Qsc19-Ottomans Results & Strategy Discussion

[Renata]

Originally posted by Txurce
Thanks very much, guys. What I hadn't figured out was the number of citizens required in the "sweet spot." You both seem to indicate that it's in the 4-6 range, depending on whether I just built or am about to build a settler. I've always been impatient, and start building settlers before I grow big enough to optimize.

Sometimes it has to be 5/7 to get enough shields, especially if your bonus food tile is a flood-plain wheat, which produces none, or if you're lacking in 2-food/2-shields tiles (mined bonus grasslands, usually). 4/6 is usually better if you can manage it, since it'll take less of the lux slider to keep happy. If you have enough happy for 5/7, though, that's great due to the higher commerce you'll have.

Renata

 

[MadScot]

If it's 5/7, don't you have to be sure to build the settler at the 6-7 expansion, or risk losing stored food in granary when you build the settler? (I always seem to end up at 4/6 in my games)

Also, if the city can't manage it at the 5/7 route due to shield shortfall, it'll take longer to set up as you need a larger pop AND the granary will be more of a pain to build. It might be the best option you have, but hopefully there's a city site on the other side of that bonus food that works better.

 

[Renata]

Originally posted by MadScot
If it's 5/7, don't you have to be sure to build the settler at the 6-7 expansion, or risk losing stored food in granary when you build the settler? (I always seem to end up at 4/6 in my games)

Also, if the city can't manage it at the 5/7 route due to shield shortfall, it'll take longer to set up as you need a larger pop AND the granary will be more of a pain to build. It might be the best option you have, but hopefully there's a city site on the other side of that bonus food that works better.

Yes, the settler has to come out on the same turn as growth to size 7, or the stored food would be lost.

The absolute dead minimum of shields you can get by with for a 4-turn settler factory is six for the first two turns and seven for the last two, provided you also have a 2-shield tile such as a forest or a mined plains for the governer to assign the new citizen to at each growth (6+6(+2)+7+7(+2) = 30). A funny thing about this pattern is that for the second growth the city will actually say 1 turn left for growth and 2 to build the settler, but you still get the settler the next turn.

In any rate, I've seen this pattern a lot lately looking for flood-plain starts to practice for this month's game. With a flood-plain wheat providing the food, you need at least two bonus-grass type tiles in the radius to get to six shields at size 4. If you don't have that, you need to go up a size to 5/7. I usually don't have trouble building the granary in such situations: either I pop-rush 20 shields of it [doesn't help the lux slider, granted!] or I chop a forest or two.

Renata

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Renata
The absolute dead minimum of shields you can get by with for a 4-turn settler factory is six for the first two turns and seven for the last two, provided you also have a 2-shield tile such as a forest or a mined plains for the governer to assign the new citizen to at each growth (6+6(+2)+7+7(+2) = 30).

You actually only need 25 shields, not 26. You get +2 on the turn that your city grows from size 5 to size 6, and +3 on the turn that it grows from size 6 to size 7. (Because the city center produces 2 shields at size 7, as long as it's built on a terrain that normally produces at least one shield.)

Don't forget to adjust down for corruption, though, if it's not your capital. It's possible that some of the +2 or +3 shields can be taken away by corruption.

Another gotcha: your city has to be able to actually grow to size 7! It doesn't work if you don't have fresh water or an aqueduct, because the city can't expand to size 7 and use up the food and generate the extra shields.

 

[Renata]

Ooh, good points, thanks! (Of course if you're working a flood-plain wheat you're probably on a river, though. )

Renata

 

[Yndy]

Originally posted by Renata
Yes, the settler has to come out on the same turn as growth to size 7, or the stored food would be lost.

If the surrounding tiles are good you could do something with 7+ also. I was late in building this settler and my town grew to size 7. I rearranged the tiles and got the settler to come out in 3 turns with +4 food in turn one. In turn two I rearranged the tiles and got the settler to be ready in one turn with food -3. This way I only lost one food in the decrease.

 

[el_kalkylus]

What a surprise, I made it to 17 in the group that

"had moderately strong population growth but may have failed to distinguish themselves with focusing the production and commerce benefits of that population in tandem with other trading, research, and military growth opportunities."

