ACEs - Achievement Challenge Events - please vote

[testdummy653]

Spoiler :

My intent is to save our CFC TG1 game the turn before victory, so that everyone can play the last turn on their own computer, thereby having a King victory on their personal HoF, so you'll have that one!



This is a good question. I've been considering knocking out the Steam achievements and the easiest way to do so is on the low levels, so its possible we may want to consider ranking achievements by difficulty level played on. As a suggestion:

• Settler = 0.7
• Chieftain = 0.8
• Warlord = 0.9
• Prince = 1
• King = 1.1
• Emperor = 1.2
• Immortal = 1.3
• Deity = 1.4

Therefore an achievement earned on Prince is equal to 1 point. Just a suggestion.

I'd like to help on the admin side too, if you need me or want me. I suggest having several on the admin staff would be wise, but that's up to you.

I think that having a good amount admins, is a good idea... Methos, how would we be able to tell the difficult that was played? Would this be the honor system?

 

[Methos]

I think that having a good amount admins, is a good idea... Methos, how would we be able to tell the difficult that was played? Would this be the honor system?

Either the honor system, someone manually checks the save, or a script that pulls the difficulty level from the save file. There could be other possibilities too, these are just the ones that currently popped up.

Edit: I finally voted for the admin option.

 

[testdummy653]

Either the honor system, someone manually checks the save, or a script that pulls the difficulty level from the save file. There could be other possibilities too, these are just the ones that currently popped up.

Edit: I finally voted for the admin option.

Okay, that makes more sense....

 

[stormerne]

Thanks Methos and testdummy653, and others who have shown their enthusiasm by commenting and voting. Sounds like we have a viable project, so there's probably no reason why we can't get started...


At the time of writing, there are seven people who have offered to help with this. That's great! Now I've outlined what's needed, perhaps those people can say which areas they'd like to help in. The first job is to begin the inaugural ideas thread, and have a target date for wrapping that up and agreeing the first challenges (and a date for starting the following round). I wonder if testdummy653 might like to kick that off (unless someone else desperately wants that job)?

 

[Pouakai]

My intent is to save our CFC TG1 game the turn before victory, so that everyone can play the last turn on their own computer, thereby having a King victory on their personal HoF, so you'll have that one!



This is a good question. I've been considering knocking out the Steam achievements and the easiest way to do so is on the low levels, so its possible we may want to consider ranking achievements by difficulty level played on. As a suggestion:

• Settler = 0.7
• Chieftain = 0.8
• Warlord = 0.9
• Prince = 1
• King = 1.1
• Emperor = 1.2
• Immortal = 1.3
• Deity = 1.4

Therefore an achievement earned on Prince is equal to 1 point. Just a suggestion.

I'd like to help on the admin side too, if you need me or want me. I suggest having several on the admin staff would be wise, but that's up to you.

It would have to depend on the achievement though... for example 1000 temples is 1000 temples, regardless of wether you're on Deity or Settler.

 

[Methos]

It would have to depend on the achievement though... for example 1000 temples is 1000 temples, regardless of wether you're on Deity or Settler.

Good point. We'd have to distinguish between the achievement.

 

[testdummy653]

Thanks Methos and testdummy653, and others who have shown their enthusiasm by commenting and voting. Sounds like we have a viable project, so there's probably no reason why we can't get started...


At the time of writing, there are seven people who have offered to help with this. That's great! Now I've outlined what's needed, perhaps those people can say which areas they'd like to help in. The first job is to begin the inaugural ideas thread, and have a target date for wrapping that up and agreeing the first challenges (and a date for starting the following round). I wonder if testdummy653 might like to kick that off (unless someone else desperately wants that job)?

I will be working on starting this thread asap. It will be a little later today in the afternoon (EST).

Of course if someone wants the job, please take it

I posted the thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=9918288#post9918288
I tried to summarize everything that was said in the forum, If you think i missed anything or a post something that not true, let me know... (also if i have some spelling error let me know).

 

[testdummy653]

Any suggestions on how we should vote on the Achievements?

 

[stormerne]

Well we've got some interesting suggestions, and far more than I'd even hoped for. And one or two great attempts at... er... what was that thing... ah yes... humor. But plenty of fun stuff and some really quite substantial.

The differences from my first-post idea are (a) we have more suggestions than expected, and (b) we're adopting a monthly rather than weekly cycle. I'd originally envisaged just voting on a handful each week. I hadn't thought of voting on that many!

So perhaps we need to discuss first whether to thin them out at all (apart from the jokes!) as we could actually start with the lot of them, yes? We might just need to discuss some to check if they're feasible or really too easy. What do you think?

 

[shanodin]

Maybe you need to pick say five from the total pool to vote on each (maybe fortnightly since there is such interest) month. Eventually everything will get done. Ones that don't get voted on this month can go back into the pool to be considered again in the future.

 

[testdummy653]

I think we definitely need to thin some of them out. But those that are not chosen should be still consider for later months.... I'm think we pick out like 10 good ones, and then let the community vote and the top 4 will be the months achievements.. (4 because there are usually four weeks in a month, and that gives people time to attempt them)

Methos? any ideas?

