GOTM 07 First Spoiler - 500 AD

[Jastrow]

I dont see it as the type of change which should be anounced... If your strategy was based on hut seeking, then you were taking an inherent risk... What if the first 3 huts you pop contain barbarians? What if the AI beats you to all of them (in my test games, I averaged seeing only 2 to 3 huts in this configuration (which BTW, I did NOT pop; I never pop huts in test games because they upset the validity of the tests)).

More significantly however, even in an unaltered map (and this may be one for all we know), there is a possibility of no poppable huts within range. Unlikely as it may be, if the map script places them randomly, there might be non around...

Moreover, early scouts have other uses than popping huts. They help meeting other civs, and figuring out the lay of the land for building new cities.

Huts are just a map feature like anything else... Complaining about their removal would be tantamount to players who built boats in GOTM6 complaining that everyone was on one landmass in a fractal game. Its part of the randomness of the map.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Jastrow:

When you build and use scouts, you chose to take your chances with barbarians, with the AI getting there first, and with few being in close proximity, because you know from experience those risks are inherent in an unaltered game. If you built boats in GOTM06, then you knew that there might not be good use for them and choseto take that chance. But there was no way to anticipate the total absence of huts in GOTM07, because there are always huts in an unaltered game. If you built scouts to pop huts in GOTM07, you were confronted with a situation that you did not choose to take a risk on, you made a wrong decision for arguably the right reasons; and that is unfair, not a normal consequence of the inherent variability of the game.

 

[topcatdk]

Adapt and overcome, that’s in my opinion one of the great feelings of Civ, play towards something you think is right, only to figure out that it didn’t work and then adjusting to gain success is a great feeling. It’s not long ago I played a map where I went hut-hunting early on, so I wasted time building an additional scout only to find I was on an island (room for 4-5 good cities though) and two huts which both gave me additional scouts, so now I had 4 scouts with nothing to do. Warmongers often bee-line for Swordsmen to do an early rush, but if the map has no Iron within reach you’ve wasted a lot of time there, adjusting to make up for the loss is a great part of the game in my humble opinion.

I whish we’d get a GOTM as some point where we didn’t know the type of map, or perhaps one with no horses could be interesting (without announcing it of course)

 

[Civgeek]

Any change that alters the game’s strategy should be revealed to the players in advance. What say my fellow fanatics?

I agree completely; any modifications to the game should be noted in advance. This allows players a chance to think through the implications of the change and makes for a more strategic challange (i.e. more things to consider in advance). A simple note such as "Huts Modified" or "Resources Edited" would sufice. Not doing so can and will penalize some players for otherwise sound strategic decisions. When one player is penalized due to the random nature of the game (hut locations, land layout, resource locations) and another is not, that's just part of the game, but when the penalty arise due to a deliberate manipulation of the save/game that isn't communicated, that is unfair.

 

[Vynd]

I agree completely; any modifications to the game should be noted in advance. This allows players a chance to think through the implications of the change and makes for a more strategic challange (i.e. more things to consider in advance). A simple note such as "Huts Modified" or "Resources Edited" would sufice. Not doing so can and will penalize some players for otherwise sound strategic decisions. When one player is penalized due to the random nature of the game (hut locations, land layout, resource locations) and another is not, that's just part of the game, but when the penalty arise due to a deliberate manipulation of the save/game that isn't communicated, that is unfair.

I also agree. My understanding is that the GOTM is supposed to give us a chance to compare our Civ IV skills by letting us all play the same game. Removing the huts seems to have been motivated by a desire to remove some luck from the game, thereby making the comparison more fair. All well and good. But since it was done without telling anyone, it's now impossible to make a fair comparison with people who made a conscious effort to exploit the (non-existant) huts.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Exactly, vynd and civgeek! I was beginning to feel as though I were a lonely voice of reason howling plaintively in the wilderness.

 

[drkodos]

drkodos:

You did not address the unfairness issue at all. Even if you think a flexible approach to play should be rewarded, don't you, nevertheless, think it unfair should a player research Hunting (as his initial tech) based on his experience that there are many huts on an epic map and then discover that the rules have changed and no huts are available. However flexible he may be and quick to recognize his mistake, those critical early turns researching a low-utility (in a no-hut game) tech can never be fully recovered from. He would be significantly disadvantaged, and not for lack of skill.

