Player Rankings and Individual Winners

mepbmlist
#1

As I see it, there are really 2 issues here:
1. VPs reward players for playing certain nations (Noldo, Corsairs, WW, etc.)
2. VPs reward players for anti-team play. (Keep the Noldor out of the fight altogether. Build up Character ranks, a huge treasury, and lots of artifacts, and just before other players win, take some points from other highly placed players on your team by challenging their chars, stealing away gold, or taking their pops.)

Your system discourages #1, but if anything, encourages 2. It means that players interested in winning as the noldor need to score SIGNIFICANTLY more points than the norm for a nation who normally comes in first anyway.

Better might be a running talley for points scoring in current categories, like:
Current # of soldiers + total number of enemy soldiers slain.
Current character points + total points of enemy characters slain.
Current treasury + total amount of gold/resources given to allies.
Current pop center levels + total enemy pop center levels destroyed + total levels of pop centers given to allies.

With perhaps extra points awarded for other team contributing activities (like points for locating enemy characters with ScoChar, to keep QA and Woodmen from being run over by nations actually doing the assassinations.)

So the winner would be the nation who was most effective in fighting the enemy. Then maybe a standard deviation system such as the one you suggest to keep the scales balanced. Make the noldor and other top nations race to be first into battle to kill as many enemies as possible, and give all their spare gold away to allies in need!

Winn Keathley

···

Every nation would have its Mean Game End VP, and its
corresponding Standard Deviation. The nation that
excells the most in relation to it's own nations
historical results, wins!

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#2

--- In mepbmlist@y..., "Winn Keathley" <Gnaeus@h...> wrote:

As I see it, there are really 2 issues here:
1. VPs reward players for playing certain nations (Noldo, Corsairs,

WW,

etc.)
2. VPs reward players for anti-team play. (Keep the Noldor out of

the fight

altogether. Build up Character ranks, a huge treasury, and lots of
artifacts, and just before other players win, take some points from

other

highly placed players on your team by challenging their chars,

stealing away

gold, or taking their pops.)

Your system discourages #1, but if anything, encourages 2. It means

that

players interested in winning as the noldor need to score

SIGNIFICANTLY more

points than the norm for a nation who normally comes in first

anyway.

As below, I like the idea of junking the current individual victory
conditions and replacing them with ones that reflect contributions to
a team win. These should also be calibrated for the overall challenge
of the position; a 2950 North Gondor player should score a VC just for
holding Osgilath until turn 10, for instance, since it is very hard to
do. I'd keep Brads idea for the four other score components; it might
be simpler to just make a rank ordered list of the base scores. EG if
the Noldo player has 1350, which places him #50 among completed Noldo
scores, while the Northmen player has 900, which places him #30 among
completed Northmen players, the Northmen have ranked better.

I *do* think that the four basic score components don't simply measure
inactivity. It is possible to rack up a high score by sitting on your
hands, but teams that have more than one or two players doing that
will lose badly. Looking over my games, the people who score well are
usually the most effective players. There are absolutely exceptions,
which is why it would be nice to come up with some clever ideas for
rewarding folks who do a nice job in a tough spot.

Frankly, the game needs a more powerful incentive than the milk of
human kindness to get the best players to choose the toughest slots.

cheers,

Marc

Better might be a running talley for points scoring in current

categories,

like:
Current # of soldiers + total number of enemy soldiers slain.
Current character points + total points of enemy characters slain.
Current treasury + total amount of gold/resources given to allies.
Current pop center levels + total enemy pop center levels destroyed

+ total

levels of pop centers given to allies.

With perhaps extra points awarded for other team contributing

activities

(like points for locating enemy characters with ScoChar, to keep QA

and

Woodmen from being run over by nations actually doing the

assassinations.)

So the winner would be the nation who was most effective in fighting

the

enemy. Then maybe a standard deviation system such as the one you

suggest to

keep the scales balanced. Make the noldor and other top nations race

to be

first into battle to kill as many enemies as possible, and give all

their

···

spare gold away to allies in need!

Winn Keathley

>Every nation would have its Mean Game End VP, and its
>corresponding Standard Deviation. The nation that
>excells the most in relation to it's own nations
>historical results, wins!
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