GOTM 38 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[da_Vinci]

Did you know that if you concentrated on just 2 of the 3 global rankings you could easily be among the top 19 on those 2?

I thought that is what I am doing ... focusing on speed AND score!

Do you mean concentrate on, say, just speed, (and thus, on combined by having high points for half of what makes it up)? Isn't that really focusing on one?

Current approach has me 23 in score, 18 in speed and 16 in combined, so pretty much making your target of 19 in two as it is.

dV

 

[jesusin]

(and thus, on combined by having high points for half of what makes it up)? Isn't that really focusing on one?

Half of what makes it up????? It is not a mean, it is not an addition, it is the maximum!

If you concentrate on score and ignore speed, combined global ranking == score global ranking.

If you concentrate on speed and ignore score, combined global ranking == speed global ranking.

Current approach has me 23 in score, 18 in speed and 16 in combined, so pretty much making your target of 19 in two as it is.

dV

You can go much higher playing worse!

You: 70K score, 70K speed, 70K combined.
Me: 20K score, 100K speed, 100K combined.
Gold winner: 100K score, 20K speed, 100K combined.

Speed ranking
1.- Me
2.- You
3.- Gold

Score ranking
1.- Gold
2.- You
3.- Me

Combined
1.- Me
1.- Gold
3.- You

You get 2 silver and 1 bronze, both Gold and Me get 2 gold and 1 bronze. Insert some more players and you are in the 16-23 range while Mr Gold and Mr Speed are always the first in 2 of the global rankings.

 

[wwassme]

@daVinci

Further, since your global ranking is the better of your paired GOTM and BOTM (and sometimes WOTM) score, you can concentrate on score in one paired game and speed in the other to maximize your overall global ranking in each of score, speed and combined.

 

[da_Vinci]

Half of what makes it up????? It is not a mean, it is not an addition, it is the maximum!

If you concentrate on score and ignore speed, combined global ranking == score global ranking.

If you concentrate on speed and ignore score, combined global ranking == speed global ranking.

Yes, you are right and my language was sloppy ... I should have said "concentrating on one of its two possible components", not "half of what makes it up"

You can go much higher playing worse!

Uh ... how is being Mr. Speed or Mr. Gold playing WORSE than how I play? My approach is designed for someone who is not going to be Mr. Speed or Mr. Gold ...

Also, for some victory conditions (e.g. dom) my score points often are higher than my speed points (when we have a really fast dom, hence why I go diplo mostly), which is why my speed total is 18th at 205.5 points, but my combined is 16th at 230.3 points. So if you are not Mr. Speed or Mr. Gold, the calculus can get more complicated ...

@daVinci

Further, since your global ranking is the better of your paired GOTM and BOTM (and sometimes WOTM) score, you can concentrate on score in one paired game and speed in the other to maximize your overall global ranking in each of score, speed and combined.

Well, that is the plan, tempered by the following:

WOTM migrates between sets of GOTM+BOTM, so a balanced score-speed performance may make sense there ...

Having a speed game and a score game presupposes that the difficulty levels are winnable for me on both games, not always the case ...

dV

 

[wwassme]

Having a speed game and a score game presupposes that the difficulty levels are winnable for me on both games, not always the case ...dV

In a month where one game is at a higher level, and potentially not winnable, then the recommendation would be to focus on speed in the more winnable game and focus on score in the potentially not winnable game. As I understand it, score (for global rankings) is calculated based on your score's (game adjusted score) relation to the highest (game adjusted) score achieved. You will get a score for global ranking purposes regardless of whether you win or lose. At a higher difficulty level, game scores overall are likely to be less (I'm not sure if the highest score changes much though), thus your relative score ranking may be higher.

My understanding is that your speed ranking is relative to the fastest speed for that victory condition. However, you need to win to receive a speed ranking. Accordingly, in a higher difficulty game if you go for speed and lose, you get no speed ranking and a lower score ranking than if you were focusing on score.

There are of course numerous variables such as how many other competitors are focusing on score vs speed, for the speed ranking how many others are trying for that victory condition and, of course, what the highest score/fastest speed per victory condition turns out to be. Since rankings are all relative to the other players submitting games, where you end up depends a lot on where other players end up.

 

[greatbeyond]

Contender save.

