Conquer Club Bracket Tourny - Version 18 [abandoned]

[Coleman]

Version 17

Territories: 66, 34 neutral, 32 not neutral.
Special Features: Unusual Game Mechanics and a winning Objective of holding the Final are the special features of this map. (Ranged Attacks, One Way Attacks, Objective, Double Dipping)

Version 18

Changes

Altered the legend text.
Changed the appearance of Final

Large:


Small:

ORIGINAL POST---------------------

Idea from: bspride

Here's my take on bspride's idea. Everything but Round 1 boxes will be starting neutral.

Small Map:


Known issues:
1) Trophy Graphic may be subject to copyright.
2) CC Icon doesn't look good on the Trophy yet.

I'd view the Trophy Graphic as a placeholder for a better one should I come up with it.

3) Some of the spacing around the boxes isn't quite right yet...

[Aerial Attack]

This looks sweet !!!

And, you don't even need it to be sports related.

Nice going to start with the small map and size up.

Alas, it's 633 pixels wide - special dispensations only allow 630 (right?).

For the later rounds - boxes 10 and up will be crowded when you include the Army circle. (should not affect large map)

With ALL Lower Pairs might be confusing.

Round 1 Pairings (+1)

[possible statement below]
Round 2 Pairings (+2)
w/ matching Round 1 Bonus

[different possible statement below]
Round 3 Pairings (+4)
with prior Round 2 Pairs

instead of "or" say equivalent to (or equals) +12 per Color:

[Coleman]

Whoops. I can axe 3 pixels easy though.

It should be 3 under, for some reason I managed to get a white square around the black outline that added an extra 6... I'll get rid of it next update.

The large map will be less crowded, I assure you.

[Coleman]

Version 2

Changes
1) Fixed Dimensions
2) Reworded Bonuses

Large Map:

Small Map:


...

Next Version I'll Title Case "For a grand total of" to be "For a Grand Total of" that was an oops.

[WidowMakers]

Interesting idea. Great first draft. I have an issue with the bracket connection lines. If someome is playing that does not know what a sports bracket is will they really understand the flow? Here is my suggestion for connection lines.

[gimil]

Gameplay wise i have no complaints. Though, what will the neutral values start at?

[Gilligan]

I like it.

Just one thing: How will you know 'pairs'? You can't easily tell on yours, so I suggest that you so something like WMs that has easily distinguishable pairs.

[Unit_2]

hey coleman, try to make the bonuses like this, it would be easy to play.

[DiM]

aside from the symmetrical nature of the map (which i don't like) there's one more thing that concerns me:

the possibility of winning really fast.


i'm played a 1v1 and the other guy started first deployed 3 troops and then attacked with those 6 troops and killed 12 of mine and still had all 6
so he went 6v3 then 5v3 then 4v3 and finally 3v3 and he had all 6 troops intact.
so if a guy has that kind of luck in this map he can get to 1 of the final spots from round 1.
if he already starts with a few +1 bonuses and deploys let's say 6 troops instead of just 3 he can even end the game in round 1.

and getting a few +1 bonuses from the start in 1v1 isn't hard because each player starts with 10 round 1 spots so in theory he could get up to +5.

and just one more thing. i like mission based maps. look at AoR. hold all castles to win. but the difference between this and AoR is that here no matter what gametype you play you'll always go for the mission not for the normal way because you can't do it the normal way without passing through the mission terits.

i'm making a comparison here with AoR because it's mission map that i'm very familiar with.

let's say we have 2 6p assasin games.
1 on AoR and 1 here.

on AoR you have 2 ways of winning the game. kill your target or capture all castles. you CHOOSE your own way and make your strategy.

on Bracket you can't go after your target you must do the mission.
because let's say a guy starts in blue and his target is in red. if he wants to go after his target he must go through the final terits and he would be a fool not to take both final terits if he got that far.

so basically this will completely spoil the assassin game.


there might be a problem with terminator games also. i don't know how the current update works but i think that if a guy gets the mission then all other players in a terminator game regardless if they are active or not will lose points to the winner. if this is true then terminator is also spoiled.

[Coleman]

I'm not sure about all that, but you don't know how many neutral armies I plan on placing. It isn't going to be 3 everywhere, I plan on making it very impractical to try to advance forward without having all the pairs you can from that section.

As in, trying to take Round 3 before having a Round 2 bonus (or the equivalent in Round 1 Pairs) should be impossible in one turn, or very unlikely. I'm going to go for a 10% chance.

Also, the way victory conditions work, they need to be able to hold Final for a whole round.

