Slitherine

All,

Last Caracole, I tried to table complaints/issues until the end of the tournament. That was done to avoid distracting from the tournament completion and to support having a "full experience" before trying to figure out improvements.

Because of that, I know feel we lost out on a lot of discussion that could have been useful, so this time around, I want to give a forum to complaints, recommendations, suggestions earlier than before.

One thing I will probably stay with is to NOT make changes in mid-tournament. I don't believe that helps things to change tournament rules / organization in the middle. If something really obviously needs to be done -- I'll support making a change before we begin Phase II.

Anyway, if anyone has issues, tack them on to this thread.

(Page reserved to keep a summary of Caracole II issues, complaints, topics, etc.)

No complaints here.

My back hurts, works a drag, the wife and kids are making me cazy... Caracole 2 promised to resolve all these things, I want a refund!

The check is in the mail...

TheGrayMouser wrote:My back hurts, works a drag, the wife and kids are making me cazy... Caracole 2 promised to resolve all these things, I want a refund!

You mean it didn't?

I am not sure what you can do about this, but is is getting hard to keep track of who has issued pre-challenges and challenges.

I suspect some of my potential opponents have failed to notice my pre-challenge, and I may have failed to notice someone else's pre-challenge, or resulting challenge.

PMing the person when you issue a pre-challenge seems like a good idea, but I am not sure that everyone is familiar with the PM system, or looks to see if they have any PMs. Certainly some of the PMs I have sent have received no answer, which I suspect is due to the person not noticing that they have a PM.

It might be worth putting in the instructions for the next tournament that people should issue their pre-challenges and challenges in PMs as well as on the board, but people will also need to be instructed to check their PMs regularly.

I think you're right. Some of my challenges have gone unanswered.

I'm beginning to suspect not everyone is as OCD as me about following events on the forum.



John

Exactly, that seems to be the main problem of this tournament: the chaos of multiple games. The tournament system seems to be more balanced than the previous one, but the organization of the games between the players is quite annoying. Maybe creating a different thread for each of the tournament pods could be less confusing?

That's a good idea...

John

I was about to post what Dortmund just suggested. Maps are better, cav is a decisive factor, the new challenge system is def. more interesting than before "hey I need a win mmm you play Turks whereas I take Poland " but its hard to keep track of who challenged who with what armies + password. The more it goes, the hardest it get because the caracole II topic keeps getting bigger. 2 threads "challenge only " / " results and flooding here " could help for...caracole III .

But besides that I am having a great time, Ottomans are suddenly much stronger than before. What about the russian and dutch armies, can we download them ?

Vadim84 wrote:Maps are better, cav is a decisive factor

In the next update, "Medium" maps will default to 32 squares wide. (The same as "Very Wide" in the current version). Other map sizes increased pro rata.

The updated autodeploy will prevent the light troops from initially being deployed ridiculously far from the main army as they can be at present on "Very Wide" maps.

When we go to Phase II (pods A, B, C grouped by phase I scores), I'll organize three sub-threads for challenging. For now, I don't want to throw a curve ball -- so we'll just muddle thru Phase I as we are.

John

How does someone have a flank attack with an open battle?
In my Caracole game, a flanking attack has just arrived.

shawkhan2 wrote:How does someone have a flank attack with an open battle?
In my Caracole game, a flanking attack has just arrived.

There is no skirmish setting for Side B to send a flank march, instead the AI sometimes (randomly) chooses to send one. (If you could specify that Side B should send a flank march in the Skirmish settings, it wouldn't be much of a surprise, which would defeat the whole point).

This also happens in MP games, but it is not under the control of the Side B player, the AI still decides randomly. Flank marches can also be sent by either side in an open battle if the autodeploy routine places some of the units off the map - this obviously isn't going to occur with Very Wide maps, as there should always be room for them all to deploy normally.

So in the case of your battle, the AI randomly decided to send some of the side B troops on a flank march. Note that these are not extra troops, they are deducted from the original army strength. So the Side B player had to manage without them until they appeared.

John, as I have mentioned before, if you ask someone at Slitherine (maybe a PM to Iain MacNeil in the first instance) they will probably allow you to have a separate section on the forum for this competition now that it is becoming more established. You will also need to ask for moderating privileges. I have this facility with FOG PC and the Digital League and it helps me enormously in terms of organising the tournament, which usually has 70+ players.

After a while you will develop your own system whereby you can use "stickies" and locked, merged or deleted threads, etc to present your tournament and schedule in a much clearer way for the players. I couldn't run the Digital League without it now.