HOF Cheese Annex (unofficial poll)

[superslug]

nothing to do with cheesy wins, but cold we get a few more statistic screens like those of civ3 hof?
e.g. victory condition percentage, leader percentage, map percentage, mapsize percentage, difficulty percentage? maybe for the complete hof and for the personal record?

That's up to Dianthus, but I agree they were cool to have.

 

[Misotu]

At the risk of being a nauseating bore, I *still* think the Gauntlets should have more weighting.

(slinks into corner, muttering to herself )

 

[Moonsinger]

At the risk of being a nauseating bore, I *still* think the Gauntlets should have more weighting.

(slinks into corner, muttering to herself )

I think the Gauntlets are already overweighted. For example, at the moment, you could score more with a Gauntlet on the Settler level (which takes less than 1 hour to play) than the average Deity game (which takes forever to win one). For example, this is one of the greatest game ever played and it scored only 10 points. I think the top 10 slots on G-Minor 23 (settler game) would easily score more than 10 points.

 

[superslug]

At the risk of being a nauseating bore, I *still* think the Gauntlets should have more weighting.

They will. We're having some staff side conversation on exactly how to do this. I certainly feel there should be some recognition of regular Gauntlet contributors...

 

[Thrallia]

I think the Gauntlets are already overweighted. For example, at the moment, you could score more with a Gauntlet on the Settler level (which takes less than 1 hour to play) than the average Deity game (which takes forever to win one). For example, this is one of the greatest game ever played and it scored only 10 points. I think the top 10 slots on G-Minor 23 (settler game) would easily score more than 10 points.

I think that the reason it only got 10 points is because there's only two players who've submitted games in that table...once someone else submits one, he'll likely gain a ton of Qscore points.

 

[Misotu]

Probably true Thrallia. In fact, if there were a gauntlet with those settings, Ironhead would probably get the points he deserves for it!

But to be honest, it's just another quecha rush. Not knocking quecha rushes or anything, but there is more to this game than just picking an over-powered faction and running everything over Most of the gauntlets nowadays seem to be attracting quite a lot of entries, which makes the setting very competitive, and the people who do well should get the points for it.

@superslug: Thanks for the response and looking forward to the results of your deliberations!

 

[Moonsinger]

But to be honest, it's just another quecha rush. Not knocking quecha rushes or anything, but there is more to this game than just picking an over-powered faction and running everything over

Quecha rush is very difficult on Deity huge map. All it takes for one AI to hook up horse or copper and we are ancient history. If anyone think it's easy and cheesy, they should try it to see what happen.

 

[Denniz]

Quecha rush is very difficult on Deity huge map. All it takes for one AI to hook up horse or copper and we are ancient history. If anyone think it's easy and cheesy, they should try it to see what happen.

Considering the amount of time it took me to master (ha!) the Quecha rush on Monarch standard map, I would agree that it is very, very difficult. Although, I don't think it is even possible get that kind of early victory with another civ. (At least for us mere mortals. )

It is very tough to seperate the cheese from the truly difficult, sometimes. But where do you draw the line? Nobody is talking about banning them from the HOF Tables. This is all about recognizing players that have mastered all aspects of the game (i.e. Quattromaster). Or I should say "ranking" them.

 

[Misotu]

Yeah, what he said.

I'm sorry if you thought I was saying it was easy. It's not easy.

 

[de Mott]

But to be honest, it's just another quecha rush. Not knocking quecha rushes or anything, but there is more to this game than just picking an over-powered faction and running everything over

I don't think it's just another quechua rush.
Just look at the "early" dates:

770 BC You have captured Delphi!!!
The Greek Civilization has been destroyed!!!
360 BC You have captured Madrid!!!
The Spanish Civilization has been destroyed!!!
400 AD You have captured Smolensk!!!
The French Civilization has been destroyed!!!
980 AD You have captured Calcutta!!!
The Indian Civilization has been destroyed!!!

Quechuas help to weaken some of your enemies in the beginning and to get you some extra cities, which is very important. But there's far more to it than just rushing.

 

[Misotu]

Sure there is, but that's not the point. There's more to beating 20 other people in a settler-level game than just sitting down for an hour and pressing turn end, too

Moonsinger was saying that she thinks that the Gauntlets already score too highly. I strongly disagree with this because of the competitive element which means that the challenge lies not only in the difficulty level level of the game, but also in the fact that there are usually many competing entries for that one slot. I also disagree because Gauntlet competition is the single element that encourages people to try settings that are not obvious ... Korea for a cultural win, domination victory on the highlands map, etc. These victories will not score well at all on the standard Quattromasters rating because the settings are not ideal - but winning a Gauntlet is a real achievement and should be reflected in the scoring.

That was the point I was making. I was probably a bit too heavy on the irony when referring to the quecha game, because I feel strongly. Mea culpa. But the underlying point remains.

 

[Dracandross]

because the settings are not ideal - but winning a Gauntlet is a real achievement and should be reflected in the scoring.

Thats true! There should be some kind of plaque showing total performance in gauntlets. Of course that can't be part of QM as time will increase score but still. Now Gauntlet score shows just scoring of 4 best gauntlets and thats nothing really. Simply 10 points for first 8 for 2nd 6 3rd 5 4th etc would do the trick but more sophisticated method woulda be nice too ala game of the month.

