Passive vs Active Defence

[TheGrayMouser]

We play even point battles because we view it is fair right? And if you get to choose the army (mostly) that you want to play with and logic would dictate that you would pick an army that you would be willing to fight with under fair conditions no?

Maybe a tournament format where 1 side gets to obtain a default win in a draw situation but has to play with 100 fewer points?

I suggested this for the DL many posts ago but with no point disparity. I was met with profound silence from players, and I imagine the organizers would not have interest in anything requiring more paperwork.

It seems like a large amount of players feel partial credit is needed, hence all the rules for different kinds of draws, point differences in victories etc , blah blah. I have never played any sport where the goal was to tie.

There are many instances where during a season teams will play for a draw against certain opponents as that will give them final victory at the end of a season. I see the DL in the same light. It is a campaign and there will definitely be times where not taking a risk and playing for a draw could give a player a top table position at the end of the season. Other instances are when a player takes heavy casualties and can no longer win a game so plays for a draw. It is what it is and is part of any competitive environment.

You mean like throwing a sports game when your team has already made it to post season playoffs? Not exactly the same thing as the DL imho is all regular season...but I really don’t care. I have no interest in the meta gaming (or as the organizers have proposed, that players can role play or pretend playing a division is some kind of “campaign “). If players feel that corner camping is legit and somehow “historically justified” then have fun! Nothing against the DL, I’m just not interested in that kind of atmosphere. Rather just play a series of games with the assumption that both sides are trying to win the battle at hand.

[SimonLancaster]

It seems like a large amount of players feel partial credit is needed, hence all the rules for different kinds of draws, point differences in victories etc , blah blah. I have never played any sport where the goal was to tie.

Are you from the US or Canada? I know in US sport there are very few draws. In English football, as one example, a team will play away from home and often be very happy with a draw (same in Europe as a whole).

[stockwellpete]

Sorry chaps, but my "piffle detector" has gone off.

Season 8 of the FOG2DL has just finished. The proportion of drawn matches in the four main league sections was as follows . . .

Classical Antiquity - 14 draws out of 270 matches = about 5% of the total
Late Antiquity - 21 draws out of 270 matches = about 8% of the total
Early Middle Ages - 16 draws out of 270 matches = about 6% of the total
Biblical - 8 draws out of 135 matches = about 6% of the total

The number of draws where no points were awarded (where neither player reached the 25% threshold) was as follows . . .

Classical Antiquity - 3 out of 270 matches = about 1% of the total
Late Antiquity - 3 out of 270 matches = about 1% of the total
Early Middle Ages - 5 out of 270 matches = about 2% of the total
Biblical - 2 out of 135 matches = about 1.5% of the total

So the idea that the points tariff in the FOG2DL leads to negative play, or that negative play is encouraged by the rules, is totally ridiculous.

And then we have these completely daft arguments . . .

"You can see in the Rally Point thread in the DL where it has gotten to the point where metagaming draws against good players is now accepted as a valid metagame strategy since there are no rules to prevent it and deny your opponent points by not playing the game. That is an insane concept to me as a competitive tournament in a game should be to try and determine who is the best player of the game, not who can sit there and figure out when it is beneficial to simply not play the game at all. The logical extreme of this metagame strategy would be to identify in a tournament the top contenders and have every other player actively collude to play uber defensively or hide in whatever terrain is available to minimize the chance of these players to get points and then play "regularly" among the rest of them" . . .

Who would even think of trying to do this? How many players would agree to it? None? One in a thousand? The whole thing is ridiculous. And then we have this corker . . .

"edit: Not picking on Pete's tournament but I would just point out that in the DL, if you think you can't win against an opponent due to either a skill gap or a terrain disparity, the DL currently actively incentivizes you to find a way to draw the game. In both cases, you gain 0 points and you can deny your opponent the chance to earn any points. You essentially have a net loss of 0 against that player and can try to win a division off of the remaining games. The threshold for gaining the 3-1 split is high enough to discourage active play since that situation still puts you at a -2 point relative loss to that player nevermind the fact that if you just lose outright they get the 4 points and you get 0. So camping nets you the advantage of forcing the other player to come at you at a disadvantage so you can potentially net 4 points. If they don't engage, then you have lost nothing relative to that other player. Sure you can't do that in every game but as players in the Rally Thread have pointed out, strategically selecting when to do so seems to be perfectly valid."