 

[stormerne]

Well how about dividing what we already have into categories? For example:

• speed of expected completion (quick/average/slow)
• difficulty (easy/medium/hard)

There may also be other categories too, like "instructive" (because you have to learn about some part of the game to achieve it) or "fun" (because it's quirky in some way). After categorizing them, perhaps it would be good to aim for a spread of characteristics. Of the ones I've already suggested I would estimate:

• Master Mason: slow + easy
• Puppet Master: slow + medium
• Contrarian: average + easy
• Borders no obstacle: average + easy
• Merchant Magnate: average + medium
• Nature Lover: average + medium
• Export Tycoon: average + hard
• Just dropped in: quick + easy
• Renaissance Man: quick + medium

If you think this is a good idea to do this, perhaps others can estimate theirs do. If we disagree with an estimation we can discuss it.

 

[testdummy653]

Well how about dividing what we already have into categories? For example:

• speed of expected completion (quick/average/slow)
• difficulty (easy/medium/hard)

There may also be other categories too, like "instructive" (because you have to learn about some part of the game to achieve it) or "fun" (because it's quirky in some way). After categorizing them, perhaps it would be good to aim for a spread of characteristics. Of the ones I've already suggested I would estimate:

• Master Mason: slow + easy
• Puppet Master: slow + medium
• Contrarian: average + easy
• Borders no obstacle: average + easy
• Merchant Magnate: average + medium
• Nature Lover: average + medium
• Export Tycoon: average + hard
• Just dropped in: quick + easy
• Renaissance Man: quick + medium

If you think this is a good idea to do this, perhaps others can estimate theirs do. If we disagree with an estimation we can discuss it.

I like this.....

How many do you think we should pick stormerne?

 

[stormerne]

As a continuation of the categorizing idea, first I think we give "effort points" (EP) to different combinations of categories. These are NOT the same as points for achieving challenges. They are just something that makes choosing the challenges easier for any particular month. They're intended to reflect how much time an average busy person might spend on getting that achievement, including retries.

We assign 1 to easy, 2 to medium and 4 to hard difficulty levels. We also assign 1 to quick, 2 to average and 4 to slow expected speed of completion. Then the EP for a particular challenge is the product of those two, so each gets an EP of between 1 min (1x1) and 16 (4x4) max. For all the different combinations it looks like this:

.......Quick Average Slow
Easy.....1......2......4
Medium...2......4......8
Hard.....4......8.....16

For example, based on this table, "Export Tycoon" would be 8 EP, "Nature Lover" would be 4 EP, "Renaissance Man" would be 2 EP, and "Just dropped in" would be 1 EP.

Based on that I suggest SIX achievement challenges a month. And I think we should choose challenges that, when we add up all the EPs, comes to a total of around 30 (in the range 24-32). So, for example, we might have the following combinations of 6 challenges for 5 different months:
16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 32
16 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 30
8 + 8 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 1 = 29
8 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 2 = 24
4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 24
and so on in many different combinations.

Having six new challenges a month seems to be easily viable, based on the amount of ideas we've already had. Categorizing them with EP will make sure we set a consistent degree of total challenge each month. Sure, we'll get our estimations wrong sometimes, but if we break it down into small chunks like this, many of the errors will hopefully cancel each other out.

What do you think?

 

[Pouakai]

Maybe we should have a forum to discuss this?

 

[stormerne]

Maybe we should have a forum to discuss this?

That may yet happen. Please stay tuned.

 

[shanodin]

This sounds like a good idea but I do worry about possible differences in opinion about the ease of any one particular challenge.

 

[stormerne]

This sounds like a good idea but I do worry about possible differences in opinion about the ease of any one particular challenge.

Very true. But what usually happens is that one person will tend to estimate more or less consistently too easy, another person consistently too hard. That's due to difference in skill level and just plain optimism (or naivety!). But that's OK too because it's the relative difficulty between different challenges that's important rather than the absolute difficulty.

Another thing that happens is that someone will "see through" the challenge and intuitively know the best way to approach it. For example, there's a Steam challenge called Flying Fortress where you have to bomb another city with a B17. It's quick and easy in my estimation. Doesn't seem too hard, but how to do this quickly? Duel map, modern era start and turn barbs off if you like. On any difficulty level, your choice of favorite, you start with enough culture points to open Rationalism and immediately unlock Scientific Revolution, so you can be building a B17 on your first turn! You start with three settlers so you can make a chain of cities to rebase your B17 towards your opponent. You're done in just a handful of moves.

So some "differences in opinion about the ease of any one particular challenge" come down to imagination. Part of the challenge may be, like Baldrick, to find "the cunning plan" and after that it becomes straightforward, even if not easy.

 

[testdummy653]

This sounds like a good idea but I do worry about possible differences in opinion about the ease of any one particular challenge.

Plus when people start rating and submitting their own achievements, others will be reading their suggestions and they can be like "that achievement seems a lot easier than the rating". So hopefully the ratings will average out.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

You bet i'm in!

If only to trigger 1) A mutually beneficial cooperation within my own project and 2) Some solid activities towards reaching our respective goals.

Your Challenges, My Records. Two Coins of the same side (not a phrasing error, btw) , in fact.
Goals, baby. Tough. Extremely difficult.

Let's revive this thread too. It deserves a lot of attention.