index last updated by cracker – July 3, 2003

"Divine Intervention" Qsc20 for Civilization III

This Quick Start Challenge is a bit unique, because it is the first QSC game that includes submissions from three different classes of game played on the same map. Our process for scoring and analyzing Qsc20-Spain focused first on individually scoring all of the games using the same QSC scoring system that everyone has become familiar with. The raw scores have been retained in the scoring spreadsheet and in the results table.

Then we used the QSC scoring system to evaluate how much value would be assigned to the starting unit bonuses for the Conquest Class game. Conquest Class players were given the following additional points at the beginning of the game just by virtue of having some extra tools to play the game:

·        3 Treasure Chests worth 10 shields each = 30 pts

·        25 extra gold units in the starting treasury = 25 pts

·        1 extra starting worker = 30 pts

·        1 extra town (carried by the extra settler) = 20 pts

·        9 extra tiles of territory (carried by the extra settler) = 36 pts

·        1 extra happy population point (carried by the extra settler) = 25 pts

These starting 166 points may not have seemed like much, but the real added benefit came from the accumulated extra power output from the extra city available from the very beginning of the game. The average player would have moved the second settler at least a space or two, but after the extra town was founded it would start producing extra food, shields, and gold that would accumulate to add to the power of the player if managed properly. As the town would grow and spin off additional workers and/or settlers the added power per turn would increase as the QSC progressed.

The total value of having the additional city would add at least 944 additional power points into the QSC games for all players who played the Conquest Class game if they managed their bonuses reasonably well. Taken together with the 166 points of starting bonuses this extra 944 pts of power output would add up to a total QSC point bonus of 1110 points that would need to be adjusted back out of the game to measure how many QSC points that the Conquest Class players actually accumulated in the game.

We also used the QSC point system to analyze the missing point totals that would need to be added back to the Predator Class games in order for their scores to be equivalent to all other QSC games. Although there is no scoring benefit or reward for players to play the predator class game, it is necessary to add this point differential back toward all the predator scores to allow them to be used as reference points for all other players. The predator games had the following penalties to overcome:

·        1 fewer technology valued at its future trade value = 257 pts

·        25 fewer gold units in the starting treasury = 25 pts

·        Minimum impact of raging barbarian encounters = 90 pts

The total scoring bonus required to bring the predator games up to a minimal equivalent level would be 372 points.

Timeline packages:
A thru F (359kb)  ·  G thru R (432kb)  ·  S thru Z (316kb)

Results Groupings

The results of this QSC were grouped for comparative analysis but left in the single results table because this one table emphasizes the clear superiority of one major approach that emphasized exploration, expansion, commerce, and trade. The groups were specifically chosen to have nothing to do with Conquest, Open, or Predator Class games and could theore

The 6 Groupings of Games in this Qsc20 are:

  Group 1 - Over Defenders - Players who committed too many resources to building immobile defenders and/or spearman at the cost of exploration and growth in other areas. The “Immobile Defender” or fortress unit in this game was designed to boost player confidence and give players the option for specific early point defense at a few key locations. Players that built more than 3 to 5 of these units could have slight skewed the power perception of their enemies, but not enough to offset the long term damage of lost resources that should have been committed to other more important projects.
  Group 2 - Swordsmen Military - Players in this group had early commitments to swordsmen used for offensive purposes or active defense.
  Group 3 - Players with Lots of Warriors - (probably headed toward a mass swordsman upgrade strategy of some kind). There is no implication that lots of warriors might be any different from early swordsmen, but in this game the tech pace may have been fast enough to indicate that mass upgrade strategies might have needed to be in progress 20 to 25 turns earlier than under typical Emperor or Monarch pace issues.
  Group 4 - Players on an Early Horse Path - the game setup for this game provided instant visibility of the Horse resources so that players could make early decisions to incorporate the decision to either pursue a horse based offensive path or stick with the iron based swordsman upgrade path.
  Group 5 - Aggressive Explorers, Expansionists, and Commercial Traders - Before the game began and without any foreknowledge of the game, Moonsinger had perfectly perceived that the key early skill in this game would be leveraged technology and influence trading. The foundation of success in this area is lots of early contacts plus commerce, commerce, commerce that comes from lots of population and low population, high happiness, low corruption towns.
  Group 6 - unclassified games.

You may download the entire data table summary for all the valid QSC submissions in an Excel spreadsheet to help with more detailed discussion and analysis which some of the more experienced players should be able to help provide.

