The Great War

[mookiemcgee]

Thanks Shoop, I know this was addressed lightly earlier in the thread(what you see is what you get)... But if it isn't a rule, and only a few people are doing it only out of respect I think I might politely decline to follow it myself...

Mookie is a dick and will try to get a leg up by taking his first turn before you get a snap. You have been warned, please be sure to do the same to him!!!!

[Dukasaur]

12 hour fog rule in Great War tourneys?

Almost no one I've played with seems to wait 12 hours (or for my ok) when these games start, so I assumed that the 12 hour fog rule wasn't in place for these tourneys.

However I was just reprimanded by an new opponent for not waiting (the games were only up for about 10-15 min before I started taking my turns), he has asked I share the info on my turns , which i did out of respect.

Frankly it puts me off quite a bit that my respectfulness puts me at a competitve disadvantage in this set, while I'm getting run over in other sets with other players that don't wait. I'm personally not comfortable asking others to share their first turn info, its part of the game as far as I am concerned...

What is the main intent regarding this rule in 'great war' tourneys per you "the management". I would like to have some clarity moving forward. Again i understand its not an enforceable rule, but do you intend on people obeying this or not? Should I say tough luck to the next opponent that asks when i dont wait? My opinion is this rule has a place in clan war games, but in tourneys where many people arent in clans and may not even know there is such a informal rule it seems out of place to ask people to obey this.

Its clearly no a rule in this tourney and many don't wait. I always wait out of respect for my opponent and I know the people I play regularly do the same. But clearly there is a bunch that don't. So I would say its your call.

This.

I don't enforce fog rules. Some people follow them, some don't. If I'm playing against someone who I think might expect it, I wall them and ask.

[Dukasaur]

With Worldwide Warfare Week winding down, there are still three WWW tourneys (Falkland Islands, Qurna, and Dogger Bank) open for sign-ups. When the last three fill, I will publish stats for how many people signed up in total.

Meanwhile, it's time to get back to our regularly-scheduled programming...

Tomorrow the Suez tournament will open:

show: raid on the suez may 3rd to 10th

Also, Monday May 4th will be the last day that the Conquer Gods will drop random Cannon tokens. After that, it will be back to earning them the hard way...

[sm8900]

hi. how does this work exactly? do the maps shown actually correspond to the battles that they represent? just want t make sure I follow this. thanks.

[waauw]

hi. how does this work exactly? do the maps shown actually correspond to the battles that they represent? just want t make sure I follow this. thanks.

just auto-tournaments, click on the tournaments tab on top of your screen and you'll see what you're looking for.

[Dukasaur]

hi. how does this work exactly? do the maps shown actually correspond to the battles that they represent? just want t make sure I follow this. thanks.

It would be lovely if CC had 5,000 maps and we had one of every battle! Unfortunately, no. We have to work with what we have.

We can of course use maps of the place, and often we have more than one choice. If the battle is in France, we have France, France 2.1, and France 1789 to choose from. If the battle is in Italy, we can use Italy or Unification Italy or possibly even something like Imperium Romanum. The tourney that is currently up, Suez, was fought in Egypt, so I've used all four of our Egypt maps in round one.

Even with three France maps, there were something like 50 battles in France during the Great War, so the tourneys would quickly get repetitive. We try to switch it up and create a feeling of what was the most important feature of the battle. Here's some aspects of battle, and some of the ways we've represented them:

