Panzer Corps 2 - World Championship - Round 2 Update

[bendtheknee]

[/quote]
If a player blindly disbands all units without checking them first, no briefing can help him.
[/quote]

In my opinion one of the goal of this kind of tournament is to try to interest a maximum of people in pvp on pzc2, the strongest like you folklore (I really think so for having played against you ^^) to weaker and help players early in the game to avoid irreparable mistakes. Now my biggest fear is that the player will no longer connect (currently turn 6) and it comes back to the scoring system problem again ...

[/quote]
Also, I might be wrong, but in this round 2 map, the defender is vastly overwhelmed by attacking units. There is no way to win as defenders if the players have similar skills. That is why the current point system is better than a simple binary win/lose system. Otherwise, the majority of players will have 1-1, which kinda makes such a round of no avail.
[/quote]
certainly a win / loss system has no place in this kind of tournament. But I would like to have a little explanation from slitherine on the changes they plan to make before round 3.

[bendtheknee]

hey edmon a little you tube video of the match against EILobo

[Trepko]

Currently in combat with Pink1a (bubu13 vs Pink1a) he remove all his units during the deployment turn to create units without experiences. Devastating mistake ...
A little clarification in the briefing can prevent this sort of thing in my opinion.

If a player blindly disbands all units without checking them first, no briefing can help him.
Also, I might be wrong, but in this round 2 map, the defender is vastly overwhelmed by attacking units. There is no way to win as defenders if the players have similar skills. That is why the current point system is better than a simple binary win/lose system. Otherwise, the majority of players will have 1-1, which kinda makes such a round of no avail.

There would be 2 ways to make the system work:
- If both players win the "attacker side", then the final winner is determined by how fast he succeeded (i.e at what round did he win).
- Or you could keep the actual scoring system, but only to determine the final winner. And then, the ranking is determined by how many wins each player has.

The problem of the actual scoring system is that the points you got from each round are used to determine the overall ranking, whereas only the number of win/lose should.
Transpose this to any sport championship: in soccer for example, the winner of each match is determined by how many goals each player scored. But the championship ranking is not determined by the number of goals you scored during all the matches. It is depending on how many matches you won.

[Dardalon]

The scoring system is very unjust and bad. I play since "Panzer General 2" and know the series. For what do you do a world championship? To know, who is the best. Not, who can reap points. That's boring. The ultimate goal should always be to win the game. Everything else is for wimps.

So make it a real contest!

[DarkBlueInk]

There are really only 2 problems with the current scoring mechanism:

1) the "bug" or bad design that stops points accumulation once the attacker captures all victory hexes. It wouldn't be a problem to win fast if you were getting credit for it. This should be a very easy fix.

2) the points awarded when your opponent is a no-show or quits mid-round. Awarding 2000 points is way too high. When only the top ~12 players have over 4000 points for 2 rounds, then awarding 2000 points is too high.

These problems are glaring given that we are only into the second of twelve rounds. If we were into the 10th round (and the scoring issue fixed) then I think we would see a more accurate ranking. For the next several rounds there will be volatility until the top players are playing other top players every round.

[Dzidek]

I think, there is no solution, After 1st round it should have been paired the winners. But now the pairing was by points (what we know, can be higher by losing slow, than for a fast winning). Only solution is restart the whole tournament with a correct method.

Exactly, I wrote about it, there will always be someone wronged.

The solution is pretty easy and it is my specialty to turn crap around, so I still think it is.

It's nice that we agree that this tournament is crap:)
Of course, we can try to improve it, unfortunately the disgust will remain.

Enough complaining, below are my suggestions for changes.
1. A tournament rules should be created, where the rules, the method of scoring points, and the selection of opponents will be described in detail. Resolving unusual situations, disputes and all similar things that should be there.
2. Scoring fixes when attacker captures all control points. (As I understand it, work is underway on this). What if the defender captures all Supply and Control Points and destroys all of the attacking units? Such a game should also end automatically with additional scoring for the defender. Generally small points are good and reflect the specificity of the game.
3. Analyze matches not resolved before time runs out. Most often it is the result of one of the parties withdrawing from the game (or delaying the time), most often when the loss is already obvious. In this case, the points for the winner should be added for controlled points for all missing rounds. If the situation is unclear, the remaining player should be treated as if his opponent had not started the game from the beginning.

And two suggestions for diversifying the battles.
1. Add sometimes commander traits for scenario. The same or different chosen wisely would certainly diversify the gameplay.
2. Add a few heroes for assignment to units. Another variety and another opportunity to prove yourself.

