GOTM 54 Second Spoiler - end-game.

[tR1cKy]

Obormot, your idea isn't bad at all. Restricted awards may help in raise the interest in the competitions. But i think it's not enough.

Personally, i started to play GOTMs after over 1 year that i was wandering in these forums. I see lots of new names in the general discussion area of Civ3. Probably many of them aren't even aware of this competition. Sending a few invitations each of us may result in new entusiasts picking up the competition.

Specially made maps - unusual competitions - altered civilizations etc. may lead some of the retired ones to join again.

Just some thought of mine. What do you think about them guys?

EDIT: without being annoying, i think that suggesting some people seeking advice of some sort to see the GotM threads and trying a pair of games should be good advice anyway.

 

[SpiffyKeen7744]

I started out building Warriors and eventually blocked off the entrance to my peninsula. My research took me to The Wheel first, but I did not build War Chariots initially. After meeting and trading, I decided that I would conquer the world with Swords. This worked well as I also could upgrade my Warriors, and because I had been doing that in the last quick game. I connected up the iron just north of the starting point while making a road through the mountains. I also put a city on the hills horses to make the road faster. China was my first target.

Since the start did not allow for lots of cities, I decided that I would jump my capitol to Chinese lands as soon as possible. I built my first core with that in mind, with the FP to be built in Heliopolis.

After two or three wars, I managed to capture 3 Chinese cities by force, 2 through peace deals (including an island city), and destroyed 4 size-1 cities by 130AD. That left the Chinese with two cities and me with a great second core. In fact, this is probably the best second core that I ever had. I used 3 of the old Chinese cities and 4 of my own. The Americans had placed 2 at a perfect distance from Shanghai. I jumped palace to Shanghai in 110AD.

Events that took place before the palace jump led me to reconsider my sword-conquest idea. First off, everyone was in the middle ages by now. I was in the middle ages too thanks to a military leader and thus the Great Library in Shanghai in 350BC. This let me build up money for upgrades and rushed buildings. I had switched to Monarchy in time for my golden age which started in about 230BC. Starting around 50BC, I had enough Medieval Infantry to take the rest of China, and I decided to take the Cavalry route. I was losing MI really fast, so I decided to switch production to Library, Barracks, and War Chariots and change to the research game.

In the end, I built a total of 8 Libraries in my two cores. I researched directly to Military Tradition, after switching to Republic in 210AD. Along the way, the Americans fell off the map. They had always been spread out, but things got worse for Lincoln. I received Boston and New York through cultural flips, and the Germans took San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, and Chicago. Washington was all they had left. After taking China's last two cities, I realized that conquering China gave me four additional luxury resrouces: Dyes, Furs, Incense, and Spices.

I built up War Chariots as much as possible until I received Chivalry in about 500AD from the Great Library and started going after the Celts. The Celts did not have iron, so Knights worked well against Spearmen. However, the Arabs had declared, so I was fighting the Arabs for Celtic land. I think Entremont was captured back and forth for 5 consecutive turns.

Once I had MT in 620AD, conquest went much faster. I learned from my wars with the Germans that cities with foreign citizens (Celts and Chinese) don't get destroyed when captured, which is nice. I managed a Domination Victory in 850AD. My second core looked really good at that point.

My conquest progress went something like this:

 

[Wardancer]

@Spiffykeen - Nice spoiler, unluckily you went for the same victory condition as Klarius so no award for you this game!

@Tricky / Obermot - I think both those ideas are excellent. A bit of marketing of the GOTM competitions across the other parts of the site definately would not hurt.

In terms of Obermot's suggestion I think this is an absolute must. I have just completed the Roman game with a fairly late science win. In is no way worthy of an award (particularly when compared with some recent efforts of others) but I think I stand a fair chance purely on the basis I am likely to not have any competition from anyone serious.

At the moment the only two fastest finish awards worth anything are the Conquest and the dom. That needs to change.

 

[Obormot]

I think 3 awards per games would be nice to balance good competition and good diversity. One military (one month conquest, next month domination, etc), one builder (one month space, next month diplo, next month 20k, then back to space, etc) and one "marathon" (cow and 100K). The other conditions are playable and get jason score according to the best dates, but don't get awards. It will be unfare to the epthatlon players of course since they'll have to wait 2-3 month between attempts, but well, winning the epthatlon is not supposed to be easy.

