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Evaluation of the Tourny.

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: The World
Forum Name: Tournament IV - The Undead Horde
Forum Description: 4th Tournament - Details, progress, reports & awards
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=3092
Printed Date: 28 Mar 2024 at 19:28
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com


Topic: Evaluation of the Tourny.
Posted By: geofrey
Subject: Evaluation of the Tourny.
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 19:49
My opinion about Tournament mechanics.  

Tournament IV was very fun. It gave me a reason to use my military troops I had built, and presented me a challenge with managing my troop production. 

I believe the tournament lasted a full month. This was a good length as it gave me incentive to alter my military production rates. Long enough to have an impact on the world of Illyriad, evidenced by the increased cost of military goods on the global market. 

I do wish we had headsup on what we would be using to win this tournament. My main army consisted of Infantry when the tournament began. As soon as I had a consistent report of the types of foes we were all DEFENDING against, I quickly changed all of my Sov. to increase archer production and began cranking out crossbow dwarves. too little too late tho, as I was unable to keep up with the demands of the undead. 

I eventually came to the conclusion that I could not win this Tournament based on my pre-existing army. So instead I changed my goals from winning it, to killing as many un-dead as possible. 

The inability to leverage alliances was a bit dissapointing. But not nearly as dissapointing as the inability to leverage diplomats. 

The "warning" before the final assault was badly timed in my opinion. I would of preferred the following order of events to occur prior to the final assault: 

- 3 days prior to the final assault I receive a message from one of my commanders telling me enemy forces are amassing a giant horde at location X:X in a last ditch effort to get to the summoning stones. 
- I have the option to send scouts and spies to that location to ascertain the nature of the assault. Scout's would tell me the numbers, and spies would tell me the timing of the attack. 
- 2 days prior to the final assault I receive a message from the Crimson group, saying they will send forces to aid me in the defense
- At this point I have the opportunity to develop a strategy 2 days in advance. In my case, knowing that I am going up against forces I have no way of defeating, I would of requested aid from all military units in my alliance. We would of rallied on my summoning stone and stood strong against the evil army that approached. 

Instead I had a few hours notice that something really bad was going to happen. With no time to take any action with the warning, I did nothing but wait to see what happens... and as we know, dragons happened. 

Mechanics: The basic mechanics were very simple. Occupy a summoning stone and 3 waves of enemy troops will attempt to attack the stone every night. You must defend against them and fight them off. 

Unfortunately this meant that offensive tactics were useless. 

What were your thoughts?




Replies:
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 21:37
Great tournament! Awesome way to introduce new content and get a large section of the playerbase accustomed to the way certain things work, such as battle magic and moving NPCs.  (And NPCs that attack!)

Having a tournament that emphasized defense over attack was a nice balance, especially considering that some races' units are a bit better for defense than attack and this tournament allowed them to use that strength.

We got to "exercise" some skills like Force of Will that have previously been mostly useless.

One minor criticism I have was that we all had to defend on the worst possible terrain on which to defend.  I'm not claiming this is unfair or anything, since it affected everyone equally.  However, in some ways it would have been interesting to have a variety of terrain types available to defend so that players could make that part of their strategy.


Posted By: StJude
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 22:06
Great idea to start a thread on what went right and what went wrong with the past tournament.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. This tournament tried to accomplish too many goals in my opinion. It was billed as a tournament, but functioned as a test of AI as well as a "fun" world event.

I think it would have achieved it's goals better if only one of those goals were the focus. I got the impression that the primary goal was the testing of AI for factions in the future. But I can't conclusively say that was the intent, it's obviously speculation.

I really like your idea of employing other aspects of the game, like diplomats. To expand on your idea, it would have been a lot of fun to have to send your scouts to a "Haunted" location, maybe even a graveyard or something similar and get a threat assessment of the kinds of troops you could expect to see rise and attack the standing stones. This could be done with a 48hour advanced warning?

Anyway, as a world event, this tournament was excellent. As a tournament, I am afraid I can't give it the same high praise.


Posted By: Anjire
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 22:30
It was an okay tournament I would give it a 5 out of 10.  

While the new content is intriguing, I feel the new content smell will quickly fade in much the same way as it did for tournament II.  There was much hype about the use and the soon(tm) to be released content around the harvested parts that has yet to materialize.  