That's all my suggestions, maybe they will be useful for something.

2) the points awarded when your opponent is a no-show or quits mid-round. Awarding 2000 points is way too high. When only the top ~12 players have over 4000 points for 2 rounds, then awarding 2000 points is too high.

I think that 2000 points is ok. By not recognizing a quick win and not analyzing completed but unresolved matches, the scoring is falsified and probably many more players would exceed the 4,000 points. Especially since the second round is still in progress.

[SiberianStorm]

Reposting here as well:

A question for moderators/Slitherine/experienced players

Is there anything that can be done to prevent “forced battle/full turn replays”?
Something like server side game caches for MP battles and tournaments would remove this but will likely become yet another feature request for developers in the already long list

This issue has been mentioned before on the forum, and up to my knowledge has not been answered.
Situation I am discussing here is when game or game engine crash results in opportunity to replay the single unit battle (rerolls of unlucky outcomes/correction of mistakes) or even full game turns.

This explains some of the weird behavior I witnessed in my multiplayer games.
-players disconnecting from their turn multiple times
-turn video replays that start with sequence of attacks on key defence points across the board, that all unsurprisingly result in above average luck
-surpressed 7 strong artillery killing 2 and surpressing 5 entrenched pioneers

I record my games and can provide more examples if this helps anyone

I have to say this has nothing to do with my current battle/opponent but I am confident this happens in the tournament as well.

There are two solutions I can think of:
-insist that you coordinate playing time and play live (difficult to manage and implement)
-join the opponent’s turn and remain logged in so that the game state is saved on your side of the table, and when the game “crashes” and opponent logs back in again, the turn resumes as normal.

I can’t imagine myself continously monitoring if the opponent started the turn and logging in to keep the cache/game state intact.
Aside from costing a lot of precious time it removes all of the fun and thrill of playing the MP games.

This issue is bigger threat to corect scoring than most of the other things discussed.

Is there an easy existing solution to prevent this?

[ElLobo]

Sorry Lifever, but this tournament cannot be saved anymore. [...]

I hope you take it well if I firmly disagree.

The solution is pretty easy and it is my specialty to turn crap around, so I still think it is.
Blind optimism is not one of my traits though

Good things need time and this tournament is for a year - so it does not run away. Those that care keep their screenshots and will get a happy ending.
The game mechanics are in order for the most part. It would be more severe, if there would be a bug that makes playing impossible or unfair.
It appears to me the game is good enough in its current form - although it could still need some tweaking here and there for MP.

Your observation, that potential has been compromised and was wasted, disappointed me as well.
The participants vastly outdid the last great PzC1 tournament - which is the only reason I cared about it.
Without activity and community this format is pointless and the PzC2 Championship worthless.

Anyway...

We could also see it as a test of mental toughness. In a war we need to grind and suffer before the story unfolds.
Hopefully this will also be achieved here, bc the ones willing to put in the effort will stand out.
The weak will quit - we don't want them in the corps anyway.
The rest is taken care off as we speak - an azubi was already put to work this morning.

As you say, good things need time, the problems can be solved too by time!!!
a test for my mental toughness? sorry, this you will loose, i got a fantastic lesson of "how to play" by Edmon (thank you very much, it was bloody for me, but i´m happy with)
and he tested my mental toughness!!!

i´m keen on playing, and i want meet the best!!!!

I know that the most difficult and most challanging is to have the patience to wait and to see what will happen,....

this game is fantastic and a quick and fast solution probably is worse than it is now.....
....good things need time!!!!

I´m looking forward to!!!

[StuG_Tutor]

Folklore wrote:

If a player blindly disbands all units without checking them first, no briefing can help him.

I did this with the British in round 2 out of rote habit from playing random map multi-player, but I agree with Folklore--mea culpa!

[StuG_Tutor]

SiberianStorm wrote:

This explains some of the weird behavior I witnessed in my multiplayer games.
-players disconnecting from their turn multiple times
-turn video replays that start with sequence of attacks on key defence points across the board, that all unsurprisingly result in above average luck
-surpressed 7 strong artillery killing 2 and surpressing 5 entrenched pioneers

I brought up my concerns about a keystroke that crashed me out of multi-player and allowed me to play a turn over on Steam just before the tournament began and I think Edmon said that a suspicious number of game crashes by a player would be considered cheating. I was given the impression this was trackable by Slitherine.

