C3C Conquests COTM 02: Saves now available

[Dan-Beersheba]

Yay! post #1 for me. Where is the party?
Who is this Jason, and why is he gonna score me? Is there something I need to download for this? Sorry, probably goofy questions, but I am new here.

 

[a space oddity]

Welcome Dan!

Jason is the 'brainchild' of Aeson. It allows a player of the GOTM to get a high score without having to 'milk' the game for 'Firaxis' points, ie the normal in-game points.
You don't need any downloads for this, it's computed when you submit your game.

 

[AlanH]

Hi Welcome

You need to go to the first post and download the save file for your chosen difficulty level, and play. When you're done, save the game at the turn after victory by saying Lemme play afew more turns ... and upload the save to the Submissions page.

Make sure you play to the rules laid down for GOTM - the most important ones are:

- don't ever, ever, ever, reload a save file and replay a move or turn or turns to improve the result. Roll with the punches and your errors, learn, and move on. This, of course, includes restarting the game and replaying it.

- don't look at the spoiler threads that will be posted for people to report progress until you have reached the point in your game where you qualify.

-do read the list of exploits that you can and cannot use on the gotm.civfanatics.net web site.

- do have fun.

 

[dmanakho]

The old three-fingered salute heh?
That old wreck that claims to have Intel-inside can barely get up enough MHz to run your little utilities. It certainly isn't man enough to handle C3C. Its real test is yet to come, however, when I attempt to drag it into the 21st Century by loading up Linux on it to try some cross-compiling ....

No offence to AlanH and other Mac Addicts, but i really wish Firaxis released a version of Civilization for Linux instead of Mac...
That is the one most important reason i use Windows instead of Linux on my home PC.....

 

[Greebley]

This is a bit of an aside but:

Out of curiosity, is there reason behind the preferences that are turned on or off? I noticed the wonder and disorder popups were turned off (you don't know if someone starts a wonder, and if you get more than one riot you can't cycle ahead), the "always build the same unit" and ask for unit production were set so the AI sets some random unit you don't want (I prefer both to be on) without telling you, etc.

This was the predator version if it matters. It seems odd that the first thing one needs to do is change so many of them. If the non-predator versions are the same, then I would think it hard on ppl who haven't played the GOTM before as it isn't "newbie friendly". It seems to give an advantage to anyone who knows to change the preferences right off. Even an expert player may not think to check the prefs and think he will be warned when a wonder starts.

Not sure if this is something you have given any thought to, but I thought I would mention it. In general, I would set it to "maximum information" and let ppl who care turn it off.

 

[AlanH]

A agree that maximum information is the preferred default. The worst one I noticed was when stop at end of turn was disable once. I lost a turn of research because of that. Now I *always* check preferences on anyone else's save I inherit, whether it's an SG or a GOTM, if only to turn off that stupid book cursor. That one always seems to be on, no matter what else has been disabled.

 

[ainwood]

I'll bear that in mind. I normally just go in and change all the preferences that I want to when I first open the game (and I think that a lot of these are stored in your .ini files, rather than in the save anyway). I'll have a look for next-time.

 

[Cat Behemoth]

Q.

What about scientific leaders? Are they turned off or on?

 

[AlanH]

Hi, Cat, welcome.

I'm, not a C3C expert, but I believe they are switched off to remove the wide random variation they could createin different games.

 

[Cat Behemoth]

Thanks. In COTM1 I've learned a lot of unneeded techs, trying to find one. And only when I've already finish the game I saw, that they were turned off. I could won much earlier than i did it. Are they will be turned off forever in all of COTMs?

 

[Darkness]

This is a bit of an aside but:

Out of curiosity, is there reason behind the preferences that are turned on or off? I noticed the wonder and disorder popups were turned off (you don't know if someone starts a wonder, and if you get more than one riot you can't cycle ahead), the "always build the same unit" and ask for unit production were set so the AI sets some random unit you don't want (I prefer both to be on) without telling you, etc.

This was the predator version if it matters. It seems odd that the first thing one needs to do is change so many of them. If the non-predator versions are the same, then I would think it hard on ppl who haven't played the GOTM before as it isn't "newbie friendly". It seems to give an advantage to anyone who knows to change the preferences right off. Even an expert player may not think to check the prefs and think he will be warned when a wonder starts.

