Saintland & Pasarga's Northern Rushmori Bid for World Cup 85

[Saintland]

Saintland and Pasarga's Northern Rushmori Bid for World Cup 85
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The Kingdom of Saintland and the Dominion of Pasarga present the following bid to bring the World Cup to northern Rushmore:

About Saintland
The Kingdom of Saintland (commonly known as Saintland) is an island nation of around 700 thousand souls located in northern Rushmore. Saintland has participated, in some form or another, in 16 World Cup cycles and has qualified for 8 World Cups. While West Saintland was once a constitutional monarchy ruled by feminist parties that were committed to their vision of "feminist democracy", those days are long gone after King Paulus XVI's successful reunification of Saintland under the eastern government. During the decades when Saintland was divided, the west's population declined while the east's population exploded, paving the way for the east's eventual conquest of the west. Saintland is now, once again, a unified theocracy and the power of Throne and Altar is much stronger than it was during the days of the king's grandfather Paulus XV when the Kingdom was last unified. Today's Saintland is also much stronger economically thanks to the successful international expansion of the True Church of Iesus Christus.

OOC Experience
Saintland has previously hosted Baptisms of Fire 59 (with Star United States) and 70 (with Free Republics), WBCs 27 (with Maklohi Vai) and 34 (solo), World Bowl XXII (with Free Republics), IBC 17 (with Royal Kingdom of Quebec), WCoH 23 (solo), the King Paulus XV Memorial Games and a number of other minor tournaments. The user behind Saintland has also hosted World Cups 68 (with Legalese) and 81 (with Banija), Cup of Harmony 66 (with Falcus), WBCs 37 (with Frenline Delpha), 42 and 47, World Bowls XXXI and XXXVIII, WCoH 35, RUWC 25, the X Winter Olympics, the Games of the XIII Olympiads and many other events. He is the current president of the NS Olympic Council and the World Baseball Classic Council, a former NSCF commissioner, a former 2-time World Bowl president and a former IBC president.

About Pasarga
The Dominion of Pasarga is a pair of islands in northwest Rushmori home to the "home nations" of the region. The islands are notable for their toy exports, their following of Zoroastrianism, as well an unusual amount of talent in the footballing arena. A friendly people who prefer honest hard work over silver tongue workings and shouts of deeds. The nation underwent a massive modernization project with the assistance of Eura and nearly two decades ago, thought there are still some parts of the rural areas that look as if they are still turn over the century. Pasarga is a very successful footballing nation, with three World Cup Final appearances and several Copa Rushmori's as well, in addition to being the current holders of the Copa Rushmori, with some of the worlds best players and club teams calling the nation home.

OOC Experience
The user behind Pasarga has hosted no less than twenty-six major footballing tournaments (World Cup, Cup of Harmony, and regional tournaments) under the guise of: Valanora, Pasarga, and Demot, as well as numerous WCoHs, caretaker of the DBC, caretaker of the CdC, host of the HCL, host of the AOCL, as well as conference hosting for multiple NSCAA and NSCF tournaments.

Format

While we cannot know the final signup numbers at this time, we would be looking for a shorter tournament than the last World Cup. 20 groups with playoffs, 30 groups or even 15 groups with 2 MDs scored at the same time on all but the first and last MDs are all possibilities for the qualifying format.

The World Cup finals format, of course, would remain the traditional 32 team format with scorination every other RL day.

Scorination Formula

We would use xkoranate with the unmodified NSFS formula for association football and the xkoranate (additive) style mods.

RP Bonus

We propose a cumulative RP bonus dependent upon the length of the tournament. As usual, there would be a small carryover into the World Cup finals. We will emphasize quality over quantity with RPs being judged on creativity, effort and information usage.

Tiebreakers

Head to Head Points
Head to Head Goal Difference
Goal Difference
Wins
Goals For

[Northwest Kalactin]

One question about the tiebreaker, why isn’t goal differential not higher on the list?

[Pasarga]

There are valid arguments on whether H2H or GD is the more preferred initial tiebreaker, it was decided that for this bid that H2H would be the first tiebreaker if teams finish level on points.

[Xanneria]

IC: WHy Saintland?


OOC: Why Puppet nations?

[Pasarga]

For the IC of having both of the nations in the same region should we be awarded the tournament.

[Recuecn]

Since it was brought up on the thread of the other bid, I thought I'd ask the same question here: won't doubling up matchdays decrease opportunity for rp, as well as potentially harm rp quality? How likely do you think you are to have to resort to having more than one matchday per day?

[Sarzonia]

I would definitely be against doubling up on Matchday, in particular given the uncertainty we're dealing with OOCly.

[Saintland]

Since it was brought up on the thread of the other bid, I thought I'd ask the same question here: won't doubling up matchdays decrease opportunity for rp, as well as potentially harm rp quality? How likely do you think you are to have to resort to having more than one matchday per day?