-Dracandross

 

[Harbourboy]

but winning a Gauntlet is a real achievement and should be reflected in the scoring.

I certainly agree with that. Gauntlets are now the only HoF games I have time for, because they are simply much more difficult than normal games where you can choose all the settings, so it takes much longer (for me) to get a successful completion.

 

[Miraculix]

I am not convinced that increasing the reletive importance of Gauntlets in QM is a good idea. This might discourage people from filling up the HOF tables that are not covered by the Gauntlets.

To me, QM and Gauntlets are two different competitions, QM is about mastering a large variety of settings, and filling empty or almost empty HOF tables. Gauntlets are about competing with pre-selected settings in a very competitive environment on a regular basis. The current QM scoring formula seems like a somewhat unclean mix of these two competitions.

What about excluding Gauntlets from the QM score formula and create a Global Gauntlet Score Ranking similar to GOTM? This seems like a more clean solution with two independent HOF-based competitions, QM and Gauntlets.

 

[Misotu]

Yes, I see what you're saying. I think your concern could be covered quite easily by specifying the Gauntlets more accurately. But in any event ... I might be wrong about this, but looking at my scores, it looks like the Gauntlet score only counts in the Gauntlet table. Some of my QM scores - particularly in League of Nations - are Gauntlets games. And they only score vanilla HoF scores, not the score I got in the Gauntlet. I think the higher score should count? This would help to address the balance a bit, and encourage people to enter Gauntlets?

 

[Moonsinger]

Moonsinger was saying that she thinks that the Gauntlets already score too highly. I strongly disagree with this because of the competitive element which means that the challenge lies not only in the difficulty level level of the game, but also in the fact that there are usually many competing entries for that one slot. I also disagree because Gauntlet competition is the single element that encourages people to try settings that are not obvious ... Korea for a cultural win, domination victory on the highlands map, etc. These victories will not score well at all on the standard Quattromasters rating because the settings are not ideal - but winning a Gauntlet is a real achievement and should be reflected in the scoring.

I agree with you on everything you said about the competitive/challenging elements of those gauntlets; however, that isn't the reason why I think they are overweighted. Because the gauntlet score are eternal, for this reason alone, I think they are overweighted on the QM table.

For example, if you scored 1st place with 100 points on your spaceship gauntlet and your ship was launched around 2049 AD. This score is eternal! Down the road (may be many years later), someone manage to win the space race by 10AD on the exact same level+map+civ+same setting as your 2049AD game. Surely, the 10AD game may score 100 points too, but it will never decrease the value of your 2049AD game (because that gauntlet score is eternal). If you get your QM status by playing mostly gauntlet games, then your QM place will be eternal as well because there is no way people can knock you down the list. This is exactly the one reason why I think gauntlet games are over weighted on the QM table. Of course, I could be wrong about its "eternal" status, but at the moment, it seems to me that all those gauntlet scores are eternal.

PS: If you are wondering why a 2049AD space race game would win top gauntlet score, well, it can happen. For example, if you are the only one playing that gauntlet, naturally, your score will be counted as #1. Not only that it's #1, it also will be counted as an "eternal" #1 score too.

 

[Ozbenno]

If you get your QM status by playing mostly gauntlet games, then your QM place will be eternal as well because there is no way people can knock you down the list.

Your QM scores in categories other than gauntlet can erode (or increase) over time as other people submit games. Using your example, say you won the gauntlet in 2049AD using Washington, Deity, Great Plains, Normal speed and had 100 points in all categories for those settings. Someone comes along after you and submits a 10AD game with the same settings, your gauntlet score stays at 100 but all your other QM category scores go to 10 (I think for 2 games).

For my 2c, I think gauntlets are weighted right. It would be interesting to get scores based on places (as I have managed a 3rd once ) but not that big a deal.

 

[playshogi]

Perhaps the distinction between Major and Minor can be eliminated by leaving the level the game is played at up to the player. Scoring would be based on 1) level played 2) date finished 3) score. This would have the effect of filling up more of the regular tables, too.

 

[Misotu]

@Moonsinger: Yes, I see what you are saying and I can understand why you'd be concerned. But how often does one player get the #1 slot? Well, yeah, I know there are some players who do *really* well on Gauntlets, but the thing is that if you looked at the Gauntlets over time, they do distribute. And if you give extra points for, say, the top xxx places, I'm not suggesting killer points. Just a weighting. That really wouldn't affect things over a year or two, so I guess your only real concern would be if you thought Civ IV were eternal. I know you don't think this ... nor do I In the time frame we're talking about, it really wouldn't affect stuff. And if we were both wrong, and Civ IV turned out to be the turn based strategy game to end all turn-based strategy games ... well, then another correction in the scoring formula might be in order down the line if those eternal scores proved to be a problem.

Right now, the Gauntlet affects just two slots in the overall picture. When you consider that league of nations alone commands 24 slots ... well, you know, it's worth considering. I agree a light hand - not a huge bonus, but just a filip. It would be good, I think. And I think that it's worth looking at Gauntlet scores scoring at Gauntlet level in the other slots. I haven't done the maths, so I don't know what the effect would be. But over a couple of years, we're really not talking that many Gauntlets by comparison with the overall number of slots in the table, are we?

 

[Methos]

Just a thought on the eternal thing, but what if a depreciation was instilled after certain periods of time? I believe GOTM uses this.

BTW, I'm just discussing Moonsinger's thoughts...