Gotm 152

Game of the Month 152: February 2014

Civilization: 1 German settler
Starting techs: None
Difficulty: King
Total players: Random (unknown)
Restarts: on
Barbarians: Restless Tribes (-0)
50x80 game generated map

Deadline: April 7, 2014

Please be sure to follow the submission guidelines when submitting your game (please do not send your files in a .zip file. Attach them directly to your e-mail with your name in the save file). No extra save is needed.

You can download the game here.

Please send the savegames only to civ2gotm@gmail.com.

Have fun.

Nice. Before I start I'll be practicing on GOTM 140 which seems quite similar.

littlejimmy said:

Nice. Before I start I'll be practicing on GOTM 140 which seems quite similar.

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Yes, helpfully spotted. The February game last year (140) is similar to this February's - maybe a tradition starting? It seems likely, based on the spoiler and results so far known, to be the one last year that had the most people playing.

Resource seed is 3 or 35. There are two specials hidden by grass within the visible area. One tile over NE is a 4 special location but it is on a hill and with only 1 settler not a great choice. Home continent is number 1 so black clicking is useless.

Not knowing who is in the game (none as of the start), or even how many rivals there are, gives us no clue as to how many key civ holes there are.

If I were to play OCC (have not decided yet and will not for quite sometime), I would tip the hut and then go explore the river for a better spot with ocean access.

This looks interesting, I might join you guys, at least for this round, though competing against the micro-management wizards that some of you are might not be too easy.

Helloooo

I was talking to my son about the glories of civ2 and the idea of getting the GOTMs started back in the day so it got me looking at the site to see if the posts were maybe archived here to show him and I was amazed to see it was still running after 13 years. I don't think I've even touched civ in about 6 years, but after poking around in the technical forum for a while I managed to get the game up and running again. No guarantee I'll finish, but I'm giving this game a shot!

It's amazing how some things just come back to me (Without even thinking i pressed v to toggle beween a unit and focusing on the map. Why would my brain waste space on that bit of knowledge for 6 years??!?) while other things have me completely befuddled (i recognize the term "key civ" in Ali's post above, but can not for the life of me remember what it is and I haven't bothered to search for it yet). I found a couple of the old utility apps which have helped immensely. I knew I had to time a revolution but got it wrong by one turn. I think i've lost more units in this game than I used to lose in a half-dozen games. Probably the hardest part to remember is the techs (prereqs, preferred path and objectives, how to manage, etc.).

This will certainly not rival the days when I was regularly racing Peaster and co. for green stars or sailing to the stars with OCC finishes, but it's fun just to obsess about it play again. The worst part is that I KNOW i'm being inefficient and sloppy, but don't remember how to do it better. Hopefully I'll be able to play the whole thing out before the end of the month. Maybe I'll even try another one after this.

(Note: As i was fumbling around, I've had a few misclicks, blunders, and such and when that happened I went back and restarted from a recent save. If that's not kosher let me know and I won't submit. Either way I'll still try to play it out, cuz it's mostly for my own fun.)

Best. Game. Ever.

Welcome back Tim. You were one of the regulars when I first joined and I remember learning quite a bit from your posts. It is good to have you back. I hope you stick around for a while.

Going back to a save due to misclicks and blunders is definitely allowed. Anytime you hit the wrong key, you can go back. Anytime you meant to do something this turn and hit end turn too hastily you are allowed to go back as well.

I am thrilled to see the post from Tim The Enchanter, whose previous post, except a few stray ones on the topic of Civfanatics NFL Fantasy Football was more than five years ago.

Tim's is one of the names I have come across so often in the archived discussions - definitely an A-list celebrity by my reckoning.

It's a visit to match the ones we had last year - GotM140 saw a visit from zenon, back after 8 years, and GotM145 saw Starlifter join us. And maybe Peaster's appearance for 148 should count too. Quite a tribute to the game.

I wasn't sure if I had time to play this one - having finished 150 only today - but I'll have to give it a go now.

Hi Tim ! Welcome back ! I am getting hungry to play again and may join in this one too.
Does anyone want an EC contest ?

Peaster said:

Does anyone want an EC contest ?

