No Sign-Up Required!
Play Now!
A&A Tournament
Since we've been discussing a tournament over in the Russia thread in General Discussions, I thought I'd get an actual tournament thread started over here. I'm willing to organize the tourney. So far I think the best suggestion is to make it an it an individual tournament where each player will play all the different countries. I think we'll divide the field into groups of 5 people (determined by random.org). Team selection (and the order with which each person plays the various countries) will also be determined randomly. Each person will score one point in every game where his team wins. If we have 2 groups of 5, the top 5 scoring players among the 10 will advance to a second round. If we have 15 or 20 players, we'll take the top 10 among them and end up with 3 rounds.
If there is a tie for the 5th spot to advance, we'll break the ties using a 2 game playoff. 3 other players will be assigned to the game along with the 2 tied players. The tied players will each play Germany and UK in the two games. The 3 extra players will retain will each play the same country in both games to take the teammate variable out of the contest. If the two tied players again split the series, the winner will be the player that won in the fewest number of rounds. If that still doesn't break the tie, it will go to a coin flip. I'll try to figure out a way to break a tie among 3 or more people if that situation comes up.
The one thing I need to find out is if we can assign players to specific countries rather than using random team assignments the way it is right now.
Who else wants in?
Any comments, suggestions, or recommendations?
Updated player list:
docbrown, humphrse, Woodruff, Tigerpiper, drkillitz69, Markus, Tashen,
larche1976, InGeneral, j35t3, William (reserve)
That brings us to a full 10 plus 1 reserve. Since we can't assign players to teams, we're still tossing around the exact format for this thing. See below for the current ideas.
I'm in. Have you asked GameAdmin if we can assign certain nations to certain players?
sign me up
Definitely in for this ..
excellent idea by the way
I want to blow some stuff up
Me too please! I know that im fairly knew to Forces but i would like to join. I love A&A and a tournament sounds awesome.
Cheers
add me too!
First of all, here's the list of people that wanted in:
docbrown, humphrse, Woodruff, Tigerpiper, drkillitz69, Markus, Tashen, larche1976, j35t3r (awaiting confirmation on him, but he asked to join in in the other thread). If we get one more we'll have 10.
Now the bad news. I emailed the admins, and it's not currently possible to assign players to specific countries. They hope to add that feature, but it may be a while. So I think a tournament arranged according to these rules will have to postponed.
So I propose an alternative: With 10 players, we have round 1 consist of 20 total games (everyone plays 10), where the players are randomly assigned every single game. This many games should be enough to get everyone to play most of the different countries. And by mixing up who plays together everytime, we minimize the chance of someone being penalized by ending up on the same team with a less experienced player multiple times.
Scoring will be the same: 1 point if your team wins. Top 5 scorers will advance to round 2. Ties will be broken using the Africa map with no starting forces, factory placed in your capital, and manual territory picking. Round 2 will consist of 5 A&A games with the winner being the person that scores the most points out of those 5 games. First tie breaker will be scores in round 1. If there are still 2 or more players tied, a 3rd round of 5 games will be played. The winner will be the player with the most points accumulated between rounds 2 and 3 combined (this may be a player that was not in the lead at the end of round 2). First tie breaker is round 2 score. Second tie breaker is round 1 score. If there is still a tie at this point, it will be settled on the Africa map with the settings listed above.
I hope all of that makes sense. We need one more player to get an even 10. To keep this from dragging on too long, can everyone leave a minimum of 2-3 slots free for these games?
Any questions or concerns? I'll assume that everyone is okay with this format, and that everyone that expressed interest wants to stick with it. If we get a 10th player, I'll use random.org to generate the members of all the games on Wednesday and we can get started very soon thereafter. That should give everyone some time to clear out some game slots.
I'm a sucker for tournaments. :)
wow!howz about a lil less??
what about a prize?the points and competition alone are good enough for me but..are there any incentives?
Well, you'd play 10 games in the first round and then a maximum of 10 in the second/third round. I wanted to make sure there were enough games in the first round to mix things up and spread the nationalities and teams around. I thought about just 5 in the first round, but if you get stuck as Japan with a newer player as Germany in 2 games, you're pretty much out of the competition.
As for prizes, I don't have the ability to offer anything personally at this point. Perhaps just the crown as the undisputed A&A king on this site. :)
I know you can't assign players to countries - but what happens if random assignment results in (very) uneven assignment to conditions? I play the Axis much more frequently than Allies due to whatever glitch we have in the system - Woodruff seems to primarily play Germany, etc ... If one player plays the US 5 times in the first round, he/she is most likely to be victorious.
