DTASAL scoring system explained!

[NTKB]

Ok so here is the concept I had a while ago that I am going to try and implement into DTASAL. I am ready to answer the many questions im sure you might have.

Each team chooses one city to start with from among a map of NA and europe with many important citys on it. Each city will have 3 TDM style maps assigned to it. Every week, you may issue an attack on an adjacent citys. The opposing city has 7 days to meet with the challanging team. They will then play 7 rounds of each of the 3 maps. the team that wins 2 out of 3 maps will gain/defend there city successfully. If the defending team chooses after a successful defense, they may initiate a sudden death MWH 3 round TDM match. If the defenders win this match they gain the attackers city that they were attacking from (a counter attack if you will). If they lose it, both sides retain there city.

All teams will start with at least 3 "buffer" citys to start around there city that no one is in control of. You may initiate an attack on said city and automatically claim it for the week. All challenges must be issued from 0001 Sunday to 2399 monday. Responses must be answered by 2399 Saturday. If no response is recieved you may automatically claim whichever city you are challenging. When a victory is attained over another empire, a screenshot of one of each empire members saying in the INF browser if they won or lost. Screenshot should include both comments in the same shot from both sides and be in jpeg format with a size of minimally 1024 x 768. Screenshots should be sent to (email will be provided).

As you can see, as you grow in size you may attain more than enough citys to defend each week. For this reason, for every 10 citys you gain you may assign a single city to start an auxillary team. This auxillary team will then be able to expand your "empire" for you. Auxillary teams can be formed from patriots (see below) or mercenarys (see below) who wish to join an empire. Weaker states may form alliances and strategize among themselves as they please.

There will be two castes of "freelancers." mercenarys and patriots. A mercenary claims allegiance to no one and may fight in any weeks match he chooses. He may fight in up to 3 matches a week. Patriots may fight unlimited matches a week but can only claim patriotism towards one "empire." He may forfeit his unlimited turns for the week and fight in a single match to assist an ally of a empire. A patriot is under no obligation to fight for his empire during the week. If a patriot chooses he may swap allegiances or become a mercenary. If he does this he forfeits all turns for the week. Mercenarys who wish to become patriots do not suffer this penalty.

Full allegiance members of an empire may fight unlimited battles a week for there empire. They may only assist each ally they have once a week. This includes assigning an auxillary team to fight for said ally. An empire may only use 2 mercs for one week, or 1 for 2 weeks and then cannot use a mercenary for the following week. If an empire cannot field at least 2 members once every 2 weeks they should not be running an empire. The system allows for all players to have a chance to participate and to see more than just numbers to what there victorys are accomplishing.

If an empire is wiped out, the players become mercs for 2 weeks and then may choose to join another empire or become a patriot.

The game will run until 1 empire conquers over 70% of the map.

All empires, citys, and perhaps many players will have bio/profile pages you may access on the DTASAL website that is under construction. Once complete you can simply click a tab to open a citys info or an empires profile.

Hope you guys like the idea!

 

[yurch]

You sir, have been playing entirely too much R:TW.

 

[NTKB]

well.... I actually had this idea way before R:tw came out... Ask Shan I was trying to form a league like this almost a year ago. But now that I think of it it does seem kinda rtwish. Hey if it works it works just trying to have some fun here

 

[UN17]

Ooo complicated Sounds fun! Hope you have enough teams for a pretty good fight.

 

[Vega-don]

im down with this but its ****ing complicated.. wasnt it supposed to be the "easy and quick league"?
give me a gun, and an ennemy!

 

[Keganator]

Seconded

 

[NTKB]

im down with this but its ****ing complicated.. wasnt it supposed to be the "easy and quick league"?
give me a gun, and an ennemy!

