[BTS] News: BOTM 170 Results and Congratulations

[Deckhand]

Do you like to build Wonders? I hope so, this map has been designed to let you create an amazing Wonder Capital.

Well, everyone made lots of wonders. But.

Do you like to crush easy opponents? That is not the intent for this game.

The top four scores were all Conquest victories.

Five players and three AIs went to space. Only one Domination victory. No Culture, Religious or Diplomatic.
Thanks for playing, hope you had fun.

Summary of Medal Winners:

nocho: 1500 AD Conquest Victory, 346,528 points.

Pangaea: 1430 AD Conquest Victory, 327,912 points.

Kaitzilla: 1280 AD Conquest Victory, 316,570 points.


Fastest Finish Award Winners:

frederiksberg: 1735 AD Spaceship Victory, 234,327 points.

MarleysGh0st: 1960 AD Domination Victory, 45,538 points.


Other Award Winners:

Jovan Kukic: 1515 AD Conquest Victory, 246,743 points.

voglchen: 1954 AD Spaceship Victory, 23,400 points.

HassiSan: 2021 AD Spaceship Loss, 10,620 points.

greatbeyond: 1981 AD Spaceship Loss, 3,478 points.


>> See the full results here.
>> See the updated global rankings here.
>> See the latest Pantheon of Heroes here.
>> You can see and compare graphic replays of all the submissions here.
>> Award symbols are listed here.

 

[Deckhand]

Here's where everyone settled.

The Small Print:
The numbers by each player's name indicate the turn settled on (starting turn is 0). Symbols indicate victory condition, if there's no symbol then the player either retired or was defeated. The yellow border indicates the land that was visible at the start of the game.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Wow, having the only Domination sounds impressive!

But the 13.1 points towards the cumulative rankings certainly wasn't.

Thanks for the game!

 

[Kaitzilla]

I remember this game.

Started out with super early Oracle ->Alphabet and Code of Laws beeline.
A mistake!
Everyone teched so slow.

Spoiler :

Almost had some amphibious elephant glory, but it wasn't meant to be.

Spoiler :

The civ gods felt pity though.

Spoiler :

Finished it out with Lib->Astro.

Spoiler :

Nice work Nocho, Pangaea, and Jovan for smashing all the AI.

Frederiksberg had a nice space date too.
22 turns off the HOF record.

 

[Anatoly]

I have one question, probably stupid, but, how can I get graphic like you?

 

[Pangaea]

Cool, another silver. I have a lot of those

Congrats to especially nocho for a very nice score. Thanks for the write-up Kaitzilla. Libbing Astro must be why you were able to smash the other continent that soon, and grab conquest very early. Impressive game

From what I recall I libbed Cuirs, smashed our own continent with them, and then got Astro at some point and took out some cities on the other continent, which was enough to cap everybody there. Was a fun map, with lots of wonders on the cheap. Most of them typically don't help all that much, but it's good fun. I still like their videos

 

[cseanny]

I'm watching a few threads and I'd like to say GGs to everyone. On a playful but serious side note, Kaitzilla smashed everyone by 15-20++ turns!! I'm scratching my head how that's not Gold!!??

 

[shakabrade]

GG guys, really strong games from everyone. I had very limited playtime in 2 nights and was really trying to finish it as soon as possible wall clock time, but did have some arogant hopes that my space would be the fastest. And then, frederiksberg does his thingy and leaves me to bite the dust with magnificent game with 3 times as many cities and corporations and stuff. :greatjob:

But, next time I'll prove that my Slav State Property is not only the less RL effort, but actually competitive for space. Muahahahaha!!!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I remember this game.

Started out with super early Oracle -> Code of Laws and Alphabet beeline.
A mistake!
Everyone teched so slow.

Spoiler :

You reached 1600BC without teching the wheel? Interesting... Didn't that cause you issues with not being able to use resources? Like the gold and the marble for the Oracle?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

btw I also remember this game. I recall moving the warrior SW, seeing the seafood and then - after lots of anguish - moving and settling 1NE to keep the grassland-oases without orphaning the seafood. But I was well happy when I realised this meant I had a 2nd stone in the BFC.

I think this was also an unusual game in that I didn't build a worker first - figured that with those oases I may as well just expand to size 4 while researching bronze working so I could chop the worker roughly as quickly as building it from the start.

I also then recall discovering that we had two of the most warlike neighbours you could ever want for in a Civ game - both practically guaranteed to declare war at some point, probably in Monty's case well into the BC years - and we had no resources to build anything other than archers. There followed some wondering whether Deckhand had turned into kcd_swede, and a rapid beeline to construction (although managing to Oracle Civil Service and build the pyramids and great lighthouse on the way). Unfortunately, real life then intervened and the next time I looked at the game, it was with the realisation that the submissions deadline had passed a few days before. Oopsy!

 

[Kaitzilla]

You reached 1600BC without teching the wheel? Interesting... Didn't that cause you issues with not being able to use resources? Like the gold and the marble for the Oracle?

Gold was already connected.
Can tell because the tile said (Fresh Water) when hovering the mouse over it.

Things get really weird at the end of a river.
Sometimes it will connect a tile and sometimes it won't, but fresh water indicates a river connection.

Spoiler :

Marble is not needed to build Oracle playing an industrial civ (+50% wonder production) with that many hammers in the capital.

