[NO PLAYERS] Seeding and ranking discussion

[spacetyrantxenu]

I think the intent of secretly submitting the player rankings was to avoid influencing subsequently submitted rankings.

Edit: I don't know if it's necessary to do that, btw, probably depends on just how much effort is going to be used to balance things out.

[Mardoc]

Yeah, but I want to be influenced. I don't want to rely on my opinions as they stand today, I want to listen to other people's arguments and evidence and change my mind after thinking about it.

[GermanJoey]

That's why I was hoping we could go over each of the players first before we start tossing out numbers. It can't be that I'm the only one that's not intimately familiar with the civ skills of every single person on this list...

[Bacchus]

Yeah, open discussion is the way to go.

My thoughts so far on ability are in line with everyone else's:

Ability
Tier 1, 5 points: (Fin)Harry (confident)
Tier 2, 4 points: Gav (confident)
Tier 3, 2 points: Molach (confident) 2metra, REM (fairly confident), ipecac, Alhazard (not confident)
Tier 4, 1 point: Unknowns (Wannabe, Greywolf, Dantski)

I don't really have enough to go on to differentiate within Tier 3.

Danger to neighbours
Tier 1, 5 points: OH, Gav (confident)
Tier 2, 3 points: 2metra, REM (confident)
Tier 3, 2 points: Molach, ipecac (not confident), Alhazard (not confident)
Tier 4, 1 point: No clue (Wannabe, Greywolf, Dantski)

Clearly, it's the bottom of the table that we need to get more info on.

[GermanJoey]

Yeah, the bottom of the table is what I was hoping for more on too. I read up on these guys some today but I don't have the energy to write much anything up; been sick as a goddamn dog all day today.

REM - ladder player, apparently a very good one according to Mack. my bane in PB22. infamous cataphract rush in PBEM61. a very strong, active-minded player IMHO but quite a bit more short-term minded than he should be, and doesn't think as much about what his opponents are thinking as he should. is extraordinarily aggressive; his only thoughts on the way forward seem to be to kill someone else. this game being BTS will be a big advantage for him. imho he's underrated so far.

ipecac - newish player, but not bad. pb23 - thread unreadable due to ruff's home network spam, but did not do great. I think Dreylin was the main turnplayer though. pbem66 - not a bad performance considering how horrible his land was compared to others. i think you guys are underrating him some.

TheWannabe - pb27 is his only game; he dedlurked ipecec/dreylin/ruff in pb23 but didn't post much. not sure why y'all already rated him a 1 since you're both pb27 players, but IMHO, (pb27 spoiler)

this rating is accurate. he has no idea what he's doing.

Greywolf - FFH and MoM player only. Played in all FFH PBEM XXXII and EitB PBEM XXXVI; didn't seem to know what he was doing.

Molach - more FFH than not. PB11 - did ok, but started slow, had a cramped spot and failed to just slam into his nearest neighbor with agg rome. pb18 - lasted til the end, but got obsessed with a stupid island between him and WilliamLP and didn't really do anything all game. can't comment on pb27. don't know about his ffh stuff.

Alhazard - newish player but seems ok on the fundamentals. many of his updates are inaccessible youtubes. has only played PBEMs so that's a disadvantage. PBEM66 - seemed to be doing okish, but its hard to tell cause he stopped reporting early. pbem67 - was falling behind when the game was called. pbem65 - not that impressed.

Dantski - ancient player from the diplo era. hasn't played in a bts game since pb3, which was over 3 years ago. definitely did not play well there. hasnt played any mp since a few ffh games about 2 years ago. i would rate him fairly low.

2metra - prickly CFC guy. very experienced pitboss player, but doesn't seem to do well when playing here. many hate him here about ISDG drama that i couldn't give a crap about. is a very slow expander, going from PB17 and PB22. however his biggest weakness is with understanding other players. gets insane narratives in his head about what his neighbors are doing, and then will fight for revenge forever against imagined slights. was dtay's bane forever in PB22, and essentially knocked him out of competition. tried to poach land from korea about 30 turns too late, after i already had galleons. then he became my bane forever and knocked me out of competition. another thing to note about pb22: used an enormous carrack navy into the fucking modern era (other civs had destroyers and battleships and he was mostly keeping up in tech) simply to avoid obsoleting the Colossus.