Apart from the fact that drawing a match below the 25% threshold gets you zero points and has the same value as a loss as far as the other 8 players in the division are concerned, I have done a stat to show that players seeking to win a division outright have very little lee-way in terms of dropped points and that any strategy based on drawing 0-0 with the other contenders (sometimes just one other player, but often two or three other players) is almost always bound to fail.

This little chart shows the minimum number of points needed to win a division outright in the FOG2DL Seasons 1-8 (i.e. getting one point more than the second placed player) . . .

34pts - 1
33pts - 14
32pts - 2
31pts - 11
30pts - 7
29pts - 19
28pts - 11
---------------- so in 55% of cases, a player will need 28 points or more to win a division (i.e. they can drop a maximum of between 2 and 8 points)
27pts - 7
26pts - 13
25pts - 23
24 pts - 3
23pts - 4
22pts - 2
21pts - 1

Of course, the lower the points total required to win a division is, the more likely it is that 3 or 4 players will be in the hunt for promotion so a 0-0 draw strategy would be catastrophic. In 55% of divisions a player will need at least 28 points, meaning that they can afford to drop between 2 and 8 points across their 9 matches. A strategy based on getting a 0-0 draw with someone loses half of those 8 points straight away. In some divisions it would cost the player their promotion right away. The only time where it might make sense to deliberately go for a 0-0 draw is right at the end of the season where such a result can definitely guarantee that a player will win promotion. And really, if they have already got themselves into such a strong position in the division, presumably by playing in an attacking manner and winning most of their other matches decisively, then they are quite entitled to play a defensive match in those circumstances.

Piffle detector is now off.

[Cunningcairn]

Sorry chaps, but my "piffle detector" has gone off.

Season 8 of the FOG2DL has just finished. The proportion of drawn matches in the four main league sections was as follows . . .

Classical Antiquity - 14 draws out of 270 matches = about 5% of the total
Late Antiquity - 21 draws out of 270 matches = about 8% of the total
Early Middle Ages - 16 draws out of 270 matches = about 6% of the total
Biblical - 8 draws out of 135 matches = about 6% of the total

The number of draws where no points were awarded (where neither player reached the 25% threshold) was as follows . . .

Classical Antiquity - 3 out of 270 matches = about 1% of the total
Late Antiquity - 3 out of 270 matches = about 1% of the total
Early Middle Ages - 5 out of 270 matches = about 2% of the total
Biblical - 2 out of 135 matches = about 1.5% of the total

So the idea that the points tariff in the FOG2DL leads to negative play, or that negative play is encouraged by the rules, is totally ridiculous.

And then we have these completely daft arguments . . .

"You can see in the Rally Point thread in the DL where it has gotten to the point where metagaming draws against good players is now accepted as a valid metagame strategy since there are no rules to prevent it and deny your opponent points by not playing the game. That is an insane concept to me as a competitive tournament in a game should be to try and determine who is the best player of the game, not who can sit there and figure out when it is beneficial to simply not play the game at all. The logical extreme of this metagame strategy would be to identify in a tournament the top contenders and have every other player actively collude to play uber defensively or hide in whatever terrain is available to minimize the chance of these players to get points and then play "regularly" among the rest of them" . . .

Who would even think of trying to do this? How many players would agree to it? None? One in a thousand? The whole thing is ridiculous. And then we have this corker . . .

