I just finished looking over the real-time ladder templates, and am a bit surprised.

Current Templates:

- 6 of 10 templates are based on one template model, 1v1 Ladder, with the same or similar starts (3x4), card settings, and wasteland settings.

- 8 different maps. 5 of 10 templates are on the Earth series of maps. Diversity?

- Luck: 4 of 10 are the same as the 1v1 ladder. 4 of 10 are straight round 0%. 2 of 10 are straight round 16%. This is good. I would like to see a proportion of 1/4 straight round 0%, 1/4 straight round 16%, 1/4 weighted 16% , 1/4 weighted 0%, and a couple unique attack/defense luck templates.

- Cycling orders: 7 of 10 templates have cycling orders. Did I miss something? Since when are cycling orders so wonderful?

- Light fog: 3 of 10. This is acceptable. But, in the future, please be more creative with templates. Spy, reconnaissance, and surveillance cards do a better job of dealing with the fog of war than light fog. For example, give out one spy card to start the game and no card pieces thereafter; both players see the starts, like with light fog, but can only guess what happens behind the fog thereafter. Or, give two recon cards to start the game, no card pieces thereafter, and let the opponent see you play your cards; you can strategically scan the board to find the enemy's locations (and the enemy sees you doing it!). Or, give out pieces of recon and/or surveillance cards throughout the game (like the Season V template does).

- Local Deployment: 2 of 10. Turkey LD is fine, but Turkey sans LD is better. MME LD is good, but MME LD sans light fog is better.

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Future Templates:

- Less light fog, more spy/recon/surveillance. But keep the ratio of games with light fog/spy/recon/surveillance to a maximum of 20-30%. Currently, 40% of the games have altered fog. It is a bit much.

- Less Earth series maps, more variation. 50% of the current templates are on Earth series maps. A max of 25% would be better.

- Local Deployment: 20% is a good ratio. What other maps would make for good LD games? It seems a map of 60-120 territories is best. Imperium Romanum (no 1:1 bonuses)? Ancient Greece II (change bonus values)? France? Vietnam? Phobia? Snow Mountains?

- 1v1 NC: Currently 20% of the templates have no cards. 20-30% seems about right, based on what others prefer. I would prefer a minimum of 50%.

- Reinforcement Cards: Currently 80% of the templates have reinforcement cards. Why must a player be forced to attack just to keep up in the card race? War is about offense and defense. These 8 templates pressure players to attack. This limits one's strategic options. How can a template be truly "strategic" if at the moment you click "Join" your defensive options and attack options have been limited by the settings? 80% is far too high. Let's not limit the strategic options with settings. Give players a fixed and limited number of armies and see who can use them better. Don't introduce performance enhancing armies (PEA)!

- 10 templates is a bit sparse. More variety would be nice. Don't let people get comfortable with all the templates. In an ideal world, a rotating template 1v1 ladder represents (a) what people enjoy, (b) a showcase of what WL settings have to offer, and (c) the best maps for 1v1 games. Basing future templates on WL GAMING LIVE tournament templates would be a good start.

- Add these 25 maps and the real-time ladder would truly represent the variety of 1v1 play :

Europe http://warlight.net/Map?ID=73
Huruey's Castle http://warlight.net/Map?ID=5055
Republic of Macedonia http://warlight.net/Map?ID=5420
Earth (standardized bonuses) http://warlight.net/Map?ID=7
Vietnam http://warlight.net/Map?ID=6870
Poland Big http://warlight.net/Map?ID=498
Phobia http://warlight.net/Map?ID=8035
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy http://warlight.net/Map?ID=2121
Treasure Map http://warlight.net/Map?ID=5313
France http://warlight.net/Map?ID=894
Renaissance Italy http://warlight.net/Map?ID=12815
Korean Peninsula http://warlight.net/Map?ID=4225
China http://warlight.net/Map?ID=8144
East Asia & Oceania (with normal neutrals) http://warlight.net/Map?ID=1627
Greater Middle East III http://warlight.net/Map?ID=12769
Turkey (without LD) http://warlight.net/Map?ID=5402
Scandinavia http://warlight.net/Map?ID=3751
Snow Mountains http://warlight.net/Map?ID=7573
Gelvien Islands http://warlight.net/Map?ID=7055
Volcano Island http://warlight.net/Map?ID=4943
Ancient Greece II (LD) http://warlight.net/Map?ID=9623
TEG World Map http://warlight.net/Map?ID=7534
Ancient China I http://warlight.net/Map?ID=3670
Qina http://warlight.net/Map?ID=10401
Sumo http://warlight.net/Map?ID=5062

Edited 6/7/2014 08:45:56

On a related note. A separate RT s1v1 ladder would be absolutely amazing. Basically something like autogames, where you can find a near constant stream f strat 1v1 opponents, but where you're matched against opponents of similar skill instead of just curbstomping random players in horrible fashion one game after another.

