2nd Apolyton Civ3 Tournament : 1-15/December/2001 (results are in!)

[cgrecu]

Re: Re: giving away dummy cities

Originally posted by Ahlyis

Anyway, it IS an exploit, but it is NOT a cheat. The gold bug is an obvious bug since there is no way the AI could possibly pay that much gold per turn. In this case though, the AI simply wasn't smart enough to recognize what was going on. Sounds like a brilliant strategy that obviously needed to be fixed, but accusing someone of cheating because they discovered it seems ridiculous to me. Are you saying that any time I find a weakness in the AI and use that to my advantage, I'm a cheater?

The thing with this particular exploit is that it really messes up the game.It's one thing to gain a few techs earlier by unfair trading, and another to completely wipe ALL civs in 8 turns(exept their capitals).
And that is what I did in a game, by using this strategy.
It does not matter that I was the last in score at that point, after ten turns I was the absolute ruler of the world.After that point I could have obtained any victory type, I could go for culture, or for expansion or anything.
And I think that most of us already knew that the AI is very found of foreign cities, and often giving away a size 3 city will make him trade all that he has (money, tech,maps).
So what marty did, it's just extended the "range of action" of this exploit.
While this is not a cheat, nor is a "briliant strategy".
And it sure is a bug, because it alters completely the whole scope of the game.
I could win with this any game on any map on any difficulty level without needing to know much about the game.

[randomturn]

For those who were mistaken, your first mistake was assuming nobody had any new super strategies/tricks.

If you continually allude to superstrategies that only you have been clever enough to discover -- and continually and conspicuously refrain from discussing those strategies, people will continue to be skeptical. Those who've been here for a while have seen one-shot-wonder "great scores" from people with mystery strategies but who mysteriously can't beat anyone in MP. People are going to be especially skeptical of a save game in which you waged 5 wars at the nearly the same time (300BC-200BC) and wrapped them all up so quickly since it looks like you just changed the MOD file to make your offensive units temporarily invincible.

[Ahlyis]

Re: Re: Re: giving away dummy cities

Originally posted by cgrecu


The thing with this particular exploit is that it really messes up the game.It's one thing to gain a few techs earlier by unfair trading, and another to completely wipe ALL civs in 8 turns(exept their capitals).

So what marty did, it's just extended the "range of action" of this exploit.
While this is not a cheat, nor is a "briliant strategy".
And it sure is a bug, because it alters completely the whole scope of the game.
I could win with this any game on any map on any difficulty level without needing to know much about the game.

Agreed. This strategy completely unbalances the game and I'm glad they fixed the AI in the patch.

My whole point was that this is NOT a cheat. While I completely agree that it should be banned or fixed (as it is in the patch), I felt strongly that calling someone a cheater for discovering and using it was ludicrous. I would only consider making full use of an exploit as cheating if the tournament rules specifically forbid the use of that particular exploit. This tournament had not such stipulation, so it was not cheating.

[photar74]

OCC Diplomatic Victory in 1808. Score: 1213

The English were useless on this map! Expansionistic is a useless characteristic without huts on a small, nearly luxury-less island.

In addition to the civ choice, the poor starting location and no other civs being on the original island made OCC quite difficult. I think the Indians were only one turn away from building the UN when I finished it.

As a result of these factors, I was never able to take a tech lead after about 500BC. However, buying whatever the new technology may be at a given time and then immediately selling it to all the other civs was even more luvrative than usual.

After the Germans and Indians made peace sometime around 750AD, there wasn't much warfare in the game, which was bad for me since it resulted in accerlated tech advancement for the Indians. I thought about it for a long time, but I simply couldn't imagine a scenario where convincing other civs to go to war would be worth it, considering almost all of them had at least one outpost near London.

After I won by Diplomacy, I tried to see if I could win by culuture, since the target date for a culture victory was only 1865 or so, and the other civs had not made much progress on spaceships. However, in 1832 the Indians landed a large force on my island and wiped me out without any warning or cause. Thus, I must revert back to my less exciting Diplomatic victory. I'm not sure I would have achieved 20,000 befoe spaceships were launched anyway.

Overall, I'm glad its over. Now I know never to play the English again, and I can download the patch!

[photar74]

OCC Diplomatic Victory in 1808. Score: 1213

The English were useless on this map! Expansionistic is a useless characteristic without huts on a small, nearly luxury-less island.

In addition to the civ choice, the poor starting location and no other civs being on the original island made OCC quite difficult. I think the Indians were only one turn away from building the UN when I finished it.