I moved 2 SW and settled on the Silver near the river. I had read in the BOTM 14 discussion about settling on bonus resources for the boost it gives, apparently not in vanilla Civ4. No commerce bonus. All in all it wasn't a bad site, but the extra gold income could have allowed me to research CS and then get Philo for the sling. As it was I explored and was a little dismayed, but not surprised that there weren't any Horses nearby. Perhaps the Horse Grinch deleted them from the map? I did find the Horses near MM and got a Settler there just in time. GH weren't too bad, just one tech (HBR), some experience, Gold, and a Settler. The Settler had to do a little dance to avoid the hungry Lions prowling around and after 6 or 7 turns he settled near the Copper to the N/NW. I did get a couple of Axes out but they were only good for eliminating Caesar with the support of Immortals. It wasn't until I got Maces (very early) that they went East to war with the support of Immortals. After getting Cats I moved on MM.

I did a couple of test games and was able to win in 1275AD and ~1500AD, so I was hoping to beat these times. Unlike my tests, Barbs were a whole lot more active in this game and the Civs were crowded on the East end of the map. MM expanded much faster than all the other Civs combined. I had four cities, having eliminated Caesar, (did anyone let him live?) when disaster struck. At one point a Barb Axe got close to my capital, that's when the RNG decided to level the playing field between me and the AI. I had 2 Immortals in the Capital and a Warrior. I sent both Immortals out to kill the Axe. First one loses at 67% and does NO damage to the Axe, the second loses too, but takes the Axe to ~3. He attacks and kills my Warrior at ~50% odds. It takes about 4 turns to get an Immortal there to retake it. This is one of several RNG travesties. A couple involved Maces, preparing to eliminate Khan and Sally at 99.x% odds and losing, requiring more Maces to be rushed the length of the map. I did consider using just Immortals for a quick win, but by the time I got them running, MM already had Axes and Spears. I read one of the other reviews where a conquest was had with all Immortals. I'm not sure how that was possible, (perhaps a very kind RNG or just shear force of numbers?) because I was very quick on the offensive and MM and Egypt had lots of Spears and Axes, Caesar did not, Sally, Khan, and Louis only had a couple.

The order I took them out in was most aggressive to least; Caesar, Louis, Sally, Khan, then MM and lastly Egypt. I could have beat my time by several turns, but foolishly agreed to Peace with Egypt to get a bunch of techs (hoping for a little better score) and get a few reinforcements to the last battle

Conquest victory in 1450AD

I researched AH, Wheel, Mining, BW, Myst, Med. PH, Writing, COL, Pottery, take CS from Oracle, Metal Casting, Machinery, Math, Construction, Paper, Printing Press (needed extra Gold, shouldn't have bothered, and instead went to Engineering after Construction) finished Engineering just before the win.

 

[jesusin]

Uh ... how is being Mr. Speed or Mr. Gold playing WORSE than how I play? My approach is designed for someone who is not going to be Mr. Speed or Mr. Gold ...

Looks like you're putting reins to yourself.

WOTM migrates between sets of GOTM+BOTM, so a balanced score-speed performance may make sense there ...

No sir. Once again, the global is the maximum among GOTM,BOTM and WOTM. Playing WOTM balanced after having played 2 unbalanced (one for speed, one for score) is like no playing WOTM at all.

 

[da_Vinci]

Looks like you're putting reins to yourself.

I would say I am being realistic about my current capabilities, relative to the competition ...

No sir. Once again, the global is the maximum among GOTM,BOTM and WOTM. Playing WOTM balanced after having played 2 unbalanced (one for speed, one for score) is like no playing WOTM at all.

That is true, if you have been successful in those two unbalanced games. But if you have a speed failure in one bracket, and a score failure in the other bracket that the WOTM will oscillate between, I can imagine a scenario where the balanced WOTM may give the best result, again assuming that one wants a good ranking in all three globals.

The balanced game is like a stop loss order in a stock market: it provides a mitigation against risk of a large fall in ranking by providing reaonable points in both score and speed. That then allows more explicit speed or score focus in other games in the bracket.

All that said, I appreciate the comments from you and wwassme, and I agree with them in general, my only disagreement being that I can see some value in some circumstances for the balanced game. But maybe not as often as I previously thought ...

dV

 

[Thorrez]

I would say I am being realistic about my current capabilities, relative to the competition ...

That is true, if you have been successful in those two unbalanced games. But if you have a speed failure in one bracket, and a score failure in the other bracket that the WOTM will oscillate between, I can imagine a scenario where the balanced WOTM may give the best result, again assuming that one wants a good ranking in all three globals.

