Players League Season 2 discussion thread

I would imagine it is rare to get 3 or more solid members in a coalition. With these hypothetical new rules I doubt coalitions would often be more than 2 after cutoff.

But more to the point. An experienced player doesn't want to share points with a weaker player, but they want to use the weaker player to their advantage. Ultimately this forces the more experienced player to make a decision to share with the weaker player or lose the benefit they would give them. This protects newer players from being exploited to a certain extent. I would imagine many top PL players have done well partly by exploiting other players. Part of my motivation for this idea is that I am a new player myself and don't like how experienced players benefit from newer players. I can see the top players being resistant to the sharing idea, but I think it will make PL more attractive to players in general.

I would like to change 3 rules:

1) About NAPS: We need to change naps honor rules system. I propose 2 ways:

-Inlcude Naps as a official rule. For a NAP to be valid, both parts have to publish their agreement on the newspaper. If somebody break a nap, we need him to get out of the game, with expulsion.

-If you guys think the point is a little complicated the other alternative I propose is NAP forbidden.

2) About provinces trading: Trade provinces forbidden, with only 1 exception: when you have one rebellion, is allowed to trade you that province.

3) Techstacking forbidden: Some of us have suffer tech stacking. I am refering to aircrafts tech stacking. I propose to expulsion to player who use that advantage.

4) Nuke forbidden: I like this rule, I would not change it.

The rest of the rules are ok, in my point of view.

I think NAPs should be allowed but at your peril. If it doesn't work out it was your choice to get into it.

RoW only between coalition members.

If you change the scoring system coalition size might not be restricted to 3 but I certainly do not think it should excide 3 or 4.

Personally I would prefer no rockets but I suppose it would be worth testing out at least once and see how it goes.

I like the coalition sharing idea, but only for end of game stats. I think all alliances must be in a coalition. This would prevent some abuse of "secret" alliances. I think rules should be changed to give the leading coalition the victory and first three spots. Then give points to individuals outside of that coalition. Example: Coalition One with members ABC wins the game. They would get points for 1st, 2nd, 3rd. (So then it is individual VP's that determine order.) 4th place on down would go to the next highest ranking individuals as it does now. The only change is that people must be in a coalition if they want a top 3 spot. I think this would encourage more cooperation between all players, and encourage players to join a coalition, making it more of a team game for 1,2,3. As far as NAPs go. I don't see a realistic solution. Having mods keep track of all NAPs seems way too complicated. The only idea I have is that if it is proven that a player has broken a NAP, they should get a yellow card, third time in one season would be banishment for rest of season. Not a good solution, but is fairly easy to do.

Giving more points to highest VP within top coalition would not solve the basic problem of competition within coalition. I don't think people should have to feel compelled to be in a coalition though. It's often the case that it's hard to find the right players to work with. There is nothing wrong with some going solo or having 2 player coalitions, or for that matter larger coalitions as long as score is weighted by coalition size.

As far as NAPs, who cares. It's an honor rule for the purpose of discouraging people from being jerks, but people are jerks so there is no stopping it. The NAP issue is just part of the strategy and everyone is in the same boat trying to negotiate the troubled waters.

All right anyone else got something on their mind?

I'm not sure about Province tradings... I'd like them to be not allowed, however it seems like a silly thing to ban but it is controversial and causing many issues...hmm

NAPs I'm still not convinced should be banned, first of all it's impossible to do, second of all, if you don't trust someone don't make a NAP with them - simple as that. It's optional and honor based which is the way to go.

wildL SPQR wrote:

All right anyone else got something on their mind?

I'm not sure about Province tradings... I'd like them to be not allowed, however it seems like a silly thing to ban but it is controversial and causing many issues...hmm

NAPs I'm still not convinced should be banned, first of all it's impossible to do, second of all, if you don't trust someone don't make a NAP with them - simple as that. It's optional and honor based which is the way to go.

I suppose I should say something, since I am not afraid to be vocal in the Newspaper

1) NAP's: I think they should be done away with in the sense of, you don't need a contract to back up any agreements players make. Let any wheeling and dealings between players go on, that is a major part of this game, the diplomacy. Though RoW and Share Map are still forbidden. There does not need to be anything said about a contract, its diplomacy after all. Some of the strongest in real history was done with nothing more then a handshake. Most players in this league will learn over time if someone is a person worth trusting or not.

2) Coalitions: Make them concrete with no backing out once joined for any reason. If a player goes inactive on a coalition, then I hope he gets treated as any PL player should be, we have agreed not to go inactive. I think with them being concrete, they will be less quick to form and more thought given into joining one. I would make a cutoff of some day, being the last day a new coalition can be formed.

3) Rockets, yes please give us rockets as right now the game is very unbalanced by the Air Force. Once a player is being hammered by a squadron of tac's it is near impossible to get any military units close to where the attacks originate, rockets would change this as the moment those planes land to refuel, that territory could be attacked from a distance, something we cannot do at this point. Yes, we too have planes, I know, but once your outgunned in the air, your in trouble.

