News: Botm 54 Results and Congratulations

[DynamicSpirit]

Well I dunno. I gave you no production. I gave you one nearest neighbour designed to squeeze the culture out of you and another designed to build millions of units. I gave everyone CG3 archers to stop you getting any bad ideas. I gave you a torus map to make maintenance costs astronomical. What else am I supposed to do to make your life impossible???? And what happens? A BC conquest victory, just 156 turns into the game, and before the offending player had even finished exploring the map! Congratulations, evil_spock! Such a shame that such an early victory can’t give you enough population to feature highly in the score. The gold medal went to zamint3 with a 1440AD domination win.


Summary of Medal Winners:

zamint3: 1440 AD Domination Victory, 233,384 points.

Jovan Kukic: 1345 AD Domination Victory, 200,177 points.

Tachywaxon: 610 AD Conquest Victory, 151,317 points.


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Fastest Finish Award Winners:

Sleepless: 1802 AD Spaceship Victory, 93,024 points.

jaybone: 1851 AD Spaceship Victory, 90,097 points.

jesusin: 1530 AD Cultural Victory, 80,701 points.

evil_spock: 260 BC Conquest Victory, 66,679 points.

lymond: 1250 AD Religious Victory, 53,123 points.


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Other Award Winners:

bcool: 1710 AD Cultural Victory, 56,310 points.

Stalintag: 1905 AD Conquest Victory, 51,860 points.

drizzt.titan: 1595 AD Religious Victory, 40,520 points.

dratboy: 1956 AD Domination Victory, 25,199 points.

ChrisFromLux: 1906 AD Spaceship Victory, 21,519 points.

donsig: 1961 AD Conquest Loss, 1,559 points.

Rutseg: 1894 AD Domination Loss, 1,103 points.


>> See the full results here.
>> See the updated global rankings here.
>> See the latest Pantheon of Heroes here.
>> Award symbols are listed here.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Here's where everyone settled. Gosh, you guys can't agree on anything can you? Some people go North, some go South, but because the wrap-around edge of the map is there they end up further North than the people who did go North! A few individuals go East. Alamankarazieff discovers the 3-pig spot but misses the hills just beyond. Rutseg obviously had a longing for the sea. dratboy is the only person who settles in place (what was wrong with the spot? kcd_swede and afker obviously decided there wasn't enough jungle by the start and they wanted more. And God knows what Greeder was doing, settling with unchoppable jungle-covered pigs, plus fish but no means to build workboats!

It's enough to make me go gray trying to figure out what you were all doing.

(Edit. I think I need to stop doing these maps. They're too effective at showing where the mapmaker screwed up in setting coastal vs ocean tiles!)

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.

 

[Manco Capac]

Lulz...I won bronze medal after all.
...
...
...wait that doesn't count towards Eptathething
...
Grrr.

 

[Manco Capac]

Oh yeah...almost forgooot.

Congratz rto Evil_Spock. He's indeed a true conqueror.

 

[Mylene]

Bronze = best medal, yep yep.
No connections with our sgotm result of course

 

[Greeder]

And God knows what Greeder was doing, settling with unchoppable jungle-covered pigs, plus fish but no means to build workboats!

God knows, me - don't.
It's a miracle that I finished in top half. It didn't improve my global ranking. Not at all...

 

[Htadus]

...
...wait that doesn't count towards Eptathething
...
Grrr.

Ah for crying out loud Tachywaxon (I am afraid to call you just Tacky ever since you yelled at me without using capital letters) there is no such thing as Ep..ep...ept....oh what ever. It should be called Oct....oct..oh octathethingy.

Congrats to winners and thank you for the new type of map DS. (did you really have to make it NS EW map? grrr)

 

[Manco Capac]

Yell?
I don't think so.
But I recognize I'm quite agressive. I recognize it at least.

 

[Htadus]

Easy there cowboy, no need for all that agression. I am just kidding. You once commented about wondering why people are calling you just "Tacky" right after I did so in a HOF thread. It is just that....

....I am just a sensitive soul, though I may seem thick-skinned. And it hurt that.......

 

[jesusin]

Congrats to the winners! Great fun!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

While I think of it - several people asked questions about the map and the game in the spoilers, which for obvious reasons I couldn't answer at the time. It's too much effor to go back now and find all the posts with questions in, but to answer the ones I remember...

1. The rice comes as part of the map. I didn't on the whole add it.
2. The unspecified twist alluded to in the pre-game discussion was, as you've probably all figured, the presence of 3 Montezumas. With the one you were likely to meet first named 'the 5th' as part of the psychological warfare that all good mapmakers wage on the players.
3. The main motivation for the toroidal map was not the maintenance but the fact that without it, you started right in the corner of the map, protected to the west by the ocean and to the South by the map boundary. I thought that would (a) make the game far too easy, and (b) limit your possibilities for where you could expand to. Toroidal seemed a good solution while making the map unusual as well.