Obviously, it's not a big deal if someone gets Russia 3 times and the UK only once - but I am concerned about really bad assignments .. Can we at least choose teams in tournaments (much like we can in regularly created games)?
As for rewards, I think a simple new Avatar might be nice (as we can't have sigs on these forums). Here's something that I spent 1 minute on:
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/893/winter2010.jpg
I didn't think it was possible to choose teams even. If that's possible, than I'm all for that. We could do it as teams of 3 (we currently have 9 players) with 6 games between each team - 3 as the axis and 3 as the allies. As the axis, your team plays with each person taking a turn to sit idle.
With 3 teams of 3, everyone would end up playing 10 games total: 6 as the allies and 4 as the axis.
I do like the Avatar idea.
Yes, we can set it up to choose teams.
HOWEVER, rather than the way you outline it, I would prefer to have "everyone plays every nation once (or twice), with NOBODY sitting idle. In other words, we don't have two distinct teams, but rather five individuals (in each grouping).
so how many open game slots will i need?when i go extreme this wont matter but right now it does
can you add anymore people to the tourny? Sign me up s.v.p.
thats a cool idea.
How do you choose teams in an A&A game? You have to set the game type to "Standard Multiplayer" in order to get the 5-player game type, and that doesn't give you an option anywhere to choose teams.
Right now I'm thinking we try to have everyone keep 2-3 tournament games going at once. If everyone in the grouping has an additional slot, than they can have more. It will probably take a little while to finish all the games up for round 1, but I suspect most people would prefer to have it stretch out a bit longer than to have to fill up all 10 slots with tourney games.
Perhaps instead of assigning teams, we just do what Woodie suggested, play 10 round robin games with 10 people, and it DOESN'T matter what team or what country you're on. You just play 10 games and record wins/losses/countries/teams.
This idea goes to Woodie, I'm just repeating it: Each time the game is over, each person on the winning team gets 1pt, each loser gets 0pts. At the end of each game, there will be a post in this thread (or whatever thread we use) that will display the scores of each person playing. At the end of the 10 (or whatever number of games we choose), person with the highest points wins!
We may have to figure out a way to eliminate ties (I was thinking of a complicated way recording how many players you ELIMINATED (you count as the eliminator if their country becomes your color), but that would take a bit more work than is wanted most likely. Thoughts on ties? There's bound to be 1-2.
It doesn't matter what team you're on, what country you play, or whatever, there's 10(or more) games, no one is gonna get the same side/country so many times that it severely affects anything (which is why I suggest 10+ games to solidify this).
Any thoughts/comments on the issues addressed above? What about ties? Perhaps the tied people can play a heads up game? That wouldn't work... O.o..... How about instead of a SOLE winner, we have the FINAL TOP 5 players play a FINAL game #11 for the winning "team."
That sounds best, play 10 games, keep track of points, top 5 players go into final game, and the winning team counts as the "winners" who will get a special "badge" or something saying: "January AA Winner" or something...
So far the round robin idea sounds best to me. It seems to be the most detailed and efficient method i have heard as of this time. Also, this would make things easier in the sense that participants would'nt have to chose teams (not sure how you guys would want to do that anyway... would team captains chose their teamates? and how would you decide who the captains are?).
Another plus to the round robin method would be preventing all participants from complaining about their "sucky team". No one wants to be stuck with teamates who cant communicate, strategize, work together, etc. Without assigned teams, nobody can claim to have lost all their games because of teamates they had to play with since game 1. Granted, a round robin style, wouldnt prevent you from ever being placed on a bad team, but it wouldnt give you an excuse for how you faired in every single one of your games.
The points system seems simple and easy enough to keep track of. Not sure how to handle ties though (which would probably be inevitable) Need more sugestions for that.
Anyways, what does everyone else think?
doc, I signed up before william, but you didn't add me to the list?
Sorry about that. I think I missed your post all the way at the bottom. William is our 11th player and will be held back as a reserve in case someone opts out after all.
:)
So -- we're at 11 (because that's louder than 10). How do we go about getting this up and running?
I'll start a new thread tonight so we can use a clean page. We'll start with the round robin approach with a total of 20 games - everyone plays 10. We'll see where we stand towards the end of that round and see if the leaders are willing to do a second round of 5 games. I'll get the lists put up this evening though.
i have an extra slot for another game
What do you guys want to do about tourny deadbeats?
