Submit your faction! - Alpha Contest - administrative thread

[Sigma]

I noticed that at a given time there are usually between 5 and 8 Guests logged on here, which means there's a good chunk of people that are reading out stuff here but haven't joined.

We may be able to encourage them to contribute, and here is how: turn AC2 into the new Network Node. We can set-up an email for people to send their faction txts and graphics to, and make weekly/biweekly/monthly faction design contests for all comers. That way in addition to bringing in more activity we would expand AC2's stock of faction options.

Can we discuss this as well? I think it would be a great way to hike activity a bit and get new people who don't really post all that much to get into the swing of things; plus it would boost our supply of custom factions beyond what was recovered from The Network Node.

[Buster's Uncle]

I think there's a good idea there, but I can't see it working.  I'd certainly support an attempt.  Tell me more.

[Sigma]

We'd just need to start small, is all. We obviously have a lot of people who lurk here and read what we do, but not as many contribute. So the first round we'd probably just rely on our current posters (Green1, Jarlwolf, Kilkakon, ete, you, me, etc) to supply the factions, then we bundle the factions all together into a set and vote on the winner, and the winner gets a badge. There we go, we've now increased our Custom Faction stash by 10%, and we've potentially sparked interest.

In subsequent rounds, the barrier to entry should be lowered to allow new members or people who aren't members to join. For one we wouldn't require graphics, which means that the entrants would only need to submit the txt files; then we could as a reward for the best ones have our members create graphics for them, giving them further incentive to submit their ideas.

Each round could have a theme in the way that several of the Nextwork Node sets did, i.e The Progenitor Civil War, the Aquatic Set, the Second Mission, the Return to Earth. That way the sets could be thematically consistent instead of just a pile of random statistics.

[Buster's Uncle]

For that matter, why not allow submission of art w/o .txt?  Some of us are only interested in the creative part - makes for a good partnership with those tech types who only care about stats and playability.

I doubt putting up an email is a problem, but what I'm trying to figure out is how to package/display such a thing to get people's attention and submissions. 

[Sigma]

For one you could post it on the Front Page. For two, I don't know exactly how this board software works but can you have global annoucements that will appear on all subforums?

We could also advertise it on other forums (Civ forums, Apolyton, whatever I don't really know much about the community).

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm going to call sisko's attention to this...

[Buster's Uncle]

I do think there's a wonderful idea in there, and hope we can make it work.

[Green1]

For one you could post it on the Front Page. For two, I don't know exactly how this board software works but can you have global annoucements that will appear on all subforums?

We could also advertise it on other forums (Civ forums, Apolyton, whatever I don't really know much about the community).

Civ Fanatics regularly sends folks here for things they can not answer themselves. The other boards are kind of deadish. Even so, If I was a forum mod of a dieing board, I would raise my eyebrows if some interloper came and started trying take active posters!

Then again, even with GOG release, this game is quite old. You are not going to get the traffic of, say, Civ V or even Age of Wonders 3.

The main thing is, while new folks are cool, I kind of like smaller community here. It is a lot more intimate than say a gargantuan board like MMOChampion where you can post something cool and it is lost in the noise 5 minutes later.

[Buster's Uncle]

--Sure, but I'd like enough noise to keep me entertained much more of the time...

[Green1]

--Sure, but I'd like enough noise to keep me entertained much more of the time...

lol.

Maybe if AC2 comes out or there is some open source project that makes it into code and not CFC forum thread. Then again, activity on the level of AoW2 Heaven would give you entertainment.

But really, 4x boards are pretty tame and intellectual. If you want the banhammer to keep from getting rusty (at least towards actual humans) and to show your nerdrage powers, you need something like TeamXbox forums.

That said, this is a cult classic.

[JarlWolf]

I agree to this and support this fully. And plus I'd love to create more factions:

I actually had an idea of doing an entire "Return to Earth" style set, with the storyline being

Play factions on Earth at the same time the Centauri folk landed on Chiron: On a nuclear blasted Earth with scarce resources, crazy factions and warlords and mutant humans to replace mindworms. It'd be a total conversion for SMAC.

I also had an idea of starting up a little contest thing myself:

A forum personalities faction, we have factions based on various members of the forum personalized by each person. They'd have custom leaderheads based either on their real life pictures or preferred avatars/images people can identify them with, and it'd be mainly a comical take on factions in general, and the ideologies of each faction would be extremely humorous and insane.

[sisko]

@Sigma: i'm a big fan of all forum competitions and i'm game when it comes to organise one.
still, there's a little problem: just look at the GotM and the AC ladder. neither of them was a big success and the increase in forum activity was only marginal (..if any).
on the other hand, maybe we were targeting the wrong audience. after all, the modders are by far the most active when it comes to participating in more than one section of the forum..

For one you could post it on the Front Page. For two, I don't know exactly how this board software works but can you have global annoucements that will appear on all subforums?

this can be done.

We could also advertise it on other forums (Civ forums, Apolyton, whatever I don't really know much about the community).

no problem (as long as the idea is starting to generate enough activity).

A forum personalities faction, we have factions based on various members of the forum personalized by each person. They'd have custom leaderheads based either on their real life pictures or preferred avatars/images people can identify them with, and it'd be mainly a comical take on factions in general, and the ideologies of each faction would be extremely humorous and insane.

this sounds like the theme for a future round of the contest. ..why not the first one?

[sisko]

A forum personalities faction..

i have somewhere on the web such a faction. the finder gets 200EC from me!

[Sigma]

A forum personalities faction, we have factions based on various members of the forum personalized by each person. They'd have custom leaderheads based either on their real life pictures or preferred avatars/images people can identify them with, and it'd be mainly a comical take on factions in general, and the ideologies of each faction would be extremely humorous and insane.

this sounds like the theme for a future round of the contest. ..why not the first one?

I dare say the only way this could work would be for us to Secret Santa each other. Which I am wholeheartedly in favor of.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sigma, tell us what you can about the Network Node - it would probably be useful in promoting this project, and a lot of us into custom factions are just plain curious.

...

This dovetails with a project Darsnan's talked about -to put together a collection of every custom faction out there- and a couple of things ete's already working on -to index custom factions on the AC2 wiki, and to fix up/complete many of the ones that could use it-.  It would be good to get their input.  I guess I'll send both gentlemen a heads-up...

...

A forum personalities faction..

i have somewhere on the web such a faction. the finder gets 200EC from me!

I pitched the forum personalities factions idea about 4.5 years ago, and have actually made three.  I have to disqualify myself from sisko's challenge, as I'm sure he's talking about one DrazharLn and I made...