• We do have a couple general World War I maps -- Europe 1914 and Trench Warfare. Obviously, those get used quite often, but not, I hope, too often. With 1915 being the Gallipoli year, you will see WWI Gallipoli and WWI Ottoman used a lot this year.
• If it was a winter battle, and cold weather played a part, we've used the Antarctica map.
• If it was a summer battle, and hot weather played a part, we could simulate that with Africa II or maybe Oasis.
• I got lucky with the battle of Sandfontein -- that actually was a battle fought for control of an oasis, so I used the Oasis map pretty heavily there. The Battle of Tanga, which we did about a month ago, is colloquially known as "the Battle of the Bees" because it was frequently interrupted by troops running from attacks by aggressive African bees. Obviously, that immediately suggested the Hive map.
• If it was a fast paced battle where things changed rapidly, we can use Escalating Spoils to create fast games. Other settings that tend to produce fast games are Sunny, No Trench, Freestyle, and Unlimited forts.
• If it was a slow, ponderous battle where every inch took a week to gain, we can use Flat Rate and Trench to create slow games. Other settings that can be used to create a feeling of slowness include No Spoils, Adjacent Forts, and to some degree Fog.
• If the battle was heavily influenced by artillery bombardment, we can simulate that with Nuclear Spoils. We can also use maps where bombardment is important, like Waterloo, Arms Race, Stalingrad, or Duck and Cover.
• Betrayals and mutinies can be represented with Zombie spoils (your own troops turn against you.)
• Amphibious landings or surprise manouvres can be represented with Parachute reinforcements.
• If the terrain is a factor, we can look at the terrain maps we have on CC. If it's a big featureless flat field, we can use something like Feudal Epic that's a huge mass of grassland. Or, if we're in the mountains, we can use King of the Mountains as a map. In the first Masurian Lakes battle, James used the Great Lakes map to simulate fighting around the lakes. And so on.
• To avoid using the same maps over and over again, we try to think outside the box. Suez was a really one-sided British victory, so in the final round I used the Trafalgar map, which was another really one-sided British victory. In one tournament I'd already overused some of the obvious choices, so I noted that the German commander was from the Baltic coast, and I stuck in the Baltic Crusades map. In the Marne tournament I used the Steamworks map, with its balloons, to simulate the use of reconnaissance ballooons by the French. In Bita Paka I used Woodboro, because the battle was primarily fought for control of the radio station. That was actually the perfect map for the occasion, I'm really happy we had it.

Like waauw said, you can click on the autotournament details button, and that will tell you what maps and settings are used within it. If you want more information, the full description of all current tournaments is given in the fourth post of this thread, Current and Upcoming Tournaments (I apologise that "Upcoming" is a bit of a misnomer. We are working up against the clock quite a bit, so rarely is any Upcoming tourney posted much more than a day or two before it launches. That will improve as time goes on.) If you want to browse lists of previous tourneys in the series, you can look at the fifth post, http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=207817#p4556461List of Previous Tourneys.

[stealth99]

I have a suggestion but I first want to be clear that this post is not a challenge to our Automated Tie-breaking Procedures.
Having said that, you will need to familiarize yourself with CC's Tie-breaking Rules for Automated Tournaments Only:

TIE-BREAKER RULES

show

THE ISSUE - Players are being eliminated from too many Great War Tournaments, with identical win/loss records as player(s) who are advancing to the next round.

EXAMPLE I just advanced to the finals in this one:

http://www.conquerclub.com/player.php?mode=autotournament&tourney_id=12457

How do you think Coors1 feels about things? His record was identical to the record of all four finalists!! This cruel tie would have been broken by round speed OR by who joined first; believe it or not.

How often does something like this occur? Well I didn't cherry pick this example, it was the first one I came across in my overall search of my finished tournament games. This situation occurs in almost every tournament, with multiple examples occurring in most tournaments.

BIGGER ISSUE - When the problem occurs in the final round, players are eliminated with identical records as the player who outright wins the entire event.

BIGGER EXAMPLE - What happened here is just plain sad. Aren't we here to have fun by producing winners based on meaningful competition?

http://www.conquerclub.com/player.php?mode=autotournament&tourney_id=12113

This does not happen in non-automated tournaments. Are we not paying a huge price for this automation?

FUTURE EXAMPLE - True story

The most recent tourney that is listed, The Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes. There are just 12 players. We all play 12 games in a single first round and the top two advance to the Finals. So this is a two round tournament. Nothing wrong with that, I'm not opposed to short and sweet tournaments, providing they can produce a winner without using a random method.

What is the likelihood that this first round will end with 2 clear winners at the top? Remember, when we have more than two players tied at the top, two players will advance to the finals and the rest will be outright eliminated, based on a method that I believe I have proven is close enough to completely random, to call it just that.

One of the most likely outcomes in that first round, would be 4 players with 2 wins, 4 players with 1 win and 4 players with 0 wins. What a mess that would produce! Yet the automated system for settling ties will just sweep that mess under the rug and send two players to the finals and send two players packing. Heartless that computer is.

