Civ 3 GOTM #2 *Spoiler* talks

[Elfi Wolfe]

I ended up submitting my game even though I did not finish it.
The save game was starting to crash every few turns, then it was crashing every other turn. So I just turned in what I had done.
Game was at 1802, score was 1752.
biggest problem is that france and englang had taken out the main land mass and would keep sending over their ships to bomb my shores. And rome would keep joining them in attacks on me.

Found a good respone to the shore bombardment. Get a whole bunch of artilery and counter bombard the ships and then send one of your ships out to finish off what is left.
At the very least the enemy has to move his ships back to his ports for repairs. But the AI learns. Now his ships come in and bombard then move back out of range of the guns.

I'm doing good, am 3rd behind France and Britian. but the crashes just got to me.

 

[Badluck]

About submitting.... i didnT' submit because it is my third game and i am still learning so sometimes i do major misstake and i had to load back 2 or 3 time.
maybe next month i will be submitting.

I have finished taking the small island and mine.

When i met the civ on the great island i was 1 COMPLETLE age behind them in technology advance...
i started paniking.... but they where afraid of my *horse 2:1:2* and then had Cavalry and rifleman so i put 100% in cash and i traded each 2 turn a new technologi for cash to the second suckiest on the big island so he would start fighting the other big guy and so the small one keep small so when i want to attack them i would be able too have 4 easy citi on theire island...
the problem now is that i have NO COAL!!! there is only coal on the big island, and they ask my 1000 gold and 60 per turn for this coal !!! are they DUMB!!!!
i think i will have to try and take one of the german cities near the ocean that have coal...
should not be to hard to take but to keep it will be hard..

If we were created by god, then we are Frankenstein;
not to be controlled or understood.

 

[Scarhart]

I posted earlier with my first GOTM experience (driven into the sea by the Romans), and have read other folk's game discussions with a mixture of admiration and head shaking.

I must say though that Spoonman's post a few days ago provided me with a lot of hope and inspiration. He (I assume male from the handle) was also hammered by the Romans, but managed to sue for peace as he was losing his last city. And he *still won the game!*

I was at the point of being overrun when I tipped my king. Now I see that even when the early game is bleakest, that I should hang on and play and perhaps have a chance.

Thanks for sharing, people. I've enjoyed my first GOTM experience immensely!

Until later,

Scarhart

 

[pieterb]

I'm new here, just finished my first GOTM last night (started late on Dec 22) and read this thread today. Lots of good stuff here!

Aeson seems to have called it bang on! I thought I had a possible win here but in already revealed scores I see that I have not. As Aeson predicted I am in the same general range of score with the kind of finish Aeson describes. I took a spaceship win but I could have picked culture or conquest.

I think that my tactics were a bit different but strategy the same. In a nutshell:

I took 3 wars with the Romans to wipe them out. I squeezed a lot of tech out of them the first two times in exchange for peace. Got two great leaders along the way, used one to build Forbidden Palace in a productive location just west of south-center of the homeland continent. I never even thought about iron or horses - the hoplite/archer combination is very powerful and with a labor camp churning them out you can soon get enough high level units fighting to be fairly sure of ending up with at least one great leader.

Just about the time I'd finished beautifying the conquered homeland (about 1050AD) and had a pack of galleys ready to go somewhere (I didn't bother exploring with them up to now) the English discovered me. Lots of trading resulted in me catching up in tech and knowing about everyone except the Aztecs - in my game no one met them till about 1200AD. I hurried some research and as soon as I had galleons, upgraded everything and went visiting. (Including taking settlers with me - at this middle stage I think it generally better to raze cities and rebuild than to constantly cover your back against uprisings.) From this point (about 1200AD) on, for a LONG time I had a constant shuttle service of galleons (and later transports) running back and forth. Started by invading the French and soon after (ASAP after getting Nationalism) I made a MPP with the English. They were perfect for this purpose - strong enough and well positioned to take the heat off other wars, badly enough positioned to give me first crack at whoever we went to war with, and reasonably positioned to be the last ones on that continent I'd take out.

Then one at a time (two or three at some moments) war with selected targets. After eliminating everyone else on that continent I abused a Right of Passage with the English and cleaned them out. Finally, everyone back on the boats and off to visit the Aztecs. Left them with two cities in 1818 and then polished the game a bit toward the 2050 limit for a higher score.

