Mega-Dueling Tournament - Rules, Settings, Check List, and Sign Ups

[AreaOfEffect]

Mega-Dueling Tournament

Starting mid-January, I hope to be starting a tournament of 1-on-1 player duels. The details of the tournament are written below. I will be firm on the rules as I have written them.


Game Rules

Sign-ups

1. Players can apply to be in the tournament by posting to this thread. Players are asked to only state their interest, no other preferences (such as desired nation) are to be announced.

2. The final player count is to be a power of two (2, 4, 8...), with 64 being the maximum number of active participants. Any additional players will be reserved as alternates.

Selecting Nations

1. When it is announced that I am accepting nation picks, I will require that each player submit 1 nation and 1 number from 0 to 99 via PM to me, areaofeffect. Nations can be from any age. Mod nations will not be allowed.

2. Anyone who picks a nation nobody else has picked automatically wins that nation and can add it to their list of nations. Any duplicate picks will be settled with a random die roll of 0 to 99, with the player closest to the roll winning that nation.

3. It will be announced which players and nations are not matched so that the selection process can be repeated amongst them.

4. At the end of every round, the victorious player gets to add the defeated player's list of nations to their own. They may choose to begin the next round with any nation on their newly expanded list.

Note: If you have any questions about this method, please first refer to the "reasoning" section further in the reading.

Match-Ups

1. Players will be matched in the order of their readiness.

a. For the first round we will be distributing nations in a series of rounds as discussed above. Those who have a nation but not a game at the end of each round of picks will be paired up based on the order in which they sign-up for the game. Therefore the first ready player who signed up will fight the second ready player who signed up. The third will fight the forth and so on.

b. For following rounds, players will be pair up with awaiting players who have also finished their previous round and won.

Note: If you have any questions about this method, please first refer to the "reasoning" section further in the reading.

Alternates

1. Players who sign-up beyond the current maximum player count will be used as alternates. The alternates will be selected in the order they joined the game.

2. Defeated players will join the list of alternates and be given a higher priority then all previous alternates.


Game Settings

Game Server: llamaserver.net

Number of Starting Provinces: 1
Strength of Independent: 5
Special Site Frequency: 40
Money Multiple: 100
Resource Multiple: 100
Supply Multiple: 100
Random Events are Common
Score Graphs are Enabled
Hall of Fame Entries: 5
Magic Research is Easy
Standard Victory*
Master Password is Disabled
Renaming is Allowed
Cheat Prevention is Active

Mods: CBM 1.6
Maps: TBA

*Changed from my original choice.

Note: If you have any questions about these settings, please first refer to the "reasoning" section further down in the reading.


Checklist

This is a list of things I will need/want to secure before the game starts in mid-January.

* A minimum of 16 players. 31 players so far. (Ideally I want the full 64.)
- One well balanced land-vs-land 2 player map
- One well balanced land-vs-water 2 player map
- One well balanced water-vs-water 2 player map
* A server willing to host the tournament. Use of the llamasever has been confirmed.
- Additional Admin support #1
- Additional Admin support #2

Note: Anyone willing to help with the maps should post a contribution to this thread.

Reasoning

Initial Nation Picks

In the past I've seen people use a method of distributing nations in mega-games that involves the players submitting five initial picks. I've noticed that this method places a big burden on the organizer to satisfy players with limited information.

Many nations are very popular and some players are unfortunate enough to choose popular nations for all five of their picks. The complexity of the affair often means the organizer has to go back to the players for additional information spite them receiving five initial picks. By going back to players after every round of picks, I avoid the redundancy of secondary picks being the same as nations already chosen.

The Expanding List of Nations

Though it may not be clear within the rules, each player will begin round one with one nation available for selection. When a player wins a round, their options for the next round expands to include the nations available to their defeated opponents. They will still only play one nation per round.

This means that a player will have the option of 2 nations in round 2, 4 in round 3, 8 in round 4, and so forth. The objective is to focus the tournament on the skill of the player rather then the strength of a particular nation.

Those nations that didn't get selected for round one will not be an option for the remainder of the tournament as that adds more complexity to the game then I am willing to deal with.

Match-ups

I've decided to pair player's based on the an order of readiness. The point of this is to reduce the lag time between rounds up until the very late rounds which should be full of our most devoted and invested players. The system also has the quirk of semi-randomizing rounds. (Call it a feature.)

It may have the side effect of pairing the highly popular nations against popular ones and the less popular nations against the other less popular ones, for the initial round at least. I consider this a nice balancing feature. In later rounds the pairing will ideally pit the quick winners against each other. This will likely also diminish the number of rush nations after the second round. Another neat little feature.

This is of course all my hopes within an ideal outcome. The only way to see if works is to practice it. All in all, I think its obvious benefits out ways its obvious flaws and fits the with the amount of focus and time I want to put toward such a game.

The Game Settings

The settings are configured to match the default setting of a middle-age game, with some variations. The middle-age is the intermediary age and isn't too radical for early-age and late-age nations to cope with.

