GOTM 38: Results and Congratulations

GOTM 38, China, Emperor.

A terrific game, and a nail biter for the staff, with some last minute entries that rearranged the top of the table. War mongers took full advantage of the map and the Chinese Riders, and dominated and conquered their way into the top 12 positions. Scoring was close again, with 15 players beating 10K.

SirPleb claimed his rightful place at the top, taking the gold medal with a stunning 430 AD Domination victory. Bradleyfeanor achieved Domination 21 turns later in 640 AD for silver, and akots led the conquerors on score to win the bronze medal.

Here are the full results, and here are the QSC results. Please join me in congratulating all the award winners, and everyone who played and entered.

Special congratulations go to SirPleb, whose Fastest Domination award takes him to his SECOND Eptathlon. More on this achievement in a separate thread.

Summary of medal winners

SirPleb: 430 AD Domination Victory; 11740 points

Bradleyfeanor: 640 AD Domination Victory; 11214 points

akots: 720 AD Conquest Victory; 11136 points

Other award winners

Mark Cutt: 690 AD Conquest Victory; 11035 points

Shigella: 2050 AD 20K Cultural Victory; 10207 points

Poggen: 1180 AD Diplomatic Victory; 9325 points

tao: 1520 AD Spaceship Victory; 8751 points

redbad: 1600 AD Cultural 100K Victory; 8054 points

civ_steve: 1824 AD Cultural 20K Victory; 5694 points

wolp: 1740AD Conquest Victory; 6522 points

stoo.w: 1796 AD Diplomatic Victory; 4374 points

QwertySoft: 2029 AD Cultural 100K Victory; 3194 points

yakinikuman: 1987 AD Domination Victory; 3154 points

heuf: 2014 AD Spaceship Loss; 2619 points

edmeister: 2028 AD Cultural 20K Victory; 2601 points

ballywog: 2011 AD Spaceship Victory; 1079 points

Col Klink: 1000 BC Conquest Loss; 259 points

Congratulations to SirPleb for another amazing game and first place finish! You are truly amazing, SirPleb!

Also, congratulations to all the other winners!

On a personal note, I am definitely improving, as I ranked 46th of 93 in this one. Hey, that's in the 50th percentile, so I'm happy. I was aiming for the fastest 100K finish, but Redbad beat me by 105 years (1600 to my 1705). So, I'll have to settle for 2nd fastest finish this time. Congratulations, Redbad, on your excellent game.

Congratulations to everyone and my personal congratulations to Abegweit for not letting me to get into the first ten
OTOH it was my first predator and the best place I ever got

My to the staff - that's a really fast turnaround of results!

Congratulations to the Winners (yay, that includes me for 20K ) and Good Game to all the players who submitted. I checked the statistics page; the top scores were all Domination and Conquest games, but there was pretty good representation of all the Victory types in this GOTM38, compared to recent competitions.

Whoa, just barely squeaked out that olive shield(<400 points). Got 2/6 so far(space and now 100k).

Golden ambulance, here I come!

civ_steve said:

My to the staff - that's a really fast turnaround of results!

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Largely selfish on my part. I have a trip planned this weekend, and wouldn't have been able to publish them until mid week. The timing was helped by a significant improvement in player good behaviour, perhaps following on from ainwood's gentle reminder

JonathanValjean said:

Congratulations, Redbad, on your excellent game.

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Thanks for your kind words. I'm sorry that you were victim of my first award.
That is not counting the 20K-shield I recently got: getting the shield when only competing with SirPleb for the award is not much of a achievement.
But seriously, lately I'm maneging to stay more and more focussed on the victory goal.

Congratulations to all the winners and competetors. It was a fun game.

Dad'gumit ballywog! I thought I had a good chance to get the lowest SS victory this time. Done in by my own kind. ( )

Are there any Histographic result awards - presumably for winning?

Interesting game.

It appears there's a limit on how many nuclear bombs can be utilized before the planet overheats and food disappears on a REALLY large scale. On the other hand, it does seem to slow down spaceship construction by the other empires (for those of you losing due to the space race).

Well, I was denied gold and the Domination award by the master himself...but Hurray, my first Silver!
It is most appropriate that SirPleb beat my game handily, considering that--for many, many months--the vast majority of improvements to my gameplay have come directly from him. Congrats SirPleb, on a triple award game! And thanks for yet another educational post.

