XOTM award and ranking overhaul?

[ParadigmShifter]

I think that slaving heavily is going to produce more rebellion random events in BtS.

I didn't realise that it was based on score until I did WOTM9, my first. Faster != better score when it comes to a conquest victory. But I'd never won a conquest vic before so I had a lot of fun with my super war chariots of doom.

 

[Mutineer]

What the hell, why slavery overpowered? Useally only people who have no idea about game balance scream overpowerted.
Nerf slavery and we back to only boring cottage spamming.

 

[Lexad]

Often one developers do not remember what has already been fixed and what hasn't Hope it's like in HOF mod (and the last patch, I believe) - or we'll just have another HoF mod fixing it

 

[darrelljs]

What the hell, why slavery overpowered? Useally only people who have no idea about game balance scream overpowerted.
Nerf slavery and we back to only boring cottage spamming.

Hmm...it seems odd that someone who touts FE as superior to CE in large part because of the extra production would consider slavery balanced. I think it is overpowered and am in favor of a mild nerf, but my fear is Firaxis will do something similar to the cash rush nerf, which went too far.

Darrell

 

[Mutineer]

SE only work because it is posible to cash excess food into production.
That let one to develop with small amount of developed ties early on.
Rememeber, it is longer to farm then to build cottage or mine.
Otherwize one have to regulate city grow with a multiply different improvement, making SE even more costly in term of development then CE.

Which idiot desided what slavery need to be fixed? They probably decided that slavery overpowered when they start to use it by AI, and for AI it is grossly overpowered with 50%+ % city grow bonus, making it to convers 1 food into 5 shilds in emperor or so.
With Blake never think AI bonuses significant that probably make some extrimelly stuped decisions.

 

[darrelljs]

I agree that is why farm based economies are viable, however I think things are currently balanced where it is too often the best choice. I know not everyone agrees with that, so I'm open to the fact I could be wrong.

The nerf from what I can tell is to make Slavery medium upkeep, and to add slave revolts which you can apparently end with cash. I worry slave revolts went going too far, but until we have some experience with it we won't know.

Darrell

 

[ungy]

That is one of the reasons I am not an active player now, winning all the time gets boring too.

Well your presence is certainly missed, as you have generously shared much with the community in your spoilers.

Given that there are only a handful of players who could conceivably beat you at a given victory condition (and possibly some of them are feeling the same lack of challenge), have you considered contacting them and all playing for the same VC? That might make a victory more satisfying (and hopefully the rest of us would get to learn something from your play).

 

[da_Vinci]

Well your presence is certainly missed, as you have generously shared much with the community in your spoilers.

Given that there are only a handful of players who could conceivably beat you at a given victory condition (and possibly some of them are feeling the same lack of challenge), have you considered contacting them and all playing for the same VC? That might make a victory more satisfying (and hopefully the rest of us would get to learn something from your play).

Sounds like it might be a great idea for the top players (not me, of course ) Maybe this could be more formalized? Here is an alternative: call it the Ace's League, and and perhaps it plays one difficulty level higher than the main game (or more if the groups wants more challenge).

And it could either be open only to those who have five or more (hence the term "ace") medals or fastest awards (not including cow), or maybe require that those who are aces must play in that league (not sure, just brainstorming here).

Upside is that it gives more challenge to the top players. Downside is that their games are not comparable to we ordinary mortals. But are they really comparatble anyway?

Just a trial balloon ... but if it brings back those players who find it too painful to win all the time ...

dV

 

[Obormot]

I've heard there was a similar tournament-within-a-tournament thing for civ3 GOTM called the "medal play games", where the was a chosen victory condition for each game. I don't know the details, since I wasn't around at that time yet, but it sounds great. Maybe we could resurrect it now...

BTW, it seems that so far 100% of the players support the idea of getting rid of the cow (or at least removing it from the requirements from the Epthatlon.)

 

[akots]

I've heard there was a similar tournament-within-a-tournament thing for civ3 GOTM called the "medal play games", where the was a chosen victory condition for each game. I don't know the details, since I wasn't around at that time yet, but it sounds great. Maybe we could resurrect it now...

That would be really nice idea.

 

[akots]

Sounds like it might be a great idea for the top players (not me, of course ) Maybe this could be more formalized? ...

At this stage usually, an interest in multiplayer games starts to appear within the top group of players. Similar to what happened with Civ3 after Conquests were released. Since the game mechanics are understood and most of the bugs are fixed, it is quite possible to play some quality MP games.

 

[DaviddesJ]

At this stage usually, an interest in multiplayer games starts to appear within the top group of players. Similar to what happened with Civ3 after Conquests were released.

