Originally posted by ControlFreak
Any chance that someone ... could describe how the General Assess column was created?
Well, that is one of many simple flags that get created when the games or scored and it sort of an overall impression of what seems to be going on in the game when the file is opened and the map situation is examined. I apologize for the weak term but that is meant to be "Not a distinctly strong indication of being either a builder, warmonger, special gambit, distinctive, or other moderate approach." Weak just fits in the space better.
When we score the games, first they are run through a map stat utility and then the units and towns are tabulated. We also look at the timelines for hints of what each player thinks they may be doing.
One general compliment for all players is that just in two months of doing this we are seeing a significant increase in the number of players who do things in their timelines that say things like "Ok, here's the plan for the next 20 to 30 turns." etc.
The "Weak" assessment does not get used alone to develop the groups.
Something that stands out between the more powerful games and the less powerful games is that you have to be committed to what you are doing to really dominate the strategy that you choose. The moderates may be in fine shape to keep from losing the game, but the players that push to extremely successful strategies in specific areas do seem to do much better overall.
I am going totally from memory here, but I seem to recall that DaveMcW's game was a powerful example of Archer based military power that puts him in a position to expand with a stick without stimulating his GA earlier than planned. There were also several examples of dedicated builder games.
Each time I review the QSC games I learn something through comparison of what seems to work well and what seems work less well.
My advocated approach to this process is for players to look for two or three other games that seem to be alot like yours (sort of like the groupings process but be more specific). Don't look at you game individually or you may miss the big picture. Once you have your peers grouped together you can either use the game info all on your own or you can contact these peers that you have chosen (or that you all have chosen each other by default) and look for common things that you seem to be doing. Then look for a group of two or three games that seem to be a lot alike but that score alot higher in the QSC than your group did. The published groupings are designed to help you do this but are not absolute in any way.
Once you can pick out the differences between your games and games that you might want to play, DO NOT try to memorize the difference in the build orders and pretend that this memorized sequence will give you the winning strategy. Use what you see in the games to help you develop decision rules that let you play the higher level game when those choices are the right choices to make. This way you can extend what you know to lots of other game situations.
If you can group the games together in terms of what you think they are doing well or what you think they may have in common you are already 75% of the way towards playing a better game that will let you have a lot more fun.
, but I did it for QSC17 
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