You are new to the CivPlayers league? You have questions on what this is all about? You need help with a specific problem?

If you have a common question or problem that occurs more often and was already answered or solved, you may find the answer here in our FAQ - sometimes questions even answer themselves by reading our 'rules' section in the main menu. Be sure that you read this FAQ and our rules carefully before you contact an admin for help. Just click on a question to show the answer.

- FAQ

• I just want to play a good game. Why do I need to register myself?
• The signup is needed to create an account for you, we don't ask for any personal information during registration. But we need an account to store your statistics, how many games you won or lost and what your current rank or skill is. And this account needs to be unique and only accessible by you, so noone can play under your name or imposter your id.
• The singup is not working, if I use the signup link it says 'The league is invite only'.
• It might happen, if too many people try to harm our league by creating dozens of accounts or resign because they got penalized, that the league status may be changed from an open to an invite only league. In that case you can't signup yourself, you will need an invitation by an admin to get an account at Civ3Players - just contact any admin and ask if you're allowed to join.
• If I try to singup, it says that I'm banned from the league. What did I do wrong?
• That depends on your situation, if you are really new to Civ3Players, you didn't do anything wrong, otherwise if you are not new to C3P, you might know why you are not allowed to signup again. Sad but true, sometimes people do not abide by our rules and need to be penalized. If they still don't listen they might be ultimately kicked off and banned from the league. Admins then have the power to ban that players IP, name, E-mail etc. and maybe also a whole IP range or mask. So it can happen - esp. if you have a dynamic IP - that you fall into such a goup of banned IPs. In that case you have to contact an admin, he can unban your IP and grant you access to registration.
• Is the membership and signup for free or do I need to pay for your services?
• Playing in the Civ3Players League was and will always be free - you don't need to pay anything to use our services nor to compete on the ladder! The free regular account has no limitations in use and does provide all needed functions to play and contribute to our league. But for members who want to show their sympathy for what we are doing here and pay something back, we provide a premium membership program for a really small fee. In addition to all the functions you get from a regular account, you will gain access to even more detailed statistics, profile options and sections. If you are interested, have a look at our 'premium membership' section.
• I signed up already but my name does not show anywhere. What is the problem?
• Your account needs to be validated, therefor the system sent an activation E-mail to your specified E-mail address already. This is necessary to make sure the E-mail address you entered at signup is valid and prevents automatic registration programs to flood our system. Just follow the instructions you received in that activation E-mail to finish your registration process.
• I did not receive an activation E-mail. Can I activate my account otherwise?
• The activation E-mail was sent to you by our automatic registration system. Sometimes junk-mail filters catch that E-mail or it has been blocked by your provider (that often happens with freemail services). Please check your junk folder or contact your provider for spam filter settings or maybe the E-mail address you entered was just not correct. If you're sure that you set all correctly, you can request your activation E-mail again here.
• I can't use my name to sign up during registration. Is it blocked?
• Every username has to be unique, if someone else was faster and took your username, you have to choose another, sorry. Please don't use a name that is nearly exactly like an existing name, that confuses people and makes it hard to report - using a similar name on purpose will be treated as impostering and penalized. Maybe your username got banned for misbehavior, please contact any admin to get more information about that.