Graphs are on so that game organizers can have some means to monitor the progress of games as it proceeds. It will help an intermediary decide on a victor should a game hold up the entire tournament.

The Hall of Fame is set to 5 as it is only a two player game. 10 would just be excessive.

Research is set to easy as it will help balance the game away from rush tactics. Normally the presence of other players will keep rush nations in check. Yet in a 1-on-1 duel, that check goes away. I wouldn't want the tournament to be reduced to who has the better rush tactic/nation.

Standard victory because its a duel after all and matches shouldn't be that long. So the games will all be to the death (or concession). Plus, it seems to be what many player's prefer so far.

Renaming is on due to popular demand.

CBM 1.6 seems to be the standard of today. Last I knew, QM was the most devoted person at making Dominions 3 a balanced multiplayer game. This devotion goes well above those of the developers, who have many other things to worry about. Therefore I will use his mod for this tournament.


Confirmed Players List

01. Frozen Lama . . . . . . 02. Alpine Joe
03. Baalz . . . . . . . . . 04. WraithLord
05. WingedDog . . . . . . . 06. Nihil
07. Cidi. . . . . . . . . . 08. Meglobob
09. Psycho. . . . . . . . . 10. Stretch
11. Ink . . . . . . . . . . 12. chrispedersen
13. Trom. . . . . . . . . . 14. LDiCesare
15. Squirrelloid. . . . . . 16. llamabeast
17. yandav. . . . . . . . . 18. Bananadine
19. Belac . . . . . . . . . 20. Raiel
21. Aethyr. . . . . . . . . 22. thunderbird
23. KIM . . . . . . . . . . 24. slMagnvox
25. Jarkko. . . . . . . . . 26. Apsophos
27. AdmiralZhao . . . . . . 28. Lingchih
29. Swan. . . . . . . . . . 30. Stagger Lee
31. ghoul31 . . . . . . . . 32. Graeme Dice
33. zlefin. . . . . . . . . 34. Kheldron
35. Xanatos . . . . . . . . 36. shard
37. Sir_Dr_D. . . . . . . . 38. Hadrian_II
39. vfb . . . . . . . . . . 40.

Alternates
01. sansanjuan

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Renaming is off cause I don't foresee many micromanagement issues to arise in a small game.

I will never play in any game that has renaming off, as I refuse to have to check every single mage every time I want to forge or cast something or when I'm scripting spells.

[Frozen Lama]

intrest stated. i assume opponents will be chosen randomly

[rdonj]

2. Anyone who picks a nation nobody else has picked automatically wins that nation and can add it to their list of nations. Any duplicate picks will be settled with a random die roll of 0 to 99, with the player closest to the roll winning that nation.

What if the players pick the same number? I suggest adding a +drn -drn roll onto the numbers given in case this happens

[AreaOfEffect]

Originally Posted by Tollund

I will never play in any game that has renaming off, as I refuse to have to check every single mage every time I want to forge or cast something or when I'm scripting spells.

This isn't really the place for me to express this, but players out there really need to be informed about the 'F1' function. Press the damn button and view all of your mages' paths at once. Stop telling the opposition what paths your bringing into battle before the battle starts. [Self censored comments.]

Frozen Lama, thanks for playing. The pairings were going to be in the order people sign on. I could randomize it, but either way some people won't be happy. At least by letting the order be determined by when you signed up, you get some semblance of control, rather then it being pure chance.

rdonj, I planned on rolling an additional roll in situations that led to a tie. Choosing the same number would apply in those circumstances. I will consider the dominions DNR rule.

[Tollund]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

[This isn't really the place for me to express this, but players out there really need to be informed about the 'F1' function.

It's incredibly inconvenient, and forces you to switch between modal screens. It's hardly a replacement for renaming, which is only the easiest way to deal with the UI's lack of refinement.

Press the damn button and view all of your mages paths at once. Stop telling the opposition what paths your bringing into battle before the battle starts. [i][Self censored comments.]

Oh come on. It's trivial to take a look at each mage once you're in battle, and it might give information to your opponent on two or three of your commanders at most.

[Alpine Joe]

I am interested

[vfb]

Originally Posted by Tollund

It's incredibly inconvenient, and forces you to switch between modal screens. It's hardly a replacement for renaming, which is only the easiest way to deal with the UI's lack of refinement.

Oh come on. It's trivial to take a look at each mage once you're in battle, and it might give information to your opponent on two or three of your commanders at most.

You just have to get into the habit of renaming your most experienced indy commander "D7BoneGrind" or "S9MasterEnslave". Yay! Your foes will flee in terror, frightened by your awesome name.

[Baalz]

I'll play.

[WingedDog]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Victory By Provinces (70%)

As far as I understand, a duel map has 30-40 provinces, so 70% of territory is 21 - 28 provinces, which is not that big advantage and could be siply gained via mass cloud trapezed thugs in one turn.

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

It is extremely unlikely that a player owning 70% of the map can be defeated.

It happends and pretty often.

It's a small map, why don't just fight to the death.

Another important game condition is missed:
Is it a blitz or PbEM?