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

[Jesper Portus]

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]

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?)

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.

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]

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]

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):

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]

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]

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]

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

*Pedrunn's* city expansion code...

[Maquiladora]

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]

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]

Maquiladora,

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

Bill

[Locutus]

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]

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

[Locutus]

NP, happens all the time

[mapfi]

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]

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