As a result of these factors, I was never able to take a tech lead after about 500BC. However, buying whatever the new technology may be at a given time and then immediately selling it to all the other civs was even more luvrative than usual.

After the Germans and Indians made peace sometime around 750AD, there wasn't much warfare in the game, which was bad for me since it resulted in accerlated tech advancement for the Indians. I thought about it for a long time, but I simply couldn't imagine a scenario where convincing other civs to go to war would be worth it, considering almost all of them had at least one outpost near London.

After I won by Diplomacy, I tried to see if I could win by culuture, since the target date for a culture victory was only 1865 or so, and the other civs had not made much progress on spaceships. However, in 1832 the Indians landed a large force on my island and wiped me out without any warning or cause. Thus, I must revert back to my less exciting Diplomatic victory. I'm not sure I would have achieved 20,000 befoe spaceships were launched anyway.

Overall, I'm glad its over. Now I know never to play the English again, and I can download the patch!

[Sirius_A]

I am at a point in the game where I can call a vote for the diplomatic win, but if I carried on I could probably get a spaceship or conquest victory also.

Can I submit both victories, since they're from the same game it's not a restart, or am I only allowed to pick one to submit?

[MarkG]

pick one

[Sirian]

Whew! Two weeks is cutting it a little close, even for someone who has a goodly amount of time to play. I gave up sleep on one night to continue playing this thing.

Hmm. English? This was quite a departure from the other few games of Civ III I've played so far. Lot of ground, lot of cities to build, but widely scattered, mostly weak terrain, pretty tough to defend. I have quite a bit to say about my adventure with this game -- too much to fit it all here. So the complete report will be hosted on my own aborning Civ III site:

Sirian's Great Library

Here's a brief summary. (Yes, for me, this is brief. No snickering, please). I played expansionist style. Rushed to Map Making at 32 turns each, then rushed out bronze working and ceremonial burial at max tech rate, and whipped all my useless new colonies into producing a temple at the first chance via rush building. My second city alternated workers and warriors at size 1 and 2 for many centuries while I concentrated on settlers (no granary) with London. Once I got to bronze working, I built the granary in London and alternated between settlers and spearmen there, while my third city built a barracks and built nothing else but veteran spearmen. The Iroquois landed one city on the northwest corner of the west isle. I had control of the rest of "my" land, plus I had landed two colonies at the luxury sites on the northeast coast of the Indian continent to the south. One of those was rather close to my capital and I had high hopes for it. The other was too far away, so I purposely planned never to grow it beyond six, as it was on a hill and I would use walls to help defend it. I spotted ivory as yet unclaimed on the west end of the iroquois continent but did not believe I could hold that, so I didn't bother to go for it.

Wise choice, as it was all I could do to hold off the extremely aggressive Indians on their own continent through two different major wars. Sweating bullets there, reinforcements repeatedly arriving with at most one turn to spare before the cities might have fallen without them. Took some hefty losses and spent a lot of gold on rushing barracks, artillery and troops. Had to trade for better tech in BOTH wars to upgrade my defensive units, to be able to hold on. I didn't touch any wonders and didn't plan to. Magellan's was the one I wanted, and I made sure to grab it, sparking a golden age that boosted me to first place, from which I never looked back. I hunkered down in a consolidation and building phase. Lack of horses left me with scant offensive options anyway, and even my defense was pressed against those elephants. Had to counterattack against the wounded elephants and cavalry with bowmen and riflemen, to finish some of them off (at some nasty cost), in the second war, or they'd have just recycled them endlessly and wore me down. Two turns after I got tanks (FINALLY an offensive unit! Good grief) I marched out seven of them against the Indians, my hated enemy and most dangerous scientific rival, and my quest for world conquest was underway. (Ha, take that, you treachorous !@#$!)

Domination victory in 1880. No other civ made it into the modern era. None of them got past combustion. Germany and Iroquois eliminated, Russia and India reduced to one city apiece on tiny islands. Score: 3573. Complete report, and additional saved games from other time periods, will be available on my site within the week, if not sooner.


- Sirian

[solo]

Tried OCC with this one, using strict OCC rules, and also playing with the new patch with the longer max research time of 40 turns. Not having any luxuries or resources made it a challenge to build that rocket first, but London was on a river and on the coast, making an OCC game viable. Launch was in 2018, leaving much room for improvement, as did the final score of 345 pts. At the end my city was producing 298 beakers and had accumulated 16884 points of culture.

Oops, started reading comments after submission, and now realize games using the new patch are taboo. Please disregard this submission.

[Psyringe]

No submission from me this time

*sigh* I guess I'm just not ready for Monarch.

