News: BOTM 99 Results and Congratulations

[DynamicSpirit]

This game featured a pretty tough start – with few happiness resources and quite a bit of tundra and desert nearby. But that didn’t stop lymond from managing a pre-1000AD conquest victory. (860AD) winning the bronze medal. Nor did it prevent WastinTime from picking up a very early space win in 1730AD, netting him[*] the silver medal. Meanwhile congratulations go to BornInCantaloup – who picked up his first gold medal on only his 4th GOTM entry, for his 1390AD domination win. But such was the competition that even this relatively good date was nowhere near enough to win fastest domination. That honour went to Seraiel – who achieve the feat in 980AD – on only his 2nd GOTM submission. Clearly we have some very good new players joining the competition.

Fastest diplo win went to Jastrow in 1620AD, fastest religious to Minou in 1100AD, and fastest culture to Rusten, in 1520AD. And I should say Welcome back to Rusten – who has returned to the competition after playing a number of games around 5 years ago. Rusten already has fastest conquest, diplo and space awards, so with this fastest culture win he looks like he’s well on his way to an eptathlete award…

[*] Or her. One can never tell on these forums . Usually I try to phrase the results announcements in such a way as to avoid using gender-specific pronouns just in case I get one wrong. But I decided this time I couldn’t be bothered So I’m using ‘his’ on the assumption that most GOTM players are ‘him’s Apologies in advance if I’ve got anyone’s gender wrong.


Summary of Medal Winners:

BornInCantaloup: 1390 AD Domination Victory, 464,126 points.

WastinTime: 1730 AD Spaceship Victory, 359,100 points.

lymond: 860 AD Conquest Victory, 320,045 points.



Fastest Finish Award Winners:

Seraiel: 980 AD Domination Victory, 182,261 points.

Jastrow: 1620 AD Diplomatic Victory, 169,052 points.

Rusten: 1520 AD Cultural Victory, 84,937 points.

Minou: 1100 AD Religious Victory, 55,476 points.



Other Award Winners:

nocho: 1430 AD Conquest Victory, 233,312 points.

ikotomi: 1890 AD Spaceship Victory, 95,454 points.

UB40: 1934 AD Domination Victory, 59,779 points.

NobleZarkon: 1924 AD Cultural Victory, 10,663 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]

Here's where everyone settled.

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.

 

[Pangaea]

Some fantastic results there. Well done guys (and gals).

Only 40 years too late for space on my part. But no shame in losing to WastinTime.

 

[Rusten]

Thanks for the wb. Keep up the great scenarios and I'll stick around!

 

[Seraiel]

Congratiulations to all participants and winners .

Very good game from Lymond, but actually any win on this horrible map is imo. commendable.

And if you believe it or not, but this game was the first successful HA-rush I played in 5y of CIV ^^ .

 

[Pangaea]

Thanks for the wb. Keep up the great scenarios and I'll stick around!

Clearly not very "rusty" after the hiatus

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Thanks for hosting and the quick results.
GG to all contestants.

Everything went very right for me on this map and I had luck when it mattered (winning some 20% fights with very little troops for back up).
These watery Sushi maps are a very good training for logistics.


Just realized that Seraiel had, in fact, settled 1NW and not 1NE as he wrongfully claimed ^^
I liked that spot. There were many benefits to being coastal.

 

[lymond]

great game, folks. Good to see Rusty Rusten back in the fold.

And Wastin' does all the girls proud!

 

[nocho]

Thanks lymond, for inflicting me my first ever low-scoring award (as far as I remember)! It sure wasn't my best performance ever, but I guess the standard has gone up quite a bit if 233k gets you those awards these days!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Thanks lymond, for inflicting me my first ever low-scoring award (as far as I remember)! It sure wasn't my best performance ever, but I guess the standard has gone up quite a bit if 233k gets you those awards these days!

Not your first I'm afraid. You won lowest-scoring conquest in WOTM 55 and again in GOTM 100. But it's your first BtS lowest-scoring conquest (Unfortunately there's no separate award for securing that kind of hat-trick )

But I think you're right about the standard. I'm sure I can just about remember a time when a 233K score would have given you a good chance for the gold medal.

 

[nocho]

Not your first I'm afraid. You won lowest-scoring conquest in WOTM 55 and again in GOTM 100.

I guess I blocked that from memory.

Actually, I just see that in both those games I also won fastest conquest, so on those occasions basically I probably was the only one silly enough to try for conquest. But at least one won me a gold medal too.

