League Rule Changes for 2014 AAG40 2.0

[gamerman01]

@Gamerman01:

It should be possible to have an Axis bid after the Allied bid goes down to 0 and both players still don’t want the Allies.

Both players don’t want the Axis, rather  :-)

[seth4god]

I too would like to see some sort of runners up playoff or tournament for those that don’t qualify for the main event.

[Amon-Sul]

I have no problem with bidding tech…. if you’ll give me jets with the USA so that you can have Axis, I will accept.  I guess the point of bidding is to achieve a mutually agreeable game start situation such that both players are happy with their side and how it’s starting.

Great. This how we can have three categories of bids: units, IPCs to the bank and tech.

With the tech it could be really interesting.

Maybe (if both players agree) we can try with ˝double bids˝

For example the players bid, the Allies go to Gamerman with 8 IPC, that means Jen gets 8 IPC with Axis to bid and Gamerman 8*2=16 IPC for the Allies.

this how we could get more interesting situations early on. Limit of 1-2 units per territory could help here because of the large Allied bids. But it is just a thought, personally the tech thing seems like a good new thing by itself :)

[gamerman01]

@seththenewb:

I too would like to see some sort of runners up playoff or tournament for those that don’t qualify for the main event.

Good news - it’s happening even for this year, in November.
I imagine we’ll go probably go ahead and put it in the league rules for next year (provision for multiple playoffs, with the main playoff producing the league champion)

[Degrasse]

I’ve heard of a few players thinking the Allies are overpowered and the Axis needs the handicap.  I rewrote B to address both opinions.

B.  Bidding starts for the Allies at 48 and goes down to zero.  If neither player wants to play Allies with a positive bid, then the bidding restarts at 1 and goes to 48 for the Axis handicap.

I’m happy to play Allies with a bid of 6 although I understand other players have gotten much higher bids.  WOuld this version of D work better than no chinese unit bids at all?

D.  Bids placed in China may only be infantry or artillery and must comply with bidding rules E and F.

Gargantua had made a couple of scenario changes in the XDAP tournament.  A simple rule G will allow the moderators to make any balance changes to the scenario if they want.

G.  The following changes should be made during the bid process for no cost:
    1.  Add a heavy bomber to Moscow
    2.  Add a transport to the French fleet off Southern France
    3.  etc.

And for games that use technology,

H.  For games with technology
    1.  Starting with certain technologies is allowed and would be negotiated between players as part of the bidding process
    2.  for single die roll games, IPCs in increments of 5 may be added to each country’s starting IPC total to be spent during the first turn.
    3.  For tech token games, IPCs in increments of 5 may be added to each country’s starting IPC total to be spent during the first turn.

[boldfresh]

If the winner of the second tier 1 playoff beats the winner of the by win percentage playoff 2 straight then thay are the league champ!

[gamerman01]

@Boldfresh:

If the winner of the second tier 1 playoff beats the winner of the by win percentage playoff 2 straight then thay are the league champ!

That sounds really great until you think about being the winner of the main playoff event.  You run the gauntlet of 7 of the other top players in the league and then you have to win up to 2 more games against the guy who won the other, so up to 5 games to win the championship?

No, that’s NG  :-)

Keep thinking

[boldfresh]

No the guy that wins the playoff based on highest win percent wins it all with only ONE win against the challenger.  The challenger must win 2 straight.

[seth4god]

@Boldfresh:

No the guy that wins the playoff based on highest win percent wins it all with only ONE win against the challenger.  The challenger must win 2 straight.

That’s up to three additional games.

[Jennifer]

As I said, these are ideas and a place to kick off from.

I have no personal objection to virtually any bid either player wants to make, as long as it does not violate the rules.  However, bidding for technology is rather hard to police.  How much are paratroopers worth?  This is not to say it cannot be allowed, just something to consider is all.

As for negative bids being for Axis units, I have no objection to that.  We can rewrite the section in question to say that you bid for the allies, if the bid for the allies reaches zero, you start to bid for the axis.  Under no circumstances will a bid be placed in which a unit or units are removed from the board.  (I tried this with the tournament last year, let me tell you, I don’t EVER want to do that again!)

I don’t really have a problem with one unit per territory or sea zone, I just think it might be overly restrictive.  Just my opinion.  In some cases putting an infantry in Bessarabia, Ukraine and East Poland for instance, the restriction seems capricious at best, useless at worst.  I do see justification in regards to defense in certain critical areas on round 1 that would be bad to have major swings on, so I understand the reason for the rule.  Just my thoughts.

[boldfresh]

@seththenewb:

@Boldfresh:

No the guy that wins the playoff based on highest win percent wins it all with only ONE win against the challenger.  The challenger must win 2 straight.

That’s up to three additional games.

Forget I said anything.

[gamerman01]

Seth, it’s up to two additional games (is not best of 3), but that is unacceptable…

Jenn, I think we are saying the same thing which is cool - we’re not opposed to bidding techs.  I also thought “shoot, we’d have to value each tech” but you don’t.  The players bidding with it do.

