GOTM60 Results and Congratulations

[Cactus Pete]

There were only 31 victories (8 losses and 3 retirements) submitted out of 199 downloads, probably in large part because the map made for a long game. Appreciate those who stuck with it and pleased that the lengthy game was not a source of complaint. Noted that even srad's fastest Cultural victory, which the map favored, required a bit of a slog.


Congratulations to Fluroscent for gaining the gold, and to Ronnie1 and Dhoomstriker for winning the silver and bronze respectively -- all via Domination. All three certainly showed The-Hawk how it's done.

Have something in the works for 62 rewarding social skills.


Summary of Medal Winners:

Fluroscent: 1770 AD Domination Victory, 80,114 points.

Ronnie1: 1570 AD Domination Victory, 61,925 points.

Dhoomstriker: 1860 AD Domination Victory, 61,558 points.


Fastest Finish Award Winners:

Xcalibrator: 1800 AD Conquest Victory, 40,404 points.

htadus: 1904 AD Diplomatic Victory, 34,164 points.

srad: 1720 AD Cultural Victory, 17,759 points.


Other Award Winners:

The-Hawk: 2034 AD Domination Victory, 8,067 points.

UB40: 1996 AD Conquest Victory, 7,357 points.

enKage: 1984 AD Cultural Victory, 4,313 points.

afker: 2028 AD Diplomatic Loss, 3,559 points.

Holy Cheese: 2028 AD Diplomatic Loss, 1,878 points.


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

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Have something in the works for 62 rewarding social skills.

Sounds interesting... do you mean in-game Diplomacy or the strength of our Spoiler messages?


Congrats to everyone who survived on this map, especially those who settled outside of Shangri-La and thus had to deal with the AI hordes!

 

[WelshGandalf]

The "full results" link doesn't work, it takes me to BOTM 35 results, and the GOTM 60 results are not available on the drop-down.

 

[srad]

Congratulations! Surely not easy to get a Domination or Conquest victory. Not to mention a diplomatic!

 

[da_Vinci]

Congrats to the winners!

Thanks to Cactus Pete for the setup!

Special thanks to Htadus for winning diplo earlier than 1995, which was when my border popped and triggered a dom on the turn my UN vote came up (would really feel bad if it would have been fastest diplo! )

dV

 

[AlanH]

The "full results" link doesn't work, it takes me to BOTM 35 results, and the GOTM 60 results are not available on the drop-down.

Fixed. The "Publish" button had not been pressed

 

[WelshGandalf]

Thanks for sorting out the rankings - quite pleased with my first top 20 finish

Appreciate those who stuck with it and pleased that the lengthy game was not a source of complaint.

It wasn't long if you just played culturally - and didn't build a city at the entrance to the valley Defnite kudos to those who went for, and achieved military victories though. Dhoomstriker's 74 hours must've been so draining to play through...

I think zvovesny should get some sort of award for finishing the game in a blistering 67 minutes.

 

[Fluroscent]

Thank you for this game. One of the most fun I can remember.

 

[Hescumet]

thanks for the game. very well done concept. great how it worked for the different victory conditions.

(hat to try one of the christmas simleys. hilarious.)

the GOTM is the best thing about Civ, and Civ is great already. Oh, and congrats to the winners!

 

[MarleysGh0st]

So my time loss wasn't even "good" enough for an ambulance.

I won't complain too loudly about the game, Cactus Pete, because it was a very interesting special scenario, but I do hope that future games aren't so dependent on discovering an exploit to achieve victory.

Or did somebody build a city on the forest hill outside the valley and still manage to triumph?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

did somebody build a city on the forest hill outside the valley and still manage to triumph?

I'm not sure, but I built a 4th City relatively early to grab Wheat and Horse. That City was outside of the valley and certainly attracted its fair share of attacks.


Presumably, though, if you built a City on the chokepoint's Hills square, you were also attempting to exploit the fact that the AIs would throw stacks of units against a single target that could be well defended, no?

Yes, it is very annoying to find out after the fact that by choosing not to exploit this chokepoint location, a bigger exploit of the AIs hardly attacking at all would have been possible.

That said, had you lost your chokepoint City, then you, too, might have discovered that the AIs were no longer interested in your valley Cities, as long as you had a Military Unit along the one-square-wide path between the captured choke City and your other Cities to "block" the AI pathing algorithm.

Dhoomstriker's 74 hours must've been so draining to play through...

While it certainly took a lot of time to capture AI Cities, spread my three Shrined Religions to each, and then abandon said Cities to the AIs for the fun of it, most of that time was probably idle time. With a guideline of "try to keep playing sessions 1 hour or longer" plus not always having that long to play at a time, it is often easier just to leave the game open in a background window so that each session can be long enough. Unfortunately, the game still logs time during that time period and I got burned in the past using the "Pause" functionality in that the game froze and wouldn't let me continue playing, so it is what it is--mostly idle time.

 

[da_Vinci]

So my time loss wasn't even "good" enough for an ambulance.

I won't complain too loudly about the game, Cactus Pete, because it was a very interesting special scenario, but I do hope that future games aren't so dependent on discovering an exploit to achieve victory.

