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

[Frito]

I'll be out of town next week so I had to hurry it a little
Diplomatic win in 1730. 2230 points.

[Ahlyis]

3034 points, Cultural victory in 1765 AD.

I expanded as fast as I could at first, but then tried to maintain peace for as long as possible. I was cruising along fine until the Zulus decided to attack me out of the blue. This wasn't until about 1300AD. We had a right of passage agreement and I had basically no defenders anywhere, so they took one of my cities for free. For some reason, they only took one though. I was just starting to build a military anyway, so I formed some alliances and wiped out the Zulus. I ended up with most of their cities, but the one of mine that got taken ended up in the hands of the Chinese for many years.

About 5 turns after annihilating the Zulus, Egypt decided they wanted a piece of me. So myself, China and the Aztecs divided up the Egyptian empire.

Peace came down again, but by now I had seen what conquest did for my score. So I spent about 15 turns building Tanks and Mech Infantry. I was the only one with the tech for either of those. I built a huge wall of unitsjust to keep anyone else from coming over from the East. Then I declared war on China. They had a pact with the Persians, so Persia declared war on me. No prob. But Persia had a pact with the Aztecs and Romans, so both of them declared war on me too. No prob. I had so many tanks built already that I was able to fight on both fronts (Chinese and everyone else).

The Chinese had a city on that small island and I didn't care to build a transport to go get it, so I took everything else of theirs and left them there on that island. I took all of the Aztec and Persian cities that were on my half of the world, then sued for peace. The Romans wouldn't talk to me, so war with them lasted longer, but I didn't care to expand any more and basically just built a wall of units to keep them penned into their corner. Eventually we agreed on peace.

Meanwhile, I was rush building temples, research labs, cathedrals, et al to pump up my per turn Culture increase. At the end, I was getting over 1100 Culture per turn.

Greece stayed at war with the Aztecs, Persians and Romans and wiped out the Aztecs, then Persians just a few turns before I won by Culture.

[Ahlyis]

For some reason, the file doesn't stay attached when you preview your message. Here is the file.

[Frito]

Neither did mine...wierd.

[Out4Blood]

Aeson - interesting score bonus - might have to go back and relook at the scoring increments then, if that's true. My game was well in hand by 100 AD and I could probably get a Domination victory earlier than 600 AD since I was razing cities rather than keeping them (to AVOID winning).

[dainbramaged13]

hey markg, are we suposed to avoid using mods like annunkobas? i mean should i restore the original civ3mod.bic file?

[Eli]

You must restore them. Playing with different settings is like playing a different game.

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by Out4Blood
As for game details - I basically, used my (and others) deity strategy of early military conquest to rule the world early. Massed archers, then horsemen, then knights were effective at wiping at all opposition.

I must not be implementing that correctly. After playing the game with my normal playing style, I tried the "despotic whip" strategy, and got seriously bogged down about the time the enemy got Knights.

Did you build anything normally, i.e. without sacrificing population?

Where did you get the horses? One thing about this setup is that the Babylonians don't really have any iron OR horses in their natural influence area. I finally took some horses from the Zulu in 100 AD or so, but promptly got kicked off them.

When you're using archers, do you build barracks? How about catapults? In my early war with the Persians, I got rather frustrated when I lost 5 Regular bowmen to a single spearman, and I started building both. In retrospect, the catapults probably didn't pull their weight - I probably would have done better with bowmen alone. Not so sure about the barracks.

I had a severe gold problem when I was playing this way, due to unit upkeep costs. What did you do about that?

Another key point is that I never had more than 4 native workers. After I got smart, I deleted my native ones. All my workers after that point were captured. I had at one point about 100 workers.

I can understand not building more, but why delete your existing workers?

5. Max food production. I spent WAY too long using workers to create mines and super towns, which then sat on "wealth." Bah. I should have made food from the beginning, since I never actually "made" anything and hurried everything (wonders included).

I assume you mean you used Great Leaders to hurry the wonders?

Did you go the route of Great Leader -> Army -> Heroic Epic, or did you just use every leader for Wonders?

[jack_frost]

i think he ment hurried - sacrificed population to hurry everything he built.

[Robert]

I achived a diplo victory but got *only* 3200 points or something.
Thus I decided to load the turn before and not gather the UN

Now I'm conquering the Zulus. Not razing their cities,
I just keep them It's good points !

I own the entire left side of the island. Only the greeks, romand and aztecs are left over, busy building their space ships.
I'm in war-mobilization and have to capture their capitals quickly, but first I need to kill the zulus.

What if the patch will be released before November 30th............
then the scores won't be fair anymore because some people will have played patched and others unpatched............

any official word on that ?

