Restarts

Mabye 1 in 4 starts favor the player . . . I'd say mabye 1 in 4 disadvantage you and 51% are equitable . . .

Heya wait a sec thats 101% . . . mmm I must be playing too much . . .

Seriously, I use Cntl-N just to get a central map position but thats about it . . . playing out of the corners is difficult (at least I find it much harder to dominate) . . .

[Message Edited]

I find playing out of the corners to be much easier. Go figure.

Oh, wait. Not talking strictly gigantic maps here, so perhaps that makes a difference. Try playing from the dead center on a Medium map, high fertility. *shudder*

I agree with Ginata's assessment of terrain ratios. About one in four favors the player, one in four disfavors, and the rest are somewhere between.


I try to play straight through, no restarting with spoilers. I used to manage that about one in three games, now I have that up to almost two in three. The higher the fertility, the less likely I will find my initial result poor enough to warrant redoing it. I also average about one Ctrl-N per game. Having beaten a Huge map Maso with a single planet, I feel I can dig out of almost any hole, terrain-wise, as long as I don't draw a runaway Drengin next door -- and maybe even then, if I can finesse it right with the attack bribes.


- Sirian

I am bad at this. I like to play a particular strategy or style to explore the limits of the simulation, so I look for particular characteristics in a starting position. maybe 1 in 20 will suite my plans. F'rinstance I played a gigantic Rare Maso with 4 planets to start a few days ago to see If I could pull it off (26,18,18,17). I did not hehe

For what it's worth, I simply can't play from a central start. I tried again last week, but I get frustrated with the exploration aspect. I always start in a corner, so when I get sensor drones I send them across the map in stripes. Also, I like the isolation so I can have an economy in place (for bribes) before I meet the AIs.

As far as your question are you expecting too much -- it depends on how sophisticated a player you are. I don't see any metaverse postings, but I don't want to make any assumptions.

I think it would be safe for me to say the strong majority of players of all levels in the metaverse prefer a large number of planets to start. I like a relatively small number of high quality planets clustered 2 or 3 in a sector. The game can be won either way. But until you have enough experience to adjust your playing style to the starting position, you will certainly find some far easier than others.

The difference I see with Civ III is that around 50% of the starting positions in GalCiv are at least playable and theoretically winnable, whereas in Civ III on diety level (I capped out at 13,000 points) you need a virtually perfect starting position.

I almost never restart. I lose a fair amount of games, though.

I used to restart. I read here many times that it was important to have a good position with many planets. Lately I 've seen many posts about 1planet/sector strategies, and stopped restarting. I've actually won 2 games where there were no other habitable planets in range (medium, uncommom). I think I find it easier (my firts 2 wins in a row in a long time -- and I don't play nowhere near maso), specially if I'm in one of the corners. It seems to me that since the AI is so :much better at grabbing planets, having them be uncommon, levels the game alittle. Usually one of the AI has 2 - 3 planets, and me and the others 1 or 2.
I must say, what I've read here has made a big difference in my playing: I did not have time to play during a couple of months, but whenever I could I would read the discussions in here from work. It seems I've acumulated many strategies in these months of reading. So thanks everyone (special thks for: LDiCesare, Sirian, Vincible, Ray, Theoden: very informative posts in general) for your help in my victories !
But I still do loose many games, usually very early on (sometimes, things seem to just not want to work the way you expect no matter what...)

~SDC~
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That is so wrong, as in any other 4x games, a good start makes the game easier but a bad start doesn't make a win impossible.


I used to restart if Earth was lower than PQ 18 but I stopped after getting a very lucky game. It was a gigantic/rae maso, Earth was PQ 16 in a corner and with only 1 planet within reach, even after the first range extension. I was curious to see how bad was that single planet so I sent my colony ship that way. It turned out it was a PQ 26. While getting there I built a colony ship on Earth, which was pure weed since my most urgent need was a constructor, so I used that colony ship to land on Mars to have a chance at a morality event when landing on the PQ 26. I did get an event, increase PQ by 48%, this was my best planet ever! I continued playing and eventually ended up with 4 more planets, 2 of them had a manufacturing capital, and cruised to an easy victory. Since that game, I always play until I have seen all the planets within my original range.

~SDC~

I just got the game about a week ago, out Christmas shopping for my son, figured I'd get something for me

Yeah, as Jaxom said, this is not correct. Stop by RBCiv some time.

http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/

Check out the Deity games in our tournament. Epic 30 had a rather bad start, and Epic 12 is infamous as the no-win scenario that one of our players actually prevailed against.

In the Legendarily Bad category, we also had the start from RBE DSG2 succession game, where a team of players pulled out a win that shocked the entire civ community. The report thread for that one has over 15,000 views, and the result led directly to AI changes for the first Civ3 expansion.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31407&perpage=20&display=&pagenumber=1

I'm afraid the screenshots are dead in that one, but it is over a year old now. I still have the final save, though, since I played the last turn.

Accomplishments are only "impossible" until someone comes along and finds a way. The Wright Brothers, for example. 100 years ago, almost exactly, they managed to fly. And now look at us.

One has to push the boundaries, though, to take on as much challenge as can be handled, to push back the limits of possibility, to make possible the impossible. That's why the theme of the Realms Beyond metaverse empire is to seek challenge through diversity. By learning to play under different circumstances, more is learned about the game, with crosspollenation of learning boosting performance in all areas. The more different situations a player can handle, the more successful he can be.

Maxtipherous plays almost all gigantic maps, and is choosy with his starts. That's fine. It allows him to score the highest of anybody per game reported, and the may the Meta scoring works, he loses less of his points to the square-root thing.

Me, I get restless doing one thing over and over. I'm shooting for getting into the top ten, or at least the top 25, on just about every Metaverse category available. Doing OK so far, got every alignment, half the map sizes, but I need a lot more games to break into those averages. And my Tiny map efforts suffered a huge setback when my first Tiny Maso was zeroed out because I made too much money too quickly and fell into the anomalous range. Blah.

Having an online community helps, though. Reading what others are doing also helps in the crosspollenation process. Diversity breeds strength.


- Sirian

Ok I took the bait. I stopped by the link and I didn't see anything remotely like the Civ III I play. Well, since this isn't a civ III forum I guess I'll let it go (grumble) (hehe).

It depends upon my mood. If I feel lazy, I will restart until I get an obvious advantage. If I feel adventurous, I'll take the first starting point I get. I lose a lot because of that, but it just makes winning that much sweeter.

Bill

~SDC~

Hey Maxtipherous, did you click on the first link or the second?