http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/99375/The_Mini_Me_challenge.JPG


Welcome to The Mini-Me Challenge!

“Size is doesn’t matter.” – Anonymous.


What's this?
The latest in a series of informal strategy challenges which include:
Let's Get Cultural (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=184466) and Lust For ShrineGold (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=183141).

What's the challenge?
To help Little-Guy-Genghis destroy as many cities as possible by 1600AD.

What's the catch?
You can't have more than three cities. Small is beautiful.
(i.e. You may build a total of two settlers, not including the original settler. Or you can capture 2 cities. Or any combination as long as your total cities never exceed a total of 3.)
edited at Sep 15, 2006 at 07:44 PM GMT.

How do I play?
It's easy! Same as usual:
- Download the 4000BC save at the bottom of this post.
- Play it until 1600AD. Razing many cities as you go.
- Post your 1600AD save here with a note stating the number of cities razed.

Victory goes to the player with the highest number of cities razed (that's destroyed, not raised :crazyeye:) by 1600AD,
as shown at the top of the Info Screen > Statistics page.

Can I look at other people’s saves and check other people’s tactics?
Sure. Or you can play it blind. :cooool: If you did play blind let us know when you post your final save. Either way if you choose to post a guide to your build or tech route then stick it in a SPOILER. Thanks.

How long have I got?
This weekend and next weekend. And all the days in between. Last chance to post a winner is Sunday 24th September 2006. But the first person to reach 1600AD and post gets bonus Kudos. :bowdown:

Settings
Leader: Genghis Khan
Difficulty: Warlord
Build: Civ IV vanilla
World Size: Large
World type: Pangaea
Climate: Rocky
No. of Rivals: 10AI's
Options: No Barbarians


Let the Khan-age begin! :spear:






For the Fine Print see inside spoiler. You can skip this if you want. You know the deal, right?
What do I win?: Nothing, except the begrudging respect of others. Plus the option to set the next challenge if you want. See this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=184201) for rough guide lines.

Tie-Breaker: In the case of a 'Cities Razed' tie the winner will be the person with the largest number of enemy units killed. Info Scn>Stats page>4th column total.

What if I destroy all 10ai's before 1600AD?: With 3 cities, that's impressive. Even on Warlord diff. I guess, fastest annihilation get's a bonus prize, but total cities destroyed is what counts. You should have let them breed more.

Finish time: Midnight, your local time, on 24th September 2006. "Grrr, if he lives on the international date line he'll have an advantage!" :mad: Get over it, it's an informal game.

How many different attempts can I submit?: That depends if you have a life. The upper limit is infinite. But obviously start from the begining on each attempt.

About the Settings:
Game speed = normal,
Era = ancient,
Pangaea = a massive single continent,
Rocky = more hills and stuff,
Size = Large, but with a total of 11 nations, not the standard 9,
Sea level = low. Just means the 'wrap' distance across the sea is going to be closer.
Victory settings: Time and Conquest only. But cities razed is what counts.

Why 'No Barbarians'?: It takes a random factor out of the equation. If you want to score a 'city razed' your going to have to pick a fight with one of the big boys.

Why not use the Warlords expansion?: To be more inclusive.

Why Warlord difficulty?: See above. Plus the 3 cities rule and Rocky terrain might make it more like Noble.

Do I have to settle my first city in the start location?: No. You can do what ever you want, buddy.

Can my 3 cities be settled or captured?: Either or a mix of both.

Can I take a 4th city and abandon one of my original 3?: No. Sorry. Choose your 3 wisely.

Can I go way over 3 cities and gift the excess cities away at 1590AD?: No! :nono: Get with the spirit of the game, pal! I'll be checking the 'number of settlers built' and the Log of the winner.

Can I weaken a nation and gift him a city and instantly sack it before he gets his defences up, then rinse/repeat?: No.


Clarification: Edited: Sep 17, 2006 at 01:40 PM GMT.

- No gifting your settlers or cities to the AI's.

- Three cities maximum. Whether the cities are obtained by the original settler, or a built settler, or a settler popped from a goody hut, or a city capture it's all the same. Just stick to the limit of constructing only 3 cities between 4000BC and 1600AD.


If you have any reasonable questions post them below or PM me.



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For what it's worth, here's a screenie of the start location. Trust me, it's better than it looks.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/99375/MiniMeScreenShot4000BC.JPG



Good luck. And may the angriest little guy win! :aargh:





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yay! i was looking forward to the next one, been way too productive and social since the last one ended anyways so i´m going to give this a go tonight... first time ever on warlords difficulty so that´s gonna be odd.

game on! :king:

PS: love the jpg :)

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!

Nice one. Hope I don't get lost in all the variant rules, although I doubt it will happen. I've pretty much "standardized" my games, but I think I'll really enjoy this. And hey, I can always play it a second time. :) Well thought about No Barbarians. It's too easy to abuse them in this kind of challenge.

P.S. Nice presentation too.

I'm game... bring it on

Can I weaken a nation and gift him a city and instantly sack it before he gets his defences up, then rinse/repeat?: No!
I don't think this is precisely correct. I think you may do this, as long as you never own more than 3 cities at once. Right, Raiser?

well at least it´s kudos for me. 55 razed by 1600 AD

this is going to be beaten by A LOT as this was my first try and i didn´t have much of a gameplan going in and i made at least one colossal blunder (yes, cavalry actually requires gunpowder to be researched).


as far as i can tell the key is to get your 3 cities up soon (plenty of decent sites) and basically beeline for maceman (maybe make a sidestep to get siege engines which i did way too late).

on this level basically nothing can stop your 4/5 macemen and you´ll get some decent troops after some turns of warring.

probably one should then proceed to attack as many neighbours as one can handle and insert some peacefull times so that they´ll be able to resettle the razed lands (something i mostly neglected). this will allow you to assemble additional armies which should start doing the exact same thing in a farflung corner of trhe continent and refill any losses or shortcomings of your initial armies.

imho the low difficulty settings make this challenge a bit to easy vs the AIs and i guess it will come down to managing the AI into resettling, was still fun the first time aroung though :goodjob:


PS: whoops edit, save file didn´t show up

I think we should ad one more rule: You are not allowed to build more than three settlers.

If you all for some reason disagree with me then be prepared for me building up 10 settlers and gifing them away to the closest neighbour only to declare war shortly after and razing them all... Ofcourse I wouldnt do that ;) , just giving you the reason to why three settlers should be the maximum.

But I lost one of my settlers to an angry neighbour you might say. Go capture one of his cities then is the answer...


The challange sounds fun. Might give my old computer a hard time as it is a large map but ill give it a try.

I'll be checking the 'number of settlers built' and the Log of the winner.

Can I build a settler and gift it to the AI? :mischief: That seems like it might be the best path to victory. Once you've built a few nice offensive units and gotten your economy up to the point where each city can build a settler in 10 turns, you should be able to average about one razing per 3.3 turns.

I'm thinking that after the first couple wars, the biggest obstacle is going to be the production penalties the AI suffers on Warlord difficulty. They just aren't going to be able to build cities as fast as you can raze them. Gifting settlers would be a good way to get around that.

I think we should ad one more rule: You are not allowed to build more than three settlers.

Absolutely.

My communication skills aren't as good as I thought they were. I imagined this was implicit.

Clarification:
YOU MAY HAVE THE ORIGINAL SETTLER AND BUILD A MAXIMUM OF TWO MORE. BRINGING THE TOTAL TO THREE.

Apologises for the confusion. The intention is to produce a compact and efficient war machine combined with skilful target acquisition and then bully the locals. Not to find a loop hole to make the task easier.

Guy try guys. ;)



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Well at least it´s kudos for me. 55 razed by 1600 AD


Kudos! Kudos!
:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

Well done. 55 cities is a great start. I shall call you Mr Speedy.


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I'm thinking that after the first couple wars, the biggest obstacle is going to be the production penalties the AI suffers on Warlord difficulty. They just aren't going to be able to build cities as fast as you can raze them.

scherbchen's first attempt left 3 nations with cities, but your right you don't want to run out.

Possible suggestions if you hit this problem in the spoiler:

Clearing space then pausing the assault and delaying your later attack runs might push the total.

Plus carefully gifting techs to your chosen late game neighbours might increase the targets yet further.

Rather than sweeping from one side of the map to the other, try alternating your victims geographically. Attack, leave to last, attack, leave to 2nd to last, attack, etc.

Also starting to destroying cities as early as possible might given them time to recover.

You can try anything, except giving them settlers or cities.

Good luck, Dr Jiggle.



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I shall call you Mr Speedy.


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Mr Euro would suffice, after all my evening begins before the US players even settle in for their afternoons. not really a *skill* on my part.

still taking those kudos though :king:

Absolutely.

My communication skills aren't as good as I thought they were. I imagined this was implicit.

Clarification:
YOU MAY HAVE THE ORIGINAL SETTLER AND BUILD A MAXIMUM OF TWO MORE. BRINGING THE TOTAL TO THREE.

Apologises for the confusion. The intention is to produce a compact and efficient war machine combined with skilful target acquisition and then bully the locals. Not to find a loop hole to make the task easier.

Guy try guys. ;)



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What if you pop settlers from goody huts? Can you still build 2 more? BTW, my goody huts gave me 2 settlers, 3 workers, and a bunch of gold.... warlord difficulty is sweet.

What if you pop settlers from goody huts? Can you still build 2 more? BTW, my goody huts gave me 2 settlers, 3 workers, and a bunch of gold.... warlord difficulty is sweet.

Wow! I think the rule on that should be that it's your choice whether to keep or delete settlers popped from huts, but if you do keep one, that counts toward your total. Some other options would be ...

A) If you pop a settler before you've built 2, then you must keep him. If you pop one after you've built 2, then you must delete him. What I don't like about this is that you can conceivably get cheated by the random number generator. If you pop a settler from a hut that's halfway across the world, you have to wait for him to walk back home and hope he doesn't get eaten on the way. If you pop a settler 1 turn before you were about to build one, then you wasted all those hammers, and you aren't going to get gold from them like you would from a wonder.

