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Topic: Suggestions/Poll for the next tournament

king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-01-22, 23:03

I will host another tournament in a couple months, and I want to ask your opinions on it.

Not because I expect that a lot of you will comment or give useful insight, but because that way if someone will complain during the tournament I will point him there and say "if you don't like this and that why didn't you say it in the proper thread when it was the time?" So, if you want to keep your right of complaining, you should definitely answer here face-smile.png

format will still be the swiss system, with maybe some minor modifications from the one I used for the 2016 tournament, unless there is a small number of participants, in which case round robin (i.e. everybody plays against everybody else) works better. I don't think there's any question on that.

The ideas I want to ask your opinions about are

  • We've seen from the 2015 tournament that 2v2 is largely unfeasible with people from different time zones.on the other hand, if everyone comes from the same time zone, it is perfectly doable. So I was thinking to host a 2v2 tournament, but restricted only to players from european time zone, or who can be online during european evenings (say, an east american student who is free in the early afternoon, or a russian with a bad case of insomnia)

  • One complain by some was the lack of large maps. Large maps take a lot of time to play, and time is at a premium. I thought that this can be gotten around, by allowing one month to play instead of the canonical two weeks, so that players can be expected to start the game one evening and continue on another. On the other hand, one month for a single turn can be a lot of time. What do you think of this feature? I'd do one or two turns with it.

  • suggested maps: is there some map you particularly liked? some you particularly disliked? I think fjords was well received, so I'd keep it. Aside from that, I really have no ideas but to use some of the canonical maps that weren't used this time. If the "long turn" feature is appreciated, I'd propose for it twin lagoons, calvisson, dolomites (yeah, I keep shipping my maps),maybe desert tournament. If we do 2v2, I don't really know; desert tournament and four kings were good maps, calvisson and dolomites can still be used for 2v2, and I'd have to give a good look to more

  • tie break: I like the chance, in case of a tie for top place, to have the stronger players fight another round. it produces some beautiful games. On the down side, though, somebody said it was anticlimatic. what do you think? shall we have a second phase in case of tie, or should we use the buchholz system to declare the winner?

  • any other comment.


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auktionadmin
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 02:13

2v2 tournament is a good idea if there is the same time zone. We are enough to play a little European tournament in teams, I think.

In the 2016 tournament I missed the tenor to find bugs and I don't know that somebody did watch parallely at the map editor during the the game window is open or did study extremly the map before. I realized that some players gave up quickly and I think they didn't do that because of time (they joined the tournament and knew the time intervals). Because not every player can read the English language well I suggest a simple declaration for the few or new players who want participate.

I also suggest a very simple map voting (with very good description) for these players who don't know the maps and don't have the time to study them.


My map WideGreen:
https://www.widelands.org/maps/widegreen/

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SirVer

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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 07:41

On the down side, though, somebody said it was anticlimatic.

I did not mean the final rounds specifically, but the swiss style tournament in general. I think it the format produces very good games from very early and the games have been entertaining throughout the tournament. but since there is no bracket, it feels like any single game is not as important and there is no clear 'path' for a player to proceed through the tournament. There is no concept of quarter, semi and finals and it is just not as climatic for this reason. I understand now why soccer tournaments do not use it.

I still think the swiss tournament style is a great choice for Widelands! The ups beat the downs as far as I am concerned.

As for suggestions:

  • I really like the other win conditions. I'd love to have Autocrat being less played in future tournaments.

  • I always thought a 2v2 with shared control would be interesting: i.e. two players decide on a tribe to play, then we use a 4 player map, but configure the game so that on the blue and the yellow spot are blue headquarters. Eventually those players meet with their economies. This increases interaction, because the players need to divvy up the tasks in the economy somehow.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 08:49

I really liked the Swiss system too, because I'm not a good player and it allowed to play me more than 2 games.


