I don't think there is a single "the key", aside from military aggression. (Every high score will, I think, involve successful military campaigns because of the way the scoring works.) This particular approach (lots of Great Leaders) depends on the map and the Civ. For a non-militaristic Civ it only begins to make sense on a map large enough to expect fighting to result in 76 (16 + 5 * 12) or more wins with elite units - that's the minimum for building Heroic Epic first to net a long term gain. (Vs. 5 * 16 = 80 to get the same number of leaders without Heroic Epic.) Not much gain until you go higher again. I think the gain is a fair bit more dramatic for militaristic Civs but I don't know the numbers. My guess would be 57 (12 + 5 * 9) before expecting to be ahead by building Heroic Epic.
As far as I know, winning a fight with barbarians will never result in a Great Leader, you can only get leaders in fights with rival Civs.
Originally posted by Matrix
There is always a great deal of luck involved in Civ3. Think of a battle between your first warrior attacking the only city of an enemy (with only one warrior).
The only way of dealing with the army-from-goody-hut bug is saying you must reload once you get that. We can hardly ask people to do that.
I've thought the same thing about domination: perhaps they intended it this way.
Originally posted by Taé Shala
NO.
If some people are to greedy warmongers it is their own fault.
I never triggered domination victory by accident because I prefer to play cautious.
I triggered a cultural vic by accident in the last game of the month too. No one would allow me to reload.
If you are winning a way you don´t expect it is still a winning .
That is what we all play for.
If you just win you can´t just say: I want to win by a different way to get more points.
You only win domination victories using brute force against rival civs.
If this results in a lower score it is okay, because it rewards peacefull players.
Originally posted by Taé Shala
Same is with cultural victory.
1. You must have 20.000 culture points in a single city. - Easy to understand. That is OK.
2. If your civilization is worth 100,000 and at least twice as much as any rival, you win. - Twice as much? What does it mean? We don´t have any exact numbers.
Once I accidently won when another civ razed one city of a rival of me. I don´t know if this was the trigger but I think so.
So what I want to say is that as long as there are no exact numbers going for a cultural vic is also like playing with fire.
And therefore there are two solutions:
1. You may reload after you accidently got a domination or cultural victory. - This is against the currently accepted rules. It is even against the spirit of the GotM from my point of view.
2. You may not reload. This is the currently accepted rule. I don´t see any reason to change it.
The fact that you don't know exactly when domination victory commences is not enough reason to make reloading in such a case valid.
That's not put in another way, but something entirely different!
It's painful, indeed. But that's part of the game. Just like Killer who got killed very early by barbarians and other bad luck.
When you accidentally press the wrong button you do something unintended, but when you do something unintended you don't have to have pressed the wrong button.