B) Always delete settlers that pop from huts. What I don't like about this is it means you never ever want to pop a settler in this game. If you have the choice of keeping or deleting him, then you at least have some options (at least until you've built that second settler). Most huts will probably be gone before the second settler is built anyway.

C) You can always build 2 settlers, no matter what. If you pop a settler from a hut, that means you can gift it to an AI. Or maybe it means you can save yourself 100 hammers and only build one (or none if you pop 2). Actually, I think I like this better than my original suggestion. This means you never get cheated by popping a settler. It also makes the verification easy, since all you need to check for is no more than 2 settlers built.

basically i don´t see a problem about the huts.

last challenge (the cultural one) i restarted that one so often that i basically knew which hut was going to give what (i only tangled 4 huts there though, one would give agri and that was it).

there are a lot of huts the AI won´t pop (i guess it´s because of the level). but as raiser said, it´s supposed to be a FUN challenge. not one for people fresh out of law-school :>

last challenge (the cultural one) i restarted that one so often that i basically knew which hut was going to give what

Isn't that cheating?

No, replays are permitted, and all the knowlege that entails.

What scherbchen is finding is NOT that certain huts have to give X bonus.
What he is finding is that certain huts probably give one thign over another-This is based on the World seed, since it does not change through reload except if you put "randomize world seed on reload" as an option in cutom game (maybe we should do this for future challenges.

Isn't that cheating?

No, in these challenges the rules are a bit different. Knowledge of the map is granted and your strategy choices from that point make a win or loss.

Isn't that cheating?

you got a point there, no doubt.

i wouldn´t call it cheating though, i guess.

you restart the challenge... say... about 50 times. you know when you send your first unit N-N-E you will get agriculture 8 out of 10 (note: if i didn´t get agri i did keep on playing). if you send it W you will pop low gold and if you continue N-W you will pop barbs.

after trying the start a lot of times you just know where these events are bound to occur. is that cheating? imho no, not unless you consider knowing the good places to settle a city after you gave a map a go to be cheating (oh so THERE is where the horse/bronze/iron/etc is going to pop).

one of the things i find thoroughly entertaining about these challenges or scenarios is that you have a *set* world. this allows you to revisit fixed parameters again and again in order so see what you can do about your gameplay. how to tweak it.

this imho includes the goody huts. i can not "unknow" the fact that goody hut 3 is going to pop "tech x" on turn y, i can not unknow the fact that position b is a good spot for my second city (and if you watch my save-games, you´d prolly throw your hands up in the air and ask yourselves why anybody would want to settle THERE 50 times in a row!!!1).

does that make sense? i´m tired.

Wow! I think the rule on that should be that it's your choice whether to keep or delete settlers popped from huts, but if you do keep one, that counts toward your total. Some other options would be ...

A) If you pop a settler before you've built 2, then you must keep him. If you pop one after you've built 2, then you must delete him. What I don't like about this is that you can conceivably get cheated by the random number generator. If you pop a settler from a hut that's halfway across the world, you have to wait for him to walk back home and hope he doesn't get eaten on the way. If you pop a settler 1 turn before you were about to build one, then you wasted all those hammers, and you aren't going to get gold from them like you would from a wonder.

B) Always delete settlers that pop from huts. What I don't like about this is it means you never ever want to pop a settler in this game. If you have the choice of keeping or deleting him, then you at least have some options (at least until you've built that second settler). Most huts will probably be gone before the second settler is built anyway.

C) You can always build 2 settlers, no matter what. If you pop a settler from a hut, that means you can gift it to an AI. Or maybe it means you can save yourself 100 hammers and only build one (or none if you pop 2). Actually, I think I like this better than my original suggestion. This means you never get cheated by popping a settler. It also makes the verification easy, since all you need to check for is no more than 2 settlers built.

Well I hope we don't decide on option B. That would ruin my game.
Btw, I popped both of those settlers pre-3000BC. I had 2 more cities by about 2700BC. I've been pretty dominant ever since.... Its 175 BC and I am 1 tech away from knights. I've built the Oracle and the Great Library and i've already eliminated 3 civs. Of course eliminating civs isn't all that hard when each of them only have 3 or 4 cities.

and i've already eliminated 3 civs. Of course eliminating civs isn't all that hard when each of them only have 3 or 4 cities.


Eliminated civs ?? Isnt it a good idea to leave them to build cities ??

I dont see what the problem is about settling/not settling. Just say you are allowed no more than 3 cities at any one time, period. If you end up with an extra settler, you can do what you will with it so long as you dont settle(i would gift to civ). Assuming the rng is actually random, the games has a big luck influence anyway, so if you pop a settler just before you're about to build one - tough luck.

Eliminated civs ?? Isnt it a good idea to leave them to build cities ??

I think that with 11 total civs, getting rid of 3 is not going to affect the amount of cities too much. I may be wrong.

Are yes, I forgot there were so many. How my computer can handle it.

I guess I totally suck at warmongering, my best so far is 9 :mad:

I think I am waiting too long to attack, probably should just go for barracks > Keshlak > mass attacks.

As far as setllers go, I don't see the big deal. The rules are pretty clear - it says THREE CITIES. If you want to have 22 settlers, go for it. Seems pretty obvious to me.

If you have more than three cities then you lose.:rolleyes:

As far as setllers go, I don't see the big deal. The rules are pretty clear - it says THREE CITIES. If you want to have 22 settlers, go for it. Seems pretty obvious to me.

The problem is that if you're allowed to build settlers and give them away, that's almost certainly the best strategy. You can probably build many hundreds (thousands?) of settlers, and give them all away to a few adversaries whom you've reduced to one pitiful city each, and repeatedly raze their cities as they build them.

(Are you allowed to gift units to a player with whom you're at war? I haven't tried that.)

Alrighty, just to clear some things up and allow people to focus on the game.

Build as many settlers as you like(EDIT: Why allow people to build something that will be very hard to check if they missued or not?.... YOU CAN ONLY BUILD TWO SETTLERS IN TOTAL), you are not allowed to gift the excess settlers to the AI so they wont do any good for anyone. You are allowed a maximum of 3cities at any time so the extra settlers are pretty useless.

(I am quite sure that you can not allow the AI to capture one of your towns and then raze it later as you will automaticly recapture it, if this is not the case then people are only allowed to count the razed cities that was originally built by the AI)

The intention is to produce a compact and efficient war machine combined with skilful target acquisition and then bully the locals.

Great, really looking forward to play this one :)

Oh.... and gifting settlers and the like is obviously cheeese :D

GIFTING SETTLERS
You are not allowed to gift the excess settlers to the AI
I concur.

And the ideal situation to prove that you haven't is that your 'settlers built total' (on the Info Screen > Stats Page) equals three or less.



GOODY HUTS
What if you pop settlers from goody huts? Can you still build 1 or 2 more?

No. Sorry.

#1. If you pop a settler from a goody hut before you have 3 cities or have started your final settler. Easy. He can be used to build 1 of your 3 cities, because the popped settler does add to your settlers total on the Info Screen > Stats Page.


#2. If you've got 3 cities already and you come across an un-popped goody hut, and it pops a settler, then it will push your total number of settlers to 4 on the Info Screen > Stats Page. The 1 original + 2 built (if you choose not to make 1 of your 3 cities a capture) + 1 the goody hut settler = 4.

The ideal situation is to say "bad draw, I should have got to the hut sooner" and put him in the capital unused. That way when you post your 1600AD save you can say, "I know it says I have built 4 settlers in the Info Screen > Stats Page, but the fourth guy is sitting unused in the capital. So you know I didn't build four cities."

Note: If you've already had situation #2 and you gifted it to an AI then fine. The rules were unclear. Remember it's just an informal game, so that attempt is still valid.

If you've already had situation #2 and you built a 4th city with the popped settler, then sorry it's not a valid try. It's fairly clear that you accidental broke the primary condition:

What's the catch?
You can't have more than three cities. Small is beautiful.


I hope that's clear. I've amended the fine print.

- No gifting your settlers or cities to the AI's

- Three cities maximum. Whether the cities are obtained by the original settler, or a built settler, or a settler popped from a goody hut, or a city capture it's all the same. Just stick to the limit of constructing only 3 cities between 4000BC and 1600AD.



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I guess I totally suck at warmongering, my best so far is 9 :mad:

I think I am waiting too long to attack, probably should just go for barracks > Keshlak > mass attacks.
Still a good try, Wlauzon. I tried to make this challenge accessible to all levels. Give it another go and experiment.



Are yes, I forgot there were so many. How my computer can handle it.
Sorry. I had to go to 10ai's on Warlord as opposed to 5ai's on Monarch to make this challenge work for beginners, while attempting to not let experts run out of targets.

I forget sometimes that I have a beast of a machine. :borg:



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Here's my save, 29 cities razed. I could definitely do better on a replay, as I made some mistakes towards the end (and also, knowing the terrain would have been helpful!). I find it more fun to just try once, though, so I'm submitting this.

Notes:
* My second settler stepped onto the spot to build my third city, I saw the radius around him, I pressed 'B'.. wait a minute. That radius was white ;_; So, I went after Frederick first and made Munich (later Ghengisgrad) my third city.
* My basic tactic was to continually produce mounted units (plus a smattering of support) and just have the horde sweeping around the map, constantly fighting
* Keshiks lasted a LONG time, then Knights a while, and right at the end I had Cavalry
* I actually got Cavalry a bit too late, I think, so I got bogged down at the end. In ~1550 I had to lower my science rate below 100% for the first time when Tokugawa attacked me :( his samurai are no match for cavalry, of course, but it basically tied up the end
* I tried to keep the AIs as backward as possible, but of course I did occasionally need cats/CR Axemen/etc
* I don't think my city locations were perfectly optimal, but they worked pretty well. The third one was 'behind' for a while, unfortunately, due to having been captured rather than founded. As it was my copper source, that caused problems for a while, but not big ones
* I wiped out 5 of the civs, but I think that was a tactical error; it would have probably been better to leave the toughest nuts intact and go after the soft targets of more enemies. Then again, keeping some friends meant I was able to tech trade a lot (despite having three production cities, I was ahead ever since Alphabet)

Although the regenerating-start thing isn't for me, scherbchen's 55 cities is still very impressive! 55 with my strategy would have required a LOT better play than I can currently do :)

well I managed to get to 36. very interesting scenario, I've never really played as "the destructor" before and found it interesting to know ahead of time that I didn't need to think, just kill :satan:

I think I could have done better with the following changes:

1) my early goal was to get 3 production centers up and running ASAP and then pump out military and only military. If I had gone for a few more early razes, my number might have gone up. also, I built stonehenge so my borders would expand without having to do anything else and pyramids for police state. might have done better to skip these but I'm not sure. might try again.

