Qsc17-Carthage - Results & Strategy

[cracker]

Today we can announce the results for Qsc17-Carthage and extend our congratulations and thanks to all the player who submitted games to help use develop the results package that will now let you discuss, review, and learn from the play efforts of of so many different individuals.

We received 88 total submission for this QSC game which again has set a new record.

Our top eight QSC finishers played very strong games that demonstrated the power of their opening strategy and management decisions.

Alexman
Bamspeedy
Narakael
Kemal
Borealis
Bremp
SirPleb
CaptButtkick

and all our special awards winners deserve special applause for each us for sharing their approaches to this game.

A major feature of this month's results presentation is the return of the minimap index features with the most complete set of composite maps for any documented competitive game in Civfanatics history. These maps are made possible through the contributed support of RufRydyr who mastered the composite overaly techniques in less than a week and then converted every one of the submitted games into a displayable set of maps in xxx.jpg format that all players can use.

Here is a link to the complete set of Qsc17-Carthage results web pages:

Qsc17 Results and Data Tables

 

[RufRydyr]

Congrats to everyone that did well!

Personally, I did lousy. , but learned a lot as usual. This map way a real pain. I got off to a horrible start in the QSC and just stayed bad. It's so true that the first 80 moves really set you up for an easy victory or a long haul towards victory or defeat.

 

[Borealis]

Wow! I knew moving the settler would help, but not that much! It also seemed like I ended up not having to build an early granary at my main settler/worker factories, and having a bunch of workers helped. I was extremely low on military, but I fixed that later. I wish my GOTM result would end up this good but that is not to be with no suicide galley luck.

A big thank you to RufRyder and the rest of the GOTM staff for running this QSC and helping make the results as easy to understand as possible. The minimaps in particular highlight the importance of exploration, something which was extremely important throughout the game.

 

[cracker]

the colors codes in correspond to the game software version. Blue=Mac, Rust=PTWv1.21, Olive=PTWv1.14.

In the tables, there will from time to time be a highlighted square just to draw attention or remind us of something important. The highlighted light yellow squares for JustusII and several other players indicate where galleys have been lost to treacherous waters of Giant Squid (as near as we can tell).

 

[Ribannah]

Adding all those minimaps was a fantastic idea! I love it.

It is interesting to see that in some games Egypt did much better (well, initially) than in others.

 

[Yndy]

It is now obvious that cracker created a started position where the choice of the first move had an important impact on the game development. Moving south proved to be the most beneficial move with 9 out of the first 20 being in Category 2.

Moving to the north proved to be the worst choice possible while moving twice towards the floodplains was only marginally better than not moving at all.

I guess that all players that scored high drilled into the tech tree and not only those in Category 1, Regent is the level where you should max research all the time.

Exploring was the next thing to do. It is obvious that by not meeting the Egyptians by 1000BC any player would have lost a lot of tech points and fall in the second half of the results table (See categories 6, 7 and 8).

It is pretty interesting to notice what brought the extra points to the top players. Tech played a very important role to the extent that my 2 techs from goody huts (Horse Riding and Literature) gave me the best tech score. But at a closer look it was more than tech. It was the population/units where the 20th player scored 38% less than the first and the 10th player scored 30% less than the first. Out of the population units workers probably played the most important role during the QSC and surely later on.

Excellent job everybody. An extra ovation for Alexman and his 17 workers as well as for the newcomers Narakael & CaptButtkick. I am very anxious to see the final results where I foresee very close top 20 scores.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I noticed an error. I did have Horseback Riding. Yndy still would have beat me for tech points, but it would have been alot closer. I bought Horseback Riding from Egypt, I believe. Literature was the only tech I got from a hut.

 

[Ribannah]

There seems to be a small error in my score as well. I had 201 shields accumulated (over 50% of the Lighthouse!), not 147.

I only opened the huts after discovering Horseback Riding, and got Currency plus 50 gold.
But that was after the QSC timeframe.

 

[Shillen]

I guess that all players that scored high drilled into the tech tree and not only those in Category 1, Regent is the level where you should max research all the time.

More like whoever met Egypt before 1000BC. I think just about everyone traded for 3+ techs from egypt after meeting them. Just some people didn't meet them until after 1000BC.

I'm pretty happy with my middle of the pack results. I had a huge inexperience with archipelago maps which became obvious with some of the mistakes I made. I underrated the value of seeking contacts early. I had map making in like 1400 BC and didn't meet egypt until around 300BC IIRC.

Congrats to the top finishers. I hope to do a lot better in qsc-18.

