Qsc17-Carthage - Results & Strategy
- Thread starter cracker
- Start date
cracker
Gil Favor's Sidekick
Several points that are coming up in these discussions that are very important and worthy of being reinforced:
Location Choice is not the Only Thing at Work in the Good Games
When you look at the games and group them by who moved to what location, remember that the games are not a pure representation of the Power of chosing those different settlement positions. Many of excellent players chose to move to the position to the south or to one of the positions nearer to the flood plains, but these moves in and of themselves are not the pure reason that these players scored better. If you look at their timelines you will see that top players match their choich of strategy to the availble terrain positions and then optimize the build sequence for their first several city locations so that the cities specialize to use certain improvements. A city with a reasonable citizen count in a high shields location often gets a barracks to crank units, or gets assigned to wonder building. A city in a high food location gets assigned to be a settler/worker pump and could get a granary to magnify this effect.
We see many, many games were players have barracks or granaries wasted by how these resources are applied to the tasks of building the empire.
The statistical effect that is at work here is often called "Self Selection" because good players will often make the good choices even though they may have still played a superior game if they had been limited to making the same opening movement choice as the less experienced.
The Opening Settler Decision is "When should I not settle?"
I still firmly believe that most players should develop a set of rules that help them define when they snould NOT found on the starting position. In other words, the default choice should be to settle on the starting postion and get on with the business of playing that game unless certain conditions are met.
This game was engineered to include two of the criteria that I use to tell me when I should strongly consider moving the settler: proximity to ugly terrain (in this case jungles and mountains) and 1 square away from the coast. Both of these conditions do not guarantee that a move is required, but just indicate that you need to more strongly consider the impact of other options.
Exploit the Benefits you have Paid for With Your Qsc Participation
You hear some players commenting how they use the Qsc results to improve their own personal games and this process deserves recognition and encouragement. Some players are looking for the answer and failing while other players are using the result to help them define a process that helps them to find the answer in each new situation. Unlike other game process where players self select into games that are different at different skill levels, we have the luxury in the GOTM of having a number of excellent strategic thinkers who strive to squeeze the maximum civilization development out of each play opportunity. The advantage here is a clear gain in the number of performance levels that you can see in a common frame of reference. Look at the players in the upper ranks of the QSC score and recognize that they are in a postion to do virtually anything that they chose in a game. Then look at the timelines and save game files (as mad-bax and others have been doing) and see if you can extract some of the key choices that give you pieces of this same ability.
Location Choice is not the Only Thing at Work in the Good Games
When you look at the games and group them by who moved to what location, remember that the games are not a pure representation of the Power of chosing those different settlement positions. Many of excellent players chose to move to the position to the south or to one of the positions nearer to the flood plains, but these moves in and of themselves are not the pure reason that these players scored better. If you look at their timelines you will see that top players match their choich of strategy to the availble terrain positions and then optimize the build sequence for their first several city locations so that the cities specialize to use certain improvements. A city with a reasonable citizen count in a high shields location often gets a barracks to crank units, or gets assigned to wonder building. A city in a high food location gets assigned to be a settler/worker pump and could get a granary to magnify this effect.
We see many, many games were players have barracks or granaries wasted by how these resources are applied to the tasks of building the empire.
The statistical effect that is at work here is often called "Self Selection" because good players will often make the good choices even though they may have still played a superior game if they had been limited to making the same opening movement choice as the less experienced.
The Opening Settler Decision is "When should I not settle?"
I still firmly believe that most players should develop a set of rules that help them define when they snould NOT found on the starting position. In other words, the default choice should be to settle on the starting postion and get on with the business of playing that game unless certain conditions are met.
This game was engineered to include two of the criteria that I use to tell me when I should strongly consider moving the settler: proximity to ugly terrain (in this case jungles and mountains) and 1 square away from the coast. Both of these conditions do not guarantee that a move is required, but just indicate that you need to more strongly consider the impact of other options.
Exploit the Benefits you have Paid for With Your Qsc Participation
You hear some players commenting how they use the Qsc results to improve their own personal games and this process deserves recognition and encouragement. Some players are looking for the answer and failing while other players are using the result to help them define a process that helps them to find the answer in each new situation. Unlike other game process where players self select into games that are different at different skill levels, we have the luxury in the GOTM of having a number of excellent strategic thinkers who strive to squeeze the maximum civilization development out of each play opportunity. The advantage here is a clear gain in the number of performance levels that you can see in a common frame of reference. Look at the players in the upper ranks of the QSC score and recognize that they are in a postion to do virtually anything that they chose in a game. Then look at the timelines and save game files (as mad-bax and others have been doing) and see if you can extract some of the key choices that give you pieces of this same ability.
Singularity
Infinite Density
I could've gotten a tech or two extra from cleo, but refrained since it would impact my GOTM overall plans. Cleo was strong in my game, and I didn't want to make the road of eliminating her any harder...
7.6 tiles pr city...4 place
7.6 tiles pr city...4 place
hbdragon88
haunted by blackness
I thought I did lousy, but this was quite unexpected. My mistakes in the beginning made my game less fun than it could have been. I didn't go for Map Making which was pretty fatal. The Group 1 players had at least a couple of galleys around when they finished.