The balanced game is like a stop loss order in a stock market: it provides a mitigation against risk of a large fall in ranking by providing reaonable points in both score and speed. That then allows more explicit speed or score focus in other games in the bracket.

All that said, I appreciate the comments from you and wwassme, and I agree with them in general, my only disagreement being that I can see some value in some circumstances for the balanced game. But maybe not as often as I previously thought ...

dV

I had absolutely no idea what you were talking about when I started to read this. It turns out after almost 3 years of playing GOTM I had missed that there was a speed ranking and only checked the score one .

And the really fun part is that I score a lot higher in the speed ranking .

 

[Ronnie1]

I still don't know where to find the speed rankings or any other rankings for that matter.

 

[AlanH]

How about the right hand panel on every page on the GOTM site, where it says "Global Rankings"?

or every Results announcement post, where you see:

>> See the full results here.
>> See the updated global rankings here.
>> See the latest Pantheon of Heroes here.
>> Award symbols are listed here.

Or, to make it really easy:

See the updated global rankings here

 

[Ronnie1]

I hang my head in shame!

 

[da_Vinci]

Or, to make it really easy:

See the updated global rankings here

What, no with that?

You must be mellowing ...

(I am glad you went easy on my buddy, R1 ... )

dV

 

[Conquistador 63]

Good thing about this threadjacking "rankings discussion" is that more people discover the beauty and the therapeutical virtues of the Speed and Combined rankings. In the last few months, everytime I feel sad or blue, I go check those and I always get instantly happier!

However, GOTM38 won't help me in those rankings. My goal was something else. I got a very late domination - 2021AD. If nobody else got the same idea, I *could* end up with a certain award... Which I have never tried to get before, but looked less tedious than usual to me, with the smallish mapscript and the normal speed. We'll see...

 

[Erkon]

...However, GOTM38 won't help me in those rankings. My goal was something else. I got a very late domination - 2021AD. If nobody else got the same idea, I *could* end up with a certain award... Which I have never tried to get before, but looked less tedious than usual to me, with the smallish mapscript and the normal speed. We'll see...

No! No!! Noooohhhh!!!! Please don't tell me you went for the ... Oh my, you did

Tell me one thing: did you get more or less than 100 future techs? <shudders in fear of wasting 18 hours in vain>

 

[Conquistador 63]

Ouch! Now it is my turn to fear having wasted a lot of hours in vain. I got more than 100 FT's but my end game wasn't optimized (see finish date <2050), also did not bother to get total conquest in the last few turns so Pop score also suffered...

 

[Erkon]

... my end game wasn't optimized (see finish date <2050), also did not bother to get total conquest in the last few turns so Pop score also suffered...

Neither did I, so the award may go to someone who actually cared to maximise score! I ended up with 55% land and won a diplomatic victory 2024 AD.

Anyway, it was a fun game, and the research rate was insane. I didn't disband my goody-settler as jesusin did, but he didn't play challenger OTOH

Oracle: T60 - 1600 BC (CS).
Academy: T161 - 1010 AD blush
Liberalism: T178 -1180 AD (Biology)
Future Tech: T269 - 1795 AD

I was building research in all cities, apart from two, who built explorers (overflow => ~200 coins), which enabled 100% research rate. Got a bunch of great people due to running pacifisms and farmed all cities

 

[KingMorgan]

I play for fun, not some ranking score bollacks.

1640 conquest in less than 3 hours.

Really messed up, planned to quickly vasllize the world then found i couldn't. Cavs saved the day and i blitzed the rest of the AI. Really good fun this game.

i may try harder next time

 

[jesusin]

I was building research in all cities, apart from two, who built explorers (overflow => ~200 coins), which enabled 100% research rate.

That's almost like killing your settler, I'd say. For how many turns did you waste your production?

Spoiler :

This is Vanilla, no money from overflow.

 

[Erkon]

That's almost like killing your settler, I'd say. For how many turns did you waste your production?

Spoiler :

This is Vanilla, no money from overflow.

About 50 turns for two cities, and then another 50 turns with one city.

The figure in upper left said -200 gpt, but my treasury did not decrease while building two explorers / turn. When I switched to research, the treasury started to decrease, although not at -200 gpt.

If the gold didn't come from overflow, where did it then come from?