Civ4 GOTM 1 Results & Congratulations

[Markus5]

Isn't there an award for the TIME victory condition?

 

[Gurkburkinator]

Is there any way to view the saves with 1.52?

 

[chunkymonkey]

I'm not sure whether this has been discussed before, but perhaps one way of modifying the final scores to allow for greater comparison between victory conditions - i'm thinking GPR here mostly - is to given the top score in each chosen condition 100%. The ratio of each player's score to this top score is then their GPR.

e.g. samson's 1815AD spaceship victory (37516) nets him 100%, as does hendriksoon's domination, Dave's conquest and so on. Note that these are not the fastest win dates.

My 1912AD (21334) space victory would therefore earn me 56.87% for this game, rather than the 16.354% score i get after being compared to hendriksoon's score. Pursuing a space victory or other peaceful victory i don't think i would be able to compete. This effectively forces me (if i want to stay on the first page of the GPR) to consistently play the GOTM as a warmonger.

Whaddya think?

Congrats to all though!

 

[Shillen]

I'm not sure whether this has been discussed before, but perhaps one way of modifying the final scores to allow for greater comparison between victory conditions - i'm thinking GPR here mostly - is to given the top score in each chosen condition 100%. The ratio of each player's score to this top score is then their GPR.

e.g. samson's 1815AD spaceship victory (37516) nets him 100%, as does hendriksoon's domination, Dave's conquest and so on. Note that these are not the fastest win dates.

My 1912AD (21334) space victory would therefore earn me 56.87% for this game, rather than the 16.354% score i get after being compared to hendriksoon's score. Pursuing a space victory or other peaceful victory i don't think i would be able to compete. This effectively forces me (if i want to stay on the first page of the GPR) to consistently play the GOTM as a warmonger.

Whaddya think?

Congrats to all though!

I think DaveMcW suggested much the same thing. It has potential but what if only 3 people go for a diplomatic victory and none of them do a great job of it? One of them will get 100% credit anyway?

 

[AlanH]

Is there any way to view the saves with 1.52?

We're investigating options for this. It will probably mean editing all the saves to make them compatible.

 

[Jason Fliegel]

It appears that _speedy_ (who came in #327 in the submissions) is not listed in the Global Rankings.

 

[regoarrarr]

Woohoo! 41st and 4th fastest Diplomatic victory *pats himself on the back*

1410AD Diplo is insane. I have half a mind to see if I could beat that even playing completely spoiled!

 

[DaveMcW]

My suggestion had 3 parts:

1. The best game for each victory condition scores 100%.
2. For victories other than score, the fastest game is the best one.
3. "Best game" is determined by a statistical analysis of all GOTM data. It's possible for no one to score 100% in a given month. (Though for the first few months they will because we have no other data.)

 

[AlanH]

But when a game is 'Progressively Aged' does that mean that a game 9 months ago would have less of an impact on the global ranking than a game 2 months ago?

If this is the case is there somewhere to find the formula?

Sorry for the delay in replying. I was distracted

Games add to the total ranking score according to their age. Aging is linear:

0 months: score x 100%
1 months: score x 88.89%
2 months: score x 77.78%
3 months: score x 66.67%
4 months: score x 55.56%
5 months: score x 44.44%
6 months: score x 33.33%
7 months: score x 22.22%
8 months: score x 11.11%
9 months and older: zero

So next month, GOTM 1 will add 88.89 to whatever Hendrickszoon scores in GOTM 2, and it will add 33.574 x 88.89% = 29.844 to your total.

 

[DaviddesJ]

If I were constructing a scoring system, it would include the following factors (at least):

1. A time factor, for the time at which you achieve a particular victory condition, relative to the "expected" time for that victory condition (which could be estimated in various ways).

2. A "world population" factor. I would give the winner a score based on the total population of the whole world, not just his or her own population. The theory being that the player who achieves world domination (of whatever sort) is doing well if the world is doing well. This would reduce or eliminate the undesirable incentive to conquer the world for a high score even if you're going for a spaceship or cultural victory. Again, the population would have to be adjusted relative to a benchmark of what is "expected" at a particular time.

 

[HeadBlend]

Congrats all.

Thanks to Ainwood, AlanX an others for the huge effort to do all this.

486th place - about the same as my CivIII ranking

On with GOTM_2 for 400th?

 

[dar]

Dar with a 2:08 playtime, and henceforward known to me as “Dar the Speedy.”

Lol thanks. I'm so used to playing multiplayer that even when I sit down without a timer I still end up flying through most games. Its a bad habit really .

 

[Memphus]

@AlanH

Thanks, I knew there was math behind it

That being said missing a game can have disaterous consequences at first but does ruin your chances forever...Very cool system


As for my $0.02 on score, if somehow each building was worth X amounts of points, (reason being later game buildings worth more for other victories)

As well as culture be factored in, but on a scale
meaning culture point 7000 in a city is worth more than point 10.
This is because otherwise it would be too big of factor for domination as borders get expanded a couple of times, but not all cities get high (above 1000) in culture.

