A milker's confession...

[superslug]

As most if not all of you are aware by now, there's two primary categories of HOF players. One group are those of us that do huge maps and milk them to the bitter end for score. The second group are the fastest finishers, the ones that play tiny maps and get a nice score off the early win bonus.

Given that the games on tiny maps go so quick compared to the hundreds of hours I spend on huge maps, I have to admit, I've always kind of looked down on tiny map players.

Well, I don't anymore.

I've had a lot more exposure to what it takes to win big on tiny maps lately. I've been keeping up with boogaboo's rampage of tiny and small games, and I've been playing almost two tiny Sid games per day lately.

It's become quite apparent to me that for true success on smaller maps, you have to put in almost as time as a milker on a huge map. In can indeed be actually more frustrating considering you have to start over and over and over.

Anyway, my hats off to the tiny map players and to the hours you spend that the game clock doesn't catch.

I've never done an OCC, so I may do one on Monarch later tonight on a tiny map just so I can have the honor of joining the fastest finish player crowd!

 

[boogaboo]

Superslug.. we're not worthy!!

I'm glad someone appreciates my time spent into this, but as those who know me always say for most of the last 10 years :
"Don't u have anything else better to do than play civilization??".


I work, enjoy, smoke, play civ, fantasize about milking, and want to beat everyone's a-s-s in the HOF!!!!!
That doesn't mean I don't respect you - I just try to get better.

And yes, I was also surprised from the different small and tiny challenges I didn't quite anticipate.
In the process, I read a lot of your stuff, including articles and just saw the "bonus disk strategies" that chieftess published out.
There are a lot of things I didn't quite realize until I saw the discussions here, but I was not aware until few months ago that such evolved fan sites for civilization existed.

For this, we're not worthy!!


...so you want to tear my fragile {tiny, monarch} high apart!!
I will see you at Aeson's room!!
DaveMcW also did some deity high.. did he beat me in tiny?
Sure.. with that 3950BC city I just learned to know..

Hard days lonely nights.

 

[zerksees]

Have you ever tried milking a tiny map game?

I am sure it would go faster - I wonder if it is possible to beat the tiny conquest with tiny milk?

 

[boogaboo]

I tried to do some calculations on this, and it seems the limit is somewhere between small ands standard.
Small is still a conquest and standard is already milking.
Perhaps {small , high difficulties} could be ultimately beaten by milking. Currently it doesn't look so.

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by zerksees
Have you ever tried milking a tiny map game?

I am sure it would go faster - I wonder if it is possible to beat the tiny conquest with tiny milk?

There's no way that would work. I can't remember who did the number crunching (Aeson maybe?) but it's been determined/suggested that an early win on tiny with the bonus will equal about 2/3 of the score of a milked huge on average, so I think in order to beat a fastest finish with milking you'd have to go up to at least standard, probably large.

 

[Svar]

I guess I'll be qualifying for your club with a twist. I already submitted a tiny Chieftain map with a 20K culture win in 1832 and a score of 1200+. I'm currently doing another tiny Chieftain map for another 20K culture win. Comparing it to the first one, I'm in 540 AD, already have 3268 and adding 57 culture points per turn. By 530 AD in the last one I was at 1379 and adding 34 culture points per turn.

Don't ask what year I will finish because I don't know how to estimate that, it will be faster than the first one though. I didn't get any MGL in the first one and haven't gotten one in the second so can't build the Heroic Epic otherwise they could be quicker.

 

[boogaboo]

I still try to find the milking/conquest limit, and after revising my excel sheet, it looks like it is only a question in standard maps.
Here are my estimations:

 

[superslug]

Lost two OCC's on Monarch before stepping down to Regent. Got a UN/Diplo win about a dozen turns before 20K would have kicked in.

It's the first time I've ever tried an OCC. Quite an interesting and hair raising two hours...

 

[boogaboo]

and my milking/conquest table..?

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by boogaboo
and my milking/conquest table..?

At first glance it seems to be well thought out work, but to be honest my friend, I'm still trying to deciphe it...

 

[boogaboo]

Ok, I'm sorry.
I thought I could put it "without words" but it seems I was just too lazy to write this:

Table #1 : how much score can be achieved by conquest?
I put the tiny/small records of HoF, and tried to predict what the scores might be in standard and larger.
In standard, I use the tiny/small point ratio to decide how much points there will be on standard - this is "predicted1".
Large and huge are less accurate, and rely on the avarage of the tiny/small ratio - this is predicted2.

Table #2 : how much score can be achieved by milking?
The only true data is a huge milking. All huge difficulties have the same estimate except multiplier (1,2,....,6) for score.
Since milking relies on tiles, I predicted the other world sizes by their tile ratrio.

Table #3 : a table that has "if" sentences checking which table has most score!

 

[zerksees]

boogaboo -

Interesting table.

Does this take into account that a milking game would use 60% water and a conquest game would use 80%?

 

[boogaboo]

Of course not -
milking scores predictions are done by comparing to other milking games, so I guess it is on max domination.
Conquests are by date and are not world size related, so it does not matter.

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by boogaboo
Of course not -
milking scores predictions are done by comparing to other milking games, so I guess it is on max domination.
Conquests are by date and are not world size related, so it does not matter.

Thanks. I should have looked at the table better before posting.

I am not sure the equation for milking scores would be so linear just based on map size, because there are fewer AI rivals on smaller maps allowing you to get control earlier possibly allowing more turns of milking on average. I don't have any facts to back this up but these are my thoughts on the matter. If true this could move a some of the game/difficulty combinations from conquest to milking, though I am not sure how many.

 

[superslug]

Zerksees, I think you're right about longer milk times on smaller maps. Not only are there less AI to deal with, by map nature, they're closer. Even by laying down rails before your cavalry (the usual milk sweeper), conquest takes turns, especially on nonpangaea's.

 

[boogaboo]

I think u'r both right.
But now when I think of it, how much (in percentage, let's say) should we give bonus for this ?

I think I'll do the ratio by comparing the large HoF stats to my predicted (milking table), and do an approximation to the anomally.
The only existing HoF score that is higher than my stats is only mostly milking (1924AD), and is a monarch record of Talamane with 20573 ,Cultural 20k, Large, Babylon.
My predicted is 18288 for this, which is 12.5% higher.
Since the game was not entirely milked, I will put my current guess at 15% (for bonus of going one step down in map size).

I'll give this a percent number and come back with an updated version of the file.

 

[boogaboo]

Here is the updated list.. hmmm.. perhaps 15% is 2 much?
Anyway, this is exactly what will eventually be checked.