I didn't vote and will not vote on anything until I feel I have a better grasp of the kind of game played in MVL, but I have a suggestion based on my general view of MVL.

To help minimize the differences in scoring inherent in the two chapters, would you consider giving some additional bonus points for highest score or scores or best speed, either team average or individual scores, in DL games and the same for DA games?

We apparently don't have enough players to have separate divisions for DL and DA. But if you think in terms of two groups of players, the DL's and the DA's, then you could say that as it is you only award points for best overall performance. My thought was that you might want to expand the scoring to reward best performances within each group.

A second thought, that I haven't really thought through, so could be said to be half-baked, is that it seems that as you have it now, the scoring system doesn't separate the teams from top to bottom by more than a couple of points. Have you had too many ties in the past? If so, making the gross number of points earned larger should tend to separate the top and bottom teams more and help avoid ties. Or, maybe you like having ties. Possible food for thought.

I've voted.

Thanks.


OK


It's an idea but I don't think we have enough folks for dedicated divisions. Also there are those that go back and forth between the versions. I think playing both is a good thing. I don't think we have to have anything like exact equality I think it only needs to be reasonably similar.


Actually, rounds have been getting closer with teams more closely matched. Initially we had more runaways but lately I think the overall improvement in everyones game is becoming more evident.

I think we're always looking for other things to give bonus points for. It gives something that everyone can shoot for that way. I would normally think that as the league gets larger we would probablly increase the number of bonuses available.

I do think close rounds and ties are a good thing for the league. It tends to give everyone a shot.

Mumble, I feel like you're over-stepping a bit. A vote was taken, and a clear majority has chosen Option 1 (so far). Despite the fact that Option 3 would actually be better for me personally, because I'm relatively good with the points-grinding, I voted for #1 because I believe it's in the better interests of the League. I think the voting process should be more clearly defined so that it will be efficient and smooth. So I am proposing some new voting procedures for the MVL, and I hope that people will have some input, criticism, and additional ideas.

1. Any vote will run for a specific period of time, perhaps 2 or 3 weeks. This should be standardized for every vote.

2. Vote results will be based on the "simple majority" standard. A certain option must get over 50% of the votes to be accepted. If it turns out that no particular option gains over 50%, a run-off vote will be held for the 2 most popular options.

OR

2. Simply, whatever option gets the most vote wins. No majority standard, no run-offs.

3. Once completed in the alotted time frame, a vote becomes official and cannot be overturned by any administrative official of the league. The democratic process needs to be preserved.

4. A vote can be proposed by any player, and needs to be seconded by two other players in order for it to go to an official vote.

Thank you for you feedback.

Sentient species taste better...

Not to push my suggestion, but to be sure it is understood, what I had in mind waas not to have separate diviions, which I understand we don't have enough players for, but to do something like these:

Keep the exact same scoring system you have in place now.
Award one additional point each for:
Two Highest individual DL scores.
Two Highest individual DA scores



Another variation might be:
Keep the exact same scoring system you have now.
Award one additional point each for:
Highest team average DL score.
Highest team average DA score.

Or both of the above, etc..

I understand your concern but basically I'm just floating a trial balloon and seeing if it has any support or not. I'm all for the democratic process but actually I prefer a process of consensus building that seeks to establish some common ground as opposed to the idea that a slight majority should enforce their will over a significant minority who may vehemently disagree with the majority opinion.

To this end I object to your statement 2. I feel that if there is an issue that comes close to being decided 51 to 49 then neither action should be taken. If something is that closely contested I feel that it’s better to go back and discuss the issue and come to some conclusion that is acceptable to a greater percentage of folks.

As far as numbers 1, 3 and 4 I’m fine with those points. However, what I expressed in my above post was not an attempt to overturn a vote by an official of the league but simply an expression of concern by a member of the league. Certainly I would hope that you agree that all MVL members should feel free to express their concerns.

I really wasn’t looking to establish Robert’s Rules of Order for MVL votes, but as an example in the Metaverse Council we had large number of rules regarding votes; how they were proposed, how long people had to discuss the issue, how many voting options there should be, how they should be worded, what percentage of participation defines a quorum and what sort of “majority” should be required to enforce a change. As far as the last two items we required a 90% voting quorum and a 70% “majority” requirement. I’m not necessarily saying that this is what we should do here but it certainly is as legitimate to have such requirements as it is to say that a 50% majority dictates anything they want to the 49% minority.

