Proposed 2-tier GOTM System

[Lexad]

There're plenty opportunities other than GOTMs for high-level play:
1. HoF G-Majors
2. Strategy thread games, like http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308871
Get outside. Meet people.

GOTM format is fine as it is.

 

[da_Vinci]

How about something like the following? I.e. single difficulty on Immortal and Emperor months. This has the obvious benefit of less division of the player pool (while still offering rookies the same variety in difficultly levels as before, but catering to veteran tastes too).

I > E > DM > IP > IN > DW

If we always have a D or I game, and then rotate one or two other lower difficulties, that should provide enough difficulty for the Munro-minded crowd.

It does start to widen the gap between game levels, as we would be rotating a second difficulty over more levels than two ... Such as DE, IM, DP, IN, repeat. Perhaps, with the players not locked into tiers, the size of the "step up gap" is less of an issue?

In this system, one could always play a N to E cycle, or play I or D if that suits them. The question is, how will the best players distribute between the two levels? Does the competent immortal player get enough advantage from faster AI tech pace to feel no competitive disadvantage to play immortal, compared to monarch or noble? Does that hold for diety as well?

Now, there are fewer sub monarch games in this proposal, so maybe we extend it to DEP, IMN, repeat? Now each month has high, intermediate, and low difficulty games.

No player is locked into any difficulty level in this idea ... the games are in tiers, but not the players.

In this last system, I might start playing emperor and monarch games, but could then step up to playing emperor and immortal games, and if I improve enough, imortal and deity. Players can self-select in to "tiers" of DI, IE, EM, MP, and PN, can advance through those self-selected tiers at their own pace, and can drop down to a leisurely lower diff game if they want.

If this is a reasonable approach, then how the different difficulty levels play into awards (maybe it is already self-adjusting?) would need to be assessed and managed. Might need some empirical data to finalize the award implications.

dV

 

[leif erikson]

Interesting reading.

I am curious because it sounds as if players are playing for different reasons. Is the competition to compete against the AI? Or is it to compete against others in the community?

If one views the competition as against others in the community, then it seems to me that it shouldn't matter that much the difficulty level?

 

[da_Vinci]

Interesting reading.

I am curious because it sounds as if players are playing for different reasons. Is the competition to compete against the AI? Or is it to compete against others in the community?

If one views the competition as against others in the community, then it seems to me that it shouldn't matter that much the difficulty level?

Well, for some of us, on some levels, the first task is to win the game at all!

So from that perspective, difficulty matters.

Then, for those who win regardless, I can see why there would be a preference for a competition to see who has the best struggle against the AI, as opposed to who has the best cakewalk over the AI ...

dV

 

[Rusten]

The lower levels can be like playing with no rivals at all, the AI is a complete punching bag--it's almost like 7 different barbarian tribes. There is close to no interaction other than pillaging cities. To spin your words; if one views the competition as against others in the community, then it seems to me that we might as well play by ourselves without 'rival' interference and remove everything except barbarians. It still works from a competitive standpoint, but it's much less fun.

 

[Munro]

I agree with Rusten. For me it's both. Competition within the community makes single-player games a lot more interesting (and educational for us mere mortals ) but unless there is some level of challenge from the AI as well, the game itself is less fun.

 

[Niklas]

I actually don't like Munro's proposal much, and I think he misses my point.

I don't want all games I play to be Deity or Immortal. I like variety, and I would want to play the occasional game at lower levels. And it wouldn't be enough for me if there is a lower-level game as well, since if there was a high-level game I would choose that, to play against the best players. I want to face all those good players on a lower-level game once in a while.

My point is exactly what Leif suggested - I see this competition as being against other players, not against AI. And in fact the higher the level, the more this becomes a competition against the AI, and less against other players. The higher level we play on, the more effect the RNG will have on results - an early DoW, missing a key wonder early, such things have a profound effect on Deity but often won't matter much at all on Monarch. That's not to say I prefer Monarch to Deity, I enjoy the challenge from the AIs in the game too. But I don't see it as any less of a challenge to beat all the other players on Monarch than it is on Deity.

Consider why a player like Dynamic, one of the best players I have ever seen, would spend time perfecting the strategy for a cultural game on Settler - it's no less difficult to play a perfect game there than to win at Deity!

