News: BOTM 09 Final Spoiler

[MarkM]

By 1728 I was close to domination win, wiped out Bismarck then Cyrus then Wang Kon then JC to have 60% land and 187K points (and growing by thousands per turn, with biology and then cereal mills just having just kicked in during previous 10 turns):

... but yet again I failed to find the RL time to finish Too bad, was turning out to be my most successful Immortal game ever, I may just be optimistic, but I was thinking I would have a great shot at actually getting a medal, I figured I could get my score to at least 250k, my infrastructure was very well built up, no happiness or health issues at all, even during wars of dozens or hundreds of turns.

I don't know how many BOTM in a row this is that I can't get the last 10-30% done, or else barely get it only by rushing final turns like crazy and/or losing sleep (which just isn't worth it). Three? Four? Five? It seems like all the BOTM games are epic length now I see BOTM10 is yet another epic game (sigh). Think I will maybe have to take a break from BOTM, I need to rejuvenate my enthusiasm in order to do that much playing in one 30 day period And I'll be honest, right now I'm more interested in playing around with Spore ... and then maybe after that, Colonization.

ADDED: I just checked and it's not my imagination, 7 of the first 10 BOTM have been epic length games

 

[Ronnie1]

I submitted a Contender Save, Religious LOSS!!

I settled in place and founded city #2 by the resources NE!

Built GW in cap and Pyramids in city 2. Built AP with a GE as most of the world was single religion. Spread religion to the others while building relations.

Resident vote was won easily!!! First vote I went for the win, but the opponent had changed while I wasn't paying attention, and the 1st vote proved to be the last vote also.

Replayed from the just before the vote, paying closer attention to detail and was able to manipulate relations for a win about 30 turns later.

All in all, I was pleased except for the outcome.

 

[nokem]

I remember reading a deity walkthrough illustrating the total espionage economy and being totally blown away. Not a single library built IIRC. I don't remember the author - anyone able to dig out the link?

Found it. Two of them in fact by Obsolete. It's cottages he doesn't build of course - not libraries.

The Espionage Economy (Something Different)
SSE/EE For Deity Masters

 

[DynamicSpirit]

It seems like all the BOTM games are epic length now I see BOTM10 is yet another epic game (sigh). Think I will maybe have to take a break from BOTM, I need to rejuvenate my enthusiasm in order to do that much playing in one 30 day period

Yeah, it did cross my mind that we were overdue a normal speed game. However, I also thought normal speed on deity seemed a bit too cruel, since the consensus seems to be that normal speed makes games harder and I'm sure anything on deity is already going to be hard enough. (I also get the impression epic is overall more popular, hence some greater emphasis on epic).

Personally I don't find epic games much longer to play than normal speed ones anyway - I take it that's not your experience? Still takes the same number of unit moves to conquer anything...

 

[Nioco]

Yeah, it did cross my mind that we were overdue a normal speed game. However, I also thought normal speed on deity seemed a bit too cruel, since the consensus seems to be that normal speed makes games harder and I'm sure anything on deity is already going to be hard enough. (I also get the impression epic is overall more popular, hence some greater emphasis on epic).

Personally I don't find epic games much longer to play than normal speed ones anyway - I take it that's not your experience? Still takes the same number of unit moves to conquer anything...

I also suffer from lack of time to play epic game, I always finish in a hurry...and often with lack of sleep for the next day (not worth it but I don't like to see 15 hours of game "thrown away"). Conquest domination are time consuming, but resisting invasion as well. More turns=more chance an AI will DoW on you...I have been DoW about 7 times in this last BOTM.
More turn=more time micromanaging...
So I also wish for normal speed

 

[Gosha190]

So I also wish for normal speed

What do you think about Quick? Nice speed! Anyone can vin or lost very fast!

 

[srad]

I really prefer epic speed and I don't think that the game will be significant faster with normal speed.

Most of the playing time is consumed by micromanagement, unit movement and thinking (don't know if this helps ).

