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]

Oops, reposting game file.

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]

As for tournament issues...

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]

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]

to jimb0v2, and one last save file post

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]

difficulty

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]

Spaceship, 1860

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