Ranking Reset??????

[St4tzilla]

Many of you do not know me outside of xbox360, but we most certainly have played before. I have logged something close to 1,000 games. I may talk a little smack here and there, but I generally keep to myself when playing and seldom have my mic on. I am probably not one of the top 5 players in the world, but I have to be considered if one expands discussion to a top ten. I've been as high as number 3 on the ladder and have lately been ping ponging between ranks 5-11. Today, without any warning and for no apparent reason I can think of, my ranking has been reset. I am hoping that the powers at be or perhaps some of the more knowledgable "insiders" on here can provide an explaination for why this might have happened. I look forward to playing with you all in the future.

[Grayson]

hi, welcome to the boards

You got a "random reset", which really sucks. The other way you can get reset on xbox is to not play for 2 weeks (there's no reset on ps3, but it's way more buggy and less ppl on ps3), which is an "inactivity reset". If you play long enough, you'll probably run into a random reset. Some people never get them, some people get them often. It sucks really bad to get on in FFA because it takes longer to get back into the top ranks than H2H, where I've had about 5. I've only got 1 random reset on FFA, and a few inactivety resets (will be getting one shortly if I haven't already, since my xbox is in for repair after my red ring of death I got recently).

I've played you twice, once as the Greeks from random, and once with the Arabs. You beat my Greeks the first game, and the very next game I played as the Arabs, and moved my settler and took your cap early, though it was a little tough than normal to do so. You played as the Americans both times, so it's hard to be an accurate judge as to how well you played the games, and it was a few weeks ago, but if I remember you from the usually lackluster FFA crowd I run into, you definatly have something going for you. Hope to see you use something other than the Americans, but if not, that's ok. I dont' mind a tougher match...

Sorry that you got the random reset. There's really nothing you can do but bite the bullet, and know that a lot of top players have had it a lot as well. I know Morte has had a bunch of resets as well...

[dukeblue1987]

Resets can happen a few ways...

1. If you don't play a game for approx 2 weeks.
2. No apparent reason.

Also, just because you are on the leaderboard does not mean you are in the top 10 best players of the world. If you have a poor connection or just don't feel like waiting out freezes, it is near impossible to be in the top 10. You need to win approx 80-90% of games to stay there and if you disconnect at a 20% rate you will lose points eventually. Also, many people here choose to play weaker civs for more of a challenge. This also hurts rank in a sense. Much easier to get to the top playing America or China than France! I am in the top ten as Arabs and I wouldn't consider myself one of the best 15-20 players.

Please don't take this the wrong way, as I'm not saying that you are not good, I'm just saying that many of the best players are not at the top of the leaderboard =)

[St4tzilla]

I agree that rank alone is a poor judge of skill. I indeed get many of my ranking points beating up on people with the Americans. That said, I can sustain a 80+% win rate with all but the French and Mongolians. I imagine I could bring up my chances with the French if I chose to play them more often. I've played everyone near the top multiple times. Morte and Bumbum handled me with relative ease in the past, though I think I could put up a much stronger fight now. I am probably one of the more anonymous top players because I've stayed off the boards, but I think 1100 games is a large enough sample size to know where I stack up. I'm not claiming to be the best, but I think top 10 is a wide enough range that I have a slot somewhere in it. I guess I'll have to crawl back up 30 points at a time. Has anyone cracked the top 20 playing solely as the Indians? They seem to be the most neglected civ both in mp play and on these forums.

[MorteEterna]

I agree that rank alone is a poor judge of skill. I indeed get many of my ranking points beating up on people with the Americans. That said, I can sustain a 80+% win rate with all but the French and Mongolians. I imagine I could bring up my chances with the French if I chose to play them more often. I've played everyone near the top multiple times. Morte and Bumbum handled me with relative ease in the past, though I think I could put up a much stronger fight now. I am probably one of the more anonymous top players because I've stayed off the boards, but I think 1100 games is a large enough sample size to know where I stack up. I'm not claiming to be the best, but I think top 10 is a wide enough range that I have a slot somewhere in it. I guess I'll have to crawl back up 30 points at a time. Has anyone cracked the top 20 playing solely as the Indians? They seem to be the most neglected civ both in mp play and on these forums.

