Well. That's fancy.

Many thanks to my esteemed Cascadian compatriots, whom it was an honor to fight alongside.

Congratulations! There are as always so many "what if:s" that I can be bothered to think about it. Sweden came close, but as we say in Swedish "nära skjuter ingen hare".

Congrats, Team Cascadia! Hard to argue with the region's recent success.

A small suggestion for the next World Cup: don't have anonymous games. Hiding the handles just gives a big advantage to the WebDip regulars, who break anonymity by obsessively monitoring whether other users are logged in when press gets sent or orders posted. If the point of anonymity is to reduce metagaming, it doesn't work; it just restricts metagaming to a class of people using online sleuthing skills that aren't what the tournament is hoping to test.

And, anyway, this is a team tournament. Seems odd that team strategizing would be discouraged.

I agree. Let it be non-anonymous.

And GB should give more points than PP. Most games of the highest quality are played in GB.

That I dont agree with. Full press is the way this game was designed to be played. That is why it's called DIPLOMACY, not Stratego.

No, this game is designed to be played in FP, GB and PP, as you can check in settings. And it turned out that most of highest quality games are played in GB.

And I was talking about GB - PP relation, not about GB - FP (although many things could be said regarding that, also).

With "this game" I meant Diplomacy as designed by Alan Calhammer. Everything else than full press (or preferably FTF) if merely a variation from the original game.

OK, once again, I am saying that GB should bring more points than PP, because that variation of WEBdiplomacy (that we are actually playing) is being played much more often and by highest level of players and it deserves to bring more points than PP.
I am not saying that GB should bring more in relation to FP.

Gunboat is a crap shoot, that's why there were multiple games to try and normalize results.

Cool, I agnowledge (I dont know to spell this word:) that fact, but it still doesnt touch my idea. We can kick both problems with one thing:
3 gunboats and each of them brings 0,5 points.
You give it more than to PP, and you keep your crap in your pants, Gen.

Congratulations to Team Cascadia, who deserved this win.

Godalmighty help me did I hate that public press game in Group C, the one that Balki won. His brilliance in running circles around everyone, the unpleasant play of France and non-existent press of Russia, and the nature of public press games made that maybe the most frustrating game I've played on this site. I consider that a compliment and a testament to Bartokomous's skill.

Congratulations, team Cascadia!

Interesting feedback on the non-anon status, and that's certainly something to consider for the next iterations. It's a delicate balance that the tournament strikes between some meta (cooperation within your team) and too much meta (cooperating amongst different teams) and I felt anon assisted in that regard. If the time stamp feature is ever removed or fixed, I feel that games should be anon. But until it is, I will consider what you said, madotter.

As for Nikola's comments, I still feel that each category should be weighted evenly, so team formation still matters and tournament results aren't overly weighted on the play of a single player. I want it to be possible for a team to have an excellent gunboater and still not make it out of the group stages if they have a poor team.

That being said, not many people have experience with public press on the site, and it showed in some of the games. That also being said, public press is great fun in part because of that, and I think this tournament goes a long way in promoting that particular variant on the site.

Each gunboat, different gunboater?

PP gets its promotion regardless of the number of points it brings. For years, now.

Never mind, I see that no one gives it approval. I give up. :-)

Congratulations Cascadia! It was fun to be a part of the tournament.

Don't change a thing, this tournament was perfect.

And don't make it non-anonymous, maybe just fix the site to get rid of the online/last visited indicator.

YES. Stupid green dot and time stamp.

Goldie, when are you posting the full finals scoring table? #ButBetterThan2015GunboatTableUpdate

Metagaming is by far the worst aspect of this tournament, each game should be played on its own merits and then the results calculated, hopefully that gets fixed for the next iteration... mid/late 2018?

I'll do it as soon as I have access to a laptop again. Can't do it easily from a phone.

MM - that is the ideal, but unfortunately you cannot prevent people from looking at the results of other games and adjusting their play accordingly. So I've chosen to embrace that aspect rather than fight it. Next iteration should be sometime in 2018, yes.

Whaaaaa??? I LOVE the metaness of this, it's what makes it different from being 'just another game'. The best tournaments are the one's that throw a curve ball at you that you need to adjust to.

That's flawed logic. The sooner metagaming occurs, the worse effect it has. Yes, people will look at completed games, but by the time they are complete the metagaming will be minimal (however potentially significant)...

I stopped playing in the Leagues, back in the day, because if you won your first game you would automatically be eliminated first thing in your next game, which was pretty stupid... Sure, some would say don't win your first game, suppose those are the people that kept playing in the leagues, which is fine, to each his own, and there will be a certain crowd excited for the World Cup however it is set up, it's just that there will be another set of people that will not be excited and the World Cup may be worse off because of that...

@MM - There's far less meta in this tournament than in the Leagues. No collusion allowed between teams, and that's final. Games are anon to prevent the early game meta you describe. Just need to get rid of that online button and then it's pretty hard to do anything you described.

You could have each team create a new account whose name isn't known to the other players. That way nobody would be able to check their last online status.