I think it is more unfair and unbalancing to have huts that through a random element offer some people a greater chance of success than others.


One could also argue that in practice games (similar to the ones I played) they did not have to face the Roman Empire and thus having to face them in the actual GOTM was patently unfair. This argument would be a red herring as well.

 

[Jastrow]

My main point is the following...

What PROOF do you have that the game was altered? How do you know that it is not just the case of randomly not get any huts within range? How ulikely is that? 1/100? 1/1000000? 1/1E14? Whatever the number, it is not impossible!

Do I think the map was modified? Probably.... How confident am I? Maybe 90%... I have seen maps before with only 1 hut withint 20 squares of home. This one appeared to have zero... How much more ulikely is that? One standard deviation, and I saw one 1-hut game out of ~20 tries, so I would estimate that zero hut probability at at least ~3%, and quite possibly higher.

If we are not even 100% sure there was a modification, then I dont see how we can claim the modification to be inherently unfair... It is well within the bounds or randomness. (What if he just generated 1000 maps, and selected for play the one with the furthest randomly generated huts? Would you call that unfair as well?)

 

[spader020]

Hi everyone, my first post, my first GOTM.

I have never played on Prince and I have never attempted a GOTM, so I had no real expectations. It has been the strangest game for me so far.

I went with Adventurer, because I needed any help I could get. However, that didn't really work out well, as my scout was eaten by lions rather quickly and my extra worker didn't have anything to do except build roads for a rather long time. Although it did allow me to farm the wheat earlier.

I founded Hinduism, which I quickly converted to.

My first builds were warrior, worker, warrior, settler. I believe I made a mistake by going with another worker second. As I was going for the early religion track, I now had 2 workers with nothing to do for a while.

I founded my second city near the stone, my third on the coast near the gold west of my capital, and my fourth north of my capital near 1 of the dye. Directly east of Baghdad, a Barbarian city was built near the rest of the dye. That became my 5th city when captured, and those 5 made up my civilization as of 500 A.D.

I built (Stonehendge, The Oracle, The National Epic, the Hanging Gardens and the Great Library) - All in my capital. The Oracle gave me the slingshot to Civil Service and I promptly converted to Bureacracy. As I attempted to slingshot, I finished CoL, and founded Confuciousism.

With my first Great Prophet that popped from the Stonehendge in my capital, I built the Hindu shrine. I expected to see major conversions from the other civilizations. To my surprise, Confuciousism spread like wild fire, and everyone except for Capac (Budhism founder) and Alexander (Jewish Founder) had converted to it. After changing over to Organized Religion, and spreading it to all my cities, I quickly converted away from Hinduism to match my fellow civilizations.

In order to build the second shrine, I dedicated an extra priest in my capital until I generated another GP to build it.

My capital has become the strongest GP farm I have ever had in the game. Although I am terrible at controlling it, by 500 AD it was at 70+ per turn. I had generated many priests and a couple of engineers which after my shrines I just "added" to my capital. Probably not the right move, but my capital is generating so many hammers that I can produce any military unit in a single turn.

As of 500 AD, I was in a rather decent point lead, with 5 cities, and no wars up to that point. I am really proud of how well I am doing, but also have no idea what sort of victory condition I am headed for. I do know that my first war is coming soon, and Caesar to the east will be my first target.

I am having a blast, and I am so excited at how well I have done. I have made a few mistakes and have probably been too conservative up to this point, but I am just happy to still be in the game and 1st in points.

The hardest part has been not restarting when I make a mistake. It is just something I need to get used too. But when I didn't restart after making a couple of mistakes, I realized that they weren't that bad, and that I can recover nicely. Lesson learned.

I haven't finished yet, I am in the 1400s, but look forward to a great finish.

Thanks.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I agree completely; any modifications to the game should be noted in advance. This allows players a chance to think through the implications of the change and makes for a more strategic challange (i.e. more things to consider in advance). A simple note such as "Huts Modified" or "Resources Edited" would sufice. Not doing so can and will penalize some players for otherwise sound strategic decisions. When one player is penalized due to the random nature of the game (hut locations, land layout, resource locations) and another is not, that's just part of the game, but when the penalty arise due to a deliberate manipulation of the save/game that isn't communicated, that is unfair.