If you miss 1 turn in the AA map in the first 3 turns it really really impacts your chances of winning. The problem is, it is no longer just about YOU in this tourny. Its about the TEAM. So if someone on your team misses their turn it severely impacts the team. I just had someone miss their FIRST turn in the game. I know, its just ONE turn, but that reallys puts us on the defensive end for the next 3-4 turns to make up for the first initial UNDEFENDED rush on turn 1.
How are we going to handle deadbeats?
I have to say, I'm really happy with the way the tournament is going. There are some headaches here and there, and it's always possible to find something in your teammate's play to complain about if you try. But setting that aside, it's really fun to see new strategies come forward, and then counters develop for them and then counters to the counters. I think the tournament results also speak very well of the balance between the axis and the allies. So far we've completed 8 games total with the allies winning 5. However, the axis are very likely to win game 4A (though it's still early enough that something crazy could possibly change things). That would give them wins in 4 out of 9 games. We'll see how the ratios look at the end of the tournament, but I'm pretty impressed so far.
I'll post in here since the other thread is getting really crowded. Where do we stand in the games with Ross? Bromley86 has agreed to fill in for the last few games. Was 5B far enough along to count it, or did deadbeating change the course of the game? How about 6B and 7A? Do any of those need to be restarted with Bromley?
I don't believe him deadbeating had anything to do with the game. We're still playing and it looks pretty bad for the Axis.
I don't understand why everyone is so crazy about deadbeating... Its a VERY easy fix... The person who gifted all of the deadbeat's stuff can play it all seperately.
It will take a lot of extra work thatyou normally don't have to do, but it is better than scrapping a game. I honestly don't want to play a tourny that will just fold to someone deadbeating. That means someone can use that to their advantage. Oh the game is looking grim, deadbeat! WOOHOO RESTART!
Real easy. At the time of the deadbeat. Record the deadbeat's territories and units. Those units and territories will be seperate. Along with the income generated from those territories. New units for each country must be bought using that country's INCOME and must be placed on that country's FACTORIES.
I lost a game because of William's deadbeat. (Himleaving the game did not cost me the game, but him not taking a turn for 3 turns did!) We didn't take that game back. I've also lost a game (the first game Ross joined) because of how bad Ross was. Not to mention he didn't take half of his turns. But we counted that game. Now, for the SECOND time, we're restarting a game my side was already in position to win? For what reason? Because people don't understand you can continue playing a game???
Imagine the Yankees giving the World Series to the Red Sox because they have one of their pitchers get hurt... C'mon guys... You all joined this tourny to PLAY! So PLAY IT!!!
It will take an extra 30 seconds to a minute to take your turns if you are the subject of a deadbeat. Just separate all of your stuff from the deabeat's stuff and WALAH! All is fixed!
In fact, not only will you be keeping track of it, you'll have a whole table of people watching you extra careful to make sure you're keeping everything seperate.
I think the only time a deabeat rule is enforced is within the first 4 turns (it takes 3 turns to activate). This means that if they deadbeat either after taking one turn, or don't even show up, its a redo.
There's no reason to redo the entire game, especially one thats been in progress for 10, 15, even 20 turns already...
/2cents
Jester,
That's actually a good point. Have the two combined forces been kept essentially separate in the game since Ross dropped? If so, I think I would tend to favor keeping the result, especially since Ross was playing on the side that (according to you and Tigerpiper) was already winning. His missing 2 turns in a row made it worse for the allies. Can you guys come to an agreement on it, or are the four of you split on the issue?
One comment about one of your other complaints: If a player deadbeats, he's out of the tournament. Period. That means that deadbeating will not help your cause in any way. You are probably right about missing a turn out of the first 4 (or maybe even 6). Most of the games I've been in are pretty close to decided by around turn 5.