• I can't login to my account. Was it deleted?
• The system automatically purges inactive accounts after 90 days, so if you were not active within that period your account was deleted automatically. You should also check if your password was entered correctly, maybe you changed it once in your profile - have a look at the message you get when trying to login. After a certain amount of false logins your account will be suspended, that is for security reasons to make your account invulnerable to bruteforcing. In that case please contact any admin for help.
• I forgot my password. Can I have a new one?
• Yes, of course. You can reset your old and request a new password here. For security reasons the new password can only be send to the E-mail address currently active for your account. If you are somehow not able to access your E-mails right now, the only way to get a new password is to contact an admin for help.
• My account got hacked or someone stole my password. What can I do?
• Normally it's impossible to overcome the security systems, you sure that you didn't give your login details to someone else? Or did you use a common or too easy password? Using 'password' as your account password might not be a good idea, in the first place at your registration we checked if your password is secure enough, please make sure you use a similar secure password when changing it in your profile. For now, you can try to reset and request a new password here if your E-mail address is still valid, otherwise only an admin can help you further. If you are suspecting somebody to use your account, you really need to inform an admin about it - they have ways to investigate and maybe track down the burglar.
• I don't like my username anymore. Can I change it?
• Yes, you can. Every member is allowed to rename himself once a week, the limitation is to avoid confusion - a member changing his name every minute is not what we want. If you want to change your username, go to your profile once you are logged in, there you can change all your account details. All name changes will be shown in the daily news, so everybody is informed about who is who. Be warned, you can't avoid a penalty with changing your username - our records will be passed over to your new name automatically.
• I moved to another E-mail povider, can I change my E-mail address somewhere?
• Yes, it's the same like changing your username. You are allowed to change your E-mail once a week via your profile, but be sure your new E-mail address is valid and you check it on a regular basis. All communication between the admins and you is done with that E-mail, like complaints, non-reports etc. - if we find out that your E-mail address is invalid, your account will be suspended.
• I'd like to leave the league. Can I have all my stuff removed?
• Sorry to see you leaving, but of course you can have all things regarding yourself to be deleted. You can either do it yourself by using the 'withdraw' link once you logged in or ask an admin to completely remove your account. But be warned, once your account is withdrawn and deleted, there is no way to reactivate your account or to rollback your statistics.

• How do I know that games are ranked ladder games?
• Basically ladder games are just normal games like any other you see in lobby, the only real difference at first sight is that they have the term 'ladder' somewhere in the game title. If you join such a game, the outcome will be counted towards your statistics. But make sure it's really a ladder game before start, check if the other player's names are also registered on the ladder. Also check the settings, most ladder games are played under a specific ruleset (have a look at our 'rules' section for more detailed information) - once you check in and the game starts, you automatically agreed to the settings.

• What skill system do you use for ranking players?
• We use a modified Glicko2 rating system which was extended to support FFA and team games as well. Glicko was designed by Mark Glickman and is similar to the ELO system used by chess leagues. If you want to know more about Glicko or need a detailed mathematical paper, just google for it and you'll find dozens of helpful pages.
• I always got 4 reports from a 4v4 team game. Now I only got 1 report, did I do something wrong?
• No, all is fine. You now only get one report from one match, no matter how many players were involved. That makes it easier to compare the different game styles and put them into one rating skill.
• There is a RD value beside my skill. What does it mean?
• The RD is an uncertainty value used by the rating system and indicates how precise your actual skill value is. The lower the RD value the more precise does your skill reflect your actual strength. With each game you play your RD value will decrease and your skill value will become stable.
• Wow, I got a really big skill boost from my first game. Is that ok?
• Yes, it is. Since you start with a high RD value the system can not really rate you among other players and does not know your real skill. So if you beat someone with a higher skill the system assumes that you might be way stronger than expected and credits you with a bigger skill gain (this also works in the opposite direction). That way it will bring you way faster to your actual skill level even with not many games played. Once you have some games on your record you'll notice that the skill jumps will become significantly smaller.
• I placed 2nd in a 5 player CTON but still got a win for that match. Is that correct?
• That's correct. You do not get a win based on your placement anymore but based on your gained/lost skill in that game. If the players who placed behind you are high skilled then you might gain more skill from 'beating' them than you lose to the first placed player. In that case you would gain skill for the overall CTON and that match will be added as a win to your statistics (this also works in the opposite direction).
• I only gained a few skill points from my last team game even though most players on the other team were higher skilled. Why is that?
• In team games your skill gain/loss will not only be calculated with your own skill, your teammates' skills will also be taken into account. So if your teammates are all higher skilled, your overall team performance is expected to be better than your opponents and you will gain less skill points for a win. The other way round you would gain more skill for a win if your overall team skill is lower than your opponents' skill.
• Why did my RD value increase after a match and not decrease how it should be?
• The RD value will be recalculated before the actual skill calculations are done. This is to bring the time factor into the calculations, if you did not play for some days, the system assumes that your actual skill value is not precise anymore and thus will raise your RD. If you play at least one match within each rating period this will not affect your RD at all - the duration of a rating period is set by the admins.

