Our Civilization III High Score Hall of Fame (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/) section is now officially open for business! This new section will be updated and maintained by Duke of Marlbrough, a veteran forum member and a new site helper.

The rules for the Civ3 HOF are basically the same as the Civ2 HOF, except that we will only accept random map games. There is now a limit of 10 games per difficulty level -- so you can only submit a game if its score is higher than the lowest score in a particular HOF. We are also considering some kind of integration between the High Score HOF and the Game of the Month feature. Check out the new section (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/) and start submitting your games!

>> Civilization III High Score HOF (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/)

One submission has already been received!

Beammeuppy is our first submission in the Civ 3 HOF. :goodjob:

Just a question as to what constitutes a random map. I realize that this rule is to prevent people using premade maps which they already know, etc but does it mean the player cannot determine the structure of the continents and the type of weather/age of planet at the set up screens - ie do all settings have to be turned to random?

I can´t go to HOF. All I get is a "file not found".
Are you sure you linked it right?

No, non-random maps are maps you or others made using the map editor. Maps created using the normal map setup process when starting a new game are considered random maps.

I can´t go to HOF. All I get is a "file not found".

I am sure the link is correct.

When I´m clicking on the link I am taken to this:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/styles/cfc.css

And then I get the file not found error.

Are you really sure that the link is right? :confused:

Am I doing something wrong?

HOF is working fine IMHO. There are just no entries in there yet!

Duke, when will the first HOF be there, how are submissions proceeding?

Originally posted by Taé Shala
When I´m clicking on the link I am taken to this:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/styles/cfc.css

And then I get the file not found error.

Are you really sure that the link is right? :confused:

Am I doing something wrong?

The style sheet link for that page was wrong, but it shouldn't prevent u from viewing the page. Anyway, I've fixed the style sheet link, you should be able to view it now. :)

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
HOF is working fine IMHO. There are just no entries in there yet!

Duke, when will the first HOF be there, how are submissions proceeding?

We made up a blank page a couple of weeks ago just to have something for people to see right away.

I hope to update the page every week or two. When I do update it, I will post a message here. :)

Do you have to win?

This early on, it won't be a requirement. Many people are still learning how to play the game, and so getting any kind of high score, whether win or lose, is a victory for them.

Later, it still won't be so much a requirment, just that scores will be much higher from people who have started to master the game.

If you have a high score you would like to submit, send it in!! This is your chance to get on the board. Plus, once the slots fill up, you will have to actually beat somone's score to get listed.

Right now the score to beat is 0 ;)

I tink it's a great idea but I'm wondering how it will work with people modding the game and using different rules?

The only modding that should be done that affects the play of the game is the patches released. Any other Mods that change the game play are not allowed. The Mods that change the graphics are ok.

Any settings that people can pick in the set-up of a normal game are acceptable.

Part of the HOF is that many people look at the games very closely. If any game is thought to have been cheated, it will be reviewed and if found to be cheated, it will be removed.

There, I've sent it, my first submittable win, 5499 on Emporer (my win on Monarch was on the world map) I was just curious, but I assume saving/reloading is not considered a cheat, or at least, cannot be used for disqualification (I think everyone has done this at least once during a game) Also, does the year or map size have any bearing on the score? I think you would naturally get bigger scores on when you play longer on bigger maps.

In addition to the top ten for each difficulty, I think you should have the best score for each Civ (top 16) as well as the best score for each map size.

Originally posted by DarkSchneider

In addition to the top ten for each difficulty, I think you should have the best score for each Civ (top 16) as well as the best score for each map size.

Or best score for each win type: Highest culture win, Highest Diplo win, etc...

I'd like to at least be able to see the name of the civ played by each person in the highest score games.

Also, Darkschneider saving and reloading is considered cheating in the game of the month and I would assume it would be considered cheating here too.

Eliezar

I agree with Eliezar: no reloading.

By the way, what does random map mean?
May I choose weather and age or do I have to set it to "random"?
I think it is easier to get a honorable score on a 5 Billion years map than on any other. So I ask you.

In addition to the top ten for each difficulty, I think you should have the best score for each Civ (top 16) as well as the best score for each map size.
What I will be doing is highlighting various games with different colors to show what Civ they were playing as. Then you can see where they are within the ranking.

The size of the map is alrady going to be listed, so that would be easy to look for in the results.

Or best score for each win type: Highest culture win, Highest Diplo win, etc...
The type of win will also be listed, so a quick scan of the scores should also let you find the highest scores. What I do not want to do is list games on the results twice.

Also, does the year or map size have any bearing on the score? I think you would naturally get bigger scores on when you play longer on bigger maps.
As you said, the best scores would most likely be acheived on bigger maps, that were played longer, that allowed the players to expand more and thus get more points. However, you cannot play past the natural ending point of the game (I believe it is 2020 AD?).

By the way, what does random map mean? May I choose weather and age or do I have to set it to "random"?
A random map is one where the computer generates it. You can, however, set the parameters with which it uses. So, you can choose weather and age and such. You do not have to set them to random.

Reloading your game is addressed in the same way as it is for the GOTM.

If you submit a game and it does not show up on the results page after it is updated and your score looks like it should be worthy of being listed, PM me or post a message here. When I receive submissions that are not complete, I will PM the player.

i don't see any points in that HoF

what a crappy page!

what a crappy page!

I know is a bit bare right now, but it was just barely born.

We still have to receive submissions for it and then it will be updated. It will be updated sometime soon.

Again, thanks for your kind words. :rolleyes:

I think the page looks rather cool.:)

I am just not that eager to see how much better everyone is than me.:)

Originally posted by Sam_Catchem
I think the page looks rather cool.:)

I am just not that eager to see how much better everyone is than me.:)

I don't really think that score is a good measure of how good a civ player is. Rather it is a measure of how much patience a player has for continuing to play after victory is assured. Personally, I get bored once I know I am going to win.

Although, some of the highest scores will be from those who conquer the world in the BCs, but this is another story altogether. I also find this a bit boring, but to each his own.

Just to be clear,

what a crappy page!


:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Grow up,

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough


I know is a bit bare right now, but it was just barely born.

We still have to receive submissions for it and then it will be updated. It will be updated sometime soon.

Again, thanks for your kind words. :rolleyes:

DoM, sorry about that guy. Some of us appreciate your hardwork.:)

i sm sorry but i don't know how to do the "quote thing" on this message board, but i have a couple of points.

Eyrei it is a bore to drag on when you know you will win, i think if you are in this situation you need to raise your difficulty level, as i doubt you'd have that problem on a large map with more than 10 civs :-) As for a bore winning in the BC's, umm you try it again at a hard difficulty level and see how much of a bore it is trying to survive when you find out you have bitten more than you can chew too early. lol

As for the comment about obviously the bigger scores will be on large maps, haha, ohh I don't think so, all the big scores will be conquest on a small map for sure.

As for the comment about obviously the bigger scores will be on large maps, haha, ohh I don't think so, all the big scores will be conquest on a small map for sure.

So far it looks as if you are right. The top three scores are all conquest games on small or medium maps.

I'm very much use to Civ II, so I'm still adjusting to the many changes that Civ 3 has.

There were a couple of things that needed to be fine tuned, but the page will be updated by this weekend.

If your name is not on the updated page it means that I did not get complete information from you or your saved games were not attached to the e-mail (both of which have already happened).

When I go to the HOF page it is still empty. Are there scores posted now ? If so, is anyone else having this problem ?

When I go to the HOF page it is still empty. Are there scores posted now ?

There were a couple of things that needed to be fine tuned, but the page will be updated by this weekend.

Um, no there are no scores yet.... :rolleyes: ;)

If you really want to know benjdm, you are currently fourth for the Regent level. :)

Thanks ! I'm sure I won't last long, though.

Hows my 4150 point, Space Race Vic stacking up on Monarch?

I just submitted a 12400 Monarch victory.

Check out the Updated Page. (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/) :)

If there are any errors or changes needed, e-mail or PM me. Some of the submissions did not provided all the required information, so there are a few blanks for map sizes. :p

Deity Leader: tetley
Emperor Leader: Dark Schneider
Monarch Leader: tetley
Regent Leader: Smirk
Warlord Leader: Sir. Martin
Chieftan Leader: Celeron450

Congratulations to all who submitted, I can tell there is going to be some serious competition for spots on the HOF very soon.

Thanks moderators for doing all that. Although I know my couple of high scores won't last long, it's very nice of you to volunteer your time to do this rather tedious work.

I think it would be nice to see the finish time as well, since you get a bonus for any early finish it would be helpful to see at a glance what sort of game that person played. For instance a 2050 UN victory is definately a milked game.

Also the civ played, but I see you mentioned using different colors.


My last suggestion I sent to you in a submission as well, have people include the 4000BC auto save so others can play the same map and compete directly with a highscore. This would remove any kind of lucky map scenarios.

Looks great however, keep up the good work.

tetley your scores are going down! ;)
Muwahahaha!

Most of the highest scores were from games played on tiny and small maps. I am guessing that this means the games were won very early, so they got a huge bonus to score. Just my opinion, but I enjoy playing a game for a long time, so I rarely play on anything smaller than medium. I have posted this idea before, but I really hope the scoring is fixed in another patch. Has anybody beaten deity on a medium map or larger. Now I bet that is hard.

On one hand clearly its easier to get a conquest victory on a tiny map, on the other hand any old joe can milk a larger map until 2050 and get a large score just from settling cities and sheer population. So how do you fix the scoring so that both are equalized?

Basically they are on two different poles, conquest is best for small maps, and building is best for large maps. You would have to have two separate scoring systems, one for conquest and one for milking the game. The conquest one would give more bonus for larger maps, and the other would give more bonus for small maps.

Giving a bonus for smaller maps on the basic population scoring system should equalize the scores between a tiny map and a huge map. So those of equal skill would get the same score no matter what map they played, they wouldn't get a bonus just because the landmass supports more cities and therefore more population which creates higher scores.

Same could goes for conquest, on a tiny map if the best my skills can muster is a 200BC win, and on a huge map if the best I can do is 1500AD, the score I should get for both those games would be similar in a balanced scoring system.


The only thing I think may be a good idea that we as players can do is just create a balancing factor for the game size and type. For instance I would make medium the standard map size and its factor would be 1.00, tiny for conquest would get maybe something like 0.50, whereas large would get 1.5 (just guesses, I doubt tiny and huge are equally distant from medium scores).



On an unrelated topic:
Duke,
Kind of a rules clarification, when you say default rules would that include something like specifing which other civs you are playing, or how many? I noticed the winner in the chieftain level turned off 2 of the civs so that he only had to defeat 1 civ in the game. That doesn't seem very fair, and also potentially ruins it for conquests, since its obviously easier to conquest when you only have 1 enemy, right? This can be said about non-conquest games as well less civs less competition for land.

I don't 'milk' the game for points. I win as soon as I can, usually with a diplomatic victory as soon as the UN is built. If the state of international affairs does not allow diplomatic victory for whatever reason, then yeah, it takes longer. I may have to wait for a cultural victory, or attempt domination. I usually enter the modern age around 1650 AD. I can't even imagine spending the time to milk one of these games. Add to that the patience it would take to sit through turn after turn that take 2-5 minutes a piece for the AI, and I would say people should be somehow compensated for their patience. Not for me though. I get bored. The fact that all of the really high scores are on tiny and small maps does bother me though. Despot rushing a huge military to destroy 3 or 4 opponents is really not that hard. What is hard is fighting off a overwhelmingly large force sent by a large, industrialized nation or preventing several large opponents from ganging up on you.

I have a question. How do you know someone didn't cheat. I can change the rules to give my civ all the benefits plus 4 techs to start with. Then pick a civ like the Aztecs and change their special unit to something like 20/20/6! I can easily conquer the whole world very quickly. Hence a huge score.

jju, i am not sure but I wonder if the saved game would include some info allowing you to know it is a modified game.

On another note. I'm starting to believe that the hall of fame should include normal sized maps with 7 opponents ONLY.

Reasons?

Possible to milk a bigger map for more points, but it is no harder at all. In reality your end score is almost always determined by your performance in the first 50 to 100 turns.

Possible to get an insanely easy, insanely early win on a 1v1 game on a tiny map. Just need to wait until the random generater puts you close enough to that other guy.

This would be a level playing field. Its just impossible to compare 1v1 on tiny to 1v7 on normal to 1v? on Huge.

Then we would be getting a true hall of fame instead of a hall of "What map and opponents spec's allow the biggest score".

I'd also like to see a situation where victories of different types are possible, ie you won't get a very high score with spaceship or UN on a tiny map.

Finally, I think games should have to have ALL victory types turned on. Why? There is an easy way to get a massive score. Huge map, Conquest the only victory type, and then just conquer and population boom. You have no fear of losing by tech (spaceship), popularity (UN), culture (has a comp ever won by this?), and can go all out war. I think a level playing field makes a HoF great.

This would leave room for the 9 different types of of maps and the different civs to give variety.

Eliezar

The Civ that was played will be shown by the text color. It was not done this time because I could not open some of the saved games to find out who they were.

I agree that the scoring is skewed towards a fast easy victory, especially with a 1 vs 1 game. I am thinking of making it a requirment to have at least 7 civs in the game. I'm not sure about requiring a certain map size, but, as a couple of you had mentioned, that would give more of an accruate picture for the HOF.

I am also thinking of having something similar to the GOTM. I would post a saved game and everyone can play it and the top ten for that game will be shown. There would be a time limit of (maybe) 3 months. I'm still trying to think of things that can make the HOF better and more fun. :)

Did you see my original post about scoring categories? You can keep everything you have and add a 'Tournament Rules section' Where tournament rules are something like Medium sized map, all victory conditions on, 7 rivals, default map settings.

The other problem with mixing map sizes is you will only see tiny conquests for many months.

As for turning off victory conditions, thats kind what my previous post was asking, I don't think saying using the standard rules is enough as evidence by the few questions here.

It would be easy to tell if someone turned off domination, space ship, or cultural (maybe). As for specific cheats, maybe, some relflect themselves on the power history, like the gold cheats of pre-patch. I would think a 20/20/2 warrior would also show up, sinces thats very powerful.

I'm all for a standardization of the games, all civs on, default winning conditions, standard sized map. However, that takes on the appeal of a tourney, not high scores. As far as high scores are concerned quick conquest victory, and extended milking of a large map will make the highest scores.

Yeah, the high score is not worth going for currently.

After more thinking on it I think the best way would be much more complex than people might desire here. Rather than having a "top ten" of highest scores I'd like to see:

Top 3 scores.
Earliest 3 domination.
Earliest 3 conquest.
Earliest 3 UN.
Earliest 3 Spaceship.
Earliest 3 Culture.

And make the map the computer generated normal sized with 7 opponents and ALL victory conditions on. Games needing to be saved at 4000bc, 10ad, last turn.

I might even be willing to help sort through some of the games if there were just too many coming in. The current situation of tiny conquests just isn't enough to motivate me to try for it anymore. Although I guess I have a couple I could send in, but they are in the 5-6k range on Deity. /shrug

Eliezar

Not to give anyone ideas, but you can change the rules and have a 20/20/6 special unit. When you're at the last enemy city just disband all you special units and save the game. Go back into the rules and change the bic file. Now start the game back up and then resave it. Now when you start the game for the final time you have the original rules in the bic file and all evidence of cheating is gone. How can you stop this? Playing around last night I won on tiny with an 9,000 plus score. I'm sure that if I tweak the game I can get much higher. While I wouldn't get satisfaction because I knew my score was bogus, someone else would probably never beat it. You need a single set of criteria and a better way to check for cheating.

Ha, I've gotten 18k on diety with conquest without cheating. So with any mod cheat you'll still need to be at the top of your skill to build and get those units made. Unless you have some cheats for that too.

Personally, I would very much enjoy a HOF for top scores in Civ III, but at the same time it would be almost impossible to prevent cheaters. As jju_57 pointed out the trouble in actually preventing cheaters to post saved games, I would definitely have to agree.

:D This is a very good idea at the same time! :D

Until we get a patch that can actually fix this little problem, I'm thinking this HOF list might be sort of pointless.

But you guys are assuming that the games being sent in are cheated games. Why is that?

I know it might be hard to beat the some of the scores you see, but that's the whole point of the HOF. To show what others are capable of and let others see if they can elevate their game play to better levels becasue of it.

If anybody thinks a game is cheated all they have to do is PM or e-mail me and it will be looked into.