Busy indexing nil values

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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 09:22

SirVer wrote:

  • I always thought a 2v2 with shared control would be interesting: i.e. two players decide on a tribe to play, then we use a 4 player map, but configure the game so that on the blue and the yellow spot are blue headquarters. Eventually those players meet with their economies. This increases interaction, because the players need to divvy up the tasks in the economy somehow.

This would be great but a decision for one tribe may be difficult. Isn't it feasible to have one border for a team with different tribes? Yesterday WorldSavior blocked his Teammate (king_of_knowhere) to build a road, because WorldSavior's border prevented it.

auktionadmin wrote:

In the 2016 tournament I missed the tenor to find bugs

One bug was found, and i think if a bug is encountered, it will be reported.

and I don't know that somebody did watch parallely at the map editor during the the game window is open or did study extremly the map before.

While i would love to see the tournament playing on 'secret' maps, maps that nobody knows, it is difficult to make such maps. Couldn't find the related posts where this was discussed some time ago. With official maps every Player has the chance to study the map before the tournament, so the conditions are equal to every player.


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

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auktionadmin
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 12:57

kaputtnik wrote:

One bug was found, and i think if a bug is encountered, it will be reported.

I added that tenor in context with the extremly attitude to win the challenge. i think some players didn't want play a challenge where the tenor to win is higher than the tenor to play with new players or to find bugs. As I said: I think some players didn't have time or didn't want study extremly the maps before. I think 'secret' maps aren't a good solution but rather the main tenor should not be mainly to win and to scare off new or interested players.

I think interested and already joined players shouldn't loose interest during the tournament. Ok they found the tournament thread for joining but did they find the Suggestions/Poll for the next tournament to vote for maps? That's why I suggested a more simple voting, I suggest the voting with graphical chart in the same thread where the joining is.

kaputtnik wrote:

While i would love to see the tournament playing on 'secret' maps, maps that nobody knows, it is difficult to make such maps. Couldn't find the related posts where this was discussed some time ago. With official maps every Player has the chance to study the map before the tournament, so the conditions are equal to every player.

You are right I think official maps are the best for new and interested players because they probably know the maps. You can't forbid to open a second window with a map editor while the game window is open because nobody can control the other players. But if every particpant engage to vote and discuss for 'their' maps they won't loose interest. The declaration of the rules was too long for players who can't read the English language good enough, I didn't find the discussion about the tournament maps in time and I wish there will be a better discussion about the tournament maps with all players who really have interest.

I also prefer a system which allows more rounds. Autocrat is my favorite end condition. And I love big maps with big building ground.

But I really suggest that there will be a final voting in the final announcement thread.


My map WideGreen:
https://www.widelands.org/maps/widegreen/

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 13:01

SirVer wrote:

On the down side, though, somebody said it was anticlimatic.

I did not mean the final rounds specifically, but the swiss style tournament in general. I think it the format produces very good games from very early and the games have been entertaining throughout the tournament. but since there is no bracket, it feels like any single game is not as important and there is no clear 'path' for a player to proceed through the tournament. There is no concept of quarter, semi and finals and it is just not as climatic for this reason. I understand now why soccer tournaments do not use it.

oh, i see, it is less spectacular. elimination is spectacular, but it does not bode well with fairness or competitive gameplay. that's why soccer tournaments are elimination, because they are shows made for the publlic; and the winner is very rarely the team that was actually stronger. in chess, where there is not much show business - and what little is there cares for high level competitive games, not for spectacularization - to assign the world championship they made a 12-games match.


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einstein13
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 14:28

Swiss-system

This is good for not experienced players to have a chance to play more than one time (they can play even 5 or 6 times). So it is good.
Bad thing about that are long times for playing. The tournament can't last forever. This one is on finish after 3-4 months.

Probably best solution is about playing both swiss-system and double-elimination tournaments. Maybe one swiss-system, then double-elimination, then swiss-system, and so on.

but since there is no bracket, it feels like any single game is not as important and there is no clear 'path' for a player to proceed through the tournament

Another thing is about inventing a bracket for swiss-system tournament. The system is not very clear for laymen (I spent several minutes to get the point and calculating for the first time) and it should be cleared for people who can't speak English very well and don't understand math on more abstract way. King, you tried to do so and you did well, but not well enough. Maybe some wiki pages about tournament systems here?

