Earth challenge (huge size)

[m00n]

Maya/Emperor/Epic
Victory: Domination at 1878 AD
Normalised Score: 119019

Well it's been the long match. more than 13 hours This was my first Epic/Huge map and I noticed the end turn times were annoying for a while. Especially on the middle of the game when almost everyone was still alive and 16/17 remaining AIs were waging war against someone. Other than that it was the least challenging game I had ever had on Emperor. I Warrior rushed the Incan at 3500BC and sat on South America like a fat duck. Monty and Sitting Bull were in Taoism that Hyan founded for me. Everyone else had to go through them to get me which they didn't. As a result I was never declared on. The rest was just, build an army, crush the enemy, repeat. My wars were: Incan->Aztec->NA->Rome->Vikings->Russia->Mongoles->Khmer

I noticed a couple of big mistakes such as going against Monty with just Cavallerie and Spys, expecting Longbows on his side and getting Rifles instead. Lost ~20-30 Turn there. And building two old world invasion armies one Naval and one Tank. Just Tanks would have been ~20 turns faster. Will I go back and play it again? Maybe on Immortal... We'll see. And now off to watch Let's plays on this

 

[Archon_Wing]

I didn't get a domination victory because I sucked and it was already too late by the time I secure the Americas. :/ I want to see more domination wins with the western hemisphere. :S It just seems so tedious and the lag makes me unwilling to play past 1600.

 

[m00n]

That's what I thought. I'm of the opinion it should be removed, so european civs can't reach the Americas (or vice versa) until optics.

Well the Vikings did sail to the new world without optics.

 

[Matrix]

CaF, interesting theoretical question whether the scores are ordinal or ratio. I already calculate with squared scores, but that's based on gut feeling. Also because I once wrote the scores of a pitboss games for every turn and it increased something between parabolically and exponentially, but that's doesn't apply to this.

But you're right in the sense that the margin of error is unknown and probably quite large. Which leads me to what TheMeInTeam mentioned: I think you're right that we need a lot of results before we can make call this fairly balanced. That's gonna take a long long time.

Your example put the finger on the spot. The only way to counter that is by playing the 'harder' civ yourself and prove that it's not so hard after all. But then the problem arises that one doesn't finish a game so quickly to work on this side of the challenge.

Monkybone, your post was merely descriptive, but correct. Indeed, this works with geometric averages. And should victory results be compared separately? That we would need even more results to make it fair.

I would also like to mention that when I started this thing at CivDuelZone, I started with a different way of calculating. I measured the averages of all players and civilizations, then divided that by the mean of the civ that the player played/the mean of the player who played the civ, and then vise versa, and again, until it reached an equilibrium. The system I use now has as goal: the smallest difference possible between expected and observed results. (Expected = civ score * player score / global average.) At the moment the difference is zero, because there aren't any conflicting results yet. E.g. player A scored better with Rome than with Egypt, but player B scored better with Egypt.

So,
are we going to keep it like this or should we alter something? I think neither. Here's my suggestion:
I will leave this to run as it is, but will start a new challenge too, with a standard sized Earth map.
My suggestion would be:
- Speed: normal
- Difficulty: free of choice
- Victory: time, domination
- Settings: no random events, no huts, pick religion
- All civs start with one archer

Advantages of a standard sized map: more players will have time to submit multiple results, less civs means there are more results per civ, people can react on other results, trying to get the highest score is less tedious.

Please let me know what you think. And thank you for the feedback and thinking along!

 

[vranasm]

actually that hears very good ;-)

the only problem being... you have to choose attractive civs and leaders ;-). Some player may feel like your choice is not attractive enough

 

[Makahlua]

Oh, NOW you want to make a standard map after I finish a game on this one - 16h played, WTH was I thinking??

Russia/Noble/Epic
Victory: Domination at 1890 AD
Normalised Score: 66967

So I started out with an axe rush, supplemented by HA's; I was trying to decide between Vikings & Rome, but I noticed Rome only had copper, and I could settle their Iron, so bye-bye Caesar. But also, events were trying to make a match between me and the Vikings, I figured I could come back later and get them ... look who's still on my map at win time, LOLz.

Mali & Zulu went after Egypt, even my Viking buddy got in on the action; I was late to the party, so I just declared on Mali long enough to get the Taoist holy city (and get time for upgrades & siege). I was worried about the Zulu's level of power, but I caught their main stack out of Africa, and then there was no stack, muahaha. Once I got to knights backed by trebs, it was not so bad, but then I went right on to Cossacks, and welp I hear you AI's like CavStomping, so imma CavStomp right over you to winning, kthx.

China & Aztec were getting big during all of this, but as the conquered cities came back online, my tech went through the roof, and in the end I was just slogging through long turn times to the inevitable. Poor India was everybody's whipping boy/war target during most of the game. Aztec and Khmer had just started a little spat when the dom win finally triggered. What you can't see in the screens: me in position to mess up Monty's pland in SE Asia AND do some good ol' stack killing .. with Modern Armor Huh. I just realized I never swapped to Free Religion, because I was trying to keep Genghis/Ragnar/Sury/Asoka all liking me.