 

[Dianthus]

Has anyone noticed the way naming of towns/cities affects the QSC? Most participants didn't bother renaming, but the following did :

Aeson (Orange Sodia, Soda River, Carbinated River, Carbonated Fork, Soda Bay, Soda Lake, Orange Coast, Soda Silks, Carbonated Springs, Orange Dairy, Soda Stables, Orange Frosty, Orange Silk Grove, Soda Delta, Orange Gem Lake)
Col (Colstantinople, 3*Sogut, 2*Iznik, Colborough)
Creepster (Can't be bothered to list them, but all 20 settled contain creepster in their name)
Deep Thought (Rhi'Anon, Madrigal, Brayle, Stoneheim, Otter Ferry, Leix, Shoal, Tyr, Gonen)
RufRydyr (1st of 5 named RufRydyrville, which was captured by the Celts in 2510BC)
whb (Sogood, Southriver Hill, Spicetown, Silkylake, Westriver Hill, Northshore, Eastshore)

So, the moral of the story, if you want it easy just name your towns after Orange Soda products or Creepster. If you want a challenge then name your first town RufRydyrville .

 

[jeffelammar]

Just a note: I was not trying to question the group I was put in. When I compare stats, I knew I was on that border. My point was that when I was playing, I thought I was being a warmonger. It's amazing how your impression of a game can be very different from the reality when you step back and look at it with your 20/20 hindsight.

Also, the main reason that I didn't have more of a swordsman blitz is that I noticed that Brennus had no Iron, and I wanted to take him down before he found some. Otherwise I probably would have timed it in the forementioned 800-700 BC range.

I do have to say that I am always impressed with people who get wonders in the QSC timeframe. I still have to spend most of my effort expanding, and seem to not get to wonders till 600 BC. Guess I still have a lot to learn.

 

[Greebley]

On having a 4 turn settler factory:

Is there another requirement that it is on a river or has an aquaduct?

I ran into a situation where I would end up size 4 with a full food box. So without the aquaduct you hit size 6/max food and then end up size 4/max food. Thus it takes an extra turn (or you need to do it with 1 size 4 turn, 2 size 5 turns and a size 6 turn).

Or at least that was my guess. Am I right?

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Also for the QSC it has been mentioned that you can raise your happiness at the end.

Does this also mean you can do things on the last turn to raise score that you don't do in your full GOTM. For example, I could buy some techs and improve my score, while in the GOTM, I end up waiting a few turns for a tech to finish to get a better deal.

It seems squirrely, but then again if QSC score is what you CAN do by 1000 BC(as compared to did do in the full game), then it would make sense.

I am assuming here that you are loading the QSC game up (which is a end of turn save for year 1000 bc from the full game) before submitting it, and that you have played your GOTM well past the QSC date, otherwise the trade itself could be a spoiler for the GOTM.

Sometimes there is the silly temptation to spend my gpt for a tech or two in 1000 BC simply to better the QSC score. If the above was allowed, I might consider doing it, so as to get both the better GOTM as well as satisfying the urge to "do well" in the QSC.

An extreme case would be that I can only buy an exclusive tech if I trade away communications. For the GOTM, the lack of communication may be more valuable, but in QSC I don't care past turn 1000 BC so I net 6-7 techs that never happened (or happened later) in the full game.

 

[cracker]

Greebley,

Your observations about ways to implement improvements in you QSC score by using the 1000bc cut off date are really quite true, but in the bigger picture, these changes will not make you the overal winner and probably will not change which strategic group you fall into.

If we look at the happiness scoring, we can see that this scoring change is chosen as a method to alert players to the potential value of making wise tradeoffs in the balance of technology research, cash, entertainment, and specialist assignment that get combined with strategic road connections to cities and luxury resources.

In the analysis of past game performance, we determined that we needed to increase the relative emphasis on early population growth, military unit experience, and technology trading leverage. Instead of increasing the per citizen points by 15% from 20 to 23-25 to implement this emphasis shift, the extra points where placed in the happiness balance as a means of drawing attention to and recognizing performance capacity in this area. Do not focus on the individual game implementation of this coice in your one game but look across the 100 different data results to see that very few players were able to achieve 100% happiness and max score even though that might be your first guess.

Second, it would be possible to time last turn GPT and contact swap trades to maximize the last minute tech gain. This issue plus the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issues would not be resolved by changing the cutoff date of implementing a more complex scoring system in these areas. We continue to review these results on an ongoing basis, but so far we see that players may use these leverage tricks to move up by 3 to 5 places in the mid to lower range without substantially winning themselves an more glorious result in the QSC or GOTM. Just the fact that players (including yourself) can recognize and evaluate these tradeoffs is a major, major accomplishment that you should recognize and be proud of. Most players of the Civ3 game never get to where they can recognize these issues and then use the benefits to gain more enjoyment out of the playing experiences.

Test your assumptions in some of your recent games and see what it buys you in QSC score. Download 1 or two of the games in the number 5 throug 15 positions and see if you can do anything in the last possible turn to increase their QSC score and if these changes improve the comparative positions of the games by more than just one step on the scale.

