Panzer Corps 2 World Championship - Official thread (1st round starting on September 15)

[StahlRat]

This tournament began on Tuesday, didn't it? I wonder why my opponent and I and half the participants cannot begin their rounds.What's going on, Slitherine? We all remembered the start date and were ready.

It should have showed up and been playable early Wednesday. What is the problem you are having? If the match appears but nothing happens when you try to start it, you may want to file a bug report.

I've done that.
The round's games appear but the 'Join' boxes are dithered. Nothing else is available. I cannot look at the map nor deploy my units.
It's only the second round, and for me this tournament is nothing but a burning outhouse.

Ahah, I thought the round didn't even start yet. Still waiting for my email from PBEM
Tried to login anyway on Thursday, saw "Start" for Allies and greyed out "Join" for Axis, made 1st move for Allies and that was all. Since I've received no email, I thought that round didn't start yet, and my 1st move was like bug

Anyway , my current opponent is Ted1710. Hey Ted1710, how does it look on your side ?

[SiberianStorm]

A question for moderators/Slitherine/experienced players

Is there anything that can be done to prevent “forced battle/full turn replays”?
Something like server side game caches for MP battles and tournaments would remove this but will likely become yet another feature request for developers in the already long list

This issue has been mentioned before on the forum, and up to my knowledge has not been answered.
Situation I am discussing here is when game or game engine crash results in opportunity to replay the single unit battle (rerolls of unlucky outcomes/correction of mistakes) or even full game turns.

This explains some of the weird behavior I witnessed in my multiplayer games.
-players disconnecting from their turn multiple times
-turn video replays that start with sequence of attacks on key defence points across the board, that all unsurprisingly result in above average luck
-surpressed 7 strong artillery killing 2 and surpressing 5 entrenched pioneers

I record my games and can provide more examples if this helps anyone

I have to say this has nothing to do with my current battle/opponent but I am confident this happens in the tournament as well.

There are two solutions I can think of:
-insist that you coordinate playing time and play live (difficult to manage and implement)
-join the opponent’s turn and remain logged in so that the game state is saved on your side of the table, and when the game “crashes” and opponent logs back in again, the turn resumes as normal.

I can’t imagine myself continously monitoring if the opponent started the turn and logging in to keep the cache/game state intact.
Aside from costing a lot of precious time it removes all of the fun and thrill of playing the MP games.

This issue is bigger threat to corect scoring than most of the other things discussed.

Is there an easy existing solution to prevent this?

[karste70]

Hello all,

this is a realy stuipid tournament.

I am new at PC2 and was verry happy to play this, but in first round, nothing!

And in second round my op comes late and play 3 rounds, lose a lot, and now?
nothing!

I think this is the end of my PC2 Gaming!

Good luck all!
Karsten

[FritzchenEK-I]

Hello all,

this is a realy stuipid tournament.

I am new at PC2 and was verry happy to play this, but in first round, nothing!

And in second round my op comes late and play 3 rounds, lose a lot, and now?
nothing!

I think this is the end of my PC2 Gaming!

Good luck all!
Karsten

Beg him Karsten
Get on your knees and beg him to play on

Have the exact same experience

1st round I got screwed with 2k pts
What kind of a gift is this?
I got gifted to lose the T even if I play exactly as good as the winner

Now my opponent stops playing. I took two objectives TURN TWO
Two more TURN THREE

It is so incredibly stupid
keep your opponent happy and in the illusion that he can win

Otherwise he quits on you and you can never catch up on the scoreboard !

In what bizarre world does this make sense?

This part is impossible to get rid off right? Even w improvement of scoring

I hope my opponent just has something else to do and shows up again

SCORING HAS TO CHANGE ENTIRELY or another guy gets gifted a certain loss w 2k pts next round

[jimtracyii]

Hi all,

There is still time to rescue this tournament. Just use the scores from the first two rounds to seed a double elimination tournament. Should not take any more than 10 rounds. You can keep the scoring to determine who wins the match between players splitting a win and loss during a match. And then if a person stops playing the round then they automatically forfeit to their opponent. Simple and clean the way most double elimination tournaments work. I myself would be embarrassed to win with this format. Many good players are being sabotaged by their opponents not showing up or stop playing when they are losing and so their scores are artificially low.

