Well, in terms of sheer numbers of entries, this game has been fantastic - shattering all previous GOTM records. We had no less than 623 entries! :eek: To put that into perspective: The previous best was way back in May 2003, where GOTM 19 had 244 entries. We have over two and a half times as many for this game! :goodjob:

So - who were the winners? Well, it was a mixture of new faces and old ones. In first place, hendrickszoon showed that he's not just a Conquests expert - he cleaned-up the gold medal with a 1450 AD Domination victory - his statement that 'population is everything' may have helped him get to 130,454 points, but it took a lot of skill as well!

In second place, DaveMcW, the only person to-date to have won 'eptathlon' awards in bot the Civ3 GOTM and COTM grabbed silver with a 1670 AD conquest victory. His score of 116,976 is not to be sneezed at, either.

In third place, it was one of the new faces: Dave the Lesser grabbed bronze as well as the fastest domination award when he triggered domination in 1260 Ad, with 97,847 points.

Summary of Medal Winners:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/GoldMedal.gif hendrikszoon: 1450 AD Domination Victory, 130,454 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/SilverMedal.gifhttp://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/cow.gif DaveMcW: 1670 AD Conquest Victory, 116,976 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/BronzeMedal.gifhttp://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/world.gif Dave the Lesser: 1260 AD Domination Victory, 97,847 points.

Other Award Winners:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/parchment.gif Yurian: 1410 AD Diplomatic Victory, 51,881 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/visor.gif pigwidgeon: 1585 AD Conquest Victory, 38,798 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/SpaceShip.gif samson: 1815 AD Spaceship Victory, 37,516 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/MusicNote.gif A'AbarachAmadan: 1600 AD Cultural Victory, 34,889 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/blueshield.gif denogginizer: 2027 AD Domination Victory, 7,172 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/greenambulance.gif Hermit: 2018 AD Spaceship Loss, 5,520 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/purpleshield.gif McArine: 2031 AD Diplomatic Victory, 5,155 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/burgundyshield.gif salsa: 2038 AD Conquest Victory, 4,354 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/greenshield.gif Nightfang: 2030 AD Spaceship Victory, 4,160 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/oliveshield.gif Puzzlinon: 2024 AD Cultural Victory, 3,552 points.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/redambulance.gif shumble: 450 BC Conquest Loss, 202 points.


>> See the full results here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/results/index.php?month=40001).
>> See the updated global rankings here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/rankings/civ_global.php).
>> See the latest Pantheon of Heroes here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/pantheon/index.php?table=civ_gotm_medals.php).

For those of you who are new to the GOTM and may not know what the various awards are, go to the full results page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/results/index.php?month=40001), and hold the mouse over the award icon - the pop-up text gives a quick summary. Or go to this page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards.php) where they are all listed.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And a last acknowledgement:

Getting a system that allows us to accept 623 submissions via an automated upload system, calculate scores, generate results and put them on a webpage is not a trivial task. It has been automated such that when people submit their save files and replays, the important information regarding score, victory or loss, year, type of victory etc is automatically extracted. Thanks go to all who helped with this - in particular, Gyathaar for his help in sorting out data extraction from the save file, Dianthus for helping with that and the online parser, and AlanH for the online parser, setting up the webpages, processing the submissions - and generally making the administration of the GOTMs much, much easier. The amount of work he has contributed to the Civ3 and Civ4 GOTMs is incredible. So - as we release the first set of results only 8 days after they closed, please join me in giving a simple 'thanks' for the work that enables this competition to be run. :)

Results look a little odd to me because it seems you have to go either conquest or domination to maximize points.

:wow: 623 submissions :crazyeye: Congrats all!!!:clap:
What seems odd to me is how low the fastest conquest is in the scoring table. In general, I am surprised with a very weak correlation between dates and scores. I am guessing that indeed a modification of a scoring system is unavoidable. The first thing in mind is to decrease the input of population into the final score.

hmm... what does it mean if you're not on the list?

congrats to all btw :clap: :worship:

hmm... what does it mean if you're not on the list?
You had an email, sent on 12 December.

Congratulations all! :eek: :goodjob:

-- Roland

I've fixed a couple of gremlins. The Global Ranking table now shows up properly, and Puzzlinon's Lowest Scoring Cultural victory is also listed correctly, both in the post above and in the tables.

I have no words eek.... eeekkkk... and eeeekkkk again....