I did enjoy the fact that they introduced a new tactical element into the tournament having it focus on defense rather than offense as the prior three have focused.  However, this quickly turned into monotony for 29 or so days competing for a lottery of attacks based on how lucky you were with the standing stone placements, number of attacks on those standing stones and the strength of those attacks.  To me it became much like the old Dunkin' Donuts commercial - "time to make the donuts" day after day.  

The last attack was very bold and innovative but I truly wish they would have actually built up better for it to allow for more world/alliance/confed cooperation rather then a lucky you were on and active at the time hurrah.  






Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 23:18
Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

One minor criticism I have was that we all had to defend on the worst possible terrain on which to defend.  I'm not claiming this is unfair or anything, since it affected everyone equally.

I disagree - Orc specialist unit takes a greater penalty on plains than the specialist units of any other race - and hence were put at a considerable (up to -30% defence penalty) disadvantage.


Posted By: Aurordan
Date Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 23:42
Yes, but spearmen are far better at defending in general.  If anyone was disadvantaged by that logic it was the races with attacking specialization, though anyone could pretty easily switch if they wanted too really.


Posted By: LordBliss
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 02:30
The division of players was awesome, allowed participation by all.  There had previously been suggestions for tourneys designed for newer players, and i think the devs went one better and gave us a tourney that everyone could participate in.

I would have preferred that the undead armies grown larger faster, causing more people to have to scramble to get armies out, keep commanders alive, etc.  It kinda became a little tedious.

I also think the whole standing stones thing was a minus.  players whose cities just happened to be near standing stones could get more attacks in than those without close stones.  so a significant advantage based on something that no one ever cared about (proximity to standing stones) before the tourney.

eh.  just me griping a bit.  sounds like a lot of people competed and had fun, players of all different sizes, nobody lost an eye, so have to give the whole thing an A minus.


Posted By: Gaia Nutella Tulips
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 08:44
The tourny wasn't half bad, it let everyone join in and destroyed half the armies that were around! It was a nice change from being at war with people and listening to them complain, I am sure all of you can relate to that.
 The only minus in this game was the final warning mail, there was no way that the army I had standing on those stones for the last 3 days could survive that onslaught, given a longer preparation time like the 48 hours Jude suggested or even 24 hours would have been more than sufficient for me to pull all my troops off the stones or shove more on the stones.

 I'd rate this tourney an 8/10


Posted By: JimJams
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 10:35
I decided to step back from the tournament in the very few days, mainly because I realized I could not compete. While the tournament is something we all enjoyed a lot, even me, I have a few reasons to dislike the way it was planned and developed. Just for future reference and feedback.

1) Limiting undead activity to night (server time) severely impaired European's ability to compete. Should I explain why?

2) Some races had advantages. Races with strong and cheap defending unit on plain had an advantage. 

3) Standing stones are not equally distributed. A few cities had big advantage from standing stones distribution.

4) Last wave was too big, compared with the rest of the tournament. Would be better to raise the attacker numbers steadily in the last week or so... I can think a lot of other way to manage this, but surely the "low attacks all the time and big punch" is only good to flat the competitors.




Posted By: Senza
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 13:03
1) Limiting undead activity to night (server time) severely impaired European's ability to compete. Should I explain why?

This time constraint was difficult for us on EST as well.  The troops had to be at the stones at the preset time in order to activate them. Unfortunately, it was during my work hours so I missed entering more days than not. 
I did have fun killing off some troops on the days I was able to play though :-)


Posted By: abstractdream
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 20:01
Most complaints and compliments I agree with.

Some observations (not original, granted):
The entire event seemed like an endurance test. Maybe that was the point. I dropped near the end, my loss. If you stuck it out you got the big XP.

The stone locations were purely coincidental, but I was 3 squares from one so no complaint personally.

The idea was to participate, figure out the mechanics, share and learn from others. In that it was a complete success. I can attest however, to the ho hum attitude of smaller, less experienced players. Many assumed they couldn't join in because of their size and no rhetoric to the contrary could convince them otherwise. Guess that could weed out the less interested, but I think it pushes them out sooner than necessary and even the less active are beneficial and deserve some consideration.

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Bonfyr Verboo


Posted By: The_Dude
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 20:43
Very much a click fest.  Not much strategy, really.   Load up armies and send to stones in time to activate.  Build replacement troops for the next day's reload of the army.  Rinse, Repeat.

  Randomness of attacking forces probably evened out if a player was able to spend every night, all night on a stone. 

 I also got the sense that the undead armies adjusted size based on the size of the defending army - a larger defending army would be hit with larger undead armies than a smaller defending army would face.


