Civ3 High Score Hall of Fame

[Thunderfall]

The updated HOF is uploaded!

Check it out: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3hof/

Notice I changed the color of all the tables to one color. I feel the old HOF page was too colorful.

Good job Duke!

 

[Beam]

Yep,

Big thumbs up for Duke, it has been a though discussion, yet there is a new HOF now that makes sense and where challenges are at hand. I personally hope that players where I have shared sav files with will submit as well for HOF given their gameplay. Ease of submission should not be an issue, it is very straightforward.

In response to Sirpleb, most of your post makes a lot of sense. I'd like to plea however for sustaining the multiple types of victories, i.e. more then just warfare. Also there should be easy to measure criteria, both for player and the Duke to judge submissions!

We all agree on the limitations of the scoring system, but what options do we have? We can work within the existing scoring system and adopt entry types like "the first who........" or wait for Firaxis to implement our ideas. Given the speed of Firaxis I would appreciate the first.

Please respond!

Thunderfall, on the new colors. Fine for me as well. I.m colorblind anyway.......

 

[SirPleb]

Yes, thumbs up Duke! I agree Beammeuppy, there's certainly something special about "the first to ..." The different win types create different challenges when measured by earliest date. The challenge is going to be finding some way to measure them, associating some kind of recognition/score with the date/type. I hope that eventually a good way to do that will become clear.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Originally posted by Thunderfall
Notice I changed the color of all the tables to one color. I feel the old HOF page was too colorful.

Fine with me, I didn't put them in there in the first place.

As far as the 'first of' scores, I would be willing to attach an excel spreadsheet that shows the date the game was received, that way people can sort it by whatever criteria they want.

As I said earlier, I will be adding a column that shows the Civ that was played, but I need to run through all the games (25 or so)that have that information missing first. Once that is done (hopefully by the next update) I will add that info to the page. I will also be adding a 'finished date' column as well.

Thanks all for the encouragement.

 

[boca]

Congratulations to the Duke of Marlbrough

You're doing a great job and we appreciate it

 

[Grey Fox]

I agree with Boca...

And on Deity maps, you don't have to be a Master Civ:er to beat them if the settings are right... so this was a very good thing to do (limiting the rules that is...)

If you play a Tiny map, Iroquai as the playable civ, America as the only opponent (they start closer with culturaly linked starting locations, and that's good if you wanna finish early). You can get scores up to 18-19000 points real easy if you get a fair map and a Horse and maybe some luxaries real close...

 

[Aeson]

I don't really think that the tiny and small maps are a problem. Granted they would fill up the HOF board for the first couple of months, as they can be played so quickly. There is some skill involved, but mostly in choosing game settings, and following a perfected opening gambit. I can beat any of the conquest scores posted by building to 2050 on any difficulty level though. This is how it should be, as the best scores will still entail the perfected opening gambit, but also add in patience and the ability to stick to a coherant build strategy throughout the game.

36060 is the highest score through an early conquest, and that is an impossible (can only be done on a specially edited map) 3950BC conquest on Deity. It should be possible to beat that score, though domination might keep the scores a bit lower. 20k-30k scores shouldn't be too rare eventually though on Monarch-Deity levels. It just takes a lot of time to do.

 

[Beam]

Originally posted by Aeson
I don't really think that the tiny and small maps are a problem. Granted they would fill up the HOF board for the first couple of months, as they can be played so quickly. There is some skill involved, but mostly in choosing game settings, and following a perfected opening gambit. I can beat any of the conquest scores posted by building to 2050 on any difficulty level though. This is how it should be, as the best scores will still entail the perfected opening gambit, but also add in patience and the ability to stick to a coherant build strategy throughout the game.

36060 is the highest score through an early conquest, and that is an impossible (can only be done on a specially edited map) 3950BC conquest on Deity. It should be possible to beat that score, though domination might keep the scores a bit lower. 20k-30k scores shouldn't be too rare eventually though on Monarch-Deity levels. It just takes a lot of time to do.

Good contribution IMHO, yet if you have read the HOF thread there is also a desire to eliminate "milking games". Those are games where just one AI city is left for ages and the only thing happening is accumulating score points. How much skill is required to do that? Once you are in the position to kill the latest civ what gameplay is left?

The scoring system still sux in order to rate skill of play, I hope that with some modified entry rules we can avoid milking games!

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Beammeuppy, you need to check your PM. I sent you one a few days ago, but I figure you don't have any kind of automatic notification active for it and just don't know it's there.

Hopefully by posting here you'll see this. (No, I still can't send or reply to e-mail from the hof account)

 

[linjon]

my world is ` 71-72 squares top to bottom and ~ 80 side to side-difficult to count some of the squares- this would be standard world?

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

The map you play must be randomly made and computer generated. No pre-made maps or scenarios count. If you don't remember what size map you chose, you can start a new standard map and count it out to check.

 

[Beam]

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
Beammeuppy, you need to check your PM. I sent you one a few days ago, but I figure you don't have any kind of automatic notification active for it and just don't know it's there.

Hopefully by posting here you'll see this. (No, I still can't send or reply to e-mail from the hof account)

Duke,

Replied to your PM and activated PM notification. Please gimme some extra info on your question and I'll check it out!

 

[Aeson]

I can understand people not wanting to allow milking of games as well, as it becomes very tedious in the latter stages. Playing a game from 4000BC till 2050AD, while maximizing the scoring every single turn, takes the most time, effort, and skill though. It isn't going to come down to who hits the spacebar the most. The best scores are going to come from those who maximize population and happiness while conquering the world at the fastest rate. After that it still takes a lot of skill to know how to build up corrupt cities fastest and how to avoid domination or cultural victories from being triggered.

