I uploaded again, and I will be checing in often untill I know that you have it.

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All is good Cindy

Current best scores for Strawberry Fields

Current team score = 32,135 (UP by 2188 points)

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

Thanks, now I am aiming to see if I can match/beat/or at least get closer to tridean's score.

In c3 it is the market ladies who are needing serious help, in c4, it is the market men, the ones that retrieve goods. There is so much more room in those carts than what they get. But that at least makes more sense, men just naturally aren't as bright, right, Monique?

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Jun 324, 1.6 million. Race against time.

Will submit as soon as I reach 40000 points or so, then keep submitting each time I significantly increase it (Steve - suggest you wait for my last one ).

Losing a fair bit through mistakes I haven't time to go back and fix - having to be philosophical about that, but I cannot accept the last mistake os accidentally clicking on wool went I meant to mothball grapes. Lost most of my sheep, so going back 2 months.

I'm not getting fur out. Inkatium has three sources of fur (Dalania, Caledonia and a warehouse) all just one tile away but he's ever so slow getting it. I'm tending to reset whenever C20/Julia finish and never mind anyone else. Maybe only doing a little over 600K profit a year.

Monique - it's Dave. Trium is a brand of mobile phone. Happened to be lying on my desk when I was registering at HG

for those games strength and ingenuity do not still go together , it seems ..........

Good score , you are ahead of me this time !!!!!
We don't have such brand of mobile phone in my country ...........

Last months to play for me .........

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HARD

just submit last entry , not so good I was hoping , but troubles in end to rise beauty ( it seems not enough evolved villas ..... )

thus score :
3 489 054 dn
Favor=90
beauty=96
all others = 100

I do my best ..............

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HARD

Confirmed your save Monique - worth 51,118 points. Very well calculated too, but I guess you'll find out why I said that on Wednesday...

Team score now up to 33,437.

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

Waaoouuu !!! really quick checking !!!!

I am now wondering what I may have find without noticing it !!!! it may be something about beauty rating of course , it is the only one not to 100 , and I was thinking to miss points because of this ........ Need to think about this for now !!!

Strategic heads of my team , what are you thinking about this ??????

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HARD

Reached end of 325 with 2.75 million (but ratings not good as this is a work in progress). Scores about 39,000, just ahead of my last, will submit soon.

Contest page says 7 hours to go - this is always at variance with the advertised 11pm ET since the server is on GMT-7. Can I rely on 7 hours?

Allowed myself 20 minutes off to go and get an eight-pack to keep me company through the night. No sleep for me - and I have to go to London tomorrow!

From previous experience the upload utility accepts entries so long as the current date (CBC time) is not later than the closing date. So you can in fact go until 11.59pm. Then it disappears without trace. Anything later would need to be subject of negotiation with the moutonmeister.

In situations like this, it was probably a bad idea to share your, er, liking of sheep with the world. Bad timing, I'd call this.

Great score by the way. 4 million looks possible.

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Hmm..you're right. Need to work on my people skills.

Submitting May 326 - just over 3m. One unhappy villa after a solitary piece of furniture, which was supposed to be getting me a blessing, leaked into a markey carelessly left with furniture checked. Worse, Bacchus keeps giving him more, so I'm stuck with it (unless I mothball).

I wish I'd had some practice on this kablooey. I find Valedonia really hard to get right, and Schwartzius' cosmetics too, because either Caledonia is buying shedloads and you haven't enough or it won't buy any and you can;t get the quay cleared out. Should have had more than one warehouse. Also, I've had tons of gold/marble sitting here since very early on and never had chance to sell it!

I'm pleased with how I'm doing in one way, but I'm missing so much through rushing and making mistakes. Still, no time to worry about it now.

Exactly the same issues I have had with Caledonia....at least if the resets were more or less evenly placed it would not be so bad, but they are not...you seem to get two close together and then none for ages (just too hard to try to manage this, and the distance in for traders is the real culprit here). I have 2 warehouses for cosmetics and a third to take the overload, and always ready to switch Dalania to wine if needed.

Very early on I discovered that 4 luxuries was not as good as three. Another bug for the list.

I made the mistake before this thing even started of criticising the Fab Four. Probably much worse than cruelty to sheep, this.

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Finished!

DN 1071324
93 culture
100 prosoerity
100 favor

I had planned to reload, and just play it for fun, and improve, see if maybe I couldn't do better if I didn't feel under the gun. But it would NOT be fun! What will be is maybe to work on that map I have thought of to get even with these two!

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Well done, Cindy

I know this has been quite gruelling for you, as it is for me. I'll be done soon - just taking a quick break. Only 10 months to go and I'll never have to look at this !*&^% map again

Nice work everybody. I'm going to try to replay the last 10 months or so to maybe try to get these 500 and something points for 60,000. Have about 4 hours left.

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Well, I'm done, but not happy. I was going well but really struggled with the last six months and messed everything. For some reason I couldn't get new equites in - they kept appearing at the entry point, walking a short way and vanishing, They got there in the end, but way to late. Everything collapsed at the last minute - I had to submit a save from just before that as I only had half an hour left.