"edit: Not picking on Pete's tournament but I would just point out that in the DL, if you think you can't win against an opponent due to either a skill gap or a terrain disparity, the DL currently actively incentivizes you to find a way to draw the game. In both cases, you gain 0 points and you can deny your opponent the chance to earn any points. You essentially have a net loss of 0 against that player and can try to win a division off of the remaining games. The threshold for gaining the 3-1 split is high enough to discourage active play since that situation still puts you at a -2 point relative loss to that player nevermind the fact that if you just lose outright they get the 4 points and you get 0. So camping nets you the advantage of forcing the other player to come at you at a disadvantage so you can potentially net 4 points. If they don't engage, then you have lost nothing relative to that other player. Sure you can't do that in every game but as players in the Rally Thread have pointed out, strategically selecting when to do so seems to be perfectly valid."

Apart from the fact that drawing a match below the 25% threshold gets you zero points and has the same value as a loss as far as the other 8 players in the division are concerned, I have done a stat to show that players seeking to win a division outright have very little lee-way in terms of dropped points and that any strategy based on drawing 0-0 with the other contenders (sometimes just one other player, but often two or three other players) is almost always bound to fail.

This little chart shows the minimum number of points needed to win a division outright in the FOG2DL Seasons 1-8 (i.e. getting one point more than the second placed player) . . .

34pts - 1
33pts - 14
32pts - 2
31pts - 11
30pts - 7
29pts - 19
28pts - 11
---------------- so in 55% of cases, a player will need 28 points or more to win a division (i.e. they can drop a maximum of between 2 and 8 points)
27pts - 7
26pts - 13
25pts - 23
24 pts - 3
23pts - 4
22pts - 2
21pts - 1

Of course, the lower the points total required to win a division is, the more likely it is that 3 or 4 players will be in the hunt for promotion so a 0-0 draw strategy would be catastrophic. In 55% of divisions a player will need at least 28 points, meaning that they can afford to drop between 2 and 8 points across their 9 matches. A strategy based on getting a 0-0 draw with someone loses half of those 8 points straight away. In some divisions it would cost the player their promotion right away. The only time where it might make sense to deliberately go for a 0-0 draw is right at the end of the season where such a result can definitely guarantee that a player will win promotion. And really, if they have already got themselves into such a strong position in the division, presumably by playing in an attacking manner and winning most of their other matches decisively, then they are quite entitled to play a defensive match in those circumstances.

Piffle detector is now off.

LOL! Where did you get your piffle detector?

[TheGrayMouser]

What the heck is a piffle?! Is it smaller than a Tribble?

[TheGrayMouser]

It seems like a large amount of players feel partial credit is needed, hence all the rules for different kinds of draws, point differences in victories etc , blah blah. I have never played any sport where the goal was to tie.

Are you from the US or Canada? I know in US sport there are very few draws. In English football, as one example, a team will play away from home and often be very happy with a draw (same in Europe as a whole).

I assume your talking about professional teams here, where management is making the calls perhaps?...I would imagine when playing sports for fun ,( pre college, intramural etc) being told to throw a game would not sit well with the players. From Lanhkmar, USA.

[SimonLancaster]

It seems like a large amount of players feel partial credit is needed, hence all the rules for different kinds of draws, point differences in victories etc , blah blah. I have never played any sport where the goal was to tie.

Are you from the US or Canada? I know in US sport there are very few draws. In English football, as one example, a team will play away from home and often be very happy with a draw (same in Europe as a whole).

I assume your talking about professional teams here, where management is making the calls perhaps?...I would imagine when playing sports for fun ,( pre college, intramural etc) being told to throw a game would not sit well with the players. From Lanhkmar, USA.

No, not necessarily. Like an amateur football team playing away from home would often be very happy with a draw if playing one of the better sides in the league, for example. You just beat them at home.

I have followed American Football since I was a kid. I know you don't really get draws because you go into extra time. Almost every game will have a winner. Same with basketball or ice hockey as far as I know. This just doesn't happen in many sports in the UK/Europe. In cricket there are often draws. Rugby not so many but they can happen.

PS You are not throwing a game you are just drawing (taking one point) and staying unbeaten, especially away from home!

[MikeC_81]

Rather just play a series of games with the assumption that both sides are trying to win the battle at hand.