I'm going to agree with TMIT about events really needing to be out, I ended up being buddies with the Vikings solely through event meddling, and they looked mighty tasty there in the beginning! I wouldn't mind a smaller map, it would be less of a slog in the late game - you know it's bad when you're building the spaceship and wondering whether Dom will kick in before you liftoff :x

PS I am amused I caught Cathy *almost* winking XD

 

[WithTea]

Matrix - I see what you're trying accomplish but in the end you're setting things up nicely for the war mongers and leaving the peace mongers, like myself, out in the cold. By far most of my wins are cultural. Second is space. Third is diplo. In other words I'm completely shut out. I've had a grand total of TWO domination wins in my life. I did it for quattro and I had to work at it. Near as I can tell for non-elite players Space is the go to win. You'd be cutting out the people who normally never venture above the Noble setting. So with your recommended settings you end with Elites who are war mongers. I think we're already replete with data on that.

 

[Florian K]

So,
are we going to keep it like this or should we alter something? I think neither. Here's my suggestion:
I will leave this to run as it is, but will start a new challenge too, with a standard sized Earth map.
My suggestion would be:
- Speed: normal
- Difficulty: free of choice
- Victory: time, domination
- Settings: no random events, no huts, pick religion
- All civs start with one archer

Advantages of a standard sized map: more players will have time to submit multiple results, less civs means there are more results per civ, people can react on other results, trying to get the highest score is less tedious.

Please let me know what you think. And thank you for the feedback and thinking along!

Now that I'm five or six hours into my epic Russia Immortal game you want to change the format? Actually a separate challenge as above would make comparisons between civs much easier. Which leaders/civilizations are you going to play with?

I think all the comparisons between civilizations with the current earth challenge are not going to be valid. The current comparison between Rome and the Vikings is ridiculous. I'd be very surprised if you got the hundreds of games submitted that you'd need to get a proper statistical comparison. As several people have pointed out victory type also hugely impacts scores and therefore which civilizations are perceived as easier. And nobody has mentioned that certain civilizations are easier to play with at the higher levels. This is not reflected in scores achieved at the lower difficulty levels because the play styles can be more varied at lower difficulty levels.

 

[Florian K]

When I said the current comparison between Vikings and Rome is ridiculous I meant that as a reflection of how smaller numbers can skew a result. If both are well played I do feel the Rome is probably the easier civilization, but I don't believe the scores for Rome are going to be more than 4 times as high (or anywhere close to that) on a regular basis.

 

[CaF]

@map:
I'm kind of surprised of the long playing times posted here. My game took me about 6 hours, but i guess when you play beyond the 1600s ADs the turnsdo get very very long.

I'm looking forward to a smaller earth challenge map.

@the statistical thing:

Getting a big enough sample to play around with some numbers is just a matter of time. I'm however not convinced, how we can draw useful conclusions out of all this. I had enough statistics courses at University to be in the position where i can claim that all sorts of magic can be done with numbers I will never claim that i fully understand all of this, though.
As long as we don't behave like girlish soccer commentators ("2nd shot on goal and 1 goal! he is soooooooooo good?!?!") we should be able to stay sane and keep our dignity.

 

[guspasho]

Matrix - I see what you're trying accomplish but in the end you're setting things up nicely for the war mongers and leaving the peace mongers, like myself, out in the cold. By far most of my wins are cultural. Second is space. Third is diplo. In other words I'm completely shut out. I've had a grand total of TWO domination wins in my life. I did it for quattro and I had to work at it. Near as I can tell for non-elite players Space is the go to win. You'd be cutting out the people who normally never venture above the Noble setting. So with your recommended settings you end with Elites who are war mongers. I think we're already replete with data on that.

I agree with this sentiment. I hate warmongering because it takes so damn long, so I never do it. Even though I never submitted any results I attempted a Vikings game that I was doing fairly well at. I got stuck when I tried flexing my warmongering muscles and taking out Rome and watched that fail spectacularly as they defended successfully against huge stacks of experienced-up berserkers. That was frustrating enough, and my goal was only to capture Europe and then win Space Race with cottage spam. I just won't bother with all the time and frustration required for a domination win.

Yeah, I suck, I'm a novice player as my postcount title suggests. Which serves my point (and WithTea's).

As has been discussed, the score is unbalanced and heavily favors domination victories. I have no idea how one would correct that since the victories are all quite different (except domination and conquest I suppose, I never remember the difference) so it's like comparing apples and oranges. I see what you're trying to do and I think it would be fun but this would have to be corrected first. Alternatively you end up dividing the players between their playstyle and skill level.

 

[Optical]

I'm playing one as Native America ATM. I'm still trying to take down the Aztecs

 

[Florian K]

It is the nature of statistics inaccurate when there are few cases, but if this stays popular we may hopefully see some tendencies drawing forth.

Good point

 

[Matrix]

Just to make one thing clear: I will not close this one down. I was merely suggesting to make an additional challenge, on a standard sized Earth map. This challenge will have no alterations, because many results have already come in and many people seem to be playing it as we speak.