2) I did NO tech trading to speak of because every tech I researched was one I DIDN'T wan them to have (CoL, HR, CS, GUILDS) so as a result, I only hit knights like 30 turns before the time limit.

3) tech order - I went for HR then construction, then CS but had to backtrack for machinery (moron) and then to guilds. I probably could have done this better as evidenced by the fact that some of you managed to get cavalry.

Good scores for castiglione and lateralis. Congrats, thanks for posting.

Scherbchen still holds on to his lead the way with 55.



I wiped out 5 of the civs, but I think that was a tactical error; it would have probably been better to leave the toughest nuts intact and go after the soft targets of more enemies.
That's a good point.

With this challenge, for a player of average ability, is it better to reduce the number of AI's that are pissed at you or just prune the little cities from all of the AI's?



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Looks like I am the new leader. I managed to raze 69 cities. Unlike Scherbchen I did not go the cavalry route but instead used grenadiers. I don't think wiping the civs out makes much of a difference as I wiped out 7 or 8 of them and it didnt really slow me down much. The ending of the game was pretty fun since I was at war with 6 civs at one time. Organized and expansive has always been my favorite trait combo for war, although organized isn't really useful when you have 3 cities.

Whoops, just noticed that I posted organized above. I was also playing Ottomans and got confused. Anyway aggresive and expansive is probably just as good. That was the reason I went for grenadiers since I could just promote all my macemen and get tons of free promotions. The march promotion really helped with this challenge. I could basically run my grenadiers all over the place and not have to stop. It really sped up razing of cities. My opening play was a CS sling followed by machinery to get early macemen. I went to war with axemen while waiting for machinery and basically never stopped from there. I got the heroic epic pretty late, but my war engine was really fueled by bueracracy for a good chunk of the game. I didn't really use seige weapons much since triple promoted grenadiers could easily handle taking cities by themselves.

One tactic that "sort of worked" for me is to build a ton of military and just put them on auto, so that they just auto pillage.

By "sort of" unfortunately this really needs cavalry to work well, and I got it far too late. Not really sure it would work as a real tactic, but was kind of fun to see the long strings of pillage messages.

But my best is still only 13, I guess I just am not a warmonger enough - I keep wanting to build "just one more improvement or one more tech", so I get started too late. 95% of my "real" games I go for cultural domination, so I never really learned the best strategy for wiping out other civs.

By the time I get where I want, it is so late in the game that the sheer logistics of moving units around fast enough to take many out is the main problem.

This is how the emperor AI must feel playing against me in other games :)
It is 1400 AD and all you have is ARCHERS?!? -- I will get cavalry in 5 turns, -- well, that's bad for you.... :D

Razed 15 cities so far. I'm afraid I WON'T make it to railroads :rolleyes:

Exactly 50. Really good challenge Raiser .

I did pretty sloppy logistics, and i think good logistics is the key to this one.

I did CS sling, then maces to Grenadiers. Attacked Toku,Issabella,Ghandi, keeping Frederick and Elizabeth as Confucian Friends. In the last centuries I turned on Frederick and Liz, but should have gone for therm earlier and left Toku and Issa crippled instead of wiping them out.Movement of troops needs close attention I think which made it such a good challenge

One weekend down, one to go. And the story so far with the first attempts looks like this:

PaganPaulWhisky....69 :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

Scherbchen...........55

Mice.....................50

Lateralis................36

Castiglione.............29

(Only listed posted saves. If I've missed anyone let me know.)



Congrats to PaganPaulWhisky on 69 cities razed and the slaughter of 285 innocent units.
Your firepower graph really jumped at 500BC and kept rising. Impressive. Couldn't quite see what caused the plateau between 800-1200AD, but whatever it was set you up for a good finish.
Glad your 'puter coped with 11 nations, mice. ;)
Movement of troops needs close attention I think which made it such a good challenge.

In this rocky land I am curious to see if anyone can make good use of The Keshik, and their 'ignores terrain movement costs' ability, as an aggressive early option to get an extra dozen cities before the big troops come on-line.



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Your firepower graph really jumped at 500BC and kept rising. Impressive. Couldn't quite see what caused the plateau between 800-1200AD, but whatever it was set you up for a good finish.


The early spike was probably due to pop rushing and chopping forests (great technique with expansive). I usually do this much earlier, but I did not want to stall acquisition of macemen. The late plateau was probably caused by construction of the heroic epic since I did build this pretty late (one of my errors). My second city was a monster for production and was cranking out grenadiers every 2 turns with HE. My third city was sub par, but I really wanted to get that bronze hooked up ASAP and did not want to wait for a border expansion. The gold mine helped with research too, however I think selecting another spot would have been better.

I razed 54 cities. Not a bad first try, but I could've had at least 15 more. The problem for me was that I ran out of cities to raze. The last 200 years was basically me waiting for the computer to build more cities.

I started with a CS slingshot and cottaged my capital. I managed to pop 2 settlers pre-3000 BC. I settled both of them by 2700 BC, but I should've saved one of them for after iron working. Because of this I had no iron and I had to jump straight from Keshiks to Calvary. Other than that, I think I did pretty well..... maybe too well considering I ran out of enemies. I should've left each civ with 1 or 2 cities instead of completely eliminating them. Next time I will do things a little differently, if I ever get around to playing this again

70!

could have been a conquest victory, but julius is a spoilsport and builds not only one but two cities on islands.

guess who has two thumbs and no coastal cities? :clap:

surprisingly fun to restart, didn´t expect that. almost quit halfway because my start was so slooooow i thought.

I still haven't tried this game. Might not get to it at all, but I was thinking of another idea.

So it's not legal to gift the AI settlers. OK, but what about gifting military units or workers? The question is whether that would help them much. I'm thinking it would, because


the AI seems to insist on escorting settlers with at least one and often two military units. If you give them units, then they can focus more on building settlers instead of units.
with the AI's production and growth penalties on Warlord difficulty, they're going to have a tough time making workers. The workers they do make will also be penalized (as far as I know) with longer work times to build improvements. If you give the AI a few extra workers, they'll have better land which will lead to better production which will lead to more cities. You can always capture them back later. In fact, you might be able to just cycle a few extra workers among AI's -- gift to one, steal back later, gift to another, ...
if you make sure to always give them the worst possible units (ideally whatever unit is least effective against your main force; for example, lots of spearmen against your axe and macemen), they might be less likely to augment their force with better troops. Let them build on their own, and they'll make a nice, diverse army, but give them units and they'll have whatever you gave them.


Of course, this could all backfire completely, but it might be worth trying.

I've played this like a normal game. No "gifting". Made a huge mistake in the beginning when I waited too long to put my second city down and I got beaten to the spot. Grrrr. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I razed 41 cities, but the end was sooo fun! :D I'll post the save and some comments tonight.

I'll definitely try this again.

Oh, just to add: I never ran out of cities to raze. Don't worry about gifts, go get'em. At least on your first try. If you're too good for them, you can worry about helping them. :)

Nice job, scherbchen, I think you've reached some kind of limit there. ;) :goodjob:

i'm trying this one, and i'm completely out of my comfort zone.
3 cities...
that's not much!

I'm having the same problem PeteJ mentionned about Iron, though i only popped one settler from a hut.
I tried a different option : you can't have all land you want because of the 3 city limit? so what! culture is your friend. i have founded 3 religions in my second city, i have built the oracle and the GL in my capital = plenty land for me;) .
The bad part of this is you need hammers for building wonders. Hammers that would be better spent in troops! + keshiks tend to die often... (i have one heroic keshiks, somewhere around 26 xp, all other died)
CS slingshot is easy at this level, even while razing a few egyptian cities :lol: .
I'm at 1000 AD, and razed 13 cities. That's kinda slow, isn't it?I attacked egypt because i wanted to grab a worker and i missed it:crazyeye: . I sued for peace after razing the same city twice (just healing next to the ruins, and saw the settler coming. In a normal game i would have attacked the stack before he settled, but not this time.
I killed the russians (no cossacks, thank you) and kept Moscow for the high food, the english (no redcoats, thank you) and the japanese (no samurais, thank you). Now it's spanish time. I've got a small expeditionnary task force, that should raze a few of those paella centers.

I'm aiming for conquest with a vast tech lead, cavalry should help me out of this slow pace.


It's fun to see how different the game is when you change the objective.

cabert, I don't think 13 cities at 1000AD is THAT low. You'd be surprised what you can achieve once you concetrate on upgrading your army and getting a few good stacks to work.

I haven't built any keshiks though. Had only one that was upgraded from an early chariot. I still think they're pretty much useless.

cabert, I don't think 13 cities at 1000AD is THAT low. You'd be surprised what you can achieve once you concetrate on upgrading your army and getting a few good stacks to work.

I haven't built any keshiks though. Had only one that was upgraded from an early chariot. I still think they're pretty much useless.

problem is i don't have anything to upgrade :lol:
money is ok, but keshiks die too often = won't upgrade.
I have a good production potential, though. City n°2 with HE can build a mace in 2 turns , capital has a lot of forest to chop, i have workers all around the place, and city n°3 can whip a lot. Not being able to build the globe theater is making it less powerful though.

Made a huge mistake in the beginning when I waited too long to put my second city down and I got beaten to the spot. Grrrr. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Hey, no problem. Raze it! The fools must be punished for their insolence! :hammer:

Cabert, I haven't played this challenge, but my intuition is that 13 cities by 1000AD is fine. I suspect that the best strategy is to sort of sit back and wait, letting the AI develop cities while you develop an army. Then pounce at the last minute and just go nuts with razing everything. I don't mean completely sit back like a pacifist, but I suspect that if you graphed out razings vs. time, you'd see a very steep rise in the curve around 1300 or 1400AD.