It does seem complicated but really its pretty simple once you understand it. Most of the rules listed were to avoid complications later and to answer all possible questions ahead of time. Heres a simple version of how this works:

As an individual, you must choose. Mercenary, Patriot or Empire. As a merc, you can play 3 matches a week with any empire. Its that simple and really theres nothing more to it. A patriot can fight unlimited battles a week but only for his empire. He is also not expected to fight ANY of the empires battles for a week. Patriots are for people who wish to support an empire without being under any sorta obligation. And lasty I guess we can call them soldiers, they will be dedicated to one empire and fight for its boundrys and survival. They are expected to take a vested interest in there empire, and this position is only for the team that can field 4+ members not including patriots. Thats all you need to know as an individual.

Now as a team, it gets a little bit more complicated though not much. You choose a city before the league starts. I will provide a map and its citys, and teams will choose one in the order they signed up for the league, TW (my team) being last to choose since we were the first to sign up and are all members of the mod committee ( to be fair ). After this, sometime during sunday you will PM via DTASAL forums a challenge request to an adjacent city you wish to attack for that week. you will then fight a match within the week that will decide who controls the city. Thats the basics. The rest is to sort out the details.

If clans like n1 wish to sign up with 8 people are I think they are, you may form 2 empires and be allies. It is strongly suggested neighboring smaller empires next to these larger alliances form alliances of there own to deal with the big nieghbor. In the end though, good fighting will win the day.

Maps will still be small and TDMish so that hasnt changed. Its really up to you how much you wish to be involved in the league. As a merc you will have minimum involvment (but play an important role nonetheless). As a patriot you can have minimum involvement as well but can also be very involved. And as a soldier you will be greatly involved.


If worse comes to worse I can always make this a simple ladder league

 

[-=]N[=-ZeuS]

This is Shan's IGL thing!

What about that idea that was shot around with Shan about mercs being able to band together to freeze an area of the map for a turn (week) to complicate the advancment of certain empires?

Is that all you've got out of rules or are there more? If there are more I'd like to see em (if they changed a lot since the IGL talk)

 

[ant75]

That's simply not fair, there are much more german players than french players, they're gonna invade us a third time for sure... I demand an option "call allied forces" .

More seriously, i see several problems coming from this system. Maybe i didn't understand it quite well, in that case correct me.
- Basically an empire starts with 3 cities. So if they loose their first 3 matches they're out and that's it ?
- You said a defeated empire could always be "hired" by another empire as an auxiliary team, but who's gonna hire for his empire a team that had nothing but defeats ? Surely nobody will, and i already forsee that the best players are gonna be in great demand, while less experienced players are gonna gonna be cast out. This is just snobbish.
- As teams get wiped out, the whole system is gonna be monopolized by a few empires that will endlessly fight to exterminate eachother, which is gonna take a while since those remaining teams will be approximately of the same skill level and will have a lot of cities to conquer. The process i'm describing here is a classic phenomenon in economics and will surely happen here unless you find some kind of "antitrust" rules to prevent the whole thing from becoming an oligopoly in the hands of 2 or 3 empires.
- also, what's with this MWH TDM sudden death thing ? Why this map particularly ? Why TDM, whereas the rest of matches are DTAS ? Why 3 rounds only ?
- if i understand correctly, a team that can't/doesn't want to respond to a challenger automatically looses the city it was challenged for. So imagine that a team of 3 players is very busy during a certain week (exams, work or RL stuff). If 10 teams challenged them on this very week they loose all the territories they were supposed to defend ? If not how long can they postpone the fights ?

It seems to me that some of these issues have to be thorougly thought through if you don't want this league to become uninteresting to most teams after 2 weeks of playing.

 

[geogob]

It does seem complicated but really its pretty simple once you understand it.

Still, even I understand it, it is still complicated.
Me neither, I didn't expect such a complex league (from the original premise).

 

[-=]N[=-ZeuS]

I'll try to clarify...

-Every empire starts with 3 cities. These cities are not next to another empire so this way you can gain more cities as much as you want until you meet up with another emipre. Then you fight it out

-If someone gets defeated but was defeated because they got overwhelmed with challenges and worn down, doesnt make them any worse players (I expect to be among the first to fall yet some people consider me a good player... on my good days

-That's why when someone gets high in power the smaller empires band together to try and cut them down to size. This is an ongoing event to keep people interested in INF as long as possible. It's supposed to take a long time.

