- Joined
- Aug 15, 2001
- Messages
- 20,063
Sorry to hear that, but I know I can't change your mind.
They HAVE finally changed the scoring to discouraging milking. That adjusted further to reduce milked wins.
In the scoring area they finally are listening.
SP6 - Deity Training
- Thread starter Sirp
- Start date
Sorry to hear that, but I know I can't change your mind.
They HAVE finally changed the scoring to discouraging milking. That adjusted further to reduce milked wins.
In the scoring area they finally are listening.
You guys (JMB and Lee) got me to thinking about it, so I just spent an hour looking over the new GOTM.
Bah..........I still won't touch it for the following reasons.
ICS is allowed.
ROP Rape is allowed.
Ship hopping is allowed, though this is minor in my eyes compared to the first two.
Take the new Predator class for example. Do you really think you will stand a chance of having the fastest conquest finish if you don't utilize ROP Rape? No way.
You will have to use it to be competitive in the standings.
IMHO, cracker & company just don't get it. They fall all over themselves worrying about things like resource graphics, yet major things like ROP Rape are given a free pass.
(And with the addition of a Predator class, now it's actually encouraged.)
@JMB
If they ever implement standards of play as seen at RBE, I will consider it. Until then, I stand by my previous statement. So your right in the fact I should not have used the word never.
But frankly, I don't think I'll be eating crow anytime soon.
Oh, and you can 'stick your nose in' whenever you feel like it.
@Matt: Yeah I agree, they have improved some things, but they have left some major very insidious tactics allowed.
There are two further tactics that are commonly used there which are pretty insidious:
- mass upgrades of offensive units. Particularly warrior -> swordsman. Some players like SirPleb even intentionally delay acquisition of horseback riding just so they can build lots of chariots to upgrade to knights
- crippling the AI through buying lots of workers off them early on, and checking the diplomacy screen every turn to get to do this.
Personally I have no problem with ship chaining, as I think that ships move too slowly as-is, and setting up a ship chain is kinda ingenious. But everything else, I agree is insidious, and can understand anyone refusing to play because of it.
Certainly claims that the 'exploits issue is over' is untrue.
-Sirp.
There are two further tactics that are commonly used there which are pretty insidious:
- mass upgrades of offensive units. Particularly warrior -> swordsman. Some players like SirPleb even intentionally delay acquisition of horseback riding just so they can build lots of chariots to upgrade to knights
- crippling the AI through buying lots of workers off them early on, and checking the diplomacy screen every turn to get to do this.
Personally I have no problem with ship chaining, as I think that ships move too slowly as-is, and setting up a ship chain is kinda ingenious. But everything else, I agree is insidious, and can understand anyone refusing to play because of it.
Certainly claims that the 'exploits issue is over' is untrue.
-Sirp.
Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!! Go us! Just checking in from out of town to see how things went; will have to wait until Monday to download the save. I love that 1425 BC save; I have to admit I've seen much worse, hanging around these forums, though, even in games that were won. It is a heart-warming sight, though. 
@ Lee, JMB, etc: thanks for the congrats!
@ Sirp: thanks for everything - if it wasn't for your training games I might never have dared beyond Monarch!
@ my teammates: thanks for making up for all my silly moves!
And again, wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
Renata
@ Lee, JMB, etc: thanks for the congrats!
@ Sirp: thanks for everything - if it wasn't for your training games I might never have dared beyond Monarch!
@ my teammates: thanks for making up for all my silly moves!
And again, wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
Renata
serttech2003
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2003
- Messages
- 143
Great Game, I've been following to see your progress. One day I may actually win at deity.
Regarding GOMT:
I have just started playing, and I can agree with you on most of your complaints. However I don't really have a problem with massive upgrading, I think we all do it in our games, SirPleb just took it to an extreme, which I guess is the problem with all the exploits. Anything taken to an extreme will unbalance the game. I'm not sure I get the difference between upgrading and ship chaining. I don't think the ships were intended to work that may. I think my biggest complaint is that the ranking of players makes some of them carry everything to an extreme. I could never milk a game, I don't have the patience and it seems pointless to me. Oh well.
I am not trying to troll or start a fight with those better than I am, just adding my two cents. I have been checking out the RPB pages and am having trouble down loading the games. I am running XP and the folders always appear empty. Any ideas?
