Some numbers about the Epics tournament

[Kylearan]

Edit: Corrected starting date

Hi,

I'm slightly ill at the moment: Too ill to do something useful, but not ill enough not to be bored. So I decided to take some statistics about the Epics tournament. I don't think we'll make it to Epic 100 with Civ 3, so Epic 50 looks like a good enough jubilee to make a small retrospect.

The first Epic was opened on May 20, 2002, over three years ago! From all of the 50 Epics, 37 were scored, and 13 unscored. Sirian has been the main driving force of the tournament, sponsoring 37 Epics. T-hawk sponsored 5, Arathorn 2, and Rowain deWolf, Charis, Griselda, bihary, microbe and Kodi one each.

How many players have played the Epics is not known, but 104 different players reported about their games, were they be victory, loss, or unfinished. All in all, 483 games were reported. Here's a list of the most active players, not listing those with less than 5 reports:

43: Kylearan
25: Sirian
23: T-hawk
18: Sulla, Jabah
15: Dwip
14: Jester, Urugharakh, Grimjack
12: Cyrene, Griselda
11: falsfire
10: Sirp, Rowain deWolf, Jaxom
9: Smegged
8: Iteean, JMB, DogBoy, Charis, Bam-Bam
7: Hotrod, KingBob
6: mucluc, Sir Bugsy
5: JJ, cheshire cat, snaproll, speaker, 6thGenTexan, Dark Savant, LKendter, Justus II

(Er...who's that crazy guy with apparently Too Much Time On His Hands who alone is responsible for about 9% of all reports? Maybe someone should tell him to Get A Life... )

The game with the most participants was Epic 18: Potluck Duet ( 24 ) followed by Epic 24: Speed Racer ( 20 ), Epic 31: Potluck Brunch ( 19 ) and Epic 14: Alexander the Great/Always War ( 18 ). The Epics with the lowest number of players were Epic 23: Prince of Persia ( 3 ), Epic 49: Domination Dilemma ( 3 ), Epic 41: Balance of Power ( 4 ) and Epic 26: Mystery Meatlof ( 4 ). Average participation per Epic was 9,66 players. Average fun factor was somewhere between High and Very High.


Let's see where this will go from Epic 50 on onward, and how any tournament Civ 4 might spawn will fare. For me, it has been a lot of fun!

-Kylearan

[Jester]

Hey, I'm all the way up at 14? Neat.

Thanks for the great (and long standing!) tournament, Sirian. Thanks as well to everyone who's participated, sponsors and players.

Er, Kylearan, just curious, but what 7 epics *didn't* you play?

Jester

[Sirian]

Thanks for the stats and commentary. Very cool.

The one thing I have to mention is the date, though. September? No way. Epic One began in May and closed on June 10, 2002. Here's the official game list:

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/civ/egamelist.html

So it's been more than three years. 8)

I managed to play in half of these things? That's got to be like fifteen or more of the first twenty, and one out of three or less for the rest.


- Sirian

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Er, Kylearan, just curious, but what 7 epics *didn't* you play?

*cough* Well, that would be Epic 9: Rising Sun, Epic 10: Horse feathers and Epic 11: Hooray for Hollywood (had been away in Ireland on vacation during that time); Epic 20: Food for thought (didn't like the concept: I'm not a big fan of modding); Epic 23: Prince of Persia (I had the expansion already and didn't want to go back); Epic 26: Mystery Meatloaf (no idea why I skipped that); and Epic 34: Dance of the Feathered Serpent (Vacation again, Brittany this time...).

If a potential Civ 4 tournament will run at the same pace as the Epics did in the beginning, meaning 2-3 games in parallel, I don't think I will be able to report that ridiculous high number of games again...somehow, time is getting shorter the more I get older. Or is it because I'm getting slower or less efficient in organizing my spare time? Maybe I should replay Epic 33: The Tortoise and the Hare to see if I'm still able to finish that game in 2h:17m

*sigh* I wish I had the time to play Guild Wars or WoW...

-Kylearan

[Sirian]

If a potential Civ 4 tournament will run at the same pace as the Epics did in the beginning, meaning 2-3 games in parallel, I don't think I will be able to report that ridiculous high number of games again...

What if Civ4 is MORE addictive than Civ3?

[T-hawk]

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with that 23. My site lists a total of 29 Epic reports. Of those, three were shadows on games I sponsored, and Epic Four wasn't a real report, but by my count I played 25 official games with a few being incomplete. (I also reported shadows for a different civ on potluck Epic 18, and for Epic 20 a few months after the fact, but those were posted on the old forum, not my site.)

Sirian's also played at least a couple shadows, although I don't know if he's reported them all.

BTW, this seems as good a time as any to mention this: Sometime last year, I downloaded (as an exercise in Unix shell scripting) all the main Epic info and reporting threads from the old Network 54 board. Didn't get the images, but I've got all the text from those threads archived in case N54 ever disappears. If anyone wants a copy, let me know.

- T-hawk

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with that 23.

What I did was to browse through all the Epic result pages, not to look at the individual user's homepages. Either I miscounted (very well possible, of course), or not all of your games made it into the results, for whatever reasons. Shadow games or games reported too late might thus have been left out, and the dual potluck Epic I counted only as one result.

-Kylearan

[Dwip]

I'm...5th in number of reports? Well, that's surprising, a bit.

Makes me wonder what the numbers are for SG participation.

Neat stuff.

[Sullla]

Hmm, did I play that many games? Most of them were in the beginning of the Epics; I played in 9 of the first 18 Epics, then 5 of the first 9 Play the World Epics. After that I was basically done with Civ3, aside from some swansong performances in Epics 47 and 48. I'm really disappointed with the way Conquests turned out, so much so that I simply didn't want to spend any more time on it once it became obvious that the (many) balancing issues were never going to be fixed in patches.

Fortunately, I expect that we'll see many old faces again and welcome a slew of newcomers in a couple of months with Civ4. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for good things...