News: SGOTM 23 - Orient Express - Results and Congratulations

[AlanH]

SGOTM 23 - Orient Express

Well, I hope you all enjoyed building the trans-continental railway to BSPollux's specifications. All five teams succeeded in the challenge, and in spite of time pressures you all did it (pretty well) in time.

Turbo Ants (gold) and Phoenix Rising (silver) produced fast Conquest victories within 20 turns of each other.

Xteam crept under the wire while I was otherwise engaged in real life and snatched both the bronze laurels and the wooden cutlery with the only Religious victory.

"Nice try but no cigar" awards go to Unusual Suspects and Unallocated, who both Conquered in 1240AD and 1515 AD respectively.

Well done everybody. I'll leave it to wiser heads than mine to discuss the relative merits of approaches the teams took.

Orient Express Summary

Turbo Ants, 275 AD Conquest victory, 478,671 points
LowtherCastle,
Mitchum,
Pollina,
WastinTime,
ZPV​

Phoenix Rising, 475 AD Conquest victory, 441,319 points
Gumbolt,
BornInCantaloup,
ConfusedCounsel,
elitetroops,
MegaLurker,
Rusten,
yyeah
​

Xteam, 1100 AD Religious victory, 237,102 points
Folket,
Cactus Pete,
Dhoomstriker,
Jersey Joe,
neilmeister,
NobleZarkon
​

Unusual Suspects , 1240 AD Conquest victory 330,073 points
classical_hero,
Deckhand,
kcd_swede,
nocho,
Ronnie1,
Zhary​

Unallocated, 1515 AD Conquest victory 240,549 points
haphazard1,
enKage,
pigswill,
ikotami,
marbe166,
Packers5280,
Sun Tzu Wu
​

Full results, progress charts, saves and replay listings are available on the Progress and Results Page

Use the Game Replay Page for an animated graphical replay.

The Team and Lurker threads are open to all.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Well Done Turbo Ants, Phoenix Rising and Xteam! Nice RLDV, Xteam! Congratulations to all that participated!

 

[LowtherCastle]

Congratulations to all teams for a well-played competition. Congrats to PR for Silver and to XTeam for the Wooden Spoons.

Many million thanks to AlanH for always being there and for being the best moderator on the entire internet.

Thanks and applause to BSPollux for another excellent scenario!

 

[soundjata]

Well played CIV4 champions we love lurking your threads

Please think about us more and post a few pictures

 

[Gumbolt]

Well played Turbo Ants for another fine gold laurel. Also to Xteam for for doing something different and getting a laurel. Well done to all other teams for completing this fun map.

Thank you AlanH and BSP for all the work and effort to make this game happen.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Congratulations to all of the participants! Thanks once again to the admins for putting together an entertaining and exciting challenge!

So many Conquest games means that most of you had the courage and audacity to face the deadly Russians in battle at some point in your games.

The scenario was well-designed and I believe enjoyed by all. Interesting twists that would have made for more balanced games across of the teams might have occurred had Hatshepsut started with Copper in place of Horses and were she to have had Jerusalem-like defences in her Cities, making her less of a walk-over for the teams that beelined her early on, and were London to have been on the same continent as us with a land bridge to it up in Scandinavia as you often see on self-generated Earth Maps, with teams being forced to either deal with England early on or suffer a significant loss of squares to work until they did get around to dealing with England.

I did like how there was a balance between teams who could self-build The Great Lighthouse versus having to wait to go out and conquer it, although AI randomness seems to have played a significant difference with it being built by either an AI at the far end of the map or by an AI much closer to home.

I also like how the division of Religions was spread across of the map, making for interesting diplomacy and less randomness between the games in how the various AIs interacted with each other, while also leaving room for shifting diplomacy as a result of SGOTM teams' interference, due to some Religions only existing in AIs' capitals and once those capitals fell, the AIs might switch Religious groups and thereby curry favour with a different set of AIs.

Certainly, it was a fun and challenging scenario, with a lot of thought and effort put into it, things for which we can all be very thankful!

 

[WastinTime]

So many Conquest games means that most of you had the courage and audacity to face the deadly Russians in battle at some point in your games.

We took the cowardly way out. We disbanded our scout and an injured Knight near his borders so there wouldn't be any chance of bloodshed. DoW on T124, capitulation T125, victory T126.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yeah we didn't fight the mongols either. Gifted 5 cities. Captured 5 cities same turn. Had to wipe out Persia turn after but pretty much a formality. As long as you don't lose a unit 40 points from capturing 4 cities mixed with land and power 4-5x higher normally does the trick. The average Ai power was not very high at this point.

 

[Gumbolt]

Any news on next game?? New year?

 

[AlanH]

Probably

 

[Fippy]

If you turn probably into yup sure, that would be

 

[AlanH]

The Sign-up thread for SGOTM 24 is now open. Hurry, Hurry. We start on 1st February.