Made loads of mistakes while trying to juggle everything in the last six months. Over-imported everything, missed lots of exports, didn't even bother to open the last two routes. Lost track of beauty rating completely - I think it finished about 90. CR97 (no circus), PR96 (late domi didn't upgrade) FR 90, 3864700 dn.

Wasn't helped either by three rainstorms in about four months (I know, I should edit the .ini file). I always get fires during rainstorms and my Inkatium quay went down. You can imagine my language at that happening at the last hurdle after such an epic

But despite my excuses I did better than I ever thought I would. About 54,000 points I reckon. I'm just sorry I didn't do as well for you guys as I know I could. It wasn't that I left it to the last minute either - I've been doing this day and night for two months.

It's been a great pleasure associating with you people. May the best team win (of course we will )

Wow, Trium, and you said that I had been struggling.

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Damn you two late submitters

Trium - I know you are a perfectionist but a score of over 50,000 is a stunning achievement for anyone in this contest.

I'm looking forward to the countdown for the top ten individual players... Quite a few are going to be surprised methinks

@Cindy - you asked about how the teams were selected. Actually it was largely down to personal judgement as to who I thought would work together best as a group. For example - Paul & Monique worked together on ROTML, you know Paul pretty well, you and Trium are new to C4 contests but like Paul (and Monique) have a detailed understanding of C3 so have that common ground to work on... Sometimes we're not devious, but just trying to be nice!

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

Hey, I tested ROTML too, guess you forgot, And Trium and I work together on The Mod Squad.

Keep trying, you'll get there!

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Confirmation of the final scores:

17,755 for abana
54,390 for Trium

Final team score = 36,454

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

It seems we did our best to improve our scores !!!!

It was a great contest , and a real pleasure to play in this team , lot and lot of things learned ...........

Big thank and bravo to our Captain , who worked hard , either in advices than in playing , and to Trium who gave so many indications and put so much time in this contest

Abana , your last save is a great improvement !!! Bravo to reach the end

And as Trium said "" May the best team win "" , but I think we fought correctly , although those who were able to play till the end

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HARD

I agree "may the best team win", but we know that is us, don't we?

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Congratulations team!

So now you know, you have three out of the top 5. Given the quality of the opposition, this is a brilliant achievement.

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

WWWAAAOOOOUUU !!!! I think we fought a lot in last days , and I was not so happy with my score : with less sleep ( 3-4 hours/night in last week , need some rest for now ) and better management , I might have done little better , but I am REALLY happy to be in TOP 5 !!!!!!!!

3 of us so well placed , great team's job I think !!!!!

Very big BRAVO to our Captain , who will be well placed , and to our ""novice"" Trium who did such a huge work and score

However I miss something in the ranking ...........

I LOVE these team contests , even if at end I (we) have an overdose of the game for a time

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HARD

I'm really surprised to still be in the running after 5 top 10's have been announced, and I certainly didn't feel I'd done a great job. I think I got a good start, but I was stupid to invest so much time in a part of the game where there is not a great deal of money at stake. You just seem to feel that every denarii counts when you've only got a few thousand, once you have over a million you no longer care about the thousands

From Paul's posts it looks like I started ahead of him then gradually lost the lead, so he was trading more effectively than I was. I did find my mistake with Inkatium quay - I though I was being clever by having it, Dalania, Caledonia and a warehouse all sharing a single tile of road for minimum travel distances, but of course this causes congestion. Too many carts trying to use the same tile causes a lot of waiting and manouvering around each other.

I intended manipulating taxes to get a higher score but I found myself way too busy to even think about it. I could only get 9% property tax with zero sales tax. Seems to be a difficulty level issue. I kept forgetting things - like being so engaged in micromanaging quays that I'd forget to unmothball farms or something.

I messed up the end really badly. I could have taken at least some remedial action in the half hour remaining, but to be absolutely honest I was falling asleep at the keyboard (which is probably why I messed up). I should have bunged in the circus to get those last (valuable) culture points, but I already had equite labor problems and mansions were devolving. Of course, I only needed to save before they actually devolved - I wasn't thinking straight.

Similarly, I only needed to mothball a few insulae to get PR100, and I omitted to do it. Kicking myself now. As for BR - I was keeping track on a spreadsheet but lost count of things near the end. Dazed and confused by then, I hoped it would rise when I deleted industries but I left it too late.

Annoyingly, I sacrificed trade at the end to get those ratings, then failed to get them. If I'd realised I wasn't going to get them I'd have done at least one more reset, maybe two.

With a fresher mind and another hour I'd have made another 3000 points or so, but I shouldn't be dissatisfied really. It looks like us three, pantavit and...who else?

Is pantavit's team the one with a few no shows? That's going to help them. I know it's difficult to be fair to everybody in these situations, but it doesn't seem quite right that a team with weak but willing players is weighed down more than one whose players didn't bother to show up at all. But I won't be so ungracious as to argue about it - it's only a game after all

Could not agree more. Whats more I'm absolutely positive Steve realises the implications of what seemed like a reasonable decision at the time. It doesn't matter anyway. We have three in the top 5 and two in the top 3. Probably even so we will still run 3rd of 5 teams.

