1st Apolyton CIV3 TOURNAMENT : 15-30/November/2001

[Comrade Tribune]

I never save except when I finish playing, and I never reload except when the game crashes.

I mean I can´t understand what is the fun not playing with the hand you get?

Btw, in this tournament my first warrior triggered Barbs from his first village. They killed him, sacked my town TWICE and destroyed my half-finished 2nd Warrior in the process. The second village I found was empty. I am not making this up.

I refused to surrender, played on and expect a score in the 2000´s.

[jimb0v2]

hence why this tournament is not really a tournament, but rather just some guys posting scores.

[jimb0v2]

comrade, your story is the reason why this tourament can never truly be a tournament, because say a legitimate person did get a settler and iron working as there first 2 huts. they pretty much auto win vs you. The whole point of a tournament like this is to have a control and then to try and use the same recources as everyone else to do teh best you can. But the random elements of battles and huts don't allow this. Theres always just the chance that a person will win a bunch of battles that you don't or that he will find much better stuff in his huts than you do.

[Comrade Tribune]

True; but the same is true for any multiplayer game in Civ. A pretty significant luck factor is part of the series -and of real history.

[smellymummy]

fantastic map! made this to be a cool game... pangea's are usually neat like that i guess.

I got 2072 points, space ship victory at 1780'ish. No military action taken at all except at the begining while exploring, I harrased the zulus (which eventually doomed them).

I never went for the iron, and only found a use for it for railroads. At that point I had gained a city by culture from the AI that had iron. I gained a whole bunch of cities through cultures...

The end game was nice, the technology was entirely dominated by me. I was in modern age while my oponents were still trying to research corporation. Eventually I capitulated and sold tech to allow selling off the extra aluminium I had.

Had time to build tons of nukes, bombers, tanks, artilery etc. I could of taken many cities on this last turn, but I doubt I'll try.

No save->reload at all, but I did save often (i'm getting to many corrupt autosaves so I save myself often). Surprised I only got 2000 and change of points. Guess that's what happens when you don't go for total domination.

btw corruption wasn't a problem, and I didn't even build a FP. I went right away for a main 9 cities grid with a centralized palace.

now, I need another tourney map

[MarkG]

To show exactly what jimb0v2 is describing, we wont have one winner or one standing beased on score.

We'll have standings according to victory type and sorting in two ways: highest score and earliest year

Which means we'll have 10 "winners"

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by MarkG
To show exactly what jimb0v2 is describing, we wont have one winner or one standing beased on score.

We'll have standings according to victory type and sorting in two ways: highest score and earliest year

Which means we'll have 10 "winners"

Markos, I don´t get you here.

The random goody hut/save-reload difficulty does not go away, regardless if you sort by score or year and victory condition. The randomness/cheating will directly influence the outcome regardless how you sort.

[Dog of Justice]

The posted file was the turn I won, rather than the turn before it.

*later edit: deleted attachment because it's from before my final battle*

[Dog of Justice]

I will state directly that I'm definitely not the best Civ player here, or near it for that matter. My regular strategy is far too perfectionist (in the sense of developing good cities instead of the higher-scoring and more-effective-versus-humans despotic conquest). Though, ironically, I may use this map to refine my regular strategy, since I have such a large set of results to compare to, and people are more or less distinguishing which results are without saving/reloading and without the huge early game swings like 3900 BC settler.

The game definitely has a different flavor when played once through versus played with any form of reloading at all. The latter controls for luck, but alas, also controls out most of the skill involved as well. The former is obviously the fairer way to hold the tournament, but Aeson is probably correct when he suggests that the winner would then probably be the guy with the 3900 BC settler. This is at least an important issue as the unenforceability regarding the save/reload cheat (which an "honor code" can handle reasonably well, I think); early huge swings must be essentially eliminated from any tournament game, so as to not block out the effects of true skill.

There are two ways I see to do this. One is to impose specific game rules, such as "settlers generated by huts must be disbanded immediately". The other is to let each tournament run at least two or three games, so that a single early lucky break has a chance to be averaged out.

In the meantime, I'll comment that establishing separate win categories does not deal with either of these issues (extreme swings due to early luck, and the enormous advantage provided by any amount of replaying). As others have already remarked, it would not be difficult to parlay a 1375 BC almost-conquered-the-world position into an early victory of almost any other type.

