Ok all you l33t hax0rs.

I throw down SP gauntlet!

Rules
"Play now"
Immortal difficulty
Quick speed
Standard Size
Climate of choice
Map of choice
Civ of choice

I. Post 2 saves
A) How it got set up save. Turn 100-150 (at beginning of first war, when civ is developed, at completion of primary plan or etc...).
B) Victory Save. Within a couple turns of your win. I should be able to load your save, click enter 1-4 times and see victory.

II. No loading.
A) You may declare a load for a death of hero/super unit, give percentage or circumstance of its death.
B) You may declare load because of dumb mistake (such as accidentally changing civ whan you complete a tech).
C) You may declare a load for any reason you like, no problem.
D) You need not declare loads because of multiple play sessions.
E) Aside from (D) above, do declare any loads and why, please.

III. Enjoy
A) No matter how "cheater", your win counts if you abide by the objectives/rules above.
B) Use random or favorite civ and/or the map that works best for you.

I have save(s) for Svalt (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6819049&postcount=8). I hope to see other civ wins.

Soon, we'll have .32 and a thread will be opened for it. Best you get some practice and street cred from old skool .31 now :)

Archipelago Lanun, Rocky Khazad, Cold Doviello... think you got the max? Let's see. Don't be bothering anyone with "I'm sure I will win". The victory save is of utmost importance.

I'm not much of a Quick player but I think I might try it out for a game. :)

Even on quick, standard size can take 6-15 hours so note the edit:

D) You need not declare loads because of multiple play sessions.

GL, you'll need some :)

Hmm...if I make a modmod that gives one civ an insane advantage but doesn't change enough to make the saves incompatible would that work?

How does letting the Insane trait grant about 100 free promotions to all unitcombats, +100 xp per battle, -95% required xp, +100 turns summon duration, +10000000 starting gold, +10000000 gold from pillaging, free upgrades, +1000% GPP etc. sound? I'm pretty sure huge benefit out of these early on would make such bonuses unnecessary for the last few turns of the game.


:mischief: You said "No matter how 'Cheater'" ;) :p :lol::D:lol::eek::rolleyes::blush::lol:



While I have no real interest playing an unmodded version, I would never give myself that much of an advantage. I typically give my rivals as big of a boost as myself. Winning is rarely my goal (I often turn off all victory conditions), so this challenge isn;t for me.

II. No loading.
A) You may declare a load for a death of hero/super unit, give percentage or circumstance of its death.
B) You may declare load because of dumb mistake (such as accidentally changing civ whan you complete a tech).
C) You may declare a load for any reason you like, no problem.
D) You need not declare loads because of multiple play sessions.
E) Aside from (D) above, do declare any loads and why, please.


Hmm - not getting this bit...

"No loading unless something goes wrong, then it's ok if you tell us?"
"No loading except between sessions" may be more useful for a "challenge" game.

I don´t really understand what the challenge part is here, but I played with those settings and won a Khazad domination victory at turn 196. Could have probably done it a lot faster, but I always get into builder mode after a few conquests. Playtime was 3 hours.

No rules about victory settings?

No rules about victory settings?
Any victory. The point is to get a look at/learn from a well-played game.
I don´t really understand what the challenge part is here, but I played with those settings and won a Khazad domination victory at turn 196. Could have probably done it a lot faster, but I always get into builder mode after a few conquests. Playtime was 3 hours.
The challenge is to post a save of a victory under the rules above. Do you remember how many points?
Hmm - not getting this bit...

"No loading unless something goes wrong, then it's ok if you tell us?"
"No loading except between sessions" may be more useful for a "challenge" game.
I'm new at this, good point; however, if someone loses a hero on a 99% during an otherwise very fun game... is it best to slog on without, accepting the challenge presented to you by circumstance or reload and continue the romp with mega-hero? I leave the choice up to the player. Personally, I'l scrap a late game rather than reload unless I make a silly error such as clicked on the wrong button/didn't mean to hit enter/etc.

-----

Also, include a story of the game if you have time.

Please, no more "oh yea, I've won that before easy" without victory saves. Failing to provide a save and yet running one's mouth will not be considered good sportsmanship.