 

[kcd_swede]

What do you think about Quick? Nice speed! Anyone can vin or lost very fast!

Kwik is good. Then we can play GOTW (game of the week) instead!

 

[jesusin]

Personally I don't find epic games much longer to play than normal speed ones anyway - I take it that's not your experience? Still takes the same number of unit moves to conquer anything...

Dammed warmongers! It takes a 50% more turns and 50% more micromanagement to win a peaceful game in which you don't ever move a single military unit.

Aren't we overdue of a Quick speed game? That's the speed where attention to details really pays off.

 

[MarkM]

Yeah, it did cross my mind that we were overdue a normal speed game. However, I also thought normal speed on deity seemed a bit too cruel, since the consensus seems to be that normal speed makes games harder and I'm sure anything on deity is already going to be hard enough. (I also get the impression epic is overall more popular, hence some greater emphasis on epic).

Personally I don't find epic games much longer to play than normal speed ones anyway - I take it that's not your experience? Still takes the same number of unit moves to conquer anything...

I see your points. I think this game was easier at the earlier stage because it was epic -- especially for my strategy where I wiped out Bismarck and had already moved on to attacking Cyrus by 2000BC, which would have been a LOT harder to do on normal.

But reverting to my "cow" playing style (aka "builder", with some additional goals and criteria) after the initial rushes made the later game game a lot slower. You can see from my mini-map I had a lot of cities. As I've written in the first BOTM result threads about all my cows (I've actually won the cow in 3of the 4 BOTM I've finished!), I'm pretty much always going for a medal (just something on my "bucket list" I guess, it always seems to be the same 3-6 guys getting them, but I am closing in on their scores). I find I maximize my score (medal chances) by doing all that infrastructure build and then having the "population capacity" to let my score run up fast at the end.

So in summary, it's probably just me But since I'm pretty much stuck with me, I whine about it and make everyone else suffer I am amazed how people find time to playing BOTM, GOTM and WOTM, and finish them all. I guess I'm just a slow old fool. I'm maybe whining more than usual this game, because I think I may have finally had a shot at winning a medal this game if I could have finished. But who knows, maybe all the medal winners will have 250K+ scores.

But stepping away from being me for a moment, I think you're general idea of running immortal and deity at epic is a reasonable one. But perhaps when the cycle resets to a lower level, consider running fewer of those as epic? Especially running x epic gaems in a row. Probably a big reason I did not get this game done is that I started late because was pretty burned out from rushing at the end to finish last game, which in turn I started late because of push to finish previous game, etc. I really didn't even start playing this game in earnest (play past 500ad) until after the labor day weekend. So maybe like I said all I need to do is sit one or two out to heal from the burnout and hit the ground running when a game comes out.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Dammed warmongers! It takes a 50% more turns and 50% more micromanagement to win a peaceful game in which you don't ever move a single military unit.

Aren't we overdue of a Quick speed game? That's the speed where attention to details really pays off.

You accusing me of being a warmonger?!?

Agree we have rather neglected quick games (To be honest I personally wasn't sure whether anyone would want one, which is partly why I'd never done one, but clearly some people do...)

 

[DynamicSpirit]

So in summary, it's probably just me But since I'm pretty much stuck with me, I whine about it and make everyone else suffer I am amazed how people find time to playing BOTM, GOTM and WOTM, and finish them all. I guess I'm just a slow old fool. I'm maybe whining more than usual this game, because I think I may have finally had a shot at winning a medal this game if I could have finished. But who knows, maybe all the medal winners will have 250K+ scores.

No that's fine. After all, the only way we know when setting games if there's a demand for something slightly different is if people tell us in the forums.

Your points are noted

 

[kcd_swede]

Dammed warmongers! It takes a 50% more turns and 50% more micromanagement to win a peaceful game in which you don't ever move a single military unit.

Aren't we overdue of a Quick speed game? That's the speed where attention to details really pays off.