Regarding GOMT:
I have just started playing, and I can agree with you on most of your complaints. However I don't really have a problem with massive upgrading, I think we all do it in our games, SirPleb just took it to an extreme, which I guess is the problem with all the exploits. Anything taken to an extreme will unbalance the game. I'm not sure I get the difference between upgrading and ship chaining. I don't think the ships were intended to work that may. I think my biggest complaint is that the ranking of players makes some of them carry everything to an extreme. I could never milk a game, I don't have the patience and it seems pointless to me. Oh well.
I am not trying to troll or start a fight with those better than I am, just adding my two cents. I have been checking out the RPB pages and am having trouble down loading the games. I am running XP and the folders always appear empty. Any ideas?
@Renata: Oh yeah there is MUCH worse than that in other games that have been won. T-Hawk's Epic 26 and RBE2 come to mind.
@serttech: Don't worry, discussion is welcome. I already opened my big mouth and gate-crashed our victory party with GOTM discussion
Mass-upgrades is a big problem, however to be fair, it's something that's more Firaxis fault than the fault of the GOTM people, since there's little you can really do to regulate it.
Search is disabled at the moment, so I can't find it for you, but I opened up a thread on why the price of upgrades is too cheap. It's titled something like "Are upgrades too cheap?" and was posted in the Civ3 general discussions forum.
In brief Firaxis would solve 99+% of the problem simply by doubling the cost of upgrades.
This problem is more a 'culture' thing than anything else. GOTM has a culture that promotes mass upgrades and buying workers as often as possible. These strategies exploit game flaws, and would not be good strategies without such flaws. I detest the idea of having to partake in such strategies to be competitive.
I suspect that certain GOTM players may also engage in other strategies which they don't mention as they would almost certainly be labelled exploitive. (Or else everyone else would start doing them, and thus the person would lose their competitive advantage). An example of such a strategy, which did work on a previous version of the game, but might not work anymore, is to sell your map, move a galley one space, uncovering a few tiles, sell your map to everyone again for 1 gold, move your galley one more space, and sell your map yet again to everyone for 1 gold.
Do this every turn and you will be doubling your income. I haven't tried to see if this will still work, but I know it did on a previous version.
-Sirp.
@serttech: Don't worry, discussion is welcome. I already opened my big mouth and gate-crashed our victory party with GOTM discussion
Mass-upgrades is a big problem, however to be fair, it's something that's more Firaxis fault than the fault of the GOTM people, since there's little you can really do to regulate it.
Search is disabled at the moment, so I can't find it for you, but I opened up a thread on why the price of upgrades is too cheap. It's titled something like "Are upgrades too cheap?" and was posted in the Civ3 general discussions forum.
In brief Firaxis would solve 99+% of the problem simply by doubling the cost of upgrades.
This problem is more a 'culture' thing than anything else. GOTM has a culture that promotes mass upgrades and buying workers as often as possible. These strategies exploit game flaws, and would not be good strategies without such flaws. I detest the idea of having to partake in such strategies to be competitive.
I suspect that certain GOTM players may also engage in other strategies which they don't mention as they would almost certainly be labelled exploitive. (Or else everyone else would start doing them, and thus the person would lose their competitive advantage). An example of such a strategy, which did work on a previous version of the game, but might not work anymore, is to sell your map, move a galley one space, uncovering a few tiles, sell your map to everyone again for 1 gold, move your galley one more space, and sell your map yet again to everyone for 1 gold.
Do this every turn and you will be doubling your income. I haven't tried to see if this will still work, but I know it did on a previous version.
-Sirp.
I agree with you there, Sirp, although in LK38, I had this discussion with Sirian and he said he thought the updated map information of tile development was worth the 1gold. I tend to disagree since a human would never give you his entire income every turn for a map, like the AI often does.
Originally posted by Sirp
@serttech: Don't worry, discussion is welcome. I already opened my big mouth and gate-crashed our victory party with GOTM discussion
More my fault than yours Sirp.
Thanks everyone for all the congrats.
@serttech:
Can you be a little more specific about your downloading problem?
PM me with the details of what is going on, and I might be able to help you with it.
Griselda
Realms Beyond
Congratulations on your win! 
Serttech, I can think of two things that could be happening. First, some people have had trouble finding save files when using the built-in windows file extractor. That problem can be fixed by using winzip .
Also, I noticed that some of the older games' save files are no longer on the server. So, the save files themselves might not be available, unless by some chance the player happens to have the file somewhere.
-Griselda
Serttech, I can think of two things that could be happening. First, some people have had trouble finding save files when using the built-in windows file extractor. That problem can be fixed by using winzip .