How is it unfair? We all played on the same map, didn't we, and with the same knowledge at the start? If - say, hypothetically - Ainwood had told only half of us that there were no huts or the AI were a long way away or there was horses 2 squares west of the settler starting point, but not told the rest of us, *that* would be unfair, but that's not what we're talking about. Whatever map we play on there are going to be people who, by chance, make strategy choices that turn out to be good or bad in the light of the actual map and events. For example, when I started, I moved my settler two squares North, thereby excluding both the horses and the copper from my city radius. No way would I have done that if I'd known where the copper and horses were. And I'm pretty surprised they were *both* there. In fact that's such a strategically good combination for early warfare strategies that - well, I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be a map modification. Suppose that was a deliberate move by Ainwood: Should I then complain that I got disadvantaged because Ainwood never told us he'd put resources there? Of course not! I should just accept I made a decision that turned out to be the wrong one, and adapted my strategy to compensate when I found out. That's how Civ goes. To play well, you have to be flexible and adapt.

FWIW I think that on prince level, the long distance to the AI's - which noone knew about either - probably has as big an effect as no huts (it makes early worker-stealing harder, and meant there was a far bigger barbarian threat than normal: At one stage I was contending with not one but *two* barbarian cities on my borders.)

 

[Orion071]

Man, am I rusty. I skipped the last GotM and I haven't played a game of Civ IV in about 6 weeks. So do I practice for a few games to get back in the swing of things? No! I jump immediately into the game and start playing. I play on Emperor level, so the Prince difficulty isn't a problem at all, but I've already made a bunch of stupid mistakes.

Saladin is one of my favorite leaders and he's great at culture wins so I planned on that from the beginning. I moved my warrior N on the hill and decided to settle on the plains hill. Since I didn't have the extra commerce to start (had to work a forest until the border expanded to the flood plains) I didn't think I could get Buddhism. I did found Hinduism and then went Mining -> Masonry -> Monotheism to found Judaism as well. However, during that time I produced Warrior -> Warrior -> Warrior -> Settler. I settled in the forest next to the Clams and Fish and Gold west of Mecca. I should have waited on the Settler so Mecca would be the Holy City for both religions, but now my religions were split.

In the meantime, my Warriors were exploring the territory. No huts?!? Not very nice neighbors either. Toku and Caesar and Alexander? Not to mention Izzy and Vicky nearby. I tried to grab a Worker from Toku, but for some reason the Worker died instead of being captured. I've never seen that before. So I had a war with Toku for nothing. Fortunately, I made peace fairly quickly. I wanted to spread my religion to Izzy so she'd be my friend, but HC spread Buddhism to her first. So great, now everyone's mad at me.

I built Stonehenge and the Oracle in Mecca for Great Prophet points and grabbed Theology with the Oracle. I thought about CoL, but Theology was more expensive and I thought I could still research CoL faster than anyone else. Nope. Alex must have popped a GP for it, because he grabbed Confucianism and then later Taoism. Meanwhile, Mecca was producing Great Prophets that I used for the 3 shrines.

JC switched to Judaism, so I switched to have at least 1 friend. Not so fast! 3 turns after I switched, he declared war on me anyway! Fortunately, his initial thrust was a couple of Axemen and a Spearman which I fought off with Horse Archers and my own Axemen. When I started to see Praetorians, I sued for peace real fast. Alex took a barb city near all of the dyes, so I took it from him. I also took a couple of cities from HC just west of my core.

So right now, I've got 8 cities, a massive tech lead, a massive power lead and I can win pretty much any way I want. I'm still in line for my culture win, but it won't be a quick one because I don't have an Artist farm set up yet. My 3 culture cities are set as my 3 Holy Cities, but none of them are a good GP farm. I've got 2 cities with Buddhism from HC, and I still can get Divine Right first, so I should have 5 religions to run with. I spammed Izzy and Vicky with Christian Missionaries so both of them share Christianity with me. They're the next 2 highest scores so they're good friends to have. I'll probably wipe out JC with Macemen and Camel Archers (just because I can ) and then finish my culture win.