I'm about 221, near the best rotflmao :)

congrats to the over 100.000 winners and to all the loosers

:wow: 623 submissions :crazyeye: Congrats all!!!:clap:
What seems odd to me is how low the fastest conquest is in the scoring table. In general, I am surprised with a very weak correlation between dates and scores.
Here is a scatter graph of scores and turns, colour coded for the different victory conditions. The fastest and highest score award winners are highlighted. I've used a log scale for score, and you can see that this gives a pretty linear distribution and quite strong correlation.
For anyone who wants to do more analysis, I've also attached the spreadsheet containing this graph and the raw data.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/C-IV1_chart.gif

Thanks to our wonderful GOTM staff for all your excellent work on the first 4oTM. Considering that you guys had to deal with work, the holidays, a new game, a new submission system, a staggering number of players (and questions), and probably a dozen other things I am not thinking of, it is most impressive that you have the results out on the 9th! :beer:

Congrats to everyone who played and contributed to this historic number of participants. We are now huge!:cooool:

Dave the Lesser (Congrats!), comes from the dark and leaves me dreaded #4 on the table. I can smell the homemade apple pie, but can’t have a taste. I’m synchronized swimming at the Olympics. I’m the long-eyed dog under the dinner table begging for a scrap. I hope this isn’t foreshadowing! :cringe:

Special congrats to:
Yurian: 1410 diplomatic victory. Did I miss the summary of this great game somehow? If there isn’t a summary, I would certainly love to see one.
Dar with a 2:08 playtime, and henceforward known to me as “Dar the Speedy.”

No award, shield or something for highest scoring “time” victory? Since we have shields and ambulances and such, it seems it should get something more than just “highest yellow dot on the scatter graph.” Maybe a little gold pocket watch or something?

One 4oTM down, many, many more to come. Woot! :banana:

Congratulations to the high scorers, your skills I can only dream about. :worship:

Congratulations to the rest of us survivors, we have lots of work to do! :crazyeye:

And a big hand to all who worked to provide the feedback of the scoring table for us, and for in general administering GOTMs. As a person who singlehandedly maintained a small computer shop for many years, I know how big your job is and how important team members are. Thank you for all your work! :goodjob:


--- Ewok have short legs, only score 337 - have to run faster ---

Cheers Ainwood and AlanH and everyone else involved with the first Civ4 GOTM.

It's certainly raised my Civ4 playing experience and was great fun.

Some of those scores are damn impressive!

:thumbsup: and :goodjob: to the Staff for processing this huge number of entries in such a short time, especially with no prior system in place! :eek: (and publishing 2 COTMs and 1 GOTM results as well!) Just awesome!

Also, congratulations to the Medal and Award winners, and thanks for the Spoilers! (I have a lot of reading to do!)

To think, I'm ranked 210th and I'm 3 away from being in the top third! :eek:

Great game everyone. It's nice to see both new and old faces.

So - as we release the first set of results only 8 days after they closed, please join me in giving a simple 'thanks' for the work that enables this competition to be run. :)

I agree. Thanks all of you! I hope you can accept my thanks the best way I know how, I'm going to keep playing! :D

One question, will the Global Ranking System be a permanent mix of both CivIII and CivIV, or will the two be separated?

Never mind the minor awards, who's the highest scoring mod ? :cool:

@Methos: There are already separate results, GR and Pantheon tables for Civ4.

Never mind the minor awards, who's the highest scoring mod ? :cool:
Well, on a quick scan, there were only two mod submissions, so strictly speaking it's "Higher Scoring Mod". Are you going to tell Thunderfall you beat him? Or shall I? :D

I'd also like to thank all the GOTM admins for the hard work they put in over the last couple months with all the new game troubles and all.

Let me echo Roland in wanting to see Yurian's writeup. I'm amazed that you could get the other civs to vote for you that early in the game. It's clear by your score that you didn't vote yourself in with a large population, so very nicely done. Unfortunately I cannot open Yurian's savefile because it says the sav is protected. :confused: I wonder if I can open any of the protected v1.09 saves.

Also, the results clearly indicate that a new scoring system will be needed to bring fast spaceship, culture and diplomatic victories into line with domination and conquest.

Woohoo! Lowest scoring domination! You have no idea how much work that took! ;)

Now, let's try a losing effort on prince. :cry:

Out of 623 submissions I came in dead last. That doesn't feel too good. At least I've already won GOTM2 so I won't come in last on that one :)

Thank you VERY much to all those that put so much effort into making the GOTM work so well.
thank you for getting the results posted so fast, this gives me the incentive i needed to continue my attempt at 4OTM-2.

the best part about there being over 600 submissions, is that i almost made it into the top 10% :D . here's hoping to get into the single digit percentile this time.
again THANKS!

EDIT: there REALY should be an award for: Pedro B (#56)
i mean look at the amount of time he invested in the game......143 hours 15 minutes. talk about dedication.
edit2: just realized why that cant realy be an award. way too easy to inflate your time, by leaving the game running.
how about one for "se7en" then (#543) for least time taken for a victory (spaceship none the less too, which means he got all the way through the tech tree), impressive i'd say with only an hour and forty mins.

EDIT: there REALY should be an award for: Pedro B (#56)
i mean look at the amount of time he invested in the game......143 hours 15 minutes. talk about dedication.
edit2: just realized why that cant realy be an award. way too easy to inflate your time, by leaving the game running.
how about one for "se7en" then (#543) for least time taken for a victory (spaceship none the less too, which means he got all the way through the tech tree), impressive i'd say with only an hour and forty mins.

