News: SGOTM 18 Results and Congratulations

[AlanH]

SGOTM 18 - Austin Powers

Only one team dropped out of this competition. The other eight teams all achieved victories, once more demonstrating that Dr Evil kcd_swede really is losing his grip.

Six turns separated the top three winners of the laurels. The Shawshank Redemption took the Gold Laurels, 20 years ahead of the Silver winners, Plastic Ducks, with a Bronzed Kakumeika 40 years later.

Meanwhile, Fifth Element achieved both the slowest victory and the lowest score to take the Wooden Spoons.

Here are the award winners:

[IMG=LEFT]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/btsgoldlaurel18.png[/IMG]

The Shawshank Redemption, 1200 AD Diplomatic victory, 305,806 points
Dhoomstriker
ingentingg
Jastrow
LowtherCastle
Mitchum
RagingHordes
Tachywaxon
​

[IMG=LEFT]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/btssilverlaurel18.png[/IMG]

Plastic Ducks 1220 AD Diplomatic victory, 240,052 points
BornInCantaloup
Doshin
Dubioza
kossin
shakabrade
UnforcedError
Zx Zero Zx

​

[IMG=LEFT]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/btsbronzelaurel18.png[/IMG]

Kakumeika, 1260 AD Diplomatic victory, 281,869 points
bcool
Kaitzilla
mabraham
Seraiel
Sun Tzu Wu
WastinTime
​

[IMG=LEFT]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/btswoodenspoon18.png[/IMG]

Fifth Element, 1830 AD Diplomatic victory, 76,409 points
BLubmuz
enKage
Folket
Mastiff_of_Ar
pigswill
Shaandore
unclethrill
​

Full results, progress charts, saves and replay listings are available on the Progress and Results Page

Use the Game Replay Page for an animated graphical replay. The Team threads are now open to all, to gaze in wonder at the skill and ingenuity of our competitors.

Congratulations everyone.

 

[kcd_swede]

Congratulations! Enjoy your Mojo while you can. Dr Evil has however escaped to the future and you may not have seen the last of him yet.

If you are interested, this was Dr Evil's pre-game expectations:

Spoiler :

I think most teams will find this easier than a standard Immortal difficulty level game. Perhaps doing some of the objectives in a timely manor will pose problems, but just winning the game/dominating the AI opponents should be easier than usual if you are careful about diplomacy and trading techs. Teams that ignore demands will struggle to survive.

My guess is that UN would be the fastest way to win the game, and with require complete kills, it should not be hard to get them friendly. But you'll need a lot of military just to survive, so its not a beeline. Culture has the lowest tech demand, but is so wrong for everything else you have to do- militarily and tech, and being unable to adopt a religion if you go to Liberalism to get Free Speech - means it is a nightmare task trying to win this way. Maybe a team can handle it; for an individual player its really really hard.

Space race is really the straightforward choice... it meshes with all the objectives. You'll need a lot of land, and better production possibilities than I gave them. Aluminum will be hard to come by unless you are a military juggernaut. Since this is the straightforward choice (for me) I would bet that it is the wrong choice for fastest finish, even with Satelites, Fission, Fusion, and Composites already in the game. They'll be using espionage anyhow, so they should get those techs cheaply. OTOH... Minimum +10 turns to arrive at Alpha Centuri.
But I don't know... I think there are too many flood plains to set down cottages making it too easy. Also, tons of food means plenty of production by slavery for units to win battles. This could be so obvious that it will be the choice for all... and that's OK since originally we were consdering just making a space race. Decided on any "peaceful" VC just to give them some things to think about. But whipping and cottaging are juxtaposed, so it will be interesting to see how they optimize that.

Pre-built improvements is interesting because it alters the calculation for "worker first" that is there in a standard start. Worker first is definitely wrong in all my testing... but I bet someone does it anyhow.

The most interesting thing about the game is that any one of the AI (possible exception is Goldmember) can run away if you are careless. If Ghandi is protected from Goldmember and not attacked by Dr Evil, he goes crazy with culture. Mansa is your friend to get tech parity/supremecy, but doing so makes him a formidable challenger for space race. Dr Evil can get too big to fail, and then you will really struggle to get your Pad back, let alone get his Lair before he starts nuking you. GK is going to DOW you if you don't beat him down early and often. And bribe Joao to dogpile... who will almost always get squeezed in the middle, but first build someone a lot of nice cities.