But a player disconnecting from their turn multiple times doesn't mean they are crashing their systems. irl I have a lot of things competing for my attention. This weekend I realized I could "Exit to Menu" in the middle of a multi-player turn and come back to it later--I had always assumed once you start your turn you have to finish and rushed a lot in prior turns (when my opponent showed up) because I could only grab "x" minutes to fit in a turn. I am pretty slow at making decisions in the game (I drive "real time" multiplayers nuts!) I plan on using the Exit to Menu option a lot. By your criteria list that would make me a suspected cheater. I'm not, just got a lot going on.

[urbanov4]

Currently in combat with Pink1a (bubu13 vs Pink1a) he remove all his units during the deployment turn to create units without experiences. Devastating mistake ...
A little clarification in the briefing can prevent this sort of thing in my opinion.

If a player blindly disbands all units without checking them first, no briefing can help him.
Also, I might be wrong, but in this round 2 map, the defender is vastly overwhelmed by attacking units. There is no way to win as defenders if the players have similar skills. That is why the current point system is better than a simple binary win/lose system. Otherwise, the majority of players will have 1-1, which kinda makes such a round of no avail.

This point system good to decide, who won, but only between the two, who played against each other. With it there will be no draw games (or it would be extremely rare). But it is very bad to compare players, who had different opponents. It makes possible to win the whole tournament by onyl palying against weak players. Also, most of the players will have no chance to play against the strongest ones, and to win the tournament even, if they won all of their games. There is no system like this. Think it over : it is like the footbal world championship would be won by the team, who had the most goals (against the weakest ones of course). Or the box champion would be,the one, who had the most points in his all matches added, not counting he was knocked out half of them. And the ones, who knocked him out would be somewhere in the middle of bottom. This should be really similar to boxing matches. Points decide who won, then the winner gets a point and play against other winners.

[Folklore]

There would be 2 ways to make the system work:
- If both players win the "attacker side", then the final winner is determined by how fast he succeeded (i.e at what round did he win).
- Or you could keep the actual scoring system, but only to determine the final winner. And then, the ranking is determined by how many wins each player has.

The problem of the actual scoring system is that the points you got from each round are used to determine the overall ranking, whereas only the number of win/lose should.
Transpose this to any sport championship: in soccer for example, the winner of each match is determined by how many goals each player scored. But the championship ranking is not determined by the number of goals you scored during all the matches. It is depending on how many matches you won.

So, the winner is determined after both attacker/defender sides points are compared? That's a decent take.

[SiberianStorm]

Folklore wrote:

If a player blindly disbands all units without checking them first, no briefing can help him.

I did this with the British in round 2 out of rote habit from playing random map multi-player, but I agree with Folklore--mea culpa!

It may help players new to MP and new to tournaments to explain some of these basics.
I found these post written by PC legends really helpful and will summarize some of my learnings here:
-Thanks @Folklore https://steamlists.com/panzer-corps-2-m ... uide-tips/
-Thanks @[TOR]a432 https://indiefaq.com/guides/1666-panzer-corps-2.html
Start with (re)reading the game manual.
Watch Edmon's tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUt9vO ... SqlUMLnFWX
Read the above referenced posts.
CHAT with your opponent, I found many people fun and helpful.

DEPLOYMENT
1. You can change your army setup during the deployment phase (redeploy, purchase, upgrade (within the same class or to another class e.g. tank to recon, disband)). Undeploy all button will undeploy core units only, which will also help you understand what to mess with (core) and what never to disband (auxiliary). Disband all is not to be done.
2. You can always redeploy your core units. If you disband a core unit (has a ^ symbol on the unit icon) you will get the full cost of the unit (prestige, core slots) back.
BEWARE: If you disband a core unit with experience (stars *) you can not buy a new unit with the same experience instead. Upgrade preserves experience. Cross-class upgrade e.g. tank to recon, removes one star from experience.
4. If you undeploy an auxiliary unit you may not be able to redeploy it (not completely sure about the rules/exceptions here).
5. If you disband an auxiliary unit you may not get any prestige back (not sure if there are any exceptions). DO NOT DISBAND auxiliary units during the deployment phase, you will not get any value back.
6. If you buy paratroopers WITHOUT a transport and scenario allows for air transport, you can deploy airborne paratroopers in the deployment phase AND drop them in the 1st turn to an unoccupied airfield.
PROTECT your airfields (and supply hexes) (and objectives) with a unit at all times.
7. 17 strength Bridge Engineer costs 90 prestige and 1 core slot. Split unit of Bridge Engineers (8 + 9) costs 90 prestige points and 2 core slots and is often good enough to prevent a paratrooper drop or a long distance recon/truck advance to your supply hex. This makes them a great candidate for the above "protection"
BATTLE
1. You can buy new units only at the supply hexes. Supply hexes have an icon with white "half-circle", and can be different from mission objective hexes. Buy planes at the supply airfields, buy ground units at supply "cities", buy ships at supply ports.
2. You can disband your existing units (and recover it's worth in core slots (full) and prestige (prorated)) ONLY at the supply hexes. AND if the movement and attack actions have not been spent, otherwise you have to wait for the new turn. Recons are exceptions to the rule as you can move them to the supply hex and disband them IF attack action is unspent.

