Evaluating CIV Players

[Sareln]

How would you do so without counting on a win/loss ratio? What statistics do you think would be important or useful? Basically, how do you determine how "good" of a player someone is without looking at their Win/Loss? Or is that the only thing that matters?

[Twinkletoes89]

What are you evaluating them for?

Suitability for PitBoss or PBEMs? / Online Play / Single Player or something else?

I think each of these require some different qualities so its hard to put a blanket ranking on a player who may be an amazing SP player but no good at online play.

[Amelia]

Let's just try PBEM / Pitboss for now, since they're around the same thing.

[Sareln]

What are you evaluating them for?

Suitability for PitBoss or PBEMs? / Online Play / Single Player or something else?

I think each of these require some different qualities so its hard to put a blanket ranking on a player who may be an amazing SP player but no good at online play.

I'd be trying to get a comparison against other players with MP in mind. I think that outside of diplomacy and unit movement, the same base skills apply in MP/SP, in MP however, there is less wiggle-room.

[Krill]

I use my gut instinct, but then I've watched quite a lot of players.

[Kyan]

Well, you could use previous PBEM/Pitboss games to generate a ranking system. You would likely need to establish some kind of 'weighting' system though as quality of opposition would need to be a factor. You could make adjustments though for things like:

-how far someone was ahead
-who they were against (their rank?)
-did they get wiped out?
-what position did they finish in?

Such a system might act as an incentive for people not to give up in games when they've already realised they cannot win.

[Cyneheard]

For RB's PBs/PBEMs, there are a number of skills you need, some more valuable than others, and they all vary in value depending on the exact game in question. These are the big ones IMO:

1) Micromanagement. See: Spullla, PB2.
2) Tactics. Micro is cities and workers, tactics is troops. There are plenty of good and not-good examples of that.
3) Diplomacy. That was king in PB3. Obviously irrelevant in PBEM4 - Vets, where it's a CTON.
4) Metagaming. This is things like:
a) Civ/leader selection, being appropriate for what the mapmaker's going to throw at you. You don't want to be Imhotep (PB1: Shaka Zulu, thinking Impi rush where the tech pace was lightning fast and the map gigantic), or Portugal or Carthage in PB3 (no water).
b) General meta-gaming, setting your priorities right during the game. Decisions like how densely to pack in your cities because of the map characteristics and other higher-level decisions.

[Krill]

A lot of the time it isn't how someone performs, it is how they approach and deal with a situation.

[luddite]

Win/loss is really the best way, but I don't think that anyone has played enough games of PB or pbem civ to be fairly evaluated that way.

[Bobchillingworth]

As CIV players win more battles and establish their dominance over their rivals, they increase proportionately in size and bulk. Their teeth grow sharper, their tusks longer, their senses sharper, and their minds keener. A veteran CIV player of many rounds can tower far above mortal men, and frequently sports a variety of gruesome, wickedly curved spines across their person. True CIV Grandmasters have been recorded as large as twenty feet in height, rippling with muscles and causing entire cities to tremble in their wake.

While the generous application of massed collateral has been known to slow their advance, authorities strongly recommend that civilians leave treatment of any concentration of CIV champions to professional archmages or the Imperial Guard, depending on which century & canon you inhabit.