News: WOTM 03 - Results & Congratulations

[DynamicSpirit]

Changing the retired game scoring for GOTM to just the Technology element of the score equates retiring score with score due to a conquest loss. This is a relative disadvantage for players with a good game who are up against the time-limit, but any retirement option is still better than none. Enticing players facing a bad situation to continue their game may result in them learning a thing or two, and might even increase their score vs retiring at the first sign of real trouble. And the player still has the option to retire and submit at any time, if they choose to.

That's convincing enough for me. Up to now I've thought the current system should be changed but have not been totally certain how. But that sounds to me like and extremely good argument for only counting the science part of the score for retired games - so I'm now going to nail my colours to that mast

A couple of people here have argued that retiring is sensible because you're admitting defeat. Well in that case, ISTM retiring should be scored the same as a complete defeat - a conquest loss, as civ_steve suggests.

 

[AlanH]

When I was a delivery driver, my customers only got change if they asked for it .... but what I won't do is cheat or steal

That must be a local cultural or legal distinction. Where I come from, deliberately not giving change is considered cheating or stealing.

 

[Dumpfbacke]

@ civ_steve:
hey thanks for answering in such details to my post - I feel so honored - even though I'm not sure I completely understand (probably you also didnt fully get my points, but hey !).

I think my approach was a bit more laissez-faire, but many here seem to be really serious about this. I simply like to look my results up afterwards to see how others are doing, and submitting is just me giving others a chance to check if they beat me or not. I'm not retiring a game that I'm losing to preserve my score. But I will do it if something sets me back drastically and will prolong the game too much (e.g. in WOTM 4 I'm near a culture victory, but if I happen to foolishly lose a Legendary city to the AI and have to go for domination instead, it will just be too much 'work'.
And like DynamicSpirit said, I might not even really want to submit this then, because it smells like defeat. (well it would be, sort-of )

However, reading through the posts, I start to like your idea about counting only the tech value. It does make sense, looking at how serious a topic this is for some of us.

One last remark, and it's probably too much effort to check always, but how about this:
- if you are at retiring while at war, it means you'll probably lose turn by turn, so treat it as a defeat, only tech value counts.
- if however you are able to establish peace, maybe at the cost of some land/score, you're clearly holding your own for the moment and can retire proudly at whatever your score is, as there should be no immediate defeat.

 

[Thrallia]

1) You shouldn't judge other posters. Leave that to god or judges (depending on what you believe in).
2) It's a competition. A friendly one, sure, but still a competition. If you play tennis, and you know your opponent has a hard time with low balls, will you still play high balls? I know I wouldn't. Retiring for score preservation is perfectly in the spirit of competition. Maybe not in the spirit of cIV, but that's a different matter.

from his response, I'd say my 'judgement' was dead on. And I wasn't actually judging him, just trying to get an impression of the type of person he is...totally different. Everyone does that all the time.

When I was a delivery driver, my customers only got change if they asked for it. When I play, I play to win, but what I won't do is cheat or steal. I'll lie, but only to the police or my boss.

that sounds a lot like cheating and stealing to me...and there's never a reason to lie to the police or your boss unless you've done something wrong.

To me, the spirit of competition means that you will do whatever it takes to get closest to the top without cheating. If that means retiring while you still have a decent score, then that's what you should do. If you are competing, its foolish to do something that would lower your score. Playing on until your assured destruction will lower your score. If you're just playing for fun, do whatever you want, but for me, competing is fun.

Well, considering the GOTM is a continuous competition...I'll be perfectly glad to have you retire every time you are faced with a hardship...if I'd done that I'd still be playing adventurer saves and considering myself a prince level player. Instead I won an immortal game, play contender saves now and consider myself a monarch+ player now. I've also learned how to recover from nearly untenable situations as well(almost won an emperor game via space race in which various setbacks caused my research to drop badly enough that I didn't learn Iron Working until 1070AD!!!)

 

[Moxxa]

That must be a local cultural or legal distinction. Where I come from, deliberately not giving change is considered cheating or stealing.

Its more like I would just assume that all the change was my tip. If they said "HEY! What about my change?" I just tell a joke and play it off like I'm in a serious hurry. They would understand and still tip me anyway. After about a year, quite a few of the customers would request me to deliver to them. How else are you supposed to make 200$ a night delivering pizza? Ahh...the stories I could tell...good times...

I agree that retiring is a loss. I think that you should play to win. What I don't think is that your score should be reduced for retiring. I just don't see any good reasons for it. If you are facing imminent destruction, not hardships, but 100% guaranteed destruction, and retiring will give you a higher score, it is your best option and you shouldn't be penalized for making that strategic decision.

I plan on playing in the next WOTM and I don't plan on retiring.

EDIT: Good job Thrallia. May you continue to improve and learn.

 

[drkodos]

That must be a local cultural or legal distinction. Where I come from, deliberately not giving change is considered cheating or stealing.

