News: GOTM 08 - Results & Congratulations

[ainwood]

GOTM 8 was a Monarch-level game, but it was great to see that of those who submitted, around 80% managed to win. For those who lost, most were to spaceships, which suggests that they managed to stay in-the-game in some form right through to the modern ages - well done!

What we haven't seen much of in the Civ4 GOTMs is the players at the top of the medal table also carrying-away the fastest-finish awards, but we got that this month, with Obormot grabbing gold and the fastest domination. Cactus Pete claimed his third medal in as many months - going one better than the other occasions as he grabbed silver. In third place was Doc TK.

Summary of Medal Winners:

Obormot: 1220 AD Domination Victory, 125,594 points.

Cactus Pete: 1640 AD Domination Victory, 111,776 points.

Doc TK: 1854 AD Domination Victory, 91,627 points.

 

[ainwood]

Other Award Winners:

Piscator: 1460 AD Diplomatic Victory, 79,972 points.

Jovan Kukic: 1730 AD Conquest Victory, 78,598 points.

jesusin: 1808 AD Cultural Victory, 15,314 points.

Garmoon: 2050 AD Time Victory, 12,245 points.

Grey Cardinal: 1838 AD Spaceship Victory, 3,973 points.

 

[ainwood]

Bede: 2003 AD Domination Victory, 15,315 points.

Mastiff_of_Ar: 1990 AD Conquest Victory, 10,990 points.

dmccarthy: 2038 AD Spaceship Loss, 8,504 points.

Paladin Elder: 2024 AD Diplomatic Victory, 8,189 points.

Jan107: 2037 AD Spaceship Victory, 5,474 points.

paulhager: 1992 AD Cultural Victory, 5,074 points.

drkodos: 1920 BC Conquest Loss, 171 points.


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

 

[Lexad]

Go, Obormot!

Btw, there's smth wrong with fastest space, it shoul be Grey Cardinal (1838), current owner's save dates 2029.

 

[Garmoon]

Hohoho my first award ever!!

 

[BLubmuz]

Congrats to the winners (but, be aware, i'm improving myself ), and many thanks to the Staff for another fun game.

More congrats to the Staff for keeping the pace

Would be nice if the top players post some spoiler, I never seen a post from them (are they afraid of something or simply don't like to sink from heavens between us poor mortals?)

 

[DaveMcW]

Congrats to all the prize winners for your dominating performances!

grangerm was the next highest ranked player, with 80.9% in the combined rankings.

 

[Stile]

Go, Obormot!

Btw, there's smth wrong with fastest space, it shoul be Grey Cardinal (1838), current owner's save dates 2029.

Too bad. I wanted to see how someone managed a 250AD launch on Monarch. That's someone I could learn from.

(Who am I kidding? I could learn from all these winners. Congrats!)

 

[godotnut]

So, my first top ten finish in a GOTM was trying for the victory condition I like the least and have by far the least experience with: conquest.

Further evidence of the irrelevant scoring system for points.

Congratulations to all the winners. I am especially impressed this round by Piscator's tremendous 1460 AD diplo. And thanks to the fantastic staff for their timely results!

 

[EEO]

Congratulations to all winners !

Special congrats to Obormot because he has got a great strategic victory. As he said in his final spoiler :
"The path to macemen/knights is not that long though, especially with some shortcuts provided by GPs. So the bottleneck will be food/hammers, not beakers."

This view was the key as well for high scoring as for fast domination victory in GOTM8. Those who followed (as I did) a more classic way with CS slingshot, beeline to Biology/Military Tradition/Astronomy went toward serious difficulties, provided this terrible combination in settings: archipelago/rocky ...

Thanks to ainwood for this unusual game ... and also thanks to DynamicSpirit because I guess one of his thread had some influence on this (you have justified your pseudo by altering the routine of the games ).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Looks like the concerns that were expressed when the three classes were introduced, that people might feel pressured to play challenger, have definitely turned out not to be a problem: Almost noone played challenger (4 people if I counted right). The challenger class is almost looking redundant. Adventurer looks like it's a lot more popular though - think I counted about 44 adventurer entries but that was on a quick scan so probably slightly out)

 

[Thrallia]

hm...#139, not bad for my first submitted victory I suspect that if not for the adventurer bonus I would have either lost or had the lowest scoring diplo victory.