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Not saying I will make a contest, but I am going for EC, and it would be great to compare. Yesterday I got to a point where I can start the spoiler, and I will post about the initial turns soon.

Has been a while, for health reasons I have not been able to play my favorite game.
One problem I have is that the SAVES of the games shows up as a strange " *.Php " format, and I can not open the file, and IF I do alter the format ( i.e. Save as a " *.sav ) has no sound, so whats the new trick to download a Game ?? I love the sounds....that make it part of the game. Any imput how to download the game ?? Thanks

Welcome back Uruwashi
We have not changed anything regarding the format of posted games. The problem must be at your end. As you can see this game was successfully downloaded and played by TimTheEnchanter who was absent for many years.
I hope you can fix the problem and join us. We miss you.
You may want to search the tech problems subforum for a solution to your problem.

URUWASHI said:

One problem I have is that the SAVES of the games shows up as a strange " *.Php " format...

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Sorry to hear about about health problems and I too enjoy your contributions.

Regarding download, as Ali says it is still a *.sav file. Maybe you are using a version of Internet Explorer? In situations like this I often find it's worth right-clicking and seeing if something helpful shows in the pop-up menu, such as "Save Target as..."

Yes...I play around with the file and changed the name to 152.Sav and works Fine ! Thanks.

Great news. Looking forward to your log in the spoiler thread.

Results are up.

I do not see any submissions from littlejimmy, TimTheEnchanter, or Uruwashi which all mentioned here they are playing. What happened?

Ali Ardavan said:

I do not see any submissions from littlejimmy, TimTheEnchanter, or Uruwashi which all mentioned here they are playing. What happened?

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Yes and apart from us core players, Peaster and TheViking did play and submit files. It was great to have a bit more interest in a GotM near this time last year.

For me the spoiler has become where I find out what happened.

As a passing thought, and without wishing to offend our noble moderator, who I know has desperately little spare time and whose Civ2 knowledge I hold in the highest regard, we staff would ideally manage that a GotM game be scored in the following month if we want to encourage submissions - so the results come out whilst the game is still memorable. Feb '14 to Jan '15 is trips under sail to and from Australia (from Europe) timescale.

In the case of GotM 152 the spoiler holds a pretty full account of many of the games and outcome, and it did so before the deadline. So I can see that what happened might be that a player, even if they finished (as Tim did) could decide not to bother to submit.

That is not to detract at all from the GotM idea - I personally enjoyed the game all the more for the spoiler discussions with Peaster, as I lost a close race for green using a different tech path - and I do appreciate seeing the scoring and being able to view other checkpoint files, so I wouldn't do away with that element whilst staff are willing to do it.

Inkerman said:

As a passing thought, and without wishing to offend our noble moderator, who I know has desperately little spare time and whose Civ2 knowledge I hold in the highest regard, we staff would ideally manage that a GotM game be scored in the following month if we want to encourage submissions - so the results come out whilst the game is still memorable. Feb '14 to Jan '15 is trips under sail to and from Australia (from Europe) timescale.

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Could not agree more. I was hoping that when I got involved (designing and posting new games) and you got involved (scoring) the gap would close rapidly. It has gotten better (down from 15 months to 11) but still too long. Whenever results are posted I look back through the thread to remind myself what the game was and in this case (as in most games played on game-generated maps) I have no recollection.

Inkerman said:

That is not to detract at all from the GotM idea - I personally enjoyed the game all the more for the spoiler discussions with Peaster, as I lost a close race for green using a different tech path - and I do appreciate seeing the scoring and being able to view other checkpoint files, so I wouldn't do away with that element whilst staff are willing to do it.

Click to expand...

I just noticed that you lost the green star by a single turn! ouch! (And peaster lost the bronze by a fraction of a point. Double ouch!)
I too enjoy the game a lot more when there are more participants. I remember the early years when the number of submissions were over 20! By the way, do you know who had the original idea that started the discussion that led to the start of GOTMs? TimTheEnchanter.

Maybe there are experienced players who can't spare the time to play that often, but would enjoy a game now and again. We might have a chat about that in the future game thread, especially as in the past the February game (such as this 152, and often a normal size game generated map at King level) has seen the largest number of players.