Can we expect changes?

[Nad]

@DaviddesJ: That is true but it's not particularly well documented and can get lost in the midst of all the high scoring games.

What I mean is that rather than submitting a game and seeing ti ranked by score amidst all the serious players, how about having another category altogether, in which submitted games are recognized and confirmed, but the score isn't ranked. You don't have to rank such games at all, you can simply list the finish and victory/loss type. This way you're encouraging submissions without putting any pressure on scoring. At the moment, it just "feels" awkward, even embarrasing, submitting a game with a low score, because it would just be swamped and possibly ignored amidst all the games where people have milked to get a high a score as possible.

Of course, as you say this is not essential and can be done informally anyway. I'm just suggesting that doing this formally might be a way to encourage more casual submissions.

 

[a space oddity]

The whole idea of the GoTM is comparing games. Scores are one way but the spoilers are actually more important for that purpose. That is the place to show what you've done and why. It can give rise to sub-competitions like the one where a number of players (incl me ) tried for a 20k victory which was not required that month. We all scored kinda low but it was fun to see what we did to get there and how different the dates where in the end.
The different awards are another way to aknowledge the achievements of the competitors. Yet another way is the patheon of heroes where the ongoing participation is awarded in number of entries as well as in ranking.

 

[Nad]

I'm not saying a spoiler/discussion thread should not exist, I was simply stating there were too many of them! I agree 100% that the discussion and comparisons/contrasts are more than half the fun of such events. What I'm saying is rather than having so many threads which may serve to confuse, why not wait until you finish your game and then join the spoiler/discussions?

In any case, it was meant as a minor point about how confusing and intimidating the GOTM forum can fell to a newbie, becuase it just appears that there is so much to take in. Having a single spoiler thread would reduce this somewhat. Similarly, having a single thread which deals with the admin rules of GOTM would reduce the clutter...it could be like a "must-read" for the GOTM forum, explaining the basic rules, house rules, spoilers, submissions etc. At the moment, we appear to have 5 stickied threads just to confirm basic rules

 

[Hergrom]

Originally posted by Nad

At the moment, it just "feels" awkward, even embarrasing, submitting a game with a low score, because it would just be swamped and possibly ignored amidst all the games where people have milked to get a high a score as possible.

Just for clarification, nobody has milked a GOTM for quite a while now. The Jason scoring system has essentially eliminated it. Theoretically it is still a viable option, but nobody does it now.

As far as to score or not to score GOTM games, I think we would lose many players if results were not ranked. Most people say they are there for the comraderie, or to see how others played their games, but most really want to see how they stack up to the top layers. I know I do.

Case in point: Look how posting and submissions declined while we were in the "no results being posted" phase. People got bored and a little disgruntled without comparative results. (This is by no means a complaint... I am mearly posting what I observed).

Hergrom

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Nad
What I'm saying is rather than having so many threads which may serve to confuse, why not wait until you finish your game and then join the spoiler/discussions?

Many people need a whole month to play through a GOTM. I have children and a job, I don't have an infinite amount of free time for games. It's much better for participation and community if you give people a way to interact with each other during the course of the game, as opposed to requiring everyone to avoid any discussion until the whole game is over. I think you would get much less participation that way.

 

[AlanH]

There are typically only three spoiler threads during the month:

- End of Ancient Age, often restricted map visibility
- End of medieval, full map visibility
- End of game

In practice, many games end at spoiler #2. Spoiler #1, focusing on the building and early trading phase, is where the most direct comparisons can be made between games. Spoiler #2 is much more about diversity of different players' approaches to war and peace and diplomacy. Leaving all game reporting to a single post after the game will, in my opinion, result in a poorer overall reporting standard. Perhaps we can compromise with two spoilers only - Ancient Age and End of Game.

On a purely pragmatic point, I for one have found that a half-game spoiler can run foul of the maximum posting size, and that's without providing a detailed turn log, just trying to summarise the main threads of research, war, diplomacy and trading. So a full game summary would become much more limited in the information supplied, or would anyway have to span multiple posts in the single thread. Once the full game is over the early game details may be a month old, and become much more difficult to recall and summarise accurately. So it is logical to provide a separate Ancient Age spoiler thread, where players can be confident they can post and compare their first phase progress but will not see details of the full world map or unknown civs before they have discovered these for themselves.