You know, one of these days all the instruction you have given is going to enable me to snatch a medal from you. I may also have to pop two settlers from huts and get 45 great leaders, but still, it’ll happen!

Congratulations to all the Civfanatics who played!

Scad said:

It appears there's a limit on how many nuclear bombs can be utilized before the planet overheats and food disappears on a REALLY large scale. On the other hand, it does seem to slow down spaceship construction by the other empires (for those of you losing due to the space race).

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IIRC there is a big difference between CIV3 vanilla and PTW/Conquests. In vanilla global heating causes degeneration of the land (grass turns into plains turns into desert). Where in PTW/Conquest global heating makes forests disappear. I could be mistaken though.

But if I'm not wrong then global heating won't affect spaceship contruction in any significant way in PTW/Conquests.

It makes forests disappear in vanilla too. It selects a random, non-desert/hill/mtn. tile, I think, and then 'degrades' it one level: Tundra->Grassland->Plains->Desert. If it's got forest on it, it takes off the forest and exposes the tile beneath. That's why it's a good idea to forest every tundra tile and any unworkable tile(i.e. outside 21-tile radius of any city).

The results sure are crowded at the top this month! Congrats to Redbad and Jonathan Valjean- you're all that stands between me and the 100K fastest finish, although you were really way ahead, Redbad. Nice game!

Jove said:

, although you were really way ahead, Redbad. Nice game!

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But then again, you played predator; so how did we really compare

Scad said:

Are there any Histographic result awards

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Welcome

There isn't a specific Histographic award. We award the Cow to the player who achieves the highest base score, before victory bonus is added. This month it went to Shigella whose game showed a 20K Cultural victory in 2050 AD, but if that condition hadn't triggered he'd have got a Histographic victory.

I see Alan has already explained the cow, and it definitely appears I made the right decision in milking this one out to 2050. Given my base score and bonus in 1050 (when I could have triggered domination), my Jason would have been around 9700. I'm intrigued that, even with all of the shenanigans I pulled during the milking phase (i.e. 20K city investment, researching into future techs), I could increase my Jason score by more than 500 points. As I stated in my spoiler, I assume I gave up at least a couple hundred Jason points with my little "diversions."

This raises one major question in my mind - how exactly is available food calculated for Jason scoring? Is it an average of all workable tiles (excluding sea) on the map, or is it counted using the "best" tiles (grass, flood plains) first?

I was working a LOT of sea squares during the last 200-250 turns of my game, but I have a hard time believing that my improvement in Jason score can be adequately explained by maximizing the placement of "fishing villages." Rather, I suspect this improvement is better attributed to maximizing the "food-rich" squares and abandoning as much hills, mountains, desert as possible.

I'd appreciate the thoughts of the gurus, as this could have implications if one were trying to snag a medal, rather than simply a fast finish.

And BTW, another simply awesome game, SirPleb. I found this site when I was so green that the AI gifted me techs on Chieftain, and simply can't overstate how much your posts have helped my learning curve!

Jove said:

Congrats to Redbad and Jonathan Valjean- you're all that stands between me and the 100K fastest finish...

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Thanks!

However, I join with Redbad in pointing out that you played predator, as opposed to open. Speaking for myself, I seriously doubt that I could have achieved a 1730 100K victory on predator level the way you did, and certainly not in 1705. So, my compliments to you on an outstanding 100K game on predator level, Jove.

Shigella said:

This raises one major question in my mind - how exactly is available food calculated for Jason scoring? Is it an average of all workable tiles (excluding sea) on the map, or is it counted using the "best" tiles (grass, flood plains) first?

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Available food is calculated as follows:

Add together the maximum food production for all the land and coast tiles on the map and divide by the number of thoise tiles. Maximum food production assumes you irrigate and rail all possible tiles, including cleared forest/jungle/marshes, and you have harbours for all coastal tiles.

So if you focus on high food tiles, and enclose a minimum of mountains and deserts while reaching the domination limit as fast as possible, you can beat this food average. Therefore you will improve your milked score compared with the early victory bonus you would be awarded by Jason.