Apolyton Tournaments: General discussion, regulations and suggestions

[MarkG]

please post about the subjects in the title here

[Capt Dizle]

I suggest that:

1. All reloading, which would include restarting, is prohibited. If a save is corrupted or for any other reason it is not possible to continue a game then the player must withdraw from the month's competition.

2. Use of the money bug is disallowed. Use of mods are disallowed. Any method or circumstance that a player might intentionally or unintentionally use, which in the player's judgement could give them an unfair advantage, is disallowed and the player must withdraw.

3. Players should refrain from reading any threads about the current game, however, should a player accidentally read something about the game, they should judge for themselves if that knowledge could give them an unfair advantage and if so withdraw.



The rules would be enforced only by the participants sense of honor and decency.

[Ahlyis]

If those are the rules, then I will abide by them. I definitely think that there should be a category specifically for submissions that meet those criteria.

But I would prefer that submissions not be limited to those in order to be eligible. For me, and many others I think, a lot of fun is derived from playing again to see how much better I can do. I also like seeing what others can do if allowed to play multiple times.

By playing more than once, you do gain an unfair advantage over the first time player, but I disagree over whether that should be considered cheating. I just think that there should be a separate category for the two types of submissions.

Determine the victory conditions, then have two winners. The best submitted game from a first playing with no reloads or restarts wins one category. And the best submitted game, with reloads/restarts allowed but no mods or other exploits, wins the other category.

I don't think we need to have a winner for every victory type. Just pick which victory types will be permissible for the contest. Whether that's just one or several doesn't matter. But if there are multiple permissible victory conditions, don't award multiple winners for each one.

Also, I don't care whether we use score or year of victory as the criteria, but it needs to be clear from the outset what will determine the 'best' game.

[dainbramaged13]

I think we should have one victory type only allowed for the win or something to that affect, so we dont have half of the people involved getting awards, or we should have a self-imposed rule like OCC or a no-war game
Yes, i believe that there should be a category with certain rules that you MUST abide by like jimmytricks, and then another category like Alhyis' where almost anything (except mods of course) goes.

[Capt Dizle]

I agree. Two categories. Just set up separate threads. Limited and OpenTourneys.

For the Open group, I would suggest one rule. Folks should be willing to state what they used, mod or reload or whatever. I would actually be interested in that.

Limited would be for those with a desire to play a straight up game.

Neat thing is that you could enter the Open after completing the Limited game and making your submission.

That would be neat and would solve all the issues.

[smellymummy]

thats not a good idea, having one tourney for people who play the map the second time around.... I mean come on its a tournament, you should not be able to play with any forewarning of what's going to happen at all.

And having a tourney for people who will play by saving and reloading !?!@

You should load the map, and play turn by turn. If you loose a city, if you loose your army on the offense, if you get barbarians in the hut, or whatever ! suck it up and play.

If you're defeated, or if you can't win the first time around then you're out and that's it. You'll just have to practice some more until the next tournament.

That's how I'll play and I have no qualms about loosing.. but sure I'll prefer to win

[Tilemacho]

I agree with two categories. First you can play without reloading and then if you like play again with reloading.
But I think that the winning categories should be reduced!!! I propose conquest and space to be the main ones and culture and domination to be EXCLUDED !!! I mean they don’t really add a new strategy do they? They only reduce the score builders can get! Maybe diplomatic and history victories could stay as secondary options….

[Master Marcus]

Hmmm, no, I was just thinking about allowing a culture victory only for the tourney score, on average map+8 civs+archipelago, but with ALL other victories allowed at Monarch+ and let's see how many can have it before the AI gets the Spaceship.

[smellymummy]

ok so now that the 2nd tourney has made it to the anouncement, is there going to be any rules, such as no save reloads, exploiting, etc?

Or is it going to be a free for all again until the community in general reaches an agreement? Mods, care to comment?

[Ziggyny]

Originally posted by smellymummy
thats not a good idea, having one tourney for people who play the map the second time around.... I mean come on its a tournament, you should not be able to play with any forewarning of what's going to happen at all.

Maybe it's that I'm new to the online Civ community, but why is that such an absurd option?

More to the point, what is it about a tournament that makes it a first-run through thing? When I heard that there was a tournament, I honestly thought that meant I should try to master the map. If that meant several tries, so be it.

Was I totally missing something?


Of more relevance, I very much agree with having a category for first time through, and a category for mastering the map. I think there should be two winners in each group, one for date and one for score.

