Today we can announce the results for Qsc19-Ottomans and extend our congratulations and thanks to all the players who submitted games.

We received 101 total submissions for this QSC game which again has set a new record and yielded 97 scorable games.

Our top seven QSC finishers played very strong games that demonstrated the power of their opening strategy and management decisions.

Creepster
Bremp
Darkness
Alexman
Mark Cutt
SirPleb
Aeson

A major feature of this month's results presentation is again the minimap index features that provide you with a visual reference to help you select games that you would ike to download for further review. These minimaps are made possible through the contributed support of RufRydyr and Xevious who converted every game into xxx.jpg images so that you can easily browse them online.

Here is a link to the complete set of Qsc19-Ottomans results web pages:

Qsc19 Results and Data Tables (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/qsc/qsc19/index.shtml)

I came in 4th???? :confused:
Pinch me, I must be dreaming.....:D

Congrats to all the players who submitted and thanks to the staff for getting the results out this quick....

Congrats to all in the top 5! Good job, Darkness, on 4th place! Ribannah, wonderful job! Truly extraordinary!

:goodjob:

6th ... and above SirPleb and Aeson!
I'm afraid I will never have a better result in my next 1000 GOTM.

Thanks to the staff, the QSC results pages are very professional.

Originally posted by Mark Cutt
I'm afraid I will never have a better result in my next 1000 GOTM.

I have the same feeling.... :( ;)

I noticed that all the top 4 players had already met all the other civs at 1000bc.
Is this a coincidence or the score system gives a high premium to the players who meets many civs?

I try to avoid talking about my own games in these threads because its so boring for other people :sleep: But this time I just can't resist....

In this game I built half a dozen spears for defense. Partly because it was my first emperor game and I expected the AI to be quite aggressive, and partly because I h8 my towns being ransacked by barbs, especially when I'm saving up for upgrades.

Also I didn't build a single galley in the QSC period, nor did I even start constructing the FP. The result of all this was that my QSC looks OK but my final submitted game stinks.

I really need some help learning how to play once I get into the middle ages. Anyone know any decent links?

On another note: The GOTM staff must be getting fed up with people thanking them for what they do, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Thanks guys. :goodjob:


EDIT: Mark

IMO it isn't getting the contacts that increases the score, it's what the player does with the contact. Getting the contact early, and particularly b4 the local civs enables you to do more with it to improve the power of your position through careful trading. I think the scoring system fairly reflects this.

Kudos to Ribannah for a great start and a fantastic looking timeline which I will be studying in detail.

I really need to figure out how Ribannah knew better than to move atop the mountains.

Originally posted by Mark Cutt
I noticed that all the top 4 players had already met all the other civs at 1000bc.
Is this a coincidence or the score system gives a high premium to the players who meets many civs?
You got more points for contacts, more points for additional techs, plus more money from trade opportunities.

Originally posted by mad-bax
I try to avoid talking about my own games in these threads because its so boring for other people :sleep: But this time I just can't resist....


I can imagine... well done :goodjob:. I too built too many spears, but I added to that mistake by not building granaries at first, based on suggestions of not having the time, 'cos of the expected crampiness...:lol:

Space <--- doing better in this month' game :)

Originally posted by a space oddity

Space <--- doing better in this month' game :)

You're a veteran Deity player now Space, so I guess this month will be a breeze for you. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Yndy

You got more points for contacts, more points for additional techs, plus more money from trade opportunities.

You're right.
Looking at my gotm19 I'm still not sure that I should have built 2 or 3 additional suicide galleys instad of some swordmen ready to crash Brennus.
That is one of the many tough decisions in a civ match that make civ such a great game.

I really bit the big one on this start!

Originally posted by RufRydyr
I really bit the big one on this start!

:lol: :lol: :cry: :suicide:

As god is my witness I swear I will never whine about the RNG ever again.

Congrats to all, especially Darkness and Mark Cutt (welcome).

Originally posted by Mark Cutt:
Looking at my gotm19 I'm still not sure that I should have built 2 or 3 additional suicide galleys instad of some swordmen ready to crash Brennus.
I guess you had to build one or the other. The top ten players were in group 4 or 5.

Hot Rod@:goodjob: one place out of the top ten!
Personally, my fall from #3 was not unexpected. I'm still happy with my #20. And it was another banner month for LKentder's students (both of us killing LK:p) Thanks again for helping us so much LK!:worshp:

The minimaps were a great help comparing this month with the various levels of contact. I did miss the initial settler placement map though. I thought that was really cool last month!

Terrific presentation again QSC staff.:goodjob:

Congratuation to all winners and players!:goodjob: Wow, I'm moving up to #23 this month (only because DaveMcW didn't submit; thanks Dave). You guys are getting too good at this game.

Originally posted by Moonsinger
Congratuation to all winners and players!:goodjob: Wow, I'm moving up to #23 this month (only because DaveMcW didn't submit; thanks Dave). You guys are getting too good at this game.
Moonsinger@ how did Bamspeedy's ISC style work out? Too bad he didn't submit either so you could compare.:) Guess Creepster's challenge for I Crammus was too much for him.:lol:

Originally posted by ControlFreak
Moonsinger@ how did Bamspeedy's ISC style work out? Too bad he didn't submit either so you could compare.:)

I don't know...I have always said that I will try Bamspeedy's ISC style in my next game, but I never did. I guess it's hard to tech the old dinosaur any new tricks.:( One can't learn to adapt to new enviornment will soon go extinct. I think I'm heading to join my buddy dinosaurs in the land of extinction in any day now, but not before I finish the GOTM20.

I made a quick analysis correlating QSC results and full game results.
I divided the full game players in 4 quartiles and calculate how many players of each quartile participate to QSC.

