The (6 Player) League

[negoeien]

iceland, chained please

[inonzuk]

I want to play with Adjacent setting, on the "Classic Art" map.

Thanks

[Bones2484]

Will reserve with USA chained please!

(unless, of course, there is still room)

[Sun Tzup]

Arms race, adjascent

[Lindax]

Arms race, adjascent

Ain't on the list, and for a reason

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[Incandenza]

Hey BA, you have my map down as Centerscape, it's s'posed to be Middle East.

[BaldAdonis]

Hey BA, you have my map down as Centerscape, it's s'posed to be Middle East.

Oops. I'd been copying them to my inbox as they came in, looks like I wrote Middle Earth for you. That's fixed now.

Will reserve with USA chained please!
(unless, of course, there is still room)

I've been holding a spot for White Moose, who wanted to join the group which inspired this tournament. He's away right now, and word is he will be back "soon".

[JoJo123]

I'm in. South America, chained.

[Blitzaholic]

is this round robin?

or is there points for how you place?

how do you determine the winner?

[Blitzaholic]

Hey BA, you have my map down as Centerscape, it's s'posed to be Middle East.

I got centerscape, he got us confused

[Lindax]

Why is it full Baldy? Are you accepting more players in the future? With a league the amount of players doesn't really matter, does it? In other words: what's the plan if more players would like to join?

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[BaldAdonis]

I had to put (FULL) in the title for the mods to give me privileges to create games (at least, that's my understand: they won't move it to ongoing unless it says full, and they won't give rights to make games unless it's in ongoing).

I'd like to accept more players as we go along, although I haven't settled on an introduction method yet (feedback would be helpful). I plan on reintroducing a (permanent) thread in Create/Join or in Callouts (where you can all post about your great experiences to encourage more players).
[spoiler=Possible methods of introduction]

• Anyone who just wants to play (and possibly learn escalating games that way) can start from the bottom and work up. Then relegate the lowest finishers in the bottom tier. This would be easy to implement. Removing players each round can be determined by the number of applicants. But good players would have to wait a while to play the best in the league, and bottom tier players would face stronger competition than appropriate.
• if players think they are good enough to start above the third tier, then they can play as replacement players for anyone who drops out mid way through a season. Then if they are good enough, they should stay in contention, otherwise they'll lose enough to drop down. This solves the problem of having more than 48 players at a time, but it also means I can't get rid of players who just lose all the time and spoil games for everyone else.
• New players can challenge players who would have been promoted to a series of matches. This way I can introduce new players to the league, and demote players in the bottom out of it, but it also means that after playing for 3 months and beating everyone else to earn a promotion, a player may find she gets some bad luck, loses the series and is stuck where she started.
• I can attempt to gauge the skill of a player, and when someone new signs up, I'll relegate an extra person from each tier at or below where I would place them. This might be annoying to players in the middle of the middle tier, because a large number of new players would mean they would be relegated, even though they didn't play particularly poorly.
• I can increase the size of each division, and place players where they would be suited. This means I'd have to alter the schedule, and you would then face some opponents more often than others.

[/spoiler]

[Lindax]

Ok, some thoughts:

You are going to work with divisions, I assume based on current rank. Say you have 6 divisions with 6 players each, for example: division A consists of 6 Colonels. Can you not have division A1 with the players now in and open up division A2 for new Colonels and above who join? Then when you have another 6 they play their own division and after an x amount of time you promote the top 1 or 2 to division A1 and demote the bottom 1 or 2 players of A1 to A2. The top 1 or 2 players of division B1 would then change places with the bottom 1 or 2 players of division A2 (if it exists, otherwise they change places with the bottom players of A1).

Also, if you have, for example, 3 players waiting for A2 to fill, they could replace players that drop out of A1 if that would occur.

I don't know if this fits in your current plans, but maybe it helps

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[BaldAdonis]

Right now I have two divisions at each level. That way they can swap players mid-season if everyone is getting bored with playing the same groups. I could, of course, introduce more divisions at each level, but that would mean waiting for 8 suitable players to sign up (I might as well try to take down 18 armies with 4).

[Lindax]

Right now I have two divisions at each level. That way they can swap players mid-season if everyone is getting bored with playing the same groups. I could, of course, introduce more divisions at each level, but that would mean waiting for 8 suitable players to sign up (I might as well try to take down 18 armies with 4).

I think once this gets going you'll get a lot more people that want in. I still don't see many regular escalating players here!

Btw, I'll be happy to help you with the organization etc., if you need a hand

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[ahunda]

I had a short PM exchange with BaldAdonis a few days ago and wanna give some input here too, for the public discussion:

First of all, I´m glad to see this thing started, and I think, the details of set-up & rules could be changed, as we go along and see how it all works out.

Right now, my 2 main concerns are:

a) The small groups: Playing the same 7 people in 42 games could become rather tiresome. Even with swapping 4 players mid-way, it would still be a lot of games with the same players.

