Challenge-VI-01

[Ozbenno]

While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we are running a series of ten games called the Hall of Fame Challenge Series. Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but any games meeting the settings of one of the games will be counted towards the Challenge.

(*) Please read the >> HOF rules << BEFORE playing!​

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Diplomatic (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Prince
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Oasis
• Speed: Epic
• Required: No Tribal Villages, No Random Events
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians
• Civ: France (Louis XIV)
• Opponents: Must include Aztec (Montezuma), Celt (Brennus), Japan (Tokugawa), Korea (Wang Kon), Portugal (Joao), Russia (Catherine)
• Version: 3.19.003
• Date: 6th October 2011 to 6th February 2012

The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

 

[Nice Jerk]

Hey guys, this is my first challenger series. I&#8217;m hoping that watching youtube videos of TMiT and Chris has been enough to propel me into the hall of fame of the Hall of Fame series.

After a few lost-cause games and several practice maps I feel like I have an okay strategy for this one. It is to REX out cottage cities along a river, and to take advantage of the unused starting land that will be available somewhere. This is a map for 8 but only 7 civs are required, so somebody is going to have extra land. On a large map like this, you want that somebody to be you, (and especially not Cathy).

After settling up the river, wipe out the AI in the north, (or not if the bonus land is there). I did this with Elephants, which are readily available in the middle of the map, and took out Brennus. To his west was the bonus land, the majority of which I got before Wang Kong came along. But I waited to settle the extra land until after I beat down Monty with the phants. After the good land is secured just tech and backfill to victory.

In each game I played my rival in the UN would be Cathy, and I needed Wang Kong and Joao to vote for me for the UN victory. So, the further you spawn from them, the better.

I can&#8217;t wait to see how some of you handle claiming all the land that&#8217;s out there, while maintaining a decent tech rate. Especially with the prince AI adding nothing to the tech trading scene.

 

[vranasm]

@Jerk
if the save will be accepted I will beat you by 4 years!

but we both are badly beaten 40 years by Ric.

My strategy was... Diplomation obviously. I spawned in south left corner with copper nearby. I think I took on Celts and wiped them with axes+spears while building Mids.

I eventually (around 1 AD more like 200 AD) got to cats+axes and declared on Monty, which I took 4 cities, but couldn't cap him due to questionable tech path.

I switched then into cuirs since I had iron and horses, I got Cuirs around 1200 AD, quickly capped Russia (which was east from celts) and Tokugawa (which was north east). Wang Kon peacefully vassaled short before I attacked Russia.

Then it was mostly about storming towards UN.

Monty peace vassaled towards Joao, which was OK since I wasn't THAT sure with voting mechanics. I won with ~200 votes margin. score around 112k.

Some comments about the map. This map doesn't offer start regulation, thus it was pretty tough to roll good map with map finder. I had to be satisfied with 2x wet rice and some hills and trees.
Overall this map is surely tough, the distances are so long that going without SP (which ironic enough I got after all captures) is demanding even on prince. I almost whole game was running in average around 20% slider.
Some particular comment about land... from the few attempts i generated I think that this map type is crap and I didn't enjoy playing on such map the way I would do if the land was a little bit more forgiving.

I am happy I finished the game though and posted it... now to other challenges with hopefully better land.

I greatly enjoyed the no events, no huts setting!
I think it's much more fair for comparision between players.

 

[AgedOne]

I feel myself tempted towards the foolish old "Run North for the Horses" strategy in this one. (I'm always tempted on Oasis maps )
The main ideas are:
place the unlikeable leaders in the North
Run your settler to the north and settle
If you have horse, rush all of the northern crowd with chariots / horse archers
If you have no horses, start over

It's often a foolish strategy because you lose 10 turns walking before settling your capital.

It might just work here because:
This is Prince
Epic speed, so the 10 turns lost mean less

However, this works best if your UU is a chariot!

I'll probably have a go on Saturday.

As for managing my economy - currency and code of laws before the killing finishes

 

[vranasm]

As for managing my economy - currency and code of laws before the killing finishes

Well I was at a point when I run wealth everywhere, CH almost everywhere with ~26 cities all over the place and it wasn't enough ;-)

good luck if you happen to get this in BC's.

I saw that strategics pattern you mentioned... copper south, horses north.

btw I didn't mentioned this, but actually it was pretty fun to have musketeers running together with cuirs, but they were mostly for guard and heal duty.

 

[AgedOne]

Well I was at a point when I run wealth everywhere, CH almost everywhere with ~26 cities all over the place and it wasn't enough ;-)

good luck if you happen to get this in BC's.

I'm hoping to not have quite that many cities. About 18-20. But I could be mistaken, and find I really need a lot more.