[Robert Plomp]

MarkG: We'll have standings according to victory type and sorting in two ways: highest score and earliest year

Which means we'll have 10 "winners"

25 participants......... 10 winners.........
it's starting to look like what my mother always said when my sisters and I asked whom of us made the most beautifull drawing:
"They're all equal beautifull ! You''re all winners"

bluh

[Adagio]

Originally posted by CyberShy
25 participants......... 10 winners.........
it's starting to look like what my mother always said when my sisters and I asked whom of us made the most beautifull drawing:
"They're all equal beautifull ! You''re all winners"

bluh

Yeah...But even with those great chances of getting a winning place I'll proberly be at the bottom of each category. I haven't finnished my game yet, but I don't even have 1000 points yet and I think I was in the year 1400-1500 (don't remember exactly).

I have to admit I have made a few "save/next turn/load", but that was less than 10 times and was only if a really bad thing happened (Like my capital being razed), I have lost a city due to culture, but I didn't load the game again because of that.

Oh, and btw, I wont get any domination victory since I'm a peacefully guy

[Dog of Justice]

Yes, I did save and reload battles, though there were limits to what I could accomplish with that. If I wasn't able to take back battle results, I suspect I would have only been set back 20 turns or so, thanks to the snowballing numerical superiority following the conquest of Tenochtitlan, which could be taken without any saving and reloading. (Only Greece would have been significantly more difficult to conquer; but the Aztec-respawn cities would have given me a good base to work from.) The other 60+ turns of difference can be attributed to the first two huts, and knowing what directions to send my forces.

In the meantime, this final save file is after my last battle, unlike the last save file I posted. Took me only three tries to provide a convenient replay.

[Dog of Justice]

I think Monarch may be a good level to hold the next tournament at. The game designers themselves have commented that Monarch is the fairest level, providing the AI some bonuses but none of them insurmountable. Any reasonable style of victory should still be possible, and less optimal players (like myself, when I don't have my save/reload crutch ) should still be able to win.

I do NOT think a Deity tournament scenario would be a good idea. All the early results indicate that you MUST rush to win on Deity, while on lower difficulties you may need to rush to get the highest score, but you can still win the game without rushing. I hope the patch modifies Emperor/Deity AI to expand a bit less and build significantly better defenses, to reduce the disproportionate effectiveness of rushing.

On another note, someone asked if I used only Bowmen. Essentially yes, except for a few Catapults (only one of which saw action, actually; but it was where it counted most, Greece), two Horsemen (Shanghai was the only city I had with access to Horses for almost the entire game; and in the meantime, both Horsemen also were used against Greece, though in this case the respawned version), and one Swordsman (Memphis was built on top of an Iron deposit, so I figured what the heck; hey, a Swordsman doesn't cost any more than a Bowman when you're pop-rushing, and Memphis had far too much corruption to do anything other than pop-rush).

Finally, a gratuitous game balance comment: what were the game designers thinking when they made the first population unit worth up to 39 shields when pop-rushing? Admittedly, pop-rushing is STILL broken even if that number went down to 19; but 39 is ridiculous. I suspect it really needs to be 9 for the first population unit, and 10 for every subsequent one. The unhappiness interval, which no powergamer cares about, can probably be halved as well.

[Skanky Burns]

Well, i finished by spaceship victory in 1860
My score was 2265

I didnt start out very well, only grabbing a few cities via culture, not founding too many. Romans declared war on me early, but i got Persia to declare war on them, and Persia got everyone else to declare war on them too They didnt last too long. This had the unfortunate effect of allowing Greece to be a super-power, gaining half the map.
I survived up until the 1700's, first in tech and culture, selling to the others. Until Greece decided that wasnt good enough, and attempted to crush me. Due to a distinct lack of saltpeter, i was forced into the defensive, but managed to hold my own with those nifty Infantry units i had just discovered (and were pumping out like crazy). Persia, who were also fairly large decided to get in on the action too, and declared war.
I had been trading with them for saltpeter, and built 7 cavalry before the agreement was cut short by war, so i used these to capture a city near saltpeter. The city fell, but wasnt close enough. Unfortunately i had also run out of cavalry, the few left were for home defence (both of them )
Eventually, i discovered how to build tanks. After mobilizing, almost every city was producing tanks, and the Persians eventually fell, followed by Greece. In one battle, i managed to destroy all 30+ cavalry that had invaded my territory, and that spelt the end for Greece's global domination.
After the war, i quickly went after the spaceship techs, as i didnt think i could beat the other conquest or domination victories

[Adagio]

I guess I'll be the only one to upload the savegame even though I lost to the AI (as said before, I have never played civ3 on this level before).

It ended in 1826 were the Persians won the diplomatic victory (I voted for the Persians, because I didn't believe they would have won. I ended with the score 1036.