-The MDM/MWH 3 round TDM match is a "counter-attack". Basically...
you attack team 1.
team 1 defends your attack.
team 1 couterattacks against you.
you play a MDM 3 round TDM match
team 1 wins
team 1 gets YOUR city
You can only do a TDM couterattack AFTER defending from an attack. And you can only counterattack the team who last attacked you the round previous. You cannot counterattack someone who beat you in an attack.

-Building an empire is a hard and time-consuming thing. If you cannot respond to the attacks you should not enter (as NT said). If you're shorthanded call in some merc, that's what they're there for. You cannot postpone a challenge, only forfeit. No exceptions, **** happens to everyone, not just you. It's not like you're actually losing the world, it's a game. If you drop out because your team cant get it together doesnt mean you're through, you can still play as a freelancer.


That's the way I see it and the way it was supposed to be for the IGL

 

[geogob]

If someone gets defeated but was defeated because they got overwhelmed with challenges and worn down, doesnt make them any worse players (I expect to be among the first to fall yet some people consider me a good player... on my good days)

Well that sucks. I mean. You lose because 4 teams decide to challange you the same week. You would play against them, but not in 7 days. So you lose because of that? mmm.

Building an empire is a hard and time-consuming thing.

So? where's the fun league, whit easy rules and little organisation going then? Will be even worse with that Patriot thing.


Well that idea is a very good idea, very interesting. But not what I expected for the original proposed DTASAL. The match organisation will be even worse than with the ILCR IMO... especially if we have to debate on mutators and stuff like that.

EDIT: Post continued...

[...]they may initiate a sudden death MWH 3 round TDM match.

Why TDM? Why not the closest attacker city? MWH makes no sense what so ever (and is an ugly map). The idea of sudden death is a very good one though. Could see nice comebacks.

Also, i like the idea of making alliances. Makes it more interesting.
What happens when an official alliance wins over 70% of the map or have eliminated all other teams... do they turn back at each other?

What happens if two team challanges one of my city and I forfeit the city, not playing with any of the teams? Do they have to fight each other?

 

[-=]N[=-ZeuS]

Well that sucks. I mean. You lose because 4 teams decide to challange you the same week. You would play against them, but not in 7 days. So you lose because of that? mmm.

IRL you try to overwhelm the enemy by attacking all at once rather than sending small waves to be decimated. It's just good strategy.

So? where's the fun league, whit easy rules and little organisation going then? Will be even worse with that Patriot thing.

The fun league is the day to day playing you do on the free servers
An event is something people go out of their way to make complicated ^_^

Well that idea is a very good idea, very interesting. But not what I expected for the original proposed DTASAL. The match organisation will be even worse than with the ILCR IMO... especially if we have to debate on mutators and stuff like that.

Yea, it caught me off guard too. I really was expecting a DTAS version of ILCR but NT took out the IGL plans and turned it from EAS to DTAS. Not that I mind, I think it could kick ass! I just wish more and more people would participate...

 

[NTKB]

This is Shan's IGL thing!

What about that idea that was shot around with Shan about mercs being able to band together to freeze an area of the map for a turn (week) to complicate the advancment of certain empires?

Is that all you've got out of rules or are there more? If there are more I'd like to see em (if they changed a lot since the IGL talk)

Wrong. I had brought the idea to Shan and we were going to start the league together. He put up forums and all. After a few weeks of dev it didnt work out so he saw that some similar ideas were floating around and brought my concept to there concepts. I am now trying to envision what I originally had planned that shan liked so much that it moved him to start forums and whatever other help I needed. Hope that clears everything up.

AIEEEE to much to repsond to with people responding.

