The Rally Point

[voskarp]

Spread sheets were used in LoEG, this is not LoEG...

This league has never used spread sheets!

Enjoy playing the games.
/Oskar

[Jonathan4290]

I think what the masses are trying to rabble about is that the league is running really well and the current standings are great, updated way more regularly than could be expected. However, it would be easier for all the spreadsheet containing results was brought back in future. It is a quick, easy to way to see who you've played and how well other players are doing. I recall doing a bit of quick scouting in LOEG to see what I was up against at times. I do not anticipate the posting of such a spreadsheet to be much of a burden on league staff as all of the updates are done by the players.

[batesmotel]

Spread sheets were used in LoEG, this is not LoEG...

This league has never used spread sheets!

Enjoy playing the games.
/Oskar

Dear Luddites,

Have you considered the possibility of maintaining a Excel or Open Office spreadsheet locally showing results for each division? This should be much easier than doing this on paper. You could post a read only copy to Google docs or as an image here, and also print a copy to protect against a failure of this new fangled digital technology?

Chris

[stockwellpete]

I think what the masses are trying to rabble about is that the league is running really well and the current standings are great, updated way more regularly than could be expected. However, it would be easier for all the spreadsheet containing results was brought back in future. It is a quick, easy to way to see who you've played and how well other players are doing. I recall doing a bit of quick scouting in LOEG to see what I was up against at times. I do not anticipate the posting of such a spreadsheet to be much of a burden on league staff as all of the updates are done by the players.

It is not the "masses" though, is it? At the moment it just one or two players who got used to the spread sheets that were provided by LOEG. As Oskar has already said, we are not LOEG and we are not going to be using spread sheets in the foreseeable future. Our approach is to bring everything into the results threads to create more "atmosphere" in them. We think things are going very well in our first season and there will be new features added as we develop the league. You cannot expect us to do everything in our first season though. You say that the spread sheets will be filled in by the players - but who is going to correct these spread sheets? The ones provided by LOEG were strewn with errors and none of us on this committee will vote to return to a system that did not really work very well at all.

[Cunningcairn]

As someone quite new to this game I was unaware spreadsheets had previously been used. A spreadsheet is very useful to see who you've already played and as a historical record. I made up my own spreadsheet for this purpose. This tournament is well run.

cheers
Martin

[Turk1964]

Chris I find your attack to be unjust and nit-picking. Do you realise in the last LOEG I spent countless hours fixing players mistakes on the Google Spread sheet. It had to be checked daily to ensure players who had posted a result had indeed placed it on the spread sheet correctly. Then you had players who would put results on the spread sheet and not on the Forum thread. I spent a lot of my own time Voluntarily working on the old spread sheets and the committee unanimously agreed to do away with them. AS Oskar has already commented this is not LOEG it is an entirely different contest. We the committee volunteer our time for the Fog community freely and expect a little respect for this. Name calling is in my opinion very childish and if you think we are all Luddites then move on!

[batesmotel]

Turk,

I haven't argued in any of my posts whether spreadsheets should allow the players to enter the data or not.

My suggestion was that if the work to correct player entered data was excessive, then just maintain the spreadsheet yourselves and just post a read only copy of it. That way the information which you must be tracking for the league anyway is easily available for the players to see. That seems more realistic than asking each player to personally keep track of who they have played or from having to search through pages of posted results instead.

Since the committee seems to have plenty of time to personally track who isn't playing quickly enough and to post lists of shamed players, it would seem like it should be less work for you alll around to post a spreadsheet of which players have already played each other and who has not played than to just keep this information to yourselves and expect each player to do the bookkeeping themselves.

Chris

p.s. Historically the Luddites were skilled weavers who objected to the introduction of power looms which devalued their skilled artisanal work and deprived them of jobs. So their objection to the new technology was rational and justified from their point of view. Some how I don't see that maintaining the current league results only on paper as being partiuclarly rational at this point or protecting anyone's employment .

[stockwellpete]

You've made your point, Chris. Nothing new will be happening for Season 1. We feel that what we have is quite adequate and your disparaging comments are having no effect on the committee's point of view. If what we are providing in our first season is not acceptable to you then I am sorry but we have been working flat out to get everything up and running and working properly. And we can tell by the rate that matches are being completed that most players are really enjoying the tournament. There will be further organisational developments in Season 2 but they will most likely not involve spread sheets. You may be familiar with all this Office software and how it works but I am certainly not and I don't think Mark and Oskar are either.

I also think most players are quite capable of keeping a track of who they have played and who they are yet to play. It is not unreasonable of us to ask players to keep their own records for this purpose. We do not post "lists of shame" as you so unpleasantly put it, but we need to send signals to everyone in the tournament that a certain amount of monitoring is going on. By using lists we can contact players who do not log on every time when they read the forum and sometimes other players will pass messages on for us. This often helps to speed things up. Most of what we do is by PM and every thing so far has been resolved amicably. I think most players accept that the committee needs to intervene at certain times so that things continue to run smoothly. If a player cannot accept it then perhaps this is not the tournament for them.

