"Wild Bill's Rumblings Of War"- A Tournament

[Wild Bill Wilder]

Thanks for the update, Spanish Bombs. I appreciate the brief AAR. I know a tourney prohibits detailed comments. But just hearing this much is very encouraging.

Wild Bill

[Juha Ahoniemi]

Yeah, it's turn 16/25 I believe. That is the most advanced game for me. But I think it is quite good pace considering that we are on different continents - with all my 4 opponents. I shall write some quite colourful AAR stuff, and I'm dying to read how others have played those scenarios. There has been feelings of joy and sorrow, amazemant and disbelief, and pure malicious state of mind. In some cases it has been tormenting and rewarding - if "cavalry" was in time...

Big thanks to all who made it possible. I begin to understand how great efforts this have taken. And, off the record - there was a time I doubted that Wild Bill has gone slighly mad or he was just sadistic !

This all makes sure that I will try to pay back and spend time with those AAR's.

Spanish - now where is that turn of Yours?

Juha

[Enoch]

I can back up what Spanish Bombs said. The outcome of our game is very much in doubt. A very tight game up to this point and lots of action still left.

My other game with Juha is still up in the air as well.

I've got a TCP game set for tonight so I might have an AAR ready within a few days. I'm sure the adrenaline rush will be even greater than a regular TCP match.

[Peter Svensson]

That's it. I'm no longer the King of the Castle, or the Lord of the Manor. I lost 44-56 against Kingfish in a fierce fight around Kommerscheidt, a town on the Kall Trail. I think that's the first completed game of the tournament. Treeburst and Winecape now have my AAR.

[John Kettler]

I ordered StuffIt Deluxe, figuring on getting it quickly (mit manual) because the firm that makes it is in California, where I live. Sadly, it's back ordered. Jarmo, please send me the Mac zip shareware or whatever it is so I can get going. I have two games in hangfire because of PC opponents who can't read my files. Either that or Kingfish (who has a PC, AOL and who routinely reads my files) can fight me when his present game wraps. I have to fight him at some point anyway.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Peter Svensson]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by John Kettler:

I ordered StuffIt Deluxe, figuring on getting it quickly (mit manual) because the firm that makes it is in California, where I live. Sadly, it's back ordered. Jarmo, please send me the Mac zip shareware or whatever it is so I can get going. I have two games in hangfire because of PC opponents who can't read my files. Either that or Kingfish (who has a PC, AOL and who routinely reads my files) can fight me when his present game wraps. I have to fight him at some point anyway.

Regards,

John Kettler<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

John,

You can download compression utilities at www.download.com.

And if you are looking for a Section II fight, I'm up.

[Peter Svensson]

Treeburst, now that Kingfish and I have finished a scenario, is it OK if he and I exchange passwords, so we can look at each other's movies? I just thought it would be fun.

[Wild Bill Wilder]

I envy you guys in the heat of battle. You all have a great attitude "win or lose." That speaks well of all of you.

Thanks,

Wild Bill

[Treeburst155]

Peter,

Yeah, go ahead and exchange passwords if you want. The Kingfish/Svensson game has been recorded along with 10 extra points to Peter for the excellent AAR. I will post the results to the "Standings" page as soon as I get a few more in.

Treeburst155 out.

[John Kettler]

Thanks to all the help received here, I now have the means to create and also open .zip files. I'll .zip outbound turns if need be, but I prefer not getting .zipped files, since it's just more admin on this end.

Stix and Tom, please E-mail me and let's get the war rolling. Who needs a repeat of what

from me?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Holien]

Wild Bill you want words of encouragement!!!

Evil!!!

:mad:

Sneaky!!!

:eek:

Devious!!!

Cunning!!!

Scary!!!

:confused:

Seat of pants!!!

Roller coaster!!!

:eek:

Hmmmm I am running out of words of encouragement.

I am just finishing (being finished) a game with Kingfisher ( a great opponent with way too many guns!!!!) and in the first third of my defense against Von Luckeeeeeee Smokeee man.

Both games have been fun so far if not frustrating. The maps as always are well designed and they seem balanced, but I reserve judgement until I can see the whole picture.

I look forward to the next games which I will start this week if I can find someone available.

Kingfisher has been great in getting the turns back and we should see the results for that game in this week. As for the AAR that will follow after the weekend. I will E-mail Mr Bill a copy at the same time if that is ok with TreeBurst?

P.s. If you (Wild Bill) have time for some Voyeurism I could also e-mail you a video to have a snigger at. (A BTS video before anyone gets the wrong idea, blimey some people!!!)

