SGOTM4 A New Beginning - Maintenance Thread

[klarius]

Actually, I have both sets of dates - they are generated automatically when I upload a start to the server. I did consider publishing the new ones, but decided against it since having two sets of dates, however carefully explained and separated would lead to confusion and acrimony. After last month I have gone for simplicity. You will have to content yourself with my assurance that the differences do not materially affect the Gold Laurel competition, and since everyone is playing the variant, will not affect the Green Laurel competition either.

FWIW, apart from SGOTM1, the Jason "values" for the SG games have all been different to a minor extent from the original GOTMs, and I decided from the beginning to stick with the original.

In the future, where old maps are "revisited" it would of course be possible to play to the new parameters which take account of any changes I make. I would invite discussion of this.

The Jason values used in the submission system differ a lot from what is published in the calculator.
Using the values I found from teams that already submitted, I guestimate 40 turns difference for conquest and 15 turns difference for 20k.
While these values seem more realistic for the easy (due to differential naval movement) map, it would be nice to know such things in advance.

 

[mad-bax]

I don't disagree klarius. SGOTM has evolved somewhat from the friendly off the cuff experiment it was not too long ago, and it now comes under the same sort of scrutiny as GOTM. Soon, I will begin to offer custom maps for SGOTM. At that time of course, all of the correct game and Jason parameters will be released with the game.

In a similar vein... this will coincide with a migration to a single fixed Mod, which will be based on the GOTM22/23 mod. There will be a few differences, but they will be discussed in a seperate thread at the appropriate time.

 

[AlanH]

Note that we don't see the Jason parameters for other competition games ahead of time. They are deliberately suppressed as they divulge information about the map.

 

[mad-bax]

Yes, I should have made that clear. What I meant was that there would only be one set of Jason parameters which would be calculated in the normal way. Teams will not know the best dates up front of course.

 

[klarius]

That's fine for GOTM, where the best dates have negligible influence on the competition.
But with the SGOTM system of scoring relative to best date, I think one should give the information.

 

[mad-bax]

klarius: Just to put this to bed forever more...

In future, SGOTM games will be new maps that have not been played before. Also the sponsored variant will always specify a single victory condition.

As far as possible, the victory conditions and variants will be mixed up so that builders and warmongers alike will have an equal opportunity to shine.

I have been a little coy about stating this outright in this manner, because it was my hope that the first custom map would coincide with a migration to a "fixed" "set-in-stone" mod for SGOTM. Not wishing to start another storm of protest, I hasten to add that this mod will not have much in it that you have not seen before in GOTM, it's just that every GOTM has a slightly different ruleset and I need to build one with all the Civs, all the correct upgrade paths, all the correct trade rates etc. etc ad nauseum, and this takes some time.

FWIW, this process is fairly well advanced, and I will be opening a discussion thread shortly so that you can all decide what you want in it, and what you don't. I may even start a non-competetive SG with both versions of the mods so that they can be play-tested by people more competent than I. Interested?

 

[mad-bax]

I have decided to delay the announcement for SGOTM5 by a few days. There are still too many teams that have not finished, and rather then push people, it would be better to wait.

I hope this doesn't inconvenience people too much.

 

[bed_head7]

It is a little late to be reporting this, and probably was already discussed at one point or another somewhere, but Babylon was listed as having Scientific and Religious as its traits, but did not recieve a free tech upon entering the Modern Ages. If this was already mentioned, feel free to smack me upside the head.

 

[mad-bax]

There were a lot of scientific civs in the game. I did not change any of the traits from the original. Babylons traits were changed by either cracker or ainwood in order to "tweak" the way the game played. Ainwoods CivAssist program will correctly identify the traits of a civ.

You shouldn't take anything for granted in GOTM

 

[bed_head7]

Okay. I thought that since the game had its own civolopedia identifying the Babylonians as Scientific that the traits would match up, but I guess that wasn't the case.

 

[tao]

The "problem" with scientific civs is, that they skew the game between those playing 1.29 and those playing PtW. In 1.29, the new age free techs are in 95+% monotheism, nationalism, and rocketry. In PtW, the probabilities are much more evenly spread and you can get several techs by donating a number of scientific civs into each new age. This usually is a great advantage, at least for strong players.

Thus IIRC in gotm the scientific trait was mostly removed, except for the humans.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Is the upload page working properly? I posted a final game, but it is showing that Team Bugsy is still in 1880 AD.

 

[klarius]

Is the upload page working properly? I posted a final game, but it is showing that Team Bugsy is still in 1880 AD.

The final scores are not showing for any team.

In order to limit spoiler information on this page for games in progress, team progress information does not include the final result scores and victory conditions until the game is declared finished.

 

[mad-bax]

I will be closing SGOTM4 shortly, and will post the results thread probably Friday.
At the moment I am trying to cope with bug fixing the mess I made of SGOTM5.