Great Plains with Tasunke/Hippus on Play Now! Standard Immortal Quick. Not a single load.
Victory on turn 92 by conquest.
Heres a zip with turn 60 (the turn i attack Khazad) and turn 92, after everyone is dead (just finished off Auric), when you hit next turn you'll get victory.

Was that too early or do I need to wait til turn 100+?

Ok, I toke the lanun and tiny islands. Perhaps this was not the best game, but certainly the most easy.
My score was 18367. And it took 6 hours with breaks. Oh, I didn´t play now... dam it. But no loading.

Ugh 300 turns into my attempt to do an Altar victory on Medium / Small islands with elohim. Hannah was selected, and she summoned basium (but inexplicably only had 2 cities so her and bas each are basically doing a OCC). Have all the altars but the final, and founded the Order, and have a stack of Monks / Sphener / Valin / Confessors. Hannah has been annyoing me to death with a incredibly powerful Black Wind that I seem powerless to stop (fireballs aren't hurting it at all, and I am still a few turns away from dang frigates). Hyborem and Tebryn are fighting Hannah and Basium, and to keep hannah / bas happy I have declared war on them several times (but AI doesn't seem very good at launching sea attacks).

I am not very good at Immortal, it seems. Oh well. I'll keep slogging along. My science is awful I don't have high priests yet...

Oooh boy I got command 4 for spehener and he just captured archeron ! Yay!

Well I finished in 5 hours, 22 minutes. My very first FFH game on Immortal. I hope I didn't mess up any settings...

Got the Altar victory with 40 some odd turns left (which was the victory I was shooting for, so yay! - I bought it with 6100 gold when it had 20 turns left to build).

Settings:
Play Now
Immortal
Quick
Medium_and_Small / Standard Size / Rocky Climate / High Sea Level / Islands
Elohim, Einon Logos

Score 6725. Boo, Tom Bombadil.

2 Loads, 1 for Orthus pop right next to me (i was not adequately prepared), 2nd because Orders from Heaven was founded in the crappier city (instead of Glens of Killybegs, with lvl 2 of the lunnotar altar).

I'm not very good, and this probably was an easier Immortal than some maps, I'm sure others could've done much better... I still had to deal with Hannah and her damn pirates, and then I invaded Tebryn on turn 359 (I needed his capital, he built a ton of wonders and after I took it, it gave me about 150 beakers / turn, which pushed me to Omniscience with enough turns left before Hannah's score victory would kick in). Sphener and Maerdero had an all out brawl, with boatloads of monks, Paladins, Corindale, Valin, and a few mages backing them up. Oh, and a Mobility I Archeron :-D. Horray for Command IV on Sphener. AC was up to around 25-30 at one point, then with the death of many ragnarok units and the destruction of the AV holy city, it dropped again.

I discovered that it's NOT a good idea to have Corindale around the Balsperaphs because they will Mimic him, and then cast Domination - I lost a Paladin to this!

I also found out the necessity of really focusing on certain techs when playing Immortal level. I was able to trade some techs with Basium as soon as he entered the game, and then later with Kandros for many, many techs, but even when I Altared to Victory, Hannah / Basium were ahead in score and had a boatload of techs that I didn't (and Hannah / Basium were stupid, with one city each!)

Attached are the saves, one right after I found the Order, on turn 171, and the other the turn before the altar victory.

177199

Hm, I just wonder how you get victory points? The faster games had less points, and the long game of westamastaflash had the least point value. And I think my game was very easy ... Just build a lot of Arcane Barks, and visit the neighbours.

Any victory. The point is to get a look at/learn from a well-played game.
The challenge is to post a save of a victory under the rules above. Do you remember how many points?


Final score was something like 240k.

Here is the last autosave. Should be 6 turns to victory if you vassalize sabathiel and the balseraph queen.

Hm, I just wonder how you get victory points? The faster games had less points, and the long game of westamastaflash had the least point value. And I think my game was very easy ... Just build a lot of Arcane Barks, and visit the neighbours.

I was specifically going for an Altar Victory - naturally I expected the score to be less because I have to get all the way to omniscience, as well as the fact that I'm not very good at Immortal level games. There are many, many, things that I could've done differently (Kill Beeri off early instead of leaving him around) but I wanted to kind of role-play the pacifist Einon, who only would go to war against the ashen veil because they were turning the world to hell.