This is the crux of the issue. It is obvious that players are not in agreement here on this. When ties are allowed, it creates situations where metagaming can happen because you can play to deny something without having to play to win.

I assume your talking about professional teams here, where management is making the calls perhaps?...I would imagine when playing sports for fun ,( pre college, intramural etc) being told to throw a game would not sit well with the players. From Lanhkmar, USA.

No, not necessarily. Like an amateur football team playing away from home would often be very happy with a draw if playing one of the better sides in the league, for example. You just beat them at home.

I have followed American Football since I was a kid. I know you don't really get draws because you go into extra time. Almost every game will have a winner. Same with basketball or ice hockey as far as I know. This just doesn't happen in many sports in the UK/Europe. In cricket there are often draws. Rugby not so many but they can happen.

PS You are not throwing a game you are just drawing (taking one point) and staying unbeaten, especially away from home!

This is clearly a cultural thing. North American sports/competition/game design features lots of sudden death overtime or play until there is a winner regardless of how long it takes. Losers also typically get nothing while winners take everything. Professional Ice Hockey int he last decade introduced shootouts even during regular season play to ensure there is always a winner. Baseball teams play until there is a winner regardless of the number of innings though they just instituted starting a runner on 2nd base at the start of each overtime inning to try and resolve games quicker. Basketball has been winner or loser and the loser gets nothing since the game's inception. It is just you strange Euros that tolerate these "draws" .

In addition, most North American sports there is also a litany of rules to punish defensive play or "run the clock" strategies. Ice Hockey has a delay of game penalties and icing rules. Basketball has 3 point lines, no goaltending, the restricted arc, and paint violations to curb excessive defensive play. The very structure of baseball makes it impossible to run the clock and there is no such thing as defensive play.

Now I see Pete has taken the opportunity to use a necro'd thread to demonstrate that he doesn't understand basic metagaming strategies.

Sorry chaps, but my "piffle detector" has gone off.

-blah blah statistics-

So the idea that the points tariff in the FOG2DL leads to negative play, or that negative play is encouraged by the rules, is totally ridiculous.

It is a fact, attested to by DL players in writing in the rally thread, that several times, tournament circumstances dictate that they are required to attack at a significant disadvantage to try and scrape points when they would not have done so otherwise. It is also a fact that players have said that they will attack into defensive positions irregardless of the odds simply because they don't care. Quoting the number of draws is irrelevant because in most cases, one party of another inevitably caves and attacks. Also not all maps offer a camping position.

You may try to argue that the rules of the DL don't neccesarily encourage negative play but quoting draw statistics is not helping you here. You would have use another line of attack.

And then we have these completely daft arguments . . .

"You can see in the Rally Point thread in the DL where it has gotten to the point where metagaming draws against good players is now accepted as a valid metagame strategy since there are no rules to prevent it and deny your opponent points by not playing the game. That is an insane concept to me as a competitive tournament in a game should be to try and determine who is the best player of the game, not who can sit there and figure out when it is beneficial to simply not play the game at all. The logical extreme of this metagame strategy would be to identify in a tournament the top contenders and have every other player actively collude to play uber defensively or hide in whatever terrain is available to minimize the chance of these players to get points and then play "regularly" among the rest of them" . . .

Who would even think of trying to do this? How many players would agree to it? None? One in a thousand? The whole thing is ridiculous.

A division A player is on record in the rally thread saying that they regret attacking into the castled position. The logical extreme is just that - an extreme - designed to show why certain argument or logical position is faulty because it can, *not necessarily will* lead to a certain outcome. Regardless of how many players would or would not do it since it would be collusion and unsportsmanlike, raising that point does not invalidate the logical thrust of the argument that your points system has that flaw in it.

And then we have this corker . . .

