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Thanks! It was great to write for this contest. I think the competition was really good. The quality was high, and it was great to see so many different kind of AARs. The stories of Mettermrck, Balkanite and Alfred Packer, the history book of ComradeOm (I really liked yours!) and the gameplay of Pro and myself. And of course that mysterious A.I. of EUROO7. Too bad he pulled it back, I was quite curious about it.

I really enjoyed writing for this contest. It was a challenge to play the game during this time, write the story and edit the pictures. And that while things tended to go very busy 'in real life'. I almost didn't make it for the last entry, but finished it in the end.

It was also very exciting to see the results shift those first days of the poll. Knights of the Order had at a certain moment even more votes than Westphalia Alert. But after the downtime it was quite obvious. I want to thank everyone who voted!

Too bad that after the forum upgrade the background colour of the posts changed a little bit: I had made some pictures especially for that old background colour.

I think that this contest was well set up . The anonymous posts were a good thing. Well done Duke! Too bad that in the end four of the ten didn't end up in the voting round, and that the final chapter of Gladius Dei, Sword of God didn't came. But after all the stories were good, really good. I reread them this week and enjoyed every single one of them. I'm looking forward to the next contest!
 
Well done (and well won!) Monnikje...Westphalia Alert was great!

And well done to everyone who wrote an AAR and to Wellington, who thought this whole thing up.

It was great fun to participate in and I'm looking forward to the next one!
 
Splendid work, Monnikje, and congratulations. :)

I was extremely disappointed not to finish Gladius...went away on a T-Day weekend trip and it slipped my mind. Plus the forum upgrade, and by then it was too late. It was a fun story to write...sort of a Kingdom of Heaven/Indian Jones mix. :) I had it mind for a FC concept I was musing about.

Thanks again, Duke, and sorry for not finishing. Anonymous stories are great ways to derive true feedback.
 
Right time for my thoughts on the matter and to get a bit of feed back on things.

I am generally happy with the way things went in the contest. I was particularly pleased with the quality of the AARs which exceeded that which I had expected.

Running it too was easy enough. A few lessons learned but nothing major.

I thought the time between postings was about right, a week was long enough to read at leisure and not so long that they were forgotten.

I think the anonymity worked well and I see no need to change that.

Now the bad points.

Reading was made somewhat hard by the number of posts. By that I mean finding the right post amongst what became a long thread. I think an index in the first post could fix that problem though.

Readership I think was high enough based on view counts but few people offered detailed feedback in the comments thread. Does this mean few people actually read them all or thoroughly? Would it be better if people could post in the main thread?

Voter turn-out was quite low. This was disappointing but not all that surprising. I didn't do much work to promote this, however I'm not sure what more could be done. It probably didn't help having the forum go down half way through the voting.

It was also disappointing to see only half the contestants finish the contest but on reflection if all ten had it may have actually been too much to read in detail.



So what others comments does anyone have on the contest? I would like to run it again, not immediately and possibly with Hearts of Iron, but soonish. To make it work though it would be great to get some feedback on what needs improving. I'm open to all suggestions.

To the authors - Was one week enough time between updates to get things done? Would it be better to have two weeks notice before the start so that lots can be written then?
 
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I suspect not all of the AARs got a full reading. Hey everybody, did you read all of the submissions?

I actually did (but then, I was sizing up the competition :) ). In that vein, I was a bit concerned to write a pictureless narrative for just that reason - I know that if I had limited reading time, I would likely have just glossed over the narratives myself.
(this concern was mooted when Westphalia Alert proved such a clever work of genius that I could have filled my AAR with pictures of scantily clad females and still lost).

I wasn't surprised to see several end prematurely, simply because so many AARs end prematurely even when not placed under time constraints and really, I saw making it until the end as part of the competition so I don't see that as a downside at all.

Also, I think one week was fine. With two weeks, I think you would have actually seen more drop-off (more time to lollygag) and it would be hard to maintain forum interest for the 7/8 weeks it would take to go from launch to final updates and then voting with a 2 week lag between updates.
 
One thought on the entries, Duke - I wonder if it wouldn't work better if perhaps the initial story post was updated rather than making a new post with parts 2 and then 3. A note that the updates have been added would clue those reading that more is there and it would be easier to follow. The only issue you may run into is a post limit in characters or photos. Just a couple of ducats thought.