As for models on this I have no idea

 

[godotnut]

First of all, congratulations to everyone and THANKS to the fabulous and sexy GOTM staff!

Secondly, I add my voice to the chorus of those who want some kind of score weighting to boost those awesome non-combat related victories, making other victory conditions viable options for those wanting to score in the top ranks. And this comment comes from someone who won with a domination victory.

Now, on to my questions:

Can someone help me understand how well (or poorly) I did? This being my first GOTM experience, I have no basis for comparison. As someone who started playing Civ last summer (civ3 obviously) and who has never competed like this, how happy should I be with a ranking of 73rd? I mean, how experienced is the average participant? Any guesses?

Also, is anything done with the overall rankings? For example, it seems like a good idea to invite everyone in the top such-and-such percent at the end of one year to play in an invite-only "playoff tournament"--or something like that.

What I'm looking for is some kind of further incentive to play every GOTM and wind up as high as I can in rankings, regardless of whether I make it in the top 3 or 10 (seems unlikely). Is there anything like that in place now? Even a end-of-the-year overall award or something?

What do you all think about a "superbowl" of Civ for the top 25% or so at the end of a certain period of GOTM play (six months? a year?)

 

[Memphus]

@godotnut

Have you looked at the global rankings?

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/rankings/civ_global.php

And Reference:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3554303&postcount=49

I think this is what you were looking for?

 

[AlanH]

It appears that _speedy_ (who came in #327 in the submissions) is not listed in the Global Rankings.

Thanks - well spotted A bug that's been hibernating ever since C3C COTM 1. Fixed.

 

[DaviddesJ]

What do you all think about a "superbowl" of Civ for the top 25% or so at the end of a certain period of GOTM play (six months? a year?)

I worry because one of the best things about the GOTM is that you don't have to play for the highest possible score. You can just play the way you like to play. There's nothing at stake that you lose if you don't score as much as you can.

Creating more tangible rewards (like the right to enter a special competition) would create more pressure to compete, which I personally would not value. There's also the real issue that it's pretty easy to cheat. That's just another reason not to create incentives that are too strong.

In practice, the "Predator level" of Civ3 GOTM serves more or less the role you describe---it naturally attracts the top 25% or so of the players, without the exclusionary element.

I used to play tournament bridge, and one of the neat things about that game is that most tournaments, even the national championships, are open to anyone who wants to enter (or almost anyone---some have relatively minimal requirements, that keep out total beginners). Intermediate players can choose between playing against the best (and losing), or competing against their peers, in a parallel event. I think that's a good paradigm for us, too.

 

[Kuranes]

AlanH's scatterplot pretty much tells the full story, but I did a bit more statistics on the spreadsheet he posted to see how various victory conditions fared. Spaceship victory is by far the most popular with 267 submissions, but also the lowest scoring.

+--------------+-------+----------+----------+
| type         | Count | AvgTurns | AvgScore |
+--------------+-------+----------+----------+
| "Conquest"   |    14 |      332 |    27546 |
| "Cultural"   |    27 |      335 |    13062 |
| "Diplomatic" |    82 |      343 |    17251 |
| "Domination" |   142 |      327 |    27214 |
| "Spaceship"  |   267 |      380 |    10018 |
| "Time"       |    53 |      430 |     4917 |
+--------------+-------+----------+----------+

For the database nerds in the audience, I saved his spreadsheet as a CSV and imported it into MySQL like this:

create temporary table civ (year int, turns int, score int, type char(32));
load data infile 'civ.csv'  into table civ fields terminated by ',' lines terminated by '\r\n' ;
select type, count(*) as Count, round(avg(turns)) as AvgTurns, round(avg(score)) as AvgScore from civ group by type;

 

[Methos]

I worry because one of the best things about the GOTM is that you don't have to play for the highest possible score. You can just play the way you like to play. There's nothing at stake that you lose if you don't score as much as you can.

I agree with David entirely. It's already showing that military victories are the best way to get the highest score. So in other words to reach the % to be included in this "superbow" I am forced to play a victory condition I do not desire.

GOTM's are fun and great to compare with other players who are achieving the same victory condition I am going for. I would not enjoy playing if my primary objective was reaching a high score in a victory condition I do not like.

 

[Elandra]

The clock is pretty meaningless for all but the shortest games because the clock keeps ticking even when the player is AFK. I'm sure that any time over 30 hours contains a big portion of idle time.

Actually, 100% of my time was spent on the game. (50-plus hours) No idle time to speak of. I may be an oddball, but it took me that long. I even did my city placement planning outside of the game clock using screen prints. I'm looking forward to reading the leading game summaries to see how I can win faster, both in turns and in real-life-time!

@Samson: Congrats on your space race medal, I'm in awe!

@the staff: thanks a ton, this was a blast!