[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Freeciv and a tournament

[Paul Zastoupil <paulz@xxxxxxxx>]

jesdynf wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, Paul Zastoupil wrote:
> 
> > One of the key problems I see is identifying players.  It would be nice
> > to have some sort of id for each client.  Maybe we could generate a key,
> > and make servers aware of the keys.  This could be done easily on
> > www.freeciv.org and then storing that key with user information
> > (something non-invasive, a uid that they pick would be enough) in a
> > database. Of course I wouldn't want the system to require
> > www.freeciv.org... so just keeping a flat file somewhere would be fine.
> 
> That's why I wanted to make it dependent on the metaserver. We can throw
> up another metaserver if we want to; it isn't dependent on THE metaserver
> at freeciv.org.
> 
> A flat file with one line per game would work fine, actually. People
> create scoring accounts on the metaserver, then the game is just recorded.
> 
> The results of the game could look like
> 
> Tourney             Ruleset  Scoring
> -------------------|--------|-------------------------------------
> FC '02 Semifinal    Classic  jesdynf 15, paulz 24, smeier 4.6e+22
> 
> Make the file available for download, and some simple Perl scripts could
> provide any amount of scoring analysis you cared to see.
> 
> Privacy isn't an issue; each individual metaserver can have its own rules
> about who can grab the scoring file. You could run a private tourney quite
> easily; simply deny new scoring accounts, deny non-registered games, and
> deny unauthorized access to the scorefile.

Well I was thinking of this in more of a general sense, not just to work
in a tournament.  If we could identify a user as themselves, and no one
else could impersonate them, we could create a real ranking system. 
Something like a .civclient.id, they could copy this to all the machines
that they play from and the client would present this on connection and
they could be authenticated as to their id.  We could then just let the
ranking run all the time.

> 
> > the scoring right up until the end.  How can we create a "scoring"
> > system that would reflect a persons skills better?  I like the idea of
> > Victory Points suggested by jesdynf <jesdynf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, but I would
> > like to see more discussion of it.
> 
> I don't play enough FreeCiv to really say -- I still get whomped by the AI
> -- but I will note here that the VP system could make or break the game.
> You could easily encourage some very odd strategies if everybody knows a
> checkpoint is coming; a proper scoring system shouldn't involve anything
> where you say "It's 1999; time to set taxes as far as they'll go this
> year"...

This is definitely true.  The rules need to be very intelligently
designed so that pursuing more points wont make for a strange game.


-- 
Paul Zastoupil