I know who the Luddites were, Chris. They were among the first anti-capitalists. But just for the record, we have a number of layers of record keeping established already for the league. First of all we have everything that is posted on this forum and we take a lot of care over how it is all presented; then Mark and Oskar keep records for the two sections that they are each convenor for (I don't actually know exactly in what format they are keeping these records, we just agreed that they would use a method that they were comfortable with); and then I keep a complete set of back-up records in hard copy in case of computer failure. So we have three levels of record-keeping, plus Mark and Oskar compile their tables on Creately and I also keep all the tables up to date on Creately so that we have back-ups if required. I think that is pretty good myself.

[voskarp]

I use pen and paper for the scores, just like I do when keeping record of my own games. I did that in LoEG 9 & 10 too. It still works pretty well...

[Peterabb]

I would just like to say a special and well earned THANK YOU to all those that have organised this competition and keep me and the rest of the players up to date on this forum for the FOG Digital League. It must take up some time to do this and I know myself, I wouldn't have much spare time to commit to doing this sort of thing. Once again, THANKS.

Peter.

[voskarp]

Many thanks for the support.

[BillMc]

I think everything is running great.

I stayed away from doing leagues before because I was concerned that I don't have the time to do the spreadsheet entering, tracking, etc. When I was invited into this one, I decided to give it a shot and am very pleasantly surprised. Simple is better!

thanks

Bill

[Turk1964]

Thanks Bill we appreciate your support

[CharlesWayneRobinson1]

I have read through this thread and just wanted to put my 2 cents worth in.

First, I really like the way the league is ran.
I like this a lot better than the spreadsheets we used to have.
It was pretty easy to figure out, and the results are posted regularly.
It was real easy for me to go through the thread and see who I have and have not played.
When I posted a question about trying to find an opponent, I was answered quickly.
As such, I have already completed all of my games.

You guys have done a great job with this league.

I would like to see the original four plus the themed league, like I said, I already finished my games and I am getting board


I saw a post about banned armies, please don't ban any armies. They are good for lower level players to use to help level the odds against more experienced players. In addition, these armies forces players to become better - you have to figure out how to beat these armies. It is one of the reasons I play with all the armies and don't really care what army I compete with.


My only beef with the games is not anything you guys can really do anything about.
It is the size of the maps compared to the army sizes.
I think they are to small, but the game system automatically chooses these based on point values.
It does severly handicap certain armies though (such a shooty armies); all you have to do is push the other army off the board.
In addition, normally you have to knock a unit all the way down to 44% with shooting to cause it to finnally route. A real hard thing to do.
The only way I see to fix that is to have everyone choose a 500pt army, but only build a 400pt army leaving 100 points left over.
This would cause the system to load maps for 500pt armies and give more room to maneuver.
Everyone would have to choose fixed armies though and submit army lists (Unless we just trust everyone not to cheat on the army build).


In addition, I wonder if we can do up a point system based on margin of win.
I know that I had a seven game winning spree for one of the divisions.
But each battle was hard fought and I did not win by a lot.
Another player could win only six games but win big on those games and was barely beaten on the other three (i.e. being a little better player).
Not sure if this would be feasible though.

Just some ideas.

Thanks

[stockwellpete]

I have read through this thread and just wanted to put my 2 cents worth in.

First, I really like the way the league is ran.
I like this a lot better than the spreadsheets we used to have.
It was pretty easy to figure out, and the results are posted regularly.
It was real easy for me to go through the thread and see who I have and have not played.
When I posted a question about trying to find an opponent, I was answered quickly.
As such, I have already completed all of my games.

You guys have done a great job with this league.

Thanks very much for your kind words, Charles.

I would like to see the original four plus the themed league, like I said, I already finished my games and I am getting board

We have gone to three main historical periods in order to create the space for a historical themed section. What we are hoping to do is to expand this themed section so that more players can enter it next time. Using the new FOG Digital ratings it will be possible for us to split the community into two pools and then we will try and recruit 16 players from each pool. We can then run two separate themed events. Another idea further down the road might be to split the High Middle Ages section into western and eastern European (and central Asian) groups - we would probably need to sign up 60 players for the section before we did this though. Not impossible, by any means.

I saw a post about banned armies, please don't ban any armies. They are good for lower level players to use to help level the odds against more experienced players. In addition, these armies forces players to become better - you have to figure out how to beat these armies. It is one of the reasons I play with all the armies and don't really care what army I compete with.

