Hello again!

As I mentioned in this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=261105) thread, I have devised a plan to achieve all the requirements for four of the six legs of the Elite Quattromaster Challenge.

I will try to post a thread around every two weeks with the game conditions, and then some highlights of my game, and encourage others to do the same. I also open the floor to discussions of strategy, as the regular HoF'ers never cease to amaze me with their insights into the game.

Round 10: Stele-ing a win!

Another leader new to BTS is Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia. He has a UB designed around a cultural victory, but we’re going to go with a map that’s not as friendly.

"Required" Settings:
Expansion: BTS
Era: Ancient
Civilization: Ethiopia
Victory Condition: Culture
Game Speed: Marathon
Map: Global Highlands *Note*: The current HoF mod will give you an ineligibility error on this map indicating that you have selected balanced resources even if you haven't. The submission will still work properly (unless of course, you actually selected balanced resources ;))

Although all maps except duel are eligible for EQM, [strike]all[strike]most of the submissions for the Bindy challenge so far have been small or standard, so I’m going to concentrate on those two. If you’d like to try on another map size, it’s perfectly valid, but I probably won’t notice the submission unless you tell me. And if you’re going to try the challenge with a different game spped, civilization, map, and victory condition, that’s nice, but I probably won’t include it in the results, Ruff.

Here again are the opponent requirements for various map sizes.

Mapsize Minimum Maximum
Tiny 2 4
Small 4 7
Standard 6 10
Large 8 14
Huge 10 17
Remember, Duel Maps are definitely ineligible for the Elite Quattromaster Challenge.

Zara is Creative and Organized. Creative has the obvious minor boost to a cultural victory, and Organized can help with expenses, although that’s unlikely to be an issue in a typical culture game. Zara’s UB is the Stele, a monument with an extra 25% culture boost. His UU is an Oromo Warrior, a musketman that shoots laser beams from its eyes.

Zara starts with mining and hunting, so no religious advantages there. There are likely to be a few “mineable” tiles in your capital’s fat cross on this map, at least.

If you're interested, the current best dates for a small map are:

Deity Lexad 1316 A.D.
Immortal Contraflexure 1644 A.D.
Emperor Contraflexure 1681 A.D.
Monarch Dignitas 1693 A.D.
Prince Dracandross 1811 A.D.
Noble Peluin 1830 A.D.
Warlord Misotu 1551 A.D.
Chieftain Jack LEagle 1310 A.D.
Settler BLubmuz 1414 A.D.

and the current best dates for a standard map are:

Deity Dracandross 1376 A.D.
Immortal Contraflexure 1578 A.D.
Emperor No Entry
Monarch cabert 1604 A.D.
Prince ori 1494 A.D.
Noble Misotu 1554 A.D.
Warlord Misotu 1442 A.D.
Chieftain Misotu 1374 A.D.
Settler LeSphinx 1305 A.D.



Results:

bestje won in 1658 on a Monarch level Small map. (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=12476)
Bindamel won in 1702 on a Monarch level Standard map. (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=12501)

Global Highlands is a map that I don't have ... and, personally - I hate it, mainly because the last game I played with it annoyed the heck out of me. I have Mr Zara as well as Marathon so I might play a bastardized version of Rnd 10 again ... something like Spain, Global Highlands and Quick.

Never played global highlands or Ethiopia so I'll give it a go. Cabert's monarch date looks tricky to beat though.

Yikes, marathon speed, hmm.... my least favourite.

Marathon is the best, especially for higher difficulties. IMO, setting the game to marathon speed bumps the dificulty down one or two steps. At faster speeds, your troops can become obsolete before they reach their destination. On marathon, you get a lot more time to play with each type of troop before a new tech age comes along.

Yeah I know, I just think it takes far too long and is dull for much of the game.

My only marathon HOF submission took me about a week to play. And now it is banned for EQM because it was Huayna :( And it was my only GMajor win so far :( :(

That is an easy fix - play a marathon tiny map with 2 opponents, tech to axes and just roll over them. You may need cats, so mapfind a nice commerce start (gold, gems) and you are home.

