WOTM 05 Results & Congratulations

[ainwood]

Crazy resources and an aggressive civ made for an entertaining game in this fantasy-realm based map. Unsurprisingly, its was conquest & domination victories that made up the bulk of the submissions. Jove walked away with the gold medal by a comfortable margin. In second, Doc TK was again not quite able to grab gold, but again showed his consistency. In third, Don Rumata is to be congratulated for nabbing his first medal.

Summary of Medal Winners:

Jove: 1050 AD Conquest Victory, 150,103 points.

Doc TK: 1520 AD Domination Victory, 138,200 points.

Don Rumata: 1625 AD Domination Victory, 130,333 points.

 

[ainwood]

Other Award Winners:

Bradleyfeanor: 1250 AD Domination Victory, 127,754 points.

ngraner42: 1540 AD Diplomatic Victory, 106,258 points.

Lexad: 175 BC Conquest Victory, 79,465 points.

julienheadley: 1842 AD Spaceship Victory, 60,717 points.

anakin.d: 1700 AD Cultural Victory, 18,746 points.

chunkymonkey: 2050 AD Time Victory, 16,567 points.

 

[ainwood]

tonlaan: 1976 AD Domination Victory, 22,399 points.

Gnejs: 1380 AD Conquest Victory, 13,113 points.

Chamnix: 2028 AD Diplomatic Victory, 10,502 points.

g_storrow: 1969 AD Spaceship Loss, 5,422 points.

honda tadakatsu: 2033 AD Spaceship Victory, 4,415 points.

THE WIZ: 2039 AD Cultural Victory, 3,803 points.

deadloss: 2200 BC Conquest Loss, 86 points.


>> See the full results here.
>> See the updated global rankings here.
>> See the latest Pantheon of Heroes here.
>> Award symbols are listed here.

 

[da_Vinci]

Well, at least my dairy skills are improving! I managed to milk my laboriously slow 1780 dom win for over 80 K "final score" (the score formerly known as Jason?) which came out 19th highest !?

Which absolutely proves that speed, not score, is the skill barometer in this game! I mean, what kind of system has me listed above, say, Lexad's 175 BC conquest!?!

Congrats to all the real winners and real talents!

Somwhere the past I recall AlanH wanting to expunge the term Jason Score from Civ 4. The GOTM results tables call it "final score", but the WOTM results tables still say Jason Score. Time to break out the "X-sponge"

dV

 

[AlanH]

Thx. Pleased to see my QA department is still on the ball

 

[Jenarie]

Congrats to all the winners!

 

[Lexad]

Yippie! My first WOTM badge! Thanx for congrats, dV, I feel OK with scoring being the primary factor as long as I get first in Speed and Combined ratings - jesusin

 

[EEO]

Which absolutely proves that speed, not score, is the skill barometer in this game! I mean, what kind of system has me listed above, say, Lexad's 175 BC conquest!?!

Congrats to all the real winners and real talents!

dV,

I think you not really understand what you are talking about ...
Playing for fastest military victory (domination or conquest) is one of the easiest strategy in Civ4/Warlords. To say it with an analogy: you just have to put on speed and avoid crashing. On the contrary, when playing for score you have one more serious requirement: -continuing the analogy- you must end with your car in good condition too. This constraint prevents you from giving up all aspects of the game in favor of military production and total rush.
In fact, "fast military strategy" seems more adapted for a game called "Barbarization", and I consider quite relevant that the score formula does not reward it so much.

That does not mean that the score formula is well balanced for other victory conditions, but it's another story ... I just wanted to react to your words that are erroneously insulting for people playing for score.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

dV,
I think you not really understand what you are talking about ...
Playing for fastest military victory (domination or conquest) is one of the easiest strategy in Civ4/Warlords. To say it with an analogy: you just have to put on speed and avoid crashing. On the contrary, when playing for score you have one more serious requirement: -continuing the analogy- you must end with your car in good condition too.

I don't think that last bit is true. When you're playing for score, you tend to keep the 'car' in good condition until, say, 20-30 turns before your victory and then you just start doing whatever to max your population - even if it means taking/planting totally useless cities, chopping forests on tundra (thus ruining those tiles for future use) etc. The result would not be considered to be in good condition if you had to play on beyond your victory date.

If you want to continue the analogy, playing for speed might involve trashing your car the moment you buy it by running it faster than it's supposed to go down a racing track. Playing for score might involve keeping your car well serviced for ages, then suddenly trashing it by driving it up a mountain that's far steeper than it's designed to go up. Neither would be seen as good examples of looking after a car.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Congrats to Julien Headley on the space race - beat me into 2nd fastest - by, umm, 99 years! That must've been an impressive game. None of the other spaceraces come close: 17 spacerace victories spread between 1941AD and 2033AD, and then Julien's in 1842AD!

It sure says something about the scoring system that the fastest cultural victory got barely 1/7 of the score of the fastest domination.

 

[da_Vinci]

That does not mean that the score formula is well balanced for other victory conditions, but it's another story ... I just wanted to react to your words that are erroneously insulting for people playing for score.

