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[regoarrarr]

It would just require a delicate balancing of picks that isn't easy to do. Who gets pick 30? No matter who it is, that is the least desirable drafting spot, end of story.

So I noodled on this a bit. I assume some to many people are familiar with the NFL draft value chart. Basically, each pick in the draft is assigned a "value" that most teams agree is the proper "value" of the pick. Coaches and GMs and such use this to balance out trades when they involve future draft picks.

So while I don't think this is completely analagous to our situation, I think it's fairly close, in that the difference between the #1 and #2 picks are a lot more than the difference between the #29 and #30 picks.

http://www.draftcountdown.com/features/Value-Chart.php is the chart

So I tried to minimize the difference between the "value" that each team got and you couldn't make it exactly work, but

1-29-30
2-27-28
3-25-26
4-23-24
5-21-22
6-19-20
7-17-18
8-15-16
9-13-14
10-11-12

comes out pretty close and has an advantage of being fairly simple. So you go 1-10, and then go backwards, with each team gets 2 picks.

Of course, you could always have people bid on which pick they want, or even which set of picks, but then we're kind of right back where we started

[regoarrarr]

So, replying to myself (I gotta get myself back in the habit ), I think those particular values over-represent the dominance of the first picks. The #1 pick isn't THAT much more than the #2 pick (say India / Inca / Fin).

So using the picks from that chart from #4 to #33, another set of orders is

1-29-30
2-24-28
3-20-27
4-17-26
5-16-23
6-13-25
7-15-19
8-14-18
9-12-22
10-11-21

In the end, it's just about deciding the weights - if that can be done, it's fairly trivial to find a set of picks that minimizes st. dev of those picks

[plako]

This system would be alright to me and balance doesn't had to completly right to work well enough. I would suggest something like this for pick order:
1-20-30
2-19-29
3-18-28
4-17-27
5-16-26
6-15-25
7-14-24
8-13-23
9-12-22
10-11-21

That isn't far from Rego's suggestion. Would we have then a limitation that only 2 selections per trait. No duplicates allowed and only real leaders possible. any trait or civ could be picked at any point.

[Cyneheard]

Plako's system is consistent with how Ra sets up the game, which has a slightly unique auction system that works just fine.

@Rego: 1-29-30 is clearly the worst of the 10 players.
You get either your civ of choice, and last pick on all traits, or one of Fin/Exp (which any of the top four players are guaranteed to have access to, and the top 6 get access to at least one of Fin, Exp, Inca or India), and then a crap 2nd trait and last choice of civs.

The NFL draft isn't a great comparison: it has a much steeper drop-off at the top few picks than Civ4 does. Sam Bradford at #1 is the likely Offensive Rookie of the Year, and looks like a franchise quarterback who may lead his team to the playoffs. The #6 pick, Russell Okung, has missed half the season but been a mediocre-to-solid linesman when he's played, quite a lot less valuable. And this year had teams draft really well: very few of the top 10 picks have been busts so far, which is quite rare.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Yeah, the NFL draft I think is an inexact comparison. #1 pick has super high value compared to the #5 pick or #10 pick, because there is often one player that is an obvious future stud, and then a pretty steep drop off. In this setup, there would be an even steeper difference between pick #1 and #30 than in the NFL draft (because there are a lot more players than there will be traits/civs in the pool), but nowhere near the dropoff between 1-10, which is what is important for the trying to balance who gets picks 11-30.

In Civ, if you were drafting from a pool of 2 of each trait, it would be more important to avoid getting Charismatic or Protective than it would be to secure Financial over Creative and Expansive, or hell even over Philosophical or Organized etc. For this reason 1-29-30 isn't even remotely fair. In fact, I don't even think 1-20-30 is fair. I would much rather draft something like 5-15-25, or 10-11-21, because the real goal would be to avoid the chaff in the pool, which no first pick will ever fully compensate for.

To be fair, you would need four rounds of drafting, which would require splitting UUs and UBs, which would require a mod and would just get too complicated for a game that will begin sometime soon (likely next couple weeks).

EDIT: Player list updated.

[Nakor]

Sounds good, Plako.
Only way to find out is by trying (or doing a test pick).

Looking at the sign-ups, I think we could start an 8-team PB. Nice amount of teams, not to big. Thoughts?

[SleepingMoogle]

Eight teams is fine with me, but we can keep the signups open a little while longer while we put the finishing touches on the draft.

[Ioan76]

Hello all from a newcomer !!

I'd like to sign in for this game - if this is still possible. Also I'd like to be in the same team with Mackoti.

Best regards

[Lord Parkin]

If you guys will have me, I'd be most interested to join in on this game. The one pitboss game that I'm involved in at the moment is drawing to an (excitingly close!) conclusion, so I'll soon be ready to pick up another game.

I've lurked from time to time on several other games that you've had going here, and this looks like a great community to be a part of. Some of you will probably know me from other sites (including CFC) where I'm more active - I certainly recognise a few of the names here. For those of you who don't know me already, I'm a veteran of quite a few pitboss games hosted by various different people and websites over the years. It'd be a pleasure to play with some new faces as well as familiar ones.

If you don't mind, I'll launch right into a couple of quick-fire questions for anyone who has a moment to spare.

Firstly, I didn't see an estimated start date in the first post. Any rough ideas yet? Anytime before mid-January will be tricky for me as I'll be going bush for a week or two, but after that I'll be fine.

And a couple of quick questions regarding the rules...

8. No AI Takeover

Am I getting confused, or does this mean that any civs which are reverted to AI stay as AI forever? If so, what's the purpose of this option? What happens if someone, for instance, wishes to change their password mid-game (perhaps for a sub)? The usual practice of retiring then logging back in wouldn't work, right? Or perhaps I'm just getting hopelessly confused.

11. No Spies/Missions
13. Settle or Golden Age all Great Spies

Okay, fair enough. Is this a "flavour" thing or is it to prevent certain exploits? If the latter, then out of curiousity, could someone reference an example where these things have been (presumably) abused to the extent that they are now prohibited? I'm just interested. I'm aware of civic and religion switching missions being a pain and too cheap, as well as issues with pillaging resources, but I didn't think they were that game-breaking - just annoying (at least in my experiences so far). Perhaps I've been blissfully unaware of how bad things can get with espionage and spies.

18. Snake Pick

I'm a little confused by this... can you elaborate?

Thanks for your time, and I look forward to hearing back from you.

[plako]

Nice to have you included LP.

No AI takeover doesn't mean the game option. It means that game won't continue with AI in the game.

Spies - Spies are not big issue for me personally, but in most of the games started here this rule has been used.

Snake pick - normal snake pick means unrestricted leaders. Pick order is randomized. Everyone picks either civ or leader during 1st round and then supplements the pick on the reversed 2nd round. However therehas been lengthy discussion in this thread to try something new.