I do see now that in WOTM I got 3 low scoring awards, but if I see that Dhoomstriker tops that list then it's not such a bad company to be in.

By the way, how can you see in which particular games somebody won medals or awards (given the somebody, rather than the game)? Or is that a prerogative for staff?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

By the way, how can you see in which particular games somebody won medals or awards (given the somebody, rather than the game)? Or is that a prerogative for staff?

Good question I used one of the staff management tools to check what awards you had - which obviously isn't accessible outside the GOTM staff. Thinking about it, there's no reason why that information shouldn't be publically available, other than the effort required to code up a suitable web page. I guess it's never been done because - as far as I'm aware - no-one's asked about it up to now!

 

[Pangaea]

Apparently NobleZarkon is pretty handy with website stuff, and has made some good changes in the Hall of Fame. Maybe you can contact him and see if he's interested? (Or she, I really don't know).

Would be interesting with a 'personal' page where all your results and awards (if any) were listed.

 

[Seraiel]

Thanks for hosting and the quick results.
GG to all contestants.

Everything went very right for me on this map and I had luck when it mattered (winning some 20% fights with very little troops for back up).
These watery Sushi maps are a very good training for logistics.


Just realized that Seraiel had, in fact, settled 1NW and not 1NE as he wrongfully claimed ^^
I liked that spot. There were many benefits to being coastal.

1 NE had advantages but for me with going for Domination it was a plain disadvantage because of losing the Deers and also finding the Furs very late while I would have needed them as early as possible with that much .

Btw. BiC : Did you intend to go for the Gold Medal? I forgot but thought that you'd also go for Space when reading your opening with Oracle CS and GLH in the spoiler-thread.

Is the Gold Medal somehow regarded as the highest possible reward in GOTMs? For me it's actually the fastest finishes that matter but the ranking somehow also seems to suggest something different. How does score even matter in CIV? It's 99% population, one could win a Gold Medal in 90% of the BOTM's probably by simply rushing towards Sushi, letting all cities grow and then trigger Domination at the right moment. The last is not to de-value BiC's game, I'm only a little astonished because I initially thought that Gold would go towards the fastest finish, then I found out that it doesn't and accidentally even won Gold in BOTM-97 myself and now I ask myself if the GOTM-staff really wants us to play highscore games and believe noone really does that because everybody goes for fastest finish, but BiC's game makes me think differently (and it might make me play differently once I get an Ephtalon . Jovan Kukic also wrote that he tries for Dom- / Conquest and Gold, how I'd love to score 4 times as high as he while finishing +100% of turns later because going intendedly for score only ) .

 

[Seraiel]

Hey !

You did it again E is East. 1 North-West is 1NW
You got me confused in the spoiler threads. I thought you settled the awful spot 2 north, 2 east, losing not only the deer but also the cows.

You have to see it like this. The 1 is for North and then it's east for as long as one reaches 1NW .

Sry, east and west were never my strengths. I'll try to pay more attention, I somehow always tend to think "right" and "left" is somewhat unusual for me. The last is not ment politically.

 

[ikotomi]

Congrats everyone. Didn't think I would win any awards, so that's pretty cool. First game I've finished in a long time, so I learned a lot.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Congrats to all of the participants! There were some really great games played this time around and it is nice to see a lot of active participation! It seems that the change in XOTM scheduling is having its intended positive effect of getting more players joining in on a regular basis.

I do see now that in WOTM I got 3 low scoring awards, but if I see that Dhoomstriker tops that list then it's not such a bad company to be in.

Cheers!

One interesting point to note is that the Low Awards tables seem to have a similar ordering of rankings as the Fastest Finish Awards tables, in that the more Award categories that you are awarded, the higher your relative position in the relevant ranking table.

While there isn't an official "nude boy statue" Eptathlete Award for Low Awards (probably to discourage people from solely playing to win Low Awards), one can still unofficially compete to get a higher ranking in the Low Awards tables by winning Low Awards in as many categories as possible.

Another minor fact worth noting is that the Ambulance Awards don't get displayed in any cumulative ranking tables; presumably, this decision was made long ago to prevent people from intentionally submitting losing games just to rack up Ambulance Awards, since only a game where the player lost is eligible for such an Award. If you want to see who scored a given Ambulance Award for a given game, you must visit either the results thread or the Results ranking page (called the "full results" above) for that particular game.

By the way, how can you see in which particular games somebody won medals or awards (given the somebody, rather than the game)? Or is that a prerogative for staff?

