I think Centurian's right. I don't think you need to have individual professors if it's too difficult, but the playing "professionals" should be separate from the "professors." If there are only 2 or 3 "professors" that's fine, as long as the "professionals" that are playing the game are not part of that 2 or 3.

ok so it's agreed that commentators will not provide direct advice to student players.

what do we want to do about the professors/mentors? i read two different things in Centurian's and Dunecat's posts. i do agree that having talkative types in the games is good - and there is no way for us to ensure that the students are talkative, so having those be either vets or graduates of school of war works.

but what do we do about giving the student players direct advice if that's not happening *in* the game?

But that's what we had last time! 2 vets playing and 2 more vets commentating on each game. I would suggest (politely) not changing too much from the original system - every single one of us had a great time and (I think) we all learned a ton from the various vets from their differing locations.

We learned from the vets in-game on how to truly play the game and we learned from the commentators what our actions could/would look like to outside parties. I think that departing from the scheme would deprive the future rookies of valuable insight.

I personally learned more from playing WITH Babak and The Wizard than reading Jacob and Centurian's commentary, because they (the in-game vets) were really good - and their press reflected that.

Unless the rookies immediately banded together and decided to unilaterally wipe-out all of the vets before fighting amongst themselves, I would be disappointed if most of the vets didn't take part in the draw or solo. The students are playing to learn and the vets are there to show them how to win. You can't do that, imo, by losing.

Sorry. My previous post was in response to Dunecat.

@pooter: So, you're saying that previous games didn't have impartial mentors?

What do you mean no direct advice? I'm not going to tell Italy to move to Piedmont and attack France, but I would like to tell him that he can do that, or move to Tyrolia and attack Austria. I'm not going to tell him to ally with Austria, but I'm going to point out the dangers of not doing so. What is the fine line here?

You can assure players are talkative by calculating their messages per game via their profile. But I think one of the most central messages of SoW is talk often and to everyone.

I think putting players like Jacob who is ranked 8th on the site in with a bunch of rookies is a little much. Look what happened last time.

Hmm, interesting point pooter. Perhaps exposing players to superior play is a good idea. I know I learned alot when I played with MadMarx for the first time, even though he handed it to me.

@centurian - responding to PMs, answering direct questions like "what are the benefits of a move to tyrolia vs bohemia?" i think yall did a fine job of respecting that line last time around, even though it is a fine one.

as for putting Jacob with a bunch of rookies - TheWizard is no slouch and uclabb is well ranked on the Facebook version, yet they were both eliminated in their games. Fortknox, who also is a fine player, also was in the game with Jacob as well. so, i don't think it's too much at all. i also have a tendency to be of the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" mind, and since some many graduates of the first 4 games said that having the vets in the game with them was helpful, i think we should value that.

@Dunecat - yes, there were two vets and five rookies in each game. those two vets gave advice in the game, and also taught by example. two additional vets who were not in the game and not in communication with any of the rookies did the commentary.

sorry, one more thing about in game messages - a couple rookies who have asked to be included have no completed games, so you can't measure their game messages yet. i am inclined to not include someone who hasn't finished a game, but i kinda would rather include someone who is in 4 games and hasn't finished one, than someone who has finished 4, but is in currently playing 10.

The in game messages comment was for the vets, or proffessionals or professors or whatever in-game. The rookies will probably have low press levels, but hopefully that will change.

Just following up on the idea of a 'professor' per 'student' - that was tried on the Facebook version, and it didn't work so well (I think) - the amount of input from mentors varied, from none, through general advice and suggestions, through to almost playing the game.

I like the idea of 'Consulting Professors', who the students can ask for advice - there are times when asking someone who knows if a set of moves will work would be really really useful

thanks for that insight Pete U. that's another factor that is very important.

i'm starting to come to the conclusion that with the addition of a "consulting professor" or two, we should stick to our previous format. two vets and five rookies in game, two vets commentating, and a consulting vet or two. but let's see where the discussion goes, get some more people to weigh in, and i'll make a decision tomorrow. hopefully we can get the game started by the end of the week.

Yeah, I'm not really proposing anything wildly different. There's no problem if the "professionals" (aka the vets who are in the game) give advice--the students should feel free to consider that advice with the advice of the unbiased "professors," aka vets who are not playing the game.

And yes, the professors should be discouraged from just telling the students what moves to enter.

I think we're really moving in the right direction here. I agree with the points made about the commentators not being the consultants.

I think 5 students and 2 profs per game PLUS 2 prof commentators and 2 prof consultants sounds like a good mix.

I also agree with Centurian's comment about one game being more of a showcase game. I'm kind of torn between the desire to have more students having the opportunity to participate and the desire to have more people looking at the same game. I think it would really clinch it for me if I could here from some people who were looking at the previous SoW games, but not actually playing. Did you learn anything? Was it a valuable experience even though you were not playing?

Also, it strikes me that we may want to nail down some guidelines for who qualifies as a prof and who qualifies as a student. My first thought is that the people who want to get better would probably be happy if the skills they learned could help them to get into the top 10%-20% of ghost-rated players. So, I think the cutoff for prof should be either 10% or 20%.

As far as students go, I could probably be swayed by either the bottom 20% by ghost-ranking OR anyone below prof level that wanted to be a student. Also, I think students should at least have a minimum of one completed game and not have any CDs on their record. At the very least, these conditions could be used to give preference to some players over other players.

ack - "if I could hear".....