@westamastaflash Oh it was also my first won game on this diffiiculty. And the biggest problem was beating the infernal. Mostly I bombarded the citys with arcane barks and wiped the rest with mercenaries. No other civ than me had the possiblility to attack. Hyborem was the only one with bigger ships.

It's great to see all these entries; I look forward to taking a look at them to gain some insight into the various civs.

Randomed Khazad. Got stuck between the Jonas and Flauros so I teched bronze ASAP then founded RoK for cash. Jonas did the usual wolf rider rush and was wiped out by axes. Flauros then attacked, but for some reason was mainly fielding hunters and junk Fellowship units and was wiped out. I then had to fight an equal sized Tasunke for the win. This actually started off very badly because the AI ran its 50+, 3 movement, level 3-5 Raider horse army around my slow infantry and repeatedly captured my border cities.

Once I finally managed to wear the Hippus down (having an early 14 defence unit in Maros helped a lot), kill their invading troops and regain control of my borders, I marched a very highly promoted Bambur/Champion/Treb stack buffed by Stonewarden/Adepts around Tasunke's core cities which he was unable to answer.

I had to reload twice due to game crashes but this only happened after the game was won anyway.

OK. I am tempted ... will start playing within the next 48 hrs. Cool idea, eco!

Next random civ to win was Luchuirp or however you spell it. I spawned on double gold which made things too easy, but it did allow a completely peaceful game on my part with just minor AI-AI skirmishing. Popped the world spell on turn 1 for an engineer and settled the great engineer too. The AIs (Falamar, Jonas, Cardith, Valledia, Cassiel) didn't seem to care about religion so I built 7 cities and had each one found a different religion.

I converted everyone to RoK, but got stuck a couple of percentage points below the religious victory threshold with no one willing to trade gems, and therefore unable to build stonewardens for inquisition. Being unable to build priests due to lack of gems seems to be an issue quite often with RoK. Rather than invade anyone I built the Mines of Gal-Dur to get iron for iron golems and marched about 10 of them all the way to the other end of the map to kill Acheron. I then inquisitioned a bunch of cities for the win.

The biggest difference I've noticed in gameplay with Quick speed is barbarians are almost no threat compared to normal/epic where they slow your opening down significantly. On quick you can just open agriculture+worker with every civ and get away with it.

Room to make 7 cities and founding every religion, on immortal... that's nutz.

Hmm, maybe this'd be more fun if we choose a civ/map setup, and then have one person post the Initial Save?

Then we'd be playing on the same map, and could actually compare notes.

Too bad you make the civ you are playing dynamic.

Hmm, maybe this'd be more fun if we choose a civ/map setup, and then have one person post the Initial Save?

Then we'd be playing on the same map, and could actually compare notes.

Too bad you make the civ you are playing dynamic.

I see what you mean, but we can look at the saves and see how different starts allow different things. More learning this way, if less comparability.

Another big difference are the value of cottages. Because they are build very fast and upgrade very fast, coast cannot compair with them even as Lanun.

Another big difference are the value of cottages. Because they are build very fast and upgrade very fast, coast cannot compair with them even as Lanun.

Lanun with FoL (if ancients available), Guardian or OO Tower (happy), coves and unlimited sages (arcane lore) does nicely. Unless Lanun gets a 7+ (out of 10) start, yea, coast sucks.

Here is mine Lurchuip challenge.

Play now, _normal_ speed (I don't like quick much), immortal, Beeri.

At start I moved mine initial settler, since I found a Patria nearby. There was some jungle, but Patria still rulez. Next I warrior spam nearby civ (Sheaim). Having 3 cities I wasnt so backwards. Lanun built Titan wonder in that time which they doomed himselves to be mine next target :). Interestingelly mine friend Kurio help me in war (in fact, I was helping him, hehe). After getting 2 nice cities from Lanun, I play builder style, getting for Engineering and its wonders, iron golems and captured Acheron/Lich city. Domination was close then.

Here is mine Lurchuip challenge.

Play now, _normal_ speed (I don't like quick much), immortal, Beeri.

At start I moved mine initial settler, since I found a Patria nearby. There was some jungle, but Patria still rulez. Next I warrior spam nearby civ (Sheaim). Having 3 cities I wasnt so backwards. Lanun built Titan wonder in that time which they doomed himselves to be mine next target :). Interestingelly mine friend Kurio help me in war (in fact, I was helping him, hehe). After getting 2 nice cities from Lanun, I play builder style, getting for Engineering and its wonders, iron golems and captured Acheron/Lich city. Domination was close then.