To be honest, I myself am in favour or retaining all victory conditions for the new challenge I was planning to create. As I said: sometimes a domination victory simply doesn't seem to be an option and people also have different playing styles. Besides, the whole point of this thing was that we compare the relative scores in the first place. The only thing that can skew it is when a player always goes for a domination victory, but decides to go for a five-city-challenge cultural victory for fun with one particular civ. Meaning, please play your own natural style for every game here! Do funny things for HoF challenges, for example.

I might have to change the calculation mechanism for this one though, because as someone else stated before, we will need a lot of 'cases' for this thing to be statistically accurate enough. And the problem is also that for the benefit of accuracy we need people to play two or more games. On the other hand, the rate in which results come in gives me hope.

 

[dilettante]

Ok. First off, apologies for dragging the the challenge's median score with my awful normalized score. 2nd, wow... i played 28 hours. I was 3/4ths of the way to domination and I said screw it I'll win space race now. so I had all of western europe, all of northern asia, southeast asia and half of africa... but I won by space race.

33855
Cathy/Warlord/Epic
Space Victory 1923AD


One of the most fun things to come out of this was when I was taking the fight to Shaka, I was gathering my army outside to challenge his large stack and break his army. I thought he would turtle and ride out the attacks. I was stunned when he launched the attack and nearly breaking my army in two. I was gladly surprised as I said "Man, this really is like the real Shaka Zulu, brave to the end. He'll take the fight to me rather than wait."

Some of us play because it's a game and we play it like a game. Some of us play because we're immersed in the role play. I guess I was the 2nd kind of player.

Also, the events did play a pivotal role in my rolfstomping of other civs. I had the build 12 chariots quest which I flipped into 12 curaissers to 12 cossacks. I can't say I don't like events (as I do, it gives variety and spice) but I can't deny it gave me a HUGE advantage either.

I'll play my khmer game as well as another civ. If you need takers for the standard earth challenge (even at epic speed) count me in Matrix.

And even though it was really long, I really appreciated a new challenge. I played on small and tiny maps but this was a really fun challenge... so kudos Matrix for making me try something out of my comfort zone.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[Archredbeard]

First off, thanks for making this Challenge map, has been a blast to play/watch Absolute Zero´s as well as TMIT´s You Tubes.
I have some thoughts as well about the map/new challenge.
On this map I have played Shaka to the stars in 1856AD for a score in the 65k ish on Emperor.
I tried a dom win as well too as Shaka, but I got bored when I got to Cav, mostly cause Cathy just got her Cossacks .
I tried the Romans as well as Egypt, and got a huge chunk of land/techadvantage, then the long turns starts and I ..........
I had a go as China now and in 640 AD I have 25 cities, taken out Mongols and Khmer early, then rexxed in the pacific as mad, took out India and have that whole peninsula as well, currently at war with Ramses, but, the long turn starts now ..........

Spoiler :

One thing I have done every Civ/start, is gunning for the GLH, then the Oracle to get a couple Triremes paired with a galley/scout to explore and nab huts in the pacific/Japan as well as Ireland/Englands huts. That has every time paid off well, 3 times I got Construction, 2 times Heriditary Rule, 1 time I got Bureaucracy, etc.
Not to mention early circumnav traderoutes with Americanos. It certainly is a bad thing with Huts, cause when someone like me abuses this so bad, the scores is not fair.

I would say one more thing, sorry about the wall of text, but, here goes:
When placing Starting Civs on a new challenge, make sure to take MORE civs, not less.
The reason is, that on higher levels, the AI gets too much land to handle for the player. You easy get 30+cities AIs, and that is nearly impossible to handle.
Just my 2 pennies

 

[Edzako]

Just to make one thing clear: I will not close this one down. I was merely suggesting to make an additional challenge, on a standard sized Earth map. This challenge will have no alterations, because many results have already come in and many people seem to be playing it as we speak.

To be honest, I myself am in favour or retaining all victory conditions for the new challenge I was planning to create. As I said: sometimes a domination victory simply doesn't seem to be an option and people also have different playing styles. Besides, the whole point of this thing was that we compare the relative scores in the first place. The only thing that can skew it is when a player always goes for a domination victory, but decides to go for a five-city-challenge cultural victory for fun with one particular civ. Meaning, please play your own natural style for every game here! Do funny things for HoF challenges, for example.

I might have to change the calculation mechanism for this one though, because as someone else stated before, we will need a lot of 'cases' for this thing to be statistically accurate enough. And the problem is also that for the benefit of accuracy we need people to play two or more games. On the other hand, the rate in which results come in gives me hope.

Go for it ! I got bogged down by terrible laggs in mid gamr on this one.

 

[Matrix]

Alright, I'll start a new thread tonight and add "huge" to the title of this one.

FYI, I won't have proper internet at home for at least a month and can't play Civ at work, so I'm a little handicapped at the moment. But I'll manage.

 

[topsecret]

Alright, I'll start a new thread tonight and add "huge" to the title of this one.

FYI, I won't have proper internet at home for at least a month and can't play Civ at work, so I'm a little handicapped at the moment. But I'll manage.

YAY!
I'm better at standard maps!

 

[Yoshiegg737]

Ah, good thing I haven't started yet. The standard size sounds better for me