Who here plays to win?

[Species8472]

Hi, you will probably not know me, I usually browse the civfanatics forums.

I am also in the ladder team for civfanatics ladders. Although we currently only support civ2 individual ladder and civ2 tribe ladder, we would like to support more ladders in the Sid Meijers series.

My question is: Do you like to play AC for a tournament/ladder?

[Googlie]

S8472:

Solver broached the subject of a smac/x ladder here about six months ago, and got a sceptical response from the PBEM vets.

Notwithstanding, a number of us agreed to give it a try, and about ten to fifteen games were started using his rating system.

Our scepticism was well justified, as he lost interest sometime in June (the last time the ladder was updated) so naturally we too have lost what little interest we had. (As an aside, I see that he has mercifully removed the ladder thread from the boards - too embarrassed to let it remain, I guess)

Tau Ceti's tourney rankings provide a fair indication of playing skill (although perhaps only a third to a half of the games currently underway are tournament games)

I suspect your inquiry is falling on deaf ears - I for one have little interest in repeating the Solver fiasco.

Googlie

[Solver]

Not at all. It was a partial fiasco, but has absolutely different reasons behind it that most people believe, and the events behind the scenes are different, too. Mail me for info, if you want, I'll tell you what is it with the ladder, what's its status, and about it's last update (09-Nov-2001), BTW. Hope you hear this.

[mark13]

Yeah, OK, a partial fiasco. About 97%ish.

But I would otherwise agree with Googlie that it isn't really conducive to SMAC, simply because of the factional bonuses - some factions are far better early game, some late game etc. Much better to judge players on how games finish, rather than what the graph looks like halfway through, IMO.

[Flubber]

I agree wholeheartedly with googlie and Mark13

[Solver]

I am now thinking whether to post this and bring the system back to life...

Actually, I agree with the faction bonuses thing. Only, if you rate it after the game end, it takes pretty long time to update, often in months to have significant changes. For CtP worked very nice, though. Also stalled there now...

[vitamin j]

As a relative newcomer to MP, I'm trying to do the best I can with the faction I'm playing and the circumstances of the game. If I win as a result, great. But win or lose, I've found the civ/smac crowd to be some of the coolest gamers around. And I think people know that on any given day, the game could go either way. So I'd have to say, maybe.

[Rastapopoulos]

I agree that any ladder system must work with the results of the games that have been finished.
If I lead the power graph all the way along, but in the end someone Planet-busts me away 'cos I'm too stupid to build enough Defense Pods I don't deserve to be high up in the ladder, really.
So it follows that the process of building a ladder will take long, years, probably, since games take so long.
But I do think it would be interesting to think about a scoring system that takes into account ALL the games played, not only the ones from a 4-month-period as it is done now.
I have started some discussion about that in Tau Ceti's latest Results Thread and I'd like to encourage more people to participate: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=32567
So the answer is, yes, I'd like to play for ladders, but we'll have to talk about the system...

[Species8472]

I am at a complete loss how SMAC works. I only know about civ2 and i know the ladder for civ2 was a great success. Does the game design of SMAC not fit for proper MP? I mean, is it too hard in SMAC games to decide who is the winner in the end?

Our ladder works like this:
- only finished games get reported. This means, when all players in the game resigned and there is 1 left. The order in which players resign is important. the lower you end, the more points you lose.
- the winner reports the game
- scores are automatically calculated. so updating is instantly.

[Rastapopoulos]

how exactly does the scoring system work, species?
post it here please or post a link where I can read about it...

[Species8472]

On our civ2 ladder, i have a detailed description on how points are calculated. you can browse there now by clicking on this link: www.civladders.com or read below:

How are my points calculated?

The ladder formula was originally written by one of my favorite companies- Westwood Studios. They use the ladder system for online tournaments that are reset every month. Their tournaments are based on head-to-head games, or better known as duels. That's why I rewrote the ladder system a little, so it can also be used for three up to seven players. The ladder formula for a duel game is as follows:

RN = RO + K(W-WE)

where:

RN is the new rating
RO is the old rating
W is the score in the event(1 is a win, 0 is a loss)
K is 200 points
WE is the expected score derived from the following formula:

WE = 1/(10^(DR/400) + 1)

DR is the difference in ratings between the players. Players will never lose more than 10% of their total score during any game. All players start at zero points and can never drop below zero points at any time.

This formula is used for every game you play. In a seven player game, you play against six other players, so you actually play six games. This also means that in a six player game, you can lose more than ten percent of your score. In fact, you can lose up to sixty percent of your current score (6 players X 10%).

For more detailed information about this formula, contact me:
ICQ: 15720485
Zone Messenger: Woke23
Email: Wkerpershoek@hotmail.com

[Species8472]

bump 1

[Scipio Centaurus]

It's been many years since I played tournament chess, but that formula looks similar to the US Chess Federation's player rating system. Problem is you needed many results [30+] to begin to draw the players into their proper rating range. Not sure if you get enough PBEM SMAC results to do the trick. Unless you count every player who drops from a PBEM game or never even plays a single turn as a 'win' for the remaing players! Then you have plenty of results to work with.



- Scipio