Nations in the game

[Gipfelstuermer]

A post for discussion:

How many and which nations should ideally exist in the game?
Shall we live with the 80 nations selected by Buhmann forever or are there reasons to rename / remove / add nations?

(I can provide a full list of the nations, etc, if that helps, but before discussing nation by nation would like to start a general discussion about it.)

To clarify:
The question is just about the available nationalities for riders, and consequently about the national championships because so far that has mostly been linked (even though one can imagine a world in which not every available nation holds a national championship, like it happened to poor Adnan Smajilovic from Bosnia And Herzegovina in February whilst Malaysia did hold NCs despite not having any rider - both cases are just curiosities/anecdotes that happened because the code has not been 100% consistent so far).

Question is not relevant for the race editor and calendar, where there can be a different set of nations, as is already the case.

[lennylenny]

obviously remove those that don't exist anymore or would never have a pro cyclist like North Korea

otherwise i would suggest nations that had a rider in the Top X of UCI World Rankings in the last y years

Biniam Girmay is pretty high in the rankings this year, so i would definitely suggest Erithrea as a more unusual one

other example nations to consider if we follow this thinking:
Mongolia: Sainbayaryn Jambaljamts
Mauritius: Christopher Rougier-Lagane
Panama: Franklin Archibold

[Robyklebt]

Step 1: Remove the ones that somehow snuck in during the flash-react transition.
North Korea-Yugoslavia-Taiwan and probably Bosnia, if it didn't get a NC I suspect it is new too.
Step 2: Continue here.

80 seems +/- the right number. Some nationalities though clearly should be changed. Criteria for inclusion should be:
-real life cyclists. Eritrea&Ethiopia the obvious examples
-personal connection for players. I remember that we had at least one player with Kosovo-Albanian ancestry, might be nice for him or others like him to be able to chose that.

Then right now we of course have a number of countries that really don't qualify with either criteria. These then could be cut. But I'm pretty sure you'd have lots of complaints... so probably easier to just add without the cuts.

Step 1 though should have been done weeks ago. Now is still ok.

[Hansa]

Sooo my proposal would be:

we use these 126 countries listed in the UCI nations ranking:

https://www.procyclingstats.com/rankings/me/uci-nations

and for the NCs if we say we want to use 80 nations we use the top 80 nations each time we have NC (ingame in RSF-Nation ranking. i remember that existed before in the stats so i assume that its still there in the Database.)

therefor some NCs probably change each time we have NCs.

[Chemnitz Pro Cycling Team]

Sooo my proposal would be:

we use these 126 countries listed in the UCI nations ranking:

https://www.procyclingstats.com/rankings/me/uci-nations

and for the NCs if we say we want to use 80 nations we use the top 80 nations each time we have NC (ingame in RSF-Nation ranking. i remember that existed before in the stats so i assume that its still there in the Database.)

therefor some NCs probably change each time we have NCs.

I like this idea. Finally I rider from Monaco will be possible!

[team fl]

Sooo my proposal would be:

we use these 126 countries listed in the UCI nations ranking:

https://www.procyclingstats.com/rankings/me/uci-nations

and for the NCs if we say we want to use 80 nations we use the top 80 nations each time we have NC (ingame in RSF-Nation ranking. i remember that existed before in the stats so i assume that its still there in the Database.)

therefor some NCs probably change each time we have NCs.

I like this idea. Finally I rider from Monaco will be possible!

Bah, no Liechtenstein.... Grmpf. But Stefan Küng has the Liechtenstein citizenship f.e. (although I admit that he's starting for Switzerland in international competitions like WC or Olympics) .

[Robyklebt]

Still the same problem...

Can we kick the countries that somehow snuck into the game again?

-North Korea
-Taiwan
-Yugoslavia

Then when naming a rider the country flags are missing a lot, in the naming screen. And some are wrong. Chile is Sri Lanka, Russia... Rwanda? Burundi? Spain Honduras or Guatemala, probably others too.

Once you name the rider the flag seems to be correct in the countries I tried lately.. but would be nice to have it everywhere.

I

[Alkworld]

Still the same problem...

Can we kick the countries that somehow snuck into the game again?

-North Korea
-Taiwan
-Yugoslavia

Then when naming a rider the country flags are missing a lot, in the naming screen. And some are wrong. Chile is Sri Lanka, Russia... Rwanda? Burundi? Spain Honduras or Guatemala, probably others too.

Once you name the rider the flag seems to be correct in the countries I tried lately.. but would be nice to have it everywhere.

