1BC Civ Forums / Civilization IV Discussion / CivIV GOTM: BTS Game in Progress / July 2006 GOTM / Latest Posts

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:17:21 GMT

Fine by me...probably don't have time to play it untill the last two weeks of August anyway...off from work then :) (looking forward to spending more time with Warlords)

RE: July 2006 GOTM

mongoose201 — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:58:40 GMT

Slight Delay on the August GOTM.. It will be up this weekend.:)

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Aintmyprob — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 08:11:19 GMT

I thought I offered congrats... oh well...

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Bismarck2990 — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 05:15:07 GMT

I never got a cheer for winning! But indeed, congrats and good luck on defending it next month.

[b][i]*cues in the evil Zone laugh recording[/i][/b]

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 16:32:56 GMT

hehe, thanks:blush:

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Scipio Africanus — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 15:18:25 GMT

Congratulations Palpster!

Three cheers for the Palpmeister!

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 12:07:00 GMT

ah yeah, I was going to post that, but forgot....must've been the award ceremony excitement ;)....oh well, there it is. If anyone's interested I think I could post the log (or what's it called? Replay?) as well....so you can all see I made quite a few mistakes, that's why I didn't expect to win.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

mongoose201 — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 10:58:15 GMT

If anyone wanted to have a look at the winning save, here it is..

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Aintmyprob — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 07:44:49 GMT

Congrats Pal... I have to agree with the whole time thing vs in game score...

As for allowing the game all victory conditions, but accepting saves of only one or two types... yikes... Have to really pay attention. Domination really sneaks up on me sometimes...

Addit: What happens if time is eliminated, and you milk it by way of all but domination, and controlling a space race for a very late game loss hehehe.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 03:15:47 GMT

Joy! Champion :D...(even if only few competed, I hope more will join in future editions).

About your ideas Moose: I'm all for switching options/settings/victory conditions around. However I would not choose for in-game score to be decisive, because that would mean everyone would try to achieve a Time Victory, after all then you would have the most time building, expanding and populating your empire not to mention all the points for researching technologies and building Wonders. imho, the winner should (always?) be either the one with the highest normalized score or the earliest victory date.

Quite a few folks on here are still in the process of learning to play Civ IV (as opposed to Civ3) and I don't think trying to get a Time Victory would be a good thing for them, after all, the Time Victory is nothing more than a consolation prize for anyone not being able to achieve another kind of victory. No offense to anyone, I have several Time Victories under my belt as well. All I'm trying to say is people would learn more from a game geared towards Domination/Diplo/Cultural/Space Race than Time, since those victories require a goal, planning how to get there and I believe would prove a better learning experience than simply playing along and expanding till the 2050AD arrives.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

mongoose201 — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:17:25 GMT

Congrats to Palpster, July GOTM Champion with a final normalized score of 37927.

Also, in reply to the above, I wasn't planning on the same rules with every game. That wouldn't be fair to all players. For the August GOTM, we'll probably just be going with the ingame score and I was also thinking about limiting victory conditions to give others chances. Perhaps only Time, Culture, and Space Race for the next game. Here is the catch. I may enable all victory conditions and only accept saves with certain victories.

This will limit problems that could arise if I eliminate Domination. The problem being that you could leave a single AI one city and build a massive civ to milk the score. In this case, you would have to achieve one of the selected victories without triggering another.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:40:31 GMT

Why don't we set up a game that has to be won by one either Diplomatic or Cultural Victory?....From what I gather, quite a few people on 1BC are Civ3 veterans, but still getting to grips with Civ IV, it could be a useful learning experience to go for a Diplo victory and compare notes on how it was achieved. Earliest victory would win, as opposed to highest scoring (although this will most of the time amount to the same person winning).

Another recommendation for those trying to get more out of Civ IV and learn about the depth of it; don't play on anything below Noble. The advantages for the player are so huge, that it's really not fit for taking a proper look at how things work in this game. For example getting a decent economy going with your Civ is just too easy on lower levels. On Noble and above you'll see the first signs of what it actually costs to maintain a sizeable empire. Below Noble it's just espand as fast as possible and it completely misses out on some of the balancing qualities of commerce, health, happiness and the way number if cities influences all this.