I sent Thunderfall the update yesterday, but it looks he hasn't updated the page yet. I added a text file to tetley's Deity game explaining how to finish it properly. There were 11 more submissions this time. Smirk covered the list with new #1 spots in all but one level. I wonder how long he will stay on top with all the submissions I am getting. I have 5 new ones yesterday alone. :crazyeyes

None of the scores so far would hint at being cheats to me. I decided to edit stuff and see what score I could get while cheating on a randomly made map and it was about 3 times the top score so far.

Eliezar

Well for my HOF submissions not only were they not cheats, but I wasn't going for a high score either. They were played before the HOF opened. All I did was dig up my old saved games. I deleted them earlier, but fortunately I didn't empty the Recycling Bin (in Windows) so they were still there.

BTW my Deity win was Persians, my Monarch was Aztecs. No shocker there. If you really want to go for a high score, start-and-restart as Japanese until you get Horses.

To test it out I played a game on diety, tiny 1 opponent and modified the Aztecs to have a 20/20/6 warrior and 4 techs with all attributes turned on. I played against the French. My score was 27,912! I then modified the game and no warnings or other evidence appeared to show that I cheated. The reply shows me destroying Paris three times but that is the only indication that something was wrong. After all how could my two arriors defeat all those units that the AI gets for free.

Here's my thought......

I plan to make the Civ 3 HOF based off of a minimum map size and number of civs.

Right now I am leaning towards the minimum being a standard map with at least 4 other civs.

So, a default game would be:

A computer generated map, allowing all victory conditions and random selection of at least four computer opponents (see below). The computer opponents must be random selections. You can select your preference on Type of land mass and water amount, as well as Barb activity and difficulty level.

For a Standard Map you would need to have at least four rivals.
For a Large Map you would need to have at least six rivals.
For a Huge Map you would need to have at least eight rivals.

Comments?

Sounds good to me. :goodjob:

Sounds good to me as well:cool:

Eliezar

I think minimum map size AND USING FIRAXIS' SCORING would be worse than what we have now already. I don't have the answers (I probably won't be submitting, either--Empire Earth, baby! :goodjob: ), but I expect lots of Huge maps ending around 2050 if you do that.

My opinion: no random maps in the HOF. Do high-scores on a per-scenario basis only, and allow restarts from 4000 bc.

You'll see the same problems with huge maps that you currently see with tiny, but only they will be milked games and obviously will take a longer time.

Each of those games I recently submitted took at most an hour to complete. Some of them like the extremely easy low difficulty games took maybe 15 minutes. On chieftain, only 1 civ actually had defenders. Compare that to a larger map when it can take a few minutes waiting for the AI to move, and then easily 15+ minute for you to deal with your civ (like gotm2). I quickly grow bored of this, but as you'll see once the gotm2 scores come up, plenty of people *will* do this for a high score.

So if you do what you suggest you will get some early conquests initially and then a load of milked games. I'm not sure why you are leaning towards the larger maps, why allow huge but not small? I don't play anything greater than standard. And standard only a few times. I have a fast machine, but the micro-management involved is just way too tedious for me.

Anyway, Firaxis' scoring is just broken, its only based on city area and population (which are actually closely linked) so in effect you are just getting x2 score for how many cities you have. Ignoring that very general problem, there is no scale at all for map size. A larger map will allow you to build more cities and obviously have more population and land area which will directly affect your score.

If you want to make the standard size the standard size I suggest you deviate from standard the same in both directions and have a self made scale factor for each. I would just make it simple, figure out a scale factor based only on how many tiles are present in small and large, the goal being if you have an exact civ in either of those maps your score would be the same. In other words a tile in standard may be worth 1 point, a tile in small 1.25 and in large 0.75, or something along those lines. Whats the actual tile size of the maps?

Then once that problem is solved you'll have to deal with random maps, not all maps are created equal. My idea is to have people include the 4000bc save along with the highscore so others can remove the "good map" bonus and compete directly with a current highscore, the intention being to remove any luck factors and create a skill only ranking. If I get a highscore on a map, and then you play it and get a better score, you are obviously the better player and more deserving of the highscore. However, you'll still have to rely on players being honest and not replaying a map forever to improve their "that map only skills".

Thats a fine tradeoff in my mind since there is only so much you can do with any given map, but across all the possible random maps there will be a large variance in scores. That also doesn't change much with map size since the score is an average, if you start with a bad map and have bad land initially you're score will always be hurt by that.

Just take a look at my deity game, that was easily the easiest deity game I've played and that was reflected in the score since I got a quick conquest. Its all because of some wheat flood plains. If you play a deity game and don't have similar resources at the start you simply won't be able to attain a comparable score (in conquest that is).

Smirk would you agree that scoring of Civ III in itself is retarded and that the fastest finish is actually what is more skillfull? I think score should be dumped for 3 earliest wins, earliest conquest, earliest domination, earliest spaceship, earliest culture, and earliest diplomatic. Even on size normal maps the best scores will probably be games that are won around 1ad and then milked for score until 2050. 8(

Eliezar

I agree that the scoring system is very much flawed for Civ 3. So, until that is adjusted in some manner (either by Firaxis or us) I do not want to have it where I just get a flood of tiny conquest games.

Granted, the larger maps that are milked will produce a high score. Good. Let people show that they can play a prolonged game and do good.

Some of the submissions I have are ridiculous. If they hadn't captured the last city in the game, their empire would have fallen apart in two turns. I don't want games that show that you can ignore your cities and just crank out troops and kill the other guy really fast. I want games that show people can develope their civs as well as kick the AI's butt. Plus, the cultural and domination victories would keep people from simply milking the game till the end. There is only so long you can go before you reach 20,000 culture points.

I would like to see games where there is more effort given to actually playing the game rather than trying to get a high score.

Still get the 404 file not found error at the following site for hof:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/styles/cfc.css

Duke,

I think you are headed in the right direction with those rules. I played a decent game, got 5500 points or so, and thought about submitting it to the HOF. I saw those high-score early conquest games, and decided not to enter. I'm just not interested in competing with that style of game.

My only suggestion would be to have more civ's required than 4 - or is the number of civ's sufficiently built into the scoring already.

Anyway, I'd enter it with the rules you're proposing. They narrow the possibilites enough to make it interesting.

Thanks,

Dunster

Originally posted by bruinb77
Still get the 404 file not found error at the following site for hof:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/styles/cfc.css

This (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/) is the HOF page, what are you using that gives you that error?

Originally posted by Dunster
Duke,

... I'm just not interested in competing with that style of game.


Classic excuse, those who can't compete, choose to not want to compete.

As for the comment about empires falling apart, none of mine would have, so I'll assume you're talking about someone else's submissions.

The facts are simply that building is easy, anyone can do it. The large appeal civ has is based on that, if its more difficult than simcity than the "mass" can no longer enjoy it. If you are gonna candy coat HOF and define rules that disallow conquest then you should rename HOF to Hippy HOF or better yet HOF for the Masses.

Anyone that can achieve a fast conquest can just as easily not take that last city and still score better than any other style (ie Dunster's, whatever that may be). You can see the evidence of that on the last gotm, the winners were those who controlled the game earliest and then built until the end of the game. Is that skill? I don't consider anything after the person was in control skillful. Its just like simcity at that point.

If you change the map size to some minimum size like standard or large you'll have the exact same situation, except people will milk the game. Maybe not the same situation since I would never play a game like that.

Also culture and domination are just hurdles, you can easily just trash a lot of temples to prevent a culture win. In the gotm2 thread a few people got into the specifics of what it takes to get a domination, so people will just stay under the wire until they have reached 2050.

If you are gonna candy coat HOF and define rules that disallow conquest then you should rename HOF to Hippy HOF or better yet HOF for the Masses.

I'm not going to disallow conquest. I am just going to make it be where the map has to be bigger, and have a minimum number of civs to play against.

Anyone that can achieve a fast conquest can just as easily not take that last city and still score better than any other style

Good, let them show that they can dominate the game early on and then maintain their civ for an extended period of time.

Each of those games I recently submitted took at most an hour to complete. Some of them like the extremely easy low difficulty games took maybe 15 minutes.

That is part of the problem that I am having. It is taking me longer to process some of these games I receive then it is for people to play them. Plus, a game that only has two cities (a starting city and a captured AI city) in it before it is done is not much to look at for a HOF submission.

So, what is going to happen with this next update is that I will remove all the tiny and small maps from the listing. They will be listed separtely on the HOF page to acknowledge those who took the effort to submit those games. The new maps size restrictions and number of Civs will be listed as requirments for a submission.

Aren't we all struggling here with the HOF in relation with Civ III? I see valid arguments from Duke towards tiny conquests and valid arguments from a lot of posters for making high scores for what Civ III rules allow. I would guess the standard rules is a bare minimum, yet how to deal with country mod-packs? I enjoy the Dutch modpack, which is based on the Babies, but the Bab UU is replaced by a VOC Galleon, right guess, an upgraded Galleon.

My gut feel is that the scoring system is questionable (stands for sux) given the high bonus for milking and for early victory. Don't we all agree that the first is tedious and the latter is not really a game at all? I must admit that my high score play style in Civ I and II was milking, i.e. have one civ with one pathetic city left and work land and develop future civs and raise lux levels to max in 2010 etc. Most of the time it was game over when you were first to develop Armor and rush over your buddies. I am certainly not planning to rehearse that in III.

Going back to both tiny conquest and milking it is apparent that in both cases the AI is insignificant, period! Why not turn that around and make the (in)significance of the AI civ a factor in score calculations. OK, it requires Firaxis to make changes to the scoring system, on the other hand we can't expect Duke to set HOF rules all the time and wait for the next poster to find the next gap!

Some ideas (random order) and with Civ III point accumulation in mind:

1. Make the score of AI civs a factor in your own score in a way that strong AI Civs can be good for your score.

2. Also, if there are no strong Civs around that has a negative effect on your score.

3. Do this in relation (and not by itself) with the year where high score is made.

4. Make the scoring mechanism more versatile i.e. include Culture by some means in the scoring mechanism.

5. Make the AI UNDERSTAND that there is a point where it should stop messing around and just plain surrender!

6. Set a minimum of whatever (pop, land area, culture, year, number of cities) before victory can be called (Civ III is full of examples of these minimum criteria..............).

So, I'd like to play indeed for fun and skill and not being chasing around for the next loophole or stupid whatever and most of all have a decent HOF.

Please feel free to respond! :)

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough

That is part of the problem that I am having. It is taking me longer to process some of these games I receive then it is for people to play them. Plus, a game that only has two cities (a starting city and a captured AI city) in it before it is done is not much to look at for a HOF submission.


Thats what I voiced concern about a week or so ago, clearly tiny with only 1 enemy civ is not the default rules, by my estimation. The old high score for chieftain was exactly that, however I beat that score in my first game without selecting some of the civs to none. Chieftain by design is easy. Why not cut out everything below regent also since it is such a pushover.

My vote is for adjusting the scoring so that its more fair across the board then to set more stringent default rules that will only rule out certain styles of play.

I agree that the scoring system being used in Civ 3 does not reflect the ability to play a game well as opposed to playing it fast. For now, changing the parameters that games can be played within is the the easiest recourse I have. Unless a new scoring system is developed that acurately reflects all aspects of the game the only thing I can do is make it where people play a sustained game with a minimum number of AI players. Otherwise the HOF is nothing more than a slash fest.

So, unfortunately, until something revolutionary comes along, setting minimum standards is an attempt to make the HOF worth trying for.

Beam, may I say those are great ideas.
Makes me think, I dont know what interaction official Fireaxis staff have with the forum (if there is any), all I know is that from so much posts and ideas they (and the players) could profit so much.

Duke, dont take me wrong, I commend you for your work at the HOF and your efforts to make it work. Im not usually a pessimist, but I dont really see how any type of HOF for civ3 can work out, unless drastic, insightfull changes are made to the core of the game and its scoring system.

One of the things that makes civ3 the great and unique game it is, is the randomness factor you can find everywhere in the game.

First, on tiny maps, you simply need to have a wheat on a flooded plain to start with. Then you go mad rushing units. You will need luck again to have the AI players near to you. On Smirks game they were all on the same, small and packed continent wich obviously made his life easier.

You will also need some luck as to how the AI plays, who they engage war with, whatever they get good units fast or not, all in all an overwhelming number of random occurrances.

Basically the "skill" one might be so proud of in an early victory, is the "skill" to abuse the ridiculous overpowering that despot rushing gives you on the early game. Take tiny maps in account, and the overpower is ten times higher.

Personally I think rushing units/buildings is completly messed up, being unrealistic and overpowering at the same time. If it was up to me, Id change it so that the shields you get for rushing depended upon other factors, such as wich era you are in, how many shields the city normally produces, etc. Think about it, its damn stupid, say a city with max corruption. They can barely produce 1 shield, but if you ask your citizens to rush build it they do it promptly and perfectly. It doesnt make any sense, and this is just one of a thousand examples you can think of about how rushing is just wrong.

Smirk, dont think Im trying to offend you or anything. Im a pro counterstrike player myself, and me and my team will use each and every bug/exploit in the game we can find if its good to beat our opponent, given that its a legal bug/exploit. You are out for high score, wich is what the HOF is ultimately about, and you did well at it. This is a competition for high score, not the most pretty civilization.
However, dont pick on people who feel that this is a silly way to play civ3 - I know I do. I like to "nerd on" civ and do what I want to. I just ended my first game, emperor on medium map with japanese. I couldve easily won by space race, instead I built about 50 ICBMs and tons of ground troops, and laid waste to my 2 allies who controlled 2/3 of the world. Now that was fun :). My score was something like 4k but I had my fun :).

Well GOTM is great because it puts everyone on the same ground (however luck and randomness is still a big factor concerning how the AI behaves during the game). But on a random map...I dont see how it can work out. Its my humble opinion that its a damn waste of time to compete for points in civ3. It doesnt prove a thing. You can play twice on the same map and it will never be the same because the AI will behave in a different way every time. Sometimes they will grow more powerfull then you, sometimes weaker.

Skill comes in play when you are dealing with an AI who happened to grew more powerfull, and unfortunately there is no scoring for skill like this.

If I may add to that Storm, yep it is that kind of play that makes the game, yet is so difficult to measure. Most exiting times are when you're in real competition with another Civ and that is where my idea for scoring related to other Civs came from. Score accumulation as implemented in Civ III can be a big help here!

IMHO the two civ, two city type of high score play has very limited sustained appeal and if not removed will be on top of HOF until Civ 4 is available and I think Duke will come up with some logical and easy to check rules for HOF entry that still allow that particular type of gameplay.

btw Duke your work and input is very much appreciated!!! :goodjob: :goodjob: :goodjob: :goodjob: !!

The milking strategy is another issue (done it often in I and II, hate it a lot now). The only way I can think of where this could be made manageble for HOF entry (I mean reject milking HOF entries) is that a HOF entry file must come with a savfile of lets say 20 turns before indicating reasonable competing Civ activity at that point in time. Like double the nummer of AI cities with a minimum of four or something like that! The idea here is that milkers and all the others have 20 turns left after achieving near global domination to make whatever finish they want! (btw not sure how this works with the various victory types, should HOF entry allowance not require to have all victory options switched on???)

Hope you can add to these ideas and keep HOF alive, even with the limitations Firaxis implemented and making life easier for Duke. Evey hour spend on a HOF entry is an hour less you can spend in playing the game!!!!

Duke, is there a way we can make sure these ideas are shared with Firaxis???

I was thinking....since we all agree, including Duke who is the HOF administrator, that the actual scoring system is very far from being a good way to calculate skill, maybe it should be completly ignored.

You would have several different categories like "fastest conquest on medium map - deity level". You would get interesting categories like "fastest space race on large map - emperor" and so on.
What would count its the year you finished the game. I think this way skill would be closer to be accurately calculated. Being able to quickly achieve, say, a culture victory on a huge map on deity would for sure be an awesome thing to accomplish.

So you have all this categories, victory condition (5) X map size (5) X difficulty (6). That would account to an enourmous number of 150 categories wich is far from reasonable to be administrated by 1 guy alone. This could be trimmed down, for instance, allow only medium sized maps and above. Also, only monarch level and above (I feel a HOF shouldnt pay much attention to lower levels of difficulty. Altho it may not please the masses, the HOF is where the real good players should be listed).
This way its trimmed down to (5) X (3) X (3), 45 categories. Much more reasonable. Eventually, some of the categories might not have entries at all for a long long time, like culture/deity/huge I mentioned above.

To make a multi categories system work, it would need a top 10 players board. This board would take all the victories a player achieved on every category he sucessfully entered, adding them up on a points system.