 

[LKendter]

Originally posted by cracker
Second, it would be possible to time last turn GPT and contact swap trades to maximize the last minute tech gain. This issue plus the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issues would not be resolved by changing the cutoff date of implementing a more complex scoring system in these areas. We continue to review these results on an ongoing basis, but so far we see that players may use these leverage tricks to move up by 3 to 5 places in the mid to lower range without substantially winning themselves an more glorious result in the QSC or GOTM.

I am glad that you are aware of the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issue. Not get credit for the second tech block can be put you back a lot in the QSC, but have very little impact on the end game.

 

[denyd]

When mentioning the short term bumps to increase your QSC score, I thought of a couple of nights ago when I reached 1000BC in the current GOTM. I was tempted to change the slider to max lux to get as many happy faces as possible, save the game, change the slider back to where I had it (1 sci, 9 tax, 0 lux) and keep on going. Quite an artifical change just to get a better QSC score. I decided that I'd rather have a true evaluation of my QSC than an inflated one based on an in-turn adjustment.

It would be nice to have a better method of your empires state of happiness that was based more on long term contentment rather than a one time reward.




conquest

 

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by denyd

It would be nice to have a better method of your empires state of happiness that was based more on long term contentment rather than a one time reward.

I think the original intent of giving points for happy people was to encourage people to quickly hook up their luxuries. Because of the worker turns involved in hooking up luxuries, you could spend those worker turns mining or something that may have a stronger effect on your QSC scores. So, if all your cities were at low population sizes and you had military police to keep people content, a person holding off on hooking up the luxuries could do better than someone who spent the time hooking up the luxuries.

Another motive was to show to some players how powerful the luxury slider can be in some situations, and if used properly.

I still think you should get points for how many happy/content people you have when luxury is set to 0%, but that gives an edge to ICS.

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by LKendter




I am glad that you are aware of the 1 turn move+ 2x40 turn research issue. Not get credit for the second tech block can be put you back a lot in the QSC, but have very little impact on the end game.

I fully agree!


Edited out confusing comments....

 

[BillChin]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy

I still think you should get points for how many happy/content people you have when luxury is set to 0%, but that gives an edge to ICS.

What I lobby for is for Gold per turn after corruption to be included in the formula. Unfortunately this also favors ICS (what doesn't). GPT in the formula closes two loopholes: boosting the lux rate purely to get happy citizens for the submission turn, and making GPT deals to buy tech, both boosting score in the short term but having zero impact on the long term game.

I am curious to see if the recently adjusted QSC scores have a greater correlation with end of game score than the old QSC scoring. The old QSC scores did not have much relevance to end of game score, and in my opinion encouraged poor strategic decisions with its heavy emphasis on tech. Techs only get cheaper as time goes by, and if are not going to be used immediately to upgrade units, construct buildings (markets, courthouses, libraries) or change governments, they are often of little use to acquire early unless a player is going for tech based win such as a Diplomatic or Space victory.
+ Bill

 

[hotrod0823]

As far as the correlation it is a toughie. My QSC was strong, despite my temples, and yet my final GOTM score was only at 62 or so. The GOTM final scores rely heavily on territory and population, tech and improvements mean nothing. If you have a large civ with large population you score well. The Highest scores in 19 were domination/conquest games that were completed quickly and didn't need to even research beyond Military Tradition. The Sipahi were huge for gaining territory and those of us who had only smallish territory but excellent tech positions (space and diplo victories) don't score as well.

A strong tech position in the QSC allows any victory condition but is most beneficial for a space win, IIRC that was the drive of the original QSC. You can and most do, overcome a weak QSC and get great GOTM scores if you push to the domination limit quick and win or push to the limit and sit back and wait for the launch.

The correlation you are looking for is not going to be there. QSC is an indicator of relative strength of the civ. not the end game score.

 

[samildanach]

As far as the ottoman QSC is concerned the 1 move 2*40 research issue doesnt really come into play versus founding at the start position. As the second tier techs which are the normal target for the min research gambit ( literature and polytheism) are inexpensive on this map size 250 and 300 beakers respectively. Given the speed at which most of the players on this board devolope their empires this would require only minimal intervention with the research slider in order to produce the 7-8 beakers per turn required to recover from moving from the start position. Again the GoTM 20 map is of standard size and is therefore tech friendly and moving from the start position shouldnt pose problems as far as the QSC is concerned it just means having to be aware that you will have to intervene at some stage to recover the lost turn.
As far as huge maps on a high level are concerned the 1move 2*40 research issue would be more of a problem for the QSC. As it may require heavy use of the research slider to recover the lost turn and may interfere with the use of the luxury slider during the expansion phase.