bloodlust GOTM

[cerebus]

How about a GOTM where the only victory condition possible is conquest?
No wussy UN.
No high flying space ships.
Just pure world domination!!!!!
Talk about challenging, trying to keep your dplomatic options open while really planing to crush everyone.

How about it?

 

[Lawrence]

Sorry I would say I won't like the idea.

You know currently the players on top of the GOTM list are playing like this: bloody conquest----close to domination limit and only one AI with 1-2 cities left on the map----milk the game to the max extent----win in whatever way in 2050.

Your idea won't change the whole thing and it will just urge more people to play in this way( by depriving their chances to go for other types ). Anyway, we would like some diversity in GOTM.

 

[Matrix]

I don't know, Lawrence. We shouldn't determine our course of actions solely by the top players. Perhaps, for other people than the top players it would be fun for a time.

 

[col]

I'd like to see a game with only UN allowed. Make some warmongers rethink their game plan..... Anything is better than forever replying essentially the same game over and over.... Groundhog Day was a great film but would make a lousy game ...

 

[Matrix]

Originally posted by col
Groundhog Day was a great film but would make a lousy game ...

You got a point.

 

[Barker]

It was only a great film until the 10th time I saw it.

 

[Lucky]

Diversity would surely be a good thing for the GOTM.
I have tried out almost every winning possibility and also scored almost every award we have, but this GOTM begins to lose it´s fun factor for me. My only goal now is a gold medal, but that is not really enough. For the last months game, it was definitely not enough to give me an urge to start playing it at a reasonable date. I started 2 or 3 days before the deadline, not enough to have a chance to finish.
Diversity would really improve the gaming experience, we had no change in the standard rules, except for GOTM 2 where we disabled Domination. All others were more or less the same.

 

[MOE]

I also have to admit that gotms should at least played on the emperor level. Regent is just a question of how and when you`r gonna win....

 

[Lawrence]

Here comes up the good old question of the scoring system.



Yes I know Matrix won't like this.

 

[cracker]

I think the comment about GOTMs being played only at emporer or above, fails to recognize that a major purpose of the GOTM format should be to attract new players. A proposal like that will exclude 90% of the civ player pool. I have played a number of open pool succession games and this has been very enlightening as to how really bad most of the players really are when it comes to even the most basic skills.

I have a fairly visionary glimpse of the future and feel that GOTM will evolve in the next 6 to 8 months to cover a shorter playing span with some different scoring formula. It will not be long before someone (cheifpaco, gramphos, et al) will come up with an external scoreing generator that lets us abandon the flawed internal system for comparative tournament games. This external score calculator will just assemble a simple scoring formula using things that can be counted up in the game and then adding some configurable coefficients that calculate a score.

The reason we will see shorter playing spans is to focus on comparative skill issues that cannot be emphasized by the general scoring system and the long term impacts of the RNG. Any two players starting from the same position will not be playing the same game after 50 to 100 turns because of how the random events accumulate.

We will see monthly quick start challenges that emphasize understanding how a civ matches with different terrain. We will see conduct of war challenges where the assigned challenge is to find and eliminate "X" as quickly as possible while maximizing some features.

Some of these concepts are being tested at realms beyond, but I seem the GOTMs shifting to a shorter and more focused set of comparative play options that eliminates all the emphasis on completing the game and milking it into oblivion in order to maximize the internal game score. This is where the game begins to lose interest at anything other the extreme high difficulty levels (technicllay I think it loses interest there too).

 

[Sirian]

Lawrence: you're right. Here comes the issue of the scoring system again. One of the main problems here is that the Global Rankings, based on the game's scoring formula, are at cross purposes with and stand in the way of scenerio diversity. The awards do, too, to a lesser extent. The whole tournament is structured in a singular fashion, with only two goals: fastest finish or highest score.

It doesn't even PAY for players to play the low difficulty games if they are too low for a milked score, and pull down someone's average. The idea of a UN victory with Diplomatic as the only enabled victory condition doesn't go far if players ignore that, get to the domination threshold, milk the game as usual and take a histogram win or even a LOSS as none of that matters anyway. All that matters is the score. The score overrides everything. Likewise, even if a particular game of the month were set up in a way to cater to other priorities, if those don't worship at the altar of "high score" they would only hurt top players' global rankings, which are the fuel of this event for many players. Wouldn't folks then SKIP those games, to protect and nurture the best raw numbers for their global ranking? Oh some might be politik about it, but they'd find a way to miss out on the low scoring game, one way or another. And for those who did play, what meaning would the global ranking continue to have, when it stops measuring even between milkers and starts to show differences between those who play only the highest-potential-scoring games vs those who also play the lower scoring scenerios?

