Gotm19-Ottomans Results and Congratulations

[ltcoljt]

Originally posted by Smirk


Not true. Domination plays a special role in this game and especially in gotm since to have a good scoring game, no matter the victory type, you have to expand to the domination limit. The reason space race and some others are deemed easier is because you don't have to expand to the domination limit in order to win. This goes moreso for diplomatic which IMO is about the easiest way to win (as long as you don't shoot yourself by breaking deals etc).

The point is (and one that SirPleb has illustrated for many months now) is that getting to the domination limit is a root skill afterwhich you can do whatever you want in any game. You can win most any victory type without getting to the domination limit, but you can also win any type after you've reached the domination limit with a much higher score.


This isn't an all or nothing sort of strategy either you can still be working on getting to domination without sacrificing other goals like faster tech, culture (with the exception of 20k). A good space race game is both a fast expansion to domination as well as a fast tech pace.

Smirk,

First of all I want to apologize in regard to the play on your name that I made, it was no reflection on you, just the language.

Now about this post, I don't think you really read what I said. I said A space race game, if played to max score, is far harder than a domination or conquest win. You must have missed the phrase "if played to max score". I did reach the domination limit in my game, and I did so in such a way as to juggle research and infrastructure builds while I was in conquest mode. It would have been far easier to 1. just go straight domination or 2. just go for a speed run to a launch.

If you will look at my result you will see that I scored substantially better than the fastest launch and not to poorly versus the domination scores.

Those of us who play Sir Pleb's upcoming quick game will no doubt be facing a far harder task than he faced if we play not for the fastest track to the launch but to max score as well.

Thats just my opinion.

 

[Qitai]

Itcoljt> Just curious. What would your Jason score have been if you had gone for the domination win?

 

[Aeson]

I don't think it's far harder to play out from Domination to Spaceship, or harder at all. It's basically milking while keeping research high (which does require skill, but no moreso than getting to Domination quickly). It definitely is more time intensive, but IMO time expenditure doesn't equate to difficulty.

 

[ltcoljt]

Originally posted by Qitai
Itcoljt> Just curious. What would your Jason score have been if you had gone for the domination win?

Impossible to really answer that because of the way I went for the space race win. I paced myself, alternating between expansion (which I would have continually pursued if going for a domination win) and building infrastructure/milking. I went for the latter because I thought I would have had a higher "score" with some milking than I would have gotten by a beeline to a purely fastest date space win. I may or may not have been correct on that, but I did have a higher score than the space race medal winner.

As a result my "pacing strategy" I didn't reach the domination limit until about 1300 ad. Replaying the 1325 turn for instant domination I see that I would have been able to finish in about 30th place, down from my 23rd with the space win.

I was focused on my strategy from the begining, I would have to back way, way up and replay a lot of the game to see what would have been my best domination result.

We will be able to know more about how space race stacks up against domination in the scoring when the Sir Pleb quick game results are in, but I must point out that there might be two ways to play that quick game. Fastest to finish and pursuit of the highest score. In my mind it should be possible to score higher by not going for the fastest route. But a lot will depend on Sir Pleb's positon.

 

[ltcoljt]

Originally posted by Aeson
I don't think it's far harder to play out from Domination to Spaceship, or harder at all. It's basically milking while keeping research high (which does require skill, but no moreso than getting to Domination quickly). It definitely is more time intensive, but IMO time expenditure doesn't equate to difficulty.

I think that getting to the domination limit first and then going for the spaceship will not necessarilly yield a higher score than delaying getting to the domination limit a bit in favor of building and milking as you go. This is what I think is harder.

Sure, by slowing down you lose some territory score, but you should be able to make that up by a higher average of happy pop and a quicker finishing date.

I just don't think its so simplistic that the best result is always obtained by getting to the domination limit asap.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Creepster
I failed to realize that I needed navigation to get the resources over to the Roman island. I had 20 odd horsmen waiting to attack after I upgraded them. I had The Great Lighthouse, a harbor on all three continents, and a barracks, but there was a sea or ocean tile between the landmasses that prevented the upgrade until after Navigation. I ended up unable to use about half my troops for most of the game.

Like others, I don't understand how this happened. It's barely possible that hostile units severed the coastal route between the continents, but with Astronomy you should certainly be able to connect. Can you post a save file that shows the problem?

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by ltcoljt
I think that getting to the domination limit first and then going for the spaceship will not necessarilly yield a higher score than delaying getting to the domination limit a bit in favor of building and milking as you go.

Score only comes from two things: people (happy, if possible) and territory. It's not too hard to make people happy, if you have lots of extra cash for entertainment, but I think it's a lot easier and quicker to increase your score by adding territory than by adding people. (The latter requires not just population growth in your existing cities, but building cities that have no other function, and irrigating and railroading all of the tiles around them, etc.)

 

[Mark Cutt]

Originally posted by TedJackson
So I have for QSC 19: 73rd percentile, GotM 19: 70th percentile.

That's right. I made the analysis also using the total percentiles as you did.
The point is that, as discuss before in the thread, QSC players overperform non-QSC players in the full GOTM ranking (e.g. 90% of the QSC players have a better percentile ranking in the GOTM than in the QSC). That's way I preferred to post the analysis made on players who played both competition.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Aeson
Also, Mazarin's game is a real eye opener. A little under six and a half hours playtime and still very well played! (by comparison I spent 22 hours playing just about the same game)

Of course I didn't really play for 159 hours (a lot of those hours were from leaving the game running when I was called away, and then not getting back to it until the next day). But I'm sure I played a lot more than 22 hours. I find it hard to imagine playing through a whole game in "only" 22 hours, although I'm sure I'll get faster as I play more games.

