The following is the final draft of the rules for FFA games on the wizard's ladder. There is lots of tweaking that could still be done, but to be honest I think that should wait till after some games are played to see how they work.

A Free-for-All (FFA) game is a game with allied victory turned off which ends when there is only one player left standing. All house rules apply during FFA games, as does the following additional rule: No surrendering allowed. Aside from those rules anything goes.

Scoring:

Players are ranked in order of when they were eliminated, and bonuses are given for the player who "kills" another wizard. To get that credit the opposing wizard has to die during your turn, or die on their turn while attacking your units.

The point base is determined by comparing the total points for the top half of those finishing with the bottom half (ignoring the man in the middle for odd numbered games) and using the chart for 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 games respectively with a minimum of 4.

That point base is then multiplied by 1.5 for 4 player, 1.75 for 5 player, 2 for 6 player, 2.5 for 7 player and 3 for 8 player games to create a point pool that is divided amoung the winners and subtracted from the losers as follows (all values rounded down):

4 player: 2/3, 1/3, -1/3, -2/3
5 player: 2/3, 1/3, 0, -1/3, -2/3
6 player: 1/2, 1/3, 1/6, -1/6, -1/3, -1/2
7 player: 1/2, 1/3, 1/6, 0, -1/6, -1/3, -1/2
8 player: 4/10, 3/10, 2/10, 1/10, -1/10, -2/10, -3/10, -4/10

Three player games are a special case, where the point pool is 3/4 of the score that a two player game between the person coming in first and the person coming in third would have recieved (minimum of 2) with the middle player have a base of zero.

Next you are awarded kill bonuses for those wizards you eliminated. You get 3 points if they were in your class, 2 if they were in a class one or more lower than yours, 4 if they were one class higher than you, and 5 if they were two or more classes higher than you. If a person is killed by independents they lose 4 points, which is divided among the players who are still in the game at the time they were eliminated.

Substitutions:

If a player is needed to substitute for another in a Wizard's Ladder game then that player has two turns to register his appearance on the Game Registry board if he wishes to assume the risks and benefits for that game. If nothing is posted it will be assumed he's playing "for fun" and all points gained or lost, including kill bonuses, will accrue to the player he replaced rather to himself.

Warning:

Please be warned that FFA games are as much a game of diplomacy as a game of strategy, if not more so. Backstabbing and secret/shifting alliances, players ganging up on the leader or the person coming in last are all part of the nature of the game. If the unfairness of that bothers you then you are better off not playing FFA games. This goes even more so for Random maps, where frequently the games are unbalanced/unfair to begin with.

[This message has been edited by hiranu (edited 01-01-2004 @ 04:19 AM).]