Again just some thoughts, but in this case geared more towards those who are still somewhat uncomfortable with Civ IV, but willing to give it a try and learn a thing or two in the process.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Leo — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:15:36 GMT

I could LIVE with all settings except for:

[quote]New random on reload[/quote]

I am usually pretty good at maintaining the rules of a GotM...but if you do this, I will more than likely be tempted to reload for favorable results. You CAN test my honor...but I'd prefer you don't :D

[quote]Require complete kills (have to kill every unit and every city to eliminate a civ).[/quote]

This seems like a tedious setting. I could understand if they had a settler out there...I suppose this is a way to let a large military force maintain the game but what I forsee is one lone ship without troops on it being the last unit out there, maintaining my war weariness.

I would prefer no culture flipping after conquest. I don't mind having culture flips due to culture but the having to maintain lots of troops in cities during conquests, while realistic, might not be fun.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 16:15:18 GMT

We've already got very few people that actually put a game in, I reckon we'll see even less participants at Marathon speed. I probably wouldn't play it. I simply don't have the time and besides, I usually get bored with Marathon speed. Also Marathon speed heavily favors a militaristic approach since units last a lot longer 'till their obsoletion.

All the other settings are fine, although I'd prefer a game on Noble or Prince difficulty and Normal speed.

Mind you these are just my personal thoughts, let's hear what others have to say.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Scipio Africanus — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:36:19 GMT

I have a suggestion for the August Civ4 GOTM: lets do some stuff to make it considerably more difficult to win aggressively, eh?

I been playing a bit using my own Marathon mod (which simply makes units & Techs slightly cheaper and time pass considerably slower so that you wind up with lots more time to build stacks and stacks of units, and to actually play out all the strategic permutations which the game affords), which is quite similar to the one which Ddmagnan recommended.

The real beauty of Civ4 is all the new culture stuff, all the interdependency among buildings, civ size, terrain, resources, techs, wonders, etc., and it would be neat to have a GOTM with some of the settings set to bring all of this out. Here would be my suggestions:

Human player as one of the civs that are Financial, Philosophical, Creative or Spiritual (including Catherine, Elizabeth, Frederick, Gandhi, Hatshetsup, Isabella, Louis XIV, Qin Shi Huang, or Saladin).

For the AI, two Expansive opponents (Victoria, Bismarck, Cyrus, Julius, or Peter), one Organized (Roosevelt, Washington, or Tokugawa, but Tokugawa is probably the best choice) and the rest Aggressive (Alexander, Genghis, Huayna, Kublai, Montezuma, or Napoleon).

Warlord difficulty, large temperate Terra map; Marathon speed; the following settings clicked on:

City flipping after conquest (meaning that, if you do not have the culture to back up your conquests, you'll lose the city); New random on reload; Lock mod assets; Require complete kills (have to kill every unit and every city to eliminate a civ).

Following victory conditions: Conquest, Cultural, Space Race, Diplomatic. Meaning that Time and Domination are not clicked on.

This should result in a long, LONG game, that depends as much on building a civ as on mowing through the AI with stacks of doom. Not that that is not fun and all, but just to try to have a GOTM that brings out all the neato features of Civ4.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:03:32 GMT

Here's what I did:

Made a quick dash for Bronze Working and Iron Working then started to mass produce swordsmen. While exploring I stole two workers, one from Asoka and one from Izzy. I had decided early on to keep at at least one Civ alive and friendly so I could do some tech trading. As it turned out this would be the French. Meanwhile I bullied the other Civs a bit for any techs I didn't bother researching myself.

Never opened borders with the Malinese which meant they were stuck on that small stretch south of my starting position. Never had any dealings with them untill I decided it was their turn to face the might of the Japanese warmachine. After conquering every civ but my good friend Napoleon I had more than enough population, but needed more land for a Domination victory, so I ended up taking two cities from the French after all.

550BC: Americans destroyed
500AD: Indians wiped out
1270AD: Chinese vanquished
1585AD: Spanish annihilated
1705AD Malinese trampled

1740AD: Domination victory

I could have done better if I'd been a little more focused on military conquest, I got distracted into building Wonders and improving cities a little more than I should have (I'm normally more the builder type, so I guess I acted out of routine). Also after taking one of the Indian cities, I neglected to leave any defense there moving towards the next city with everything, figuring my good relation with the French meant they wouldn't take the city. Of course I failed to see that the French had Open Borders with the Chinese and a lone warrior was passing through there and razed the city (I had just taken it with Musketeers, imagine my annoyance when this one, lowly warrior showed up....anyway, the city was razed to the ground and the bloody french beat me to getting a settler there and built a city on MY spot.....I made them pay for it in the end though as it was the first city I took :D

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Leo — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 12:13:11 GMT

Diplomatic Victory, 1988!