But all in all this was fun, can't wait for the next tournament

[celeron450]

I started out slowly, but I was able to gain a tech advantage and win a conquest victory with superior firepower in 1778.

celeron450

[OneFootInTheGrave]

my first full game finished, a bit more than 2100 points and a spaceship victory.

whaaa a great game, I went on from the save to win by conwuest and it got me a bit more than 2900 points, but that doesn't make sense anyay to post here. It is kind of unfair that spaceship does not bring any extra points as it used to? Conquest gives the most always. But well.... The constant cultural overthrowing at the end of conquered cities is annyoing at least. (there was a nuclear war in the part when I continued ..not bad, but cities are not totally destroyed, maybe they should be with an IBCM.)

But here it is my first finished game.

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by Out4Blood
There are horses NE or your start location - you need to fight the Persians for them. They are near a flood plain which is a bonus. The other close ones are SW, but they Chinese will get them faster and the mountains/jungle make it a waste of time to build roads down there.

Yeah, I played the map again, and this time I noticed that the Persians had some convenient horses. The Iron / Horses to the southwest CAN be taken before the Chinese get to them, but you have to know they exist, and you have to send a settler there ASAP.

On the whole, they're not worth the effort. The Persian horses are more convenient, as is the Iron near the Aztec starting city.

I did much better the second time around, but still not as well as you did. I don't believe I really had the entire continent in hand until 1000 AD.

I used archers until I got horses. FAST units are broken - they totally rule this game. A fast unit is worth several slow units since the fast ones never die.

Any unit that usually takes wounds instead of dying has a severe advantage, since it can be healed with a few turns of resting (or 1 with a barracks). I think that's the point that the guys who claim "knights aren't worth it" are missing.

Sure, you can get 2.5 Horsemen for the price of one Knight. Sure, in a straight fight, the 2.5 Horsemen will beat a Knight. But they'll still lose a lot of Horsemen, even if they outnumber the Knights. If you're the attacker, you should always greatly outnumber the defenders - and in that case, the Knights take a lot of wounds and few casualties.

That's comparing fast units to fast units.

As you point out, fast units almost never die if they're facing slow units, provided they outnumber the enemy enough. Every once in a while one will kill itself trying to get a enemy past that last 1 hit point, but it's rare.

However, they do have one weak point - you can't really use them to defend towns. They retreat from fights in the open, but not in towns, so they give up their biggest advantage.

I think the alternate attack strategy is supposed to be infanty and artillery, but the artillery just isn't good enough. Yes, with enough artillery you can reduce the defenders to 1 HP each, and take them out with the infantry. However, in practice, a "large enough" cavalry force (Horsemen / Knights / Cavarly / Tanks / Modern Armor) is much cheaper.

You don't have to pay for units in Despotism. Just make sure you have a lot of cities.

I didn't have enough cities. Despotism gives you 4 units per city for free, and I had too many.

First game I went Great Leader -> Army -> Heroic Epic. I think I got 4 GLs the entire game. When I didn't, I ended up getting 2. IMO, Heroic Epic is broken like Air Superiority.

I think there are very specific circumstances when you're allowed a Great Leader, but I'm not sure what they are. For example, I don't think I've ever gotten a Great Leader except when eliminating the last unit in a stack, or last defender in a town.

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by MarkG
To show exactly what jimb0v2 is describing, we wont have one winner or one standing beased on score.

We'll have standings according to victory type and sorting in two ways: highest score and earliest year

Which means we'll have 10 "winners"

I honestly don't care how you rank the save games. I think it's interesting to have a lot of people play the exact same map, and then see how they approached it differently. Rather like a game of duplicate bridge.

[Dog of Justice]

Originally posted by gus_smedstad
I think there are very specific circumstances when you're allowed a Great Leader, but I'm not sure what they are. For example, I don't think I've ever gotten a Great Leader except when eliminating the last unit in a stack, or last defender in a town.

The only Great Leader I obtained in my game was not under either of these circumstances. (Instead, it defeated the second-to-last stack defending a city, I believe.)

[Dog of Justice]

Originally posted by gus_smedstad
I honestly don't care how you rank the save games. I think it's interesting to have a lot of people play the exact same map, and then see how they approached it differently. Rather like a game of duplicate bridge.

Yes, that's a great analogy, at least for those of us who actually play duplicate bridge. It's at least as interesting to find out what other contracts were played, and how they turned out, as it is to find out one's relative ranking.

[fanatic civver]

conquest victory in 1832 AD, score 2192.

Overall a fun game. Pangaea turned out more fun than I thought it would be.