N[=-ZeuS]-Every empire starts with 3 cities. These cities are not next to another empire so this way you can gain more cities as much as you want until you meet up with another emipre. Then you fight it out

Not exactly. You start with a SINGLE city, and then you will be surrounded by a MINIMUM of 3 empty citys which you can invade from week 1 and claim for your empire. When choosing your city at the start of the league, you cannot select one that is adjacent (citys will be connected by "roads") to another empires city. Empires will choose there city in the order they sign up there empire. No logo, etc is needed, but if you wish you may submit one so that your empire bio page has one. You may even submit a screenshot of yourself and some bio text (fictional whatever). We will do our best to get everyone, only expect delays if massive influx of these fall on our lap. We wont delay league start for this kind of stuff.

Well that sucks. I mean. You lose because 4 teams decide to challange you the same week. You would play against them, but not in 7 days. So you lose because of that? mmm.

Hence the need for patriots. I am thinking of making the merc cap for a team at 50%. So try and get people to be "friendly" towards you. I am not expecting too many empires but it will be interesting to see how the community responds to this.

So? where's the fun league, whit easy rules and little organisation going then? Will be even worse with that Patriot thing.


Well that idea is a very good idea, very interesting. But not what I expected for the original proposed DTASAL. The match organisation will be even worse than with the ILCR IMO... especially if we have to debate on mutators and stuff like that.

Its not hard at all to organize. You look at the map. Choose a city to attack, send a PM, wait 1 day and recieve a few game times they are available, you respond, meet fight and we handle the updating. Once its all set up it will require minimal effort from the players, minus the leaders or teams who work as a council to forge an empire. But these players CHOOSE to be so involved. If you geogob, wanted to fight for my empire for instance, if you didnt want to be involved in 2-4 challenges a week (4-6 hours) then be a patriot for me! You may then dedicate as much time in the week as you choose or we need you. You can even stop for a month then come back and jump back into the fray.

- Basically an empire starts with 3 cities. So if they loose their first 3 matches they're out and that's it ?

"If an empire is wiped out, the players become mercs for 2 weeks and then may choose to join another empire or become a patriot" for another empire.

- You said a defeated empire could always be "hired" by another empire as an auxiliary team, but who's gonna hire for his empire a team that had nothing but defeats ? Surely nobody will, and i already forsee that the best players are gonna be in great demand, while less experienced players are gonna gonna be cast out. This is just snobbish.

Perhaps if a team serves as mercs for 2 weeks they may choose to attack an open city, and if it has a neighboring empire, that empire may choose to issue a sudden death 3 round TDM MWH match which can stop them from controlling the city and make them wait another 2 weeks as mercs. I plan to add a generous amount of citys so the map will be constantly shifting. Does that sound fair for you? Your not a bad player anyway

- As teams get wiped out, the whole system is gonna be monopolized by a few empires that will endlessly fight to exterminate eachother, which is gonna take a while since those remaining teams will be approximately of the same skill level and will have a lot of cities to conquer. The process i'm describing here is a classic phenomenon in economics and will surely happen here unless you find some kind of "antitrust" rules to prevent the whole thing from becoming an oligopoly in the hands of 2 or 3 empires.

Hence the 70% of the map win percentage. If you feel this is wrong, perhaps I can reduce it to 60 or even 50%? I want this to be a fair league for all.

- also, what's with this MWH TDM sudden death thing ? Why this map particularly ? Why TDM, whereas the rest of matches are DTAS ? Why 3 rounds only ?

This map is shaped to provide good flow, and allow a quick result to the match. I chose TDM and the 3 round rule to provide someone who mounted a successful defense against an aggressor the chance to take that aggressors city without any other penalty. Its a free shot to hit them when they are weak (after a loss on attack). I chose 3 rounds of small map TDM because after 3 maps of DTAS im sure the teams will be tired and wish to end it allready. Plus it will throw something new into the mix.

- if i understand correctly, a team that can't/doesn't want to respond to a challenger automatically looses the city it was challenged for. So imagine that a team of 3 players is very busy during a certain week (exams, work or RL stuff). If 10 teams challenged them on this very week they loose all the territories they were supposed to defend ? If not how long can they postpone the fights ?

