The Rally Point (discussion and questions)

[stockwellpete]

HI there, I am excited about participating in the league this time around. Apologies if I have missed this in the numerous threads. On your army selection process, I have to assume that you will be making divisions where the geography (and to some extent, date) settings is off. Thats is, the divisions might have armies that could not have fought in reality. What is driving this question is that the Scots have only 4 geographical opponents. Related, to what extent is date a consideration? for instance, it might be fun to play a hoplite era but I would be hesitant to match a hoplite based force againsts a pike one. Please share how these considerations are factored in when constructing a division of similarly skilled players.

Yes, that is right. In the core league sections such as "Classical Antiquity" and "Late Antiquity" it will be possible to have match-ups between armies that did not fight historically. These categories are very broad so it will be possible, say, for the ancient British to fight an Arab army in the Late Antiquity section. The time period for each section means that the armies are reasonably contemporary with each other. We will not be having medieval knights fighting ancient Egyptians! It is not actually my own cup of tea as I always play strict historical match-ups or scenarios, but this format has always been very popular going back to older competitions such as LOEG and FOG1DL. The other sections in the first season, where we have had to improvise a bit because we do not yet have medieval armies, are all much more historically based. In between seasons there will sometimes be a poll or two where questions about the balance of content offered in the tournament can be considered.

lastly, it is a medium army on only a medium map?

Yes, that is correct as well. Also, always "pot luck" terrain, unless otherwise specified, and always default army selection (whereby players can pick their units at the start). I hope you enjoy the tournament.

[Scotty123]

do we get a notification as to start date and that we have been accepted?
thanks

bob

You have PM (stockwellpete)

[stockwellpete]

The start date is February 1st. Everyone is accepted in this first season. If we have players dropping out early and not finishing their matches then they may find themselves facing restricted entry in Season 2.

[edb1815]

How frequent are the "seasons"?

As a new DL player I didn't want to enter too many sections this go round so I was curious from your experience in the FOG1 DL how often new seasons were started. Will a new season start directly following the end of this one in April?

[stockwellpete]

How frequent are the "seasons"?

As a new DL player I didn't want to enter too many sections this go round so I was curious from your experience in the FOG1 DL how often new seasons were started. Will a new season start directly following the end of this one in April?

The seasons will start each year on February 1st, June 1st and October 1st. So a 10-week season followed by a 6-7 week break every 4 months.

[edb1815]

Cool - Ty!

[MikeC_81]

Any chance you could have the Digital League forum as a distinct section rather than a subsection? Saves clicking a bit and helps with visibility.

[stockwellpete]

Any chance you could have the Digital League forum as a distinct section rather than a subsection? Saves clicking a bit and helps with visibility.

It is only one-click from the main Slitherine page where all games are displayed and the FOG2DL is shown as a distinct section on that page. It is what we had last time and I think it is OK really.

[stockwellpete]

The Classical Indian section has undergone a major revamp today with the addition of 3 Chinese armies from jomni's "Silk Road" mod and it is also going to be used to trial a new points scoring system for the FOG2DL which may be rolled out to the wider tournament in subsequent seasons. If the trial goes well there will be a poll before the start of Season 2.

The scoring system to be trialled is as follows . . .

4pts - win
2pts - tie
1pt - draw
0pts - loss

+1 winning bonus point if you win a match by 25pts or more (e.g. 40-15 or 50-25)
+1 losing bonus point if you lose a match by less than 20pts (e.g. 41-60 or 45-64)

Please feel free to comment on this idea.

[mhladnik]

Dear all, here is my original reply to Pete:

There is very little difference between a winning bonus point, and a losing consolation point. Only between 20 and 25 nothing happens. Would you perhaps consider something like raising the big win threshold to 30, dropping the lower one to 15, or even both? Perhaps the upper bound is ok at 25, as this is the quick victory condition anyway. Ideally, we would have some statistics on what the distribution of wins usually looks like.

So, I hereby put up for vote the suggestion to drop the losing bonus point margin to 15, i.e. for scores like 45-60 or closer. What do you guys think?

[devoncop]

Can I suggest that to dissuade "camping" and encourage aggressive play the bonus point for losing should be for causing over a certain % loss to the winning side (maybe 35 or 40%?).....The bonus for winning % margin seems good to me at 25%....otherwise bonus will be too common.

Just my thoughts.

[mhladnik]

You cannot lose closely if you haven't routed 40% (or 45% in my proposal) of the enemy Otherwise you either lose (big), or the game is just a draw with no one breaking.

[stockwellpete]

Can I suggest that to dissuade "camping" and encourage aggressive play the bonus point for losing should be for causing over a certain % loss to the winning side (maybe 35 or 40%?).....The bonus for winning % margin seems good to me at 25%....otherwise bonus will be too common.

Just my thoughts.

By setting the losing bonus point threshold to less than 20pts it means that the beaten player will have to inflict 40% losses minimum on the winning side because the default winning conditions require a 25% winning margin, or the causing of 60% losses to your opponent. Matches finishing, say, 59-40 or 40-21 are draws because neither default conditions have been met.

[stockwellpete]

So, I hereby put up for vote the suggestion to drop the losing bonus point margin to 15, i.e. for scores like 45-60 or closer. What do you guys think?

Yes, I am not opposed to this if people think a margin of "15 or less" is better than "less than 20".