For instance. Having the 1st position on a category gives you 10 points, having the tenth position would give 1 point. As an example, Joe achieved 1st place on "fastest UN victory/medium/monarch" (10 points), also 3rd place on "fastest UN/large/emperor" (7 points) and 6th place on "fastest space race/huge/deity" (4 points). Joe have a total of 21 points to compete for the top 10. Under his name on the top 10 board would be a summary os his achieved victories on the categories he applied in.

The actual score and tribe used to win a game could show up on the HOF just for presentation purposes only. We agree that the scoring system is almost useless to point out skill. And as far as the tribe used goes, I feel its like a personal choice of weapon used to do the job, so it could show up for others to learn from.

If two players ended a particular category on the same year, THEN the score could be used to determine wich one will have the higher spot on the list.

On a system like this, only the fastest players wins. Altho this still is not 100% ideal, I think its way better then scoring system. It completly eliminates milking. I think you will agree that pop/territory only serves you to achieve a final goal, and should not be motives of rewarding. Being able to quickly impose a victory on several of the categories will be especially hard, and a motive of rewarding.

Thanks for reading thro...Duke plz tell me how you feel about this idea.

Makes sense and can be done with simple parameters. IMHO however 45 lists is still way to much to administer even with top 10s derived from that. Just thinking out loud here to eliminate one categorie:

Diff. level? No, this is where most challenge is coming from.

Map size? Hm, the bigger the map, the more time is needed (I believe), but it also provides more bekers for lets say Space Race.

Victory type? Well, the winner is always right isn't it. However, Diplo / Space Race require the more trading and negiotiating skills, while Culture, Domination and Conquest require the more aggressive skills. With all victory options active (and minimum criteria set) Conquest will never happen btw, and on the higer diff levels you need a big empire anyway to win on Culture. So IMHO victory types can be grouped in peacefull and aggressive!

So this could bring things down to 3 (diff.) x 3 (map) x 2 (Vic type peacefull or aggressive) = 18.

Question then is whether a split in Victory types matters for Mapsize?

Whatyathink?

Originally posted by Storm-br

Personally I think rushing units/buildings is completly messed up, being unrealistic and overpowering at the same time. If it was up to me, Id change it so that the shields you get for rushing depended upon other factors, such as wich era you are in, how many shields the city normally produces, etc.

Smirk, dont think Im trying to offend you or anything. Im a pro counterstrike player myself, and me and my team will use each and every bug/exploit in the game we can find if its good to beat our opponent, given that its a legal bug/exploit. You are out for high score, wich is what the HOF is ultimately about, and you did well at it. This is a competition for high score, not the most pretty civilization.


You don't see my commenting at all on other game styles, you paid for the game, you play it how ever you want. But I am enduring people commenting on my conquest play style. Saying its easy, not fun, worthless whatever. If you don't like it, don't play it, and complain to firaxis about how the score is weighted towards early conquest. Also of course stay away from playing multiplayer when/if it comes ouit since intelligent humans will have much more intelligence than the AI civs.

Your comments on the game design seem to be misdirected or at worst completely wrong. Forced labor resulting in increased production and death of the laborer is not unrealistic, happened at the time. That and flood plains *are* historically accurate, the first two civilzations that we have record of both were born on that concept. All along the nile (ie egyptians) was flood plains, and they irrigated it. And it took them a damn sight less than 1000 years to build *all* of their pyramids.


So if that means anything to you it should be that flood plain rushing is not a bug *or* exploit, its historically accurate. And also definately a concept designed to be in the game.

All the people against conquest need to be aware thats their own perception or choice; historically, conquest and wars are the meat of all civilizations.

er ok :p

Ok guys.

You both are making great efforts in helping me work out the kinks in the scoring for the HOF in a way that makes it worthwhile, but please do not start talking about specific game issues in this thread. Go add to another Civ 3 thread about that subject or PM each other.

The game I submitted last night took me 11 days to complete. Not milking, several things happened.
Got off to a slow start in culture, because the world ganged up on me very early, and I was at war most of the time after that. Built culture as fast as I could, but first I had to survive. By the time I found France and Russia, I had subjugated my continent that I initially shared with 4 others. And by that time they were both so far ahead in culture, there was no way to win by culture. Un was out, because they all thought I was a warmonger. Well, I did become one, by default:D
No city ever approached 20000. My core (original) cities were from 4000 to 8000 each. Yet I had a total of 160,000 at the end. No way to get twice as much as France as long as she was still producing. And to eliminate her ability to produce would have made a domination victory... which I got. By the same token, tech was not a problem, ie no fear of spaceship usurp. I had not even gotten to the space research, since Ihad other goals in mind, and France was 5 or 6 techs behind me.
I do think the score based on land size+Pop is wrong. Perhaps if we added a factor for culture, say culture score/100 and a factor for techs, say 10 points per tech, it might balance out the score some.

Duke,

Just curious when and how the HOF will be updated and / or based on modified rules?

Thnx for all the good work!

Sorry it's taking so long. I'm actually working on it right now. It's going to be a complete update, the rules and the 40 games or so I have gotten since the last update. I had some problems with the installing the patch also. I'm use to programs knowing where they are installed and selecting that as the directory to update, not picking a generic spot and hoping the game is there. :crazyeyes:

But, I'm up and running and am trying to get the update sent into Thunderfall today. :)

Getting even more curious now...... :D :D :D :D

More thoughts on the scoring system. :) I know that some will disagree with me - please know that I'm just throwing out my ideas, I know that what I say is opinion, not fact.

It is clear that many players feel that the scoring algorithm is flawed. The overall problem seems to be that the score does not measure skill well, especially when comparing different types of games.

So, before considering how to try to measure it, do we need to define skill in this game? I suspect that people with different styles of play will define skill differently, and thus will lean toward different scoring systems to measure what they feel is skill.

To my mind higher skill implies an ability to simultaneously use many of the game's facets (units, improvements, resources, tech, culture, diplomacy, etc, etc.) well, to produce a desired outcome.

Any definition like that would seem to rule out fast conquest. If a game can be won so soon that much of the tech. tree hasn't been researched, then that game did not require skillful use of many of the city improvements, unit types, long-term diplomacy, governments, etc. (That game never got to them at all.) So that game is only measuring skill in a subset of the game's rich features. One might enjoy such games and be extremely skillful in using that subset, but it still does not seem as great a test of skill as a test which requires skillful use of a greater range of the game.

So it makes sense to me to eliminate the smaller map sizes. In a general sense, to eliminate games which don't require an application of skill throughout the longer timeline available in the game. (So far, that seems to apply only to small maps, and/or maps with few opponents, and perhaps maps at lower difficulty levels.)

Continuing in the same vein is the question: Does an earlier victory for a given victory condition imply greater skill? Suppose one player wins a game with conquest in 1800AD, with a scattered Civ with many small cities which have been heavily pop rushed, and with little culture. A second player wins the same game in 1850AD with a large happy populace and high culture. Which of these took more skill? A very tough question.

Before rushing to any scoring modification which strongly favors earlier wins I think the previous question should be considered at length. In my opinion the second case in that example probably took more skill. It required a more delicate balancing of more of the game's factors and was a harder goal to acheive. (If indeed one considers it a desirable goal, which is of course part of the problem in this discussion, defining the goals by which skill will be measured.)

If one agrees that the second case took as much skill, the big problem is how can it be measured? I don't have a solution to that. But, I do want to suggest that perhaps the existing scoring system isn't all that bad for the moment.

The two games I described earlier (1800 vs 1850) will be closer in final score after milking than they were in conquest date - the first case has more time available to milk, but is behind in averaged-over-the-years score at that date. The second case has a real chance to win in final score. So, to my mind, the existing scoring system, with its favoring of milking games, does after all have some inherent goodness. Earlier control of the world is favored in one way (more time to milk) but more early building can offset that and might produce a higher score. A subtle tradeoff which at least to some degree can measure skill.

I think that the best tests of skill will be games which can't be won by skilled players until late in in the Industrial Age or later. Given a game which is a challenge up to that point, I don't personally have a problem with milking it. By the time it is "in hand", the game probably has 150 or less turns left to 2050. I imagine that many people invest 40 hours or more in getting a tough game to that point. Spending another 10 or so milking it is not that big a deal to me.

And there is (in my opinion, I know some strongly disagree) some skill and interest in milking efficiently. You need to consider it even before the "in hand" date, anticipating that your average per turn score over the long haul will matter. You need to trade off more towns with faster growth and less unhappiness vs. maximum size towns which use up tiles themselves. You need to optimize build paths vs money available, spending on happiness now vs. happiness later. And so on. It isn't as complex as war and it isn't random, but it isn't trivial either.

One possible cure for the scoring problem is to emphasize date but separately rank the earliest win of each type (conquest, spacerace, etc.) Theoretically that would let us emphasize and work on the different areas of skill in the game. But I'm not convinced that it would actually help. It has a few problems. 1) How do we compare the different types? I think that people inevitably will want to compare them, they'll want THE high score however that is defined. 2) How to balance the types? That would take some careful thinking and might end up imbalanced anyway. 3) Once balanced, would people like the result? I suspect that most high level players LIKE the warfare aspect. And warfare is such a complex part of the game that any game which largely excludes it probably doesn't require as much skill. I'd be rather unhappy if I played a dynamite game, putting 100 hours into a large map with 16 civs and starting on tundra, finally beating down every other Civ by 2000AD, and then someone beat me by playing an easy "builder" type game from the same start to a 1500AD diplomatic victory. I would strongly feel that beating all other Civs into submission had required more skill. :) I suspect that any good scoring must most reward a game which includes a significant element of war and conquest. If a scoring system doesn't require that for THE high score, then many existing players (including me) would feel that it must be a flawed scoring system in some way and we'd be back to discussing what's wrong with the scoring system.

In summary: From my perspective the existing scoring system is, although flawed, not all that bad for measuring skill. I would not want to see it replaced with something which might be worse by favoring early conquest even more than it already is - I think that might only create an increased and undesirable focus on skillful blood-letting (and pop rushing) at the cost of other game factors.

Continuing in the same vein is the question: Does an earlier victory for a given victory condition imply greater skill? Suppose one player wins a game with conquest in 1800AD, with a scattered Civ with many small cities which have been heavily pop rushed, and with little culture. A second player wins the same game in 1850AD with a large happy populace and high culture. Which of these took more skill? A very tough question.
I think the scoring system takes this into account already. The higher population and culture would goven more points and be adjusted by the fact that it happened later in the game.

The main flaw I see in the scoring system is the huge point bonus given to a quick victory no matter what the conditions. A conquest game with 80% water and 1 other civ should not govern the same score as a 50% water with 4 other civs game.
In summary: From my perspective the existing scoring system is, although flawed, not all that bad for measuring skill. I would not want to see it replaced with something which might be worse by favoring early conquest even more than it already is - I think that might only create an increased and undesirable focus on skillful blood-letting (and pop rushing) at the cost of other game factors.
I agree and that is why I have eliminated Tiny and Small maps as a means to eliminate the quick conquest games that don't seem to measure much. It seems the scoring system levels out a bit better once the game starts to develop, so we have to do things that encourage somewhat longer game play (i.e. minimum number of Civs to play against).

Looks like the board is not updated???
I have submitted two games, but not heard anything. I assume they went to the right place....
I am obviously not the master of this game, but they are respectable wins...:D

I got done with the update around Midnight last night and tried to e-mail it to Thunderfall, but my SMTP server rejected the file because it was too big (8.3 MB). So I had to wait until I got home tonight and break it into two smaller pieces. Anyway, they are sent over now so as soon as Thunderfall gets some time it will be updated.

The Listing only has games that were played on Standard Map sizes or larger. I made a separate listing for all the Tiny and Small maps to recognize all the effort that people had put into them, but those do not include the saved game files. No more games will be added to the Tiny and Small list.

Please also note the rule changes for type of games accepted as well as information that is requested. I have not had the time to check every game to get the missing information so there is still no reference to the tribe played or year the game ended. I hope to get that portion caught up on with the next update.

Give it a little while and then check out The Updated Civ 3 HOF Page. (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/) Just be sure to have your pop-up stopper installed first because it is on the server that the ads appear on. :(

On a similar note, I cannot reply directly to e-mails that are sent to me right now. Thunderfall is working on the problem and hopefully that will be fixed soon.

The updated HOF is uploaded!

Check it out: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/

Notice I changed the color of all the tables to one color. I feel the old HOF page was too colorful. :)

Good job Duke! :goodjob:

Yep,

Big thumbs up for Duke, it has been a though discussion, yet there is a new HOF now that makes sense and where challenges are at hand. I personally hope that players where I have shared sav files with will submit as well for HOF given their gameplay. Ease of submission should not be an issue, it is very straightforward.

In response to Sirpleb, most of your post makes a lot of sense. I'd like to plea however for sustaining the multiple types of victories, i.e. more then just warfare. Also there should be easy to measure criteria, both for player and the Duke to judge submissions!

We all agree on the limitations of the scoring system, but what options do we have? We can work within the existing scoring system and adopt entry types like "the first who........" or wait for Firaxis to implement our ideas. Given the speed of Firaxis I would appreciate the first.

Please respond!

Thunderfall, on the new colors. Fine for me as well. I.m colorblind anyway.......

Yes, thumbs up Duke! I agree Beammeuppy, there's certainly something special about "the first to ..." The different win types create different challenges when measured by earliest date. The challenge is going to be finding some way to measure them, associating some kind of recognition/score with the date/type. I hope that eventually a good way to do that will become clear.

Originally posted by Thunderfall
Notice I changed the color of all the tables to one color. I feel the old HOF page was too colorful.

Fine with me, I didn't put them in there in the first place. ;)

As far as the 'first of' scores, I would be willing to attach an excel spreadsheet that shows the date the game was received, that way people can sort it by whatever criteria they want.

As I said earlier, I will be adding a column that shows the Civ that was played, but I need to run through all the games (25 or so)that have that information missing first. Once that is done (hopefully by the next update) I will add that info to the page. I will also be adding a 'finished date' column as well.

Thanks all for the encouragement. :D

:goodjob:
Congratulations to the Duke of Marlbrough

You're doing a great job and we appreciate it

I agree with Boca...

And on Deity maps, you don't have to be a Master Civ:er to beat them if the settings are right... so this was a very good thing to do (limiting the rules that is...)

If you play a Tiny map, Iroquai as the playable civ, America as the only opponent (they start closer with culturaly linked starting locations, and that's good if you wanna finish early). You can get scores up to 18-19000 points real easy if you get a fair map and a Horse and maybe some luxaries real close...

I don't really think that the tiny and small maps are a problem. Granted they would fill up the HOF board for the first couple of months, as they can be played so quickly. There is some skill involved, but mostly in choosing game settings, and following a perfected opening gambit. I can beat any of the conquest scores posted by building to 2050 on any difficulty level though. This is how it should be, as the best scores will still entail the perfected opening gambit, but also add in patience and the ability to stick to a coherant build strategy throughout the game.

36060 is the highest score through an early conquest, and that is an impossible (can only be done on a specially edited map) 3950BC conquest on Deity. It should be possible to beat that score, though domination might keep the scores a bit lower. 20k-30k scores shouldn't be too rare eventually though on Monarch-Deity levels. It just takes a lot of time to do.

Originally posted by Aeson
I don't really think that the tiny and small maps are a problem. Granted they would fill up the HOF board for the first couple of months, as they can be played so quickly. There is some skill involved, but mostly in choosing game settings, and following a perfected opening gambit. I can beat any of the conquest scores posted by building to 2050 on any difficulty level though. This is how it should be, as the best scores will still entail the perfected opening gambit, but also add in patience and the ability to stick to a coherant build strategy throughout the game.

36060 is the highest score through an early conquest, and that is an impossible (can only be done on a specially edited map) 3950BC conquest on Deity. It should be possible to beat that score, though domination might keep the scores a bit lower. 20k-30k scores shouldn't be too rare eventually though on Monarch-Deity levels. It just takes a lot of time to do.

Good contribution IMHO, yet if you have read the HOF thread there is also a desire to eliminate "milking games". Those are games where just one AI city is left for ages and the only thing happening is accumulating score points. How much skill is required to do that? Once you are in the position to kill the latest civ what gameplay is left?

The scoring system still sux in order to rate skill of play, I hope that with some modified entry rules we can avoid milking games!:)

Beammeuppy, you need to check your PM. I sent you one a few days ago, but I figure you don't have any kind of automatic notification active for it and just don't know it's there.

Hopefully by posting here you'll see this. (No, I still can't send or reply to e-mail from the hof account) :(

my world is ` 71-72 squares top to bottom and ~ 80 side to side-difficult to count some of the squares- this would be standard world?

