How do you guys score so high?

[TheSandbag]

Just a preface to my actual question, but, I have to say, I'm new here, and this entire site is so damn impressive. In fact, this whole community thing is so damn impressive! Cheers to all of you! Ok, now done to the nitty gritty:

How do the top players of the GOTM score so damn high? Whenever I play, I think I'm doing fantastic if I've got a score of a thousand around the year 1820! Seems as though I'm lagging quite seriously behind the rest of you. I have as yet to actually try my ahnd at the whole GOTM thing, but now that I'm a member, I'll have to give it a whirl. So, if anyone has any insight and/or advice, I'd love to hear it! And a big CHEERS to the GOTM9 Japan Campaign ... wow!

 

[Creepster]

A lot of the scoring has to do with expanding as fast as you can. In the current GOTM I ended up with about a 100 cities at the end. You do have to be careful not to go over the domination limit.

Expansion early in the game is one of the harder parts for some players. In this game I built a settler after a warrior to get another city ASAP. I then set one city up to produce only settlers and the other to get me the Pyramids. As new cities were established I built more settlers. The only time I did not build settlers was if I could not balance food production and shield production to coincide for the settler, then I usually built a warrior. For me early in the game almost all of my cities had no improvements, and no defense. I don't worry about this early, because barbarians cannot destroy a city and the AI does not attack this early.

Those are a few thoughts, but I would also look in the war academy, there are some good posts in there on strategies.

 

[Bamspeedy]

You should read Sir Pleb's article in the Strategy Articles forum titled "How to maximize your score" or something like that.

Basically you start out with a conquest style of play, killing all the AI and claiming 66% of the map, then switch to builder mode and build marketplaces, aqueducts, hospitals, mass transits in all your cities, and then win at 2050 A.D.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Yep, Bamspeedy is correct, Sir Pleb's article is the way to go, well that's what I did.

 

[pilferman]

I don't know how anyone could have the patience to play until 2050. I consider myself a patient guy, but not that patient. I suppose I should tip my hat to those who can do it, and bring in the ungodly scores that they do. This is my second GOTM (GOTM X). My first being GOTM 1. I guess I'd rate myself as an average player (in the GOTM pool, that is). I had always played with a heavily modified civ3mod.bic to make my games more entertaining. Recently I reverted back to the default rules and decided to play this GOTM. It was quite a change, but I did ok. I could have scored higher but I only play to maximize my enjoyment. That means playing at a modest pace while trying to win. Being at regent difficulty, winning was not a problem but on the other hand there will be some ridiculously high scores. Now I'm rambling.

What I'm trying to say, TheSandBag, is that some people play GOTM to win, some just to compete, and others play because they can't get enough civ3. I'm somewhere between the last two. Regardless of your score, the important thing is that you enjoyed playing, win or lose. I'm going to start playing GOTM regularly, and the more competitors involved the better.

Welcome.

 

[Anjin Sushi]

I play mainly for the enjoyment, but I do hate not winning.

However, being a peaceful man, I have a very hard time attacking innocent and weak civilizations.

But GOTM - and the apolyton site as a general - has taught me to loosen on this principle with good results. (But nobody wants to be friends with me anymore).

PS: Moving big armies is a timeconsuming activity allthough its getting better with every upgrade.

 

[acjvanv]

Basically you start out with a conquest style of play, killing all the AI and claiming 66% of the map.

How do you know you have 66% of the land, do you count them by hand? And if so, you then have to stop by 65% to avoid winning? Am I correct?

 

[Karch]

Download Mapstat posted on this site to see how close you are to domination:
http://www.civfanatics.net/files/civ3/pafiledb.php?action=category&id=6
As for strategy - be very aggresive militarily until you control all. "Kill Your Neareast Neighbor" should be your first goal in any game. Take their land and then start looking toward the next victim. Score is tabulated by two factors: Territory you control and happy people in your society. Your initial focus should be a balance between settler produciton and military unit production. Produce settlers as fast as you can, but also always be planning for your next conquest. Once you've taken over the 1st 2 or 3 civs and own their land, (and if you're lucky enough to get a great leader for a FP) you've already won. After that kill everyone else off until just one civ remains with one city and milk to the end. An exciting way to play until you reach the domination point, but after that it sucks. (Early win bonuses should probably be higher).

Keep your reputation perfect (don't break any treaties or deals with other civs) until you're ready to exterminate the last few hopefuls remaining. This will help you keep pace with tech, etc.

On another topic (maybe this belongs somewhere else, I dunno I don't post too often): I can't see why anyone would ever enter Communism. If my civ revolted in Democracy, I'd switch to Monarchy. The only real loss is commerce. (worker speed is slower, but in a war who cares? and corruption is a little higher, but core cities still produce shields at the same rate). With communisim, ALL cities are in mediocrity.

 

[acjvanv]

Thanks Karch for the info.

But is using an external program allowed in a GTOM?