[fanatic civver]

>Where did you get the horses? One thing about this setup is that
>the Babylonians don't really have any iron OR horses in their
>natural influence area. I finally took some horses from the Zulu
>in 100 AD or so, but promptly got kicked off them.

***SPOILER - for those who havent played the map yet***

If you expand towards the right and down a bit you will be able to get the pair of horse resources near the huge jungle. I think there is iron down there as well. In my game, the chinese beat me to it (I hadnt scouted the area quick enough) but because of my kick arse culture I got both iron and horses when the cities defected to me.

I think I also got an iron resource through a random event next to one of my biggest cities. That was a bonus because coal was near that city too, so I could build the iron works wonder!

>I can understand not building more, but why delete your existing workers?

Not sure, but I think slaves are free while your workers require support, like military units.

[fanatic civver]

-EDIT: double post-

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Out4Blood
Aeson - interesting score bonus - might have to go back and relook at the scoring increments then, if that's true. My game was well in hand by 100 AD and I could probably get a Domination victory earlier than 600 AD since I was razing cities rather than keeping them (to AVOID winning).

I dont know if its possible to get a domination victory that early, or how domination victories compare score wise with conquest. I certainly had conquered 2/3rds of the land mass several hundred years earlier, though my cultural influence wasnt as widespread probably.

I made a seperate post about the conquest victory bonus by date on Deity level, but havent tested other difficulties. Just based on the 3 Regent victories that I've obtained by conquest so far, it seems the bonus is very close to half what it is on deity levels. On deity the formula is something like (2050 - Date) * 6. Note: a BC date would be considered as a negative date, thus adding to 2050 instead of subtracting from it.

I've noticed a bonus of 4500ish for both conquests around 600AD that I've played, and another game I finished at 30AD yeilded close to 6000 bonus points. Both those scores are in line with a (2050 - Date) * 3 scoring bonus. I'm just guessing that the other difficulty levels would be scored in similar fashion, just with a different multiplier at the end. 6 for Deity, 5 for Emporer, 4 for Monarch, 3 for Regent, 2 for Warlord, and 1 for Cheiftain would seem right, though I havent tested.

I would be interested in the scoring bonus's for other victory conditions that any of you may have noticed, along with the date. Testing conquest bonus's was quite easy as its possible to design a map where you achieve victory by just placing your first city. I cant think of an easy way to test the other victory conditions though in a controlled environment, and certainly not in as quick a manner.

I dont think that Civ3's scoring system is an accurate depiction of a players competence in most cases. In conquest its almost entirely based on date, and some early "luck" can make a difference of thousands of points. On Civfanatics GOTM I got a settler from the first hut on my first run through the game. My final score ended up being 6454 with a 30AD conquest. Just wondering how that early settler affected my score I played again, this time getting barbarians from the first hut. Both times I think the only other hut gave an advance, and I used the exact same build strategies in each case. I certainly had an advantage the second time through, knowing the resource and civ placements beforehand. This, along with the elite spearman the barbarians so kindly trained for me allowed a very early conquest of a Babylonian city.

Still my score lagged significantly from the first "early settler" game. I wasnt able to achieve conquest until 640AD IIRC, with a score of 4700. I certainly had a better military strategy the second time through, and didnt have to wait for transports after finishing off the Zulus, but the early settler more than offset these improvements score wise. It seems that an early settler under these conditions was worth close to 2000 points, which is completely out of whack. Playing a 3rd time I tried for a spacerace victory, and launched c. 1500AD. my score was 2700, which doesnt compare with the military victories well at all.

I think an early launch should be worth as much as an early conquest, and maybe it is if "early" is defined by a date not taking into account the type of victory. An early launch or cultural victory would be much later date wise than a comparable early conquest or domination victory. As far as diplomatic victory goes, I dont see how a date would really effect that, maybe it should be based on how many of the other civs vote for you, or how they have viewed you throughout the game, so you cant just bribe everyone to like you right before the UN vote.

The other side is that by putting off your victory, sometimes you can gain more points than you lose for the date bonus. To do this effectively, you need to keep track of how many points you are getting per year, not per turn. The number of years per turn varry by age, from 50 to 1, so using a per turn increase of points to justify prolonging victory is only accurate from 1950 to 2050. Using this to advance a score seems wrong, as every victory would first be "won" by conquest, and then the score bloated by building. I dont see anything wrong with a score obtained by using combined strategies, just if early conquest has to be there for a decent score, it cuts out a lot of more peaceful approaches to the game in scored competitions. Of course having seperate competitions for each of the victories types would negate this somewhat, but the best scores would still be posted by those who wiped out most of the competition early and then built to the desired victory condition.