I was looking at the same thing. Even in the top 10 you see folks who played < 10 hours and others who played > 100 hours. I'd always assumed the highest scorers would take longer because they micromanaged everything, considered every choice a bit more carefully, checked their advisors every turn, etc. That does not seem to be the case.

Also, thanks to the GOTM staff for putting on these events.

The clock is pretty meaningless for all but the shortest games because the clock keeps ticking even when the player is AFK. I'm sure that any time over 30 hours contains a big portion of idle time.

It was a great achievement by the GOTM staff and hopefully you feel rewarded by making 623 civ players very happy.

It must be the first time i feel good about finishing 84th in anything. Great scores up near the top and thanks to the extensive wirte ups from all those expert players.

Originally Posted by RoddyVR
how about one for "se7en" then (#543) for least time taken for a victory

I too think this is worthy of an award, it takes great skill to win a game that fast.

I've used a log scale for score, and you can see that this gives a pretty linear distribution and quite strong correlation.


Thanks Alan. Indeed there is a strong correlation, Hendrikszoon and DaveMcW outlayers do not surprise me. However, indeed, there seems to be a little difference in curves with the different victory conditions. Spaceship is clearly below domination and diplomatic and cultural are somewhat scattered with the latter being the lowest. This could be due to specific game conditions, though.

Sweet, my first gotm ever and I came in 32nd overall. Not too shabby, hopefully I can improve and get up their with the big boys. Special thanks for everyone who put time into playing, generating, and maintaining the gotm. It adds a certain something to civ that helps it keep from getting boring.

My basic goal for this game score wise was to be in the upper half of the games submitted... What do I end up being? 312, aint that a lil bit ironic. =P

Hendrikszoon and DaveMcW outlayers do not surprise me.They seem to be the only ones who played to the scoring conditions which, I suspect, is why they finished so much ahead of the pack. That, of course, does not take anything away from their achievements. Quite the contrary.

It also appears that the only way to get to the top is with a fast domination. (DaveMcW basically did that just like all the rest of the top scorers. It just amused him to come up with a conquest instead. He could have had either victory condition). I imagine that this is true even with a civ which does not have such an awesome UU.

It's pretty obvious, though, that the scoring system does not do a very good job of comparing different victory conditions. In fact, it is downright awful. Yurian and A'AbarachAmadan had awesome games and yet finished far back in the pack.

Incidently, I agree with BradleyFeanor that Yurian owes us a writeup. :yeah:

Congrats to pigwidgeon for your dedicated push to a conquest victory!

It would be kind of silly for me to win the cow and conquest awards. :mischief:

Congrats to all the winners, and thanks to the GOTM staff for their dedication! :thumbsup:

Don't feel bad if you didn't win any award... I ended up at the lower half. :p How's that possible? :D

176th, not too bad. I'm surprised I only played for 4 hours though, it felt like a lot longer.

Well done to everyone, especially the GOTM staff for coping with all those submissions:goodjob:

Unfortunately I don't think I'll have the time needed to play GOTM2 well (exams:sad: ), so I'll have to wait until February to see if I can finish higher

- On the results page, is there any significance to some of the scores being in blue?

Finally, I'd like to add my voice to everyone else's in thanking the GOTM team. It was lots of fun and I appreciate all the behind-the-scenes work that went into this.

[edited because the "100 hours" thing was already explained before I pressed the "post reply" button!]

17th for my first GOTM! That's much higher than I expected! I wasted a lot of time before sailing out into sea. I think I've already done better in my 2nd GOTM comparing to the first. Yet the ranking will need another month to be seen.

My thanks to GOTM staff and every winner and loser who submitted the game.

23rd For my First GOTM :crazyeye:

I just want to Make sure I understand the global rankings properly.

My game percentage (33.574)is calculated by

Take 43799 (Memphus) and divide by the top score 130454 (hendrikszoon)

:43799/130454 = .33574 % 100 = 33.574%

This I understand :)

But when a game is 'Progressively Aged' does that mean that a game 9 months ago would have less of an impact on the global ranking than a game 2 months ago?

If this is the case is there somewhere to find the formula?

Gongrats to all winners. :cool: 130,000+ is an impressive score.

I couldn't take part because my laptop is way too slow to run a normal map. I've now gotten my hands to a tower pc and will participate from now on. ;)

My first XotM-victory ever. :woohoo: :woohoo:

Now I'm trying to be under the first 500. ;)

Thanks Alan. Indeed there is a strong correlation, Hendrikszoon and DaveMcW outlayers do not surprise me. However, indeed, there seems to be a little difference in curves with the different victory conditions. Spaceship is clearly below domination and diplomatic and cultural are somewhat scattered with the latter being the lowest. This could be due to specific game conditions, though.

The linear correlation with finishing turn seems to be a good reason why spaceship is a low-scoring victory - because it is a later victory condition. If you are well-set for a domination, then you pretty much have your choice of victory condition (by controlling which civs you beat up, when, and by how much). Diplo and Space generally come later because they require you to have reached a certain tech whereas domination and conquest do not.