Forces are only turned over to another player when the deadbeat starts out the game deadbeating. If the player goes awol after taking their first few turns, like happened with larche in 5A, their forces remain "theirs", sitting idly by while Germany sails around them and takes UK unfettered. lol And Germany's ability to take UK swiftly without having to fight through UK's navy definitely changed the course of that game, as Russia was already pressing out and strengthening (something that changed rapidly when Germany had the extra UK income + total renewed focus on Russia). That being said, I do agree with jester that restarting once a game has been in progress and all players have been playing isn't really necessary. In 5A, it wasn't the Axis' fault one of the Allies went on autopilot. They adjusted quickly and took advantage of it. Kudos to them. You know from my prior posts I felt strongly that the Allies were in a great position with Russia getting off to a strong start, and that what happened absolutely changed the course of the game. Maybe we would have lost anyway, but I really felt like that game was going to be a win for us. But, at no point did I ask for a redo on 5A, for just the reasons jester stated. The game started normally and correctly with all 5 players, and the 2 axis players didn't do anything wrong, why should they be penalized for taking advantage of the game conditions? They shouldn't. BTW, I also don't think someone in larche's position should be removed from the tournament, only players that deadbeat from the start should be. Someone who is mostly playing but can't get on for a few days due to work or life circumstances and goes into autopilot because of it, that happens. The beauty of a team game is if they can get a message to their team they'll be gone for X hours or days, their team can stall taking their turns for the full 24 hour periods and buy as much time as possible for the player going on auto-pilot to get back.
It's a good system to do if you play the countries seperately, but in our game that wasn't done. I had russia dead in three turns but when we got the dead beat russia built over 5 infantry per turn in it's capitol. That changes the game drasticaclly
And if someone is deadbeating, then they should get to redo the game, they are our and an alt is put in his place. That way someone doesn't deadbeat just to restart the game. They get a loss if they dead beat and they are out.
i was about to counterattack.
but that's ok. I agree its a draw.
I also agree with jester's solution- I had already submitted a turn, though, when he made it
We can go back and forth all night, which is why I think we should call it a draw or redo without the deadbeat. Continueing the game you have to do like Jester said and play the two seperately or it would just be smart to have everyone deadbeat right away and just leave up to a one vs one and hope you win.
that "keep the units and income separate" crap wont work.for obvious reasons.i wont elaborate.
I want to say TY doc for organizing and running this tournament! You did a great job and this was not an easy thing to keep organized and running smoothly.
I would say this tournament was a success, and am excited it went so well. We had problems with some deadbeats but it was handled well, discussed and reasonable actions decided.
The only negative for me was being soured on the team aspect of this thing... I don't mind losing when a team mate makes mistakes, and hopefully my team mates haven't been too upset with me when I've made them (because I have). But it was frustrating when team mates didn't communicate. Communication is key in a team game, knowing where your opponent will be moving for instance when your forces are in a position to work together, is essential. I had team mates who did not respond to PM's and just moved. I had team mates who pm'd me to move specific units to assist them somewhere not realizing I had already submitted my turn for that round, and they needed to be asking for help on the NEXT round not the current one, because it wasn't coming. I had a team mate go on autopilot without telling anyone while he was going to be away for work for a few days.
And, I had a team mate who I discussed strategy with and he was very insistant on a specific strategy to go after Russia early (I was Germany), so I went with it even though I didn't feel it was attainable and had an alternate strategy I thought would seriously bolster our chance of victory by early economic advantage. We did not get good die rolls in the russian capital and it failed, so I pulled back. At the same time he pm'ed me saying pull back and defend Germany and italy, and he was going to press Russia as he had taken control of the china/sink area. He sat on russias doorstep and didn't move in, which allowed them to roll tanks to Germany and assist the UK/US forces, and take my capital. Fine. But I went back into the game later to check his progress like I always do in team games, and find that he's bad mouthed me in the game chat, saying the game was gifted to the allies and it's BS, he doesn't know what InGeneral was doing but he kept PMing me to pull back and defend Germany and I kept throwing guys at Russia. That was all BS, which he apparently didn't think I would ever come back and see. We communicated our intents back and forth, no PM went unanswered, he knew exactly what I was doing and it was in line with his suggestions. Major d-bag move, you know who you are.
So I guess I'm really feeling soured on the whole team game thing right now, since there was too much "I" in "team" at times.
But, there were a lot of good, communicative team mates too and this was an excellently run event. I wanted to share my impressions of this tourney and express my frustration at times with how the team aspect was handled by some of the players, but none of us can control how others handle their business, it is what it is. Kudos to doc for pulling off an excellently run tournament, I would sign up for any tournament you're running in the future, team or not.
Ok. We need to make a decision on whether or not to have a final round for this tournament. The idea would be to take the top 5 players and let them play 5 (or maybe just 3?) more games between them. The winner would be the one with the most points out of those 5 games (with the initial round of 10 being the tie breaker).
I'm inclined to say that this is worth doing at this point since we appear to have quite a grouping of players right around 5 victories. What do you guys think? Are you getting too tired of this tournament to want to take it one more round? With the same players in every game, it might be possible to get all 5 of them going nearly simultaneously (or as soon as enough spots open on for everyone).