[devoncop]

Can I suggest that to dissuade "camping" and encourage aggressive play the bonus point for losing should be for causing over a certain % loss to the winning side (maybe 35 or 40%?).....The bonus for winning % margin seems good to me at 25%....otherwise bonus will be too common.

Just my thoughts.

By setting the losing bonus point threshold to less than 20pts it means that the beaten player will have to inflict 40% losses minimum on the winning side because the default winning conditions require a 25% winning margin, or the causing of 60% losses to your opponent. Matches finishing, say, 59-40 or 40-21 are draws because neither default conditions have been met.

Yes fair point.

[nyczar]

I like the less than 20 threshold for the beaten player because it means the losing player has achieved the minimum score needed to win in the first place. It also evens out the fact that sometimes in the close games you find one side rallying to widen the gap rather than executing a final maneuver. ie they win because of timely fate.

[MikeC_81]

Any chance you could have the Digital League forum as a distinct section rather than a subsection? Saves clicking a bit and helps with visibility.

It is only one-click from the main Slitherine page where all games are displayed and the FOG2DL is shown as a distinct section on that page. It is what we had last time and I think it is OK really.

No prob. I just find it hard tapping the right link on my tiny phone screen

The Classical Indian section has undergone a major revamp today with the addition of 3 Chinese armies from jomni's "Silk Road" mod and it is also going to be used to trial a new points scoring system for the FOG2DL which may be rolled out to the wider tournament in subsequent seasons. If the trial goes well there will be a poll before the start of Season 2.

The scoring system to be trialled is as follows . . .

4pts - win
2pts - tie
1pt - draw
0pts - loss

+1 winning bonus point if you win a match by 25pts or more (e.g. 40-15 or 50-25)
+1 losing bonus point if you lose a match by less than 20pts (e.g. 41-60 or 45-64)

Please feel free to comment on this idea.

I seriously disagree. A win should be a win. Period. I am not even a big fan of the current 60+point difference system in place now. Its only acceptable because everyone plays the same armies and its mirrored for both sides.

There are armies out there, especially those who have core units containing cheaper but lower quality units, where sacrificing units to obtain open flanks on superior enemy core units is a common tactic and this would be prohibitively punishing for them. It would also be far more beneficial for armies with a significant core of above average or superior troops since they have a much higher chance of rallying before dispersing off field compared to armies with large numbers of Raw or Average units where a unit rout means almost certain loss of the unit in the game. Even if a superior unit rallies once after being routed and stays fragmented and unusable, it still counts towards this proposed modified scoring system.

I cannot emphasis how much I disagree with this scoring philosophy when not everyone plays the same armies and the games are not mirrored.

With respect to camping, I think the penalty of 1 point draws is already a big enough loss that this will not be a problem. Passive Play is usually the result of a player characteristic so they would be passive against most of their opponents and sometimes is a result of two asymmetrical armies refusing compromise on a meeting place (ie A medium foot heavy army may have no choice to be passive if his opponent's heavy foot army refuses to go anywhere near rough terrain and just sits in perfectly open terrain).

[stockwellpete]

I seriously disagree. A win should be a win. Period. I am not even a big fan of the current 60+point difference system in place now. Its only acceptable because everyone plays the same armies and its mirrored for both sides.

There are armies out there, especially those who have core units containing cheaper but lower quality units, where sacrificing units to obtain open flanks on superior enemy core units is a common tactic and this would be prohibitively punishing for them. It would also be far more beneficial for armies with a significant core of above average or superior troops since they have a much higher chance of rallying before dispersing off field compared to armies with large numbers of Raw or Average units where a unit rout means almost certain loss of the unit in the game. Even if a superior unit rallies once after being routed and stays fragmented and unusable, it still counts towards this proposed modified scoring system.

I cannot emphasis how much I disagree with this scoring philosophy when not everyone plays the same armies and the games are not mirrored.

I am not convinced by this "prohibitively punishing" for MF armies argument. Even if it was true then players would factor the scoring system into the decision that they make about army choices during the recruitment period. The purpose of the bonus points, which are marginal to the overall scoring system anyway, is to encourage players to keep fighting hard (and not to give up or resign) even if they realise they are likely to lose the battle. They can either try and deny their opponent an extra bonus point for winning, or they can try and extend the battle so that they themselves get a losing bonus point. So it gives players a secondary goal in the match. It also will help to reduce the instances of players finishing a league section with exactly the same number of points, which happened frequently in the FOG1DL. The bonus points should help to spread players out a bit. I think these points heavily outweigh your concerns about the unfairness for MF armies.

We do need some data and this trial in the Classical Indian section will give us something to look at. I will take feedback from all the players who have entered this section at the end of the tournament and if it is generally positive then I will run a poll about the issue in the close season before Season 2 starts.

[mhladnik]

I looked at victory margins and ran them through a script to get a distribution for the last two completed rounds of the holiday tournament, where the matchups were established based on previous round results and not completely random as in the first round (so at least a bit like the league division sorting by strength). Here are the results according to the proposed changes:

Bonus win point: 67 %
Nothing: 9 %
Bonus loss point: 24 %

If the bonus loss point margin is 15 or less:

Bonus win point: 67 %
Nothing: 19 %
Bonus loss point: 14 %

I hope this data is helpful in informing the discussion.

[stockwellpete]

That is very helpful, mhladnik.

What it suggests to me that maybe the winning bonus point is a bit too easy to get and that a winning margin of 30% might be more appropriate.