"edit: Not picking on Pete's tournament but I would just point out that in the DL, if you think you can't win against an opponent due to either a skill gap or a terrain disparity, the DL currently actively incentivizes you to find a way to draw the game. In both cases, you gain 0 points and you can deny your opponent the chance to earn any points. You essentially have a net loss of 0 against that player and can try to win a division off of the remaining games. The threshold for gaining the 3-1 split is high enough to discourage active play since that situation still puts you at a -2 point relative loss to that player nevermind the fact that if you just lose outright they get the 4 points and you get 0. So camping nets you the advantage of forcing the other player to come at you at a disadvantage so you can potentially net 4 points. If they don't engage, then you have lost nothing relative to that other player. Sure you can't do that in every game but as players in the Rally Thread have pointed out, strategically selecting when to do so seems to be perfectly valid."

Apart from the fact that drawing a match below the 25% threshold gets you zero points and has the same value as a loss as far as the other 8 players in the division are concerned, I have done a stat to show that players seeking to win a division outright have very little lee-way in terms of dropped points and that any strategy based on drawing 0-0 with the other contenders (sometimes just one other player, but often two or three other players) is almost always bound to fail.

-insert irrelevant chart-

Of course, the lower the points total required to win a division is, the more likely it is that 3 or 4 players will be in the hunt for promotion so a 0-0 draw strategy would be catastrophic. In 55% of divisions a player will need at least 28 points, meaning that they can afford to drop between 2 and 8 points across their 9 matches. A strategy based on getting a 0-0 draw with someone loses half of those 8 points straight away. In some divisions it would cost the player their promotion right away.

The flaw with your thinking is that your fail to recognize, even though I explicitly stated it in the quote, that drawing with an opponent also robs them of the 4 points and thus it leaves you in a better position than if you had fought a legitimate battle and lost.

Here is an example to illustrate. I have actually never beaten Ludendorf in any setting before. If I was a metagaming type of player and I was thrown into a division with a random assortment of Div A players like Snuggles, Nosyrat, and friends, I would definitely play defensive and camp and if Ludendorf offered a draw, I would happily take it since now both of us are at the same -4 point deficit vis a vis the rest of the player pool. I'll then take my chances with the other 8 games to try and earn the 32 points still possible knowing that the maximum number of points he can earn is also 32. Doubly beneficial is that if there is another player who thinks that they can't beat Ludendorf as well, they might employ a similar strategy and thus potentially robbing him of another 4 potential points while they might fancy me as a target that can be taken down and thus I would be offered a fair game.

What I just demonstrated is that the EV of playing for a 0-0 draw is higher than the EV of playing him for real and losing. Ignoring this basic metagame strategy is like sitting at a poker table and knowingly getting involved in hands with players that you know are better than you rather than targetting the fish to steal all their money. Yes, if most of the division is better than you then you cannot employ this against multiple opponents and expect to win the division. Just like how you should get up from the poker table and find a seat somewhere else if there are more than one or two players better than you at a table. You also have to be able to internally gauge opposing player skill to a reasonably accurate degree to pull this off. And at some point you have play somebody and win to earn points somewhere but that is just common sense but again, it doesn't invalidate the basic premise.

In fact you have on record a player this season who had *nothing to play for* who specifically said they camped since they felt they had a weak army and would be slaughtered by a superior player playing a superior army and felt better with a 0-0 draw rather than losing. The fact that this option existed for him made him engage in defensive play. The better player caved, attacked anyways and got slaughtered in return. Basic EV being demonstrated right in front of you even though all he had to lose at that point was the mental dissatisfaction of getting bowled over by a better player.

Your own players are telling you that your system promotes negative play

The only time where it might make sense to deliberately go for a 0-0 draw is right at the end of the season where such a result can definitely guarantee that a player will win promotion. And really, if they have already got themselves into such a strong position in the division, presumably by playing in an attacking manner and winning most of their other matches decisively, then they are quite entitled to play a defensive match in those circumstances.

Thank you for demonstrating yet another metagaming tactic which is unsavoury but also perfectly viable for exploitation in your system. If in the same hypothtical situation where it is Ludendorf, 7 division A players, and I in a competitive setting, I am incentivized to delay my game against Ludendorf for as long as possible to see if pursuing a 0-0 draw/camping is a viable strategy for me. If I played out the rest of my games first before dealing with Ludendorf, I would know exactly where I stood and how to optimally craft my approach to our game and thus tune my strategy to create the best EV.