With what we have currently, it's a manual process of looking at the Results ranking page for each game individually.
40 + a three-digit game number for GOTM
60 for WOTM
70 for BOTM

Examples: GOTM 116 WOTM 71 BOTM 83

 

[Deckhand]

Is the Gold Medal somehow regarded as the highest possible reward in GOTMs?

I think so. I think it is hardest to get. For one thing, you are competing against everyone; not just those going after the same victory condition. Score is what counts for Gold, Silver, Bronze. And score is weighted by turn; so I'm not so sure that you could get gold by delaying and pumping up score. That's how you get the Cow.

For the Eptathlon awards you need Fastest Finish in each victory category plus the Cow in vanilla and WL or the Gold in BtS. Of those requirements, the Gold is definitely the hardest as the others are available by being the only one targeting that victory.

For the Ranking, I think only relative score counts.

 

[Rusten]

I think so. I think it is hardest to get. For one thing, you are competing against everyone; not just those going after the same victory condition. Score is what counts for Gold, Silver, Bronze. And score is weighted by turn; so I'm not so sure that you could get gold by delaying and pumping up score. That's how you get the Cow.

For the Eptathlon awards you need Fastest Finish in each victory category plus the Cow in vanilla and WL or the Gold in BtS. Of those requirements, the Gold is definitely the hardest as the others are available by being the only one targeting that victory.

For the Ranking, I think only relative score counts.

Not really true in practice. You get score by having land and population = domination victory. But usually you avoid winning for a century or two and increase your city sizes with sushi.

Non-military VCs (and for the most part conquest) are never going to win gold unless nobody pursues domination.
At least personally I don't consider any victory "better" than the others. What matters are the other finishes/players with the same goal as you. A gold medal target is like any other target -- you compete with the other gold medal contenders.

 

[Seraiel]

Thx for that information Deckhand .

It is possible to get a higher score by delaying the victory and pumping up the population though. WastinTime and me played a friendly competition of highscore-focussed games about 4-5y ago. He held the highest score every recorded in HoF with something like 2.8 or 3M, I was new to CIV but managed to beat that score by scoring 3.6M myself after between half a year or a year and he was so kind to not publish his game in which he scored 4.8M before that, so I actually held the highest highscore ever recorded in CIV for about 2 weeks . Not completely relevant but funny, what's relevant is that we (mostly he) found out that the way for the highest score is to play a Big & Smalls map, go for the earliest Sushi date possible (we achieved BC Sushi dates in that competition, the games were on Marathon and with Incans though) , found a crazy amount of island-cities that only take up very little land (I had more than 200 cities in one game on a Huge map but assume 300 would have been possible and better 1-2y later) , spread the Corps super-fast with cold-whips and Galleon-chains, grow the cities (even into and ) and then end the game when the score reaches its peak. The actual score is a combination of population and finish date, and that is why that style gets such extremely high scores. In Domination or Conquest games the player needs to use the whip heavily in order to be fast, he'll also probably not research until Sushi and Sushi can give more than all tiles of a city give. It's an own gaming style that is a combination of Domination-victory but later, with more research and only focussed on score so it's basically like you say, it's its own type of victory but it doesn't compete with the other players! If someone intendedly plays like that, no Domination-game, Conquest, Spacerace or Cultural Victory will ever compete. The cow is rewarded for the highest base-score so that one is 100% winnable by being the only player for a time victory, but it's exactly the same with the Gold medal, a player going for highscore via Sushi + Domination will have a so much higher population than the Dom- + Conquest players but end the game so much earlier than the Spacerace players, that he doesn't directly compete against them.

Having your info and you having this info from me, it'd actually be logical to transform the GOTM-awards and make highscore its own victory condition that stands on the same level that the fastest finish awards do. It then would also be logical to scrap the Silver and the Bronze medal in order to not make that victory condition more important than others, but ofc. it'd be ok if you as the staff decide that score is actually the highest form of victory, because of ... Playing for Score is actually very highly difficult, maybe even more difficult than a Space Race but at least on par. Maybe Space + Score are only the most time-consuming though. Score is definitely a very fun way to play the game, so why not motivate the players to play for it, even if it's no official, unique victory condition.

If you want to inform yourself on that topic, there are some interesting writeups, Replay #5 from my signature (3.6M score) , there's a writeup called sth. like "4.8M score with Inca-rush 2011" by WastinTime and T-Hawk also made a writeup on his webpage and even coded a score calculator.