Discussion Thread for QSC game hosts and moderators

[cracker]

This is a thread to support some discussion of basic elements for people who would like to host or practice playing Quick Start Challenge games in succession game formats like progression, best ball, and parallel.

Quick Start Challenge games (or QSCs) can be a great way to rapidly enhance your play skills by comparing and documenting certain play approaches.

The website for the basic concept rules and scoring format for a QSC can be found at:

http://www.civfanatics.com/doc/civ3/cracker/quik_start/index.htm#how_to_play

You can also look at a good example of how the QSC format is applied to a progression game where all players play from the same start position in ten turn increments and then upload their turn reports and save files for other players to compare and discuss.

Here is a link to the handyandy progression game example:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36486

The QSC format is also typically played with a set victory condition specified in the game so that play strategies can be more focused to facilitate a closer comparison of choices.

This thread will upload some tools to help people manage and play their own QSC games at various difficulty levels and under different scenario conditions.

If you would like to host your own QSC game take a look at the example game and the weppage outline and then post any questions you may have about the format here in this thread and I will upload some of the spreadsheet tools to help you host and manage your own QSC game.

 

[hotrod0823]

After participating in QSC-C1 and the handy andy game and finding the New QSC associated with the GOTM I have grown to enjoy the discussion it fosters and it has helped my early game play as well as issues regarding happiness, tech trading, research paths, barb activity, etc etc.


The question I have is: Can the game be played as a QSC to focus on Domination or Conquest or Culture. Each would have a specific focus and how would the scoring of these early round have to be changed to show that new focus??

One thought that is not taken into consideration is relative strength of the AI civs. If anything Mao has shown that lending a helping hand works wonders for early space launch (for Monarch), would that lead to early domination as well?? Probably not!! Is a truer Measure of domination your total land area or the land area relative to the land area of the AI at a given point in time. That goes for culuture as well. How should culture be measured in a QSC? Total culuture is not included presently in the QSC, for a culture game it should be.

The other thought is difficulty level and land terrain: what is there effects on Early game play. At the Monarch level you can easily do a farmers gambit and build "enough" strong cities to get to the very critical 4 turns per tech point, dragging the AI with you to help research the other path. It is very effective on Monarch how about Emperor?

I am not purposing a new game "yet" but would like to see these games continue and would like to see one start shortly. Don't think I would be the best person to sponsor a game but would be more than willing to help get something started and help foster discussion.

Hotrod

 

[Borealis]

Originally posted by hotrod0823
The question I have is: Can the game be played as a QSC to focus on Domination or Conquest or Culture. Each would have a specific focus and how would the scoring of these early round have to be changed to show that new focus??

This is especially interesting when considered in the light of Charis's QSC-c1 game, and the 'shadow Charis' games played afterwards- at the point where we stopped evaluating, Charis had a huge lead in territory over everyone else, but was behind in the space race. I'd like to see a discussion, if not a game, treating domination/conquest as a goal from the start that is not run with Always War parameters. (Slightly off-topic... if any SGs that people reading this thread have dealt with this on a Monarch-or-up level have been run, please PM me so I can read them. I need more experience warmongering!)

The other thought is difficulty level and land terrain: what is there effects on Early game play. At the Monarch level you can easily do a farmers gambit and build "enough" strong cities to get to the very critical 4 turns per tech point, dragging the AI with you to help research the other path. It is very effective on Monarch how about Emperor?

I've tried it, and I haven't been able to use the optimal QSC-c1 strategy on Emperor without being extremely lucky with land area, AI civs placement and agressiveness (see GOTM14 for Xerxes as an early neighbor making that quite difficult on Deity), etc. What might be nice, but probably too much effort, would be a parallel Monarch/Emperor QSC with the same maps, seeing exactly how the no free content citizens, etc., affect gameplay. I'm not experienced enough to run one of these myself as I've just started Emperor but I would gladly participate and help in one should someone start it. Perhaps some of the Deity players could help administer one?