(There is not actually very much of a science penalty for invading the world as the space race approaches because most of the cities you will take will be well-enough developed that they quickly provide more in tax and looting-value than they consume in maintenance.)

(There is not actually very much of a science penalty for invading the world as the space race approaches because most of the cities you will take will be well-enough developed that they quickly provide more in tax and looting-value than they consume in maintenance.)

This is not true at all. If you expand to the domination limit you will not research as quickly as if you took half as many cities. Not to mention all the hammers you spent on units instead of science buildings and the fact that you tended to work more production tiles than commerce in order to build those units. Take a look at beta gauntlet 1 with fast spacerace victories, no one was close to the domination limit in those, and that's only playing with 4 opponents on a standard map with no barbarians.

Isn't there an award for the TIME victory condition?

Is there any way to view the saves with 1.52?

I'm not sure whether this has been discussed before, but perhaps one way of modifying the final scores to allow for greater comparison between victory conditions - i'm thinking GPR here mostly - is to given the top score in each chosen condition 100%. The ratio of each player's score to this top score is then their GPR.

e.g. samson's 1815AD spaceship victory (37516) nets him 100%, as does hendriksoon's domination, Dave's conquest and so on. Note that these are not the fastest win dates.

My 1912AD (21334) space victory would therefore earn me 56.87% for this game, rather than the 16.354% score i get after being compared to hendriksoon's score. Pursuing a space victory or other peaceful victory i don't think i would be able to compete. This effectively forces me (if i want to stay on the first page of the GPR) to consistently play the GOTM as a warmonger.

Whaddya think?

Congrats to all though! :D

I'm not sure whether this has been discussed before, but perhaps one way of modifying the final scores to allow for greater comparison between victory conditions - i'm thinking GPR here mostly - is to given the top score in each chosen condition 100%. The ratio of each player's score to this top score is then their GPR.

e.g. samson's 1815AD spaceship victory (37516) nets him 100%, as does hendriksoon's domination, Dave's conquest and so on. Note that these are not the fastest win dates.

My 1912AD (21334) space victory would therefore earn me 56.87% for this game, rather than the 16.354% score i get after being compared to hendriksoon's score. Pursuing a space victory or other peaceful victory i don't think i would be able to compete. This effectively forces me (if i want to stay on the first page of the GPR) to consistently play the GOTM as a warmonger.

Whaddya think?

Congrats to all though! :D


I think DaveMcW suggested much the same thing. It has potential but what if only 3 people go for a diplomatic victory and none of them do a great job of it? One of them will get 100% credit anyway?

Is there any way to view the saves with 1.52?
We're investigating options for this. It will probably mean editing all the saves to make them compatible.

It appears that _speedy_ (who came in #327 in the submissions) is not listed in the Global Rankings.

Woohoo! 41st and 4th fastest Diplomatic victory *pats himself on the back* :-)

1410AD Diplo is insane. I have half a mind to see if I could beat that even playing completely spoiled!

My suggestion had 3 parts:

1. The best game for each victory condition scores 100%.
2. For victories other than score, the fastest game is the best one.
3. "Best game" is determined by a statistical analysis of all GOTM data. It's possible for no one to score 100% in a given month. (Though for the first few months they will because we have no other data.)

But when a game is 'Progressively Aged' does that mean that a game 9 months ago would have less of an impact on the global ranking than a game 2 months ago?

If this is the case is there somewhere to find the formula?
Sorry for the delay in replying. I was distracted :rolleyes:

Games add to the total ranking score according to their age. Aging is linear:

0 months: score x 100%
1 months: score x 88.89%
2 months: score x 77.78%
3 months: score x 66.67%
4 months: score x 55.56%
5 months: score x 44.44%
6 months: score x 33.33%
7 months: score x 22.22%
8 months: score x 11.11%
9 months and older: zero

So next month, GOTM 1 will add 88.89 to whatever Hendrickszoon scores in GOTM 2, and it will add 33.574 x 88.89% = 29.844 to your total.

If I were constructing a scoring system, it would include the following factors (at least):

1. A time factor, for the time at which you achieve a particular victory condition, relative to the "expected" time for that victory condition (which could be estimated in various ways).

2. A "world population" factor. I would give the winner a score based on the total population of the whole world, not just his or her own population. The theory being that the player who achieves world domination (of whatever sort) is doing well if the world is doing well. This would reduce or eliminate the undesirable incentive to conquer the world for a high score even if you're going for a spaceship or cultural victory. Again, the population would have to be adjusted relative to a benchmark of what is "expected" at a particular time.

Congrats all.

Thanks to Ainwood, AlanX an others for the huge effort to do all this.

486th place - about the same as my CivIII ranking :cry:

On with GOTM_2 for 400th?

Dar with a 2:08 playtime, and henceforward known to me as “Dar the Speedy.”


Lol thanks. I'm so used to playing multiplayer that even when I sit down without a timer I still end up flying through most games. Its a bad habit really :).