First Permanent Alliance ever with the Malinese. Took out the Chinese because they attacked me once, took out the French to get the votes to win, since I was in a space race with Roosevelt.

8371 score (with another of 5387...not sure what the difference is but I think the first is the one we're using)

Lech Walesa as the 'title'

Had a good time! Still not the 'love' I felt for Civ 3 but at least it gave me an excuse to play

Edit:

As normal with any GotM...not even close to winning! Great score Palpster! Jeeeez...you goon.

I have to add my voice to the "Hates 2-space rule" chorus. My Civ 3 strategy ended up relying on early close city placement and it's hard to get used to not using it. But this was a good game...I guess I'll have to go warmonger next time to get Palp a run for his money.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Bismarck2990 — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 14:51:34 GMT

I've been too busy to get the dust off the civ case... But I'm hopeful of a comeback next month to reclaim my title. But congratz to whoever wins this one. :( ;)

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:28:16 GMT

Like I said in the other thread, I'd give it a go...provided I get hold of a copy and get it to work.

As for this months game; 5 days? come on guys get your games in. I'd hate to win from just LC :P (was that cocky enough to get you playing and beat my score? I hope so ;)).

RE: July 2006 GOTM

mongoose201 — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:31:09 GMT

My CivIV Warlords should be here tomorrow. If there are enough people onsite that have the expansion, there will be a GOTM for each.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Aintmyprob — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:52:35 GMT

where did the month go?

we gonna have the expansion Gotms???

RE: July 2006 GOTM

mongoose201 — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:44:29 GMT

Less than 5 days remaining, people. Let's get cracking.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 16:44:06 GMT

I beelined iron working and gunpowder, bullying techs I passed out of the other civs in the early game. Later on my economy was pretty solid after capturing most if not all of the shrines and spreading religion around. Allowed me to run 100% tech and take a big lead. I switched to more culture towards the end trying to grab as much land as possible for the Domination, but since I was running Cavalry and cannons against macemen and a few musketmen at that time it wasn't really a big sacrifice to cut back my research rate.

Anyways, congrats on the win :)

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Locus Coeruleus — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:07:27 GMT

Ha Ha!!!! I beat your score Palpster!!! :P

actually, I did beat the game score by about 1000 points, but the normalized score....fuhgittaboutit. You got me by a factor of close to 5. Good job!

I'll post the sav and writeup here in a little bit if anyone is interested.

I was quite satisfied though with my SpaceShip victory, actually managed to form a Permanent Alliance with India which helped me get those last techs a bit sooner. ;)

[URL=http://imageshack.us][IMG]http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/9010/civ4julygotmee0.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Scipio Africanus — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 20:10:41 GMT

[quote][b]Palpster (7/16/2006)[/b][hr]Scipio: do you mean something along the lines of, build an empite on operational and then micromanage and wage war on the tactical level? (not entirely sure what you have in mind).[/quote]

Yep! That is pretty much exactly what I have in mind. I've been playing a lot of Matrix Games games. In particular I'd recommend "The Operational Art of War" (TOAW III). It has about 200 scenarios in it!!!!

http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec_Main.Entry17C?SID=45905&SP=10023&CID=0&PID=832786&PN=1&V1=832786&CUR=840&DSP=&PGRP=0&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=0

For Naval and air warfare: "War in the Pacific" is great for WWII era, and "War Plan Orange" is good for pre-WWII era (battleship era). These games are so detailed they make Civ look like monopoly! BUT! you cannot develop a society, there is no attention to things like culture, wonders, religion, city production, and little attention to things like resources. In short, I'd LOVE to see a game that combines the tactical and opertional level warfare detail of games like these, with the civilization growth-simulation qualities of Civilization 4.

Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack this thread, which is supposed to be about the GOTM (and thus great advertising/prosletyzing space for my efforts to get some gullible and very-capable young modder to bite on my ideas and run with them!). So if guys are intrigued at all, why don't you start a new thread.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Locus Coeruleus — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 08:22:05 GMT

Oh, Yes, Yes, Right you are! I know that!!! But we can't give away everything can we! :P

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 05:39:10 GMT

[quote][b]Locus Coeruleus (7/14/2006)[/b][hr]Was working on destroying the German Empire with all of my forces in that region when the dumbass Chinese attacked me out of nowhere. [/quote]

Ehm...there is no German Civ on this months game :blink:

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 05:10:50 GMT

Scipio: do you mean something along the lines of, build an empite on operational and then micromanage and wage war on the tactical level? (not entirely sure what you have in mind).

