Weekly 5-map tournament - 2011 IMO winners - Closing 8-7-2011

[florrat]

If no one posts how they beat the maps yet, we can let this tournament finish on the right day (it is unlikely the top three will change), and let the new tournament just start one day early, but end on the normal time.

I think this is the best solution. I think it is not a problem at all that the new tournament starts a day earlier. And probably you had to choose the new theme anyway (even if I end first, since I picked the theme of this week).

[Fisherck]

Tournament Results

Rank	Player	Total Score
1.	Fisherck	63125
2.	florrat	63040
3.	Evil Roc	62691
4.	Colin	62068
5.	jlog	60745
6.	Lord_Farin	60194
7.	Measure	59472
8.	bmaw323	59016
9.	Nate Dog	58295
10.	TonyP2000	58076
11.	BrYK	58026
12.	Tunnen	57754
13.	xatu285	55105

I fixed it. I still do not have much of a lead though. ;)

[Fisherck]

Since no ones done it yet, I will post the final scores (I double checked to make sure it is past sunday ;)). Now I DID NOT check to see if someone played past the midnight deadline, and it has been 6 hours... :)

Tournament Results

Rank	Player	Total Score
1.	Fisherck	63125
2.	florrat	63040
3.	Evil Roc	62691
4.	Colin	62068
5.	jlog	60745
6.	Lord_Farin	60194
7.	Zaggy	59765
8.	Measure	59472
9.	bmaw323	59016
10.	Nate Dog	58295
11.	TonyP2000	58076
12.	BrYK	58026
13.	Tunnen	57754
14.	xatu285	55105
15.	Katra	48195*
16.	Alan	37151*
17.	RichieRich	25457*
18.	Simon	13179*
19.	BoostBreed75	12182*
20.	Koker93	11854*

* Did not finish all maps.

[Evil Roc]

Eager to see some screenshots and/or clues on great results by Fisherck and florrat, you both have done an excellent job there with the scores/times!

[Fisherck]

Sorry I didn't post these earlier, kind of busy today. :)
I probably won't talk about my strategy to much as a picture is worth a thousand words and my memory doesn't work. ;)
EDIT: Just a moment I got a couple kinks...Done...

Spoiler

Lisa Sauermann was a little complicated in the beginning. I immediately went for the gems, then when I had enough, built 2 nullifiers (because the strong gravity and weak emitters made it possible). A little after this I built 2 blasters for each of the top two chambers (4 for you math wizzes ;)) to clean up the mess. After that, I built up a little energy, then worked my way down.

[close]

Spoiler

Jeck Lim was reletively simple. I took the left chamber, then the right. Ta Da! :)

[close]

Spoiler

Lin Chen was amazingly easy. As you can see, I never had to build a single reactor. The crystal energy is more than enough. The pitifully weak emitters were no match for the 4 blasters I built (2 each for the top 2 chambers)

[close]

Spoiler

For Jun Jie Joseph Kuan, as you can see, I built up extensively before attacking. I simply assulted down through the chambers to the bottom.

[close]

Spoiler

David Yang was definitely the hardest. Not because of difficulty, it is an experimental map after all. :P But because I have never tried to finish an experimental map (with the exception of day 20) competitively. To start I built in every available space, then built my dark beam (only 1!), and a buch of conversion bombs. The top right I started with a conversion bomb, then let the dark beam work (I always detonated a conversion bomb because it allows you to build nullifiers quicker as dark beams do not get everything). Then while doing this I attacked the middle top and left top chambers with 2 conversion bombs each and nullified the emitters. After that, I simply worked my way down.

[close]

[Measure]

On David Yang, do you think you could have finished faster if you used the 80% efficiency method for digging and reactor building?

[Fisherck]

On David Yang, do you think you could have finished faster if you used the 80% efficiency method for digging and reactor building?

I do not think so, and that is because while the 80% build method get's more more room out a specified amount, it costs a lot to excavate the terrain. It is far cheaper to building on the caverns I take over because I do not have to use that 3 energy (like I did for the first 2 and a half caverns) . And I was far from energy starved. Now I do think I could get faster times, but not because of reactor placement. ;)

[Kithros]

Getting the best times on experimental maps is so far beyond merely being tedious - which is why I never really bother getting good times on them. To truly do them optimally you would be doing all kinds of weird tricks with dark mirrors deactivating, turning etc. to the extent that you would literally be pausing every single frame.