As for the intersting and challenging maps, i agree to some extent, but not completely. The recent challenging maps in COTM had fewer people participating. The games should be unusual to some extent, but should not take too much time. It was fun for me to explore the world of COTM23, but i got bored when i saw just how much land there is on that map. I think smaller maps are the way to go, we have more people playing GOTMs now then COTMs, this used to be the other way around, but changed when GOTMs moved to small maps. Also people usually like better starts more, so a great start deity is more fun then poor start emperor game (though some alternation is required of course).

As for marketing gotms, this may attract some people, i agree, these forums are big and people from one subforum don't read what's goin on in others. But I don't really know how this can be done.

The GOTM staff are now very busy running 3 GOTMs and 2 SGOTMs at once and in 4OTMs the number of submissions is several hundreds that is higher then submissions for 3OTMS have ever been, so maybe they don't have the time to arrange all these changes But perhaps we should start discussing this now (maybe this can be moved to a different thread), hopefully sometime when the 4OTMs are running smoothly they'll find some time to think about this. I guess we just have to say thanks to them for not forgetiing about good old civ3

 

[ignas]

11219 jason
domination in 390

 

[ignas]

i played civ4 for few months but i can say civ3 is better than civ4. that is my opinion

 

[tR1cKy]

I will casually suggests people asking for advice to see some spoilers here and try a GotM competition. It would be good advice too. In my case, it did a great job of improvement and refinement.

 

[LethalLogic]

I salute everyone who got to the middle ages in this game. I thought I was a great CivIII player when I started this, my first GOTM. I now stand humbled and beaten. :-(

So Tricky, Obormot, et al. You guys are doing great just giving advice. I think people will start GOTMS like I did. Needless to say this being my first emperor game and first GOTM I fared pathetically.

I was actually pretty okay till QSC, 6 cities 19 population or something like that. But German's demanded tribute I refused, DOW. America demanded tribute I refused DOW, Chinese demanded tribute, I refused DOW, all in the same turn!!I got so panicky pushing my poor spearmen to the mountain passes, that I missed ALL wonders. I fell VERY far behind in tech, and had the ignominy of having my military advisor disband units because we could not manage their upkeep.

So all you guys thinking you have had a bad game, please don't fret. I can successfully win the hardest played worst defeat award anytime. You know, start one of those awards and I bet we have more people coming in.

 

[SpiffyKeen7744]

@Wardancer - Thanks! I have not written a spoiler in a while. I'm glad that I've done a good job. Lots of pictures does not necessarily mean that I provided an interesting or useful description of my game. Now that I am closer to being a "top" player, maybe my spoilers will help others...

As for reducing the possible victory conditions so that there is more competition, I don't know what to say. I have only ever won Civ3 games through domination, conquest, or a 20k cultural city. As long as there is the possibility for domination and conquest, I don't mind having only one other fastest finish award. It might just convince me to try a space or diplomatic victory.

@Obormot - How is 100K cultural like the cow? Is that because you have to rush a bunch of buildings and that leads to the same kind of micro-management as going all the way to 2050AD? I mean, don't the other victory conditions (space, diplo, 20k) usually last longer (date and time spent playing)... Looking back at previous results, it seems that the different fastest finishes take turns being the game with the longest play time. Sometimes it is not even the cow. I saw 20k, space, and diplo fastest finishes taking longer than the cow and 100k. I would say that space, diplo, 20k, and 100k are in the same boat, just as conquest and domination are in another. I'm just curious why your reasoning was.

 

[Obormot]

Maybe i'm wrong. I never played a 100K game and got my award for nothing

Well, my point was that diplo, space and 20K require the player to balance expansion and building up the core (when they are played for fast finish, not score), but 100K and cow require reaching the dom limit ASAP and only then doing some other micromanagment. But anyway it doesn't matter how to split the awards in categories, we may just pick 3 out of 7 randomly. The idea is that we have 40 people playing now instead of 100. So the number of awards should be scaled using approximately the same factor.

