Registration for a PBEM Duel Tournament will open on 15 October (Tournament)

Following two successful PBEM tournaments, the first one a Duel Tournament which reached its final phase and the second one a 2 vs 2 Team Tournament about to start its second round, a new PBEM Duel Tournament will open registration at the end of the week. The tournament is expected to start in 2 to 3 months.

An Article by Hiliadan

Following a poll conducted in May and June, asking the type of tournament people would like to participate in, a 2 vs 2 Team Tournament was first organised (see news Registration for a PBEM 2 vs 2 team tournament will open next week and Round 1 of the PBEM 2 vs 2 team tournament has started!). The second choice, favoured by 63% of voters was a new PBEM Duel Tournament.

The new tournament will thus be double-elimination, 1 vs 1 and PBEM. It will be hosted on the Battlefield website and will thus benefit from its existing functions, such as roster visualization, meta-statistics, ranking, match reports, etc. A dedicated page will be opened on 15 October for players to register.


Roster visualization: Example of the latest 16 players Duel PBEM tournament


Registrations will stay open for quite a long time for three reasons:

1. Give time for gabthegab, Fistandantilus and Skuns453Lirik902, the players involved in the final phase of the previous 2015 PBEM Duel Tournament, to (hopefully) play all their matches and thus more easily participate to this new tournament;


2. Finalize v1.2 of the PBEM & Single Player Balance Mod which will be used during the tournament in order to provide a level-playing field for all players, classes, races and specialisations and create favourable conditions for fun and intense games (see the latest article about the balance mod and the full changelog of v1.18, the latest release of the balance mod);


3. Provide sufficient time to discuss the rules and settings for the tournament, currently debated on the official Triumph forum.

The PBEM & Single Player Balance Mod will be used in the tournament

The tournament is expected to start around December or, more likely, January 2017.
32 players are expected for this tournament.

One big change compared to previous tournaments is that prices will be available for the winners! Following a poll conducted in August (Would you be ready to give some money for a tournament in order to get a (small) prize for the winners?), the suggested financial participations from players will be 3€. Players will be free to contribute more.
Players will be free not to pay anything and still participate to the tournament but they will then not receive any prize even if they win.
Players who contribute financially will have a chance to win the "lucky prize", even if they do not win the tournament. And the more they contribute financially, the bigger their chance to win. For instance, if 100€ are collected and a player contributed 10€, he will have a 10% chance of winning the lucky prize.
There will be 4 prizes, whose value will depend how much money is collected (please note that some money will be used to pay for the transaction fees from Paypal and some to pay for the server of the website):
- winner of the tournament: about 10-20€ gift card on Steam or GoG + AoW3 item (t-shirt or similar, based on the budget)
- finalist: about 10-20€ gift card
- 3rd place: about 5-10€ gift card
- lucky prize: about 5-10€ gift card


New in this tournament: prizes - A very small financial contribution is suggested so that winners and a lucky player (who did not win) can get nice prizes

If you want to participate to this tournament, please join the 2016 PBEM tournament player pool to get the latest news regarding the tournament!


Settings

Balance mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=661597466

Turn timer = 1 day
Medium Map with Surface and Underground on Continents
Normal Game flow speed

Start town: Village
Starting units: Weak
Starting distance: Far
Roads: Few
Roaming units: Average
Treasures: Average
Cities: Few
Dwellings: Few
Ressource structures: Average
Visit structure: Average
Treasure structures: Average

Water Slider at 25%
Undiggable walls and Diggable Wall Sliders down to 15%
All other sliders left untouched at standard 50 %

Ironman Mode: on
Seal Victory: off
Unifier Victory: at 2 Beacons
Tactical Combat Mode - Against AI: Always Ask

Game speed: Normal
Starting Resource: Standard
Starting Skills: Normal
All Heroes Have Resurgence: Never
Defenders Strength: Strong
Cosmic Events: Medium
Maximum Number of Heroes: 2 (1 Leader + 2 heroes)
Maximum Heroes Level: 13

Map Exploration: On
City Founding: On
Random heroes match player race: Off
Empire Quests: On

Rules
1. One round cannot exceed 2 months. If neither of the players won 2 months after the start of the round, then one should surrender and take a screenshot of the score and provide it to the judges. The team with the highest (combined) score then wins the match. If scores are very close, the judges can decide that it is a draw and ask the players to replay the game with a shorter (for instance 1 month) deadline.
 