 

[Karch]

yup

 

[TheSandbag]

Wow. Thanks for all the good advice guys, and by all means, keep it comming. I will definetly look into Sir Pleb's guide today, and maybe start a new game tonight. I have to agree with Pilferman on playing until 2050. Unless I'm waging World War Three, simply building improvements becomes very tedious. Pilferman, you'll have to enlighten me on how you've modified the civ3mod.bic file ... I'm very curious. I have also been toying with the idea of giving up playing for a while and starting a a full-fledged Mod project of the game to fix some of the quams I have with it. Although, I don't have that much experience with messing around with code, and rules and all that, but perhaps I could start a recruiting process here and get some people together and run with it. I'm not sure. But if anyone is interested, we should talk. Thanks again everyone for all your helpful imput!

P.S. Cartouche Bee: Congrats on all of your oustanding performance with the GOTM! I am duely impressed and humbled.

 

[pilferman]

SandBag, I attached my modified civ3mod.bic file. I must warn you, however. It makes games much easier and going back to the default rules can become difficult. I only use it when I'm feeling like playing a lazy game. I suppose it doesn't make it "easier," it just makes some of the tasks simpler (you'll see).

If you don't know how to use it or what it is, I'll explain. civ3mod.bic is the file the game uses as its default rules. You can make changes to it in the Editor. With the latest patch, once you start a game, that saved game stores its own rules, so changing the civ3mod won't do anything (thankfully, because of the GOTM). If you start a game with a modified civ3mod, however, you'll be able to play with those rules. (I think that's how it is, but if I'm wrong, let me know or correct me). To install the attached file, copy and paste it into the Civ3 folder (not in any subfolder). Before you do that, though, rename your current civ3mod.bic file to something else to serve as a backup. To revert back to the original rules, just rename the old file civ3mod.bic and overwrite the modified file.

I recommend you try it, but don't get attached to it or it will make playing GOTM very different. That's one of the reasons I didn't submit my GOTM 2-9 files. Another thing, if you don't like it or would like to tweak it a bit to suit your playing style, just open up the editor, open civ3mod and edit away.

I hope that helped

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Hi TheSandbag,

Thanks!

Once you understand SirPleb's article on scoring you will find that having large cities do potentially score the most points. Then when you add some of Aeson's ICS style play you learn that you can use ICS to get your score up quickly and then thin the ICS cities down so you can create large cities later in the game like SirPleb suggests. One thing you have to remember is that in the HOF the maps people are building off are usually ideal type situations with lots of grasslands. In the GOTM maps this is not the case because you have lots of varied terrain. I usually find that in GOTM games that cities with footprints of 9 squares offer you the chance to get placements so that you can have high percentages of good scoring terrain types. Basically maps with the highest percentage of grasslands and plains will offer the best possibilities to score well.

Other scoring factors will include how quickly you get control of the map and get all the available luxuries. Luxuries definitely help your score early in the game. I also use tactics like building a worker in cities of size 12 when I have not yet discovered hospitals. When a city has a size of 12 and it's food stores are full all excess food is going to waste. So I will build a worker and let the size go down to 11, if the food stores were full it grows back to 12 the next turn anyway. Now I have a worker that can improve terrain or help another city grow. [I use the same tactic on cites that are size 6 without an aqueduct.]

Very few really understand how the scoring system works and getting over that hurdle is the single biggest step to getting higher scores. The number of posts that mislead the readers is very high and you have to learn which posters actually know what they are talking about. If you follow the advise of some, scoring will always be a mystery.

CB

 

[Bamspeedy]

But is using an external program allowed in a GTOM?

Just so no new player gets confused or mis-uses this information. Programs like mapstat that just counts the tiles for you is allowed. Apollo which tells you when you will achieve a culture victory is allowed. Modpacks that affect graphics ONLY is allowed. Any programs, like trainers, saved game editors, and other civ3mod.bic files that alter the rules is NOT allowed.

If you download any modpacks (civ3mod.bic files), make sure you save the original civ3mod.bic file as a backup and switch back to this when you want to play the GOTM and submit it. I downloaded the DyP mod and when I loaded up an old game I had all these different graphics and stuff that made it confusing for me, although all the rules seemed the same. I would recommend not wandering off into the modpack world until you are an experienced player so you know what changes you make to the rules will actually affect the game and whether or not the changes are game BALANCING so no civ or player (human or AI) has an extreme unfair advantage.

Also, if you are experienced playing by normal rules, it will be easier for you to know if you are playing a game where the rules have been changed. You would realize before finishing and submitting a GOTM that "wait a minute, this isn't right!, I forgot to uninstall my mod!"

 

[kb2tvl]

high score means high culature and high population.

 

[tc_trancer]

i've never played in a gotm before but i am looking forward to participate this time. i suck, but i'll give it a try. also, i'm wondering, how many games have you people played total? how many a week? i've played like 3 full games and i've had it since december, but i've almost completed around 10. i haven't had time. (school sux)

 

[Serg]

Originally posted by tc_trancer
...also, i'm wondering, how many games have you people played total? how many a week? i've played like 3 full games and i've had it since december, but i've almost completed around 10. i haven't had time. (school sux)

I'm playing the GOTM only. So I've played 10 Civ3 games and ended up only 4 from it. Too much work. Does the school really take so much time?

 

[thefrenchzulu]

Try working! I've played the GOTM10, my first game in months! Did follow it up with 3 OCC's. This takes far less time!