I think we should allow the game...we are talking about 3 mins here. And i'm the captian of team E so its not like im rooting for the A-Team at all, i just think there is a little room for leeway.

Though if FB does allow the game, we would have set a precedent and should be mindful of how long over then end date is considered leeway.

If it does'nt get allowed, Oh well, my own stupidity, my clock is running a little slow, and for some reason my PC is very slow on the Metaverse, otherwise I would have been 30 secs early :p 

Hey I didn't see this bad ass banner on this page yet.


I say allow it, but then again I could be biased so don't count my vote

That banner is great. Who made it? Bravo!

I guess I was tooting my own horn since I made it   

Hi!

Umm, I hadn't realized. To my count there were quite some 1-year victory games submitted, so I tried it too. But it was hard.

After those retries it looks to me I'd need quite some luck to pull out a 1-year victory. In the submitted game it took me 10 months to research the last three techs for a tech victory, despite I've been producing ~1400 TPs. To do things faster I'd need another tech planet at the end of the first year. I've tried that, but most AIs've put in orbit defenders when my troop transports came close. The only HW I managed to take was from a single minor civ.

Fighting multiple wars when you have only one year to finish them is very hard. Doing that with the all-labs approach is even harder. I didn't lack techs, I lacked production output to improve my HW AND build ships: 2-3 colonizers, survey ships and constructors, some trade freighters and quite some troop transports. I managed to build only 1 colonizer, 3 survey ships, 2 smal-hull constructors, one freighter, 2 troop transports and one armed and fast cargo hull to clear orbit of attacked civ.

There was also anther problem: every thech that didn't belong to the path to tech victory was simply a diversion. For money I needed MCC. That was about 12 turns, and I'm still convinced I couldn't manage even a 2-years victory without it. For successfull conquest I needed weapons (no big deal, but still 2 turns), better engines (5 turns) and ground combat tech (~15 turns). When I faced defenders, the cost just rocketed skyhigh: medium hull (not researched, because it would took me ~6 turns), better weapons (6-8 turns to research lasers-5 or plasma weapons) and some miniaturization to actually build better ship than AI's attack-4-6 heavy fighters. Include here 6-7 turns to build that ship, another 5 turns to get it to the AI, and a year and a half is gone. Where's then the time to rebuild conquered planet and to research tech victory in 2 years?

My hat's off for those of you who managed to win that game in two years!!

BR, Iztok

Yes, well, given Iztok's comments, and the fact that the round is over, I should probably talk about how I finally, finally managed that one year win (and then the two followup fast one year wins).

I had many of the same problems with balancing a need for money and military while smashing out research. I was finally able to get it down to a science with the Korx, by using traders early to keep people off of my back so that I could conquer two empires unmolested, plus the Korx start off evil, with two good planets and with ion drives which made my survey ships/troop transports faster.

My problem? While, if you check, I played close to 10 games with the Korx (avg about 45 minutes real time for me to complete a game) they were all 2 year wins. But, what you don't know is that they were all in January/February of year 2, I really just needed to shave 2-6 turns off of my time to get that one year win. But I was already trying everything I knew. I kept hoping maybe I could get lucky with +25% research anomolies, or maybe with a slightly better starting position, or maybe this or maybe that. But between mega events destroying some of my best games and just no luck when I needed it, all I did was perfect the 106 turn win. But I NEEDED a 104 turn win.

Then I had an idea (and this is what took me the 60 hours) and I'm not sure if it should be legal, although the pain and boredom of playing through this game was probably punishment in and of itself. The only thing I could think of to shave time off of my research was to put the 1 point into creativity to start the game. Now I played one game with creativity straight, and wasn't able to improve my time.

And then I just cheesed the system. For my next game I set my auto save to 1 turn, and then re-loaded every turn until I got creativity to proc. Let me talk about the disadvantages first. This was mind-numbingly boring and I did a lot of other things while "playing". I probably spent 39 out of every 40 minutes of "play" time watching the load screen. Creativity seems to proc about 1-2% of the time, because it was taking me on AVERAGE 60 reloads PER TURN to get a research result I was happy with. It almost killed my will to keep going several times because I was just too impatient to keep sitting there, but I gritted my teeth and just kept on with the reload grind.

The advantages were pretty significant as well, however. I got Creativity to proc 86 times straight, knocking 20 turns off of my best time. Because I was getting all of the techs a turn or two faster (and the effect snowballed) I also saw a score increase. Also, mega events no longer de-railed my game, because if one popped up I just re-loaded. ALSO, I never got the economy boost event, but if it had popped up I could have kept it up indefinitely.