I'm going to try to keep going, in the face of extreme pessimism, and ask lack about your concerns for Terminator.

Assassin is going to be a lot of chance on this map, if your target is on your half or quarter of the map it's possible. If they are on the other side, and you aren't, you're probably better off going for the victory condition.

EDIT: Sorry Unit_2 missed your post. I'm not sure I like that much... I'll think about it. I'm not very pro-easy though.

[Coleman]

Version 3

Changes:
1) Followed WM's advice with the connections.
2) Fixed the large map border to match with the small map.
3) Added my signature.
4) Adjusted the Grand Total in the bonus text to be title case.

Large:

Small:


Known Issue:
I made the Final different on each map. While this is possible in xml I should probably make them consistent.

[DiM]

I'm not sure about all that, but you don't know how many neutral armies I plan on placing. It isn't going to be 3 everywhere, I plan on making it very impractical to try to advance forward without having all the pairs you can from that section.

As in, trying to take Round 3 before having a Round 2 bonus should be impossible in one turn, or very unlikely. I'm going to go for a 10% chance.

if they are 3 or less victory is possible in the first 1-2 rounds (if the guy has lucky dice)

i also took into consideration that you might make each round with increased number of neutrals but after looking at the movement options i doubted that.

let me explain further. you say going for round 3 without the round 2 bonus will be hard but to get the full round 2 you must take round 3. let's say you have blue 9 and blue 10. to get blue 11 and 12 you must first take blue 13 and 14 which are in round 3. but if i have blue 1234 and blue 9-10 and just taken blue 13. there's no way i'm gonna go back and conquer the other half of blue and fight through all that neutral and other player armies. i'm simply gonna go for the final.

Also, the way victory conditions work, they need to be able to hold Final for a whole turn.

yep hold the 2 terits of the final for 1 turn. that's totally possible very early in the game with all neutrals at 3. if they are more and lead to high numbers then i doubt there will be much backwards movement on the map. let's say i manage to get half of blue as in the earlier example. i'm still gonna prefer fighting the neutrals that lead to the final than fight whatever troops and neutrals that are on the other half. either that or i'm just gonna wait until somebody clears the neutrals in front of me. and that's the second problem with big neutrals. let's say you put 50 on the final and 25 on the round 4. there's no way in hell anybody will fight that. and if by any chance your target is on the other side then it will stay there.

I'm going to try to keep going, in the face of extreme pessimism, and ask lack about your concerns for Terminator.

please ask as i'm very curious how this works.

Assassin is going to be a lot of chance on this map, if your target is on your half or quarter of the map it's possible. If they are on the other side, and you aren't, you're probably better off going for the victory condition.

yep and that really sucks. because a guy could get lucky and have his target on his side for an easy kill while the other guy has to go through all the neutrals. and as i said before if the neutrals are too big then there's no way you could kill your target if they're too small then going for the mission is going to happen in all games regardless of game type.



my main concern is the lack of mobility. i can't see an escalating kill cash in kill cash in happening on this map and i don't see a no cards game also.

when i look at the map i see 4 players with a million armies each standing on all 4 white terits without anybody going for the final.

so i'd say add more attacking routes. that would however spoil the bracket idea but in my opinion that's the only way to improve playability.

i'd say add connections between blue 13/14 and pink 13/14 and between green13/14 and red 13/14
this way movement between the 2 halves can happen without going through the final.

[Coleman]

let me explain further. you say going for round 3 without the round 2 bonus will be hard but to get the full round 2 you must take round 3. let's say you have blue 9 and blue 10. to get blue 11 and 12 you must first take blue 13 and 14 which are in round 3. but if i have blue 1234 and blue 9-10 and just taken blue 13. there's no way i'm gonna go back and conquer the other half of blue and fight through all that neutral and other player armies. i'm simply gonna go for the final.

I should show how many neutrals I'm going to have... I plan on making your strategy possible, but harder then taking the entire color first, by a lot.

yep hold the 2 terits of the final for 1 turn. that's totally possible very early in the game with all neutrals at 3. if they are more and lead to high numbers then i doubt there will be much backwards movement on the map. let's say i manage to get half of blue as in the earlier example. i'm still gonna prefer fighting the neutrals that lead to the final than fight whatever troops and neutrals that are on the other half. either that or i'm just gonna wait until somebody clears the neutrals in front of me. and that's the second problem with big neutrals. let's say you put 50 on the final and 25 on the round 4. there's no way in hell anybody will fight that. and if by any chance your target is on the other side then it will stay there.