I actually captured it instead of razing it, despite the fact that I had a settler in waiting. Was too afraid that someone else would settle it. And it was my iron city. Argh. It's just that I didn't find any good iron city locations and decided founding the third city there could wait. Next time I'll build the second settler faster to take the iron too.

Hey, no problem. Raze it! The fools must be punished for their insolence! :hammer:

Cabert, I haven't played this challenge, but my intuition is that 13 cities by 1000AD is fine. I suspect that the best strategy is to sort of sit back and wait, letting the AI develop cities while you develop an army. Then pounce at the last minute and just go nuts with razing everything. I don't mean completely sit back like a pacifist, but I suspect that if you graphed out razings vs. time, you'd see a very steep rise in the curve around 1300 or 1400AD.

hey! that's why i noted it! to see where there was really different options, if i can gather enough time for a second run.
I can already see that early razing is easier (warlords level : you can face archers for a long time = easy prey for keshiks), but you pay it in the long run : the keshiks die and you have to build many fresh units.
I think the slow motion, with axes first, then cat + axes, then cat+maces, then cat+grenadiers may have fewer losses = more steady.

My 1st try, 1-short-of-the answer to life, the universe, and everything (http://www.google.com/search?q=the+answer+to+life%2C+the+universe%2C+and +everything&btnG=Search):


4000BC & early years: The people of yada-yada-yada... Settled in place. Started building two additional scouts to take advantage of no barbs. Got 3 techs I think from huts, including Bronze Working. Dumb luck. I'll take it.

Early wonders: built Stonehenge, Oracle, Pyramids and Great Library all in my capital. Easy as pie, I forgot you could get away with this on Warlord. I managed it only once on Prince with a 4 clams + 1 fish + stone capital playing with Cathy. Ah, those were the days...

Capital:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Mini-Me%20challenge%201st%20try/capital.jpg

My first prophet was used to lightbulb Theology to enable Theocracy. All the subsequent military was built using Barracks+Theocracy, no Vassalage. Maybe I'll change it next time. Christianity and then Confucianism were founded in my second city which did NOT get copper, but a lot of floodplains instead.

2nd city:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Mini-Me%20challenge%201st%20try/2ndcity.jpg

Weedy :smoke: move number one: I waited too long to build Iron city:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k259/radu_stancu/Civ4/Mini-Me%20challenge%201st%20try/ironcity.jpg

I had copper from a capital border pop, so I built Axes and started the war on England to get to Iron city. Stupid AI. grrr...

My troops during the game: Axes+Spearman(heal&march), then Macemen+Catapults+Elephants+Spearman(heal&march), then I brought in a few Knights and finished with Grenadiers.

Research was another :smoke: move: I'm not sure why but I thought Liberalism was a priority. :D I got Chemistry with it, but seeing how I didn't build any Universities I might as well have researched Chemistry on my own. Drama (for Theaters), Engineering, Civil Service (Macemen & Bureaucracy), Theology and Chemistry is about all I think is useful to research. Pretty hard to get to Cavalry, and the Grenadiers can do a good job on their own.

At the end I was really abusing the whip + rush buying a lot of units. Felt like the world was coming to an end. I think I just discovered how powerful a smaller empire with high food cities can really be.

P.S. I had to reload once since I accidentally kept a city instead of razing it. :mischief:

My troops during the game: Axes+Spearman(heal&march), then Macemen+Catapults+Elephants+Spearman(heal&march),

Do you realize that March only helps that unit? So with Medic I and March, your medics can heal while they move, but are your medics actually getting injured? I wouldn't expect that to be a very useful combination under most circumstances. I'm usually more inclined to use Medic II if one of my medics earns an additional promotion.

4 Days left for official entries, and Scherbchen stomps on 364 innocent units to retake the lead with a narrow margin of 1 city razed. Have we reached an upper limit with 70 cities?

Congrats to new entries PeteJ with 54 and Carl Corey with an almost Douglas Adamsian 41. Not quite the answer, but valiant efforts non the less.


The updated leader board looks like this:

Scherbchen............70 :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

PaganPaulWhisky...69

PeteJ....................54

Mice.....................50

Carl Corey.............41

Lateralis................36

Castiglione.............29

(Only the posted 1600AD saves are listed here. If I've missed anyone let me know.)

Sounds like there maybe a few more second attempt scores on the way, which are welcome. Then it'll be time to start throwing out ideas for challenge #5 as we await the winners choice.




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i'll post a try this weekend
I thought i would be able to go for a second game, but it's not going to happen.
I'm targeting something like 30/40 cities.
My advice to those who start a new game : after 1000BC, don't bother with mouted units! build roads!

I am having some problems with this challange due to the low performance of my laptop. I made it to 1500bc when i got restless because of all the lag an... I just cant imagine playing it all the way throught to 1600ad with tons of troops...

Razing 70 cities is a mighty fine score! Congratulations Scherbchen.

Aww... sad to hear about the performance problems, Lynxx. Any way you could play it on another computer? Things might not go that bad though, you'll have more troops but less AIs to deal with. But if it's already lagging in 1500BC... Ouch.

Ahhhh, apologises to all. There was mention in the pre-challenge discussion thread of keeping the challenges do-able for those with vertically challenged 'puters.

I blithely ignored this in my search for a game that would test a variety of player skill levels. i.e. low diff setting, but many opponents to test the advanced player. With hindsight perhaps I should have gone for Noble & 5ai's, rather than Warlord & 10ai's.

To give an idea to others of the system requirements for this challenge:
If you completed this challenge, what are the spec's of your 'puter and did it play ok?

For what it's worth mine are - Athlon64 3000 processor, 1.25 Gig of RAM and a 256MB Radeon X800 graphics card. Oh, and it played fine.

But hopefully one of you completed on a more economical system.



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My system is a Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 1.5GB RAM with 128MB memory GeForce FX5200 video card. The card is pretty old, so's the proc, but the RAM makes up for it. I have no problems going into the 1600s whatever the map size, game speed, etc.

ok i had to give this another go. had to reload an autosave in 1605 because there was not much to do in the late 1500s and i accidentally passed the last turn, didn´t change anything about the outcome though.

while initially i thought the replay value for this was quite low (and i apologize for saying so raiser) it reminded me very much of my civ2 experiences where i always beelined for bombers and had a pretty good time on monarch (never really managed the game above that except for some lucky punches here and there).

73 razed, i´m still sure that can be beaten though (had a lucky settler pop here though before i even started to build my first one)


if you can manage with 2 cities at the beginning you will be able to get to those 2-3 off-continent cities that will always be built in the far north. just build or capture one further north or north-east. however access to copper/iron will be trickier so that might require some thought. you can also use that far off base to upgrade troops in the later ages.

to that end i would suggest the first big SOD to travel NE through german, then incan, then egyptian territory. raze some cities along the way and give them time to rebuild, maybe hassle the greeks from the new base. the new units can fight the immediate wars against the english/indian/russian/spanish. i wouldn´t finish off every opponent you fight but leave them with a city, you might get another raze or two out of it by games´end.

i will try that this weekend i think, however my civ skills won´t be able to keep up with the costs of that farflung city. i run into financial trouble with the initial 3 cities close by as is -.-

80-85 is doable imho, but i expect to be surprised by higher numbers


thanks for the fun challenge raiser :goodjob:

EDIT: typo-time

oops my specs...

2.4 ghz
1 gig RAM
RADEON 9600 series grafics card with 256 MB

ancient motherboard

no problems with this one (would have stopped after the first run though if it had run badly)

My specs

3 gHz
1 G RAM
radeon 6600 GEforce

I had no trouble with the large map to 1600 and in fact I will play more large maps now because I liked it. I guess most challenges wont go far past 1600 or so. With 5 AIs would they make 73 cities? I dont think so.

60. Was my ~5th attempt (the others were abbreviated. First game, I had razed zero cities by 1100 AD - having too much fun building!!!)

(The last one was razed in 1600, I assume that's legal.)


Research (approximately):
* Poly first, AH hut, HBR hut, basic misc, Mono first, BW, Oracle CS, Math/Construction, Alpha/Lit, Theology first, Paper, Machinery, Chemistry, Steel, Banking.
Comments:
* Hind maybe not needed, but Jud probably worth it; OR was good during infrastructure phase. The temples were handy, though.
* I traded away techs MUCH less than in previous games. Only did 2 or 3 such trades through the whole game. All I really needed were military techs, and the longer the AI was kept from longbows, the better. Longbows suck, don't they?
* Paper was nice for the intel from peace treaties.
* After Steel, I shut down research for Maceman->Grenadier upgrades. But I'm not sure I should have waited for Steel. The Cannons I built did not seem that decisive, because once I had Grenadiers, they were taking cities, not seige units.
* I kept building Macemen after Chemistry. I guess if no tech after Chemistry mattered, then I might as well have done that, but I did wonder whether it was worth it, as opposed to building Grenadiers directly and giving them Combat III, then March. I wonder if Combat III Grenadiers would have been good enough.

Initial build:
* scout/worker/barracks/settler/settler/warrior/hind miss/worker/library/worker/granary. something like that.

In previous games I had a much longer infrastructure period, with temples and courthouses, and didn't start a military buildup until Macemen. This time I didn't build coutrhouses at all, and only built temples late, when I really needed them. I did attack with axemen+cats, and took Machinery late. IIRC my invasions didn't begin until around 500-300 BC. (Don't remember.) I waited for the border pop from the capital for copper, but that was fine, I had plenty of buildings to build first. Before copper I also built some keshiks, partly because I had gotten HBR from a hut, but I don't think they proved especially useful except as an early invasion deterrent.

Edit: I built 2 grocers and 1 market after shutting off the slider, but in this particular game I'm not sure that was worth it either: I think it was too close to the end of the game. If I had shut the slider off a little earlier, after Chemistry, then maybe they would have been worth building, I'm not sure.

After some preliminary games I decided the minimal wonders were Oracle and GL, so that's all I built. I couldn't justify any other wonder. I couldn't see having enough native happiness to run Police State - maybe with the culture slider, but that would delay Chemistry. The GL was good though; with settled great scientists I could keep teching even after shutting down the slider.

