3rd Apolyton CtP2 SP Tournament: 1 August - 1 September 2002 - Page 5

Jesper Portus · August 21, 2002, 02:15

Quote:

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I must say though, 12 cities on that first island, im not sure if thats too many, to keep each city productive and growing. I only built 7, i couldve got a couple more if id have scouted the island more, but the 7 i did build just had more space and expanded well.

I built five cities on the first island. My goal is to built very large cities. Currently they stopped with a population of 32 till I reach the Arcology ...

So long
Jesper

Locutus · August 21, 2002, 06:53

Thanks for all the kind words everyone, I'm very pleased to see 9 savegames were already submitted (and more underway) with still 10 days to play...

TheArsenal,
Doh! You're supposed to send in the savegame of the turn *before* you win, not the turn after it. I hadn't read your post carefully enough and spent over an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't get the actual victory while you had met the requirements

If possible, I would appreciate it if you would send in the correct savegame after all, this makes it possible for me to actually confirm your victory and to do some tests to see if you didn't cheat or anything like that (not that I think that you did, but why treat you any different than the rest?)

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
But to make things more enjoyable, would it be worthwhile everyone putting in a vote for what they'd like to see in the next game?
e.g. More land that current game, less goods, certain units left out or changed somehow, mostly desert terrain, etc...

Or should we just leave it up to Loc to figure out something new?

The thing with votes is that the result is always somewhere in the middle, so either it would lead to inconclusive results, or all games will end up being the same. I want to make sure there is a lot of variety in the Tournament settings and also in the mods used, this is more fun for the players, incites you to try something new & different, and will give more modmakers a chance to get some publicity for and feedback on their mods. So, at least for the time being, *I* will determine what the settings for the Tournament games are.

But of course, I'm always open for ideas. After the first Tournament, there were basically two suggestions for future games: a tougher AI/game and an island map. I incorporated the former suggestion in the second Tournament (although I may have gone a little of the top with that

) and the latter in this Tournament.

Quote:

Personally I'm in the mood for a gigantic map (I can't run those mega-ultra-large maps, my system won't handle it unfortunately), about half way on the land/water setting, max goods, Impossible setting, and it'd be nice to see the AI massing up some more formidable naval fleets but I guess that's in the coding more or less... anyway, just some thoughts.

I actually considered using a Gigantic map for this tournament, but I'm still a little hesitant because not everyone has a PC fast enough to handle such a big map. But one of the future tournaments will certainly be played on a Gigantic map. A game on Deity turned out to be a little too hard last time, but the current King game seems to go well for most people, so we'll probably play on Emperor next month. As for the other settings, I haven't decided yet but I'll consider your (and everyone else's) suggestions when I do.

As far as the mod goes, I think MedMod would actually be the most natural progression for the next tourney: we started with the original game and gradually used more progressive mods. Apolyton is still pretty close to the original game, Goodmod slightly less. MedMod is closer to the original game than Cradle (Cradle doesn't even cover the same time period - well, not really), so that would IMHO be the most logical for the next Tournament. However, considering the current state of MedMod, I don't feel now would be the right time for a Tournament game with it, it really needs one more update to polish things properly (this update will probably come some time after IW's city expansion code is released), so it's quite possible that next month will be a Cradle game after all...

mnbryan37,
I agree with centrifuge, with a score like that, you should be able to handle Impossible games easily

mapfi,
The best way to take 1-tile islands is to first take all other cities of that civ. Since sea tiles have little to no production, it's impossible to maintain a large army with only 1 tile islands. With only 1 or 2 cities left, your opponent

will be forced to disband all but 2-4 units per city. So once you're done with the regular cities, take a stack or two of your best naval units (whether they are Coracles or Ships o/t Line) and attack those islands. If there are several islands, you may want to recon all of them first: some islands may have many defenders while others may have none. By taking the weakest cities first, you might force your opponent to disband some of his defenders in his stronger cities...