In RL, these types of tiebreakers are used because guys have to get home after a weekend competition, to go to work. There is limited time and limited resources so you quickly force a winner using these seemingly random methods. We don't have any of those RL issues here, do we?

The Auto Tournament System has it's limitations but we need to work within those limitations to create tournaments that won't yield so many of these seemingly unfair outcomes. It makes more sense to create tournaments that will have people walking away from them happy to recommend them to a friend; win or lose as opposed to feeling like it was a complete waste of time; again; win or lose.

IT GETS WORSE

The latter part of the Masurian tournament has the exact same problem but much, much worse. The 2 player final is a best of 4?? How can this be? Why an even number? Are we setting up for disaster before we begin? A 2-2 draw means the winner will be decided by the player who wins their two games in the quickest number of rounds; in other words a random outcome. That is the best case scenario. Given the low number of games it's quite reasonable that the players could have a tie in round speed too. In that case, guess how this medal and tourney trophy is issued?

We know before this one even starts, that the winner may be declared based simply on who joined first.

While I don't like our Automated Tie-breaker Procedures, I am not blaming anyone here. I'm just asking you to be more aware of these rules and how they affect the tourneys you are creating; so you can try and have these things actually competed for as opposed to just handed out.

I am one of the biggest supporters of this Great War Venture and I commend the people who are volunteering their time to bring me this enjoyment. Thanks so much guys and I hope this helps you make it even bigger and better.

[SiriusCowKing]

I agree on the tie issue and not only in the great wars but in all auto-tournaments.

[Captn B]

I also fully agree that the CC's Tie-breaking Rules for Automated Tournaments need to reflect skill by winners, rather than by an arbitrary time of who may have stumbled onto and joined a tournament first. That gives the TO the best advantage if he joins it just after he posts it. lol Not very fair.

Though it can be argued that the tourneys' winners must be determined by some criteria, and this is that criteria. Caveat Emptor. Therefor, all players are aware of that criteria before they begin play and thus it is their choice as to whether or not they wish to join.

But that is a hardened perspective, which tends to turn people away. Since this is a site which promotes enjoyment, anything (besides the normal play/dice/randomness of drops/...) that can be altered to enhance that experience, will only be a benefit. I would hate to be Coors1 in that example, knowing I was just as good (in this set) as the others, but I was eliminated on a technicality. And in the Masurian Lakes example too! That'd be even worse.

I'd suggest that if it is easy to repair, that it be righted immediately.

Of course perhaps it's a binary thing and since computers only speak in ones and zeros that it must be a multiple of an even number. lol NOT.

I'm sure it's a simple programming fix that will provide many more-satisfied customers, rather than embittered ones.

Thanks to all the vols and management who provide an excellent experience for us!

[Slaylark]

OK, without piling on stats that i have verified, Stealth hit the nail on the head, i agree with his idea and GREAT effort to improve this site and tourneys.. well done bud.

[Dukasaur]

Wow, I seem to have become a magnet for everyone's pet peeves about the auto-tournament engine. I suppose I could just say, "I don't control the auto-tourney engine, I'm just an end-user" which would be literally true, but also a bit of a cop-out. After all, I am the biggest and most enthusiastic user of the engine, and I am also BW's number one fan on the site, so I suppose I need to be able to take the heat.

First things first:

I am one of the biggest supporters of this Great War Venture and I commend the people who are volunteering their time to bring me this enjoyment. Thanks so much guys and I hope this helps you make it even bigger and better.

Thanks, stealth! You have been one of our biggest supporters, and I appreciate that. Military history is one of my passions; conquer club tournaments are another, the Great War series brings them both together. Still, it's the compliments I get from you and people like you that keeps me going!

Thanks to all the vols and management who provide an excellent experience for us!

On behalf of the Great War team, I thank you..

THE ISSUE - Players are being eliminated from too many Great War Tournaments, with identical win/loss records as player(s) who are advancing to the next round.

BIGGER ISSUE - When the problem occurs in the final round, players are eliminated with identical records as the player who outright wins the entire event.

This does not happen in non-automated tournaments.

