GOTM 2.0 Brainstorming

[MarkM]

Where do we rank people based on the time the game runs? We quote the time played, as there is no reason to withhold it from our more statistics-obsessed players. But we don't rank it!

I stand corrected - you can sort results by the amount of time played, but indeed the rows in that page are not numbered (assigned a rank), you just see it sorted that way.

But all this is kind of parenthetical to the idea that I thought I saw floated here that we would start generating ranking by time played (which is what was meant by speed, or am I wrong?). So this does seem to be the measure of achievement that some believe should be used for this game, how few minutes are spent with the game running.

 

[Munro]

I would play more if there were harder games each month (emperor / immortal and above).

I always liked the idea of having different difficulty levels available for the same map. Once you've mastered immortal, playing at prince or noble just doesn't really appeal..

 

[da_Vinci]

I stand corrected - you can sort results by the amount of time played, but indeed the rows in that page are not numbered (assigned a rank), you just see it sorted that way.

But all this is kind of parenthetical to the idea that I thought I saw floated here that we would start generating ranking by time played (which is what was meant by speed, or am I wrong?). So this does seem to be the measure of achievement that some believe should be used for this game, how few minutes are spent with the game running.

By speed we mean number of turns (i.e. "game time"), not passage of real time.

(Lightbulb comes on in the dairy ... and a loud "D'oh" echoes ... )

dV

 

[AlanH]

I stand corrected - you can sort results by the amount of time played, but indeed the rows in that page are not numbered (assigned a rank), you just see it sorted that way.

But all this is kind of parenthetical to the idea that I thought I saw floated here that we would start generating ranking by time played (which is what was meant by speed, or am I wrong?). So this does seem to be the measure of achievement that some believe should be used for this game, how few minutes are spent with the game running.

Wrong on all counts, I'm afraid. Speed when discussing rankings and awards always refers to the number of turns taken to complete the game. Earlier date/fewer turns => faster game.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I always liked the idea of having different difficulty levels available for the same map.

Same here. I can't imagine a better system. Let's say, two difficulty levels.

 

[adrianj]

I had a mini brainwave today. It's more an extra feature that the map designers could choose to do, but it won't work with the HOF mod...

How about designing a map where the player plays as two different allied leaders - just like a multiplayer game. Ie, techs are shared, and there is an extra element of strategy involved in synergising the traits of the two leaders. It is something that I'm really enjoying with a pitboss game I am involved with.

The game could be set up as a scenario, and then opened up and saved as a multiplayer hotseat game. Obviously, therein lies the game's biggest flaw - HOF mod doesn't allow multiplayer. Another option is to have the player allied to an AI. Certainly not the same, but could still make for an interesting game.

 

[Rusten]

How can GOTM be developed so that it ...
1. ...becomes even more fun?
2. ...attracts more people?
3. ...sparks more forum discussions?

As has been mentioned several times in the recent posts it would be great to have more high difficulty games. If a player is stuck doing other things than civ the month you host the deity game one has to wait more than 6 months for the next one. The "two difficulties" idea would help a lot for this. If you get to play a level similar to your skill level you'll be more interested in discussing the game post-mortem as well--whereas cakewalk victories aren't that inspiring.

I would play regularly if this was implemented.

 

[dalamb]

I got a little out of the Always War Rome GOTM ages ago, which was also at a much higher difficulty level than I usually play, but most of what I learned was on restarts. So there's definitely a place for them. The Ghandi Price-level Always War somehow felt more scary because I figured I ought to have a chance at doing well and was more terrified of making mistakes; on Rome I knew it was hopeless!

 

[leif erikson]

We would like to thank you all for the many ideas you have posted thus far in this thread. We, as staff, have begun several discussions on these ideas.

At the moment, I am working on two of them and I would like to ask some questions that I hope develop the ideas you have presented a bit more.

Please click here for a further discussion of a Quick Start Challenge type of event for Civ 4.

The second Idea that we need some help with is the two-tier game system.

I think it would help if you could develop the two-tier idea a bit more so we could better understand what it might look like. Using this thread seems fine for now.