I could argue this with you, or I could do all my maths first and go from there. I find arguing this now, before my maths, to be very impractical. I'll come back to this.

yep and that really sucks. because a guy could get lucky and have his target on his side for an easy kill while the other guy has to go through all the neutrals. and as i said before if the neutrals are too big then there's no way you could kill your target if they're too small then going for the mission is going to happen in all games regardless of game type.

I want people to go for the mission. That may not appeal to you. I'm going to take off my moderator mask for a moment and say that I think Assassin is a bullshit gametype, and I've never planned for it, or thought, "how would assassin work for this map?" when I've looked at anything.

my main concern is the lack of mobility. i can't see an escalating kill cash in kill cash in happening on this map and i don't see a no cards game also.

I could make it so each round could attack all the territories below it one way. Like 14 could attack 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, and 12. White 1 could attack all of blue. L could attack all of the left side.

That wouldn't help with the left and right being as separated as they are....

I could add some sort of bridge on the top and bottom between the 1s on the top and the 8s on the bottom. This would further encourage going back to get the lower portions of the brackets, for people that wouldn't otherwise so that they could attack the other side and ignore the Final. I'd probably want to do it by adding a neutral territory between them though, and making it dumb/hard without a Round 2 bonus. What I would call such a territory I don't know.

As an added thought here, I could connect these two neutrals so going form one corner to the other is easier. But in doing so it may encourage killing everyone while ignoring Round 3 and up, which would be bad in my opinion.

I'm not against going away from the standard bracket, this is the CC bracket tournament, not your grandmother's bracket tournament. And I have a lot of space to work with for explaining more things if I need to add stuff.

when i look at the map i see 4 players with a million armies each standing on all 4 white terits without anybody going for the final.

That's possible... I suppose. Again, I'll need to do my maths first to see what would be a 10% chance with dice odds at each stage. And then see how people might behave in those conditions.

I'm in no hurry. I want to make this work.

[Night Strike]

What if you made the first round numbers attack the same number in the other three brackets?? If not every seed, then maybe just some. It would greatly improve mobility and then you can up the bonuses.

By the way, the way you numbered the territories isn't the proper way to seed games. Was this done on purpose?

[Coleman]

I numbered the territories for sanity. Saying 4 Blue is easy.

I'm not sure I like letting some of the first round numbers attack all four corners. Nobody would care about Round 3 onward, they'd kill everyone with Round 2 and Round 1 bonuses.

Anyway, my maths say this:

6 Neutral - Round 2
8 Neutral - Round 3
12 Neutral - Round 4
28 Neutral - Final

The odds of getting all of the Final in round one are outrageously low.

To start with you have 6 vs 6 you need to roll 3 complete victories.

Then you are looking at 5 vs 8, 4 complete victories.

Then 4 vs 12, 6 complete victories, and if you lose a single army, then you are stuck rolling 2 dice.

Now it's 3 vs 28, you need to win 14 times at 2v2 when defenders ties beat you.

Lets say you do that somehow, then you need to win 2 vs 28, you need to win 28 1v2 rolls in a row, with having done everything I said up to this point as well.

Possible? Yes. Probable? Absolutely not.

For perspective.

Winning the Final doing what I intend up to Round 4 (having all of one color) but ignoring the other color and the other half of round 4 has a 0.0006187925418484125% chance of happening in one round. It'll probably take 4-5 rounds, assuming the other player leaves you alone. And then holding it for a whole round with the puny bonus you'll be getting will be tough unless everyone else sucks really bad.

Winning the Final doing what I intend all the way has a 10% chance of happening in one round. And it probably will happen in two with an expected victory in 3 or 4 rounds if the other side is slacking.

[DiM]

6 Neutral - Round 2
8 Neutral - Round 3
12 Neutral - Round 4
28 Neutral - Final

ok this means nobody will be able to storm right to the final but it also means one needs to get through 108 neutrals to go from 1 terit in round 1 to another terit in round 1 on the other side of the bracket.

and if we're talking about a 6p assassin game and your target has his 5 terits on the other side, in order to kill all his 5 terits you might have to go through up to 150+ neutrals + all his troops.

on the other hand if your target has his 5 terits in the same color as you you'll have to kill just 40 neutrals + his troops. big big difference.

and yes i know you said assassin is stupid and that you don't like it but it's still a game type that has to be considered when making a map.

i still think that connecting blue 13/14 with pink 13/14 and green 13/14 with red 13/14 would be a good solution. this way there is an alternate route that could allow a player to pass by 80 neutral troops (rnd 4+final) to get to his target. much more balanced

[Coleman]

So the new problem. Where is the strategy in all that? Non-existent.

