3rd Apolyton Civ3 Tournament : 17/Dec/2001-7/Jan/2002 (results are in!)

[philler]

Cultural victory
Space race visctory
Domination victory

all in the same turn...

this is strictly a quirk of fate right?

no shenanigan whatsoever involved?

[DaveV]

ICS: Now, more than ever!

I ran out of time to finish the game before the deadline, but I should be able to have a domination victory before AD 1000. No reloading, city trading, or treaty breaking; only a couple of gold/turn deals (both of which I regretted when I had to wait to attack). I just ran pure ICS (Infinite City Sleaze) and Despotic conquest.

[SonicMeiyu]

Space Race victory 1796 AD, 3196 points

A very interesting game, far more wars for me this time (I didn't have any in the first two tournament games).

Three key events made this game much easier for me. First, Thea worker found iron in the mountain to the east of Athens very early in the game. Second the Germans were wiped out early leaving me the only scientific civ in the game, and third someone built Sun Tzu one turn before anyone else discovered invention. This left me alone to build Leonardo without any compitition. As a result I got Sistine, Bach, Leon, and Copernicus for my first time ever.

I started very slowly and conservatively until I developed cavalry and using Leon I upgraded my 15 or so horsemen to cavalry and blited the Zulu into history. Not oong after I developed steam engine only to find no coal! But there was Tenochtitlan for the taking so I took advantage of my cavalry monopoly and blitzed the Aztecs. The result was a nice large empire, and after building FP in Ulundi I had a beautiful low coruption empire. Befoe I knew it I had a huge 10 tech lead on my rivals (they stayed in comunism for an eternity fighting each other and only developed the tech that I sold them at a very high price) and any wonder I wanted was mine.

Eventually, the Japanese decided they wanted my oil and attacked me just after I had built up an army of tanks. Befoe I knew it the entire world was at war with Japan, and shortly afterwards Japan joined the Zulu and the Aztec.

Since my last game was a diplomatic victory I decided to go for a Space Race victory. I was well on my way when Rome decided they wanted to wipe me out (Judging by their early attacks I think they wanted my ivory). So I enlisted the Chinese at the price of some of my extra dye and proceded flatten the Romans (the stupid Romans proceded to declare war on the Enlish too, even though Julius had the smallest army in the world). Good thing too because just before I discovered Sattelites my only Uranium source ran out. Luckily I had 5 or 6 modern armours just out side the Roman uranium city.

When I finished the SS Party deck, I was in the middle of my Roman campaign, and war weariness was starting to climb. Despite all the fighting (by my standards) I only got one leader- and very late too, so I wasn't able to take advantage.

[La Fayette]

'Domination' in 1595

This should be a victory by domination since I conquered the whole island, which means more than 2/3 of the land (as the guidebook states), but the AI didn't tell me I had won, so I go on playing (until conquest, I suppose) and post the result in the near future.
Anyway, my main objective was to test my 'size 6' strategy and it did work very nicely indeed.

[La Fayette]

domination victory in 1760

The AI just announced domination victory (1760, 3623 score).
I owned 70 cities and there were 14 left to take, so it seems that the 2/3 rule given by the civilopedia has probably been modified (patch?).
Anyway, it was fun getting there.

[Aeson]

In some limited testing of when domination is awarded, I've found it to be a sliding scale. The percentage of land tiles needed to be culturally claimed varies inversely to the number of total land tiles. Water tiles don't count either towards the total, or the number claimed.

Some of the numbers... Standard Maps, Regent (edited maps for easy tile counting and settlement)

100 Total
90 didn't trigger domination

1862 Total
1497 (~78%) needed for domination

1519 Total
1214 (~80%) needed for domination

As you can see, the % needed to trigger domination increases as the number of squares decreases. At what rate exactly I'm not sure. And as its very boring to do, this is all the testing you get from me I also tested whether or not how long the land was claimed mattered, and it didn't ever change the percentage.

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by Aeson
And as its very boring to do, this is all the testing you get from me .

I am fairly sure that this is not the truth: all good players at this game come to test ...sooner or later .

[Aeson]

I just meant im not running any more tests on when domination is triggered... not that i was the only one who would do it

[Conqueror]

Nice scores there

Nice scores you have performed people, so nice that i couldnt beat them, so i wont be posting my game here

Got only about 2300 points with space race at 1940.

Waiting eagerly for the next tournament, this game tought me to play better then before and i'm sure ill do much better next time

[Chemical Ollie]

Very brutal map! I learned a lot. I got a cultural win in AD 2003, when China already had 9 parts of the spaceship ready. I had plans to nuke them if they had tried to build the last part (they had already nuked the Japs back to the Jurassic era, so they deserved it).

I see no reason to post any file, as I only got an average score of 2300 something, which is less than half of what the best players got.

I went for early culture. I missed the Pyramids to the Krauts with a few turns and got the GL instead. I also did some aggressive settling to grab the horse in the chokepoint. The poor Horse Town whas then whipped to a high culture value. I only did one early war, to grab the iron island that the Tommies settled just a few turns before I reached it. They were not amused, but could do little against it. Shortly after, a new iron popped up on the southwest hill, but you can't have too much iron can you? My great culture made the Zulu saltpeter city defect to me, so I could build mustketmen. I was also attacked by the Chinks, but as I had built some forts at the chokepoint, they could not hurt me. The war got me two leaders before they had to sue for peace and pay me tribute. I used one leader to rush J.S. Bach and one to build an army. I also built Sixtine, Shakespeare and Tsun Tzu. The Tsun Tzu is great if you want to upgrade your units in any city. I always build it if I can.


