Ladders

[mark13]

I would fully concur with Googlie's post - it hit the nail on the head. The internal scoring system is certainly not the answer - if someone could come up with a decent system that calcuated more truthfully a player's position in the game, I would certainly be interested. But not me.

[quinns]

Great explanation about the Statistics in SMAC!

I wonder, though, if the same thing happens in SMAC that happened in CTP. That is, in CTP, (sorry, it's the only thing I know, right now), there is a "Civ Score" and a "Power Graph". These do NOT track the same thing. Though there are similarities between the two, they are really quite different. One tracks "POWER" and one tracks "CIVILIZATION". Someone could have a very unhappy civilization but be very powerful. Someone could Nuke the rest of the world and "win" the game and be the most "powerful", but they would be considered a bit "uncivilized" (and not necessarily a very good player, either).

My question is, if this might be happening between your "F8 Key Stats Screen" and your "Power Graph". Are you sure that they are tracking the same thing?

You know, even if you were to come up with a really good algorithm to measure a player's ability at a given time, I THINK that it would be too complex to really use in a practical sense. I've been wrong many times before, but I can't imagine a truly workable while, at the same time, COMPLETELY accurate system for measuring a player's ability.

[This message has been edited by quinns (edited December 15, 2000).]

[Googlie]

quinns:

You are right, (and I erred in the previous post).

That formula above is the formula for determining the might of a faction as it reports in the power graph turn by turn.

The AC score formula (which appears when you hit the F8 screen, and at the end of the game) is:



#ADVCONCEPT4
Your Alpha Centauri Score is computed as follows:

(1) 1 point for each citizen of each base.
(2) If you have won a $LINK [Diplomatic=10005] or $LINK [Economic=10008] victory, score:
(a) 1 point for each citizen of a $LINK [Pact Brother's=3] base.
(b) 1/2 point for each citizen of any other faction's base.
(3) 1 point for each citizen of a surrendered base.
(4) 1 point for each unit of $LINK [commerce=29] your bases are receiving.
(5) 1 point for each $LINK [technology=140062] discovered.
(6) 10 points for each $LINK [Transcendent Thought=140088] advance.
(7) 25 points for each $LINK [Secret Project=110102].
(8) A $LINK [Victory=30] bonus if you have won the game.

There are then additional bonuses for early victory, using 'ironman' rules (essentially can't save and reload without a lot of hassle - guards (imperfectly) against someone replaying a move when they have hit a poor result in pod-popping or mindworm battling).

Many players steadfastly refuse to play 'Ironman' as the game has ben known to be unstable with .exe crashes, and who wants to have played 30 or 40 turns and not be able to restart on the last turn. (shouldn't apply to PBEM's though, as each turn is completed and saved anyway)

Anyway, I think these give a flavor of the magnitude of the task in devising an equitable running ranking system - and which gave rise to the "yawn" reflex.

To make it work in smac/x you ptobably need to link up with someone who has played extensively and who has broken down the formulae (like MariOne, Simpson II or maybe Velociryx) but their absence from this thread prolly means that they have little interest.

But if a formula can be created that meets us "whiners" criteria, I'm sure interest will perk up.



Googlie

[WhiteElephants]

It seems a mixture of both of these graphs/charts/scores would yeild an accurate result with a minimal amount of "new" formulas. If we can get both scores in numeric values maybe we could add them and divide by two to get an average of both. But, as Googlie pointed out, there are various ways to inflate the scores.

I can't quite conceive of anyone actually wanting to receive (x) amount of emails with one or even two (screen shots? or just the save games?) attached, opening them, computing the results, and then posting them weekly. Although I can't quite believe I'd actually want to, or remember to, send an extra email ever ten turns when I can't even work up the energy to post here after every turn.

Quinn, Solver, do you two know what your getting yourselves into?

[mark13]

Apparently it's worked with CTP, so I can't imagine that being a problem - still, I too would have reservations about this....it would seem a lot of hassle just to get a little chart up at the end of every week....still, if people are prepared to do it, I can't see it being a bad idea....

[quinns]

White Elephants -- Read my previous post. It is exactly this "hassle" that I'm trying to avoid! I think the simpler the better. As I implied earlier, anything more than ONE snapshot of a Power Graph for each TEN turns per GAME, would cause this thing to fail miserably. I, for one, sure won't go opening each player's game and record the results, divide by two, etc., then enter them into the system, even if it was only once every ten turns.

But I would be happy to do it as stated, (one Power Graph every ten turns), provided somebody from SMAC acts as a Ladder Administrator and sends me the data on a weekly basis (see earlier quinns post in this thread). It really doesn't take too much time (1 hour per week, about) now that the system is up and running.

Is the Power Graph really that bad in SMAC? Can someone really abuse it without compromising themselves later in the game?

Quinns -- CTP PBEM Ratings Processor

[WhiteElephants]

Just out of curiousity, how long do CtP PBEM/IP games take in terms of turns completed?

[quinns]

White Elephants - Regarding length of CTP Games - Well, I know of one game that is well over 200 turns right now. I think the only reason a game really "ends" is because players lose interest, or one player gets a substantial lead and it becomes just a long, tedious mop up job to "conquer" the rest of the civilizations.

