Earth challenge (huge size)

Finished a game less cheese than my first settler cultural vic. This time i went for a Roman Domination. Finished by 1555 AD

Here we go:
Roman
Domination
1555AD
Score: 174347

Spoiler :

caesar.png

caesar2-1.png

What difficulty level did you play this on?
 
Finished a game less cheese than my first settler cultural vic. This time i went for a Roman Domination. Finished by 1555 AD

Here we go:
Roman
Domination
1555AD
Score: 174347

Spoiler :

caesar.png

caesar2-1.png

What difficulty level did you play this on?
Woups that would be a noble win...
That is quite a massive score for a game on Noble! :eek:


You get the huge difference in weights because players do something irrational in this format (go for a different VC than massed military -----> domination).

Victory conditions do not yield balanced scores. Actually, the formula for high scores has been explored pretty heavily in civ IV; capture a tremendous amount of land, milk as much population as possible using sid's sushi (or on very land heavy maps, cereal mills but usually sushi is better), and try to win in the early 1000's AD with domination. That is the formula that has, on other maps, been used to get scores over 1 million and can easily beat 500000 on this map if someone has the patience for it.

Even max-speed space races by the best of the elite can't come close to that in score. I'd go so far as to throw non-domination games out when it comes to ranking the civs, or else stratify VC because frankly comparing a domination win to a culture win isn't reasonable.
I've been thinking about this. It's at players their own discretion to choose what style they play. However, the way I play is going for domination if possible, but quite often I play on a difficulty which is a tad bit too high for me and find that a space race victory is the best option available (or cultural on a rare occasion). So in my humble opinion the fact that domination victories rule the score chart is not a reason to disable the other options.
 
Also, I've been wondering whether I shouldn't have started this thing with a normal sized map – I've made one earlier – so that people more able to play this more often, with different civilizations. Perhaps I'll do so after all if the interest in this one would seem to fade.
 
Also, I've been wondering whether I shouldn't have started this thing with a normal sized map – I've made one earlier – so that people more able to play this more often, with different civilizations. Perhaps I'll do so after all if the interest in this one would seem to fade.

Normal speed??? :bounce:

Edit: The 7 civs map looks good. Russia's start looks a bit strong though with no Mongols or Europeans - plus the other 6 civs look like they would naturally pair off as enemies leaving Russia unopposed. Perhaps Carthage and Ethiopia would be better to replace Zulu and Egypt, making more of an even 3-way battle for the middle of the board.
 
oh well that one I can see myself actually finishing (the standard one).

But seems so limiting against the heroic map you prepared otherwise... For one there is not enough civs represented, but for logical reasons!

Maybe make some rotation of civs in the map? (Like in one challenge let Monty in, but SB out, the other SB in and Monty out)... is something like this even doable?
 
Ok, I'll work on that too then. I'm just a bit afraid that they will compete with each other and therefore fail in their concept. Also I chose for this map, because it's supposed to be something epic. ;)

Anyway, sorry for the overflow of messages, but I just wanted to give you a bit more insight in how the calculation actually works out. Please look at the attached picture. That shows who played as which civ/which civ is played by whom. That way the results are sort of linked together.

Example (and read carefully): gram123's score* for Rome is 2.24x better than his score for Egypt. Therefore Egypt is considered to be harder to play. Therefore Kadazzle's score on Egypt is considered to be 2.24x better than his actual score when comparing to other scores played as Rome.

Kadazzle's score for India is 1.87x better than Morholt's score for the Vikings. But
Morholt was 7.89x better than dcmort93 playing as Vikings.
The Vikings were 0.48x easier than Rome for dcmort93.
Dcmort93 was 0.21x better than gram123 playing as Rome.
Rome were 2.24x easier than Egypt for gram123.
gram123 was 0.49x better than Kadazzle playing as Egypt.
Egypt was 0.59x easier than India for Kadazzle.
1.87 x 7.89 x 0.48 x 0.21 x 2.24 x 0.49 x 0.59 = 0.53 = 1/1.87

As you can see this makes the comparisons extremely fragile. All margins of error are multiplied too. This can only be compensated when multiple players played the same more and the same civs. We need more 'strings'. ;)

Ah, and those groups in the flow chart are actually totally non-comparable. More variables than equations.