Although I won't make the cut, I say go for it! That's what tournaments are all about. :)
I want to echo everyone's comments so far (here and in other places) .. This was a great endeavor by docbrown, and I know I appreciated it .. I'm not sure I'd still be on the website if not for this tournament, as I have gotten frustrated by deadbeats.
InGeneral - I have to ask - are you sure the game you are referring to took place in this tournament? I didn't think you actually played Germany in any of the games we've been assigned.
Which gets me to my second point - I hate the fact that you can't currently control who goes into what role. A true tournament should have seen everyone in each role twice, and a proper rotation through the teams. Yet, the website still suffers from the same team assignment problems (e.g., jester was Germany for way too many games). I wish we could run a proper tournament on this website.
I also wanted to echo InGeneral's comments about team play. Some games (particularly driven by certain people) were very high communication games, whereas it went very differently in other games. I am partially to blame here (as I am far from perfect), but I was somewhat surprised by the individual behaviors of some people.
I'd love to be a part of a future A&A tournament, particularly if we can (a) get the team assignment process fixed and (b) we can do our best to vet the players so that they stay committed to the games.
Thanks again for a great tournament experience!
supported.
humphrse - I know, right, I was japan at least 20 times in this tournament, or so it felt. lol Yes, I'm sure it was a tournament game... the country assignments were posted incorrectly in the results thread... one of the many "Japans" for me should actually have been a Germany. No change in scoring though, the Axis and Allies were sided right in the post, just myself and the Japan player reversed in the posting of country assignments. Maybe the poster had grown accustomed to me always playing Japan. lol :)
Good point humphrse, I too would love to see us be able to control who goes into what roll. Unfortunately this function as well as how some people operate under team play are things doc or any tournament organizer have no control over.
I guess there will always be some lemons in the mix, but doc's organization and running of this thing made lemonade imo.
According to Jester, game 10B looks like it will probably be an allied victory (meaning an additional point for Markus, TigerPiper, and Humphrse). Game 10A is still pretty early, though I think the axis has to be the slight favorite at this point. We'll know better in a few rounds. If that's the case, it's an additional point for DocBrown and Bromley86. If both these predictions are accurate, here would be the final standings:
Honestly, I'm starting to change my position on whether or not to have a final round. There are 5 players tied for 4th place, and I can't really think of a good way to distinguish between them. I thought about using games won as the axis as a tie breaker, but looking at the list, it looks like the game are split with 11 allied victories to 9 axis. I think it's pretty fair to assume the two sides are pretty well balanced. I say we just award TigerPiper (assuming he does come out on top) as the winner (or larche if he ends up on top after all).
How about this as a tie-breaker if they both win the round 10 games: They play one final tie-breaker A&A game. Markus, as the 3rd place finisher would get an exhibition spot in that game. Two more players are needed to round out the game. For that, larche and TP could each choose 1 player among the remaining players. If larche and TP end up on the same team, no one is to play and we let the game expire and re-create it until we end up with a game where they play on opposite sides. Sound fair?
killitz is still fighting as japan, but I am safe to say allied win
this give me seven wins, already set forth above- just thought I'd make it official
jester- germany
killitz-jpan
tigerpiper- us +1
markus -uk' +1
humprhese - russia +1
i was doing good as the japs till jester cracked...nice job everyone..
This game is more than likely an axis victory now. It's not 100% certain, but the axis have an economic advantage now, UK no longer has much of a navy to get troops to Europe, Japan has a navy in the Atlantic, and the US is facing Japanese troops in Alaska and Canada. Russia is still around but is gradually being pushed back.
In any case, it looks like the above scores should be accurate. I'll post again when we can definitely call it, but it looks like TigerPiper is the victor of the first ever BattleForces tournament!
however you want to do it. I am fine ending it now, but fine playing on.
Hey stat geeks- is it statistically relevant how many times jester got germany?
Hmmmmm, how to do this...
We've got 3 people that get a spot. Then there's 5 people who are tied for a spot. Bromley can be counted out of it, he was kind enough to fill in, but he was just a fill in.
That leaves us with 4 people trying to fill 4 spots.
There's only one thing I can think of doing, and thats host a tie-breaking game to get into the finals (aka Playoffs).
We would play another A&A game using those 4 people and either Bromley, or one of the 3 top placed people, or someone in the 4pt range.
Regardless, we'd need that "sub" to be on the Allies side. This way, regardless of which side wins, there will be only TWO people of those 5 that would get a Point to be eligible to compete in the finals.
Thoughts?