As the unofficial ranking (see below) shows, mnbryan's early victory was achieved with only 22 cities (5 of which on the starting island). Mapfi and I both had 50 odd cities towards the end of the tournament, about 10 of which on the starting continent. Apparently stuffing your starting island with many cities is NOT the key to an early victory...
Note however that mapfi did a very impressive job with his economy and science, he took the lead in these areas very early in the game and ended up with the second highest score of all, while 3 people below him finished the game several hundred turns later

Only Martin still has a higher score, but I think Martin is specializes in maxing out the score

Perhaps with the exception of centrifuge's 'cheat game' of last month, mapfi's game probably has the highest score:endyear ratio of all tournament games so far

Maquiladora · August 21, 2002, 06:54

Quote:

Originally posted by centrifuge

ummm , I guess that you must have overlooked this one

ah indeed i did, have to take a looksie seeing as you beat me

Locutus · August 21, 2002, 06:57

Anyway, here's an update of the unofficial score so far (as usual in a seperate post so it doesn't screw up anyone's forum layout):

Code:

Endyear
-------

Rank   Player		Victory Type	Year	Points  Cities	 Pop	Advanc	Wonders	Feats	Last Research
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1   centrifuge		Diplomatic	 810 AD	 6,370	 16	 111	 21	 1	 2	Gunpowder
 2   Maquiladora	Diplomatic	 970 AD	 8,320	 18	 294	 38	 2	 3	Industrial Revol
 3   mnbryan37		Bloodlust	1290 AD	17,030	 22	 383	 37	10	 2	Economics
 4   Locutus (1)	Bloodlust	1505 AD	18,320	 48	 909	 44	12	 1	Oil Refining
 5   mapfi		Bloodlust	1550 AD	21,795	 55	1204	 58	17	 6	Jet Propulsion
 6   ETB		Bloodlust	2181 AD	19,500	 50 	1217	 59	13	 2	Modern Medicine	
 7   TheArsenal		Diplomatic	2218 AD	11,225	 33	 989	 50	 9	 1	Mass Media
 8   Shadow		Diplomatic	2291 AD 20,535	 40	 978	 78	14	 8	Nano-Assembly
 9   Martin Gühmann	Bloodlust	2300 AD 28,055	 50	1961	 91	25	 9	Virtual Democracy

Endscore
--------

Rank   Player		Victory Type	Points	Year    Cities	 Pop	Advanc	Wonders	Feats	Last Research
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1   Martin Gühmann	Bloodlust	28,055	2300 AD  50	1961	 91	25	 9	Virtual Democracy
 2   mapfi		Bloodlust	21,795	1550 AD	 55	1204	 58	17	 6	Jet Propulsion
 3   Shadow		Diplomatic	20,535	2291 AD  40	 978	 78	14	 8	Nano-Assembly
 4   ETB		Bloodlust	19,500	2181 AD	 50 	1217	 59	13	 2	Modern Medicine	
 5   Locutus (1)	Bloodlust	18,320	1505 AD	 48	 909	 44	12	 1	Oil Refining
 6   mnbryan37		Bloodlust	17,030	1290 AD	 22	 383	 37	10	 2	Economics
 7   TheArsenal		Diplomatic	11,225	2218 AD	 33	 989	 50	 9	 1	Mass Media
 8   Maquiladora	Diplomatic	 8,320	 970 AD	 18	 294	 38	 2	 3	Industrial Revol
 9   centrifuge		Diplomatic	 6,370	 810 AD	 16	 111	 21	 1	 2	Gunpowder

Unless Jesper or anyone else who hasn't posted their game yet can do better than you guys, it looks like there won't be any new additions to the Hall of Fame this month (although centrifuge's entry will change - considerably)...

Jesper Portus · August 21, 2002, 08:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Locutus
Unless Jesper or anyone else who hasn't posted their game yet can do better than you guys, it looks like there won't be any new additions to the Hall of Fame this month (although centrifuge's entry will change - considerably)...

I hope to reach over 30.000 points! Using a spy is expansive, but it brings a lot of points! So I conquered all but the arabains and than "bought" six of the arabian citys.

Yet the arabians have one poor city and I am on the way to gaia. I hope I can finish the "gaiaforming" till 2300 - and till the end of these tournament.

So long
Jesper

mnbryan37 · August 21, 2002, 09:44

I took the opposite approach to the 1-tile islands. I attacked them first, as early in the game they only have one military unit. Thus, I was able to attack with just a single ship of the line.

How do you guys get to a government that allows so many cities so early in the game?