 

[SirPleb]

Anyone interested in the GOTM19 replay mentioned earlier in this thread, going for high score space victory, please visit the thread here in Quick Games.

 

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by Mark Cutt
The point is that, as discuss before in the thread, QSC players overperform non-QSC players in the full GOTM ranking

I shouldn't post when I'm tired.

I meant to say thank you for bringing home to me the flaw in my method of self evaluation. Instead I waffled on about my (flawed) figures.


regards

Ted

 

[Balton]

Congrats to SirPleb and those who received top awards.

I am also expecting an award of some kind for 247 hrs on the same game. Actually it was a lot longer but a power failure prevented me to go over400 hrs

The main reason for keeping the game on was to keep the number of reloads to an acceptable level. Otherwise I would have had to turn it off everynight as my job takes me all over Europe on short trips which prevents me to play continually. And I cannot install the game to may business laptop and my personal laptop a PowerBook Pismo gave me a message that prevented me from submitting the Celts game so I am down to my Dell at home.

 

[Yndy]

Originally posted by Balton
I am also expecting an award of some kind for 247 hrs on the same game. Actually it was a lot longer but a power failure prevented me to go over400 hrs

The main reason for keeping the game on was to keep the number of reloads to an acceptable level. Otherwise I would have had to turn it off everynight as my job takes me all over Europe on short trips which prevents me to play continually. And I cannot install the game to may business laptop and my personal laptop a PowerBook Pismo gave me a message that prevented me from submitting the Celts game so I am down to my Dell at home.

Hi Balton,
You don't have to do that, you know. You might have read that in a message some time ago but if you were not told to watch your play style (I assume you were not), you don't have to do anything to actively lower the number of sessions you play. Still your counter is amazing, I thought you played 8 hours per day, all month long.

 

[Creepster]

DaviddesJ

Can you post a save file that shows the problem?

I will look through my saves. I am not sure if I hae a save after Astronomy and before Navigation.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Yndy

Still your counter is amazing, I thought you played 8 hours per day, all month long.

You ain't seen nothin' yet! I run civ3 continually in the background as well, not because I'm worried about reload or session stats but just because that's the most convenient way to do it for me. On my current rate of progress on GOTM20, if I manage to get through the game (a BIG "if" ) , I'll probably have close to 500 hours on the clock, and only a couple of reloads.

However, I notice that the playing times for most Mac games in the stats show up as zero, so maybe the counter isn't working anyway.

 

[Aeson]

Civ 1.29f and Mac saves don't include a time played counter (AFAIK). It's an added feature of PtW, which is why they are the only ones to have the time played noted.

 

[Aeson]

So far, out of the PtW games where we've extracted the time played data, mudfoot is currently the 'champion' (most stable system?). His GOTM18 submission had 588 hours of playtime on it... thats 24.5 days!

 

[Txurce]

Aeson, I have a time total on my Mac game, for some reason. (I also have one extra game credited to me in the global rankings - I've only submitted three.)

 

[Smirk]

Originally posted by ltcoljt

Now about this post, I don't think you really read what I said. I said A space race game, if played to max score, is far harder than a domination or conquest win. You must have missed the phrase "if played to max score". I did reach the domination limit in my game, and I did so in such a way as to juggle research and infrastructure builds while I was in conquest mode. It would have been far easier to 1. just go straight domination or 2. just go for a speed run to a launch.

I see what you are saying but in practice that isn't what can happen or even what does happen. If you rush to domination limit as fast as possible you have the best potential score. If you then delay domination and go for another victory you are adding more time to the game but not really more difficulty. The only hard SR victory is the one where you are racing with the other civs to built the ship, and once you are dominating this wouldn't ever happen.

The other side of the coin which is to ignore domination and just rush to a SR victory will always score lower than the domination-then-SR game, however you can still get the fastest victory awards and it might be the only way for some victory conditions. The best games, those in the top 10 are usually those that perform both a fast domination and also a fast victory. That is melding two goals. If you try this but sacrifice one aspect or the other you will end up somewhere in the middle. For instance if you slow down expansion to improve your tech rate you will be somewhere in the middle of the person that didn't slow down expansion and the person who only concentrated on the solo goal of fastest SR victory. So you won't score highest and you won't get the fastest victory awards. Think of the Jason score as a compromise between fastest victory and full game milking. The best games will be those that create a good scoring kingdom and at the same time move quickly to the chosen victory.

Looking at your game data what is being said here is that every domination win above you could have halted the domination and then went on to another victory say SR and won either before you did with a similar score or after you did with a higher score. If you really want to see the difference a good civ building game can do look at Moonsingers game, she won 1 turn after me, but scored a thousand points more which earned her a spot 14 places above me.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Smirk

Looking at your game data what is being said here is that every domination win above you could have halted the domination and then went on to another victory say SR and won either before you did with a similar score or after you did with a higher score.

This may well be true for Itcoljt's 1520AD spaceship (which doesn't seem particularly early, to me), but it's not true for Shillen's 1315AD spaceship (which had an even lower Jason score). If I'd shifted to building a spaceship as fast as possible after conquering everyone else, I couldn't have finished by 1315AD. Perhaps SirPleb could, since his domination was so early, but the rest of us couldn't.

The fundamental issue is that the Firaxis scoring only rewards getting lots of territory and people; it doesn't reward anything else even if those other things are "difficult". And the Jason score just approximates the Firaxis score if the game is played all the way to 2050AD, so it has just the same issues. It's never going to reward other difficult feats. If you want that, you need a completely different kind of score.