I'll need to add all the connections I mentioned to DiM so players have options. If I do so a lot of different possibilities open up.

For instance, rushing White 2 with half the blue bracket and some parings elsewhere may turn out to be a brilliant idea because you can completely rape the person going for Green by being able to attack anywhere on the entire Green Bracket.

You could have part of Blue and decide you don't like the Purple player very much, take the connector and start attacking him from the side he didn't feel he needed to defend. Then use the spoils from having parts of both sides to advance on the other players.

I may need to change more then that. I'll put something together and see what people think.

If they like DiM's 13/14 to 13/14 idea better I can change it to be that.

[DiM]

So the new problem. Where is the strategy in all that? Non-existent.

I'll need to add all the connections I mentioned to DiM so players have options. If I do so a lot of different possibilities open up.

For instance, rushing White 2 with half the blue bracket and some parings elsewhere may turn out to be a brilliant idea because you can completely rape the person going for Green by being able to attack anywhere on the entire Green Bracket.

You could have part of Blue and decide you don't like the Purple player very much, take the connector and start attacking him from the side he didn't feel he needed to defend. Then use the spoils from having parts of both sides to advance on the other players.

I may need to change more then that. I'll put something together and see what people think.

now we're getting somewhere.

i'll wait for a new update on the connections and then do my math and post again.

also 1 small request. please put the neutrals on the map. like i did on AoR. it's easier to make calculations if i see all the neutrals there.

[Coleman]

also 1 small request. please put the neutrals on the map. like i did on AoR. it's easier to make calculations if i see all the neutrals there.

Now that I have an idea of what I want them to be at the moment (may change) I'll be doing so.

[mibi]

i dig it.

[Coleman]

Version 4

Changes
1) Added T and B.
2) Added rule about attacking prior boxes.
3) Added neutral counts.
4) Ignoring small map for a while. I've shown I can put it together when I need to. (Sorry AA)
5) Large map matches the small map now.

Large:


Night Strike: I'm considering your seeding idea to make it look more like a standard tournament; could you help me figure out how I'd name everything if I did it?

[DiM]

1. stop changing the poll. i haven't even managed to vote in the initial one. i was waiting to form a good idea on where this map is heading.

2. the T and B aren't good. in fact they make the map even more unbalanced because now whoever owns the corners has much more mobility. i'd still like to see the 13/14 connected. and after more thinking i'd like to see them connected in all directions.
blue to green and pink
pink to blue and red
red to pink and green
green to red and blue.

3. i see you added the any box can attack all prior boxes. what does this mean?
if i have white 1 can i attack everything in blue?

this could be really good if i understand it correctly. lot's of movement, the possibility to attack past a wall of neutrals plus a really good incentive to move up the bracket.

[Coleman]

1. stop changing the poll. i haven't even managed to vote in the initial one. i was waiting to form a good idea on where this map is heading.

I only changed it once. But fine, I'll behave from now on.

2. the T and B aren't good. in fact they make the map even more unbalanced because now whoever owns the corners has much more mobility. i'd still like to see the 13/14 connected. and after more thinking i'd like to see them connected in all directions.
blue to green and pink
pink to blue and red
red to pink and green
green to red and blue.

I could have Blue 14, Green 13, Red 13, and Purple (do you see pink? that's scary) 14 all connect to a circle around the center showing they can attack each other. I can even use fancy graphics to make the circle look like it hovers over the other lines and the lines from the boxes connecting to it like they are slanting upwards all 3d like.

I like T & B, but if you really think it hurts things they can go away.

3. i see you added the any box can attack all prior boxes. what does this mean?
if i have white 1 can i attack everything in blue?

That's what I meant. Not sure how to word it better, hopefully AA will, he's good at that.

this could be really good if i understand it correctly. lot's of movement, the possibility to attack past a wall of neutrals plus a really good incentive to move up the bracket.

Thanks for that.

[cairnswk]

Nice work Coleman.

I would like to see R be able to attack T and L be able to attack B.
It would spice things up.

[I GOT SERVED]

I like this idea. Here's my 2 cents:

I'm fine with T and B. If it makes DiM feel better, maybe you could have them connect to 9 in each bracket. Or maybe add another attack route in there somewheres.

I like the progressive neutrals idea, leading up to 28 in the final. But my only issue is what happens if say during a triples games, what happens if one team gets eliminated? Does the team automatically win it? Or do they still have to conquer the finals?