[ 09-25-2001: Message edited by: Holien ]

[ 09-25-2001: Message edited by: Holien ]

[WineCape]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Treeburst155:

Peter,

Yeah, go ahead and exchange passwords if you want. The Kingfish/Svensson game has been recorded along with 10 extra points to Peter for the excellent AAR. I will post the results to the "Standings" page as soon as I get a few more in.

Treeburst155 out.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

After receiving/reading Peter's excellent AAR report with his battle with kingfish, I second the fact that he should receive 10/10 for his AAR report! Well written and clear with a breakdown heading of every turn as well as action phase.

Congrats to Kingfish for winning the game! I see that the loser (Peter) has enjoyed the battle, which shows that once again Wild Bill and his crew turned up some top battles/maps.

Best of luck to the other participants,

Charl Theron

-----------------

In victory, you deserve champagne; in defeat, you need it.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

[Treeburst155]

Holien,

Feel free to send your AARs directly to Wild Bill if you want.

To all,

Leonard Dickens has dealt a severe blow to Tom Travisano with an 87-13 victory. Congratulations, Leonard!! He also turned in a nice AAR which I will be forwarding to Wild Bill, his testers, and WineCape.

All tourney participants will eventually have access to these AARs. I may even have a volunteer to post them to a web page. I'm waiting to hear back from him.

On the standings page, any points for AARs will be figured directly into a player's total points. The average score per game will also reflect AAR points. AARs don't have to be turned in immediately after the game is finished. You can take your time writing them.

Treeburst155 out.

[John Kettler]

Rats! I spoke too soon. I have PK ZIPv2.03 and can even do things like set compression levels in it, but how do I actually use it? There seems to be no instructional documentation with the shareware, just stuff on what it can do. I tried drag and drop already. That didn't work.

Help!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Treeburst155]

Listen up!! This is important!

I received an email from "Nabla" (Jarmo Hurri)of Finland. He described to me a scoring system that I think is excellent. It's a Duplicate Bridge scoring system. It's a good way to score CM tournaments because scenarios are very difficult to truly balance. Here's how it works. I'm quoting Nabla's email to me:

"A particular problem I've been interested in is scoring in the case of

uneven battles, that is, in battles where one side has a much better

chance of winning to begin with. This is important for two reasons.

1) Uneven battles are what a commander generally faces in the real

world.

2) A truly even battle is very difficult to generate (and some losers

will disagree anyhow).

While many games with scoring systems are inherently even (such as

chess), fortunately there is an uneven game from which we can borrow

the scoring system: bridge. In bridge you have to play with what

you've been given, and you can have very uneven hands.

What I've got in mind is an n-player tournament where you have n-1

battles. Each player plays each battle once, and also plays once

against each opponent. The results of ONE BATTLE are scored as

follows. The player who gets the best ALLIED CM POINTS in a battle

scores n-1 GAME POINTS for that battle and the player who gets the

worst ALLIED CM POINTS gets 0 GAME POINTS for that battle. Points are

computed similarly for Axis side. Sum up over battles, see who has

most points, and you've got a winner. This is the scoring system used

in duplicate bridge. Note that in this system the performance of each

player is compared to the performance of players playing on the same

side (for example, as Allied). This enables the use of uneven battles.

As mentioned above, the real beauty of such a game system would be the

possibility to have them play uneven battles. I mean, tournament

administrators would design the battles, and they could be as uneven

as one wishes (actually they could be generated partially randomly), you

could have intelligence info which might be inaccurate etc. And it

would not take such a long time to design the battles since they would

not have to be balanced. "

This I think is a brilliant scoring idea! I would like to convert this tournament to this scoring system.

Say you are playing the Allies in Scenario A and you get whipped 80-20. Your 20 points for that scenario will be compared to all the other Allied scores from that scenario. If the best any Allied player did on that scenario is 35 points then it is fairly obvious the scenario is not balanced well (VERY difficult to do without extensive, repeated testing). Your 20 points will be ranked (compared)with all other Allied scores for that tournament. It's a perfect way to handle scenario imbalance!!

What do you say, guys? Should we convert to the duplicate bridge scoring system? I think we should. Let's call it the "Nabla" system. Since the highest score you can get for a game is 7 points we would make AARs worth .7 additional points. This makes an AAR worth 1/10th of a perfect game, just like it is now. How about it? Let me have some feedback. The only drawback I can think of is that you really won't know how you stand until ALL the scenarios are finished. Until then you would only have an approximation from the game scores. I would redo the standings page by listing results for each scenario. I'll have to think about how to best do it.

Treeburst155 out.