Of course, the honour system is the be-all and end-all of this option.

Modifying the game so that tundra gives a lot of food, for example, should be disallowed. I think that makes it a completely different game.


I don't know what the rules are for the next tournament, but I am going to play it through once, 'cleanly'. Then I'm going to try to master the map. I'll post scores for both, and you can take each of them into consideration however you so desire.

Originally posted by jimmytrick

The rules would be enforced only by the participants sense of honor and decency.

You ARE talking about human beings aren't you?

I'd rather bet on the Clipper's to win the Championship.

[Zaphod]

Just a few suggestions:

I think having two tournaments for the same map, Open and Limited, makes a lot of sense. There are benefits to both, and both can be fun. They are really different games, though, so making a judgement on best games in a tournament where some are playing once through and some are reloading is not fair; one is not measuring the same thing.

I would also like to argue that for both of the tournaments there should be separate categories for victory. Conquest and builder games are fundamentally different and should not be compared against each other. So, perhaps we should have a conquest winner, a cultural victory winner, a space race winner, etc. for each tournament - Open and Limited. Or maybe just a conquest winner and a space race winner to make things simpler.

On the question of honor, there is no problem for the Open tournament - anything goes. For the limited tournament, practically speaking I don't see anyway to enforce the rules strictly, but having the Open tournament as an option should provide an outlet for those who have a style of play (with reloads, mods, etc.) that the "iron" men and women would consider cheating.

[riven]

My suggestions:

1. Keep everyone happy.

Thus:

a. Have an unrestricted section. (for the faint hearted).
b. Have a restricted section.
c. Have a winner for each victory type.
d. Have a winner in terms of score and year.

This does mean a lot of winners, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing, refer to suggestion 1.

[MarkG]

yuo know guys, i dont know if this has come accross, but i could use some help with the validation of the saved games.....

[philler]

edited because I hadn't seen that the new tournament was available!

how long has it been there?

[MarkG]

2-3 hours...

i couldnt do it from home due to a hard disk failure....

[Sirian]

What kind of validation? What kind of help?

[MarkG]

eeeer, you know, finishing each and every submitted game in order to get the exact date and result, checking if there is nything looking strange, that kind of things...

you see, i'm still supposed to produce results for the tournaments

[Sirian]

I'm not even clear on what the rules are. You only have a couple of rules listed. So either the rest need to be posted... or created.

For example, just what IS the victory condition? Score? Just that simple? Would it then be in a player's interest to milk the score until 2050, assuming they had control of the game that much? If you go by date, that too conveys some advantage onto certain victory conditions. Have you thought through all of these things?

Speaking for myself, I'd play just for the interest factor of being able to relate to discussion about game specifics, and seeing what others do differently from me in the same situation. I'm not likely to bend my gameplay to winning the tourney, but rather just to beating the game the strongest that I can, and let the tourney chips fall where they may. Some have suggested a winner for each victory type. Well, depending on how many players submit results, there may not even BE winners of each victory type, and certainly space race or diplomacy will tend to be weighted, since those are the only options unless you dominate the tech race.

The third tourney map IS a good map, just that it has SUCH a strong starting location. My first five cities were all built on rivers, and that's just such a huge deal. In all the games I've played, I've never gained supremacy so quickly (and without ancient war, just building and expanding). If there are any game-breaking factors in terms of starting locations, it would be fresh water. If you don't have any, you're going to grow slower. If you can't irrigate at all, anywhere in your local area, you are in for a real long haul. The other factor is the presence of food boosters in your capital: wheat and cattle. Those can bust a game wide open, too, as you expand so much more quickly. This game had both.

I haven't messed around any with the editor, at all. Sometimes you have to play a map to find out whether or not it's going to be challenging, or merely frustrating. I think it may be asking too much of anybody to glance at a map and judge it. Some maps are made or broken by what you do with them, too. Resources are just so vital, that not having certain ones really does make things interesting. On the other hand, aggressively reaching out to grab resources is possible, so depending on what you do, things on a resource-scarce scenerio (like tourney three) can really flop around within a wide range. And, too, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. I just HAPPENED to send my first military unit scouting in the perfect direction, but only because the cattle was over there and that's the direction I had a road going in. If the cattle had been on the other side, I might have played a much weaker game. Who knows.

The biggest problem with helping to set up a tourney game is then not being able to play in the tourney. For that reason, I'd be willing to offer up maps I've played, that I know are fun, but kind of doubt that I'd want to be involved in a way that would prevent me from playing a new map (because I know too much about it in advance).