I for one will accept whatever position we manage to achieve as a team, knowing all of us did the best we could under the circumstances.

Dave you have made the top 3 of 26 players, at a game you don't appear to have ever seriously played before. And you could have beaten my score if you paced yourself better. You are just incredible, I am in complete awe, and proud to have been able to assist you to achieve this result. By the way, you could have used the circus bug. Once the circus has charioteers, you can take away its road connection for an extended period, meaning it does not require equites. My bad for not mentioning this.

Something funny is going on. Either Dalan has missed the top 10 (impossible I would suggest) or Pantavit is all bluster. But he knows what he is talking about, thats the thing...

Seems I was really the only one of the three of us playing Insane who was happy with their final entry....

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Paul - it would be good to have a discussion in the team forums about how we handle "no shows" in future team contests, when this is all over, because, yes, I'm not entirely happy with the rule as it stands. As it was, Dalan's team was the only one to have a player subject to the 90% rule - which means his team's score was the only one subject to influence by the scores of other teams. When you see the final tally I think you will agree that it would not have been right to have 1/3 of his team's score subject to this rule (which is what would have happened if I had counted VectorGod in his team as well).

What I will say is that one of those two explanations is the correct one.

At the risk of confusing the non-cricket-speaking members of the team, I will say that Dave's non-satisfaction for what is truly an amazing performance reminds me of the story of Percy Holmes from my beloved Yorkshire. After he and his partner Herbert Sutcliffe had just broken the world record for an opening stand, he is supposed to have said in the dressing room "My word Herbert, if it hadn't a' been for my lumbago, we would 'ave brayed 'em".

Congratulations again Dave - remember, until this contest, only Dalan had ever beaten AndreasHauffe in a C4 CBC contest.

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

congratulation Dave you did very well

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HARD

Don't get me wrong, guys - my 'dissatisfaction' is only really with my messing up the end after a long hard haul. Otherwise I'm cock-a-hoop!

Playful sense of humour pantavit has, don't you think?

http://www.citybuildingcontests.net/...2&postcount=10

Yeah, some humor!

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well despite of number's results , we can be proud of our team which is the only one to have 3 scores up to 50 000 , and one of those with the most novice players in !!!
Our late fight was relentless and fruitful and big bravo to Our Master Captain

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HARD

I'll remember that one. But as I posted elsewhere, since the contest closed I found I was able to get 100% religion coverage with less than one-third of the required workers in religion, so I just placed the circus and got CR100.

What puzzles me slightly - I didn't put in a charioteer at all, but most other players whose saves I have looked at have done so. If it's not needed, why would almost everybody else put it in? Am I missing something?

And did you see Andreas' save with 35 mansions? Beautifully laid out, but behind me by around 200k. I don't know if that proves that the villa strategy is a bad one or, since he didn't use kablooeys, that it is a good one.

Shame so many of these end saves don't show the city at its prime with everything working. Andreas' is probably one of the most complete - there isn't enough left of Dalan's to learn anything by.

And Paul, you've been giving me far too much credit. Great for my ego, but bad for the pressure, for now I think too much will be expected of me

It’s a malfunction of C4 you can reach 100 in culture with an inactive circus (without any road connection).
But when creating the beauty-rating Hieronymus was smart enough to prevent this bug. So only an active circus will contribute to the beauty rating – and therefore you need a charioteer.

I also find this very annoying. Perhaps it would be possible also to provide the saves from December 326. I think most cities were still complete at this time.

Yes! Now you are doomed!

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We can work it out

Apart from the obvious case of Dalan, are there any other particular requests? I could at least approach the players concerned and ask them to email me their Dec326 saves.

If anyone's not sick of it already I could even post a "barking mad" version for people to try... (starting with 0dn)

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

That's a great idea, Steve. As there will be an end of year reset, we should be able to observe trade at full throttle too (and learn something)

Another great idea. What will be the scaling? Mind you, I start every Monday with 0 dn. But I still make it through to Friday somehow

Welcome back Trium (You can see the strange visitor messages abana left me on my profile...)

Oh I just nicked this from Inka. Thanks for your save btw - I'll upload it this evening.

Actually it was Paul who mooted this possibility, mid-way through the contest. Don't know how serious he was being. As to scaling - no idea this early in the morning! Apart from the concrete fact of starting with 7500 less denarii, I'd have to factor in the impact of the favour hit and the inability to open the prosperity route early on. Against that I would have thought the kablooeyed ports strategy was essential to make any kind of headway early on. 1.3 or 1.25, I'll let you know later.

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"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know! "

Trium, you can also see some strange messages that were left for me.

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To be honest, I think the credit belongs to Inka. I agreed because I thought it was a good idea, insane being a little easier than I expected, and also to give the impression to other teams that we were on top of things, hehe.

Honestly, I think it could be done by a good player with no other changes.

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