@AlanH

Thanks, I knew there was math behind it :)

That being said missing a game can have disaterous consequences at first but does ruin your chances forever...Very cool system :goodjob:


As for my $0.02 on score, if somehow each building was worth X amounts of points, (reason being later game buildings worth more for other victories)

As well as culture be factored in, but on a scale
meaning culture point 7000 in a city is worth more than point 10.
This is because otherwise it would be too big of factor for domination as borders get expanded a couple of times, but not all cities get high (above 1000) in culture.

As for models on this :lol: I have no idea

First of all, congratulations to everyone and THANKS to the fabulous and sexy GOTM staff!

Secondly, I add my voice to the chorus of those who want some kind of score weighting to boost those awesome non-combat related victories, making other victory conditions viable options for those wanting to score in the top ranks. And this comment comes from someone who won with a domination victory.

Now, on to my questions:

Can someone help me understand how well (or poorly) I did? This being my first GOTM experience, I have no basis for comparison. As someone who started playing Civ last summer (civ3 obviously) and who has never competed like this, how happy should I be with a ranking of 73rd? I mean, how experienced is the average participant? Any guesses?

Also, is anything done with the overall rankings? For example, it seems like a good idea to invite everyone in the top such-and-such percent at the end of one year to play in an invite-only "playoff tournament"--or something like that.

What I'm looking for is some kind of further incentive to play every GOTM and wind up as high as I can in rankings, regardless of whether I make it in the top 3 or 10 (seems unlikely). Is there anything like that in place now? Even a end-of-the-year overall award or something?

What do you all think about a "superbowl" of Civ for the top 25% or so at the end of a certain period of GOTM play (six months? a year?)

@godotnut

Have you looked at the global rankings?

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/rankings/civ_global.php

And Reference:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3554303&postcount=49

I think this is what you were looking for? :confused:

It appears that _speedy_ (who came in #327 in the submissions) is not listed in the Global Rankings.
Thanks - well spotted :thumbsup: A bug that's been hibernating ever since C3C COTM 1. Fixed.

What do you all think about a "superbowl" of Civ for the top 25% or so at the end of a certain period of GOTM play (six months? a year?)

I worry because one of the best things about the GOTM is that you don't have to play for the highest possible score. You can just play the way you like to play. There's nothing at stake that you lose if you don't score as much as you can.

Creating more tangible rewards (like the right to enter a special competition) would create more pressure to compete, which I personally would not value. There's also the real issue that it's pretty easy to cheat. That's just another reason not to create incentives that are too strong.

In practice, the "Predator level" of Civ3 GOTM serves more or less the role you describe---it naturally attracts the top 25% or so of the players, without the exclusionary element.

I used to play tournament bridge, and one of the neat things about that game is that most tournaments, even the national championships, are open to anyone who wants to enter (or almost anyone---some have relatively minimal requirements, that keep out total beginners). Intermediate players can choose between playing against the best (and losing), or competing against their peers, in a parallel event. I think that's a good paradigm for us, too.

AlanH's scatterplot (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3552015&postcount=11) pretty much tells the full story, but I did a bit more statistics on the spreadsheet he posted to see how various victory conditions fared. Spaceship victory is by far the most popular with 267 submissions, but also the lowest scoring.


+--------------+-------+----------+----------+
| type | Count | AvgTurns | AvgScore |
+--------------+-------+----------+----------+
| "Conquest" | 14 | 332 | 27546 |
| "Cultural" | 27 | 335 | 13062 |
| "Diplomatic" | 82 | 343 | 17251 |
| "Domination" | 142 | 327 | 27214 |
| "Spaceship" | 267 | 380 | 10018 |
| "Time" | 53 | 430 | 4917 |
+--------------+-------+----------+----------+


For the database nerds in the audience, I saved his spreadsheet as a CSV and imported it into MySQL like this:


create temporary table civ (year int, turns int, score int, type char(32));
load data infile 'civ.csv' into table civ fields terminated by ',' lines terminated by '\r\n' ;
select type, count(*) as Count, round(avg(turns)) as AvgTurns, round(avg(score)) as AvgScore from civ group by type;

I worry because one of the best things about the GOTM is that you don't have to play for the highest possible score. You can just play the way you like to play. There's nothing at stake that you lose if you don't score as much as you can.

I agree with David entirely. It's already showing that military victories are the best way to get the highest score. So in other words to reach the % to be included in this "superbow" I am forced to play a victory condition I do not desire.

GOTM's are fun and great to compare with other players who are achieving the same victory condition I am going for. I would not enjoy playing if my primary objective was reaching a high score in a victory condition I do not like.

The clock is pretty meaningless for all but the shortest games because the clock keeps ticking even when the player is AFK. I'm sure that any time over 30 hours contains a big portion of idle time.


Actually, 100% of my time was spent on the game. (50-plus hours) No idle time to speak of. I may be an oddball, but it took me that long. I even did my city placement planning outside of the game clock using screen prints. I'm looking forward to reading the leading game summaries to see how I can win faster, both in turns and in real-life-time!

@Samson: Congrats on your space race medal, I'm in awe! :goodjob:

@the staff: thanks a ton, this was a blast!