Then I started to build a huge army of cavallery, infantry and artillery so I could take on the strong Germans that had long ago erased the Zulus, Brits and Aztecs and was no 1 in the World. When I felt strong enough, I made a "Molotov-Ribbentrop" pact with Chinese and there was a race to grab as much of Germany as possible. They did not last for very long, and I suffered very few losses, as the Chinks kept the Krauts busy. In the meantime, Rome settled on the Aztec land the Krauts had razed. I had to do an aggressive settling to grab the coal in the middle of the new Roman land. Then, when I got mech inf, I deceided Rome should stick to their own continent. It took me only one turn to throw them back in the ocean. To bad for the Chinese, they had a pact with the Romans. I used armies of 4 veteran mech inf to defend most of my border cities, and put a stack of 25 artillery under such an army. They didn't even bother to attack it when I brutally shelled down the Chinese towns to a few citizens before my modern armour rolled in. I stopped just short of Bejing, after I had grabbed all luxuries I needed. The Chinks refused to talk to me until then anyway. War wearyness was a real pain, especially as the Japs had the Suffrage, but some luxuries did help. When peace broke out, all but me started the space race. The Chinks got the lead with the Japs close behind, which finally led to the Chinks nuking the Japs to death just to keep them tied down.

I had plans to get a conquest vic in AD 2040 by nuking and blitzing the rest of the world. I and started to decrease pollution and increase population to maximize my score, but my time ran out when my capital reached 20000 culture.


One thing I have noticed is that the scoring system highly encourages aggressive conquest rather than peaceful expansion. The earlier you conquer your neighbours, the higher your score. I normally build 20-30 towns of my own and then conquer a neighbour or two in the late game. If you want more than the average 2-3000 points I normally get, you must go for blood from the very start. I tried that once and got 4000 on a tiny map by domination in AD1400. You don't even get score points for building wonders any longer. Does anyone agree with this observation, or is it just my strategy that s*ck?

[Aeson]

The scoring bonus for all types of victories is indeed determined by date. Conquest being the type that is available earliest, it will often be the highest scoring option. On maps with a lot of land though, just missing a Domination victory and building up until 2050 can score higher than early Conquest. Sadly these are the only ways of getting "high" scores.

[SonicMeiyu]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre
One thing I have noticed is that the scoring system highly encourages aggressive conquest rather than peaceful expansion. The earlier you conquer your neighbours, the higher your score. I normally build 20-30 towns of my own and then conquer a neighbour or two in the late game. If you want more than the average 2-3000 points I normally get, you must go for blood from the very start. I tried that once and got 4000 on a tiny map by domination in AD1400. You don't even get score points for building wonders any longer. Does anyone agree with this observation, or is it just my strategy that s*ck?

If you look at the histograph, you will see that only three factors influence your score for most of the game: land area (offhand I can't recall if this includes sea squares), happy population, and specialist population (I think you also get points for future tech but I'm not at my home computer and I've always won long before this became a possibility). Therfore, content pop, wonders, etc. count for nothing, and since all turns count to your score it is vital that you conquor a civ or two before the end of the midle ages if you want to be at the top. Strictly speaking, the only way I think you can get a huge 5000+ score is to take over just under 2/3 of the world and hold on as long as possible without triggering a cultural/domination victory.

While I believe that the current scoring system is much better than the old civ2 method, I think your cultural achievements,(especially wonders) should count towards your score. Currently, only happiness wonders indirectly count via increased happiness.

[SonicMeiyu]

This may be getting a bit off topic, but how about bringing back the peace dividend in some form? While the old civ2 system never seemed to count for much (at least in my games) the idea was good, and there should be some way to discourage, or at least not over reward, war mongering for 6000 years.

[La Fayette]

IMO high scores only mean boring endgames and use of specific techniques. (ask Ming, or Rah,...)
The best player is the one who achieves earliest victory of any kind (earliest landing, earliest domination,...), preferably without use of reloading or exploits, or even cheats or mods.

[SonicMeiyu]

Originally posted by La Fayette
IMO high scores only mean boring endgames and use of specific techniques. (ask Ming, or Rah,...)
The best player is the one who achieves earliest victory of any kind (earliest landing, earliest domination,...), preferably without use of reloading or exploits, or even cheats or mods.

Good point, I agree entirely.

I remember playing civ2 trying to finish the "perfect game", which meant dominating a huge map with large land area (usually the large earth map) and maximizing my score by lauching a 40,000 pop spaceship at the last possible moment.

Problem was, I never finished a single game. I would start a new game (always the best part) play off and on for a couple of weeks before quiting after the mind boggleing tedium of spending hours to micro-manage only a couple of turns . I'd then do something else (like work) before coming back a few months later and starting all over again.

In summary, don't be intimidated by those high scores, especially the early conquest/domination types which probably took a very long time to play anyway.

On a side note, I tried doing a borg style game building nothing but workers, settlers, and fighting units in the tournament 1 game but it just took too d--n long. I was sick of it before 2000 BC. I would be interested to know how long (in hours) it takes people to play this kind of style to the finish.