Team Play of the GOTMs - Concept Discussion

[cracker]

Over the past several months we have been discussion some management concepts in the GOTM Staff Forum and trying to assess if some of these ideas would be valuable and enjoyable for players to participate in.

One concept we have discussed is to foster a Team level competition that would still require each of the team members to play their own games without external assistance but which would reward teams who choose to cover many different victory conditions and promote pre-game preparations that will help their team members play well and really enjoy the embedded concepts of the games.

We want to actively invite your questions and comments on this concept.

Please use this thread to actively provide us with your thoughts and to help us shape how this concept might be considered for implementation.

Here is a link to webpage on the GOTM web site where we have a brief outline of the "Team Play" concept.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/team_concept.shtml

Let us have some constructive comments and specific inputs from you.

 

[mad-bax]

As a confirmed conscript I hesitate to post here. But the benefit of such a scheme to me and others like me is so great that I just have to comment.

Firstly, I can only express my wholehearted support for this idea, and hope that other players of all abilities will do likewise.

Crackers post asks for constructive input, which I hope the following is.

Teams constucted as indicated is best. I do have reservations about teams picking themselves however. I hope that some thought will be given to ensuring that people who want to participate but don't get picked do get to play. I would say that the selection process should be completed privately amongst the leaders b4 the actual teams are announced to avoid the possibility of people getting the impression that they are not wanted.

Without wanting this to be too like the tournament, I think that there should be some measure of compulsion in going for different victory types. Maybe everyone could play to a certain date and then the leader ( or team) decides which of the victory conditions the individual aims for. These intentions could be posted. Team members could opt to ignore their designated victory condition, because of the way the game goes, but would incurr a penalty, or conversely get a bonus for completing their objective. Unfortunately, this would probably mean that an individuals personal score might be lower than it would have been if he/she could choose the way in which he/she plays the game.

Finally, I think that some form of incentive should be offered to leaders, as they might be a bit thin on the ground.

I have a couple of specific questions for the staff about this concept.

What will you do if you get a flood of inexperienced players wanting to play without enough experienced players to make up the teams?

Will the games be split into seasons? If so, how many games?

Will people be able to transfer between teams? And will leaders be able to "fire" team members who fail to meet their commitments?

It's obvious that a lot of thought has already gone into this proposal. I for one hope it comes off.

Sorry this post is so long.

 

[flexo]

I think this could be great fun. I'm game for it.

 

[pterrok]

Just shooting off the top of my head here...

If the team captains could look at the lower player's games, say every 100 turns, and give them advice on what to do in the next segment it would help the lower players learn right then...Maybe 100 turns is too often, but at least ONCE they should be able to assess the game and give advice.


Another way to do it (different than what you've outlined above) would be like in a pool league. Each player would fall in a band based on their global ranking and the team captains would assign players to play against the opposing team's players. (Alternating the match-up picks.) Instead of Conscript to Leader you'd be 1-5 and a team could only consist of so many points worth of players at the beginning of the season.

If you had two similar ranked players up against each other, the one who ends up with the higher global score for that game earns his team a point, and the team that earns the most points in the match-ups wins that match.

If, however, you send your 1 against a 5 there WILL need to be a handicap system that determines how many points the 1 gets or by how much the 5 needs to win by, but you should be able to come up something based on the Gloabal ranking statistics.

Since there can be a huge variance in the outcome of a game for a lower ranked player it should be a BIG handicap to make the 5's sweat! <g> (Or make the captains only put their 5 up against the other 5.)

In this syetem, beating the other playing becomes paramount--even by a single point!--so that the 5's really, REALLY press as hard as they can to earn their team a match point instead of just getting their score averaged in with the rest of the team where it becomes less significant.

As the season goes on, players can get their ranking changed--your 1's could all become 2's say. You're only allowed to put so many points worth of players up in a match, so if your team becomes all 5's and the limit is 15 points, you'll end up not being able to oppose the other teams in some games--it's not an automatic win for them, though--they actually have to win the game to get the match point.

Etc., etc. if you find this idea has merit...

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by pterrok
If the team captains could look at the lower player's games, say every 100 turns, and give them advice on what to do in the next segment it would help the lower players learn right then...Maybe 100 turns is too often, but at least ONCE they should be able to assess the game and give advice.

I think we should emphasize that initially we will want to discourage this mental concept of getting of giving advice about future moves in any currently open game. This really does not help the lower level players to learn the key processes of using the prexisting strategy resources that are freely available to all players and instead it encourages the "I can't do it by myself" without help or without cheating behaviors.