So I took a look at this game, and I think it's a great example of why 'play now' just gimps the AI.

I used your initial save and replayed this map. Scored a conquest Victory before turn 200, total of just shy of 300,000 points.

Carditha and Osgaballa built nothing other than the basic scout/warriors the entire game, only the lanun had a sprinkle of swordsmen and catapults by the time I took care of them.

I've attached two saves. Turn 59, right before I take Yggdrassil away from the Kurio's, and the final save on turn 191.

A few notes on the game: I cast Gifts of Nantosuelta on the second turn, after building my capital, and immediately changed to pacifism. By turn 50 I had a second city,and my capital was pumping out warriors every turn, sometimes two. (+5 production in capital from first Engineer, and great Engineer spawned turn 26).

I pushed the Kurios back onto their peninsula, and got one high XP warrior, who I used to do the same to the Sheiam. Took city after city from those two for a bit, then switched over to the Lanun with a large force of Wood Golems, Barnaxus (Level 2) and a 100 XP warrior with shock 2 and March.

Research order was roughly:
Agriculture, Ancient CHants, Education
Masonry, Construction
Exploration, Hunting, Mysticism, Fellowship of the Leaves
Animal Husbandry, Calender, Mining
Hidden Paths

From there it matters less, but that was the gist of it.

I loaded a few times when I lost greater than 95% combats with Barnie or Doomie, for a total of 3 times in the early game. I also got frustrated trying to take the last Sheiam city and did some really stupid attacks, that I reloaded from for two other loads around turn 180.

Final score was something like 240k.

Here is the last autosave. Should be 6 turns to victory if you vassalize sabathiel and the balseraph queen.

Why didn't you have a state religion? That seems weird for that late in the game. Was that one turn of anarchy so terrifying? Or did you just want to keep the culture bonus' from all the various religions?

Weird. I could have sworn I had changed to runes of kilmorph sometime before, but apparently I went through the whole game without a state religion.
There are actually quite a few benefits to having no religion (most notably easier diplomacy and more culture), but it really was just an oversight.

Especially since I could have changed at no cost due to the golden age.

I have save(s) for Svalt (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6819049&postcount=8). I hope to see other civ wins.

Svalt

Great Plains with Tasunke/Hippus on Play Now! Standard Immortal Quick. Not a single load.
Victory on turn 92 by conquest.
Heres a zip with turn 60 (the turn i attack Khazad) and turn 92, after everyone is dead (just finished off Auric), when you hit next turn you'll get victory.

Was that too early or do I need to wait til turn 100+?

Hippus

Ok, I toke the lanun and tiny islands. Perhaps this was not the best game, but certainly the most easy.
My score was 18367. And it took 6 hours with breaks. Oh, I didn´t play now... dam it. But no loading.

Elohim

Well I finished in 5 hours, 22 minutes. My very first FFH game on Immortal. I hope I didn't mess up any settings...

Got the Altar victory with 40 some odd turns left (which was the victory I was shooting for, so yay! - I bought it with 6100 gold when it had 20 turns left to build). Score 6725. Boo, Tom Bombadil.

2 Loads, 1 for Orthus pop right next to me (i was not adequately prepared), 2nd because Orders from Heaven was founded in the crappier city (instead of Glens of Killybegs, with lvl 2 of the lunnotar altar).

I'm not very good, and this probably was an easier Immortal than some maps, I'm sure others could've done much better... I still had to deal with Hannah and her damn pirates, and then I invaded Tebryn on turn 359 (I needed his capital, he built a ton of wonders and after I took it, it gave me about 150 beakers / turn, which pushed me to Omniscience with enough turns left before Hannah's score victory would kick in). Sphener and Maerdero had an all out brawl, with boatloads of monks, Paladins, Corindale, Valin, and a few mages backing them up. Oh, and a Mobility I Archeron :-D. Horray for Command IV on Sphener. AC was up to around 25-30 at one point, then with the death of many ragnarok units and the destruction of the AV holy city, it dropped again.

I discovered that it's NOT a good idea to have Corindale around the Balsperaphs because they will Mimic him, and then cast Domination - I lost a Paladin to this!