We would use the scoring of 2 matchdays on the same RL day if necessary to avoid marathon qualifying. While we will make our final decision on the format once we know what the numbers will be, our preference is definitely for a shorter qualifying of 10-14 matchdays (not counting the playoffs for second place teams if we go with 20 groups).

If there are 18 matchdays (groups of 9 or 10) then scoring a single matchday on the first and last days and scoring 2 on all other days results in 10 days of qualifying. For groups of 11 or 12, that would be 12 matchdays instead of 22. For groups of 13 or 14, that's 14 matchdays instead of 26. For reference, groups of 5 or 6 means 10 matchdays and groups of 7 or 8 means 14 matchdays.

Technically, any format other than 1 group of 150-200 would decrease opportunity for RP compared to that format but there were already very few nations that took advantage of all 22 opportunities to RP in the last World Cup qualifying. I do think a shorter qualifying format is more likely to increase RP quality because 18+ matchday qualifying campaigns can definitely contribute to burnout in the long run.

IC: WHy Saintland?

Besides the IC reason of having both of our nations in the same region, I chose to go with Saintland because the first World Cup in Saintland is more interesting to me than the third World Cup in the Free Republics. Given that Saintland was originally my main nation, its kind of a weird historical accident that they'd never hosted a World Cup.

ICly, the government of Saintland is extremely well funded thanks to the great wealth of the Church of Saintland (most of which was acquired through its activities outside of Saintland) and they see the World Cup as an opportunity to promote their state Church and to further strengthen their tourism industry (pilgrimages to Saintland are the foundation of their economy) and are thus willing to spend large sums of money on the World Cup.

One question about the tiebreaker, why isn’t goal differential not higher on the list?

I personally prefer head to head because xkoranate's additive style mods can reduce a 2-0 win to a 1-0 win but cannot increase the margin of victory. This provides a very slight disadvantage to teams that use defensive style mods.

[Savojarna]

Given the notably shorter scope of 10-14 MD's, does this mean we would drastically shorten the length of the tournament or that MD's would last 48 hours? Personally I have a preference for the latter, as the length of a tournament doesn't contribute much to a burnout feeling for me and it's more caused by regularly missing match-days and the resulting feeling that I'm constantly behind events.

[Pasarga]

We would most likely proceed with the usual format of 24 hours between qualifier scorination, with the 48 hours between the Finals scorination. A prolonged tournament reduces what has already become a very slow moving cycle where we're getting lucky to have 3 tournaments a year, which is not our preference.

[Vilita]

We would most likely proceed with the usual format of 24 hours between qualifier scorination, with the 48 hours between the Finals scorination. A prolonged tournament reduces what has already become a very slow moving cycle where we're getting lucky to have 3 tournaments a year, which is not our preference.

I think the fact that we only have 3 tournaments a year is sufficient justification to not rush through and have the qualification done so quickly that some users, who may have signed up months before the first MD, don't miss the entire tournament because they go on holiday for a weekend and come back and its already MD 5.

I don't see any downside to 48 hours per scorination. It levels the RP playing field and provides a more enjoyable experience for all participants - particularly due to the fact that there are fewer World Cups per year to enjoy.

[Banija]

I will say like I said over in the other bid I'm generally not a fan of 2 MDs per RL days.

However, burnout is something that I think more and more about. I am interested to see how the practicalities of 2 MDs per RL day would work. A conscious effort to avoid burnout is good for NS Sport in the long run. There's general resistance to change, but we won't really know how we like it unless we try it. So I'm willing.

I would say- if we're doing 2 MDs per RL day anyways with smaller groups, having less frequent cutoffs probably helps the goal of avoiding burnout? I've generally felt burnout comes from the intensity (X amount of cutoffs in X+1 days), so having more than one off day during the main Qualifying stage will help the cause.

I do have a question: if there are Playoffs, I assume they will be two-legged ties? And it that's so, will each leg be scored on a different day?

[Pasarga]

Playoffs will indeed be two legged and scored at least 24 hours apart, perhaps even 48 hours depending upon the schedule.

Our preference is smaller groups and avoiding the need for the need for the 2 MDs per scorination day, as the whole intent is to reduce the drain that prolonged qualifiers put upon the participants.

Now for my own personal opinion and not the stance of the bid, I see 48 hours between scorination for 2 MDs to negate the desired effects of shortening the tournament schedule in the situation of large qualification groups. Our two biggest worries as a community and subforum, regardless of the sport we participate in, is pace and burnout. Maybe moving to having more off days is the answer, I'm not entirely sure, I know for myself the 2 MDs per scorination makes a lot of logical sense as it would reflect IRL international weekends, which is how I've always RPed qualifiers taking place anyhow. It might not be the answer for the entire community but it is something I think we should be open to at least trying once should the need arise.