I had a huge advantage over my opponent in the round two as he made no changes to the initial army setup while I redeployed in both situations.
This has made the match completely one sided and I hope this will help more people understand some of the MP mechanics and benefit from it.

There is probably much more to learn from the best in the game.
Feel free to add to this post/correct if I made mistakes.
Good luck everyone

[DarkBlueInk]

^^^^^ This is exactly what Slitherine should have provided to all players before the tournament started ^^^^

[HerrOberst]

Thank you SiberianStorm, that was an excellent and informative post!

[bendtheknee]

Reposting here as well:

A question for moderators/Slitherine/experienced players

Is there anything that can be done to prevent “forced battle/full turn replays”?
Something like server side game caches for MP battles and tournaments would remove this but will likely become yet another feature request for developers in the already long list

This issue has been mentioned before on the forum, and up to my knowledge has not been answered.
Situation I am discussing here is when game or game engine crash results in opportunity to replay the single unit battle (rerolls of unlucky outcomes/correction of mistakes) or even full game turns.

This explains some of the weird behavior I witnessed in my multiplayer games.
-players disconnecting from their turn multiple times
-turn video replays that start with sequence of attacks on key defence points across the board, that all unsurprisingly result in above average luck
-surpressed 7 strong artillery killing 2 and surpressing 5 entrenched pioneers

this is a secondary problem, if a person wants to cheat ... they will cheat no matter what you do.
Crashing the game to be able to replay your turn is obviously cheating, but personally I don't see the point of finishing first in a worthless ranking ...
The priority must be put on the fact of attracting new players to the multiplayer and there fore to have an adapted point system (person who does not play, quick victory which makes lose points, etc.)

[tycoon1969]

What does one do if their opponent has still not taken their turn? Is there a way to let them know they are being waited on? Guess I should give some background...since the beginning of the 2nd round started there has been no action from my opponent. I'm still waiting on their turn one.

Aaron

[SteelTiger007]

you get 2000 for not playing so who cares about playing a game where you win BOTH SIDES DECISIVELY AND GET LESS THAN 2000 POINTS, I am not playing so my opponent Panzergott will get 2000 and he still has no chance of winning tournament since leaders are at 5800 points , he will be 2000 points behind and still trail any nonplayers which got 4000.... BY THE THE 3RD ROUND ITS MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CATCH ANY ONE AT THE TOP EVEN WHEN YOU WON EVERY GAME IN FIRST TWO ROUNDS BY THIS SCORING SYSTEM WHICH IGNORES THE WINNER AND REWARDS THE POINTS COUNTING STRATEGY

[DarkBlueInk]

you get 2000 for not playing so who cares about playing a game where you win BOTH SIDES DECISIVELY AND GET LESS THAN 2000 POINTS, I am not playing so my opponent Panzergott will get 2000 and he still has no chance of winning tournament since leaders are at 5800 points , he will be 2000 points behind and still trail any nonplayers which got 4000.... BY THE THE 3RD ROUND ITS MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CATCH ANY ONE AT THE TOP EVEN WHEN YOU WON EVERY GAME IN FIRST TWO ROUNDS BY THIS SCORING SYSTEM WHICH IGNORES THE WINNER AND REWARDS THE POINTS COUNTING STRATEGY

You're not reading and you're not listening. Slitherine acknowledges the problem and has clearly said a fix is coming before round 3. We do not know yet if the fix is retroactive or not, so overreacting is not your best move here. Have some patience and give them a chance to address it.

On top of that, once the stronger players are at the top of the leader board and playing against each other, it will not be blowout games. Very likely they will be lower, more evenly scored games with both players winning the attack or both players winning on defense. That time will give others a chance to gain some ground and maybe overtake them. But with only 2 out of 12 rounds done, YOU don't know. So chill and let's see what happens in November.

I'm curious though, when real life isn't fair to you outside of pixel war games, do you rage quit then as well?

[malic]

All I know is I'm having a blast playing and i just wanted to say thanks to my two opponents so far for playing it through. Now I cant wait for round three to start lol.