Some statistics

[binTravkin]

Faction		Posts 	Threads	Activity	Organisation factor*
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sparta		9648	217	I		44.46		II
Data Angels	4895	83	II		58.98		I
Morgan		3698	244	III		15.16		V
Gaia		3370	121	IV		27.85		VI
PLO**		559	14	V		39.93		III
--------------------------------------------------------------------

* - an arbitrary factor:
OF = round(posts / threads, 2);

** - Pholus Lunar Outpost (to not be confused with other PLO's )

I would've liked to include statistics about team members and active members, but I doubt I can collect objective information, it's a bit too late.

[binTravkin]

Based on following visual evidence:

[GeoModder]

:winner:
(I can't help keep wondering if my long vacation in 2005 damaged the DA's too much )

[binTravkin]

It's pretty paradoxal how Gaians being the biggest team and having such prominent members as Illu, Darsnan, CT, Hydro and SmackSim within it's ranks, was the least active.

Partially I can account what was wrong and I hope people mentioned dont take it personally.

Illuminatus was our team leader from the start, at least the ideological one.
His mistake was being too idealistic about how a team should work and believing in democracy too much.
Team needs a strong and autoritative leader and a set of other influential persons, which aid the leader, to work smoothly.


Darsnan was quite inactive for the most part of the game.
I suppose, he was either lurking or having little interest seeing how not much of discussion, RP, etc was going on after certain moment.


CT was the turnplayer and an authoritative person which I saw as the perspective leader and strong hand initially.
Early on things were going pretty well, when there was still SmackSim around, they two and others were discussing turns alot.
Later, however, when he should've stepped up and taken control officially, he didn't, instead becoming the quiet turnplayer person, who rarely talked and discussed alot, yet heeded the advices which seemed good and plans which were agreed upon (remember my Hive defense plan? ).
In the end, though, he was the person who was mostly controlling it all as there were only him and me active and Netwarrior and Ouro showing up from time to time.


Hydro was active early on and was the Lord of Progress, yet it seemed there's little to do for him, again, after certain point in Gaian history, he lost interest.


SmackSim was very active and helpful for the team early on, one could even argue he was team's defacto decision maker at some point, yet he disappeared around the time of one of the hurricanes in US and everyone was wondering what happened to him.
As it later turned out he had simply changed his style of life.


Me, I was pretty active early on and one of the two most active persons (CT, me) later, but I had a pretty little idea what is my place in the team and how DGs work as this was my first DG.
Had there been a strong hand to put me where I belonged, I could've been much more useful.


In summary I think the start-of-the-end of Gaian team was SmackSims departure, we held on for a time, but he left us too frustrated and noone else really managed to assume his position as one of the main persons in the team.
Early on it was effectively a triumvirate - CT, Smack, Illu, they had characteristics that made them a very good combination for top of the team.
Once one of the triumvirate was gone, there was an empty space and soon the second pulled out leaving the last one as the backbone of the dying team.

[fed1943]

Interesting study,binTravkin.
So,knowing the enviroment(here,computers)and the object(here,the game SMAC)is far from enough:the decisive and greatest skill is getting and maintaining the team funtioning.
Best regards,

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by binTravkin
It's pretty paradoxal how Gaians being the biggest team and having such prominent members as Illu, Darsnan, CT, Hydro and SmackSim within it's ranks, was the least active.


Darsnan was quite inactive for the most part of the game.

Yes, I left before you came on board. I explained why I was leaving the Gaians here .

Originally posted by binTravkin
It's pretty paradoxal how Gaians being the biggest team and having such prominent members as Illu, Darsnan, CT, Hydro and SmackSim within it's ranks, was the least active.

Me, I was pretty active early on and one of the two most active persons (CT, me) later, but I had a pretty little idea what is my place in the team and how DGs work as this was my first DG.
Had there been a strong hand to put me where I belonged, I could've been much more useful.

You may also not know that Snowflake started out on the Gaian Team as well, and that she was actually the first to quit the team. FYI in case you weren't aware of this.


D

[binTravkin]

There's no need to remind me of those events, Darsnan.
I was/am a member of Gaian team and I know of them.

However, people who were not in our team and are not very eager to check all the old threads, dated around game start or even before it, might not know it.

I also know about HongHu/Snowflake and the Enigma affair and how she's connected with your participation in our team and how EN and Kody is connected with her leave..

That post was more like 'my thoughts about why Gaians ended up in being a team consisting of 1 person' as it were for last 10-20 turns (as I wasn't able to follow up due to RL stuff).

Interesting study,binTravkin.
So,knowing the enviroment(here,computers)and the object(here,the game SMAC)is far from enough:the decisive and greatest skill is getting and maintaining the team funtioning.
Best regards,

Yeah, that pretty muchs sums it all up.

[vyeh]

I'm a newcomer to the DA's and ACDG. I read the entire DA forum in a week, so I think I have a good overview.

I apologize to any DA if I misspeak.

The DA players were motivated by playing a faction new (to them). There was a great deal of enthusiasm up to the very end.

Because the DA's were an unfamiliar faction, there was a lot of experimentation. In retrospect, I think most of the DA players would agree that the first initial mistake was not going to Free Market at the earliest possible moment.

Our two initial Colony Pods started on a river. We established two river bases immediately. If we had gotten to FM early, we could have established a tech advantage AND built the two Secret Projects that we missed by one turn.

So I suppose that if there was a failure, it was lack of a strategic focus. Being a probe based faction got us thinking in terms of infiltration of the other factions. While we got the AI hive, the fact that all the human factions knew about our probes negated that possibility.

[GeoModder]

We did well I think. AFAIK the Morgans never suspected we infiltrated them.
And there were plans to do a "masked" infiltration, but somehow the majority never went for it.

[Maniac]

Re: Some statistics

Originally posted by binTravkin
* - an arbitrary factor indicating if factions had one thread per turn, or one thread for several turns

[Chaos Theory]

After a while, I really wanted to yield the turnplayer position to someone, but no one would take it. binTravkin helped out some of the time when I couldn't get turns in, but wouldn't become the regular turnplayer, and others became less and less involved or present.

[binTravkin]

Maniac, that's why it was marked 'arbitrary'.
I do believe that having a bit more centralised and joint planning than a plan for each individual turn (except for occassional remarks and tricks being done in 1-3 turns), is better as one can follow the line easier and it's easier to see events in a more global/general scale if you do not have to navigate threads to find what did you plan 5 turns ago..

[Kataphraktoi]

I call it Multiple Sentence \ Post Technology. which accounts for the DA postcount. Herc does it pretty good...

Hey, vyeh, head over to civgaming.net and read the ACDG2 archives for drones if you want some real top stuff.

[Kataphraktoi]

You mean DA has best organization because we have a dictator?

Well i like our government best anyway. A true democracy(for a time) with people working together, and executive veto available to any 1 member, IIRC, which wasnt used AFAIK.

[binTravkin]

I think that a DG team must work more like an organisation, not nation, which means that even if there's democracy, there should be an organisational body who keeps things running and sometimes even makes unpopular decisions.