I also found out the necessity of really focusing on certain techs when playing Immortal level. I was able to trade some techs with Basium as soon as he entered the game, and then later with Kandros for many, many techs, but even when I Altared to Victory, Hannah / Basium were ahead in score and had a boatload of techs that I didn't (and Hannah / Basium were stupid, with one city each!)

Attached are the saves, one right after I found the Order, on turn 171, and the other the turn before the altar victory.

177199

Bannor

Final score was something like 240k.

Here is the last autosave. Should be 6 turns to victory if you vassalize sabathiel and the balseraph queen.

Khazad

Randomed Khazad. Got stuck between the Jonas and Flauros so I teched bronze ASAP then founded RoK for cash. Jonas did the usual wolf rider rush and was wiped out by axes. Flauros then attacked, but for some reason was mainly fielding hunters and junk Fellowship units and was wiped out. I then had to fight an equal sized Tasunke for the win. This actually started off very badly because the AI ran its 50+, 3 movement, level 3-5 Raider horse army around my slow infantry and repeatedly captured my border cities.

Once I finally managed to wear the Hippus down (having an early 14 defence unit in Maros helped a lot), kill their invading troops and regain control of my borders, I marched a very highly promoted Bambur/Champion/Treb stack buffed by Stonewarden/Adepts around Tasunke's core cities which he was unable to answer.

I had to reload twice due to game crashes but this only happened after the game was won anyway.

Khazad

Next random civ to win was Luchuirp or however you spell it. I spawned on double gold which made things too easy, but it did allow a completely peaceful game on my part with just minor AI-AI skirmishing. Popped the world spell on turn 1 for an engineer and settled the great engineer too. The AIs (Falamar, Jonas, Cardith, Valledia, Cassiel) didn't seem to care about religion so I built 7 cities and had each one found a different religion.

I converted everyone to RoK, but got stuck a couple of percentage points below the religious victory threshold with no one willing to trade gems, and therefore unable to build stonewardens for inquisition. Being unable to build priests due to lack of gems seems to be an issue quite often with RoK. Rather than invade anyone I built the Mines of Gal-Dur to get iron for iron golems and marched about 10 of them all the way to the other end of the map to kill Acheron. I then inquisitioned a bunch of cities for the win.

The biggest difference I've noticed in gameplay with Quick speed is barbarians are almost no threat compared to normal/epic where they slow your opening down significantly. On quick you can just open agriculture+worker with every civ and get away with it.

Luchuirp

Here is mine Lurchuip challenge.

Play now, _normal_ speed (I don't like quick much), immortal, Beeri.

At start I moved mine initial settler, since I found a Patria nearby. There was some jungle, but Patria still rulez. Next I warrior spam nearby civ (Sheaim). Having 3 cities I wasnt so backwards. Lanun built Titan wonder in that time which they doomed himselves to be mine next target :). Interestingelly mine friend Kurio help me in war (in fact, I was helping him, hehe). After getting 2 nice cities from Lanun, I play builder style, getting for Engineering and its wonders, iron golems and captured Acheron/Lich city. Domination was close then.

Luchiurp

So I took a look at this game, and I think it's a great example of why 'play now' just gimps the AI.

I used your initial save and replayed this map. Scored a conquest Victory before turn 200, total of just shy of 300,000 points.

Carditha and Osgaballa built nothing other than the basic scout/warriors the entire game, only the lanun had a sprinkle of swordsmen and catapults by the time I took care of them.

I've attached two saves. Turn 59, right before I take Yggdrassil away from the Kurio's, and the final save on turn 191.

A few notes on the game: I cast Gifts of Nantosuelta on the second turn, after building my capital, and immediately changed to pacifism. By turn 50 I had a second city,and my capital was pumping out warriors every turn, sometimes two. (+5 production in capital from first Engineer, and great Engineer spawned turn 26).

I pushed the Kurios back onto their peninsula, and got one high XP warrior, who I used to do the same to the Sheiam. Took city after city from those two for a bit, then switched over to the Lanun with a large force of Wood Golems, Barnaxus (Level 2) and a 100 XP warrior with shock 2 and March.

Research order was roughly:
Agriculture, Ancient CHants, Education
Masonry, Construction
Exploration, Hunting, Mysticism, Fellowship of the Leaves
Animal Husbandry, Calender, Mining
Hidden Paths

From there it matters less, but that was the gist of it.