In my match I have broken through the German lines and half of his units are surrounded. This is clearly going to be a win for me as I am only on turn 4. My opponent has not submitted a turn for this scenario in 4 days. In the other game he thinks he still has a chance so he sent his turn. Now I refuse to send my completed turn in that game as we are on the same turns in both games and I do not want him to see what I am doing in the game as the Germans until he sends me his turn. The reason is he can do what I am doing in the game as the Germans and try to emulate it. Which could cost me some points in the long run.

Win or lose, Good luck to all.

[songseeker]

PC2 is an excellent game. For me it is by far the best game of its type and it deserves much more than the way this competition is treating it. I do, however, realise that Slitherine has limited resources and other priorities. I have no idea how much time they are able to devote to sorting out the mess they have created here, but I suspect it's no more than an hour or so some days from a designer and maybe a few days from a programmer. So suggestions for the way ahead will have to acknowledge this. Perhaps a way for the future would be to form a small group of informed players – it would not be hard to find them from this and other PC2 threads – and ask them to consider what should go into the basics for this type of competition and make recommendations. I have little doubt that they would have no trouble finding volunteers to join that sort of small group, including someone to run it. The output is likely to be a very practical and robust system with much fewer complaints. But that is for the future.

For the present, what can be done. The problems have been well documented on this thread and others, along with several good suggestions as to how the situation can be recovered. We are told that some steps are being take to improve the situation from round 3 on, but without any detail. So, for what its worth, my own suggestions follow, acknowledging that some are taken from previous posts.

Its has been suggested that these first 2 rounds are taken as a sort of preliminary. To sort out those players who truly want to participate, from those who have changed their mind but have no way or interest in formally withdrawing from the competition. This is a very good suggestion to my mind. There are few disadvantages to doing this. The main one is the potential for disadvantaging those at the top of the leaderboard by making them start again. But, I suspect that very few of them would really be concerned at having to start again, If they are as good as they seem to be, they will quickly rise to the top again. And the huge benefit would be the removal of those players who are holding back the competition for lack of action. So, if this approach is taken, the competition could resume from round 3 or even restart from round 1. I for one would have no problems restarting from round 1. I would even prefer it.

The issue with victory hexes not awarding points beyond winning the scenario is easily resolved by a programming fix. Indeed, the campaign game already does this so to fix it would, I believe, be trivial, and take less work that it did to remove it.

So what happens when players still decide not to take their turns because they are losing badly? I cannot think of a perfect solution to this – although that does not mean that one does not exist and it might still come out of the discussion on this and other threads. Perhaps the least damaging solution would be to assume that the player who was last active when their opponent ceases to move, has won. And award point on the basis that the active player at that time has captured all remaining victory hexes and destroyed all their opponents remaining forces. This will cause some undeserved awarding of points, but it will be nothing like as bad as the current situation, and I doubt will cause any distortion of the final result in the long run.

One other suggestion before I risk boring all by too long a post. The concept of a round requiring both players fight from each side of the conflict and with equal resources is quite clearly aimed at putting both players on an equal and fair position from the start. But this is then compromised by retaining the random nature of the combat results. While this might give a more realistic encounter – particularly in the campaign games – it does not help to maintain the equal and fair footing of the 2 players. A few bad or good random results can change the outcome significantly. Surely, in this type of coemption the random nature of the combat should be removed – its a standard option on campaign games – to make the situation really equal for both players.

[brianjones17]

PC2 is an excellent game. For me it is by far the best game of its type and it deserves much more than the way this competition is treating it. I do, however, realise that Slitherine has limited resources and other priorities. I have no idea how much time they are able to devote to sorting out the mess they have created here, but I suspect it's no more than an hour or so some days from a designer and maybe a few days from a programmer. So suggestions for the way ahead will have to acknowledge this. Perhaps a way for the future would be to form a small group of informed players – it would not be hard to find them from this and other PC2 threads – and ask them to consider what should go into the basics for this type of competition and make recommendations. I have little doubt that they would have no trouble finding volunteers to join that sort of small group, including someone to run it. The output is likely to be a very practical and robust system with much fewer complaints. But that is for the future.