The map you play must be randomly made and computer generated. No pre-made maps or scenarios count. If you don't remember what size map you chose, you can start a new standard map and count it out to check.

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
Beammeuppy, you need to check your PM. I sent you one a few days ago, but I figure you don't have any kind of automatic notification active for it and just don't know it's there.

Hopefully by posting here you'll see this. (No, I still can't send or reply to e-mail from the hof account) :(

Duke,

Replied to your PM and activated PM notification. Please gimme some extra info on your question and I'll check it out!

I can understand people not wanting to allow milking of games as well, as it becomes very tedious in the latter stages. Playing a game from 4000BC till 2050AD, while maximizing the scoring every single turn, takes the most time, effort, and skill though. It isn't going to come down to who hits the spacebar the most. The best scores are going to come from those who maximize population and happiness while conquering the world at the fastest rate. After that it still takes a lot of skill to know how to build up corrupt cities fastest and how to avoid domination or cultural victories from being triggered.

Once you are in the position to kill the latest civ what gameplay is left?

If you follow this question to its conclusion, you will end up with the assumption that only very early pop rush conquests offer any gameplay. The best players can take out the AI very quickly, but just because they can doesn't mean they have to. If players only went for the most efficient and fastest possible victory condition, it makes the contest very one dimensional. I think we can all agree though that improving terrain, building city improvements, diplomacy, and military action are all important parts of a Civ game. The highest scores will be posted by those who can use an efficient overall strategy for the entire 540 turns in a Civ game. It certainly won't be the funnest playstyle for most (myself included), but competitions are rarely about who had the most fun.

Originally posted by Aeson
....After that it still takes a lot of skill to know how to build up corrupt cities fastest and how to avoid domination or cultural victories from being triggered....



....... I think we can all agree though that improving terrain, building city improvements, diplomacy, and military action are all important parts of a Civ game..............

Well, we agree on the important parts I guess, but it sounds a bit artificial to avoid victory! :sheep: :sheep: :sheep:

How do you plan to play until 2050 and build your empire in a controlled way while avoiding diplo AND space race AND cultural AND domination AND conquest. I mean the AI usually gets in a position to build spaceships at 1700 - 1800 if still alive and if you want to make it to 2050 you would have to sabotage their construction time after time. Not my idea of enjoyable gameplay!

Yet I am open for suggestions!

That's the point. I had to eliminate the quick and dirty wins and I was getting flooded with the at least set a minimum standard for the game. Then, the prospect of playing a long ardious game will keep people from milking the game out to the very end.

The Civ II HOF was based entirely on milking the game, but how many people milked it for all it was worth? One. Will he ever do it again? No Way. He spelled it out for everyone that it was something he only did once to see if he could actually do it.

Will someone get onto the HOF by milking a game, most likely, will they play that type of game repeatedly, no way. Who would want to play a game that gets very boring and very drawn out. It kinda defeats the purpose of it being a game, which is meant for enjoyment.

So, people will play games that require more skill than restarting the game until they get a good start next to the only AI player, but will find a long drawn out game too tedious to be worth it. A decent way to allow people to show what they can do. :D

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
How do you plan to play until 2050 and build your empire in a controlled way while avoiding diplo AND space race AND cultural AND domination AND conquest. ... Yet I am open for suggestions!
Well that's the thing :) It does actually add to the challenge to accomplish this. You can take out everything except one rival city, and box that city in so that it cannot grow or send units anywhere. Then you don't need to worry about the space race. You need to control the UN. You need to avoid taking too much (domination.) And you need to do all these things at once.

Efficiently taking out the last rival(s) without resettling the land is usually straightforward but can be interesting. (If it seems too easy, try it on a huge deity map with 15 rivals :) When you get near 2/3 of the world there will probably be a number of strong rivals left. Taking them out without settling the remaining land can be a challenge.)

I've found that it adds a lot to the challenge to milk a controlled (i.e. just boxed in rivals remain, to make the milking stage fast) diplomatic victory. It can be done! If that is still too boring (try it before you decide :)), try getting all six wins out of a single game (requires milking of course to include the retirement win), that's quite a challenge.

I don't think of milking as avoiding victory, I think of it as choosing the time and place of victory.

I find that the milking stage of the game is not nearly as tedious as one might think if you haven't done it. The boring part is adding a marketplace, hospital, and mass transit to all the cities. But even that doesn't take all that much effort. Optimizing growth and location is even less work but is more interesting. Ensuring that you don't get a cultural victory is less effort again. (Boring but quick and easy to sell off some stuff.) If you want to "beautify" the unused land (e.g. pull up unnecessary railroads and plant forests) that takes longer than any of the other parts. But that is of course not necessary, it doesn't add to score. The turns go very quickly in the milking stage. When there are just one or two rival cities with few units, and there is nothing left for the automated workers to do, the computer plays the turns quite quickly, no big deal.

My most fun games has been my low scoring games actually... recently i played the same game as a freind and we had a rule that we could only build or conquer a total of 10 cities, all cities taken by culture could be kept. So you could get more cities, I got 12... anyway, that was one of my funniest games ever. I built a wall of fortresses and defensive units around my hole border, and was freindly towards everyone except the russians. My first iplomatic win... I only got about 1500 points. Still, one of the best games I have played yet.

A question about HOF game rules.

Is reloading allowed or not? Over at the GOTM forum, Matrix seemed to be under the impression that it was for HOF games. I have been playing a game to submit to the HOF for a couple of weeks now without reloading. It really didn't make a difference up to now anyways, as the sheer size and scope of the game would have assured that I could never finish if I was to reload for individual circumstances. But now I am closing in on the domination limit, and have stopped expanding just to be safe. Allowing a reload would let me pinpoint the domination limit, and would be tremendously advantageous in maximizing score. The rules state "no cheating" but really aren't clear on what constitutes cheating. I was just assuming the same rules as in the GOTM up till now.

General Definition of Cheating:

Cheating is generally considered anything that is done outside the normal operations of the game. That means editors, mod-packs, and the like. Anything that everyone who just buys the game, and only installs patches/updates to the game, can do is fair game.

Reloading is allowed to a degree. If you want to check things, reload, if you want to redo a combat, you shouldn't reload.

The rules aren't as strict as the GOTM because in tthe GOTM everyone is playing the same game so they have to be sure everyone is playing on a more fair level within the fixed time frame. In the HOF, if someone outscores you, you just have to eventually play better to beat them.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up :)

Originally posted by Aeson
I have been playing a game to submit to the HOF for a couple of weeks now without reloading. It really didn't make a difference up to now anyways, as the sheer size and scope of the game ...
Oh oh, this is scary! I've been working on a huge deity game for the past couple of weeks. We might be working on the same thing :). I've been doing it without reloads too. But it would be great to test the domination limit on this map, I'm really glad to be able to make that exception, it has been a constant worry!

Aeson, Sirpleb,

Just being curious, you say you are playing now for a couple of weeks? Wow! How much time you spend each day and what kind of strategy? My impression is that Deity on a huge map takes a lot of time, if you can give some indication......

Well, first of all the game I've been playing is on Emperor, so no worries SirPleb. I had started a comparable game on Deity, but back before the # of Civs was finalized, so I hadn't used the required 8 AI. I may eventually play a Deity one through with 8AI, though it would be a few weeks before I could really even start! ;)

I was just using this Emperor game to test some Impi resource denial strategies, and ended up with almost the perfect start, so continued playing. As it turned out, the only other Expansionist Civ was the Americans, and they were on a seperate landmass. It is a Huge/Pangaea/8AI map, but the Americans and Aztecs had about 1/5th of the landmass off on their own continent.

These types of games take 100's of hours to play, I'm at 1450AD, and just waiting for my automated workers to finish each turn takes close to 10 minutes on a 1.33GHz/512MB RAM machine (all animations and moves turned off). I have finished the conquest at least, which took a long time as I had well over 400 military units most of the time. If I had known we could reload to determine the domination point sooner, it probably would have made about 2-5k difference in the final score, but oh well. I had really cut expansion short, just to be safe. I would say I've played about 150-200 hours into it already, though a lot of that was because I didn't start automating workers until about 500AD. The terrain and city improvements left to do will easily eat up another 50 hours. Then it should fly by.

I usually play about a half hour to an hour, then switch to another game. Even had to take breaks during some turns as they were so long, mostly before I started automating the workers. On a side note, I certainly have learned a lot about Zulu/African culture and mythology from looking up references for city name ideas! No "New" or numbered cities for me :)

As far as the strategy, just massive settler expansion to about 40 cities and tons of scouts getting huts for the first bit. I was able to outpace the AI expansion because of a settler from a hut about 20 turns in. On Deity, that would never happen, even with 2+ settlers. Because I had more cities, I was able to renegotiate peace treaties with the AI Civs, demanding 1 or 2 cities every 20 turns. My first 30 or so "conquests" came that way. Those cities did the pop rushing of Impies while my core expanded peacefully. A couple of those cities had nearby Iron, and they just rushed out Swordsmen. I also set up temporary Horsemen pop rushing camps next to several bonus food sources which could rush a unit every other turn. By 500BC I had begun the conquest, though just tenatively. Around the end of the BC's I had built up to about 100 each of Impi and Horsemen, and let loose the flood gates.

It was constant war until 1200AD from that point on, usually producing about 20 units every turn, and maintaining a unit count of 450-800 not counting the 200+ captured workers. Just to put how many battles were involved each turn into perspective, I got a leader every single turn that I didn't already have one active from 300AD till 1200AD. "Mpande" made his appearance 8 times, accompanied by several other leaders who's names excape me. I now completely disbelieve any claims to having 2 active leaders at the same time, at least post-patch. Now the French are stuck on the island I dubbed "Madagascar", surrounded by privateers and Frigates, while I figure out just how many cities I can build.

The screenshot attached is after I had disbanded 150 Knights and 200 Impies, the rest are mostly workers. It also doesn't include any of the captured workers. Madigascar is on the lower left/right, just at the edge of the screen.

Originally posted by SirPleb
I'm really glad to be able to make that exception, it has been a constant worry!

Exactly, I know that trying to get a game to 'perfection' needs to be tinkered with, so it would be absurd to say that no reloading is possible. However, as I said, if I feel that the game has been constantly reloaded at every turn or combat, then I may bring it up for discussion in this thread and let everyone decide if they agree. If they do, it will be removed.

BTW, Thunderfall may be un'sticky'ing this thread in the near future, so it may drop down the list very quickly with how many posts all the other threads get. So, you can do like I did and bookmark this thread so that no matter where it is on the list, you can get to it quickly. :)

I'm processing the games for the HOF right now and the HOF has now reached the point where people are being bumped off the HOF listing. We have 14 games for Monarch and 12 for Regent, so that makes the first 6 casualties for the HOF.

Reminder: Be sure to include all the need info with your submission. If you do not have at least your level and score in the e-mail, your game will not be processed at all. If your submission is missing any of the other info it's processing and subsequent addition (maybe ;)) to the HOF will be delayed. Missing information is the main reason for delays in updates to the HOF. :(

I'm working on a huge deity 15 rival six-way win. It has been very tense until yesterday, touch and go whether I could do it up to then. I really don't want to think how many hours goes into one of these. Something between 100 and 200 so far I guess, I truly don't want to dig deeply into that :)

For this one I unabashedly pop rushed. I started by building 8 cities and I rushed 7 of them unmercifully as I launched my first attack. And kept rushing them into my second attack. And then added another 7 cities in a second slave camp and started rushing them too. And even then I was behind in power and tech for quite a while. And behind in culture for longer. Even after I got a lead in power it was not clear for a long time whether I would be able to isolate a "friend" Civ (for the diplomatic win), and get UN first, and clean everyone else off the map. I'm at 1600AD now, with 4 rivals and 1 friend remaining, none of them strong. Around 1500AD was when I felt the game was in hand. We were just reaching the end of the Industrial Age then, with 6 rivals left in the game. I was in Despotism until 600AD and have been in Monarchy most of the time since, haven't shifted to Democracy yet. Have had few times since the initial buildup where I haven't been at war with at least one rival.

Diplomacy has perhaps been the most challenging aspect in this game. It has been quite tricky trying to have just the wars I want to have. Hasn't always worked by a long shot. Diplomacy is surprisingly interesting and challenging when there are so many Civs involved.

I'm on a 1Ghz machine. The AI's turns were taking perhaps five minutes at the heaviest stage. I didn't time them but the automated part of my turn (the automated workers) were slower again, taking something definitely longer than five minutes at the heaviest stage. My time per turn has been quite variable. In the most intense phases of the game I probably spent over an hour per turn. I've had most of the workers on shift-A automation for a long time now, they got to be much too much work to manage.

I had the same experience regarding Great Leaders. With hundreds of units active (at this point over 500 workers + military, plus another few hundred captured workers), whenever I use up my current Great Leader it is at most one turn later that I get the next one, usually the same turn. I haven't had a huge number though - I saved each for the next wonder I wanted. And I had the same experience Aeson, never ever had a second one show up till I used the saved one. I don't believe in two at the same time now, if it were possible I should have seen it in this game.

It is hard to be sure from the screenshot Aeson, but it looks like you've used a remarkably regular/planned build pattern for your cities. I'm looking forward to seeing the final result!

Aeson, SirPleb,

Thnx for the quick response, it is impressive, Wow! Looking forward for the final result as well. The dynamic gameply sounds very attractive, yet the time needed makes me reluctant to dive in to it!

Probably needless to ask, but you let the AI do scientific development? Aeson, how come your city pattern is so rigid?

Thnx and good luck!

15AI is quite an undertaking on Deity SirPleb, I'm impressed that you've made it so far! My experience in games of that type is that it takes a lot of work to keep the AI from expanding even while you are conquering their territory. One of the AI will always resettle any land that opens up, and even the AI you are fighting can still expand at the same time if there is room. I think the top "bloated" scores for Monarch, Emperor, and Deity will be about on the same level, as the lower difficulty levels allow for quicker territory aquisition, while not getting quite as good of a score modifier (Monarch 4, Emperor 5, Deity 6). Anything lower than Monarch though, and the AI won't be able to help expansion by providing captured workers and cities quickly enough.

Because of the settings on my game, I was always ahead in tech. I got every Ancient Era tech from huts (was able to pop about 75 of them), except a couple I traded for. By the time the Americans and Aztecs had caught up, they were facing my Knights, and huge stacks of Impies had already cut off their Iron supplies. Somehow the Americans had Iron for at least 1 turn once they had Chivalry though, because they did end up with a lot of Knights. Thats ok because the conquest was really boring up till that point. It also didn't matter how fast I could take them out as my army was already built, and I couldn't claim their cities due to domination anyways.

The city spacing pattern was my initial idea of how to best determine domination. I didn't want to have to count all the land tiles on the map, just the ones I hadn't claimed. By having each city claim the same number of tiles (every city has 2 shared tiles with other cities, no wasted tiles in the pattern, basically claiming 20 tiles each) I could quickly add up the number of tiles in my empire. The pattern is able to be shifted along the more east-west lines, which is why the north-south lines aren't quite straight. There were only 3 cities sites so far that didn't fit because of mountains, though a lot of smaller coastal areas messed things up a bit. Of course the realization that reloading wasn't completely forbidden rendered this superflous, but it appeals to my obsessive compulsive nature ;) A closer spacing pattern would have yeilded more points, as my first 7 citizens are always happy. A few discontents sneak in after that since I can't build cathedrals, colloseums, or temples as I would have hit the culture wall much too soon. I build a temple in each new city until it expands the borders, then sell it off.

Just wondering... score is all that matters here, it doesn't have to be a victory to be accepted right? I just want to make sure before I go ahead with my planned ending...

Score is what determines your place on the HOF, correct. If you simply end the game (or time ends), then you will have a histograph victory as long as your score is higher than all the other players (which I'm sure it is).

What I was thinking of was just building the UN at the proper time to have a vote at 2050 (vote comes every 11 years). Then voting for the French so that I lose... would be kinda funny don't you think? Perhaps giving all my cities to the French as well as a gift, and disbanding my final city (and the resulting settler) for a conquest defeat in 2049 ;)

Yes indeed Aeson! The AIs have been quite aggressive about resettling any hole I make in the map. :) With the first 5 rivals I attacked, I captured all cities instead of razing. I was putting all resources toward other things, didn't divert any to bringing settlers with the army. I expected (and got) a fair bit of culture flipping back to the AI but figured it was cheaper to just re-take them later. It was however painful to see cities inside and at my borders flip back to an opponent while I was at peace with them. Later in the game I razed and resettled, trying as much as possible to fill in conquered territory before any rival could. In the very late stages it has been a bit challenging due to the Domination threshold. To some degree I've just lived with the rivals filling in the new space, taking them again later. I reduced the problem a lot by disbanding cities in some of my central regions, then settling in the newly conquered areas. Other Civs sometimes send settlers to my disbanded areas but this approach creates a nice time delay between the two events, and it is easy to weed them out again later.