It is my sincere hope that we will have some top flight players who want to participate in the team play concept. We will have to see how the roles evolve. I think it may fall to the experienced players on the team to more actively provide leadership in the pregame discussions and then to provide some more detailed discussion and assessment of the games of other team members after the games are submitted.

The pregame discussions will take on even more significance for the teams as the challenge will be to use the scope of the game announcement to assess what the game will be like and then to decide if the players on the team will want to divide up and pursue different victory conditions. Since a well played game pursuing any victory condition should score well in the Jason scoring system, the key decisions will be trying to decide which player on the team should pursue which victory condition on the current game based on the characteristics of the civilization that is being played and the assumptions about the characteristics of the map.

One thing to bear in mind is that the individual players scores from the games should be uneffected by team play once the players open the games and begin playing. All of the improvement in player scores should come from preparation and then a liberal dose of experienced player leadership that helps the inexperienced players to focus in on a very focused set of victory objsectives. One thing we are seeing again and again that characterizes many of the games by inexperienced players is the lack of distinct focus on a specific objective or game plan.

I am not sure that many of the novice players full recognize the impact of focus, focus, focus and then using just a few key resources that are already available to help you them play that specific game in a strong fashion

I think this will also help some of our experienced players who could give good advice and potentially write good pregame advice, to look at the resources that are available and to identify where there may be gaps that can be filled by focusing new articles on specific issues. I know that if a Bamspeedy, a RirPleb, or a Moonsinger were to point me to a specific artical and say "Here is something you need to read" in order to contribute as a strong team member playing your assigned victory condition, then I would be reading that article and asking questions before I began playing the game.

To help reward teams for attacking mutiple victory conditions, we could consider a method of adding up the team scores that weights the impact of the final scores using the number of games that fit that victory condition. If the team submitted one score for a given vistory condition, then the score would be used at 100%. Perhaps two scores would result in those scores being reduced to 90% impact, etc. A team that spread out its victory conditions would have a higher potential score if all player skills were equal to the competition.

I think that teams may also choose to have a specific play start date for all their team members and to perhaps use a bit more pregame discussion to help prepare themselves to play well. Using examples for previous Qsc games may be particularly valuable in these pregame planning discussions.

Teams could also have an "encouraged" espected submit date so that they could get all their games in to the scoring table and then spend some time reviewing their submissions after the fact. These post game "chalk talks" would provide a lot of great focused comments that would lead right into the pregame discussions for the next game.

 

[hotrod0823]

Based on what cracker has put forth thus far on the subject I am wondering how the GOTM staff will form team units and scoring.

If I read the description correctly the aim is win by various conditions with various "play" levels. Chances are a conscript player who routinely wins at warlord occasionally at Regent will have a tough go of it may not contribute much in terms of victory in an emperor or deity game.

I guess may question is how are losing games from the lower division players going to contribute to the team score? A fully milked culture win on deity could completely overwhelm a conquest lost in the early AD times by a conscript player that is playing above his or her level.

How is the Monarch/MediocreEmperor player such as myself going to be placed particularly with not much in terms of GOTM experience other than QSC.

[edit]

Hotrod

 

[pterrok]

I guess I should have said 'lowest players' to make it clear I meant for the Captain to only offer advice to the Conscripts or '1s'...

The problem is that we are all sitting here at our own computers and there is not any immediate kibitzing or feedback...After the fact is too far in the past for most beginning players. I recall that someone posted a game in progress that they were having trouble with, and I think it was Bamspeedy who downloaded the save and wrote up a nice report of what he would do to turn it around...

That was immediate and VERY effective! It applied to his game right then and could be understood in context. If he had to wait until the game was over and then Bamspeedy said "You needed to build more workers" it would have been MUCH less effective. Build them when? Use them how?

How does a coach teach you to focus? By noticing when you are off and pointing it out to you. But that is something that needs to be done right then--not after you've lost the game! You call a time-out and remind him of the plan...

If the player who gets this help is really interested in the game, the improvement in his play will push him to the next level very quickly where he won't be able to get this help from the captain anymore; he'll just have to figure out from the post-mortems in the spoiler threads where he might have done something ineffective...

The only part I don't like about it myself is that it puts a lot of onus on the captain--and maybe the best players would not be the best captains. (Or they might not have the time or inclination to help out like this.)