Also, I noticed that some of the older games' save files are no longer on the server. So, the save files themselves might not be available, unless by some chance the player happens to have the file somewhere.
-Griselda
serttech2003
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2003
- Messages
- 143
Thanks, switching to winzip worked. Another thing to hate Microsoft for.
Sold the map every turn? I can barely remember to check for rioting each turn. I must admit that I lean more toward the RBP epics each day. I also agree that some if not most of the people do things they don't talk about in order to post the scors they get. Check out the discussion over the start in this months GOTM. I lost count of the people who randomly moved their settler SW and just happened to uncover the wheat after moving their worker n or something like that.
Anyway, sorry again for intruding with GOTM talk. I relly really don't ever mea to intrude where and when I'm not wanted or stick my nose in where it doesn't belong. Funny how civ and its tatics mirror how we think and live in reeal life.
Sold the map every turn? I can barely remember to check for rioting each turn. I must admit that I lean more toward the RBP epics each day. I also agree that some if not most of the people do things they don't talk about in order to post the scors they get. Check out the discussion over the start in this months GOTM. I lost count of the people who randomly moved their settler SW and just happened to uncover the wheat after moving their worker n or something like that.
Anyway, sorry again for intruding with GOTM talk. I relly really don't ever mea to intrude where and when I'm not wanted or stick my nose in where it doesn't belong. Funny how civ and its tatics mirror how we think and live in reeal life.
Sirp,
When I tried playing this game, Japan attacked with all its units in 2200 BC or so. I had 100 gold but didn't get the opportunity to pay tribute. Japan when straight for war. The first warrior managed to kill my rushed spearmen, leading to the loss of my capitol Does this happen often in Deity games?
My start was a bit unusual in that I got both a settler and a town from huts, so I may have actually passed Japan in population. I thought maybe this was the cause. Or perhaps it was due to too weak military? I had 2-3 warriors.
I guess I am wondering how big a threat attacks from an AI are in deity games early on. They are hard to survive when they have 10+ units when you have so few. Especially when you are trying to expand.
When I tried playing this game, Japan attacked with all its units in 2200 BC or so. I had 100 gold but didn't get the opportunity to pay tribute. Japan when straight for war. The first warrior managed to kill my rushed spearmen, leading to the loss of my capitol Does this happen often in Deity games?
My start was a bit unusual in that I got both a settler and a town from huts, so I may have actually passed Japan in population. I thought maybe this was the cause. Or perhaps it was due to too weak military? I had 2-3 warriors.
I guess I am wondering how big a threat attacks from an AI are in deity games early on. They are hard to survive when they have 10+ units when you have so few. Especially when you are trying to expand.
@serttech: Yeah RB is far less 'competitive' and far more 'comparitive' than the GOTM. Like I said, your opinion is definitely welcome here 
@Greebley: Hmm...you didn't do anything to provoke Japan? Did you have any cities near them (overlapping their cities)? Did you refuse a tribute demand?
Attacking that early isn't common, but I have seen it happen. If it does happen, there's pretty much nothing you can do about it. With how many free units they get, you're essentially going to be toast...
-Sirp.
@Greebley: Hmm...you didn't do anything to provoke Japan? Did you have any cities near them (overlapping their cities)? Did you refuse a tribute demand?
Attacking that early isn't common, but I have seen it happen. If it does happen, there's pretty much nothing you can do about it. With how many free units they get, you're essentially going to be toast...
-Sirp.
@ serttech -- I've lost on turn five in an emperor start where all of Persia's starting units headed in my direction and just kept coming. It happens. 
I wouldn't say that your lack of warriors was the problem in and of itself -- we were extremely light on military for a long time, too. I think there must be some random dice roll on whether or not to attack on any particular turn, weighted by relative power or something; you got unlucky, but it just as easily could have been us.
Re: the GOTM issues that've come up. I don't know why, but the problems don't really bother me. Maybe it's because I despise the in-game scoring system in and of itself, so I can't really take seriously any ranking system based upon it. I do enjoy when/if I do relatively well, but I can't get too worked up who did and who didn't use techniques that I don't like. That said, I wanna get into the RBciv thing, too. Is there another game active this month? I actually have time this summer.