It is neat to realize that even at this flat-out high end of play, very different strategies can still work! My tech approach was pretty much the opposite! I started out thinking that I didn't have a hope of keeping up in tech, with 15 AI Civs researching much faster and trading among themselves. So I planned based on that, on being behind for much of the game. At the start I kept research at 100%. I'm playing the Aztecs so I started with Warrior Code and Ceremonial Burial. I researched Pottery, The Wheel, and Horseback Riding as quickly as possible. I met the English early enough to trade one tech with them (I got Masonry I think, don't remember. It didn't help my primary focus.) I didn't get any tech from huts because I didn't do a lot of exploring. I planned to get my first bit of catchup in tech in exchange for peace after a war. I kept research at the maximum in order to learn "blocking" techs, the key one being Writing. (When I exchange peace for techs, I'll want as many techs as possible. If I don't have Writing, the other Civ can't put the four subsequent techs on the bargaining table even if they have them. And I was far enough behind that they would have those four by the time I bargained for peace.) After this opening phase (catching up a bit in exchange for peace) I started buying tech. In general I decided it would be ok to lag far behind in tech. So when I bought "old" techs from my weakest rivals (why feed the coffers of the strong ones?) I got discount prices. Eventually the combination of getting techs for peace and buying techs (sometimes played together - just before giving peace to Civ#1, I would buy a "blocking" tech from Civ#2, then get an almost state-of-the-art tech from Civ#1 for peace) got me nearly up to date in tech. I would occasionally buy a bleeding edge tech from someone when I really wanted it. (E.g. Invention. I bought this and Chivalry from rivals as soon as both were available. I then built Leonardo's with a Great Leader. First time I ever built this wonder. It paid for itself immediately by reducing my Horseman upgrade cost by about 4,000 gold.) I also occasionally tech-brokered for a bunch of cash. I did not do much of this, did it 3 or 4 times. It is a great money maker but I did not want to make key techs available to the world at large, and in general I did not want to speed the rate of research in the game. It was going to be a rush all the way, to get control of the game before anyone could get the UN (or horrors, perhaps even a space race.) If I tech brokered much, all that would happen a lot sooner. Finally, in the Industrial Age, I put a big boost into researching Scientific Method before anyone else and built Theory of Evolution. (A wonder I generally have not put a big emphasis on. In this game it really mattered.) I built a cash reserve and just before building Theory of Evolution I bought/traded for all known techs (I'd skipped some) from other Civs. So Theory of Evolution gave me a two tech jump and I was finally the tech leader. After that I stayed on top with a 90% research rate. That resulted in a massive tank launch via airports (I'd established a "beachhead" city on every landmass but one in the world by this time, planning on airport based mobility.) That finally brought the game under control - I'm now able to easily target the remaining rivals.

I'm hoping to at least break 30,000 in score. It is hard to tell yet what the score will be. I'm a bit past 15,000 at 1700AD. The score will be affected a lot by the Domination threshold. I too may have lost a couple of thousand by not pushing it earlier. Now that we're agreed it is ok to test the threshold I've started settling more. Have settled a surprising amount of additional land without hitting the threshold yet.

I must confess that this was not my first try. I generated perhaps 10 random huge deity maps before this one. Two of them I played to about 1000BC before deciding I couldn't make it to all wins. (In one of them I just plain got beat up and couldn't recover. The other I did not get horses soon enough to have a chance.) The rest I rejected right at the start. Maybe that's cheating. I'm not ironman enough to think I could do this with any random start. I figured that on any map with a tundra type of start, or without any bonus tile of any sort visible, I didn't have much hope. I did reject one random start because it was too good - it had the settler on a flood plain with 2 wheats on flood plain across the river from it. That just seemed too easy for a game which would heavily use pop rushing.

Aeson, that sure is a funny idea, losing by diplomatic or even conquest! :)

I usually play at Emperor, and I recently started my own Deity game on a Huge map with 8 Civs. Both times I had no horses within miles, and I was playing China (Indoustrois must ROCK on huge maps, and Militaristic is always good...). And both times I never came to the stage were I needed to Pop-Rush, It just made my cities worse, I could actually produce an archer every 4th turn in 4-6 cities and a Settler every 4-6 turn in 3 cities, without Pop Rushing.

Questions to the 2 Deity-Rockers Aeson and Sir-Pleb:

When do you pop rush?
How fast must the city grow to be a good pop rusher?
How many citizens should the city have?
Do you ever waste more then 1 citizen by poprushing?


And about the Tech-Race on the Higher difficulties. I always go for the Great Library, I build it in a River-City with improvements concentrating on Mines, I always build start building a Palace when I'm about to get Writing, then I start Literature and I almost always gets it. Then I lower my tech research to 10% and sometimes 0% when I now I won't get the tech before the comp.

Well, I've currently gave up on Huge-Deity, and will play Huge-Emperor instead...

Locking forward to any tips from you!

Sorry guys, the last couple of posts were somewhat related to the HOF, but now it is just about general Civ 3 stuff. Please start a new thread (or add to an existing one) for those topics. If you have anything that relates specifically to the HOF then bring it up, otherwise.......:nono:

Oops, quite so, sorry Duke! I've started a new thread to continue that conversation at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16167

For whomever is getting concerned about lack of conversation topics for the HOF here are two good ones:

1. The multi.sav feature, allowing to go in God mode and learn all of the map, resources, civ locations and even modify AI city production! It is obvious that this is not allowed for HOF entries, how can it be verified? Just did some playtesting: renamed an existing save to ..............multi...........sav and loaded. Then went end of turn and loaded the new autosav both without and with exiting the Civ program. In both cases the saved game contains information that the feature was used, i.e. you can still go into AI cities. Provisional conclusion: if an attempt is made to change production by using multi.sav that info is kept in the .sav files, no matter the filename given later. It is still possible however that a player renames a .sav game, looks what is going on, and uses an original file to continue play. Anyone to confirm / challenge the above?

2. 1.17f is announced! I would assume that new submissions should be played on that patch level, even if the contents are not yet clear. How to handle the powerplayers that are working on their submissions right now? IMHO they should be given some time, i.e. another 3 or 4 weeks.

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
1. The multi.sav feature, allowing to go in God mode and learn all of the map, resources, civ locations and even modify AI city production! It is obvious that this is not allowed for HOF entries, how can it be verified? Just did some playtesting: renamed an existing save to ..............multi...........sav and loaded. Then went end of turn and loaded the new autosav both without and with exiting the Civ program. In both cases the saved game contains information that the feature was used, i.e. you can still go into AI cities. Provisional conclusion: if an attempt is made to change production by using multi.sav that info is kept in the .sav files, no matter the filename given later. It is still possible however that a player renames a .sav game, looks what is going on, and uses an original file to continue play. Anyone to confirm / challenge the above?
Some people have some ideas on spotting the use of this. Plus, we will see how 1.17f address' it also.

2. 1.17f is announced! I would assume that new submissions should be played on that patch level, even if the contents are not yet clear. How to handle the powerplayers that are working on their submissions right now? IMHO they should be given some time, i.e. another 3 or 4 weeks.
Yes, the older version will be phased out. I will allow a decent amount of time before making it a 'requirement'. :)

1. The multi.sav feature shouldn't make too much of a difference in players scores. If it is used for actually altering gameplay, then it's easy to tell that it was used, and the game can be rejected. If it is just used to see what is going on, that information would be available in most cases anyways, using some form of espionage and reloading. It probably is possible to hex edit the save file after the god mode has been used, switching it back to normal. Anyone who can do this could also change the score directly anyways, so its not introducing any new problems.

2. Not knowing what the patch is going to change makes this difficult to address. Going from version 1.16 to 1.17 seems to suggest that there won't be any big changes, just some bug fixes and a few tweaks perhaps. Unless pop-rushing is changed or something like that, it shouldn't make any difference towards the HOF submission. In the case that drastic changes are made in this or a future patch, maybe a whole new HOF should be created, and just Archive (no new submissions after a grace period) the current one. Firaxis probably will change pop rushing at least somewhat in the future, and to compare scores before and after wouldn't be fair as it makes such a huge difference.

Assuming that Firaxis will go through some sort of testing scheme it is not very likely that a very recent discovery like multi.sav will be in the new patch.......

Oops, off-topic?

Duke,

What you mean with "some people have some ideas"?

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
Assuming that Firaxis will go through some sort of testing scheme it is not very likely that a very recent discovery like multi.sav will be in the new patch.......
It has been confirmed that the patch will NOT address the 'Multi cheat'. I was hoping they had known about it on their own and fixed it quickly. :rolleyes:


What you mean with "some people have some ideas"?
Shhh, it's a secret. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. ;)

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
Shhh, it's a secret. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. ;)

Well, KLM offers direct flights from both LA and Frisco to Amsterdam, my coordinates come with the Avatar, we have a good selection of girls and beer, Civ is installed here.

What is the issue?

The Civ 3 HOF is once again updated. We have 3 levels that are now filled to capacity, so any new games submitted will have to beat a score on the listing to be able to make it on.

For those of you that were asking about the game that had a size 101 city, here's the thread to discuss it (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16430).

Congrats to all that have made it on the list and those of you who were bumbed from the list better get going on a new game to get back on. :)

Again, any games that are submitted without the difficulty level and score will not be processed and those that have missing information may be delayed in getting on the listing.

Woo the HOF has finally been updated! Especially pleasing since I have the top chieftain score. :D

i want to see my game in the HOF... how long does it take before it appears

:confused: The year is 1959. I'm playing a Regent game, going for a cultural victory (India, Democracy). I've mismoved a few pieces, never reloaded. Everyone on my continent but me is at war with Egypt (we have a peace treaty following my repulsing their sneak attack).

As part of my cultural expansion plan, I want to move through some of Egypt's current territory to found a city just outside its borders. So I ask for and receive (mutal) Right of Passage, or so I think I ask for Right of Passage.

As the AIs start moving, I'm attacked by everyone on my continent. Why? Because I asked for and received a Mutual Protection Pact, not Right of Passage!!! (they were right next to each other

:D )

Ouch! In this case, what do think about the fairness of reloading?

Here's why I think it should be OK:

1. In the real world, a democracy's advisors would would the President/Mahatma about the consequences of an MPP.

2. In Civ3, if you "bump into" an AI piece as you move, the Miltary Advisor warns you that you are attacking the AI and asks you to confirm that you really want to do that. But there's no warning when you make an MPP that you are about to go to war with AI X, Y, or Z.

Thanks,
King of America

Yes, you can reload when you make an obvious error like that.

I am just curious... I understand why I should send a copy of the saves from 4000 BC and just before ending the game but why oh why the 10AD-save? It's just not that I wonder why, I have also missed that date sometimes (realizing that it's 400 AD and I have no save) thus making iot impossible to send in my game to HoF.

The 10 AD save is just to give a mid-game reference. It would be very hard to tell how someone was playing just by seeing the first and last turn of the game.

As long as your saved game is reasonablly close to 10 AD, that's fine. Be sure to check for your autosaves too. They can sometimes go back several turns.

Hey all, I just had a question; will there be separate HOF for post 1.17 and pre 1.17? The pop-rushing has been changed a great deal, and will probably affect the scores, no?

BTW, I don't reasonably expect to be on the HOFs here, as I play solely for fun (and to win the game of course ;)) and will not make any attempt to milk more points out of my score. If I do happen to have a score that would make it, I'd definitely send it in, though! It's interesting to see how people can stretch the boundaries of the game, though it sure must be tedious to milk a huge emperor game for maximum points... (that screenshot with the grid-like city structure on that huge continent made me wince at the upkeep that must take!)

- Windwalker

I'm considering having a new 1.17f HOF. I'm still looking at what kind of scores can be obtained with the 1.17f -vs- non-1.17f games. So far it looks like the results are very similar, although a bit more difficult to obtain very early on. Scores to get on the HOF can still be beat using the 1.17f patch, but whether the top scores can be beat is a consideration. I am also considering an 'adjusted' 1.16f score to compensate for the pop-rushing ability.

Another consideration is that the next patch may have the pop-rushing feature reinstated someway (just speculation, nothing more), so it may end up being a non-issue in the end.

I'm open for suggestions...... got any?

when you open a game do you know if it'S a 1.17 version or 1.16 or do we have to send it to you.»???

Perhaps it would be enough to state in the list with which version the score was made. Easier to do it that way I guess...

I'm pretty sure I could play a 1.17f game and beat the 1.16f score I submitted a few days ago. I missed out on 5-7k at least by turning on the Governors for the last 100 turns and not building up to the domination limit as soon as possible. When I switched on the governors I went from a +145 per turn increase which was steadily rising by 1 every 3rd turn, to a +107 per turn increase which was steadily dropping by 1 every other turn.

A similarly played 1.17f game isn't going to score as much as a 1.16f game though. A score increase for 1.17f games of about 10% (or decrease for 1.16f games) would probably be about right. It's just a guess though. :) Otherwise, just setting up a new HOF for 1.17f games, and archiving the 1.16f HOF would be fine with me.

all the score i see in the HOF now are not really high and anyone talking time could beat em with 1.17 version. It'S not like if they were unbeatable score.but i would be glad if you put -10% on 1.16 version, that would make a bigger difference between me and the second place..:))

hehe:)

j/k:)

Aeson's estimate sounds right to me too - a lower score for the same level of effort when playing with 1.17 but not a lot lower.

But this may be a moot point. It seems likely to me that there will be another patch in not too long and that it will again change the game balance. Perhaps for the moment note which revision each game was played with and sort it out later when we see whether there is another patch, and what its effect is?

Just add a Version Column in the Table.

I do not know which version people have played the game on. As of right now I know that all the games received have been on 1.16f or earlier. I track the date the games were received, and can pick an arbitray date as the cut off and then adjust the games before that point.

Since most of the talk seems to support my thinking, for now the HOF will stay as is. The current scores are not 'unbeatable' and there will be other patches in the future. I'm not going to restart the HOF each time a patch comes out.

Besides, if someone wants to get on the HOF they will just learn to play good enough (without cheating) to get there. :D

P.S. Since there doesn't seem to be much concern over the HOF game with the size 101 city, it will stay in the HOF unless someone wants to try and show wrong doing in it.

ok i've sent mine.. 1156 on chieftain.. hope it make it to the hall of fame :D

So close but so far...You should be in second place with that score because my score was 1188. :p

I've played through the first couple era's in a few 1.17f Deity games now, and I don't think the pop rushing rules will make too much of a difference score wise. The 10% estimate sounds about right. If the tech rate differences I've been noticing hold up throughout the game though, launches might be coming before 1000AD.

A faster tech rate means shorter windows of opportunity for Horsemen, Knights, and Cavalry to be effective. With the retreat roll and longer military buildups, it might make for a much tougher time in keeping the AI from launching. I haven't played on any of the other difficulties yet, so couldn't say how the new AI tech trading system affects the tech rate on those levels.

I'm playing a Large Emperor map at the moment.

And the AI is unbeleivable fast in trading and researching techs.

The only reason I could match with them is the Great Lib. (A wonder for the non-AI's :D) Anyway, I built the Pyramid when trying to build-up to the Great Lib in my capital, and I also ended up with the Great Library, 'cus the comp doesn't research Literature until they have at least Map Making.

wait and see my chieftain score:)

Originally posted by Badluck
wait and see my chieftain score:)

Not if you don't resubmit it. :p

Check your PM. :)

It took me 10 mins to actually understand what was a PM and find where it was...


well i will send both game back.:)
(chieftain / warlord ) since both were in .ace

i am resubmitting them right now...:)

Originally posted by Badluck
wait and see my chieftain score:)

I don't like the sound of that...

Now I have moved onto warlord but maybe I will try to improve on my cheiftain score. :p

hehe... wait and see my warlord score too..:)

It seems that I will be waiting along time...Where did that CFC slave go that was supposed to update the HOF every hour?!?!? ;)

don'T worry, he said he would do it during this week,

it taking a lot of time because some poeple don'T send all the information or don'T send the game in .sav or ,zip (like me) so he have to tell them to resend the e-mail....