For the present, what can be done. The problems have been well documented on this thread and others, along with several good suggestions as to how the situation can be recovered. We are told that some steps are being take to improve the situation from round 3 on, but without any detail. So, for what its worth, my own suggestions follow, acknowledging that some are taken from previous posts.

Its has been suggested that these first 2 rounds are taken as a sort of preliminary. To sort out those players who truly want to participate, from those who have changed their mind but have no way or interest in formally withdrawing from the competition. This is a very good suggestion to my mind. There are few disadvantages to doing this. The main one is the potential for disadvantaging those at the top of the leaderboard by making them start again. But, I suspect that very few of them would really be concerned at having to start again, If they are as good as they seem to be, they will quickly rise to the top again. And the huge benefit would be the removal of those players who are holding back the competition for lack of action. So, if this approach is taken, the competition could resume from round 3 or even restart from round 1. I for one would have no problems restarting from round 1. I would even prefer it.

The issue with victory hexes not awarding points beyond winning the scenario is easily resolved by a programming fix. Indeed, the campaign game already does this so to fix it would, I believe, be trivial, and take less work that it did to remove it.

So what happens when players still decide not to take their turns because they are losing badly? I cannot think of a perfect solution to this – although that does not mean that one does not exist and it might still come out of the discussion on this and other threads. Perhaps the least damaging solution would be to assume that the player who was last active when their opponent ceases to move, has won. And award point on the basis that the active player at that time has captured all remaining victory hexes and destroyed all their opponents remaining forces. This will cause some undeserved awarding of points, but it will be nothing like as bad as the current situation, and I doubt will cause any distortion of the final result in the long run.

One other suggestion before I risk boring all by too long a post. The concept of a round requiring both players fight from each side of the conflict and with equal resources is quite clearly aimed at putting both players on an equal and fair position from the start. But this is then compromised by retaining the random nature of the combat results. While this might give a more realistic encounter – particularly in the campaign games – it does not help to maintain the equal and fair footing of the 2 players. A few bad or good random results can change the outcome significantly. Surely, in this type of coemption the random nature of the combat should be removed – its a standard option on campaign games – to make the situation really equal for both players.

I have a very simple suggestion to stop the awkward situation when a player has taken all objectives except the last one and killed all enemy units and has to rely on his beaten opponent to keep ticking off the turns to score maximum points . If a player reaches that stage for example with 3 turns remaining he should be credited with the maximum points and the game ends. As for the frustrating problem of non playing opponents they should be booted from the tournament at the end of the first round. I personally have had 2 good opponents so far with good communication and completed both games so i feel sorry for those who are still waiting for there games to start or complete. This is a great game we all love so i hope a solution can be found so we can all enjoy ongoing tournaments. so thanks to both my opponents so far and good luck to all players for the rest of this tournament and future tournaments of this great game. Cheers All

[songseeker]

I would like to offer a practical illustration of the proposal I made a couple of posts back of how to deal with players who stop taking their turns because they are losing badly. The suggestion in more detail is:
At the point a player ceases to send in moves, award the last active player the points he has earned so far, plus additional points on the assumption that he owns all victory hexes for the remaining turns, and has destroyed all the opponent's forces. Award the inactive player the points he earned up to the time he ceased playing.

Now to the practical example:

In the current round I am in the UK and my opponent is in Australia. So its unlikely we could ever be on line at the same time. For the first 7 rounds things have gone well, with each of us making a daily move. Now, although I may be doing my opponent an injustice and he may be just busy or otherwise engaged he has not sent any moves for the last 3 days and I am beginning to suspect he will send no more because of the bad situation he is in.