Here are the results:

GOTM 17
Top 25% players: 58% played QSC, 42% did not play QSC
2nd quart. players: 46% - 54%
3rd quart. players: 15% - 85%
4th quart. players: 20% - 80%

GOTM18
1st quartile players: 65% - 35%
2nd quartile players: 28% - 73%
3rd quartile players: 25% - 75%
4th quartile players: 22% - 78%

Said in natural language: either only the best player tend to play QSC or those who play QSC tend to become a best player

Congrats to the winners. It seems I'm finally starting to learn from them. With the last three months of 60th - 70th percentile, I am happy to be at 28th this month. Still need to work on the settler factory thing, but I'm getting there.

Mark Cutt,

Excellent Quartile analysis and what you have done is almost exactly what I have done each month in the background as part of the QSC review process.

It is hard to correlate individual QSC scores versus final game scores because there are so many decisions that can rest in between the end of the Qsc and the Final Victory.

One thing that we can observe is that players in the QSC tend to fall into two fairly distinctive groups that evolve over time.

The "Demonstrators/Performers" are players who really do seem to be in command of the game even without the QSC and they are using the Qsc as a vehicle to give something back to the community while at the same time testing the finite limits of some fairly precise strategy choices.

The "Emerging Players" are players who use the Qsc to sort out the mechanical techniques that open up the doors to doing fun things in the game at difficulty levels that may have been previously untried or inaccessible. We see players in this second group actively moving up in quantitative score performance in both the Qsc and The Full game submission.

There are qualitative measures of improvement that we can see in most "emerging players" as well. The ability to communicate what is going on in their games as well as to focus all their energies on a specific game altering objective in fun and innovative ways represent things that we hope expand the enjoyment of that game just as much as they expand the players ability to beat the challnges that may be raised.

In general we may have shifted the average level of play of almost all players up by 1/2 to almost 1 full difficulty level though the participation in the QSC.

What I find most interesting about the QSC is that it forces you to think towards a fixed goal early in the game. This type of focused approach can only help your game to improve. Before the QSC I never decided on my victory condition until I was well in the "wrap up" phase of the game. Now I start thinking about it before my first move. It may change once I see the map, but it is a much more focused path than what it used to be.

Congratulations to all of the players, both at the top level and to those who feel that they have improved their game at any level.:beer: :goodjob:

@Control Freak: :lol: Yeah my games have really improved because of my playing SGs with Lee. Hope Lee continues to play GOTM and the SGs it is always good fun to see how your SG partners fair in the GOTM and QSC. Hope this month gets even more SG players interested. Maybe some day I will hit the top ten but then again I am sure my Early start will not hold up once the GOTM results come out.

Originally posted by Moonsinger
Wow, I'm moving up to #23 this month (only because DaveMcW didn't submit; thanks Dave).

Actually I did submit, I'm just 16 ranks below you. :)

I didn't care about QSC score in this game, and it shows. I avoided contacting the second continent as long as possible to keep my monopoly techs more expensive for them. I spent 500 shields on wonders which only count for 200 points. I played 95% of the QSC as a 4CC, which is great for production but lousy for score. I submitted with 10 unhappy people because I think playing with the slider at 1000BC is silly.

It's really nice to see that most of new players and the students are doing very well and some of them begin to surpass their own teachers. :goodjob:

Sorry DaveMcW, I don't know why I didn't see your name.:(

Dave,

You also begin working on you specific victory condition 43 turns before 4000bc.

I can open your QSC and see that you are 350% focused on only one objective (which is admirable and typical of your style).

In some cases you are sacrificing three or four hundred points of power to gain two or three turns toward beating your best date objective.

I will be interested to see if you feel that there were some scoring elements and power elements that you may have been able to drive even higher within the limits of OCN impact on your number two city (which was perfectly placed IMNSHO).

Great game for you as well. :goodjob:

Originally posted by Xevious
Still need to work on the settler factory thing, but I'm getting there.

If you want to see a master developing a settler factory, you should look at the Timeline for SirPleb's game in QSC 17 Carthage. He detailed every move he made and why he made them. It really helped me understand how sharing resources between cities can improve your game.

Hopefully it will really help me in GOTM 20 where I used his style of play to get off to a good start.

Well, I got 67 0f 98, still in top half. Not so bad considering I didn't irrigate that game square.
:cry:

I did build a few temples. I was worried about Brennus' close capital. I figured I could finish expanding northward at a slower rate. That decision did cause one war, but probably did not affect Ceasar's despotic ways.

I wound up loosing the space race. Tech went so fast I couldn't finish off Hannibal with my Siphai. Maybe I could have taken out a few more infantry, but I didn't want to loose all my troops when the best defenders I had were muskets!

Congrats to the top dogs.

The results are great, and so fast too. Maybe I should read a timeline before continuing with QSC20.

One suggestion for the QSC summary - it would be nice to have a name to group lookup, along with the overall rank.

Well..I should get some kind of honor for dropping the most places in a QSC. GOTM18 I got 26th place. GOTM19 I get 64th place. I was in group 6. I KNEW not building a granary was going to be majorly dumb idea...and I regretted it the whole time. I will not make this mistake in 20 if it can at all be helped. I did go on to win via conquest, at a much later date than the pace setters. Ah well..

eh... I went from 20th to 82nd...

... so I get that prize, thank you rabies :goodjob: you've made my day :lol:

@a space oddity: ouch! Ok..I'll shut up now....now you've made my day! ;)

Once again we see the power of meeting other nations. The sooner the better. And if you can be the first one to do it, still even better. Contacts allow you all sorts of new strategies.

The interesting thing is the effect on QSC scores. I know that I made contact with Rome just after the 1000 BC mark. If that had happened before, it would have increased my score greatly to have the extra trading partner.

I also find it interesting to see how we end up in groups. I got group 7, when I thought I was being a warmonger. Guess it's all in the perceptions.

jeffelammar,

Your game was one of those interesting games that fell right at the cut off point between Group5 and Group7. You and DaveMcW were both right at this dividing line where you had 11 or 12 units in the warrior/sword path with about 50% of them veteran. Your game was also the highest scoring game in that group 7.