The hall of fame has been updated!! The ranks for all the levels are now full! :egypt:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/

Thanks Duke for the hard work. :goodjob:

hehe... wait and see my warlord score too..

Were you going for a sweep of the chieftain-regent levels? You came very close to pulling it off :).

We have our first fully milked game thanks to SirPleb. :)

Also of notable mention was Aeson's game where he had a huge scoring loss. He gifted away his entire kingdom then you just need to disband his last settler to 'lose' with 37,000+ points.

Thanks to his efforts I have now added in the word 'winning' to the HOF submission guidelines. ;)

As Thunderfall mentioned, the ranks are now full, so you have to bump someone off the list to be put up there yourself.

Let me remind everyone (again) to supply the needed information with your submission along with your saved games.

Thanks.

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
Also of notable mention was Aeson's game where he had a huge scoring loss. He gifted away his entire kingdom then you just need to disband his last settler to 'lose' with 37,000+ points.

Thanks to his efforts I have now added in the word 'winning' to the HOF submission guidelines. ;)


Hehe :), I wonder what Aeson thinks...

Duke of Marlbrough would it be possible to add a 'year of finish' collumn to the HOF?

That way it's a bit easier to predict what strategy someone used before you download game.

ProPain

Eh? I asked if this would be an acceptable ending to a game, guess i misread your answer Duke. You could always just build a city with the settler and give me a histographic victory if you have a problem having a "loss" on the board. The score would probably be about 2-300 points lower, but oh well. Kinda disappointing that it wasn't included... :P

I think I somewhat misunderstodd your question also. I knew what you were doing in the game, but I thought you were going to submit your score before gifting away your empire. I didn't realize your submission was a 'loss'. I decided to not include it (after some discussion) because, 'technically', your score is not what the game shows, since you have no cities or population.

I was trying to attach the saved games to my previous posts, but the file I put together was too large. As soon as I break it down to smaller pieces, I'll post it. It was very funny to 'lose', but yet 'win' at the same time. :rolleyes:

Duke of Marlbrough would it be possible to add a 'year of finish' collumn to the HOF?

I am working on it. If I could get everyone to submit the required info it would go much smoother. I hope to add the tribe played as well as the year ended soon. I have about 20 more games to try and check for tribe/year info, but I am having a hard time to find the time to complete such a tediuos task. :crazyeye:

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
I didn't realize your submission was a 'loss'. I decided to not include it (after some discussion) because, 'technically', your score is not what the game shows, since you have no cities or population.
I do hope you will include Aeson's game as a Histographic win. The replay of his game is fun to watch. The replay shows clearly how hard Aeson worked at this game, how he played it, and how well he played it. So that information is included in the save file even though he doesn't own the cities in the final map. It is just a bit of humor that after taking everything he gifted it all to France at the end.

Edited after seing Bamspeedy message:

Hey Bamspeedy did you milk your game??

cuz i didN'T milk it, i stoped playing at 1800 ad, otherwise my score was going for around 10,000 to 12,000 if i finished in the 2050, but iw as to bored and i tough,


Bahhh no one will beat my little score by looking at old result, well not this time..:)
i guess i was wrong

if you didN't milk your game then i will be impressed:) when did you finish your game?
hmm well i am downloading it right now anyway:)

hey duke maybe you should add a hall of strangeness wich would include any strange goal people could fix themself. (being a part of HOF)
It should only show the best of that category. and give a small explanation of goal.


Like the best high score while losing
The fatest finish for standart, large, huge map
The lowest score while wining
maybe something like the best score and building only 1 citi for the entire game ( you can capture them)
the highest territory score
the highest happinness score
the highest specialiast score
the highest culture before winning (probably over 100,000 :) )


probably not all those idear are good but i am sure some of them are, what do you think?

If someone wants to go through the games and make a list, I'll add it to the HOF sheet. Otherwise, I just don't have the time to try and make and maintain one.

You guys can decide on what things you want 'special' awards on as long as someone is willing to put together the list.

We may be able to Aeson's game on there yet. ;)

I like these so far:

The best high score while losing
The fastest finish for standard, large, huge map
The highest OCC game

I think the highest score for segments would most likely go to someone already on the list for a normal game.

But I will consider any suggestions.

i must say i like the Highest culture game when winning because this could go up in the 200,000 culture.:) that could be interesting

what OCC game???

well, i doN,t know if i have enought time but maybe i do.:)

what should i have to do.:)???
i could probably try.. i have at least 1 free hour per day when not near exam.:)



and i dunno.... you could also just list them under the current level

like deity
1...
2...
3...
4...
5...
6...
7...
8...
9...
10...
fastest finish for
standart
large
huge
highest OCC game
highest score while losing

OCC is One City Challenge. It's when you play a game but only have one city during the entire game. There are variations on it, but that's the basic idea.

If you (or anyone else) puts together a list, we'll decide which categories to track and which way it fits best onto the HOF. :)

looks like we updated the HOF...

that deity score looks scary...

with what do you want me to make a list.

with the current HoF game?? or with the e-mail you receive, then if so, i would need a way to get those game, and we should need to ad in the HoF page that if you are currently beating one of the *strange game * you should write it in your mail so i don'T have to look at ALL e-mail.


This meant i will try and do it, if you tell me from where i should start:)

Hey Bamspeedy did you milk your game??

Finished at 2020 A.D. I was still gaining 40+ points/turn. I could have maybe milked it for a couple more turns, but the Germans had just got the laser (last tech needed for spaceship), so I changed the production of a city that had been building an ICBM to the spaceship part. You were gaining 32 points/turn. So by using the score calculation program found in the utilities forum (I think that's where it is), if you had stayed the same size (in territory size and happy people) you would have finished with 10,324 pts if milked all the way to 2050 A.D. So you would have beat me by just 19 points.

To improve that score you would have had to claim more land, and it looks like on your map this would have set off domination victory too early. And you might have also run into the problem that I did, where the AI is close to the spaceship so you can't milk it all the way to 2050 A.D. If you start a war to destroy their spaceship, then there goes all your happy people, hurting your score (plus the possibility they nuke you). And then one of the other civs might get close to the spaceship, so another war starts, taking away more happy people. That's why I ended at 2020 A.D. even though I had modern army armies parked right next to their capitals if I wanted to use them.

I was on pace to get a culture victory in the late 1800's. Around 1750 A.D. I was around 75,000 culture points, gaining 750+ cp/turn and easily had more than double the culture of my nearest opponent. So I sold all my libraries, universities and colleseums so that Germany hopefully (which they did) would get 50,000 cp before I hit 100,000 cp. I started wars with civs that did not border Germany, or only slighty bordered them so that Germany's culture was preserved, since they were the top culture civ behind me. It looks like I had about 50% of the land, so I could have possibly claimed more land to improve my score.

Originally posted by Badluck
with what do you want me to make a list.

You can use the current HOF list or if anybody has games they want to submit they can attach them to posts here or send them to me and I'll post them.

It's going to take some time and effort to get this going. If no one submits the games, it won't make much of a list. :rolleyes:

Duke:
can i use excel to make the list??

Bamspeedy
really:? good game:)

then i am happy i didn't play it till the end just to beat you by 2 or 3 point that's pointless..:)


I wonder is it better to have a continually growing empire or an empire that grow fast and then stop. *both are the same size in the end*

Yeah, excel would work great.

You may want to try and post a new thread the try and drum up some saves. I think the people that look in this thread are the ones who have already submitted games.

I wonder is it better to have a continually growing empire or an empire that grow fast and then stop. *both are the same size in the end*

In almost all cases you DO want to claim as much territory as quickly as possible. So the earlier you take over your neighbors the better your score will be because of the higher territory score being averaged for more turns. I grew quickly then stopped to build my infrastructure, so that those cities would be powerhouses, so I could steamroll my opponents when I ran out of things to build. Got other civs to fight wars far from me so they were weakening each other. With the solid infrastructure I was making tons of cash (along with selling luxuries and techs for gold/turn) and was able to quickly buy aqueducts, hospitals, marketplaces in the 150 or so newly conquered/settled cities. I don't bother with building Wealth, it's usually better to be building units to disband in the cities that are building improvements.

Now I learned that maybe I shouldn't have taken the time to build some of those improvements and launched my attack sooner. Later in the game when I had all 8 luxuries I didn't need the colesseums because all my people were happy. The libraries and universities were wasted shields because although they gave me a quick cultural and scientific edge I ended up selling them because with so many cities my culture was too dang high! Plus the faster I researched, the quicker the AI could get techs because of v1.17f and probably spies. I also made the dumb mistake of having a revolution (because of war-weariness), while I was still in my golden age! :mad:

By watching the results from your game I was impressed by how quickly you knocked out those other neighbors that were quite a distance away. What kind and how many units were you using for these early attacks? Horsemen or Swordsmen? Or were you doing the warrior gambit?

I just posted a note at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18729 with some thoughts about maximizing score. Hopefully of interest to people working on HOF games. :)

i am not sure i remember well.

but i started with some explorer to get a good tech advance.

also got 2 settler from hut and those started building archer....

by the time my city near paris builded is first archer another one or two as arrived from my main citi... so i attacked and they only had 1 spearmen in capital
rush builded an archer with there capital and started building another , waited for there city to grow in culture *rush build another archer with there city* attacked with my 4-5 archer....

To kill babylonian i sended 3 archer from my main land... and took the city *waiting for there cultural growth and more troop...*

i took the respawn city with horseman and by the time those horsemen got to the green AI i had discovored knight so i took one of there city builded , rushed a barrack upgraded troop..

What do you guys think about expanding the number of HoF entrys to 15? It would take up a little more space, but we could solve that by moving the Tiny and Small scores to another page, and just posting al ink to that page.

I think this would be good because it would be cool to see that you were for example 4th out of 15 instead of 4th out of 10. Makes you feel like your score is higher ;) Also, the scores are starting to get pretty high, and it would allow for more people to get their scores entered. What do you all think?:goodjob:

From the rules page:

Your game can only be modified by patches/updates or Modpacks that affect graphics ONLY.

There were two versions of the civ3mod.bic that Firaxis released with the 1.17f patch. Is the "fixed" (ie. second) 1.17f bic file what everyone needs to play with, or can we play with any Firaxis released patch version?

Since 1.16f games are in the HOF would it be valid to play a 1.16f game now and submit?

Can a game be submitted if part of it is played in one patch version and part in another?

In regards to Histograph submissions, what signifies a "winning" game?

I think that the rules could be defined more clearly. Many people have the first 1.17f civ3mod.bic file and don't realize it. I've noticed a lot of people have said they've gotten a Settler from a hut in 4000BC, which is a phenomenon that only occurs with the first 1.17f civ3mod.bic released. The people getting Armies from huts don't always realize it's because of the 1.17f civ3mod.bic version they are using. Maybe the "acceptable" bic file(s) could be posted on the rules page for people to download.

I agree with aeson,

Pearman: i would prefer having the highest OCC game and highest lost and other strange game then 5 more normal game..

Generally, the most current patch put out should be the edition used to play HOF games. I'm going to do one more update sometime in the next couple of weeks that allows the 1.16f version to be used. But, after that update, only 1.17f games will be accepted.

A histograph win is when your score is higher than all the other players and the game is considered a 'win' by the program.

If you have any points you would like clarified about the rules, let me know. Some of the items are acceptable within certain parameters. If the parameters being used are not what others think they should be, they can be discussed.

That is a very good point about having a link to the most current updated for the game on the HOF page. I'll add that to there next time.

Once the game is completely 'finalized', we may realize that it is radically different from the previous versions and 'reset' the HOF buy putting the scores that are there now on a separate listing and basically starting new. It may not happen that way, but it is a possiblity.

Is it allowed to use the Worker-Poprushing teqnique?

I've used this in my Chinese Large Emperor map that I will send in to you, before the next upgrade. I started this as my first game with the 1.17f patch, and used this teqnique and started to learn more about it.

I wouldn't say that it was that teqnique that made me win the map, but it sure helped a lot. Without it would surely taking a little longer time, but the thing that actually made it quite easy was the fact that I took away the possibility of the enemy to produce the best defender out their (or attacker at some points), so by taking resources from the enemy I made it very easy to secure the large Continent... I'm currently in the 13-14 Century and have the large continent uner my control, but my two large enemies with on large island each, the romans and germans, both have infantry and I haven't got Tanks yet and I did not want to risk it by using my Cavalry... so I settled for peace (figuring I will sometime soon hit the domination point), and will try to invade them with tanks or modern armor before they build the UN or the SpaceShip.

But if the worker-poprushing, isn't allowed, then my game might not be allowed either... but as I said I started this game at I point were I did not consider this an exploit, but a tactic so I used it.

But at this point, every turn is getting quite long so if this game won't make it to the HOF, you should tell me and I won't play it through...

Anyway, could you post here about a week before you do any updates to the HOF page? So that people can force themselves to complete their games before you update, or update whenever you get, let's say 5 or 10 new submissions?

Because I planned to make it to this update, but it seems like I have to wait another month or so before the HOF will be updated again...

Originally posted by Grey Fox
Is it allowed to use the Worker-Poprushing teqnique?

As long as it is something that can be done in a normal game, it is allowed.


Anyway, could you post here about a week before you do any updates to the HOF page? So that people can force themselves to complete their games before you update, or update whenever you get, let's say 5 or 10 new submissions?

I have been trying to update it when I got at least 10 submissions. Because of earlier problems trying to get the e-mail account through CFC to work, it made it difficult to contact people about their submissions, so they were delayed until I either got an answer, or 1 week went by. I was trying to give everyone who sent in a game a fair shot to get in on that update.


Because I planned to make it to this update, but it seems like I have to wait another month or so before the HOF will be updated again...

I'm now going to try and do an update every two weeks or so (hopefully starting in April). That way people will know when their games have to be in by to make the next update and also they won't have to wait so long for each update to be posted. You can always e-mail me to let me know a game is on the way or to check when an update might be coming up.

I can still post a reminder message here if you guys want.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm very open to suggestions about the HOF. You can post them here or e-mail me as Pearman did to get an idea of what changes can be made. The HOF is here for you guys after all. :D

I will be updating the HOF in the next week or so. If you want your game to be included in this HOF update, send it in before next week.

* Decreased HugeMap Size to 160x160.

This should mean 1.21f scores can only reach 80% 'maxed' 1.17f scores, not taking into account any of the other changes.

* Added Preserve Random Seed rule. Turning this off will allow random seeds to be changed when a saved game is reloaded (which makes combat different...).

This has an effect on the "typo stupid move" exception on the disallowance for reloading since a different result sequence will occur if the random seed is not preserved.

Duke how do we deal with this one?

And a check on other options might be required, I read something on a corruption slider.

We will have to see the complete details of the patch.

One option can always be to start the HOF over with the new patch, but I don't really want to do that until they are done with the updates.

Also, sorry I haven't been able to update the HOF as I said I would. My computer crashed and I haven't found my CD yet for Front Page to re-install it. :(

longest time between updates.....

Originally posted by wohmongarinf00l
longest time between updates.....

Hmmmm, I wonder why......?
Also, sorry I haven't been able to update the HOF as I said I would. My computer crashed and I haven't found my CD yet for Front Page to re-install it.

Too bad too. I seem to remember one of your submissions looked good enough to be first place in it's rank. Too bad I lost it when my computer crashed. :p

oops....i guess i should probably send it again? i still have the
zipped files....

Originally posted by wohmongarinf00l
oops....i guess i should probably send it again? i still have the
zipped files....

:lol: I'm just kidding. Guess I should have put more smilies after it. :) Maybe next time you should be a bit more tactful in your statements so I won't have to try and sound sarcastic. :D

I have the new submissions listed out and ready to go, but I need to get my program going again. So, like I said before, I'm going to hopefully get it going again this weekend and get an update done for you guys.

jeez, i thought i had a real small sense of humour. now i know it's zero.
i'm sorry this was one of those useless filler posts. i shouldn't do that. i promise not to....

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough


:lol: I'm just kidding. Guess I should have put more smilies after it. :) Maybe next time you should be a bit more tactful in your statements so I won't have to try and sound sarcastic. :D

I have the new submissions listed out and ready to go, but I need to get my program going again. So, like I said before, I'm going to hopefully get it going again this weekend and get an update done for you guys.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Finished at 2020 A.D. I was still gaining 40+ points/turn. I could have maybe milked it for a couple more turns, but the Germans had just got the laser (last tech needed for spaceship), so I changed the production of a city that had been building an ICBM to the spaceship part. You were gaining 32 points/turn. So by using the score calculation program found in the utilities forum (I think that's where it is), if you had stayed the same size (in territory size and happy people) you would have finished with 10,324 pts if milked all the way to 2050 A.D. So you would have beat me by just 19 points.