At the end of turn 7, as the allied player I have destroyed all his forces, taken all but one of the victory hexes and am sitting outside the last one waiting to take it on turn 15 (Silly that this is needed when so easy to fix).In the other game he, as the allied player has taken 3 victory hexes, but has lost well over half his forces in the process while I have lost about 20%. I am now poised to counter attack and would likely take back the 3 victory hexes in 3 or 4 turns. So, if he makes no more moves I will lose 100x8 + 25 points for the lost turns as the allies, and 50x8 + 75x6 for the lost turns as the Germans. That's a total of 1675 points lost because he will not finish the game. If the suggestion above is used I would be awarded an extra 8x25 points for the allied side (but these points really should be awarded anyway because its really silly to sit outside the last victory hex just because the game does not recognise victory in the way the campaign game does, and I will not count them further in this example) and an extra 75x3 points for the German side ( the additional points coming from the 3 victory hexes currently owned by the Allied player and awarded each turn from turn 7, as opposed to turn 10 when all would be retaken anyway. So, for all practical purposes I would have been awarded an total of 225 extra points above what would have been earned if the game had concluded properly.

It seems a much fairer way to proceed by giving the bonus of 225 to the winning player, rather than taking away the 1675 points that would have been properly earned. This is not a perfect solution, but it does seem fair.

[SiberianStorm]

Is it poseible to find a fair solution? Probably not.
This tournament is everything but fair given complete lack of instruction and communication from the organizers.
People did not start with the same information and are not fighting fair battles.
Changing the rules now however would also be unfair to players in the lead
We will not have a fair competition regardless of the update.

Skill and talent will eventually win, but many fair people will have poor experience playing.

There are many great proposals for improvement discussed here but I honestly doubt someone will have time and willpower to read through all of our proposals and then derive the best solution for this tournament
.
Apologizing and rebooting this tournament completely to day 1 once necessary changes are made is something to consider.
I hope this would bring back some of the players that have churned.

[Vindictus]

Can anyone explain to me This.

As the allies, I defeated the enemy in 6 rounds, took all objectives, and then the battle ended. I expected to continue the rest of the rounds 7-15, and get all the objective points for those rounds but instead got nothing.

Punished for getting fast victories?

[bendtheknee]

Can anyone explain to me This.

As the allies, I defeated the enemy in 6 rounds, took all objectives, and then the battle ended. I expected to continue the rest of the rounds 7-15, and get all the objective points for those rounds but instead got nothing.

Punished for getting fast victories?

it's been just since the start of the championship and since the other tournaments that we say it ... did not capture the last hex of victory before the last round

[Matula22]

Hi there,

who can explain the scoring system to me. I captured all victory points in round 7 and only got 333 points. Why ?
What goals do I have to pursue in order to get more points?
Thank you for your answers

[paulwalvoord]

Can anyone explain to me This.

As the allies, I defeated the enemy in 6 rounds, took all objectives, and then the battle ended. I expected to continue the rest of the rounds 7-15, and get all the objective points for those rounds but instead got nothing.

Punished for getting fast victories?

Same issue. Looking at the scores there are a lot of at least a few others who have had this issue. Maybe there is a way to add those points to our total score, other than just sitting on all but 1 objective. I'd say the spirit of Panzer Corps is to win as fast as possible and get a reward for it, not win quickly and be disappointed.

Personally, i am still enjoying the tournament! And I am glad that it the devs are attempting to encourage players to keep playing without being eliminated. There are just a few issues to work out, and this is one of them.

[DarkBlueInk]

Hi there,

who can explain the scoring system to me. I captured all victory points in round 7 and only got 333 points. Why ?
What goals do I have to pursue in order to get more points?
Thank you for your answers

Scoring calculation is simple: 25 points at the beginning or each turn for every victory hex you hold, plus 1 point per core slot of enemy units eliminated. The problem is that once you capture all victory hexes, the game ends and you do not receive any points for the remaining rounds. This is a flaw that Slitherine has acknowledged, and is now well documented throughout the forums.
Slitherine has said a fix will be ready prior to round 3. They have not, however, said if the fix will be retroactive.