Right now we have a system where per 12 months we have roughly 1D 2I 2E 2M 2P 2N 1W. That's too few high-level games, for Munro and Rusten as well as for me. Munro's suggestion would see us with 4D 6I 2E for the upper level. That's too few low-level games for someone like me, who enjoys playing against the best on lower levels. My own suggestion was to have 3D 4I 2E 2M 1P for the upper level. That's triple the number of Deity games compared to now, and double the number of Immortal games, 7/12 games are on Immortal or Deity. Is not that a suitable compromise?

EDIT: You might say that I wouldn't be facing the good players on the lower difficulties anyway, since they wouldn't actually play. But I think there are enough good players who do for it to be enjoyable - but I sure wouldn't mind more!

 

[Rusten]

That's plenty of compromise, and my feelings are pretty similar to yours, Niklas. I think the current overall system is pretty good. I simply want to increase the number of high difficulty games--not to remove all the low difficulty ones, I can enjoy those too every now and then when competing against others. As such I'm not necessarily in favour of the tier system but rather higher difficulty games more frequently. When/if that is the case I will probably make a habit of playing the GOTM and as such participate in the lower difficulty ones as well.

 

[Munro]

Yes, you're right - that sounds like a good compromise.

 

[Gosha190]

Is the competition to compete against the AI? Or is it to compete against others in the community? ..

ask Jesusin about

 

[da_Vinci]

Might be a good time to review the alphabet soup of patterns, as well as to confirm where there may be consensus:

I think there has been a general migration to the idea that we do NOT assign players to tiers.

I also think there has been a general migration to the idea that we would have two or three difficulty level variants for each map (or at least for some maps).

So, similar to what we have now, their are tiers of saves, but not tiers of players (at least not officially ... )

So, then the question is one of optimizing a difficulty rotation in the upper and lower (and third if used) game tiers. The potentially competing interests are:

More high difficulty games at the top.

Top players all play a moderate difficulty game from time to time (since that is max diff that month)

Still enough moderate to low games for the developing players (which is what I think makes at least two diff levels per save a must)

Not dividing the top players among the saves (want to preserve the keen competition)

These conditions should be satisfied within a single version, for those who don't have or choose not to play certain versions.

With that in mind, which of the following is best (or something different?)

I would very much prefer a system closer to what we already have, but where we use difficulty levels as equalizers as has been proposed several times in this thread. If we cycle the "Contender" difficulty as (W-)N-P-M-E-I(-D), like we do now, we could use something like (P-)M-E-E-I-D(-D) or (P-)M-E-I-I-D(-D) for the "Challenger", and (W-)W-N-P-P-M(-E) or (W-)W-N-N-P-M(-E) for the "Adventurers". If we go with the latter suggestion, that would mean that out of every 12 games (for a given xOTM series) there would be:

* Challenger: 3 Deity, 4 Immortal, 2 Emperor, 2 Monarch and 1 Prince.
* Contender: 1 Deity, 2 Immortal, 2 Emperor, 2 Monarch, 2 Prince, 2 Noble and 1 Warlord.
* Adventurer: 1 Emperor, 2 Monarch, 2 Prince, 4 Noble and 3 Warlord.

Looks pretty darn perfect to me, at least for the two upper levels, the lowest might need some adjustment.

Doesn't have to be a hard only month to make you happy, just a hard option every month, right?

I had suggested "Suppose we have DIE, IEM, EMP, and MPN as the difficulty rotation over 4 games."

No reason it could not be DIE, IEM, DEP, IMN is there? Or even add DMN, IPW for a six type rotation. dV

How about something like the following? I.e. single difficulty on Immortal and Emperor months. This has the obvious benefit of less division of the player pool (while still offering rookies the same variety in difficultly levels as before, but catering to veteran tastes too).

I > E > DM > IP > IN > DW

If we always have a D or I game, and then rotate one or two other lower difficulties, that should provide enough difficulty for the Munro-minded crowd.

It does start to widen the gap between game levels, as we would be rotating a second difficulty over more levels than two ... Such as DE, IM, DP, IN, repeat. Perhaps, with the players not locked into tiers, the size of the "step up gap" is less of an issue?