I'm sorry to inform you that I just beat your word record.:( My final score is 10852 points and I have no choice but to win the game in 1908. I didn't find this forum until I was in late 17th century. Therefore, I wasn't able to milk the game much.

My savegames can be located at http://www.geocities.com/nancymoonsinger/game/civ3/civ3.html. I hope the "Duke of Marlbrough" have time to take a look at it.:)

PS: Now, that I have heard about those milking tips. I can't wait to try them out in my next game.;)

Does your game meet all the HOF requirements? Small and tiny map games are not allowed and there is a minimum civ limit for each map size...

Originally posted by Dell19
Does your game meet all the HOF requirements? Small and tiny map games are not allowed and there is a minimum civ limit for each map size...
Yes, it does meet all the HOF requirements (100%)! I have always played all my games on a large or huge random generated map with at least a dozen number of civs. All victory conditions were turned on.

Originally posted by Moonsinger

Yes, it does meet all the HOF requirements (100%)! I have always played all my games on a large or huge random generated map with at least a dozen number of civs. All victory conditions were turned on.

Just checking because you don't want to be dissappointed...

I'm sorry to inform you that I just beat your word record. My final score is 10852 points and I have no choice but to win the game in 1908. I didn't find this forum until I was in late 17th century. Therefore, I wasn't able to milk the game much.

Good Job!:goodjob:

I could have got a much higher score, too. My game was before Sir Pleb printed his 'Maximizing your score' article in the strategy articles forum, so I wasn't too smart in my milking phase. It was also before Chiefpaco made his mapstat utility. And now I am smarter at conquering all the enemies alot faster, because in that game I didn't attack anyone until the industrial age. But now with v1.21f, the score will be much harder because the large and huge maps have been reduced in size (less area and cities to milk). Oh well, if I ever have time between the GOTM and the tournament I'll take another crack at Regent, although I was gonna shoot for top score on Monarch next.

Question for Duke of Marlborough,

Do tournament games and GOTM's count for HoF? God was asking about it in the tournament forums, and submitted a game.

In one way, I think that they should since no players have forehand knowledge of the map or enemies, and all the victory conditions are turned on. And all the other rules apply the same as far as no reloading, no using cheats, the editor, or other programs (except for mapstat for avoiding domination), etc.

But on the other hand, I wouldn't like to see so many top scores that were played on the exact same map. Plus someone like SirPleb and Aeson could have top scores on every level. I realize that they could anyways, but had it not been for GOTM6, they probably would never bother playing Warlord level. There would only be a few people who would dominate all the scores on all the levels.

I also think each person should have a limit of 1 or 2 scores for each level, so no one could control all top 10 scores. If they beat one of their older scores, the lower score(s) would be dropped off the list. This gives more people a chance to at least get on the list.

Nice job moonsinger. I see you also kicked butt in a deity game. Good job.

Also to add to Bamspeedy's post about limit of submissions by a person per level, I wanted to say that if you submit a diety game 2 months ago with a good score and then you submit warlord game with 10,000 points, it shouldn't be counted because you are beating diety and its unfair if you go and decide to play an easier level to dominate.
i don't think Sir Pleb or Aeson have to prove it too us by sweeping the whole HOF with top spots.

I understand going the other way. I submitted a chieften game 774 points months ago when I was still new to Civ 3. Just a while ago I submitted a regent game with 6800+ points, large map FYI. Right now I have a huge monarch game going on with 1100 points in 300 AD. I started a huge warlord game a while after that regent one and played it a bit. I had the Aztecs and I knocked out 3 of the 16 civs with jaguar warrior rush. Already have so much and knights haven't shown up. I decided to quit it, because it was boring and it wasn't fair because I would have the game by cavalry times.

Anyway I got only 6800 or so points because it was on a large map and also before I realized that early conquest was needed to get a high score. I started my warring with cavalry, when I should have taken somebody out with horsemen and then knights.

Bamspeedy & God: Thank you for your kind words.:) I guess I will see you guys again in the Monarch or Emperor level or in a multiplayer game.:)

the current emperor HOF doesn't have good monster score so i decided to give it a whirl. i played a milked game, final score 11702.

at higher difficulties, even though the AI doesn't expand too quickly, it's very difficult to keep up with tech. the prior early fast expansion has been replaced by a slow momentum buildup whose effects u start to feel in the middlge ages. they will be researching faster than u and purposefully keeping u out of the loop. they have toned things quite a bit where an AI with 3 cities doesn't automatically get the latest techs while u and ur 20 cities can't pay anybody enough for a simple tech. " toned down" is the phrase, so u can still time ur wars to get some techs from the weakened neighbours.

i started in the southern part of a huge continent - china in the south, aztecs in the west, americans in the east, russians in the very northeast and egyptians in the very northwest. the other continent was occupied by indians, french, japanese and germans. romans had a huge island to themselves. i only had two wars in the early years - one with china to build up territory and another one with the aztecs for pre-emptive purposes. i spent all of the middle ages trying to catch up in tech. i was finally saved by the theory of evolution. in addition all my neighbours got involved in useless wars while i stayed neutral and built tanks. after that, i invaded them one after the other.

in mordern times, the romans almost built the spaceship(had 2 components to go). i had noticed that they were not taking part in any of the wars so i shipped a kamikaze force of 24 MA. i razed Rome and that seemed to halt their plans for a bit as i prepared a new real invasion. they restarted their space program and had built 5 parts again when i nuked every one of their cities. besides rome, japan was the only other nuclear power so they declared war. both used up their nukes cos i had already built SDI. i picked everyone off one by one, leaving one indian city for the milking phase.
that's the most tedious of all! irrigating all formerly mined squares and watching to make sure when global warming occurs, the worker doesn't mine the square.

I started a monarch game as Persians on huge map w/continents. The early game went really well. I didn't build any ancient wonders, couldn't care about them, instead I built tons of immortals and conquered and destroyed the Germans, Americans, and Japanese.

But I realized I was on a medium sized continent. The other civs were elsewhere. America and Japan ran off and established cities on some other continents and islands. English got a crappy island, but Zulus got a relatively large continet(not as large as mine) all by themselves. It sucked but I was still ahead in score.

Then I sent some suicide galleys across the ocean and one of the made it and I traded contancts and all and I found out they did not have a tech lead!

I built almost all the Middle Age wonders except Sun Tzu and Magellans. I got Leonardo through palace setup. Rushed Sistines with a leader I had got earlier with those immortals. Then zipped straight to Music Theory and bought Astronomy. because I had so many libaries, I got a tech lead. I built Bachs in my capital and got it with time to spare. Copernicus was a bit tougher but I pulled through. Then went for economics and started Smiths and then Newtons later. Got both, Smith's easily, but Newtons was a bit closer.

I just entered the Indusrial era and right now fighting the Zulu. The war is going ok, but this is my first industrial age war with v.1.21. The Zulu have built almost no cavalry instead using swordsmen and impis and riflemen. Idiots. The war shouldn't be too tough but it will be slow as I will keep on bringing more and more cavalry in too overload those riflemen.

I stopped that game as it is getting a bit long, as in alot of figthing. I'll finish that later. i got 3000 points, around 1350 AD. Greece who is second has 1800 points.

Started another monarch game as Japanese. Already taken out Babylon with horsmen and Indians with warrior and chariot gambit. I have a 50 point lead right now. We're halfway through the Ancient era. Hopefully I can take Russia out with horsemen and then wait for Samurai to continue to fight.

Another question I have. Do all the game options need to be checked? Of course all victory conditions, and I can understand 'preset seed' should be checked, but what about culture linked starting locations, and allowing re-spawning?

I'd hate to spend 50-100 hours on a game and find out it's not accepted because I didn't allow the AI to re-spawn.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Another question I have. Do all the game options need to be checked? Of course all victory conditions, and I can understand 'preset seed' should be checked, but what about culture linked starting locations, and allowing re-spawning?

I'd hate to spend 50-100 hours on a game and find out it's not accepted because I didn't allow the AI to re-spawn.

I think "Allow Respawning" must be in. Anyone disagree?

I think we should all play by the standard rules.

Where does it have culturally linked starting locations or random seed and that stuff?

I don't bother to play around with the editor or rules. Only thing I look at is the civ, difficulty, and world size.

Originally posted by Grey Fox
I think "Allow Respawning" must be in. Anyone disagree?

I think we should all play by the standard rules.

Yes, I don't know if it was ever explictly said, but standard rules would be used.

I have made great progress on getting my system back together, but I have not had any luck with FrontPage. I found my Office 2000 Small Business CD, but it doesn't have FrontPage on it. :(

So, I just wanted to let you all know I am still trying to get an update done as soon as I can. If you want to know where your game stands in the ranking, post here, e-mail or PM me. If I get enough response, I may just post an excel file that shows the standings. It's the best I can do for now. :(

does it make much of a difference whether u allow
culturally linked starting locations or not.

and i can't remember whether i allowed respawning in my persia game. of course this being 1.21, the duke can check.

Where does it have culturally linked starting locations or random seed and that stuff?

With v1.21f, those options are right at the start when you pick your civ/victory conditions.

does it make much of a difference whether u allow culturally linked starting locations or not.


In a way, yes. If you want to take full advantage of an expansionist civ. If you play the Iroquis, you will always start next to the Americans and Aztecs. So there goes all your goody huts! With the culturally linked starting locations turned off, you might still have the Americans and Aztecs in the game, but they won't always be right next to you. And if your real lucky you won't have any expansionist civs in the game. I can really dominate half the world while still in the ancient era if I get all the goody huts and make all the other poor civs give me cities out of tribute.

The same could be used for Persia to ensure you don't start next to Rome, thus your immortals will be unstoppable until Fuedalism. I'm sure there are other examples of civs that would be better if they didn't always start right next to a particular civ.

Well, at least I know, so I don't waste anytime playing a game that wouldn't count.

What about the tournament/GoTM games I asked about earlier, Duke?

With v1.21f, those options are right at the start when you pick your civ/victory conditions.
Wow, I didn't even notice that. I haven't ever bothered to check any victory condition. I go from the civ seleciton box to the difficulty and to okay.

@Duke: The regent Egypt game i sent a few weeks ago was updated to v.1.21. I had played most of the game with v1.17 and there were 50 years left and I downloaded the new patch. So I think some of the older saves are still v1.17 while the last one is with the newer patch.

In that game the rules are standard because I had already played 98% of the game, and you can't change the random seed stuff, I think. I didn't have any wars so I don't know.

@Bamspeedy: I think culture linking should be your choice. It was preference before which I don't think I had checked before. You made valid points for both sides of the argument and I agree with you there.

The babarians activity is optional so should this be.

Respawning is bulls**t. It shouldn't even be an option.
When you're dead, you're dead - no comebacks

If I get myself killed off that quickly, will the AI allow me to respawn? Of course not - so why should it be allowed to?? :mad:

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Question for Duke of Marlborough,

Do tournament games and GOTM's count for HoF? God was asking about it in the tournament forums, and submitted a game.

I think it was agreed that Tournament and GOTM games would not count for the HOF. As you said, it would allow many submissions of the 'same game'.

I also think each person should have a limit of 1 or 2 scores for each level, so no one could control all top 10 scores. If they beat one of their older scores, the lower score(s) would be dropped off the list. This gives more people a chance to at least get on the list.

This is actually how it is. I don't have it in the rules, but this is the criteria I follow. Each person is allowed 2 submissions per difficulty level.


BTW, Once more feedback on the new patch is heard, the parameters for playing the game may change.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
So there goes all your goody huts! With the culturally linked starting locations turned off, you might still have the Americans and Aztecs in the game, but they won't always be right next to you. And if your real lucky you won't have any expansionist civs in the game. I can really dominate half the world while still in the ancient era if I get all the goody huts and make all the other poor civs give me cities out of tribute.
How do you benefit from those goody huts? I rarely get anything out of them except hostile barbarians.:(:cry:

Originally posted by Moonsinger

How do you benefit from those goody huts? I rarely get anything out of them except hostile barbarians.:(:cry:

If you are Expansionist you can NOT get barbarians from the huts. You get TECHS, Settlers, Maps, Gold etc quite often. On huge maps, or even large maps have I gotten the whole first tech tree out of goodie huts.

I got Front Page loaded again. :yeah: [dance]

If I can find some time during the week, I'll try to get the update done, otherwise, it will be this weekend. :)

Originally posted by Grey Fox
If you are Expansionist you can NOT get barbarians from the huts. You get TECHS, Settlers, Maps, Gold etc quite often. On huge maps, or even large maps have I gotten the whole first tech tree out of goodie huts.
Thank you! Thank you!:) I didn't know that. I have never played the Expansion civ before, but now I have something to look forward to.:)

PS: I hope I made it to the Hall of Fame list.:) I can't wait to try out some of the milking tips I just learned from this forum.

what a laugher. I just tried my first kick butt in the ancient era game. Worked out a bit too well. Was cruising along just wasting the other civs around me, assimilating civs, got a whole 800 points in 300 ad. Trigger dom victory in 490 ad end up with 7199 points, #3 for the monarch level. If I needed any more convincing that the scoring system for this game is screwed, I just got it.
Nice way to spend the next to last day of vacation( yes its raining out).

dikwhit, i don't know how your situation confirms that the scoring system is screwed.

Dikwhit


if you look at regent game

1 Bamspeedy 10305 Huge Spaceship

if a regent game can score that this meant an emperor can easily score 15k point
and monarch

2 SirPleb 8632 Standard Diplomatic
if with a standart game someone can score 8632 by milking this meant that on huge you can probably easily score 15,000 point

around twice your score.


the problem with the HoF is that It's not updated often enought and not enought or that not enought poeple send in submission.

By my statement that the scoring system is screwed, I was in agreement with many others on several points.
My biggest gripe is that the game rewards a blitzkrieg playstyle, not a builder. After all the name is the game is civilization, not command and conquer.I normally play milker style, build everything useful in every city, most of the wonders etc. This "more civilized" play style has no real rewards, in the score column.It takes many days of quality milking on a huge map to score big.Or 4-5 hours blitzing a standard size. Where is the incentive for long term planning?
I have outscored my hof submission on huge maps playing builder, but not by a heck of alot, and it wasnt submitted due to custom map. 300+ cities improvements maxed, #1 in most demographics, all but 3 wonders etc etc and I get 8000 ish points. 30 cities ,all ancient wonders(built none), 3% literacy
:lol: 40 % approval and 20 life expectancy and I end up with 7200? your kidding,,, right?

As to Badlucksff, point of equating scores, it doesnt work exactly that way. First those wer both milked games im sure.Scoring comes from difficulty level warlord=1 deity=6. Regent to monarch is only a 33% increase not a 50 % and it was on huge not standard, a difference Im too worn out to figure out,lol
Second, comparing anyone to sirpleb(or aeson) is not exactly a fair argument, their scoring ability (and bams) is well known.
I wasnt saying how great a job I did, rather I was upset that that POS game will get me on the HOF. Now I have to beat it with a milking game just to make me feel better.

a-milking-we-will-go, a-milking-we-will-go.....

it has been pointed out that the object of the game is to maximise both territory and happy population. a good score comes from doing this consistently throughout the game.

i think the scoring system reflects this as best as it can.

it has been pointed out that the object of the game is to maximise both territory and happy population. a good score comes from doing this consistently throughout the game.

i think the scoring system reflects this as best as it can.

Yes, as far as reflecting happiness/territory per turn it does reflect that pretty accurately. But what dikwhit is referring to is that in his game where he didn't have very many happy people at all and didn't build much infrastructure at all, he scored better than on the game where he made everyone happy and built all the improvements. This is where the early win bonus comes in. If you win at 400 A.D. you do get a very large bonus to your score.

I think he's wishing you should get points for wonders and improvements (not just the happiness improvements).

The key to max score is to get almost to the domination limit at 400 A.D., like dikwhit did, but stop before triggering domination, then build all the happiness improvements. And milk it to 2050 A.D. You really increase in points after you get hospitals and railroads.

There should be a better balance on the scoring system, so that it isn't that on tiny/small maps the only way to get a high score is to finish early, and on large/huge maps the only way to score big is to milk until 2050 A.D.

You should get a Higher bonus for early games at Larger maps, and less on smaller.

Making it possible to get a High score if you are fast enough on the larger maps. (for an early win).

Maybe the Hof should be divided between the different Map Sizes, because you can never beat a Good Milked Huge Map with a Large, or Standard map.

I know Aeson is working on a Score now that will beat SirPlebs score by an enourmous amount. (Almost double...)

