Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 09:35:27 +0100 From: Tournament HeadquartersSubject: W2WT: Tutorial #7 - How to Win the Tournament! This tutorial explains the structure of the tournament, how games are scored, how players are ranked, and how prizes are awarded. Read carefully! *** The Structure of the Tournament: The tournament consists of a series of rounds: Round A, Round B, etc. Each round consists of a set of 20-turn, 4-player games (A01, A12, B19, etc.). All games in each round are played in parallel on a single scenario. Each game uses the "privacy" features of the Remailer so that players will not know what is happening in other games until the end of the round. At that time the history logs of each game will be made public in the Remailer archives, and the game results will be used to update the Tournament Standings at http://www.heeter.net/tournament/Standings.html Rounds A, B, and C are open to all players and will be played using all four flavors of Warlords. Round D will be restricted to the top 32 players (based on the standings after Round B), and Round E will be the top 16 (determined after Round C). The ranking method is described further down in this Tutorial. Round F will be the final round, with 4 players fighting for the ultimate victory! The final round is a fight to the death, not a mere 20-turn game. It will be run "live" on the Remailer, for the world of Warlords players to watch. :) Note: Rounds D, E, and F will only involve the Deluxe/CD versions. If a player does not have W2 Deluxe, we will help them buy it. You can drop out after any round, but please don't bail out in the middle of a round! If you drop out during a game it screws up your game and distorts the tournament rankings. Players leaving the tournament after the end of each round will be given a final "Tournament Rank" as they withdraw or are eliminated. This rank will be used to seed any and all interested players in the upcoming Head-to-Head Warlords Ladder, where all can continue the struggle for glory and power, using any and all flavors of Warlords! (For a sneak preview of the ladder, visit the Ladder playtesting page: http://www.heeter.net/w2home/head2head.html ) In schematic form, the structure of the tournament looks like this: ============================================================================= TOURNAMENT STRUCTURE: 6 rounds, 20 turns/round, 2 days turnaround, 18 months ============================================================================= Round A Round C Cut Round E Cut -----------> -----------> | ----------> | | All players All players | 16 players | Round F | The | ----------->| Greatest Round 2 | Round D | 4 Players | Warlord! -----------> | ----------> | | All players Cut 32 players *************************************************************************** 10/97 1/98 4/98 6/98 9/98 1/99 4/99 (Month/Year) In a different form, here's an approximate calendar for the tournament. There will be about 5 turns of overlap when one round is finishing and the next is beginning. Later rounds may overlap more as players become more experienced; that will shorten the tournament. For example, by having Round D overlap Round C, instead of waiting for Round C to end, we save about 4 months. 1997: Oct 4: Round A begins 1998: Jan 10: Round B begins. Extra timeouts given for Round A. Feb 4: Round A ends. Apr 1: Round C begins. Extra timeouts given for Round B. May 10: Round B ends. First overall tournament rankings. Select top 32 players for Round D. Jun 20: Round D begins. Aug 1: Round C ends. Second overall rankings. Select top 16 players for Round E. (Prizes assured!) Sep 10: Round E begins! Oct 20: Round D ends. Third overall rankings. 1999: Jan 10: Round E ends. Fourth overall ranking. Select top 4! Jan 15: Round F begins; fight to the death! We may need to increase the number of timeouts in order to keep everyone sane. We have to run two rounds in parallel in order to complete enough rounds to clearly pick out the best Warlord before the end of the milennium! (Over 95% of the players who replied to the survey on this agreed with this decision, as long as extra timeouts were allowed.) Do not worry if you need to take vacations or aren't sure how fast you can do your moves; we'll do our best to keep everyone happy while keeping the tournament moving. But play as fast as you can so we can finish the tournament quickly! Generally each player is assigned to only one game in each round, but occasionally we will not have a nice multiple of 4 players and then someone will be asked to be a sub in a second game. We may need a few players to replace lost players, too. Anyone playing in two games has the liability of having to get them both completed in the usual turnaround time. To compensate, they also get the advantage of choosing their best result as their "official" result for that round. Someone playing in two games in the same round will play different colors in each game, so they don't get a special advantage from playing the same color twice. Any player may volunteer as a potential sub. When a sub is needed one will be chosen randomly from the available pool. No one will serve as a sub in more than one round unless we run out of subs. :) *** How Games are Scored and Players are Ranked: Each game will run 20 turns. At the end of Turn 20 all combat ceases, and it becomes time to evaluate the game results. Tutorial #8 explains in detail how this is done. Assuming you survive the whole game, the critical value is your "final city fraction" - the ratio of your final city count to the