Overall I thought the timing was just about perfect. I too was disappointed that voting was down but perhaps not many people were aware of it. Only thing I can offer there is perhaps time and familiarity will gather the project some support. Perhaps we should limit the entries to five rather than ten as well to make sure there isn't too much to read. Though there, you might run into a problem of half of them dropping out with only 2 finished.
 
I would support less than ten stories as well. The many tales got mixed up with other somewhat. Perhaps coz's suggestion of editing posts might fix this or your suggestion of an index but I think something could be done to improve contiguity of the aars. Also having ten would be a lot to read I feel. If the contest could be performed each month (which I think would be best, new ones posted whilst voting for old ones starts) then those who miss out wouldn't have to wait too long.
 
Ok so one week was fine between updates. What about having two weeks before the first post? Would that be a help? I think that starting with 5 would be too few given that a drop out or two would be expected. Perhaps 6 or 7 initial entries would be good.

Is there still a picture limit on posts? It use to be ten but has that been removed or just increased? From memory the post limit on characters is somewhere in the order of 40K. If someone is going to go over that they ought not to be entering a short AAR contest. So provided that the picture limit doesn't exist I see no problem with editing posts.

I agree that familiarity is likely to help with getting voters but I think running this every month it may run out of contestants and/or interest. Additionally I don't wish to be running it every month. If someone else would like to help out it could work well.

I'd like to get thoughts also on running the next contest as open to all games. I would like writers from CK, Vicky and Rome to be able to enter but none of those games probably has a large enough base of support to run the contest solely for them. So it leaves the options as having an EU contest, a HoI contest and one for the rest. Do you think it would actually create many problems if the contest were open to all games?
 
I would support less than ten stories as well. The many tales got mixed up with other somewhat. Perhaps coz's suggestion of editing posts might fix this or your suggestion of an index but I think something could be done to improve contiguity of the aars. Also having ten would be a lot to read I feel. If the contest could be performed each month (which I think would be best, new ones posted whilst voting for old ones starts) then those who miss out wouldn't have to wait too long.

What if three blank posts in a row were saved for each AAR, then you could just edit in the second and third posts into "reserved2" and "reserved3", allowing the AARs to each appear as their own little block for easy reading


does that make sense?
 
Well I did my part for trying to spread the news of the contest *hints towards AARland Article*

Anyways, I did read the entries, though not as thoroughly as of the time constraint. At least for GtA you have a whole month to read 4 stories whereas here you read upwards of 30 a month. Sure you don't need to anaylze the stories but a good time should be given when weighing stories.
 
What if three blank posts in a row were saved for each AAR, then you could just edit in the second and third posts into "reserved2" and "reserved3", allowing the AARs to each appear as their own little block for easy reading


does that make sense?

That seems a sensible workaround that keeps things easy to follow and still with a clear separation between updates.
 
Hm... pictures of scantily clad females. That would make this contest interesting... But on the other hand... I'm sure that pictures of a scantly clad Einstein would not be a success ;).

There is a limit of 32 pictures per post. In total I used something like 41 pictures in the three posts together, and I believe that Scandinavia is Not Enough has more. Editing one post with the three entries might prove difficult for gameplay AARs.

Beside making an index with urls to the entries, you could also add at the end of an entrie a link to the next post. So when post 2 has been made, you add an url to this post at the end of post 1. This way you could click to the next post when you read them all, and you don't have to scroll all the way down.

I agree that one week between the updates is perfect: long enough to create the update, and not too long between the updates. Two weeks before the first post would be better than one week, because it gives a little more time to prepare the AAR. It shouldn't be longer than two weeks, that would work the opposite way I think: the entry beeing too far away, postponing and such... No, two weeks would be great.

I guess you will always have a few people who drop out. The number of contestants that had handed in chapters was good to read, I think. So something like 6/7 would be good. If one or two drop out, you would have something like 5 entries. I think it shouldn't be less, since there still has to be something to choose between :).

By the way, I read all the entries good the first week. The second I didn't go thouroughly through them all, since I was very busy trying to finish the final chapter on time. But I made that up by reading them all very well during the voting week.

Edit after previewing this post: That would even be a better idea, Alfred Packer: that way you can read the entries even easier.
 
I think the idea for a EU contest, HoI contest and then a "everybody else" contest is a good idea. As for individual posts, I second the idea to have a "Reserved - Part II" and "Reserved - Part III" part after each first post. Its just simpler that way.
 
Many congratulations to Monnikje for the contest and well done to all the contestants :D