SpielByWeb

[Kanga]

Now we are into the penultimate round of the first attempt at a Hacienda League, I'm starting to think about what to do differently in the next season.

I'm not asking at this stage for expressions of interest in playing next season, more in format changes.

Amongst the questions I'm hoping for feedback on are:

1. timeframe for games. I used 1 week initially in this season, then reduced that to about 9 days on average because some players were finding it too hard to keep up. Of course others were now finding it a bit slow.....

2. Format of matches. I quite like the 3 games on the same map against each opponent, but am willing to consider other options.


3. choice of maps: I've actually learned quite a lot about map choice in 2 player tournaments. I plan to avoid the maps that always end up in land buyouts. These maps are those in whom all the markets can be reached without coming close to using all the animals. In this League, the maps used in Round 3 - map 187, and Round 7 - 179, both had that happen routinely in the games played on them.

It's a strong personal preference of mine to avoid these maps in 2 player (they are both good maps in multiplayer). 40 round games make the tournaments drag on too long and reduce the result to a larger portion of luck of the draw than I like. However feel free to express your thoughts if you disagree!


4. Number of players per League: I used 10 this time round, obviously it depends a lot on the precise number of players signed up. However what do people think would be optimum?

5. Promotion / relegation / adding in of new players to league:

Given that not all the players from this season will stay on I probably wont be able to do a pure relegation / promotion as discussed. Also we may end up with different numbers of players in each league (see point 4). What I propose doing is ranking players based on their finishing order this season. So the League A players would be ranked 1-10, League B 11-20 and so on. The top two in League B would exchange rankings with the bottom two in League A, and so on.

New players who join in are more problematic. I'll use their performance in previous Hacienda tournaments to rank them and put them in at a best guess location.

Feel free to add in any better suggestions, I've quite literally just made this up as I typed.


Anything else that you want to comment on, feel free.

[cpsof95]

1. Timeframe is good.

2. I'd prefer playing on different maps against each opponent.

3. I agree.

4. 10 is good.

5. Sounds good.

[tlc]

Personally I like the 3 games on one map.

Everything else sounds great.

[t_o_m9]

I like the 3 games on one map
current timeline is good, 1 per week works nicely
2 player maps are critical, just like land buyouts, some maps have definite starting advantages over the other if taken
10 in a league might be alot

[GamesOnTheBrain]

I have no preference for the maps. 8 per league might be better.

[Early_10]

[spearjr]

Here is what I don't like about the 3 games on one map against the same opponent: I don't have a chance to learn from the first game and apply it to any of the other games as they are all progressing at the same rate. So if:

week 1 was normal games against opponents 1,2, & 3 on maps A,B & C,
then:
week 2 was variant one games against opponents 1,2, & 3 on maps A,B & C, finally followed by:
week 3 was variant two games against opponents 1,2, & 3 on maps A,B & C. I'd be happy.

This works out then that 10 people to a group, 9 rounds/weeks nicely.

If this is the format for the next league, I'll join up again.

(I also find the three games against the same person on the same map with the different variants all at once boring, but I appear to be alone in this.)

[Early_10]

[IBX]

I like a variety of maps which require a variety of strategies to win. I realize this may be 'non-traditional,' but I appreciate the challenge of having to alter my play to fit the map...so I'd love to see play on maps that end in a land run, plus some that are water heavy, or market heavy, or more of a chess match...many of the maps selected seem to have the same strategy involved, because I think Kanga has a pretty strong preference on how he likes a game to progress and those are the maps that make his top map list.

[Wildfire2099]

I like the format as it is, actually... I think it worked really well.

As to ranking people going forward... I might do something more like this:

Div A gets 4 pts per win, Div B get 3 points, Div C get 2, Div D gets 1...

that way the players that did well in their group have a small chance to be ranked ahead of those from the bottom of the one above... otherwise, you wont get alot of movement in either direction.

[SunLion]

I'd like to put in a request for retaining the 9 days between rounds, possibly making it 10. The reason is that very few of my opponents are anywhere near the same time zone as me and when you only have a small proportion of any one player's waking day when the other player is also awake, things are unavoidably slowed down. At one point early on when you were trying to keep to 7 days between rounds, I was playing 3 rounds at once and that was really too much.

[NoMoreCheese]

I also have enjoyed this format very much.

The most debatable point is definately which and how many maps to use, probably because either system would work equally well. Two quick points in favor of current system:

1) three different maps for each match-up is a whole lot more maps Kanga (or others) would have to pick through

2) current tourneys already use different maps for each game. as this is an alternative to regular tourneys, why not have alternative map use also?

[t_o_m9]

[spearjr]

[Dobinator]

What if we had the no-variant game on a pre-determined map, picked by Kanga or whoever, and then each player gets to choose his/her own map for one of the variants?