way to go BRICH!!!

and...... nothing has been set up

Ok, I just made the game and sent out all the PMs. I'll leave the game once someone else joins.

For anyone that's interested:
gameID=17680

We'll I was waiting for someone to set up the L bracket

Way to go BRICH again! haha

I've joined the game. Sorry for the holdup.

The Winner's bracket round 3 game has finished, here are the results:

Moving on to Winner's Round 4:
Leif_Syverson
CubanJedi
B-RICH94
Dr. Recommended
Spartan22
Captainmeme
La Rage

Joining the Loser's Bracket:
Aranith
SandgooseXXI
Guaroz
Lukas Podolski

Once the Fantasy game is over, the top 9 from that game and the 4 who lost Crowded will play on Imperial. The next round in the winner's bracket is Zeus V. We can either start that now or wait until the Fantasy game is over.

How many will advance from the Imperial game?

6 go on to advance, bottom 3 are eliminated. -gleriv

There are 13 though in the Imperial game though?

The top 7 from Imperial, along with the bottom 3 from Zeus V, will play on Modern II.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amsfv9TiL2agdDljTHNrWjVRd3hYM28ySVlJZ0F4dVE&usp=sharing#gid=0

If you need more standby players, I would be happy to be a backup.

well shiiieeet....

I created the next winners bracket: http://vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=17999

PMing password.

A lot of people have expressed the opinion that this kind of tournament doesn't lead to "true" diplomacy, i.e. it's just a matter of who can form a dominant alliance early. I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about it at this point, but perhaps someone has an idea for how to make it a better game? My only idea is that we could play a normal diplomacy game, meaning everyone is ultimately trying to win or get as small of a draw as possible, and it just so happens that the top 4 also move on. Would the rest of you guys (in the winner's bracket game) be down with something like this?

Well, it was clear since the sign-up that the goal of each Round was just being in the top 'x' players. Funny that someone realize just now, after 9 months, that it leads to a diplomacy more unusual than other tournaments.
IMHO, the goal of playing a tournament is to win the tournament. Nobody will risk to be eliminated from the tournament just to try to win a single round.
So B-RICH, you can all play next round until there's a winner, but since the goal is still to be in the top 4, everybody will still try to "form a dominant alliance early", I believe.
Your idea is understandable and, although changing the rules while a competition is ongoing is almost never a good idea, you guys in the winner's bracket can try to play next round until the end. But I bet it won't make a lot of difference.
The biggest difference will be having, in the end, someone claiming that he lost the Tournament because he tried to play 'true' diplomacy in Round #5, ending up in the bottom 3. Oh, what a hero. Loser.

So, what everybody can do at this point is to learn from experience, to keep in mind to read carefully the tournament's rules *before* joining one and then try to figure out how it will develop. So nobody will find anymore himself into a competition he doesn't like.

The phenomenon that you are discussing is what is called meta-gaming. That phrase is commonly misused here to be associated with cheating, but the two are very distinctly different things. That's part of the reason that the behavior on this site is so bad, because many players and apparently some of the influential leaders do not understand the difference. Tournaments by design and definition are met-gaming events because they incorporate results from multiple games and then apply those results to a larger event/game. Any time you have that scenario, the purity/sanctity of the individual games will suffer to various degrees. If you don't like this effect, then it's best not to enter tournaments.

Meta-gaming is not always cross-gaming, and it's not always a bad thing. Cross-gaming is a perverted and unethical derivative of meta-gaming. Understanding the difference is a key to enjoying this hobby. Multi-accounting in it's various forms is not meta-gaming at all, even though people refer to it as such. Once again, this may be semantics to some, but the clouding of the terms has led to an overall confusion about what type of behavior is and is not ethical.

"Tournaments by design and definition are met-gaming events because they incorporate results from multiple games and then apply those results to a larger event/game. "

Bingo. That's exactly what I had in mind when I wrote that this particular Tour's formula "leads to a diplomacy more unusual than other tournaments."
All the tournaments, under different degrees depending on their formula, lead to 'unusual' diplomacies. For the reasons RUFF said, mostly because the Tournament is *one* game itself, and not a collection of games. There aren't "games" into a tournament, there are "rounds".
Incredible to hear, I agree with basically all RUFF said, except "That's part of the reason that the behavior on this site is so bad"
I don't believe that the behavior on this site is so bad. Perhaps RUFF might want to be more clear about this on a NEW thread since, here, Buttergoose-competitors are discussing just about the current Buttergoose-Tournament.

Next time we hold a tournament if ever, it will probably be on a scoring based system.

multiple "brackets"
3 rounds, points to 1st 2nd 3rd etc highest
highest 2 advance to the next round and proceed that way. It's honestly a good "life lesson" and def. won't happen next time around.

@Guaroz, I have known the entire tournament that this type of diplomacy is "more unusual" than other games, which is why I'm still alive. However, the reason I brought this up was because during the last game multiple people brought up the fact that they didn't like the format of this particular tournament. I was only trying to brainstorm a way to make the upcoming rounds more enjoyable for those remaining, without losing the integrity of the tournament. Since none of the 6 other people moving on have responded, it would seem that everyone is okay with continuing to play the way we have been playing up until this point.