In any case, nobody will win before paratroopers, so there should be time for a lot of very different things to happen. Compared to how the AI behave in a "long" game, the RNG involved with "Require complete kills" is absolutely meaningless.

No tech brokering slows the AI down a lot, especially if the player trades the good trade-bait techs to Mansa so he can't trade them along to others. Playing that setting right makes the game pretty easy. Playing it wrong... its going to be a long hard slog. I tried eliminating this setting... its hard to see the effects in testing... so I left it as originally stated, even though it might make things too easy for the best teams.

The railroads that soundjata put in there make travel really fast. If the player has the initiative, these also make it easy to "back-door" on the AI like GK, especially. If the player is on the defensive, they'd be wise just to pillage the RR's.

I predict Plastric Ducks or Kakumeika will win at about turn 250, by beating down all the AI with Trebs/Elephants/pikes, then leisurely walking to a fast culture VC. Paratroopers arrive at the Lair while Dr Evil is still figuring out gunpowder. All teams complete all objectives by turn 350. (Margin of error about 150 turns).

Oh yeah... my biggest fear is that Fat Bastard find some way past Joao's territory in the first 20 turns and ruins someones day. That was prevented by not giving Joao enough +diplo with Dr Evil to grant Open Borders until much later, and the choke points make it so the AI wouldn't know what to do to get there anyhow. Also, Fat Bastard will not head towards a city Dr Evil doesn't see; plus he tends to stay close to the Swinger's Pad in all my testing. If you are really crazy, you can lure FB to your capitol by using the Fembot as bait. If you do something that boneheaded, you deserve to lose quickly. You should be well able to get spearmen before you ever might meet Fat Bastard. Better yet... make peace for tech trade with Dr Evil at the first opportunity. Life will be a lot easier if you do that.

I would like to list the extra awards for this game, in no particular order.

The BFF (blazing fast finish) award goes to Phoenix Rising, for being the first to demonstrate the feasibility of defeating Dr Evil.

The MMA (maximum mojo acquisition) award goes to Misfit Gypsy Nuts, for gaining the highest base score... and proving that the wrong strategy played exceptionally well will not be good enough for laurels.

The MAT (most agitating team) award goes to XTeam, for gaining a whopping -120 diplo modifier with Dr Evil. You really got under my skin!

The LOP (leaders of the pack) award goes to Unusual Suspects for their outstanding defeat of everyone except the teams that beat them for laurels. 4th place is pretty good considering the quality of the competition.

The Huey Lewis and the News award (sometimes bad is bad) goes to team BadCiv. Experience is often earned the hard way.

The rest of the awards are Laurels and Spoons, as published... no award (or mocking) I can give can top that.

Thanks for a very entertaining competition with a nail-biting finish.

 

[leif erikson]

Congrats to the winners and all who finished.

Thanks to the staff for another interesting challenge.

 

[Mitchum]

Thanks for the great game, KCD and soundjata. It was truly a fun experience.

Congrats to all of the medal winners. I was amazed how closely the charts were for the top three teams. It really could have gone any way.

I had a lot of fun!! Thanks to my teammates for putting up with me along the way...

And thanks to AlanH for keeping us on track.

 

[Dubioza]

Indeed, thanks for very interesting game!

Congrats to all participants and especially TSR team on amazing finish!

 

[kcd_swede]

Indeed, thanks for very interesting game!

Congrats to all participants and especially TSR team on amazing finish!

Oh yes... congratulations to The Shawshank Redemption! You have me to thank for putting the jinx on the Ducks and Kaku with my pre-game predictions.

 

[Folket]

Well played everyone. I learnt that I will need to be more reckless next time.

 

[neilmeister]

This makes it 3 out of 3 that the Suspects have finished 1 out of the medals. Mind you, usually it is by 1 turn. This time it was 400 years

Awesome dates by the top 3.

Indeed, we need to be less risk averse.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Winning dates are awesome.

