A little let down by Game of the Week

[Mysticjon]

I was very much looking forward to this feature as its always nice to benchmark your position compared to others when playing on a level playing field (ie. same map/difficulty/civ)

where I feel let down is with the scoring - IMO:

1) You should be able to see results from the previous weeks (i.e. I registered a score on the English GOTW King Difficulty - an when the new Roman GOTW started all the previous scores where wiped.) How do I know my final position from the previous week?

2) You should be able to veiw rankings determined by a number of factors (i.e. Fastest Space victory, best normalised score, victory type etc ASWELL as earliest finish date - otherwise people will ALWAYS domination rush!)

Any thoughts?

Could this be amended by a patch or are we stuck with it?

JT

 

[Widowmaker313]

Yeah, I hope there are game types when you have to win in economic, cultural, or technology victory, not domination, because then people could play as aztec or zulu and dominate before iron working and stuff!

 

[Squikel]

of course it could be fixed by a patch but they could just as well make the results available on their website

 

[Mysticjon]

I note from another post in the forum, a file patch has not been released for civ rev - hopefully resolving these issues - I will watch and wait

 

[Ginger_Ale]

I note from another post in the forum, a file patch has not been released for civ rev - hopefully resolving these issues - I will watch and wait

Yeah, there's a topic for that here. I think you mean "now" instead of "not".

 

[Mysticjon]

thanks ginger, yes I meant 'now'

 

[Squikel]

damit now I have to turn on my xbox and check this could end up taking 3 hours and it is already past midnight.

 

[PaperBeetle]

As a Civ3 GOTM stalwart, I am also disappointed with the GOTW implementation. Not just the transience of the rankings, and the lack of normalising between VCs (and civs, although it is not yet clear why a handful of submissions come from the "wrong" civ), but the fact that you can keep retrying the same game. My first king GOTW ranked 3/99 at the time of submission, but I don't know whether the people that placed ahead of me were on their first attempt, or whether they were restarting over an over to use their knowledge of the map, and find the optimum route through the slalom of the RNG. I am going to go ahead and guess that the people who won Chieftan level in less than 15 turns were not playing the map blind.
But ... before the game was released Firaxis (or 2K) did admit that this would be how the GOTW would work. They certainly knew what the alternatives were, as they have ex-GOTM competitors on their staff. The fact that they chose not implement something more stringent suggests to me that they didn't think they could enforce no reloading / restarting. Is it possible to save during a GOTW game btw? I didn't try, but I did notice that the advisors weren't prompting me to save at the era change moments.

 

[Squikel]

yep ended up taking almost 2 hours, and no the patch don't seem to have done anything.
no you can't save in GOTW but they could have done some anti cheat system if they required you to be connected to xbox live from start to finish when playing GOTW.

 

[jayeffaar]

But there's no way they could prevent people from playing the game with alternate accounts to learn the map and then switch to their main account once they know what they're doing. And people would do that, you know.

 

[Grumbles69]

I think that its better that you can replay it, GOTW is about planning out the whole game in as little turns as possible, if you want to compete blind play head to head.

Check out www.civgameoftheweek.com which will be keeping a record of previous leaderboards (sorry missed the very first one) last weeks is up, and you can download a map of this weeks GOTW to help plan your strategy.

To win with a different civ all you need to do is to take an AI city and then either build a palace in their ex-capital or lose your capital.

 

[PirateRobert]

My personal opinion is that GOTW would be more interesting if the random number generator was seeded differently for each game at the start. You would still be able to play multiple times to learn the lay of the land which would allow you to post better scores, but you would never know the exact results of a battle or a goody hut.

The really good players would still be posting good scores but they would be more reasonable scores in most cases.

In fact, the random number generator should be re-seeded based on time for EACH TURN. Even in the normal game. Right now, you can reload a turn and if you do everything in the exact same order, you get the exact same results. So the order of the day is reload - try something - reload - try something else.. hmm first one was better.. reload - do the first thing again (with exactly the same results)

Rob

 

[Random Fires]

While I agree, the random seed can have a rather frustrating effect, its only marginal. Example, this weeks GOTW, I can manage getting my units to all targets by 2800. But due to the random seed, I cann't merely finish them off. And I'll fully admit, I'm trying and have tried to find the random seed combination in order to tie or beat the top spot.
But the difference is only a mere 200 years.
Meaning, in my opinion, strategy is still the biggest factor in determining the final outcome of the game, not the random seed.This applies not only to GOTW, but all modes, single or multi.

 

[christian_g]

I note from another post in the forum, a file patch has not been released for civ rev - hopefully resolving these issues - I will watch and wait

You probably are on the Xbox. On the PS3 we already had two patches, but it looks to me that we are still beta testers. How can we ask about more complex sorting criteria on the leaderboard or achiving when they can not fix even the order of the list on the PS3 or fix the bug with the results that are not submitting.

If you are lucky, your result will be posted in a few hours (but it is possible not to be shown at all), so for a modified version we might have to wait days for the result to be sorted by multiple criteria and archived.

 

[christian_g]

2) You should be able to veiw rankings determined by a number of factors (i.e. Fastest Space victory, best normalised score, victory type etc ASWELL as earliest finish date - otherwise people will ALWAYS domination rush!)

If you can win by domination rush, you can have all the others. What better start could one expect than to have 4 capitals + some early technologies in turn 20?