Now, there are fewer sub monarch games in this proposal, so maybe we extend it to DEP, IMN, repeat? Now each month has high, intermediate, and low difficulty games. dV

Right now we have a system where per 12 months we have roughly 1D 2I 2E 2M 2P 2N 1W. That's too few high-level games, for Munro and Rusten as well as for me. Munro's suggestion would see us with 4D 6I 2E for the upper level. That's too few low-level games for someone like me, who enjoys playing against the best on lower levels. My own suggestion was to have 3D 4I 2E 2M 1P for the upper level. That's triple the number of Deity games compared to now, and double the number of Immortal games, 7/12 games are on Immortal or Deity. Is not that a suitable compromise?

The final Niklas compromise seems to have some early support ...

dV

 

[Frederiksberg]

Lot's of discussion and proposals in here .

Maybe it would be easier to agree to some goals rather than a specific implementation?

My top 3 wishes to a revised system would be:

1. One and only one game for the best players and all those who want to compete with the best.
2. A fair amount of easy games to allow newcomers to get a good start.
3. A fair amount of Emperor+ games.

 

[da_Vinci]

Lot's of discussion and proposals in here .

Maybe it would be easier to agree to some goals rather than a specific implementation?

My top 3 wishes to a revised system would be:

1. One and only one game for the best players and all those who want to compete with the best.
2. A fair amount of easy games to allow newcomers to get a good start.
3. A fair amount of Emperor+ games.

A pretty good list of overarching goals ... now, just how mutually exclusive might they be?

I remember an old book on buying computer hardware that said, "when buying a printer, of speed, quality, and low price, you can only ever have two out of three." The Heisenberg principle of printers?

Now, even if we agree on the goals, we eventually have to find a system that delivers the goals. So ...

Seems to me that if you have only one game per version per month (goal 1), then you split those games over time into 1/3 difficult (DI), 1/3 moderate (EM) and 1/3 "easy" (PN, apologies to the developing players who may struggle on these ...); or call it 1/2 high (DIE) and 1/2 low (MPN) ... in any case, does that satisfy goal 2 and goal 3?

My sense is that some top players are looking for half of the games to be DI ... and the developing players might like to see half the games be PN. Seems to me no way a one game system can accomplish that.

Let's look at possibilities:

Start with a base pattern of D M I P E N D M I P E N; ( designed to alternate low and high diff games)

Anyway, to achieve goals 1 and 2: P M I P E N D M N P E N; Replaced one D with a P, one i with an N. Now there are 6 PN, 4 EM, and 2 DI. Good for goals 1 and 2 by abandoning goal 3. Rusten and Munro will cringe.

Alternate goal 1 and 2: D P I P E N D N I P E N; Replaced one E with a P, one M with an N, This has 6 PN, 2 EM and 4 DI. A bit better for goal 3 by sacrificing intermediate games. I think Niklas may cringe at this.

To achieve goals 1 and 3: D M I D E N D M I P E I; Replaced one P with D and one N with I. Now 2 PN, 4 EM, 6 DI. A howl from the developing players, as goal 2 is abandoned.

Alternate goal 1 and 3: D M I P D N D E I P I N;n Replace one E with D, one M with I. Now 4 PN, 2 EM, 6 DI. Better for goal 2 by sacrificing intermedate games.

How to optimize goals 2 and 3? Well, ignoring goal 1 have two saves, one always high, one always low. But there has been opposition to that.

Suppose a high game rotated among DIEM and a low game rotated among EMPN. Now put the EM as a common game and we get D/P, I/N, E, M over 4 months. Or D/P, E, I/N, M to alternate difficulties. Or going low to high: M, E, I/N, D/P or M, I/N, E, D/P

Half of months have a DI option (goal 3)

Half of months have a PN option (goal 2)

Half of months we all play one save at an intermediate level (goal 1)

Two saves in half the months, only one save in half the months (giving the staff a break)

No player is locked into high or low game when there are two saves.

A player can play NPME, or PMEI or MEID rotations as they choose. Addendum ... or play the full range from N to D as well.

It doesn't get better than this!

Still have to decide if low game is eligible for awards ... but as has been said, that is a secondary concern to getting the pattern set.

dV

 

[kcd_swede]

Most of the proposals that I have read would imo reduce my wish to play gotm's rather than increase it. 2 tiers? Bwah... I already know I'm not a top tier player and a second tier means I can't even see how far back from the optimum I am.

OK, I think agreement a 2-tier system won't be good has already been acheived.