Anyway, so we won't be having any in progress check-ups, I can live with that...

But a bonus of pitting the players head-to-head in a match format of the team games would be the marquee games that would come up! SirPleb vs Moonsinger--who would you bet on? <g>


I'm not sure I like that bit about trying to get the different victory conditions--it's like saying that you had to get x number of slams in a bridge tournament or had to win by a pawn promotion in a chess game. Let the players play as they will. The Tournament is where you should go to play for specific win types. (And I'm getting my clock cleaned in the Elite division right now both because it's unnatural for me to go for some of those win types AND because a lot of those guys are sandbagging and should be Leaders! <g>)

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by pterrok
But a bonus of pitting the players head-to-head in a match format of the team games would be the marquee games that would come up! SirPleb vs Moonsinger--who would you bet on? <g>

That would never happen. Since SirPleb is like the knight of the old code (Dragonheart) and I'm like the Lady of the Lake (Merlin), if our paths ever cross, we would be on the same team.

 

[Bolan Longpants]

Right now we're playing a, what we call, dynasty tournament over at 1BC. In this tournament I made three teams with 4 players at different levels. All teams start out with the same 4000BC save and each player has to play 20 turns and pass the game on to another player. As you can probably see from the results thread so far I probably overestimated the level of the players of Team Blue. Judging players level is a tough job since I didn't see saves of some of the players. Still it has been a lot of fun so far and one of our most experienced player Zigeuner decided to play the game on his own. As you can see in the graphs he has been leading the game from the beginning and he will be probably win the game.

Essential for having a tight team tournament is to judge each player's level. I wonder how this will be done. Based on previous GOTM scores maybe?

Based on what we have seen so far in the 1BC Dynasty Tournament it can be a lot of fun.

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
That would never happen. Since SirPleb is like the knight of the old code (Dragonheart) and I'm like the Lady of the Lake (Merlin), if our paths ever cross, we would be on the same team.

I would not view a situation where you playing on one team and SirPleb playing on another would be viewed as "crossing paths".

Part of the challenge would be for the superior players (like yourself and SirPleb) to use you influence to attract strong players at the middle and lower play positions.

I would not see the teams competition as having the feel of gladiatorial combat as much as it would feel like a medieval tournament. Just because you have an archery competition, a sheaf toss, an ax throwing competition, broadsword stepping, and other games that test your skills, does not imply you have to throw the weapons AT each other.

With the Jason scoring system in place, it should be possible to facilitate many head-to-head comparisons of performance to the standards even if two players pursue different paths to victory.

 

[drewshark]

I think it is a great idea, and I would be aboard when it gets organized. Unfortunately, there will never be a foolproof way to handicap the players to make a tournament exactly even. However, I'm sure by pooling the resources of the great minds here, this project could be undertaken somewhat quickly and in a very fair way. I especially like the idea of the "captains" and to discuss the game beforehand and set some type of plan of attack or what to look for. I have suspicious feeling that much is held back from these pregame forums by the great players that don't want to give anything away that they are thinking. Let me know what I can do to help!

 

[IceCreamEmperor]

It seems to me that a major problem with the suggestion that Leaders could actively intercede to give advice on a lower-skill player's game is that if the Leader hasn't finished the game yet themselves, they are automatically going to learn an enormous amount of strategically-useful information just from looking at someone else's game. If you've only played a game until, say, 1500BC and you get/have to give advice on a save from 500 AD, that's going to completely skew the rest of your game.

So the suggestion that a Leader could review saves in-process only works if you assume that the Leader will be the first player to finish, which really doesn't make a lot of sense, and puts a lot of unnecessary onus on the Leader to rush through their game.

If I've just misunderstood what was being suggested, then never mind, but I really don't see any way that a player (particularily a 'conscript' who may not have the ability to seperate critical/spoiling info from general questions) could ask for mid-game help without ruining the game for the more skilled player by giving away as-yet undiscovered aspects of the game.

--

I haven't played any Gotm games or anything yet, but I'm hoping to try the next one, and in general I think a team idea sounds excellent. I've been following some 'training day' succession games and even as a lurker they've been a lot of help. The main thing that actually seems to improve people's play in those games is the sense of responsibility to the other players. Having a team set-up for GOTM, where you've been assigned a specific goal to fulfill, should help push that sort of additional focus. After all, people are depending on you not to walk into that hut three tiles from your capital...

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
That would never happen. Since SirPleb is like the knight of the old code (Dragonheart) and I'm like the Lady of the Lake (Merlin), if our paths ever cross, we would be on the same team.

