Sept 27 Update

[Bremp]

Hi all,

I decide to play a chieftain game too
I'm still in 10AD, but I think I'm doing well.

Here is a save for those interested:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/Bremp_America_10ad.sav

It was my best start. In 1000BC I had 33 cities and 7 settlers and by 10AD I was already connecting my 6th luxury

 

[Darkness]

Great update Aeson! 4 new number one scores. That must be a first for a single update...
Congrats to everyone who made it to the HoF!

 

[superslug]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
PS: I concur with CB that the Chieftain level bring new challenge. There is very little help from the AIs and we have to do virtually all the work. Can't really focus on both research and expansion at the same time. At the Deity level, we can just simply focus on expansion and let the AIs do most research for us. Can't really do that at the Chieftain level.

While I agreed with CB that Chieftain has the 'disadvantage' of the AI prepping tiles for us and providing us workers and techs, there are extreme advantages. For starters, you should never get beat to most Wonders.

Also, I find the Chieftain ancient age to be the easiest. With a large enough pangaea and goody huts, even a nonexpansionist Civ can dump out 10 warriors, a Settler and still beat everyone to the Pyramids. Send those 10 warriors out in all directions, raid the huts and give away anything you learn to the AI as soon as you know it. That way, if they hit a hut, they'll get a tech I don't know and I can trade with them.

With all due respect to my fellow players, I have to agree with you Aeson. My specific thinking is this: Anyone who places in the top ten on Emperor or Deity should have any scores they have on Chieftain/Warlord removed. However, we have an XP coming out in less than a month that adds two new difficulty levels. I don't know how fast Conquests will be legal for the HOF, but whenever it's ruled acceptable or incorporated somehow, it will change things...

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by superslug
While I agreed with CB that Chieftain has the 'disadvantage' of the AI prepping tiles for us and providing us workers and techs, there are extreme advantages. For starters, you should never get beat to most Wonders.

At the Deity level, we won't be building any Great Wonders ourselves anyway and we have the AI to help us building Great Wonders (most of us, just wait for them to build it then take it away from them). Therefore, we will be wasting extra time building Great Wonders at the chieftain level. And if we spend a lot of time building Great Wonders, that would also slow down our expansion too. So basically at the Chieftain level, we now have a lot of research to do, Wonders to build, etc on top of the normal workload. The only advantage at the Chieftain is that we don't have to fight any war (sure there will be war, but it's really nothing; therefore, it's like no war at all).

With a large enough pangaea and goody huts, even a nonexpansionist Civ can dump out 10 warriors, a Settler and still beat everyone to the Pyramids. Send those 10 warriors out in all directions, raid the huts and give away anything you learn to the AI as soon as you know it. That way, if they hit a hut, they'll get a tech I don't know and I can trade with them.

True, we will find a lot of techs, warriors, gold, and map and less barbs at the Chieftain level, but the most we can get is the full ancient tech tree but no more. And the most we can get is 1 free settler because once we have more cities than the AIs, there won't be any chance for any more free settler from the hut (I think).

With all due respect to my fellow players, I have to agree with you Aeson. My specific thinking is this: Anyone who places in the top ten on Emperor or Deity should have any scores they have on Chieftain/Warlord removed. However, we have an XP coming out in less than a month that adds two new difficulty levels. I don't know how fast Conquests will be legal for the HOF, but whenever it's ruled acceptable or incorporated somehow, it will change things...

I do not disagree with you and Aeson on that, but I think some chieftain players may be sad. Basically, the only reason they were on the list is because the top dogs aren't allowed to be in. Basically, someone may take it as "the only reason that I'm #1 is because the top players aren't allowed". Anyway, no objection here.

 

[superslug]

Regarding the production issues, yes we do have to build Wonders ourselves at Chieftain. However, we also have to build significantly less military units, which frees up cities for producing Settlers and Wonders both. There's a specific list of very few Wonders that I build anyway, so in my case I feel the extra Settlers don't hamper my expansion.

I've heard that too, about the cap on free settlers from huts, although I disagree about the free techs capping with the Ancient Age. As you did recently, you can get lucky trading with the Scientific civs at the beginning of the Middle.

I think some chieftain players may be sad. Basically, the only reason they were on the list is because the top dogs aren't allowed to be in. Basically, someone may take it as "the only reason that I'm #1 is because the top players aren't allowed".

Take what I originally posted with some grain of salt, my current game is on Chieftain and will be my only current entry on the HOF. I mean no disrespect to Chieftain level HOF attempters, because I don't want to discourage anyone from joining into this ever lively area of CFC. As a matter of fact, the reason I'd like to keep top dogs off of Chieftain is so that we can perhaps use it as a 'gateway' level to encourage more participation towards higher levels.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by superslug
I've heard that too, about the cap on free settlers from huts, although I disagree about the free techs capping with the Ancient Age. As you did recently, you can get lucky trading with the Scientific civs at the beginning of the Middle.

No, with PTW version 1.21 or later, the free tech for the scientific civ (when they enter the new age) is random. Therefore, different scientific civ may get different free tech. This is the same as in any level of PTW v1.21 or later.

 

[superslug]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Before it was randomized, you couldn't get lucky by having three civs get different free techs. Sometimes even still you don't get lucky because two civs might both get the same one as their freebie.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by superslug
Yeah, that's what I meant. Before it was randomized, you couldn't get lucky by having three civs get different free techs. Sometimes even still you don't get lucky because two civs might both get the same one as their freebie.