Unless the tournament is restructured, top to bottom, there's no sense wishing for "diversity". You get the diversity of a different map, a different civ with which to work. That's it. That's all this event is DESIGNED to supply you. Is that such a bad thing? For those most entertained by the open-ended, score-the-most scenerio, it's a good deal. For those wanting more variety, or who have some concerns about this arrangement, their options have been either to cope anyway and accept it, or to seek elsewhere for their civ3 gaming fix.

All I can say is, it IS well possible to have a tournament filled with diversity. And I can say that from experience. What I don't think is possible, is to have that and have ANY kind of global rankings together in one basket. The only way the global rankings hold meaning in the first place is if they are comparing the same kind of thing across game after game. Some want that. Some enjoy that, it gives their civ3 gaming purpose. So... for those who want that continuity, it's available here. For those who hunger for variety, you would have to look elsewhere, wouldn't you? And... is that such a bad thing?


- Sirian

 

[cerebus]

How about a different kind of scoring for a bloodlust GOTM.
You start out with 5000, or what ever number is best, points at the begining of the game 4000 BC. Every turn it goes down by let's say 200 points.
Conquoring the world by 1 AD is better than 2040 AD.

There could also be bonus points
At year 1000 BC +500 points for every Civ you have crushed
At year 1 AD +200 points for every civ you have crush if the number is over 3.
At the end of the game if the number of your own units that have been killed is less than 200 then +200 points, you have been an smart killer.

These numbers are off the top of my head, but you get the idea

Don't look at the score the game actually gives you, people have their ways of milking the points to make themselves look good.

In a blood lust game you want to conquor the world, do it fast and do it efficently. Nothing else would matter.

Everybody has their own stile to playing civ3, a bloodlust game would let the military minded folks strut their stuff. Maybe if you were not a war oriented player it would give you a new outloook on the game. Could be it reaffirms to you the the military way sucks for you or it could open new doors.

 

[Exsanguination]

I say have objectives like "conquer before 1000AD" or "100k cultural by 2000AD", so it discourage milking.

 

[Kemal]

Or maybe we could have a special "house rule" with each Gotm, like banning a certain government type, not having more than a certain amount of cities until a specified date in the game or not allowing ships to be build until transports etc.

I used certain rules to keep civ2 interesting because it was too little a challenge with the normal game rules.

This way even Regent games could become a challenge for expert players and new players won't be forced to play at high difficulty level and get overwhelmed by the massive AI advanteges all the time to participate in the GotM.

Of course, certain games can be challenging without any special rules (like the game of the month 7 deity challenge)

 

[alexander dumas]

I think that the global rankings should only allow one type of score for each player. What I mean is, each player could submit on Domination game, one Conquest, one Dipo, etc... with their highest score, then one of each with their earliest finish. The normalization would be for each category so that everybody's highest domination score would be averaged, then everybody's earliest finish for domination would be averaged. The ranking would be an index of all of those. I know that this doesn't prevent milking, but it does provide categories for people to compete in, and it challenges players to win with several different strategies.

...Just thinking.

 

[datascat314]

I won diplomaticly with only 8 cities and after never entering war. I think it's boring

 

[Yndy]

Is there something I missed?

Suddenly here comes a topic about score and objective of the GOTM (what else?). And suddenly all the old timers show up (I’m talking Sirian, Lucky, Matrix, Exsanguination) plus cracker gets back from vacation.

On previous occasions this ended up as a hot topic. *remember to check this often*.

I’m not sure if you can get more diversification out of GOTM than it currently has. Even cracker’s visions seem unattainable to me.

I am getting tired (slightly) even of reaching for a goal that I don’t master. I’ve never done a 20K cultural victory and the one that I’m going to have is not going to score high in GOTM’s book or mine.

And I start to believe that the classes are merely meant to decrease the score of top players and not to give more of a challenge to them. So I tend to focus on score instead of survival and that’s getting boring and stepping people’s toes (Yes, I’m going to get a fast domination and will then milk the game until I get that 20K victory).

I still got some things to say but I’d rather chew on them.

 

[Ambiorix]

Originally posted by Yndy
Is there something I missed?

Yes, I think so : the dates of the posts are from 2002. Don't you just love technology ?
Maybe we need to put a wooden stake through the heart of this thread or something, to make sure it stays down this time ?

 

[Yndy]

&^*$, #@%*&, &^*$@$, ^&%^* !!!

I'm such a $%$&&*, *)%*^.

I'll just leave my previous post un-edited as a monument of stupidity and ignorance.

Only one question for datascat 314: Why did you dug out that old rusty thread?