Please Read: Welcome to the C-IV GOTM

[12tn2]

Tks for all your kind answers, DS, lymond & Alan. I'm trying to access the result page but it seems that GOTM site is currently down. Now for the barb tech, will it significantly affect the gameplay? For example, will it delay the appearance of barbs in the early game? I can live with barb cities being a wee bit more backward, though, in order to avoid opening WB & spoil the map. However, in case I need to do it, what are the barb techs in various difficulties?

 

[dalamb]

At Monarch you really need to add Archery, so that the barb cities aren't pushovers. The others are less important, but here they are:

• Hunting at Emperor
• Agriculture at Immortal
• The Wheel at Deity

Of course they're cumulative: add all 4 techs at Deity, for example.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Tks for all your kind answers, DS, lymond & Alan. I'm trying to access the result page but it seems that GOTM site is currently down. Now for the barb tech, will it significantly affect the gameplay? For example, will it delay the appearance of barbs in the early game? I can live with barb cities being a wee bit more backward, though, in order to avoid opening WB & spoil the map. However, in case I need to do it, what are the barb techs in various difficulties?

As dalamb says, whether the barbs have archery is quite significant, since it changes whether the first barbs are mostly archers or mostly warriors - and obviously, dealing with barb archers invading your territory tends to be a lot harder than warriors.

I would add though that, realistically, you're never going to be able to play really old GOTMs exactly the way they were played first time round - simply because the Civ patches that Firaxis released since then changed some of the gameplay (mainly to fix various imbalances that were found after Civ4 was first released). As a couple of examples, I believe at the time of the earliest GOTMs, horses were visible from the start (you didn't need to research animal husbandry), and chopping was more powerful (it game you 30 hammers right from the start of the game - later that was changed to the current situation of 20 hammers pre-mathematics, 30 hammers with mathematics). So if you want to play old GOTMs (which is a really fun thing to do), it's probably best to just accept that you're playing on the same map that was originally played, but there will be minor differences in how the game pans out for you.

 

[Htadus]

The problem is that playing up to 0 AD is relatively fast, and then it takes me weeks of pain to get to the end of the game. What I'm asking for is a thread where I can just give reports and talk to the other players while I play the game.

The first thread used to cover up to 500AD which was a great cutoff. But that got changed along the way and quite possibly some lengthy discussions.

 

[12tn2]

If you want to play old GOTMs, the easiest way is to download the WorldBuilder file. To do this, go to the GOTM results page, select the game you want, and you'll see a link just above the results to download the WorldBuilder file for that game. The current version of the HOF mod should be able to load any GOTM WorldBuilder file to play it - so you don't need to bother with any of the hassle of trying to downgrade your Civ version.

Good luck and have fun!

OK, now the site is online I'm proceeding with it. There're 2 problems:
1/ Is the WB file equivalent to contender save? If I want to play challenger what should I do? Do I need to change AI civs techs & especially units? That would spoil the game to the max.
2/ When I click the WB file link there are 2 options. When I choose to open it with Civ4 then the Vanilla version (not with HOF mod) pops up. When I choose to save then run HOF 1.74 separately, the game can't see & load the WB file. It allows me to see only Civ4savefile. Now what should I do?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The first thread used to cover up to 500AD which was a great cutoff. But that got changed along the way and quite possibly some lengthy discussions.

As I recall, there was a general consensus amongst the staff at the time that 0AD more sense as a date for the beginning of the game. Personally I don't think it makes much difference as on normal speed there's only 20 turns between 0AD and 500AD.

There's not really any perfect solution for how to arrange the spoilers because different people are likely to want to discuss at different points in their game. But if you think there's a better way of doing it than at present, then the best thing is probably to open a new thread and get other people's views to see what most players think. I'm sure most of the staff would be willing to modify the spoilers if there's a consensus amongst the community that we should. At the moment I don't perceive that there is.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

OK, now the site is online I'm proceeding with it. There're 2 problems:
1/ Is the WB file equivalent to contender save? If I want to play challenger what should I do? Do I need to change AI civs techs & especially units? That would spoil the game to the max.

Yes, it would normally be equivalent to contender. We don't keep challenger/adventurer worldbuilders. I'm afraid to get it to challenger you would have to make the same changes that are described in the pregame discussion for that game. Depending what those changes are, that might or might not spoil the game. Since you're opening from a WorldBuilder, there's in any case no way to avoid seeing who the AIs are, since when opening a WorldBuilder, civ always asks which civ you want to play as. (The one to select is always the first one in the list so if you know that you may be able to avoid reading the others). On the up side, it also asks you what difficulty level you want to play at, so if the only difference between contender and challenger is the difficulty level, then you can just pick the appropriate level and not have to make any edits. (Or if you want to play something harder than the original game, you could just pick a higher difficulty anyway).

2/ When I click the WB file link there are 2 options. When I choose to open it with Civ4 then the Vanilla version (not with HOF mod) pops up. When I choose to save then run HOF 1.74 separately, the game can't see & load the WB file. It allows me to see only Civ4savefile. Now what should I do?

There are two solutions. Firstly, if you want to load a WB from within Civ, you won't find it the 'load game' option. You need to select 'Load a scenario' in the Civ main menu, then you'll be given the option to load from a WorldBuilder.

