[BTS] News: BOTM 195 - Always War - Results and Congratulations

[DynamicSpirit]

Playing Always-War attracted a lot of interest - and a lot more victories than I expected. A huge contrast from the original GOTM 22, played on the same map, for which only 6 people out of a lot of submissions managed to win. Evidently, the changes I made from the original game made it far too easy

Congratulations to @Mitchum for the extraordinary feat of a conquest victory in 35BC - the only BC victory for this game. And to @Lawrence - who achieved fastest domination not that much later - 250AD. But the most amazing achievement must surely be @WastinTime's 1500AD religious victory. That's right - an always war game, in which every AI is your sworn enemy, yet @WastinTime somehow still managed to get enough AIs to vote him to victory. All I can say is... next time I need a public relations expert to make me more popular, I know who I'll be contacting...

As for the medals... They went to later victories, but still for quite respectable dates. @Fine_Distinction got silver for a pretty impressive 220AD conquest victory, while gold and bronze went to domination - @Termitnik in 920AD, and @Jovan Kukic in 1130AD

Perhaps unsurprisingly, no-one went for space, culture or UN-diplo, so the only victory that wasn't conquest or domination was @WastinTime's one.

Summary of Medal Winners:

Termitnik: 920 AD Domination Victory, 244,101 points.

Fine_Distinction: 220 AD Conquest Victory, 211,649 points.

Jovan Kukic: 1130 AD Domination Victory, 165,438 points.


Fastest Finish Award Winners:

Lawrence: 250 AD Domination Victory, 131,292 points.

Mitchum: 35 BC Conquest Victory, 75,766 points.

Dumpfbacke: 1880 AD Domination Victory, 35,617 points.

WastinTime: 1500 AD Religious Victory, 26,684 points.


Other Award Winners:

LANCE1313: 1465 AD Conquest Loss, 334 points.

pious_pete: 3775 BC Conquest Loss, 76 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.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

If anyone wants to compare with the original game, it was vanilla GOTM 22. I've now made the discussion threads visible. You can see them here.

• Pregame discussion: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/news-gotm-22-pre-game-discussion.240444/
• Saves available: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/news-gotm-22-saves-available.241471/
• First spoiler: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/gotm-22-first-spoiler.242103/
• Final Spoiler: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/gotm-22-final-spoiler.243174/
• Results and Congratulations: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/gotm-22-results-congratulations.248398/

The actual GOTM 22 results are still hidden - working on getting them made visible again and will post here once you can view them.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Here's where everyone settled their 2nd city (first city was pre-settled for you).

I suspect this map gives a bit of clue to one of the reasons this game turned out so much easier than the original: A large number of people settled on the stone, presumably to facilitate building the great wall to hold off barbs. The original game was played in vanilla civ - for which the great wall did not exist: It was only added as a new wonder in the Warlords expansion pack. In the original game, there was no defence against the barbs, other than fog-busting and fighting them.



The Small Print:
The numbers by each player's name indicate the turn settled on (starting turn is 0). Players are colour coded by game class (challenger=red, adventurer=blue). 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]

Interesting. With such a wide dispersal of second city settlers, I took the most defensive approach, choosing a hill only three squares away from the capital. Since my early game was specifically targeted for the Great Wall, I have no idea why it didn't occur to me to settle on the stone.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I've uploaded a larger, clearer, map of the 2nd cities. If you've already looked at this page with the old map, you may need to do a hard refresh of this page to force your browser to load it (because it has the same file name as the old map). The new map has the city Rome displayed in white with a purple background.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

I've uploaded a larger, clearer, map of the 2nd cities. If you've already looked at this page with the old map, you may need to do a hard refresh of this page to force your browser to load it (because it has the same file name as the old map). The new map has the city Rome displayed in white with a purple background.

Hi @DynamicSpirit, thanks for the game and very interesting 2nd city analysis. Congrats to everybody! That was my first conquest victory ever in a civ game and I was frankly amazed how early I was able to do it, in all my other games, domination was achievable earlier, so I decided not to optimized an anyway good score and just go for it. @Mitchum's speed was amazing though, I was initially very fortunate and was able to conquer even faster, but bacame much sloppier in the end. And @WastinTime again achieved an "impossible" victory and @Termitnik a mind-bogling score. Going to watch everybody's games in the replay now

EDIT: I am surprised that @Mitchum & I were the only ones that chose conquest.

 

[Termitnik]

It was so long ago that I can barely remember what it was about.. Definitely it was way easier than it was announced Actually these lbows which quickly brought me dozen of workers + tech advantage from very beginning due to planted GS + permanent borders expansion for IMP/ORG make me feel it was even easier than usual game. It is not about Great Wall, I haven't built it and don't think it is worth to build..

