COTM 08: Results and congratulations

[ainwood]

COTM 08 was a tough game - whilst you could travel around the world and get contacts from as early as mapmaking, the starting position was limited in luxuries, and sparse of early resources (no iron or horses).

The aim was to get people thinking in a different way, and to require a different approach than the old recipe-based republic slingshot followed by horse / sword-based expansion. From the look of the leaderboard at the end of the game, it proved to be a very interesting challenge, and quite a balanced one too.

A few months ago, following discussions of the balance within the Jason scoring system, Aeson posted that he would show that players pursuing a Cultural 20k victory could submit games that could still compete for medals. Well, he certainly did it in style, completing a Cultural 20k victory in 1762 AD, and walking away with no less than 4 awards for his efforts, including the gold medal!

SirPleb secured second place, after blitzing the world for a conquest victory in 790 AD.

To show that the game was nicely balanced, Dynamic grabbed the bronze, with an 1170 AD spaceship victory only 74 points behind SirPleb!

Of note: the next two places went to Diplomatic and Domination wins respectively!

Summary of medal winners:

Aeson: 1762AD Cultural20k victory, 11035 Jason points.

SirPleb: 790 AD Conquest victory, 10484 Jason points.

Dynamic: 1170 AD SpaceRace victory, 10410 Jason points.

 

[ainwood]

Other award winners:

Bradleyfeanor: 880 AD Diplomatic Victory, 9858 points.

A'AbarachAmadan: 870 AD Domination Victory, 9828 points.

Kuningas: 1365 AD Cultural 100k Victory, 8778 points.

 

[ainwood]

Other award winners:

bozo: 1735 AD Cultural 100k Victory, 6126 points.

nichelle: 1715 AD Diplomatic Victory, 4751 points.

ancient_gamer: 2019 AD Domination Victory, 2470 points.

gervond: 1994 AD SpaceRace Victory, 1836 points.

Borgil: 1854 AD SpaceRace Loss, 1759 points.

Tubby Rower: 270 AD Conquest Loss, 196 points.

 

[solenoozerec]

@Aeson - Has anyone got four awards in one game before?
Congratulations to all winners and everyone who played (myself included – my best rank ever and the first time in the top ten ).

 

[Renata]

Beeyootiful results. BradleyFeanor's game blows my mind -- diplo victory less than ten turns after the earliest victory of any type. Way cool.

Congrats, all.

Renata

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

My goodness Aeson. It was only a few games ago that I did a 20K and concluded one could not score well, especially if competing for a fastest finish. You proved my thoughts absolutely wrong! Awe inspiring!

Also to SirPleb. Conquest?! On this map!! I had to leave one opponent as they entered IA 36 turns prior to me reaching domination and upgraded to Riflemen all over, and I wasn't even to Physics yet.

And Dynamic with a Spaceship in the top 3! Didn't think that was very likely either!! Great job!

Although I would have rather seen it in another game , it is nice to see domination games relegated to second class citizens.


Also want to give a special thanks to SirPleb. I know there are many great players out there, but after my first COTM I decided to study, study, and study some more how SirPleb plays. His great posts and detailed QSC reports have propelled my game to new heights. Thanks again!!

 

[Dynamic]

Congrats to all who play on this non-usual but how we now understand very balanced map!

The top 5 rows have 5 different victory conditions! I think it will be classic ad a good example for those players who not believe that it's possible.

I very impressed by Aeson game and SirPleb played very strong game as usual. Bradleyfeanor got very early Diplo victory and A'AbarachAmadan have classic stlyle Domination. Very nice results!

 

[civ_steve]

Awesome set of results! Truely outstanding results by all the Award winners (did you guys decide beforehand which victories to go for? ) I hope this doesn't mean a return to milking!

 

[solenoozerec]

Congratulations to all winners and everyone who played...

I think I forgot to congratulate one more person, Ainwood.
This map turned out to be very balanced indeed which is obvious from concentration of awards at the top (Kuningas 100K is an exception).
IMHO it was the best map and choice of civilizations I ever completed.
Ainwood - and many

 

[Darkness]

Congrats all!

I think we can now (after the results proved otherwise in COTM7&8) lay the gripe that only military wins score high, to rest...

 

[Aeson]

This was well balanced and interesting map, but Cultural 20k (or any late milked victory) was definitely favored a bit due to the limitations on early expansion. It's too bad Hannabir wasn't able to finish out his game though. He had 17 more pop than I did at 1000BC, it would have been interesting to see what could be done with it.