[SimonLancaster]

In Test cricket there are often draws even for the whole series. Cricket for you non-followers is played all over the world: India, West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, etc. Not just Europe. The Lions rugby team (UK & Ireland) even went over to New Zealand and they managed to draw the series. Everyone was happy because it was a good series of matches.

Enough of the history and culture of drawing, anyway.

[Cunningcairn]

This is clearly a cultural thing. North American sports/competition/game design features lots of sudden death overtime or play until there is a winner regardless of how long it takes. Losers also typically get nothing while winners take everything. Professional Ice Hockey int he last decade introduced shootouts even during regular season play to ensure there is always a winner. Baseball teams play until there is a winner regardless of the number of innings though they just instituted starting a runner on 2nd base at the start of each overtime inning to try and resolve games quicker. Basketball has been winner or loser and the loser gets nothing since the game's inception. It is just you strange Euros that tolerate these "draws" .

In addition, most North American sports there is also a litany of rules to punish defensive play or "run the clock" strategies. Ice Hockey has a delay of game penalties and icing rules. Basketball has 3 point lines, no goaltending, the restricted arc, and paint violations to curb excessive defensive play. The very structure of baseball makes it impossible to run the clock and there is no such thing as defensive play.

[/quote]

Mike that is totally untrue saying it is a cultural. I have played in a number of US Opens and know most of your US National team. Not one of them would agree with what you have just said. Strategic cautiousness is a valid and widely used tactic.

[kronenblatt]

...

In your view Mike, what should then a point system (or an alternative to a point system) ideally look like in a league?

[Cunningcairn]

In Test cricket there are often draws even for the whole series. Cricket for you non-followers is played all over the world: India, West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, etc. Not just Europe. The Lions rugby team (UK & Ireland) even went over to New Zealand and they managed to draw the series. Everyone was happy because it was a good series of matches.

Enough of the history and culture of drawing, anyway.

They were bloody lucky

[stockwellpete]

The point about posting the statistics is to begin to try and measure "negative play" in the FOG2DL. How serious a problem is it? So firstly, I posted the percentage number for draws because they are the most obvious indicator of where the problem might lie . . .

Classical Antiquity - 14 draws out of 270 matches = about 5% of the total
Late Antiquity - 21 draws out of 270 matches = about 8% of the total
Early Middle Ages - 16 draws out of 270 matches = about 6% of the total
Biblical - 8 draws out of 135 matches = about 6% of the total

So we can see that around 6% of matches are drawn, or to put it another way 94% of matches are not drawn and end up in a victory for one of the two players. But, of course, a drawn match is not necessarily an indicator of negative play. It certainly might suggest cagey play, a lot of manoeuvring and skirmishing, but many draws are very exciting encounters so really we need just to look at those matches where players do not reach the 25% threshold to score any points at all to make an assessment of negative play. And then we have these numbers . . .

Classical Antiquity - 3 out of 270 matches = about 1% of the total
Late Antiquity - 3 out of 270 matches = about 1% of the total
Early Middle Ages - 5 out of 270 matches = about 2% of the total
Biblical - 2 out of 135 matches = about 1.5% of the total

So about 1.5% of matches (3 in every 200) end with a negative outcome, if you want to use that term, but 98.5% do not. To me, that suggests very strongly that there is not a serious issue with negative play across the tournament. There are not cohorts of players pursuing negative strategies to try and bamboozle the top players. And then, if you look at some of these 0-0 draws individually, they have happened because players have failed to avail themselves the possibility of re-rolling the map at the start, or two players have agreed a 0-0 draw because they are mid-table and they just want to get the game out of the way. One match was agreed as a draw with the score something like 22-20 because both players thought the threshold was 20% rather than 25%, so even this 1.5% figure can be qualified a bit.

The flaw with your thinking is that your fail to recognize, even though I explicitly stated it in the quote, that drawing with an opponent also robs them of the 4 points and thus it leaves you in a better position than if you had fought a legitimate battle and lost.