35 templates in total seems like alot. I agree that there should be more variety in maps and lack of comfort to every template. 20 might be better.

Cool post

35 templates would be great. Just weight the templates like you can weight cards in card settings, to control frequency of use.

That would be awesome.

Maybe add in one multi attack template too, if we are truly gaging all 1v1 skill

In general I think more templates is better. That way people can't just matter specific settings, so it can be a better test of overall warlight skill.

However, with a real-time ladder, you have to be careful to make sure none of the settings will create a game that will drag on too long, or games will be decided by boots. If we had a rotating template multi-day ladder, then that wouldn't need to be constrained at all by length of game considerations.

I fully support your post Qi. I did not go through all of your templates, but I'm also in favour of increasing the number of templates (assuming all of them can be used competetively). In any case Fizzer already responded to that request and said that he won't increase the number of templates, because new players would be reluctant to join since they wouldn't want to learn 20+ templates. I on the otehr hand think the opposite, with 30+ templates pure experience factor would be minimal, thus increasing the incentive for newer players to join.

duel map should be there

I agree with most of your post, except this part:

MME LD is good

...Sorry, but have you ever tried playing a real-time LD game on MME? It's not uncommon for games to last over an hour because the map is simply too large. In multi-day games, this isn't much of a problem, but since real-time games require you to be playing until the game is done, hour-long games are really unacceptable.

We should have 'The Ultimate game' the settings include: Medium Earth, local deployment, multi-attack, cyclic order, light fog, 0% straight round, auto dis, 0 neutrals as distributed territories, 15 sized wastelands and all other territories as 2's or 3's.

That would be great.

Edit:
I would prefer http://warlight.net/Map?ID=13590 over my Renaissance Italy. Tho I plan to redo Renaissance Italy.

Edited 6/7/2014 18:28:39

The familiarity argument is interesting. Some things that contradict that argument:

- The 1v1 template the greatest number of people are familiar with is not included
- If you play your custom game 1v1s with no cards (like a large number of people do), you will be less likely to join this ladder bc the vast majority of card settings are based on the 1v1 ladder template, which is not especially representative of pure WL game logic, given the influence of the cards.
- If you played the seasonal ladders, you have an unfair advantage. and if you didn't, maybe you are reluctant to join bc you are unfamiliar with or dislike many or most of the seasonal templates, which are mostly redundant copies of the same settings with a difference here or there that requires a good memory for unimportant things or minute or two searching the settings to figure out what the differences are (bc the template descriptions on the wiki, in the lobby, on the real-time ladder home page don't mention all the differences).
- If you joined the real-time ladder early, you have greater familiarity than those who join later. Learning 10 templates with different card settings takes time. While you learn, you lose against the more experienced players. Maybe this discourages you from sticking with it. I don't understand the rating system. But maybe the rating system makes this situation worse, and thus increases the likelihood a player quits playing.
- Many of the templates are not especially interesting. Get too familiar and you will become bored and quit the ladder or decrease your game count for lack of interest. This is how marriage works. And this is why people increase the number of "templates" they play outside of marriage.
- Since the current templates lack diversity, only a certain type of player will join or enjoy the ladder. Do you like cyclical orders? No? 80% of the templates are cyclical. Do you like 1v1 ladder settings as the framework of all your games? No? 70% of the templates are. Do you like the Earth series of maps? No? Half of the templates are.

The real-time ladder has great potential. It could represent the variety of gameplay across WL. Or it could represent a sub-section of players (people who like Fizzer-flavored templates and maps) and strategic logic.

I think that with greater variety and more templates, more people will play and the average number of games per person would increase. If there are 30+ templates, it would take longer to become familiar with the templates. And if half the templates don't have any card settings, all you would have to do is get familiar with the map itself and the luck. The reason I didn't join the seasonal ladder right away is bc I couldn't view the settings properly on the app from the lobby (there is a bug). So I would have 5 minutes to figure out all the card settings and luck settings and fog settings, think about how that influences the game, and then slowly zoom in and out on the app to scan the board and make my picks. I tried it once and it was annoying. I barely made my picks in time and the picks were bad. If more templates had no cards, that process would have been less painful, and I would have kept playing.

Do you eat the same food every day? Do you only eat 10 types of food every year? Since when is variation and new stimulation somethng that decreases activity? Do you eat cafeteria food all the time? Do you like it? Or is it the only option? Eat it or go hungry?

Fizzer is the school cook and his templates are cafeteria food. Participation will not increase as much as it could if so many cafeteria templates are used.

Edited 6/8/2014 00:36:14