 

[Charis]

Borealis,

In case links to a few warmongering games are of interest to others I will point out a few. They're all highly aggressive) :

Celts (Emperor-Dom) RBP1:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35699

Japan (Monarch-Conquest) RBD2:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13653

France (Emperor-Dom) RBCiv Epic 19: (zip file of a report)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBCiv19_CharisRpt.zip

None are always-war, but each has conquest or domination as a goal from the start (Japan was pushed into it very early on, actually). They're also good in that they do not neglect building, nor do they rely on a roll-the-dice early archer rush. The French one is a good example of bad area, bad start, surrounded by a bunch of aggressive military civs. The start is rough and it gets very dicey at a few points, but afterwards the French start to eat their lunch

I'm not sure I've seen an SG where the goal was specificially domination/conquest with earliest possible year (Gothmog has recently stated interest in such a game, btw). Nor have I seen an SG (besides all-war) that pushed it as far as first build being a barracks ala qsc-c1, or that tried an archer rush. It would be quite interesting to see one, and it would make a good game anywhere from Monarch to Deity diff (with good players the Monarch game would be as much a roll-over-the-AI as my qsc game).

The idea of parallel game on Monarch-Emp-(and Deity) would be extremely interesting, and a ton of work! My concern in trying that is... I don't know how well the qsc values reflect how well one is actually doing towards a domination win (as qsc1 suggests). I wouldn't commit to a tri-level game until I knew that it would make sense to do it as a qsc. Hmmm.... now that you mention it... this would make an ideal RBCiv Epic (not sure if you've followed those at all). It would be identical map, three-difficulty levels, with a goal of earliest domination win, no variant rules, just no exploits. No 'scoring' other than finish time so no work for the ones running it, but still highly instructive in that you get to read the detailed reports of other people trying it, both on your difficulty and on other diffs.

Charis

 

[hotrod0823]

I really like the idea of 3 games on the same map! I tried to find some results for Civ tourny game 2, a Conquest (as the goal) game on the hightest levels. There were games played at Monarch, Emperor and Diety !!! I wasn't able to find any results for these games . It would be interesting to see the QSC scores at a few of the 30 turn breaks for each difficulty and see how those scores represent the fastest conquests.

I think current QSC score allow is not enough. But a better factor or additional factor would be the players QSC relative to the AI QSC score. Essentially a power factor to address how the player is dominating the game, wether it is in land area, tech, population, number of cities etc. All are a factors in completing an early domination win. You can't go all tech the way most were able to in QSC-C1 and expect to have early domination. Just look at my QSC score for GOTM14 and you can see how the QSC score doesn't truely represent how well you are going to do overall. I ranked 5 IIRC but was subsequently slaughtered by Persia about the turn of the century. Yes I had a good start but not the right start for survial in a Diety game.

Also, I think a QSC tool, much like mapstat or Apollo would be helpful for the game administrator to make the results gathering process that much easier. (I have to believe cracker and our new GOTM staff alchemist are working on such a tool ).

As far as the Tourney data if one of the administrators can share any of the games info it would be appriciated.

Hotrod

 

[Arathorn]

For a look at some Monarchy games where domination/conquest was the goal, check out

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19511

and

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19512

Yes, score is the "listed" goal, but everybody determined speed was the way to go. Just for completeness, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19510 has a third take on the same map.

My personal experience is that deity is a completely different animal for domination/conquest than anything lower. On monarch (or lower), it's mainly a matter of getting people into position and determining whether or not it's possible before Navigation. Knights at the latest. Emperor, too, the world can usually be conquered with knights, but occasionally lasts to cavalry. Deity, OTOH, seems to require infantry, RRs, and tanks before succumbing, at least in my experience. Dates are relative, of course (meaning that the deity tanks sometimes come about the same time, calendar-wise, as the monarch knights).

The size and type of the map play a HUGE role in how well "conquering" works. My best emperor date is just after the AD/BC breakthru, but it was a lucky coincidence that it worked (conquest, not domination). The smaller the map, the better earlier conquest works. As the amount of land gets larger, the change-over time from expansion to military gets later, too.

I have a LOT of problems with the QSC parameters to start with, but especially in regards to how quickly/easily domination can be achieved. Oh well. Just wanted to share some experiences.

Arathorn

 

[meldor]

@Charis, in the last AW in the LK series (LK35?) Lee took the Russians out in the first 20 turns and turnsed the game into a methodical walk in the park. It wasn't exactly an archer rush as such, but worked about the same.