Well, it does happen sometimes in non-automated tournaments, depending on how their tie-breaking rules are written. Still, I'll grant you that it happens less often.

show: extended version of that answer

Are we not paying a huge price for this automation?

Short answer: No. We lose some flexibility, but we gain volume and a lot of efficiency. There's a cost, but relative to the benefit, it's not too high.

show: more complete version of that answer

http://www.conquerclub.com/player.php?mode=autotournament&tourney_id=12457

How do you think Coors1 feels about things? His record was identical to the record of all four finalists!! This cruel tie would have been broken by round speed OR by who joined first; believe it or not.

How do you think anybody feels when they play really well and come really close, but not quite close enough? How do you think a hockey team feels when they play to a perfect tie, and then it comes down to a shootout and one wacky shot that should have gone in but took a crazy spin along the way? How do you think a soccer team feels when they have an identical record as someone else but are just one less in their goal differential, probably because of some flukey against-the-wind miss that should have been a goal?

Of course it's a bummer, but unless you want to redefine the very nature of competition, it isn't going away. The very point of a tournament is that it gradually eliminates people and distills things down to just one winner. There's always going to be people who played really well and came really close but didn't quite make the cut.

If all tournaments were 1v1, it would be easy enough to to make them all odd-numbered elimination brackets and guarantee that ties are impossible. Which we mostly do in all-1v1 tourneys. But once you have multiplayer games, preventing ties is nearly impossible. Almost every structure will allow a possibility of multiple players ending up with identical records and needing a tie-breaking rule. The exception is the simplest multiplayer tourneys where only one player advances per game, like I did with Franz Ferdinand, but that is a very restrictive formula and would get pretty dull if all tournaments ran that way.

[The latter part of the Masurian tournament has the exact same problem but much, much worse. [b]The 2 player final is a best of 4?? How can this be? Why an even number? Are we setting up for disaster before we begin?

Well, that's one of the James Ker tourneys, and since you've been playing the Great War tournaments since the beginning, you probably noticed that James has this quirk of putting an even number of games in the finale. I found it disconcerting at first, but eventually I've come around and I see what he's trying to accomplish. Basically I think James wants the regular season to matter.

Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like in professional sports or whatever, if the regular season actually mattered instead of becoming irrelevant once the playoffs begin? I mean, it's ridiculous. A team in baseball will play 168 games, and that's just to get them into the playoffs, but once they get there, all those games go completely out the window! What a total fucking waste! Wouldn't it be cool if the final score factored in both your performance in the playoffs and in the regular season?

So that, I think, is why James does these even-numbered finales. Because by allowing the possibility of a tie in the finals, it means that the winner might be crowned not because of his performance in the relatively small number of games in the final, but because of his performance in the tournament overall. And that, I think, is a pretty cool idea.

But, if you absolutely hate it, don't play James' tournaments. You'll be happy to know that he's resigning and we probably won't see any more of his tourneys for a while. Personally I think it's a big loss. His quirky tournament structures added some much-needed variety to the rather predictable styles of the other Great War tournament authors.

We know before this one even starts, that the winner may be declared based simply on who joined first.

That's theoretically possible, of course, but extremely unlikely. It would require a remarkable triple coincidence:

1. The two players would first have to be tied in the Finals. That's a 37% chance. Fairly likely to happen.
2. They would then have to be tied in the tournament overall. The exact probability of that requires some integrals that I just can't face crunching right now, but as a ballpark estimate, looking at some of the larger tournaments, I'd say it happens less than 1/4 of the time. 0.25 x .37 brings us to a probability less than 8.5 %. (If any math whiz wants to crunch the numbers and post the exact probability that the top 2 players will win exactly the same number of 12 times 12-player games, I'd appreciate it.)
3. As a final coincidence, they would have to get past the second tie-break and have won all their games in the same number of rounds. Again, I can't do the math and give you a precise probability (and I'm happy to hear from anyone who can) but I would ballpark that again as being something in the range of 1/4 of the time or less. So now we're down to a cumulative probability of .25 x .25 x .37, or about 2.3 %

So, like you said, it could happen. I'm willing to bet that it won't. Literally. If any one of the Second Masurian tournaments is settled by the third tie-breaking criterion, instead of the first or second, I'll buy you 3 months premium. You don't even have to reciprocate on this bet. I'm fairly sure that the 2.3% chance won't happen, but if it does, I'll live with it.