Specifically in regard to the current vote I was expressing one persons opinion that the quality of support if not the quantity, of this vote differed from that of the first vote we took. That is all I was doing.

I do think it’s a good idea to define the rules governing the votes we take. However I disagree with the concept of a simple 50% majority dictating an outcome without at least some reasonable attempt at trying to come up with a more inclusive solution. For example, last I looked 15 people had voted out of the supposedly 29 people in the league. When viewed under this light 9 or 10 people hardly constitue a majority of the league although they may be a majority of those that are interested enough to vote.

I have seen comments like this from you before Mumble, and I wonder if they are misinformed. You assume that the AI is more likely to surrender in DA, and I just don't see it. Granted, I haven't played many DL games lately. I can tell you that I posted 4 0-year wins this last round, all slightly different, and I never had the AI surrender. I don't know how others have done it, but I am pretty confident the AI did not just roll over for them either.

I am currently playing a large game, where my military score is 198k, and the Thalans have a military score of 8k. They will not accept my peace offer. I offered all my money, planets, techs, and half my ships before I got a green. I have 300 planets to their 25. I don't know exactly what triggers a surrender, but it is not merely 10 to 1 on military score.

As far as the vote is concerned, I'm fine with a simpple majority of those that vote. We can treat it like a US Supreme Court decision. In a few rounds, when the league membership changes, we can just vote again and the new decision will be law.

My submission:




Finally got the whole posting a screenshot thing right. Not like it took me 10 tries, or anything... >.>

They certainly could be since as everyone knows I haven't personally played DA. I was perhaps extrapolating based on comments I thought Wyndstar made about it.

In any case I would be interested in hearing how the 0 year DA win was accomplished under this rounds settings. I wouldn't doubt that there are a number of variations of how it could be done. I also can't say that it is impossible to duplicate the 0 year win under DL but I definitely tried quite hard and was unable to achieve it, although I could have perhaps made a better choice of opponents other than the Drengin and Torian, not sure that really makes all that much of a difference though.


It's not military score it's the military rating ratio as shown in the Civilization Manager under the Stats & Graphs tab in the Military bar graph. In that ranking your (and their) Military Might Rating as it's called is generally a value between 0 and 300. If the ratio of these numbers is greater than 10 to 1 then (in DL) it's not that the AI will automatically surrender but it is that an AI will accept a peace treaty offer with serious concessions. By serious concessions I mean accept a peace deal that involves them giving you half their remaining planets (or sometimes more).

Here I'm talking about DL with which I have personal experience. There are other requisite criteria. Generally the planets in question need to have a population of 2B or less. Also you need a significant diplomancy advantage over the specific AI. Finally there seems to be times when the AI won't accept peace at all but for no apparent reason 8 turns later will give you peace along with 20 planets. Also the Galactic Baazar helps but is not an absolute requirement. This does take a bit of a developed "knack" to achieve but mainly you just need to know that it can be done and what criteria you need to satisfy and if you keep at it, it can easily be accomplished.


If a majority of the league agrees then I won't argue with this.

I'm not sure we would want to introduce that many new bonus points. However on that vein what about a single bonus point for fastest game or highest score of the "other" type.

For example as in the case of this round if all speed bonus points went to DA games then award a bonus point to the single fastest DL game. Or conversely if all score bonus points went to DL games then you could award a bonus for the highest score DA game. If there was a mixture of DA/DL games that achieved a particular bonus then no "other" type bonus would be awarded.

I guess this means we need to vote on what the voting requirements should be.

Not that i am a fan of distinguishing between the builds at all, but if we were too than this is a fair and reasonable way to go about it. It would have my support.

I've played 4 or 5 games this round also and haven't gotten a single surrender. A few culture flips, yea, but no surrender.

Doh...problems with my post.

Consensus building is generally a good thing, but I think that to have the league devolve into more of a debate club would turn a lot of people off. Having defined and concise voting rules wont prevent people from discussing issues.



I think this would too often result in very little ever being resolved. I'm reminded of something from history. In the late 1500's Poland (where half of my ancestors are from) had a political system that was partially democratic. There was both a parliament (the Sejim) and a Senate (Senat), which consisted of the noble families of the commonwealth. One rule which nobody was willing to let go of was something called the Golden Liberty. This gave any one representative the power to veto any resolution, even if every single other person held the opposite view. Basically, nothing ever was accomplished. Civil wars, invasions, and complete bureucratic gridlock were the result. By the late 18th century, Poland had been completely partitioned by it's three neighbors, and for a time ceased to exist.