I'm sure that they must have done something really really different. Probably raised the science spending quite a bit to speed research to Map Making, because I didn't even have as much exploration as DaveMcW had in 1000BC - it probably was 1200AD when I had that much explored.
I liked the grouping especially so I could study more in-depth on how players did. But I found the mini-maps to be a bit small and hard to read the player's name.
At least I stayed consistent
: 63rd out of 64 in qsc16, 87th out of 88 in qsc17. My score did rise by 50% from 2000 to about 3000 points this time.
I'm sure that they must have done something really really different. Probably raised the science spending quite a bit to speed research to Map Making, because I didn't even have as much exploration as DaveMcW had in 1000BC - it probably was 1200AD when I had that much explored.
I liked the grouping especially so I could study more in-depth on how players did. But I found the mini-maps to be a bit small and hard to read the player's name.
At least I stayed consistent
: 63rd out of 64 in qsc16, 87th out of 88 in qsc17. My score did rise by 50% from 2000 to about 3000 points this time.
cracker
Gil Favor's Sidekick
Mouse over any of the maps and you will get the player's name will be more clearly displayed in a text box.
The maps are also diplaye in about the same ored as they appear left to right in the data tables.
You can also click on the minimaps and open a big clearly readable view of each map in seperate window so that you can resize the windows and setup your own side-by-side comparisons.
Just like playing the game, the minimap index is only designed to be a step in the process of greater enlightenment and enjoyment.
First, I have to add my congratulations to many others here: The QSC Results and other GOTM information displays put together by the staff and volunteers are just AWESOME!! 
I met the Egyptians by 1000 BC, but the only Tech I had to trade was Writing, and I decided to delay them getting galleys. I asked for equivalent points (I'll have to check whether I got them) for the Techs I could have traded for; I certainly got them for free later when I started dismantling the Egyptian 'regime'.
I made choices early on that affected my QSC score negatively; I had my reasons, and I still played my game, and at no time did I not feel I was in total control of the outcome (except for that loud ticking sound I heard as March 31st approached.) I ended up in 61st place (down considerably from an earlier top 10 score); in part I attribute this to the general improvement of the typical QSC participant, which is evidence that the QSC effort is successful in improving the average player's skills.
I met the Egyptians by 1000 BC, but the only Tech I had to trade was Writing, and I decided to delay them getting galleys. I asked for equivalent points (I'll have to check whether I got them) for the Techs I could have traded for; I certainly got them for free later when I started dismantling the Egyptian 'regime'.
I made choices early on that affected my QSC score negatively; I had my reasons, and I still played my game, and at no time did I not feel I was in total control of the outcome (except for that loud ticking sound I heard as March 31st approached.) I ended up in 61st place (down considerably from an earlier top 10 score); in part I attribute this to the general improvement of the typical QSC participant, which is evidence that the QSC effort is successful in improving the average player's skills.
MadScot
Brandy's back!
Just like to add my thanks to cracker et al for the results data, which I shall have plenty of opportunity to study, for the same reason I suspect I won't be submitting this month - cursed civ disc
RufRydyr
QSC Map Maker
Considering that it's never been done before, I think they came out pretty good. If you look close enough, you'll also see some mistakes. Some of the city names are cut off.
The players' names where in a size 72 font, but when resized to 600 and 250 pixels wide they do get pretty small. I'll probably try to make them bigger for QSC18. Bear in mind that there are size and bandwith issues to consider. In Paint Shop Pro each map started out at 50-100 Megabytes! In fact the most time consuming part is waiting for my computer to process. Even though I have a pretty good computer, there is the wait time to open 88 games individually, the wait for the merge layers function, waiting for pics to be saved in PSP, etc.
I'm currently rushing through GOTM18 so I can start work on the QSC18 maps on the 20th or so. If time permits between the two I MIGHT do another run of JPEGs that are larger, zip them, and place them somewhere for download. This is also dependent on my harddrive not running out of space!
BTW, Cracker mentioned the return of the minimaps. It was completely my fault that there were none for QSC16. I had agreed to do it, but didn't finish by the deadline.
These gorgeous maps and the concept behind them sprung from the genius mind of Cracker. I just did some grunt work. I feel that in the future they are just going to get better just as the games keep getting better and more interesting.
BTW, they are time consuming. If there is a player that has PTW and Paint Shop Pro that is interested in assisting with these maps, please e-mail me. It's really fun, plus you get to see all the QSC games before anyone else. The only other requirement besides PTW and PSP is that you've finished with the current game and I suppose a cable modem/dsl is just about required.
hotrod0823
Deity
I see the results and I still think that I made the correct move in founding on the Starting location. Carthage was settup as a settler factory and I forget the name of the city that actually had the Floodplain wheat but all that city built was workers. My biggest headache was the fog. I lost 2 galleys, 2 warriors and a settler.
Had my settler survived I may have been in the top ten eventhough I decided to settle on the start. Crackers point about using the strength of each city to its fullest.
Had my settler survived I may have been in the top ten eventhough I decided to settle on the start. Crackers point about using the strength of each city to its fullest.
