GOTM Techniques, Cheats, Rules & Discussion Thread

[Duke of Marlbrough]

We do have some games with no huts becasue of that. Reloading, in general, is not allowed because it can affect so many other things. Should we allow reloading of combat results? or reloads when Barbs appear? Where do we draw the line at ending any randomness in the game?

Civ is largely a strategic game, but there are elements of randomness that make it different for every player. Huts are just another element to the game.

 

[A+ombomb]

I do agree on reloading being bad for combat results, but barbarians appearing is usually a good thing since you can gain bonus money!

 

[A+ombomb]

Is there a special bonus in the score for players that go for that 1 city challenge?

 

[ElephantU]

Wish there was!

No, but you get listed in Red and have few challengers...

 

[SideshowBob]

Originally posted by A+ombomb
Your rules guide states that reloading the game (such as to get optimal huts) is against the rules. Aside from the obvious - its pretty hard to police aside from pure trust - wouldn't it make more sense if each player could get exactly what they wanted from each hut?

You have a point there, but that would take out a whole lot of the fun from the game. When you play "normally" you can reload as much as you want, but then the game soon bacomes boring, doesn't it. I just played my king-high-score-game and it was much more boring than the GOTMs are. And if you are allowed to reload - who will monitor that the game you submit is your first try and not your umptieth. The GOTM is just another, and more challenging (and theefore more intereting and fun) way of playing Civ.

Anyway, it's fun to see how different outcomes different players can have. If one wants a "easier" game I simply recommend switching to a more "vanilla"-like version of Civ 2. Being not that great at this game I found that I can get lots and lots of money and techs from the AI when I bought amore vanilla-like version of the game instead of playing my "Civ 2 Ultimate Classic Collection"-version with extremely hostile AIs.

DoM - are there any hutless games coming up? It would be fun with a game with huge amounts of barbs and no huts - then you'll have to learn to defend your cities and to deal with the AI to get "free advances" and keeping your cities though you are at peace with the AIs.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

February will be a hutless game.

 

[SlowThinker]

Can't you replace huts by technique used in scenarios? 'Huts' must be 'defeated' first: there are barb units with movement 0 on the map, if you defeat them you get gold and/or a unit (Settler...)

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

I don't think we ever planned on doing Modded Civ II games. Some people seem to have problems playing them how they are, let alone having different rules.txt files to use and such.

 

[SlowThinker]

bump:

12. Unnaturally Large City Sizes Disallowed
(Also, growth with less than 1 food surplus)

What does it mean?
I cannot fill the foodbox unless I ensure +1 food surplus?
I always considered a city growth via food caravan and 0 or negative surplus as natural...

 

[la fayette]

Originally posted by SlowThinker
bump:
I always considered a city growth via food caravan and 0 or negative surplus as natural...

So do I

but I suppose that when the GOTM rules were established (by Starlifter ?), the designers wished to avoid players spending the whole month trying to increase their score with help of thousands of caravans, like people do when playing a 'high score' game.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

The rules were designed by the active players at the time. Starlifter just tried to organize them for everyone.

I think the main reasoning behind it is because growing a city that has a food deficit usually leads to or uses the FCT, so it is disallowed by association.

 

[SlowThinker]

So is my interpretation

A player cannot fill the foodbox unless he ensures there is +1 food surplus.

is correct?

I think the rule is good and simple.
From other point of view a player must be vigilant always he fills the foodbox. This is not so good.

 

[Steadboy]

Alright i was all into my game there and missed the 1 AD save by about 170 years... am i still elegible or do i have to restart?

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

You can send me the closest game you have to the needed dates.

You would not be able to submit a game if you restarted, so keep playing what you have and send the saves that are closest to the dates.

 

[Steadboy]

great, thanks

 

[SlowThinker]

quoting from page 5:

Originally posted by SlowThinker
This computation shows the GOTM score is not set ideally. If a civ grows by 1.88% per turn then it is doubled after 37,21 turns. But in the beginning (when you grow by building new cities) the empire is doubled in less than 20 turns; with WLTxD it is less than 15 turns; with good caravan shipping (and ship chains) it may be even faster.