I dont know Roberts Rules of order, but I do know we need a standardized process. Again, we cant have the voting process be stifled by bureaucratic red-tape and a mountain of rules which crushes people's desire to participate.

The voting rules need to be well defined, efficient, and effective.



Yes, thats what these threads are for. ;)



This is a very subjective statement. Interpreting people's strength of opinion is mostly based on the viewers perceptions and a tricky proposition indeed.



The current vote total is 10 for option 1, 5 for option 3, and 1 for option 4. This is not a majority of the league, but it is a very clear majority of those who have voted.

Sentient species taste better...

Of course it is. I never said it wasn't other than my own subjective opinion. If no one else shares this opinion then consider it dropped.


You proposed 4 rules and I had concern about one of them. It hardly constitutes a "mountain" of "bureaucratic red-tape" which "crushes people's desire to participate" if I simply propose modification to one of your proposed 4 rules.

Note that I freely admit to the use of exaggeration for effect, however I doubt I have often reached the heights of hyperbole that you achieved with that sentence.

In any case I'm agreeing that we need a standardized process we're simply discussing one point in your proposed process.


I'm not disagreeing with your basic arithmetic. I simply phrased this the other way, which is that option 1 received a clear majority of those that voted but the number of folks that stated a preference for option 1 is not a majority of the league.

There clearly needs to be some quorum requirement. If only 2 people voted with both in favor of the same motion then I doubt many people would be impressed by the unanimous vote. Reductio Ad Absurdum, certainly 2 is a number chosen to make a point, but what level of participation is reasonable to require? I would suggest that 50% participation is about the lowest bounds one could place on participation and still be true to the so called democratic process. Personally I think 75% is a better goal but you can only work with what you have. At least the current vote does (barely) satisfy the 50% quorum requirement.

Thanks for the Polish history lesson, however we didn’t have that big of an issue with achieving the 70% majority in the Metaverse Council. However your point about devolving into a debate club is perhaps subject to er… debate.

Look, I’m not trying to cripple the leagues ability to make a decision, I’m only expressing my own personal opinion that I’m uncomfortable with the idea that a bare majority of those that happen to be sufficiently interested enough to vote could enforce an unpopular decision on a significant minority. I’m not even necessarily suggesting that the current 10 to 5 vote doesn’t exceed a level that is reasonable to be presumed a “significant majority”.

Note however that at the time I made my first post on this subject the vote was 9 to 5 which was the same results as the previous vote when Neilo made essentially the same comment that I made and wondered aloud whether or not that was a clear enough margin to enforce action or at least whether a runoff election between the two major choices was warranted.

At that point I argued that 9 to 5 seemed sufficiently strong enough to proceed. In this case it was the admittedly subjective “strength of preference” issue that caused me to argue the other way. Does 9 to 5 changing to 10 to 5 make a difference in my opinion. Yes it does, not an all encompassing one but clearly as the margin goes up my objection goes down. However having raised the issue of quorum and a desire for some kind of margin to be considered a majority, I still feel these are valid topics for consideration in your proposed “standardized process”.

In lieu of your proposed voting rule 2,


I propose the following.


Hardly a “mountain”. Note that the both the current and previous votes clearly are valid based on my proposed criteria.

Actually I would ammend the above slightly to specify that the runoff between the two popular options only require a 50% margin to be accepted. This ensures that there never will be a case of deadlock but it also gives folks one last chance to make a compromise between two opposing motions that could be of more universal appeal.

Is this really such an onerous requirement in an attempt to achieve greater consensus?

Just to have my ammended proposal all in one place.

we need a standardized process. Again, we can’t have the voting process be stifled by bureaucratic red-tape and a mountain of rules which crushes people's desire to participate.
You proposed 4 rules and I had concern about one of them. It hardly constitutes a "mountain" of "bureaucratic red-tape" which "crushes people's desire to participate" if I simply propose modification to one of your proposed 4 rules. Note that I freely admit to the use of exaggeration for effect, however I doubt I have often reached the heights of hyperbole that you achieved with that sentence.

Yes, thank you...the Master has set an instructive example. No, thats not too onerous, I just want to make sure we guard against administrative paralyzation.

There clearly needs to be some quorum requirement.

Agreed.