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 22:34
Peace and H? actually had some good tactical back and forths, though, TD. Were quite fun...


Posted By: Mara Zira
Date Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 22:43
I liked this tournament, especially I liked the storyline to it. So, um, when are we getting the "chapter wrap-up" for this section of the story? Big smile

My alt account is small, basically had no standing army when this event started, had the nearest standing stones at least 2 hours away, and yet she still finished in the top 5 of her league. And she's human, so she didn't have super-strong ranged or spear defensive units.

Mara had two main commanders out: one had the nearest standing stone 3 hours away and the other had one on her level 5 sovereignty for that city. The commander with the sovereignty standing stone had a slightly larger army to start with, and both had the same ability to produce troops. Yet the one that DIDN'T have the nearby standing stone with nice sov defensive bonus was the one that was at #10 in my league before that last, big hit. The army with all the advantages was much lower.

I grant that the ability to get your armies out on the stones for the full night was a deciding factor in most leagues, but I don't see evidence that some of the other things brought up here made a deciding difference in who won and who didn't.

Despite the fact that last, big hit knocked Mara's top commander down to #16 in her league, I think it was a clever way of taking the luck element (which people were complaining about) out of it. If I'd had my other commander out--the one with the sov bonus--she would have had more troops left and would have jumped up in the rankings. By how much, I don't know. My top commander was just barely holding on and would have won a top ten spot by luck. The difference between me and those below me was only a few hundred experience. But the final attack showed that 5 other players had been able to endure the attacks better than me, and so they earned more experience in that final battle. It seems fair to me.

If I'd realized earlier how powerful that last army was, I might have pulled out my troops only to regret it later when I realized what purpose it played. So I'm glad I didn't have a chance.


Posted By: Southern Dwarf
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2012 at 14:03
I thought it was interesting until my armies get wiped out by players who not even did read the rules. Then I quit the tournament knowing that I would not be able to compete further. But from what I gathered it was less mystery than I had hoped for. More scouting and spying for clues would be preferable for me but for those who like big numbers and fighting it was of course a good tournament.

Edit: But is a different tournament no option? Soon after I joined the third tournament started in which I killed things. The next one was too tought for me but the goal was to kill things. Now we killed othern things. I once thought Illyriad got more debth than just killing but since tournaments are the biggest events in the game I am not sure anymore. :(

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Also known as Afaslizo ingame.


Posted By: Daefis
Date Posted: 22 Jan 2012 at 23:36
I enjoyed the tourney and if nothing else it allowed me to train up my defensive commanders but it could have been so much more. The problem was that it was 29 nights of pretty much the same thing followed by one almighty slaughter fest on the last night.
If the numbers of undead had increased more significantly each night then players within allies could have wound up reinforcing a few commanders. I really expected it to go more along those lines where no single army could stand night after night. Tactically this would have been a lot more interesting. Involving players and alliances to work together to give one commander a chance. As it was the larger players survived every night with ease and could simply keep building troops as fast as they were losing them meaning they still had large enough armies left at the end to defeat the final onslaught. 
So good but a chance missed in my books.


Posted By: Berde
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2012 at 03:59
I think my biggest complaint about the tournament was that it happened during what is the busiest holiday season of the year. I had company come in a few days before Christmas, then stay until the day after Christmas, then just around the corner was New Years.

As I was already a very new player, who had heard the Global Chat refrain of "you don't need an army, you're too small for an army!" I was already behind, esp as my population -just- enough at the time, I think, to get me moved up one league. Once the holiday hit I was pretty much out with no hope of building troops fast enough to keep up with the slaughter.


Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2012 at 15:28
Originally posted by Beriadanwen Beriadanwen wrote:

I think my biggest complaint about the tournament was that it happened during what is the busiest holiday season of the year.


Personally I contend the opposite. I'd prefer multiple, continual tournaments to be run on a permanent basis. My issue is that lack of tournaments. A majority of players play the game wanting to participate in conflict to a degree. A tournament is currently the only forum in which to do so. And in running multiple tournaments simultaneously players would have the ability to chose their preferred format most relevant to their size and enjoyment.


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"ouch...best of luck."
HonoredMule


Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2012 at 16:01
Originally posted by Llyorn Of Jaensch Llyorn Of Jaensch wrote:

Originally posted by Beriadanwen Beriadanwen wrote:

I think my biggest complaint about the tournament was that it happened during what is the busiest holiday season of the year.