Of course it is, if you live in the modern, Western World.

 

[slowrider]

Took a look at some of the game files from recent retire submissions. There were about 20 retires for GOTM 10, 11 and 12. I also looked at the 10 retires from WOTM 3.

The games fell into 3 categories. (1) Retiring when the player was in a competitive position relative to technology, power, etc. They were not under attack but for some reason just retired. I assume this was due to time constraints. (2) Retiring under attack, which I subjectively determined they could have survived while protecting their land and population. Had they continued playing they would probably lose but their score would have been higher than the retire score. (3) And finally tactical retirement in the face of certain conquest defeat.

From GOTM 10-12 about 25% fell into the time constraint category. The most, about 50%, were type 2 and the remaining 25% were the type 3 tactical retirement. There were 6 tactical retirements out of a total of 449 submissions or 1.3% and the average Global Ranking benefit was about 1 point. The average player ranking was 308.

There were 10 retirements in WOTM 3 and 8 of them were clearly tactical. Imminent destruction wasn’t obvious for a couple of them but I lumped them in as well because the situation was so bad. The average benefit was only half a point due to a relatively large high score. The average global ranking was 280 but there were 3 top 100 players. One of these players didn’t submit a GOTM 12 so that tactical retirement score counted. The other players submitted the second game and of coarse that score counted.

 

[Alraun]

Its more like I would just assume that all the change was my tip. If they said "HEY! What about my change?" I just tell a joke and play it off like I'm in a serious hurry.

Translation: I thought this was an easy situation to get away with stealing, so that's what I did. When people were paying enough attention and caught me, they let me off with a feeble excuse, which just encouraged me to steal even more!

 

[da_Vinci]

A discussion this heated, on a topic of this sort, without me in it? We have to fix that!

Have not had warlords until this Christmas, so had not wandered into these threads. When I get some time to learn it, you will have to put up with me here too.

But first, some levity. Based on his post 36, AlanH must think he is watching Seinfeld when he reads this thread: wasn't that the show about nothing ... ? Usually, when he opines that a post is about inconsequentia, he is talking to me! Now I don't feel so alone.

Now for the serious discussion

To get smashed, and then go-back and submit a save from an earlier point in the game where you were doing OK is, IMHO, outside the rules of the competition.

No doubt about it, this is precisely a reload: going back to an earlier time in the game, and replaying to change and improve the result. In this case, the replay is the retirement. I am surprised that the mods did not jump on that idea more strongly.

slowrider hit the nail on the head with the different types of incomplete games: the ran out of time when viable (or even hugely winning), and the retired in the face of doom. How can we appropriately reduce the score of the retired in the face of doom (face it, in that case the score is a sham - the game was misplayed if you are that desperate, regardless of the untenable score that you have at the retirement) without unfairly penalizing those who played well but ran out of time? The reality may be that we cannot do both.

As far as the relative placing in the results of the single game, the problem is comparing apples to oranges. Making it half an apple makes the comparison more sensible? Maybe not. The reason that we don't accept reloads is that they are not comparable to first played games. So for the same reason, comparing retired games to completed games doesn't make sense if the retirement was in the face of doom.

But if we made one table for completed games and a separate table of the incomplete games when posting results, that might solve the within game issue.

Global rankings is a tougher issue. How to give some credit to the incomplete when winning due to time, but not too much credit to the retired in the face of doom? And the rather separate issue (from the competetion issue), the desire to incentivize completing the game in any case. The best (and by no means perfect) solution may be that the points for the retirement are not more than the points for a conquest loss, which is the tech points only method if I understand it right. Yes, it is really not fair to the ran out of time winning group, but it does address the other two issues. It seems that any other approach to be more fair to the out of time winners is too good to the retired disasters and incentivizes retirement.

No win-win on this one, sad to say.

dV

 

[Thrallia]

well, the only retirements I've submitted were for games in which I was winning and ran out of time(GOTM7, GOTM10), I've played out all my losses...those don't seem to take as long I can say I would certainly not complain about a reduction in my score down to my tech points only for my retirements. I'm happy to have the option to submit them at all, since for most things you get no credit for something that is unfinished.

 

[da_Vinci]

Thinking more about this, there is one win-win if it is feasable.

If there is a reliable and not too cumbersome way to adjudicate retirements into losing retirements and time retirements, and the mods are willing and able to do this, then they could be handled differently. That would be a win for all three issues (no penalty for time, the right penalty for loss, incentive to finish). Only the mods "lose" by having more work, so as I say, it may not be feasible. It opens a Pandora's Box of what the adjudication method should be.

If you weight the three issues (time, loss, incentive) equally, then the tech points only seems best (not perfect). But if you weight being fair to the time retirements more heavily, then maybe we don't penalize retirements.

Suppose we decide (and now we are in the realm of value judgements) that incentivizing completion is not really a competition related issue. Player can always retire, and finish later for the education (and that is now their personal responsibility).