All in all I finally managed my 1 year win, and I did it with a method which was all through the normal interface, but it felt... wrong. THAT is why I said I wanted to bring up my method and ask on a future rule/decision from others on whether this SHOULD be legal. Still, I doubt I would do it another time. It increased the time it took me to play a single game by 9,000%. Who has that kind of time?


But then I was introduced to ARC, lovely lovely game-breaking ARC. With ARC I can whip out a 1 year victory on these settings in my sleep. First off, setting one of the better races (Krynn, Altarians in DA) to evil saved me many turns and cash. When I would research Xeno Ethics with a non-evil race to get to MCC, my treasury would be zeroed out. Given the level I lease to, this could lead into a debt spiral that would add 10-20 turns to my game. On average, going evil lost me about 5200 credits (which was why I eventually just went with the Korx - it had to be an evil race). BUT by being able to just MAKE myself evil I was able to save all of that cash, never had my economy crashed, and seamlessly cruised to the MCC. Ah, but that power wasn't even close to the ability to change super abilities. By being able to combine Altarian research bonuses with Spore, I was able to get my first spore ship by the third turn (one +25% research anomaly on the 2nd turn), and rather than wiping two enemies it was child's play to knock out THREE enemies by the 25th turn. Not only could I ambush the AIs faster with my SUPER research PLUS Spore, but I then never had to waste a single turn the whole game on the military tree or soldiering techs.

Using the Altarians (with Evil, Spore, and the Oxor starting worlds) I was actually able to finish on these settings in AUGUST of the first year, and the game only took my usual ~40 minutes. The sheer power of combining these things was overwhelming, and is kind of what caused my reaction to ARC generally. If I can use ARC, I'm gonna be unstoppable. IF I had combined ARC with Creativity and reloading I could have blown away both time and score for what my official submission was.

The Krynn ARC game I played was similar, although used less finesse and was just plain disgusting. I didn't get my first spore ship till the 5th turn, but I was still able to knock everyone out in the first 35 turns. I was lagging considerably at this point in research vs. mysef with the ARC altarians... but. I had such huge pop growth, morale and econ bonuses I was raking in nearly twice the money. I ended up fully building 3 seperate tech worlds, never even dropped my treasury below 1000 bc the entire game, and ended just a few turns slower than the Altarian game (Sept. of year 1)

Given any sort of longer game I think I could outscore almost any other setting with ARC Krynn if I actually took the time to score grind because combining spore with their economy advantages can get me unreal amounts of money early. The setup is just so forgiving and powerful I honestly don't know what the AI could do to stop me. Maybe if I could team-lock 20 good AIs to go against me I MIGHT be able to be stopped with ARC Krynn, but it would have to be a pretty big map to give some of the AIs a chance to get out of the gate. The base morale bonuses the Krynn can bring (+80%!) to spore just buries what the Korath can manage. Add that to the Krynn economy bonuses, diplomacy bonuses, military bonuses, etc. etc. and you just have one of those sweet spot perfect storm combinations.


So there is a little behind the scenes on how I finally got my first one year victory, why the two ARC 1 year victories were so laughably easy, why BECAUSE they were so easy I had such a strong reaction to whether ARC is legal in the future, and my overall question of whether constant re-loads should be legal.

On the question of constant reloading... I don't want us to get overly bogged down in rules, it can only be policed by the honor code, and really playing that way is its own punishment. Personally this game was quite the opposite of my norm, as I usually turn auto-saving off completely so that I am never tempted to reload EVER and force myself to play out of whatever position I get myself into, mistakes and all. I think not re-loading helped to make me a better player (and is part of why I tend to smaller maps, if you never save, beating a larger map in one sitting becomes daunting) - but should it be illegal? I think this may be a huge can of worms, perhaps that is best just left closed.

Thoughts?
~ Wyndstar

Sorry I haven't replied sooner. I was sleeping at 5AM, I'm sorry to say. :LOL:

There's no need to nitpick about 3 minutes. Playjeff's submission should be allowed.

As to slightly late submissions, my two cents go with about an 1 hour after the Round's ending is ample. But this is Silver's call.



I think I posted on this on the Tyranny forums. Though I don't see that great a need to remedy this. Besides the pain and boredom that you mentioned I remember a post of Brad that the AI gets a free move of some sort that gives it an advantage over you when you reload.

