Game of the Month SGs - Discussion Thread.

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I just had an idea for an award system. What about an SGOTM ALL STAR team, a named squad of players selected from all the competeing teams. And selected on the basis of who planned and executed the most cunning, daring or entertaining game plays. A selection of an All Star team might also cut down on cribbing as players will have to show some originality to get on it:)
Just so you know M.B I would honoured to be named to the ALL STAR Team.....not that i'm expecting anything of course:D ;)
 
I can do cunning :D


Ted
 
@ Mad-Bax: Following the threads, etc., it is apparent that you are putting a lot of work into SGOTM...(and not getting much time to play some Civ). As one who played in a SGOTM for the first time this month, I just want you to know I appreciate the hard work you've done so that the rest of us can have some fun.
 
You can take a peek at the vbulletin web site for more info (or actually wait for some knowledgeable people here to reply ;) ).

In fact, the whole point is to decide whether it is worth sacrificing some of the 'fun', the free lurking and so on for a more 'honest' event.
Either way, of course, you loose something.

As zagnut says, the same thing occurred in the GOTM with the reloading issue.
There have been lots of discussions some time ago, very similar to this one: should we keep the GOTM as an open, friendly competition or set up a 'police-like' force to prevent at least the most blatant violations?
In that case it turned out that in order to give a sense to the competition -friendly as it may be- some monitoring was indeed necessary.

So, if we want to run the SGOTM in the form of a competition, even a loose one, I am afraid that we will unavoidably reach similar conclusions. Which will bring some form of control over the threads, and some metric to define when a game is so heavily cheated that it cannot be accepted for the final ranking.

This would really turn the SGOTM into another 'official competition', potentially loosing some of its appeal for some groups of players (on the other hand, it may attract others... :hmm: ).
Still, this is not what I would like to see -at least, not yet.

The SGOTM is clearly different from its parent, and in my understanding the competitive side of the event is of lesser importance, being more a way to spice up the team play and to allow more teams to play the same SG than anything valuable by itself.
From this point of view, I think that some cross-lurking can be tolerated: I like a lot the idea of the 'snake' award for the obvious cases -it may actually be a good deterrent.

My feeling is that if it is clear that 'cheating' this way is not rewarded, the impact of cross-lurking can be limited. If on the other hand, the SGOTM turns into a competition to picking someone else's good idea as quickly as possible, then we will need some form of control.

Just my very humble opinion. In any case, we certainly need to define an approach regarding this point.
 
Originally posted by mad-bax
Another discussion topic.

Ideally, I would like everyone to stay out of each others threads and the original spoiler threads. Unfortunately it's not going to happen unless I start banning people. At this embryonic stage I don't want to do that. Therefore rather than penalise the cross-lurkers by banning, or penalise the non-cross-lurkers by doing nothing I decided to allow everyone to read each others threads.

I'm beginning to regret it.




Why not just tell people not to read the other teams threads? You have to trust them. I don't think any enforcement should be needed. If you specifically tell people they can read the other threads, then they are bound to. Dividing threads up as for GOTM would be good as it would enable people to read non spoiler parts of other teams efforts, which would be fun.

Did you tell people the settings for GOTM1 (ie map size, no of opponents, pangea/continent/archipelago?). These were certainly available for the original players, and wouldn't have been a spoiler. It would have placed those of us who had some prior knowledge of the map (probably only you and me), in a more equal position with everyone else.

I think this has been an enormous success, and you deserve a pat on the back/ medal.
 
I agree with Offa, cross-lurking should be officially discouraged.
That will stop much of it, on its own. Also this is a team sport and there will be members of most if all teams that will not want to have their accomplishments tainted by using information that would give them an unfair advantage.

I also want to say thank you, this continues to be enjoyable. I am gaining insights in playing as part of a team.

I would also say that I would rather have a very poor showing without gaining knowledge from another teams thread, than to have a very good showing after having taken advantage of information gained from lurking in another teams thread.

In short I would like to do as well as possible without cheats, exploits, or other questionable means. If someone feels that they need those to enjoy the game, let them. They are hurting themselves most of all.
 
