Caracole Tournament Post-Mortem

[flatsix518]

All,

First I want to thank everyone who participated in the Caracole Tournament. I hope all of you enjoyed it.

I'm an avid tournament player. As soon as I played Pike & Shot, I was interested in participating in Pike & Shot tournaments.

I thought a bit about how a Pike & Shot tournament could work. I realized that the limitation of challenges explicitly pairing armies would require something different from "open" pairings of armies as in FoG. I tried to figure out a format to operate with that restriction. The core idea was for both players to propose a challenge. This "back and forth" brought to me the image of the period Caracole tactic and begat the name of the tournament.

So I took the bit and decided to organize the first Pike & Shot tournament.

My priorities were three:

1) Create the back and forth challenge.
2) Structure rounds of play in a way that prevented players from playing each other more than once.
3) Move at a reasonable pace. Not over burden with too many games per round. I settled on two opponents / four games per round per player.

BTW. I did consider other processes for the rounds. I was very much a fan of the LoEG tournament round-robin play within period. I am also a fan of swiss tournament rotations. I did not go with either mainly because I had no idea of how many participants there were going to be. I was hoping for seven, in the end 24 signed up. Since I'd already announced the tournament organization -- I stuck with the "no recurring opponents" notion.

Sooo...let's figure out how to make the Caracole better in the future.

Best regards,

John

[flatsix518]

I'm updating this by my sense of the conversation and my own evolving thoughts:

1) Tournament organization - A swiss rotation has been proposed and some have discussed the "pod" (ala LoEG) organization. Both are worthy of discussion.
- I've spent more time thinking on this and believe an LoEG round-robin pod structure is the best. Currently, my thinking is to run the tournament in two phases. In phase one, players are distributed into "round-robin pods". Each pod will contain players of all ability ranges (best players spread across all pods). In phase two, the pods would be "pivoted". In the second phase, players will be grouped into pods with other players of like ability.

2) How should players agree challenges? Is the present challenge / counter-challenge sufficient?
- This is very related, now, to #4.

3) Draws are unlikely in Pike & Shot. Should a "tournament draw" construct be allowed?
- After more thought I've decided this is a very bad idea. No matter how close the game, the computer will determine the winner. If players cannot bring themselves to engage because of the terrain – they may agree to close the game, reconstitute the challenge and play it out. No draws can be submitted as the final result.

4) Are some army match-ups unfair? How should this be addressed?
- Thinking has converged to four options which have been published and some players have commented. The four options are:

Option 1: Continue current method. Challenger constructs entire challenge, including both armies -- limited to historic enemies.

Option 2: Pre-Challenge for both armies to play. Challenger announces army pair (historic only) on the forum and opponent chooses which army to play. Opponent constructs the challenge accordingly.

Option 3: Pre-Challenge for one army to play - historic enemies only. Challenger announces the army he wishes to run and opponent chooses which army to play from historic enemy armies only. Opponent constructs the challenge accordingly.

Option4: Pre-Challenge for one army to play - open to any enemies. Challenger announces the army he wishes to run and opponent chooses which army to play with from any opponents available with the filter turn off. Only disallowed armies are same nationality (no civil wars). Opponent constructs the challenge accordingly.

So far 8 players have expressed their opinions with option 2 the most popular.

5) Should we increase the width of the battlefield to enable more maneuver?
- Next Caracole will be played on "very wide" (32 square) battlefields.

6) Do players want more or fewer games per round (if we have rounds)?
- No longer applicable with Caracole going to pods.

7) Should army size be changed?
- Next Caracole will also use medium size armies.

Do the players want a change in tournament director? Is there someone who wants to run a Caracole?
- I'm happy to run the next Caracole. But I can also step down if someone else has a burning desire to do it. Please comment/volunteer.

[TheGrayMouser]

All,

I'm going to kick out what I think are the most "needful" topics to be discussed.

1) Tournament organization - A swiss rotation has been proposed and some have discussed the "pod" (ala LoEG) organization. Both are worthy of discussion.

2) How should players agree challenges? Is the present challenge / counter-challenge sufficient?

3) Draws are unlikely in Pike & Shot. Should a "tournament draw" construct be allowed?

4) Are some army match-ups unfair? How should this be address?

5) Should we increase the width of the battlefield to enable more maneuver?

6) Do players want more or fewer games per round (if we have rounds)?

OK -- looking forward to discussion on these topics and the raising of additional topics.