 

[Harok]

Congrats to all winners. Great game Obormot.

Thanks to the staff for their hard work.

 

[AlanH]

Go, Obormot!

Btw, there's smth wrong with fastest space, it shoul be Grey Cardinal (1838), current owner's save dates 2029.

Thanks for highlighting that error. Fixed.

I thought I had caught all the odd dates last month. Clearly more investigation required!

 

[Obormot]

Never thought that a fast domination could score higher then milked games!
I guess everybody was just too obsessed about getting the CS-slingshot, or maybe it is only because hendrikszoon didn't play this time.
But, anyway I am happy to win both my first award and my first medal in 4OTMs.
Congrats to other winners and thanks to the staff.

 

[Vynd]

Congrats to everyone, and thanks to ainwood and AlanH!

 

[EEO]

Never thought that a fast domination could score higher then milked games!
I guess everybody was just too obsessed about getting the CS-slingshot, or maybe it is only because hendrikszoon didn't play this time.
But, anyway I am happy to win both my first award and my first medal in 4OTMs.
Congrats to other winners and thanks to the staff.

I think that this success lies in the fact of being able to attack AI Civs with Knights when they still have Archers and small empires. It was a perfect timing. If you wait too much, AI Civs begin to cooperate much better and your technology advance tends to lessen at this level. This combined with settings that make the logistics harder (archipelago) and defense easier (rocky) has for result that milking is not efficient anymore.

I don't know for hendrikszoon ... did he try and was not happy with the result to submit or didn't he play ? I don't know, but should not be surprised by the former ...

By the way, I am curious about some things in your game :

- How important were the effects of the slavery bug in your result ? (I am personally reluctant to use it but I wonder how efficient it is ...)

- What was your trading policy with AI ? For instance, did you refuse to trade any tech leading to Feudalism ? (This could explain they went late toward it)

- Would you play the same strategy if level was Emperor or higher ? (all other things being equal)

 

[Piscator]

Never thought that a fast domination could score higher then milked games!
I guess everybody was just too obsessed about getting the CS-slingshot, or maybe it is only because hendrikszoon didn't play this time.

Congrats Obormot! Good to see a change for the gold medal in many months! And it just goes to show you really don't need a CS slingshot for the top medal I just read your spoiler. Smart use of the great people.

As for the milking of games, I guess this maptype didn't encourage that much with all the logistics involved. Personally, I really never have the patience of doing that since it milks out my spare time too much as well (and well, it sounds too much like work...). I think the score system really should normalize population/territory points for more balance. The influence of e.g. Biology is humongeous.

Anyway, I'm really happy with my fastest Diplomacy and my 1st award as well. And well, I'm really suprised it was also the 4th place as well Also I was very happy with a normal game speed. It just took me ten or so hours to complete it. Diplomacy is also the least time consuming victory condition in my book.

However, I was a bit rusty this game. Last time I played was gotm3 and just some minor unfinished games inbetween. I made a fair amount of mistakes. One that keeps popping back to my mind was the building of the Chicken Pizza. It just goes to show you shouldn't play Civ before dinner...

 

[RobertTheBruce]

As for the milking of games, I guess this maptype didn't encourage that much with all the logistics involved. Personally, I really never have the patience of doing that since it milks out my spare time too much as well (and well, it sounds too much like work...). I think the score system really should normalize population/territory points for more balance. The influence of e.g. Biology is humongeous.

Anyway, I'm really happy with my fastest Diplomacy and my 1st award as well. And well, I'm really suprised it was also the 4th place as well Also I was very happy with a normal game speed. It just took me ten or so hours to complete it. Diplomacy is also the least time consuming victory condition in my book.

Congrats to all the winners. I think Obermot mooted all the discussion about optimal CS strategies for the game start. Great game.

I like the normal speed as well. After 13 hours I thought my game was starting to drag and just wanted to finish. Cactus Pete, please tell me you just leave your computer on all week to play the game in a single session. 210 hours is 7 hours a day all month. I'm amazed and a little frightened.

 

[Mad Professor]

Wow - I jumped from 601 to 360 in the global rankings. It's amazing what actually submitting the game does to your rankings!

Congrats and commiserations to the awards winners. Thanks to the GOTM staff for their efforts too.