score graphs

[Cainehill]

Or three - the maximum, the minimum (and if that line is on top of yours, heh heh heh), and either the average or the median. They wouldn't need to be gray - say bright red for the maximum, dark blue for minimum, gray for median, and white for you.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
They wouldn't need to be gray - say bright red for the maximum, dark blue for minimum, gray for median, and white for you.

Why does everything always have to be a patriotic American red, white, and blue? Be bold. Go for the retro-nostalgic combo of cyan, magenta, and yellow! If anyone questions your taste in colors (or sanity), you can tell them you're being considerate towards the minority of color-blind strategy gamers.

-- Arryn, founding (and sole) member of the National Association for the Advancement of Retro Colors (NAARC)

[Ivan Pedroso]

I like the idea of a maximum(composit)-line, it doesn't give away too much specific player info, but at the same time it provides some usefull info.

The minimum-line might not be that interesting, since it would just be zero after the first player is dead. One could make it the minimum of all non-zero player-stats, but then it would just show the stats of the current almost-dead player.

The average/median-line would be a bit odd as well. You could average over all non-zero values and it might just work. But it would make some funny jumps whenever someone close to dying finally bites it.

All in all I would still prefer this min/max/average approach to the current all or nothing system.

Another idea would be to use the current system but only update the scores every Xth turn, where X is some player-controlled integer. This way you would get a snapshot of the values once in a while, but you wouldn't know if the different stats are rising fast or slowly decaying etc.

With the --scoredumb command all these ideas should be possible to code, including a feature that enables the host to distribute the computed info to the players in some usable format. Might even look nice, and I would certainly give praise to the person (YOU ?) who completes this little exercise.

[ August 05, 2004, 20:25: Message edited by: Ivan Pedroso ]

[KroolDeath]

Great replies, glad I brought this thread back up...

I guess it occurred to me that maybe something could be tweaked. During my first MP game, when I noticed a couple of the nations really climbing fast in the land grab and became rather concerned. It can, almost, drive your own strategy seeing things like this (this is a newb approach of course, but it could cause reactionary strategy like you were in some type of footrace!).

Krool

[nakomus]

A variation Ivan’s suggestion of infrequent updates with the current system would be to time shift the graphs so that the “present” time of the graphs is actually N turns ago, where N is settable at game creation.

This way, by the time a change appears on the score graphs things have already moved on somewhat. The land grabbing player may have had time to consolidate his position, or the player who lost a large army may have recovered a bit.

A player with a good idea of what is going on in the game and scouts all over should be able to extrapolate from the graphs and knowledge of what has happened recently, whereas a turtle in the corner would be less likely to be able to make decisive use of the information.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Why does everything always have to be a patriotic American red, white, and blue? Be bold. Go for the retro-nostalgic combo of cyan, magenta, and yellow!

Red, white, and blue, are hardly purely American colors. As examples which immediately spring to mind, both the French and British flags are composed of those same colors.