I made a few blunders. In the early game I did almost no research after granary. (My deity strategy works on the assumption that buying tech works better than researching it. In my last deity game I won nicely and only researched 3 techs myself in the entire game.) In this game I should've researched more. I also fouled up badly in giving the English at one point a right of passage. (Didn't mean to and don't remember doing it!) It allowed them to capture a number of cities from common enemies when I thought I had them better isolated. And my great treachery with the English (massive attack abusing a right of passage) was a mess - I underestimated the number of tanks required against infantry in a number of cities. Caused eventual deterioration to anarchy, then peace, and eventually a new and better planned final assault on the English. And I really should've moved my palace in this game, somehow that is something I never think of, I guess it is something I'm sentimental about. (Weird considering how ruthless I am willing to be.)

Luck was average I think. Two goodie huts wiped out the units that explored them, one gave a settler, one gave a conscript, the rest were ho-hum. Once a barbarian uprising beat up a city. I got two great leaders from fighting the Romans - one more than I really expected from that amount of fighting. But in the entire rest of the game I only got 3 more. (None until way down the line, long after I really needed them.) Way below the odds, I guess that offset the bonus one I got earlier on.

I could have had a better score. I think that at least 18,000 to 20,000 might be possible. Aside from the mistakes, I could have "beautified" things a lot more in the end game. I never carefully settled the big continent for maximum population, nor the Aztecs' homeland. And I didn't irrigate them - it would have been too much grief pulling my hordes of workers off the "A" level of automation. I should've shift-A'd them in the first place. I did irrigate the entire homeland because it was easy to do that one. Could've gained a fair bit in my score by micromanagement I think.

I'm not including my score here, going to keep you guessing <g>. But it does not beat the highest score already reported here. I definitely could exceed the 15,000 level by going back to my 1818 (end of the wars) save and replaying from there with micromanagement, instead of just slamming it home casually. I'll stand by what I did and remember to be more careful in future! <vbg> I do suggest that posting scores in this thread is perhaps not a good idea in future - I think a surprise result is more fun as well as avoiding the possibility of unscrupulous play.

A funny thing: I normally play with only conquest victory enabled. In this game, from early on I had my eye on ensuring I'd control the UN. (I almost saved great leader number 2 for that. That would've been over-cautious though <g>.) But I never thought that a cultural victory might happen. In this game when I was done with war I considered how did I want to win? On checking I found then that my culture was over 85,000. I played one turn and checked again, it had gone up by 900. Oh no!!! An accidental cultural victory was rushing at me! (Good grief, it almost even happened!) I immediately sold nearly every temple, cathedral, library, university, research lab (only had a few of this), and colosseum. Got my culture growth down well under 100 per turn. After doing all that taking a cultural victory felt wrong <g>. So I chose to go for a spaceship victory near 2050.

 

[Eliezar]

I was similar with the conquest to cultural victory scenario. But I just let the game end when I cultured up. If I would have played on I could have had a pretty massive score, but I didn't.

Romans defeated by 600s ad
French defeated by 1200 ad
English and Indians defeated by 1500 ad
Main Island completely conquered by 1600 ad
Cultural Victory in the early 1800s

My biggest problems were that I couldn't get a single trireme to find another land mass even though I kept sending them down the sea channel that would have led to the Aztecs. Combine that with the Indians finishing the Great Lighthouse when I was 2 turns away and the Indians didn't arrive on my shores forever.

If I would have milked the score and not allowed a cultural victory to come naturally I would have had 15k by the year 2000 it would seem, but I didn't milk the score to that degree.

In fact, my bonus for winning was less than what I would have gotten for playing 4 more turns.

Eliezar

 

[Squiggy]

I am dreading the day when I will be able to win in 2048 and have the fastest finish in a GOTM because everybody else milked it to 2049.

 

[Aeson]

I doubt we will be seeing too many more domination disabled GOTM's, which is the main reason why high scores this month are going to be 2050 games. The good scores for GOTM2 are going to be ~15000 most likely. With domination disabled, that would basically mean that only 60% of that score would be possible. 60% of 15000 is 8000, which would be a score that conquest victories could possibly achieve on this map. A 300 AD conquest would net 7000 bonus points, and by that time population and territory should be close to 1000 points. I recently played a game to a 450BC conquest victory on the GOTM2 map, just to see if it could be done. Of course that was with blatent exploits, such as city trading and reloading. Plus I had prior knowlege of the map. I would assume that without the city trading or reloading, it would be possible to achieve conquest somewhere near the 300AD date, though 500AD would be more likely.