John

Post mortem? I have 6 games to go! I'd better get cracking!
Hmm, no particular thoughts any many of these but
5) sure why not go with wider maps ( or go w large armies where it seems better balanced...)
4) this is tough, simply because fair, balanced, bad army etc is so subjective. We have already eliminated no historical line ups, the only thing next is don't allow human purchase or use pot luck. The latter is likely going to result in more subjective complaints of unfairness when the AI 'screws" him, twice in a row haha.
The way it is now is likely the "fairest" yet there are players who arnt thinking of issuing a challenge in a way that puts their opponent at a disadvantage, and possibly when he rec's the cross challenge his expectation is that his opponent doesnt hose him... No solution there. I suppose one could do reciprocal challenges set by the tourney organizer. In that case best to have one opponent per round. I find a reciprical game is ok here an there but too many of them could be tedious.
A fun way to do it though is have the ist challenge via potluck, and then do a reciprical match based on that for the second game between two players, per round

[flatsix518]

TGM wrote: "use pot luck"

I have to say the worst matchup I ever started to play was a pot luck game. The armies involved were unfortunate -- but the list the AI generated for me made it an impossible game to play.

I don't even know if I would participate in a "pot luck" driven tournament...

Not to mention I really think a big part of tournament play is army list construction. I enjoy that part of tournament gaming. I particularly like that computer tournament gaming allows the design of new army lists before every game.

John

[TheGrayMouser]

TGM wrote: "use pot luck"

I have to say the worst matchup I ever started to play was a pot luck game. The armies involved were unfortunate -- but the list the AI generated for me made it an impossible game to play.

I don't even know if I would participate in a "pot luck" driven tournament...

Not to mention I really think a big part of tournament play is army list construction. I enjoy that part of tournament gaming. I particularly like that computer tournament gaming allows the design of new army lists before every game.

John

haha , I just thru it out there in combo with playing a reciprical match based on the ist potluck randomness. Both players would have a chance , and you get rid of the notion that , in order to do well, you need to issue a challenge giving a bad army to your opponent since no matter what you do he might stick it to you. It would open up more variety.
I'd hate to see historical armies be banned because of subjective complaints by the few, or maybe not banned but considered to be "poor taste". Other than that though, what options are there? Someone mentioned in the tourney thread that player one might choose 2 line ups and then the opponent picks one of them. That's OK but seems like a lot of work and effort and slows down getting the game on

[rbodleyscott]

I'd hate to see historical armies be banned because of subjective complaints by the few, or maybe not banned but considered to be "poor taste". Other than that though, what options are there? Someone mentioned in the tourney thread that player one might choose 2 line ups and then the opponent picks one of them. That's OK but seems like a lot of work and effort and slows down getting the game on

I don't think it would slow things down much if
1) Game A: Player 1 proposes the matchup. Player 2 chooses which side he wants to play and sets up the Challenge.
2) Game B: Player 2 proposes the matchup. Player 1 chooses which side he wants to play and sets up the Challenge.

That should deter grossly unbalanced matchups and encourage historical matchups.

[krieg63]

so far I have finish more than 130 games, and I have more than 15 in progress.
1/3 was played with pot luck and most was fully playable.
on the other 2/3, I will said 40% could have been consider as unfair.

I'm in the middle to do some stat for each army.

other than pot luck my preference will be for a discussion between the 2 players. one side propose on nation army, the other side its opponent. if there is only one possible match, the other side could pick one or the other army
for exemple,
one side propose French 1550/1559
the other side could chose spanish or French are there is only one match

exemple 2) one side propose sweeden 30/34
the other side could chose
catholic 19/32 or 32/38
or imperialist 19/32
or spanish 21/34
or polish 18/32 or 33/48

agree also, so for wider maps and why not larger army.

[flatsix518]

I don't think it would slow things down much if
1) Game A: Player 1 proposes the matchup. Player 2 chooses which side he wants to play and sets up the Challenge.
2) Game B: Player 2 proposes the matchup. Player 1 chooses which side he wants to play and sets up the Challenge.

That should deter grossly unbalanced matchups and encourage historical matchups.

I think this is an elegant proposal.

One concern is that even the current challenge / counter-challenge was a little difficult for some people to grasp. This raises it a bit more, I'm sure some newbies will have a little difficulty getting on to it.

Pot-luck would seem to be the easiest. To accept/play. How would we handle periods? Are players free to choose period?

John

[Hrothgar]

I'm not familiar with the various tournament structures; however, if we only played one opponent per round, then I'd still suggest that the tournament runner pick the match-up for the round, and each player play one game from each side. The random map could still end up favoring one player, but this seems like the fairest way to assign sides.