Skill Rating:
OldHarry - 10 (duh)
Gavagai - 9
REM - 7
2metra - 6 2metra+OT4E - 8
ipecac - 5
Alhazard - 4
Molach - 4
Dantski - 2
Greywolf - 1
TheWannabe - 1

As far as neighbors are concerned, from my perspective I'd say that the most dangerous 4 (OH, Gavagai, REM, 2metra) lower their neighbors' skill ratings by 1 apiece, with REM and 2metra getting special consideration above their skill level because they're both kind of disasters to neighbor. That is to say, if, for example, ipecac were next to Gavagai, REM, and Molach, he would effectively rate a skill rating of 3, as far as land-quality goes, meaning he would get better land if he's stuck next to these guys. Conversely, we could say that GreyWolf and TheWannabe would effectively increase their neighbor's skill rating by 1 apiece, because they're likely to underexpand and be food for later.

[DTG]

I played with ipecac in PBEM 66, and Alhazard in PBEM 66 and 67. The current consensus seems to be that both are mid/mid-lower tier players, which seems accurate to me. Briefly, both ipecac and Al understand the fundamentals of BTS, know how to set up cities, and recognize how to snowball via certain wonders. Both, however, underrate the importance of food vs. hammers, probably due to the influence of RtR reports written by better players. Of the pair, ipecac's empire-wide micro is slightly stronger, although he builds too many Workers (I think this is true of Al too, although to a lesser degree). Alhazard is very good at building important wonders in a short amount of time: in PBEM 65, the MoM (1-turn); in PBEM 66, he grabbed the Oracle and Colossus, the latter of which has kept him relevant; in PBEM 67, he built a very early GLH. These wonders don't, however, always have the desired effect, hampering his expansion.

Both are a bit too rigid in their thinking about the game: ipecac, I believe, is relatively new to Civ in SP and MP which limits his options a bit. His land was perfectly fine in PBEM 66 —I'm not sure why GJ thinks otherwise— but he played his hand wrong. Alhazard sometimes commits too hard to the wrong course of action by sticking to preconceived plans, and then falls behind without becoming a non-factor (hence 3x 2nd place finishes, if the ongoing PBEM 66 is included).

For all intents and purposes, I think they play on the same level and are solidly mid-tier with room to grow. Alhazard is a shade stronger at present, and is (I think) more likely to make it to the end of a typical game.

[Jowy]

Okay I know very little but maybe it'll be of some use.

Dantski/V8mark: Hard to judge because their games were forever ago and a lot can change in that time. They've been active in other games like LoL and Hearthstone and done Twitch streaming so perhaps they haven't been playing too much Civ4. I expect them to not make noobie -moves but not be at the top either.
Gavagai: Played against him in a greens game (PB12 I think?). He was middle of the pack. Nothing exciting, though the game was quite one-sided because Serdoa snuck in and dominated.
2Metra: What I remember most from him in PB9 was his will to take down the leader. It's very different from usual RB where most players just let the leader run away with the game.
REM: Performed a successful Cataphract rush to win a PBEM. Could be in trouble in a bigger game. I think his start was pretty slow in that game even before any rush techs.

[Dreylin]

I think Joey's ratings are pretty spot-on.

ipecac - newish player, but not bad. pb23 - thread unreadable due to ruff's home network spam, but did not do great. I think Dreylin was the main turnplayer though. pbem66 - not a bad performance considering how horrible his land was compared to others. i think you guys are underrating him some.

To add a bit more on PB23; while the other greens got to work with a mentor with recent PB experience, he got saddled with a guy who was originally hoping to sign up to that game as a Green myself.

It's true that I was the turnplayer for the early half of the game, however I was operating from a pretty detailed micro plan that was mostly updated by ipecac. Our game was hampered by selecting a leader with niche traits (Monty!) and then running a wonder-heavy opening which hurt our expansion. Anyway, after that start and poor strategic planning, I think ipecac performed well tactically, and is certainly strong on micro.

One note on REM's aggression; regarding PB22 I would probably give AdrienIer a chunk of credit for the narrow focus on you. This mostly from the perception of his other games that he always seems to find a grudge war with someone: PB23 (us/johns), PBEM68 (Grimace), PB29 (Jowy)....

[Mardoc]

Alhazard - 4
Molach - 4

FWIW, I feel like Alhazard can beat me more often than not, while I could beat Molach more often than not. Both are probably in my 'tier'.

[AdrienIer]

One note on REM's aggression; regarding PB22 I would probably give AdrienIer a chunk of credit for the narrow focus on you. This mostly from the perception of his other games that he always seems to find a grudge war with someone: PB23 (us/johns), PBEM68 (Grimace), PB29 (Jowy)....

While I think that the circumstances in those four games are very different, especially for the last two where I wasn't even playing the turns when the wars broke out, I'll admit that I have a great share of the responsibility in our team's aggessive mindset in PB22.