Bill

Immortal Wombat · August 21, 2002, 09:47

Quote:

(this update will probably come some time after IW's city expansion code is released)

*Pedrunn's* city expansion code...

Maquiladora · August 21, 2002, 09:55

Just made a b-line for Monarchy, build happiness buildings and usually get a happiness wonder along the way, i can have about 5 or 6 cities over the maximum to keep happiness normal.

Locutus · August 21, 2002, 10:11

Quote:

Originally posted by mnbryan37
How do you guys get to a government that allows so many cities so early in the game?

B-line to Facism, use a LOT of Entertainers. I can stand up to 50% above the city limit, after that the economy crashes harder than in the '30s... (which is exactly what had started to happen in my game this tournament, I wouldn't lasted 10 more turns...)

mnbryan37 · August 21, 2002, 10:12

Maquiladora,

That's what I did also, but Locutus had 48 cities by the year 1505 and Mapfli had 55 by 1550!

Bill

Locutus · August 21, 2002, 10:13

Crosspost

(Yes, I use all happiness buildings and wonders as well - although this game I hadn't built any Cathedrals, would have allowed me to have a few cities more I suppose...)

mnbryan37 · August 21, 2002, 10:13

Oh. Sorry I didn't wait long enough for a reply

Locutus · August 21, 2002, 10:16

NP, happens all the time

mapfi · August 21, 2002, 11:33

I went monarchy - republic - democracy - that trade thingie (whatever it's called in english) using entertainers, lots of happiness bulidings and the feats.
The advantage of close city placement as I did it is in my opinion that I was able to use the population over six either for science to get faster ahead or for entertainers when I was over the city limit.

Jesper Portus · August 22, 2002, 01:51

Status report:

*** Year: 1900 ***
*** Biggest City: 46 ***
*** Citys: 45 ***
*** current built in the citys: Arcology ***
*** current science projekt: Technokraty ***
*** Next Goal: Colonize the ocean ***

So long
Jesper

mapfi · August 22, 2002, 07:27

Jesper, that's looking good, but probably taking lots of time

Locutus, thanks for the laurels (does one say that in English?). I still can't belive it was that good. Funny thing is, comparing my score to centrifuges made me look up the old post and I just realized I still got my Max.Player setting on 0. Hm, tells you how stupid I am, I guess I should change that for the next tournament game, huh?

Speaking of the next tournament game: I'd like more AI's. I'm currently playing this SAP game which started with 16 enemies. It's 1200AD and I'm constantly struggling to keep up. The cool thin is - I can see the AI's also battling each other for more room to expand. There are already around 4 civ's extinct - not by my hand. I see 5 superpowers emerging (hoping to be one of them) and I'm just so looking forward to still be fighting against those in the 20th century. That's what makes the game just so much fun, when it's hard to keep up and you're never really able to get the lead. Somehow, in this tourny I got the lead too fast. So what I'm saying: If people's machines can handle it - more players.
As for the mod - I haven't played a full game with either med or cradle so I don't care that much and just hope I won't be crushed by the different AI.
Map Size: Big is cool, but more players and bigger maps clearly isn't going to happen. That's why the size we had seems big enough to me.

Jesper Portus · August 22, 2002, 08:01

Quote:

Originally posted by mapfi
Jesper, that's looking good, but probably taking lots of time

Oh yes! For the next tournament my goal is a fast victory!

So long
Jesper

HuangShang · August 22, 2002, 12:06

yo i allied w/ the greeks again... and my science score had a point where it simply rockets...
now im building all the wonders in my build query to rack up point... and actually win this time

centrifuge · August 22, 2002, 15:18

Quote:

Originally posted by Maquiladora

ah indeed i did, have to take a looksie seeing as you beat me

Any advice or observations are always welcome

ETB · August 22, 2002, 21:28

Well, maybe we can stick with Goodmod/SAP for the next tourney and just have the opposite land to ocean ratio and extra (maybe 12) AIs. That would give MedMod at least another month or so to polish up and give tournament players a familiar mod to play on, but a different game. It would certainly be more difficult to handle AIs if they are all on the same landmass, so the difficulty level should NOT be raised. Anyway, I am all for Locutus deciding/making the games and letting us suggest our ideas for future games.

ETB · August 22, 2002, 21:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Maquiladora
The quickest way in the tech tree to take a city like that, is to attack with ship of the line until all defenders are dead. Then unload any a combat ground unit into the empty city.

