GOTM 62 Results and Congratulations

[Cactus Pete]

Congratulation to Jovan Kukic, whose superior social skills resulted in a gold medal winning game that was also the fastest Domination victory, and to silver and bronze medal winners, Lexad and neilmeister. They, too, should consider second careers as Machiavellian diplomats or marriage counselors.

It was rewarding to this map maker to see well-played games over a range of victory conditions, including Dhoomstriker's Conquest (which I didn't think was possible), and to read of the proactive princess's cunning guile explicated with evident enthusiasm in the spoiler threads.

Summary of Medal Winners:

Jovan Kukic: 1410 AD Domination Victory, 193,048 points.

Lexad: 1530 AD Domination Victory, 156,932 points.

neilmeister: 1510 AD Domination Victory, 115,323 points.


Fastest Finish Award Winners:

Conquistador 63: 1720 AD Diplomatic Victory, 105,309 points.

htadus: 1931 AD Spaceship Victory, 62,782 points.

hhhawk: 1908 AD Spaceship Victory, 43,781 points.

jesusin: 1685 AD Cultural Victory, 39,422 points.

Dhoomstriker: 2046 AD Conquest Victory, 10,193 points.


Other Award Winners:

Stalintag: 1940 AD Diplomatic Victory, 25,903 points.

High King J.J.: 1959 AD Domination Victory, 23,554 points.

enKage: 1991 AD Spaceship Loss, 10,821 points.

the_fugster: 2037 AD Cultural Victory, 3,932 points.

donsig: 1988 AD Spaceship Loss, 1,582 points.


>> See the full results here.
>> See the updated global rankings here.
>> See the latest Pantheon of Heroes here.
>> Award symbols are listed here.

 

[magicgunnar]

Regret that I didn't go for conquest, but I thought I wouldn't make it. Congratulations to everyone! Is there a map of where people settled?

 

[AlanH]

Here's the map of capital settlement choices.

 

[babybluepants]

Congrats to the winners!

And... to Dhoomstriker! Looks like you got it just in the nick of time.

 

[kcd_swede]

Congrats to the winners! Nice work Dhoom. And most of all thanks Cactus Pete for yet another creative scenario! Keep'em coming. Only you can make Vanilla tastier than Choclate Chip Cookie Dough(TM)!

 

[WelshGandalf]

Haha well done Dhoomstriker, two awards for your effort... congrats to the rest of the winners too.

I'm content with 31st for my lazy domin-culture win

Also thanks to the map maker, it was a fun concept to play out!

 

[Mitchum]

Congrats to all of the winners.

I got beat by a last-day submission for fastest Diplo. Nice work, C_63!! I didn't deserve to win anyway with my sloppy game...

 

[enKage]

Conqest?
How ? If BTS - Toku could peacefully became a vassal...

BTW
I continue collecting bdges xD This time green ambulance

 

[adrianj]

Conqest?
How ? If BTS - Toku could peacefully became a vassal...

Check out Dhoom's post in the final spoiler. It was masterful!

 

[neilmeister]

Indeed, Dhoomstrikers game deserves a much bigger score than it got.

My first medal, yay. This was also my first ever domination win.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Congratulations to all the winners!

I'm still trying to figure out how the_fugster could achieve a cultural victory and yet have a lower score than I had from my incomplete game. I always suspected that the scoring system didn't reward cultural victories adequately!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Yep, congrats to the winners. And especially to Dhoomstriker!

I'm quite surprised that so few people settled on the desert tile - which looked to me like the obvious place to settle, rather than leaving it in the big fat cross. I'd be interested to know why some of the people who settled in-place did so? Was it the losing one floodplain that stopped people moving?

 

[neilmeister]

I was convinced, as were others, that the desert contained a metal. That and I hate losing FP's.

 

[WelshGandalf]

The desert many of us settled on wasn't a FP though?

Marley I'm guessing you attacked and the fugster just stayed at home for a cultural win?

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Marley I'm guessing you attacked and the fugster just stayed at home for a cultural win?

Yes, I tried for a domination victory, but as described in my final spoiler, I failed miserably. I only held on to two conquered cities when I retired (and one of my original ones was lost to Tokugawa by a cultural flip).

the_fugster must have held on to at least his three legendary cities, and probably more. But beyond that, he won his game! That ought to be worth some bonus over my feeble efforts.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Thanks for the congrats, gang!