You can really look at groups 5, 7, and 8 as sort of continuum of militray power focus with pnp_dredd in group 5 at one end of the spectrum and BadAndy in Group 8 at the opposite end of the spectrum.

You were already in the midst of using your 7 swordsmen to extract a heavy toll on Brennus and convert you military power into other forms.

The number that was being used to divide up the groups was:

warriors + swordsmen + veterans + decorated +elites
(plus selecting any one with 10 or more swordsmen out ther hacking away)

pnp_dredd's number was at 37 while yours and DaveMcw's were are 17 and 18 respectively.

Again the groupings are not absolute and it is OK if there is ome overlap since we want to look at common elements of teh groups instead of just individual games.

Alright!! Not only do I climb up into the top20, but I gain special recognition for my 'huge' ... group of friendly, sword-bearing 'cultural ambassadors.' :D (Tis a shame that Carthage was the 3rd civ on my continent; although I did appreciate the 2 wonders Hannibal built for me!)

Congrats to all, and thanks (once again!!) for the great work done by the GOTM staff!

Originally posted by Mark Cutt
I noticed that all the top 4 players had already met all the other civs at 1000bc.
Is this a coincidence or the score system gives a high premium to the players who meets many civs?

I think this has the same problems that the pyramiding tech points did, obviously the contacts have value, but there is no way that an increasing value makes sense. I haven't looked too deeply at the other games, but getting the other island contacts early can make a big difference, but I expect only on a linear scale.
This is another one of those things that shows more in how you use it then in simply having it.


Originally posted by rabies
I KNEW not building a granary was going to be majorly dumb idea...and I regretted it the whole time. I will not make this mistake in 20 if it can at all be helped. I did go on to win via conquest, at a much later date than the pace setters. Ah well..

I didn't build any granaries and I don't usually consider them essential to success, 60s is a pretty large commitment in the early game. Since this isn't a gotm20 strategy thread I won't comment on any strategy except to say that in a diety game it could be that by the time you've built the granary you could end up with no space left in which to expand.

Cracker,
Could you enlighten us on some of the 'General Assess' words you used in the spreadsheet? I see 'flood' 'bonus' 'xxx' and a couple other (mostly self explanitory) ones.

..and once again, I'd like to thank you/your team for taking the time to put these spreadsheets together. I love looking through them.

Smirk,
Would it be smarter (on more difficult levels) to build a settler from the capital first..and then a granary? I am toying with this idea on gotm20 (have not started yet).

a couple of players seemed to be using an aggressive settle flood strategy and that is where the "flood" note came from.

The "xxx" was just a marker that in my mind could have been "moonshine" or "rat poison" or something to indicate a first reaction to seeing the footprint of those games. (hopefully no one will take those personally). When you open the games and look at them it is sort of an out of body experience. You try to ignore anything about the player and in many ways the owner of the game is anonymous while the beans are being counted.

But some games have a signature style to them that is either good or bad. When you open Bamspeedy of Creepster's games you can usually say "Oh, that's Bamspeedy or Creepster just by the city placement density that they use in many games."
Some of the markers in the notes where initially to identify things that looked like really bad worker and city placement decisions but that train of thought was abandoned.

The "Bonus" or "Sword Bonus" markers were for games that had recently mass upgraded swords and then where actively in the process of getting them into position to do something powerful. This is the first game where we have seen a number of players actively doing this well because often players will time the swordsmen rush to fall in the 800-700bc time frame. (I think BillChin, TedJackson, Smirk, BlackHawk, Moonsinger, and JonathonValjean were on this slightly later timeline. If we could see that the swords were upgraded and then sent immediately into battle, there was a cash equalization bonus added to the "partial credit" scoring line.

The QSC chart seems incorrect for my game (I'm in group 1). It says I had 5 granaries, which isn't right. I did have 5 libraries, which aren't listed. Apparently, building libraries was so unusual that it confused someone who was preparing the charts.

DDJ

I think there's something wacky, because I'm listed in grp 2 as a temple builder, and I built none - but did build libraries!

Not only has that put me in the wrong group, but also has artificially inflated my score, since I think you get more points for the more expensive temples. And I thought I had done so well....:(

Originally posted by DaveMcW
I submitted with 10 unhappy people because I think playing with the slider at 1000BC is silly.

This seems silly to me, too. I think the QSC score should count all citizens the same, because obviously anyone can increase luxuries to 100% just before they submit, just to increase the score.
Cracker, any reason not to do this?

I also notice that the Pyramids are huge in the QSC score, because they give 60 points per city (i.e., you get the score for the granary in every city you own). This seems excessive, since the granaries in non-core cities are worth less (you wouldn't build them if they weren't free).

Just some minor nitpicks with the scoring, in case anyone is considering adjustments.

I continue to score in the 2d division of the QSC rankings, and feel it's primarily due to one glaring deficiency: the inability to manage an optimized settler factory. I did much better in gotm 20, but can't really say that I have cracked the equation that allows a good location to pump out settlers in 4-5 turns. As some of the prior posts attest, it would be very helpful if one of the more adept players would sketch out what is required to build and manage such a factory, given varying terrain.

This has all been explained well elsewhere, but a 4-turn settler factory might go like this:

5 pop, 10 food, 0 shields
5 pop, 15 food, 6 shields (+5/+6)
6 pop, 10 food, 14 shields (+5/+8)
6 pop, 15 food, 21 shields (+5/+7)
5 pop, 0 food, 0 shields (+5/+9)

This requires that you have 5 tiles that together produce 13 food and 5 shields (always assign citizens to work these); a 6th tile that produces 2 food and 1 shield, like an irrigated plains or a mined grassland (assign a citizen to work this at size 6); and a 7th tile that produces 2 shields, like a forest, or mined plains or hill or mountain or desert (never assign a worker here, but you get the forest production on the 2nd and 4th turn when the city grows, assuming you specify "Emphasize production" in the governor menu).