I also fully agree that the CC's Tie-breaking Rules for Automated Tournaments need to reflect skill by winners, rather than by an arbitrary time of who may have stumbled onto and joined a tournament first.

I highlighted "by winners" in the quote above, because it is significant. We're talking mainly about non-winners. The only time we see the precedence (third tie-breaker) come into play a lot is in early rounds, when there are multiple players with zero or very few wins, and only some of them need to be eliminated. For instance, if the tournament structure calls for six players to be eliminated, and there are eight players with zero wins, we need some method to decide which of them will win the wild card and advance despite their lack of a win. For that, a relatively arbitrary measurement like that is very necessary. There really isn't any data to work with at that point. Once the tourney has advanced a bit, you can talk about win percentage being the most common tie-break. It's only those early rounds where precedence plays a big role, and why should it not? Remember, we're not talking about "winners" here. We're talking about people with zero wins who are getting a chance to advance despite being winless. It's not that the six eliminated players are losing anything, it's the two that are allowed to advance despite being winless who are winning a free pass.

In the Finals the third tie-break is almost never seen. As you see in my response to stealth99, the precise probability of the Finals being decided by precedence is very hard to calculate precisely, but even in a tournament like Second Masurian which has an extraordinarily high probability of a final-round tie, the chance of precedence being a factor is about 2%. For most tournaments, which have odd number of games in the final round, and often many more rounds, I would put it as vanishingly small.

In a 20-round tournament like Race to the Sea, I would peg the probability of it being decided by precedence as effectively zilch.

Overall, if you balance out the tourneys with a high chance of a final round tie and those with a low chance of a final round tie, again the math gets ridiculously difficult, but I'm willing to bet that overall it's on the order of one in a thousand, and anyone who wants to do the math is welcome to come and prove me wrong.

Just as a bit of perspective, I checked some sports sites. Here's the tie-breaking rules for the World Cup of soccer:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/wp/2014/06/23/world-cup-tiebreakers-explained/

Here’s how FIFA will break group-stage ties, lifted straight from the organization’s book of regulations.

1. Greatest number of points obtained in all group matches.
2. Goal difference in all group matches.
3. Greatest number of goals scored in all group matches.
4. Greatest number of points obtained in the group matches between the teams concerned.
5. Goal difference resulting from the group matches between the teams concerned.
6. Greater number of goals scored in all group matches between the teams concerned.
7. Drawing of lots by the FIFA Organizing Committee.

So their criteria are much deeper than ours, but in the end, there still has to be some arbitrary method (drawing of lots) because no matter how you structure a tourney, their will come a time when you have teams with records that are identical in every way. (Again, as above, there are obvious exceptions: bracket tournaments that are exclusively 1v1, and multiplayer tournaments where only one player per game advances, and possibly some other structures. But overall, it's a pretty short list. Almost all structures allow the possibility of identical records.)

That gives the TO the best advantage if he joins it just after he posts it. lol Not very fair.

That's my cheating you're worried about, since I'm the only one who schedules all the Great War tourneys. Regardless of all the different authors of all the different Great War tournaments, I'm the one who does the final proofread and releases them for launch. So, if you're worried I might be cheating, feel free to monitor my performance in these tournaments.

All new Great War tournaments are released @1500 CC time on the scheduled day, so that people who are worried about this can set their alarms and plan to be online at 1500. This is common knowledge. So much for my big advantage. (Actually around 1520. The auto-tourney engine takes about 20 minutes per sweep, and it launches new tournaments at the end of the sweep, so a 1500 launch time is usually actually around 1520.)

Once the initial iteration of a tourney has filled, the next iteration will launch about 20 minutes later, during the engine's next sweep. Anybody can see this by watching the counter go down whenever they go to their Central Command. The tourney will say how many spots remain to be filled (4 spots left... 2 spots left, 0 spots left). Once it says 0 spots left, you know (if the schedule hasn't been exhausted) that the next iteration will launch in 20 minutes or less, so if you're really worried about it, get ready.

