Civ4 GOTM Schedule

Here is the schedule for what games we are planning to publish during the near future

From July 2016 onwards, we'll be running 2 BtS games (BOTMs) a month. Vanilla or Warlords games may be released occasionally, possibly with longer submission deadlines, according to staff availability. Check these forums for details.

Schedule Jul-Dec 2016


Deadlines: 1 month for BOTMs, irregular, but may be 2 months for GOTMs and WOTMs.




From January 2016 onwards, we aim to run 3 Civ4 games each month: An easy BtS game, a hard BtS game, and an alternating vanilla-or-Warlords game.

Schedule Jan-Jun 2016




Submission Deadlines: Each competition will run for approximately 1 month for BOTMs, and around 6 weeks for GOTMs and WOTMs.

We aim to have each game announced and the pregame discussion thread available 5 or so days prior to game release.

Be aware that these are the dates when we aim to release games. The GOTM staff will do our best to get games out on these dates. However the vagaries of real-life and the fact that games are done by volunteers means keeping to exact dates won't always be possible - so you should expect that games may be a few days late.

(Reserved)

(Reserved 2)

(Reserved 3)

(Reserved 4)

A few observations.

As you can see from the new schedule, the pattern of games is changing from January 2016 onwards, with a greater emphasis on BtS games. We have taken the decision to increase BtS from 1 to 2 games per month, while reducing vanilla from monthly to bi-monthly and Warlords from every 6 weeks to bi-monthly for several reasons: BtS games consistently attract higher participation, our recent discussion and survey on the future of GOTMs showed high support for focusing more on BtS, and we expect recent changes to Windows that make it harder to get PCs set up to play vanilla or Warlords to further reduce participation of those flavours in the future.

This change means there will be 3 games a month in total - a slight increase from the current 8 games every 3 months. The new timetable should also mean games appear at more regular intervals (~ every 10 days)

At the same time, most games will appear as one single contender save only. We will no longer routinely offer adventurer or challenger saves - although they may appear occasionally if the occasion or the game seems to warrant it. These alternative saves were usually only played by a tiny minority of players. We will probably simplify the game announcements by omitting any mention of contender or challenger saves (except for the rare games that do have them) - hopefully, that'll make the announcements easier for new players to understand.

I realize these changes won't suit everyone, and I apologize to anyone who is disappointed by these changes. Unfortunately, the GOTM staff members have only a finite amount of time, and it therefore seems sensible to concentrate our efforts on those games that the greatest numbers of people enjoy playing - which we believe these changes will help to achieve.

Oh - and in case you're wondering. Yes, this is the first time we've published the schedule. Making the schedule public seems an obvious thing to do with hindsight, I'm not sure why we never did it before. But, we hope doing so will help you guys to plan your GOTM playing.

Happy playing!

PS. The 1 Jan BOTM will be a few days late. Yes, we're getting off to a grand start on the schedule!

Great! I for one very much like the new schedule.

Thanks to all the GOTM staff.

Love it.

Appreciate the ongoing effort.

AWESOME! I am so excited, I am going to bust your balls about that BOTM 98 starting today! I can't wait!

Great work guys.
I find myslef that i just cant play on certain lvl, when iam playing on low dif., even when i know that iam playing more against everybody who praticipate then ai.
I just palying too fast not too much care idk is just way it is.

So makeing BoTM-Easy and BoTM-Hard for me is a great idea.

Great news! Hooray!

I'm not sure if this is correct thread to ask about this but here goes.
I noticed results for BOTM 108 have just been released but BOTM 107 has not. Did #107 get lost in the shuffle ?
I do realize hosting/summarizing results are done by volunteers and that we're all busy...so this is just a friendly nudge .

I just discovered that information after coming back from a longer Civ break and it is brilliant! Two BOTMs a month is just what I needed!

I have now added the July-December 2016 schedule to the first post of this thread.

For the next 6 months we will run 2 BOTMs each month, one easy, one hard. We are not currently scheduling any vanilla or Warlords games, but some might be added depending on staff availability/willingness. I'm sorry about any disappointment that lack of regular GOTM/WOTMs causes. Numbers playing those games are dwindling, but we've realized during staff discussions the last few weeks that there's a more serious problem: Because of the problems loading dvd-based games on Windows 7, it's becoming very hard for most of the GOTM staff themselves to load vanilla or Warlords in order to prepare games. That's the thing that's now really forcing us to focus only on BOTMs.

On the other hand, BOTMs are continuing strongly for at least the next 6 months.

Looking further ahead: October will of course take us into the time when Civ6 gets released. At the moment none of us have any idea whether Civ6 will actually be 'good' enough to tempt lots of people away from Civ4. And we also don't yet know to what extent running Civ6 games will put extra pressure on staff.

If the Civ6 experience turns out to be anything like the Civ5 experience, then Civ4 BOTMs may continue for a long while yet. If on the other hand, Civ6 turns out to be sufficiently interesting that lots of the Civ4 GOTM community swap over, then we may need to rethink.

The new schedule also seems to go from January to June

Thanks for putting in all the work!

georgjorge said:

The new schedule also seems to go from January to June

Click to expand...

Oooops, forgot to update the month names. Fixed them now. Thanks!

Ah - I see "hard" game has moved from 10th to 15th. Nice since today is 10th. I expect we will be seeing an announcement soon.

Deckhand said:

Ah - I see "hard" game has moved from 10th to 15th. Nice since today is 10th. I expect we will be seeing an announcement soon.

Click to expand...

Well you're a member of the staff, you should know

(But yes, the upcoming game is my game, and boy are you in for a surprise...)

Looking forward to the Deity BOTM due out today based on the above schedule!!