[Thomas Norton]

I second the comments being made about these battles. Great stuff. Just had the experence of seeing one of my opponents do something truely masterfully. After watching it three times, I sit back and wonder: "Who are those guys?"

Thank you guys for making this happen.

Tom

[JonS]

TB,

regarding the scoring:

It sounds ok to me, but I have a slight niggle in the back of my mind regarding the fact that we play each scen as one side only. I'm assuming the smart folk who put the bridge scoring system together have taken this into account though.

Jon

Oh yeah - thouroghly enjoying the games so far Thanks to all the designers and testers.

[Treeburst155]

Jon,

With this scoring system your scores for each game will be compared only to the other scores achieved by players playing the same scenario from the same side. The highest Allied score for a scenario would get 7 points, the second highest gets 6 points and so forth. It is true the raw game scores for a side in a scenario will have been achieved against different opponents, but that's really no different than it is now.

Treeburst155 out.

[JonS]

Ok, having thought about it more, what I mean is that my total score will be based on a mix of 7 games that no-one else in the same section will have played. But, as you say, this is no different to how things are now.

I say lets do it

[Treeburst155]

I see your point John, but I still think the "Nabla" system is more accurate for determining skill. There is a slight problem I've discovered. Each scenario is played only four times in each section. That would mean the high score for a given side in that scenario would get 3 points. This isn't necessarily bad but I think it might be better to compare scores among all three groups. Each scenario will be played twelve times in all three sections combined. It would be a more accurate determination of performance if players scores were compared will all these games. This would mean 11 points to the highest score for a given side in a scenario and on down to zero. In essence you are competing against all the players who play a scenario from the same side you did. You will have all played different opponents, but you all played a given scenario from the same side. If you think about it for awhile it really is brilliant IMO. Each of your game scores will be compared against 11 other scores from players in your exact situation, except for who the opponent is. It's beautiful, really.

Each scenario would be listed on the Standings page twice. Once for Allied scores and once for Axis. As players finish a scenario their name and score will go under the proper column based on which side they played. These columns will be ranked from the highest score to the lowest and updated as new results come in. At the end, everyone will be assigned a final score for a scenario based on their place in each of the columns they are listed under. There will be 14 columns and everyone will be listed in 7 of them at the end.

The final scores will be compared with the people in your section. High score wins the section and moves on to the playoffs.

Treeburst155 out.

[ 09-25-2001: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

[Juha Ahoniemi]

This sounds very good. Justice for all. I say let's do it.

Juha

[JonS]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Treeburst155:

...There is a slight problem I've discovered. Each scenario is played only four times in each section ... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Are you sure about that? I initially thought that too, but I'm pretty sure its 7 in each group. Everyone plays all the scens after all

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Treeburst155:

...I think it might be better to compare scores among all three groups. Each scenario will be played twelve times in all three sections combined. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The only 'problem' I see with this is that then there is effectively only one, large, group, rather than the three sections we have now.

[ 09-25-2001: Message edited by: JonS ]

[Peter Svensson]

The proposed scoring system does sound very good, and I'd love to see it implemented.

The one drawback may be that we will have to wait till all games are completed in all three sections till we find out what our effective score, i.e. ranking, is. I don't think that's much of a problem, especially if the Standings table is supplemented with a page that reports on every played scenario, its score, and the side taken by each player. I wouldn't mind maintaining such a page, if Mike has too much to do.

[Peter Svensson]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JonS:

The only problem I see with this is that then there is effectively only one, large, group, rather than the three sections we have now.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope, I can back up Treeburst on this. We each play seven scenarios, but in each of them we only play one side. Eight people times seven scenarios, divided by two (because each scenario takes two players) makes 8*7/2 = 28 played games per section. That's 4 games per scenario.

And we'd be playing as one big group in one sense only - when comparing percentage scores. Each section still sends one player to the finals, so we are still competing only within the section.

[Treeburst155]

Peter,

I edited my post above to explain how the standings page could be set up to give players at least an idea of how they are doing. It will require a complete rework of the page. I'll email you and we can discuss this aspect of the scoring in detail. I probably could use some help on this if you feel like it. I'll be in touch.

Jon,

Everyone plays each scenario but only 4 people play it from the same side in each section.

Even though your score will be affected by other sections it will only be put up against people in your section at the end.

Remember, everyone is subject to the same scoring system so it will still be fair. With twelve instances of every scenario/side your score will be a fairly good representation of your skill in the given situation. If you only score 28 points, but the best is 29 you will get 10 points for that scenario because only one person did better. Hmmm... what about ties? I'll have to think about that. It does happen.

Treburst155 out.