Wolfpack Empire

Rankings

It's extremly difficult to define rankings or ratings for the Empire players for the following reasons:

The method of chess and draughts (ELO ratings) where the ratings are derived from the players' expected and factual performance is hard to apply in Empire, because it's very tricky to calculate the expected and factual performances of Empire players. Still, Roman M. Parparov attempted to figure these performance things out and produced a rating system of himself.

The method of tennis, where players take part in numerous yearly tournaments and the comparative performances every next year define changes in their rankings. This system would calculate performances not bad at all in Empire, if we had our tournaments yearly and our players play 8-9 tournaments a year, at least. But it's unlikely to happen.
The method of soccer (Coca-Cola ratings) is based on face-offs between two participants and is therefore irrelevant for Empire where you never face only one opponent.
The pure logical method of establishing rankings on the amount of top spots captured by players in each game was used by Ken Stevens but was considered by the Empire community as unsuccessful. Still this method was used again by Geoff Cashman in his BERS (Bloomington Empire Ranking System) rankings which looked much more solid. Geoff abandoned this method though, despite significant progress, because the method had features that could result in players not wanting to play, so as to protect their ratings.

The only rating system that has managed to stand the test of time is a simple 1-10 scale. It is somewhat arbitrary, subjective, and suffers from players having inflated opinions of their abilities. Nevertheless, it works. Here it is:

Rank	Description
0	Your first question is "What's a client?" You are a true empire virgin.
1	You've played a game or 2, were 100% lost, and were the first (or second) one out of the game.
2	You've still only played a game or two but none of your civ's starved. You still didn't get to make tech or find out what the "%" sector is.
3	You finally discovered the attack and dist commands.
4	"OHHHH, I need to use the thres command with the dist command." When the newbies ask a question via anno's you a: realize the guy is weak because he posted a question instead of telegraming the deity, and b: you know the answer. You still won't last to the end game portion but you are getting the hang of things.
5	A big turning point. You made your first kill of someone who fought back. You are no longer 1st kill on everybody's list.
6	You actually make it to endgame. You know what to do in both a high and low tech situation.
7	When the game starts, everybody else looks at you and thinks "ally with this guy, go through him, or win with his consent."
8	You dominate the local area of your world all the time. You project power faster and farther than most other people.
9	Like 8, but you are very adaptable. You will win in any starting configuration. Everybody who is not a newbie knows who you are.
10	The main difference between you and the 9's is that you started out as a 6 and they started as a 1 way back when...