 

[dcstevez]

There have been some fairly off-point responses to Cactus Pete's complaint. I think we all agree that removal of goody huts makes the game more fair, although some would probably complain it makes the game less fun. The question is whether or not basic modifications to the game such as this should be announced so that everyone starts with the same assumptions as well as the same map.

That said, I disagree with Cactus Pete's conclusion. I believe there is an important balance between fairness and surprise. There is an established pattern that the GOTM is often going to have an interesting twist manipulated by the creators. Removal of all goody huts has happened before and has been widely discussed in speculation during the pre-game threads. This map also placed our opponents very far from our starting spot, punishing those who relied on grabbing workers rather than building their own. GOTM 4 rewarded that strategy heavily, and punished people who did not explore and then expand quickly enough.

The GOTM is not randomized like a normal game of civ. When you are playing the GOTM, one of the possibilities you must consider, and factor into your strategy, is that there may be no goody huts. One of the joys of the GOTM is seeing what surprises the moderators have in store for us. I would hate to see the day when they had to list all of their manipulations of the map in the introduction . . . in the name of fairness.

GOTM 8:
Goody Huts everywhere.
Two hostile civs located very nearby.
Three religious civs with good start locations.
No Iron or horses in immediate vicinity.
Bronze in the initial city location.
And by the way . . . we stuck India with a really great start location with Marble AND stone . . . so don't even try to build wonders.

 

[Cactus Pete]

DynamicSpirit:

The complaint I'm voicing is not major, but it is frustrating when I fail to communicate it.

It is, of course, true that we all played on the same map and had an equal chance of being frustrated by the absence of huts. It is also true that bad decisions are an inevitable, and certainly not an unfair, part of game play. However, it is unfair when bad decisions are bad because the rules of the game have been altered without notice and not because bad judgment and/or bad luck occurred in circumstances that an experienced player could have anticipated and chosen to avoid or risk.

Your example of resource alteration is actually a good one to the extent that an experienced player could be certain that it would never occur in a normal game. If you are correct in your hypothesis that an unnatural resource allocation did occur at the start position in GOTM07, then that was indeed unfair to you (whether you view it that way or not), because you made a bad decision for good reasons, based on your considerable (I've been reading your posts) game knowledge. Your knowledge should be rewarded; rather, it may have put you at a disadvantage, and that is unfair.

On the other hand, if Ainwood, or whomever, altered the terrain or the resources in a way that could indeed occur naturally (if rarely) in a game, you indeed have no grounds for complaint, and your comment on the need for flexibility and quick adaptability in game play is pertinent.

I argue that an unnatural alteration of the game may be desirable, but only if the players are apprised of it; otherwise, some unfairness will almost inevitably result. I would like your support on this and urge you to think it through again.

 

[Jastrow]

@ Cactus pete...

In light of your last post...

Would you agree that we dont yet know (not being able to see the starting map in the worldbuilder, and btw we get a full view, the other civs will have popped any huts near to them) wether the alteration (if any) was unatural or not?

It seams to me that no huts within poppable range is at least possible from the natural random map script. Would you not agree?

 

[drkodos]

However, it is unfair when bad decisions are bad because the rules of the game have been altered without notice and not because bad judgment and/or bad luck occurred in circumstances that an experienced player could have anticipated and chosen to avoid or risk.

Highlighted text by me may indicate the cause of your consternation:

The rules of the game were NOT changed. Your statement to that fact is 100 percent wholly incorrect.


Important reminder: It is a GAME.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Jastrow:

I don't know the parameters by which huts are placed on the map, but the area I explored early was huge -- certainly much larger than any other hut-bare area I've ever seen in other games. I'm not at all sure that the algorithm for placing huts doesn't force at least, say, one hut within a given area. At any rate, the probability that this was natural seems so remote as to approach unnaturalness.