total number of unrazed cities, including neutral cities and cities belonging to Lost Players. Both your city count and the total cities are determined after the last player moves on Turn 20. This fraction is the main ranking criterion. Since it's a ratio, you can improve your score by either controlling more cities, or razing cities you don't control. You are ranked against other players who played the same *color* in the other games of your round. (You are NOT ranked against the others in your own game, because certain colors may have strategic advantages and it wouldn't be fair.) Winning your own game is less important than doing better than the others playing your color in the other games. Winning helps - of course - but it might not be necessary (if no one in your color wins their game), and then again it might not be enough (if many players in your color win their game)! If two players in the same color have the same city fraction, then we use the first tiebreaker: total final base army strength (including blessings and hero Battle Items but not any other bonuses). The procedure for determining this is explained in Tutorial #8; it's easy. If necessary, we will use final gold and then final "profits" (income - expenses) as additional tiebreakers. After breaking the ties we'll know your exact rank within your color group for a given round. [ Note: Different tiebreakers are used in the case of players who are vanquished during a game, or who destroy all opposition and control 100% of the cities before Turn 20; these are explained in the official rules on the Web. ] Your overall Tournament Rank is derived partly from your rank-within-color rankings for each round, and partly from your "Opponent Quality" rating, which is based on the average Tournament Rank of your opponents. (The relative weightings are still being fine-tuned, but they will be in the range of 33-67% each for your own rank and your average opponent rank. The rankings will not actually be needed until the end of Round B.) *** How to Win Prizes: The way to win prizes in the tournament is to: a) be a great role player, b) motivate your fellow players to write an entertaining game history, or c) play well enough to survive until you are in the Top 16 for Round E! In each of the first three rounds (A,B,C), five prizes will be awarded! One prize will go to the individual player who does the "Best Role Play", and four prizes will go to the players in the "Most Entertaining Game." The decisions will be made by a committee of moderators who will not be allowed to receive prizes. The top 16 finalists who make it into Round E will also receive prizes! The prizes will be supplied by SSG; they will probably be free games! So, to win the tournament, you need to survive as long as possible and hold as many cities as possible at the end of Turn 20, and do better than anyone else playing your color. You want to do as well as you can, regardless of how tough your opposition is! In other words, play Warlords the way you would normally play, only don't give up if you start to lose, because the longer you hold out and the more cities you hang onto, the better your ranking. And even if you get crushed, you might still have the satisfaction of knocking your opponent down enough that he or she doesn't make a later cut! [ One important note: All players and moderators will be looking for signs of cheating during each game. All cheaters will be immediately and ungraciously expelled from the tournament. News of their dishonor will be spread far and wide! They will also be banished from future Warlords activities, including the Head-to-Head Ladder. There are no prizes for hex editing!!! ] For full details, see the official Tournament Rules. For wisdom about how these rules might affect a player's strategy, ask your Moderator or look at the histories of the playtesting games. Now you know how to win the tournament... May the Greatest Warlord Win! -- The Tournament Organizers P.S. But what if you don't win? You can still have lots of fun! All but one player will lose at some point. Unlike AI games, how you choose to accept defeat is very important, even more so in the Tournament than in ordinary play-by-email games. How you lose can strongly affect the tournament results, even if it doesn't affect who wins your particular game. Prizes will be won or lost based on single cities, or even armies. Losing gracefully is therefore very important to the success of the tournament. Keep in mind a few key points: (1) It's bad for both you and the tournament if you just disappear. Please finish any game you start. It's usually unwise to resign unless you will be eliminated that Turn anyway. (2) You can lose your own game and still do well in the tournament! Your goal is simply to play as well as you can with your own side. (3) The longer you stay in the game, and the more cities you hold at the end, the better your tournament rank, and the better your initial position in the Head-to-Head Play-by-Email Ladder. (http://www.heeter.net/w2home/head2head.html) The Ladder gives you a shot at revenge, too. :) (4) The purpose of the tournament is to find the best warlord. It's not right to lose in a way which skews the results of your game towards an undeserving player. Consider the consequences of your final moves very carefully, and don't play with personal malice or vicious spite. Be sure that whatever you do really hinders your enemies and helps your allies. Analyze the effects of your actions on the end-of-game statistics. And take down as many foes as you can before you die!