Anyway, you only received 333 points because you captured all victory hexes before that last turn. To maximize your score, you should have (1) captured only 4 victory hexes as quickly as possible -perhaps the 7th round-, (2) held off capturing the last victory hex until the very last turn, and (3) eliminated all enemy units because you get the value of their slots. By capping in the 7th round, you missed out on 125 points per turn. And if you let any enemy units survive, then you again left points on the board.

[StuG_Tutor]

Well, I think the state of the tournament (and the PC2 multiplayer world) is just juicy full of opportunities for outstanding improvements!

I think some sort of competition board as has been suggested is a great idea. I would love to see a Panzer Corps II "League" complete with a Competition Board, Rules Committee, Player and Match ratings and the option to have a League Match or non-rated match while in Multi-player mode. I'd love to see improved communication options available both to find opponents and to let them know "Hey, I have to go to my cousins wedding in Bristol--I won't be able to play my next round until Monday." Currently I have to just catch them while they are logged into the game--irl I rarely can. Speaking to SiberianStorm the first rule I'd put into the League is if a crash occurs in the game the match doesn't count--null and void at least and possibly a loss for the player whose system "crashed."

So how do we bring about a Player's League with a group of us hashing things out and bringing our recommendations to Slitherine in an organized fashion to improve the multiplayer community in general and the tournament system specifically? I think we'd need a virtual meeting space of some kind for starters and a way to communicate with each other. The best I can come up with on the fly is the Steam group I just formed: "Panzer Corps2 League." If anyone is interested in working to develop a superior multiplayer environment and tournament system "by players for players" please join me. The group is open for now, we'll have to decide where to go from here.

I hate to add to the pile of current issues but...I'm one of those who have been burned by the system for approximating "some sort of score" when an opponent stops showing up in this tournament. I know others who have been burned worse and are fed up with the tournament because of it. Sometimes I play a certain gentleman who is much better than I am. I think he's probably "top ten" but he's around the middle of the pack like me because his opponent showed up for one or two rounds, didn't immediately capitulate and so his score is less than 2000...if his opponent played through AND gave a respectable showing I guarantee he'd end with a score far above 2000--probably above 2500. In the second round he has a "no show" opponent (unless he got so fed up HE's boycotting the tournament now). My case isn't as clear cut--in round one I was trouncing my opponent as Germany (20:1 score I believe) and had given up a single victory hex to Germany by round 6(?) and was ahead on points as Poland. Then my opponent bailed. The scoring alchemy gave me a score of 1584. Fine--I made a mistake or two maybe I should get a middle of the pack score. Then I got curious about what a match might look like if the participants FINISHED and got a score like I received. Songseeker's first round popped up as a finished game with a score like the one I was assigned--he and his opponent looked pretty well matched getting comparable results as they took their turns as Germany and Poland. The Point Assignment System for Unfinished Games (PASUG) gave me a score as though I was playing a roughly equal performing opponent and that wasn't even close to being the case. 2000 points for a "noshow" opponent or whatever prorating formula Slitherine is using for partially completed games is flawed and inadequate.

One suggestion has to do with the "chess clock" analogy. If a tournament round is 21 days, each player has 10.5 days of time. I'm fairly certain it has been my opponents turn for more than 10.5 days. In chess he would have lost the match by now and it wouldn't be an unreasonable system to give me victory hex points times turns remaining for all victory hexes on the board--I'm still coming up short on points since I am deprived the opportunity of destroying his units and getting points = slots destroyed...but I guess I'll live.

[markwatson360]

Hi there,

who can explain the scoring system to me. I captured all victory points in round 7 and only got 333 points. Why ?
What goals do I have to pursue in order to get more points?
Thank you for your answers

Scoring calculation is simple: 25 points at the beginning or each turn for every victory hex you hold, plus 1 point per core slot of enemy units eliminated. The problem is that once you capture all victory hexes, the game ends and you do not receive any points for the remaining rounds. This is a flaw that Slitherine has acknowledged, and is now well documented throughout the forums.
Slitherine has said a fix will be ready prior to round 3. They have not, however, said if the fix will be retroactive.

