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Post 19 Feb 2011, 8:44 am

Gentlemen,

I welcome your feedback on the tournament. What went well? What didn't? What could be improved for next time?

While I do appreciate all feedback (good, bad, or indifferent), and will read and digest all of it, I cannot guarantee that all suggestions will be implemented in future iterations of the tournament. As I have communicated to some of you personally, this tournament is probably not for everyone. It is, by design, fast paced and heavily weighted toward tactics and strategy over other core diplomacy elements such as communication.

Some topics of discussion to get the thread going...
-Accelerated deadlines
-Scoring model
-Retreats/NRR policy
-NBR policy

My expectation is to run the tournament again in the near future. Be on the lookout for communication regarding this in late May 2011. Thank you for your participation and interest!
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Post 21 Feb 2011, 7:48 pm

Well I have to say I enjoyed this Tournament very much - thanks a lot for putting in the immense time and effort to host it Bobby! Making Gunboat games both interesting and community based is quite a challenge, and I'd say it was done very well indeed. Since I survived all the way to the penultimate game year of the final table it probably held my interest more than the majority who were eliminated after round 1, but I found it fascinating to see who I was up against back in those earlier games once the names were released. Also surprised to see how many "big names" at Redscape fell so early on.

I do have a few issues of constructive critism to bring up, though. First and foremost was the policy of autoremoving a unit if the player in question hadn't supplied a valid retreat. This was plainly stated in the rules as being the case, yet often seemed a little harsh and also had a much larger effect on how a game went than it perhaps should have. Examples:

Back in Gluttony Austria made a supported attack against Venice in Fall 1904, successfully taking it from Italy. Italy hadn't supplied a retreat and his other 3 units were engaged against Turkey, so the result was not that Italy lost an SC and was put into a bad position, but that Austria was able to walk into Rome and Naples as well without opposition - pretty far from a "typical" result from an attack like that. Also, given the cumulative nature of the scoring system, this single action is what qualified that Austria for Round 2.

It also helped determine the result of the final table. In Spring 1902 Germany similarly destroyed a French Army in Burgundy, allowing him to walk into first Paris and then later Brest unopposed. The result was that Germany was up to 9SCs by 1903 and was able to bully/dominate/crush E/F/R into submission. Turkey gave him a run for his money at the end, but really it was at that moment that the Tournament Champion was decided.

So, I think that is something that definately needs to be looked at carefully before this Tournament is played again. Although it is a good and fair idea in theory, I worry that in practice it was too influential a rule to the actual game results.

Other big point is to wonder how many players actually followed it all the way to the end? I'd imagine that the majority who were eliminated earlier on simply tuned out, which is a shame. I wonder if instead of having a 7:2:1 format for table numbers you could instead have a 8:5:3 format (or the like) with more players able to continue playing and the Champion being determined not by SC count on the final board but instead by total Tournament points. Ironically, the TC was actually determined this way this time anyway. Something to think about.
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Post 21 Feb 2011, 7:55 pm

Hey Bobby, is there there a place where I can see who my opponents were on each respective board?
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Post 21 Feb 2011, 9:41 pm

Never mind, I found it.
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Post 23 Feb 2011, 2:06 pm

GMBobby wrote:Some topics of discussion to get the thread going...
-Accelerated deadlines
-Scoring model
-Retreats/NRR policy
-NBR policy


I think it is perfectly reasonable to have quick deadlines in this sort of tournament. I also understand the retreat policy.

However, I think it would have been helpful since games are not normally played with the "no retreat anticipated, no retreat given" rules to have reminded the players of this in every warning email. In other words, "Orders due in 24 hours. Don't forget to submit any possible retreats because IF YOU DON'T they will retreat otb."

I think you did an amazing job. Seriously. I can't imagine running a tournament like this. Well done!
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Post 23 Feb 2011, 8:08 pm

