Are we trying to catch up for lost time from the last game?!?

2015 ODC Finals
Start: 48 mins (05:50 PM)
5 minutes /phase (live)

Don't miss out!

An interesting stat from the last round; the following countries were part of a draw in (X of 6 games):
5 - Germany (4 draws, 1 win)
4 - Turkey
3 - France
2- England
2- Italy
2 - Russia
0 - Austria

I don't recall agreeing to Rulebook Press either. ;)

damn, can't slip by anything past these guys...

Please do not advertise your live games outside of the live game thread.

- webDiplomacy moderators

:-)

Is gameID=173000 part of the live game thread?

In all seriousness, do we know when the game actually will be starting and are all seven players still available to participate?

I believe at least two must step out.

I propose March 7th start day.

After all that you want to still wait another three weeks to start.

Somebody is lucky this is going to be an anonymous game and all the participating players are above targeting a player simply for being a pain in the ass. ;)

Look, I'm not holding a gun to anyone's head, I'm just semi-facetiously saying that would be best for me. If it starts tomorrow it starts tomorrow...

Personally i'd prefer sooner. If this game is anything like that Game 4 we're already looking at it potentially carrying on until July, who wants to spend their summer weekends checking in for unchecked game messages that need a response?

I mean, probably won't go on that long for you specifically ...

*looks at gun pointing at my foot*
Starting later would be better for me as well, as shown by the fact that I'm still awake.

Interesting EoG from Jimbobicus.

I understand where he's coming from, but I think he's way off the mark. In terms of precedent and incentives for future games, I think the mods got it right. I know that the small disincentive of games ending before their time is more than offset by the huge disincentive of games that go on in an endless drudge without anything really changing. If the game hadn't been stopped, I'd have probably ruled myself out of taking part in similar tournaments in the future.

From an uninformed spectator's point of view, the game in a nutshell is this. Jimbob found himself in a weak tournament position after failing to score points in his first game. mscott was in a strong tournament position after scoring well in his first game. Because of this Jimbob had no leverage over mscott other than to appeal to his sense of mercy and comradeship (if such a thing exists), but instead managed to piss him off. The final couple of months seemed revolve around Jimbob looking for levers that didn't exist, and was reminiscent of watching kids in amusement parks try and pick up a glued down chocolate bar with a robot crane arm.

Can't fault the fighting spirit, but by God it was painful...

I'll be sending out invitations tomorrow unless there's a unanimous agreement among finalists to start later. The second game's invites will go out in roughly two weeks. The pregame join periods will be at ten days like the other rounds, and you are allowed to use your pause whenever, so if things are really bad you can delay it a little bit, but everyone has been waiting a while and I'd like to get this going soon.

Earlier the better for me, by the way. My last game ended so long ago I've been booted off the GR list.

And with regards to jimbobicus, I think it's important that everyone understands that he didn't do anything wrong here. I know the game looked rather empty towards the end, but there was a lot of diplomacy going on the whole time, and drawing it any earlier would have been premature, even if the result did end up the same. He tried as hard as he could to get enough points to qualify, and the game only recently reached a point where doing that was impossible.

I'm sorry that he feels slighted by my choice to draw the game, but I hope it doesn't turn him away from webDip in general or this tournament specifically if we ever host it again.

I can't fault the fighting spirit of Jimbobicus, as painful as it was to have to wait out (and it was). I feel for him as i've been in those situations before where i felt the frustration of the game not having been fully squeezed, but i also think it appeared clear here mscott had no incentive or desire to budge and diplomacy had failed between Stack and Jimbo.

My one potential criticism on the forced stalemate would be that there didn't appear to be a warning period that it was about to kick in. Possible this all happened in private, but if not i think it may have made an impact on players adjusted their way of thinking. At very least i would have expected Italy to get cut if for nothing more then to add time to the clock due to the center changing hands and stimulated some activity into the game (unless Jimbo saw no point).

Was any specific warning given?

Side note: We should consider looking into a feature to keep all tournament round games anonymous until all games are completed. There's a pretty significant meta impact on being the final game outstanding.

Octavious is 100% on target with his assessment of the game.

... And should ODC 2016 be starting soon?

I explained the conditions under which I'd consider forcing a draw about 10 years before the end of the game, and I gave jimbobicus prior warning before forcing the draw as well. He could have eliminated Italy if he had wanted to.

The permanent anonymity idea is a decent one. I'll discuss that with the other mods, though it's not something that would have an impact for the finals.

The tournament format allows for some interesting diplomacy given knowledge of other game results. Whether that is better than fully anonymous, I don't know - but it does provide an additional layer of strategy that would not be there otherwise in the tournament, and totally absent from one-shot games.

Yes, it can be quite useful I'd say.

Agreed, not a factor in the finals. While I'm sure the first game outcome will impact the playing of the second game, it'll be near impossible for identities to not get out sooner or later when you're playing the same 7 big personality guys in concurrent games.

We'll just have to factor the meta in.

Very much enjoyed the format of the tournament and the interplay between different games. If it were to run again, I'd suggest not giving any points for survives, though.

^

It would be harder to break ties but there's no reason to think that SC count upon loss is a reasonable me way to do so. Something like strength of schedule makes more sense.