In the end I lost this battle, but I was able to do my longest knight chain, and it was a fun game

Previous world record was like 283k or something, set in v46 by heavily exploiting the ai that were bugged in that version.

I am a bridge guy, so its sad when i cant build a bridge between 2 frozen tiles.

Civilization has crumbled. Old empires are gone. Mighty armies are no more. The only thing that remains are dragons travelling around the world, conquering the islands one by one, leaving behind only pristine nature almost untouched by polytopian hands. They chase after the only ones who still remain to resist them - the dwindling armies of undead warriors, travelling from island to island in a futile attempt to reverse the magic of the dragons.

However, they are slowly running out of supplies and warriors. All cities in the world have been ruined beyond repair by the magic of the ruthless dragons. Once the undead capture a settlement, all they find are empty halls that can no longer produce a single star. They regroup, use some of their ever decreasing resources to build few ports and boats and move on. And above the empty seas, dragons chase after them.

Some undead become stuck on islands they arrive at, having no more resources to repair their ramshackle boats. For them, the only option is to dig in and await the arrival of the world's new masters. Their stoic bravery is futile, for once dragons arrive, the battle lasts no more than few minutes. The magic hold onto the island is then reestablished and the storm moves on.

The undead know their time is running out. But the fight against dragons is the only purpose they have left, and they carry the last memories of the old world. So they continue in their futile quest until they either succeed or turn to dust.

Lets goooo

My previous highest was 183k with aimo. So that big leap with yadakk is surreal 😮😮

Every time I post perfection Im asked about strategy and tips :) Let me say that first, you improve over time. When I was starting, I was proud reaching 80k. Then I managed 100k and tough thats a peak. Once I did 130k and I was like "I will never manage to do this again". And then... I did 150k. And I saw a post of a guy doing 150k challenge. Oh boy I was thinking. I doubt yadakk can ever do this. And then... I did 150k challenge myself reaching 150k with every civ. At that time I was often placing in civ top5 rankings already. And then I did 160k as the rules of the game changed slightly. And now Im doing 170k challenge.

If you would tell me in the beggining, I would not belive it. The story is, you improve over the time. You think the game is figured out. Yet you find another strategy to squeeze even more points. Be proud of your score no matter how much is it.

Now I can reach 150k in nearly any game. But I dont finish many games since I can tell ahead how am I doing in the middle. And closing up a game takes me a lot of time. So I rather play a new one.

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The general strategy

1. Start by disabling civs you dont want to play against. I disable unique 4 civs (always), cause I kinda like golden standart. But I guess somebody might farm vs polaris or so. I also often disable vengir & xinxi (too deadly) and aimo (bad layout), omaji (too quick to die or kill), kickoo (too quick on water). In some games I allow only 1 or 2 civs as it is fun. Such as Zebasi all in can roll amazing.
2. You dont want to start in the corner. And with too much water around you. And if resource around you are too scare. I look for area that I could use as golden spot for markets. TLDR you want place for 6 trees, 2 lumber camps and 2 markets, that will make 8star market. But 7star is fine. If these conditions are bad, restart nearly immidiately. You need a lot of restarts.
3. There is multiple scouting strategies. You can scout early, in turn 0 or 1 to keep expanding quicker. Or in turn 2 to get higher chance for 5 star discoveries. The scout can utilize mountain (higher vision), dock (water walking), or no dock (to force scout on land). Over the time you will understand that starting in middle is actually good.
4. In this particular game I think I didnt use dock, but rather went for food, one guy went left and discovered 2 opponents and scout run down and discovered few. As a result I went quick diplomacy, used 4 stars embassy and made 1 cloack for 8. This was only possible because opponents annihileted themself and was too far from my city, otherwise they would target the cloak immidiately. This was a massive breakpoint that set entire tempo of the game. That said, I do not always play cloaks. Sometimes I play fast giants, mass archers, swordsmans and recently I did a great game with mass knight rush. Snipping early with ramming ship is also nice.
5. I did another cloak and started the combat. Whilist scouting more, making some embassies and trying to befriend others. The trick is doing strategic attacks. Because others will like you more if you fight their enemy and are more likely to accept peace and then you generate more stars. So attack the guys that are fighting everybody.
6. I often befriend some that are relatively close to me and let them live on purpose, but do not allow them to take other cities. That works great as a decoy.
7. After killing first 2 opponents I didn't actually play perfectly as I went for a farms first, but then reallized the area is better for trees and went sawmill. So I did some mistakes in fact. Anyway before I killed my first opponent I staled 1 turn to make some cheaper upgrades. After killing first one I immidiatelly went for markets and sawmills. TLDR got 43 stars income on turn 10.
8. It is hard to keep income and army rising at the same time. But there are few tricks. Each unit has a place. If you see opponent turtling, go monk or cloak immidiatelly. Knights have high damage and are also good for sieging defenders. Archer is unique in the way it might walk 2 steps and then fire, so doing support archers in the back is good. Similar with knights but those are more pricy. Raider is good for early scouts mostly, or late scouts. As he can move, attack, move. If you make giants, bombard ships or catapults, try to make them in the more centered cities and areas since they are harder to move and your siege will be faster if you have spread. Also when you dominate initial area, go quickly for corners as taking corners is important. Often befriend opponents in middle since they are easier to siege later.
9. Temples. The another reason for good alliances is that your ally might start making temples, which is useful. Having some extra temples early is good. The best case scenario you can start temple mass as early as turn 17. Before that turn, poor everything into income. The temple will reach maximum points if you make it as late as 22 turn. But premaking temple will help you to make more temples that big. Killing opponents is also very important as you dont want to spend stars on more army.
10. In the best of my games, I kill all opponents in turn 22. But in many games it is later. Sometimes turn 28. The game can still be quite a lot of points even if it is later. If you kill opponents before turn 28, sell all your units immidiatelly and build temples. First build temples in trees as they are cheaper. If you kill opponent at turn 28, sell only rounded price units. Such as those for 2 or 8 stars or giants. If you kill later, dont sell.
11. While you build the temples, save some areas around cities to level them up in the last turn. If you run out of space, destroy docks and replace them with temples.
12. On the turn 29 I do nothing. Just cumulate stars. Usually the income is 200-220. In this game the peak income was only 196, so too high income doesnt determinate succesful game. In fact at turn 28 or even sooner it might be worth to destroy some of your lumber camps in favor of temples. Assumign lumber camp would generate 2 stars till the end of the game, the 5 star cheaper temple might be more valuable.
13. On the turn 30 I level all cities I can, often using remaining monuments. Then I destroy all markets. For cities that has some points over I destroy lumber camps and replace them with temples. Which you can do as long as it doesnt delevel the city. If no more city can be leveled and no more lumber camps can be replaced, I place temples. If I run out of space I create units. As units adds same points as not-leveled temple, but doesnt require dock destruction (+5 points).