Cities were:
1. starting location. Cottages, wonders, NE. Left outer-ring forests.
2. northwest by 3 spice / 2 sugar / corn / gold / horse. Heroic Epic.
3. north on the lake, by fish / rice / banana (but not Iron, went for hills instead). Was very good in the late game with 1F3P workshops.

Militarily,
Not sure what to say. In stacks with Macemen+Axes, a decent number of the axes survived long enough that I could clear out an area fairly well and send them back for upgrade. One thing: I razed a couple capitals (leaving secondary cities as the new capital), but I suspect that was a bad idea (until the very end game). Fun, though. There go the Pyramids! There goes the Colossus!

The end game movie is pretty fun to watch!

Athlon 64 X2 dual core 4800+ 2.41 GHz, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX, played fine.

i finished my game, and i razed 58 cities
With just a little better planning/worker management it would be 60, but I finished at 3:30 am this night and my wife greeted me rather coldly for this :sad:, so it was clearly not mm time.

How it went :
got a settler from a hut, so i didn't build any
Used a rather usual for me tight placement for my second city, then remembered I can only have 3, and i had already 2, without knowing where the horses, copper, iron was :crazyeyes:
If i get to try this again, i won't settle the second city this fast!

When i saw that copper and horses were just outside my borders i went on wonder spree (needed the cultural expansion!).
It's been a long time since i played warlords level last time, I didn't remember how easy it was to get all wonders :lol:
Most huts gave me scouts, and i forgot there were no barbs , so after a good deal of exploring (!) i did post a few on fog busting:mischief:.

When i finally was able to build units, i went for chariots, and went after Egypt. Why Egypt? because i saw a lonely worker.
And I missed him! (being rellocated 3 tiles away when declaring war always makes me :mad:).
I rage, i razed Hatty's second city, waited while my units healed, and razed the same city again after a settler rebuilt it:lol:

After that, Russia had planted a city right next to mine = easy prey. I razed it, then a few others, and Cathy was dead.

I kept moscow as 3rd city. Good food + forest = rushing possibilities.

From this i gained a lot of workers that started building roads and roads.

I went after Togugawa too with keshiks. Toku dead.
Then I went after England. No more English. Then I went after Freddy. He had some useful techs, so I sued for peace and let him rebuild.

To avoid a lengthy post, let me say that i teched well (suprisingly so, with only 3 cities, and one totally focused on unit production) , since all this razing kept me with high amounts of money = 100% research. I won every race (Music, liberalism, economics), teched to steel and remembered i had no Iron :cry:. To overcome this problem i culture bombed my second city, and could finish the game with grenadiers (upgraded macemen! loads of those), cavalry (just a handful), cannons (a good deal).
I even built a galley to raze the island city ;)

I killed almost every other civ : planned to go for conquest,with last city captured in 1600 ;) , but got a bit lazy in unit building, so fell a bit short (HC and Freddy are alive in 1600).

Afterthoughts:
* If I could try again, i would space my second city a bit more. That was really a bad move.
* I also would go for multiple wars earlier = more units, those wonders where only needed because i had to culturally expand!
* Upgrading units is cool, but you need to be in your cultural borders = plan for it.
* early wars are easier, but killing the neighbours is not a good choice. Sueing for peace with freddy was cool. I razed more german cities than spanish ones, and earned 2 techs (sued for peace 2 times!).
* It's really doable (hey! i did!) to tech to steel, and cannons are great :)
* mounted units are good for early wars, but after that i used only 1 move units (including elephants).
* march promotions are good, though not game winning. A few marching grenadiers helped a lot speeding my late wars.
* roads everywhere!

60. Was my ~5th attempt (the others were abbreviated. First game, I had razed zero cities by 1100 AD - having too much fun building!!!)

(The last one was razed in 1600, I assume that's legal.)

The end game movie is pretty fun to watch!


what video?
did you win the game ?

(My specs

3 gHz Intel
1 G RAM
ATi card, 256 MB , can't remember which one,
game runs smoothly, though late in the night i'm not sure i would notice anything if it wasn't ;))

I just meant that if you Retire in 1600 you can watch the map with AI cities being founded and razed. :goodjob:

Final weekend and Scherbchen stamps his authority on this challenge with a 73. Last chance for immortality (:confused: :confused: :confused:) close of business Sunday.

And congrats to new entries Cabert with a 58 and Jet with a 60. Thanks for the insightful play-by-plays.



I finished at 3:30 am this night and my wife greeted me rather coldly for this. :sad:Just explain that Mr GwenGwis couldn't do it without you and answer any further questions with a mumbled "Just... One... More... Turn." :run:


The last one was razed in 1600, I assume that's legal?Yes, indeed it is. You could take 75 cities on the last turn. That would be a stylish way to steal pole position! :D



So the penultimate leader board looks like this:

Scherbchen............73 :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

PaganPaulWhisky...69

Jet........................60

Cabert..................58

PeteJ....................54

Mice......................50

Carl Corey.............41

Lateralis................36

Castiglione.............29

(Only the posted 1600AD saves are listed here. If I've missed anyone let me know.)


I just meant that if you Retire in 1600 you can watch the map with AI cities being founded and razed. :goodjob:Having never retired (call me Mr Tenacious) I never realised that you got the post-game-coloured-map-play-reel-thingy without completing. Good to know.



My vote for Challenge #5 is some sort of total wealth variant. Any suggestions to inspire the eventual winner?



---

My vote for Challenge #5 is some sort of Total Wealth variant. Any suggestions to inspire the eventual winner?

I feel like I've said this before. Did someone suggest this as an option last time? Anyway ...

I think this sounds like a fun game. It opens up a lot of odd tradeoff opportunities for saving a few gold here or there. For example,


Should we sacrifice production and food at all costs in order to get a few extra commerce (ex. work coast without a lighthouse)? Or will it be better to grow/build more effectively and then use that for greater commerce later?
Should we pack in lots of cities close together in order to more effectively work cottages before our population grows?
Should we try a pacifist game to save on unit costs or an aggressive military game to accumulate wealth from razing and pillaging?
Should we research aggressively in order to get more advanced financial technologies, or turn research down near zero in order to save money?
...


It would be very interesting to see what sort of approach turns out to be the best.

Should we sacrifice production and food at all costs in order to get a few extra commerce (ex. work coast without a lighthouse)? Or will it be better to grow/build more effectively and then use that for greater commerce later?
Should we pack in lots of cities close together in order to more effectively work cottages before our population grows?
Should we try a pacifist game to save on unit costs or an aggressive military game to accumulate wealth from razing and pillaging?
Should we research aggressively in order to get more advanced financial technologies, or turn research down near zero in order to save money?
...

It would be very interesting to see what sort of approach turns out to be the best.

Yeah, could be good if a set-up could be found that where both the peacenik and the pillager have a solid chance at a win.

The challenge set-up would definitely have to stifle Great Merchants. GM trade missions to large pop capitals on distant continents are by far the best way to rake in the gold. So the game would quickly converge on GP farming strats and become similar to 'Let's Get Cultural' (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=184466&page=5). A small pangaea map or a lack of allies ought to limit that one strategy and allow for a more inventive approach.



---

another idea (a pet peeve of mine if you will) is limiting the military.

like, say, 30 units max... at all times.

this would allow for different strategies. build one SOD and really, really be careful where you pick your fights. or be peaceful and culture-accumulate territory. or go science-nut and hoard a ton of gold to diplomatically create situations where your limited army can take a few key cities.

of course (afaik) one can not track down the size of a players army in retrospect... but this is all for fun and giggles anyhoo...

i am still convinced someone will break the 80 razed barrier, though.

go gwengis!

A second try. I didn't beat scherbchen mighty 73, but I did improve a lot since my first one: 55 cities razed.

Here's the save, I'll post the "story" later, I'm way too exhausted now. :)

A second try. I didn't beat scherbchen mighty 73, but I did improve a lot since my first one: 55 cities razed.

Here's the save, I'll post the "story" later, I'm way too exhausted now.

Good try Carl, a solid jump of 14.

Time is running out for us Euro-ite's. I'll give the guys on the other side of the pond a few more hours. Then I'll post the final scores tomorrow afternoon, but if I where Scherbchen I'd start working on ideas for #5. :mischief:




---

it was really a good challenge anyway. I didn't think so, but there are a few very interesting notions involved :
- first, the settings were good: there is in the stat screen a direct way to know where you stand (better than my "army of vetrans" were you would need to go through the units and count :crazyeyes:), and clearly oriented for war (you won't raze a city with a tech) = clear objective. The requirement of staying at 3 city max was somewhat artificial, but made it more fun.
- building an economy for 3 cities only with loads of troops isn't straightforward (even on a low level);
- razing a good number of cities really funds your economy, doesn't it?
- there was a good replayability (no time to do so :() since there were clearly different options;
- as a "domination kind of guy", i really was how you could manage conquest;
- absence of barbarians made it clear that the AIs at this low level are suckers :lol:

Instead of total gold you could go for gpt or even net gpt (after expenses).

By the way, I finished the game yesterday for a conquest win. There were 73 cities on the mainland and 3 on islands. I had a coastal city (captured) this time, but I forgot I had only galleys. :D So I had to wait in the end to get Astronomy to build a couple of galleons, then I had to take them round the world, and it took me forever to do that. The mainland was cleared in around 1700-1750, I don't remember exactly. Still no time for a more detailed report, but it will be written one of these days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next challenge: the problem with counting gpt is that the best way to do it is through shrines. It will turn into "Lust for Gold" all over again. Total gold at year X means you can choose to go the religion way to bring income through shrines, or go the aggressive way and bring income through wars. I could have had huge amounts of gold at the end of my last game if in the end I wouldn't have bought my troops from the third city. (the other two produced troops in 1-2 turns, no need to buy)

We could use Montezuma for this. He's both Spiritual + Mysticism for a religious start, and Agressive for a military strat. It would be nice to have several strategies possible. Difficulty level I think either Prince or Noble if there are a lot of people for whom Prince is too much. Warlord would probably be too easy. (no real competition to found religions, no real problems in combat, etc)

As for Great Merchants, we could prohibit the idea of using them for trade missions and be done with it. It's too dependent on luck, as some could pop only GMs even at 60-70% chances while someone else could pop a Great Artist with only the National Epic in place. It's not like in battle where luck evens out due to the huge number of individual fights. Here all you need is a few lucky rolls and you'll beat any strategy.