I recall crashing every time I tried that in CtP. So that is not a problem for CtP2?! I'll have to remember that....

Shadow · August 22, 2002, 23:56

Been tinkering with a few things, and it seems that with the mods used in the 3rd tournament I can't realistically play on anything bigger than a 'regular' size map. I end up with turns lasting 3 minutes or so before I reach the year '0'!

I think the fact that there was lots of water made it ok in the last tournament.

I'm working on ways to 'tweak' my system, but I won't be able to upgrade for at least a half year. If Loc picks a setup that I can't run properly it doesn't matter though, I'll just sit it out. I don't want to mess up things for you guys with better systems.

Cheers,
Shadow

Martin Gühmann · August 23, 2002, 07:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
Been tinkering with a few things, and it seems that with the mods used in the 3rd tournament I can't realistically play on anything bigger than a 'regular' size map. I end up with turns lasting 3 minutes or so before I reach the year '0'!

I am trying currently to increase the performance of the slic files, but I it looks that the gain of performance won't be very high.

I also found some bugs in the GM1_goods.slc. And now it is a new version of MG_ComImpsForAIs3.slc in the work.

By the way on my old 486er I it needed one and a half hour to to do a turn in Civ2. One hour to move all the settlers and caravans and the other units, to modify the city build queues and wait half an hour to wait for my computer that it had cycled trough all my cities.

And what I got in the end as I was at the happy city founding: Too many cities. So that was the end of Civ2 for me.

-Martin

Maquiladora · August 23, 2002, 08:06

Shadow have you turned all the bells and whistles off already on Ctp2? Like taking the "low end system" on install, turning off units animations, trade routes and maxing out unit speed etc. I like to have 'mouse scroll delay' "0" too.

Unless you mean specifically the AI civs taking 3 minutes for all its turns. I sometimes play CtP2 on a P166 and it doesnt take that long, even with 10 civs, huge map.

Shadow · August 23, 2002, 19:55

That's interesting Maquiladora,

I'm running a P2 233, and I've turned of virtually everything I can turn off and still have the game functioning so it's 'fun'. My main problem is like you said, waiting for the AI to do its thing.

I'm in the process of 'decluttering' my system though, taking out a lot of memory resident things that don't need to be there, not when I'm playing CTP2 anyway.

I'll keep tinkering...

Martin, sounds like torture... [grin]

Maquiladora · August 23, 2002, 20:35

Back on the subject of the next tournament, i dont mind SAP+goodmod again. Just as long as theres more AIs. Or if not, cradle 1.32. I dont know how much people have practiced with it though.

Locutus · August 23, 2002, 22:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
I'm running a P2 233, and I've turned of virtually everything I can turn off and still have the game functioning so it's 'fun'. My main problem is like you said, waiting for the AI to do its thing.

Shadow, I've played CtP2 on a P200 for a long time and didn't have any problems, it ran fairly smoothly with regular maps and not too many AIs (no more than 8). If you have to wait 3 minutes around the year 1 AD, your system is far from optimal. How much memory do you have in your system? As you said yourself, you should clean up your PC. You don't need anything other than explorer and systray running in the background when playing CtP2, so you can close all other tasks with Ctrl-Alt-Del before starting the game. Also, make sure you have a fixed amount of Virtual Memory, that's a big resource-saver. The ideal amount of VM that you want differs per system but 3x the amount of regular memory is a good rule of thumb (on pre-XP versions of Windows: Control Panel -> System -> Performance -> Virtual Memory). Defrag and Scandisk (including a surface scan) your system (if you use the PC a lot, do this on a regular basis (well, not the surface scan but a regular Scandisk and Defrag). If you're familiar with PCs, you can gain a LOT of extra speed by messing with the BIOS settings, but only do this if you know what you're doing...

Shadow · August 24, 2002, 01:48

Cheers Loc, I'll look into it.

Maquiladora · August 24, 2002, 12:40

Anyone still playing that hasnt posted a save game yet? i wanna get cracking on the next one while i have plenty of time

Any decisions on the rules?

HuangShang · August 24, 2002, 15:22

yo man i haven't beat it yet

but i guess its b/c i need to play more often

damn yo school'll start in 9 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!