 

[Offa]

This game is a very impressive demonstration of the importance of the first move.
I elected to found Carthage on the start square , and then went on to fail to find the Egyptians before 1000bc
and I didn't manage to complete the GL until ~900bc. Altogether a learning experience. I aim to read the pre game thread more carefully next time.
I didn't have time to complete the game (RL) so I replayed the start moving the my first Settler S first, and with prior knowledge of the map managed to crank out 17 cities by 1000bc. If only I could do it the first time round. Very similar experience to GOTM16 on second attempt (done after real game submitted).
Congratulations to those heroes who managed to make all the right moves straight away.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

Wow, I did a lot better than expected
I followed the advice I got from the pregame discussion and scouted with my worker, but decided to go W instead of S with my settler. Can't remember why

I was lucky to meet up with the egyptians just a few turns before 1000 b.c. On the other hand I got maps and barbs out of the huts I popped (two huts popped).

I didn't submit my end game because I reloaded after invading the egyptians with catapults and UUs
lol, I'm still in a learning process here so cut me some slack

EDIT: I almost forgot the most important thing I'd like to mention.
A huge to the fanatics staff for the presentation.

 

[Email10]

I was also surprised I made it so high up the list (19th) considering I only had 5 cities on my home island.

Would be interesting to see how the scores compare to the game version used, but maybe that's a bit too much to ask for.

Thanks for a great collection of statistics and the minimaps are great!

 

[Kemal]

Great presentation of the results, thanks to the gotm-staff and RufRydyr in particular for the minimaps.

Seems like most people had been able to pop the huts within the time frame limit, I didn't because I left my exploring warrior marooned on one of the earlier islands to protect a settler against the volcano. (I was afraid they might spawn barb warriors).

Have to say this map was perfectly fit for the QSC because of the lack of random events, which also makes alexman's score even more impressive.

 

[Renata]

At a rough guess, sending one of those galleys that was putzing around busting fog off to find the Egyptians would've moved me up at least 15 slots . The fog was so much fun to play with, though.

I can't believe I came in second in the crammy category. I knew with such a premium on workable land I'd want to space cities close enough to use every single land tile (and as much coast as I could grab) pre-hospitals, but ahead of Bremp!??? Yikes.

edit: Think I found the culprit - an error in the territory count. I knew there was something wrong with that.

Would like to know how the top players managed to squeeze out so many more infrastructure/people points than I did. That, more than the exploration/tech issue, is something I think I need to work on.

Renata

 

[ControlFreak]

I'll add my to the rest. The GOTM Staff really has put a lot of work into the new GOTM format. Truly AWESOME!

Hey, I improved! I went from 34th to 33rd. At least I'm consistent.

One comment about the starting location. I think this may be the case of correlation versus causation. I know that 4 of the top 8 players moved S to the jungle. But is their score higher because of this move or is the move made because they are all good players and this seems the most logical to them?

I had felt that the jungle would be manageable because of our industrious capability and might lose a BG founding there.

 

[Renata]

The big thing with settling on the jungle, I think, was bringing the wheat into the capital's radius while retaining high production for the city with the nearby BGs. Made fast expansion ridiculously easy even in my case, despite a number of micromanaging errors. The top players no doubt managed to take more advantage of that than I did.

Renata, came in 34th, nice to meet you neighbor

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by Renata
Renata, came in 34th, nice to meet you neighbor

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Good thing you liked the fog or you'd be living in the big house up the road

 

[LKendter]

The thing that stand out the most is:
11 hotord0823
12 Lkendter


The person whom has been in my training games finished the QSC ahead of me.

I am surprised I stay that high in ranks. I did not come close to the cram level of many of the people.

 

[Borealis]

@Renata: Workers were your main problem, with you only having 4 workers and no captives, either Egyptian or barbarian, by 1000 BC. Squeezing in an extra worker or two or building a worker before you built a garrison was useful on this map, as no barbs threatened and Regent happiness means that you're still okay at size 2. Some players, such as Bamspeedy, managed to score extremely high and have a large military :worshp: but I found it effective to prioritize workers above MP here. Your lack of workers resulted in a lot of missed growth opportunities for your cities in the northeast, where many plains and floodplain tiles would have benefited immensely from development. Maps with high ratios of plains and floodplains as compared to grasslands tend to show the effects of worker #s the most, in my experience.

As for citizens, getting hit by disease hurt you, but I know that what helped me get a good start on growth was building my second city in a spot to help work irrigated flood plains immediately. My third city went to the high-shield area to build the Lighthouse, but for settlers I wanted the growth boost immediately.

@LKendter: I'm not sure if this affected you, but before I played the game that month, I went and played a 'practice' game on an randomly generated archipelago map on Regent first. I ended up playing another game after that one to refine my skills on that level as I kept thinking about the citizens born happy, tech rate, barb agressiveness, etc. like it would be on Emperor level. My QSC-17 ended up being a farmers' gambit that would end with the AI me on Emperor- Cleo would have shown up with galleys laden with war chariots much earlier given the tech rate, I suspect.

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by LKendter
The thing that stand out the most is:
11 hotord0823
12 Lkendter


The person whom has been in my training games finished the QSC ahead of me.

Yeah, Hotrod has been improving by leaps and bounds since we played together in Unlimited Players Rome. Benefits of lots of playing time and really good trainers, LKendter, Charis, Cracker to name just a few.