@godotnut: You were 73 out of 623 - in the top 12% of all published entries. Your score at 25,355 was 19.4% of the top score, and 166% of the average winning score of 15,304. The average winning score falls between ranks 185 and 186. This was one game.

We don't have a play-0ff. Or rather, perhaps I should say every game's a play-off, as it provides an opportunity for all players to try to improve their rankings.

Why have an exclusive contest for top players? I'm guessing they wouldn't want to play an extra game. So we would either deprive everyone else of a game for one month, while an elite group played their own game, or have two different games one month, one for the elite players and one for the rest.

We run higher difficulty level contests periodically, and these provide a natural stage on which the top players can strut their stuff. Once we get into the swing of it we'll also provide a 'premier league' experience with the 'Predator' class, where you can optionally play a game on the same map as everyone else, but with extra difficulty factors built in. There are no score or award bonuses for taking that option, just a greater challenge, and bragging rights.

Speaking for myself, I think we should rather concentrate our efforts on continuing to provide a range of games where all players can compete with, and learn from the masters, and where all players get a chance to extend their skills.

Hrmph. Where's that samson guy? I must find a way to eliminate him from that results list!

Nah, serious, gratz for getting the fastest space ship samson ;). I'm happy enough with 2nd place (score and finish time), as I found out how much I had done wrong while playing the first HOF gauntlet directly afterwards lol.

First, thanks to the GOTM for a wonderful game and the speedy turnaround of results. Your efforts are appreciated!:goodjob:

Second, to all those who managed a win but still scored lower than the highest scoring loss:blush: ...I'm with ya...better luck next time!

Finally, I need to start studying how some of our elite players manage to win so early. To this day I've still never won domination. Great job to all winners - see you in GOTM2!

This was my first gotm, so i'm satisfied with my 297th place entry. Top 50%!!!

I'm not sure about this, but in a thread in the Hall of Fame Forum Called "High Scores Seem Possibly Much Easier", or something, on page 5, it says something about how, on noble (no difficulty modifiers to your score) the highest ingame score possible is 10,000. That is with every tech, wonder, max population, and max land. If this thread is correct, how on earth did DaveMcW score 9679 ingame!?
I'd also really appreciate it if someone showed me a link to a writeup by any of the top players.

Thanks alot to all the staff.

Just go to the closing spoiler thread for GOTM1. You'll find alot of top write-ups there.

A big thankee from me to all the GOTM staff... you all take a good game and make it even gooder!

Also, thanks to the people who lost and still submitted their games. That, to me, is the mark of a good competitor. I'll be joining the ranks of the "submitters of losses" this month, if where I currently stand in the game is any indication. :mad:

Quick question... it looks like time victories are being reported with a date of 2040AD... that doesn't seem right. Shouldn't it be 2050?

The game was created in version 1.00. When version 1.09 was released it turned out to have 440 turns for a Normal speed game, but the game file still had 430 turns as the limit. So time ran out at turn 430, which is 2040 AD in version 1.09.

A "world population" factor...The theory being that the player who achieves world domination (of whatever sort) is doing well if the world is doing well.

That's an idea I haven't heard before. I find the underlying theory expecially appealing. If the concept isn't used as part of the scoring system, perhaps it could be part of a new award.

With all the talk of what can be done with the SDK, would it be possible to have a "utopia" award--an award that went to the player whose entire world (all civs) had the highest population, were the most technologically advanced, most peaceful throughout the game, etc.? Victory date would need to somehow be a factor too, of course.

I think I didn't word that well; it sounds like nothing more than a modified space victory. What I have in mind is the ultimate "builder" award. Where the player isn't only responsible for advancing their own civ, but every other civ as well, and doing it in the most peaceful way possible.

Does that sound like an appealing award, or would it even be possible?

First, I would like to congratulate the staff who, I am sure, worked really hard on making this first GOTM for civ4 and gave results very fast considering the number of submissions.

I would like also to congratulate the top 3 winners who completely left everyone else far behind! While I don't play GOTM very often, I don't remember a GOTM with a 4th score under 70% of the winner!

I got a score of 50% of the winner, which is about what I was expecting. I usually get around 70% of the winner, but it has been more than a year since I played Civ. What a surprise it was when I saw it was enough to get the 12th place, just over Roland, which I have always considered unbeatable! :eek:

What is worst is that I know some of the mistakes that I did, but I don't know what I did that was so good that most players missed it! :blush:

I can only guess that the good players are not yet at the top of their game and they will shortly put me back to my rightful place, far away below them! :D

Until then, party! :band:

The linear correlation with finishing turn seems to be a good reason why spaceship is a low-scoring victory - because it is a later victory condition. If you are well-set for a domination, then you pretty much have your choice of victory condition (by controlling which civs you beat up, when, and by how much). Diplo and Space generally come later because they require you to have reached a certain tech whereas domination and conquest do not.

(There is not actually very much of a science penalty for invading the world as the space race approaches because most of the cities you will take will be well-enough developed that they quickly provide more in tax and looting-value than they consume in maintenance.)