Bobby


I totally agree with Dr. Fate on the retreat policy Giving the players a "ultimatum" on retreats would put the onus on the player to submit retreats.
In my games I submitted retreats for all units that were in danger of being attacked ...even to provinces already covered.never in any of my games did I lose a unit to NRR.
That being said probably the only changes I would like to see would be
1.Random finishing in games...This would make sure players keep on there toes and you would not have the feeding frenzy that happened in the early games.Telling everyone game finishes in 1908 allows players to work to that end.and probably keep more players interested.
2. In the Final I agree with the last man standing rule ...Fight till the end... but I found the game a bit too long and shorting the game to say 1910/11 would force players to make decisions a little quicker
3. Have adjucations on monday night and thursday night giving players a bit more time than 1 day to make decisions and have builds due Friday night or saturday morning.....I found myself getting home on tuesday having dinner spend time with the wife then get to my game to hurry things up because orders were due the next day....send them think about things at work come home wednesday and send changes.....if I had time...a small thing but when you don't have internet at work as I do it is a big deal

Other that these small changes I found the game most enjoyable and very well run and do look forward to playing again

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Post 23 Feb 2011, 11:45 pm

Before I make any sort of suggestions/comments about changing the tournament (I mean, who wants to hear about what is wrong with their tournament, anyway…), let me start out with the good things:

(1) I liked the format of the tournament. You have to do well in 3 straight games, with the last two against players who have done well in the tournament. I think the tournament is well-designed to get a winner who is deserving;

(2) I like the concept of the best two finishers from each country advancing; when you draw Austria (as I did) it would have seemed hopeless except for the fact that I only had to finish among the top 2 Austrian players:

(3) Point system seemed to work pretty well to me;

(4) Love the consistent deadlines with some grace period until adjudication. Were there any NMRs?

Alright now for some suggestions (feel free to figuratively toss these in the wastebasket)

(1) I agree that the lack of a retreat phase had an impact on some games; I would simply have a procedure for default retreats (home sc, other sc, distance from home sc, etc.) if there is no conditional retreat order. As far as an ultimatums go, this is a taxing tournament to run and I think the less Bobby had to do the better

(2) I didn’t have a problem with the Monday, Wednesday and Friday deadlines but it makes sense to make it Monday, Thursday, Friday. It really shouldn’t take much to order builds in one day. I don’t know if there is any convenience issue in not adjudicating on Thursday, however.

(3) The first round is so taxing to adjudicate, might it to be prudent to enlist some guest gms to assist in handling the first round?

(4) Accelerated deadlines? I think this depends on the convenience of the GM. I don’t think even one deadline a day is too taxing for players, however (well, excluding weekends) I think speeding up the second and third rounds might be considered to keep interest.

(5) is there a downside for revealing the identities of players who have been eliminated after each round? I think if eliminated players have been identified they are more likely to submit EOGs and of course people will start speculating as to who is left.

(6) I think if you don’t send in a build you lose it--I don’t think a default can be used.

But it’s Bobby’s creation, however. Let him do with it what he wants to. I’m sure I’ll still be happy to play
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Post 24 Feb 2011, 5:57 am

Great to see so much feedback already! Much appreciated.

(3) The first round is so taxing to adjudicate, might it to be prudent to enlist some guest gms to assist in handling the first round?


Round 1 took approximately two hours per movement phase for adjudication and basic review, and about an hour of data harvesting. I was easily spending 10hrs a week on the tournament. The nice thing was that R1 was only two months, and R2 and R3 were much much easier.

One of my concerns with farming out R1 are that others may not be as focused on getting the adjudications out on schedule. As a site we have not been able to coordinate this well in the past (think Patriot Games), and that is with a weekly deadline as opposed to a more taxing semi-daily. Then you have to look at having backup GMs, which could mean community E-mail boxes...just not sure if I want to take this tournament down that road. But it could become necessary.

(4) Love the consistent deadlines with some grace period until adjudication. Were there any NMRs?


All in there were 22 player NMRs, although some of these resulted in replacements being tapped before the deadline, which meant orders were used.

10 games = appx. 2.2 NMRs per game

Given the deadlines, I think that's pretty reasonable.

We also had five players withdraw or abandon. Dr. Jack Jennings & corruptone NMRd S'01 and were immediately replaced (I had backups waiting in the wings). Geezerguy had to bow out in R2 and was replaced by Green Arrow. Green Arrow had previously served as a stand in for andreaz while he was on vacation.

Sounds like the biggest and most resounding rule that needs to be addressed is the retreats. Admittedly I didn't like seeing NRRs cause such large swings in power, although I loathe the idea of default retreats. Your proposals do seem reasonable.