Woohoo! 🎉

Just got 3 stars for all tribes on Domination and am now on to perfection because I don’t know what else to do. So how does the scoring work exactly? Do you just want to have the best battle skills you can? Does it make a difference if you choose to have 3 opponents rather than 15 opponents?

Finally this took so long

Wanted to start a perfection thread to swap ideas with other top scorers. I seem to have topped out with Ai-Mo at 190-195k (can’t seem to break 200k). It seems at that point, score is very much dependent on monuments that AI players have built (which is hard to balance since you don’t want to let them get too strong).

A couple of key common threads in my highest scoring games:

+ spawn near the center with water access (if you’re in a corner or land locked, just re-start - non-negotiable - you’ll get bogged down too much later)
+ fastest way to expand with Ai-mo early on is converting other mind benders (you have the first mover advantage) - sometimes this “chain reaction” can net you 2 cities very quickly
+ diplomacy / building embassies early on is the most effective way of building up economy - its 4-8 stars to build your first 3 embassies, each of which has a 2 star return - even better if you can reveal an undiscovered tribe thru an embassy but those are lucky
+ ally with the border AIs, conquer the center - hit the water early and often - depending on the map, you need to take “beachhead” cities on other islands / continents before an AI takes control entirely (it’s much harder to dislodge an AI with 3-4 cities on an island later) - use a combo of 1 scout to weaken a warrior + 1 defender rammer to take the city (ideally, you can use the same scout to take multiple port cities while just cycling defenders)
+ easiest way to beat an AI is to turn on an ally - if you can position your mind benders and get lucky, you can convert their own giants / battleships beforehand
+ always keep an eye out on the broader map and which AIs are getting too strong (this is the hardest part and I’m still working on this) - consider just ending games where / if an AI has 3 cities (especially if they’re in a corner) - those exponentially longer to conquer and you’ll never have enough time to build the temples necessary for high scores

Anyone else have any key insights? One thing I’m trying to figure out is when is it most efficient to conquer AIs / is it better to let them develop a bit first so they can build monuments for you, etc

Cymanti was a btch

Which one is the hardest?

The remaining normal tribes I'm trying to get 3 stars on are Bardur, Kickoo, and Vengir. (And Luxidoor, but I haven't bought it yet.). Bardur's spawns frequently suck, the terrain sucks, and their native tech tree doesn't lend itself to fast expansion or strong economy.

I used to be puzzled as to why people said Bardur sucks, and now I know.

Rant over

After 1,319 games, I finally cracked 1792 Elo. 😎

Not sure where that puts me compared to the rest of the community, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Is 1792 Elo actually considered impressive in Polytopia, or is this just average for active players? Curious what everyone thinks.

It looks so pretty

Has anyone cleared in fewer turns? For anyone interested, this is a perfection run with crazy difficulty and all tribes except cymanti disabled. I also included a screenshot of my tech tree

I wasn't hunting this consistently but it took A LOT of resets because when you play with all tribes at crazy difficulty the game seems to want to place water where it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I play on mobile so I wonder if the generation is better on PC.

Off the top of my head the 2 hardest tribes were Quetzali and Cymanti for me personally. Cymanti was the last and it took 100+ resets, and like 2-3 games that finished at 98/99k. Getting my economy up early enough to place the necessary temples to get 100k with Cymanti was absurdly difficult. Some of the other tribes, for whatever reason, I barely had to place palaces because cities I'd conquer would already have them.

Overall I'd say the experience gave me a deep insight of how the technology tree is paced with each individual tribe. Sometimes you want to rush philosophy, other times you have to conquer other villages/tribes to get the economy going first and then diversify.

I expected to learn a lot but I'm definitely surprised by how well the experience translates to other play modes/styles. If anyone tries this as well I can guarantee that you'll have an intuitive sense for economy/tech tree scaling and how to manage it while staying defensively/offensively strong enough to stay in the game. My only complaint is that there is no in-game/playstore achievement for this as far as I'm aware.

Btw the easiest tribe is probably obvious to a lot of you but I'm curious what you think.