Chele Nica wrote:

Well, I'm definitely outvoted now :)

Not to beat it into the ground, but I just finished a game where I had one of the poorest of board positions, yet I would have come in #2 by virtue of just happening to be in the right place in the winner's elimination queue. He may or may not have had options RE: which order he took us out in (I think he did), but it certainly had very little if nothing at all to do with the quality of my play.

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/454894

Side note, your "Keepers" board looks like a super cool idea.

Xrayjay wrote:

Side note, your "Keepers" board looks like a super cool idea.

Thanks - but I'm thinking that where game-play is concerned it doesn't really make a ton of difference with the standard map. I think it needs a map that's just a bit less choke-pointy and perhaps has smaller continents in general, so while the look of the board in play can change and even look motley, bonuses still kick in.

Bump.. Any progress, O?

Haven't heard from Tom about a dump of game data.  I'm working on a site to let you play with it.  Taking longer than I thought, but I'm making some progress.   Hard to say how long it will take because it depends on if I run into problems, as well as how much time I have.  Could be tonight, could be in two weeks.

turns out my web host as a very old version of python, which is complicating things.  I may have to rewrite some of the TS library, but I'm not sure how much yet.

M57 wrote:

Chele Nica wrote:

Well, I'm definitely outvoted now :)

Not to beat it into the ground, but I just finished a game where I had one of the poorest of board positions, yet I would have come in #2 by virtue of just happening to be in the right place in the winner's elimination queue. He may or may not have had options RE: which order he took us out in (I think he did), but it certainly had very little if nothing at all to do with the quality of my play.

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/454894

Well, since we are beating this discussion to the ground, let me pst a counter-example, a board where the second place finisher (myself) eliminates 6 players, makes a serious mistake, and is beaten by one of the two survivors, who can capitalize on the mistake. I know I messed up in this game, but the 1st place player wins mostly be virtue of just happening to be in the right place at the right time:

 http://www.wargear.net/games/view/456396

Also, I made a mistake, but I also had serious bad luck trying to eliminate #3. If I had been successful in my attack (20 armies attacking 13 armies in 4 territories), this game would have a different winner.

If you wanted to compensate for that then the scoring system could just take your luck stats into consideration.

I'm not sure luck stats would do it, but that's just my perspective, and luck is a fundamental aspect of the game anyhow.

In any case, I don't think there's anything more to the discussion. I was clearly outvoted, but M57 wanted to keep piling arguments against ranking by elimination order, so I was just showing that in my humble opinion his example didn't hold water because a winner (just like 2nd place) can end in the winning position by luck, and quoting M57 as applying to the game I played "certainly had very little if nothing at all to do with the quality of [the winners'] play"

That's one of the reasons I rarely play standard risk. Too much luck for my tastes. Pointing out luck on M57's part might not have been the best argument. The argument that would alter gameplay choices is a better argument.

Another alternative (not proposing this. just for the sake of discussion) would be to score for eliminations as well as winning. That would also alter gameplay quite a bit. But not in quite the same way as ranking by elimination order. Depending on how it was weighted you could even win the game and not get as high of a score as the 2nd place person. What differences do you think that would have in gameplay strategy compared to our existing system and your elimination order system?

Also in your own experience did you ever see people make eliminations knowing they had no chance of winning just to raise their rank or did they not know/care enough about the ranking system to make choices like that?

Hum, I'm not sure how scoring for elimination would alter current strategy. In WGW, eliminating other players is one of the core strategies to win, but in other games, it has comparatively little effect on your winning chances. So, I don't think it would affect WGW or other games with large cards and/or large elimination bonuses, but it could have an effect on maps that rely less on luck. 

In my own experience, most people I played with didn't care about the rankings, except for the 25% or so of players that I played on a pretty regular basis. However, I don't remember them trying to make eliminations just for the sake of being higher ranked than someone else, they generally played to win. The majority of my games were generally 2, 3 or 4 person games, which didn't have many opportunities for eliminations.