[florrat]

I was away last week, so I did not have time to post anything yet (or to participate in the new tournament)

I agree with Kithros that doing perfectly on experimental maps is really tedious. But, there are some major decisions you can make which will influence the time a lot (for example, which caverns you will attack with dark beam, and which with conversion bombs, or if you are building 1 or 2 dark beams - I think building two dark beams will sometimes be really useful, see my strategy on David Yang).

I see now by the strategy of Fisherck that there's another possibility too attack caverns, which I have not considered before: using conversion bomb and dark beam together too clean out one cavern. Hmmm... I will try that later.

---

I will post my images in this, and the next two posts. I have quite a lot of screenshots. They are all of some savepoint in my optimal game, which need not be the most instructive times to show here (but I still do them all, maybe some people will find it even useful to know how I do my first 10 seconds, or how much I save :D )

I don't have screenshots for Lisa Sauermann and Jun Jie Joseph Kuan, and I don't know much about the strategy I used, anymore (also because I tried them both just once). The only thing I know is that for Jun Jie Joseph Kuan I'm quite sure I didn't use as much anticreeper.

In this post there are 6 screenshots for Jeck Lim. I did some things quite different that Fisherck, as you can see

[florrat]

Here are also three screenshots for Lin Chen. Unfortunately, I don't have one of the game near the end. I did build a few reactors, since they already produced their production costs after about 30 seconds ( 33+1/3 second to be exact, if no ground has to be digged, and no tech upgrades are bought). But I don't think I needed it.

Also already the first screenshot for David Yang, since four screenshots of that map would be (slightly) over the maximum attachment size of 4096KB (or is that 4 MiB PER ATTACHMENT?)

[florrat]

Here the other 3 screenshots of David Yang. This map was also my first experimental map which I tried to solve fast (and also apart from day 20).

I did it quite different than Fisherck. Firstly, I did attack the top central cavern, instead of the top right cavern. This was with the idea that I could attack the top right cavern at the same time as the bottom cavern, which would effectively reduce the number of caverns I had to attack by one.
Secondly, to attack the top center cave I only used conversion bombs, and that was the only time I used conversion bombs. (Fisherck: did you use more conversion bombs for later caves?)
And more smaller things.

If you have any other questions about my strategy, feel free to ask (although I'm away the major part of next week. Probably also when the custom map editor is released :'()


EDIT:

On David Yang, do you think you could have finished faster if you used the 80% efficiency method for digging and reactor building?

I do not think so, and that is because while the 80% build method get's more more room out a specified amount, it costs a lot to excavate the terrain. It is far cheaper to building on the caverns I take over because I do not have to use that 3 energy (like I did for the first 2 and a half caverns) . And I was far from energy starved. Now I do think I could get faster times, but not because of reactor placement. ;)

If you use the "80% build method" in the top left (instead of the 66% method of using only the left and right side of terrain), I think that has no disadvantages (but I don't want to go as far as that it will improve your time). Since you will still just dig 1 cell per reactor. Of course, it is even cheaper to build inside caverns you take over.

[Fisherck]

You are much better at taking regular screenshots than me. :D

(Fisherck: did you use more conversion bombs for later caves?)

I did use them for all of the caves because they are so darn nice. ;) The dark beams are not the best at cleaning up. They can cut through creeper like butter, but it takes to long to get rid of the small amounts of the creeper. Unfortunately any amount will destroy a nullifier. The good creeper already converted will wipe that all away. ;)

The 4th cave down I used 2 conversion bombs, but the rest I only used 1.

Saving the top right cavern is a very smart idea, because by the end of the map, I had a lot of extra energy being produced.

[florrat]

 :D I save pretty often, and then afterwards I load every save game and make a screenshot at that moment ;)

I need to remember that tactic with conversion bomb. I can totally imagine it is very effective. The way I usually go through a cave is by making a 3x3 square with my dark beam so that the middle cell will be a safe place to build a nullifier (usually I just cover the 8 boundary cells of the square. The creeper in the center cell with then disappear quite fast). But even then, it is usually indeed a big pain to remove every last bit of creeper in the chambers.