If you compare peaceful victories to domination and conquest of the same date, they get lower score.
Never mind that getting a cultural as fast as a conquest is already way harder.

Well, my efforts this time are close to something to sneeze at. But... on the other end of the spectrum is the staff. This round has to have been a lot of work! Thanks to all staff members! :)

Regarding Bradleyfeanor utopia game:

The question is how you are going to compare results. If you calculate the entire population of the world, aggressive domination is likely to score better than a peaceful game, since human civ is likely to grow faster than AI.

I think what needs to be calculated is AI population (human civ does not count).
IMHO what can make this kind of play fun is the fact that CIVIV provides us with an opportunity to restore the peace even when you are not involved in the war between AI civs.

Another question is how to delay likely victory conditions, such as Diplomatic, Space and Culture. You’ll have a better chance of getting the highest AI pop if you play to the end. Thus you will need to build UN yourself and never hold elections. You need to manage AI trades so that they will not be able to build a spaceship. I have no idea how to prevent a cultural victory (I do not know how it works).

Also from me a great thanks to the GOTM staff.
This was my first GOTM and I really enjoyed the thought of being able to compare my game outcome with that of others.

DaviddesJ, ALanH:

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, regarding the playoff or superbowl idea. I wasn't thinking enough about how much work running these GOTMs must be. It doesn't make sense to only let some people have the fun, given the natural limitation of resources in putting these on.

For what it's worth though, I don't think a playoff system is any more "elite," since everyone who wants to play starts from the same position as everyone else. But practically speaking, I see what you mean totally.

Thanks once again for hosting this! I really appreciate it. Thanks also for the link to the global rankings page. I hadn't noticed that. And congrats to all. Too bad there's no way to award a "had the most fun" prize. Some things can't be quantified... ;) .

I wasn't concerned about the work. The issue is only how many games a player would have to play in one month if s/he were involved in your play-off.

Woo! 67th for me! Almost in the top 10% of players. Then again, I guess most people were slow since we are all still trying to work out good strategies for Civ IV.

Thanks to the GOTM staff for their time, allowing all of us users to have fun.

I had a great time and learned a lot from seeing how other people played their game. I also see that if I want to be a high scorer I better not go cultural anymore. This would have been good info for GOTM2 which I finished this weekend going for the same victory condition.:mad:

One thing that would be really nice would be a way to only show a certain victory condition or a page for each. I know I can search through them to compare my win to the other cultural wins but with 6,239,762 entries it is a little tough.:crazyeye:

Congrats to the medal winners and thanks again to the people who run this competition.

Congrats to all 600+ on the first GOTM! :goodjob:

BIG CONGRATS TO THE CIV STAFF FOR THEIR GREAT WORK!!!! :eek: :D :cool:

I did have a quick question though....I saw a few others had asked this as well but I didn't see an answer. Are there going to be no awards for Time Victory? I'm not just asking because of the results this month, but for future games as well. Sometimes a Time Vic is the only option ( at least for people like me) but had I known there would be no award or anything for that victory condition I would have choosen to just go a different way and gotten a quicker victory and higher score and spent less time going to the end.

Anyway, thanks again to all the staff. It is amazing that you all were able to do this soooooo quick to the game coming out!!! :worship:

We're discussing the Time victory option. For Civ3 that was where you'd go to get a Cow award, of course. But we clearly can't extrapolate from there to this situation.

Theoretically playing to 2050 gives you the best chance to win the cow.

It's not as easy to stay under the domination limit in Civ4, with no option to sell cultural buildings or abandon cities. But I expect some creative milkers will find ways to get the cow in 2050.

TIt's not as easy to stay under the domination limit in Civ4, with no option to sell cultural buildings or abandon cities. It seems that Civ3 had the same problem at first which was circumvented by gifting cities rather than abandoning them. These then could also be a source of cheap workers. :)

Thanks - well spotted :thumbsup: A bug that's been hibernating ever since C3C COTM 1. Fixed.

I only noticed because I was trying to figure out why my GOTM1 ranking was different from my Global Ranking. With a data set of 1 game, they should be the same!

It's nice to know my mediocre game performance served some purpose -- if I had done better, I would have scored higher than Speedy and wouldn't have noticed the discrepancy!

:/ I submitted mine around the 22nd and never got a confirmation or anything, and then forgot about it until now.

Thanks for the answer so quick Alan!!!

I thought there might be some discussion going on.....the way you all are on top of everything.

Thanks!

:/ I submitted mine around the 22nd and never got a confirmation or anything, and then forgot about it until now.
It never appeared in our database. I would guess you received an error message and didn't notice.

One thing that would be really nice would be a way to only show a certain victory condition or a page for each. I know I can search through them to compare my win to the other cultural wins but with 6,239,762 entries it is a little tough.:crazyeye:
Quite right :thumbsup:. It's never been necessary before, with typically around a hundred submissions per game. I'll be refining the data displays and providing more features as time goes on. Let's hope that we keep the current great level of support for future games to justify doing it.