This is the second month in a row that we can say “Too much moving around at the start of the game can just eat up resources if there is not some clear negative in the start position that should be remedied.” This point is made in the “Improving Your Opening Play Sequences” article where we emphasize that we should not necessarily be searching for the perfect hidden object under the fog. What we should be doing is trying to gain as much information as we possibly can about our starting position to facilitate answering the question "Is this position bad enough compared to the expected adjacent squares such that it would justify a move." If we can see something that we like better then we should be able to move, but in other cases we should settle and get on with business.

Well managed sequences of opening turns could settle right at the starting position or move onto the hill and achieve almost the same outcomes when combined with well chosen second and third city locations.

One issue that was raised in considerable debate during the pre-game discussion was the issue of how a sequence of two 40 turn minimum research gambits plus an opening settler move of 1 square would miss the QSC cutoff date by one turn. This game clearly shows examples where it is possible to do much better than just the two 40 turn research gambits by maximizing the benefits of your commercial power and taking advantage of early trade brokering opportunities. The tech leaders in this game were clearly well beyond any expected limits of the two 40 turn research gambits and all through the power of aggressive tech trading and back brokering.

You are again invited to view the timelines from this Qsc20 for this Continents style Deity game and ask questions or present your own constructive observations and conclusions in the accompanying forum discussion thread.

Congratulations again to all the players, supporters, and other participants in the GOTM games,

Cracker and the GOTM Staff

General Summary of the Qsc20 game conditions

Quick Start Challenge 20 (Qsc20) is an alternative submission game that allows players to document the opening play sequences of their GOTM games through the end of 1000bc and then earn extra recognition by submitting a save file plus and accompanying timeline of the events from the start of the game up to that point. Players are free to continue playing the same game and submit the results for full competition as a completed game in the GOTM.

Gotm20 was a Deity level Civ3 game with the Humans playing Spain from a rich terrain start position with rivers, food bonuses and nearby luxury resource on a standard sized Continents map with 10 rivals. Players began the game without knowing the specific landmass configuration and could quickly discover they were on a large donut shaped continent with lots of room to expand and an assortment of 6 neighbors with grumpy dispositions. One nearest neighbor was Industrious France but the northeast direction was potentially protected by a narrow set of choke points that could be blocked and defended against the aggressive English and Celts. Again the game design provided for a raging opening tech pace and lots of trading and conflict. Seven out of the ten rivals were clear early threats to the human player and RNG outcomes fueled by the inherent random instability of deity level AI behavior would always lead to two or three of the AI players being very aggressive in the early game.

Special Recognition Awards for Qsc20:

"Pacesetter" awards for the game are granted to all top eleven finishers who set aggressive paces of population growth and expansion balanced with strong technology, infrastructure, and unit development:
Snaga, Qitai, Ambiorix, DaveMcW, acivguy, Alexman, SirPleb, Smirk, mr_ego, dianthus, and Bremp (a fantasy dream team of four experienced veterans, four strong emerging players (some in their first QSC) and three fantastic newcomers to the QSC Game format.

We would also like to recognize the following special award winners selected from the content of the submitted timelines and save game files:

  The “Warmonger’s golden erection award” - Zamint3 for 705 points mostly tied up in 26 immobile defenders. Fourteen of the top 30 games in terms of military unit power were from Conquest Class games where players may have overbuilt military at the expense of power in other forms through expansion of territory and population.

  The “Techmonger’s Ivory Tower award” - This was absolutely a fantastic result that clearly demonstrates a major difference between the command of tech research and trading opportunities demonstrated by the Open Class and Predator Class Players. The award goes to Qitai with 4457 technology points and being the only player to gain the first technology into the Medieval Age. With only one exception, the top 20 technology scoring players were in the Open and Predator Class games. 50% of the bottom twenty scoring technology games were from Conquest Class players.
  The “I Cramus Maximus award” - goes to Ronald at 9.2 tiles per city but with all the land available in this game it is hard to expect anything remotely like and ICS style approach. Ronald’s game was scored in fifteenth place overall, primarily due to only moderate tech progress and only a moderate combination of population and worker count.
  The “Not So Happy Camper” award for building the fewest number of buildings or improvements - was won hands down this month by RufRydyr who seems to be on the deliberate hunt to earn the first ever recognition as the player to earn every possible award in the QSC at least once.

For more details as to how these special awards are determined you can visit the QSC Scoring and Awards webpage.

Results Summary:

All of the save games may be downloaded from the alphabetical player menu that appears in the right hand sidebar for all pages of information related to this QSC game. Remember that the timelines are grouped into four alphabetical packages which can be downloaded from links shown above and in the menu to the right of your screen.

Note that Timelines are now required for all QSC games.

Download the complete score sheet in an Excel Spreadsheet.