In peaceful games I don't see any big deal with game speed other than how long it takes to play.

In war games, faster speed means obsolete units by the time they get to the front if you have a long way to march, so the strategy has to be adjusted a bit sometimes.

Hey... can they put a turn timer in a single player game at quick speed? Set to "Blazing", perhaps. Then we can play GOTD's instead!

 

[karmina]

In war games, faster speed means obsolete units by the time they get to the front if you have a long way to march

Not necessarily.
Try a modern starting era, deity game on quick speed! Believe me, it totally rocks

But honestly, what about having separate, quick-only, games of the week?

 

[Gosha190]

Try a modern starting era, deity game on quick speed! Believe me, it totally rocks

Do you remember G-Major 21?

http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/gauntlet.php?show=major&gauntlet=95&submit=Go

read and enjoy! http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?show=playerlog&dsply=0&entryID=11002

 

[ngraner42]

A poll was take a while back for what speed you would like to see for XOTM paly; the results were:

Marathon 8%
Epic 61%
Normal 26%
Quick 4%.

There was very little support for quick speed and overwhelming for epic.

I respectably disagree with Jesuin's support for Quick speed based on attention to detail paying off. This means that you have to spend extra time everyturn checking everything to make sure you did not overlook something and creates additional mis-click tension. Admititly people who exercise this kind of care every turn on Epic speed will have very long epic games. I prefer to focus on strategy rathher than constant baby sitting and yes it means I occaisionally get something like great people polution, but it is more enjoyable to play.

 

[toller pretzl]

Contender start. Settled in start position. Built second city by stone. Barracks in both. Warrior stole Cyrus's worker. Built Stonehenge, GW and mids. 2 axmen on way to Persepolis got lucky on barbs and got promoted. Cyrus had 2 cities but only archers. Took Persepolis then peace for techs. As soon as peace treaty was over destroyed Persians and got another worker.
Fairly straight beeline for Theology. Got Theology and GE same turn. Built AP next turn. Spread Christianity to weak cities in each civ. Checked what civ Wang Kon liked and switched to that. Gave him every tech when I got it. After only a few turns in Christianity converted to his religion during goldage. Made it to +9 points with him. Built defense units until first vote just to keep Bismarck and Saladin at bay. Sure nuff, Wang voted for me. Religious victory 625AD. Got 69 votes, needed 67.

I thought I'd tag my general question to this informative post :

Is it still possible to achieve a religious victory without any AI voting for you ? (as long as they have the right to vote).
Or has this been changed by patch 3.17 ?
Or has this been changed by the HOF-patch ?

 

[Gosha190]

I thought I'd tag my general question to this informative post :

Is it still possible to achieve a religious victory without any AI voting for you ? (as long as they have the right to vote).
Or has this been changed by patch 3.17 ?
Or has this been changed by the HOF-patch ?

1.It's impossible now (I mean self voting ). Your own votes must not exceed 75% limit.
2.All AI must got your AP religion at least in 1 city.
3. all other rools are still aplicable.

 

[jesusin]

1.It's impossible now (I mean self voting ). Your own votes must not exceed 75% limit.

Can I dig a little deeper, please?

What would happen in this situation:

Turn 1, I have 74% of the votes, everybody is infected and loves me dearly (+15). I have the AP and nobody is running the AP's religion, so I am the only one eligible. I decide the resolution to vote is religious victory.

Interturn, I finish the Hanging Gardens

Turn 2, I have 78% of the votes and everybody wants to vote for me.
What would happen then? No voting because of the 75% rule?

 

[Gosha190]

I did not test all situations in WB. And I believe that you will not be able to build HG at the time when you want to finish them as you are playing deity. But I think the such trick will not work.

In a case of any infringement, voting screen will not appear.

PS and more: it's enough difficalt to get more than 75% of population (I mean deity level). I'v played few test games and there were no such problems

PS I can give you one good friendly advse - play culture again!