I saw that strategics pattern you mentioned... copper south, horses north..

it's not quite as simple as that, but nearly. Horses in the north. Copper rare, but available both north and south. Iron mainly in the desert.

 

[vranasm]

I'm hoping to not have quite that many cities. About 18-20. But I could be mistaken, and find I really need a lot more.

tough to judge. I probably (if I explored or remembered better the UN rules) could return some of the cities to vassals.

My plan was to vassal them, but the way the AI competing for secretary with me is the one I don't vassal (2nd most populous AI being not my vassal).
Thus I wanted to go deep enough into AI's I vassal, so they don't compete with me for victory.
Since Joao had around 12 cities and Monty ~4-5, I had to cut from russia which had 17 around 1/2 of cities and from Toku which was 14 around 6.
That catapulted me to the 30 cities mark very quickly.

As I saw I got thanks to this pretty good score (around 112k). I had around 65% world population and around 60% land mass when finishing.
State property was obviously break point which allowed me to run 90% slider after getting it and really speeding up.

Not sure if it wouldn't be better to storm towards SP and then mass vassal while finishing towards MM.

I think I mismanaged the early game though. The axe rush on Celts was ok. The cats+axes war against Monty was imo missplay, but since I wouldn't have horses other way it allowed me to even finish in good time (2-move warfare is that much better).
I should have planned much better the game around 500 BC. I was really at a loss around that time mark, I remember I had to abandon the game for 1 day to think about it.

Prince is almost like playing without tech trades on, so you have to selfresearch a lot. And then the right order is confusing.

Awaiting your report! I think the plan with going horses is sound.

 

[AgedOne]

@vranasm
Have you thought about getting a PA with the largest of the southern civs? A nice situation would be Monty, Brennus and Toku in the north, all defeated, and then you ally with say Cathy (making sure not too large to vote!) against Joao, needing only Wang's vote to win.

Civs alternate north-south-north-south in the order you set them up, so itbis possibly to manipulate the start locations

 

[vranasm]

@vranasm
Have you thought about getting a PA with the largest of the southern civs? A nice situation would be Monty, Brennus and Toku in the north, all defeated, and then you ally with say Cathy (making sure not too large to vote!) against Joao, needing only Wang's vote to win.

Civs alternate north-south-north-south in the order you set them up, so itbis possibly to manipulate the start locations

well I didn't. Don't you have to check some checkbox anyway and 40 turns of have shared war/dp?

I didn't play much team games or PA games, so this is something I can't reliably play without testing before. OTOH have a lot of practice with domination/diplomation, so I always go with something I know when "competing".

now that we talk about it I wonder how I got the win considering I had around 65% of votes or was it at the point more? will have to check the save when home ;-). Hmm maybe it's tied to the fact that Vassals for VC counts as 50%, but when voting get full votes?

 

[m00n]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I played this game and I wanted to submit my saves. But I uploaded it as a normal Hall of Fame game I think Can anyone tell me where to upload the Challenger Series games, please?

 

[Ric]

Well how I approached this map after having checked the script a couple times in the worldbuilder.

First I added 4 more civs to crowd the map a bit more
I added: Izzy, Hatty, Ghandi, Lincoln. basicly a zealot and 3 push overs.

For the game itself I settled a couple cities and beelined to gunpowder. Then used said 2 move musketeers as we never get horses at our start location.
(Never thought I'd actually find a use for those musketeers)
Actually caught 4 AI's without feudalism wich means great odds for our musketeers.
Ran over 2 more AI's with my musketeers who had feudalism but by then sheer numbers and promotions against low number of AI longbows on Prince made this a non-issue.
Also had Ghandi actually peace vassal to me while I was beating up other AI's.

Next part I screwed up quite a bit though. I was generally giving most cities back to my vassals but I gave Izzy to much cities back making her my contender instead of the planned Lincoln. This costed me 2 voting rounds delaying my victory quite a bit.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I played this game and I wanted to submit my saves. But I uploaded it as a normal Hall of Fame game I think Can anyone tell me where to upload the Challenger Series games, please?