Singularity
Infinite Density
Wouldn't a program like Irfanview do the trick? I'm a bit lagged with RL this month, but would be happy to contribute next month.
RufRydyr
QSC Map Maker
I have that and it's cool, but taking screenshots is the easy part. I was hoping somebody with PSP would want to take a bunch of screenshots, align them in PSP, (and maybe add the pretty red and blue spheres over the cities,) and then e-mail the .psp files to me to finish stuff that would take a while to explain like masks and cropping every map down to the same size. Its a great oppurtunity for me to teach someone what Cracker taught me about layers and I've already thought of many other things I can do with layers outside of civing. It's a great skill set to have.
planetfall
Emperor
One part of QSC games is driving me crazy. Ok maybe not driving me crazy,but is very irritating.
What would you recommend reading to help with my QSC games?
Current annoying problems:
1. only building 6 cities in first 80 turns, 1000bc.
2. low number of citizens in empire.
I seem to be having troubles with:
1. getting cities with 5 extra foods,
2. growing about 5 citizens in early game
3. timing city growth vs popping settlers.
Thanks for your suggestions.
-- PF
What would you recommend reading to help with my QSC games?
Current annoying problems:
1. only building 6 cities in first 80 turns, 1000bc.
2. low number of citizens in empire.
I seem to be having troubles with:
1. getting cities with 5 extra foods,
2. growing about 5 citizens in early game
3. timing city growth vs popping settlers.
Thanks for your suggestions.
-- PF
TedJackson
Cunning old Celt
You might want to start with these two (both from the War academy):
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_deity_settlers.shtml
http://www.civfanatics.com/doc/civ3/cracker/civ3_starts/
Reading (& re-reading these) took me from 40th last month to 15th this month.
regards
Ted
Ribannah
Fighter Druid
So did I. It depends on your strategy, you could even win the game with only a single city (the One City Challenge).
Planetfall, how many Workers did you have? Someone has to perform those irrigation tasks! And if they build some roads before your next Settler is complete, you can start the new city much faster.
To time the city growth requires you to do some micro-management. Before ending a turn, go through all your city screens and adjust the tiles worked so that you get the most food / shields / commerce. Of these, making food the top priority is usually a good idea in the early game.
Edit: I just had a look at your minimap. Why did you found your capital on a bonus grassland? You also have an improductive city in the middle of the large jungle. And it seems you had your workers clear a jungle tile (long and hard labor!) before improving the easier land.
As in any game of strategy, if you want to improve you have to ask yourself: "Why would I do that?" at every single decision.
jeffelammar
Space for rent
Quick question for some of you.
Several of you moved the settler south, and the worker se onto the BG on the first turn.
I saw that in alexman's case it was pure luck. For the rest of you, I would really like to know the reasoning that caused you to move south without first scouting the mountain with your worker.
TIA
Several of you moved the settler south, and the worker se onto the BG on the first turn.
I saw that in alexman's case it was pure luck. For the rest of you, I would really like to know the reasoning that caused you to move south without first scouting the mountain with your worker.
TIA
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
Many players did move the worker onto the mountain first. I did also. In the pre-game discussions there was talk about moving the settler onto the jungle, because 1.) building the city automatically clears the jungle and 2.) you are still on the river.
Yndy made the choice he was going to go onto the jungle even before he loaded up the game, and in this case that gamble did pay off for him as he saved 1 worker turn. In the pre-game discussions we weren't sure if the jungle was still on a river or not, but when you load up the save we were able to check that. It is possible others took the same gamble as Yndy due to his reasonings stated in the pre-game discussion. Many were intrigued by the 'auto-clearing' of the jungle.
Yndy made the choice he was going to go onto the jungle even before he loaded up the game, and in this case that gamble did pay off for him as he saved 1 worker turn. In the pre-game discussions we weren't sure if the jungle was still on a river or not, but when you load up the save we were able to check that. It is possible others took the same gamble as Yndy due to his reasonings stated in the pre-game discussion. Many were intrigued by the 'auto-clearing' of the jungle.
Xevious
1 Solvalou left
Ruf, I sent you a pm yesterday regarding helping out with PSP. I am pretty good with PSP and can not only composite images but also size and align them with other images. I posted a couple pics in the GOTM18 pregame thread that I aligned to get the same view pre and post fog. Anyway, give me a PM if you want my help.
SirPleb
Shaken, not stirred.
I don't know if this is more detailed than you want but for GOTM17, my timeline notes include a description of why I made each move. (As well as detailing each move.) So if you want that level of detail, you could download the timeline notes, then recreate my moves to 1000BC and see why each one was made...
I'll second that, what's more, I highly recommend it! Very nice write-up SirPleb A timeline is that much more readable when some accompanying thoughts are added to the technical details, but yours is even more than that. Thanks :worshp:
I can also recommend Ribannah's, very detailed, even after 1000BC...
A timeline is that much more readable when some accompanying thoughts are added to the technical details, but yours is even more than that. Thanks :worshp: I can also recommend Ribannah's, very detailed, even after 1000BC...
zagnut
Monarch
The effort you went to in order to produce your detailed timeline is awesome. I thank you.
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