Some questions:
It seems that we might be limiting game variety for tier-one players. Must they always play only Emperor, Immortal and Deity games or can they drop down and also play Monarch, Prince or, perhaps, an occasional Noble game? Should they do so, what happens to their ranking?

Would we need to have two ranking systems or can we maintain a single, combined, ranking system? I have been reading up on ranking systems and, using some version of ELO, we may be able to use one, combined, system. Any suggestions?

 

[Heathcliff]

I'm a littlebit bored with regular BTS and Im mostly playing some mods now. Here is some ideas that could be interresting, to get some unusual games.

1. Have a one city challange game
2. The mapscripts are quite boring, fractal is best but it still looks quite alike every game. Heavily edited unusual maps.
3. Have a game with Rhye's and Fall of civilization and take some civilization where the game is not puzzle solving, but feel like a normal game. Like playing as the Germans or Russians.
4. Maybe a game with Rise of Mankind mod (a mod with twice as many techs, units and buildings).
5. Rise of Mankind and starting as a minor civ (i.e. you are at always war with all civs until both discover writing and can make peace).

If a mod is used players needs to play some testgames of course to grasp the new features, especially the stability mekanisms. In Rhye's you get stability penalty to expan out of your core area and in Rise of mankind you get stability penalty for expanding too fast and if you lack happiness and health, so you need a happiness and healthsurplus and newer civics to expand far away from capital.

Not every game should have unusual settings but maybe one game every 3rd month or so.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay. Here's an off-the-wall idea: How about two-member teams? You get to team up with someone and play together (not exactly succession, just sharing ideas by pm, either one playing turns whenever). EDIT: BUt no replays, etc., of course. Only one can play a certain set of turns.

 

[Munro]

The basic questions we are trying to answer are something like:

How can GOTM be developed so that it ...
1. ...becomes even more fun?
2. ...attracts more people?
3. ...sparks more forum discussions?

One other thing that would help me with all of the above - more time to submit! Sometimes the immortal or deity games can take 50-100 hours if it is a close game and one month is rarely enough....

1.5 - 2 months would be more realistic for me. The longer cycle for WOTM was good (but I don't play vanilla or civ any more as I much prefer the extra features and better game balance of BtS now).

Just my perspective; lack of time and too-easy difficulty levels are the main things that killed my participation after working my way up past Emperor.

 

[Jeffa]

The best thing to attract more players is more pleasant maps, so that players compete among themselves, not vs the mapmakers. There's no interest in playing on a gloomy, barren field. Also, the statistics also indicates higher number of submissions for "fatter" and easier maps.

 

[da_Vinci]

One other thing that would help me with all of the above - more time to submit! Sometimes the immortal or deity games can take 50-100 hours if it is a close game and one month is rarely enough....

1.5 - 2 months would be more realistic for me. The longer cycle for WOTM was good (but I don't play vanilla or civ any more as I much prefer the extra features and better game balance of BtS now).

Just my perspective; lack of time and too-easy difficulty levels are the main things that killed my participation after working my way up past Emperor.

Well, a couple of thoughts here ...

Lengthening submission time might not need to lenghen game start intervals, right?

One could for example, start GOTM on 1st of month and have it be due 15th of next month as a rule, if there were interest in that. Someone using the extra time for one version, such as BTS, might elect not to play one or more other versions.

Now, there is an interest in having results before the game is forgotten, but our 8 week WOTM experience can give us some insight into this as an issue.

Or, we could start one game every two weeks, with a six week (or even 8 week) submission date. That would mean fewer games of each type over a year, and I think the consensus was against that in the polls when BOTM was introduced.

dV

 

[Munro]

Lengthening submission time might not need to lenghen game start intervals, right?

One could for example, start GOTM on 1st of month and have it be due 15th of next month as a rule, if there were interest in that. Someone using the extra time for one version, such as BTS, might elect not to play one or more other versions.

That would be perfect.

Especially if the difficulties are cycled to alternate the harder games with easier games (some players may find the harder games take longer, others may find they take less time due to early elimination, but interleaving them ensures that both ends of the spectrum will have 'long' games interleaved with 'short').