I would like to play you again, if I did before. I don't remember, maybe we played only once and it was a easy game, I'm not sure. I got a normal reset in h2h, because I didn't play for 2 weeks, losing all the stats. Random resets, only reset your points, that's boring obviously.

It's not easy to tell the best 10 players in the world, however I would like to test it.

However, I don't know why you have talked about bumbumalot, I don't think he's even in the top15-20.

[Liam_Sutty]

I am currently 11,342nd on the PS3 leaderboard for H2H!! Impressive or what!? My ratio is something like 780 - 280. If a game freezes I am the first one to quit and try and get another game going. It used to annoy me at first but now I have fun taking 30+ points from people trying to get up the ladder instead!! :-)

[SVPM]

Has anyone cracked the top 20 playing solely as the Indians? They seem to be the most neglected civ both in mp play and on these forums.

I had them in top-10 on PS3 h2h about a year ago (is it more than that?), but like you, I got a reset. The most impressive though is TyShine and Grayson putting the French in the Top-10 on Xbox...

[TyShine]

The Indians would be easy to get in the top 10, actually if I had time easy to get to number 1 in H2H. What is your gamertag? BTW I think a lot of players would consider themselves top 10, but its hard to say because many of the better players do not care about rank.

[Grayson]

I don't know about "soley" playing the Indians, but the Indians have been in the top 10 before, I think Dorpsgek (or whatever his name is, usually has Spain as his fav civ) had them before, and I know that Rabid Ewok (BigStank on this forum) plays pretty much only with the Indians now....

I play random on FFA, for the most part, though if I do choose a civ, it's usually the Spanish, Arabs, Indians, or Greeks.... That is, before my xbox decided it was sick of the same game and gave me the rrod.

[St4tzilla]

My gamertag is St4tzilla (formerly Scrabblematt) I rarely play H2H because 90+% of my games last about 15 minutes and there's no real thinking involved in a horserush. I know most skilled American players finish the game with a knight rush 99% of the time. I grew so tired of the glitchers, that now I usually won't attack an opp if I have a 10+ tech lead. End the game with WB or UN around 800-1400 depending on how much I decide to toy around with my prey.

Looking for a new civ or self-imposed restriction to use while climbing back up the ranks with. Any suggestions? Anyone ever crack the top 20 without researching COL? I'm looking for something fun, new, and memorable. I can't wait to see what some of you guys come up with

[Grayson]

Looking for a new civ or self-imposed restriction to use while climbing back up the ranks with. Any suggestions? Anyone ever crack the top 20 without researching COL? I'm looking for something fun, new, and memorable. I can't wait to see what some of you guys come up with

I think if you can get the French, Russians, or Mongols into the top 10 on FFA, that would be very impressive. It's a lot different than doing it on H2H. In H2H, you can still handle sometimes the power civs with a very weak civ just by tactics alone, but in FFA, a lot of times you'll get at least 2 opponnets with a power civ, or at least several solid civs...

For self-imposed restrictions, I think no horse or knight rushes would be cool, and maybe not tanks either. Or the holy grail would be to have your fav victory icon be something other than domination, though I think that would be very hard to do without a power civ, (maybe Spain and Greeks could do this easier than others as well).

Aside from all of that, what impresses me the most out of a quality opponnet, other than just good skills, is when they display those skills without a power civ, and even with the weakest civs. Playing good players that use a varitey of civs, it's easier to get an accurate picture of their skill in this game, because they can show off a wide variety of skills, whereas a good player that uses the Americans or Chinese, they just get lost in the mix, and there's nothing impressive about it, not matter what they do. Stopping using those civs for the most part, I really enjoy this game a lot more. If you want to play with those civs, it's your choice, whatever is fun for you. But, if you want some glory, go without top civs or the popular choices, and people will remember you more.

[Pedal2Metal]

Mongols have never been in top-10 in H2H (at least not such that I can remember). I think every other civ has been in top-10 in H2H at one time or another. Doing that would be impressive. Doing it w/o horserushing is even more impressive. Doing it in FFA even more impressive. Doing it in Teams: IMPOSSIBLE! So if you like impossible challenges, try to do it in Teams.


