AGEOD Forums

I've been playing Diplomacy for years and currently the Diplomacy world Cup is on (actually hosted by France). This has been 18months in the playing and is now up to the finals. It is exceptionally well organised with a great website.
Anyway the point I'm getting at is the worldwide Diplomacy community have a fairly reasonanle database on player rankings and historical player data. Some going back to the 70's !

Now for starters AACW is 2 not 7 players and doesn't have a referee/GM. But that can be discussed later.

Daxil has already started a world comp. I advocate let's not watse the results but form an even open broader ranking system/record.

I was wondering what the AACW community interest would be about forming a player ranking/database based on PBEM games?

Of course there are obvious problems (which I am sure are all solvable, not least who will keep the records).

The scoring system would also be for discussion.

However for now I am just interested who is interested in the principle of the idea.

From my perspective I think it would be nice if after a 6 week PBEM game instead of a simple cyber shaking of hands with your opponent, you could see yourself climb 2 points up the ladder or whatever.

Also it would provide us with a ready reckoner of how frequently people are playing and whose advice is experienced in the real PBEM world.

I also think such a system would help AGEOD's development team enormously.

So over to VOX Populari !

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Diplomacy, I suppose you are referring to Avalon Hill's Diplomacy, is a great game because of its rules semplicity. I often played it with novices that became confident with game rules after some first match turns! It's the ideal game to spend a good evening with friends!
We have to admit AGEod games are a bit more complex.
Diplomacy is then a mix of chess and pocker styles games: pieces to move on the board, secret or open agreements and many bluffs!
NOTICE, no random, dice rolls factors influencing the game.

Anyway Captain idea of a stable, ruled competitions opened to all AGEod engine game users is good!
+1
.... My only regret is few time for playing!

Gray_Lensman's observation is right: we have to point out a tally scale matching AGEod games peculiarities at best.... NM, VPs, turns played to achieve a victory.
It's impostant to keep mind AGEod games are historically sim games: most scenarios are unbalanced in favour of a side.
In Diplomacy players start basically with same forces, same chances to win: only Russian player having a 1 unit advantage!

The problem of a definitive , stable version game for a long term competition will never been resolved!
+1 to Gray_Lensman for pointing out that!
+10 to Gray_Lensman for all his efforts behind AACW improvements: the main reason why we'll never have a stable reference version!

I suggest Captain to go after the "over to VOX Populari", (indeed Vox Populi in latin) possibly by a poll, may be at General Discussions page, beeing a subjetcs of interest for all AGeod engine games players.

Grey Lensman makes a very important point that the victory conditions are still being worked out. However, you can still compile a database of players and come up with a system to determine their relative strength. One past effort in this regard was the AREA system, maintained by Avalon Hill of sainted memory . Players were rated on the basis of reports they sent in of games, with nearly as many points given for each playing, win or loss, as for a win. You got more points for playing against a stronger opponent, and a stronger player gained less by beating up on a newbie. A player who went up against a very much stronger opponent might even gain points by losing (though many more if he won). It was based on the well-known chess federation rating system, but with more emphasis on games completed. I liked it, though one drawback was that some people were unwilling to play "rated" games.

To make it work, it needs to be cross-platform, broadly subscribed, used to seed people in most or all tournaments, and give some sort of benefits if only maybe a bit of product for the overall winner each year and the person with the most rated games. It would need one or more corporate sponsors and a staff of dedicated volunteers to keep the records and proselytize tirelessly.

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Gray_Lensman wrote:If it's based on VPs and NM, I'm not interested, primarily due to the fact that being privy to probable future work I and others may be doing, the VPs and NMs could easily be undergoing changes rendering data collected before and after the changes basically incompatible. A system like you're talking about needs to be for a game that is no longer evolving. For the time being AACW is still an evolving game with changes being made on a relatively frequent basis. Now if your system is a simple Win/Loss comparison system, it might be more interesting to me.

Gray,

I think by its nature the system would 'need' to be simple. VPs and NM could still be kept simply for historical data but I think a basic points for win/loss would be the most effective.