Not only is it as close to fair as possible, if the tournament runner chooses well, many match-ups which might not occur otherwise would be included. Only picking one match-up per round does not seem like too much work for the tournament runner. Also, players might get to experience a wider variety of armies. I know I haven't picked any match-ups from the Italian Wars--largely because I don't seem to be able to get a handle on how to play either side. If such a match-up were chosen by the organizer, I'd just have to deal with it. When it comes down to it, I want to win as much as the next guy, but mainly, I just enjoy playing.

As for larger armies, while that would certainly offer other possibilities, it would also add to the length of each game. Consequently, I'd advise sticking with the size we've used so far. If people want to play a larger game, it's always possible to simply post a non-tournament challenge. Seems like it would get picked up pretty quickly.

[rbodleyscott]

agree also, so for wider maps and why not larger army.

Larger army would defeat the point of the wider map, which is to make it harder to fill the map with infantry.

[krieg63]

agree also, so for wider maps and why not larger army.

Larger army would defeat the point of the wider map, which is to make it harder to fill the map with infantry.

Not really if you choose the max size map

[rbodleyscott]

agree also, so for wider maps and why not larger army.

Larger army would defeat the point of the wider map, which is to make it harder to fill the map with infantry.

Not really if you choose the max size map

True, but I am not really sure how well the Random Map code will scale beyond 32 width. Just trying it now a few times on 64 squares width, it does seem to produce significantly more open, as well as larger, battlefields.

[flatsix518]

The Pike & Shot game virtually never declares a game to be a draw. I believe the tournament should allow three kinds of draws:

1) Indecisive draw -- if both players are below 60% and neither player has achieved the 40%/25% type of victory, the battle is a draw.

2) Bloody draw -- if both players go over 60% at the same time, the battle is a draw.

3) Agreed draw -- if neither player wants to attack (because of army/terrain conditions), the battle is a draw. (Alternative is to cancel the game, issue a new challenge and try again.)

Let me know how you feel.

John

[flatsix518]

Updated list of topics to consolidate discussion and add my inputs.

viewtopic.php?f=299&t=54947&p=512249#p512249

[TheGrayMouser]

Post Mortem thoughts

1st , thanks for organizing!

*rounds: maybe be tightened up. It became clear before 1/2 way thru round tw0, and for some maybe even round one that they wernt going to compete in the "finals", yet still needed to play 50% or higher games.

*draws: I have very strong feeling re draws from FOGAM days, I don't believe they should give points, period. Other than that, if two players want to have their armies sit and watch each other 20 turns, no issues with that

*armies. I think the over riding issues are: choice and ease of challenges set ups.
An idea:(which would require a little more work for the organizer), he he: prior to matchups, players would submit their round 1 army choice to organizer, then the list of matchups would be revealed. Round 2 same to the end. Pros: everyone has a choice for army THEy want to lead, theres no "gaming the system" as no one knows whom or what they will play each round. Cons: I suppose certain armies will never be chosen, or perhaps over chosen, also, possibly many civil war battles (not bad in of itself but the game doesn't have seperate flags for civil war fights so could be a little chaotic.

[flatsix518]

All,

I collected data from Caracole battle results. This is a little sloppy, I relied upon reported results and didn't break armies down into periods. But it gives a feel for how armies did. In general, it appears most armies have 40 to 50% win success. Here is the raw data:

ARMY NAME WIN% #GAMES W - D - L
Bohemian League 0% #2 0-0-2
Catholic League 55% #11 6-0-5
Early Catholic 0% #1 0-0-1
French 57% #28 16-0-12
German Catholic 58% #6 3-1-2
German Protestant 43% #7 3-0-4
Imperialists 25% #8 2-0-6
Italian 75% #4 3-0-1
New Model Army 53% #17 9-0-8
Ottomans 13% #8 1-0-7
Parliamentarians 62% #13 8-0-5
Parliament + Scots 0% #1 0-0-1
Polish 50% #14 7-0-7
Royalists 43% #23 10-0-13
Royalist Raiders 50% #2 1-0-1
Scots Covenanter 50% #10 5-0-5
Spanish 47% #19 9-0-10
Spanish Imperial 100% #1 1-0-0
Swedes 62% #17 10-1-6
Swiss 50% #4 2-0-2
Transylvanians 57% #7 4-0-3
Weimerian 100% #1 1-0-0

In general, it appears that there is a remarkable balance among the majority of the armies. The one that stands out as unfortunate are the Ottomans. There are a few other armies that seem weak, like the Bohemians and the Imperialists. But the sample size for the Bohemians is only two battles. So we may need to focus attention on a relatively small number of non-competitive matches.

Also -- will widening the battlefield help or hurt the Ottomans, for instance?

[flatsix518]

Quite obviously many of us have personal bogeyman armies. Armies we don't want to play with or against.

