International Championship

HentaiLover69

Can we ban players who just give up and time out at the end of the season? Not only do they make the games drag on but they affect the outcome of the tournament. My last game of the season was a 4p game wherein two different players timed out. On the last possible turn they declared suicide wars and donated a huge number of points to the other remaining human player (enough to swing the game).

pajada

HentaiLover69 Players who time out 3 times can't play next season and to my knowledge they never come back.
But still new players are signing up for this tournament and around 5% of players time out in every season 🙁

AdiQue

pajada Hi Pavel,
Despite being a direct competitor to the winning spot of Silver 8, I feel compelled to offer a voice of support to HentaiLover69.

Starting a losing war that can only result in donating, instead of taking culture points sure is unsportsmanlike.

If such losing wars were started after AI took control, we can't do much, beside mount a pressure on the game developers, to finally implement the option of a forced resignation instead of AI substitution in the case of tournament time outs.

If however such losing wars were started by human players (before timing out), and it is verified by the tournament committee, it is only fair to attribute to HentaiLover69 tournament points he/she was deprived of and, as it stands right now, the top spot in the Silver 8 group.

Respectfully
Adrian

pajada

AdiQue thank you for your message Adrian. I looked closer at your league and the winner of your league would be the same even if HentaiLover69 had +3 points. For simplicity I will not redistribute the points but if that happens in the next season (AI declaring unfair War) Player's Committee will take a look and probably adjust points.

Elron

AdiQue consequences for harassing someone are part of the game. Don’t push them over the edge

Padishar

Bronze 2 game 8 has been locked by devs for over a month now due to it getting stuck in an un-advanceable state by some bug. I asked support about it again, and received an answer that it will be able to continue on the last week of January after they roll out some patch. So all's good.

weisswurst

@pajada I have a question about the rule "Do not purposefully lose to help someone else or for any other reason". What if the reason is that you could win the league by helping someone else?

More than once I have observed a situation near the end of the season in which it would be advantageous to one of the players to actually help one of the other players. An example situation (but there are many similar situations thinkable): Player A is leading the league, Player B is 2nd in the league, just two points behind player A. Let's say player A would always win the tie-breaker. They both have just one game to finish, and it is a game between players A, B and C Now suppose players B and C are leading in the game, player A will probably be last. If player B wins the game he wins the league, so player A would obviously benefit if player C would win the game instead. To what extent may player A play so to reach that goal?

pajada

weisswurst Let's say you are player B in your example above. As a rule of thumb imagine for a while that you are player A and think about what actions you would find fair and sportsmanlike from player B. Then act as your conscience tells you.
For me disbanding units in a War, letting aggressions through from player C (even when I can defend) is unacceptable, seeding an Impact of Science when player C is the best and I'm second is totally fine. It is really hard to draw the exact line, that's why I described that mental exercise above.
In this championship we are trying to be nice and competitive. The order of these two things is important.

weisswurst

pajada Thanks. I have been on both sides of the equation. People seem to have different views, personally I am quite ok with playing to play for the league win, and I would also understand and accept if other players would play like that. Sometimes I am puzzled by the actions of the opponents though, and that makes me wondering about my own actions. As an other example, I was in a game once where I was leading the league. Just one game to play, with the only contender for the 1st place in the league also in the game. The standings were so that he could win the league only if he would win that game and I would become last (3rd). Now after the first few rounds he was strong, military-wise and also leading in culture production. The third player in the game was quite weak, and I was somewhere in between. Now in that situation, I would find it perfectly understandable if the contender would be attacking me, and allowing the third player to overtake me, because that is how I would play in his position. But to my surprise, he focused all his attacks (multiple aggressions and wars) on the third player, ensuring the win in the game but also ensuring that I would become 2nd in the game and 1st in the league. Would it generally be accepted if he had played the way I would play it in his position?

pajada

weisswurst Playing a 3-player game with your main rival and focusing on destroying him to take 5 points when he takes 0 points is generally acceptable.

frotes

weisswurst

For me, I always place the games rank as the highest priority. Only if my position can not drastically improve will I consider league standing. And if I’m going to be last, I try not to influence the other positions in the game and will resign if it is hopeless

personally i actually would prefer games not be in a season and each player gain/lost rank based on individual game merit. But at the time, this was not possible before and we wanted a way to reward steady placement.

If people just throw games to influence seasonal position, it becomes too much metagaming of standing and later season games become more about that and less on the gameplay of each game.

weisswurst

frotes Thanks for the input! I guess it comes down to what is the goal in a tournament. If I understand you correctly, your goal is to finish as high as possible in each game, and if you happen to win the league that is a bonus. I guess my goal is rather to win the league and if it happens by winning most games that is a bonus as well. IMO the metagaming is inherently present in promotion-relegation based tournaments. Ladder or Swiss systems are more suited if such metagaming is undesired. But of course it should all be fun and a good basis is if everyone has the same understanding, that is why I was asking, to get a feeling what is generally considered ok.

Palino

weisswurst I personally value Glicko ladder position much more than the league win because Glicko reflects your long term results while one win in tournament could mean that you simply had just luck. Although you do not need to be necesarily the best to win GM, we have to say that to get to GM and win it requires a lot of skill of course and you can bet that the players in GM are from the best.
Regarding the fair play, as a member of player commitee, I can tell you that things like declaring a war and disbanding units afterwards are considered unsportsmanlike and if reported will result in a penalty for the player who did so (warning, deduction of points or ban). On the other hand playing impacts of any kind is always ok at least in my opinion. The commitee has 5 members and we vote in such situations and the commitee members may have different opinions on different situations so in general the line is somewhere between the impacts and disbanding units in war but nobody can give you a definite answer until you raise a specific case.
Like pajada said, just try to play fair and enjoy the game.

IdkIdcIdgaf

hi @pajada
why putting me to wood after i finished 2nd in silver?..
and it’s not about ranking. i just checked stats of guys with me in group - not sure about fun playing together... 🙁
EDIT: but thanks for organizing. my reply sounds too salty.. 😃 probably because there are not many tourneys to play on high level..

pajada

IdkIdcIdgaf hi, you played in Season 10 and then skipped Season 11 and 12 that's the reason why I put you to Wood as all other new players.
Players can skip one season and keep their division, but they need to write me an email so I'm aware of it before the skipped season starts.

wallimaendu

Hi pajada
I am in Silver 10 this Season of Internationan Championship even though I won last Season in Silver 11. I thought that I will start in Gold this Season?
Thanx for clarification...

WanderingWolf

wallimaendu looks like you finished second in the final standings. Did you factor ‘timeout’ results into the final standings? (ie players who finish behind AI-controlled players actually get more points than indicated on the website).

pajada

wallimaendu results on this web are not always right, we have stated that also in the description of the tournament:
Every player who runs out of time will be placed last with score 0 points independently of the score of AI who replaced them (example for 3-player game: when AI won, it will receive 0 points and the better human player will receive 5 points, the worse human player 2 points).
This will not be reflected directly on this web, final standings will be done in Google Docs manually (after end of championship).

Goldan

@pajada do you plan to release Glicko ratings after the previous season of the International Championship?

pajada

Goldan I'm doing update after every season of Intermezzo (there are last 3 games in progress). I hope to publish Glicko update during upcoming weekend.