Bottom line, though, is that it's a tempest in a teapot. The way to win the tournaments is to win the games. If you don't win the games then the tie-break might keep you alive for an extra round, but it won't give you the tourney, no matter how much paranoia revolves around this issue. As long as you're winning the games, the only tie-breaks you really need to worry about are the first and second.

If you're still worried, then only join the tourneys that have a large number of games in the final, where a tie becomes less likely. That's all I can say. I think I've done pretty well at providing a tremendous variety of tournaments in this series, so if one structure doesn't suit you, just wait a few days and there will be a very different one.

[Dukasaur]

Here's my latest tourney in the series. This is one of the ones I'm really proud of.

show: initial Dardanelles bombardment may 7th to 14th

[waauw]

I absolutely love the great-war series. It's a lot of fun but these guys do have a point about tie-breakers. Now, I'll admit that I haven't read your entire text just now dukasaur. The size of it scares me off. So my appologies if I repeat something already mentioned.
But there are methods to lower chances of tie-breaking rules having to operate:

• Use more direct 50% elimination rounds like most ordinary tournaments do
• in round robin tournaments, play as many games as possible. The higher the number of games, the lower the chances of ties.

For instance in the tournament "Raid on the Suez", there are 4 games in round 1 and 8 players getting eliminated out of 24. I feel like 4 is not enough and will almost certainly lead to a tie-breaker. Though I do realize that it's a fine line between avoiding tie-breakers and making the gamecount too overwhelming.

btw, is it possible to have terminator auto-tournaments where kills are counted and not wins? I'm in a tournament right now called "Givenchy" where I lost 4 out of 5 games already, but the games are terminator and I did succeed in taking with me quite a number of kills. I've been thinking of putting this in the suggestions-topic, but I wasn't sure whether this was a mistake or whether it's truely not implementable.

[Dukasaur]

I absolutely love the great-war series. It's a lot of fun but these guys do have a point about tie-breakers. Now, I'll admit that I haven't read your entire text just now dukasaur. The size of it scares me off. So my appologies if I repeat something already mentioned.
But there are methods to lower chances of tie-breaking rules having to operate:

• Use more direct 50% elimination rounds like most ordinary tournaments do
• in round robin tournaments, play as many games as possible. The higher the number of games, the lower the chances of ties.

For instance in the tournament "Raid on the Suez", there are 4 games in round 1 and 8 players getting eliminated out of 24. I feel like 4 is not enough and will almost certainly lead to a tie-breaker. Though I do realize that it's a fine line between avoiding tie-breakers and making the gamecount too overwhelming.

You've identified the problem perfectly. A higher number of games leads to more statistical robustness in the result, but many people do not want to play a huge number of games. We try to provide a good variety of large and small tournaments, so that everyone can find something they like.

I am rather confused though. First you urge that we use rounds with a 50% elimination rate more often, but then you complaing about Raid on the Suez, which is significantly more generous than 50% and allows 67% to advance.

(I was actually asleep and thinking about this woke me up and brought me back to the keyboard, lol. Raid on the Suez, for a small tournament, is about as robust as a small tournament can be.)

The first round has four 2-player games. The likely breakdown of wins is something like this:

• Four players will win zero games
• Five players will win one game
• Six players will win two games
• Five players will win three games
• Four players will win four games

So, you have 15 players that win two or more games, and "deserve" to advance, plus there will probably be one player who advances with only one win (the "wild card" or "lucky strike" player). If we followed the traditional 50% advancement, then some of the "deserving" players who won 50% of the games would have to be cut. You'd actually be making it less desirable to the players.

I think advancing 2/3 (effectively all of those who win half their games plus probably one or two who don't) is actually pretty good. Fair for those who win half, and a nice present for someone who didn't.