Or perhaps something as simple as a game of survival. Who can survive the longest against a diety ai with always war turned on... Ofcourse we would have to place the ai a safe distance away so that we got time to build some archers. Perhaps on a tiny map(so that I can play it) with only one or two ai's that will hunt us down. The creator should check the worldbuilder just to make sure we got time to build some troops before the ai gets to us.

It would be a short challange for sure, and if the creator think it is to hard perhaps we should lower the difficulty to immortal.

Edit: On second thought. A standard map against only one diety ai should do it. Will get us time to build up before the ai gets to us.

Having done gold and culture and city-razing could possibly go for research (highest beakers/turn or maybe first to discover 3 techs from different branches of tech tree).

As for Great Merchants, we could prohibit the idea of using them for trade missions and be done with it. It's too dependent on luck, as some could pop only GMs even at 60-70% chances while someone else could pop a Great Artist with only the National Epic in place. It's not like in battle where luck evens out due to the huge number of individual fights. Here all you need is a few lucky rolls and you'll beat any strategy.

no GM is a bad idea! And settling them give even better money (not in the last turns of course) than the trade mission.
I think there is a good replay value on this total gold challenge, because you'll have to balance :
- teching/amassing money
- waring to earn pillage money/ peace to send missionaries and build money

I can see at least 5 different options, and i'm not able to tell which one is better! IMHO that's a very good challenge to see the efficiency of a caste system SE with pyramids (hint hint)

So where were the threee cities located on the successful attempts?

I took a couple swings at this (I didn't have the right ideas, and was work throttled as well - it didn't help that I only just learned that copper can be used to build Macemen); it appeared to me that the right opening approach was to settle in place (one wrong idea was settling on the elephants), then make an early capture of Moscow. After that, just trim everybody back to their capitals in turn....

Yeah, I also went for Iron in my first game thinking it is needed for Macemen. Oops.

In my second game my three cities were: settled in place; east of the capital, 1SE of the lower wine tile if I remember correctly, to get as many floodplains as possible; 3rd city I took Berlin. Built the Colossus there so 2 crabs, 1 sheep, a lake, two 3 hammers forrests made a pretty good city.

Never got iron in my second game, but I never needed it. First wars with maces, then grenadiers+cats, then grenadiers+cavalry+cats.

All bow down to The Mighty Scherbchen. 73 cities razed, 379 innocents slaughtered and with a lean army of 143 troops. Congrats. A worthy winner.

speech! speech!



The Final Not-So-Mini-Me Results

Scherbchen............73 :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :trophy:

PaganPaulWhisky...69

Jet........................60

Cabert..................58

Carl Corey.............55

PeteJ....................54

Mice......................50

Lateralis................36

Castiglione.............29

(Only the posted 1600AD saves are listed here. If I've missed anyone let me know.)



Thank you to all the other competitors. There are no losers in Civ. Only varying degrees of lameness. ;)

Here is a screenie of The Mighty Scherbchen's glorious nation and a repost of the winning save.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/99375/Scherbchens_victorious_3_city_nation.JPG




N.B. Your welcome to post saves completed after the finish date, especially if they walk all over 73 cities razed. :D

Cheers,
Raiser

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So on to the next challenge. Scherbchen let us know if you haven't got the time to come up with the next challenge. I'm sure one of these fine gentlemen will be happy to step up, if you find that you are time-poor.

My vote is still a total gold challenge that rewards a variety of tactics and is simple enough to allow repeated attempts. Say, Noble in difficulty. But it's up to you.

I think an ideal time-frame would be posted in a new thread and link here by this Friday - 29th September - and end in two Sunday's time - 8th October. Ok?



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Well, I guess I'll also vote for total gold, with Monty on Noble/Prince. Map type ideas? If we keep the 1600AD finish date I'm not sure playing on continents has any meaning as the other continent(s) would be pretty much out of the picture until very late in the game. Small/standard Pangaea? Something that even those will slower configurations could play, anyway, so no large or huge. Then again, a good strategy might make use of the other continent's money too, so why not continents to make more of a difference in terms of gameplay...

I've only lurked so far -- well, I've posted but I mean I haven't played -- but what I'm finding interesting about these challenges is that by focusing on one particular aspect of the game (culture, gold per turn, razing, etc.) you really get to explore the optimal approach to that particular measurement. For that reaason, I really like the maximum accululated gold idea. It's one that is open to a variety of approaches (which will work best?) and one where whatever approach works best can probably be mapped into a real game, though perhaps with a less extreme focus.

In general I like standard size continents maps best, simply because that's what I always play, but if there's a reason (ex. this last challenge) why that isn't reasonable, then you certainly have to pick what makes the most sense. Mostly I think the choice of conditions should be geared toward making the experiment more interesting (like it was this time) and not just toward making a more goofy game.

i won? :woohoo:

certainly didn´t expect that, especially as i´m el stinko warmongero in my games 98% of the time.

as many are in favour of a gold-related challenge next and seeing as most of the ideas regarding one in this thread alone are way better than any i could come up with on my own, i will gladly cede the right to create and start the next challenge to any of y´all. :)

also i did not really get to develop and test my idea of limited armies (much less find out the fun-factor associated with that). best i could come up with so far was: maximum number of military units built total during the entire game XX. but there´s always time for stuff like that later, especially as this challenge was also of a military nature.

so have at it :king:

cheers

No matter what the next challenge is, I vote to make it a OCC. That would certainly make things interesting if we're planning on doing a money challenge.

I don't know, both Lust for Gold and this challenge involved a small number of cities. I'd rather have the option for unlimited cities this time, but I'm open to suggestions. Why would it be more interesting to play an OCC?

My reasons for a normal game: going the religious way would preferably have 3-4 cities to pump out missionaries. And military-wise I'd rather have a game in which I could keep some of the cities I attack to connect new resources, to have new outposts. On noble it will probably be impossible to go the way I went in this game, Macemen -> Riflemen and pretty much always war. We need new bases for our troops from time to time.

That said, I've never played an OCC, so I don't really know what to say about it. :)