A "normal" tile in despotism (plains or forest or grassland or flood plain or hill) puts out 3 food-plus-shields per turn, when improved. So 5 tiles would normally give you 15. In the illustration above, you need 18, so you need 3 units of "bonus" food and/or shields (and you also need the right mix).

Sometimes you may have to do something more complicated, with changes every turn, because you don't have exactly the right mix of terrains. Or you might have slightly more than you need, so you can "share" the bonus resources with adjacent cities, by working them some but not all turns of the cycle. But I think it's pretty easy to do those things (if you have the patience for the micromanagement) if you understand the above sequence.

P.S. You also get one extra shield when your city grows to size 7, if it's on a terrain that normally produces a shield. I didn't include that in the above calculation, but if you know you have that, you can have one less shield at some point in the cycle.

Txurce

by no means an expert but...

you need bonus food locally to give +5fpt at 2 or 3 consecutive populations

you need to be able to generate ~7spt at the same time

you need a granary

let's say you have a couple of grasslands with cattle; irrigate both to give 4fpt, 1 spt each
your city gives 2fpt and 1spt

so pop2 will be 10fpt and 3spt

add a forest: 1fpt, 2spt, and a mined bonus grassland: 2fpt, 2spt

pop4: 13fpt, (+5 excess) and 7spt

after 2 turns you'll grow to size 5. When you do, the new citizen will work your most productive (shields) tile - a forest, we hope. So after 2 turns you get 7+9 shields.

At the start of the turn, move the new citizen onto a regular grassland. We now have 2 turns at pop5 with 15fpt and 7spt. After 2 more turns we grow to pop6, and build a settler (16+7+7=30; in fact we'd get 9 the last turn, so we could have saved a little along the way). Settler takes you back to size 4, and start again.

You MUST have some kind of food bonus to make it work; just improving regular tiles won't get the job done.

edit: too darned slow. cursed one handed typing :(

Thanks very much, guys. What I hadn't figured out was the number of citizens required in the "sweet spot." You both seem to indicate that it's in the 4-6 range, depending on whether I just built or am about to build a settler. I've always been impatient, and start building settlers before I grow big enough to optimize.

Originally posted by MadScot
You MUST have some kind of food bonus to make it work; just improving regular tiles won't get the job done.

That is right. It is why finding those food boni early (either for the capital or for your second city - or both/more!) is so very important.

If you can't get to +5 food there are several possibilities:
- you can build Warriors in between, because you will have more shields than food;
- the Settler factory will simply start out / stay smaller (not recommended if it's your capital);
- the Settler factory will grow a bit while building an improvement, then shrink again while it's pumping out the next batch of Settlers.

The line between Settler factory and a normal city, that occasionally builds one, is thin there.

And sometimes it's wise to be impatient and build one or two Settlers before setting up the true 4-turn factory, because:
- your Workers are still busy improving the terrain and/or
- those early Settlers have a great spot to found another city that will contribute to the growth of the empire.

First of all, thanks to the GotM staff for continuously improving these excellent events (GotM/QSC) :thumbsup:

I have to say that i'm extremely pleased with my 16 th position in this QSC, nice climb from qsc18 ~50 th position. Propably will never reach this high position again :king: Would have propably done better if i had known how to properly set up a settler factory. (didnt even cut the game forest :() Unfortunately i discovered the secret of perfect settler factory only from Bamspeedys Deity Settlers article when preparing to Gotm20. (excellent article BtW :goodjob: )

Even though there are some unclear issues to me in QSC, for example, do we get negative points for unhappy people, or why is that number 5 there like this : (5).

If this is so, it seems silly, since that could be avoided by adjusting luxury slider high enough as stated perviously by DaviddesJ.

Adjusting the slider also affects the amount of content and happy people, thus netting you more points. Or is there some twist here that i dont understand ? (wouldnt be the first time :))

Greenlight,

You are correct that adjusting the luxury slider in the early game when you can appropriately do that will increase your score - - in the Civgame, in the Jason Score, and in the QSC.

The QSC scoring impact is minor but intended to at least get your attention. The early impact in the game and Jason scores can be significant and uses a cummulative average across all turns so you have to begin to pay attention to this feature early in the game to get the most benefit.

Getting good at this also avoids lost production from fallow added citizens as well as disorder.

Based on a review of the saved minimaps presented for GOTM-19. It is readily apparent for all of the AI civs that the cities were developed on the same sites in each of the individual games played. Further, from comparison of the maps, you can roughly determine what order they seem to have been founded in relative to each other. Is this consistently true? Assumably it has to do with the random # generator seed being the same for the saved GOTM file, as well as a set of hard coded rules that the AI operates under. If these are true, and the cities are founded in a given order in each game (from a review of retirement timeline films), then that would further imply that the rules extend down to unit level, and that behavior will be consistent. As examples, what terrains are explored in what order, or if terrain is the same in all directions, then what directions are explored (either compass or relative to map equator) in what order; where roads & improvements will be developed in what order; what civs will always be at war with whom; what order your cities will be attacked in, etc. Thus, upon game start and except as effected by the actions of the human player, the game will always progress the same and arrive at the same conclusion. For any given game, once another civ is encountered and their locale is fully mapped, then their given behavior if unmolested should be determinable, and further, if they are countered, then their response should be equally predictable. As another example, if you knew where their next city was to be built, and you built there first, then you could also determine where they would build next instead. You could act as puppet master for them to a certain extent, forcing them to react in expected ways simply by shaping your own actions. Of course, this would need a very thorough study of comparable GOTM files, or a review of the source code.

I feel kind of silly, having this eureka moment, when it is just software after all, and it would logically make sense that it performs this way, but this just hit me as a huge leap. I have been re-reading and analyzing the lessons from GOTM 8 & 9, as well as making my own analysis of the different civs and the mathematical likelihood's of who will have GAs when, and such, over the past few weeks, but seeing the maps just put it all together for me. I'd appreciate any comments. Thanks.