4) Points system. Please keep it simple for the sake of the moderators, we do not want to make this game work for them. You may find my example below a bit off the wall, but I will try to explain it after.

We have 10 people start a game, at games start, the winning player would be sitting on 10 points, last place, being ten of them, would be sitting on 1 point. Now, thirty days of war take place. At the end of the thirty days, only 6 of the starting ten survive. Well the score for the map goes down. 1st gets 6 points, one for each remaining player, 2nd gets 5, on down to last getting 1. If you have a coalition as part of the mix, they points are addeded together and divided by the number of members in the coalition. So say, the coalition finished 1st, 3rd and 4th in the above example, their points would be 6+4+3, or thirteen divided by 3, giving each member 4.3 points. So with this scenerio in place, the solo player, who had the hardest road, scores 5 points for finishing second and actually wins the map. Would this not be realistic as he would have had a harder road of it. This point system also addresses a thought of giving a player a capital to survive till the end. If you want more overall points, it benefits you not to take out the player entirely.

5) Trading provinces: Only allowed if the traded province rebelled and can only be traded to the player the province rebelled from.

So my two cents worth and I apologize to anyone I might have offended in my little frustration rants in any game I have played. The previous disclaimer was viewed and approved by Nimbrel before she posted it!

Just for the record, I am against rockets. However, if the mods want to make a test run with rockets, I would be willing to try. I support the mods in any decisions they come to. I would like to thank them for all they have done in the past, and all they will do in the future. Thanks guys!

After a bit of reading, I think some of the following things should be explored

1: The points system. I like the weighed coalition idea and I can agree with DX that once the formula is in place, it shouldnt be too much work perse. I also like the idea that going solo could be very profitable in such a system. In that respect, I wouldnt be surprised to see some new strategies arise and a new game dynamic occurs. Some tweaks should be made regarding solo players having a tougher time obviously, and they should be rewarded for that. In this situation I am thinking of something like:

Solo player gets +50%

2 player alliance gets +25% after calculation of their combined average

3 player alliance gets +0%

4 player alliance gets -25%.

5 or more not allowed.

Perhaps this also fixes the 'complicated' formula thing? Percentages are of course debatable.

Im a bit on the fence having day 15 the final cut off day, as I believe it is a bit too early. Day 20 should be better, though I realise it can be abused if the top 3 consists of players in different coalitions and they hook up. But hey, then you know who not to trust next game. Needs more discussion and tweaking.

2: As far as the NAPs go, I believe the current rule is adequate. Backstabbing is part of the game. Sure it sucks, but in my experience it is actually quite rare and I have seen it done to me this season exactly once. And that person was not even a NAP partner, but a coalition mate.

3: Having the PL run 28 days instead of 30 could work for us (the mods), and helps point 4

4: I'd like to see rockets in play again, and I might even want to consider lvl 2 and up if the game is shorter. It creates more options other then the 'biggest airforce = win game usually' situation. Plus, rares are actually important resources again after day 8. Or Bytro finally nerfs those tacs, but we all know when that will happen - something with hell and frost.

5: I think the new system also is easier in regard to rule enforcement, so as mod I would be quite happy to see this worked out properly.

6: Because of the day 20 I propose, I also would like the coalition forced NAP rule in place, perhaps even make it 3 days.

7: Rule enforcement is made easier, so we can probably penalise with clear penalties, as now a lot of the penalties are at the discretion of the mod. I wouldnt mind strict rules regarding this. Break rule? Ban. Do it twice in a season, ban for rest of season and stripped of all points. The only problem I see that it is very hard to call a verdict regarding point 6, as wars can be triggered by the defender setting status to peace when the other party is leaving. Need backup in solving this here.

Another thought, now that the games are on 30 day cycles, have you thought about just taking all the sign-ups and playing on a 100 player map? Random starting assignments, way more avenues on how you wish to play the map, etc.?

I don't understand the point of adding additional bonuses and penalties based on coalition size. Giving everyone the average seems like a good and simple normalization on it's own. Sure in some cases, for example, a two player coalition has a higher chance of getting two times the VP as a single player, but in some cases the single player would have a better chance. It would depend on many factors and perhaps there should be a bit of a "reward" for being able to collaborate with someone. It's a skill of its own. Larger coalitions might tend to result in internal conflicts so that could be a disadvantage also. In anycase if we did want to penalize larger coalitions more then we don't need to add an extra percentage. We can simply divide by the coalition number to some power greater than 1. For example 3^1=3, 3^1.1=3.34, 3^1.2=3.7, 3^1.3=4.2 etc. We could penalize larger coalitions in this way without having to do an ad hoc calculation step.

To me day 20 seems way too late for a cutoff. It would give players most of the game to plan on screwing their mates over so most of the game would have the same type feigned collaboration that exists now. For me avoiding this is the whole point of locking coalitions and sharing VP. Some may like this aspect of the game, but I personally would prefer to feel I was playing with allies as a single unit early on. I would actually prefer for coalitions to be irreversible from day 1. This would definitely create a new dynamic where people waited and tested the waters with NAPs etc before committing to a coalition, but it would make someone think twice before jumping into a coalition just to give them a temporary relief or buffer from another player.