The evolution of AACW I see as irrelevant. There will always be winners and always losers. Changes have nothing to do with results, patches, changed NMs whatever. I think all players already accept this.

jastaV wrote:Diplomacy, I suppose you are referring to Avalon Hill's Diplomacy, is a great game because of its rules semplicity. I often played it with novices that became confident with game rules after some first match turns! It's the ideal game to spend a good evening with friends!
We have to admit AGEod games are a bit more complex.
Diplomacy is then a mix of chess and pocker styles games: pieces to move on the board, secret or open agreements and many bluffs!
NOTICE, no random, dice rolls factors influencing the game.

Anyway Captain idea of a stable, ruled competitions opened to all AGEod engine game users is good!
+1
.... My only regret is few time for playing!

Gray_Lensman's observation is right: we have to point out a tally scale matching AGEod games peculiarities at best.... NM, VPs, turns played to achieve a victory.
It's impostant to keep mind AGEod games are historically sim games: most scenarios are unbalanced in favour of a side.
In Diplomacy players start basically with same forces, same chances to win: only Russian player having a 1 unit advantage!

The problem of a definitive , stable version game for a long term competition will never been resolved!
+1 to Gray_Lensman for pointing out that!
+10 to Gray_Lensman for all his efforts behind AACW improvements: the main reason why we'll never have a stable reference version!

I suggest Captain to go after the "over to VOX Populari", (indeed Vox Populi in latin) possibly by a poll, may be at General Discussions page, beeing a subjetcs of interest for all AGeod engine games players.

Diplomacy has managed its players base with a myriad of variants in the hundreds. From Ancient period to future and multiple maps. Yes the basic rules are easier. Point is it also has multiple variants, all of which is irrelevant to player record keeping.
Balance doesn't matter (otherwise why would anyone play the south ;-)
Obviously NMs and VPs would be part of the 'player' calculation for victory and of possible historical interest. However the essence would be simply winners and losers ( or even frequent participants).

As for my Latin Jasta, "Beware the Ides of March "

TheDoctorKing wrote:Grey Lensman makes a very important point that the victory conditions are still being worked out. However, you can still compile a database of players and come up with a system to determine their relative strength. One past effort in this regard was the AREA system, maintained by Avalon Hill of sainted memory . Players were rated on the basis of reports they sent in of games, with nearly as many points given for each playing, win or loss, as for a win. You got more points for playing against a stronger opponent, and a stronger player gained less by beating up on a newbie. A player who went up against a very much stronger opponent might even gain points by losing (though many more if he won). It was based on the well-known chess federation rating system, but with more emphasis on games completed. I liked it, though one drawback was that some people were unwilling to play "rated" games.

To make it work, it needs to be cross-platform, broadly subscribed, used to seed people in most or all tournaments, and give some sort of benefits if only maybe a bit of product for the overall winner each year and the person with the most rated games. It would need one or more corporate sponsors and a staff of dedicated volunteers to keep the records and proselytize tirelessly.

Dr King,

Thanks for the constructive input.
Yes I remember AH's AREA system. Of course it had its faults but it was on the right track and better than nothing.As I recall that system was based on lots of different games and didn't even compare same game wins ?
Point is it was broad brush (maybe a little too broad?)
If AH and Diplomacy can do it and they don't have half the technical and maths boffins AACW has, surely we can come up with something?

But I do like your ideas.

I know the Dip records are currently being updated worldwide and various independent national results are being complied into a central international database. So old records are of particular interest to the community.

AACW being relatively new if it implemented such a system would be in the enviable situation of having records back to almost the release of the game.

Gray_Lensman wrote:Now that I'm pretty much done with the RR work, I have shifted my attention to event fixes for now, (Kentucky in particular) and hopefully AI priorities. It's this last item, which hasn't been started yet that I anticipate will most likely result in changes in VPs/locations and possibly associated NM points.

So, when You'll have done with fixes, You'll start considering improvements and variants, getting trapped in a endless process postponing undefinitely the Definitive AACW version.
Know that because I'll living it with NCP: although I sought with interst to new scenarios to go after, I cannot leave the few ones I worked... there's always something to improve or a new idea to try!
That's of couse is positive for game life, keeping high users interest, but it's a no escape circuite for modders/editors.

I'll look with interst to the way you could re-work "Kentucky events"!

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