*: when talking about score I mean their score squared.
√174347 / √34704 = 2.24
 

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Ok, I'll work on that too then. I'm just a bit afraid that they will compete with each other and therefore fail in their concept. Also I chose for this map, because it's supposed to be something epic. ;)

Anyway, sorry for the overflow of messages, but I just wanted to give you a bit more insight in how the calculation actually works out. Please look at the attached picture. That shows who played as which civ/which civ is played by whom. That way the results are sort of linked together.

Example (and read carefully): gram123's score* for Rome is 2.24x better than his score for Egypt. Therefore Egypt is considered to be harder to play. Therefore Kadazzle's score on Egypt is considered to be 2.24x better than his actual score when comparing to other scores played as Rome.

Kadazzle's score for India is 1.87x better than Morholt's score for the Vikings. But
Morholt was 7.89x better than dcmort93 playing as Vikings.
The Vikings were 0.48x easier than Rome for dcmort93.
Dcmort93 was 0.21x better than gram123 playing as Rome.
Rome were 2.24x easier than Egypt for gram123.
gram123 was 0.49x better than Kadazzle playing as Egypt.
Egypt was 0.59x easier than India for Kadazzle.
1.87 x 7.89 x 0.48 x 0.21 x 2.24 x 0.49 x 0.59 = 0.53 = 1/1.87

As you can see this makes the comparisons extremely fragile. All margins of error are multiplied too. This can only be compensated when multiple players played the same more and the same civs. We need more 'strings'. ;)

Ah, and those groups in the flow chart are actually totally non-comparable. More variables than equations.

*: when talking about score I mean their score squared.
√174347 / √34704 = 2.24

This doesn't seem like comparing apples to oranges. It's more like comparing apples from heaven to oranges from a parallel universe.

The problem with "the easier and not easier" thing is that it is ordinally scaled. So you can say that things are different and they even are different by a certain margin. But that margin can not be measured in a way that makes sense. How much better is the rating of AAA compared to AA in understandable numbers? How much better is a grade of A compared to a grade of B in an exam? Can it be quantified? I have no clue. Saying that something is 2x easier than anything else does not make sense to me. Especially when based on what i would call correlation chains. I mean all we do is play the same map and generate some number ("score"). I have to think about this for a bit.

And the other problem is the one TMIT mentioned. This map is meant to be played in suicidal rush mode, IF you go for the highest possible score. The highest possible score involves killing as many people as possible and getting as much land and population as possible. Putting those wins into one list with all the other - systematically lower scored - wins makes little sense.
Also keep in mind that every high score in a late diplo or culture win will be a quick exit out of an early domination game that has gone on for too long. I could take my 1 AD save of the Zulu game(Ram, Mansa, Asoka and Cathy dead) and turn it into a culture win or i could restart and go for a passive culture win. I'd bet that the former yields the higher score. Always.
 
That is quite a massive score for a game on Noble! :eek:

But it was - look at picture

I dont understand sh.. of what you are talking about, with those statistic comparison, but now i finished a game with Inca to, so i will be interresting to see if that makes it possible to compare the two groups in the chart Matrix made...

Here we go:
Inca
Emperor
Cultural
52151
Spoiler :
inca.png
hof.png
 
Ok, finally took the time to make it all the way through a game since school is basically over.

I turned the difficulty down a notch to warlord because I was going to go for a domination victory, but I decided against that because I got such a large area already and just went for a nice peaceful space race which seemed less effort. I'm really lazy on this map! I didn't kill anyone, though I did slap Shaka upside his fool upstart head(and took half his land). Montezuma killed off Sitting Bull as he does *literally* every game.

Anyways, finally finished one.

Civ4ScreenShot0004.jpg


Picture uploaded a little small. Score is 22499, turn 457 1867.
 