Big maps

I like to play on big maps and I can say some words about that: not every big map means long game. Let's get Ice Wars as an example. You can have quite close starting positions (reaching the enemy is in short time) and on players skills depends the result of the first clash. If players are with different level, then the game will end quickly. One of them crushes the second one. If players are equal power, then the game will last for a long time.

But as you think, most of big maps means long time of playing.

I looked on "big maps package" on my site and try to find best fits for the tournament. And there were several answers:

  • Ice wars - close starting positions, very good for middle-tournament games OR the tie games (last part of the tournament)
  • Clavission - was played before, can be replayed (one of the best big maps in Widelands)
  • Colonies - my personal choice, it usually means very long play (> 12 hours) or very short one (< 2 hours). You start on a small island in the centre and try to escape by the sea. It is hard to play this map for not experienced players. But can be used as teams (2 vs. 2) or the one vs. everybody (1 vs. 1 vs. 1 vs. 1). This map should be picked wisely (for sure not for main tournament games).
  • Last Survivors - big map and equal positions. Plenty of room. Good choice for main tournament games.
  • The Nile 2 rc1 - official map + we can use any positions (+ teams!) and any win conditions. Previous version of the map was used in the tournament before.
  • Trident of Fire - most of the players know the map. Very good to play for a long time, but it means long time. Maybe limited time win condition? Wood gnome or Collectors?

When to play big maps

For sure not at the beginning of the tournament! Random players position means huge differences between them. If we allow to play strong vs. weak one, there will be no fun. Two week players and two strong players will have fun of that games. So I suggest to play big maps only at the end of the tournament (last rounds).

How many big maps

If we allow to play one big map in the tournament, the winner don't have to understand big economies. He/she can make some mistakes, but still be strong enough to win one fight or cause a tie and finally win the tournament. Allowing two big maps in the tournament will force the winner to be able playing on big maps as good as on small ones. It will make the game more exciting. Three big maps in current tournament will affect that people will be bored because of them. (half of the games will last for 28 days?) So two games will be enough for the tournament.

Last phase: tie

As we got in this tournament, we had a tie of 4 players reaching 4 points. It caused some complains about the amount of the games that should be played more. I understand that, but probably solving the tournament by one last game can be problematic: from one point of view, one clash of 4 people should solve the situation, but it allows the politics to be more important than the real skills. We can solve the situation by using "the last arbiter"* position: he/she will decide if the game was real "one against each other" or "1 vs. 3". But if we want to give players freedom, we can allow politics there. What do you think? Should be the second phase one game or more games to get the winner?

*- this position can be more than one person here: we can use more opinions about the game.


einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
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auktionadmin
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 14:59

einstein13 wrote:

  • The Nile 2 rc1 - official map + we can use any positions (+ teams!) and any win conditions. Previous version of the map was used in the tournament before.

WorldSavior and me played The Nile - official map - the day befor yesterday two times against six random AI players with Trading Outpost and the game crashed two times after a while. I have played it alone yesterday against three AI players with Trading Outpost and nothing crashed yet. But I don't know what happened if there are too many movement in this big map through tournaments. I like big maps like The Nile.

But I hate small maps sith bad build condition like fjords.

Perhaps we can make different tournaments in the future, with bigger maps and with snaller maps. So I can participate the one with bigger maps.

Edited: 2017-01-23, 15:00

My map WideGreen:
https://www.widelands.org/maps/widegreen/

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-01-23, 16:17

ok, so two big maps seem reasonable. ideally it could be 6 turns, two big maps (long games), two small maps, two nonstandard win conditions (regardless of map size, those are limited to 4 hours), for a total estimated time of 4 months. the tie break turned out to be especially long this tournament because there were 4 people with equal score, but that required some coincidences. most likely it would be 1 or 2 games.


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