While organizing the Caracole, I had a PM exchange with a player who was interested in playing in the Caracole, but had no interest in playing Italian Wars period battles. He felt strongly enough to decide to not participate in the tournament.

Soooo.....

Maybe we could do this. Each player when he signs up to play can have a short "NO" list. Up to one period and two armies to exclude from his games/challenges.

Example: NO ECW, Swiss, Ottomans

This would mean that no one could challenge this player to an ECW period game, nor games including the Swiss or Ottomans. At the same time, it means this player will not be able to create challenges that include his personal NO list.

Brave players can play without a NO list and be open to anything.

If I run the next Caracole and we agree to this, I'll consolidate and publish at the top of the thread an alphabetical list of all players running NO options.

What do you guys think?

John

[Vadim84]

Hello,


Really interesting ideas here.

I personaly wouldnt have time to play so many games if we were using the "large" format. I keep it for my non-tournament games but tournament requires to play at a given pace, besides medium format is def. alright once you get use to it. Maybe for the first two games you are like "oh, not enough units, boo" but afterward its fine. Same tactical challenge and fun anyways.

I agree that larger map would give more room for cav. so yes, medium army on larger map sounds fun - and I will probably switch to large army/mega map for my friendlies.

Now the list idea : I wont joint the tournament if you decide to put a "no" list. Why ? I wont be interested to play against someone who decided to play with early-swedish-salvo-or-nothing. The very idea, and fun, of being in this tournament is -besides meeting new opponents- to learn how to play with armies you would never try if you had choice. It was my first time with the early swedish (one defeat, now m quit good with them), Scots, early Civil War armies, some of the Spanish etc...and that was fun. A good player should be able to adapt himself to any style of play, not to be ultra-specialized on one specific army/never tried anything else. The really nice side of this game is that it covers 3 conflicts, lots of armies, lots of choices. You cut it off, them m out, really.

But , and yes, but : - we can think about thematic tournaments "30 YW tournament" "Italian Wars tournament ( me and a few others but not many obviously though there are a few fan of Italian Wars here, I personally wouldnt mind more Renaissance warfare), "Civ War Tournament" etc... then if you are allergic to one period you can still have some fun. Or, at worst , just to blacklist one available period (but if 2 players wanna fight on that ground, what to do? Wargaming is for fun, no need to be too restrictive. I enjoy seeing stats and so on-ok i have weird hobbies-, but on a relaxing way)

-I really, really like the idea of " Player 1 pick up 2 armies/ Player 2 decides " "Player 2 pick up/Player 1 decides who plays what". Its really easy to get the idea, avoids playing with a unique army, should lead to more balanced game as I wont decide the 2 armies AND the sides, create more interaction btwn players, and -more important- is a bit similar to the gentlemen agreement on duel in the XIX century. A provoked B and forced him to fight even if he didn't want, but B will choose the weapons (swords/what type, or gun etc..).

Merry Christmas and happy tournament !

[flatsix518]

Vadim,

Thank you for your thoughtful comment.

Just to clarify -- not defend. The "NO" list would simply be a player saying what they "don't want to play". So if there is someone who wants to "only run salvo foot" -- he could do that for his challenges. But if he has an opponent who has put the Swedes or the TYW on his "NO list" he can't run that army against that opponent. He'd have to choose something else.

The NO list just allows a player to exclude one of the three periods and a couple of lists to not play or play against. I don't think it's as restrictive as you maybe thought it would be.

I also believe most players won't have a NO list. I've got one army I'd rather not face -- so I *might* have a NO list with that one army on it -- but that would be it.

Again -- appreciate your input -- not really trying to defend my idea -- just to clarify it.

Best,

John

[TheGrayMouser]

Vadim,

Thank you for your thoughtful comment.

Just to clarify -- not defend. The "NO" list would simply be a player saying what they "don't want to play". So if there is someone who wants to "only run salvo foot" -- he could do that for his challenges. But if he has an opponent who has put the Swedes or the TYW on his "NO list" he can't run that army against that opponent. He'd have to choose something else.

The NO list just allows a player to exclude one of the three periods and a couple of lists to not play or play against. I don't think it's as restrictive as you maybe thought it would be.

I also believe most players won't have a NO list. I've got one army I'd rather not face -- so I *might* have a NO list with that one army on it -- but that would be it.

Again -- appreciate your input -- not really trying to defend my idea -- just to clarify it.

Best,

John

Like Vadim, I am not a fan of a "no list". I can see some players not having a particular interest in a certain module but to specify various armies as no no's seems like an advantage. For example player A cannot, thru lack of experience/interest/tactics , deal well with mobile armies he says "no" to poles ottomans transylvanians? What if player A is really good in Italien wars, can he say no to the TYW/ECW modules?