As for cutting it close, I actually had a number of turns to spare after having eliminated Toku but I was afraid of tripping the Domination Land Area Limit. That's the trouble with having several nearly-Legendary Cities--you end up owning a large percentage of the world's Land Area.

So, I spent a good number of turns allowing the remaining AIs to raze as many of my Cities as they could be convinced to capture using their Grenadiers + Cavalry. Rather than risk getting a Score Victory by waiting for 2049 AD, I turned around and razed their Cities with a few turns to spare, using mostly Tanks, Gunships, Cannons, and the odd Cossack. All of that City razing cost me a ton of potential points but secured me the Victory Condition that I wanted, so I think that the effort was worthwhile.


Congrats to the winners... there are a lot of familar names up there with some solid finish dates.


It's nice to see Lexad back... I hope that you will stick around for more than just the Russian Leader games.


Special congratulations go out to neilmeister, on his first Medal! I have been reading your spoilers for a while now and it seems that your persistence has finally paid off!

I was convinced, as were others, that the desert contained a metal.

Oops, that idea was my fault. What can I say... I come up with a lot of crazy, wacky ideas... sometimes they work out (Culture-flipping Toku) and sometimes they don't pan out at all (no Copper, no Iron, not even Oil in that Desert, sigh)... Cactus Pete didn't even take that idea from the Pre-game Discussion thread and alter the map accordingly.

I always suspected that Gyathaar (the guy who used to make most of our XOTM maps) took into account people's Pre-game discussion comments and sometimes altered the maps slightly as a result, but maybe the process of uploading the saves ahead of time makes such last-minute changes too much of a challenge or could be too much of a risk since the map might not have time to be play-tested again?

the_fugster must have held on to at least [her] three legendary cities, and probably more. But beyond that, [she] won [her] game! That ought to be worth some bonus over my feeble efforts.

the_fugster's Final Score being lower than yours is no surprise, since you ended your game first. However, her Base Score (just called "Score" in the Results table) being lower is probably due to population differences... perhaps she only had 6 Cities or perhaps she's been reading too many of jesusin's "starve-your-Cities until they pop an Artist" spoilers.

It's also possible that she missed out on many more Wonders than you did, which would help to account for getting a Cultural win in the 2000 ADs... the only Wonders which, in hindsight, were "secure" for us to build much later-than-normal in the game turned out to be ones that I beelined (fearing that I'd lose them), which were The Colossus and The Great Lighthouse. I say those two because Toku didn't have an easy way of getting Coastal Cities early in the game, while the other AIs were too busy building units to bother much with Wonders.

Certainly, Toku built other Wonders a bit later than normal, too, in many people's games (like The Oracle), but once he got started, Toku just seemed to keep spamming those Wonders!

 

[neilmeister]

Thanks Dhoom, much appreciated. To be honest I'm shocked that I had the second fastest victory.

I come from the 'persistent mediocre' school of civving, with the occasional fluke!

Its very satisfying getting better. I still remember the first time I ever played Emperor, which was for BOTM 26, and I was amazed I managed to win at all.

 

[kcd_swede]

Yep, congrats to the winners. And especially to Dhoomstriker!

I'm quite surprised that so few people settled on the desert tile - which looked to me like the obvious place to settle, rather than leaving it in the big fat cross. I'd be interested to know why some of the people who settled in-place did so? Was it the losing one floodplain that stopped people moving?

I thought the desert WAS a floodplain. Imagine my chagrin when the worker couldn't do anything to that tile. Turned out OK though.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I thought the desert WAS a floodplain. Imagine my chagrin when the worker couldn't do anything to that tile.

Yeah, it was a disappointing Desert, but since it was on a River, you could at least have made a marginal Watermill on it after learning Machinery.

Although, more likely, your Workers had much better things to do after learning Machinery and you could have held off on building this improvement well into the late game... or better yet, held off indefinitely.

 

[magicgunnar]

Yep, congrats to the winners. And especially to Dhoomstriker!

I'm quite surprised that so few people settled on the desert tile - which looked to me like the obvious place to settle, rather than leaving it in the big fat cross. I'd be interested to know why some of the people who settled in-place did so? Was it the losing one floodplain that stopped people moving?

Well, hard to know, I think for me it was mainly the forests.