C-IV GOTM 09 Results & Congratulations

[Jove]

I hope it isn't inappropriate to congratulate myself, I can't believe I came in 6th. Woo hoo! The real kicker is that I came in ahead of Klarius, who has a long long history of defeating me in GOTMs. I'm pretty sure this is the first time that's happened, isn't that grand?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

@ civ_steve: Well that is an entirely different way to look at the shields! Thanks for the historical update.

I agree. That makes a lot more sense now, I always wondered why the lowest scoring awards were there, as it seemed to me a decidedly funny thing to give awards for.

That having been said, do we know empirically that the shields go to those who are actively pursuing that course, rather than going to someone who scored low "by accident"? Perhaps an evaluation of the time of victory for the shield winners would reveal this, although from AlanH's plot (see the scoring thread), it would seem that in general, lower scoring victories will be later victories.

I can't recall ever seeing anyone post in the Civ4 GOTM threads about trying to win a low-scoring victory award, so I think it's a pretty good guess that the people who get those all do so by accident.

edit/addendum: Re the adventurer question, the 15% score penalty would seem to give the adventurers the edge in competing for the shields. For example, my GOTM 11 10,656 dom (after penalty) in 2023 may be in contention for lowest dom. Bally has a 2030 dom (score not reported). But if Bally is a contender, then I may still come out "ahead" (or should I say behind?).

Yep, and there's no 'seem to' about it, it most definitely would give them the edge if you do it right. All you have to do is load the adventurer save, immediately delete the additional units that you got for playing adventurer, so you then play exactly the contender game, except you score 15% less. (There's probably other ways, but that way gives the direct proof that in principle you can get an advantage). I think that scenario gives a very strong reason for saying that adventurer games should be disqualified from the lowest-scoring awards (But then, thinking about it, I'm half inclined to think that lowest scoring should be legacy Civ3 only, and aren't relevent to Civ 4 anyway)

 

[da_Vinci]

Yep, and there's no 'seem to' about it, it most definitely would give them the edge if you do it right. All you have to do is load the adventurer save, immediately delete the additional units that you got for playing adventurer, so you then play exactly the contender game, except you score 15% less.

Of course, some of us would need the additional units just to survive to that 2049.99 victory.

Looked at some old Civ 4 GOTM results, less confident about my shot at the dom shield in GOTM 11, (10,656 at 2023) given fairlyhonest's 2046 dom win for 3447 points in GOTM 6.

dV

 

[Thrallia]

GOTM6 was a fractal map with much less land to deal with, so to achieve a dom in GOTM11 will pretty much require you to have more points than that.

 

[bio_hazard]

I like the Shield and Ambulance awards, simply because they are relevant to low-tier players (which I definitely am). I wouldn't purposefully go for the shields- I'm just happy enough to win on most GOTM difficulty levels that i'm not going to try to finesse the scoring system. Green Ambulance seems like a good carrot for people playing losing games to see the game through to its conclusion rather than retiring. And Red Ambulance- why not? Something for the player who has really bad luck with barbs in 2000BC.

I don't think the names are important- I say keep them as "award", and I think most people playing will understand the spirit with which they are dispensed.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

GOTM6 was a fractal map with much less land to deal with, so to achieve a dom in GOTM11 will pretty much require you to have more points than that.

I was under the vague impression from somewhere that your pop and landarea points are calculated based on a proportion of the theoretical limits for what you can achieve on that map. If that's the case then the amount of land won't have any effect on that part of the score.

Of course you can always just assign your entire population to be specialists about 20 turns before your anticipated domination win, so all your cities starve down to 1 pop. That should leave you with a pretty low score...

 

[Thrallia]

perhaps, I don't really understand very well how score is determined, but I'm pretty happy that I remembered off the top of my head that GOTM6 was a fractal map considering I didn't even get to play in it.