I loaded a few times when I lost greater than 95% combats with Barnie or Doomie, for a total of 3 times in the early game. I also got frustrated trying to take the last Sheiam city and did some really stupid attacks, that I reloaded from for two other loads around turn 180.

Luchuirp

-----

Svalt, Hippus, Elohim, Bannor, Khazad x2, Luchuirp x3 (and a last minute Sidar deity incomplete)

Did your favorite civ make it in time? Tomorrow is .32!

EDIT: Corrected to Elohim.

Oh I was Elohim, not Lanun ;-)

Played a little of Ecofarms Svart game. Gotta love the military might of Chalid + Alazkan. Thought it was odd that Chalid's only upgrades were Mobility 1 and Command 1. I mean, I know you just built him, but why those two in particular? I'd think that Law II and Law III would be drastically more effective. More XP and another body. Upgrade the Hosts with Mobility if they win their first fight, so they can keep attacking. Rely more on the crown damage, then on the Pillar of fire. That's my general approach anyway. Heck just getting to cast Valor before the first actual attack is pretty useful.

Oh, other question: Why was Alazkan's Nationality Revealed? Did you accidentally reveal via that Empyrean spell? Just seems normally it's great for getting in some extra XP while your full on military builds up.

Great Plains with Tasunke/Hippus on Play Now! Standard Immortal Quick. Not a single load.
Victory on turn 92 by conquest.
Heres a zip with turn 60 (the turn i attack Khazad) and turn 92, after everyone is dead (just finished off Auric), when you hit next turn you'll get victory.

Was that too early or do I need to wait til turn 100+?

mmmm That is qwik... I thought I would try it out, not using your saves. My first war was a bit later about turn 72 against elves, I think I went for the horses a little late, my initial city placement had fur and deer, tis hard to resist using em.
I think I also used the warcry too early, I should have weighted until a couple of turns into my war, I think. The elves had sliverin hero, lost some horses to that.

You only have 2 workers and very spread out cities.
EDIT: A very good start with 3 cow and 1 horse in cross of main city. Did you keep starting new map until a good start appeared?

I wasn't able to finish off the elves, couldn't find the last city, so made peace. In new war with bannor now, horses are having some trouble.
I may have kept too many cities too early, my tech tree is also behind my opponants and they ar starting to have defenses that I am struggling against.

I am currently at turn 104 and still 6 enemies, and to make it worse Hyperion has entered the game.

A short tech & build blurb for early game would be great, because that is astonishingly fast.

EDIT: A very good start with 3 cow and 1 horse in cross of main city. Did you .

I'm guessing he didn't. Great Plains map type has those pretty often in the center of it. (Cows that is). In fact, given the research path of the Hippus, I'd say the only thing stacked in his favor was the map type in general :).

mmmm That is qwik... I thought I would try it out, not using your saves. My first war was a bit later about turn 72 against elves, I think I went for the horses a little late, my initial city placement had fur and deer, tis hard to resist using em.
I think I also used the warcry too early, I should have weighted until a couple of turns into my war, I think. The elves had sliverin hero, lost some horses to that.

You only have 2 workers and very spread out cities.
EDIT: A very good start with 3 cow and 1 horse in cross of main city. Did you keep starting new map until a good start appeared?

I wasn't able to finish off the elves, couldn't find the last city, so made peace. In new war with bannor now, horses are having some trouble.
I may have kept too many cities too early, my tech tree is also behind my opponants and they ar starting to have defenses that I am struggling against.

I am currently at turn 104 and still 6 enemies, and to make it worse Hyperion has entered the game.

