A possible rule for those sorts of situations is if no SCs change hands for 4 years, the game can be drawn by a moderator.

Another possible rule to end the tournament quickly would be to set a specific deadline either in game years or in a real date at which point the game is either counted as drawn or the player with the most SCs wins. That would have to be decided in the rules of course.

Not to end the tournament quickly but promptly. I wasn't in the last World Cup but I believe it took much longer than expected.

it did take much longer. Perhaps we need to have a clock like in soccer where there are a set amount of years to play and then if no victor it ends with a draw and we count the SC points. it would add a play against the clock kind of sense. of course it would be enough years that someone has a chance to win though

I like the idea of having a fixed deadline (in game years) and force a draw when this deadline is reached.

what about the point system? everyone think that was fine?

I thought the point system was cool.
I like the fixed deadline idea.
It could be 1915 or something like that.

RE games that drag on:

"A possible rule for those sorts of situations is if no SCs change hands for 4 years, the game can be drawn by a moderator."

Nope, there are endgames where there is a winning strategy provided you can play for a fairly large number of moves before gaining a centre. This arbitrarily cuts some games short so is a bad system.

"Another possible rule to end the tournament quickly would be to set a specific deadline either in game years or in a real date"

Real date means that you can drag turns just to change the result, which is a much worse problem. Game Years affects the way the game is played as you get close to that year, again, undesirable. The finals wouldn't have been as interesting if standard game 1 couldn't continue into the 1920s.

The stalemate idea is the best one so far, but still doesn't work in all cases (particularly with people dragging out a game for reasons to do with other games). Instead, the system that is probably best is to have people able to appeal to the mods, who then check that the people not drawing actually have a strategy they want to pursue other than just waiting. This is what normally happens outside tournaments.

Points system was good.

good point. we'll have to just resort to mods

DJE, I think some of the things you need to think about for the world cup are:

1. Whether you want to keep regional teams
How teams are going to be organised (maybe allowing it to be done by country rather than by region) and then having more than one team per country, since USA in particular lost out where it had a lot of good players just very spread out (London was lucky to turn out to be essentially the UK A team).

2. Getting the tournament more punctual.
Being long isn't a massive problem. This tournament is pretty big (it started off with 21 teams of 4, and though most of the players only played one game, it is still a big tournament. Being in rounds makes it longer too- the leagues don't really compare well because they can just *happen*. Its not much smaller than the GFDT, say, which also takes about a year.

In short what I am saying is that you don't need to cut down how long it took, but rather make sure that it happens punctually- get finals underway quickly after the first round, get games set up quickly and so on. This is really hard with so many players, and requires a lot of effort (maybe more than & those helping you realised).

3. How often should it run?
Do we want to run a new on just yet? The GFDT is just about to enter its final, the Leagues are in full swing, the Masters is underway, we have gunboat tournament coming up as well it seems.... and this tournament does demand a lot of players, so we may not as a community be able to support it so well.
More broadly, it might be worth making it biennial, rather than annual (then again maybe I'm just tired :P)


However, I must say I was very impressed overall with the tournament. My first tournament overran horribly, and its very hard to get them right. This one was great fun. Running tournaments is not easy, and I guess getting out the other end able to announce a victor is the the benchmark for success.

thanks ghost thats a lot of help. and no worries its not running soon at all! i have three tournament games going and have been busy getting a job and all.

as far as regional vs just by country, the problem is it wouldnt be a world cup if we didnt have regions. there werent enough players in greece and hellalt wanted to play. i had no problem with smaller represented teams becoming a regional team. and also larger countries that have the majority of diplomacy players here should be separated by region as well so more can play. I don't see a problem with the team organization due to region. What could be fixed is the substitute problem. Each team needs to have at least 2 substitute possibilities next time i think. Also the captain needs to be easily contacted and not have any CDs on their resumes unless they have a good excuse


the tournament does need to be more punctual yes. i'm thinking that since the tournament started the year of the world cup it may just be played in line with the start of Euro and the World Cup. (or maybe we could have like Concacaf and Euro competitions and have qualifying just to make you busy =P) The games need to be started on tiem next time as well. Signups will start earlier and the emaisl sent out earlier too.

re regions, that's fair enough, its just something to think about.

I think requiring substitutes for each team may not be the answer, but rather giving teams a limited time to replace a CD before they forfeit and you put in a "swing player" who just fills in for the game. Substitutes are more likely to go AWOL than players, you see.

true then they have the time until the next match to get a substitute. so just have a list of people who would be willing to sub in? and if a CD happens do we pause the game for the limited time?

bump