I think, I´d prefer bigger groups and a model like this:

I could set it up so you'd play, say 15 other people, 10 times each, in various combinations (for a total of 30 games)

b) How to introduce new players to the league. I think, we all agree, that it will be difficult to get higher ranked players to join later, if they have to start in the bottom league/division.

So here is an idea for a relegation system:

Let´s say we have 3 leagues/divisions with 16 players each, sorted by rank. And we have a waiting list for new players (in Callouts or Create/Join). At the end of the season:

- the 8 top ranked players in league 1 will be set to play in league 1 next season again.
- the 4 bottom ranked players in league 1 will be demoted to league 2 and will be replaced by the top 4 players of league 2.
- the 4 players ranked 9-12 in league 1 have to play relegation games against players from the waiting list (and maybe the players ranked 5-6 in league 2).

This is just an idea, not really worked out. I realise, there are quite a few open questions and problems, e.g.:

- How to determine which players from the waiting list qualify for relegation games ? We (or rather BaldAdonis as the organiser) would need to strike a balance between waiting time and rank there, that will be hard to define as a clear rule.
- What happens with the losers of the relegation games ? Set for the next lower league/division ? Those from the waiting list back to the list to wait for their next shot ?
- How will this affect the next lower league/division ? Just demote more players there to make room for the new ones ?

Well. Just throwing this out there ...

[BaldAdonis]

a) The small groups: Playing the same 7 people in 42 games could become rather tiresome. Even with swapping 4 players mid-way, it would still be a lot of games with the same players.

I think, I´d prefer bigger groups and a model like this:

I could set it up so you'd play, say 15 other people, 10 times each, in various combinations (for a total of 30 games)

It might be more interesting than you expect. There are a variety of maps (at least 6 in each division), so it's not as though you will just be repeating the same game 40 times. I think it might be worst for players on the lowest tier (because one player could decide to hold a grudge early on and ruin all later games). That probably isn't specific to the least experienced players (as anyone who has played ScottLand will attest) but I think it's more likely that they will stop trying to win games.

Well. Just throwing this out there ...

With any sort of relegation series, I'd prefer to have as many games as possible, while still keeping it to 3 at a time (to accommodate any players without premium and to maintain a reasonable gameload). So any series would put the next season on hold for about 2 weeks. I like the idea of possibly relegating some of the lower half players, but the mechanics have to be worked out.

I've got a system for ranking players (which is how I set up the divisions) that I can apply to any new applicants. Then I can just slot them in where they would fit, according to everyone's initial stats. Then I'll just relegate more people from each division, and kick out players at the bottom. I assume anyone at the bottom would be sick of playing by then anyways, and if they aren't, I'd have no problems with increasing the size of the bottom divisions (using the above mentioned schedule system), or creating a new tier.

Divisions are up now. They were decided by proficiency on our desired settings (6 player escalating, chained/adjacent, standard/terminator, those 22 maps and classic shapes). Players with no wins are in the third tier, along with one player with a single win out of three games. Players with fewer than 25 games or less than 16% wins make up the second tier (along with 3 others based on average rank of opponents). You can expect games tomorrow.

[FarangDemon]

please include me if it's not too late

chained Iberia

[ahunda]

I didn´t mean to complain. Just give some input. Glad to see this started and looking forward to a challenging series of games.

This being my first big tournament, how is it supposed to work ? Are we supposed to report results of our games here in the thread ? Via PMs ? Or do you just check the games yourself ?

[Lindax]

Wow, I don't have to play Blitz! Maybe I can finally win a game....

[Blobby]

Please add me if you can, Canada, chained

[BaldAdonis]

I didn´t mean to complain. Just give some input. Glad to see this started and looking forward to a challenging series of games.

This being my first big tournament, how is it supposed to work ? Are we supposed to report results of our games here in the thread ? Via PMs ? Or do you just check the games yourself ?

I didn't think anyone was complaining, just working things out. I'm going to have to make some changes along the way, and I'd rather have an open discussion than try to figure everything out in my head.

You can post your results if you'd like (bragging is encouraged so players will know who they need to kill), but I'll be checking the games periodically, so it isn't necessary.

[ahunda]

I was expecting 3 new games this weekend, but now I just re-read this:

keeping it to 3 at a time (to accommodate any players without premium and to maintain a reasonable gameload

Are you planning to wait until the complete first set of games is finished, before starting new ones ?

In this case, I´m afraid, this tournament is going to take forever ...

How about making this a Premium tournament and just starting a new set of games every weekend ?

With an average 10-14 days for a 6-player Escalating game (and an occasional game taking longer), game-load should be around 6 games at any given time then.

[Phlaim]

No, please. Three games is a lot to me. And is this "tournament" really going to end sometime? I thought it was never-ending.

[Incandenza]

6 top-level escalating games is about my limit, and the 3 original games I'm in are quite a ways from completion, so I'd be obliged if we could halt new game creation until we've got some games in the books.