Our first GOTM was a small map, which lent itself to early conquest. A standard continents map, or large archipelago would probably balance out the scoring between the two victory types (early conquest, 2050 "bloating") quite well. The only real problem with the scoring system is that early space launches and cultural victories aren't ever going to score high enough to win.

I think that on standard maps, a 1500AD launch or cultural victory is comparable to a 10AD conquest. Perhaps adding an extra bonus to space launce and cultural victory conditions would be in order.

(2050 - Date) * (MapSize * Difficulty) = Bonus

Difficulty
Cheiftain = 1
Warlord = 2
Regent = 3
Monarch = 4
Emporer = 5
Deity = 6

MapSize
Tiny = 4
Small = 3
Standard = 2.5
Large = 2
Huge = 1

At monarch level, on a standard map, this would give a space launch at 1500AD a 2200 point bonus in game scoring, plus an extra 5500 bonus.

(2050 - 1500) * 4 = 2200
(2050 - 1500) * (2.5 * 4) = 5500

That would give a 7700 point bonus overall, putting it close to the 8160 point bonus that a 10AD conquest would receive.

(2050 - 10) * 4 = 8160

The difference of 460 points allows for the extra territory and population points that would be gained by waiting until 1500.

On the GOTM1 map I was able to launch by the mid 1600's on a game I played after submitting my conquest. I'm not sure, but I think it netted around 2400 points. Applying this extra bonus would have added another 3600 points, bringing the total to 6000, which would have put it close to the conquest victory I had of 6455.

Smaller maps get +modifier to account for earlier possible conquest, with less territory and population points available. Larger maps get a -modifier to account for later possible conquest, with more territory and population points available. I think the type of map (Archipelago, Continents, Pangaea) shouldn't need a modifier, as they would even themselves out. Pangaea maps would allow for earlier conquest, but also more land to build up territory and population points on, with Archiplelago just the opposite.

I'm not sure about the MapSize modifiers yet, but something in the neighborhood would give us more options to pursue and still have a chance to win. The bonus doesn't seem to work well with GOTM1's results though. All of the cultural and spaceship victories still score well short of the high conquest scores. This could be because most players realized that by waiting to launch or hit 100,000 culture, their scores would be higher. It could also be because the better players saw that conquest would be the best scoring option and went that way, I don't know. I based the small map size modifier soley on the results of my space launch game, as that was the only one that I could judge how well it was played. If any of you have results from different victory conditions achieved on the same map, do these modifiers put them close in scoring? Keep in mind that if domination is disabled, only 60% of the score would count for this purpose if a "bloated" victory.

ps. I intentionally left out Diplomatic victories. In my opinion, they are too easy to achieve to warrant winning a GOTM competition that isn't designated as a Diplomatic only game. If people disagree with me about that, then just apply the same bonus to them.

 

[Smirk]

Now I don't get that at all, UN victory too easy? More easy than building 10 parts to a space ship? Easier than just building culture buildings and then waiting hundreds of years? Perhaps you have a secret you'd like to share with me? I don't think UN is easy at all, first its pretty impossible to know how the other civs will vote, also even who will be voted for.

You want to know whats easy? Milking a game that you've clearly won, only to get a higher score. You are merely trading your time for more score, not the classic equation of your time for more skill, and then that skill into more score.

 

[Aeson]

To win diplomatically you only have to build the UN and not sign any MPP's. Thats just about it. Nothing else you do in the game is very important, as long as you don't go out starting wars. Building the UN is very simple. Even if you don't have a leader, just have a palace being built a few techs before and you're guaranteed it. Every AI will at some point get drawn into a world war, alienating most of the other AI in process. Even if you make 1 or 2 Civs mad at you, they probably will just abstain from voting. The tech to build the UN (Fission) comes well before all the spaceship parts are available, and the cost of the UN is much less than the combined cost of the spaceship parts.

It's relatively easy to get a Diplomatic victory on any difficulty level, and not have to "play" the game at all. I've built one city, never researched a tech or fought a war, and still won diplomatically in the 1600's on Emporer/Small map. My score was around 2000, which was more than that game was worth no doubt. Adding the bonus I described would have given it another 6000 or so points (~400 * 15). Game took all of an hour to play, with most of that waiting for the computer to process the AI's moves. On the same map, that would have beat all other types of victories, except an early conquest. Even if I had expanded and done some of the researching myself, it would have slowed down the overall tech advancement. Granted that on other map settings and difficulty levels this wouldn't always be the case. On a larger map though, I probably would have won sooner. The AI did all the researching, and would have had more cities to do it with. For the most part, giving a bonus to Diplomatic victories wouldn't reward skill at all. In many cases, well played diplomatic victories would score less than poorly played ones.