- Technical support

Not all of our admins are tech gurus, some questions may be just too technical and can only be answered by some special admins or by the programmer. To make it easier for you and the staff to track down technical issues like website errors, warnings or layout problems you can send in a 'tech support ticket' which will be answered once the appropriate person is available.

You need to be logged in to send a support ticket, please use the login form on the left main menu to authenticate yourself.

- Other support

You did not find your answer in the FAQs? OK, let's see how we can get it sorted. The most important thing, you can always contact any staff member of CivPlayers directly if you have questions or problems, the easiest way to do so is ...

• Contact someone in game lobby
• There are plenty of CivPlayers' members in lobby at any time of the day. If your questions are of easy nature, you can simply ask any league member for help, most of them will try to help solve your problem or at least show you a way to get your answers. If you see someone with a tag like [C3PAdmin], [C3PHTD], [C3PTD] or [C3PHelper] just go ahead and send them a private message, those people are staff members of CivPlayers and will be happy to guide and help you. A good tool to use is the gamespy arcade client, using pm might be the easiest and fastest way to get in contact with our staff, but since even admins need some sleep from time to time, you might want to try to ...
• Use the 'contact admin' section on the right side menu
• You can send a request to us with every question or problem on your mind, we will be glad to help you. Your request will be send to a mailroom that every admin has access too, since our staff contains people from nearly every major time zone, your request will be processed as soon as possbile. Another way to get in contact is ...
• Write an E-mail to any admin
• If you already talked to a staff member and he knows about your story, but you forgot the E-mail address or it's easier to get it sorted with the same admin you started with, you might want to have a look at the 'admin list' in the main menu. All admins are listed there together with their E-mail address and their instant messenger id, feel free to contact anyone personally - mostly, if your problem is really tricky, the admin will forward your case to all other admins for a detailed review anyway.

- Icon explanations

You saw some icons or graphics on the page and you don't know what they mean? No problem, here is a list of the most commonly used icons and their exact meaning.

• Rank change icons

• 	Due to recently played games or rank movement of other players you climbed in rank lately.
  	Even though you might have played lately your current ranking did not change, maybe you did not gain enough skill or the surrounding players performed accordingly.
  	Because you lost matches lately or other players overtaking you in skill when winning you fell down in ranks recently.

• RD stability indicators

• 	Your skill is highly accurate and reflects your actual strength very well. Your RD value is low and makes your skill somewhat stable, big skill gains or losses will be most unlikely.
  	Your expected performance compared to others is fairly well measured and your skill value is somewhat reliable. You have a rather low RD value and thus a rather stable skill although wins and losses against players with a much higher/lower skill will still get you quite some skill gain/loss.
  	With your moderate RD value the system is not really sure how accurate your actual skill reflects your real strength, but it still assumes that you rather perform as expected. So playing against other members with a huge gap in skill compared to you will get you some more skill points.
  	Your skill seems to be somewhat inaccurate which is reflected by your fairly high RD value. Your achievement in games might differ quite often from your expected performance, therefor your skill will change desperately and you'll be able to win (lose) skill quickly.
  	You seem to be new to the league and have not played many games yet or you had a rather long break, so the system is unsure about your strength and your skill value is highly inaccurate. Your next games will bring you a relatively high skill gain/loss to get you to your real skill level rather rapidly.

• Other used icons

• 	This member owns a premium membership and has access to limited access areas. If you want to know more about our premium membership program please visit the dedicated section in the main menu.
  	After winning at least 5 games in a row you'll get this icon displayed in your player details indicating that you are on a 'hot' winning streak.
  	If you lost more than 5 games in a row this icon is shown in your player details showing that you are on a 'cold' loosing streak.
  	This medal is being rewarded to long time premium members, the medal and a number for the amount of years will also be shown within your player's details page.
  	In addition to the regular tournament statistics this trophy together with the number of won tournaments will be display in the player details of premium members who won at least one tournament.
  	This player is suspended right now or has a bad reporting behaviour, suspended players are not allowed to participate in any league match or event.
  	This league member is a CivPlayers sponsor and has contributed financially to keep this place up and running. To show our gratitude these members have the icon displayed in there player details.
  	A member decorated with such an award has become a monthly 'Most Valuable Player' in the given category, the tagged award is shown in the player details.