[NC2012] - Congratulations, Thank Yous and Closing Thoughts

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Alex_C

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Congratulations to Team France for winning Nations Cup 2012, and for managing to overcome internal difficulties in order to finish what you started in Nations Cup 2011. The French team played amazingly well, and kept us entertained throughout in their Finals with Ukraine. Whilst the they may have had their share of close matches throughout the tournament, the sheer individual skill of their members often pulled them through, and I doubt anyone would contest that they were the strongest team. That said, I still look forward to beating them with Team UK in 2013. :razz:

Congratulations are also in order for Team Ukraine, who despite very much not being a favourite at the start of the tournament, just kept improving until they were the only team left to challenge France. I doubt anyone will overlook them in Nations Cup 2013.

Well done as well to Turkey and Poland for managing to get to the Semi-Finals, despite not managing to arrange their final match with each other. They played extremely well throughout, and outlasted the majority of teams.



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Firstly thank you to everyone who ran previous Nations Cups for the inspiration and the solid ground-work on which I built. Also thanks to captain lust amongst others for their valuable advise with regards to specific rule-sets. Thanks also to Archivist for the use of his title-art, thanks to Tomy44 for running the banner-pack and thanks to Alene for the awesome trophy images used above.

I’d also like to thank Taleworlds for donating the sixteen Napoleonic Wars keys (which all the members of Team France have now received.) It’s certainly good to have the competitive scene supported by the developers in this way. Thanks as well to Goker for setting up the keys being donated.

Thank you to all the Event Admins who oversaw matches, helped resolve disputes, informed teams of the correct workings of the rules and so forth. I’m aware that there was probably not as much for you to do as there was in previous tournaments, however this is largely due to the fact of glitch-free maps having been introduced and rule-sets changed.

Thanks to the Guard of Istiniar, captain lust, Zero, Mad Dawg and Taleworlds for the use of their donated servers. The ENL servers donated by captain lust and the North American servers donated by Zero and Mad Dawg were in particular instrumental. The tournament could really not have run as smoothly as it did without them.

Thank you Bezemsteel, Ikaguia, Juvenile, Cybran, Jabbe, Nubijuki, TheBard, profail, Crusader, dzioOb, Maynd, Gultar, Chaingun, Bambama, David, Lares, Orion and Erminas for volunteering as captains of your nation’s team. I think Erminas and Ikaguia deserve special mention for bringing unexpected teams into the competition, and sticking it out until the end, especially with the innate disadvantages faced by the Brazilian team.

Finally, thank you to everyone who played in the tournament, everyone who contributed, and to anyone I may have forgotten. I look forward to seeing you next year.



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The following are just closing thoughts on how this tournament went and ideas to possibly improve upon this design come tournament time next year:

Firstly I think there were some slight problems with regards to the Group Stage. The only purpose it served this year was to knock out two teams (this purpose is essentially null, I don’t think it’s worth holding it just to knock reduce the team number from 18 to 16); to seed the Knockout Stage (arguably this is worth it, but I’m not entirely sure) and to ensure that every team gets a healthy ‘minimum’ number of played matches (again, arguably this is worth it, but I’m sure there’s a more elegant solution). I don’t really know how I’d approach this problem next year, since presumably there’ll be roughly the same or fewer teams (for instance if only 16 teams signed next year, it’d definitely seem silly having a Group Stage eliminating none of them, unless we had a 8-team Knockout Stage).

Another problem with the Group Stage was the definite presence of an extremely tough group (United Kingdom, Turkey, Poland) and a relatively easy one (Italy, Yugoslavia, Germany, Sweden, BeNe). Ideally this wouldn’t happen since it messes with the two main purposes of the Group Stage: if teams are being eliminated, good teams will be eliminated while less good teams will go through and if teams are being seeded, a decent team can end up with a bad seed. Of course one solution to this would be to seed next year’s groups with this year’s results, here would be a seeding of this year’s team based on which stage they got knocked out, then overall won rounds/overall lost rounds as an example:

Seed
Nation
WR/LR
1​
France​
2.238​
2​
Ukraine​
2.065​
3​
Poland​
2.111​
4​
Turkey​
1.813​
5​
Russia​
2.714​
6​
United Kingdom​
2.026​
7​
Germany​
1.846​
8​
Finland​
0.613​
9​
United States of America​
2.478​
10​
Netherlands​
1.649​
11​
Sweden​
1.000​
12​
Italy​
0.786​
13​
Canada​
0.509​
14​
Czech Republic​
0.435​
15​
Brazil​
0.220​
16​
Yugoslavia​
0.068​
17​
Hungary​
0.053​
18​
Portugal​
0.000​

This would then allow the teams to be seeded into groups based at least partly on how well they did this time. Of course this may in itself be futile in that the teams will most likely change in terms of ability quite radically, maybe the possibility of killer groups should just be accepted.

A change I’d definitely make if I were running Nations Cup 2013 would be to remove any size-limits on rosters, or on the number of substitutions. To be quite frank, I included both of these things mostly just because they’d been in previous Nations Cups, but in hindsight I really can’t see what they add. I suppose they make things easier to organise, and would prevent nations like Russia from forming a 100-strong team, but frankly if they have enough players to do so, I don’t see why they shouldn’t. With ID-checking in place, I don’t feel it really opens up the system for abuse.

Again, if I were running Nations Cup 2013 I think I’d be more insistent on keeping the rule-sets as close as possible to the prevalent (European, since North American teams make up a minority of teams, I’d probably aim to be mostly be using rules from the ENL or its equivalent) competitive scene’s.

With the ENL mod (or it might be a patch, can’t quite remember) eliminating the exploit of ‘money-quitting’, I’d also remove any limitations on substitutions joining during rounds, except obviously that you can’t spawn more than the other team.

I’d also want to look into a different system for tie-breakers. Luckily the current system was only actually used once, and when it was, it did feel slightly unintuitive and clunky, as well as obviously having the possibility to basically go on forever, or have a whole match rescheduled.

I’d always be looking for a better way to play home/away especially in terms of North American v.s. European. If you think you have one, please let me know.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, criticisms or the like, please feel free to contribute. Once again, congratulations to France!
 
Yep well done France. I think the best team won.

And thanks to Alex for organising a great tournament. I wouldn't be too critical of the rules or format and I still think the system used was better than the alternative suggestions.
 
Thanks you all, guys, and gz France.

Alex, i asked to remove guys who didn't play with us, now they are in the team roster and gained 2nd place too  :sad: Anyway, thanks you for organization.
 
Congrats to France, as well as the other place-holding teams. Seeing as Canada experienced the total ownage of both, it's not hard to believe that France and Ukraine made 1st and 2nd place.

Regardless, Team Canada had a blast this year. We'll definitely be looking to have a team for next year.

Thanks for the tournament Alex :grin:
 
Thanks to Alex, and congrats other teams too! Without these quality teams the tournament would not be so awesome !

Looking forward to the next year !
 
gg all :smile:

little bonus here : 5 FRA players after some beers victory celebration in paris 16th june 2012 :


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Our heroic leader is the guy in the middle; from left to right Fab Sil Nubi Asgeir Guy
enjoy ^^
 
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