Spoiler :

and we had no resources to build anything other than archers

That dawned on me too way later than it should have!
In fact, I can pin it down to the precise moment because I saved and quit began plotting.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I have one question, probably stupid, but, how can I get graphic like you?

It is a graphics mod called Blue Marble by Kai Fiebach.
I use version 4.50
http://www.civfanatics.net/bluemarble/content/index.php

Some of the resource bubbles are a bit harder to recognize, but the graphical differences between Blue Marble and regular civ 4 are not hard to overcome.
I think Darius also gets a mustache for some strange reason.


There might be even better graphics for civ 4 out there these days?
I have not checked in recent years.

I adjust the window in which I'm playing CIV, before taking screens for my writeups, so that they are in the natural resolution, and don't get scaled down. Scaling seriously hurts the quality of screens, and with the rest, I would not know what you mean with that, that's just normal CIV with blue marble mod on highest possible graphic settings.

That is a good idea.
I should max out the resolution and tinker with settings until everything looks right.
Everything in the game looks small with max resolution.

I run on 1600x900 just so the words all look bigger, but it is not as pretty as 1920x1080.

 

[Pangaea]

Gold was already connected.
Can tell because the tile said (Fresh Water) when hovering the mouse over it.

Things get really weird at the end of a river.
Sometimes it will connect a tile and sometimes it won't, but fresh water indicates a river connection.

Now when you mention it, I remember looking over that gold too and being surprised it was auto-connected. It shouldn't be, but sometimes rivers confuses the game I think. Especially when there are several rivers.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Now when you mention it, I remember looking over that gold too and being surprised it was auto-connected. It shouldn't be, but sometimes rivers confuses the game I think. Especially when there are several rivers.

In my experience, being diagonally adjacent to the mouth of a river usually seems to count as riverside in BtS, but being diagonally adjacent to the source of a river doesn't. I'm not sure if there are ever exceptions, but the gold being connected seems consistent with that. I think the rules may have been different pre-BtS. What can sometimes throw things is that it's not unknown for BOTM mapmakers to add rivers - and occasionally we get them flowing in the wrong direction!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Gold was already connected.
Can tell because the tile said (Fresh Water) when hovering the mouse over it.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the river.

Marble is not needed to build Oracle playing an industrial civ (+50% wonder production) with that many hammers in the capital.

Thanks for the detailed reply. That all makes sense.

And just to follow up... Something else struck me looking at your screenshots... You went for an astonishingly early Oracle - looks like you'd have built it on turn 31. That meant you were way, way before the time when there would have been any significant risk of an AI building it, and you must have delayed a settler/2nd city in order to get the Oracle. Presumably at that point, you could have fairly safely self-researched Code of Laws and then used the Oracle to get something way more expensive (I think you'd have had all the techs to Oracle philosophy, which could then give you some very quick great people?) Was there some reason why you chose not to do that?

 

[Kaitzilla]

And just to follow up... Something else struck me looking at your screenshots... You went for an astonishingly early Oracle - looks like you'd have built it on turn 31. That meant you were way, way before the time when there would have been any significant risk of an AI building it, and you must have delayed a settler/2nd city in order to get the Oracle. Presumably at that point, you could have fairly safely self-researched Code of Laws and then used the Oracle to get something way more expensive (I think you'd have had all the techs to Oracle philosophy, which could then give you some very quick great people?) Was there some reason why you chose not to do that?

With half price courthouses, stone, +50% wonder production, and 8 at size 2 without any farms, I had a grand ambition to put up an ultra early espionage finish date.
Get 2800BC Alphabet, trade with the emperor AI to get all the starting techs, get code of laws, pop borders with artists, whip a courthouse+build great wall for 5 spy gpp, etc. etc.

Even had a 1 tile island!
But then I noticed I had nothing to conquer Monty with, and the whole idea fell through after I narrowly lost The Great Wall to an AI.

I switched to conquest after that, and none of the starting moves made much sense.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Nice to see so many active players

And congrats to medal and award winners

My goal was from the beginning going to space and all initial moves revolved around getting Pyramids, Hanging Gardens and a forge in the same city so that I could get the GE required to build the Mining Inc corporation. As usual the RNG gods were laughing in the face of my plans and made sure that I got 3 GE's, two of them at very low odds .

Thanks to Kaitzilla for the HOF link. I hope to do a space game that ends before 1700 AD. It is possible as the HOF games show and I believe Wastintime has presented some ideas of going to space very early using massive amounts of fail gold. I'm not sure that corporations is the only way to go. As Shakabrade says, the "old school" hammer economy using State Property, Caste System and workshop spamming is not bad at all. And there is also the open question of whether to go for Std Ethanol or Sushi. I normally go for Std E.

Finally, big thanks to Deckhand, DynamicSpirit, Neilmeister and Noble Zarkon for keeping these games going

 

[nocho]

Pretty pleased with the result of course, also good to see all the activity!

I'm watching a few threads and I'd like to say GGs to everyone. On a playful but serious side note, Kaitzilla smashed everyone by 15-20++ turns!! I'm scratching my head how that's not Gold!!??

I agree that I'd value earlier finishing dates a lot more, but the game seems to value population growth over finish date to a certain extend. IIRC I libbed Biology and had significant growth during all those turns that I played more than Kaitzilla and Pangaea. Often gold is not for the quickest game, but the most optimized one in terms of both population count and finish date.