It’s not going to be like I win a bid of Allies +10, now can I have paratroopers?
It’s going to be like I’ll take the Allies if you give me paratroopers with UK +5 in units/IPC’s
2nd guy goes “No, but I’ll take the Allies if you give me rockets with the USA and +5”

Now the 1st guy might actually think the 2nd guy didn’t bid him down, but that’s moot.  Either the 1st guy likes the counter-offer or he doesn’t, and makes another offer of his own.
The point of bidding is to come to an agreeable starting setup for both players.
I do think it would be good to have a couple of league rules, and I completely agree that it should not change the rules of the game (I’ll take Allies if you let my infantry move 2 spaces) or remove pieces (I’ll take Allies if I can trade in all my starting infantry for mech)

I won’t argue that 1 unit per space might be overly restrictive.  Limit 2 would probably be OK too.

[Jennifer]

Next Year’s ranking system:

PPG
ELO
Percentage
Other

Thoughts?  Concerns?

My opinion is this, any ranking system we go with next year should be one that encourages game play for all players without ostracizing any class or group.

Perhaps we could devise a way to rank players where wins gain you points and losses don’t cost you any points but you don’t earn any points either?  The stronger the player the more points you earn for beating them?  Not sure how that would look exactly, but it’s just an idea.

[lexgreat]

Just a few things (I dont know too much about the technicalities and appreciate the immense amount of time invested in rules, rankings etc.)

• One unit per terr, have a unit there already.
• No retroactive changes in ranking if someone gets into a new tier (see final item)
• Some kind of bonus for beating highly ranked players (maybe for beating players in play-off positions at the time of respective game start)
• As per Seth’s suggestion, some kind of minimum number of games against the best players in order to qualify for play-offs / finals
• Remove win percentage as criterium for play-off / finals
• Dont crucify me - abolish tiers. No ranking system is perfect, but I trust Jenn, Gamer and the community to find a good one. Then, the ranking itself shows where people stand. Many players know each other anyway, and new players are new players, they could be geniuses or raw beginners, nobody could possibly know.

Thx again for keeping this up to all our enjoyment.

[MrRoboto]

Thanks for your detailed answer in that other thread, gamerman.

You actually convinced me, that ELO might not be the best solution in our case. And that’s mainly because a game lasts so long here. Thus, some players don’t play a lot of games and ELO system actually needs, as you stated, a certain number of games to accurately measure strength.

However, I still don’t like the retroactive changes.
And I still disagree with you, concerning always gaining points when winning.
Grinding on weak players should still award me with some kind of reward, albeit very little of course. Maintaining a near 100% Winchance, even against weak opponents, is a feat by itself. So if I decide to put so much effort and time into defeating newbies (since A&A is a long game and I would need LOTS of games against newbies), then that could be a potential way to slowly work on my ranking.
I can understand your position, however. I suppose we just have a different opinion on that matter.

[Jennifer]

What if your tier is determined by the previous year’s record?  I’d then say top players are tier 4, new or not so strong players are tier 1.  What tier you are is how many points you are worth if you are beaten by your opponent.

Benefits are:

1. Easy to compute where you are on the point scale at any time.
2. There is value in playing every challenger.

Drawbacks are:

1. Strong players can still qualify for playoffs by playing nothing but weaker players.  Of course, they’ll get their posteriors handed to them in the playoffs if they do.
2. Tiers are set until next year.

Those are not all inclusive lists. I have not had my coffee yet!

[Jennifer]

I have no problem with this for this year, but are we disallowing Low Luck for next year?  I’d say LL has to be denoted as such in the Subject line so that if Gamer or I are called in to moderate a dispute we can clearly see it is a LL not ADS game.

[gamerman01]

Great, very thoughtful posts from you all.  Thank you very much.
That’s a lot to chew on.  I see I have some thinking to do.
I haven’t had my Mt. Dew yet.

[gamerman01]

I am not aware of a single LL game having been played in 2012-2013 in league.  My opinion is that they should not be allowed in league play at all, so yes, I think we should disallow LL for next year as you said.

Reason is, it is a different game.
If you want to play LL, nobody is stopping you - play in the “Play boardgames” section, but not in league.

[seth4god]

I agree with no LL for League play. LL brings a completely different strategy to the table and LL and dice strats aren’t interchangeable. I do feel like the players should have the leeway to reroll a big battle using LL if BOTH players are amenable to doing so, or using whatever system they come up with. But the games themselves should all be dice.

I like the ELO idea, but it’s a ranking system that would be better used in a league that doesn’t reset every year. And as Gamer said, he’s not a computer.

Alex, what would you base the rankings on if we abolish tiers and win percentage? Everyone gets the same amount of points, except you get extra if you manage to beat one of the 8 players in playoff contention? I do however like the no retroactive changes to the rankings when someone changes tiers.

Jenn, what about players who join the league in the middle of next year? Or how about players who only got a couple games in before the next league? They could be way over/under rated depending on the outcomes of those games and how lucky/unlucky they got. Fluid tier changes are a pretty good system for the fluid nature of the league. How many games where played in last year’s league vs now? Who knows what will happen next year?

My opinion is use the same ranking system without retroactive point changes with tier changes. Maybe make it 20 game minimum to qualify for the playoffs; 8 of those games have to be played agaist the top 50% of the ranked players and 2 of the 20 come against the top 25%? Using this year’s rankings, that effectively means at least 8 games against tier 1 or 2 players and two games against tier 1 players. I was using percentage in case there’s some downturn in activity or something.