KA01 - A Simple Deity Space Race

[Mistfit]

Thanks to all for this very fun game! Nice writeup Gator. I personally liked our Slash and burn research style

 

[Tomoyo]

Thank you for a great first SG for me and a victory with some of the top players in the ermm... I would like to say world.

 

[AlanH]

As far as I know there's no difference between Civ3 and PtW on corruption. Our 15 extra cities didn't do us a lot of good outside of score as far as I can see. They were totally corrupt, and should have been running as scientists throughout. When I picked it up there were very few scientists.

Civ3 loses out if there are multiple scientific civs, as they all get the same free tech. But I think GOTM 20 was one of those that Cracker adjusted to ensure tehre was only one sci civ.

I found it frustrating that I couldn't add workers to cities to get the science rate up. We had several cities that didn't have hospitals, and by the time I got it there was no point in building them. How did Kemel's population compare with ours at the end? We still had some non-corrupt cities without Universities at the end, and we also had no Police stations. They can have a sigificant effect in partially corrupt cities. Did he research Sanitation? An earlier four turn Sanitation project could easily have paid itself back buy reducing our final five turn projects to four. Also, when did he get ToE? If he left that until later he would have got higher cost free techs.

 

[DJMGator13]

I'll try to look at that this evening. I could not open the actual file because it was a 1.21 version and I have the 1.27 loaded. It said I was missing some units files so I think I can just continue to add units until I can open it. I did not run PTW until I purchased C3C and it was already patched to 1.27.


How is the second KA team coming along? I haven't checked them out yet? If they are close to finishing we should discuss what our next attempt will be. I have never done a 20K victory and have had only one 100K victory and that was not planned. I'd also like to try to really push hard on an early DOM/CONQ game.

 

[AlanH]

Yes, it would be interesting to try a 20K again. I guess we learned a lot from our aborted attempt in SGOTM 4 I also have only one 100K under my belt, in the Med Melee GOTM. That was a late switch from a Domination run, when I figured I could reach it a little earlier.

 

[Mistfit]

Is there a Gotm from the past with a really good 20K or 100K date and score that we could retry like this one? I thought that having a specific date in hand was really cool. Even though we missed it by a bit, for me shows how amazing these players are.

 

[AlanH]

As it happens, I can answer that question ...

I would have cut off the listing at 1700 AD, but I extended it as far down as our dear leader. Game numbers beginning 3000 are COTMs

 

[AlanH]

... and the 100K fastest with the same cutoff criteria ...

 

[DJMGator13]

I was able to open Kemal's save file. Here is some additional info I found.

Kemal's pop from mapstat was 646 ours was 824. Which gave a 13.2 average city size for Kemal and only 10.4 for us, but we had 30 more cities.

At 100% science Kemal could generate 3190bpt were we were at 2655 (Note I did not adjust scientist so this could change some but not dramatically.)

He did have sanitation, not sure when he acquired it and he did build police stations in a lot of his cities. Check out these two pics, showing our F1 screen versus his when set to the same level 90% sci & 10% lux. Note the much lower corruption number (less than half our number) and the higher science. We match his top city in science but his were a little more efficient than ours.






How much did Democracy cut his corruption?

Toeldo, his top science city, had library, university, hospital, research lab, Newton's and was his FP city.

He built the TOE in 880AD and selected Electronics and Radio as the free techs. He completed Hoovers in 990AD, but he lost out on the Great Library, Copernicus' and SETI. No one had researched miniaturization yet so no Internet. So he hand built/bought all his research labs.

His military strength was split almost evenly with regards to weak, average and strong. So I think we did a little too much warring in our attempt and we probably should have brought the other continent up to tech parity earlier than we did. I still think we lost most of our time in the middle ages and early Industrial Age. I can't tell how he acquired some of the deadend techs, like sanitation, economics and military tradition. We researched a few of these where he may have just traded for them.

 

[AlanH]

How much did Democracy cut his corruption?

It makes almost no difference to ours. I just ran one turn forward from my 1425AD hand-off save twice - once as I left it and once revolting to Democracy. The difference in bpt was 22, and corruption was reduced by 13gpt.

I think you're right about the dead end techs. In the "Diplo with no UN build" SGOTM we were absolutely firm on not researching any optional techs. Research-based dates need total focus on the tech rate, and particularly once you are past the point where the AI can keep up you have to minimise waste.

I thought we were keeing the other continent up to speed with us pretty well. It was our local neighbours we held back, before we eliminated them. It's clear that a fast tech pace doesn't need a lot of cities. He appears to have kept the Indians and Zulus alive as research partners. Having separate civs covering the landscape obviously reduces corruption on the global scale, and maybe this is the key? As you say, it looks like he only fought two major wars, with England and the Kelts. It appears the Ottomans and Zulus destroyed France in his game. We fought four wars plus holding actions against Ottomans and Japan.