However, if you mainly play games that use the HOF mod, then in the long run, it might be easier to tell Civ to load the HOF mod by default - then you will be able to load the game with the HOF mod by double clicking on the WorldBuilder. To do that just change the relevant lines in the civ.ini file. My ones look something like this:

; Specify a Mod folder (Mods\Mesopotamia), '0' for none
Mod = Mods\HOF-1.74.004

(Make sure you take a backup of the civ.ini file before editing it just in case something goes wrong!)

 

[Htadus]

As I recall, there was a general consensus amongst the staff at the time that 0AD more sense as a date for the beginning of the game. Personally I don't think it makes much difference as on normal speed there's only 20 turns between 0AD and 500AD.

snip

.

20 turns at that stage of the game is very significant. There has been numerous games where a player or two report of a conquest victory by 500AD while players are actively communicating about such deeds. Personally I do not care what is the cutoff is anymore since I rarely write much due to time limitations.

 

[Seraiel]

Hi. I thought about maybe starting to play BOTM too. I got confused though: I always thought, that one needs to play the challenger save to get medals / awards? I think I read though, that contender is enough, but what sense does the challenger than make?

Tia.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You're correct that contender is enough to win medals - most people who enter play contender. The reason for playing challenger is if you want to play a slightly harder game than everyone else. Some of the top players play challenger, and still manage to beat most of the contender players, which makes their medals/awards look even more spectacular, since they were achieved despite having a harder game. But in general, I'd suggest that you'll only play the challenger save if you have some special reason for wanting to.

 

[ShiVvV]

Seraiel
The contender save is the 'base' game.
The challenger saves just add an additional challenge/remove a benefit, etc. as compared to the contender save. Challenger saves are just for 'bragging rights' as they are scored the same as contender saves.
Adventurer saves are made easier than the base contender save and there are even restrictions about being able to take adventurer saves depending on a player's past performance in BOTMs. Adventurer saves suffer a -15% scoring penalty also.
This link should explain it all--http://http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/1st_visit.php

I'm not sure if adventurer saves are eligible for awards. I know the other two levels are though. I'm pretty sure you'd not be interested in adventurer saves though.

Edit: DS beat me to it.

 

[Seraiel]

Thx for that clarification Dynamic Spirit. And shivvv

 

[Seraiel]

I (again) need to ask a dumb question.

How I understood it, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place get rewarded by a gold, silver and bronze medal. Then, the fastest finish of each victory condition is also regarded by... yes, what? Also, if Gold, Silver and Bronze are given to the fastest three winners, isn't it a little unfair, to compare AP-victories to i. e. Spaceraces?

And a very short minor question: What is needed to get an Ephtalon. 1st place in all victory conditions at least once, or at least once + in the same expansion, or anything else in addition?

Tia.

Seraiel

 

[lymond]

Cereal -

Not sure if I totally followed your first question, but I'll try to answer. 1st, 2nd, 3rd place is awarded to highest scoring games no matter the date. Fastest finishes for each VC category also have there own medals. One can certainly achieve a fastest finish and get a gold, silver or bronze - not that uncommon with Domination victories, which tend to be the highest scoring. Also, there is the "Cow" medal for long-playing score milkers.

An Eptathlon award is earned by achieving all the fastest finish medals once and at least one gold medal, although in BOTM you can do it without the cow medal. I still don't have a BTS cow. Moo.

You can see the break-down of things in the GOTM Pantheon of Heroes page.

GOTM Pantheon of Heroes

 

[Seraiel]

Thx for the answer Lime .

I still don't understand the Cow-medal though. Is that one for the 2nd highest score no matter the date? Becaue 1st would logically get Gold towards your description. If this is true, than it should actually be quite easy "to milk Gold-medals" on certain maps, because no matter when a Domination Victory could be, the 3-5 scores that we've seen from really milking a game are not possible with fastest domination by far.

And I wonder, that you don't owe a cow-medal. Using the logic of Tachywaxon, your avatar supposes you have plenty of experience with milking ;D ^^ .

 

[lymond]

...I really need a new avatar. My avant-garde Paint masterpiece of a pensive individual is so misunderstood.

Sorry, I meant to mention that the "Cow" is for highest base score, something which typically takes playing a fairly long game to achieve. Some folks go for them specifically now and then, even going so far as getting a Time victory, while I think many kinda back into it or get them with Space Victories. I never really tried for it specifically, although I've done a bit of milking toward the end. I've come close a coupla times.

 

[WastinTime]

What is the crash policy for GotMs? Is it like the HoF?

 

[leif erikson]

What is the crash policy for GotMs? Is it like the HoF?

You should have your autosave interval set to 1-turn. Should you have a crash, reload from the turn before and replay the same turn/s as best as you can remember them. Please then send a Private Message (start a conversation in xenForo) with the game designer to let them know you had the crash, what turn it was on and what turn you reloaded so they can verify this during their review for results.

 

[Pangaea]

Perhaps nobody reads the spoiler threads after the games have completed, but nevertheless, I just browsed through some of them. Think it would be really useful to quickly see what's what, if the spoiler threads had the starting screenshot, leader and difficulty level in the first post. Some threads have leader and/or difficulty in the title, but not that many. For people who play many of these games, it might be useful while the game is "active" too. Just a thought.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That's a good point. Recently we started putting the starting screenshot in spoiler threads (I suspect it's not all the threads though) but yes I can see that specifying the other game details would be useful too. Thanks!