Originally posted by RowAndLive
You could act as puppet master for them to a certain extent, forcing them to react in expected ways simply by shaping your own actions. Of course, this would need a very thorough study of comparable GOTM files, or a review of the source code.


Technically it's possible with enough knowledge of the game engine, but you would need more information than you get in normal play. The AI's city locations are based on resources (including "undiscovered" resources). Their unit moves are affected by enemies, so you would need military plans for all civs including the barbarians.

Its sort of like dropping a jar full of superballs. Knowing the physics, you could predict where every ball will end up but the complexity make the solving unfeasible.

RowandLive- If you have PTW, experiment with the debug mode.

As soon as you use a RNG number, you affect all the other AI's RNG numbers, even on the other side of the planet that you don't have contact with.

You never know, using an RNG number can cause another AI on the other side of the planet to either capture their opponent's capital, or have their entire stack of warriors fall to a lone spearman.

Where they build cities is based mostly on terrain and resources, so even though there may be a random number involved, the terrain would cause the AI to favor these sites, so even though an RNG number has been used up, they will still heavily favor these city sites and will nearly always build there.

Cracker has studied AI tendencies towards where the AI likes to build and can adjust the terrain to 'help' or encouage the AI build where he wants them to if he chooses or desires to (I'm not saying he has actually done this, though, in this game or any other).

As far as I know RNG numbers are used up when:
1. You founded a city
2. You trade techs with the AI (they use a RNG number to pick their next tech to research)
3. Worker automation, and unit 'auto-explore'
4. Battles
5. Culture flips. Not sure how often this is checked. I know it would be checked every turn in trouble spots, but don't know if a city with 0% chance of culture flipping would use up an RNG number or not.
6. Every unit completion and tech completion uses an RNG number, when the governor recommends what you should build/research next.
7. Popping goody huts
8. Every civ you have contact with uses an RNG number to decide whether or not to make a trade with you, declare war, demand tribute, etc.
9. If you see a civ, but haven't contacted them, they may use up an RNG number to decide whether or not to contact you (I have had civs ignore me).
10. Suicide galleys

I'm sure there are more....
But you can get the general idea that for 2 games to become identical, it would require alot of attention to every single detail.

Originally posted by RowAndLive
Based on a review of the saved minimaps presented for GOTM-19. It is readily apparent for all of the AI civs that the cities were developed on the same sites in each of the individual games played. Further, from comparison of the maps, you can roughly determine what order they seem to have been founded in relative to each other. Is this consistently true? Assumably it has to do with the random # generator seed being the same for the saved GOTM file, as well as a set of hard coded rules that the AI operates under.

Some of the game mechanics are pretty much deterministic whereas others will be heavily influence by the random number generator(RNG). The city placement is one which is not really affected by the RNG. AI generally places the city at about equal intervals and it is highly suspected (if not confirmed) that it KNOWS where all the strategic resources are right from the beginning of the game and will always seek to settle in those spots. The deterministic mechanics has been well use by many players. For example, once you play long enough, you pretty much know what the AI is going to research. Others like the exploration seems pretty much random (determine by RNG).

Originally posted by Qitai

Others like the exploration seems pretty much random (determine by RNG).
The mechanistic side of exploration is that the AI will not explore in areas it has mapped. Some have said you can hurt an AI by selling him a map of the other civs because he won't walk a unit overthere to meet them.

Originally posted by cracker

The QSC scoring impact is minor but intended to at least get your attention.


But the QSC scoring doesn't have anything to do with the real use of the slider. It just rewards people who play the whole game up to 1000BC in whatever way they normally do, and then move the slider to 100% entertainment just before they submit the QSC save file.

The early impact in the game and Jason scores can be significant and uses a cummulative average across all turns so you have to begin to pay attention to this feature early in the game to get the most benefit.


The in-game score is based on the total number of people, not weighted in any way, so the contribution from the early turns is insignificant. Raising entertainment higher in order to produce more happy people just to increase your score (without affecting civil disorder or WLTKD) is completely counterproductive; you're better off with a lower entertainment level and more income which you can leverage into other advantages. (Until you have a relatively dominant position, and don't need the money, and also have colonized most of your land.)

Originally posted by DaviddesJ


The in-game score is based on the total number of people, not weighted in any way, so the contribution from the early turns is insignificant. Raising entertainment higher in order to produce more happy people just to increase your score (without affecting civil disorder or WLTKD) is completely counterproductive; you're better off with a lower entertainment level and more income which you can leverage into other advantages. (Until you have a relatively dominant position, and don't need the money, and also have colonized most of your land.)

Is this correct? If the scores are averaged it would seem that it would indeed matter. Can someone provide a mathematical example that shows more clearly how this works.

Originally posted by ltcoljt
Is this correct? If the scores are averaged it would seem that it would indeed matter. Can someone provide a mathematical example that shows more clearly how this works.

Sure. Every person you make happy, instead of content, is worth 1 point that turn, which means it increases your average for the whole game by 1/540 point.

So suppose you have 40 citizens in 1000BC. You use the slider to make an extra 10 happy rather than content, which costs you 12 gold. (Slightly more than the number of happy faces you gain, because as you increase the slider some small cities may end up "wasting" happy faces.) So spending 12 gold gains you 10/540 = 0.019 points to your endgame score (which the Jason score is supposed to track), or 0.0015 points per gold spent.

Suppose you did this for many turns, and spent 400 gold. Then you'd increase your score at the end of the game by a trivial 0.6 points. Don't you think that spending 400 gold on research or trading or improvements, in the early era, would let you increase the strength of your position significantly, and gain, in the long run, significantly more than 0.6 points in your endgame score?