 

[da_Vinci]

Of course you can always just assign your entire population to be specialists about 20 turns before your anticipated domination win, so all your cities starve down to 1 pop. That should leave you with a pretty low score...

... and not a dom win, since you need about 64% of world pop as well as the 74% land (at least that is what I recall for GOTM 11) for the dom. But you could starve down to 64.00....01% for that low score.

dV

 

[DaveMcW]

How to get a very low score:

1. Conquer the world and leave one civ on a tiny island.
2. Prepare the settlers/artists/parts/votes/military for your chosen victory condition.
3. Let the barbarians capture almost all your cities
4. Wait until 2048AD
5. Win

 

[civ_steve]

That's why CIV's scoring system may not be very appropriate for the low score competition. You can essentially play a full-on warmonger typical CIV game, conquer most everything, and adjust the end game to get the low score at the last minute. The Civ3 scoring system required you to be consistently small the entire game to achieve a low score (although you still had opportunities to be a warmonger ).

I guess decisions about what Wonders to make (and keep) and minimal Techs required to be known, would also be deciding factors for a CIV low score attempt (besides pop and land).

 

[da_Vinci]

I like the Shield and Ambulance awards, simply because they are relevant to low-tier players (which I definitely am). I wouldn't purposefully go for the shields- I'm just happy enough to win on most GOTM difficulty levels that i'm not going to try to finesse the scoring system. Green Ambulance seems like a good carrot for people playing losing games to see the game through to its conclusion rather than retiring. And Red Ambulance- why not? Something for the player who has really bad luck with barbs in 2000BC.

I don't think the names are important- I say keep them as "award", and I think most people playing will understand the spirit with which they are dispensed.

Given the potential inappropriateness of Civ 4 scoring for the lowest score contest, maybe we could incentivize the "low-tier players" (I'm one of them too) with awards for highest score for a win after a certain date? It seems that the better players are all winning early.

The dates might have to be victory type specific (and vary by difficulty level?), and I am thinking of dates such as 1900, 1950, and / or 2000.

Thoughts?

dV

 

[DynamicSpirit]

... and not a dom win, since you need about 64% of world pop as well as the 74% land (at least that is what I recall for GOTM 11) for the dom. But you could starve down to 64.00....01% for that low score.

dV

Good point. (Usually in my games the requirement seems to be something like 42-ish% pop and 64% land, though the figure seems to rise slowly as the turns go by). If I was trying for a low score, I'd probably work by early aggression, knocking down the other civs to the point where they are not a threat and can't possibly build a spaceship while I'm waiting for my victory - ideally leave a couple of civs with one useless city each in the middle of ice/tundra. If you'd done that, then it should be possible to starve all your cities to size 1 and still hold most of the world's population.

 

[AlanH]

Why does the fact that a really low score requires planning, cunning and a good knowledge of the game mean it's an inappropriate challenge to set for an award? Aren't those some of the qualities we look for in a good Civ player?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Why does the fact that a really low score requires planning, cunning and a good knowledge of the game mean it's an inappropriate challenge to set for an award? Aren't those some of the qualities we look for in a good Civ player?

I'm not quite sure anyone has said that it does require those things in Civ4?

I think there is some modicum of planning and cunning etc. involved, and you have to be able to play the game reasonably well, eg. with things like making sure you don't learn any techs you don't need to learn, but basically in Civ4, the way you would deliberately get a low score is to avoid activating your victory condition (not hard to do, you just stop the last part of your spaceship 10 hammers before completion, or stop capturing cities when you're at about 55-60% land area), wait until nearly 2050, and then just starve your empire etc. The only victory condition that presents some challenge I'd guess is cultural, since it takes some planning to make sure your 3rd city goes legendary just before 2050, but as close to 2050 as possible. You could play in a pretty mediocre manner up to 2030ish and still get the lowest score because you were most effective at reducing the size of your civ at the last minute.