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Scipio Africanus — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 21:25:54 GMT

Well, if you stop and think about reality . . . In places like Baltimore, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Paris, London, you basically have the equivalent of several ancient towns that have grown and merged into one giant super city. In Civ3 you could sort of do that.

Actually, I have an idea for a mod using Civ4 that I'd like to run by you guys. Actually, two mods.

Tactical Civ4: Map scale is about 3 to 10 km (as in some of the scenarios in "The Operational Art of War" by Matrix Games), and the maps represent fairly small areas (say for example the area around Strasbourg, or the area around Beijing, etc.) and a period of time on the order of 100 years. Units require population to build, and instead of being "destroyed" when beaten, they get routed. This could be represented by having the unit health values be on the order of 10+ and having the combat engine set so that most units can at most deduct 1 health point, maybe up to two if they have special promotions.

Lots of other elements that could be included: stacking limits, reduction of efficiency as stack densities go up, supply, morale, partisans in tiles, etc.

Idea Two: Operational Civ4. This mod would build off of tactical, and could conceivably cover the entire span of human history. Each tile on the Operational Level map would represent maybe a 4x4 or 6x6 set of tiles on the tactical map, with the terrain type represented being the predominant terrain type in the clump of tiles in the tactical map. Not very many other changes, except perhaps to make the balance between tech production rate and game speed better, and to make more techs as in Rise and Rule. Basically, you can cruise along at Opertional level, moving your units as Division Level groups and never even consulting the tactical map, or, if you want to get into tactical level control, you can at any time, give a special command and expand any tile into its tactical map. If you are moving your units into the tile for the first time, you can choose how to split up the division into sub-units and disperse them on the tactical map.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:01:19 GMT

I've only had problems with it when I wanted to found a city close to some valuable resources only to find out an AI opponent had just built one within two tiles.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Locus Coeruleus — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 12:33:09 GMT

I find it interesting, Scip, that both you and Scotty have voiced displasure with the two-tile spacing rule. Interesting because I have never, except on rare occasions built any cities that are closer than 3 tiles apart. Different playing styles I guess.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Scipio Africanus — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:30:04 GMT

I do not like this game! :angry: 200AD and I'm already moribund.

I dislike the fact that cities must be spaced out three tiles. Ridiculous. I also dislike the balance of production in the normal speed games.

Rise and Rule Conquest mod STILL is far better than this pretty crap!

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Locus Coeruleus — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:37:01 GMT

I am indeed playing. A little bit here and there on the weekends when I can. Actually, I've made it to around the 1600AD or so. Was working on destroying the German Empire with all of my forces in that region when the dumbass Chinese attacked me out of nowhere. I wasn't going to attack them at all because they were smaller than I and we shared religion, but now I am going to conquer them completely. With those consolidations I should be set up quite nicely for the home stretch.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Aintmyprob — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:29:23 GMT

Downloaded a while back... just got started... Power session today put me somewhere around 1200 AD... hehehe One enemy down to one city, another soon to follow... hopefully the wars haven't hurt my ability to research too much...

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Scipio Africanus — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 09:42:34 GMT

I'll give it a shot! Haven't read the thread, so I'll see if I can use this as an excuse to really starting learning this game.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 04:14:20 GMT

PM'd you the save Mongoose. Thanks for the compliment, but I'd say my score is far from unbeatable. I let myself be distracted from my domination course too often for this to be hugely succesful, I think. But we'll see.

Edit: besides the few that have posted, is anyone else playing it or planning on playing it?

RE: July 2006 GOTM

mongoose201 — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:51:13 GMT

Wow.. that's going to be a tough score to beat. Nice going.:)

Oh, and Palpster, if you wish, you can attach the save to a PM sent to me.

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Palpster — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:09:30 GMT

Here's the Hall of Fame screen....Like I said first Domination ever :)

Most people will probably play fair, but I won't put my savegame up until later to make sure no one becomes tempted to have a peek at the map.

[IMG]http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e233/Nossy2006/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg[/IMG]

RE: July 2006 GOTM

Bismarck2990 — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:22:42 GMT

Just letting you gents know I will indeed be defending my title as champion! I'll have the save in by the 21st at the latest. ;)

EDIT: So much stuff to do lately... :crying:

RE: July 2006 GOTM

mongoose201 — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:28:48 GMT

If all you have is after the victory, that's fine, as long as I can determine your normalized score.

No problemo