Tournament Proposal

[DrPraetorious]

Okay - somebody has spied on solo's nation selections, since I've downloaded the attachment twice and it has been downloaded a total of four times. Is there any way to find out who it was?

[Twan]

I tend to agree with Frank (even if I don't think there will be preformed teams of cheaters for a little tournament in this small community, it's always possible). Anyway diplomacy and trade are a part of normal mp games, and if the tournament want to measure somehow the skill for mp games they should be in.

The only problem possible is : already qualified players helping one of their former allies in the next qualification match (ie : someone win in EA with the support of another player then help him in MA). If the number of players is sufficient this can be avoided by making sure the same players never replay together before playoffs ; if the number is not sufficient it's harder to avoid (except if matchs are played one after another and the winner don't replay before playoff or if only the final total number of vp count for qualification).

[Meglobob]

DrPraetorious said:
Okay - somebody has spied on solo's nation selections, since I've downloaded the attachment twice and it has been downloaded a total of four times. Is there any way to find out who it was?

I clicked on the attachment, I did not know you were'nt supposed too, not read through the entire thread. It does not matter, as I will not be able to join any tournament games, not enough free time, in too many MP's at the mo. Good idea thou.

[DrPraetorious]

Oh, okay. False alarm, then.

[solo]

DrPraetorious said:
Okay - somebody has spied on solo's nation selections, since I've downloaded the attachment twice and it has been downloaded a total of four times. Is there any way to find out who it was?

It doesn't matter to me if anyone sees my choices.

I also agree with Frank Trollman about allowing diplomacy.

As for possible cheating, I've noticed in other MP games that I play, that sooner or later cheaters slip up and are identified. After that they are shunned by the playing community, a well earned reward.

[Gandalf Parker]

The only way to check such things would be if it was offered for download someplace that you have log file access. Such as putting it on a personal webpage or off of a server like mine.

Also, keep in mind, especially with a pbem game that some people like to play from multiple machines so they might download it to their desktop, and to their machine at work, and to their laptop.

[Tyrant]

Twan said:
The only problem possible is : already qualified players helping one of their former allies in the next qualification match (ie : someone win in EA with the support of another player then help him in MA).

This was the issue that motivated my original comment. It seems like this would be a fairly easy thing to spot if someone did it, but what could be done? No way to prove it really, and what would the correction be anyway? As Twan said, the Dom community is a generally sporting bunch ('cept for the pathetic scumbag Norfleet) and i expect it'll be ok as long as this is either explicitly allowed or outlawed.

One other thought on organization, since this intended to be competitive ,it might be better to host on a fixed time schedule (ie M,T,W at 8 pm) to aviod stale turns. I'm pretty sure i've never played a long net game without a stale turn, and it usually happens because i didn't notice a game QH'ed unusually quickly. ( i sure miss God's Eye).

Will you allow players to join one qualifiing game instead of the full three? I'd like to play, but i'm over commited on the Dom3 already.(OT- the juiced economy in your Orania game was a bad plan, i don't finish turns anymore, i just stop) I suppose i could join all three, concentrate on whichever one went best and tank the other two, but that seems a bit cheesy.

And finally, thanks for both doing this and for all your hosting Dr P!

[Ironhawk]

DrPraetorious said:
Okay - in the playoff round, random events will remain common, but each player will begin with 3 provinces. That seems like it would buffer bad events somewhat but still allow SC pretenders their place (which is the problem with multi-province starts.)

This setup favors using Misfortune as a point mine. If I know that there is only a 33% chance of my capital getting hit by a bad event in the first few turns, instead of a 100% chance, then I will be much more likely to use Misfortune. After all, once your empire expands beyond say 10 provs, misfortune isnt nearly as crippling as it should be, anymore.

I understand that the intent here is to protect regular, non-misfortune players from a crippling event. But the side effect is that it very much favors misfortune abuse.

[Dragonlord]

I agree that diplomacy is important, to me it was often the most fun part of online MP strategy games, but the ones I was in we tended to roleplay all our diplomatic exchanges over email. Is that ever done with dom3?

Also, I have been thinking about favorite nations but do not have that much preference because so far in singleplayer I have only ever used 4 different nations. Why is it supposed to be secret anyway, what your prefs are?

[llamabeast]

I think that diplomacy's one of the most fun parts of MP as well, but if you decided that a tournament should be based strictly on how well players fight and exclude the diplomacy part of the skill, that doesn't seem unreasonable to me either. It might be an interesting change to have no diplomacy options (personally I tend to rather rely on it).

I don't think you need to worry about cheating though. It seems to me that this community is exceptionally fair and mature. If a couple of new people come along with a cheating attitude, they probably won't be as good as the experienced players anyway, and frankly I don't think anyone would try to cheat in the first place. I think just trusting people creates a much nicer atmosphere.