BTW, just for fun I played the alternative version of our last four turns. Before I hit end of turn in 1425 Ad I switched production in a few cities to build some settlers, and I upgraded all our tanks and our infantry. Next turn I tried to expose the Ottomans' spy and he duly declared war. I used MA and a couple of combat settlers to take out all but about half a dozen of his cities, including Sogut and his space ship. He countered a bit, and MPPs brought Iroquois and America in against us, but in another couple of turns he was confined to three cities in the southern tundra. I nuked his capital, hit next turn, receved a counterstrike from someone's nuke in one of our south coast cities, completed the Laser, and launched. Good fun

 

[DJMGator13]

I thought about doing that, I actually rushed a couple of our ICBM's and was planning on posting an alternate ending in which OTTO was wiped up using an ROP rape and then we launch. But I got too bogged down in comparing our game to Kemal's. I agree that the dead end techs may have been the difference. We researched atleast 3 of them ourselves in the late Industrial and Modern Ages, thats 12 - 16 turns right there. But we had a lot of fun trying and that's the best launch date I've been associated with.

We all learned some things and hopefully we can put them to good use in the diety level GOTM.

I'll be out of town until Saturday night, so sign me up if we start a new one before I get back.

 

[Karasu]

Well, that that's it... Thank you folks from me too for a great game and learning experience.
True, we did not reach our target date, but I enjoyed playing this one a lot. Besides, it's my earliest space launch too

It looks like you have already spotted the main points regarding our 'lessons learned' chapter. For a future Spaceship game, I would agree on:
- Fewer, better developed core cities (less corruption, more beakers...)
- Fewer wars! (I know it's hard, I know...)
- No optional techs
- As many (healthy ) trading partners as possible

On the last point, I think we did quite well on the trading side (apart from eliminating India and Zulu, that is), and there isn't a lot more that we could do with the other continent.
On the other ones, we obviously left some intentional unaccuracies in our play style -if you have nothing to improve, there is no more fun...

Actually, I wish I could have spent a little more time talking about strategies and approaches to this game -but time was never enough, especially in the last month or so. So I probably left a few things slip that might have been discussed among us.

Time is also why I won't be able to join another SG in the near future -even though Alan's charts clearly show that I am the one needing to improve in each and every victory condition...
Even though you won't see much of me during the next months, I will still be browsing the forums -hopefully I will be able to come back to GOTM and SGs sooner than I think.

Cheers

 

[Mistfit]

Good comparisons!

Sorry to hear of your absense Karasu. I hope to join up with you in the future as I enjoyed playing with you very much. Don't be to much of a stranger.

 

[Tomoyo]

We'll miss you, Karasu...

 

[DJMGator13]

You will be missed.

Hurry back. It's been a pleasure playing Civ with you. Look forward to another game in the future.

 

[DJMGator13]

I checked out the PTW team's thread and they have hit the Modern Age. They reached it before us but look to currently be researching slower than we did.

I've also dropped MB a pm to see if there is interest from that team. Either way we should probably wait a week or so to get started since GOTM37 & SGOTM05 are about to kick off.

I'm leaning towards trying one of the 100K culture games. Any thoughts about which one and who we can get to fill Karasu's spot?

 

[AlanH]

i realised I hadn't thanked everyone for a great game. Lots of lessons learned and great fun had by all. I enjoyed your company. We must do it again.

Checking out the PtW team, they are at 1250 AD with computers in a couple of turns, researching at 8 turns per tech. If you look back here, we were at almost exactly the same stage at the same date. They still have more research partners alive than we did, but I don't think they're helping much. So I think their date is going to be very close to ours.

Re. a 100K game:

he fastest non C3C result was ADel's 1360 AD in GOTM 24, Korea, Emperor. I didn't play it as a GOTM, but was involved in MB01, an SG based on it once before, and still remember the map rather well. Although I'm not too spoilt as it was a year ago, and we played it to Conquest as the Oda, starting from a different location on another continent.

SirPleb achieved a 100K in 1405 AD in GOTM 31, France, also Emperor. I played that one to Conquest as well, in May.

Then there's always 14, the Deity Babylon settlers game, where Cartouche Bee delivered a 1470 AD 100K victory in the face of fearful odds and Xerxes. I've also played that one as an SGOTM, in the Revenge competition.

They're all fun. I don't know anything about 6. The rest are all Monarch or lower, although I guess we could ask MB to change the difficulty. If we did that 18, Celts is old enough for most of us to have forgotten it or never to have played it.

 

[nikof]

Hi everyone,

Congrats on bringing us home, good endgame. I had a lot of fun with this game (even if I was AWOL for much of it!). Would love another round sometime.

Not sure when exactly, unfortunately. My wife's father just passed away unexpectedly; we're in Vancouver looking after funeral details right now. We'll be staying with her mother for a few weeks. (No internet .)

All the best to you all,
nikof

 

[Tomoyo]

All the best to you, too, Nikof.

Tomoyo

 

[DJMGator13]

Sorry to hear about your father-in-law. Family comes first.

We'll keep you in mind if we start another before you get back.