A highlight is that I did not declare war once. The stupid AI attacked me first, or I was pulled into a war through pacts. If you look at the replay you'll see that the AI paid for its stupidity In one turn alone I took about 10 cities in traditional civ 2 style (most were size 1-6 cities left over from previous wars). In all the wars I managed to get nearly everyone else against the lone power through diplomacy.

The greeks fell first, followed by zulus, egyptians, aztecs and persians. Chinese and Romans were left standing.

I could have easily got a culture victory which would probably give me a bigger score, but it would be boring pressing end of turn and micromanaging all those cities!

This was my first game ever of civ 3 (besides a short practice run beforehand on a different map).

[mscha]

I won the UN vote in 1826, just after I built it. I got four votes, Alexander only got his own and Caesars.

I managed to play the whole game almost entirely without waging war!
Only once, Caesar suddenly attacked me and managed to raze two cities. Well, a treaty with the two countries between him and me distracted him and he didn't disturb me anymore. He still wasn't speaking to me, so I sent a few tanks to Jerusalem and razed it. That got him talking, and we made peace.
I played for tech and culture, mostly. No way I could win this by domination, and I was still pretty far away from a cultural victory. If I had skipped the UN, I would be a few turns away from starting to build the space ship, so perhaps I would've won that. I could try, but since it's 7:30 am now, I think I'd better go to bed.

- Michael

[Dienstag]

I won! (not the most common thing for me, recently) Spaceship victory in 1828, I think I had 2028 points. Fun game...more or less conquered the Chinese, Persian, and Eqyptian empires, had a nice lead in tech and an impressive culture. I hadn't tried the Babylonians before, really like the cheap temples/libraries! Looking forward to next tournement.

- Dienstag

[albiedamned]

Obviously these tournaments are just for fun, because there is no way to enforce the rules. But I would like to think that everyone is playing by the honor system, and that reloading the game if for example you don't like what you got out of a goodie hut is a no-no.

In my game, I didn't reload at all. My score (~1900) pales in comparison to these early conquest/domination wins, but I believe I still have the earliest spaceship victory (1760 AD).

Mark, for the next tournament, let's not use a Pangaea map. In fact, if you really want to throw a wrench into this early domination strategy, let's play on an archipelago world!

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Mark, for the next tournament, let's not use a Pangaea map. In fact, if you really want to throw a wrench into this early domination strategy, let's play on an archipelago world!

I think Monarch/Huge/16player/Continents might do.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Mark, for the next tournament, let's not use a Pangaea map. In fact, if you really want to throw a wrench into this early domination strategy, let's play on an archipelago world!

How about making a map instead. I'd say an unrealistic map for the next tournament would be great

[smellymummy]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Obviously these tournaments are just for fun, because there is no way to enforce the rules. But I would like to think that everyone is playing by the honor system, and that reloading the game if for example you don't like what you got out of a goodie hut is a no-no.

I do hope so that everyone is following this kind of honor system. I'm glad some are actually posting it. Something about the goodie huts though. I was playing a game where I started with a hut right beside the settler start position. I saved, then tried walking over it, reload, tried building a city, etc etc. In each single case, and I did repeat, the goodie hut always paid off the same reward.

Too many people have been complaining about the goodie huts and there effects, on a tournament perspective, but I don't see what's the problem, as their rewards appear to be set into stone (bytes in this case).

Originally posted by albiedamned
In my game, I didn't reload at all. My score (~1900) pales in comparison to these early conquest/domination wins, but I believe I still have the earliest spaceship victory (1760 AD).

Mark, for the next tournament, let's not use a Pangaea map. In fact, if you really want to throw a wrench into this early domination strategy, let's play on an archipelago world!

I believe you are the earliest spaceship vicotry, but at least I beated you at the score

and archipelago map for next tourney; now that would be a hard one.

[jimb0v2]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune


I think Monarch/Huge/16player/Continents might do.

NO! This would not do!!!!
Comrade! Have you played a huge map with 16 civs before?
It takes 10-30 minutes per turn for the computer to process all the turn moves.

I'm running a 1.4 ghz athllon with geforce 3 and 700+ ram and this happens.

[jimb0v2]

Originally posted by smellymummy

Too many people have been complaining about the goodie huts and there effects, on a tournament perspective, but I don't see what's the problem, as their rewards appear to be set into stone (bytes in this case).

Goodie huts are NOT set in stone. It is set by the turn you open it on. You can always get a settler out of the hut to your north east in the beggining if you do it on the right turn. it's like turn 5,6, or 7. but if you open it on a different turn you do not get a settler.
This IS worth complaining about because an extra settler shoots you FAR FAR FAR ahead. It actually allows you to start taking over the chinese AND the persians at the same time. which is what you need to do in order to get that 10k score.