So are we still allowed to look at other teams threads?
I don't know what misconduct has M.B upset as I've only looked at a few of the opposing team threads and those teams look to be playing their own games.
I think that one has to put any percieved misconduct in the context that many of the players who have signed up for the SGOTM are not familiar with the GOTM and its rules. And are probably only now aware of the GOTM because of the sign up thread in the succession game forum.
Originally when CF and others were bouncing around the idea of GOTM succession game I was for it because I saw it as a way to recruit players to the GOTM and increase the depth of the player pool. So long as the newer players understand the difference between the SGOTM and GOTM if they are tempted to do the GOTM then I don't see much of a problem.
I do happen to think that to approve cross lurking was a bad move as players may also get the idea that it is O.K to check out the spoilers in the GOTM prior to playing.
I think that awarding a "snake" ,as Karusa would have it, to players who have been cribbing ideas from the other threads is completely offside and unfriendly given that code of conduct for the SGOTM has been in a state of flux to say the least.
 
I think if cross-lurking is going to be permitted it opens up a whole new area of counter-intelligence. Just imagine the fun a team could have, if it was in the lead, by putting disinformation in its thread. The team could agree not to post copies of its map, perhaps just exchange them by PM, and have a code word that only they knew. They could insert the code word at the beginning of a disinformation paragraph so that everyone on their team would ignore it. However, none of the lurkers would know that and they would rely on it.

Imagine if my team is in the lead and sends a Galley west to discover a new continent. Then we post in the thread that the Galley went east and found a new continent. What fun to watch the other teams commit suicide on the wide, empty ocean to the east.

This could open up an entire new aspect to the game. It could become a game in itself.
 
Originally posted by zagnut
I think if cross-lurking is going to be permitted it opens up a whole new area of counter-intelligence. Just imagine the fun a team could have, if it was in the lead, by putting disinformation in its thread. The team could agree not to post copies of its map, perhaps just exchange them by PM, and have a code word that only they knew. They could insert the code word at the beginning of a disinformation paragraph so that everyone on their team would ignore it. However, none of the lurkers would know that and they would rely on it.


WAAAY AHEAD OF YOU !!!!:smug:;)
 
Or Mad-Bax can punish thread trepassers by taking their hand for the first offense, a foot for a second, an arm for the third, and etc.
 
With the exception of finding out where the resources and the AI are located (which can be done many ways without reading the other teams threads), I'm not sure what can be learned from trolling through the other postings. First of all, I don't have the time to keep up with what 10 different teams are doing. Keeping track of who killed who and when is something of no interest to me. Secondly, unless you take the time to read each thread posting by posting, the amount of different directions being taken will leave your mind a big bowl of porridge. Lastly, if you are going a down a path less taken (we've yet to swing a sword at anyone), the other paths have no information to brighten the way of these enlightened travellers.

In summary, if you're reading the other threads to gain an edge, you're probably fooling yourself and wasting time that could be better spent reading strategy articles by SirPleib & Cracker. If you're perusing them for fun and enlightenment then my my view of the world, happy reading.
 
Originally posted by denyd
With the exception of finding out where the resources and the AI are located (which can be done many ways without reading the other teams threads), I'm not sure what can be learned from trolling through the other postings. ...

Must completely agree with this. How can you ban CivReplay Viewer? Guess, just have to have some trust in people. Especially considering existing spoilers and those who played the actual GOTM. Otherwise, lurking is completely useless. These issues are not so important compared with the impact of actual player strength or discipline in following the discussed and approved strategies. The game is rather delicate on its own and proper micromanagement is usually more important than general way or development even at a certain crucial point. Also, stronger teams might have better discipline and move faster through the turns. Weaker teams cannot catch up in strength of play but can greatly benefit by lurking. It's just like anyone at all can go and do the same game as the brilliant SirPleb's Sid HOF attempt right away even with the same map. Well, nobody can but some stronger player who would probably choose his own way to win aiming to improve the things. Yet, SirPleb knows what he's doing and is not afraid of competition but takes the challenge with a wide-open visor of his horned war helmet. "Let them come, read, know, and try to beat me". I like his attitude and would like to see more of it in SGOTM. Private threads, closed teams, lurker awards, disinformation ... It all would kill the idea.
 
I like the SGOTM idea very much, thanks for starting it!