Wow! What a stunning observation! A player is in a better position if he does not lose! Who knew? The flaw in your argument is that as far as the other 8 players in the division are concerned both players have effectively "lost" that match because they are getting no points from it at all. In many of the divisions, it is not always clear who is going to end up on top until near the end of the season. There may be four or five players in contention in the period where most of the matches are played, so having a strategy based on trying to get a 0-0 draw with a certain player might open the door for other players to go past you. As the other statistics showed, players cannot afford to drop many points at all if they are aspiring to win the division outright.

In fact you have on record a player this season who had *nothing to play for* who specifically said they camped since they felt they had a weak army and would be slaughtered by a superior player playing a superior army and felt better with a 0-0 draw rather than losing. The fact that this option existed for him made him engage in defensive play. The better player caved, attacked anyways and got slaughtered in return. Basic EV being demonstrated right in front of you even though all he had to lose at that point was the mental dissatisfaction of getting bowled over by a better player.

Your own players are telling you that your system promotes negative play.

Games like this though are few and far between and are not typical of the FOG2DL. There is not much any set of rules can do if an individual player does not really want to play the game. But you seem to be basing your entire argument on them. In a tournament that has 900+ matches scheduled in the most recent season you are bound to get a few "non-events". But to conclude that my system promotes "negative play" because of these few matches is ludicrous.

[stockwellpete]

Another statistic!

In Season 8 of the FOG2DL in the four main league sections, there were 21 separate divisions of 10 players. In 13 of those 21 divisions there were no 0-0 draws at all in any of the 45 matches that make up the fixture list for each division. Of the remaining 8 divisions, there was just one 0-0 draw in four of them, two 0-0 draws in three of them and one division had three 0-0 draws.

Another factor to consider as well is the army match-up where you can get horse armies playing against spear armies that can sometimes lead to a stalemate. Early Middle Ages had the most 0-0 draws with five where I think this might have been a minor issue. I think it is unreasonable to attribute this to the tournament rules. It is more an issue of playing ahistorical match-ups, because societies coming into prolonged contact and fighting each other tend to experience military adaptation towards each other over a period of time. Obviously FOG2 cannot possibly model this.

[pompeytheflatulent]

Another statistic!

In Season 8 of the FOG2DL in the four main league sections, there were 21 separate divisions of 10 players. In 13 of those 21 divisions there were no 0-0 draws at all in any of the 45 matches that make up the fixture list for each division. Of the remaining 8 divisions, there was just one 0-0 draw in four of them, two 0-0 draws in three of them and one division had three 0-0 draws.

Another factor to consider as well is the army match-up where you can get horse armies playing against spear armies that can sometimes lead to a stalemate. Early Middle Ages had the most 0-0 draws with five where I think this might have been a minor issue. I think it is unreasonable to attribute this to the tournament rules. It is more an issue of playing ahistorical match-ups, because societies coming into prolonged contact and fighting each other tend to experience military adaptation towards each other over a period of time. Obviously FOG2 cannot possibly model this.

Just looking at the number of 0-0 draws doesn't tell the whole picture. I remember towards the end of Season 7 Cunningcairn asking me how I was liking my first experience in the digital league. My response was something along the lines of: "horribly tedious, more than a third of my games involve 6-8 empty turns of walking across the map to a opponent sitting on their deployment zone or in a corner." And it seemed to me that the higher my standings in the tables got, the more likely it was that my opponent would play defensively or camp in a corner. Eventually I got so fed up with it I started to delay reporting in my wins on purpose.

If you look at the Gallic vs Galatian match in Ludendorf's faction spotlight series, there I tried to simulate the metagaming that typically goes on withing a digital league game. I was out looking to fight as long as I had a reasonable chance of victory. But as soon as that chance of victory was gone, I ran back to a steep ass hill and camped for a draw, since I'd be better off with a 0-0 draw than a 0-4 loss. So maybe consider rewarding players with 1 point for a loss where they inflicted at least 10% rout on the enemy? That would give players an incentive to fight in cases of mismatched armies or terrain types.