We want to get away from the situation where players line up superior pikes/spears right across the map and just advance towards the enemy. It is boring and sterile and often there is not much the opponent can do. I think what it is incumbent on our committee to do though before we ban any army is to see whether we can stipulate certain selection criteria if somebody wants to choose them. I think there is a stronger historical case for banning armies like the Dailami because they were a smallish mountain society who usually fought as specialised contingents in other people's armies rather than fielding their own big armies. But a similar case cannot be made about the Spartans or Romans or Arab Conquest armies. I will talk to Mark and Oskar about this and we will post again.

My only beef with the games is not anything you guys can really do anything about.
It is the size of the maps compared to the army sizes.
I think they are to small, but the game system automatically chooses these based on point values.
It does severly handicap certain armies though (such a shooty armies); all you have to do is push the other army off the board.
In addition, normally you have to knock a unit all the way down to 44% with shooting to cause it to finnally route. A real hard thing to do.
The only way I see to fix that is to have everyone choose a 500pt army, but only build a 400pt army leaving 100 points left over.
This would cause the system to load maps for 500pt armies and give more room to maneuver.
Everyone would have to choose fixed armies though and submit army lists (Unless we just trust everyone not to cheat on the army build).

I agree about the maps. I think if we said to people to pick only 400 out of 500pts then there would be all sorts of issues arising. Much better to keep it simple at 400pts and see how the new Unity version handles this issue.

In addition, I wonder if we can do up a point system based on margin of win.
I know that I had a seven game winning spree for one of the divisions.
But each battle was hard fought and I did not win by a lot.
Another player could win only six games but win big on those games and was barely beaten on the other three (i.e. being a little better player).
Not sure if this would be feasible though.

Just some ideas.

Thanks

We did discuss bonus points but we rejected them because we wanted to keep things nice and simple. I understand what you are saying but I think we would lose clarity if we made the points system more complex.

[rexhurley]

You dont need to ban armies as a group of convenors you make a choice of what people can use based on their selections and whatever else is in that particular division as you have done with me in this round, banning armies is based purely on opinions which is just wrong.

And oh what is a sterile game, pikes lines up advancing, sup sword sitting on multi tier hills and not coming off, knights sweeping a horse army off the map, two lines of same troops driving at each other, retarded play perhaps??

Again lets not be subjective just play the game if a large event like this comes down to personal views of a few then we have lost the flavour of the intent of the Digital league IMO.

Regards Rex

[CharlesWayneRobinson1]

We want to get away from the situation where players line up superior pikes/spears right across the map and just advance towards the enemy.

Just two points on this:

1. That is one reason we allow armies to be adjusted prior to battle. You modify your army to take advantage of terrain and to have a better chance of winning initiative allowing you to choose the battlefield.

2. Again, a bigger battlefield with more room to maneuver also helps to moderate this tactic.

Thanks

[stockwellpete]

This is something that we have been discussing on the committee for a while now - do we need a 3 month long season for the FOG Digital League? Given the fantastic rate at which the games are being completed we were wondering whether a 10 week season might be sufficient? The schedule for next year is as follows . . .

Season 2 starts February 1st
Season 3 starts June 1st
Season 4 starts October 1st

At the moment we are set up for a 13 week (3 month) season followed by a 4 week close season. That is making things a bit tight for the committee inasmuch as soon as one season ends then the invitations need to go out for the next season. If we moved to a 10 week season followed by a 7 week close season then that would allow us plenty of time to re-charge our batteries and it would create more space in the calendar for smaller events like the Companions Cup and the Lords event that has just started. It would also create a bit of space for the next Slitherine Trophy competition.

The other consideration is that previously big competitions (like LOEG) have suffered from slow play and players going AWOL and we were wondering if the length of the tournament season might have contributed a bit to this. Maybe if the season was a bit more compact then these issues would not arise so often? With regards to this first season of the FOG Digital League many of the divisions have completion rates approaching 70% even though we have only used 30% of the time allotted.

What do you think?

[CharlesWayneRobinson1]

Wow I am not sure myself.
I just do not know what everyone elses schedules are.
I play just for fun and love playing multiple players at a time.
Others like to only play against a single player at a time and treat this a lot like a chess game, agonizing over every move.
Each player enjoys the game in a different way and I would hate to do something that could drive players away.
I am not sure how often players send in turns.
I normally check three times daily, in the morning before work, when I first get home, and in the evening right before I go to bed.
That said, there is no reason we cannot try a different schedule if large group would like to try.

[stockwellpete]

My own view is that we are unlikely to lose many (if any) players at all if we reduced the length of the league season. What might happen though is that some players might reduce the number of sections they enter by one so that they could be sure of fitting all their games in. The way we could approach this issue is to reduce each season by 1 week until we get to a 10 week season - so Season 2 would be 12 weeks, Season 3 11 weeks and Season 4 10 weeks. In this way we could gradually introduce the change and we could stop the reductions if significant numbers of players felt the season was getting too short. I don't think moving to 12 weeks for Season 2 would have much impact at all really - I think players would continue exactly as before. The themed events would also fit into a 10 week schedule quite easily.