Then we are balancing fair to the time retirememt with adjust the loss retirement. In that case, I would say don't reduce the score. In this one to one (instead of one to two) decision, I would go for max fairness to the time retirement.

The loss retirement then becomes an allowed exploit (and it IS an exploit). We post it on the exploit page as such. Is is like the settler chop exploit that we allow. Since everyone can know about it and use it if needed, it is not unfair from a competition standpoint.

Maybe that is the best solution in the long run.

dV

 

[AlanH]

No doubt about it, this is precisely a reload: going back to an earlier time in the game, and replaying to change and improve the result. In this case, the replay is the retirement. I am surprised that the mods did not jump on that idea more strongly.

I agree. Such a reload to affect the outcome is clearly in breach of the rules, as the player would be using knowledge of the future score trajectory to change the earlier decision to continue. As such it would be treated the same as other reload/replay misdemeanours.

 

[socralynnek]

I have a proposition: I hope it is possible to extract from the save the following:

Let score be the maximum score that a player has achieved during the game.
Then at least someone who tries to play on doesn't get punished for that if he fails. But then the player still has an incentive to play on cause if he survives the war he might get to a better score but still he doesn't lose anything comparing to retiring instantly.

 

[da_Vinci]

Let score be the maximum score that a player has achieved during the game.

I think this has merit, if it can be done. While the max score ever in the game probably overstates the quality of a game that goes south, it is the same for all players and thus is fine from a competition standpoint. And it does remove any penalty from playing on in a tough position, which it seems we want to encourage. Finally, it does not penalize those who are doing well but run out of time (any more than the running out of time does).

Oh, and it would remove any temptation for players to play on, then if it goes bad, reload to retire earlier. Which means one less infraction type for the mods to have to worry about.

An excellent suggestion, socralynnek!

dV

 

[socralynnek]

Alan, any comment whether this is doable?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I have a proposition: I hope it is possible to extract from the save the following:

Let score be the maximum score that a player has achieved during the game.
Then at least someone who tries to play on doesn't get punished for that if he fails. But then the player still has an incentive to play on cause if he survives the war he might get to a better score but still he doesn't lose anything comparing to retiring instantly.

I think the problem with that is you could end up accidentally penalizing players for winning: The reason is that using max score in the game would only sensible for players who lose (or retire). Players who win get an early-victory bonus that is typically huge, but which is only marginal if their victory is close to 2050AD. Most games go through periods in the early -mid game when the 'score for winning this turn' is massive and totally unrelated to their eventual winning score, so you wouldn't want to use that score for winners. So in order to keep scoring winning players in a sensible manner, your scheme would have to work something like:

(1) If you win, you get your winning score, including early victory bonus just as currently.
(2) If you lose, you get the max base score you achieved (with the small extra scaling to final score that the game gives to losing games)

The trouble is that for someone who wins the game very late , (2) could theoretically be bigger than (1). In effect they'd get a smaller score than they would've done by just retiring, or doing something to make themselves lose.

A smaller problem is that it could encourage players who suspect they will lose to play 'badly' in the sense of temporarily getting an absolutely massive empire that they know they are in no position to defend and will lose very quickly, maybe not even bothering to defend it, just so they get a high 'highest base score achieved'.

 

[cabert]

I apologize for being one those who launched this discussion.

I firmly believe that rules are rules, and you should not change the rules for some minor reasons.
For the first GotMs and WotMs, the retiring was allowed, with no "special" rule.
I vote (for what it's worth) for keeping this rule, until there is a bigger problem to solve.
The top players aren't retiring, and if they do it's not because they are losing the game (since they are winning!).
So it's only an issue for second half players in some rare games were winning is really hard (or even surviving! since survivors will continue to tech and grow and thus have better scores than retirers).

just my 2 cents

 

[AlanH]

Alan, any comment whether this is doable?

The final save does include score data for each turn, as part of the replay history. In theory we could track back through these records and find the max base score, and use that to score losses or retirements.

I'm still unconvinced that this is a worthwhile way to spend time and effort, either in discussion or in implementation. I believe it's very unlikely that GOTM competitions will continue to generate the levels of losses and retirements we saw in WOTM 3. While the occasional exceptionally hard game is interesting, doing it frequently would alienate players, and participation would fall. So anyone trying to build a Global Ranking career out of regularly getting high GR scores from retirements is likely to have very few opportunities.

DynamicSpirit also raises a valid point that any change in scoring is likely to affect player behaviour, and this option does seem to make it possible to play the game in a very artificial way just to increase the peak base score.

 

[Ribannah]

What about people who win? Shouldn't they automatically be awarded the maximum score they could get from milking, instead of forcing them to postpone stepping over the winning line and to actually carry out this agonizing milking stage?

 

[AlanH]

Is there an agonising milking stage in Civ4? I thought the fast finish bonus was strong enough to make an early finish better than hanging on for a long time to increase base score?