Personally I contend the opposite. I'd prefer multiple, continual tournaments to be run on a permanent basis. My issue is that lack of tournaments. A majority of players play the game wanting to participate in conflict to a degree. A tournament is currently the only forum in which to do so. And in running multiple tournaments simultaneously players would have the ability to chose their preferred format most relevant to their size and enjoyment.


I dont see how that is opposite to the above, infact I agree with both comments.

multiple ongoing tournaments would be great, yet by running this tournament through Xmas and New Year.  Many players that have family commitments and RL friends most probably did not bother taking part, such as I did.  If tourneys were ongoing then missing a period such as this need not be an issue.

However, as I had better things to be doing in RL I have missed out on what was virtually the only thing of interest in this game for several months. 

I had gotten both my accounts into the top 10 in the first week, but realised it was not worth continuing to play, as I would not be online much if at all for 12 days of the tourney.  Wish it had been delayed till the New Year.


Posted By: abstractdream
Date Posted: 23 Jan 2012 at 21:19

Originally posted by Beriadanwen Beriadanwen wrote:

I think my biggest complaint about the tournament was that it happened during what is the busiest holiday season of the year.

Originally posted by Llyorn Of Jaensch Llyorn Of Jaensch wrote:

 
Personally I contend the opposite. I'd prefer multiple, continual tournaments to be run on a permanent basis. My issue is that lack of tournaments. A majority of players play the game wanting to participate in conflict to a degree. A tournament is currently the only forum in which to do so. And in running multiple tournaments simultaneously players would have the ability to chose their preferred format most relevant to their size and enjoyment.


Originally posted by Darkwords Darkwords wrote:


I dont see how that is opposite to the above, infact I agree with both comments.

multiple ongoing tournaments would be great, yet by running this tournament through Xmas and New Year.  Many players that have family commitments and RL friends most probably did not bother taking part, such as I did.  If tourneys were ongoing then missing a period such as this need not be an issue.

However, as I had better things to be doing in RL I have missed out on what was virtually the only thing of interest in this game for several months. 

I had gotten both my accounts into the top 10 in the first week, but realised it was not worth continuing to play, as I would not be online much if at all for 12 days of the tourney.  Wish it had been delayed till the New Year.



Yes to this.

Actually the beauty of Illyriad is that players themselves can organize and carry out pretty much any sort of "game" or "tournament" or what have you.

Here's some blatant self promotion:
http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/alliance-intermural-games_topic3100.html" rel="nofollow - http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/alliance-intermural-games_topic3100.html
(click on "out there" for some ideas)

There's a few interested players around, I think. We just need something to do. Whether developer controlled, or not (even just a bit of tinkering could blossom into something exciting) multiple, continuous tournaments would be great to have around for whenever you have the time. A handful of alliances could get the ball rolling. To me it seems as simple as posting rules and a time line, getting the word out and participation. Participation should come if there's enough publicity. The real challenge is to have some simple rules that can include a wide range of players. Military would be the most obvious and in demand, I would assume but diplo and trade can be done too. I'm sure there's some ideas out there. 


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Bonfyr Verboo


Posted By: Cerridwyn
Date Posted: 24 Jan 2012 at 01:01
Hmmm

Time of day fit the scenario and was more convenient to others yes.

---

AI

Could lead to a different type of quest/perm tourney/mystery construction
Possibilities include using multiple existing factions that the goal/outcome would be determined by your size, your race and how you approach it.

For example, a faction is basically neutral to your race. If you send a scout (we need a neutral diplomat) you get a different response than if you send a spy or an assassin or saboteur. Each of these could in turn load up a selection of special quests, could be trade/diplomacy/military and each can be done only once and the prize varies with however success is measured.

Quest like tournaments would give people the opportunity to develop their characters in various ways from martial to diplomacy to trade to whatever.


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Cerridwyn ~-~ Cerdwyn



Posted By: GM Luna
Date Posted: 24 Jan 2012 at 17:24
Thanks geofrey for starting this thread and to everyone for your feedback! 

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GM Luna | Illyriad Community Manager | community@illyriad.co.uk



Posted By: geofrey
Date Posted: 25 Jan 2012 at 16:10
I am happy to open up a forum to discuss our tournaments as long I know the gods of Illyriad are listening. 

Sometimes we community members really want to say something, like our own evaluation of the tournament, but we never seem to know where to say it, so we just post it in any semi-relevant post. It is nice having everyone's thoughts on the subject in one place. 



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