[inane scoring babble]I was close to Domination (-6 tiles) in 830AD with a Firaxis score of 11164 (3846 base and the date bonus would have been +7320), and my Jason at that point would have been 10446. If I had milked it out all the way to 2050AD at the per turn score I had in 1762AD, I would have scored 22981 Firaxis for 10934 Jason. It probably would have been a bit over 11k because some cities still hadn't been maxed out yet.

Whether those ~700 points were worth the extra 52 hours I spent from 830AD to 1762AD I'm not so sure...

 

[WackenOpenAir]

grats to the winners, espescially Dynamic for wrecking my first space attempt

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Congrats to Nichelle on her first award, the Purple Shield! Woohoo!!!

I think we can now (after the results proved otherwise in COTM7&8) lay the gripe that only military wins score high, to rest...

I would just like to state, for the record, that the Jason scoring system is woefully skewed toward 20k, four-award victories.


Four awards: unbelievable! All three top games were truly masterful, and I love seeing the spread of victory conditions again. Wacken had a great space run as well—just ran afoul of a Dynamic game. I’ve been there, done that—never ends well for me. That you both did so well on your first attempt toward that victory type is quite humbling.

Ainwood should get a pocketful of honorary awards for this map, which helped lead to the different victory conditions and was great fun to play.

 

[Ronald]

Congratulations Aeson. I thought it is impossible to get the 20k award and any medal. Extremely

Looking at your spoiler write-up, you played it like a domination game with very little sacrifices for the 20k city early on.
Without wanting to take away anything from your fine achievement, I am still pretty certain, that the 20k award could have gone to someone who concentrated more on the 20k goal early on (like in one of the recent games between SirPleb and Kuningas), but nobody dared to play 20k on this map!

So again, my dearest congratulations!

Ronald

 

[Offa]

I didn't play this, but the results table is pretty impressive so congratulations everyone.

Well done Aeson. A gold medal at last for one of the best. It does show that a 20k win can score well, but I presume this game was basically a quick domination followed by a skilled milk session, rather than an outright 20k attempt. (this is a guess as I didn't read the spoilers ).

As always Drazek's play time was amazing. He really should get a special blitz civ award.

 

[Dynamic]

This was well balanced and interesting map, but Cultural 20k (or any late milked victory) was definitely favored a bit due to the limitations on early expansion. It's too bad Hannabir wasn't able to finish out his game though. He had 17 more pop than I did at 1000BC, it would have been interesting to see what could be done with it.

[inane scoring babble]I was close to Domination (-6 tiles) in 830AD with a Firaxis score of 11164 (3846 base and the date bonus would have been +7320), and my Jason at that point would have been 10446. If I had milked it out all the way to 2050AD at the per turn score I had in 1762AD, I would have scored 22981 Firaxis for 10934 Jason. It probably would have been a bit over 11k because some cities still hadn't been maxed out yet.

Whether those ~700 points were worth the extra 52 hours I spent from 830AD to 1762AD I'm not so sure...

I don't remember exactly now what the score I had in 800AD when I reached Domination limit but by rough calculation I had slightly lower score then you and if I finished at that time I could get a lower score then I got by Space. I think it's happen because I started expantion too late, after reaching IA.
But my game was depended on high science rate is needed for fast Space. If I should go to Domination as goal I could finish much earlier, I think before 600AD but anyway I couldn't reach 11K Jason.

 

[Più Freddo]

As always Drazek's play time was amazing. He really should get a special blitz civ award.

Actually, the most Jason points per second were earned not by Drazek, but by Toyo. Here are the top 10:

Player Jason score time mJason/s
Toyo 8258 06:14:56 367,0874822
Drazek 9203 07:44:35 330,1524664
supersova_su 5680 06:10:28 255,5335613
Durkz 8599 10:05:22 236,7435714
civ_steve 7983 10:55:02 203,1194341
teastar 6205 10:01:10 172,0266149
DJMGator13 7364 12:21:42 165,475709
AveS[SU] 6895 12:03:27 158,8453475
Ronald 9543 19:15:04 137,6976798
garvarg 4737 10:33:21 124,6546144
warren peace 5439 12:51:17 117,5313871

Attached is the whole spreadsheet (zipped).

 

[civ_steve]

Another way to hash the results!

 

[jayeffaar]

Hi guys. Here's a stupid question about the time played column. What are the units? Those times seem way too short to be minutes and way too long to be hours. 87 hours of playing time for the winner? That's insane.

 

[solenoozerec]

That's insane.

Everybody here is more or less insane
Depends on who is looking on us .
But sure 80 hrs is hard. I spent over 45 hrs on this game and I was extremly exhausted, I even skipped GOTM38 because of that.