Cultural victories aren't too difficult to achieve, but it does force a player to at least expand and build, and most likely fight a few wars in the process (have to have 2x the culture to win if not a 20k one city victory). OCC cultural victories are very much like the Diplomatic ones, but don't really matter that much since they are only possible in the late AD's. I'm not sure, but the earliest a OCC cultural victory would be attainable should be somewhere around the 1800's. Compare that to 1500's for OCC diplomatic victories (on higher difficulty levels). A OCC space launch is actually a pretty difficult thing, I haven't heard of anyone doing it on deity yet. Probably the only way would be to get several leaders, which would require a lot of warfare (very dangerous on deity and OCC). In any case, it would also not be attainable until after the UN had been built for quite a while, and would at least require one facet of the game (warfare) to be played.

Bloating, or Milking, a game for more points certainly doesn't take much skill. Getting to the point where it is possible at least requires the player to work a bit, and with the scoring bonus I'm talking about, it would make the scores relatively even for winning early, or building up to win late.

I'm not saying that diplomatic victories can't be played skillfully mind you. Just it can be a very easy way to victory, requiring little to no skill, and the score wouldn't know the difference. So if we adjust the scoring to allow well played diplomatic games to compete with other victory types, then we run the risk of having poorly played games beating more deserving ones. If the # of civs was low (2 or 3), and on regent or below, then the differences might show up more. Of course, if anyone ever obtains a Diplomatic victory with only 1 AI opponent, they deserve to win

 

[Spoonman]

Originally posted by Scarhart

I must say though that Spoonman's post a few days ago provided me with a lot of hope and inspiration

aw shucks

glad i took the time to post here

 

[ProPain]

I don't agree that its too easy to milk an obviously won game to 2050 just for the score.

I'm about to finish the gotm2 by conquest (about 1875 AD) and I was getting insane with all the worker movement. Finally I just fortified them all, quit building new cities and I'm just beating the crap out of the last 2 backward civs. I have great respect for people who have the patience and stamina sit out about 200 turns of total boredom just for the score. I just can't do it, it drove me crazy. In my opinion if you can then you really have deserved the victory because you worked hard for it. And beforehand I feel sorry for those who did this and are not going to win. Just think of all those hours spent in vain.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by ProPain
I don't agree that its too easy to milk an obviously won game to 2050 just for the score.

You missed the point. It's not that it's too easy, it's that the difficulty is in boredom/stamina and not skill.

 

[Dunster]

I finished my game last night and emailed it in - a 30AD save and my 1872 space victory.

First Roman war occured when he attacked my third city. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could hold him off and still build new cities. Since everyone was defending against barbarians, defending against Romans wasn't a strain. Peace came soon at a cost of 60 gold or so.

First research was ironworking, for 40 turns. I sucessfullly got a city at the iron and then land-grabbed with the Romans, ending a city or two down. Then it was barracks and swordsmen. War started when I had 3 parties of 6 swordsmen each. In retrospect, this wasn't enough - I should have started stronger to make the war go quicker. I was victorious, just not as surgically as I would like.

The Indians made conact with me, and I traded around for contacts. I was not surprised to find that I was waaaay behind in tech, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had the power lead. Interestingly, I didn't discover the Aztecs until much later.

2 turns after I discovered Steam Power, my iron supply gave out. I spent alot to get iron for the next 40 turns doing railroad. Late in that stretch the English were dumb enough to drop 2 cavalry on me, and we went to war. The English had taken part in the German slaughter, and they had a formerly-German iron supply. I took it, and went to peace. My English war did drag in the Aztecs and Indians, so I took a few adjacent Indian cities just because I could.

From then on, I was pretty unconstrained. I researched like a madman, aiming for space. Launched uneventfully.

I then read this thread. I'm mildly horrified by the micromanagement necessary to get those high scores. I'm content to not compete for those. I enjoyed the challenge of this game - the Romans, the iron, etc. I'm equally content to bow out of the competition in a micro-managed 2049 victory.

Dunster

 

[Armageddon]

Ack - I just saw the message that said we had to resubmit our GOTM 2 entries. I just did it but I hope I'm not too late, Matrix!

Armageddon

 

[ProPain]

Originally posted by ChrisShaffer


You missed the point. It's not that it's too easy, it's that the difficulty is in boredom/stamina and not skill.

