And thanks for not being a pain in the backside to deal with :)

hmm... is this an open admission to metagaming in the leagues??? oh the horror!

@Bask - League play has more relaxed rules. You can't start the league in collusion to take it to the end together, but realizing that player Y is in position to win if he gets any more draws so setting out to end him together in Game 3 then finding yourselves in good alliance positions (A/R) and using player Y to kill another player then taking player Y out (he was still a threat) and realising you are tied if you draw both games you happen to be allied in and will both move up... Well, it wasn't planned to get us in such a great situation, but we weren't going to ignore the league factor in the game.

the specific wording of the rules is:

"Meta-Gaming and Cross Gaming:
Players may not enter into agreements or alliances spanning more than one game, although they may consider different players’ league positions in their decision making within a game."

So the way i interpret this is, as long as you don't make a specific deal like throwing one game in excahnge for support in another. You can make whatever deals within a game and keep in mind the positions of other players - thus in game 3 kicking the leader out is fair, and in game 4 a draw which includes someone you are currently tied with on points (which guarentees both of you a promotion) is also fair.

That said you don't actually know what the total points will be at the start of game 4 becasue game 3 usually isn't finished - i think it would also be fair for an ally to stab you in game 3 if he realised that because of the alliances starting in game 4 he'd get lots of points from a draw in game 3 but not enough to put him in the top league position...

Good job Draug, Leo.

It was Babak, not me...

Sorry about that Bask.

This is one of the main reasons I dropped out of league play... Perhaps if second place didn't get the same result as first place this kind of thing would be avoided to some extent? Well, I suppose there will always be those that are very happy with second place results regardless and will be more than happy to pimp themselves out for any sort of success (rather than going for the crown at the risk of failure)... Anonymous games probably wouldn't even help much (at least not in the end, though it would in early games, so that is something) since after playing several games with the exact same people, it'd get relatively easily to know who each player was by the end...

Anyway, I know many people really enjoy playing with a twist in the rules, so I'm all for league play since everyone knows the rules going into it. Suppose one concern is that leagues may breed metagamers, once that way of playing results in success (even if by others, and you end up with failure due to others metagaming success), metagaming is encouraged in non-league play even more than it otherwise would be.

Hmmm, think I've wandered off the point, sorry. Well done LeoDaVinci!

Actually. I stabbed Leo trying to win the league on SCs, but my post stab positions weren't defendable and he took back the number I stabbed for. Had I know England was going to move out of Edi that year, I could have moved in and ended the game with the SC count for the win.

@MadMarx-if you dislike the non-anonymity of league play but still want to compete with others of your caliber of talent, I think there maybe still be some slots open for the next round of the DCL(Diplomatically Challenged League). I think you would fit the criteria of less than 200 total points. Games are anon and 36 hrs.

lol acmac. I'm still waiting for my group to get restarted in that league.

^lolololol

@Madmarx, i'm all for admitting that a league is a meta-game.

Your aren't playing to win each individual diplomacy game, you are playing to win the league, which is external - the addition of having to work out how many points each player may be on depending on how current games progress, and how many you need to win isn't rocket science and definitely has an effect on how play proceeds.

And i must say i like getting to know players, I think it helps me play better against them, and I have a lot of fun.

I don't know how this would led me to meta-gaming in a normal game. I just can't see me caring about anything but winning in a single game (with the meta/league structure removed)

I agree with orathaic. I do limited meta in the leagues as the goal is to win the league, or move up to the next level, or survive and stay at that level, or take someone down with me.

But the only meta I do in regular games is study a player's history combined with my own experiences with them to decide how far I should or shouldn't trust them.

Congrats guys. It was interesting. This being my 1st foray into the leagues, I think I grasped how things worked fairly quick. But more to learn, that's for sure. You two finished off the last two games like gangbusters. The luck of the draw put ya'll close together so it was the wisest choice to partner up.

Ghost, are the league standings updated yet?

The biggest problem for me is not when it comes to who wins the leagues, but to who gets relegated. Especially in situations when you have to be the one to decide who stays and who goes down. Really the sort of decision I would have preferred to not be involved with at all...

I don't know whether it will be better if we made the Leagues have the first two games non-anon and the last two anon?

I am having trouble figuring out who moves up in the Leagues. For the sake of this discussion lets ignore people that stepped away for a bit and are coming back in. For instance since there are 2 B Leagues, 4 in theory would drop to C. So since there are 3 C leagues only the top 4 in all three C Leagues move up to B, right?

From here:
http://tournaments.webdiplomacy.net/thephpleague

"The worst six finishers in B1 and B2 (i.e. the last three in each league) are demoted, and the best six in C-level leagues are promoted (i.e. the champions and the runners-up). Nine players are demoted from C-level leagues, and so nine are promoted from the D-level."

It is very heavy on players moving up and down, which is a good thing because otherwise you'd be playing a lot of the same players all the time.

When do qualifiers for the March-July season begin?

@Alderian Oh great, I misread that. Thanks for clearing that up. Now I just have to finish in top two :)

@k-reilly
no qualifiers, you can enter the D leagues and work your way up - earning one promotion per season.

Unless other players higher up drop out, in which case replacements are sought.

@TrustMe, with the number of people that don't show up the next season, even third place could likely get a promotion.

Yeah the league promotion demotion changed a bit. At one point it was bottom two demoted and top one plus best of the runner ups were promoted between C and D. Now, even more drop out of the leagues (bottom three) and more get promoted (top two and sometimes best of the thirds like D to C). But it is easy to figure out best of seconds or thirds. Totals point count, then SC count if there is a tie across equal level leagues.