gold in space ?

[WackenOpenAir]

Moderator Action: No discussions of current games outside the spoilers please

-What gives a better chance for gold in space, cotm or gotm ?
-What difficulty level gives best chance for gold in space ?

I know its always the domination victories that win gold, i don't even know if a space game ever gotten a gold medal at all, but that won't stop me from trying. I might however change my attidute "there is only one first place, and the rest are only the best of the losers" and be happy with a top 3 spot.

Of course, if Wold Of Warcraft is gonna be out in europe, i might have very little time to play civ3 or even to sleep.....

 

[TimBentley]

Kuningas won a bronze medal in COTM 3 (Byzantines, demigod) and in GOTM 31 (France, Emperor).

 

[klarius]

Difficulty should not be too low.
Especially it shouldn't allow ultra early domination, because then you cannot compete with any later victory condition.
So the next GOTM (monarch, pangaea) is probably not a good idea.

I think COTM has an advantage becauses of the better specialists. By that all these garbage cities you need for score actually help also the space quest.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Well yeah, the after gotm37, i think difficulty level does not really matter for domination date.
I don't know however what Jason does with its "best date" for difficulty levels in relation to difficulty level for both domination and space.

Low difficulty levels make it possible to both reach 66% very early while still maintaning a 4 turn research. If Jason would give a bigger penalty for domination date than for space date with lower difficulty, it could maybe be in the space date's advantage. On the other hand of course, on lower difficulty levels, you do not have the benefit of the AI helping you.
So i don't know, therefore i ask. But i do believe you are right in all you said.

Moderator Action: Deleted sentence More about this in the spoiler thread of course.Moderator Action: All of COTM 8 discussion in spoilers please until the game is over.

 

[klarius]

Well, I didn't write difficulty level, but difficulty.
A monarch archipelago with a lousy start may be better suited than a deity pangaea.

The Jason best dates are rather unimportant. The big point is the basic Jason bonus, which IMO has some problems with very early victories.

If you want a medal it's not important how good your result is overall, it's the question how it compares to others.
You will gain less Jason by finishing a few turns earlier than the players going for domination.

 

[denyd]

The scoring system is somewhat slanted towards quicker finishes and getting to the domination limit ASAP, most space race games have goals contrary to those of military wins. In Space (& UN) games, the goal is to get to the Modern Age as quickly as possible while still expanding to the domination limit. Since you need to add infrastructure (libraries, universities & markets) instead of just building military, you are forced to constantly balance the guns vs butter equation. It's also quite helpful to have a couple of trading partners to help speed the tech pace along. Some to trade you that other branch of the tech tree. The best chance for a Space Race Gold medal will probably be in a Diety level game. In those games, you have a stronger AI to slow down the war mongers, while you also have the AI pushing the tech pace. Having a continents or archipelago game also helps (makes the military players stop to build some boats). If one of the top players decides to go for a domination win, the space race guy really has little chance for the gold, though it would be interesting to see how many games it would take a Ronald, SirPleib or DaveMcW to get a gold medal with a space win against the current crop of players.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Moderator Action: No discussion of current games outside the spoilers please!!!

 

[solenoozerec]

Moderator Action: Deleted spoiler information

Sorry, I did not think properly. However, since nothing left of my message, I am wondering how can I delete it?

 

[Lance]

Gold have been won by space, at least in Gotm 21, I think. In fact, There are 5 spaceship victories in top ten in that one.

Anyway, as I looked through the results of earlier Gotms, I really think that the best change to win gold by space is not to try to finish quickly, but to play a milking game, and to time the launch to the end. (I noticed that couple of Gotms were won by histographic. I suppose launching the ship in the end wouldn't reduce the score.) This way you don't need to worry about tech pace, but just to expand like you would in a milking game.

 

[grahamiam]

Moderator Action: Deleted quoted spoiler information!
can we stop posting stuff about ongoing games please? didn't we just have a thread on this recently? keep it for the spoilers, that way I can avoid them!

please, please, please, keep it in the spoilers! why can't this stuff be discussed there?

 

[denyd]

Lance: That GOTM 21 win was before the Jason scoring system was put into place. Jason adjusts the Firaxis score based on the relation to the optimum completion date. It's no longer beneficial to 'milk' a game to 2050 AD as it was prior this new system.

I agree with Grahamiam, keep the discussion generic or to games already completed please.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Oh sorry for posting about C08

I thought i was being carefull enough not giving any spoiler info, but anyway, ok won't do it anymore !

 

[AlanH]

Lance: That GOTM 21 win was before the Jason scoring system was put into place. Jason adjusts the Firaxis score based on the relation to the optimum completion date. It's no longer beneficial to 'milk' a game to 2050 AD as it was prior this new system.

Jason scoring was introduced for GOTM 17, I believe. GOTM 21 was certainly scored with Jason.

 

[klarius]

The special thing with GOTM 21 was that is was in the medal play series with space race as victory condition.
So most of the top players went for this.
At the same time this was a hand crafted map, which wasn't suited well for a quick military win.

 

[Lance]

I tought that it could be like Klarius said it was. That explains it. Anyway, there still are from time to time some milked games (histographic) scoring to the top, so Iwould still say, that especially in space victory, the fastest win would quite rarely be the top scoring one.

 

[Dynamic]

I think it's very hard to reach fastest Space and highest score in the same time. May be we must to do compromise between these two goal and to finish slightly later but to get some chance with reaching domination limit in appropriate time.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Yes, that i realised. This time i decided to go for the fastest date, next time gold will be the primary goal and the fastest launch only secondary.

 

[Denniz]

I think it's very hard to reach fastest Space and highest score in the same time. May be we must to do compromise between these two goal and to finish slightly later but to get some chance with reaching domination limit in appropriate time.

I built a utility based on the Jason Score calculator web page that might be useful if you are trying to compare victory conditions for a game. It has a rudimentary firaxis score projection to even up the different dates. It might be interesting to compare a real Space game's scores vs. different finish dates.