If we can agree on the settings I volunteer to post the start on Friday as "scheduled".

~~~~~~~~~~~

Ideas so far:
Map size: Standard/small (is there something in between?)
Map type: ?! (Pangaea/continents? really not sure here)
Speed: let's keep it Normal, gives us time to replay if we really want to
Difficulty: Noble (Prince?)
Leader: Monty - good for religion and/or war
Other: OCC?
Finish date: 1600AD
Victory condition: highest total gold

As scherbchen (forever be praised his warmongering skillz :worship: ) allowed us mortals to choose our own way, I'd say we vote on the settings. Feel free to come up with any additions and modifications, we still have a few days to go.

So where were the threee cities located on the successful attempts?

I took a couple swings at this (I didn't have the right ideas, and was work throttled as well - it didn't help that I only just learned that copper can be used to build Macemen); it appeared to me that the right opening approach was to settle in place (one wrong idea was settling on the elephants), then make an early capture of Moscow. After that, just trim everybody back to their capitals in turn....

i did settle n the elephant, and it made access to the ressource (hrses or copper? can't remember!) a bit longer : needed 2nd expansion to have both.
Moscow was a good capture indeed! all this food!
The game winning thing could have been to wait for iron to show up before settling your second city. I had to wait for my capital's fourth expansion to get it :crazyeye:. Lucky me, i was already on a culture building tour.

OCC is often easier than 3 cities, because you can build many National Wonders in one city. It depends how long the game is, of course.

If we can agree on the settings I volunteer to post the start on Friday as "scheduled".Carl Corey to pick the map and post the challenge. Seconded. Thanks for volunteering Carl.

Your not going to get a total consensus, but if a few people post settings that they think might make for a good challenge then it will give you a base to work from. And if you get time to playtest a couple of maps, or use the map builder thingy, then that's all good.


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I'll cast my vote thus-ly:
Objective: Total Gold by 1800AD...........1800AD to allow for a wider variation of tech choices,
Conditions: Peace only, no barbies.........we've just had a combat one and peace will speed the game up and challenge the players to find the 'perfect build',
Leader: Ghandi..................................because fast workers are fun, and I like the name Greedy Ghandi,
Difficulty: Prince.................................because we've just had an easy one and as it's a peaceful challenge, that wont go to a final victory, difficulty is not so vital. It's just that Prince diff will make management of health & happiness a more critical factor,
Build: Civ IV vanilla..............................to be inclusive,
World Size: Standard...........................'puter friendly,
World type: Pangaea...........................to reduce the influence of Great Merchant missions a bit and allow other strats,
Climate Type: Temperate....................pick a map with loads and loads of 2-food tiles to allow a 'cottage race' between competitors :),
No. of Rivals: reduce to 4AI's..............4 on a standard map (instead of the standard 6 rivals) gives plenty of space for bountiful cities in a peaceful game. The real opponents here are the other human players and our own 'personal best total-gold' target. The AI's are just there to race for land and add a bit of tech trade & foreign trade,
Game Speed: Normal...........................standard,
Starting Era: Ancient...........................standard. I don’t enjoy late starts,
Victory Settings: time only....................we don't want the game to end before 1800AD.


- I like the sound of a pure 'perfect build' to get the maximum gold, therefore I'm voting for a peace-game.

- A bountiful and spacious map could make for an interesting and skilful 'cottage race', but it would need to be backed up with an innovative civ design.

- I think a One City Challenge would limit the strat options too much for a peaceful total wealth challenge. And finding the right number of costly cities to make a strong economy is half the fun.

- The 1800AD finish might be needed to allow the use of more interesting techs and civics than a Medieval-Era-only game would allow. It also off-sets the fact that research may be curtailed by the last couple of hundred years as players use a 100% wealth slider to make it worth while building Markets & Banks and getting Free Speech & The Printing Press etc etc

- The 'peace only and no barbies' would help this necessarily longer 1800AD-finish game to play a bit faster. Therefore giving a chance for people to do 2nd and 3rd attempts.

- And lastly I think this type of peaceful challenge could lead to plenty of experimentation.
Do you go straight for cottages and Emancipation/Free Speech/Printing Press?
Do for throw in Religion/Shrines/Minaret?
How about Foreign trade/Colossus/Free Market?
You can't neglect getting some Great Merchants Missions going, even on a standard pangaea, or do you focus on super-specialists?
Could you make it to Corporation/Wall Street for the +100% gold?
How much emphasis do you put on reducing costs? Number of cities will be critical. But can you afford to make Courthouses/Forbidden Palace, as well as Banks/Markets,
Or should you just turn over production to manufacturing Wealth?

Choices. Choices. :crazyeye:



But I'll try the next challenge whatever it is.

Hopefully other people will speak up even if it's just to say "I vote for Mr X's suggestion."


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I agree with most of Raiser's comments. I'll add my thoughts as well.

Objective: Total Gold by 1800AD...........1800AD to allow for a wider variation of tech choices,

I like this. At the very least, the game should go on long enough to put Wall Street in play.

Leader: I think the leader should be one of the ones that starts with Mysticism in order to enable religion as a strategy option. It should also probably not be a Financial leader, since Financial would lead to cottage spam as a pretty obvious ideal tactic. Obviously both Montezuma and Gandhi qualify under those constraints.

Difficulty: Difficulty needs to be high enough that cheese like "get all the religions" or "raze every city" won't work. That might vary from player to player, but I'd guess that Prince is probably good.

World type: Pangaea...........................to reduce the influence of Great Merchant missions a bit and allow other strats,

Maybe, though continents might also offer some different approaches. For example, on a continents map, is it worth prioritizing the Liberalism race and Astronomy in order to get some nice gold per turn trades for resources? And before that, is it worth prioritizing Optics in order to get more trading partners to whom you can sell your technologies for cash?

No. of Rivals: reduce to 4AI's..............4 on a standard map (instead of the standard 6 rivals) gives plenty of space. The real opponents are the other human players and our own personal best total gold target. The AI's are just there to race for land and add a bit of tech trade & foreign trade,

I disagree on this one. One possible approach would be to go with a very military-oriented approach where you raze cities for gold. With a powerful enough army you might even be able to dial back science to near nothing and extort all your technology for peace. Fewer AI's would make that less practical.

Good point about 1800AD for the Wall Street. Maybe it's time to play a little further. :) Maybe we could let this challenge last more than two weeks if needed. I'm quite busy and mostly playing in weekends, a longer game would limit my options. I guess we'll see when we get there.

I'm actually starting to be afraid that an OCC could prove too boring if we take the peaceful approach and manage the game well diplomatically. It would just be too little to do. In my Lust for Gold game I managed to keep my continent war free even though Mansa has founded Buddhism and was constantly revolting back to it. At one point it just became repetitive: build missionaries, send them, build more missionaries, etc. OCC would make the military way quite hard, while the peaceful way would be more of a trade & missionary race. No taking advantage of good city positions, no alternative strategies of building junk cities to bring cottages to maturity. It's more complicated to get enough cities to build the Wall Street, while also making sure you have good commerce cities. I'd still like someone who actually played an OCC to give their opinion.

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No barbs and Pangaea with fewer AIs: these go hand in hand actually. With barbs on Pangaea with fewer AIs you'd have a heck of a time defending. If there's a normal number of AIs either barbs or no barbs is ok. If it's continents, again, not such a problem with the barbs, and it's not needed to have fewer AIs. The thing with continents is that it would be pretty much the same thing for everybody. Get Optics, sell techs. Get Astronomy, sell resources. Being the first to do so makes it worth it almost every time, so there's no alternative in my opinion. Unless... (continued after deciding on "peace or war" ->)

Peace or war? Raiser, does Always Peace mean we would set that in the options, or that we would not be allowed to declare war? I'd still say it's more of a diplomatic problem to make war and still be able to trade than in case there are no wars. Or to have preferred trading partners in case they go to war with each other. If we roll a good start and manage to get most of the early religions we could keep everyone happy especially if there's no war, then trade like mad. Again, repetitive. With war a possibility on both Pangaea and Continents we would run pretty fast into "traded with our worst enemy" problems. How we handle that to still get the cash flowing becomes really interesting even if we decide not to go to war ourselves.

(->) ...maybe if we play with war and on continents we could even see an invasion of the other continent. :aargh: Is it worth it, better to trade instead? Choices, choices. :D

The leader choice obviously will depend on whether we allow both peace and war or only peace. Gandhi is a good suggestion for the second, giving us the chance to net those early commerce wonders. Monty on the other hand could easily handle the barbs while staying mostly peaceful if we go for "peace and war" but still don't want to start the war machine.

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For now I'm for 1800AD, Peace and War allowed, Continents, Monty, normal number of AIs, barbs on. Surprisingly, most of my original choices. :p :lol: They are not set in stone and don't forget I'll merely be the vote counter here, so state your wish and it will (probably) be granted. :yup:

For those afraid that this could turn into another all-out war: I think that's much harder to do on Prince since AIs will tech at a similar rate to yours. So while there may be wars, heck, we might even be able to conquer the world by 1800AD, it might not be the wisest decision. It would mean lots of slavery-or-money-rushed units too, and that would decrease our total gold. (slavery through not working cottages) So we'd have to balance things out to obtain the maximum we can through wars while not killing our home economy.

Boy, that previous post was long. :crazyeye:

Peace or war? Raiser, does Always Peace mean we would set that in the options, or that we would not be allowed to declare war?

'War allowed' or 'Peace only' is probably going to be the critical decision for this type of challenge. If we vote on one thing, I think it should be this thing.

I was thinking click on the 'Peace Only' option in the game start up. Some reasons being:

1 - A total-wealth challenge needs a 1800AD finish, and a 1800AD finish needs to be played swiftly to make repeat attempts viable, and 'Peace Only' is one way to stop the challenge getting bogged down in conflict and a fight for survival.


2 - 'Peace Only' avoids the Raze-every-city route that we just had in this challenge.


3 - 'Peace Only' makes full use of the other people who post attempts here as 'The Opponents', as opposed to the usual "playing against the 'puter."


4 - 'Peace Only' allows players to focus on the strategies for making money. Rather than tactics to survive in this game, which I think can vary greatly from game to game, even with the same starting point.

For me winning 'Let's Get Cultural' became a 'How can I spend the smallest amount of resources to keep 100% peace'-challenge and then 'making culture' became a secondary goal.

My final attempt was victorious because I took out one AI early with chariots, and I got the same primary religion as a 2nd AI, leaving me only one AI on my continent to worry about.

I think a 'Get the most gold, but you've still got to compete with the AI's'-challenge could turn out to be similar.



So, War or Peace? I say "Peace", but let the majority vote decide.
....................... :stupid: :stupid: :stupid:



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I think people should be free to warmonger if they want to, since that increases the number of possible strategies (and can be used judiciously to effectively complement any of the more peaceful ones).

There are seven main ways I can think of to generate gold off the top of my head:
Shrine income, merchants (both specialists and GM), cottages, techwhoring for cash, begging, extortion and conquest (capturing, razing and pillaging).

Take out war and the last two are no longer options, plus a midgame landgrab ceases to be a possibility.

Monty's Millions anyone?

======================

As far as this game's concerned, I think OCC would be a mistake, as it'll basically end up with three main approaches - missionary spamming for shrinegold, GM-farming and tech-selling, none of which offer much in the way of exciting gameplay (plus we've done the missionary-spamming before).

Interesting points Raiser. It's also true that so far we've pretty much reduced the strategies and not only the desired outcome, and it makes it easier to compare games and also to improve on the next try. Having a war and peace option might mean we will either focus on one and not get to play the other, or play both but not perfect any of them. Unless we let people play 3 weekends instead of 2. But nothing says we can't... I'm now 40(peace)-60(w&p) on this.

I'd still love a challenging war game at one point, as LandGrab was the first attempt and only a few people played it and we weren't very clear on what we'd have to do. But maybe we can come up with some war variant for next time.

---------

I'd also like to have a weekend off after the fifth challenge. This could give us time to sum up a little what we've been doing here. I only managed to look at people's posts (and not all of them), and not their saves. It would be interesting to see what we've achieved so far.

Edit: Monty's Millions sounds good, patagonia.

Colorado gold rush
Montezuma
Peace only
No barbs
Great Plains
Prince difficulty
Normal speed
Standard size
3 opponents
Space Race only enabled
total gold at the end of 1863
all tactics allowed except merchant trade missions