Anyway, you only received 333 points because you captured all victory hexes before that last turn. To maximize your score, you should have (1) captured only 4 victory hexes as quickly as possible -perhaps the 7th round-, (2) held off capturing the last victory hex until the very last turn, and (3) eliminated all enemy units because you get the value of their slots. By capping in the 7th round, you missed out on 125 points per turn. And if you let any enemy units survive, then you again left points on the board.

I was thinking about this, does this mean there is never any point in capturing the last victory objective? because if you wait till the last turn to do so you were not in possession of it at the start of turn 15 so won't get the 25 points. Also if you capture it on the turn before (turn 14) the game will end and you'll lose the 100 pts you'd have got for the other objectives in turn 15. This all seems daft to me.

[songseeker]

Its really frustrating when you make a long, and what you believe to be a useful post, and then when you press the submit button you get a screen saying Slitherine could not process the response at this time. It almost made me give up, but I have persevered with this competition so far so I will remake the post.

I also do not know how to make a reply with the content of a previous post hi-lited so it puts the rest of the message into context. So, I will have to rely on quotes of what StuG_Tutor posted above:

"One suggestion has to do with the "chess clock" analogy. If a tournament round is 21 days, each player has 10.5 days of time. I'm fairly certain it has been my opponents turn for more than 10.5 days. In chess he would have lost the match by now and it wouldn't be an unreasonable system to give me victory hex points times turns remaining for all victory hexes on the board--I'm still coming up short on points since I am deprived the opportunity of destroying his units and getting points = slots destroyed...but I guess I'll live."

I really like the 10.5 days time limit. One drawback that occurred to me from using the method I outlined above was the possibility a sneaky and bad player could stop playing when he realised he would lose, but return to play his latest turns just before the round finished. Thus making it appear as though he was the active player and getting all the points. I am cynical enough to believe there are people out there like that, although maybe few in number. The 10.5 day time limit would get round that. More importantly, it would be easy to programme such that the down time for each player was counted and the end of game triggered when one reached 10.5 days. The scores could then be calculated giving all victory hexes to the active player at the time 10.5 days was reached. The inactive player would get only the points that he had earned by playing. The automated nature of this is very important, as I doubt Slitherine have either the inclination or the resources to do any manual stuff at round end. In programming terms there would have to be a little extra coding to deal with round 1 failures to play, but not much.

Of course, in extreme cases this would produce an extreme and unacceptable result in points scored for the winning player. For example, in Round 2, in the most extreme, case, with a player not starting at all, the other player would be deemed to have won on turn 1 and score 10x25x15 points, for a total of 3750 points. This is obviously too much. But, it could easily be sorted by putting a cap on points earned this way. Perhaps an arbitrary number such as 2000, or perhaps by averaging the top 10 scores from the games which did go the full distance. This would again be easy to automate with no human intervention at round end. What such a cap should be might inspire an interesting debate in its own right.

One other point that StuG_Tutor made:

"The scoring alchemy gave me a score of 1584. Fine--I made a mistake or two maybe I should get a middle of the pack score. Then I got curious about what a match might look like if the participants FINISHED and got a score like I received. Songseeker's first round popped up as a finished game with a score like the one I was assigned--he and his opponent looked pretty well matched getting comparable results as they took their turns as Germany and Poland. The Point Assignment System for Unfinished Games (PASUG) gave me a score as though I was playing a roughly equal performing opponent and that wasn't even close to being the case. 2000 points for a "noshow" opponent or whatever prorating formula Slitherine is using for partially completed games is flawed and inadequate."

An interesting analysis, but I think you are short changing yourself. I do believe that my opponent and I in Round 1 were evenly matched. But, I certainly did not know that the last victory hex should not be taken until the end of the game, and I do not think my opponent did either, as we both finished ahead. Although I cannot remember how many turns ahead. I also did not know that the initial composition and starting points of your forces could be changed during deployment. For round 2 I did know this, and it makes a HUGE difference.

