How far can you get?

[Liminullity]

So I'm loving the game so far, but I am curious how far it is actually practical to progress before inevitably being forced to restart. I seem to get stuck consistently around island 5 or 6. My hope is that I'm just bad and it's totally possible to get a game that stretches on much longer, especially since I've been pretty far down in the leaderboards so far.

How many islands have people managed to clear?

[MarobarSul]

I really think it comes down to luck and probability. The Highscores are a better metric, methinks, even though they aren't perfect either. But over the course of several maps the bad luck should even out a little better.
On some maps I struggle to meet the escape threshold (looking at you, frozen small chunk of bare rock), but on very big and generous ones, It should be possible to pull off 10k points or more -- just on one map.

[Ogami]

Well there was someone yesterday who was on his 13th island with 50k points.
So its definitely possible. But it depends a lot on what kind of island you get and your planning.
Its often better to get smaller amount of points at the beginning of a new island but place buildings for future big big point buildings like temples.

[American Dove Mitten]

I only got to the 8th which was in top 50 a few days ago, probably much lower now

[MarobarSul]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Its often better to get smaller amount of points at the beginning of a new island but place buildings for future big big point buildings like temples.

Yeah, there comes the learning process and skill into play. But it is extremely satisfying to place (for example) that damn bloody Jewelery for triple digit points.

[robofish126]

I still haven't completed my first run, at Island #8 with 37k points. And as it is my first run, I kind of underplayed at first getting only 8k across the first three islands, only to get 8k+ on just one island all the way up at Island #6.

[Cap'n Saccade]

Island #5 - After statues (which filled up 2 of the mini islands) I have choice of lumberjacks or sandpits, on a small collection of islands with 1 tree, no beaches and enough space to place a few houses on each of the 6 islands.

Luck of the draw.

However, I've run into the same problem that has been mentioned in another thread - I have no space to place all the buildings I have from the 2nd pack, so I must quit the game, as I cannot "end/lose" it and have the stats logged.

Therefore, I've copied the save files and started again, and am waiting for patch allow me to "resign".

[Lantantan]

I'm the guy who's got the current top score at 95.000. I could just keep on going and going. The difficulty does ramp up a little bit but not enough to stop me. I quit early because I was getting bored.

I found all the islands to be of equal difficulty with some exceptions.
The wooden platforms island map runs out of space before you can get that second temple up so that limits your score and will eventually kill you.
The real moneymaker map is definately the ice island. Those compact, large stretches of land and no constraining agriculture leads to massive cities with 5 x 100 point markets.

[Cap'n Saccade]

Did you also run into the "can't place any more buildings, so have to quit" ending, Lantantan?

I haven't looked at the leaderboards, but well done for getting nearly 100k!

[Lantantan]

Originally posted by Cap'n Saccade:

I haven't looked at the leaderboards, but well done for getting nearly 100k! :Hand_Shake:

:D

I didnt encounter any issues apart from some floating trees in my games. I do have a deep loathing for woodcutters and sawmills now though. I think I'll complain about that in more detail elsewhere.

[Mathosse]

Sorry Lantantan, You will have to settle for the 2nd place now :) I just beat the 100K points on my 20th island.

And actually, I believe now the 20th island is actually the final one. the "next island" didn't started to fill at all at my last island, despite a score of about 4500 points on that final island (a rock& sand one, with the statue on a remote shore, the worst map i had.)

My favorite trick is using wall plateau to increase the density of my city center with additionnal layers on top of it. Works really well with houses, you can usually put 4x30+ points houses on such plateau. Or a market, of course.

[Lantantan]

Originally posted by Mathosse:

Sorry Lantantan, You will have to settle for the 2nd place now :) I just beat the 100K points on my 20th island.

Nice! So there really was an ending? I thought because they kept going ad infinitum the scores were kinda meaningless. Now I'm starting to regret quiting early, I could have totally gotten 5k more on those 2 islands I skipped.

Wish there was like a single map daily challenge mode that doesnt just suck up 30 hours of your life, you know what I mean? ;)

[Mathosse]

I totally get what you mean ;) It was my very first run, so obviously my first islands were far from optimal, but i'll not do that marathon again either, even if I got beaten (which will happen, obviously)

But if a daily challenge mode happen, count on me to try to optimize each challenge map like crazy ;)

[M B Lamar]

Daily challenge, please, that would be meaningful - everyone working off the exact same map is an apples to apples skill challenge.

[MarobarSul]

Actually, if the luck of the draw seems to be not severe enough to limit one's ability to hop to next map, I think it's a good thing that there is a maximum number of available islands. Because we need some kind of severe restriction to get some real competitiveness in the high scores. Now the best one of us is determined by being the absolut most effeicient over the course of all maps; the player that is able to squeeze out every last point out of every decision. Else it would only be a question of how much time would you like to invest.

Of course, I would prefer to have another hard limiting factor so that the excellent players could push the chain of maps higher and higher. That could mean that the threshold to hopping on would increase with every island, without ever getting mathematically impossible to reach. But this would mean that the island generation itself would have to be altered, because for not becoming unsolvable at a certain point it has to adapt to the threshold, too. For that to happen in am enjoyable way, to become succeedingly more difficult but always remain solvable... there has to be invested some additional serious design work.

But my point is: In the state of the game right now it is a good thing to have this absolute limit, from a competitive perspective.

(At least up until there is a point reached, when several players have reached the skillcap and only luck decides the new highscores. So for the long term viability of the highscores itself it should be iterated on.)

[Mathosse]

Please note that I have no hardproof of that 20 island limit, but i think it exist because the "next island" didn't even started to fill at 4000 points, and I won previous island (19th) with only 5500 points. Maybe the threshold just rise sharpky at 20, but i'm not sure at all.

Indeed, score is somehow luck dependent (usually, it's about getting bonus plateaus, especially wall plateau, at the right timing) but in my experience, skill is enough to reliably get to island 20 with mostly any kind of draw.

As some insight, my best score out of the 20 island was on my 18th island, 10k points (from a frost map), and i ended with no space remaining at all and 7 parcs and 2 resorts left in hand.
I started to get reliably over 5k points per island only after my 6th, I was learning before that and only doing about 2-3k points per islands with many suboptimal mistakes. Also, lslands size looks like it keep increasing slightly on average.
Considering my experience, a top score of about 120k points at least looks reasonably achievable for a skilled player without too much luck, lucky draw and perfect strategy being able to skyrocket to 150k points (I think my best 10k point still require above average draw and initial map, and that perfect placement and strategy could award maybe in the 12-15k points on such map.)