Just a list for turn/year ratios for anyone considering "bloating" their score

4000BC - 2750BC 25 turns, 50 years each 150pts per turn
2710BC - 1750BC 25 turns, 40 years each 120pts per turn
1725BC - 750BC 40 turns, 25 years each 75pts per turn
730BC - 250AD 100 turns, 20 years each 60pts per turn
260BC - 1250AD 100 turns, 10 years each 30pts per turn
1255AD - 1750AD 100 turns, 5 years each 15pts per turn
1752AD - 1950AD 100 turns, 2 years each 6pts per turn
1951AD - 2050AD 100 turns, 1 year each 3pts per turn

Remember, at regent level you are losing 3 points per year, so if I had tried to bloat my score by not completing the conquest at 600AD, I would have had to make roughly 4500 points in the following 365 turns to have the same score. Thats an average of 12.3 points per turn. I'm just interested if from 600AD till 2050AD you were able to average that Out4Blood? I know you said 15-18 points per turn, but didn't mention what time frame that was taking into account. I would think that unless conquest is acheived in the BC's, a score could always be improved by bloating.

I would hope that some things would be changed in future tournaments. Editing of the map to make sure that goodie huts aren't too close to the starting point would make the game less interesting no doubt, but give players a much more even footing. Playing on maps with several continents would also make the conquest stage of the game less of a necessity and make early conquest much more difficult (and thus deserving of the large bonus).

Originally posted by Out4Blood
hence my suggestion to use the DATE as the determination of victory

I agree with this, as long as the type of victory is taken into account, otherwise the only type of victory that would possibly allow a good showing is conquest or domination. Even on Deity level, where techs come fast and furious, a space launch prior to 1000AD would be very rare, if not impossible. On the other hand, conquests on most maps at regent level can be obtained before then. As far as comparing dates between victory conditions, I really havent worked out any formula that would put them on even footing. Any thoughts? Something to think about.

[Out4Blood]

6172 - 290 AD

Okay, based on Aeson's post that there is a major scoring bonus for early victories, I just blitzed the AI this time and went for a conquest/domination victory. It ended up conquest. I dunno how to trigger domination. My score prior to winning was 895, so there was a huge bonus of over 5250 points.

I never made anything more powerful than horsemen.* I just made a LOT. My peak force was 120 horsies and I ended up with 119. I started with the Babs' bowmen to take down Persia and grab those NE horsies. After that I just hurried horsemen every 2 turns from about 5-10 cities. I pillaged the AI iron towns first, depriving them of anything more powerful than spearmen (hops for the greeks). I never made anythign in the towns except granary, rax, and the occasional temple. I made temples to try and trigger the domination - had I known I would not make it, I would forego the temples. To speed things up near the end of each civ, I would take 2 towns, ask for peace and receive a town or 2. This saved me from taking the remote towns that were far away, saving a few turns.

I managed to get 2 great leaders out of all that which I used to build the Oracle and Sun Tzu - however, these had no effect because the game was basically over by then. Greeks beat me to the Pyramids.

For those still having trouble with despotism - force build granaries FIRST. Then build barracks so yer troops can fight. Keep yer pop in each town at 1-2. Almost ALL of mine were at 1. Because this was the second game, I tried to build cities on the flood plains. Those were the towns where I could pump a horsey every 2 turns.




* I did make 3 swordsmen from a town that had iron, but no horses; they never got to fight though.

[Out4Blood]

jack_frost

damn o4b, dominating yet another strat game? At least I know I beat your stick cycle rush down in kohan

When did this happen? The JIHAD! is invincible. I hope you have recorded games to back up yer nonsense :-)

gus_smedstad

Did you build anything normally, i.e. without sacrificing population?

No. I rushed everything (except for the initial couple warriors who get produced before your pop even grows).

Where did you get the horses?

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.

When you're using archers, do you build barracks? How about catapults?

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. I only lost a few horses fighting the zulus with their Impi. They are basically fast spears. The jaguar warriors died quickly, so no losses there. Catapaults are too slow. Whenever I make them they end up following behind my horses and never ever get into battle. So I don't make them.

I had a severe gold problem when I was playing this way, due to unit upkeep costs

You don't have to pay for units in Despotism. Just make sure you have a lot of cities. Try taking AI cities. And don't change governments. Despotism rules.

I can understand not building more, but why delete your existing workers?

As someone pointed out, workers cost gold in Republic. However, my last game I stayed in Despotism, so it didn't matter. Although each worker I make is one less Horsey.

Did you go the route of Great Leader -> Army -> Heroic Epic, or did you just use every leader for Wonders?

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.

Aeson

I dont know if its possible to get a domination victory that early, or how domination victories compare score wise with conquest. I certainly had conquered 2/3rds of the land mass several hundred years earlier

I think it is 75% of the available landmass - but I dunno.