posted by IceCreamEmperor


How do you deal with the Sistine Chapel, then? And Cathedrals? Last time I checked, there's only one religion in the world that has 'cathedrals.' Nor was J.S. Bach a muslim.

Click to expand...

Sistine Chapel-- doubles Cathedrals
Cathedral-- makes more content people
Bach--makes 2 people happy.

There is no reference to these expected effects of Christianity:
1. reduced corruption
2. reduced waste {Western Christianity only, not Eastern Christianity}.

Obviously Firaxis thought of these items not as something that had any more effect on people than an opera or entertaining movie. At least they were consistent and did not assign an increased religious loyalty to the Pharoah with the building of the Pyramids.

Why Sistine instead of Museum of Modern art?
Why Cathedral instead of Movie Theater?
Why Bach instead of Grand Ole Opera?
Ask Firaxis, they programmed the game so they are equivalent.

My quote problem end-quote is with the association of enlightenment with Buddhism. From my perspective that is returning to the Dark Ages.
That is why I suggested a more neutral academic labeling system. As long as the system used is a-religious and neither pro-religion or anti-religion, I would be happy.

-- PF

Originally posted by planetfall
... As long as the system used is a-religious and neither pro-religion or anti-religion, I would be happy...

Click to expand...

In some cases we may be too quick to confuse philosophy and perspective with religion even though deep philosphical thoughts often can be associated with people who model deep religious convictions.

I do not see these things as being the same.

If you get within a few strokes of the enlightened equivalent of 'khenpo" and still feel that this is a major concern, then we will discuss whether you need a personal title that befits your status.

The fun part about living on the other side of the world is waking up to the Northern Hemisphere activity that happened overnight.

I was not motivated at all by getting some high ranking not based on my GOTM results honest . So Donsig when are you going to retire…. no reason

Planetfall,

I’m sorry this page has offended you in some way so I will explain a bit more about the my reasoning.
The GOTM forum has several goals
- Provide a regular game and results by which all participants can compete and compare their skills against others,
- Provide a fun, and entertaining environment in which we all can learn regardless of experience
- Provide a sociable forum for all participants

Part of the learning process is not just related to CIV3 strategies, we all can broaden our world view by participating with the global community who makes up this forum. I see these categories as providing more information on the world we live in and nothing more. Whether “belts of Karate” or “one countries military ranks” are chosen the aim is to provide this information in an informative way in much the same way we can learn about Carthage history in the current GOTM.

Please look beyond a more bland “politically correct” way we could present this page and look at it as a more interesting (with a sense of fun – please don’t say you can’t smile at the Lama image) way of presenting the large number of players who are the GOTM.

If you are still deeply offended by your name being in this list please PM me and I will remove it.