Hi, Tiger!

Please strike me from the list (sudden work overload; sorry! ).

Sorry to hear

If we are restarting, please could an e-mail confirming this be sent out?
People are continuing to play their turns so the longer it is left the more frustrating it will be.
Please could you tell us the time that the restart will occur, so that we do not have to keep checking back?

Mike

yes i think you should as soon ass possible delete all tourney games and start new ones sending notices by email to all players
this situation is just ridiculous and it is hurting MA's reputation really bad.

I agree with the above-written posts. Cuz' my opponents, destipe the approaching restart, are making their moves...
Or, what is even better, announce the restart time on the site itself.

looks like new games are out and the problem is fixed, at least on my games. Good luck all.

I HAVE RESTARTED ALL GAMES!

I have finished all previous tournament games manualy (They will move to "Finished games" folder in your profile).

Rank-points will NOT be scored for manualy finished battles!

Coffeedragon is removed from Group 7.

Wasabe is moved from Group 1 to Group 7 instead of Coffeedragon due to his rank-score.

LOL
Wasabe is lucky guy to escape from Morton starting pool! why it's him to get such a favor!
but anyway...with Coffee leaving that group then Khanivore has very high probability to win

Wasabe and Coffeedragon have the most similar scores-rangs: 281 and 284.

I've sent e-mail to all players.

Thanks Tiger. I hope my problems are resolved soon, I'm getting tired of using my laptop. Its old enough almost no games run on it. I'm feeling the withdrawl from no video games..........



Good Luck to all in the tournament! =)

I wouldn't have minded staying in group 1. After all, somebody has to! Plus the fact that I am much better on Antarcticus then I am on water worlds, so I would have had the best chance of beating Morton there. I still haven't learned naval warfare very well. . .

Anyways, thanks for restarting the games. I look forward to some fun battles!

P.S. Are you back in town Khanivore? I believe we've had 2 battles in the past and they were both fun. I hope the outcome in this game will be the same as those battles. . . hehehe

IMPORTANT NOTICE.

Please, use patched version to play tournament games. If it is not possible for some reasons - move your units hex by hex near country borders and cities (in other cases you may move units as you like).

Secret Allies are an element of chance. By removing the Secret part, Tiger had made the tournament more fair, not less so.

The starting points were well thought out as well. Could have had some interesting games there. I had already started several.

MA is primarily a skill game. If anyone here prefers games of chance, maybe they should consider one of cards or of dice.

Sorry about sounding negative here, but what was a well designed tournament has fallen victim to the whim of end users who obviously depend on this element of chance to give them a shot at victory.

When playing a casual game, an element of chance offers excitement, a bit of tension caused by the unknown. In a casual game, it's a nice feature. Once again, a wise choice by the developers.

When competing for a goal greater than just the outcome of the game instance you are currently playing, an element of chance is undesirable. In this case, I think most of us here would agree, we prefer to succeed or fail based upon personal skill, foresight, and the ability to strategize.

Once again, I apologize for sounding negative but I had to get this off my chest.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. The chance that goes into how secret allies are distributed adds greatly to the game in my mind. And I also don't believe that we were going after a chance of victory. Its true that sometimes the distribution of allies is poor or perfect, but that doesn't mean you are a victim of the dice as a MA player. In fact, it is one of the things that seperates MA from the crowd. There are countless turn based strategies based on the same unit principles... each unit has a specified range and firepower, movement and health. Its been done over and over.

I contend that the fact that there is some randomness allows for even greater strategy. I know I put a great deal of thought as to when to reveal a secret ally. Do I wait for the enemy to conquer the territory, and then reveal it as a rear front when his units have moved on? Do I reveal it immediately so I can keep the enemy from even entering it? Do I hold off just a couple turns so I can get more reinforcements?

On the other side, it also adds to how you play the game on your side when you know that one of those two high resource countries belong to the opponent... which one is it? Is it worth the risk of invading one, or do you wait for more reinforcements just in case?

Due to these considerations, the strategy is made more interesting by having secret allies. And the randomness is just in the initial setup. There are no dice rolls as to whether you hit an enemy unit or how much damage you take. What you see is what you get, and you have to use what you see to the greatest advantage. In that part of the game, it can be compared to chess. These are pure tactical skills, and are essential to have as well.

But the strategic elements are what really get me going. Trying to view the battlefield from a step back: Looking quickly over your fronts, and determining which ones need the most help. Seeing where you can move resources from one area to another without risking a border. Choosing which fronts you have to focus on a holding action, and which ones you need a mobile assault force. Deciding when its appropriate to focus on building a navy. All of these are more strategic decisions. When you know exactly what your enemy has where the decisions aren't nearly as deep and interesting. I believe these elements add greatly to the application of "personal skill, foresight, and the ability to strategize."

This said, I am just merely giving my opinion, and mean no offense.

I think secret allies are very usfull. What i love the most is when a guy invades a country and you have a secret ally not only boarding it (that he is unaware of) but one boarding his (that he is unaware of).

I've gotten some pretty bad Secret ally draw in teh tourney but also some good ones.

IF your lucky and play your cards right your secret ally that you tohugh was useless might just come in handy and win you the game.

My statements are of course opinions as well, and I hope I have not offended anyone.

I agree that Secret Allies add a strategic element to the game which wouldn't be there otherwise. I also feel this adds excitement to the game which I appreciate, and under the right conditions enjoy.

In a tournament setting, however, I feel a more 'pure' game would serve the goal better. That begs the question, what exactly is the goal? My target is to pit my strategic and tactical analysis capabilities against others.

I am uncomfortable with any element of chance when competing. I tend to get terrible cards and dice seem to hate me. Why? I have no idea, I've never done anything to them.

I appreciate your comments both Maelstrom and Dryfire and I understand my goals and opinions don't necessarily coincide with others. That's part of what makes our world interesting.

Thanks for listenin',
Brashen

It was a bug. It would have made an MA tournament worthless. We'd have been playing MA Bugged Tournament Version.

Knowing where secret allies are makes the game play very different.

So, I disagree.



How so? A bug was identified that changed the nature of MA gameplay. The games were restarted, but not by whim in my opinion.

Boomer

Well said, and though I don't agree entirely with you, I agree with the substance. Nothing is worse than being in the final game of a tournament and then having your secret allies spread out so far that you can't even combine two of them together (happened to me in one of the previous games... thank goodness we restarted ). Just about any opponent that is anywhere near you in skill could take advantage of that. It would not be a good test of skill at all.

Perhaps a compromise can be reached, if only in theory since to put it into practice would take more time from the Developers which are already crunched . Here's a possibility: How about modifying the randomizing of the secret allies to insure that you have a descent chance. It could be as simple as making sure you have two neighboring allies, to doing a full calculation to make sure if the enemy has a superiority in one area of the map, you have superiority in another. It would have to be random enough still that people couldn't catch onto specific patterns, as that would turn a strategic approach to a test of trivial knowledge of how the system works.

The point of this system would be to give both players an even chance. Most games I've played have a somewhat even distribution, but a few games I've played have totally favored one side. It would be nice if those random possibilities couldn't exist, thereby keeping the random element that enhances the strategy so much, but still keeping the game fair to both sides.

I suppose if the developers did have access to decide secret allies, they could create games that are fair to both sides manually. Because this would require a great deal of effort, it would only be for official tournaments, or even just for the finals/semifinals. Now that is something we could see implemented for this tournament, assuming the developers have a way of doing this.

Good proposal. Though I am sure many would disagree, lol, I'm also not sure why...

Brashen