[stockwellpete]

Just looking at the number of 0-0 draws doesn't tell the whole picture. I remember towards the end of Season 7 Cunningcairn asking me how I was liking my first experience in the digital league. My response was something along the lines of: "horribly tedious, more than a third of my games involve 6-8 empty turns of walking across the map to a opponent sitting on their deployment zone or in a corner." And it seemed to me that the higher my standings in the tables got, the more likely it was that my opponent would play defensively or camp in a corner.

No, but it is a significant part of the picture. In Season 7 you were in Early Middle Ages Division C and Biblical Division B and you were far too strong for most players at that level, which would explain why some of them played cautiously against you. I doubt that your experience was the same this season in Early Middle Ages Division A which was a very strong division.

Eventually I got so fed up with it I started to delay reporting in my wins on purpose.

Very helpful, I'm sure. Completely lost on me though as I didn't realise you were doing it.

If you look at the Gallic vs Galatian match in Ludendorf's faction spotlight series, there I tried to simulate the metagaming that typically goes on within a digital league game. I was out looking to fight as long as I had a reasonable chance of victory. But as soon as that chance of victory was gone, I ran back to a steep ass hill and camped for a draw, since I'd be better off with a 0-0 draw than a 0-4 loss.

You mean "within a small minority of Digital League games", don't you? You would actually have been far better off losing 3-1 or drawing 2-2 than agreeing a 0-0 draw. And you were only better off in relation to the player you were actually playing against in agreeing to that 0-0 draw. You were certainly not better off in relation to the other 8 players in the division.

So maybe consider rewarding players with 1 point for a loss where they inflicted at least 10% rout on the enemy? That would give players an incentive to fight in cases of mismatched armies or terrain types.

At the moment players get 1 point for causing 50% damage to an opponent in a losing battle, so giving 1 point for 10% would mean completely re-configuring the scoring system. Given that only 1.5% of matches currently end up being scored 0-0, I do not think there is a very strong case for doing that, particularly when the way terrain is generated in the game (denser areas of terrain tending to be placed on the edges of maps) is an important factor in all this "turtling" business.

[pompeytheflatulent]

Eventually I got so fed up with it I started to delay reporting in my wins on purpose.

Very helpful, I'm sure. Completely lost on me though as I didn't realise you were doing it.

It was helpful for me because delaying reporting by a few days it might give me that extra 2 or 3 turns in the next set of games to move into position to force a battle before my opponent turtled up completely.

[pompeytheflatulent]

You mean "within a small minority of Digital League games", don't you?

Yes. But that small minority of games are always carefully picked by players depending on the current standings in that division. All part of the metagaming that goes on outside of the actual matches that I dislike.

[pompeytheflatulent]

You would actually have been far better off losing 3-1 or drawing 2-2 than agreeing a 0-0 draw. And you were only better off in relation to the player you were actually playing against in agreeing to that 0-0 draw.

In that game I almost achieved a 2-2 draw because I forced my opponent to attack up a 100 height hill since if that had been a league game he had a potential 4 points on the line, while I had at most 1 point on the line - IF the stars aligned and all the dice gods were on my side.

[stockwellpete]

Yes. But that small minority of games are always carefully picked by players depending on the current standings in that division. All part of the metagaming that goes on outside of the actual matches that I dislike.

Well, I think my tolerance levels must be higher than yours. If a player has won 8 games and got 32 points (8 wins) and is playing his closest rival who has played 8 games and got 28 points (7 wins and a defeat) in the deciding match, I have no problem at all if the player with 8 wins decides to use whatever defensive terrain there is available in that last match to avoid defeat and win the division, even if the match ends up being scored as a 0-0 draw. As far as I am concerned, they have earned the right over the previous eight games to play the ninth game exactly how they want to. And they cannot be sensibly accused of "negative play" given that they have won all of their previous eight matches. These sorts of situations do happen from time-to-time in the FOG2DL, but they are quite rare.