Suggestions about key event polls for Future GOTMs

[cracker]

What does everyone think about setting a practice to establish a set of key event polls for each GOTM that help to summarize how the game was played and how people approached different elements of the common game?

I think this would go well beyond the summary that Matrix works so hard to produce that ranks scores and shows the quickest victory conditions.

The poll functions would provide an easy way to summarize and display results.

It would also make it easy to focus on some key aspects of the game that would probably change from GOTM to GOTM and then collect and present data that would be informative and enlightening.

I am not talking about stupid random dufous polls, like "Who likes immortals better than Jell-o?" or what is "Your favorite hotkey command?" or even "Do you think Ghengis' teeth look worse before or after a war?", but questions that provide a basis for comparing key game events and key game play strategy points. This doesn't mean the polls would not be light hearted and entertaining, but at least the point of the poll would be gameplay related in some way.

These polls would hopefully be opened up Early in the month, so all the players could know to provide the answers, but they would need to be phrased in a way that they were not total spoilers for every event taht has not yet occurred for everyone. Pehaps the polls need to be labeled with a cutoff date or "do not open before" tag of some point.

Any discussion of poll topics or types of topics you would like to see each month as well as any discussion of ways this should be managed?

 

[Sir Yelof]

I think that's a fantastic idea. It takes too much time to page through the lengthy spoiler thread to cull information about how others did -- and so many people repeat the same information. If I finish the GOTM late in the month, I can usually only afford to flip through a few pages to get some examples.

One would expect that it'll be hard to implement without spoilers. Really, the way to do it is to have someone who is already very familiar with GOTMs and possibly who finishes the game very early on to create the poll questions. They would vary widely from game to game.

Alternatively, we could choose a set of five people (the previous month's award winners?) to submit the poll questions for the next month. I like that a lot.

Hmmmm... I doubt we'll make it to that level of centralized authority. I would bet that this degrades into random people posting all sorts of spoiler polls. Which is not really a bad thing, is it?

Some sample questions:
1) How did you manage to secure an Iron resource?
a) Settled near Iron on western part of continent
b) Conquered French to get their Iron resource
c) Traded for it
d) Never got Iron

2) When did you establish control of the entire continent?
a) in the early going
b) When I had Knights
b) When I had Cavalry
c) By the time I had Tanks
d) Never did conquer the whole continent

3) How many wonders did you build?
4) Which enemy was your biggest rival during the game?

etc.

--Yelof

 

[Creepster]

I like that idea, and your suggested posts are pretty good. They cover a lot of the stuff I am curious about how and what others did. I don't always have the time to read through all of the posts especially if I start the GOTM late in the month.

I imagine that it will be people just posting the polls as they think of them though.

 

[LaRo]

Yeah, I like the idea. I never read the spoiler thread. Too long, almost everybody write the same things.

A kind of summary would be great.