Thanks for the Polish history lesson, however we didn’t have that big of an issue with achieving the 70% majority in the Metaverse Council.

The main difference is that the MVC was much fewer people I believe (correct me if I'm wrong. It's more difficult to get a larger number of people together, as you have noticed.

A valid vote requires participation by at least 50% of active MVL members. An abstention counts as participation. A proposal requires 60% or more of the cast ballots to be accepted. If less than 60% is achieved by any one proposal there will be a runoff between the two most popular options.

That sounds quite reasonable and a good compromise. Thank you Mumble. What do other people think?

Sentient species taste better...

hey everyone, I've been pretty much bed-ridden over the last few days, and probably will be so for the foreseeable future. As such, I'm not of the state of mind or ability to really go through and voice my opinion on these matters. Going with the latest compromise from K/M is 1) a quorum and 2) 60% majority vote. Works for me I think.

Like to ask another question...how does the team average scoring work in case a player does not submit a game? Do you divide by the number of games actually submitted, or do you divide by a specified number representing a full squad? Just curious, thanks.

Yes. The more people involved the harder it is. Actually getting 16 or more folks responding to our votes is probably a decent accomplishment.


Cool. I like to think there is a way to find agreement even when initially it seems there is none. Still the opinion of others is needed here.


Team average scoring is precisely that, the sum of the scores of the games submitted divided by the number of games submitted.

To give a little more detail, averages apply to team speed bonuses, team score bonuses and team submission bonuses and for that purpose only games of the correct win are counted. Teams also get credit for each individual bonus point earned by it's members.

The final part of a teams score is "base score". Base score is 2 points for a win of the correct type, 1 point for an incorrect win and nothing for a loss or non-submission. Only 4 games per team count towards base score, so ideally each team gets 8 points for its base score. This part of team scoring is absolute, i.e. is not averaged. However we do have a number of rules in play to determine potential replacement games since it's pretty devastating to a team to lose 2 points for not having enough games. However if it turns out that even with potential replacement games a team doesn't have 4 submitted games of the proper type then they simply lose those points. We do try to avoid this situation and to date no team has yet to lose points because of this.

This is all described in the OP of the The MVL Rulebook which is probably a good thing for all MVL players to have at least scanned at one time or other.

Sorry to hear that. I threw my back out on Thursday and have been not quite bed ridden since then although I think I'll be OK for work tomorrow. Oh, the things that we took for granted when we were younger.

Damn, sorry to hear that SB. Same for you Mumble. I've been sorta sick the last 2 days, but nothing serious. Head & body aches...bleah.

Sentient species taste better...

Sorry. I have read every word of the MVL rule thread through about a dozen or so posts, and got a little lost in all the discussion about non-submissions so thought it would do no harm to ask what the final rule is.

Ok just to confuse the situation about voting guys but i must digress for a bit.

I feel i have done all i can as commissioner of the MVL. I don't feel that i can take the league where it deserves to go, be that because i simply think a change is needed and also i am a little burned out on GC2.

The MVL deserves to have a Commish that can commit to the job 100% and i am not that person right now. As much as i do love being the Commish and love to see what i helped create and foster grow into what it is now, i simply don't think i am the right person for the job anymore. The MVL needs a new and fresh leader to take it to the AltMeta and beyond. The MVL is expanding nicely and we are all making inroads as to what constitutes a successful league.

That being said, i am not resigning from playing in the league. i enjoy the small games and the rivalry that the league brings that i cannot find elsewhere in the MV. I am only stepping down as the Commish.

So as of the end of round 6 i will resign my place as commissioner of the MVL and not to confuse the talk of voting, but i call for nominations for the election of a new commissioner.

I think voting for a new Commish is a straight forward process, the nominee with the most votes wins. As to the filling of any position vacated by the commissioner elect, that we can discuss as to whether we have elections for that position or the person with the next highest amount of votes is elected to that vacant position. I think the later works best, should that situation arise.

Sorry to spring this on you guys, and i can already here Mumble sighing over more elections... ..But the Commish should be committed and at the moment i find myself not so.

Like i said i will still be playing in the MVL and taking part in discussions to futher the league. Plus i will be available to assist the new Commish in modifying our many thread OP's that i will have to edit.

I love how we have taken the idea of the league and made it the competition that we have now and i thank you guys for the trust you placed in me to lead the league in it's formative stages.

I wish the next Commish all the best of the luck.

The Commish....
Neilo