How about...
1) Retreats must be submitted in advance (with a boilerplate reminder included with every adjudication)
2) If a retreat is not submitted, units will retreat in the following manner:
-Available owned Home Supply Center (alphabetical order A-Z)
-Available unowned Home Supply Center (alphabetical order A-Z)
-Available owned neutral Supply Center (alphabetical order A-Z)
-Available unowned neutral Supply Center (alphabetical order A-Z)
-Available owned foreign Supply Center (alphabetical order A-Z)
-Available unowned foreign Supply Center (alphabetical order A-Z)
-Any available non-supply center territory (alphabetical order A-Z)

The other issue that seems to come up is the schedule. While I don't want to go with Monday, Thursday, Friday because this gives me no cushion in the event that I miss a deadline, I would be willing to consider Monday Thursday Saturday. This gives roughly the same amount of time between deadlines, but extends play to weekends, which I thought players would want to avoid. Thoughts on this? Keep in mind that we have players from all different time zones.

Another suggestion was to reveal players as they are eliminated. I don't have a problem with this per se, but would that kill the surprise?

Good start to the discussion, keep it coming!
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Post 24 Feb 2011, 12:03 pm

as for retreats, why not alphabetical, period. That's plenty of incitament to order a retreat (the default retreat for F Nwy is Barents Sea...), low level GM work, but still not the total disaster that was before.
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Post 24 Feb 2011, 9:25 pm

My reasoning for having the tiers is that I feel a 'retreat', especially a default due to NRR, should be towards a player's home nation and existing holdings if the option exists. It would suck for the players who are submitting retreats to have a player's NRR result in a foreign unit marching further into their territory, especially if they had been allies (consider A Venice dislodged by Germany, and retreats into ally Austria's Trieste instead of Italian Rome.)
 

Post 24 Feb 2011, 10:46 pm

I like the proposed default retreat system. The point is not really to help the party that has failed to put in a conditional retreat order; it is for the benefit of other players to not have a game unbalanced because of a piece going off of the board. I think the default priorities set forth accomplish that goal.
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Post 08 Mar 2011, 5:15 am

The downside to that the the potential increase in solos. I came closest to a solo, 16SCs in Round 1 as France and would have taken it in another year. Would solos be too tournament-skewing? Would you want to increase the chances of their appearance in Round 1? Not taking sides here, just opening up issues for consideration...
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Post 09 Mar 2011, 5:43 am

My feeling is that 8 years was fine for Round 1 for one simple reason - each player is competing only against other players of the same Power for advancement. Thus for Round 1 it doesn't matter if one or other Power (such as Turkey perhaps) could do with a couple extra game years to make better use of its strengths, since all Turkey's are in the same situation.

However, this doesn't apply to Round 2 and beyond when you start to compete against other Powers for advancement. That's where a couple extra game years could come in handy to balance things out.
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Post 09 Mar 2011, 5:58 am

FYI I went back and checked the stats. For those making it to the final table their Round 1 countries were: 2 Englands, 2 Russias, 1 each for Austria, France and Turkey. In other words no-one playing Germany in Round 1 (the most successful country in terms of total combined country points) made it to the final. So maybe Round 1 placement isn't that important.

In fact, perhaps it is an advantage playing a supposedly weaker country in Round 1 since though you might not do as well, nor might others playing your country. Example: the 3rd most successful Germany in Round 1 was 8th on the leaderboard, putting his score comfortably above half of the players who advanced to Round 2. However, since 2 Germanys had done even better than him, he failed to advance.
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Post 10 Mar 2011, 9:14 pm

Fair point, but I think that what promoted dot-grabbing as an effective strategy in this Tournament was not so much the length of the games themselves as the scoring system. The scoring was cumulative, meaning that a Power that got off to a strong start, say reaching 6-7 SCs by 1903 and then mostly maintaining that level and rising to 9SCs by game's end would score more highly than a Power who stayed at around 5 SCs until 1905 before rising to 14SCs by game's end. Clearly the latter Power has played a better game of Diplomacy and ended with a higher SC count, yet due to the cumulative scoring system may rank below the first Power.

Perfect example of this was Italy in the Round 1 game Wrath. That player (Schlieffen) came second in Round 1 by SC count at 15SCs, yet was only 7th by score. This was because he made a late surge, going from 6SCs in 1904 to 15SCs by end of 1908. Now perhaps another game year or two would have resulted in his gaining a solo - can't speak to that. But what is certain is that a scoring system which didn't favour early expansion would have meant a better result for him, and perhaps a seat at the final table.