Thank you, kcd.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Well deserved congratulations to The Shawshank Redemption and Plastic Ducks!

Thanks to everyone else that offciated, participated or lurked in the team threads.

Special thank you to kcd_swede and soundjata for designing such a wonder scenario which demanded that teams balance many different aspects of the game, especially research and espionage.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Htadus]

This was well competed by the top three teams. Excellent job to all and it was great to see some excellent dates with all the requirements.

 

[soundjata]

Congrats to all the teams for taking the challenge and beating it. Congrats to all the players for their incredible dedication

Congrats to the awards winners for having all of us lurkers in awe of your amazing skills

Congrats to TSR for the victory A 2 man show for the most part. You guys are

Huge thanks to Alanh and kcd_swede for allowing me to take part in the event

 

[bcool]

Thanks to the map makers! A very nicely designed scenario.

And Congratulations to TSR and PD, a very well played game to both of you.

 

[Mitchum]

Congrats to TSR for the victory

Thanks!

A 2 man show for the most part.

To be fair, there may have been two of us for the middle part of the game but everyone was very involved in the critical early part of the game. LC came up with our high-level strategy which was debated and refined by the whole team. RagingHordes carried the team with his endless early-game testing. Jastrow did some early testing and also played an early turnset. Tachy did a little code diving. ingentingg did a fair amount of early testing and then he came back to help during the end game, played a few critical turnsets and played referee when Dhoom and I couldn't agree (which was a lot! ). It was most definitely a team effort.

 

[nocho]

Congratulations to the medal winners, especially to TSR for a fantastic result.

The MMA (maximum mojo acquisition) award goes to Misfit Gypsy Nuts, for gaining the highest base score... and proving that the wrong strategy played exceptionally well will not be good enough for laurels.

Yeah, it felt like we were playing a pretty decent game, especially after an early DoW from GK. Glad we won the fastest space award too. Somehow we discarded diplo quite soon, also for apparently tedious. Space seemed much more straightforward. Nobody even thought (or mentioned) the possibility of mass-liberation of cities, so we took a more "classical" approach to the game by simply expanding and going to space. Largely due to my fault we also grossly overestimated EP needs, which also made the choice for space over diplo more logical to us at the time. Oh well. We had an enjoyable game.

Thanks to staff for hosting!

 

[Gumbolt]

Thanks for a great game. Thanks to Alan and KCD for coping with all our drama. Well done to TSR and all Laurel winners for some amazing winning dates.

 

[UnforcedError]

Great game again, congratulations to all teams

 

[Sleepless]

A big thanks to the mapmakers for a fun game..

Well done to all the winners as well. In fact everbody who took part..

 

[Killroyan]

Thx for all the great games that I could follow over here. Congrats to all medal winners and everybody else for just bringing this game to an incredible ending. I loved the theme and the map.

 

[GKey]

Warmest congratulations to all participants!

So many strategy jewels here as always.

An idea: what if we make SGOTM lurkers dedicated thread? By that I mean thread where lurkers could shadow different games, discuss strategies, exchange opinions, etc...

SGOTM is ultimate source of strategy of these forums. Yet these strategy jewels are buried inside thousands of pages of teams discussions. This thread could bring them to the attention of the rest of CFC community.

Lurkers could give somewhat unbiased opinion on optimal strategy for given SGOTM, make brief yet clear comparison of games (graphs on progress page are barely sufficient) give feedback for future games and rage about RNG and evil mapmakers .

We could even make a People's Choice Award Laurel and vote on VIP of current SGOTM!

Of cause this thread will be closed for active players until they submit final save and become lurkers themselves, but then they will be able to easily compare their progress with other teams, read what lurkers think about their games, may be answer some questions etc...

That could be additional bonus for teams finished their games earlier.

Last, but not least important, we see that some teams are going to be disbanded. Lurkers thread could help bring some fresh blood to SGOTM. Lurkers thread will encourage more players become active SGOTM participants. May be one day we will see LSB (Lurkers Strike back) team and then beware Unusual Rising Plastic Misfit Elements!

Again, warmest congratulations to everyone and huge thanks to the staff!