Other than no RoW or country trading I don't think there should be any honor rules for NAPs. Having this unenforceable "rule" just results in people getting pissed when someone breaks it and doesn't really stop people from breaking them.

" Solo player gets +50% "

i think the VP should not be changed no matter how big the coalition is, considering 3 is the maximum allowed, as the above rule will encourage people to stay out of any fight for most parts of the game and the defense play will turn this to a boring game.

DX, I am a bit formula dyslectic, but if I understand you well enough, the result of what you say is basically the same? Greater coalitions equal a harsher 'formula penalty'? Perhaps a more lamen explanation is in order?

You have a point regarding the locked coalitions, it sounds interesting as well. I do think we will see more turtling as a result. Whether thats a good or bad thing I leave to peoples own interpretation.

Mark: Currently there is a max of 3, but that too is on the table now. More then 4 would ruin a 22P game I think, but for a 50 or 100P match, perhaps 6 is not even too much.

Nim: Still means, based on the last PL, that 34 spots would be not taken. The PL should be as full as possible or you can just as well go back to random games. Should signups be 45 for instance, I would probably vouch for a 50p game for instance. Lets say I view 90% or better as ideal, as even 1 empty spot can create great imbalance.

miech wrote:

Perhaps a more lamen explanation is in order?

Ah, thanks for the explanation. In that respect, it is not so different then my % idea, but I do understand the difference.

The next thing up, would be whether 3 is the magical number, or it should be 1 or 2 as 'coalition size' to start off the exponential calculation.

Personally, I do feel lone wolfs are at a disadvantage most (but not all!) of the times and should be rewarded as such. Maybe not 50% (in my calculation), but that was something I wanted to put up for debate. Perhaps your more...mellow approach is better

miech wrote:

Nim: Still means, based on the last PL, that 34 spots would be not taken. The PL should be as full as possible or you can just as well go back to random games. Should signups be 45 for instance, I would probably vouch for a 50p game for instance. Lets say I view 90% or better as ideal, as even 1 empty spot can create great imbalance.

Please tell me what random games you play that have 66 active players for a month as I am really jealous I think 66 players on a 100 map random start would be a very interesting game, down side to a 50 player map in this scenerio is the 16 players who would not get spot.

miech wrote:

but I do understand the difference.

The next thing up, would be whether 3 is the magical number, or it should be 1 or 2 as 'coalition size' to start off the exponential calculation.

wildL SPQR wrote:

All right anyone else got something on their mind?

I'm not sure about Province tradings... I'd like them to be not allowed, however it seems like a silly thing to ban but it is controversial and causing many issues...hmm

NAPs I'm still not convinced should be banned, first of all it's impossible to do, second of all, if you don't trust someone don't make a NAP with them - simple as that. It's optional and honor based which is the way to go.

My first choice would be to ban rival coalitions cooperating at all (everything from ROW treaties to leaving your shared border undefended while you run off to attack in the other direction is banned. Resource trading still allowed. Province trading only within the coalition.) Note that this is how the Supremacy monthly tournament works, and enforcement doesn't seem to be a big problem.

Failing that, I suppose I would encourage people to set aside the stigma currently attached to violation of NAPs. If you share a border with a rival coalition, sure, make peace with them, carry on a friendly banter, warn them about a mutual enemy steaming towards their port or whatever... But if you leave yourself wide open to having your core territories gutted by three LTs because you have placed your total faith in a rival player continuing to not attack you just because he said he wouldn't, that's your bad IMO. You were just asking for it when you left your borders wide open and your treasury for the taking. Victims shouldn't cry about being "backstabbed" in that case, because he was always a rival, not a coalition ally. You shouldn't have turned your back.

So the plot above just shows the denominator/divisor for normalizing the coalition size. To get a better idea of how that would affect the score a player in a coalition of size X might get I made the same plot except the y-axis is now the score for a player, in the hypothetical case where all players get 50 VP so you can compare the score a solo player would get to the score a player would get in a coalition assuming they both had the same VP. In addition to the exponential, which increasingly penalizes as coalition size increases I included a plot using a linear increase. The linear increase still penalizes coalitions, but the penalty doesn't grow exponentially.

Adding a double penny (actually more like a vote

I would agree that the cutoff at day 20 is way too late; actually I would support the idea of "Never leave coalition, period", though that doesn't adress the widow problem. And yeah, that would make people careful about joining coalitions - after all, if your coal mate goes inactive on day #5, you will be fighting for HIS points too for a whole month... so early solo players will be much more common and coalition forming will be a process that continues throughout the early and middle stages of the game.

I don't feel there should be any % bonus on smaller coalitions, or top players will not be joining coalitions at all anymore... after all, two solo players working together (though NOT actually entering a coalition) earn SO much more points, that the movement and view bonuses of a coalition are completely offset by it.