This means that your score will be highest if you will keep your game up to 21th century and micromanage 200 cities - but that's boring.

I suggest to adjust the formula.

Originally posted by Old n Slow
I double checked the 1.88% growth rate for 420 turns -- and yes, maintaining that growth rate will generate a score of 50 stopping at any turn along the way. However, I think that your conclusion is flawed. Empirical results to date show scores both above & below 50
...

Sorry, I was slow with my answer...
OK, an average result is 50. That induces that
1) a worse-than-average player (that is unable to reach a 1.88% growth) should try to conquer the world as soon as possible
2) a better-than-average player (that is able to reach more than a 1.88% growth) should exploit the game as long as possible, should maintain a pet civ and try to build 250 40-sized cities .

 

[A+ombomb]

I originally thought that the GOTM encouraged really milking the game for a long time too, but I now realize the flaw in my logic - wltkd. If you finish your game extremely early, exploiting the fact that you can triple your score within a matter of 10 or 15 turns, you can attain enormous scores. I am unsure whether an early landing or conquest is better - I usually end up conquering the world whenever possible anyway, just because it allows for more points with relatively little investment ( a few tanks easily handle the horribly slow teching computers). The bottom line though, if you ever want to attain a score well above 500 you better plan on an early finish, with as much planning as possible to have all of your cities celebrate to their maximum at the same time, and the same year you end the game.

FYI, the growth of your civ may be constant by percentage, but this isn't really a useful piece of information. What I found to be the best way to maximize gotm score was to compare when exactly it would be most ideal to begin global celebration to attain the largest score by the time all cities reached the end of their festivities. The exact date is always dependent on how big the map is, and how much easily useable land there is. The ideal, which you would milk the longest, would be many small islands with grassland squares and alot of ocean for each city, since this requires minimal improvement effort to celebrate (a harbor and sometimes a marketplace/courthouse is about all you ever need with 30% luxury). Even under these ideal conditions, it would still seem to behoove a player to finish very early - no later than 1000 AD if possible.

The idea of having 250 size 40 cities isn't a practical conclusion, because it is very likely that these cities will be growing to a size 40~ at very different rates. By the time you place your last city, you could boost it to size 8 right away, but it would still require 33~ turns to grow to 40, assuming you can pull off a nonstop growth. By that time, it is very likely that most of your civ would be already at its max pop, and you would be losing points in the process of growing your last city. The true solution seems to be that you want to build as many settlers as possible, constantly expanding to all places, then celebrate them all together at some ideal point which would vary from game to game.

 

[rysingsun]

i agree with rule 20 with one exception. i long ago edited my city.txt file by adding a large number of cities to it to prevent duplicate city names from appearing within the same civilization. if i werent so lazy i would have added many city names to each civilization so that no duplicates would ever appear. the biggest reason leading me to do this was because duplicate city names produce a bug when attempting to scroll through all my cities. since it is not an exploit to make the game "easier" i think this one thing should be allowed.

 

[Ace]

I don't think rule 20 applies to adding city names. Those of us who are too lazy to do that just use the rename button in the city screen to recreate new names as the game plays out.

 

[SideshowBob]

Hi again,

Background info: I’ve finally gotten my computer updated my new screen delivered and installed and yada yada yada... I’ve started playing the GOTM43 and have come rather far. As I have time this one time I thought I’d make it a long game because I’m not sure I’ll have time for that later this fall.

The problem: I installed Civ, but I forgot to patch it. I have the vanilla(?) Best of Infogrames version and now I have that many cities that the new cities’ units become NON-units. I know of this bug from before, and that’s why I thought I should ask whether I have to disqualify myself.

This bug kicked in long after there was only one pet city left. I could have finished by conquer earlier, but as I said above I didn’t feel like it. Another option is that I finish this game and refrain from building units in these cities. I don’t think I have much help from the military NON-units as the world is quite stable and I have little use for them except for keeping barbarians away. The only really unfair advantage I can see in this bug is using NON-engineers. But as I said I could refrain from building units in these cities.

I need your opinions on this.
Thanks, SideshowBob