I would say that the challenge for top players could be maintained by simply saying all eptahalon recognition/pantheon of heroes can only be acheived by results in Challenger saves. And the challenger save finish must be better than the contender finsih (and 15% reduced adventurer finish) to qualify. Thus, in the challenger level you will generate the player-player competition for those who see that as the most important aspect, yet retain the comparison aspect (with monthly medals incentives) for the contenders and adventurers. And give us adventurers a fighting chance of actually beating a few of you guys now and then.

I do not like different difficulties for same map. I would not have tried Immortal level yet if that were the way we did it now, I would have played the level I thought I could best conpare with similar skilled players. Instead, I have gotten a taste for moving up levels and beleive I can even win a deity game under some circumstances. That's why I'm here: to improve. If I just want to compare myself to others, I can play Multiplayer (at least as long as I can stand Gamespy quirks) and see who can REALLY build more catapults in 50 turns.

 

[da_Vinci]

OK, I think agreement a 2-tier system won't be good has already been acheived.

I do not like different difficulties for same map.

I agree that players assigned to tiers is quite out of favor. I am not quite sure what it is about two different difficulties on the same map, when you can pick either one, that troubles you.

Is it that we then do not "force" people to play up in difficulty? I would have thought that people would prefer to have the choice. And what my latest proposal, the N/I, M, P/D, E cycle seeks to do is to is to give a low option when we have a high dif game (or a high option when we have a low dif game, depending on your perspective).

Without this, I think several top players skip the low game, and perhaps a lot of developing players might skip the high game, if it is the only save.

If the issue is we are not all playing the same game, note that my latest suggestion has only one save half the time. I think there is enough interest in multiple diff for same map to have it half the time.

Would a N/I, M, P/D, E cycle really discourage your participation?

dV

 

[DaveShack]

I don't play many (well, any) GOTMs because it seems like every time I look it's a difficulty level or 6 above my comfort zone. I only remember to look here every 3 months or so -- and this time again the BTS game is immortal.

I'd like to see a competition that only includes players who play Prince or lower, so I have a chance at being the best of the not-so-good. Presently there is nothing like that available, or at least not that I know of.

 

[kcd_swede]

I agree that players assigned to tiers is quite out of favor. I am not quite sure what it is about two different difficulties on the same map, when you can pick either one, that troubles you.

Is it that we then do not "force" people to play up in difficulty? I would have thought that people would prefer to have the choice. And what my latest proposal, the N/I, M, P/D, E cycle seeks to do is to is to give a low option when we have a high dif game (or a high option when we have a low dif game, depending on your perspective).

Without this, I think several top players skip the low game, and perhaps a lot of developing players might skip the high game, if it is the only save.

If the issue is we are not all playing the same game, note that my latest suggestion has only one save half the time. I think there is enough interest in multiple diff for same map to have it half the time.

Would a N/I, M, P/D, E cycle really discourage your participation?

dV

Actually, I think the high level players do skip the low level games, but I doubt the low level players skip the high level games. More likely they just don't feel any reason to submit their results.

As for myself, I'd play no matter what format is decided, when I have the time. Win or lose I'll submit. I don't think I'd ever take the lower level game just because I'm not out to make things easier for myself but to learn and have fun. But if all the games were impossible for me when I started, I probably wouldn't have come so far. So I can see the point of having easier games available. I could always choose not to play them.

 

[MarkM]

I don't play many (well, any) GOTMs because it seems like every time I look it's a difficulty level or 6 above my comfort zone. I only remember to look here every 3 months or so -- and this time again the BTS game is immortal.

I'd like to see a competition that only includes players who play Prince or lower, so I have a chance at being the best of the not-so-good. Presently there is nothing like that available, or at least not that I know of.

I think you should have been able to find what you were looking for, in spades, in the recent past:

BOTM14: Monarch
BOTM13: Prince
BOTM12: Noble
BOTM11: Warlord

I sat these out, for the opposite reason of you. And I was checking in every month to see what the game was. Sorry, but best to be blunt here: if there is a choice to be made here, it should err in favor of the players who re here every month, not ones that only look in two or three times a year. As it it I had to wait five months for another BTS game above Monarch to roll around. If you are saying even that is too often, then I think we just have irreconcilable differences here.

As for the rest ... what kcd_swede said (more or less)

 

[Deckhand]

I would not have tried Immortal <or Emporer> level yet if <I had a choice>..:

Agree with this. Initially I was in favor of always having lower level available so I could play; I don't feel that way anymore.

 

[Deckhand]

Instead of multiple difficulties of same game, would it be possible to have two BOTMs each month? One at high level.