Your point is well taken, however. If it is true that such a hut-barren map is within the realm of real probability (say, greater than 1%), that would certainly weaken my argument for unfairness. On the other hand, to the extent that its likelihood of occurence approaches zero, my argument is valid.

drkodos:

You are correct -- the "rules" have not been altered. I chose that word because I thought the analogy between a rule change and an unnatural alteration of map paremeters was informative. Whether a "rule" was changed or a "parameter" unnaturally altered, the result was that certain tactics, soundly based on experience, were unfairly disadvantaged.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

Well, I thought I would try a variation on the very fast conquest wins with horsed archers. Its the first confucian camel club conquest challenge! I'm trying to rush the world with flanking II camels.

I found one east on the plains hills and start developing my empire. Early techs mining, BW, animal husbandry. Build warriors til size 2, worker, chop second worker after BW, chop last trees for settler. Expand to 4 cities by 700BCE.
1> Mecca, hybrid good production, commerce and my GP farm (I'm going for domination with camels and I'm only going to grab a few GPs for academies and shrines)
2> (2320BCE) Medina, 2 south of the stone (commerce city + gems for happy)
3> (1750BCE) Damascus, on coast west of gold with fish and cow, good commerce and production
4> (700BCE) Baghdad, in copper, cow, banana valley - lots of food and hills = primary production city.

I build Stonehenge in 1000BCE (because I can and I want a GP). I should have built some units since my empire is very low on power instead as I will quickly discover. I'm focusing on science with high commerce cities to try and get to guilds quickly. 730BCE Oracle and take Code of Laws. Found confucianism in Medina.

595BCE barb archer defeats archer defending Medina and I lose the holy city just as I pop a great prophet. Lucky, it didn't get razed (confucian barbarians?) and was retaken next turn by an axe which was racing from Mecca.

20AD - Great Library in Mecca. Switch from great prophet to great scientist emphasis. The last wonder I will build unless Hanging gardens are still available near the end.

Didn't keep track of my tech progress carefully but start a couple of wars. 85BCE H.C.: raze a city he built in the jungle near Baghdad. 80AD Isabella, start of conquests with axes which will soon upgrade to maces.

Confucianism spread very quickly to Cumae and Caesar switched so I pushed west and left my friends in the east alone. Isabella had founded Hinduism and H.C. Buddhism, Alex and Toku both switched to Buddhism and a couple of missionaries switched Vicky to confucianism. I'm starting to roll through Spain (H.C. declared on Isabella after I take Barcelona) and the rest of the world is divided into the Confucian camel club and the Buddhist bloc.

At 500CE, I have captured Santiago, Barcelona and Seville. I founded an additional city near the copper hill and dye to limit Caesar's expansion. He was very weak early on, built pyramids instead of expanding and the jungle barbs kept heading toward his empire rather than Medina after the first lucky archer. I have almost finished Guilds and Alex traded me Horseback Riding so I'll soon switch production to camels and sweep the world. The is so much commerce in this map that I'm still teching at a great rate despite my expanding empire.

I built an iron mine near Seville for production but didn't hook it up to see how long I can go before discovering that iron might be useful for my military.

I'm curious if anyone else tried a camel charge. It's an interesting change to my usual mace/grenadier attack and I'd like to see how quickly a better player could dominate the world with camels.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

DynamicSpirit:
It is, of course, true that we all played on the same map and had an equal chance of being frustrated by the absence of huts. It is also true that bad decisions are an inevitable, and certainly not an unfair, part of game play. However, it is unfair when bad decisions are bad because the rules of the game have been altered without notice and not because bad judgment and/or bad luck occurred in circumstances that an experienced player could have anticipated and chosen to avoid or risk.

Perhaps the difference between us is what we mean by 'the rules of the game'. To me, altering 'the rules' would mean something like, Ainwood changed the tech tree, or changed the strength of some unit etc. Since it's understood that the map is random within certain parameters, I don't view modifying the map as changing the 'rules'. (I might regard the information Ainwood provides about GOTM's as misleading if Ainwood altered the map to such an extent as to, for example give us a 'continents' map that contained no sea anywhere, but I don't think removing goody huts falls into that scale

Your example of resource alteration is actually a good one to the extent that an experienced player could be certain that it would never occur in a normal game. If you are correct in your hypothesis that an unnatural resource allocation did occur at the start position in GOTM07, then that was indeed unfair to you (whether you view it that way or not), because you made a bad decision for good reasons, based on your considerable (I've been reading your posts) game knowledge. Your knowledge should be rewarded; rather, it may have put you at a disadvantage, and that is unfair.