Just my few ideas about SGOTM rules:

1. I would forbid players from one team to look in other peoples threads and I would trust them to obey this rule.

2. I would not again like to see an old gotm map replayed, as some people know something about the map beforehand. Maybe even a random generated map without editing would be nice!?

3. I would like to have less emphasis on the aw, 5cc, occ bonusses then it is now, or we will have an "5cc aw" competition soon.

4. I like the idea about rbciv rules very much.

--
grs
 
The discussion about rules and spoilers and cross-lurking is very interesting to me, and because this is a fun competition I will go with the flow I think. But for the record I just want to reiterate that the reason for me throwing the game threads open was that it was *very* obvious that people were cross lurking and probably discussing the games through PM or some other method that they believe to be invisible to me. Rather than start laying down stringent rules I thought I would take the more relaxed approach, and just require people not to discuss other peoples threads in their own.

It's a similar argument to the drugs in sport question. Do you police it and accept that some people will escape detection, or do you just allow everyone to do it?

The variant bonuses seem large in the context of SGOTM1, but this is only because of the map and dificulty level. On more difficult settings and larger maps the bonuses will not compensate for the additional difficulty.

As for random maps... well, I like building maps, but this isn't SGOTM for nothing. Some people like replaying the old maps, and some would like new maps. SGOTM will always be based on prior GOTM games for as far as I can see into the future. Sometimes the games will be an exact duplicate, and sometimes not. I (rather arrogantly) believe that I can make the event fairly interesting over the coming months, but it needs to just get off the ground first before we start too much tinkering IMO.
 
I would certainly like it if you could tweak the old GOTM maps to prevent anyone who might have followed the game originally from gaining an unfair advantage. This could be done in a way that wouldn't change the game play unduly, and still permit comparison with the original players. However, I am also perfectly happy to play the original maps too.
 
Originally posted by mad-bax
... I (rather arrogantly) believe that I can make the event fairly interesting over the coming months ...

The brilliant example was the GOTM24 replay as a Japanese (Oda). That was really of great interest and challenge. Also, if possible, the difficulty can be increased for some games similar to a predator setting for current GOTMs.

Edited: Another thought occurred to me: What if one or two games (different variants if two) are kept as open SG. There are some people who would be willing to play current SGOTM even now in SG forum. Having an open SG allows them to participate if it is too late to play with a fixed team. And open SG is also a great fun.
 
Well... I'll take the credit for the idea of playing as the Oda with slower research in that game, but the architect and engineer of the entire experience was cracker.

From game 16 onwards the scenarios became more and more modified, and now to "mod up" from scratch is (IIRC) around 15MB. How many of the new players we have this month would wear such a larg download I wonder?

It's worth the download, definitely... but how do you go about convincing someone with a dodgy dial-up of that?
 
@ Mad Bax - I'm playing my first GOTM this month as well, and tolerated the downloads at dial-up speeds. The downloads are not any worse than getting patches. I did run into a problem trying to run a PTW game with the C3C version of PTW, but that is a separate issue... Ainwood was looking into that.

It might be helpful if someone involved in maintaining the GOTM site went through the instructions and built a page with explicit instructions for first time players. (Several still had questions if you look at the GOTMXXX threads...)

For the SGOTM, you might want to consider skipping 16-20, since the update for GOTM21 has everything that preceded it. Alternatively, you could go straight to 25... doing all the patching at once. This would get everybody "in synch" with current GOTM stuff, and avoid confusing setup swapping between a current GOTM and a "partial patchup" for an SGOTM. Swapping between vanilla and patched up is confusing enough. It would be a bit annoying to keep track of vanilla and 2 or more sets of patch-ups...

Another thing that would be helpful is to see how some of the transitional games behave with later updates... This could get sticky, and I don't envy your position in this. IMO, some players might be forced to "patch down", and that is not something I would enjoy.
 
Originally posted by mad-bax
... How many of the new players we have this month would wear such a larg download I wonder? It's worth the download, definitely... but how do you go about convincing someone with a dodgy dial-up of that?

Well, I did it from Moscow and believe me, it was not easy. Took a couple of days running 3-4 hours with a few hour brakes. But this is CivFanatics site after all. Must be a fanatic at least to that extent. Also, many people have PTW which is supposed to decrease the download.
 
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