- On the results page, is there any significance to some of the scores being in blue?

Hmm, thanks. Scores are colour coded for entry class. Somehow two entries had been tagged as Conquest class, which is one of the classes we provide in the Civ3 games, and gets coloured blue. They were very early submissions, so I guess they got hit by a gremlin. I've fixed it.

thanks alot to the mods for your fast work! :)
I ranked at 204, so I'm in the top 3 :crazyeye:

thanks to all the people who make this gotm work! 600+ submission... that's a lot of work!

abegweit!! well done... team hagar represent!

well done to everyone!

I'm realy impressed by the big scoring.
Seems thant conquest and domination will rule the GOTM challenge once again in the CIV4!!!!!!!

Thanks so much to the staff members, this has been a big fun.
Thanks also to all participants, specially those who wrote their logs for others to learn from.

Regarding the scoring system, it must be wrong. How can my awful game be rated the 26th? I suppose all of us made a lot of mistakes, the game being so new.

My objective for the game is always "to win asap" so I choose the VC that best suits the current map. IMHO it is not good to leverage the score of different VC: if you are playing a duel map, how can you even consider a Spaceship Victory? So if it were my decision, only victory date would be taken into account, not population or anything else. This is my personal option, anyway.
On the other hand, Cultural Victory is a completely different beast, it has nothing to do with a "normal" game. Hummmmm.

@abegweit, you are completely right when you say that there must be a lot of idle time for people putting more then 30 hours in the game. I did not pour over the game for 60 hours, there was actually a 30 minutes interruption ;-)
I have the necesity to visit a city every time it grows, as I don't trust the governor. And also, when War Weariness takes a citizen out. And also... So it takes me a lot of time to complete a game.
That's why GOTM2 is not being so fun for me, post-1000AD-turns take so long in Epic as they used to do with Civ3 (when it took me 9 months to complete a GOTM, so I only played QSC and abandoned the game). If someone wrote a guide to play using minimal real-life time, I would be grateful.

A final question: the score and the final score don't seem to correlate. Take two random players, jesusin 26th and klarius 25th, for example. Same VC, same year, their values are 5401-42589 and 5310-43339. The second has less score but more final score.
Is the "score" not the score on the winning date but on the previous date? Then the example situation would be explained if jesusin just got one more tile in his territory to barely achieve Domination Victory in his last turn whereas klarius got a lot of cities growing in pop and a lot of borders expansion and maybe a couple of culture-bombs in that last turn.
I am sorry I can't open the saves to verify it mysef.

A final question: the score and the final score don't seem to correlate. Take two random players, jesusin 26th and klarius 25th, for example. Same VC, same year, their values are 5401-42589 and 5310-43339. The second has less score but more final score.The score is calculated by adding together four different score elements - pop, land, techs and culture. The final score is calculated by modifying each of those elements and summing them. The modifiers are not proportional, and the first three are exponential. So even if two base scores at the same victory date are identical, but made up of four different score element values, then the modified sums will not necessarily be the same.

:/ I submitted mine around the 22nd and never got a confirmation or anything, and then forgot about it until now.

Same exact thing happened to me. I thought I had submitted, and was surprised when I did not see my name in the list. If there was a error message upon submission, I missed it. I'll pay more attention next time. Are you supposed to get a confirmation of some sort when you upload succesfully?

Yes, if you have submit successfully you should see a screen that acknowledges your entry and summarises your submission data. A copy of that screen is also sent to the email address you supply.

If there's a problem you'll see an error screen that looks completely different, with red text on it, and you don't get an email. Since this game started I *do* get a mail if your upload fails, as I'm interested in what difficulties players have in case I can improve the process. So far the errors I've seen are mainly invalid email addresses, and errors in selecting the correct files to upload, and players have corrected the errors and successfully submitted second time around..

Since neither you nor Xerol appeared in our database or uploaded files directory for GOTM 1 it seems most likely that there was an error message and you missed it. One advantage of automated systems is that they are pretty consistent. With 620 uploads, if there had been a system problem then we'd have had more than two players complaining.

Woho. Fastest space race. I am really chufed, I cannot remember the last time I won anything with more players than a poker table ;)

Thanks all (but mostly the organisers) for the very entertaining game. See you all in GOTM 2.

193 FriendlyFire 6853 1973AD Domination Victory 15042 C4 1.09 12:00:19 <------ About 10 of those hours were done all in the final day.

I suprised I ranked so High (193) given the absolute disaterous start and numerous early mistakes I made. Thanks for putting us right next to the Greeks (quite a shock to find myself having to face off with an militaistc AI, No doubt Anwood did this buy design)

When the 100 turns remaining appeared I admitt I was looking at best a timeline victory. Domination Victory came as a total suprise to me (Didnt know about the victory condition screen)

The GOTM 1 saves, linked from the Results page, are now unprotected, and should load up in 1.52 if you want to have a look at them. Sorry for the delay in getting this done. Please let me know if you have trouble with any of them.