I am in PTW, so I'll have to try playing with the RNG, and working through the same game a few times, and watching how they develop on the macro level - tedious, but science advances slowly sometimes, even when trying to discover man-made laws of software. I pretty well know the AI pattern on tech development, but I just wish they wouldn't be ahead of me more often than not... ;-) And concerning unit moves for exploring, again I'm thinking on the macro level - toward the equator first, toward the rivers and coasts first, etc. that would then lead them to build cities in the same order from game start. This would then imply that they know where the resources are before they've even explored the fog - meaning that their exploration,while perhaps RNG controlled on a tile level, is not random on a macro level. They explore macro areas of fog in a given order so as to build cities in certain order - "exploration" tile exposure for them at that point becomes just a cosmetic / map trading control, and limit to how fast they can develop certain city sites. This could be useful if you trade maps frequently, allowing you to get a better idea of what benefits lie "beneath the tiles" beofre they are exposed. That would also explain the great importance that the AI places on maps. Similarily, it will trade ROP and maps for different prices, paying more or asking more based on the relative strength in tiles. So again, it knows how many tiles I have that it hasn't seen vs how many tiles they have that I haven't seen, and it demands or pays more accordingly.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
As far as I know RNG numbers are used up when:
1. You founded a city
2. You trade techs with the AI (they use a RNG number to pick their next tech to research)
3. Worker automation, and unit 'auto-explore'
4. Battles
5. Culture flips. Not sure how often this is checked. I know it would be checked every turn in trouble spots, but don't know if a city with 0% chance of culture flipping would use up an RNG number or not.
6. Every unit completion and tech completion uses an RNG number, when the governor recommends what you should build/research next.
7. Popping goody huts
8. Every civ you have contact with uses an RNG number to decide whether or not to make a trade with you, declare war, demand tribute, etc.
9. If you see a civ, but haven't contacted them, they may use up an RNG number to decide whether or not to contact you (I have had civs ignore me).
10. Suicide galleys

I'm sure there are more....


Some possibles:

11. Trading a contact
12. The AI trades for contact with you (or not)
13. You build an embassy
14. The AI builds an embassy (or not)
15. Disbanding a unit
16. Abandoning a city
17. Razing a city
18. Trading a Worker
19. Capturing a unit
20. Disease
21. Privateers in AI territory / sight
22. Birth of Barbarians
23. Barbarians entering AI territory / sight
24. Barbarians getting killed
25. The AI goes into Anarchy (or not)
26. The AI chooses a new Government
27. The AI declares war / signs a treaty
28. Rebellion
29. Nuclear Power Plants
30. The AI does Espionage
31. The AI uses a Leader
32. The AI starts /switches to a Wonder

Things that seem to use different rules: doing espionage yourself, generating leaders.

The RNG is very hard to predict.
I have spent a couple hours trying to re-create some of the top QSC timlines (sir pleb, Creepster, Ribbanah)....and though some of them are very detailed, and I follow them to the letter, I don't get the exact same results. Often, this results in contacts made 1 turn later, or settlers coming out one turn later...In Sir Plebs case, I simply don't understand how he did not have massive barbarian problems up to the 2030 mark..by that time, he only had 3 warriors...and in my mirror game, 2 of those warriors were sacked by barbs..then pressed onto cities that caused production fall-backs or loss of gold (not allowing me to continue deficit tech spending). Yet in his notes, he does not even mention a barb enconter till many turns later! It is kind of annoying that you cannot recreate somebody elses game to learn...

Originally posted by rabies
It is kind of annoying that you cannot recreate somebody elses game
It sure is! Some discussion near the end of the GOTM19 spoiler1 thread got me trying to recreate my timeline and I couldn't do it. I gave up after realizing that discussions with other Civs use the RNG.

In trying to replay it I found that the barbarian behavior (seen at 3500 around Entremont) and Celt exploring behavior could go in numerous different ways.

It sure would be nice if Firaxis could change it to use a separate RNG seed for all player-initiated non-move/combat related actions. By changing a few of those (diplomacy dialogs and suggested next builds/research for the human only) to use a separate seed, timelines would become reproduceable I think. Though it would matter a lot to us I guess it is too much to hope for, reproduceable timelines are probably not a top priority for them :(

Originally posted by Txurce
Thanks very much, guys. What I hadn't figured out was the number of citizens required in the "sweet spot." You both seem to indicate that it's in the 4-6 range, depending on whether I just built or am about to build a settler. I've always been impatient, and start building settlers before I grow big enough to optimize.

Sometimes it has to be 5/7 to get enough shields, especially if your bonus food tile is a flood-plain wheat, which produces none, or if you're lacking in 2-food/2-shields tiles (mined bonus grasslands, usually). 4/6 is usually better if you can manage it, since it'll take less of the lux slider to keep happy. If you have enough happy for 5/7, though, that's great due to the higher commerce you'll have.

Renata

If it's 5/7, don't you have to be sure to build the settler at the 6-7 expansion, or risk losing stored food in granary when you build the settler? (I always seem to end up at 4/6 in my games)

Also, if the city can't manage it at the 5/7 route due to shield shortfall, it'll take longer to set up as you need a larger pop AND the granary will be more of a pain to build. It might be the best option you have, but hopefully there's a city site on the other side of that bonus food that works better.

Originally posted by MadScot
If it's 5/7, don't you have to be sure to build the settler at the 6-7 expansion, or risk losing stored food in granary when you build the settler? (I always seem to end up at 4/6 in my games)

Also, if the city can't manage it at the 5/7 route due to shield shortfall, it'll take longer to set up as you need a larger pop AND the granary will be more of a pain to build. It might be the best option you have, but hopefully there's a city site on the other side of that bonus food that works better.

Yes, the settler has to come out on the same turn as growth to size 7, or the stored food would be lost.

