I like the idea of some sort of rotation of settings. Like maybe one month will be a Best of the Best setting (Duke's settings; 4 spots, 0 luck, Standard Earth, etc). Another month could be the Old Strategic 1v1 on the Standard map or even a Two Territories setting.

I imagine that high demand/use of the ladder will result in multiple concurrent ladders (ladders for separate maps, 2v2 ladder etc).

I appreciate being lumped in with the rest of those names but I would (and do) lose to any of them more times than I win.

It blows me away to see how many games have been played by some of newest players here. I have seen people who started playing in 2011 that already have more games under their belt than me. Many of these very active players moved here from other Risk type games and already have a great deal of experience in strategic games.

I will not be the least bit surprised to see many of the names Ruthless mentioned near the top of the ladder but I also expect to see many "new" players up there as well. I'm looking forward to playing with lots of new people, I'm sure it will improve the quality of my own play to see and defend against new strategies.

Devil - You just declined my invite to a 2x2 tournament

Grundie -- I totally agree. I've seen 30+ very strong players who joined in mid to late 2010. They're winning 1x1s against the best of the old guard frequently.

I know, I almost accepted it but I am trying to limit my games a bit, and I wasn't crazy about the settings for reasons I can't currently remember. But I'm on-board in spirit!!

Maybe I should just make a tournament myself with my currently preferred settings. I've discovered that I like bumping the neutrals up to 3, most importantly - I think it makes for a bit more scrappy conflict and a bit less of the ol' holding people off while doing a land-grab in order to overwhelm their deployment, while still making it possible to go that route..

I think my tourny is plenty scrappy -- but I'd be happy to play yours.

Good, cuz I just invited you :) It's just a small one, single elimination with 16 total players in teams of two, so reserve your spot now!!

devilnis: The first ladder will be just 1v1, but a 2v2 ladder will be coming after that.

Fantastic

@Devilnis: If there are any free spots I'd love to join, although if it's full don't worry about it : )

I'd love to invite you but you're not on my friends list and I'm not really sure how to manually invite you to the game. Others that are already in it could be a peach and do so if they see this message :) Or perhaps someone can tell me how to get from Point A to Point B in this case.

just click hes name by his reply in this post, then on his profile: click add to invite list. then go to the tournament and click forward invites and choose him

I think the top player will be the impaller, very talented player plus one of the few great players ive played who never takes extended breaks.

Sweet, thanks Eagle. I did that, and then looked up and down the invite list trying to find him twice before I realized that someone else had already forwarded the invite to him and that's why he wasn't showing up on my list of new people to invite :)

Pink, you just might be right - There are so many primo players here that I am quite sure that luck will be a determinative factor between them. Maybe we should start a betting pool!

It's true that I mostly just play games against a lot of the established players, but I've posted frequently on this forum that I'm always up to play people who want a good challenging 1v1 match (although my requirement is low luck and manual picks). I don't think I've ever turned down a match request, and I was able to kind of get my foot in the door with the good players on this site by going around and challenging a lot of people in 1v1s. That's how I first played Ruthless/Duke, etc. If you're a good player with a solid 1v1 win/loss record and you want to get tournament invites and so forth, definitely challenge good players to games and you'll get invited to tournaments and so forth.

@Pink, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I don't know if that will be true. My prediction is that the top player is going to rotate around a bit, at least until things settle down. I don't expect that one person is going to hold it for any kind of extended period of time. I do think that me being fairly active is going to be an advantage, though. I don't see players like Damp, Gaia, or Troll being on top of the ladder, not because they aren't good enough but because they don't move frequently enough to move up it or stay on top of it.

Anyway, I'm really excited for the ladder. I'm also excited about a 2v2 ladder.

I think personally I'm more excited about the 2v2 ladder, purely based on the fact that most of my favorite games have been partnered up with someone of equal skill, and we can bounce idea's off of each other.. i seriously think we spend more time talking in multi-day games then actually doing our moves many times..


while 1v1, I am too impatient, which is good for fast games, but against some of the more meticulous players leads me to a quick death, *as my tourney match vs duke showed* I don't get as into 1v1's i think...

I agree with pink -- Imp would be my pick. He's cleaned out the best players in back to back round robin tournaments against what are ostensibly the top 20. Anybody can lose and he loses occasionally, but far more often than not he'll win a 1x1. My two 1x1 wins over him are both tainted by random picks. He's won every time we've had manual picks in a 1x1 so far. I really need to work on how I play turns 2/3 when encountering opps in more than one spot simultaneously. That's definitely the weaakest part of my game. That and gaining intelligence through picks -- for some reason I keep getting my 1-3 against certain players and then having to deal with an intelligence gap and possible counterpicks everywhere.


I also agree with Imp that the players who average above a day to play a turn won't be at the top of the ladders thanks to autoboot. Imp and I started a couple of months apart, but he did challenge me out of the blue to a 1x1 and then we started meeting in tournaments a lot.

Fizzer has mentioned this "2v2" ladder, and a lot of people have been talking about it, so I have some questions.

Will our teams be manual or random for each game?

If the teams are manual, will you be able to register with only one partner or multiple teams?

Are there more ladders coming after the 2v2? such as FFA ladders or 3v3 or 2v2v2 ladders?

could there possibly be to separate 2v2 ladders? one wiht manual teams and one with auto teams that change each game?

You will join the 2v2 ladder with a partner, and you'll always have the same partner. You won't be able to join the ladder twice with different partners, as this would present problems when it comes time for you to play against yourself.

There's absolutely potential for all sorts of different ladders - 3v3, FFA, etc. Once the 2v2 one is done, I may do a survey to see what most people are interested in for determining what comes next.

Random partners is interesting - I hadn't actually thought about that. If there's enough interest this could be created as a different ladder. It would surely be interesting for creating new friendships, but it also may be frustrating when you don't like your partner :)

Thanks Fizzer,

with the random partners: you could also do that as a permanent partnership with a random partner "which would most likely suck", a partnership that is random for just that game, or have it be a random partner for a certain ammount of games (3 for instance)

one more question: would you ever be able to leave your pairing for a permanent team? therefore disolving the team and then creating another team?

Yes, it's important to be able to dissolve teams as people always have the right to change their minds.