I

Most of that is fixed in the latest version (except Taiwan and the Serbian flag), which is not yet published and also contains other changes (still testing them on the beta environment)

[Gipfelstuermer]

OK, moving on with this topic. NCs were a good reminder

I summarize, we 1) clean up and potentially 2) add nations.

1) Clean Up
This includes some passport movements. Politically controversial, but view it more as a technical thing and going back to the 80 original c4f nations.
- North Korea removed and those riders become South Korean (5 riders)
- Taiwan removed and those riders become Chinese (1 rider)
- Mozambique removed and those riders become Malaysian (2 riders)
- Bosnia removed and those riders become Serbian (0 riders)
- Turkey country codes will be cleaned up (doesnt affect the riders passports)

2) Add Nations
- Eritrea requested multiple times. Would make it 81.
- Some other nations requested: Ethiopia, Mongolia, Mauritius, Panama. Would make it 85.
- Go the next step and increase to the 126 official UCI nations ?

We like the idea of adding nations, but we think before doing it we need a new rule for NCs, so that they remain meaningful and we have sensible races. Some options are:
- Start an NC only if there are X riders below Y points.
- Merge the NCs of some countries (permanently or temporiraly if they have too little riders active)

Other ideas are welcome.

[team fl]

I think two of the most anticipated and mentioned nations to add are Eritrea and Albania. But eventually, I support the idea that all "official" UCI members should be available here. If this is done in one big addition or gradually over time (f.e. two new nations every year), I don't care. But if gradually, I would add according to the nations ranking on procyclingstats. I think that's a good way to go without "political" indications. At last, you can add those members (and maybe associated member) who don't have points.

Then we would add like this (with today's ranking):

01. Eritrea
02. Mongolia
03. Panama
04. Ethiopia
05. Thailand
...

The cycling federations of Bosnia, Mozambique, North Korea and Taiwan (Chinese Taipeh) are UCI members btw .

[Chemnitz Pro Cycling Team]

I'm also a fan of adding all official UCI nations. For having proper NCs, we can add rules (at least 3/5/10 riders with points OR just the best 80 nations will compete OR something else...)

[team fl]

If we have the "only for jersey, glory and honour" system, without points, money, etc., we don't need to change anything and can offer all NCs without implications on the rest of the game. What a neat thing that would be .

[Alkworld]

From what I read, I liked most:
- no money, no points, but a pretty jersey for the winner
- adding all UCI nations

About the actual NC, I could live with any of the following options:
- only start race with x riders or teams (with or without points tbd)
- only start the x countries with most total points
- or just ride everything

All that said, everything is easy to implement.

[Hansa]

i like if we start just the best nations, so every rider can earn a NC championship for his own country if hes good enough.

[flockmastoR]

I like solutions that work in the long term. When the goal is to ahieve groups that offer some fight for the jersey, I prefer to define it by number of active riders with points > threshold. If there are more active managers and riders, more nations will be offered, if the number of active riders/managers decreases there are less. But I think it is hard to find the "right" definition to offer the right nations. Can also live with just defining a number of nations we want to have. Offering all is not my prefered way.

[lennylenny]

If i didn't miscount, 3 riders of 100+ current points would mean 43 nations with nc

But the question is, is current points a good metric? Or should it be eternal points?

[flockmastoR]

If i didn't miscount, 3 riders of 100+ current points would mean 43 nations with nc

But the question is, is current points a good metric? Or should it be eternal points?

I wouldn't set 100 current points, which is quite high for regular helpers, I mean 9 riders of my team including a NC champ wouldn't be nominated, I think we had >0 current points earlier in the game. Better demand more active riders with less current points. Wouldn't use eternal points, it should be a critical mass of riders who participated in a race in the last 1-2 months, as it shows that the manager will probably be there for the NC races

[lennylenny]

If i didn't miscount, 3 riders of 100+ current points would mean 43 nations with nc

But the question is, is current points a good metric? Or should it be eternal points?

I wouldn't set 100 current points, which is quite high for regular helpers, I mean 9 riders of my team including a NC champ wouldn't be nominated, I think we had >0 current points earlier in the game. Better demand more active riders with less current points. Wouldn't use eternal points, it should be a critical mass of riders who participated in a race in the last 1-2 months, as it shows that the manager will probably be there for the NC races

Yeah, 100 was just as an example to get the discussion going about the threshhold, maybe 10 is fine?

[flockmastoR]

Have looked at the numbers in the database, as it is pretty hard to filter riders in-game:

When chosing at least 1 current point (this month + last month), we have a total of 1222 "active" riders from 80 nations.