Matrix, if the #games were sufficiently large to filter out the "noise" or people pursuing suboptimal VC (IE not actually trying to be competitive for score) for each civ the model you're using for civ difficulty would work...but it's not going to happen. I'm a bit rusty on stats, but you'd probably need 100's of total games submitted and lots of cases of people submitting multiple entries with different civs. Even then, people could EASILY game the results. Let me give you a basic example:

Let's say, just for the sake of this argument, that I had a 250000 score with Russia. I want to beat absolutezero above with a 290000 score as above. What could let me do that? A random player getting a 5000 score with Russia but an excellent score with zulu because he went culture with russia and domination with zulu. Suddenly, my (arguably easier) start is now considered HARDER, and I might win the rankings. Ridiculous.

Of course, events/huts/etc are really bad in this format also. With AI not even starting with archery, you're a vedic aryan event away from an AI getting wiped out in the opening turns even on the highest levels. If someone's willing to roll starts enough times they can easily just walk into cities taken by the uprising event and do way better than normal. Other events function similarly, but this is the earth *challenge*, right? Not the earth "play this a bunch of times for luck help"...

I don't think you can get enough strings to possibly get a realistic picture of start difficulty on this map...participation has been good and I'm working my own game, but not THAT good.
 
Would something like only the Old World (ie cutting the map and removing world wrap), removing huts, and events, and giving everyone Archery + changing Warriors to Archers for your start make it more comparable? ie harder to do an early rush, a big map with out it being too big + no seperate continent for 1 Civ getting out of hand with no way to stop it as don't have Astronomy, thou i'm guessing Dom would still produce the highest score, its if its harder than the other results enough to warant the extra score.
 
I started a game as Pacal on Monarch. My rationale was that he would be the best leader to work an Amazon full of cottages...

I settled Mutal in place and Lakhamha atop the plains hill on the Yucatan. I started teching BW and popped Agriculture from the hut to the east ;) (actually, I reloaded from the start to see if it was just luck, but it happened again). Both cities started on workers.

Once BW was in, both cities started massing Holkans. Tech: IW for jungle-clearing (and there's a lot of it). Target: Montezuma.

My rationale for going for Montezuma before Capac is that Monty has a lot of hills (and therefore hill cities with fortified archers) and I really don't want to be seeing his metal-less UU because it'll wreck my Holkans. Capac, on the other hand, has fewer hill cities, is less likely to build units and his UU is not something Holkans need to be scared of. Therefore I need not worry about attacking him second because his cities will be plentiful but easy to take.

10 CR1 Holkans later and Tenochtitlan is mine. He has two cities to the north. One is garrisoned by a sole warrior which I take and raze (it's atop its best tile, the gold in western Mexico). His other city had quite few archers, so I reinforced and took it. No more Monty w00t!

Geezus, Tenochtitlan is a good production city! With its help, my army grows to 20 holkans and I declare on Capac. I take his second city and Cuzco, then his third city and raze the fourth.

It's 400ish BC. I now have 8 cities (I settled a few more), have a dozen workers cottaging jungle, am breaking even at 0% science, and have a crapload of gorgeous green land that happens to be infested with barbs :(.

At this time I've met the European nations, who are siginificantly further ahead in tech. I have (in terms of techs) Ag, Mysticism, Mining, BW, IW, Pottery, Wheel, Fishing, Hunting and Writing. My cities are stuck spamming Holkans to combat the barbs (stupidly, I still haven't connected the copper east of Mutal, so no axes, but the Holkans are doing pretty well, even aginst barb axes).

What should my tech path be? I probably should have at least gotten Alphabet in order to build research. I don't know if I would have had enough time to tech Currency--CoL before HC gets units that my Holkans can't kill. Construction would be a priority there, both for my UB and for cats.

But I have a lot of land to expand into, am financial, and can run my cities 2 pop higher than other civs (without luxuries) due to Expansive/UB.

Anyhoo,
NapoleonThePig
 
BTW is it me or is there a coast link between America and Europe and Asia? I know the european civilizations reached me with work boats. (i.e. before Optics)
 
there in a russia/alaska bridge in the west and a scotland/ireland/iceland/greenland/america bridge in the east
 
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