I haven't seen all that much crossover between SP Civ players and MP Civ players. They are just two different groups. MP games have always been too different from SP games to interest the same people. Maybe Civ Revolutions will change that.

 

[Erkon]

I've heard there was a similar tournament-within-a-tournament thing for civ3 GOTM called the "medal play games", where the was a chosen victory condition for each game. I don't know the details, since I wasn't around at that time yet, but it sounds great. Maybe we could resurrect it now...

Gnejs and I normally pick a VC and compete. Sometimes with a handicap (OOC or always-war). Afterwards we compare research, production and kill count figures. I like it very much, Gnejs is not that happy with the setup (guess why! )

But is it score or speed that should count? We always play for speed.

Limitations or defined VC could perhaps be a part of the challenger-setting?

 

[ngraner42]

I will throw in my vote for a designated victory condition. Having a gold/silver/bronze for speed of finish in the designated victory condition seems better than the current practice of giving so much prominence to score.

 

[Balbes]

At this stage usually, an interest in multiplayer games starts to appear within the top group of players.

The inability to track your progress against that of your rivals makes it hard to maintain the thrill of the challenge in solo games such as the GOTM. So yes, multiplayer remedies that, to an extent. Personally, I'm not really happy with the design of Civ4 multiplayer.

 

[Thalaba]

The problem as I see it is that not all victory conditions are considered equal in the base scoring. In my own games Domination victories are always the highest scoring and culture are the lowest. I don't consider time victory to be a victory at all. In any case, there is no built in method of comparing these victory types in the game, but it seems to me that this ought to be able to be corrected in the rankings.

Math and statistics are not my strong suit, but in the spirit of brainstorming I would like to put forth some ideas. My appologies to whomever may have mentioned these before. I see three options:

Option 1: Impose a victory condition on each game. Only players submitting that VC (or a loss) will have their score counted. Someone else mentioned this and I like the idea.

Option 2: Don't try to compare the different VC's with each other directly. Award the highest scoring person in each VC with 100 points, and compare everyone else to the highest score in that VC. There will always be 5 people who score 100 in each game. I suppose that might present a new set of difficulties which I'm sure someone will point out.

Option 3: There is probably enough empirical data by now to come up with a multiplier to even out the scores. For example: If somebody analyses the average scores of culture victories vs domination victories, we may find that the average culture victory is half that of domination. So in the final rankings all culture victories are multiplied by two to make them more even with the domination victories. Mathematically this is probably similar to option 2 but different in it's implementation. It would be unlikely that more than one person would score 100 in each game.

Furthermore, if we want to reward or punish certain behaviour, we could try using other multipliers. For instance maybe dividing the base score by the year of victory would punish milking and put more emphasis on speed. Or maybe it would be possible to divide by the total number of units killed/died to discourage warmongering. This last would discourage warmongering as a strategy towards diplo victory. It would also add a challenge to the usual Dom/Con victory by giving the person who used/lost the fewest troops to acheive the victory the higher score.

Any thoughts?

Thalaba

 

[Erkon]

What problem are we trying to solve? That the highest score always goes to the player who can get lots of population, land, wonders and tech in a reasonable fast manner? Is there any real problem with that? Or is the perceived problem the "unfairness" of having four medals for score (including the cow), and "only" one for each VC (total of five medals)?

The distribution of medals and awards does not go to the same set of players (with the exception of Grey Cardinal). And I have learned from these posts that acquiring a medal takes different skills than getting an award. So, is the current system really bad? Or is it our mindset that is wrong when we (or some of us) think faster is better? Why not just admit that going for score is one way to play the game and playing for speed is another, both equally correct and beautiful?

 

[Jove]

I don't consider time victory to be a victory at all.

I do. I'd consider someone to have 'won' if they survived to 2050 on a tough Deity map while preventing all AI from winning, for one example. That's a little different from the cow award though.
And I agree with Ekron that playing for score is valid in its way. Somebody with a higher score got more 'stuff' out of their empire under the same conditions. Beautiful? Well, mathematically it can be elegant at least, but then from that perspective I'd have to agree with most people that the speed awards are more so- a 'simple' race to the finish line with a clear victor.
Just some opinions though, I'm not exactly arguing for anything...

 

[ungy]

How about replacing the current challenger option (which is not too heavily used) with a new one that would:

1. Have only one VC specified.

2. Have its own medal.

3. Would be at a high level.

 

[da_Vinci]

How about replacing the current challenger option (which is not too heavily used) with a new one that would:

1. Have only one VC specified.

2. Have its own medal.

3. Would be at a high level.

Nice idea! It has similarity to my Aces League concept, but the advance here is a separate medal for the elite contest.

Maybe it would need a speed medal and a score medal?

dV