1 nation with more than 100 active riders (Germany)
5 nations between 50 and <100 active riders (Italy, Austria, France, Belgium, Great Britain)
5 nations between 30 and <50 active riders (USA, CH, Spain, NL, CZ)
5 nations between 20 and <30 active riders (Sweden, Poland, Finland, Irland, Australia)
4 nations between 15 and <20 active riders (N, DZ, MA, CDN)
10 nations between 10 and <15
17 nations between 5 and <10
33 nations between 1 and <5

When we want to have NC of at least 10 riders groups this would currently lead to 30 nations of 10+ riders with 1+ current points

[Robyklebt]

Forgot to write my NC post after the NCs...

Ah first Gipfel stuff

- Mozambique removed and those riders become Malaysian (2 riders)

Not that it's all that important, but why do guys from Mozambique become Malaysian? I hope their names fit at least...

- Eritrea requested multiple times. Would make it 81.

IMO Eritrea needed and deserved.

Of the others, Ethiopia IMO first, it has 2 World Tour riders now I think?

These 2 I think could/should be added as fast as possible.

With our numbers more right now not needed, if, then Albania or Kosovo for possible personal connections by players.


Now my list from the NCs, unfortunately forgot most of it as usual.

1) Times: The times were weird last time around, some times like 20h if I remember correctly with only 2 NCs, other times with up to 7? Despite the fact that 20h should be a pretty popular time.
Tell the robot to spread them out evenly. 80/14
2) Make a list of the most popular times, feed that to the robot. I just asked Chat GPT, the idiot doesn't know cycling4freaks. Who needs Chat GPT if it doesn't know about basic stuff???
3) Make sure the top 5 countries by points (feed that to the robot too) don't start at the same time. But start at a popular time. Basically the 5 most popular times.. .problem only that then they all overlap anyway, since most popular times are probably 19-22 plus ? Ideally start them every 2 hours, so that one is finished when the next starts... But ok, every hour works too.
4) Who can start?
a) Riders in teams with current points. Regardless of if they have points themselves. Making it by teams IMO more sensible than by riders for the first hurdle.
b) If more than 200 riders qualify go by current points first, then next by eternal points to limit it to 200 riders.
5) Only start NCs that have 10 riders from at least 3 different teams, Or make it 5 riders from 3 teams if we want more races starting. 5-3 sounds fine actually.
6) Popup tabs! For NCs. Instead of jumping between races or open a tab with a new session of c4f each time, just open the race in a new tab if you click on it.

[flockmastoR]

making it based on teams IMO works fine and probably adds some more riders of active managers (but don't expect many). The 3 teams rule also fine IMO.

What I want to add about the NC: Group the riders by teams and not based on the starting number regarding their current points or whatever was used for that. It's not an individual's race here at c4f, its team managers giving instructions and it is really terrible to ride and check the different teams in such races when the groups are bigger, on PC it is ok but on smartphone you are completely lost.

Times: Looked weird yes. Like the idea of the donkey to give good timeslots to big nations and next best time slots to the next important countries. IMO overlap is not a problem, but when they start/end at the same time it is a bigger problem. Like there was GB, France and Italy all starting at 17h this time. So 3 big nations on a very unpopular time slot.

But not really sure how to do it, 5 best nations are randomly split between 5 most popular times, next 5 nations get the next 5 popular times, then we would have the biggest 10 nations not starting at the same time and at 9-10-14-15-18-19-20-21-22-23, others are filled up randomly? hm

I don't like the way those pop-ups work here, and you cannot race on smartphone with those for sure. Had different tabs open and kind of worked. But not sure if the session time out makes troubles for that.

[Robyklebt]

Ok, overlap maybe not a big problem, you're right.

But not really sure how to do it, 5 best nations are randomly split between 5 most popular times, next 5 nations get the next 5 popular times, then we would have the biggest 10 nations not starting at the same time and at 9-10-14-15-18-19-20-21-22-23, others are filled up randomly? hm

23 probably not in, since it stopped at 22 this time.
But IMO after that fill in randomly sounds fine. With 80 races that would be the top 10 time slots with 6 races, the other 4 with 5 With less races would become less then.

As for participation, in the end it has little to do with money or not (money can be counter-productive) but more with number of managers and the available time they have. I suspect for most people it's a bit like me, when we have time we ride all the NCs we can, but if we can't we don't lose sleep over it.

[Alkworld]

I'll make a first attempt today to add Eritrea and Ethiopia. If I didn't forget anything in the code, it'll be very easy to do. Only the flags for old browsers might be missing initially, for modern browsers it should work right away (using so-called Unicode flags aka emojis).