Well after several failed attempts, getting overrun because I hadn't built a big enough army, losing to an extremely cheesy AI AP win etc.

zara finally managed to get his 3 legendary cities in 1658AD.
Played this on a small map with washington, SB, Fred and Churchill
had a pretty nice start with a good production cities and REXed a little to grab a big chunk of the map and some gold and gems.

Built up military at the likely points to be attacked, and I wasn't disappointed as everyone except Fred came and had a go. Though Churchill redeemed himself later by dogpiling Washington.
Fought an entirely defensive war and had the SoZ so WW was never a problem and in general the game was pretty peaceful.
Managed to found all the religions except buddhism and build almost all the cathedral type buildings in my 3 cities at the end my capital was going at over 1000 culture a turn.

my other 2 cities were only a few turns behind with a final GA to get the last one to go legendary

very happy to have won this game as it takes forever and its so frustrating when you have to start again.

This is the last 2 cities going legendary
179956
and this is my culture from space
179957

What level did you play bestje?

Oops forgot to say, I played at monarch

Hmmm, I'm vaguely tempted to try to combine this with the current G-Major but not sure I can win. Would be a huge slice of my now limited civ time to burn.

EDIT: Just noticed the G-Major is normal speed, so I'll be trying that one instead of this.

I have to say, this was miserably slow for the first 10 or 20 (or 100) turns, but I ended up with a lot more to do later than I expected.

It all started here:

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/earlycapital.jpg

Even though six of seven AIs started on my continent, I had plenty of time to settle that whole region you see there. Cultural city two ended up in the SW over by the crabs and sheep, and number three over by the pigs/flood plains to the east.

I haven't done a lot of BTS culture yet, but I went with Oracle (CoL), Museum of Mausollos, Sistine Chapel, and Taj Mahal. I had three Golden Ages (Great Prophet, Great Prophet and Economics Great Merchant, Taj Mahal), and the MoM was great for that:

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/tajmahal.jpg

24 turns! I hardly ever play Marathon.

And yes, I spawned a few too many Great Prophets. I even built the Confucian Shrine, although that cash was actually really helpful.

Scheduled liberalism really tight (Note the score display on the lower right), and got the big reward for it.

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/firsttolib.jpg

The BTS Sistine Chapel is SWEET for cultural victories. State religion monastery after 1000 years:

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/14cultmonastery.jpg

Even sweeter with the AP religion.

Took control of the AP at one point. Met poor Mehmed later, out on an island by himself, the Hindu pariah among the Buddhists. Due to a series of Defensive Pacts, a lot of people, including me, went to war with him when he declared on Fred. I finished the job with the AP:

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/warvote.jpg
http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/warhannibal.jpg

I was in for a long "press enter" game, because I had only two religions, when this happened in 1570:

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/stuttgartflip.jpg

It doesn't quite show in that screenshot, but the city had both Christianity and Islam, doubling my religions and opportunities for the religious multiplier buildings.

Which led to this, in 1702:

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/Bindamel/beqm/beqm10/victory1702.jpg

sounds like you've done really well if you only had two religions, my game wasn't many turns faster and I had 5.
what map size and difficulty did you play at, standard and monarch?

Did you get most of your culture from GA bombing or from the culture slider?

Standard map, Monarch difficulty.

I think I only had 8 GAs at the end; I also had one early that I settled.

At 1570, when I still only had the two religions, my best city was doing maybe 400 cpt. Getting the other two religions even though it was that late, was huge.

This was definitely a slider game, as I had two flood plain filled cities. Surprisingly, I never ran Caste System in this game; I built Globe Theatre and National Epic in my best food city (which wasn't one of the big three), and just ran all the artists from that.

I posted bestje and my games in the first post. Congratulations on the number 1 position bestje!

Round 11 is coming soon...

thanks, I was pleased and quite surprised.