If I've understood the situation correctly, getting a low score is much more of a challenge in Civ3 because your score accumulates through the game, so you need to constantly keep your empire small, yet somehow still stop anyone else winning - and that's hard to pull off. In Civ 4, your score is based *only* on your situation on the final turn, which means you can be as big and powerful as you want for most of the game, as long as make yourself smaller at the end.

But probably more importantly, noone so far as far as I can see is trying to get a low score in the Civ4 GOTMs (probably because it doesn't take much cunning to do it), so that means all the low score awards really are accidents, going to people who presumably would have liked a higher score but didn't manage to achieve it.

 

[AlanH]

Sorry, I should have put a smiley on that one

 

[azzaman333]

Heck, I know from personal experience that crap players have a better chance of getting the shields, because they're used to non-optimal play. Personally, I cherish every ambulance and shield I get (which happens a little too frequently sometimes)

Also, I think I have the record for the lowest scoring XOTM ever, with a 0. I'm so special.

Unfortunately (or is it fortunately ) I'm not crap enough at Civ 4 to get the shields, or the ambulances. Yet.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Sorry, I should have put a smiley on that one

Growl! And to think of those solid 3 weeks that I spent carefully crafting my response to what I thought was a serious point. Those nights without any sleep. The family who disowned me, the bank that repossessed my house coz I forgot to pay the mortgage while I was engrossed in replying to you so I'm now homeless. All because you forgot to put a smiley in.

Seriously, thinking about it, I do think the awards provide rather a fun form of 'booby prize' so I do quite like them there. I do think though that for consistency, adventurer submissions should be ineligible for *any* award - even the red ambulance.

 

[bio_hazard]

But probably more importantly, noone so far as far as I can see is trying to get a low score in the Civ4 GOTMs (probably because it doesn't take much cunning to do it), so that means all the low score awards really are accidents, going to people who presumably would have liked a higher score but didn't manage to achieve it.

I would agree with this given the few 4OTM's I've been in. Even so, I'd vote to keep the shields and ambulances, just by virtue of them being entertaining and presumably not too much extra work for the admins to figure out.

I can see the value of having something more achievement-based for lower tier players. Not sure if something specific to year/victory condition would be easy to implement in a meaningful way though...

If people are itching for something other than the shields, I'll just throw out an alternative- not really wedded to it, but to have something parallel with the global rankings that keeps track of the highest score achieved by each player in a GOTM. For example, keeping track of whether the player has ever reached 10,000 pts, 25,000 pts, 50,000 pts, 100,000 pts, etc. This would reward people for reaching new milestones in their gameplay even if they are far out of contention for the best games of a certain gotm release.

However, this seems like potentially a lot more work to keep track of, and I'm happy with the shields!

 

[Harok]

Hmmm I seem to be stuck at getting the 2nd or 3rd fastest finish of my given victory type but have never been able to win an award. Maybe I have been going after the wrong awards and need to try out this winning without scoring strategies. It would be funny to get all but 1 space ship part almost done and then whip and starve all cities to 1 pop while disbanding all units hoping cities get taken by barbs. Knowing how I play a decent game but end up making a few mistakes that cost me I would have probably built the Great Wall in 2000 AD by accident after trying to partially build it for cash but completing it when the AIs decided not to build it at all.

 

[AlanH]

However, this seems like potentially a lot more work to keep track of, and I'm happy with the shields!

Not really We do have a database, and the technology is well capable of determining which players have reached which milestones. What sort of badges would you suggest, for what levels of play?

I just ran a few database queries for Civ4 vanilla. here's the bell curve of best scores:

0 - 100: 4 players
100 - 250: 8 players
250 - 500: 9 Players
500 - 1K: 14 players
1k - 2.5K: 33 players
2.5K - 5K: 127 players
5K - 10K: 241 players
10k - 25K: 365 players
25k - 50k: 234 players
50K - 100K: 198 players
100K - 250K: 79 players
>= 250K: 3 players

Total: 1315 players