The whole game saw me struggling behind the other civilizations. I couldn't reach a single objective, was continuously beaten to Great wonders by 2 to 5 turns, never had any strategical resources (except iron and coal, the latter disappearing five turn after I discovered it), basically never had the leverage to accomplish anything, and weren't skilled enough to overcome all these setbacks.

It became quite clear that a diplomatic victory was my only chance, but the Indians built the UN 7 turns before me. Unfortunately my nation is not large enough to be electable, so there went my last chance. I don't have the resources to start a war, my culture is non-existent, and my cities don't produce half as much shields as those of some other nations. So I'll count that as a loss, install the patch, play some more games at regent level and hope the next next tournament will be easier.

Till next time

[Sirius_A]

Diplomatic Victory Score: 2617

After a slow start, the English only managed to settle the main island and the one to the east. The Iroquois managed to land two cities on the east island and hence set themselves up to become the victims of the English' first military campaign (the first war ever in recorded history). 6 Iroquois cities were razed or captured amidst the bloodshed. Having met their objectives and secured 3 islands, peace was negotiated.

Having fallen drastically behind in technology in ancient times followed by a costly but rewarding military campaign, the English resorted to playing the role of banker from the moment of contact with other civilizations through to the modern age. This allowed the English to enjoy specialization in marketplaces and banks. Add to that interest from money lending, the resulting 300 gold per turn surplus undoubtedly shifted the balance in the Iroquios campaign. The military campaign's benefits together with continued lending carried the English through to the late industrial age as one of the three major leaders (Germans and Indians due to their geographical locations).

The Iroquois' attitude and reluctance to trade sparked the flames for the English' second miltary campaign, this time a full scale invasion of the Iroquois' main island. Progress was slow to begin with due to the lack of mobile offensive units but with the arrival of tanks and railroads, Iroquois cities fell by the dozens.

The UN project back home in England was originally only intended as protection against diplomatic loss. But later as the time and effort of running the entire English nation pressured its ruler, the English settled for calling the vote for diplomatic victory.

Note: The time traveling technology (save/load) was used to eliminate civil unrest as the English' leader simply did not have the time or patience to tour every city each year.

[Nimbus]

Conquest Victory, 1896 AD, 2230 points

Now I remember why i hate archipelago maps. I don't like to win any way other than conquest, and sailing my ships to each of their islands was a pain in my ass.

No saving/loading, I got burned a few times by cities switching sides on me, but in general, once I got tanks the game was a breeze. The first battle with the Iriqouis determined whether I was going to be a factor in the game or not.

If I could do it over, I'd expand quicker to the other islands and scoop up those luxury resources. I seemed to have a slow beginning but then picked up steam.

I WILL NEVER PLAY THE ENGLISH AGAIN, I need my Religious Civ's to cut the cost of temples/cathedrals and reduce anarchy to 1 turn (I had 8 turns of anarchy following the fall of my democracy due to prolonged war)

[SonicMeiyu]

diplomatic victory 1756 score = 2482

My first game on Monarch difficulty, so not bad considering the lousy starting location.

My early research was BW then writing,literature, mapmaking. Hapfway through writing I started building the Colossus which set off my golden age (way too early - I didn't realize it would be set off) and then built the Great Library immediately after. After researching mapmaking I found the other civs and raked in the early techs with the GL. My settler focus was to fill up my island first and then settle the southern part of East island. Never settled the west Island. Never fought a war.

I was using SnOOpy's graphics, so the coal on the mountain north of london was lost in the shadow . I waited an eternity to buy coal from Russia (who sold their excess away before I could buy it), and paid for 40 turns until I realized that I had local coal (an automated worker built a road on the mountain).

I managed to build up a small tech lead over India by selling my old tech for gold per turn to the other civs and running my science at max (with 10-20% for entertainment). I researched Fission ASAP and built UN ASAP, one turn before finishing I gave everyone computers, rocketry, and excess uranium to make them love me. I beat Ghandi 5-2 in the vote. Overall, Im satisfied despite missing Copernicus and Adam Smith by 1 turn each.

In hindsight, I would have skipped the Colossus, and went straight for mapmaking then lit, and settled the nearby islands ASAP.

P.S. I accidently attached the wrong save game, which I have now fixed. This doesn't count as a second submission does it?

[Nimbus]

File too Big

It said the file was too big to upload to the forum that it had to be 500k or less. my saved game is like 1.4 MB. how do i upload it here?

[Psyringe]

Re: File too Big

Originally posted by Nimbus
It said the file was too big to upload to the forum that it had to be 500k or less. my saved game is like 1.4 MB. how do i upload it here?

Zip the file. It will compress very nicely.