Edit: come to think of it Asoka would play better even though he wasn't from America.

The reason I don't like the idea of Always Peace is that it seems unrealistic. Whatever you learn from this game about money management isn't likely to apply very well to a regular game.

For example, I suspect that the best approach will be something like never build any military units except maybe one warrior per city for happiness, never hook up any metal or horses (cheaper MP's), never research any of the military technologies (more streamlined financially oriented research path). This would never work in any regular game.

It certainly makes sense for someone to play in a pacifist mode. In fact, that may well turn out to be the winning strategy, but I think using the game's "Always Peace" setting closes out some reasonable options and makes for an artificial test environment.

The reason I don't like the idea of Always Peace is that it seems unrealistic. Whatever you learn from this game about money management isn't likely to apply very well to a regular game.

Isn't that inherently true of any game where the goal is to accumulate a lot of money, rather than a goal of actually doing something with your money?? It seems to me that these Challenges, by their very nature, are supposed to encourage play that's totally different than what you would do in a normal game.

For example, I suspect that the best approach will be something like never build any military units except maybe one warrior per city for happiness.

Under Hereditary Rule, it's often worth building a bunch of warriors, for happiness. Depends on the difficulty level, of course.

Isn't that inherently true of any game where the goal is to accumulate a lot of money, rather than a goal of actually doing something with your money?? It seems to me that these Challenges, by their very nature, are supposed to encourage play that's totally different than what you would do in a normal game.

To some degree, yes, but I think Always Peace would exaggerate that effect. I see these challenges in many ways as experiments in strategy. You might play them in an extreme way, but I think at some level the strategies that work can be adapted to a more "regular" game.

For example, let's suppose that in this challenge someone wins using an aggressive military razing strategy to accumulate gold and that the closest peaceful game has only 1/3 as much gold. That, to me, would indicate that using your military to finance the economy is a really strong strategy. If, on the other hand, the numbers are reversed, then I'd draw the opposite conclusion. You might play a regular game in a more balanced way, but one way or another the overall approach would still transfer.

I think at some level the strategies that work can be adapted to a more "regular" game.

OK. I don't.

For example, let's suppose that in this challenge someone wins using an aggressive military razing strategy to accumulate gold and that the closest peaceful game has only 1/3 as much gold. That, to me, would indicate that using your military to finance the economy is a really strong strategy.

I wouldn't agree. I think that if you're playing at low difficulty levels, long beyond the time at which you could just conquer the world, the best methods to achieve certain artificial goals really have nothing at all to do with how you would play a real game, against serious opponents, fighting just to win.

You might play them in an extreme way, but I think at some level the strategies that work can be adapted to a more "regular" game.

I agree with that.

LandGrab proved that in Warlords you can expand really fast and use your cities to build research and it gives you a viable alternative to cottages and specialists. Or maybe alternative is the wrong word. More like a good complement.

Lust for Gold could very well play like a cultural victory. Use diplomacy to make everyone peaceful while you only concern yourself with religion. Then use the money from the shrines to rush buy cathedrals/culture wonders.

Let's Get Cultural was pretty much the next step from Lust for Gold.

Mini-Me was about pushing the tech advantage to extreme to make war while you have the better unit. A clear road for conquest, despite the low difficulty level.

The money one could be one that lets you accumulate gold for later use. Maybe get the Kremlin and rush buy a military for the "end of the world", or rush buy cathedrals for culture if you go the religious way, or beeline for the UN and rush buy it while setting yourself up for being elected for a diplomatic victory. Or labs and the space elevator for the Space Race. Instead of planning for an early game win this is planning for a late game surge to get ahead in whatever race you're in. Peace only takes some of the bite from it, while also making diplomacy less important, and does the same to balancing your research - to get a decent amount of military units if peaceful, or a huge amount of advanced units if attacking.

I'm back to "war and peace" now. I'm really not afraid of Raze-all-cities, since it will be Prince, not Warlord. If you can do it, good for you, but not everybody can.
Also, as has been explained, merchant trade mission may even be less important than settling a great merchant. So either no GMs at all, or everything is allowed. I'm starting to lean toward anything is allowed. (more "real game" again)

I agree with everybody. You are all correct. :D


Yes, setting an unusual 'target' is inherently artificial.

Yes, you can still learn something from them about Civ strategies.

Yes, it doesn't always apply to a 'real' multiplayer game situations.

Yes, but they are still fun for their own sake.

If the idea is to play challenges that are varied then some of them should be 'Peace only' games, but it should be a minority of the challenges as it is an extreme situation. In the same way that setting the game with an Arid climate, for a bit of variation, should make up a minority of the total challenges.


To summarise:
'Peace Only' would make different players attempts to complete the challenge a more comparable thing, because the random vagaries of the different AI's, as they struggle to achieve the standard victory conditions, would be removed.

'Peace Only' would allow players to focus all their efforts on achieving the goal, rather than test their skill at defeating/controlling the enemy while achieving the goal.


'Allowing the AI's to be combatative' would make this challenge more comparable to a real game and therefore make any lessons learned more valuable.

'Allowing the AI's to be combatative' would give the player more options as to how to achieve the goal.

Two all. So let's call it a draw.


That leaves us with the decider. What are you in the mood for? :run:

- A more focused and artificial game with Peaceful AI's?
- Or a more open and random game with Combatative AI's?

Both are fun. Both are interesting.



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If we end up with 2-2, and I hope not since we still have time until Friday, I'll switch to Peace Only. No need to come up with artificial rules on how to make the decision. And I just remembered I proposed some weird challenges before, that might not resemble "normal" games. So yeah, I agree that not all challenges have to be "normal".

Let's see where this takes us. And if we do end up with Peace Only, play it out and see it's too simple, etc, we can keep it in mind for future games. It's true that there will still be much to play for, even without worrying about war, we'll see then just how much.

One more thing about map type: in one game I tried a trade mission to another continent and it was less than one on my own! I think city size influences more than distance. So continents or pangaea are both ok from this point of view.

Raiser, how do different eras starts play? I've never tried one. Does everyone get all the techs from the previous eras? I've just thought that we might actually play one to test late-game concepts without having to resort to artificial rules in order to make the game faster. I'll give it a try one day before proposing it.

why can´t this be a regular board where these matters are decided through insults and namecalling? :cry:

you guys need to play more mmorpgs and shooters! ;)

schrebchen, come on, give us your opinion on this! :)

why can´t this be a regular board where these matters are decided through insults and namecalling? :cry:

you guys need to play more mmorpgs and shooters! ;)

OMGawd I hedhs0t j00 U HaxX0r!!! U Sux!!! I Rox!!!


Happy now. :D


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My eyes. >.<

now that´s more like it :D

i never played a no-war game before, so i couldn´t really say either way. gonna try one out tonight...

Raiser, how do different eras starts play? I've never tried one. Does everyone get all the techs from the previous eras? I've just thought that we might actually play one to test late-game concepts without having to resort to artificial rules in order to make the game faster. I'll give it a try one day before proposing it.

Not a fan of non-ancient era starts myself.

With a medieval era start, for example, the players get 2 settlers, 2 archers, 1 worker, 1 explorer and all the techs up to CoL/Drama/Compass.

You end up with a dull start, as the next tech costs 1000-ish research. Even with 6 units and a few upscale civics it still takes many, many turns to get your first new tech, as Cottages still take 70 turns to grow to a Town.

Also I never feel like I can build a coherent strategy when I start with a load of techs but a low production and commerce base.

And the early religions are a bit of a lottery based on the order that nations found there 1st and 2nd cities. If you throw down your settlers quickly you can usually get given two early religions and a couple of free missionaries. If you scout about for good locations you end up with nothing on the religion front.


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One more thing about map type: in one game I tried a trade mission to another continent and it was less than one on my own! I think city size influences more than distance. So continents or pangaea are both ok from this point of view.

Agreed.

The gold reward is a multiple of population of the city visited and distance from that city to your capital. I've always sent my GM's across the sea to find a large AI capital. Never tried experimenting with the distance. It could be a lesser factor.


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Yet one more thing. :p For a total wealth challenge maybe we should have Prince diff if we go with Peaceful AI's, but Noble diff if we go with Combatative AI's. Just to keep it inclusive of broader range of players.


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Ouch, the non-ancient starts don't seem much fun indeed. I'll definitely try one though, but I don't think it will turn into a challenge proposal.

Understood about Peaceful vs Combat difficulty. Out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea what level the "usual suspects" play on? I'm winning easily on Prince but haven't had the time to jump to Monarch - said the same thing a couple of month ago. ;) Noble/Prince seem good difficulties for these challenges though as Raiser already said, since we're trying new things. Warlord and lower seem too unchallenging, while Monarch would mean we'd try more to survive than meet the challenge.

Out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea what level the "usual suspects" play on?

I'm not sure if I count as a usual suspect, since I haven't actually played one of these challenges yet, but ...

I play on Prince. In Classic, I win easily on Prince. In Warlords, I always win but it's often a close game until fairly late. I'm not sure why the difference.

I've played on Monarch 3 times, all 3 in Warlords. First was a victory, second was about 20 turns away from a sure win when the game just got so slow and crash prone that I abandoned it, third I quit too early to say where it would have gone because I decided that I find Monarch really annoying.

patagonia, PeteJ, Raiser play Civ IV on Monarch.

parachute4u, pigswill, mice, cabert play Civ IV on Prince.

Nobody gives Civ IV as Noble.

This is according to the user profile info. A lot of people have left it blank.


I find both Prince and Monarch feel very similar. But I think the majority of the challenges should be on Noble, as the real opponents are each other. Raising of the diff setting just makes it more of a chore and gives less time for replays.

That said, I think, Warlord diff on the Mini-Me challenge was a mistake.


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Well, it was definitely different to go all out with the wars. :lol: I've almost always moved up after winning a game or two at a certain level, except for Prince, so I never got to the part where you mount an army and then procede to wipe out everybody. Everything was more fought from my part. Good to relax from time to time. :)

And thanks for taking the time to look in the user profiles. :D

The gold reward is a multiple of population of the city visited and distance from that city to your capital. I've always sent my GM's across the sea to find a large AI capital. Never tried experimenting with the distance. It could be a lesser factor.
I'm sure I remember reading on here that trade missions reach a threshhold above which distance becomes a less important factor than city size. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it seems that as long as you're travelling as far as another civ's capital, you pretty much max-out the distance contribution to the money generated (unless you started very close to them).

Great plains or lakes might make interesting map-variants for this game. Space seems to take longer to get filled on those than on continents/pangaea and if we do end up going "always peace" then balancing REX with avoiding sending a pre-currency or CoL economy into the toilet is going to be vital.

patagonia, PeteJ, Raiser play Civ IV on Monarch.

parachute4u, pigswill, mice, cabert play Civ IV on Prince.
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I don't play prince anymore.:mad:
I'm just to lazy and unfocused for the emperor jump, but i gave it a few tries, and well, i survived :lol:
I'm now a confirmed monarch (won all my monarch games in the last 2 months, including warlords, and scenarios!!!!) ;)
But prince is a good test level, where you can afford some funny moves.

I'll change my profile accordingly... didn't even remember i did fill something there :lol:

This sounds like something that I would try. I would lean toward the peace only setup, mainly because I have never tried that. I have been playing at noble so far, but peace only on prince sounds fine. Or prince with war on. I do think that I could relax more and get into to stupid civ tricks on noble, though. I would go for continents over pangea. But some other map would also be fine.

In terms of 'level' I'm at the stage of complacent at prince/ uncomfortable at monarch.
Prince seems like a good mid level.
In terms of always peace I'm not in favour of it and would prefer a standard type game (no always peace, no always war, barbarians but not raging barbarians etc). I think that one part of the challenge series is obviously to win the challenge (but only one person can do that) but the other part is to learn more about a particular aspect of strategy; non