As for judging the games... without more defined rules, I wonder if anyone CAN help you. Who would know what "looks strange" or not? I think the idea of the tourney needs a little more definition, more specifics.


- Sirian

[Gramphos]

If you include the rules in the SAV (start game as Scenario) nobody can play with modified rules.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Sirian
For example, just what IS the victory condition?

both score and date(more than one winners) according to victory type

The biggest problem with helping to set up a tourney game is then not being able to play in the tourney.

i'm not asking help on the actual creation of the tournament game, but rather ideas for it...

[Conqueror]

Originally posted by riven
c. Have a winner for each victory type.

I vote for this too.

Originally posted by Tilemacho
But I think that the winning categories should be reduced!!! I propose conquest and space to be the main ones and culture and domination to be EXCLUDED !!!

Uh why should culture be excluded Its very hard to achieve cultural victory and for us who dont like to wage war cultural/diplomatic/space are only options.

For me i havent ever played after conquest or domination as they both demand me to wipe out other civs and i dont want to do that Its much more fun in my opinion without waging huge wars.

[macaday]

I like the Open and Limited categories. Limited for the one-time, no-restart, no-reload go, then after that (or if you give up), move to Open. Then in Open describe the changes you made, or where you ended up reloading... There is a good example of this over in the 5CC thread, I think posted by Solo, who didn't quite win the first time, then went back and started from an earlier point and did get the win.

I think this is very interesting to develop discussion about the different strategies used and everyone can learn something. e.g., Our games were pretty similar right up until I swiched to Monarchy; how did you handle the Zulus controlling that strategic resource, I couldn't get any trade out them, etc.

Of course there's always the honesty issue, but nothing can be done about that. If someone's going to cheat, they're going to cheat... But seems to me that people like to try out a few different strategies when they come to a roadblock... "Iroquois keep dragging the Germans into a war against me" or something... The open category lets people experiment in this way while not depriving them of particpation in a tournament.

--mac

[Taxidopolis]

OK, here's a dumb question: How come I can't load the download to play it ? I've tried moving the file to the saved games folder and the scenarios folder but it just doesn't appear as an option to load from within the game. I'm probably missing something simple here so please shout out what it is...thanks.

Erm, it might be a good idea to put some simple instructions re this on the tourney announcement page itself. Simple enough for simple folk such as myself to be able to follow and so join in the fun

Taxi

[Skanky Burns]

You just need to put the .sav file into the civ3/saves directory.
You did unzip the file, didnt you??

Suggestion for the Tournaments:

How about we do a few rounds of "Only one victory type enabled" type games. So people would have to win by spaceship, or by conquest, or whatever victory condition it was for that tourney.

This would allow people to try different styles of play.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Conqueror
For me i havent ever played after conquest or domination as they both demand me to wipe out other civs and i dont want to do that Its much more fun in my opinion without waging huge wars.

This from a person named Conqueror

Sorry, just laughing at the irony of it. No offence intended

[Taxidopolis]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
You just need to put the .sav file into the civ3/saves directory.
You did unzip the file, didnt you??

Thanks Skanky. I hadn't unzipped it into place. Damn war fatigue must be getting to me...

[Kalani]

Okay, now that there seems there might be some consensus on parameters for victory types, rules, etc. (I agree with the two thread, open style that keeps everyone happy--personally I don't have time to master a map, and enjoy dealing with setbacks rather than crafting an ideal world where I always win, but to each his own).

I thought I might post what I think Markos was looking for: ideas for what kind of game setups to have.

One idea is to play on one of the maps of Earth.

Or, since we've just had military time (except for left-out Persia), we could have peace time, using just the non-military civs. There are ten, so it'd be a large map, or you could leave two or three out, say exclude the New Worlders America and Iroquois, or leave out those from the last game: England, China, and Greece. This last would give you India, Iroquois, Egypt, Babylon, Russia, America and France.

Or there could be a european powers game. Or we could experiment with tiny or small maps, or even higher difficulty. Or we could get into custom maps (more work).

I think it could be interesting to try a game on a map that is much harsher than earth, say, make it arid, young, and cool; Pangaea with only 60% ocean--that'd make it sort of like playing on ancient Mars--and the large landmass would be offset by the scarcity of good city terrain.

Just a few ideas of the sort I think Markos was looking for. Maybe this post will generate some more.

Looking forward to the next game (despite claiming I needed a break elsewhere).

What do you all think?