Once you are in the position to kill the latest civ what gameplay is left?

If you follow this question to its conclusion, you will end up with the assumption that only very early pop rush conquests offer any gameplay. The best players can take out the AI very quickly, but just because they can doesn't mean they have to. If players only went for the most efficient and fastest possible victory condition, it makes the contest very one dimensional. I think we can all agree though that improving terrain, building city improvements, diplomacy, and military action are all important parts of a Civ game. The highest scores will be posted by those who can use an efficient overall strategy for the entire 540 turns in a Civ game. It certainly won't be the funnest playstyle for most (myself included), but competitions are rarely about who had the most fun.

 

[Beam]

Originally posted by Aeson
....After that it still takes a lot of skill to know how to build up corrupt cities fastest and how to avoid domination or cultural victories from being triggered....



....... I think we can all agree though that improving terrain, building city improvements, diplomacy, and military action are all important parts of a Civ game..............

Well, we agree on the important parts I guess, but it sounds a bit artificial to avoid victory!

How do you plan to play until 2050 and build your empire in a controlled way while avoiding diplo AND space race AND cultural AND domination AND conquest. I mean the AI usually gets in a position to build spaceships at 1700 - 1800 if still alive and if you want to make it to 2050 you would have to sabotage their construction time after time. Not my idea of enjoyable gameplay!

Yet I am open for suggestions!

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

That's the point. I had to eliminate the quick and dirty wins and I was getting flooded with the at least set a minimum standard for the game. Then, the prospect of playing a long ardious game will keep people from milking the game out to the very end.

The Civ II HOF was based entirely on milking the game, but how many people milked it for all it was worth? One. Will he ever do it again? No Way. He spelled it out for everyone that it was something he only did once to see if he could actually do it.

Will someone get onto the HOF by milking a game, most likely, will they play that type of game repeatedly, no way. Who would want to play a game that gets very boring and very drawn out. It kinda defeats the purpose of it being a game, which is meant for enjoyment.

So, people will play games that require more skill than restarting the game until they get a good start next to the only AI player, but will find a long drawn out game too tedious to be worth it. A decent way to allow people to show what they can do.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
How do you plan to play until 2050 and build your empire in a controlled way while avoiding diplo AND space race AND cultural AND domination AND conquest. ... Yet I am open for suggestions!

Well that's the thing It does actually add to the challenge to accomplish this. You can take out everything except one rival city, and box that city in so that it cannot grow or send units anywhere. Then you don't need to worry about the space race. You need to control the UN. You need to avoid taking too much (domination.) And you need to do all these things at once.

Efficiently taking out the last rival(s) without resettling the land is usually straightforward but can be interesting. (If it seems too easy, try it on a huge deity map with 15 rivals When you get near 2/3 of the world there will probably be a number of strong rivals left. Taking them out without settling the remaining land can be a challenge.)

I've found that it adds a lot to the challenge to milk a controlled (i.e. just boxed in rivals remain, to make the milking stage fast) diplomatic victory. It can be done! If that is still too boring (try it before you decide ), try getting all six wins out of a single game (requires milking of course to include the retirement win), that's quite a challenge.

I don't think of milking as avoiding victory, I think of it as choosing the time and place of victory.

I find that the milking stage of the game is not nearly as tedious as one might think if you haven't done it. The boring part is adding a marketplace, hospital, and mass transit to all the cities. But even that doesn't take all that much effort. Optimizing growth and location is even less work but is more interesting. Ensuring that you don't get a cultural victory is less effort again. (Boring but quick and easy to sell off some stuff.) If you want to "beautify" the unused land (e.g. pull up unnecessary railroads and plant forests) that takes longer than any of the other parts. But that is of course not necessary, it doesn't add to score. The turns go very quickly in the milking stage. When there are just one or two rival cities with few units, and there is nothing left for the automated workers to do, the computer plays the turns quite quickly, no big deal.

 

[Grey Fox]

My most fun games has been my low scoring games actually... recently i played the same game as a freind and we had a rule that we could only build or conquer a total of 10 cities, all cities taken by culture could be kept. So you could get more cities, I got 12... anyway, that was one of my funniest games ever. I built a wall of fortresses and defensive units around my hole border, and was freindly towards everyone except the russians. My first iplomatic win... I only got about 1500 points. Still, one of the best games I have played yet.

 

[Aeson]

A question about HOF game rules.

Is reloading allowed or not? Over at the GOTM forum, Matrix seemed to be under the impression that it was for HOF games. I have been playing a game to submit to the HOF for a couple of weeks now without reloading. It really didn't make a difference up to now anyways, as the sheer size and scope of the game would have assured that I could never finish if I was to reload for individual circumstances. But now I am closing in on the domination limit, and have stopped expanding just to be safe. Allowing a reload would let me pinpoint the domination limit, and would be tremendously advantageous in maximizing score. The rules state "no cheating" but really aren't clear on what constitutes cheating. I was just assuming the same rules as in the GOTM up till now.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

General Definition of Cheating:

Cheating is generally considered anything that is done outside the normal operations of the game. That means editors, mod-packs, and the like. Anything that everyone who just buys the game, and only installs patches/updates to the game, can do is fair game.

Reloading is allowed to a degree. If you want to check things, reload, if you want to redo a combat, you shouldn't reload.

The rules aren't as strict as the GOTM because in tthe GOTM everyone is playing the same game so they have to be sure everyone is playing on a more fair level within the fixed time frame. In the HOF, if someone outscores you, you just have to eventually play better to beat them.

 

[Aeson]

Ok, thanks for clearing that up