 

[Drazek]

Open, going for the Conquest Award!
Looking at the results by Wardancer (450 AD) and Nata (410 AD) gives me hope of finally claiming the Conquest Award. Sure, Drazek doesn't post spoilers, but I seem to have played a really strong game in comparison. I can only hope for the results to be posted quickly so that I don't have to worry too long...

No worries, Niklas. This game was a really painful for me. I thought about abandoning it for some times. It actually took me 3 weeks to complete, although playtime was just short of 8 hours. I got so frustrated with all those mountains and jungles + I lost my roading workers to barbarians a few times.

Looks like I did an unusual move in the beginning, as I did a short palace jump to west of wines. Did not bother to calculate if it was a good choice, but it allowed me to have 5 ring 4 towns. Then it was just a long wait to get those towns ready for Golden Age and get mountains roaded. GA gave me lots of War Chariots, but they weren't enough, my core really lacked production. I got Monarchy before GA but had to change back to Despotism to pop rush troops in the frontline. I must have abandoned about 20-30 towns because I just lacked army to protect them and I tried to do conquerring as fast as possible. Jason was under 11k.

 

[Wardancer]

@Drazek - At 8 hours I'm normally still tinkering with my QSC spreadsheet

@Spiffykeen - I also agree with the 100k being in a category with the cow. Its just such a painful long slog. Spending hours pop rushing all the useless culture in your fully corrupt ICS towns is not fun. Its definately my least favourite victory condition!

 

[Htadus]

I too agree we should limit winning conditions for each 3OTM. If I were to win a award because no one else went the same route, It just won't feel right. I think all winning conditions should be turned on for the game. As for how many to be available? At least 3 as Obormot sugested but 4 would be preferable. That way all conditions will be available within two month. How about 4 one month and 3 the other?

 

[azzaman333]

Domination Loss to Germany. My 2 failed wars against China left me stuck on the mountain island (start area). In the end, i was banished to the small island between China and Egypt, by Germany and Arabia (who simultaneously declared war, i hate that)So i was sitting on my island (with a galleon, 2-3muskets, 1 worker, 1 swordsman) watching the Germans plow through anyone who stood in the way.

 

[Niklas]

A bit late, but I figured I would chime in with some thoughts too on how to get a better competition. I think the idea of limited awards makes sense, it would certainly increase the competition for those awards and make the Eptathlon rightfully hard to achieve again. But I'm not so sure that's enough.

Those who have left us for Civ4 are not going to come back because we take away half the awards for each game. Those who still play Civ3 but not the 3OTM games are not going to jump in the water because the competition is tightened for each award. Those who have their Eptathlons already (or are well on their way but gave up because of the cow) won't really care about how awards are given any more. I think we need something different, something new, something that draws some attention to 3OTM.

My suggestion is to formalize a contest within the contest, much like the gauntlet games of the HOF. I'm talking about something like the Predator Challenges that tR1cKy started. Those were fairly successful, lots of players chose to join the Conquest challenge with Carthage, and even more went with the Arabian Domination Challenge. And that with no official backing to go with it, just the bragging rights.
So, I think we should introduce a formal Challenge in each game, for a particular VC, with some sort of laurel to go with it. Scrap the old awards, their value is deflated anyway (or keep them for those who really want to). Introduce a new form of Challenger Eptathlon (or maybe fewer than 7, 5 maybe if we skip the marathons?) for those who have won a challenge for each VC. Let players win their games any way they like, but distinguish the Challenger games. Keep a separate CPR, Challenger Player Rating, where only challenge games count. Retain the old GPR for players going for just any VC.

Will this increase competition in each game? Certainly.
Will it bring new players to the game? No idea.
Will it bring old players back? Probably not.
Will it make the game more fun for those of us who are still around? You bet.
(Would it put more work on the staff? Yeah, that too... )

 

[Megalou]

Niklas and others,
I'm not coming back, for personal reasons, but I hope the competition lives on. I'm not the one to judge civIV, being quite inexperienced with it, but it does seem clear to me that the major advancement in the game did take place between civII and civIII with the cultural boundaries feature.

Incidentally, I made a rare comback in GOTM54 finishing with a 450AD domination victory, but I will not submit for any reason, being officially retired.