I thought about the system some more after reading everyone's comments and I think it IS a good system depite bad luck early loses and I'll explain why.

First of all though, some suggestions involve introducing more rating rules to take account for bad luck. My opinion on this is that its the wrong way to go since it makes things more complicated, can introduce strange strategies, and is not in the simplified spirit of dice wars.

So lets keep it as simple as possible. Boneman's suggestion simplifies the rating system a little bit but the problem is that it promotes ganging up on new players. The current ELO system encourages experienced players to challenge themselves and play together. I think we'll see the value of this as the ratings grow.

Now to explain why bad early beats aren't that bad. There is a lot of luck in the game with dice placement and dice rolling and at face value the game seems random. Sometimes luck is in your favor sometimes it isn't. The strategy comes into play when you notice ways to increase the probability of good luck, and there are lots of ways to do this. So bad early positions is just the luck part of the game kicking in early. Although it sucks, the important thing to know is that because the starting positions are random everyone will have bad starting positions with the same frequency. The challenge is to better in these situations than other players would.

In a way its a lot like the luck in poker. Bad luck and bad beats happen to the best players. But better players lose less when they're in a bad situation.

I hope this makes sense. Let me know what you think.

I didn't suggest a flat point system, because I figured Ryan was committed to the ranking system. If there is a switch to a flat point system, Here's my suggestion for the points:

1st gets 4 points
2nd gets 1 points
3rd gets 1 points
4th gets 1 points
5th gets -1 points
6th gets -2 points
7th gets -4 points

These allotment gives incentives for making it to the endgame, but gives no incentive to endgame players to give up and try for second place.

This is really important. All the fun I expected from multi-player dice wars is taken away by "second place is still points" players. It's no fun taking over a board while/because everyone is avoiding you while they fight for second. The whole dynamic of the game is ruined by second place being worth anything.

Playing a computer, second place was never good enough. The same dynamic needs to be in multi player.

I just don't see how it's fair to do well in a whole series of games and then get 100 points wiped out in one turn because you had a completely non-winnable position.

I know that if I ever get above 50 points again, i'm going to refuse to play against anybody with 0 points, which makes this incredibly non-fun and hard to find a game.

Losing 100 points in a single game due to bad luck is ridiculous.

I got no issue with luck being a factor, Ryan. My issue is that the system in place encourages people to give up trying to win. They start trying to lose last.

The only good game I've that kept the fun dynamic of the original one-player was the game you watched yesterday on the +200 board. Every game should have dynamic and be that interesting. But instead, every single other game I've played, It was against people trying for second place, not first. The tiny countries are more of a threat to each other, and the big guy has no challenge to his domination of the entire board. Even that one game I mentioned, only two of the endgame players actually used the original game tactics/ethics. The others still kept trying to come in second, instead of trying to come in first.

When you gave second place value, you changed everyone's strategy to the game. My complaint isn't about luck, but about second place being good enough for everyone to quit trying for first.

MrK:I know what you're saying about competing for 2nd. So lets talk about this a bit more.

What about a 100 point bonus for 1st.

Or, I could use an ELO with two places: win or lose.

You're rating goes up if you win, and it goes down if you lose at any position. And it goes down the same amount at any position. This really puts the emphasis on 1st like the original dicewars.

It would still be elo but your expected place would be a value between 0 and 1. So if your E is close to 1, (you are playing low rating players), and you win, you don't win too much. If your E is close to 0 and you lose, you hardly lose much. But when you lose you lose the same amount no matter which place you come in.

I think this way also takes the pain out of coming in last. Although it would probably lead to more surrenders when you know 1st is impossible. But it would encourage ganging up on the leader like in dicewars.

Ryan: you mean, keeping the ELO, and putting a 100 point bonus on first? I don't think that'll solve the problem. 2nd will still be worth a lot more than fourth, and takes much less effort, since you are attacking a country much smaller than 1st. There's still just to much incentive to try for second. and that 100 point bonus just means for bigger losses next time, it's not that big of incentive, you'll still be knocked back down to pretty much the same place.

I don't think that'll stop the scramble for "I died last" points, since dying last by attacking the other dying countries would still have such a greater value than coming in 4th or 3rd while trying to take out the big one. It's just to risky.

Oh, I like the last one more, but you are right, it'd encourage to many surrenders. Maybe a 3 place system. 7th-5th is last place, gets 0, 4th-2nd gets 1, and 1st gets 2.

That'd encourage people to fight to survive till endgame, then once there, they'd fight to win.

I think I'm going to go with the win/lose point system. The second one I described above.

If you lose you lose 1/7 of what you would win based on your ELO expected score. I like this because it is very simple and solves a couple of the issues noted.

As far as surrenders I take back what I said. I suspect that someone who doesn't have a chance at first can easily have time to grow since this system encourages the strategy to pick on on the bigger guy.

I will probably put this system in tonight so that its running tomorrow. We can evaluate it again after it runs tomorrow.

You're new thought about surrenders is interesting, and probably true. Yeah, two places should bring it back to how it should be.

It may take a day or two for everyone to realize/use new strategy.