November 3-5 in Killington Vermont for those of you who don't like external links :)

I'm super excited about this event. If you're on the fence about attending, the f2f community is lovely and you should stop thinking about it and just go.

Dave Maletsky. Personal. Innovative. Friendly. Gregarious. Brilliant tactician. Top board in 2017 Worlds.

CARNAGE SCORING

People complain. Maletsky invented Carnage scoring. It's intent was to encourage solos more than playing for draws. At the time he invented it, most FTF tournament scoring systems, such as the one used at DixieCon, had systems in which players gained bonus points for being in a two way verses a three way verses a four way, etc. Because of the draw bonus points in such systems, they're criticized for favoring carebear strategies. However, even a Dixie system wants to encourage solos by rewarding the solo with a huge point gift. It gives a lot of points for draws too.

I still think the SoS is the best because it captures the relative merits of the players results a game that ends in a draw.

Of course if you're a purist, you just want DIAS.

SoS is the best.

Any system (SoS) where you can end up losing points for taking more supply centers is rubbish. Personally, Carnage is my favorite system I've seen.

Zybodia, please post your example scenario where that's possible.

You can lose points because other people grab centers in certain ways, but you're positing there's a scenario where by you gaining a center you lose points right?

If you are in first place, you can easily lose points if both you and another player (usually - maybe always - second place) gain a center. I don't think it's possible if nobody else gains. Still need a concrete example, or was I just being too ambiguous before?

I just get really annoyed when I have to choose between a slight chance of winning or provably losing significant points. Improved position should equal improved score (or at least no worse score).

Just out of curiosity, how many big-named face-to-face players (Such as played in World Diplomacy Championship, Top Board 2016 and 2017) play on webdiplomacy (or some other site)? Nobody has to reveal who they are, but I was just wondering.

I'm pretty sure Doug Moore (current world champion), Chris Brand (ex-world champion), and Nicolas Sahuguet (top board at WDC, should probably be a world champion if he isn't already) will be there. There will probably be more but all three I named were on the top board at WDC 2017.

y'all need to post about this with more than 3 weeks notice.

@Zybodia concrete example please

Okay, so the numbers aren't as large as I remember. (Quick calculations show only a difference of about -.005) As it turns out, what I was remembering was a gain of one versus a gain of two for second place. However, your score can still fall a bit. What all the situations I've found have in common are one player close to winning, one or two mid-side players, and a number of small players.

For example (not the most likely, but one of the largest losses I found in five minutes of looking):
16/9/5/1/1/1/1 -> 17/10/5/1/1/0/0
As the largest power, you go from a value of .699 of the total pot to .695 of the total pot.

Conclusion: I am technically correct. However, my memory was faulty, and it is probably not as big of an issue as I previously believed. I am still not a fan of SoS because of the counter-intuitive choices it leads to.

So if you try for a solo, you might lose 0.4 points in a 100[D] game. I think you should go for it.
But I understand what you're saying. I however disagree that it's significant enough to prefer Carnage over SoS. Do you have other arguments?

It's worse if second place manages to pick up two or three centers to your one, however, I think most of the rest is based on preference. I should say that I have played FtF once in my life, so I've never played with a set year limit. I happen to like that (non-solo) performances are more clustered in points, so consistent good performance is rewarded. Likewise, there is reason to keep playing hard as a tiny power, as those points, while they will likely not net you top board, are not so insignificant as to be non-factors.

I may love SoS for statistical analysis, but it goes against my personal play preferences for Diplomacy.

@Ezio is right - hard to plan travel for an event with 3 weeks notice ;) Webdip should advertise for events several months ahead of time!

It's every year... You had 52 weeks notice :)

A webdip calendar with f2f events would be pretty cool

^