A short tech & build blurb for early game would be great, because that is astonishingly fast.

lets see now, my memory isnt great but ill see if i can remember how i started.

firstly, that was my first map generation, the first thing i did was start building a worker while researching animal husbandry. when the worker was made i started making farms since i wasnt quite done AH.
once i had AH i made pastures, think my scout was out looking for nearby cities for me to take later. then i started researching horseback riding, while i was waiting for that i build another warrior and then a settler, then maybe a worker.
then i got HBR and build a stables while researching Ancient Chants then Education, while my first city pumped out horsemen for the rest of the game. my second city built a worker maybe, and a stables, but couldnt make horsemen cause it wasnt connected and had no horse resource of its own, i may have made another warior and worker there.
once i had education i switched apprenticeship, and i made cottages on all the plains tiles and started researching exploration for roads, i think my horsemen were piled around khazad whod just founded Runes around this time, horsemen were training on barbarians and finding the quickest side to attack khazads capital from. i started researching towards runes tech
then i took over their capital the turn i declared war, and took over their second city (runes HC) either the same turn or the turn after. orthus was just south and i killed him too and got the axe on my best unit.
i then took over a few balseraph cities with the horsemen who were mostly unhurt and left over from killing khazad, mainly relying on my orthus axe horseman. i think i switched to city states around this time, not sure when i switched to runes. after some healing and possibly some reinforcements i took over the remaining balseraph cities and a barb city. at this point i had horsemen all over the place and was beginning to connect my cities up visually and road wise, making it easier to control the area and move my horsemen around.
i then attacked sheaim with a force of new horsemen id built (by this time my second and only other self-built city had started pumping out horsemen as well, and maybe the khazad cities) and took out several cities quickly, tending to keep good cities and raze crappy ones, before i finished them off doviello declared on me and had a big stack near my khazad cities, but i got the army that killed the balseraphs with a few new recruits to make short work of them and becoming taking the doviello cities.
i finished off the sheaim and doviello around the same time with my two main armies, and then had them rush the illians and took this out rather quickly and easily.
the end heh

edit: tired, my english is sucking heh

Here you find my try on your Challenge. Couldnt finish due to time (the game also went crawlingly slow the last turns. About a Minute of load-time between turns) and 0.32.

Specs are: play now, Deity, standart size, Creation Mapscript, Sidar, quick.

But perhaps you can still draw something from it. The first save is directly before the War with Falamar.
The second one is where i left the game (my section of the Map is under my control).

It should be possible to achieve a ToM Victory from there without Danger as well as a very long Term military one by adopting CoE (shading Chalid before to be able to keep his Spells.) and backstabbing the opposition onw by one. (all are in overcouncil so no wars on their behalf to be expected.) Perhaps casting into the Mist with a bunch of HN-Scouts turned Horseman so you can wreck their economy first with impunity and get a whole load of Gold in the process. Chavalry in the Capital is built in 1 Turn each and starts with 22 Exp so with one Valor buffed combat should be able to shade (take enraged Lunatics let loose as oponents if Barbs are scarce).
So allowing up to a shade a turn which should make building ToM even easier than it allready is (or win a Culture-Victory long term if you really are determined to do it.).


Had to restart from initial a few times hope thats not to much of a problem (deity only allows for flawless play sadly. And my builder nature broke free a few times. Always used the same basic Plan for the Game and positon of my capital though.) and doesnt fall under the no reload rule. The Huts have been worse in that game than on first try (got Mysticism there on turn 5. Sad to had to scrap that one.) though so no real advantage from it gamewise. And the position doesn't allow to take any advantage of it due to early isolation and didn't ever saw alot of the map until the game that produced above saves (if someone is interested, try inital and you'll see why.).

I did one Reload of an Autosave Midgame where 4 fortified Level 4-5 Axemen with Bronze + enchanted Weapons in Forsest got killed by a bunch of Fresh Warriors and Hunters (only one Promotion each) :eek:. Which must have been 4 Battles of 99% or above in a row (they came with a force about twice as big but they won their first battles with only losing one Unit.). Whould have won the War anyways though, albeit a bit later (should have perhaps let this go since it was a bit of a tactical mistake on my behalf but got frustrated with a lot of 85% or above losses and that just pushed me over the top. Lost a few "Shades" in 95% and up battles later "to compensate" :p)
No other reloads. Also as handicap i later got no ecclastic on honor (don't know why. Is that normal?) which was quite hit to my strategy. Only recently got Empyrean spreading to my lands so i chould start cranking out Rathas.



Now though i know why you think sidar are not that strong.
In quick they are only about half as powerful and you get the important first few shades much later in comparison (i now have seen another time why i hate quick. Military hackfest without respite or fun. Nothing for a builder / micromanager like me. Won't play at that speed again if i can evade it in any way).
At Normal speed (and thats what the game is balanced for by the team after all) they are outstanding (you can produce about twice the ammount of units / shades there after all. More on slower speeds.). On Epic they are utterly imbalanced and allow to dominate immortal / deity as if it were prince. But Epic is crawlingly slow in FFH 2 anyways and the Sidar don't need the push.