In my staff capacity I am currently involved in a project to rationalise the gotm.civfanatics.net game pages to provide a one-stop shop for each game, giving all the game details, the file and spoiler thread links, and other game-specific information on one database-driven page per game. Amongst other benefits this will allow us to unstick the spoilers and other game announcements and support threads, as they can then all be reached via the game page. It will also answer the acknowledged need for an "archive" where information for all past and present games can be found easily.

As always, this project is taking longer than I would like, and is currently focused on providing improved access to existing content, but all your suggestions are welcomed as to what else you would like to be included on each game page.

 

[grahamiam]

As a newbie, I have to disagree with the assumption by Nad that the GoTM layout is intimidating. While it is a little disjointed and could use some streamlining, I don't think it was impossible to use or access. AlanH's current project seems to be a great idea and should improve the layout. The only difficulty is the multiple downloads to get the games running (as well as the multiple errors in GoTM25). Hopefully, this too can be avoided in the future.

I have only played 23 thru 25. I did not submit 23 due to lack of time in September but I did submit 24 and 25. Now that the results are posted and I can compare my games on the .crp view with the best, I am getting a better feel for how to improve my game, which is the purpose for the GoTM (besides the obvious fun ) .

The scoring system is in no way intimidating. Being able to compare/analyse game results is the best way to improve. If submitting and seeing your username on a list seems a little too much, then there is nothing preventing a player from playing his/her game and not submitting. Once the results come out, they can easily go back and compare .sav's (hopefully, recent improvements in releasing the results in a timely manner will continue). Basically, I don't believe that there is a need to have a seperate list that the CivFanatic volunteer workers must maintain. This is supposed to be fun for them too!

As far as mod vs un-mod, I feel that the mod's can be like a breath of fresh air for a game that many of us may have been playing for over a year. However, the multi-modpacks required since GoTM 20 has become too burdensome. (I've had to reformat my harddrive 2x since October!). One modpack for that specific game or group of games would be much easier to handle (say, 1 modpack for every 3 games, no relation between packs). Size of the mod files should be limited to what is practicle for a dial-up connection in order to make it accessible to the maximum number of players.

Merry Christmas! :santa:

 

[Gingerbread Man]

My official stance is that when GOTMs where somewhat modded, they were great. However, they eventually got over-done, and I just left.

I think we all like modded games, but not over-modded games. Simple flavour changes are good, or some little tweaks for a specific game, like increasing the power of the galley in a mediteranian game.

Though even if we do have 50/50 modded/unmodded games, they do need to be planned. For the good of the GOTM community, lets NOT have any completely random games! Even if it is a random map, tweak it to encourage the flavour, the history of the civ we are playing. Make sure it will be fun, no games where your land is mountains and jungle, except for your capital.

Though the most important thing for GOTMs is that every player needs a goal, and in spoilers compare how they reached that goal. To quote Sid Meier himself, "a game is a series of interesting decisions." How are you going to decide if you are going to take the road to Chicago or the road to New York, if you have no idea where you are going anyway? This will be hard for the newer players. You wont be able to make a choice, you'll just keep driving and eventually find yourself in a ditch on a cornfield.

Even if the game is unmodded, there needs to be some plan. For example, by the time of submitting, you have to capture your neighbour's capital. Or you have to have a city on another continent. Or at the time of victory, you have to have possesion of x number, of x type/s of resource/s. Something that points the players into the right direction.

So when you reach that intersection, you'll realise that you dont want to go to Chicago or New York. You really should be in Mexico, thats where the Aztec capital is, and you have to capture it before the end of the game .

 

[Justus II]

Looking at the new parameters for GOTM27, I would like to suggest that some way of revitalizing the QSC for this game in particular be worked out. Whether it is possible to post timelines only at the end of the game or something, I think that this game, with the unique challenges of removing two of the key tools for most players early game (Contact trading and map trading) would make some very interesting discussions of how different players adapted to this situation. At the least, I would like to see a focus on these points in the first spoiler thread, but I think that the QSC is the ideal vehicle for exploring the effects of these changes.

I know every effort is already being made to get the QSC back up and running, I guess what I am suggesting is that in my mind, I would rather see the QSC for this game ahead of (not instead of) updating the QSCs for the past few months. Any other thoughts?