The absolute dead minimum of shields you can get by with for a 4-turn settler factory is six for the first two turns and seven for the last two, provided you also have a 2-shield tile such as a forest or a mined plains for the governer to assign the new citizen to at each growth (6+6(+2)+7+7(+2) = 30). A funny thing about this pattern is that for the second growth the city will actually say 1 turn left for growth and 2 to build the settler, but you still get the settler the next turn.

In any rate, I've seen this pattern a lot lately looking for flood-plain starts to practice for this month's game. With a flood-plain wheat providing the food, you need at least two bonus-grass type tiles in the radius to get to six shields at size 4. If you don't have that, you need to go up a size to 5/7. I usually don't have trouble building the granary in such situations: either I pop-rush 20 shields of it [doesn't help the lux slider, granted!] or I chop a forest or two.

Renata

Originally posted by Renata
The absolute dead minimum of shields you can get by with for a 4-turn settler factory is six for the first two turns and seven for the last two, provided you also have a 2-shield tile such as a forest or a mined plains for the governer to assign the new citizen to at each growth (6+6(+2)+7+7(+2) = 30).

You actually only need 25 shields, not 26. You get +2 on the turn that your city grows from size 5 to size 6, and +3 on the turn that it grows from size 6 to size 7. (Because the city center produces 2 shields at size 7, as long as it's built on a terrain that normally produces at least one shield.)

Don't forget to adjust down for corruption, though, if it's not your capital. It's possible that some of the +2 or +3 shields can be taken away by corruption.

Another gotcha: your city has to be able to actually grow to size 7! It doesn't work if you don't have fresh water or an aqueduct, because the city can't expand to size 7 and use up the food and generate the extra shields.

Ooh, good points, thanks! (Of course if you're working a flood-plain wheat you're probably on a river, though. :) )

Renata

Originally posted by Renata
Yes, the settler has to come out on the same turn as growth to size 7, or the stored food would be lost.

If the surrounding tiles are good you could do something with 7+ also. I was late in building this settler and my town grew to size 7. I rearranged the tiles and got the settler to come out in 3 turns with +4 food in turn one. In turn two I rearranged the tiles and got the settler to be ready in one turn with food -3. This way I only lost one food in the decrease.

What a surprise, I made it to 17 in the group that

"had moderately strong population growth but may have failed to distinguish themselves with focusing the production and commerce benefits of that population in tandem with other trading, research, and military growth opportunities."

Has anyone noticed the way naming of towns/cities affects the QSC? Most participants didn't bother renaming, but the following did :

Aeson (Orange Sodia, Soda River, Carbinated River, Carbonated Fork, Soda Bay, Soda Lake, Orange Coast, Soda Silks, Carbonated Springs, Orange Dairy, Soda Stables, Orange Frosty, Orange Silk Grove, Soda Delta, Orange Gem Lake)
Col (Colstantinople, 3*Sogut, 2*Iznik, Colborough)
Creepster (Can't be bothered to list them, but all 20 settled contain creepster in their name)
Deep Thought (Rhi'Anon, Madrigal, Brayle, Stoneheim, Otter Ferry, Leix, Shoal, Tyr, Gonen)
RufRydyr (1st of 5 named RufRydyrville, which was captured by the Celts in 2510BC)
whb (Sogood, Southriver Hill, Spicetown, Silkylake, Westriver Hill, Northshore, Eastshore)

So, the moral of the story, if you want it easy just name your towns after Orange Soda products or Creepster. If you want a challenge then name your first town RufRydyrville :).

Just a note: I was not trying to question the group I was put in. When I compare stats, I knew I was on that border. My point was that when I was playing, I thought I was being a warmonger. It's amazing how your impression of a game can be very different from the reality when you step back and look at it with your 20/20 hindsight.

Also, the main reason that I didn't have more of a swordsman blitz is that I noticed that Brennus had no Iron, and I wanted to take him down before he found some. Otherwise I probably would have timed it in the forementioned 800-700 BC range.

I do have to say that I am always impressed with people who get wonders in the QSC timeframe. I still have to spend most of my effort expanding, and seem to not get to wonders till 600 BC. Guess I still have a lot to learn.

On having a 4 turn settler factory:

Is there another requirement that it is on a river or has an aquaduct?

I ran into a situation where I would end up size 4 with a full food box. So without the aquaduct you hit size 6/max food and then end up size 4/max food. Thus it takes an extra turn (or you need to do it with 1 size 4 turn, 2 size 5 turns and a size 6 turn).

Or at least that was my guess. Am I right?

------------------------------------------------------------

Also for the QSC it has been mentioned that you can raise your happiness at the end.

Does this also mean you can do things on the last turn to raise score that you don't do in your full GOTM. For example, I could buy some techs and improve my score, while in the GOTM, I end up waiting a few turns for a tech to finish to get a better deal.

It seems squirrely, but then again if QSC score is what you CAN do by 1000 BC(as compared to did do in the full game), then it would make sense.

I am assuming here that you are loading the QSC game up (which is a end of turn save for year 1000 bc from the full game) before submitting it, and that you have played your GOTM well past the QSC date, otherwise the trade itself could be a spoiler for the GOTM.

Sometimes there is the silly temptation to spend my gpt for a tech or two in 1000 BC simply to better the QSC score. If the above was allowed, I might consider doing it, so as to get both the better GOTM as well as satisfying the urge to "do well" in the QSC.

An extreme case would be that I can only buy an exclusive tech if I trade away communications. For the GOTM, the lack of communication may be more valuable, but in QSC I don't care past turn 1000 BC so I net 6-7 techs that never happened (or happened later) in the full game.

Greebley,

Your observations about ways to implement improvements in you QSC score by using the 1000bc cut off date are really quite true, but in the bigger picture, these changes will not make you the overal winner and probably will not change which strategic group you fall into.

If we look at the happiness scoring, we can see that this scoring change is chosen as a method to alert players to the potential value of making wise tradeoffs in the balance of technology research, cash, entertainment, and specialist assignment that get combined with strategic road connections to cities and luxury resources.