But then Sir Pleb will come back to beat out Aeson. The cycle won't end.

I've heard its 65K. How the hell do you do that? How the hell can you have enough time in diety game to build enought Mounted Warriors and Knights to finish off everbody so early.
Its unbelievely.

aeson or sirpleb - who will reach the maximum score possible first? could have made this into a poll but that would have spawned a new thread (i'm not sure that's really a bad thing but....)

Bamspeedy has it completly on the head. My big issue is with the fact that seek and destroy games can score almost outscore milked, time intensive games, with notable exceptions.(Aeson and Sirpleb being the main exceptions).I can see where the early finish bonus can be huge, and well deserved BUT where is some kind of bonus for improvements,wonders,demographic leadership, etc..
For the average joe there is not much incentive to play a long involved game (scorewise), when a whambamthankyamaam game scores equivelently. I prefer the build an empire style as opposed to the kick a$$ asap. For those of you in grey foxs tourny, I have learned the hard way quickly, in most cases the builder style is fairly useless, culture and score games not withstanding as the seek and destroy method must be employed early, and then either wait for cultural vic. or milk for score.That is if one wants to compete effectively anyway.
To boil it down, final score vs. time invested just doesnt pan out in most cases.

The early bonus is only large on the smaller maps, because you can't win as early on larger maps.

I sent the files to Thunderfall for the latest update. As soon as he has some time, the HOF Page (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/) will be updated (It includes all games I received up to 05-12-02). [It's updated :)]

Thanks to everyone for their understanding and patience.

Even though each level already had 10 submissions, there were almost 30 new ones added to the list. So, if you were on the list before, you may not be anymore. Be sure to send in a new game and show off your improved skills.

The previously highest scoring game by SirPleb of 44313 points was replaced by Aeson with 63545 points!! :eek:

:goodjob: Congrats to everyone who was (finally) added to the list.

Edit: In a shift of duties, I will be taking over the Civ 2 GOTM and PaleHorse76 will be maintaining the Civ 3 HOF. If all goes as planned, when the HOF is updated, it should have all his info on it. But, until then, please send all new submissions to PaleHorse76@civfanatics.net. Many thanks to PH for offering to take over the HOF. :)

Thanks for supporting the Civ 3 HOF and I wish you all luck. And, if PH puts his name in all the slots, let me know. ;)

Thank you for updating the HoF. I did make it on the list.:)[dance]

PS: I'm curently milking my first game at the Monarch Level. Just a practice run to check out those milking technique.;)

Nice job, Sir Pleb, Aeson, Moonsinger and Wohmong...

Finally the HOF is updated. I'm glad that now the Emperor scores are alot higher then they were before. Before the regent games had an overall higher score average than the emperor!!!.

Monarch is probably the toughest division. There are alot of high scores for a monarch level.

My current monarch game is predicted to get atleast 8000 points, as Sir Plebs Scorecalculator is predicting.

Emperor has alot more possible spots but its too hard. I'm doing ok on monarch. Thinking of going back to regent.

Come on! I am on the number 1 spot in Monarch for almost half a year now! God, 8000 will not do!

Any challengers, please stand up, so I can crush you :lol: :lol:

I will take that challenge on some day when I have the time to play an extra game!

ANd I think I can beat warmongeringfo0ls emperor game with my next game. (I was about to in a game I played recently but I lost that because of my bad timing in the attacks against the last 2 civs, one of them won with culture because of that... damn Infantry...)

beammeuppy, u are right. that 8000 doesn't sound right. if the regent games can net over 10K, i don't see why one shouldn't net above that with a nicely optimised early conquest+expansion game such as the one i'm trying with the zulus.

grey fox, i believe u can beat that score too. i have been comparing replays between the deity games and the emperor games. the deity games have much early prolonged conquest but
it seems that the emperor games have a very quiet middle-period.
for example, in my game i could have finished off the aztecs and the americans much earlier and not worried so much about the infrastructure and tech catch-up. i spent the whole middlegame wrestling the tech lead from the germans and russians.

congrats aeson+ sirpleb. aeson's score is amazing. i'm looking at dense-building in a whole new light.

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
Thanks for supporting the Civ 3 HOF and I wish you all luck. And, if PH puts his name in all the slots, let me know. ;) ;)

Ok, all current rules and standards are still in force. I invite PMs and emails but I would much rather have PMs as I do most of my CFC work at my real work. :D I don't check my email at work though. If you do send me an email then please link to whatever page you are speaking in reference to and also be sure to mention that it is the Civ3 HOF you are speaking of b/c I do get some emails and PMs about other Civ3 stuff. Thanks.

Sidenote, but important: I use a modified game....what steps will I have to go thru to check the games according to the standard ruels of HOF? Will I just have to open the submitted saves since the .bic is now in the saved game and I won't have to change any of my settings? Thanks for the replies.

With 1.21f games the rules are saved with the game. Not sure how long you were planning on accepting 1.17f games. Shouldn't make too much difference in loading up the games either way though. You won't actually be playing with the different rules, and I don't think the scoring system changed at all.

I think it's important to decide on how the HOF will treat 1.21f games in relation to earlier ones. The default Huge maps in 1.21f only have 80% of the land tiles of earlier versions. For instance, to beat my score of 63545 in 1.21f would take a much better played game with the fewer tiles. Roughly 80k (1.17f) efficiency, which I really don't think is possible. Even if it was possible though, it wouldn't be right for a game much better to not score an equivalent amount better.

One fix for this is to allow people to still play on 180x180 custom sized maps, instead of being stuck with 160x160 maps as the maximum size. Another would be to archive the 1.17f and previous HOF and just start a new one on 1.21f.

I don't want to end up with an 'unbeatable' score just because no one else is allowed to play out a game on as large of a map.

A poll questioning whether we should allow custom maps of certain size in order to keep the map sizes the same or to archive the v1.17f games would be good.

Are there any other questions that could be polled that DoM hasn't quashed already? I am reading through all the old posts right now so don't try to pull a fast one on me. ;)

Also, I am in favor of making it 1 entry per level instead of the current 2. What does everyone think on this?

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
Come on! I am on the number 1 spot in Monarch for almost half a year now! God, 8000 will not do!

Any challengers, please stand up, so I can crush you :lol: :lol:
Patient, my friend. I'm trying out my first milking game at that Monarch level as we speak.;) (huge random map with 15 random AIs). So far, I'm a little behind my conquest schedule; the enemies were a little tougher than I have anticipated. My cavalries have a tough time against those rifleman defenders. Without railroad, it takes forever for my replacement troops to reach the front line.:( It's now almost 1400 A.D. and I controlled only 7 luxury resources about 1/3 of the world.:( However, I think it already is good enough to challenge your score.;)

I know the secret to beat the AIs at Deity level now.:) By watching the playback of those savegames of Aeson and SirPleb, I learned that I must use the land wisely in the early stage of the game. I should build a lot of towns closer to each other (two or three tiles apart) and start pumping out a lot of troops. Later on, after I have more land, I can disband some of those town to make room for bigger size cities. Oh, baby...I can't wait to line up my towns 2 space apart. I will make every square of land count!:)
[dance]

Originally posted by PaleHorse76
Also, I am in favor of making it 1 entry per level instead of the current 2. What does everyone think on this?
Very good idea! I think each player should be allowed to submit as many times as he/she like, but only one with highest score will be kept at each level. That would give SirPleb a chance to beat Aeson.;)

I am also playing currently a huge map monarch game (patch 1.21, so reduced map size).
As far as I can see it now in 1400 AD, a final score with 8.000 points will be definitely not enough.

Have lots of fun with miliking :)

Originally posted by PaleHorse76
A poll questioning whether we should allow custom maps of certain size in order to keep the map sizes the same or to archive the v1.17f games would be good.

Are there any other questions that could be polled that DoM hasn't quashed already? I am reading through all the old posts right now so don't try to pull a fast one on me. ;)

Also, I am in favor of making it 1 entry per level instead of the current 2. What does everyone think on this?

I am in favour of only allowing random maps, custom maps could be specifically designed to give the player additional advantages.

One entry per level should be enough.

Originally posted by Ronald


I am in favour of only allowing random maps, custom maps could be specifically designed to give the player additional advantages.

One entry per level should be enough. What they mean with CUSTOM here is to allow players to play on maps that are 180x180 in Size, like the HUGE maps from earlier patches, as you know, the HUGE mapa now are only 160x160. Which lowers the score potential quite a bit.

How to solve this is another issue, maybe we should have a Specific .Bic file here we must use or or we do it ourself.
And How can we know that the person that did it hasn't randomized the map in the Editor and had a little look on it?

Anyway, 1 entry per level should be suffiecient.

What do you mean by "one entry per level"? For example: If Aeson manage to beat his 64K high score, will he be allowed to submit again? I assume that "one entry per level" means only one entry in the HoF for each level and we can submit as many time as we like, right?

one entry per level is good.

i've played so many emperor persia games it's now a routine. that's why i'm trying something new.

Originally posted by Moonsinger
What do you mean by "one entry per level"? For example: If Aeson manage to beat his 64K high score, will he be allowed to submit again? I assume that "one entry per level" means only one entry in the HoF for each level and we can submit as many time as we like, right?

Of course, your best score counts.

Moonsinger, Grey Fox, Ronald,

Good to read you are picking up the gauntlet !:goodjob: :goodjob:, after all 8000 should not be to difficult. Could you please post your results here, first of all I am curious and secondly I'd like to know the new target!

Originally posted by PaleHorse76
A poll questioning whether we should allow custom maps of certain size in order to keep the map sizes the same or to archive the v1.17f games would be good.

Are there any other questions that could be polled that DoM hasn't quashed already? I am reading through all the old posts right now so don't try to pull a fast one on me. ;)

Also, I am in favor of making it 1 entry per level instead of the current 2. What does everyone think on this?

On custom maps: only with very clear rules what can be custom and also the option to submit on the new mapsizes.

On other questions: If you have been through the posts you must have read the discussion on the scoring system. A reflection of that discussion has been processed by Aeson :goodjob: :goodjob: in a scoring system that is used in the Tournament. Why not a) poll for use of a better scoring system and b) make use of the lessons learned there.

On entries per level, I guess you mean 1 listed entry per level and a newly submitted one must be higher than the previous one? Fine with me.

I'd be in favor for archiving all the old scores. Future patches may change some things, but I don't see them making the maps any smaller, so as far as land and population available for milking, it will probably stay the same. Aren't some of these scores still from v1.07f, when you could pop-rush like mad? Start a whole new list, and possibly seperate the scores by map size, because there is almost no way a standard or large map can beat a properly milked huge map.

If you're worried about too many scores maybe have the top 5 for each level and map size (standard-huge). That way there are 15 scores for each difficulty level, so the list won't be too much longer than it is now. This way if people like playing on standard maps they have a chance at a high score without the weeks of milking it could take to finish a huge map.

I also would agree that each person would be allowed 1 score for each level (if they beat their older score, the lower score would just be dropped from the list).

Beammeuppy, you're right 8,000 shouldn't be too hard to beat. Especially if they use Aeson's style. Aeson's style is way over-powering, on the AI and on score. Of course it is more difficult to pull off on the harder difficulties, but if you have practice with his style, one could beat all the scores that are up there now. I was using his style and it looked like I was on pace for 25-30,000 pts on Regent!!:eek: I can't remember the dates but I think it was around 3-400 A.D., and I was over halfway to domination and I was gaining between 60-80 pts per TURN!

I completely agree that the scoring system needs to be addressed.

Yes, some of the games on the HOF are still from 1.07f, but, for the most part, they are not the top scores.

I don't remember my reasoning (if any) behind allowing two scores per level, maybe I was just in a good mood. ;)

And, thanks everyone for your show of concern that I won't be doing the HOF anymore. :p

I also noticed the HOF thread is sticky again. :) Nice to be the Mod of the forum it's in, huh? :D

Also relating to custom sizes...

I wanted to try a game on large map w/16 civs. It can be easily done w/editor and the map will be random. Would that be allowed. Could it be considered unfair because the AI won't have as much room to expand?


Sneak Preview of my Japan game

Duke, thanks for all the good work on the HOF, yet one more thing........

I guess we are all very eager to see your personal HOF submissions now you can!

Bamspeedy, although I have great respect for the way Aeson, Sir Pleb and others run for the high scores I do not have the time to play like that and have a good time in Civ3. But he, that is what I said months ago as well, it might be time to pick up new things as long as it does not involve micro management. I love Shift-A on workers! And Aesons Tournament scoring mechanism where an early finish is rewarded very well.

btw, I see quite often multiple quoting in single post. Who can advise how to do?

i don't think u can have too many civilisations.

expansion space is going to affect everyone equally unless u have knowledge of the map which i don't think u do.

Originally posted by wohmongarinf00l
i don't think u can have too many civilisations.

expansion space is going to affect everyone equally unless u have knowledge of the map which i don't think u do.
yeah the map is random. It remains the blue(sea) color, and all I need to do is go to the editing options, and change it.

It would affect me too, unless I came up with some way to counter it. The main reason I want it like this, is even though I can and sometimes do play huge maps, they are slow, and tedious and I would much rather play on a large map w/16 civs.

btw, I see quite often multiple quoting in single post. Who can advise how to do?

Copy the text you want to quote by highlighting and right-clicking, then when you are in the window where you type your response you hit the quote button that's up by all the other options (insert link, bold, italic, underline, etc.) then just paste the quote in the window that pops up. Use this instead of the quote button you see by people's responses, so you can have multiple quotes in your response, or to just quote a portion of what they said.

Another question, though on custom maps. Doesn't using custom maps make it more difficult for someone to see whether or not any of the other rules had been changed besides map size? Right now if any rules are changed (like if you change map size), when you load the game it informs you that rules have been changed, but it doesn't tell you what rules had changed (like someone could lower corruption, or something else to give them an advantage, without it being too noticable).

Use the UBB commands:
Yo!MTV Raps said:
Copy and paste quoting material here.
.
This will work for you, I made it so that it would show up. It will look like: Yo!MTV Raps said:
Copy and paste quoting material here.

- encapsulates the text in a quote.
- formats text in italics.
- formats text in bold.

When I said custom map I meant custom size. That way the scoring potential for patch 1.21 would be equal to pre 1.21 patch score potential.

I don't want to archive the old scores as some people worked hard to achive them plus it can be a pain if there are more changes in the expansion or in the next patch that would change the scoring potential again....I have yet to open a game and take a look at it (someone else's game) so I don't know the message about the rules being cutomized.

I think the 160x160 random map is fine with me. Even though I may not be able to score as high as someone who play on a 180x180 map, that's ok with me.:)

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
Good to read you are picking up the gauntlet !:goodjob: :goodjob:, after all 8000 should not be to difficult. Could you please post your results here, first of all I am curious and secondly I'd like to know the new target!
No, I can't post the game yet. I am still around 1400 AD. I have made too many mistakes on this game; I lost 12 cavalries trying to take away a city full of luxury from the American. I lost at least 17 riflemen at the following two turns when they tried to take back that city. I'm so stupid...if I wait for two more turns, I would have discover Infantry. I declared war two-turns too soon.:( With the surving force, I am just going to dig a moat around that city, upgrade the surviving riflemen to infantries, and will try to hold that cities at all cost (it's now fortified with 7 infantries, 8 cavalries, and 1 army of cavalries). On the bright side, I am now controlling all 8 luxuries.:) On the dark side, the whole world (7 remaining civs) are now at war with me since they all have mutual protection pacts with the American.

Anyway, I'm currently at 5400 points now. Since there are still 228 turns left on this Monarch game, that 8000 points should not be too hard to beat.;)

zulus are definitely not the way to go if u mean to conquer and build at the same time. besides the captured pyramids and sun tzu, i havent been able to get any wonders.

i'm struggling to keep up with the joneses in the tech race. it's ok though because i'm getting bargains.

I have yet to open a game and take a look at it (someone else's game) so I don't know the message about the rules being cutomized.

I just tried it out. In order to get a 180X180 map, you have to change the rules in the editor (world sizes). Then when you load the game, at the point where you normally get the box that says the date, civ, and difficulty level, you instead get a box that says "The rules for this scenario has been changed". It doesn't say which rules, though, even though map size was the only rule changed.

I'm not too worried about it, because I don' think there are any scores (except for Aeson's and Sir Plebs) that have been seriously milked, so all the scores except for the top 2 or 3 Deity scores should be beatable even with the smaller map.

Yeah, but if you edit the civ3mod.bic whatever, the main bic used for all games, then I don't think "this game's rules have been edited" will come up.