GOTM9 * Spoiler* Talks

[Leowind]

Haven't played GOTM in quite a while, but this one looked doable in my time frame, which turned out to be a good thing. Actually I got just sick enough the first two days I played to stay home, but not too sick to play . First Civ I've played since Sept 11, and the most fun I've had playing Civ in a long time . I think I largely got lucky. I never once got barbarains or weeds from a hut. Was able to research Monarchy as my 2nd tech!! Discovered the Romans when they only had one city (which didn't last long). Blocked the isthmus, then later sailed South and landed in the heart of the Carthaginian empire and took their capital. From there pretty much just steadily munching cities. finally got down to one Egyptian city left by mid-1800s. Realized I had not bothered to grow at all under Republic, but will be maximizing growth under demo now until becomes too difficult, or the end of the month, whichever comes first. My score won't approach the masters of this game, but it felt good to be totally kicking a$$ the whole game on Emperor. I think all my games in the future will be on small map.

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

I'm in the mid 500AD's, having eliminated the Carthaginians in the sweeping knight-crusades of the 100AD's, and now turning my attention to ending the reign of Cleopatra and Ceasar respectively. I control the entire main continent, not the corners and jutting nooks where the AI is stationed, but the isthmus and the meat of the land on both sides. Cash was tight for a while there, but I've overcome my monetary woes by offering up barbarian leaders heads on a plate and milking the Vikes for all their worth (not much )

I've played a casual perfectionist strategy, only branching to 5 cities before opening the eastern seige, and am now in the process of turning out settlers by the dozens to fill the vast void between my home territory and conquered eastern cities. Tech is horribly slow, caravans are non-existant, and a Republic state a good 20 turns away. The only critical decision remaining is who gets the honor of being 'pet civ of the month'

 

[Manami]

First time GOTM for me

I never play with barbs on, so those raging hordes really annoyed the hell out of me. Entire red armies spawned on the most impossible places, usually right next to a poorly defended cities. This forced me to spend valuable resources on pikemen and legions. Then there were the Romans who broke peace treaties every 3 turns, forcing me to build an army and city walls and such, again wasting resources. And because of this war I wasn't expanding properly, so I only had like 9 cities.

I was way too late with my caravans and way, way too late with WLTPing. So tech went down the drain.... I waited with the war until I had Howitzers and then I crushed the AI... I was aiming for a peaceful Spaceship victory, but I didn't have the time. Finished the game in 1980.

I mustr say this game was really challenging, but I'll never play with barbarians on again Even when I captured the last AI city, red hordes still roamed the continent.

 

[Manoa]

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I just started the GOTM 9 tonight (after many RM practice games with the same starting settings) and something very odd happened.

A few dozen turns into the game, around 1500 BC or so, I got a message saying the Carthaginians had been killed by barbarians. I've never seen this before, is this just a rare random occurrence? Is there anything I did to cause this? Just wondering since I've never encountered this before.

 

[ferenginar]

Carthagian Plague

They cover half of the continent and are tightly packed. What amazes me is the number of units they have spread all over the place. They have riflemen dotted every couple of spaces in fortressses, they send wave after wave of units against the pinch point where I have 3 mech infantry fortified on a mountain top, they're not getting through. they send lots of planes to attack my coastal cities, and their navy is a royal pain in the butt.

As my swarm of Howitzers makes its way across their territory, i find each city contains 6-8 defenders. They manage to support all of these units and still produce more every turn. The population is so unhappy that the government(demo) should have collapsed ages ago, and with the polution they create there should be skulls everywhere, but there are none.

This is AI cheating on a grand scale, I shudder to think what they get up to a deity. This is my first attempt at emporor, and it has been hard work, the game will be over by conquest circa 2000. I have decided to go for the kill, rather than SS and have switched to Fundy with 80% taxes so i can buy al the units i need. With so many away from home demo would have collapsed.

Next game deity

Ferenginar

 

[ferenginar]

1996 - only one city left.
Do I finish them off now or do I poison them down to 1 and spend a few turns of wltpd to increase my population?
I think i'll have to do a cost benefit analysis on GOTM scoring, extra pop required per turn to increase overall score.

Ferenginar

 

[Leowind]

Stormerne figured out at one time that you need about a 1% increase in Civ score to improve your GOTM score. If your Civ score isn't going up that fast, then you're losing ground by waiting. I've used that as a rule of thumb. Don't know if that still holds true. Sounds like Matrix has been fiddling with the scoring formulas lately, as usual I haven't played GOTM for a few months, so have been a bit out of the loop on the details.

 

[Muumuu]

Originally posted by Leowind
Stormerne figured out at one time that you need about a 1% increase in Civ score to improve your GOTM score...

In fact you need that 1% increase in the SQUARE ROOT of the Civ score to improve your GOTM score. Remember the GOTM score formula was... (well, better look it up at here.. http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2gotmrules.shtml )

This translates to a 2% required increase in the Civ score per turn just to keep your GOTM score from falling.