Great. I felt the same way except as it benefited my team I felt I couldn't accept Silver's pronouncement since as I mentioned the natural tendency of someone trying to be fair is to make the decision that's more negative for themselves. In PlayJeff's defense it was less than 4 minutes late and more than half a world away from his "normal" timezone. However, perhaps next time we could cut it not quite so close.


This is indeed the essence of the problem and this single sentance points out three very important points.

"I don't want us to get overly bogged down in rules". I'm as big a proponent of rules as anyone but there does have to be a reasonable limit and believe me legislating this in detail would be excrutiatingly painful.

"it can only be policed by the honor code". Absolutely correct and in fact we have introduced wordage to specifically prohibit this practice. However we do have to count on people's subjective judgement to "know" when they are operating within reason and when they are not. I don't really see a good way around this other than to rely not only on the honor code but to also rely on the good and fair judgement of League members.

"playing that way is its own punishment". Amen. If the only point of the league were winning then this argument losses validity, but as was repeatedly mentioned in the many long discussions about ARC and Straw Men, winning isn't the 1st or even 2nd most important point of this league, whether it's 3rd or 4th is subject to debate. I can only imagine how painful reloading 60 times per turn could be.

Anyway like I mentioned we do now have wordage that would have allowed any reasonable person to know that this kind of behavior is prohibited. This rule has been added to the MVL Rulebook under the heading of Honor System Addendum and reads as follows.


I think we have had enough recent upset to the league regarding the ARC and Straw Men discussion, and while I think that dicussion resulted in rules that were both neccessay and sufficient it still was a major distraction and caused some damage to the league.

I think we have anticipated this conversation and already instituted wordage that should prohibit "excessive" reloading while still allowing things like the ctrl-n selection of your starting conditions as well as a reload to avoid a game destroying event.

I believe us all to be reasonable folks and I trust that everyone in the league will use their best judgement in their interpretation of this rule.

Oh, I almost forgot.

Yeah A Team.  :CONGRAT: 

About time ;p

:CONGRAT:

Congratulations A Team

Wyndstar, impressive dedication. A couple weeks back I got the idea that may have been how you went about it. Even with that advantage however, it took some excellent play to capitalize that effectively. Your blitz skills are amazing.

As to my two year game, I had the basic strategy of going with a research maximized race (Altarian, +20 research, technologist party, +25% creativity, +30 econ, +10 morale), cntrl-n until I get a +700 research square on my homeworld, spend the first year building the income and infrastructure needed to fund the research, and the second to actually research to victoory. I was counting on all the other races being good or weak (Korx) and super organizer to keep the AIs off my back. I did have one world invaded by the torians a couple turns before the end of the game, but their invasion failed. I never had any military, which saved time, money and production.

I ended the game on November 22 with 7 colonies and 1,310 total research, 1,002 of which was from my homeworld. I had 3 habitable planets near me, including wisp, and three more good extreme worlds in a nearby system, so I made advanced colonization an early research priority. To get enough income I relied on anomalies early and the Altarian morale bonus being high enough to have a decent tax rate at 100% morale. I also went good quickly to save 60 BC/turnn on upkeep and for the diplomatic bonus with the drath, iconian and torian empires. Evil would have been preferable, but I couldn't afford to zero out my treasury, and the extra time to research to concepts of malice and build the MCC aren't nothing either for a research focused empire. I researched to xeno banking and built those as able, and built the Harmony Crystals on a world with a +700 production square. I had all my research infrastructure in place by very early year 2, and then it was mostly just end turn until the victory screen came up. Overall, I think that going with a research optimized race was smart, but largely I simply had a very good starting position.

How did you A teamers with the massive scores play this round?

Fair enough. But that is a new rule for the next round. I carefully read the rules before I pulled my reloading game, and nothing covered the case of infinite reloads.

Personally, I will just never do it again. I can't imagine I'll ever want to shave off two turns to a formula so badly again, and it turned GalCiv II from a fast-paced, exciting puzzle game to a check the screen for 5 secs before hitting the reload button grind of mind-numbing suck.

~ Wyndstar

Nothing is official yet. Given the rushed nature of my tally I would be surprised if I didn't make a mistake. The benefit of me providing a tally at all is really just as a "second" opinion to the official scorekeeper. I don't have to be right because my results aren't official. The official results take longer specifically because they *do* have to be correct. I wouldn't have brought up my results at all in this thread except to point out the ramifications of the decision on whether or not to allow PlayJeff's submission.

Yeah, this was a good idea. I thought about it, but never tried it. Generally when I got to XE with the Altarians in the games I did with them, I checked my economy to see what bonus I would get with the MCC, and it always seemed to pay for itself and more even when I only had a few colonies.