I think you may be on to something here. Now that you mention it, in all my previous Chieftain attempt with PTW 1.21, the first 3 scientific AIs that entered the new age had always ended up with 3 different techs. Now, I begin to think that may be the free techs at the Chieftain level may be the random of the undiscover tech. For example,

_The first scientific Civ entered the industrial age - true random for its free tech.

_The second scientific Civ entered the industrial age - true random between the two undiscover tech for its free tech.

_The third scientific Civ entered the industrial age - it will surely get the last one on the list (no more random).

Anyway, unless someone have seen something different at the Chieftain level, that would be my assumption for now.

 

[Takeo]

Originally posted by Aeson
The old rule was that a player could have 2 games listed at a given difficulty. If we're going to change the rule, I'd be more inclined to limit the cross difficulty submissions. I'd rather see a couple games for a player in 'their difficulty' than to see one from each of the same players in each difficulty.

No offense intended, I know that dropping down difficulty levels can be fun, and gives a different feel to the gameplay, but players who can handle Deity don't really deserve recognition on the HOF for games they play on Chieftain... anything that they accomplish there is just expected. If the same list of players is going to be on each difficulty level, we might as well just get rid of the difficulty categories altogether. If you want to play down a few levels and have some fun, the stories of your games are still welcome of course. There isn't any rule against submitting such games at this point either, but there probably will be something of the sort within the next few months.

Discussion on what the rule should be is definitely welcome.

--------------------

Any player who wants one of their games de-listed can certainly request it. Moonsinger, I wasn't sure if you wanted the game taken off because of the rule you thought was in effect, or just on general principles, so left it on.

having 1 submission per difficulty level would be fine with me. i don't know about limiting someone to certain levels. i started out on chieftain, then warlord and now i'm working on a regent attempt. months ago when i started attempts my goal was to get in on each level. i would dislike being restricted from doing this. maybe we could make it where you could only 'play down' one level below your highest submission. if you were playing a level you already had a submission on and beat your old score, then you would replace it with your new one. another way to get from lists being loaded with a lot of the same players is to expand the lists. fastest finish lists were going to have many different categories, but the 'milking' list was going to stay the same. i don't think that is fair. fastest finish lists were being expanded by all the different victory types. maybe the milking list could be expanded to have a list for every map size for every difficulty level. this would give a lot more room for more players to submit and i would love to milk out a tiny map. i know there is a problem with room on the website, so maybe only the top 3 to 5 could be downloadable. the rest would just be listed there. or, anyone that submitted, but did not make it into the top 5, could be put in a special spotlight section for that 2 weeks. you could download their games during that time, then the next update would wipe that area clean and add in any new ones. each section could also list top 20 instead of just 10.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I think people should only have 1 submission per category. It allows more people the chance to at least make it on the list instead of for example, 5 people hogging the top 10 spots.

My opinion is that people should be able to play whatever level they want and be on as many lists as they want (but only once per list).

I may even stoop to regent level and try to re-take my position there, despite the fact I'm currently working on a 'Way Beyond Sid' game where I set the AI cost factor to 1.

Is there anyway to verify what version a game was played with? My regent score seems like it was so long ago that I'm not sure of what patch I was using then. What versions are you accepting?

I think that game was before I even used granaries much (but did put a high priority on getting the pyramids), and I'm sure I used the governor for 95%+ of the game, so my score was certainly beatable as Ozymandius showed us.

 

[SirPleb]

Congratulations to all the new HOF entries, especially the new high scores. It is good to see the bar getting set higher.

Markstar, well done! It is time we had some action there, now there's a new goal to shoot for

 

[Markstar]

Originally posted by superslug Congratulations, Markstar. You barely squeeked by, but you got top dog honors now!

Thank you all!!! Yeah, it was VERY close and I was pretty scared for quite a while after I checked the map and discovered that it was considerable smaller than SirPleb's map. At times I had about 2700 points more than SirPleb, but then I reached the domination limit...

Anyways, four months works finally payed off, too bad I won't have the time to improve my score (even though my girlfriend even encouraged me to do so :love2: ), but I already lost one semester at my university because of it.

Anyways, this was only possible because of all you guys at Civfanatics who helped me improve my gameplay so thanks to all of those who share their insights with others (especially SirPleb).

 

[zerksees]

I agree that HOF entries should be limited to one score per person per category. I thought this was in the rules at one point.

I am very interested in making the HOF at emperor level, but if you allow multiple scores per person I think that fairly soon I will probably need 20,000+ points just to make it in. I am pretty sure I can score 12-15,000 and get in. Over 20,000 and I lose interest in the HOF (at my current skill level), and start working on just plain winning at deity.

I think the point of the HOF is to compare everyone’s best effort for each difficulty, not 2 or 3 best efforts from the same person.

I also think that one score per person per difficulty level is acceptable. However, if you want to avoid having the same person in all 5 lists, you might consider limiting a person to 2 or 3 HOF entries at difficulty levels of their choosing.

Rather than add 11-20 for the same categories, perhaps we should consider taking map size into account? Put large and huge in a category, and the rest in a second category. I don’t know if this would make too much work for Aeson.

Whatever you decide, please put the ruling on the submission page – thanks.