One of the good points of the rating system is that it actually encourages players to stay in the game, and encourages the game leader "not to destroy" the rest of the nations, but just to stay in the lead (but not by too much) so that the leader's ratings will continue to increase at the ten turn mark and the other players will stay in, in the hopes of gaining the lead themselves, while still gaining ratings points for being ahead of the others in the game. For once the game ends, the ratings no longer change. There is no "bonus" for ending the game, (just as there is no bonus for ending the "real" world )

[quinns]

Well, I see that there are many more pressing issues in SMAC PBEM, right now, with the "flaw" in unfair difficulty level problems that I've read about.

But I hope this idea of "ratings and rankings" isn't dead here in SMAC. I really think most of you would enjoy this type of system.
[This message has been edited by quinns (edited December 19, 2000).]

[Solver]

Quinns, we've already been told that they might like the idea. But, they don't like the way we are going to realize the system. On the one hand, we shold now stop this, and this threead will probably die then.
On the other hand, I yet want SMAC PBEM giants to reply here, most of all I'd enjoy the opinion of Tau Ceti.
Quinns, I hope you see a SMAC box under your Chritsmas tree, so that you get to play it a bit, and understand how it goes. It would be quite hard to do something here, as long as you have almost no understanding about SMAC, and compltetly no understanding about the differences between SMAC and CtP.

------------------
Solver - http://www.aok.20m.com

[quinns]

Granted. Good point Solver. I would have bought Alpha Centauri a few weeks ago, but my wife told me not to buy any games because Christmas was so close (implying that she already bought "something" for me). Maybe that was just her way of keeping me from buying another $#@! COMPUTER GAME! (for awhile anyway ).

Would you like me to send a personal e-mail to Tau Ceti to get his possible direct feedback? He seems to be the main administrator of Alpha Centauri PBEM. It might be better if you did, due to my lack of knowledge regarding SMAC, but I wouldn't mind.

quinns

[Tau Ceti]

I echo many of the statements made by other players on this thread. I suppose the acid test is whether or not there is any interest in the idea. So far people seem to be saying "maybe, if you can work out a reasonable system of gauging performance". So, can you?

Personally, I am not convinced. The powergraph idea will not work - it is hugely biased in favour of tech early on and population later. It cannot be used as an objective measure. AC score is slightly more accurate, but only slightly. There are a great number of cases where the faction I would judge to be in the best position is behind in both power and score.

The root of this problem is probably the fact that these methods of measurement count only what you have right now, not your future potential, which is usually more important. Having a huge population is good, but someone with a large territory, many cities or weak neighbours ripe for plunder and capture is probably better off. It is basically good to have many techs, but it is more important to have the right techs. Getting lots of AC points for commerce is nice, but of little use if half of it is lost to inefficiency.

If a large and powerful faction falls to a coalition of lesser forces, was it truly that great?

In my opinion, the only reasonably objective measure of a player's skill is his victory statistic. Having a lot of assets is only useful insofar as it advances your primary goal of winning the game. If someone sneaks a victory out from under the nose of a faction that is more powerful on paper through the use of cunning diplomacy and sneaky tricks, that is just as worthy a victory as beating everyone into submission by being larger, and they should not be judged differently. Hence my tournament scoring system depends only on victory.

From the above it is probably clear that I personally would not be interested in participating, and I do not intend to substitute the ladder for the tournament score system, nor have the tournament officially support it. But if you go ahead with it and the players of a tournament game decide they want the game ladder rated, then why not? It pleases both worlds.

[Misotu]

You know, I thought this thread was tracking a new PBEM called "Ladders" so I've only just discovered what it's about this morning. Hence the late contribution, sorry

I second Tau's comments here - he has summed up the main difficulties with the Ladders system well. I've seen a number of games won by a player who was behind on the power graph right the way through most of the game - but despite what the graph said, the outcome was clear to all the players concerned well before the end. I have played both Civ and CTP - SMAC is very different, much more complex I don't see the Ladder as a replacement for the current tourny scoring system - that should stand as it is.

Having said that, you guys deserve a lot of credit for being willing to put time into a service that might add some interest, despite all the difficulties. Particularly your new proposal, where you're looking at AC score (probably, rather than power graph) at the end of the game, rather than trying to do a snapshot thing on current games.

There are still many accuracy problems - for example, in random map tourny games it's possible for one player to submit to another. This submission is generally an admission of defeat, but of course after a submission to the winning player the submissive's AC score could end up being rather good

And then of course, there are the team games ...

But still, absolute accuracy in any scoring system is a hard thing to achieve.

I don't know - if the Ladder were run separately from the tourny, and included other games too, it could add a bit of fun and interest to the SMAC/X MP arena? It might be so wildly inaccurate that it's really just a bit of fun. And then again, it might provide some useful help in matching players of similar abilities ...

I'd be willing to participate in a trial, to see how it panned out and whether it was popular. I don't really see what we have to lose?

- "Giant" Mis ( Thanks Googlie )

[Misotu]

PS I don't know if it's possible to rename a thread, but one reason for the lack of responses may be that others have assumed, like I did, that this is a turn-tracking thread for a PBEM called Ladders.

If it's not possible to rename the thread, you might consider starting a new one with a link back to the discussion so far?

Just a thought ...

[quinns]

That's great Misotu! All we need to do for a trial is rate any one or two games that you are currently playing by getting a concensus among the players (that the game will be rated). (We could even rate the "already completed" games but I doubt that the losing players would consent to the rating status (post mortum) )

Right, good suggestion about renaming this thread to something more descriptive. I think Solver has some ties to the Apolyton Administrators so maybe he could rename this thread. Any suggestions? "Possible New SMAC Rating System" ???