Community Clan Competition
Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about this and wondered if a community version of the Clan Competition could be made.
The Clan Competition build into the game is pretty neat in many aspects. I like the way clans can capture territories and expand their empires by fighting battles and have to make strategic decisions about which province to conquer and which to leave to their rivals. The build in Clan Competition is set up in such a way, that it rewards clans for their ability to gather large numbers of members and places less emphasis on individual members’ skill on the battlefield. That is one way of doing it and the pros and cons have been discussed in several other threads.
What I would like to try is to set up a game that builds on the good concepts of the Clan Campaign, but is independent of clan size and has all players united on a single map.
The Concept
Let us assume we play with 10 clans on a map like the one above.
Each province on the map has influence points for a clan and the clan with most influence points rules the province. And just like the Clan Campaign (CC) in the game, the clans gain influence points by fighting battles. The difference is that the game is played in turns (or seasons, different to the ones in the build in CC) and the map of Japan is only updated at the end of each turn, say every two weeks or so.
Now, during a turn each clan may only fight 3 battles.
For each battle, the clan put together a team and arranges a battle with a team of another clan. The winner reports the battle results. After this, the clan can fight the second battle (with either the same or a new team), and then the third. It is up to the clan to decide if he wants only his best generals to fight, or give everyone a chance. At best, a clan can win 3 battles per turn, at worst, a clan will loose all 3 battles (but the looser will get some influence points, too).
Before starting the battle, each clan has to say, which province they want the influence points to go to. Like in the in game CC, this does not have the same province. So clan A can say that their points shall go to province 4, clan B can say their points shall go to province 26 (take a screenshot at the battle set up screen to record that).
Calculating influence points
Influence points are calculated similar to the games Clan Competition, but without giving extra points for retainers or “garnish points” for teams. It is 20 point for each player on your team plus 5 points for each player and each adjacent province.
e.g. winning a 3v3 for province 4 if you already have provinces 2 and 3 :
3 x (20 + 5 + 5) = 90
winning a 2v2 for province 4 if you already have province 3 :
2x (20 + 5) = 50
The defeated clan still gets 5 points per team member for his province, as reward for an honourable and sporting fight, i.e. 10 points for a 2v2 and 15 points for a 3v3.
N.B. we can still fine tune this if we feel it is necessary, I just picked the numbers from the games CC, as many people will probably be familiar with them.
Setting up a Battle
To set up a battle, a clan arranges to meet up online with another clan.
They go to the battle set up screen and (after the usual exchange of polite greetings and pre-battle pleasantries ;-) ) each clan states the number of the province they want to fight for and agree that this battle shall count.
Both parties take a screenshot of this screen.
Then the battle is fought in the usual way.
After the battle at least the winner saves the replay.
I may also be a good idea to also take screenshots of the post-battle screen or any other situation that may be useful to record.
Then the winner posts the battle results at the .org forum and thus the battle is counted.
Note that if the winner does not post the battle results, the defeated clan may also do that (but please not both, to avoid double counting). Also, at this stage, both clans can still agree not to have this battle counted. In that case, no one posts the battle results and nothing further needs to be done.
Battle Rules
Technically any set or rules can be used for the battles.
One suggestion would be to use the Budo League rules, a set or rules that was designed for clan vs. clan battles and aims to enhance interesting battles without spamming overpowered units.
Budo League Rules :
Veterans: Yes, Retainers: Yes
No quitting.
No Artillery.
No spamming. A limit on the number of any given Unit Type determined by funding level, ie. Small funds = 3 Unit Max, Medium funds = 4 Unit Max, Large funds = 5 Unit Max),
No exploits. No more than 50% of any Unit Class, (i.e. Sword, Spear, Ranged or Cav)
Any other limit mutually agreed upon by combatants.
But if two clans prefer to have their battles under different rules, that is also acceptable. The main thing is that both agree on the rules before the battle (and don’t argue about them afterwards). If you do want to have different rules, spell them out and ok them in the battle set up chat and take a screenshot.