Or did somebody build a city on the forest hill outside the valley and still manage to triumph?

What was the exploit required for victory? Other than exploiting the terrain, I don't recall using any exploits. Do you mean the "exploit" of being left alone if you stayed inside the valley?

I did found a city on the hill at the opening to the valley (after I put four inside the valley), and took a city outside the SE corner of the mountain wall for my six cities for national wonders, and won. In fact, all of the domination victories had to expand outside of the valley ...

dV

 

[kcd_swede]

Hej hej... if you are playing a game with the "always war" setting and have figured out (or stumbled into) a way to win without fighting... kudos to you! We all benefit from learning about the mechinics of such a feat.

Myself, I see the "always war" setting, and I prepare to play a game with... well... constant warring.

And I think anyone who accomplished a victory on Challenger level should receive extra recognition... perhaps even honorary Eptathlete status for life...

Great game Cactus Pete! Looking forward to your next one.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Personally I just used maths to decide to build a fort rather than a city on the entry point. Hill + forest + fort = +100% defence that can't be bombarded away like a city's defence. Plus guerilla 2 gives a 150% defence value for only 2 promotions. For a normal unit to reach 150% defence value if there was a city there it would need guerilla 2 and city garrison 3, a total of 5 promotions. Also it's not like the city would've been a great one (with most of its tiles either mountains or pillaged) so it was a clear decision to me.

 

[kcd_swede]

Personally I just used maths to decide to build a fort rather than a city on the entry point. Hill + forest + fort = +100% defence that can't be bombarded away like a city's defence. Plus guerilla 2 gives a 150% defence value for only 2 promotions. For a normal unit to reach 150% defence value if there was a city there it would need guerilla 2 and city garrison 3, a total of 5 promotions. Also it's not like the city would've been a great one (with most of its tiles either mountains or pillaged) so it was a clear decision to me.

In my head, forts always remove the forest and actually make the tile worse defensively than if I left it alone. It was probably that way in earlier patches or in one of the other expansions (or else I'm just daft ). So I wouldn't even have thought to do that... but it sounds very clever!

 

[enKage]

I\ve got my first award ever!! Even if it is lowest scored victory :] Thank u !!

 

[Xcalibrator]

Me too! I feel like the dad in "A Christmas Story" when he gets his "major award!" The fact that there was only one other Conquest win for competition doesn't diminish the shine at all. When can I expect my trophy in the mail (marked fra-gee-lay)?

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Presumably, though, if you built a City on the chokepoint's Hills square, you were also attempting to exploit the fact that the AIs would throw stacks of units against a single target that could be well defended, no?

Yes, it is very annoying to find out after the fact that by choosing not to exploit this chokepoint location, a bigger exploit of the AIs hardly attacking at all would have been possible.

Of course, I built the city there to take advantage of the intrinsic defense value of the hill, enhanced by its cultural defense value and the walls and castle I built there. And even if that was strategically inferior to building a fort on the forest hill and defending with the appropriate promotions, it was still straightforward game play.

I was using the word "exploit" as it's used in the List of allowed & disallowed exploits & strategies thread; i.e. as a bug in the game code that makes no sense and ought not be there. A lot of people won cultural victories, but I never even considered that possibility in an Always War game, since that strategy depends on being more or less at peace with the AI. Who'd believe that all the AI would forever be at war with us but wouldn't bother attacking a lone unit blocking the path to Shangri-La?

I agree that this trick isn't in that Disallowed Exploit list (it'd be nearly impossible for the situation to arise without a customized map), so I'm not challenging the results. I'm just a little grumpy that the pregame discussion wasn't clearer about this point. I won't drag out the discussion any more than that.

That said, had you lost your chokepoint City, then you, too, might have discovered that the AIs were no longer interested in your valley Cities, as long as you had a Military Unit along the one-square-wide path between the captured choke City and your other Cities to "block" the AI pathing algorithm.

No, if I had lost that city, I'd have probably surrendered immediately. I had nothing in reserve except for a token warrior in each valley city.

But, hey, I did a heck of a job defending Calcutta and the hills that extended out from there, turning the tundra below that into the Valley of Death. If anyone wants to spend a day or two in city defense practice, my way of playing the scenario has much to recommend it!

 

[MarleysGh0st]

What was the exploit required for victory? Other than exploiting the terrain, I don't recall using any exploits. Do you mean the "exploit" of being left alone if you stayed inside the valley?

I did found a city on the hill at the opening to the valley (after I put four inside the valley), and took a city outside the SE corner of the mountain wall for my six cities for national wonders, and won. In fact, all of the domination victories had to expand outside of the valley ...

dV

That's what I meant, da_Vinci. I salute everyone who managed a victory in this game. As I said in the first spoiler thread, my early decisions, coupled with the AI's resistance to what should have been overwhelming war weariness, had guaranteed that I was doomed to defeat by 1 AD. It was foolish of me to spend so much time playing it out from there. Retiring the game and trying some unofficial replays would have taught me more and been much more rewarding.

 

[enKage]

Cactus_Pete, what about starting positions? Who was brave enough to settle outside valley?