Also, I would think that playing to eliminate someone else (on games with less luck or card values) could have the effect of hurting your chances to win or go longer in the game (and hence be higher ranked), since it will become an all out war between you and your target, weakening both of you to the benefit of the rest of the players. 

Chele Nica wrote:

Hum, I'm not sure how scoring for elimination would alter current strategy. In WGW, eliminating other players is one of the core strategies to win, but in other games, it has comparatively little effect on your winning chances. So, I don't think it would affect WGW or other games with large cards and/or large elimination bonuses, but it could have an effect on maps that rely less on luck. 

In my own experience, most people I played with didn't care about the rankings, except for the 25% or so of players that I played on a pretty regular basis. However, I don't remember them trying to make eliminations just for the sake of being higher ranked than someone else, they generally played to win. The majority of my games were generally 2, 3 or 4 person games, which didn't have many opportunities for eliminations.

Also, I would think that playing to eliminate someone else (on games with less luck or card values) could have the effect of hurting your chances to win or go longer in the game (and hence be higher ranked), since it will become an all out war between you and your target, weakening both of you to the benefit of the rest of the players. 

#1 There is a big psychological difference between playing for first and playing for not 3rd.  

#2 Tom already commented on this one.  Point is moot. 

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this issue, but yes, let's close this discussion, it's gone on too long already, and as you said, there is already a decision on the table

Ozyman wrote:

turns out my web host as a very old version of python, which is complicating things.  I may have to rewrite some of the TS library, but I'm not sure how much yet.

I rewrote the parts of the lib to work with older python.

Still not completely done, but I was able to load the library & print a test message.   The interface will look something like this if you want to check it out:

http://prestopnik.com/wargear/WGSkill/

Checkbox for who is in a game, and radio button for the winner.

I just need to parse that page when you hit submit, pass it off to the library and then display the results.  Probably a few more days of work depending on how much time I get to spend on it.

Ozyman wrote:

Ozyman wrote:

turns out my web host as a very old version of python, which is complicating things.  I may have to rewrite some of the TS library, but I'm not sure how much yet.

I rewrote the parts of the lib to work with older python.

Still not completely done, but I was able to load the library & print a test message.   The interface will look something like this if you want to check it out:

http://prestopnik.com/wargear/WGSkill/

Checkbox for who is in a game, and radio button for the winner.

I just need to parse that page when you hit submit, pass it off to the library and then display the results.  Probably a few more days of work depending on how much time I get to spend on it.

Nice!  Thanks for stepping up Ozyman

Got it done finally.  User Interface is still super rough, but I think it's workable:

http://prestopnik.com/wargear/WGSkill/

check mark for those in the game.

radio button for the winner.

you don't have to fill out every row.

check it out and let me know what you think - what do I need to add?

nifty.  

I'm assuming that the games happen in the order they are listed - 1 first then 2 etc...?

ratsy wrote:

nifty.  

I'm assuming that the games happen in the order they are listed - 1 first then 2 etc...?

Yep.

Let me know if anything seems wrong - it's entirely possible there are bugs.  I did not test that much.

Has anyone played with this yet?  I've spent and hour or two with it, and my initial observation is that results vary significantly based on chronology of events.  This could very well be because of small sample sizes, but it's quite easy for a player to win 5 of 10 games (with 4 or 5 players) - sit out 10 or so, and come back and lose just 1 or 2 games to see their ranking tank way below the mean - even though they have won 40% of these games overall.   At least with small sample size - rankings seem to fluctuate pretty wildly, with relatively few losses taking big chunks out of the gains of highly ranked players.

Also, and I'm not sure if this is a glitch, but I'm pretty sure I've been able to create end results where the mean score is well below 1000, with for instance one player having barely over 1000 and the rest of the field well into the mid 900s - this with a number of the players in the field having wins or even multiple wins.  I have also achieve the opposite effect with most all players 'in the black.'  It seems to be all about order.

Summary: It's apparent to me that this needs testing with a much larger data base.