Or to be precise, exactly 1.88%, as there are 420 turns and (50^(1/420))^2 = 1.0188.

Thus the GOTM formula seems to assume a 1.88% growth rate per turn. This does seem quite low to me, at least with the limited experience of this first GOTM of mine (this #9), where I calculated my growth to be over 3.5%.

As a result, the GOTM scoring system seems to favor longer lasting games with growth until the end instead of earlier conquests. I'd prefer shifting the balance somewhat towards the early game, as the late game juggling of hundreds of settlers and improving hundreds of cities is rather boring... Does anybody else have similar concerns?

 

[Muumuu]

Could write something about my little GOTM too...

I guess I was quite lucky in the beginning, getting two cities from early huts. Otherwise the early game was nice too, capturing barbarians and growing well in the good terrain of the starting position.

First met the Romans blocking them to the north with a phalanx on a river and forest. After they turned aggressive and started breaking peace treaties, I let my elephants roll over them to end that disturbance. Had to wait quite long for Rome to complete the Lighthouse before finally finishing them off.

The Carthaginians I never had a chance to meet, because the Egyptians killed them very early. Wonder how that's possible, well maybe the Egyptians were just lucky. They were also fortified behind city walls in their bigger 8-size cities, so I next turned to fight the militaristic Vikings who had fortified their whole damn countryside. Quite interesting to see the different playing styles of the computer players...

The Vikings were soon left with only their walled capital, and then my elephants turned their noses back to the Egyptians. As also these big animals have problems plunging through city walls, more cost effective diplomats had also to be used, though bribing those big cities is NOT cheap. Well, slowly but surely Thebes was reached.

With only Trondheim left around 1500, I had to figure out when exactly would the GOTM score be maximized. Not soon it seemed, as the happy American population was growing rapidly.

At 1750 the people were still loving their time, but I'd had enough. Just bring the engineers in, and that'd be it. But that was not it, as the poor engineers were just not allowed to settle in cities over size of ten!

Well, just a few more turns and some bogey cities, and that was it, the HAPPY END!

I guess growing the empire until a space ship would have still increased the GOTM score, but timewise it just was not an investment worth making.

Great game this was, and I especially liked the small map size, which is still playable. Bigger ones are just too SLOW...

 

[Amenhotep IV]

It's my first Gotm so excuse me for my curiosity and unexperience.
Do you think 3600 points in 1899 AD is a good score or is it better
to play again?
I don't personally like eg. 4 cities size of ~20 on 40 squares, but I prefer 2 big (>35) cities to be built on such an area. What is better?
Here is a short overwiev of my game:
1 AD: Romans, Vikings, Carthaginians conquered, Republic,~30 cities, researching Invention
1000 AD Demo, ~55 cities ( In my way of playing there is still place to build ~10), only Thebes remain.
1500 AD ~65 cities, sobe above 10
1794 AD - new modern city style ;-)
1899 AD - SS arrives.

By the way, I'm that Pawe³ who occupies 4th place in Civ2 HOF.


PS. Sorry for my English, I'm Polish.

 

[Chofritz]

Hello pave3!

That is a really nice score, maybe not a gold medal but good,

BTW. You're not allowed to replay the game, Well you can replay it for fun but I don't think you should submit your 2nd try. Matrix is a really scary person,

 

[Enkidu]

As I was quite succesful in the last GOTM with conquering the world as early as possible,I decided to give it another shot.

I was very lucky with the huts, getting two cities, quite a few units and only one barbarian, allowing me to crush the Romans in no time.

Once I had found the connection to the other continent and noticed that the remaining three civ's were all on it, I quickly secured the passageway with a city. Then I clustered loads of cities on the left part of the continent (round twenty) built a few cities near the enemies, set the taxes to 70% (in Monarchy), and started building loads of elephants.

Carthegians were cleared in very quickly, the I gave the vikings and the egyptians around four techs, traded world maps with them, and finished both of them of in the BC's

 

[Amenhotep IV]

Originally posted by Chofritz
Hello pave3!

That is a really nice score, maybe not a gold medal but good,

BTW. You're not allowed to replay the game, Well you can replay it for fun but I don't think you should submit your 2nd try. Matrix is a really scary person,

Hello Chfritz !

I must say I haven't submited the game so I still have a chance to submit another one. Therefore I started yesterday from the beginning. I'm in 1000 AD now with 90+ cities ( I changed the strategy ), 12 mln people and I plan to finish game ~1850 AD
with a higher score...
I only must work hard to finish by 2nd Nov.

PS. Is there a progam which converts savegames from Civ2 Gold to Classic?, because I get crazy when I download a Gold save and I can't view it in my Civ2. Besides I can't download Civ2 Gold as I have 56k modem.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Originally posted by Pawe³


Hello Chfritz !

I must say I haven't submited the game so I still have a chance to submit another one. Therefore I started yesterday from the beginning. I'm in 1000 AD now with 90+ cities ( I changed the strategy ), 12 mln people and I plan to finish game ~1850 AD
with a higher score...
I only must work hard to finish by 2nd Nov.