2. Players can arrange whatever settings (e.g. no dwellings) they choose, but in the absence of consensus, the settings described in the “In-Game settings” above are to be considered the default. The team hosting the game is automatically and randomly chosen by the Battlefield website. If for any reason (e.g. no DLC), the designated host team cannot host the game, then the other team does. The host must take screenshots, preferably in windowed mode (showing the date and hour when the screenshots were taken), of the settings and post them publicly (so that his opponent and the judges can access them) before the match starts.

3. If one player temporarily cannot play his turns in 24 hours (e.g. because of holidays, or personal issues), and warn the host reasonably in advance, then the host should temporarily change the turn timer to accommodate him.
 
4. In the event of a crash (from your PC or from AoW), reloads are allowed BUT the player who crashed needs to take appropriate screenshots, pictures or videos (with a mobile phone for instance) and sends them to the judges. Reloads should be counted by all players and reported to the judges. If no proof of a justified crash or in case of repeated reloading (during one match or during the tournament as a whole), the judges have full power to disqualify the player.
 
5. A team can never play a class or race that it played in all its previous matches (so you can play Goblin only once in the whole tournament, you can play Sorcerer only once, etc.). BEFORE the match, you must let the Judges (but not your opponents) know what class and race you will play for your upcoming match by private message in the Battlefield website.
 
6. Banter and taunting is allowed, rudeness, swearing and racial (or other prejudicial) language is not. Repeatedly trolling will lead to forfeiting the match.
 
7. The decision of the Judges is to be respected. Players breaking the rules get a total of 3 warnings before being disqualified from the tournament entirely. Judges may disqualify a player without warnings if their behaviour is deemed to be completely out of order (e.g. racism).
 
8. When awaiting judges’ decision (as soon as his opponent requests arbitration), the host must remove the turn timer and may need to revert turns to come back to the situation existing prior to the issue being judged.
 
9. Players must play with the latest official version of the game (no beta). If the official version is updated during the tournament, players must update to it as soon as it is released both on GoG and Steam (and turn timer must be removed while waiting for the GoG release). Players must also play with the PBEM balance mod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=661597466. At the beginning of the tournament, v1.2 of the mod will be used. All the games may be updated to a newer version if all the judges deem it to be stable and necessary for game balance (they may require the non-binding opinion of the players through a poll).
 
10. If you feel one of the rules had been broken, but you carry on playing without reporting to the judges, then you have no recourse.

11. Players should not voluntarily exploits bug or weaknesses in the game. Players should report any bug or exploit to judges or on the official forum when they discover them. Judges can decide to ban players using exploits from the tournament.


Arbitration process
The main judge is Hiliadan.
Assistant judges are: XX and YY.
When arbitration is necessary:
1. If 1 or 2 of the judges are involved in the game which needs arbitration, the 3rd judge should name two temporary judges to replace them for this arbitration.
2. The players should both send necessary files to the judges (screenshots, videos, their latest saved game which can be found here in Windows: C:\Users\[user name]\Documents\My Games\AoW3\Profiles\[profile name]\PBEM) by email or any other means
3. The arbitration will be taken at the majority of the 3 judges and the decision taken is definitive. If one player refuses it, he is disqualified.

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Created on: 11.10.2016 at 19:16:09

Related Links

» Discussion about the settings and rules on the Official forum

» PBEM Tournament Player Pool