Congratulations to brisk for winning Season IX! It was a hard fought season that came right down to the wire, but brisk pulled out a victory with an impressive 17-3 record.
Season X will be a departure from the 1v1 seasons we’ve had up until this point. This marks very first time that WarLight has ever had an FFA (free-for-all) ladder!
Season X will be a four-player FFA on the Four Castles map:
Settings
TAKE NOTE: The boot time is lower in this season than normal. This season will use a 2-day auto boot instead of the usual 3-day auto boot. This helps ensure the games progress at a decent rate. If you’re going to be gone for more than two days, make sure to activate a vacation. Also, please don’t intentionally drag out games. We need everyone’s cooperation to ensure we get through most of these games before the end of the season. If you see someone intentionally playing slow in this season please report them to me.
Each player will start in their own castle for fairness. Surrenders must be accepted, so any player can veto someone trying to leave early. Army cap is enabled at 15x, which prevents players from stockpiling armies forever which could cause the games to drag out too long. (Essentially this means if you stockpile armies for more than 15 turns you’ll be forced to attack someone)
Everyone starts with a blockade card and can earn more rarely. Recon, priority, delay, and reinforcement cards are awarded regularly. Diplomacy card is also present, but rare. There will also be one random card piece per turn, so you won’t be able to predict exactly what cards your opponents have.
Check out the settings with this template: multi-player, single-player.
The season will start on Tuesday at midnight GMT (which is really Monday night for those in negative timezones). If you participated in Season IX, but don’t want to participate in Season X, be sure to leave the ladder before it starts.
Mechanics
Since this is the first FFA season, there are a few adjustments. First, there will only be 12 games in the season, not 20, since the games take a bit longer to play. However, the rate at which games are given out won’t be adjusted, so most games will be created early in the season so that they have time to finish.
The ratings are still calculated with a Bayesian ELO like they are now. Each 4-player FFA game gets fed to the ratings algorithm as three 1v1s, where the winner defeated each one of the three losers. Therefore, there is no second place, and all players should be trying to win at all times.
Also, there’s a chance that this season could finish after WarLight 2.0 is live (I’ll try for it but I can’t promise). If that happens, the people who do well in this season will be very pleased. Good luck!
I’m just curious, but will private message be turned on?
Yes, private messaging is enabled (you can click the template to see all the settings.) If it were disabled, people would likely just create other games to talk given the importance of these games, so we may as well just enable it.
This is AWESOME Fizzer!! This should be a very interesting season. Good luck to all, and congrats to Brisk for winning last season.
Hmm. I have to say I have some doubts about the template. There used to be a tournament featuring this map and similar settings, games were either very long or ended when someone got booted or surrendered:
http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?TournamentID=1783
http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=2911673 – no progress in the game until I was booted. Just exemplar game, but I believe that was the case in more games.
I might be wrong, maybe army cap is the solution for that, maybe different fog level can prevent that too, I don’t know. That tournament was just the first thing I thought about after seeing the template.
I do remember that game too (obviously) and I agree that the settings in that specific tournament did reward defensive play and patience. If there had be no boot, we may have been playing up to this day.
I do think the army cap should prevent that at least partially as defensive play is only rewarded if you control the middle. And at that point, other players can simply join forces against the player who controls the middle.
Also, in the example above, I do remember that there were no truces while in the ladder there certainly will be (better players will have a great disadvantage there).
This is going to be interesting. I didn’t take part in the last season but I will defiantly be making a return to the seasonal ladder for this!
This season will be a political one, and have very little to do with warlight strategy. This might get interesting 🙂
I take it that the participants will not be anonymized in any way? If every player will be identifiable in the game, then those alliances who have lots of WL members will have an advantage, provided they are deployed in the same game. Also, the #1 in the ladder will probably become a target for the others in his respective games.
I just noticed that booted players don’t turn into AIs
Given the short boot times wouldn’t it be better to give the players a chance to get back in the game if they happen to be unable to make their turn in time, like once?
Also, with this setup a boot could be pretty much decisive for the outcome of the game..
Incentive to be more active; also not stall.
I completely agree with this, taking back an AI after a boot would be better.
On the other hand, AI’s are unpredictable and sometimes seem to target one player, so it may not necessarily be better to have AI’s in there.
I can’t wait! These settings look great, thanks, Fizzer for making a season with more than 2 players!!