Thanks for the compliment about my posts (though I'm sure there are loads of people who have far more knowledge of strategy and hence ability to play on high levels than I do). I do see that situation as coping with how the land turned out, I don't see it as unfair in any way.

I argue that an unnatural alteration of the game may be desirable, but only if the players are apprised of it; otherwise, some unfairness will almost inevitably result. I would like your support on this and urge you to think it through again.

Thanks for asking so nicely, but unfortunately I can't really say something I don't believe. The only issue where I think you might have a point is this: People who have played several GOTMs and read the discussions will be familiar with the fact that maps are often slightly edited, but people who haven't done so may not realize that from the description of each map, so perhaps there is a case for the standard write-up introducing each GOTM map explicitly stating something like 'the map has been generated by a script and may or may not have been subsequently hand-edited, so you shouldn't count on its features exactly corresponding to script-generated maps.' Would that answer your complaint?

 

[Jastrow]

OK, I decided to get some statistics on likelyhood of a "hutless start".

Firstly, the question of how much land can reasonably be explored in this GOTM... I restarted the game several times (I already submitted my complete game days ago), and set up the warrior in various directions. In met another civ on average in about 7 moves, and never more than 10 moves. Finding a hut in a given direction after bumping into a civ is pretty unlikely, since the should have gotten it first. That means that our claims that we cannot find any huts only means that there are no huts within something like 8-12 squares of the starting position.

The, I generated a map with the same set-up as this game, opened world-builder and counted the distance from the starting warrior to the nearest two huts. I repeated this experiment 20 times. The results in terms of number of moves needed to get to the nearest two huts (assuming perfect knowledge, and selecting hte best path each time)...

5,5
6,5
8,9
4,5
1,4
3,4
3,6
2,6
3,11
3,9
3,4
8,8
10,11
5,5
7,9
1,4
3,5
2,9
1,5
4,4

So, in 20 times, there is one game where we would have been pretty unlikely to find any hut (10,11); one (8,8) where finding a hut was no better than a 50% chance, and a total of 7 games where finding more than one hut during your real game was quite unlikely.

So:

5% chance: very likely no hut found.
10% chance: one hut with luck.
35% chance: only one hut likely.

So, based on these statistics, the odds that any editing (if indeed it took place) had more than a "1-hut" effect on any strategy is only about 2/3, and there is a ~5% chance that it had no effect at all. I would say that falls well within the realm of random.

As a further test, I decided to generate a few more mapes in and look at them in worldbuilder, searching for the huts, and figuring out where a civ could start to be furthest away possible form the nearest. On the first two maps, I found nothing better than about 10 squares, but on map #3, I found a spot a full 15 moves away from the nearest hut (and of the two huts 15 away, 1 was one square from a settler, and the other was about 4 squares away, so getting to either of those was very unlikely).

Given those statistics, I cannot accept the premiss that any editing (which may or may not have taken place) was outside the realm of that possible with the random script, and thus see no reason why we should have been informed.

 

[Cactus Pete]

DynamicSpirit:

Well, I quess reasonable people can disagree. Thanks for responding.

Your suggestion would largely mitigate the problem. However, I suspect that the hypothetical new gotm player that you posit would be confused by a statement like, 'the map has been generated by a script and may or may not have been subsequently hand-edited, so you shouldn't count on its features exactly corresponding to script-generated maps.' If the standard write up were more specific and comprehensible to a gotm rookie regarding the kinds of alterations that might or might not have been made, then the unfairness would be eliminated.

It was the fact that there was absolutely no reason to think that the GOTM06map might not have any huts that I found irritating -- the moderators (or whomever created gotm06) played as gods with the game and gleefully, no doubt, left us to struggle with their anomalies.

Jastrow:

I was arguing largely on principle, and you have hit me with emperical evidence. There are nits to pick with your analysis, but it's certainly far more thorough than mine, so your point is conceded. Would you be comfortable with a compromise similar to what DynamicSpirit suggested (see above)?