 

[Tobiyogi]

I definitely think that the bonuses have been too powerful. We have two guys here who played w/o any advantages (if I interpret the blue font color correctly) and none of them couldn't win the game. I would welcome another AW-Botm-Game in the future. It was still fun!

 

[Fine_Distinction]

I definitely think that the bonuses have been too powerful. We have two guys here who played w/o any advantages (if I interpret the blue font color correctly) and none of them couldn't win the game. I would welcome another AW-Botm-Game in the future. It was still fun!

No, you don’t . Blue is an easier version, iirc here lower diff.

 

[Tobiyogi]

Really? Adventurer class sounded like huge challenge to me, but I see now. Still too easy compared to the original game. Or maybe the swarm intelligence has increased since

 

[lymond]

I'm confused. The blue guys did not win their games

 

[Lawrence]

Thanks for the game! Having played GOTM 22 (my second-to-last GOTM before the 12-years hiatus) to a bitter defeat, it's a nice to win a medal in this one!

I did expect this to be a lot more challenging than it really was, since I didn't play a test game with the 2 longbows we were gifted. But once I realized that the combat odds to take London was more than 60%, two of my longbows joined force and took London, and it was so much easier from there.

Great wall was not required as I was fog-busting just fine, but it did help me save several golds per turn on the fog-busting troops, hence I built it after all. The raging barbarians were quite devastating to the AIs, I saw Genghis completely razed by the barbs even before my longbowman went there..

I was initially thinking about going space because less people would do so in this game. But I messed up my economy too much during the expansion to Aztecs and Mongols way faster than I thought -- initially without CoL/Currency -- I only managed to save the economy after a GA and pillage gold gave me these techs, decided to just take Domination and be done with it.

 

[lymond]

My plan was Space too...ha..but I tripped Domination cause I wasn't paying attention....so used to having vassals that I can gift cities to to offset the land.

ofc, no one went space :|

 

[Mitchum]

Great games, everyone. This was much easier than the original but it was still a challenge because it was different than most other games we play. Thanks for the map, DS!

Congrats on getting a Religious victory in an AW game, @WastinTime! I noticed that Balbes won a Diplo victory in GOTM-22 but it had to be Diplomation (it was possible to vote yourself to a win in Vanilla) so you achieved something truly unthinkable.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I definitely think that the bonuses have been too powerful. We have two guys here who played w/o any advantages (if I interpret the blue font color correctly) and none of them couldn't win the game. I would welcome another AW-Botm-Game in the future. It was still fun!

No, you had one guy who played without the advantages: You! Red = challenger save - the harder one, and you were the only person who chose to play that. Blue = adventurer - the easy save. @Noble Zarkon and @LANCE1313 chose to play that one.

I'm confused. The blue guys did not win their games

That shows the the people who chose the adventurer save probably made the correct decision The idea is it's easier, so people who don't feel sufficently confident to play the 'normal' save get a slightly easier game to play (in return for not being allowed to win any medals or awards). But there's no guarantee that playing adventurer will make you win!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

the easy save. @Noble Zarkon and @LANCE1313 chose to play that one

Easy hmmmmmmm

 

[Tobiyogi]

No, you had one guy who played without the advantages: You! Red = challenger save - the harder one, and you were the only person who chose to play that. Blue = adventurer - the easy save. @Noble Zarkon and @LANCE1313 chose to play that one.

Alright. I thought I am red because my HOF-settings haven't been correct yet. Anyways, the handicap doesn't really apply here, because during the last months, I used to played more AW than anything else

I initially thought the blue guys could not win due to an even harder map, but that's understood now.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

I did expect this to be a lot more challenging than it really was, since I didn't play a test game with the 2 longbows we were gifted. But once I realized that the combat odds to take London was more than 60%, two of my longbows joined force and took London, and it was so much easier from there.

Having played a fair amount of test AW games with 2 LBs I think it was kinda bimodal - if you managed to use our generous bonuses to pillage AIs to the stone ages - it was very easy afterwards, praets + cats vs. mostly archers. On the other hand, if you were not aggressive/effective/fortunate enough early on - you were getting a brutal monarch AW with raging barbs on the top, as advertised (btw, as advertised, it was possible to die in the first couple turns, as PP did). Hence bigger than usual (?) discrepancy in opinions of this game.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Alright. I thought I am red because my HOF-settings haven't been correct yet. Anyways, the handicap doesn't really apply here, because during the last months, I used to played more AW than anything else

I initially thought the blue guys could not win due to an even harder map, but that's understood now.

Following the discussion here, the staff thought about how the results are presented, and @AlanH has done some tweaking to make the challenger (and adventurer) entries stand out better. So if you look at the results now, you'll find your name is in bold red, with an explicit (Challenger) under it. Hopefully makes things a bit clearer.

 

[Pangaea]

Hopefully makes things a bit clearer.

Very nice! It was a little too hard to tell at a glance before I felt.