Hope it helps you even if i didn't get to finish it (also wasn't fun so another reason not to finish.)

Now off to playing 0.32.

I thought I would try the sureshot approach so I started a new game, this time with a much better start, lots of cows and wheat etc, I guess when i started the last one it was just a bit of bad luck getting lots of mountain and trees.
I changed my strategy a bit and realise now that I made many mistakes that cost me a lot of time completeing. (waiting to heal and pausing the steady flow of horse production by build some other useless crap.)

So anyway... I did reload a couple of times... The first was because I never saw the barbarian fire elemental standing next to me (no graphic art), so I healed when i should have moved.
And second was due to accidental movement of troops out of city leaving it unguarded.

I couldn't get the turn 60 battle like sureshot, I had malikin declare on me around 68-70, I was preparing to attack the clan, so that changed my advance, and I had to march all the way across the other side of the map.

Finish turn 117 conquest...

I finished only after killing lunan, taking orthus' axe was his final remaining unit... funny...

I learnt a lot, haven't read sureshots reply yet will after posting... Thanks

thanks for the response sureshot, at what point did you use the warcry?

Also, building the worker first, isn't this dangerous? I always build 2 warriors first and wait until a city size of 3.
That said I also play custom maps with all the extra barbs and aggression etc... also with many extra civs

i was playing to the settings, and on Play Now! theres no raging barbs so minimal threat early on.

i think i used warcry while finishing off sheaim and doviello, since doviello had javellins i wanted a little boost, plus the end was near so i figured i should use it. i considered using it earlier, but didnt have have much need of it so waited for a time when the extra movement or strength would help take a city earlier than i would have without it

thanks for the response sureshot, at what point did you use the warcry?

Also, building the worker first, isn't this dangerous? I always build 2 warriors first and wait until a city size of 3.
That said I also play custom maps with all the extra barbs and aggression etc... also with many extra civs

Barbarians wont' attack cities until turn 100.

I don't play with aggressive AI on, but the AI pretty much leaves you alone for the first 20 turns I've seen.

could have done it faster (as always) as i overestimated the AI a lot and built way too much. anyhow, this way i got a nice conquest victory, took me 5 turns to get varn and his vassal cassiel off the map.
final turn is 188, points are 308506.

somehow the AI is a lot more aggressive in 0.32 but not a real threat with building requirements.

somehow i was not able to make screenshots, attached are my two saves, i hope they are the correct ones.
the first should be around turn 100, i have decimated cassiel to one city and am on the way to kill the sheaim.

i reloaded once as i lost a shock2 warrior against an illidan warrior with 99.8% (and my capital with that), played straight through it otherwise. now i have like 4 hours of sleep until i have to go to work :(
only one more turn ;)

Here a Sidar, Play Now, Immortal, standard size, normal speed (i hate quick), creation game.
No reloads only seession continual (which was necessary more than once at gametime 22+ hours.).

Score 665xx i belive, Turn about 480 (on normal speed should be roughly comparable to turn 250-300 on quick i think.).

Just end the Turn and you should win domination at start of the next turn or 2.

Was a long draged game with a very nice starting-city-site but isolation of that section of the map which is very bad for the Sidar since wars for XP gaining and shading are far harder to come by.

(And don't wonder because of the strange build-orders everywhere. Just wanted to achieve domination in the End and fast-clicked the buildings the last 10 or so Turns. Some nice high Level national units running around at lower right corner of the map. Hacking your way through 1000+ Desciples from 3 Nations surely yields XP but is very time-consuming... Do late-game wars suck timewise...)

Not a grand score but finally cured of my addiction to reload. :) (Although i now have an aversion to battles with odds below 90% instead... at least if high-level units are concerned.)

If these games are in .32, please post them in the new thread:

"The immortal playnow challenge"

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276346

Since there are significant changes, we can always go back and look at how changes influenced gameplay with a separate collection from each.

Maybe this is not the best idea, but I felt games from .31 and .32 could not really be compared.

Thanks, whether you repost or not, for your entries. I will peruse them soon and learn more about some of the civs I rarely play. :)