Course Reports - Structure

[Dominae]

Course reports are integral to AU. In the past, we tried the following schemes:

1. One Big Thread. Everyone posted their report in a single thread dedicated to that purpose. Reports and discussions on the reports of various players were all intermixed. There were not particular rules as to the content you could post, just whatever came to mind.

2. After Action Reports ("AARs"). In this scheme, everyone had different threads for their own game. Players would typically finish a game and provide a retrospective. Comments on each's game were welcomed in the same thread.

3. During Action Reports ("DARs"). AARs were found lacking because it was difficult to compare two players' strategies in the summary style of AARs. DARs this break up the report into distinct chunks using game dates (4000BC-2150BC) or milestones ("Reach the Industrial era"). As in the "one big thread" scheme, all players would post their report for a specific interval in the appropriate DAR thread. The main problems here was that newer players were confused by the DARs, and most players would forget to stop playing at the end of an interval (one...more...turn!).

Which of these should we employ for the CIV chapter of AU? Anyone have a better idea?

Personally I like the AAR idea because it allows for the reading of an entire game report without having to collate a bunch of posts in different DAR threads. A possible solution to this is to set up a system of links that would bring together each person's DAR (perhaps in the course registration thread?).

I also like the DAR concept because it "forces" a minimum level of comparison between each player's game, which I believe helps learning. I feel, and I think others agree, that the DAR system is a little clunky (and the name is not that great either!).

Vote and post!

[Dominae]

Just to clarify for those new to AU and who are probably confused by the above post (I have a knack for that):

1. One Big Thread: one thread, medium comparability, medium readibility

2. AARs: many threads, low comparibility, medium readability

3. DARs: handful of threads, high comparibility, low readability

Here's a great thread to see what we've done in the past: AU History 101.

[Arrian]

I personally prefer writing AARs to DARs, because I tend to just single-mindedly play the game through and then recap at the end.

I think One Big Thread is too muddled, so (to me) it's between AARs and DARs. DARs are the best for comparison purposes, which is one of the keys to AU, so despite my personal preference as a writer, I think DARs are the way to go.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Could we somehow combine the preference for writing AARs (which I'm sure is common) with the DAR scheme?

Would it be unfair to give the option to do both, then reward DAR-writers in the scoring system?

[duckilama]

I liked the DAR format we used to use.

What'd be handy is if there was some magical way to have the DARs such that you could say "give me all the DARs for Aeson for AU4 101" and be able to read his whole game, or to be able to say "give me all my DARs and all Dominae's DARs, by period" so you could have a stage-by-stage comparison of any two(or more) games, or if you just want to read what everyone did during the Military Tradition stage, you could just read the DAR that contained that.

That would be choice.

[polarnomad]

Never participated in AU, but based on my understanding of the choices I definitely would go for DAR. Requires more discipline perhaps, but sounds much more interesting to see how different people advance through their games.

[duckilama]

One thing about the DAR is that you write it as you go, so you don't lose details. I find it hard to remember, as my tanks roll across foreign soil, exactly why I placed that extra little city so close to my capitol. I'm sure there was a reason for it, but damned if I can remember. Or why I kept my puny AI neighbor around til the end. What was I thinking?

Even better, it's nice to know what the super-high-level players were thinking when they did something. DARs give you that, while AARs can leave out a lot of the whys that folks trying to learn from the masters would like to know. Why did Aeson wander for five hundred years in the tundra in SVC? Inquiring minds want to know.(Actually, ducki minds wish the screenshots had been archived somewhere. )
Why do I tend to get bogged down in builderly turtle mode(again, dammit) with no military and keep getting ganked by the AI early in the game, while others are ripping it up?
Why does my Industrial era seem so sluggish and others are zipping along?

Anyway, I feel the DARs provide a much richer learning environment than AARs or OBTs, and one thing I really love about AU is the amount we can learn from each other and the things we can teach each other. Coupled with the non-competitive format, folks are more willing to take big risks or try "crazy" ideas out, adding to the pool of information.

Man, I've missed AU.

[Dominae]

Welcome back, ducki!!

What's with the name change?

[ZargonX]

I prefer the DARs to the AARs for much of the reasons Ducki expressed: it's just a better learning tool. The detail level tends to be better in DARs due to their step-by-step nature, whereas most AARs tend to be very broad in their scope, and while they give a good strategic overlook, they lose much of the "day-to-day" minutiae which would actually be a lot of help to people trying to figure things out.

[Apocalypse Cow]

I know I'm new here, but hopefully my vote still counts. I chose DAR because it gives a better baseline of comparison, and because, like dukilama said, there are things you will forget over the 415 turns of a game. Lastly, I think that DARs give a better "organic" feel to the strategy and tactics of various players, its easier to see how someone's tactics change and adapted over the course of a game, which is often the biggest chance to learn from someone else's play.

[duckilama]

Welcome back, ducki!!

What's with the name change?

Is it different? Maybe I lost my pw and couldn't get it because the old email doesn't exist. I just assumed this was the right username. I'll see if I can log into the old one. I sure didn't create a new one on purpose. Odd...

Yep, you're right. I can't figure out what email address my "real" account is tied to and I can't figure out my old password. Any idea how I'd go about getting access back to that? I'd sure like to have my title and avatar back.

[DeepO]

BTW, one trick that might come in very handy is to simply take screenshots of everything happening in the game. I don't take notes, I simply take about 300-500 screenshots a game, detailing most of my decisions and special events. Of course, you always forget a couple of them, but in general it's easy to follow later on what happened.

One thing though: screenshots work best with resource bubbles on, and in many cases with the grid on too. If you continually take snapshots like I do, consider playing with bubbles on all the time... it will be a lot clearer to you later on.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

With a DAR structure, nothing stops players from waiting until after they've finished the game to write their reports. What I did sometimes in Civ 3 was save screenshots at the end of reporting periods (along with any other interesting screenshots) but wait until later, when I was in more of a mood for writing (or less caught up in playing one more turn), to write my actual reports.

There are two things I really like about the DAR format. The biggest one is that it lets players read early-game reports and perhaps pick up some useful ideas from them without learning information about the later game that they aren't supposed to know yet. That's virtually impossible in a "one big thread" approach because different people play at different speeds, which in turn means that reports from all different stages of the game get jumbled together. An AAR approach would give players some ability to be careful what they read at any given time, but it would be hard to consistently avoid reading at least some of the next message and/or seeing the next screenshot past what players want to read, and reading everyone's AARs a little bit at a time as the game progresses would be extremely cumbersome. So a DAR approach offers significant advantages in terms of players' being able to start looking at and learning from other people's games earlier, especially if they don't want "spoiler" information.

The other factor is what Dominae pointed out earlier: the DAR approach is best for comparing what different players did in the same period of the game.

As for readability, if players are willing to go to a bit of extra effort to make their reports easier to navigate, they could incorporate links into their DAR messages so others can follow their progress from one message to the next and from one DAR thread to the next with a click of the mouse. That would make individual players' reports almost as easy to read through from start to end as an AAR approach would. I'm skeptical as to how many players would go to the trouble, especially since it would require going back and editing earlier messages to add the links. But to whatever extent players could be persuaded to do it (and especially players with unusually good or useful DARs), it would provide an alternative approach to navigation that would be a lot easier for people who want to follow a particular game from start to end. We could even have a topped thread with links to the first message in such chains.

[Arrian]

Looks like DARs in a landslide.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Now the question is, can we come up with a better name for DARs?

Edit: One possibility would be Period Activity Report (PAR)