Idea: taking game duration as a modifier in HoF / HoF CS games

Hey guys, thought about something that would make participation in HoF/ Challenge more attractive for me at least (dont believe im alone). I played just 3 games of Challenge series, but getting a little bit poored already. If we search for popularity of competitive series, I believe this should be a very bad thing, if newcomer gets poored in 3 games, right?

At first I got depressed, for example invested a huge amount of time into challenge series TIME GAME, and got my arse busted by almost 3 times in score. Not competitive at all, right? When I investigated the results more closely I got it... The game, that took me ages (14 hours of gameplay) is nothing compared to the most of top scores (from 35 to 45 hours of gameplay). Well... Im a working person, cant allow this kind of spenditure, so I have three options:

1) take it easy and not play for result (but is it what we want from challenge series?)
2) not taking part of challenges, as it takes a ridiculous amount of time to be anywhere even near serious attempt for top places.
3) we could consider developing some kind of scoring system, that would take into account how long the game lasted and modified the final score by that.

What You guys reckon, is it worth anything, how fast result was achieved and should this fact be taken into account?

PS: dont get me wrong, I dont beg for appraize, just telling about facts that makes it impossible for me to play for good places and therefore eliminates Challenge from games.... (getting a time victory at prince is not quite a challenge on its own)

Please note that the same difference in game lenght occured in all three Challenges I have participated by so far...

Any ideas?

Doh - My take is that this is something that not only would be unfeasible to setup but is really not something I feel is necessary. I am sorry to hear that you are...um..."bored" ? (If you are doing poorly that would be bad too

First, game play time is very relative. While it might be an indicator of individuals putting more time into their game it is also often reflective of other things like simply leaving the game on for lengths of time. I know I do that all the time, and even though I'm a relatively slow player, I'd estimate that 25 to 50% of the 'game time' is just me stepping away from the computer. In other words, measuring "game time" and making it a parameter in the judgement of games is far from an exact science and I do not feel it would be reflective of any merit or lack thereof. It's a very subjective measurement as many players can play relatively fast in "game time" while maintaining a very reasonable if not excellent level of skill. There's really no way to judge this aspect and make it into a tangible modifier to the results.

While I'm sorry to hear that you don't always have sufficient time to put more time into your games (a lot of us don't have time either), I can assure you that many of the players that do well in the Challenges, do so mainly because of skill. Granted, slow and meticulous attention to detail goes a long way in the game, without the skill necessary you would not know what to be meticulously attentive to in the first place. And once you gain that skill/experience of repetitious playing, much of it becomes second nature such that your "real" game time speeds up while maintaining quality of play.

So my recommendation to you is to focus on quality over quantity. Look at improving your play and enjoying the game right now vs. gaining #1 positions. Read up and look at other players games to see what they do as far as rolling maps, tech orders for situations, city spacing, city specialization, etc. (I can assure that once you look at some of what the other really good players do you will be amazed at the difference it makes in your own game. There is tons to learn in the game and that very fact should inspire you to play more and be the best)

Civ is a complex strategy game that can take quite some time to master in order to compete with the best. It took me literally years of playing GOTMs and HOFs game to even smell the top tier positions - and I'm still a scrub compared to the likes of guys like Wastintime or Pollina (who actually picked up this game far far faster than I did). [not saying you won't learn a lot faster than I ever did]

So, it really comes down to "perspective". I want you to enjoy the game, but I don't want you to get discouraged if you are not winning the challenges right now. It takes some practice and learning to get to that position, but I assure you that you will if you keep playing and learning. I encourage you to do so and hope that you continue to enjoy Civ IV, the HOF, and even the GOTMs if you wish. (Oh and read up over on the SGOTM forum too..lots of good stuff to learn there about micro and such)

example: "Time" game...you invested a lot of time into this game but failed to score near to what the top players achieved. Ask yourself "Why did I not score well?" "What are the factors that go into attaining higher scores". I can assure that the amount of time or lack thereof was not close to the reason why you failed to score high. Look at the top players games to see what they did. Try hovering over the score in the game and looking at the factors that go into score like land, population, wonders, technology, etc.

Lastly, I should note that the Challenges are allotted several months (usually 6 or more) so there should be plenty of time for you to play all the challenges several times over, even you play slower. You don't have to play these games in a day. Just put an hour or so into a game each day or when you have time and maybe put a bit of time into the learning and planning stages as well.

Thanks for taking time and giving me a long detailed answer. While I can accept most of Your arguments, I would still not be agree that speed of game doesnt show anything. While You are right about many players going away from PC, therefore "losing time" - I didnt think about it. But at least we could have for example one HoF category or one challenge out of ten, where we aim for game speed. At least for me, it would be fun to play Deity aiming for fastest victory, that would need a new approach of balancing micro, tactical desicions will be based on how long real time it takes etc. Game time could not be an exact measurement in all games indeed, but it is as exact as any other indicator, if player is specifically aiming for it.

Just my opinion.

dohh said:

Thanks for taking time and giving me a long detailed answer. While I can accept most of Your arguments, I would still not be agree that speed of game doesnt show anything. While You are right about many players going away from PC, therefore "losing time" - I didnt think about it. But at least we could have for example one HoF category or one challenge out of ten, where we aim for game speed. At least for me, it would be fun to play Deity aiming for fastest victory, that would need a new approach of balancing micro, tactical desicions will be based on how long real time it takes etc. Game time could not be an exact measurement in all games indeed, but it is as exact as any other indicator, if player is specifically aiming for it.

