Tournaments Creation Guide

To create a tournament, log in to your CGE account, navigate to Tournaments section, click the My Tournaments tab and click the Create tournament button.

Creation Overview

Basic Settings

Here you fill in the basic information about your tournament such as its name, description, visibility, and rules.

Advanced Settings

In this section, you can set more detailed settings such as number of players and game counts.

Players Page

On this page, you can manage players in your tournament, send invitations and manage join requests.

Seeding Page

This is where you can review how players were assigned to specific groups or assign them to the groups manually. You can access this page only when you have multiple stages or multiple groups in your tournament.

Sessions Page

Here you can launch your prepared games either all at once or split them into batches and launch them separately.

Creation Steps

1. Basic Settings

Name

Set the name of your tournament. Please, keep in mind that the name is visible to all players invited to the tournament. In the case of public tournaments, the name is visible to everyone.

Moderators

Moderators have the same rights as tournament creators, which means they can start games, approve players, send invitations, edit the description, etc.
Assign moderators in case you would like to have multiple people managing your tournament.
You can assign the moderators by filling in the logins and separate them by a comma:
player1, player2, player3

You can leave this field blank if you want to manage the tournament only by yourself.

Visibility

You can set visibility of the tournament to either public or private. Visibility settings affect whether players can see the tournament on the main page or they need to be invited by moderators.

Public -- Any player can see and join the tournament. Anyone can view its details and results.
Private -- Tournament is visible only for players who are invited or who accepted an invitation link.

Please note that the creation of public tournaments is limited to players with allowance granted by CGE. If you want to host a public tournament get in touch with us at tournaments@czechgames.com

Rules

Here you can pick a selection of rules for tournament games. This goes down to your preference. Some events in the game might evaluate differently in the combination with the specific rules. When deciding this, please think about your preferred game speed.

Digital - Rules optimized to speed up asynchronous online games. Some events are evaluated at the start of each player's turn instead of immediately. Colonization auctions are resolved in one simultaneous round.
Tabletop - Original tabletop rules. Works well for live games, but it may slow down asynchronous games significantly, especially during some events and colonization.

Card Set

Selection of card set to play with. Some card sets don’t include some cards from either the base game or the expansion.

Original - The original set of cards as they appear in the tabletop board game Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization.
Base Game - The card set for the digital base game, which uses the updated versions of cards. The cards are rebalanced for the expansion.
Expansion - Completely new set of leaders and wonders.
Random Mix - A combination of randomly selected cards from the base game and the expansion.

Keep in mind that when selecting the Expansion or Random Mix card set, only players with active expansion will be able to join the tournament.

Game Speed

This selection affects the speed of each game (not the entire tournament). Time per turn differs between game ages.

Super Blitz - 60-120s/turn, 40s for responding, 5min/age reserve
Live Blitz - 90-180s/turn, 45s for responding, 15min/age reserve
Standard Live - 4-6min/turn, 90s for responding, 30min/age reserve
Relaxed Live - 20min/turn, 5min for responding, 16h/age reserve
Fast Async - 3h/turn, 3h for responding, 36h/age reserve
Medium Async - 12h/turn, 12h for responding, 2 days/age reserve
Default Async - 24h/turn, 24h for responding, 3 days/age reserve
Long Async - 3 days/turn, 3 days for responding, 7 days/age reserve
Endless - Play this only if you are sure the others will keep playing or if you do not mind unfinished games (not recommended for public tournaments).

Keep in mind that when selecting Super Blitz only players with rank 10 and above will be able to join.

Number of Stages

The number of separate stages played. Tournaments using the concept of promotion or relegation require at least 2 stages. Leagues use an infinite number of stages.

Rank Restrictions

Only players of corresponding ranks or rank range that you set will be able to join the tournament. In case the tournament has more stages, it will be evaluated only before the first stage. Leave empty for no restrictions.

Access

Free - Players can join the tournament directly without needing an approval from a moderator.
On Approval - Non-invited players need to wait for an approval from a moderator before joining.

Tournament start

You can pick here how will your tournament start.