Oh my! I was not intenting to insult anyone with my reference to real winners and real talents, other than to acknowledge that there are many more talented players that I who are lower on the list ranked by score. I see that my choice of language was misleading, and I apologize to anyone who felt is was a criticism or insult to them.

Particularly with the way that an inefficient domination victory can post a huge score compared to other victory types and even more efficient domination wins, I was mainly reacting to the fact that in my case "finishing 19th" does not mean, in terms of relative skill, what a high finish in most other arenas does. I surely can't say I was the 19th best player in the competition, or even that I played the 19th best game. But I had the 19th highest score. A fundamental disconnect. That is all I meant.

Don't get me wrong, I did have fun seeing how high I could run the score, including an end gimick of taking 5 cities at once in one turn just before I tripped the land limit.

I agree that playing for fast military victory is easier than other victory types in that there are perhaps fewer game nuances to account for. But to achieve these very fast (175 BC!) requires incredible efficiency in builds, research, and tactics (just enough troops), something I have not yet mastered.

I think that within any victory type, a faster victory should generally reflect a more skillfully (i.e. efficiently or elegantly) played game (I could be wrong here, as I have little experience with non-military wins). I can't see how it can be argued that wining later takes more skill. Winning early usually means winning small (or at least relatively small), and it seems that winning later and bigger is more rewarded in score, except after 1800 or so when the lateness factor starts to overcome size growth.

To the extent that very fast military victory will always be faster than very fast culture or diplomatic (or space for that matter), then we really can't compare across victory types in any meaningful way. Which is why we have the type-specific awards, which are based on speed.

Don't mean to rehash or reopen an old debate, but felt I needed to explain myself given any perception of an insult.

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

Thx. Pleased to see my QA department is still on the ball

No problem .. . after all, that is why you pay me the big bucks! Oh ... wait ...

Mostly I'm just the Q department (except when A can be added for annoying), and the answers come from you.

I am pleased to see that the stick out tongue smilie still has its most loyal patron

dV

 

[The Mad Swede]

Never mind me...

 

[Jove]

Hmmm... I was playing for fast domination and vassalized the last civ as I crossed the limit just to see what the game would do. So I could've won a fastest domination, but whatever. Gold's good enough for me I don't believe a gold proves I'm 'the best' player in civdom (I can't compete in the other VC's for example), but shhh! let me pretend it does for a couple days
Congrats to the fastest finish winners!!!

 

[Obormot]

Welcome back, Bradleyfeanor!

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Thanks, Obormot! It's good to be back. Sorry to all that I didn't write a game spoiler. Between being rusty after my year off and it being my first Warlords game, I made a great many mistakes and just wanted to move on to the next game.

The only thing interesting about my game was that I decided to forego researching fishing or meditation in order to use engineers or scientists to lightbulb my way through engineering and the expensive techs on the path to Chemistry. It backfired though, and my great leader pump decided to gift me with three artists due to the national epic: very unlikely odds of that happening. It made me into one unhappy civver--and also made me wonder if Warlords were tinkering with Leader probabilities behind the scenes.

I was utterly shocked to see I had won an award. It looks as though I am reaping the benefits of someone's idle curiosity, by Jove.

Congrats to everyone who played! Lexad's game was amazing. Wouldn't have thought a BC victory via Impi rush possible. Very, very impressive.

 

[da_Vinci]

Hmmm... I was playing for fast domination and vassalized the last civ as I crossed the limit just to see what the game would do. So I could've won a fastest domination, but whatever. Gold's good enough for me

Now my curiosity is up! How many cities were left in that last civ you vassalized? In my limited Warlords experience, they won't capitulate until there is only one or two cities left.

If you had not vassalized, and won by domination, how high would the score have been? Would you have doubled (medal + award)?

EEO may have a point that I don't understand all of the issues ... the interplay of score and speed at the finish dates you guys inhabit are outside of my experience (1780 earliest finish ever, before that all 20th century or later). Meaningfully higher scores that are only slightly later, within the same victory type, may well reflect a "better" game (but "better" is so much in the eye of the beholder). My original reaction was to the way that much later victories can still have rather high scores (which may be unique to domination?).

dV

 

[Vynd]

Congrats to all! And thanks to the moderators for running the game, and posting the results very quickly!

 

[Conquistador 63]

Congrats to Julien Headley on the space race - beat me into 2nd fastest - by, umm, 99 years! That must've been an impressive game. None of the other spaceraces come close: 17 spacerace victories spread between 1941AD and 2033AD, and then Julien's in 1842AD!

It sure says something about the scoring system that the fastest cultural victory got barely 1/7 of the score of the fastest domination.

Couldn't agree more! To each their own, etc. but that's why I like the speed rankings best. BTW, maybe someday I'll be able to actually grab one of those awards - this time anakin.d finished 10 years before my 1710AD cultural win. So, special congrats to him!

 

[Lexad]

Thanks, Curufinwe, luckily I had top-class mentors - Obormot, Dynamic, akots - to help me understand the game and learn to define the priorities, and most worthy adversary Grey Cardinal.