[StuG_Tutor]

songseeker wrote:

I also did not know that the initial composition and starting points of your forces could be changed during deployment. For round 2 I did know this, and it makes a HUGE difference.

I bet it did!

[StuG_Tutor]

The fundamental problem of this tournament is one thing: Sportsmanship

That is NOT something Slitherine can patch out of existence. It's our problem and I think solutions do exist. If everyone who signed up for this tournament showed up and played through in good faith, we wouldn't have all this heat and frustration around whether 2000 points for a "no show" is too little or too much or around opponents playing a few rounds and disappearing. Most of the above posts just wouldn't exist. But the problem with an open invitational tournament is that a lot of people who aren't serious about it sign up and forget or player's quit once it "doesn't look good for them." Slitherine really can't do much about it and there is some conflict of interest in asking them to flush people from the tournament when those same people are ones who have bought there product and I'm sure they hope will buy more of their products in the future.

A League approach can solve that. A League can set player's responsibilities out in a Code of Conduct. A League can establish a Sportsmanship score for each player based on % of games finished, non-offensive behavior, timely completion of turns, scarcity of crashes during multi-player play etc... A League can allow anyone in on a probationary basis. A League can issue Statements of Concern to players who are failing to abide by the Code and a League can ultimately drop players.

Leagues would have no more official relationship with Slitherine than a Football Club has with the company that makes the footballs it uses to practice and play matches with. Like all of us who have been posting on this topic, I love the Panzer Corps 2 game--I think Slitherine has made a great product. But I think we can take the product, as is, and greatly improve the multi-player experience and foster a spirit of friendly, respectful competition on our own.

Things I'd like to brainstorm with others on are a way to score any multiplayer match and give it a value towards the goal of developing player ratings. The ratings could be used to match up with players of comparable skill levels and give an actual to expected rating on any single match, tournament or season.
There are many other possibilities including having an open forum whose soul purpose is to just match up players who are looking to play a rated or even non rated match. I did create a Group in Steam called "Panzer Corps 2 League" I think ultimately it should be restricted to "members" but right now it's open.

[StuG_Tutor]

The fundamental problem of this tournament is one thing: Sportsmanship

That is NOT something Slitherine can patch out of existence. It's our problem and I think solutions do exist. If everyone who signed up for this tournament showed up and played through in good faith, we wouldn't have all this heat and frustration around whether 2000 points for a "no show" is too little or too much or around opponents playing a few rounds and disappearing. Most of the above posts just wouldn't exist. But the problem with an open invitational tournament is that a lot of people who aren't serious about it sign up and forget or player's quit once it "doesn't look good for them." Slitherine really can't do much about it and there is some conflict of interest in asking them to flush people from the tournament when those same people are ones who have bought their product and I'm sure they hope will buy more of their products in the future.

A League approach can solve that. A League can set player's responsibilities out in a Code of Conduct. A League can establish a Sportsmanship score for each player based on % of games finished, non-offensive behavior, timely completion of turns, scarcity of crashes during multi-player play etc... A League can allow anyone in on a probationary basis. A League can issue Statements of Concern to players who are failing to abide by the Code and a League can ultimately drop players.

Leagues would have no more official relationship with Slitherine than a Football Club has with the company that makes the footballs it uses to practice and play matches with. Like all of us who have been posting on this topic, I love the Panzer Corps 2 game--I think Slitherine has made a great product. But I think we can take the product, as is, and greatly improve the multi-player experience and foster a spirit of friendly, respectful competition on our own.

Things I'd like to brainstorm with others on are a way to score any multiplayer match and give it a value towards the goal of developing player ratings. The ratings could be used to match up with players of comparable skill levels and give an actual to expected rating on any single match, tournament or season.
There are many other possibilities including having an open forum whose sole purpose is to just match up players who are looking to play a rated or even non rated match. I did create a Group in Steam called "Panzer Corps 2 League" I think ultimately it should be restricted to "members" but right now it's open.