My son got them to 13th in H2H before we gave up on rank due to 20% freeze rate (that's as good as we get & sometimes we get 80% freeze rate which is annoying as heck!).

best regards,
Pedal2Metal

[St4tzilla]

I may give Mongols a try, but I think it would be pretty tough. The thing about Mongols is they're sostart dependent. I seem to lose 1/20 games as Mongolia simply because I start on a 5 tile island and all the barb huts are gone before I can get to any. Always up for a challenge though. I don't think it's possible to change the favorite victory simply due to the fact that players quit when they see that their efforts are futile. In games that I play to completion, I think I win through economic or cultural victories more often than domination in an attempt to "freeze out" the freezers. It's not hard to get America up to 3,000 gold/turn by 1100 AD or so. Pair that with the fact that it takes a new american city about 5 turns to get up to 120+ hammers and it's not too hard to win without attack.
Mongols are option A. . . . options B, C, and D, anyone?

[elthrasher]

I may give Mongols a try, but I think it would be pretty tough. The thing about Mongols is they're sostart dependent. I seem to lose 1/20 games as Mongolia simply because I start on a 5 tile island and all the barb huts are gone before I can get to any. Always up for a challenge though. I don't think it's possible to change the favorite victory simply due to the fact that players quit when they see that their efforts are futile. In games that I play to completion, I think I win through economic or cultural victories more often than domination in an attempt to "freeze out" the freezers. It's not hard to get America up to 3,000 gold/turn by 1100 AD or so. Pair that with the fact that it takes a new american city about 5 turns to get up to 120+ hammers and it's not too hard to win without attack.
Mongols are option A. . . . options B, C, and D, anyone?

Actually, I've won all my Mongol 5-tile island games. The Seven Cities is usually close at hand. Yeah, you won't get +50% trade from captured cities any time soon and you may not convert any barbs, but 200 gold before 3000 BC makes any civ good.

The Mongols are a good challenge. I have them as my favorite civ in H2H, but I haven't played enough to more than crack the top 100 so far. I was in the top 10 in FFA (peaked at 3, I think) with only random civs before my reset. Unfortunately, you can't get a random icon so my favorite civ showed as the Greeks, despite not having picked them since my noob days.

Do you really win that many culture victories online? I have won like 4 or so in all the games I've played and in every case I could've won any of the other victory conditions faster and my remaining opponent(s) had absolutely no hope of winning. Basically I've only done it for laffs.

Now there's a real challenge. Get into the top 10 with a favorite victory condition other than dominion! Probably impossible since most people quit when they're down, but it might be possible to sneak econ victories through.

Probably not with the Mongols though!

[St4tzilla]

I go for culture just to screw around, but I get it often. Obviously economic is the easiest to achieve outside of domination unless I'm able to steal 6-8 GPs. . . then cultural is just as easy. Going to test out the Mongols. Anybody know DaXecutioners? Just won a fun one against him where he was aztecs and killed greece and england in the first 10 turns. 1-0 but if I was against a half decent aztec, I'm sure this would have turned out differently.

[elthrasher]

I go for culture just to screw around, but I get it often. Obviously economic is the easiest to achieve outside of domination unless I'm able to steal 6-8 GPs. . . then cultural is just as easy. Going to test out the Mongols. Anybody know DaXecutioners? Just won a fun one against him where he was aztecs and killed greece and england in the first 10 turns. 1-0 but if I was against a half decent aztec, I'm sure this would have turned out differently.

Steal 6-8 GP? Is that because there are several AI remaining in your games or are you playing noobs who settle their GP and then don't quit when you get 20 techs ahead and steal everything?

In a lot of my games the AI are all killed off right away and so are many poor players. I can see how a culture victory might be attainable if you can steal that many GP.

[Grayson]

I guess this has to do with this topic, since it's about rank resets, but I got my XBOX back today

Got a reset on all my H2H accounts, but not my FFA account (which is what I was playing with 12 days ago when I got my error/rrod).... so all is not lost.

Inactivity resets are retarded, but I guess not as bad as random ones.