Truly, though our paths may cross, our swords will not - our cows will grow fat together

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by SirPleb
Truly, though our paths may cross, our swords will not - our cows will grow fat together

I concur. Let's drink to that.

Originally posted by Cracker
With the Jason scoring system in place, it should be possible to facilitate many head-to-head comparisons of performance to the standards even if two players pursue different paths to victory.

But in the end, we can't abandon our cows. The way I see it: our cows need us as much as we need them. They are the reason we strive for the star and to be the best that we can be. Well, I think that's enough icing on the cake. In the Civ3 reality, if we both reach our objectives at the exact moment in time, our herd of happy cows will have their final say.

 

[Borealis]

@Hotrod: I'm wondering, too, as I seem to be at or around the level you're on- both of us can handle emperor, but deity is... difficult. (Mediocre emperor? I think you're underestimating yourself. )

<start testimonial>

Although I won't end up as a leader, I'd like to invite all the people reading this thread who hasn't visited the SG forum yet to drop on over and read our threads, especially the current Monarch Training Day Game, for possible examples of learning from leaders. I've passed Monarch myself, due to the aid of many people on this site, but I still find tips to help me from everyone's threads in there. I went from Regent to Emperor to currently being mauled by the Deity AI in a few months of visiting there.

<end testimonial>

I plead inexperience in leading a team, but I'd be willing to join one and help a leader out. Hopefully, by the time this starts up, at least one of my SGs will have finished and I'll have time.

 

[hotrod0823]

Thanks for the kind words Borealis . I would too be interested in a team provided the game progresses at a normal speed and I have an opportunity to complete it. Gotm17 was painful for me to play - or maybe it was that I found Epic 25 a bit more interesting . If I am on a team I would definitely make a point in playing to the bitter end.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I think it's a good idea in some aspects, but not a good idea in other aspects. I probably won't participate myself.

I don't want to be 'forced' to go for a certain victory condition, so get rid of that idea, IMO. Some players decide when the game starts (or before) what kind of victory they want to shoot for, or what interests them. And some, (like Zachriel) decides as the game progresses. Some players have become really good at certain victories and they enjoy these games more than other victory conditions. If they are in the mood to try something different, they will do so when they feel like it. A seasoned spaceship player may not want to try and get a quick conquest, and a heavy warmonger may not want to try a diplomatic victory. Sure, they should probably try something different once, just to 'broaden their game experience', but having them try something different when they are also under the pressure of letting their team down if they don't play well enough, doesn't make for much fun. And if they want to try something different, they can always do it away from the GOTM, in their own private games, whenever they get the urge to do so.

Me, I wouldn't be a great leader if I was trying to hand out advice for a quick spaceship victory. Sure, I know some basic tips from reading the forums, but to get the best advice would be to ask the players who got fast spaceship victories in the past (Kemal, Dave McW, Ribannah, etc.). Some players are better at warmongering tactics early in the game, and others are better at fast tech speed, and others are better at building culture, and others are better at diplomacy/trading.

Now, I know someone will probably chime in with some silly comment like "the best players are very good at all the above mentioned things", but that isn't my point, the point is what specific thing they are the best at (call it their 'specialty' if you want), and what they ENJOY doing.

ICS players and players who build cities further apart won't mix very well. Many players who don't use ICS, have never even used it (or used it wrongly), and stereotype it and don't really understand the full process of how it works (what to build, terrain improvements, etc.), so they would be probably giving the wrong advice to an ICS player. The same would apply for someone that like to build up a tech lead themselves, and another person who likes to do 'pointy stick' research.

How often would 'teams' be assigned? Can players drop in/out of them on a month-month basis? Personal commitments and other things can affect whether a player can play a certain month or not. Some players just don't like playing on certain maps. Some really hate playing on larger maps (time involved, computer speed, etc.), and some hate small maps. And after a recent experience, I have further evidence of my hatred for island maps.

I do like the idea of the better players taking a look at someone's game and offer advice, but how to do that is debatable, when you got spoilers to worry about and what is considered to be the best time to give them advice (during the game could cause spoiler problems, after the game could fail to have the tips/strategies sink into the player's mind). 90%+ of the tips are situational dependent and applies to one game, but not the next.