It's actually one of the reasons I left the tournament. I don't enjoy large alliance games, especially when I'm on the opposite side of it for whatever reason!

@Guaroz could you please enlighten me what metagaming is? :P

woop sry it was meant to be at Ruffhaus...or anyone who has a definition :D

@B-RICH. Sure, I got your intentions were absolutely good, trying to make more enjoyable the rest of this Tour. You said "I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about it at this point,", well... you can sum up my previous answer like "No, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about it at this point".

BTW, actually diplomacy here is more unusual than other *tournaments*, not games. And btw again, even stand-alone games have different diplomacies, depending on the combination of multiple factors (the options you might set) like EoG condition, press-rule, pot-type, etc... to not mention the Map... So: any option has consequences, whether little or big, on the kind of diplomacy.
Tournaments, drastically changing the way a game is rated and trasforming it into a "Round" (= a portion of a a larger event/game), just add a further (big) one. Ignoring it and thoughtlessly joining a tournament and then playing it badly is a bad thing to do, I believe, both for you and for your tournament-mates. Even worse would be thoughtlessly joining it and think "If I won't like it, I'll leave it". That's the sense of my yesterday's last 3 lines: why people doesn't check what they're joining?
I hope this experience is teaching us something.

"which is why I'm still alive" Yeah, my congrats! :)
Unfortunately, Spartan's diplomacy was so much better than mine, last Round :(

When you enter into an agreement it is by definition that you *agree* with the terms, this is contract 101. I guess more is not required to be said.

Even worse would be thoughtlessly joining it and think "If I won't like it, I'll leave it".

If that was directed at me, it's offensive, like so much other stuff you post. The tournament got delayed for several months when they decided to let the loser's bracket catch up and the tournament director quit the site. If I don't want to stick around waiting for that, it is my prerogative. I have never missed a phase on here and am in the top 2 or 3 most reliable people on this entire site.

For the purposes of this discussion Metagaming is in essence playing a game (or games) above and beyond the specific game of Diplomacy you're participating in. A tournament implies metagaming by its very construct because its a competition involving more than one game. In this scenario one can expect that events in games other than the one you are playing in will affect multiple games because the competition is in effect a larger game. While this can be fun it is important to observe that excessive meta gaming erodes the integrity of the individual game.

Metagaming also takes place in a less official capacity when it crosses ethical lines into the area of cross gaming (automatic/assumed/repeating alliances, grudges/revenge, personal preferences based on out of game events). This is a rather esoteric concept to wade into, and one routinely brushes aside as an non-issue, but there is a great deal of it going on here. I think that it happens mostly because it is not specifically described and discouraged. In all of the various Dip communities that I've played in before there has been a culture of ethical behavior that shuns crossgaming. There are no specificl rules necessary for this. It's simply know across the community that you don't do this, and everyone observes these protocols out of respect for the game and each other. That doesn't happen here, and the reason it does not is because the mid team pretends that it's not going on (at least publicly) and refuses to publish a set of ethical standards. Worse than that the clamp down accusations of cheating (which is what crossgaming is). With more much more effort than they do on the cheaters. The message this sends is that cheating is unlikely to be proven here and assure to go unpunished even in the court of public opinion. This makes for a rather unpleasant experience. Fortunately most players have enough respect for the game and each other not to at this way.

Another factor that contributes to the metagaming and even the uglier extreme side of it -crossgaming- is the VDip points system/HoF ratings. There are players who metagame with these tables in mind targeting others specifically for where they sit on a table. Competition is great, and the ratings and tables are fun for bragging rights or for talking points but nether of the present systems truly evaluates skill and/or performance. They do a decent enough job at it, and they are fine to have as a tool for comparison. However they also, specifically the HoF, tend to drive decisions in games that have very little to do with the game. For example when it becomes clear that you will earn more points for eliminating higher ranked players you have decisions in game being taken with respect to out of game factors. Some of this is unavoidable, but again it would be nice if we could all agree as gentlemen to play the games on thei own merits and without respect to rankings and grudges and friendships. Most people do this, but many do not, and some are actively conspiring to manipulate the system. My suggestion is that VDip simply adopt a culture where this behavior is not acceptable. I'm not asking for bans or sanctions, but I'd prefer to see this behavior shunned and certainly to see the lifting of moderator based criticisms of players advocating a more ethical gaming environment.

Mapu, it wasn't directed at you, you already said before that there was more than one reason why you left and so I just thought that the other reasons were better than the one you said about enjoyability. I know you don't leave an ongoing game just because you don't enjoy it, Mapu. And I knew we were talking about tournaments' enjoyability, so your post was ok - it was "on topic" - and I even smiled reading "especially when I'm on the opposite side of it for whatever reason!" :-)
Btw, the reason you're telling now is just a little better than the other, but I still think you have some more good ones.

" it's offensive, like so much other stuff you post. "
Yeah sorry, I forgot that if one thing Guaroz posted can be read in different ways, then you choose the way that makes no sense or that offends someone. Well, get offended for this: You don't want to stick around waiting for a bracket to catch up the other one, but you do stick around waiting for someone to spit poison on.