Just my opinion.

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I believe that if you take two players of equal skill, and have one play quickly, and have the other play a very slow, considered, highly micromanaged game, the slower player will clearly prevail. However, I believe that slow players advantage would be significant, but surprisingly small (5-10 turns on a normal speed game.) It is truly the macro decisions that make the big difference.

Compare your time game with Neilmeister's. You built under 70 cities and were at about 48% land domination. He had 214 cities at 58%. I believe you both could have made your game decisions and actions at nearly the same speed. But, in the course of settling 140 more cities, transporting Mining Inc and Sushi execs to each city, it just takes a long time. Also, when you have that many cities, you have that many more builds to contend with.

I am happy with your interest in the HoF and hope it continues. You have to work your way to the top learning the game as Lymond said. Replay your games, you have three and a half months to submit. Post your strategies and people will usually be kind and offer suggestions for improvement. Look at Challenge I. I had most of my game easily beaten (and I played a majority of those games 2-3 times). I kept to it and made a very strong showing in Challenge IV. My play become much better because I was learning the game. I am still not that good. I play fast and make a lot of micro errors, but that (speedy play) is what I find enjoyable. I can still put up some competitive games with those who plod through slowly and micromanage all aspects of their game.

shulec said:

I believe that if you take two players of equal skill, and have one play quickly, and have the other play a very slow, considered, highly micromanaged game, the slower player will clearly prevail. However, I believe that slow players advantage would be significant, but surprisingly small (5-10 turns on a normal speed game.) It is truly the macro decisions that make the big difference.

Compare your time game with Neilmeister's. You built under 70 cities and were at about 48% land domination. He had 214 cities at 58%. I believe you both could have made your game decisions and actions at nearly the same speed. But, in the course of settling 140 more cities, transporting Mining Inc and Sushi execs to each city, it just takes a long time. Also, when you have that many cities, you have that many more builds to contend with.

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Thats exactly what I meant, building 214 cities and managing them is an headache and far from I find interesting. I liked the time challenge from the point, that one needs to balance game, so that he would not get cultural before timeś up. On two levels higher it would be even more interesting with a possibility of some AIs going for space...

Hey Doh - I think this discussion is basically done now, but I'd just like to add a recommendation that you learn some of the shortcuts available in the game for dealing with much larger Empires which can get a bit unruly.

Neil won "Time" simply as you need a lot of "land" and "pop" to score high in the game. Those are the key factors to high scores. (lesser being wonders and techs). So 200 cities is going to beat 70 any day. (I should note that "Time" games are very rare occurrences in the Challengers/Gauntlets as they tend to be unpopular.)

So, the point is there's a few things you can do to manage so many cities a bit easier by using shift click (or ctrl-click) on the city bar or use the F1 screen. You can queue up a bunch of items in all your cities, in just one click, whether buildings or units, or wealth/research. If you are warring, you can *+shift(or ctl) click units to queue them up (it works with different types multiple times) to have cities just automate building units. AND you can set rally points from you cities to the front lines. Also, at some point in such a long game, automating or stacking workers has less of a negative impact to the game.

I will sometimes set up the "global" queues to all cities and then just go to individual few cities that I want to control manually.

Also, in this case, where "pop" is so important, you might globally set cities to food focus with the governor to make sure they stay growing.

Just found this thread today. Managing 200+ cities really makes the player suffer, I experience that myself again currently, due to playing one time-game after another (need Rock of Ages for EQM) .

However, the player going through all that, should be rewarded for going through all that, which he currently gets, and that is good like it is. If someone is lower on time, he must simply play his game over a longer amount of time. That's the essence of turn-based-strategy, we don't want to play fast and sloppy like the Starcraft players, we want to be able to make the best decision in every single situation and that without any stress.

dohh: You're new to the HoF. Please accept, that there are players who already very long for the HoF, and that these players have the better approaches. You can talk to them, learn from them, most players here are very willing to share their knowledge, but please accept, that there are players that are currently better than you. Coming up with the suggestion to invent a specific category of victory in which only himself excells is brave, but if you want your speed of reaction to be rewarded, you're simply playing the wrong game.

All the best on your ongoing course, I hope that you'll not quit the HoF but take the approach I talked of and learn to score #1's yourself maybe in some months.

Seraiel

Though as I think, there is actually something similar in chess, speed-chess.

I doubt that the results would be so much different from the results we get today though. Who can play pristine slowly will still play good when fast.

I know this discussion is old and done, just wanted to add that any attempt to use the time spent on game for scoring purposes would be doomed to fail. The slow player can pause the game while thinking to stop the game clock. You can even cue up all the moves in paused mode, unpause to have them instantly executed, then pause again.

elitetroops said:

I know this discussion is old and done, just wanted to add that any attempt to use the time spent on game for scoring purposes would be doomed to fail. The slow player can pause the game while thinking to stop the game clock. You can even cue up all the moves in paused mode, unpause to have them instantly executed, then pause again.

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Thankful for this post. I would have hated a "Speed-CIV" category, because I prefer playing slowly.

lymond said:

And once you gain that skill/experience of repetitious playing, much of it becomes second nature such that your "real" game time speeds up while maintaining quality of play.

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Repetition will certainly speed up your game, but, because it becomes second nature, you will lose focus + concentration and thus your gameplay won't improve.
The challenge of getting better is to keep focus on the part you want/need to improve.
And this challenge becomes more and more difficult when there is less to improve and the repetition part becomes bigger and bigger.