Actually Chofritz is right.

You can't reply your game; even if you haven't submitted your first one yet.

Just think, during the second playing of the game you already know where everyone is, what the land is like and a very good idea of where to 'run' to to build cities to block people off. Not really a very fair comparison to everyone else who played normally.

At least you won't have to try and rush to beat the Nov. 2 deadline now.

 

[Bed]

agree duke

the rules are the rules

u can play again for fun but please submit your first attempt, even if a barb destroyed ur second town, even if u unleashed a barb archer near ur capital

if people dont follow these simple rules the GOTM is no more

i finished 1893AD with SS and lots of town but if i replay the game(knowing the others civs pos and the islands and continents patern) i think i could arrive in alpha centauri 50 or 100 years earlier or even manage to conquest the world easily
but i think it s not fair, thats why i submited my first game(i get nothing on the second hut, i did not reload... the rules are the rules u play them or u leave)

 

[LeSphinx]

The rules are the rules...

GOTM is a very good thing because we can play all of us in a same word under the same conditions... And we can discuss about that in the forum ! It's great ! Don't destroy all the good stuff made by people of CivFanatics!

You can replay a GOTM without submitting it just to try another strategy, just for you. I did it for the GOTM8 (It was my first one!) but I stop it. My aim was to have a very very very large scientific advance around 1 AD. For exemple, I discovered Invention around 900/1000 AD in GOTM8 and the second time I made it around 1000 BC. Then, for all the games, I will take this stratefy if possible.


LeSphinx

 

[ferenginar]

I used the spreadsheet to calculate my gotm score and then used this to work back to find how many more civ points i needed per turn to achieve parity. It varies from appriximately 31 in 1996 to 47 in 2020,(this equates to 1.88% but I was looking for the actual score required). With all the wonders already built, the extra points would need to come from population growth, thus I would need 15-24 extra happy citizens pre turn.

Most of my original cities were already maxed out on their food supply, the Carthagian cities taken, did give some oportunity for growth, but would need major improvements to sustain the growth. In addition i had only a few engineers available for irrigation, and only a few cities with the surplus food required to produce more.

I considered the additional score of the SS, but as I had not even started building one, this also seemed difficult. I therfore went for the kill, and completed by conquest in 1996. If I have the time I think it might be worth the attempt, but obviously not for submission.

Roll on GOTM X

Ferenginar

 

[Amenhotep IV]

Duke and others,

I couldn't agree more that playing GOTM for the second time is kind of cheating but what would you say about airbases?

'I've always considered the airbases as a cheat. You can't convince me that they were ment as replacement of railroads and farmland and that after you can build airbases, you'll never have to build railroads and farmland again...
But so far it's an allowed cheat. ' says Matrix.

It also gets on my nerves when I see a savegame where the player simly built airbases everywhere and I had to build 'legal'
farmlads and railroads spending twice the time he had spent.

Of course I may not submit my second attempt, firstly because I don't have any chances to win ( it's my first GOTM ), and secondly if you convince my that airbases are not a cheat ( allowed by software, but also a cheat ).

 

[JayKay]

Originally posted by Pawe³
Duke and others,

I couldn't agree more that playing GOTM for the second time is kind of cheating but what would you say about airbases?

'I've always considered the airbases as a cheat. You can't convince me that they were ment as replacement of railroads and farmland and that after you can build airbases, you'll never have to build railroads and farmland again...
But so far it's an allowed cheat. ' says Matrix.

It also gets on my nerves when I see a savegame where the player simly built airbases everywhere and I had to build 'legal'
farmlads and railroads spending twice the time he had spent.

Of course I may not submit my second attempt, firstly because I don't have any chances to win ( it's my first GOTM ), and secondly if you convince my that airbases are not a cheat ( allowed by software, but also a cheat ).

I must say that i agree with you! I think airbases are a cheat too!

I can even proof that they weren't meant as replacement of railroads and farmland/mine! In ToT the airbase trick doesn't work, so as you can see that this was a bug that wasn't fixed in the MGE version!!

_________________________________________________

Portugal
Nation of: Magellan's (from Magellan's Expedition);
Vasco da Gama (Discoverer of the Maritime path to India);
and Pedro Álvares Cabral (Discoverer of Brazil in 1500)

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

I think airbases were not programmed into the game correctly. They give a benefit for using them that should not be there.

That said, they are allowed in the GOTM. Why, you ask? Because nobody has the time (maybe starlifter ) to check all the games and try to determine which airbases are tyring to be used legitimately and which ones are cheats.

Since the games can't be checked correctly (besides this is suppose to be a 'friendly' competition, right? ) they have decided to allow the airbase 'cheat' for everyone just to make the playing more 'fair'. Some people feel that airbases should not be allowed in the game, and thus do not use them at all. Others, like myself, play the game within the rules we were provided, whether we agree with them or not.

So, airbases are a cheat, but they are allowed in the GOTM and I think most people will continue to use them.