Not sure if this is something you have given any thought to, but I thought I would mention it. In general, I would set it to "maximum information" and let ppl who care turn it off.

I also noticed the same (also predator level) and I agree greebley. max preferences would be preferable...

 

[AlanH]

Are they will be turned off forever in all of COTMs?

Forever is a long time Only Ainwood, the game designer, can answer that, and I don't suppose even he knows for sure. He lives in New Zealand, so you'll have to wait for the world to roll around a bit before he reappears.

 

[ainwood]

At this stage, there are no plans to turn them on. I won't say never, but I'd like to see them tweaked by a patch before they could be used. Unfortunately, patch chacnes aren't looking good, even for getting bugs fixed.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

Much as I love SGLs (I really think they add to the 1-player game), I agree with the staff's decision in this. The question (although it's a side topic from gotm) is whether SGLs shouldn't be disallowed in all comparison games (i.e. HoF games).

SGLs are imhso a fun element in 'lax games, which is what I think Firaxis wanted to do with the change. It's easily modded away and MGLs are imhso better implemented now, much b/c I never could figure out the logic behind MGLs wonder-rushing. With the excellent C3C armies, I don't even miss their wonder-rush ability.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I am gonna play this game, it is the first time i will be playing a GOTM.

I have a few questions though:

-I understand that it is not alowed to reload the game, are there any other rules that are less obvious?

-What are the rules for submission, do i need to submit only the last save file one turn before victory, or more?
-Also, where do i submit the save file?

-I only play deity/sid normally, on this difficulty, how feasable is reasearching yourself? is it normal to reasearch at 10% in the beginning or should i go all
out on it?

 

[AlanH]

Hi, and welcome. I can answer the mechanics questions. Better players than me will have to deal with your game strategy question.

The key source for GOTM info is the http://gotm.civfanatics.net web site. Click the first time visitor link for links to some guidelines on what is and isn't acceptable in GOTMs. there's also a Reference Thread with some links t useful background info, though a lot of it relates to the PtW/Civ3 classic heritage of the GOTM, of course.

Submit the save AFTER victory. Details are under the Submit GOTM link on the above site.

 

[Offa]

-I only play deity/sid normally, on this difficulty, how feasable is reasearching yourself? is it normal to reasearch at 10% in the beginning or should i go all
out on it?

Welcome. I hope you will find that it is much more fun playing gotm than solo efforts.

The current game is monarch level at which researching yourself is definitely feasible.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ok thanx, so is being registered to this forum enough of a registration, or do i need to register to gotm in addition? If so, can i hereby register myself, or where do i register?

and for the rules, i have only 1 question about the pop rushing. The boundaries of what is legal are a bit vague i think.

When i conquer an area so far that it can only be completely corrupt, i normally ICS it to have many cities, each with a tax man (or multiple if food alows) 1 gold from normal commerce and 1 from wealth. also providing unit support under the right government.
Of course i dont want to waste my good cities building these settlers, so i build them in my newly captured cities. I add a bunch of the captured workers to the conquered cities and pop rush a bit in order to speed up this settler production because the ground is already worked more than enough for these cities purpose.

So it is not that i build the workers for the purpose of pop rushing or build the towns with that purpose, it is just processing all the conquered crap to something usefull. (i know captured workers are free etc, but usually i just get way to many of them)

So i suppose that is illegal, or is it within the boundaries of legal ?.

 

[AlanH]

No more registration required. When you submit your final save use the same name as you use here. This will ensure that we know who you are and that all you rresults will be aggregated against the same name for Global Ranking purposes.

Re. Pop Rushing - I don't think many of the top players around here do much of it, mainly because early game population is typically too valuable in most situations, and in the later stages they're not usually running a pop-rushable government. It might all be different in C3C, of course P'raps I'll let the good players answer.

Another factor that reduces the need for this is I suspect you're doing it to build score. But the Jason scoring process that we use is intended to give you a score at the point of victory that you probably can't improve much by holding off and milking to 2050 AD.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

no, i do it when i conquer my first opponent, often i am still in despotism at that time and badly in need of more gold and unit support before i can afford republic.
Every city = 1 gold normal commerce + 2 gold taxmen + 1 gold wealth + 2 gold unit support republic = 6 gold.