 

[kcd_swede]

The best thing to attract more players is more pleasant maps, so that players compete among themselves, not vs the mapmakers. There's no interest in playing on a gloomy, barren field. Also, the statistics also indicates higher number of submissions for "fatter" and easier maps.

You have statistics to show this? I woul dlike to see them. I think we know that easier games to win (i.e. games at lower levels of difficulty) have more submissions. However, I am not aware that easier maps had anything to do with it. I thought it more a matter of human nature being more willing to show success than expose personal failings.

That would be perfect.

Especially if the difficulties are cycled to alternate the harder games with easier games (some players may find the harder games take longer, others may find they take less time due to early elimination, but interleaving them ensures that both ends of the spectrum will have 'long' games interleaved with 'short').

Meh... I think part of the impediment to submitting games is the realization that the comparitive results won't be made known until long after you have forgotten which game it was. I mean... BOTM15 results were just published, and it took me more than half an hour to figure out that it wastn't the Mongols game and it wasn't the vikings game but was the Khmer game.

We live in a world of instant gratification. A lot of us play these GOTM's within the first week or two. Delaying the comparison (publishing of results) even more than is done now would kill the whole point of GOTM's for some of us. And the rest of us would soldier on no matter what rules you come up with -- simply because we love the game and love to share that feeling with others who alse love the game.

 

[da_Vinci]

Be sure to vote in this poll on a Psuedo-Tier proposal that resulted from these discussions:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=315618

dV

 

[Frederiksberg]

I have been working a bit more with the idea of introducing GOTM rating. The basic model is the same as introduced in the linked post and I have developed a method for rating lost games and mechanisms for monitoring and controlling inflation/deflation. It should work well if some requirements can be met with regards to collecting data from the submitted games:

1. Submitted games must be grouped according to VC
2. For every game, information on the outcome must be available (Win/loose in T turns)
3. There must be a mechanism to register the forum name when the "rated" save is downloaded by someone.
4. The difficulty level and game variant GOTM/WOTM/BOTM must be known
5. Games, where the AI has considerable extra advantage (like AW) may not be rated.

Item 3 is probably the crucial issue and I believe it's important. The point is that some mechanism for rating non-submissions must be implemented. Only players who have downloaded the game should in all fairness be rated for a loss if they fail to submit. One possibility could be to have both a "free" save that is not rated and a marked "rated" save that can only be downloaded by someone who is logged in (or who submits forum name first).

Limitations and advantages of a rating system:

1. My current proposal is limited to handling speed - it's a speed rating.
2. The speed rating will reflect the true abilities of the player more accurately than the current rankings because there is only a small bias in favor of frequent participation.
3. The AI for the different versions (Vanilla, Warlord and BtS) will also get a rating so it will be possible see to if you are "truly" a Monarch player, Emperor player etc. Differences in AI ability between game versions will also be visible.
4. Players of intermediate strength will get more incentive to play and submit because there is always the goal of improving the rating.
5. Having a rating system could be used to "market" the GOTM within the community.

Status right now is that I have simulated the rating system and it seems to work well with simulated input data. So if there is interest from the community and from the GOTM staff the next step could be to implement and test the rating system with old GOTM/WOTM/BOTM data to see how it behaves with real game data. My guess is that some adjustments are needed, perhaps special handling of outliers (Strange results like loosing in 30 turns).

Oh - I almost forgot the most important test. In order for the system to have any credibility I must have higher rating than LC .

 

[AlanH]

How can you have data on "Win/Lose in T turns" for every game if a "rated save" is not submitted?

 

[da_Vinci]

How can you have data on "Win/Lose in T turns" for every game if a "rated save" is not submitted?

I suspect he means for every submitted game.

Does the rating for losses recognize that losing later is better (even though winning sooner is better)?

I agree that one has to be liable for games begun with the intent of applying to rating ... otherwise the ratings are based on a sample biased toward successful outcomes. So at the outset, a game must be either "on the record" or "off the record".

dV