Edit: over time a lot of different rule sets have been established in the different tournaments that have been held for this game (CWB, CWC, SJL to name just a few). It is probably beneficial to define a default rule set once enough players have expressed an interest to take part. That way the GameMaster can choose the set of rules that is preferred by most players.
Reporting Battles
I will open a special thread just for reporting battle results. There the clans can post the battle results. Please use the format shown in the following example :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ClanNameA (1/3) vs. ClanNameB (1/3)
Winner : ClanNameA (player1, player2, player3) for province 4
3 x (20 + 5 + 5) = 90
Defeated : ClanNameB (playerx, playery, playerz) for province 26
3 x (5) = 15
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The (1/3) indicates that it was the 1st of the 3 battles and can help to keep track of how many battles a clan has already fought and how many they can still do.
It is sufficient for the winner to post the result (and it helps me to avoid accidentally counting a battle twice when I do the sums at the end of the turn). If a battle outcome is disputed, it is the obligation of the winner to provide proof in the form of screenshots and replays.
Basically, a valid battle requires two things for proof :
1. A screenshot from the set-up screen showing the province numbers for each clan.
2. The replay.
These don’t have to be added to the report for every battle, but the winning clan should keep them safe so they can be provided if necessary.
Then, when the turn end, I will count all battles and update the map.
Conquering free provinces
I have been thinking about introducing a threshold of 70 influence points for conquering a free province. The idea is that in turn 1 a clan will need at least 2 battles 3v3 (1 win and 1 loss) to conquer their first province and thus get one single home territory. After that they can expand from there, taking over a new province with every 3v3 battle they win.
It also means that a weaker clan, who does not win battles easily, can still get a home land, even if they loose all their battles. Only they need to fight 6 battles 3v3 and thus need 2 turns to get their home land (which reflects their weaker power).
I think this could be a good rule to have, but if most people don’t like it, we can also play without and just go ahead taking over free provinces easily right from the start.
Winning the game
Naturally, the clan who controls the most provinces will win the game.
I believe we will need to set a limited time for the competition. For example, ending on the 1st of December may be a good timeframe (then we can all cease our feuds, make up and become friends again before the Christmas holidays).
Of course, if one clan manages to control all provinces before the end date, this clan will be pronounced the winner and be honoured with the Shogunate.
Dealing with passive players
It has become evident to me that some mechanism needs to be put into place to allow the game to go on if players (or clans) become passive. Putting your priorities on your real life (exams, girlfriend/boyfriend, children and friends) is perfectly acceptable, but it means that you should sacrifice your game victory for those higher aims and not hold up the game for other players. So here is how we should do it.
There are three ways to set up a battle. Spontaneous Battles can be arranged by just going online at Steam, finding an opposing clan and agreeing to fight a battle there and then. That is perfectly simple and straight forward and hopefully most battles can be made to happen that way.
For Arranged Battles two clans agree on a date and time for the fight by PM or email. Please post the arrangement at the forum. If one clan does not show up within 1 hour of the agreed time, they forfeit and the battle will be counted as a victory of the clan who was there. If an opposing clan reports you as a no-show, then it will be your responsibility to prove that you did go online on time (provide a screenshot). If both clans were online but unable to fight for some technical reason, the battle will not be counted.
For Challenged Battles a clan can issue a challenge to another clan and force them to fight. This is to avoid a situation that could occur late in the game where one clan is dominating and the smaller clans are trying to starve them out, simply by refusing to fight them. A challenge has to be issued on the first day of the turn, the challenged clan has to respond within 7 days and the battle has to be fought within 14 days of the challenge (we can fine tune the number of days, but some definite time limits will have to be there). If the challenged clan does not react to the challenge, a victory will be counted for the challenger.
This also begs the question what if a strong clan continually challenges the same weaker clan to gain easy points? This of course is dishonourable and if it happens repeatedly the gamemaster can, at his best judgement and sole discretion, declare a challenge invalid.
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). But there are not so many sign ups so far and in fact only Warman has said that he would ask his friends from Elite if they wanted to join as a clan. So we will have a later start and finishing date. 
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