By the way, all those who didn't like the maintenance cost, you might take some comfort from knowing that the toroidal map caused me severe headaches too - mostly because Isabella was right in the top left corner of the map, and when I switched toroidal on, that put her so close that her cultural borders very quickly pressed on anyone settling in place. I think I moved her about 4 times before she got given her actual spot in the game, each time requiring test plays, which kept revealing problems! Then I had to do the same for Huayna Capac and one of the other Montezumas, since they had also been put practically on top of each other by toroidal (Imagine Huayna being wiped out before you'd even met him...).

But well done all who played - it was (deliberately) a hard map for prince.
[/LIST]

 

[Alamankarazieff]

Gyaah, such a bad ranking, but consistent with my lame playing. Still thanks to the mapmaker for a great game full of lessons : I know whipping.

 

[Htadus]

Thanks for the explanation about the map DS. Now I see why nealmeister wanted to use this map script for a HOF Space Colony game recently. Also thanks for not waiting untill emperror or immortal to use the Torid map.

By the way following occured during my game:

Spoiler :

<Scout> Lord Pacal, do you hear this? there is some kind of an arguement going on.
<Pacal> Is it not too early for wars, what is it a...h....3825 BC is it not?
Yes My lord, should I go see what is happening?
Yes, go see what is going on.

The Mayan scout run toward the voices and climb over a hill and witness 2 settlers arguing with each other.

<Settler1> Once again! I will tell you this, I have claimed this land in the name of Aztec Empire 4 and you must clear out.
<Settler2> And I will once again remind you that I have been waiting here for orders to found the Capital of the 1st Aztec Empire.
Haa...You sir are a lier. There isss no such thing as 1st Aztec Empire.
But of course there is you imbicil. It is your ignorance that fails you. Wait till my Lord Moctesuma arives, then he will skeen you alaaive.
You call me Imbi..
Ahem...excuse me.
Who are you? just mind your buisness.
Yeas, you go away now, this is our land and our fight. be gone.
Bear
Go away
No.. no. Bear!
Yes bare in mind this is non of your buisness
Look out.... there is a bear behind you.

The settlers, who were so deeply immersed in their argument and never saw the Bear untill that last moment. Sadly the helpless scout watch the settlers die from that lone hill in the middle of the unclaimed jungle.

Humm, that should make the life easier for evil_spock.

This is all true I say.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Wait a minute! evil_spock conquers the world in 260 BC, but he doesn't even finish in the top half of the pack?

 

[Manco Capac]

Earlier the conquest, the more bad ending score and thus not being in the top tier.

 

[jesusin]

Wait a minute! evil_spock conquers the world in 260 BC, but he doesn't even finish in the top half of the pack?

What you and me might consider an excelent game and what the game considers a game deserving a lot of points are very different things.

In recognition of this situation, the competition has 2 different ways of playing, for points (gold, silver bronze medals) or for speed (Fastest Finish Awards).


If you want to win a Gold, just have 100+ cities of size 30+.
If you want to win an Award, just win as fast as possible.

 

[Mylene]

Deity fixes all points beauty problems
We need more of those...!

 

[Mitchum]

Congrats to all of the medal and award winners.

If you want to win a Gold, just have 100+ cities of size 30+.
If you want to win an Award, just win as fast as possible.

I prefer to measure myself against other players by height. Since I'm tall, it's the only way I can win...

As jesusin and Tachywaxon said, there are different ways to play and score these games. In my opinion, score is somewhat irrelevant. Milking for a higher score in a game that is already won is not something I personally enjoy and takes more patience than skill (although there is still skill involved). With that said, it takes a lot of skill to finish the game quickly AND to have a high score. Hats off to those that win a fastest finish award AND a medal in the same game.

The reason that I don't put a high value on score is that certain victory conditions (e.g. Cultural, Space, Diplo, Religious) rarely get the medals even though the fastest finishers of these victory conditions are just as skilled as those that go for Domination, get high scores and win the medals.

I'm just stating my opinion so I hope all of you high-score, medal-hoarding xOTMers don't jump on me. To each his own...

 

[DynamicSpirit]

evil_spock didn't gain a very high score because score is largely based on population (weighted by victory date) and when you win the game so early you tend to only have a very small total population, hence not a high score.

More generally, the debate on scoring tends to come up every so often. My personal view is that the score the game produces is based on a fairly artificial and to a large extent arbitrary formula, so isn't particularly meaningful, other than for comparing civ sizes on the same date (in other words if two people win on the same turn, then the score gives some measure of which one had the 'biggest' Civ on that turn). For that reason, personally I pay much more attention to victory dates for each victory condition than to the score. Having said that, I would certainly not knock the people who do win medals, since to get such a high score as the medal winners usually do does still normally require a lot of skill.

But in the end, imperfect though the score is, we have no other way to put players into a combined cross-victory ranking. So that's what we use.

 

[Mitchum]

I wonder if my personal bias against high scores and medals has to do with the fact that I don't have very many... none in BtS IIRC...