I am thinking of capping the max attacks on a single city for a round (1 week) at 1 attacks. Whoever issues the challenge first and gets a response will be the one who gets the chance. As you can see, some citys will be hotspots of action. if your a small empire (3 players is small) you may choose to take a city far away from larger empires to start, or form alliances with smaller empires like your own. By pressuring a larger empire you may reduce the risk of them taking your city. There is many strategys involved and if you run an empire I forsee a very immersive experience.

Ok lets see who instaposted me with this huge response I wrote LOL

 

[NTKB]

And guys if you really want an ILCR DTAS ladder I can do that instead. Its up to you guys. I just thought you might like this idea. I did originally envision this slightly different but the rules lawyers were not being very active so I took things into my own hands.

 

[-=]N[=-ZeuS]

I'm not complaining, I always wanted IGL to hit it off...

I do agree that 70% is too much, 60% would be better. You just need to divide the map so that a percentage is easily calculated (like 50 areas, so 2% each city)

I thought you said an empire got 3 cities? Oh, no, wait, I just read that again. Buffer cities, ok.

What if you get 10 cities, start an auxiliary unit then lose cities until you drop down to 9. Do you lose the auxiliary unit as well? Or do you keep it no matter what?

 

[geogob]

Nothing has been discussed yet on our side, but just as curiosity can you have a team of merceneries that work only together? Or only individuals?

 

[NTKB]

N[=-ZeuS]

I do agree that 70% is too much, 60% would be better. You just need to divide the map so that a percentage is easily calculated (like 50 areas, so 2% each city)

I thought you said an empire got 3 cities? Oh, no, wait, I just read that again. Buffer cities, ok.

What if you get 10 cities, start an auxiliary unit then lose cities until you drop down to 9. Do you lose the auxiliary unit as well? Or do you keep it no matter what?

Done. 60% it is. That should be better. Amount of citys depends on empires formed at start. Plus I wish to include more citys of the clans that sign up. If alot of germans sign up there will be more citys in germany. etc.

Good question on the aux. The aux team is only wiped out if its provinces it is assigned is wiped out. Its basically a mini empire within an empire. However, if wiped out, they may all become patriots for the main 4 vs 4 team of the empire.

but just as curiosity can you have a team of merceneries that work only together? Or only individuals?

That is totally up the mercenarys. they may form crews and even assign a leader to handle contacts, whatever. Hell you can even start a website for your merc company. Its entirely up to you as a merc to play as you please.

I am expecting 6+ empires to form at league start.

 

[cracwhore]

MWH...

Please, no. Anything but TDM - especially that map.

And a question on the 'timeframe' of the battles: More or less, the 'empire' that will win this will be the one made up of people that don't have jobs / school? From what I understand, you have to fight, basically, right after they challange your city?

Well, that's awesome for those of us that work all week or attend classes.

And why must we issue and answer challanges on certain days of the week? Seems a bit silly...

This league is false advertising.

Besides, isn't EAS more of an ideal gametype for a 'war scenario'? The maps actually have objectives, rather than a silly flag. Granted, the majority of the maps are terrible...

But I mean, if you're going to do what you want to do; honestly, why not just call it 'TDM league'. DTAS doesn't really serve a purpose here, if the goal is to 'conquer some other army', I would assume that you win by defeating that 'army'.

It almost seems as if this gametype would require it's own EAS maps to properly function as a true 'Risk' ripoff. If we had some more maps like 'Mostar', there wouldn't be a problem in the world...

To sum it up, from what I've read, it seems as if this league will never end - unless people just stop playing.

This happened in the ILCR, and your idea is much more complicated than 'win / loss, climb / fall on ladder'.

 

[Crowze]

You miss the point about the IGL. The point is, the IGL didn't take off because the proposed rules and whole scoring system was too complicated. Now, you've taken the same concept, added more complications, and called it a 'fun and fast-paced league'? That doesn't quite add up.