LT36 has ended

[wieder]

Here are the winners gaining at least 40% of the top score:

akfaew
xercise
wieder
edrim
dvgo
zorn
elrik


The scores:


image hosting

Thanks for everyone for playing LT36!

[zorn]

I remember cgalik demanding an explanation for how Wieder was able to get multiple techs per turn, even though he already knew that trade routes were enabled. Hopefully he figured it out: there was no special exploit involved, simply building a lot of caravans and having an alliance with cities on opposite sides of the world was enough to get large payments for every new trade route constructed. There were some extra tricks like breaking the continents to double the trade value, sending warriors or diplomats to capture caravans, and replacing trade routes with successively higher routes to get multiple payments (and in some cases demolishing a small city to start all over again), but it was the separation of cities that was most important.

I fell behind because I had a bad starting position (all of my units grouped at the end of a peninsula in the tundra) and was building settlers instead of caravans to occupy [3]. When I attacked Bamskamp at the end of the NAP I was only a little ahead on tech. But once I got radio I was able to build airports everywhere and send freight directly to Wieder's massive trade capital: a freight bought for 200 and entering the marketplace there would give 600+ (in the best cases, and later over 800) in gold and research, even after getting railroad, so it only took a few turns to get all techs.

[cgalik]

"Demanded" sounds so strong... Requested?

Nope, I never bothered to figure it out fully. I was so far behind against such a large, experienced (except you, Zorn) alliance so I knew we didn't have a chance no matter how hard I tried.

Thanks for sharing!

[wieder]

Some thoughts.

For me the most important trick was to overwrite the old routes by sending caravans to cities with routes. When you do that the bonus is calculated with the trade with the old routes. We had different views on how to do this with the most efficient way but that's how I made most of my bulbs and gold. This was also very time consuming and actually kind of hard because moving the caravans from several cities needed to be there at the same time and with the right order. The most difficult turn for doing this was the turn when the rails were invented. I prepared something like 30 caravans to reach the destination cities at the same turn. Without a research target the game allows you to collect a buffer to be used before the tc and this also allows you to get the full bonus without the rails penalty as long as you do all the routes at the same turn.

Capturing the caravans works well but it's not optimal. When you do that you can't be allied and breaking the alliances proved to be very tricky and resulted with tons of unwanted side effects like losing units.

My opinion is that your team had a good chance of having at least few winners. How would that been possible?

We were actually expecting you to boost Drew in the end once Pipo gave him his cities but apparently that never really happened, at least not the optimal way. Everyone else switching to 100% caravan production and letting Drew to capture those caravans might have boosted his research beyond anyone else. I estimated that it might have been possible for him to launch the space ship by T100 if this happened. After that Drew should have moved his capital to somewhere we wouldn't have been able to access. By giving all of his cities, except the capital, to some other player, there might have been two winners from your team. The player reaching the stars would have been one of the winners no matter what the score would have been.

[wieder]

The game was ended and the map is there to be seen for a while. At least until everyone disconnects. Take a look if you want to.

[Xercise]

A big thank you to my alliance members, especially wieder whom I fought together with almost from the start (against Haken; and thanks Haken for creating a nice challenge right from the beginning!).

I want to say a thank you to Nicemicro for becoming our vassal early in the game; we had a very nice plan to relocate him to new lands and he agreed to give us his old cities in return and thus becoming our 'relocating ally'... it would have been a nice trick to try, but then many things happened and we were unable to do it (a real pity, but that is life; now someone else can try it in future games - or perhaps some alliance has relocated another member early in game to gain new palace in new lands?)

I want to formally apologise for taking myself too seriously at one point during the game, when there was a dispute about a NAP - I was deeply disappointed in some players for some time, but I am over it now and hope that at no point my words were disrespectful. I look forward to playing against (and possibly with) many of you in the future.

Last but not least, a big thanks to Edrim and Akfaew for entrusting us with the very big secret of 'enabled trade'... without it, I doubt I would have been a winner - this is actually my first 'recorded win, although I count LT31 as a win Edrim, you did a great job organising trade routes!

Cheers, Xercise

[pipo]

Congratulations to all winners!!

I also want to thank everybody for their time and participation.

I do hold everybody in the Longturn community in high respect.

Like Vegas and Hockey, I think that, what happens in a Longturn game
should stay in that game.

This game was probably closer in style to Railroad Tycoon
than anything else. That is not bad in itself but
it was not what I signed for. To reiterate some
of my opinions, I think that Longturn is moving away from its
original goal of not requiring too much time from a player.
I do not wish to devote my time to a game that will increase my
chances of winning as I invest more time in it.


Wieder's comment about having Drew in the winner circle is really
what I expected the outcome to be. Unfortunatly, I think
the motivation was too low at that point for our players to have any
goals at all. But, to be clear, the general idea was, at one point,
what Wieder's suggested. In my mind, if no where else.


I wanted to post some last quotes on the game but I missed my
opportunity window, so I will do it here.

I asked Wieder for some suggestions, and he gave me a great
one about "We shall meet again" a song played in the movie Dr. Strangelove.
That song was supposedly also very popular during WWII.
I thought both these facts (war and nuclear bomb from the movie), should
promote the quote to publication here. The meaning of the words "We shall meet again" is
also not lost in the context of Longturn.

This game, however, deserves more if not only
because of its wierdness, maybe because of its eye-opening events.
So, I am also including some words about a great english word producer, Shakespeare,
maybe because the Spears Of Desperations where shaken during this game .

I am choosing Pink Floyd as the real multi-functions, multi-meanings quote.
Vera is the singer associated the most with the song "We'll Meet Again".

--

Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn? Remember how she said that We would meet again Some sunny day? -- Pink Floyd - Vera

--

Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won -- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

--

[wieder]

It's really a problem that the games take too much time and one of the goals for LT37 is to reduce this issue. A smaller map, maybe 5-8 cities / player and making the game to work with less units is one of the design goals for the next LT game. I'm also not going to play LT37 but instead I'll offer some advice for all the players about how to play and how to do stuff.

Trying different setups is something we can do without experimental games but since the games can be won, we need to be careful when preparing the games. This is where all the help, suggestions and ideas are welcome. We no longer have polls for every change but instead have a ruleset prepared by someone. Polls are great for some things but creating a balanced game with poll based rulesets may be hard.

Sketlux has prepared a scenario game for us and I think we could open signups for that one. Soon. If I understood correctly it will take less time to play since every player just have few cities. The scenario games are also uncharted territory for LT (I think) and at least the first one is probably not a ranking game.

Also, great quote!

[pipo]

Also, great quote!

Thank you!

I do think that experimenting should only be done with LTeX and
the respawning one that was so popular a few years ago.

I also think that LTeX is more in line with Longturn original spirit
than the current 'formal' frame set.

Making a restriction might be a good idea or not, it should be tried in LTeX...

Doing a scenario game should also be tried under LTeX first.

I think that setting a good LTeX should be a priority in this group, since there is too much
experimentation to do, all the time.


See you in LTeX, haha!