In the analysis of past game performance, we determined that we needed to increase the relative emphasis on early population growth, military unit experience, and technology trading leverage. Instead of increasing the per citizen points by 15% from 20 to 23-25 to implement this emphasis shift, the extra points where placed in the happiness balance as a means of drawing attention to and recognizing performance capacity in this area. Do not focus on the individual game implementation of this coice in your one game but look across the 100 different data results to see that very few players were able to achieve 100% happiness and max score even though that might be your first guess.

Second, it would be possible to time last turn GPT and contact swap trades to maximize the last minute tech gain. This issue plus the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issues would not be resolved by changing the cutoff date of implementing a more complex scoring system in these areas. We continue to review these results on an ongoing basis, but so far we see that players may use these leverage tricks to move up by 3 to 5 places in the mid to lower range without substantially winning themselves an more glorious result in the QSC or GOTM. Just the fact that players (including yourself) can recognize and evaluate these tradeoffs is a major, major accomplishment that you should recognize and be proud of. Most players of the Civ3 game never get to where they can recognize these issues and then use the benefits to gain more enjoyment out of the playing experiences.

Test your assumptions in some of your recent games and see what it buys you in QSC score. Download 1 or two of the games in the number 5 throug 15 positions and see if you can do anything in the last possible turn to increase their QSC score and if these changes improve the comparative positions of the games by more than just one step on the scale.

Originally posted by cracker
Second, it would be possible to time last turn GPT and contact swap trades to maximize the last minute tech gain. This issue plus the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issues would not be resolved by changing the cutoff date of implementing a more complex scoring system in these areas. We continue to review these results on an ongoing basis, but so far we see that players may use these leverage tricks to move up by 3 to 5 places in the mid to lower range without substantially winning themselves an more glorious result in the QSC or GOTM.



I am glad that you are aware of the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issue. Not get credit for the second tech block can be put you back a lot in the QSC, but have very little impact on the end game.

When mentioning the short term bumps to increase your QSC score, I thought of a couple of nights ago when I reached 1000BC in the current GOTM. I was tempted to change the slider to max lux to get as many happy faces as possible, save the game, change the slider back to where I had it (1 sci, 9 tax, 0 lux) and keep on going. Quite an artifical change just to get a better QSC score. I decided that I'd rather have a true evaluation of my QSC than an inflated one based on an in-turn adjustment.

It would be nice to have a better method of your empires state of happiness that was based more on long term contentment rather than a one time reward.

:beer:


[ptw] conquest

Originally posted by denyd

It would be nice to have a better method of your empires state of happiness that was based more on long term contentment rather than a one time reward.


I think the original intent of giving points for happy people was to encourage people to quickly hook up their luxuries. Because of the worker turns involved in hooking up luxuries, you could spend those worker turns mining or something that may have a stronger effect on your QSC scores. So, if all your cities were at low population sizes and you had military police to keep people content, a person holding off on hooking up the luxuries could do better than someone who spent the time hooking up the luxuries.

Another motive was to show to some players how powerful the luxury slider can be in some situations, and if used properly.

I still think you should get points for how many happy/content people you have when luxury is set to 0%, but that gives an edge to ICS.

Originally posted by LKendter




I am glad that you are aware of the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issue. Not get credit for the second tech block can be put you back a lot in the QSC, but have very little impact on the end game.

I fully agree!


Edited out confusing comments....

Originally posted by Bamspeedy

I still think you should get points for how many happy/content people you have when luxury is set to 0%, but that gives an edge to ICS.

What I lobby for is for Gold per turn after corruption to be included in the formula. Unfortunately this also favors ICS (what doesn't). GPT in the formula closes two loopholes: boosting the lux rate purely to get happy citizens for the submission turn, and making GPT deals to buy tech, both boosting score in the short term but having zero impact on the long term game.

I am curious to see if the recently adjusted QSC scores have a greater correlation with end of game score than the old QSC scoring. The old QSC scores did not have much relevance to end of game score, and in my opinion encouraged poor strategic decisions with its heavy emphasis on tech. Techs only get cheaper as time goes by, and if are not going to be used immediately to upgrade units, construct buildings (markets, courthouses, libraries) or change governments, they are often of little use to acquire early unless a player is going for tech based win such as a Diplomatic or Space victory.
+ Bill

As far as the correlation it is a toughie. My QSC was strong, despite my temples, and yet my final GOTM score was only at 62 or so. The GOTM final scores rely heavily on territory and population, tech and improvements mean nothing. If you have a large civ with large population you score well. The Highest scores in 19 were domination/conquest games that were completed quickly and didn't need to even research beyond Military Tradition. The Sipahi were huge for gaining territory and those of us who had only smallish territory but excellent tech positions (space and diplo victories) don't score as well.

A strong tech position in the QSC allows any victory condition but is most beneficial for a space win, IIRC that was the drive of the original QSC. You can and most do, overcome a weak QSC and get great GOTM scores if you push to the domination limit quick and win or push to the limit and sit back and wait for the launch.

The correlation you are looking for is not going to be there. QSC is an indicator of relative strength of the civ. not the end game score.

As far as the ottoman QSC is concerned the 1 move 2*40 research issue doesnt really come into play versus founding at the start position. As the second tier techs which are the normal target for the min research gambit ( literature and polytheism) are inexpensive on this map size 250 and 300 beakers respectively. Given the speed at which most of the players on this board devolope their empires this would require only minimal intervention with the research slider in order to produce the 7-8 beakers per turn required to recover from moving from the start position. Again the GoTM 20 map is of standard size and is therefore tech friendly and moving from the start position shouldnt pose problems as far as the QSC is concerned it just means having to be aware that you will have to intervene at some stage to recover the lost turn.
As far as huge maps on a high level are concerned the 1move 2*40 research issue would be more of a problem for the QSC. As it may require heavy use of the research slider to recover the lost turn and may interfere with the use of the luxury slider during the expansion phase.