Automatic - Tournament starts once all player slots are filled.
Manual - Tournament is launched manually by a moderator.
At given time - Tournament is launched manually by a moderator, but not when tournaments is full, but at given date and time.

Will you compete...?

Select YES if you will take part in the tournament yourself.

Description

Write a description of your tournament, for example additional information your players might need to know regarding your tournament. Please avoid personal information, promotion of illegal activities or promotion of the competition. For more please see link: Tournament Rules and Guidelines.

Now you can click on the Create tournament and continue button.

2. Advanced Settings

Tournament format

Here you can select one of the predefined formats or create a custom one. Preselected formats guarantee a fair distribution of games between players. This setting also affects the appearance of other settings on this page.

In these preselected formats the number of players is limited to concrete numbers that allow even distribution of games. This also applies to the number of games each player plays as well.

Number of groups

This setting is visible only if you selected multiple stages on the previous page.

Players in group/tournament

The number of players per group or in the whole tournament (depends if you have the selection of groups available). These numbers are limited in regard to the predefined format to ensure correct numbers.

Each player plays

In this section, you select how many 2-, 3-, and 4-player games each player plays.

In predefined tournaments formats you have only corresponding games available. These numbers are limited in regards to predefined format to ensure correct numbers.

In custom format, you can select any number of any games. Keep in mind that some combinations might not be suitable.

Seeding method

This setting is visible only if you selected multiple stages on the previous page.

This is where you set how players will be seeded into groups before the tournament starts. This setting cannot be changed later. You can work with this setting further on the Seeding page later in the tournament setup after all players join your tournament.

Manual - You can seed the players manually. This method is recommended if you want to seed a new stage of the tournament based on the results of the previous stage.
By rank - Players are seeded based on their rank. This method is recommended for starting new tournaments with vertical hierarchy where the players' rank is the only rough approximation of skill you can work with. This seeding is automatic and cannot be edited later.
Random - Players are seeded randomly. This method is suitable for starting new tournaments with horizontal hierarchy when you don't know the skill of individual players yet. This seeding is automatic and cannot be edited later.

Games scoring

Here you specify the points distribution for finishing the game. Each game type has separate scoring.

You specify the number of points a player gains for finishing the game on 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th (if applicable).

For 4-player game scoring, you would input the scoring as A-B-C-D where A is a number of points a 1st player gains, B is a number of points 2nd player gains, C is a number of points a 3rd player gains, and D is a number of points 4th player gains.

For example, 6-3-1-0 would give 1st player 6 points, 2nd player 3 points, 3rd player 1 point and 4th player 0 points.

All numbers in scoring have to be positive or 0. Players cannot gain a negative number of points for their placement.

You can leave this empty for default scoring (shown as a preview in text boxes).

Expired player penalization

Here you select if you want to penalize expired players. If you select YES, expiration will give the player a -1 point for that game.

Now you are good to go and you can click on the Publish Tournament and Invite Players button.

3. Players

In this stage, you are able to manage invitations and players.

You can invite players directly by their login (screen) or you can send them an invitation link (screen). After clicking the link they will be able to join the tournament.

If you have selected access level On Approval you will need to approve players who joined your tournament by invitation link or from public tournament list. Direct invitations are automatically approved.

You can also block specific players you don’t want to participate in the tournament.

After all players have joined, you will be able to start the tournament and proceed to the next step. This may take some time so don’t be afraid to leave the page and come back later. It won’t affect the tournament and players.

4. Seeding

You will be able to access this page only if you set at least two stages in the basic settings.

You can assign players into groups on this page if you selected manual seeding. You can either do this by hand with drag-and-drop or select one of the automatic seeding options.

If you selected Random or Ranked seeding, you can view how players were distributed between groups.

5. Sessions

Here you can launch your games and split them into batches. Launching the games will result in them appearing in the lobby for players and them being ready to start playing.

Splitting the games into batches helps to control how many games at a time are being played. You can start each batch separately in time intervals or after all games in the previous batch are finished. Each player plays the same number of games per batch (if possible).