@Jacob I definitely learned a lot by just looking at the School of War games, I think it was the 4th one where Italy got a triple build in the first year. That game basically showed me how to play Italy and helped me win me next game where I started as Italy. I am willing to play in any of the games, or act as a part time commentator if you need an extra person. While I have not checked for sure, I am guessing I am in the top 20-10% of ghost rated players at position 160.

I think Jacob makes good points. I would be more exclusive and say that professors (though not necessarily professionals) should be at least in the top 10%, according to the website at least. I have not looked into the percentiles for the ghost ratings so I can't say what the equivalent ghost rating percentile would be.

As for commentators, it should be at least as exclusive, maybe moreso.

I also agree with Jacob's standards for picking students.

Further, a single showcase game is much better all around. It keeps everyone focused that way--you can always have more classes later.

i've just looked over the ten evaluations we got from last time around, and they all are glowing. the consistent thing they all said was that the lack of commentary at the end of the game could have been improved, and a number said they relied much more on the commentary than on the in-game vets. on the other hand, they all said how it was great that everyone talked, and i think at least part of this must be attributed to the vets in the game.

we never did get any feedback from commentators or vets, but this is really for the students anyway, i suppose. roughly half of the students responded to our evaluation survey, which is quite a good number!

hmmm...I don't think I every saw the evaluation survey. I also never received the fedback on the commentary that you just shared, dj =) (although really it's not too surprising to hear...I know SoW III suffered a couple times from lack of commentary - I blame it all on Cent :P)

wow...I really can't type today..."every", "fedback"...sheesh...

sorry if i misstated Jacob - it was not a critique of the commentary, but on the fact that it tapered off and/or stopped for a while in some of the games. part of this was the fault of long pauses, and i think that's helpful to remember - this time, we should try to select players that don't expect to have any pauses needed for the next couple months.

everyone said that the commentary, when it was happening, was fantastic. and we didn't make an evaluation survey for vets or commentators.

In SoW 3 we were hurt by a really long pause and then the game started getting into a really boring clean up for a three way draw game, so there wasn't alot to say. You can't go switching sides every year in the later years anyways, so its hard to actually say anything.

Djbent's cutoff for profs is roughly the top 100 players. I think anyone thats not in the top 150 can certainly be a student.

Maybe three commentators would help fill the lack of commenting? Or perhaps two senior commentators and a junior commentator. Certainly not more than 3, but still.

for the record: the SoW game I was in with Jacob, I recognized the power alliance, and tried to sway everyone else, but by the time they all listened, it was too late. This is probably because the commentary was very sparse, so no one thought what I said was serious until too late (see me withdrawing from an easy invasion of england to deal with russia).

@fortknox- can you tell me what constitutes a power alliance?

I just got lucky =)

i do have a resigned but that was a really jacked up live game and so ya don't count that as CD

GREAT conversation - I'm such a believer in more heads are better than one, and this is a case-in-point... so many great comments. I'd like to add a few thoughts to the mix as well...

1) The advent of the PM system does give us the opportunity to have the 'mentors' Dunecat envisioned... and in fact the idea of one vet to one player was the whole concept behind the 'Graduate Course'... I would still think its a good idea if we can pull it off, have some medium-skill SoW-grads who could improve their game to the next level by having specific tactical and diplomatic advice one on one from top-notch players... but as PeteU said, the risk is that you get 7 different levels of participation by the vets... I would not recommend this for the SoW 5 game though, for the reasons outlined...

2) I'm glad the concensus seems to be that including 2 in-game vets is the way to go... for the explicit reasons pooter mentioned... the in-game vets (or professionals ala Dune) lead by example... both by their diplomacy and offering advice to the further-away players showing... of course the advice is bias, but the players will have to recognize that, and in fat... that itself is a useful teaching tool... to see how good players can manipulate YOUR moves and by having vets there, it makes it even more obvious. In the case of game 3, from all I heard, Wizard and myself were able to provide solid advice that observers simply could not because they were not aware of the game-dynamics...

3) I also agree that we keep it to one show-case game for now... maybe start game 6 in 2-3 weeks if everything is going smoothly... OR we can make game 6 the Grad Course we've been talking about...

4) on standards... for the vets, ghostrrating points is a good idea... top 75 or top 100 is a good cut-off as well... for the students, I would suggest a few other parameters... how much they have shown interest on these SoW threads... i think in the requests above, there was one in particular that truly stood out as the type of go-getter student we are looking for... and if you look at past graduates like texas, pooter, troo, OM, eetc... they are now not only active forum members, but also up-and-coming players that many of the vets have enjoyed playing games with... part of that, I'd like to think, was the example that was set for them both in-game and in the comments through SoW...

so what I mean to say is, lets try to get 'rookies' who have shown a desire to be active and have asked insightful questions or participated in the last 4 SoW threads... and for game 6, we can then pick from those who have participated in the game 5 thread... after all, the best way to show you'll be a good student, is by BEING one even when you are not in the game...

5) to sum up... my opinion is this: 5 'active' rookies, 2 'professionals' in-game, 2 vet commentators + 1-2 grad students (who ask insightful questions and provide back-up comments), and 2 'vet' mentors... 1 game for now... then maybe in 2-3 weeks either SoW 6 OR our first grad course.


Thank you djbent for your phenomenal work keeping the school going, and I'm so happy to see this idea is helping the webdip community improve...