Renata
I wouldn't say that your lack of warriors was the problem in and of itself -- we were extremely light on military for a long time, too. I think there must be some random dice roll on whether or not to attack on any particular turn, weighted by relative power or something; you got unlucky, but it just as easily could have been us.Re: the GOTM issues that've come up. I don't know why, but the problems don't really bother me. Maybe it's because I despise the in-game scoring system in and of itself, so I can't really take seriously any ranking system based upon it. I do enjoy when/if I do relatively well, but I can't get too worked up who did and who didn't use techniques that I don't like. That said, I wanna get into the RBciv thing, too. Is there another game active this month? I actually have time this summer.
Renata
Renata, hope you ended up getting at least a little sun on your weekend away. It's been pouring down with rain here.
There is almost always an RB epic going, and sometimes two or three. The current open one is Epic 28. It's on Monarch level (but the AIs get extra starting units), as Egypt, with little variantism except in that your aim is to get either a cultural, conquest, or domination victory. It lasts five weeks, and I think it opened two or three weeks ago, so there's two or three weeks left to play. Should be lots of fun.
You're also welcome to play any closed Epic and post a report on it. If you want a real challenge, try Epic 26 <evil grin>. I think we're due another 'potluck' Epic soon (a game where everyone plays on the same map, but each player gets a different randomly assigned civ), they're always lots of fun.
WRT GOTM & exploits, I'm not so bothered about this as I used to be. Nevertheless, GOTM does push the exploit line. One of the main allures of the GOTM is to compete with other players, but the competition aspect is almost killed off by the exploitive tactics some players use, combined with the potential for players to cheat. Also, the playing style encouraged is fairly limited. Everything is bent toward aggressive styles of play with lots of warfare. Even if you're going for a diplomatic victory, the 'usual' way to do it is by annhilating the civs that won't vote for you. I did enjoy GOTM19, and will probably play GOTM20, and then I'll see.
-Sirp.
There is almost always an RB epic going, and sometimes two or three. The current open one is Epic 28. It's on Monarch level (but the AIs get extra starting units), as Egypt, with little variantism except in that your aim is to get either a cultural, conquest, or domination victory. It lasts five weeks, and I think it opened two or three weeks ago, so there's two or three weeks left to play. Should be lots of fun.
You're also welcome to play any closed Epic and post a report on it. If you want a real challenge, try Epic 26 <evil grin>. I think we're due another 'potluck' Epic soon (a game where everyone plays on the same map, but each player gets a different randomly assigned civ), they're always lots of fun.
WRT GOTM & exploits, I'm not so bothered about this as I used to be. Nevertheless, GOTM does push the exploit line. One of the main allures of the GOTM is to compete with other players, but the competition aspect is almost killed off by the exploitive tactics some players use, combined with the potential for players to cheat. Also, the playing style encouraged is fairly limited. Everything is bent toward aggressive styles of play with lots of warfare. Even if you're going for a diplomatic victory, the 'usual' way to do it is by annhilating the civs that won't vote for you. I did enjoy GOTM19, and will probably play GOTM20, and then I'll see.
-Sirp.
I'm still away. Monopolizing my parents' computer.
Thanks for the good wishes, but no sun here either. Haven't caught a glimpse of it since last Tuesday, and the forecast isn't for anything better than 'mostly cloudy' as far out as it goes. Yuck. We all went for a walk in the woods today, though, despite the gloom, so all was not lost. Thanks for the info on the epics; I'll check things out when I get back.
Renata
Well at least it was good enough weather for you to go for a walk!
It's been pouring down with rain most the weekend here. I can barely get my dog to go outside, with his thick coat and all, so he can go to the bathroom!
And now of course, I'm at work looking out the window, and though it's cloudy, it's not raining...high nice of the weather to start clearing up on monday morning.
-Sirp.
It's been pouring down with rain most the weekend here. I can barely get my dog to go outside, with his thick coat and all, so he can go to the bathroom!
And now of course, I'm at work looking out the window, and though it's cloudy, it's not raining...high nice of the weather to start clearing up on monday morning.
-Sirp.
Yay! 
I ended up in the hospital again, and haven't been able to get to CF until today- sorry for the lack of notice on the inability to play that last bit, but it seems like Sirp cleaned it up for us just fine.
Congrats to everyone- hopefully see you in next month's GOTM, where a chance for a solo Deity victory awaits!
I ended up in the hospital again, and haven't been able to get to CF until today- sorry for the lack of notice on the inability to play that last bit, but it seems like Sirp cleaned it up for us just fine.
Congrats to everyone- hopefully see you in next month's GOTM, where a chance for a solo Deity victory awaits!