How about non-competitive teams (we won't compare team scores) that form based on victory condition they are aiming for. Various threads will form for each of the victory conditions, and players can discuss with others going for the same type of victory about the progress in their game, and from that thread a person will emerge as a leader (they may not be directly indicated as the leader, but as information is shared, most will get a feel for whose advice they want to follow).
For example: In the general discussion forums, and strategy forums, every once in a while someone posts a save and asks people to 'save his butt', because he doesn't know what he is doing wrong, or why the AI is beating him. I may look at the save and see a few things, like the number of workers or terrain improvements, then offer a couple of ideas that they could do. someone else takes a look at it and sees a few more things, and offers a couple of different options the player can take. With one leader, the new player is likely to just follow the leader's advice and put 'blinders' on, thinking that is the ONLY sollution. With multiple options given from a variety of skilled players, the player takes a look at all those possibilites and decides what is the best move for him and his play style, and becomes a better player instead of just a clone of the leader. Sometimes, the less skilled player has better ideas for a given situation than the higher skilled player. The higher skilled player is only better because he is better in other aspects of the game.

 

[Jurimax]

I totally agree with you Bamspeedy.If a novice player would get advice from let's say Moonsinger or Zachriel, the danger would indeed exist that they'd put on blinds.

On the other hand I do believe it's a concept that has a future here at Civfanatics. And therefore I'd like to congratulate Cracker for doing such a great job in keeping our beloved Civ3 on top of things.

 

[ControlFreak]

As stated many times before, I don't have enough Civ time to play anything but the GOTM if I have any hope of submitting on time. This means I've given up playing Succession Games for the last three month in an attept to submit GOTM15, 16 and maybe 17. I was just thinking today (perhaps spurred by reading through an SG thread) that I really miss this. I miss SGs because there is soo much more communication that happens between team members. Much more that happens in the spoiler threads of GOTM. You talk about everything, every move is important and every move is evaluated by other players and you get feedback right after your moves. When I first saw the Team discussion, I thought that it would be more like an SG where several people work together to play one GOTM in succession like format. After reading through the team play web page, I realized I was wrong.

OK so I thought well, at least I could play alongside some great players (assuming anyone would draft me) and beable to learn from them like that. Unfortunately, without any ingame advice permitted I would be in the same dilemma I'm in now with the QSC results.

I am so slow and have so little play time that my GOTM finishes on the last day of the month. This would then need to be evalulated by my leader and his/her comments would need to be processed. By this time, I will have had to start the next GOTM to have a shot at submitting. I made the SAME mistakes in GOTM17 as I did in GOTM16 because I had already played past the QSC time point when the QSC16 results were posted. If I could have been smacked upside the head at the end of the QSC16 I would definitely have been better off for the QSC17. But at this rate, I make the same mistakes in 2 concecutive GOTMs before (hopefully) correcting my mistakes in the 3rd.

I would like there to be a way to get side by side help during the GOTM to improve my play. I would like to have a team environment where play by play discussion would be possible without the problem of spoilers. Maybe there will be more of an opportunity for this in the "Quick Games" proposed.

That said, I think any addition that improves comradery amongst an already terrific community of gamers is a good thing. I know that I would enjoy discussing the results and claiming bragging rights or sheepishly hanging head in shame when the results came out. And I'm sure I would learn from my leader and others, even if I might not get to apply the new knowledge until the 3rd GOTM. And any competition that I can add, while still only playing my 1 game of civ would be a bonus.

 

[Wanderer]

I like the idea, although a forced victory type a la' tournament (don't get me wrong, I've just started "tourneying" and am enjoying myself) wouldn't be the way to go , imho.

I Like the idea of "teams" 1 to 5 - like a chess team. Gives us minnows a chance to compete and feel we add value.

If this goes ahead, you might want to seperate the Team Games quite a bit - maybe a month on, month off scenario, to (a) get more players, so people don't feel they are skimping on "quality" in their GOTM and Tournament games; (b) to allow teams to do debriefing.

Point (b) is the one I, as a minnow, would really like. If we have , say, a 5 man team, players 1 and 2 are likely to be strong (we would hope). In the month downtime, that team (dare I say clan?) might have it's own forum where they debate and discuss the game and their progress, and a captain/ strong player can help work through the game with a minnow and point out where they went wrong, and how to improve. Since this is post game, they get no advantage, but potentially have a more skilled player for the next round.

ALSO - a slant on the idea - how about running this in PTW, with a huge map, 12 or 16 nations, and 4 man teams with allocated starting positions. Then the team is truly a team, as they play the same game together ...

My 2 bytes worth