It was the zeroing out of the treasury that deep-sixed my early Altarian efforts, and why it mattered soooooo much when I was able to use ARC to just start as evil.

I'm actually glad I had already submitted a game before I discovered ARC. The things you can do...


And overall it was kind of a tiring round. Good job to everyone.
My team is still not doing very well... suggestions on how I should get better guys?

~ Wyndstar

Absolutely correct.

I agree. Tiring is the operative word. Hopefully we'll get an easier set of settings for next round.

As to how you should improve it's doubtful you could improve your game by very much, but it is possible for you to help your teammates improve their games. I'm not saying you aren't already doing this but in my mind giving other players the benefit of the advice of true experts in the game is probably the best thing the League can provide.

Well if you thought this Round was tiring... :LOL:

@Wyndstar: Still even with the cheesing, it still takes a very good player to accomplish what you are able to do. So congratulations. That being said the Honor Rule Addendum I added to prevent future such instances. You are correct in that it does not affect this round, only future ones.

As for what you can do to improve your game, I doubt that there is much more that you could do, legally any way, to get better. Best bet is to do what Mumble said, and help your teammates out with pointers and such (why you may very well be doing) in helping to improve their overall game.

I know for my team, all of us have shown marked improvement since we began. And it all comes from communicating and exchanging ideas and strategies. Trust me, if had MIP awards, Pndrev would definitely be getting one from us on the Villainy. :CONGRAT:



But as we wait for KzintiPatriarch to send me the final scores to give final approval on...

After Round 8 it will be five rounds since the last draft. We have six players on every team (so possibly another team can be created) and I am starting to see a level of comfort to set in amongst teammates. Now don't get me wrong, this is good, because it improves team intra-relations and a team intuitively knows the strategy but...it also limits players from learning and communicating with other players, that may have very different strategies and ideas on how to play the game. As such, I am trying to gauge everyone's thoughts on having another Draft after Round 8 is over.

Probably not a bad idea. Hopefully this will be just in time for TGE and Motti's return to the League.

As far as the current status, it might be a good idea for teams to take a look and report their current numbers. We may need a slight rebalancing for the start of next round.

For the A Team it does seem that Califdude is gone. While certainly he would be welcomed back if he does return, I think it's safest to proceed on the basis that he won't. Plus with another month on TGE's sabbatical that put's the A Team at 4 players for the next round.

we have a new player, Sunburn4, that has joined but as yet I haven't placed him due to waiting to see how the team's were set at the end of this round. If the A-Team is the smallest, then he'll be there's automatically but I'll be making that call tomorrow.

oh as a final thought as to why I allowed jeff's game...to be honest I wasn't even thinking of him being on the A-Team or anything (for some reason I thought he was on the Crusaders...his old home lol)

anyhow, I allowed his game because it was MV submitted before midnight and it was just a few minutes afterward when he made his post. If however, the game itself wasn't posted til after midnight, I may have allowed it but I wouldn't have been so magnanimous.

As for Sunburn, Excellent, a new Padawan for Mumble :LOL: 

Silver has my Round 7 results, so we should be hearing from him soon...

I had one team member disapear again this round, Rexman, which is quite surprising, but maybe some rl things got in the way. Last I heard from him was about a week and a half ago. So Team D might be down to 4 people yet again...I think we've been the most unstable team for the last 3 rounds. It's been very chaotic.

A draft would be a very good idea after the next round. Five rounds seems like just about the right amount of time for a "season" and I think its also good for the league to mix up the players every so often so that people can get to know, and learn from, other players. Also with many people showing such great leaps and strides with their gameplay, a draft would serve to more evenly distribute the exceptional players.

Sentient species taste better...

:cough: A-team with the 4 highest scores :cough: :hack: :cough:

oh sorry, frog in my throat

Official Round 7 results:

Final Scores:

Team A - 14
Team B - 9
Team C - 11
Team D - 10
Team E - 13

Congrats Team A!

Score Breakdown:

Team A - 14 points (8 victory points + 2 BP for average score + individual score BPs for DeathAdder, Mumblefratz, Piznit, & PlayJeff)

Team B - 9 points (8 victory points + 1 speed BP for Wyndstar)

Team C - 11 points (8 victory points + 1 BP for average team speed +1 BP average team score +1 speed BP to Ferrel)

Team D - 10 points (8 victory points + 2 BP for average team submission time)

Team E - 13 points (8 victory points + 2 BP average team speed + 1 BP average submission time +2 individual speed BPs to JustinSane & Iztok)

Sentient species taste better...