There's also the issue of making sure you advance enough for the next round. The second round of Suez features eight-player games. If we only advanced half of the original 24, that would be not enough for two sets of 8-player games. On the other hand, if you expanded it to 32-players to eliminate 50% and still have 16, you would be reducing the number of iterations of the tournament that fill. (Typically, we have 96 per tournament. If you make each iteration 24 players, you can make four iterations of a tournament, but iif you make them all 32s, you will only have 3. Not that I'm unwilling to do that -- there have been 32s and 40s and even a 64 in this series -- but 24s definitely need to be more common than 32s.) This whole thing, however, is the lesser of the two factors to consider. The first factor -- trying to advance everyone who deserves to -- is the larger consideration.

btw, is it possible to have terminator auto-tournaments where kills are counted and not wins? I'm in a tournament right now called "Givenchy" where I lost 4 out of 5 games already, but the games are terminator and I did succeed in taking with me quite a number of kills. I've been thinking of putting this in the suggestions-topic, but I wasn't sure whether this was a mistake or whether it's truely not implementable.

Being able to score by kills instead of by wins is one of the things on the wish list that I've given BW. There's no guarantees, but I'll get it eventually. Not telling how long. The ways of BW are mysterious.

[waauw]

what I meant with 50% was the traditional simple tournament type, where you play 1-3 games against 1 other player and the one who loses most is out. So without a point counting table.
But yeah, lets' keep fingers crossed for the terminator autotournaments

[mookiemcgee]

I just wanted to give a shout out to the great war organizers also, I really like the format and all the effort your putting into this has not been overlooked by "us" the masses.

I've been reading the Great Tie debate of 2015, and while I have been both "screwed by" and "saved by" the current tie-break rules personally I don't think the wheel needs to be re-invented. I submit there is no perfect way to break a tie short of 'sudden death'.

Here would be my solution:
Anytime there is a "bubble" amongst prize postions, a new game could launch featuring only the bubble players on a small map for a hopefully "quick" game. It could be the exact same map/rules anytime there is a tie in any auto-tourney that affects advancement or prizes. I include the caviot that I have no idea if this would even be possible given the current game system... I'm sure someone has thought of this already, and thats probably why it isnt in use now so just disreagard if this has already been beaten to death.

The one thing that really does bother me about the tiebreaker rule is that there is no way to view who joined a tourney first after it's started (at least that i can tell)... I won't know until all games are complete if I will be moving on or not. Would it be possible to include this info on the tourney page? Right now you have 5 catagories of info on the tourney page: "players, record,active,score,status" Could you add one that reads Joined/Win rounds, and have it display info the same way- example - 4/15 - meaning (joined 4th/won in 15 rounds)... At least that way you know where you stand so you can adapt your play along the way to try and secure a position (maybe by trying finish in fewer rounds).

Just trying to brainstorm with y'all, if these are nonsense suggestions just disreagard!

[Dukasaur]

I just wanted to give a shout out to the great war organizers also, I really like the format and all the effort your putting into this has not been overlooked by "us" the masses.

Thank you!

I've been reading the Great Tie debate of 2015, and while I have been both "screwed by" and "saved by" the current tie-break rules personally I don't think the wheel needs to be re-invented. I submit there is no perfect way to break a tie short of 'sudden death'.

Here would be my solution:
Anytime there is a "bubble" amongst prize positions, a new game could launch featuring only the bubble players on a small map for a hopefully "quick" game. It could be the exact same map/rules anytime there is a tie in any auto-tourney that affects advancement or prizes. I include the caviot that I have no idea if this would even be possible given the current game system... I'm sure someone has thought of this already, and thats probably why it isnt in use now so just disreagard if this has already been beaten to death.

This is an option we hope to have. It's not supported by the current auto-tournament engine, but like everything else on this site, that's a work in progress, and I think we will eventually have this option.

Even if/when it does exist, however, I'm not really in favour of always using it. One of the biggest advantage of the autos is the efficiency; the next round is created within 20 minutes after the previous round ends. Inserting a delay for a tiebreaker game partially loses that advantage. I know in my manual tournaments I found that if there was a delay for tie-breaking games, the players not involved in the tiebreaker would lose that sense of urgency and immediacy while it wrapped up. Even in my manual tournaments, I long ago started writing the structures in such a way that ties could be broken with available data, instead of waiting for tie-breaking games.

Even on a small map, you can't guarantee that it will end quickly. It might, but it might not. Still, I hope the option for tiebreaking games will be added eventually.