I do agree with you that milking the game doesn't require much skill. But winning in sport does require both skill and stamina and I think the same goes for the gotm. My personal preference lies entirely with the skill part and not milking part. But I do think a competition like the GOTM should cater to both tastes and can have a game like this once in a while.

 

[Smirk]

Aeson, in what difficulty level were you able to play with just one city and get a UN victory? That sounds very difficult to me, you must have been paying tribute to every civ. In this gotm I destroyed 4 civs and got the UN victory, simply because I never really bothered with it before and because its an early way to win.

I'm not saying that people that milked the game have no skill, I'm saying that the process of milking a game is not skill related. I expect the winner of gotm2 still played the most skillful game (at least that judged by the scoring system), but those of us that didn't purposefully milk the game for score aren't comparable score wise, which kinda defeats the purpose here right?

And that is the other reason I choose not to do it, this is fun competition, not a win at all costs competition. I'm guessing that the bulk of people that played have not milked the game, and if so I'll be able to compare my play with them. This is more a statement on the spirit of the rules, not so much the letter, since there isn't a milking section.

 

[Eliezar]

Smirk I think the milking IS a problem with GOTMs. It was a problem to me when I saw that if I played for another 250 years I would more than double my current score. I didn't go on because I was sick of the sheer redundancy, but truthfully had I played another 50 years every city would have had every happiness and population improvement and every tile would have been worked. That would leave 200 years of cleaning up pollution and pressing end of turn.

The purpose of civilization is to build up a civilization that dominates through one of the victory conditions while opposed by hostile civilizations trying to achieve the same dominance. Once you have the enemies down to 1 city there is no longer any outside pressure and thus there is no skill left in the game.

I think the truest test of skill isn't in score at all as score. The truest test of skill is who can get the victory condition fastest. I'd definitely change the rules to give awards to the earliest victory of each type, the three total earliest victories, and 1 award for the highest score.

In reality taking your civilization and improving every tile and building every city improvement you can shows little skill as well. I think that sometime in the reasonable future we will figure out the ai research patern (for instance in every game I've played the laser is the last tech branch the ai civs research that goes towards the spaceship) and this will allow us to tech faster by choosing to research what the ai isn't researching so that we can achieve a faster rate of progress than we currently do. Things like that, how to fastest achieve a cultural victory, and the quickest and least painful way to whipe out opponents are where the skill lies in my opinion.

Eliezar

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Originally posted by gonzo_for_civ
I don't think I'll submit this month.

Originally posted by Matrix
Why not? A lot of people say they don't submit when they haven't accomplished enough to their standards. But that's not the point. We all want to know how others did in relation to our own score. So please submit.

Well spoken Matrix. I didn't read this post in time for this month, but from now on I will submit my score every month regardless of win or loss or anything else. I think everyone should. My first CivII GOTM I placed 60th out of 62. I guess I can't place much worse over here

 

[Aeson]

I've played OCC Diplomatic victories out on Regent, Monarch, and Emporer levels. It really doesn't take much to do, you just have to keep a lot of military around to keep the AI from thinking you are weak. It's easier on small maps, harder on larger ones. The more Civs in the game the easier it will be. Trading a lot usually keeps everyone gracious, and tech trading, even after the patch, keeps the money rolling in. That money can be used for military alliances to help if another Civ gets too agressive (never sign MPP's in a diplomatic game though). With how dumb the AI is when it invades, it isn't hard to defeat them, even with a relatively small force. In most games of any type, your military should have a 5 to 1 victory edge or greater against the AI. Your "defense" should be comprised mostly of 2 movement attack units, as by the time any invasion reaches you, that force should be able to wipe it out. I like to wander a bit before placing the 1 city if at all possible. Peninsula's are great, especially if there is a mountain or two between you and the main landmass. The AI is seemingly incapable of making amphibious assaults, so just lining your shores with any unit takes away any chance of a sea invasion. Building a city on a gold hill next to a river is the best spot, as the gold gives you the extra commerce, and the hill gives you better defense (as does the river). Just stay away from luxuries, as the AI will probably try to grab them later in the game. The Babylonians are probably the best Civ for this type of game, as scientific will give you 2 free techs, and the cheap buildings are nice. On lower difficulty levels (or very small maps) it's even possible to take out other Civ's that you think might vote against you.

 

[Eliezar]

heh, can you imagine the OCC on an island just big enough for one civ with the entire coast primitive units 8)

Eliezar