Introducing the first ever webDiplomacy Terminator Tournament!

[mhsmith0]

I'd compiled some stats as well (probably w/ some error but w/e ) and I think the biggest area of strength for France is that the rate of catastrophic failure (whether defined as an outright loss [bot solo or outright defeat I treat as equal], or whether you also factor in stuff like 6wd/7wd which is presumably "I was about to get killed but yay the bots accepted my draw offer") is just much much lower than the other powers.

France's solo rate is actually BELOW Italy's, essentially equal to Germany's, and above but not well above England/Turkey. But no power avoids the really low scores like France does. 28% loss rate (England is 2nd lowest at 38%, the others all above 40%), 36% loss or 6/7wd (again, England 2nd lowest at 44%, the others all above 50%).

[mhsmith0]

Somewhat weirdly, early results suggest that GERMANY is the power most strongly correlated with a high finish... except that it also seems clear that it's because the highest ranked players are taking Germany, as opposed to Germany itself doing all that well.

Indeed, it may well be that Germany is a relatively weak power in this setup (not at Austria/Russia tier, of course) once you back out who is actually playing which power.

For instance, some people who in particular did notably worse w/ Germany than other powers:
genghiz solo'd France and Italy... and got a 6wd with Germany
Hellenic Riot solo'd Turkey, 5wd France, and lost with Germany
BornAgainGamer solo'd France, 6wd Germany, 7wd Italy
I solo'd Italy, 3wd Turkey, 5wd Germany (and that was a super cheap 5wd fwiw, I got my ass kicked and actual humans would have finished me off)
teccles solo'd France, and lost Germany/Italy


There were some on the other end:
RoganJosh solo'd Germany and lost Turkey, game 3 tbd
Chaqa solo'd England and Germany and lost Austria
Dipperjay solo'd Germany, lost England and 7wd Russia
pyxxy solo'd Germany and Turkey, 5wd France

but I think the overall pattern is that people who play Germany are doing worse than they are with other powers (other than Russia/Austria anyway, who just seem to be objectively bad powers in this setup)

Possibly that'll change as we get more data but that's what I'm seeing so far anyway

[damo666]

@bo will the deadline be pushed back considering we cannot create games at the moment?

[bo_sox48]

Yes.

[Floodgates]

I managed to win all three of my games, playing as France/German/Turkey.

Turkey was an extremely easy win, I just had to make sure I pushed fast enough past Italy to get over the stalemate line.

The toughest game was probably as France, where a Juggernaut quite quickly pushed all the way to the standard stalemate line at Munich. I thought that I would have to accept the three way draw, until the Russian AI did some weird re-positioning moves that allowed me to convoy to Prussia and Livonia. Didn't take long for the game to wrap up after that.

The Germany game was a mad scramble for most of the game. If I had faced a Juggernaut in this game I would have lost, but a massive stalemate in the east gave me time to clean up first England and then France, followed by a push into Russia.

Overall, pretty impressed with the way the AI plays but they are still more at a beginner level. I appreciate that they don't follow a specific list of moves, and will also generally stick to an alliance once 'made'. Room for improvement, but a very good start to the programming!

[mhsmith0]

*alarm bells sound*

WE HAVE AN AUSTRIAN SOLO
I REPEAT, WE HAVE AN AUSTRIAN SOLO

gj ibuprofen

[mhsmith0]

A bit more on Germany because it's both really weird and really interesting what I'm seeing...

By my count, three people got three solos (Balki B, Floodgates, Hirohito). Call this group A.
Another three people got above 400 (i.e. two solo's and some kind of draw): pyxxy, irilyth, genghiz. Call this group B.
On the flip side, five people got 0 points in 3 games (don't need to call them out), call this group C.

In terms of power selection:
England: 1/3 group A, 1/3 group B, 1/5 group C
France: 3/3 group A, 3/3 group B, 4/5 group C (basically everyone took France which is why it doesn't correlate with anything for overall performance despite people doing well with it relatively speaking)
Germany: 2/3 group A, 2/3 group B, 1/5 group C
Italy: 0/3 group A, 1/3 group B, 1/5 group C
Austria: 0/3 group A, 0/3 group B, 2/5 group C
Russia: 1/3 group A, 0/3 group B, 2/5 group C
Turkey: 2/3 group A, 2/3 group B, 4/5 (another super popular power)

Austria and Russia were disproportionately popular among Group C, while it's really just Germany that's disproportionately popular among Groups A/B, or perhaps looking at it the other way, disproportionately UNPOPULAR among Group C (and in fact Germany pops up extremely rarely among people with overall low scores, despite being essentially tied with England and Italy on popularity, well behind F/T of course)

I really don't know what to make of it, but it's a pretty interesting anomaly in the data at the least.

[irilyth]

Hi! Some notes on my picks:

I played a test game with England before I signed up, and one of my typical strategies worked very well, so I picked it for the tournament, and did much the same thing, and it worked well again.

Likewise France, with the added amusement that my strategy was "wipe out England, then play just like I play England". :^) I wonder if other strong E/F players tend to play them the same way.

I decided to go with Turkey for my third because I wasn't as confident that I could solo with anyone else, didn't want to play a bunch more practice games, and figured I'd at least be able to lock up a draw with Turkey. And I was almost wrong! I was slow getting to Italy, and Germany wiped out the north, and could have won a solo if the bot knew what it was doing. (Or to put that another way, given Germany's position in that game, *I* certainly could've turned it into a solo.) It ended up being a five-way draw because I couldn't come up with a safe way to get rid of any of the other powers, despite them each having only one or two units; I maybe could've gone for it, but I figured taking the 40 points was better than going for 60 or 80 and risking a 0.

Looking forward to the second round! Do we know yet how power assignment will work there?

[RoganJosh]

Hirohito was banned...

[pyxxy]

Hirohito was banned...

...for meta-gaming. So I think you can keep using their games for statistical purposes (at least until someone discovers how to meta-game bots looking at you EMC, I've seen you romancing KestasBot).

[mhsmith0]

Hirohito was banned...

guess the bubble just got a bit wider then

[bo_sox48]

Obviously anyone banned is not getting scored.

We are going to push the round 1 deadline back 48 hours, so the deadline for round 1 games to be scored will be October 2 at 7 PM central US time. Round 2 will start shortly thereafter.

[Hamilton Brian]

Stupid bots!

[Garagenpunk]

My games don’t continue, is this a common problem?

[Claesar]

My games don’t continue, is this a common problem?

No, it isn't. I've posted in Global of one of your games. Please email [email protected] if that doesn't work.

[Scarabus]

Hi all. What is the latest forecast on required score to progress?

[RoganJosh]

My forecast is highly unofficial and should be taken with a big grain of salt.

Currently, there are 12 players with a score of 400 or more.
There is another 24 players with a potential to reach 400 points.

There are 37 players who cannot reach 400 pts (some are still playing).

In total that's 75 players who have entered the tournament. I am not sure how many more players we expected - 20 perhaps? But almost no new games are being started at the moment.

(There is only 6 players with a score of more than 400 - so I'd guess probability is close to zero that the cutoff will be higher than 400.)

So - cutoff still probably 400 pts. But, there are two comments to be made. If we end up with more like ~80 participants, then the cutoff might be less than 400. Does that seem unlikely based on the above figures? Well, I think the data is biased in the sense that players loosing their games tend to play slower...

[Ayreon]

Is there a free spot to play?

[Scarabus]

I think anyone can play, but you have to have finished your three games by 20 Sep.

[pyxxy]

Is there a free spot to play?

All invitations have been sent out and sign ups are closed. Good luck to everyone participating!

^signups closed a while ago :'(