The one thing that really does bother me about the tiebreaker rule is that there is no way to view who joined a tourney first after it's started (at least that i can tell)... I won't know until all games are complete if I will be moving on or not. Would it be possible to include this info on the tourney page? Right now you have 5 catagories of info on the tourney page: "players, record,active,score,status" Could you add one that reads Joined/Win rounds, and have it display info the same way- example - 4/15 - meaning (joined 4th/won in 15 rounds)... At least that way you know where you stand so you can adapt your play along the way to try and secure a position (maybe by trying finish in fewer rounds).

That sounds like a change with no technical hurdels. I'll definitely send that one upstairs...

Glad to have your feedback, and glad you're finding the Great War series an interesting challenge!

[Dukasaur]

Now, as promised, here are the Worldwide Warfare Week participation stats:


Ardahan and Sarkamish
Launched April 20th
There were 5 iterations of the tournament, and with 20 players each, the total number of participants was 100


Kolubara/Rudnik Ridges
Launched April 21st
There were 3 iterations of the tournament, and with 30 players each, the total number of participants was 90


Falkland Islands
Launched April 22nd
There were 3 iterations of the tournament, and with 32 players each, the total number of participants was 96


Battle of Bolimów
Launched April 23rd
There were 6 iterations of the tournament, and with 16 players each, the total number of participants was 96


ANZAC Day
Launched April 24th
There were 3 iterations of the tournament, and with 26 players each, the total number of participants was 78


Qurna
Launched April 25th
There were 5 iterations of the tournament, and with 16 players each, the total number of participants was 80


Dogger Bank
Launched April 26th
There were 3 iterations of the tournament, and with 36 players each, the total number of participants was 108

Glad to have so many people aboard!

[Dukasaur]

Four iterations of the First Siege of Przemysl ran. They were a gruelling challenge with 17 concurrent games on the Siege map. The Second Siege of Przemysl, which will launch tomorrow, will be grueling in its own way, but very, very different. An elimination bracket, mostly Poly, on the Stalingrad map. Behold:

show: second siege of przemysl may 12th to 19th

With the Second Siege of Przemysl, we will be trying a new policy. We will be filtering out players with a turns-taken percentage less than 96. This is a suggestion first made by Shoop76 back in January:
Subject: The Great War

Can't we make a restriction that a player must have a certain percentage of turns taken? Probably 97%. There are organizers that ask for this in the community tournaments. This would considerably reduce this problem.

BigWham devised a way to do this, I have tested it on the Beta site, and it works. Let's hope it reduces some of the problems with deadbeats giving some people a free pass through the tourney. There's no guarantees, of course, but it may help.

[shoop76]

Four iterations of the First Siege of Przemysl ran. They were a gruelling challenge with 17 concurrent games on the Siege map. The Second Siege of Przemysl, which will launch tomorrow, will be grueling in its own way, but very, very different. An elimination bracket, mostly Poly, on the Stalingrad map. Behold:

show: second siege of przemysl may 12th to 19th

With the Second Siege of Przemysl, we will be trying a new policy. We will be filtering out players with a turns-taken percentage less than 96. This is a suggestion first made by Shoop76 back in January:
Subject: The Great War

Can't we make a restriction that a player must have a certain percentage of turns taken? Probably 97%. There are organizers that ask for this in the community tournaments. This would considerably reduce this problem.

BigWham devised a way to do this, I have tested it on the Beta site, and it works. Let's hope it reduces some of the problems with deadbeats giving some people a free pass through the tourney. There's no guarantees, of course, but it may help.

Thanks for the hard work duk and listening to what we ask for. I know its not realistic to make all changes that are brought forward, but at least we see that you take us seriously.

[Dukasaur]

The latest from DoomYoshi:

show: angola may 16th to may 23rd

[Dukasaur]

The newest member of the Community Team, takman2k helped with the design of tomorrow's entry, Neuve-Chapelle.

show: neuve-chapelle may 18th to 25th

[Dukasaur]

On tap for Wednesday:

show: attempt to force the narrows may 20th to 27th

[mookiemcgee]

Hi Duk,

I just tried to join neuve-Chappele, and was refused because "player joined another in the series"....I noticed no one else has joined either so perhaps there is a flaw in the system?