It gets automatically counted if it matches the criteria

 

[m00n]

Ah nice, so it should show up after the status is checked then I guess. That's if I got all the options right first time round

Anyway I did a more standard approch than what Ric described. No additional AIs and my wars have been elephants&cats first then elephants&trebs later always with a few axeman mixed in. I had rather weak start but moved to one of those super long rivers. I settled alongside it quite a way up north paying for the distance maintenance with cottage spam. I declared on a Joao without Longbows or Castels. Also bribed Brennus in. While Joao was still in the works I gifted Toku a few techs to open borders with him. Turns out the master of self inflicted isolation was weak, backwards and hated. So he wanted to be peacevassel to me right away. Random luck... After vassaling Joao I wonderwhored for a while (e.g. the Mausoleum) and waited for Monty to declare on his worst enemy Wang Kong. Once he did that, I joined him in the fight and the same small stack only enlarged by three trebs to take down the longbows took two cities. Monty got another one and that was enough. I then doubled my army size to a still rather unimpressive force and attacked Monty. As expected his stack still was in the town he captured from Wang Kong. So Wang Kong eats it while Toku Joao and I take Montys core cities. Monty wins 4 and looses 8. Then he gives in as well. I lib Nationalism start a goldenage, build Taj and farm Great Persons start some more golden ages. I think it was 60 turns in the end. The last turn was the turn that I made the last civic switch after having bribed Brennus and Cathys religious alliance apart. Three turns later I get voted and win in the year 1710 AD.

I thinks it's for the most part the peacevassal that made my game at least 20-30 turns faster. Though I see I'm not the only one who had that kinda luck.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@vranasm
Have you thought about getting a PA with the largest of the southern civs? A nice situation would be Monty, Brennus and Toku in the north, all defeated, and then you ally with say Cathy (making sure not too large to vote!) against Joao, needing only Wang's vote to win.

Civs alternate north-south-north-south in the order you set them up, so itbis possibly to manipulate the start locations

On prince the AI tech pace is pitiful, so PA won't help much (I use PA a lot in HoF games and even cheesed out g major 96 with it ). On these difficulties though you can permanently blow out the AI in tech on 6 cities, which means you're not going to get any speed by relying on the AI development of its land...best is to capture a ton of it ASAP and develop it yourself. The lower maintenance of prince makes that very doable also.

 

[AgedOne]

On prince the AI tech pace is pitiful, so PA won't help much (I use PA a lot in HoF games and even cheesed out g major 96 with it ). On these difficulties though you can permanently blow out the AI in tech on 6 cities, which means you're not going to get any speed by relying on the AI development of its land...best is to capture a ton of it ASAP and develop it yourself. The lower maintenance of prince makes that very doable also.

I guess you're right, TMIT. I'm getting carried away and thinking I'm playing immortal.
On the other hand, what you say about the city number requirement is very encouraging. That's more my kind of game, anyway, with an empire of more manageable size instead of 20 plus.
I'm still not going to have a chance to look at this one before the weekend, but my plan is becoming simpler. Some kind of a rush to eliminate all 3 'bad guys', and then aim to rope in 2 of the remaining AI in a vote against the third. Naturally, I should aim to get to MM comfortably early, even with 6 - 8 cities and self-researching everything.

 

[Htadus]

It has been a long time since I played an HOF game. I submitted a 15th century game. If it get accepted I will write a description of my process with a pros and cons summary.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I guess you're right, TMIT. I'm getting carried away and thinking I'm playing immortal.
On the other hand, what you say about the city number requirement is very encouraging. That's more my kind of game, anyway, with an empire of more manageable size instead of 20 plus.
I'm still not going to have a chance to look at this one before the weekend, but my plan is becoming simpler. Some kind of a rush to eliminate all 3 'bad guys', and then aim to rope in 2 of the remaining AI in a vote against the third. Naturally, I should aim to get to MM comfortably early, even with 6 - 8 cities and self-researching everything.

You can easily destroy the prince AI on 6 cities in tech, but you won't be beating human players who have 20 cities like that .

 

[AgedOne]

You can easily destroy the prince AI on 6 cities in tech, but you won't be beating human players who have 20 cities like that .

I'm sorry. I must learn to read posts accurately! You were actually saying this in your earlier post, weren't you.
I do understand. A healthy 20-city empire is much more productive than a 6-city one, plus the greater population = greater voting power.

 

[cas]

Tried OCC / raging barbs on this for fun. 1610AD. I dislike Oasis map, but it is fun with raging barbs with minimum opponents at this level...especially with an industrious leader.

Had a great mapfinder start. 3 gem, pig, cow, rice (had to move one tile)...in the SE corner. Only a few forest though, so that was the drawback.

The barbs were kind enough to take Catherine and WK out of the picture. WK founded two religions in his capital before the barbs got him, so I eventually razed that with musketeers.

Brennus was in the SW corner and founded a religion...and since Joao was direclty to his east, Brennus was able to expand a bit north and had less issues with barbs. That made him the obvious UN opponent.

Monty and Toku were next to each other in the northeast, but the barbs pinned them for the first half of the game. Toku started expanding quite a bit late, but it wasn't enough to catch Brennus by UN vote time.

I spread my state religion to Joao, Toku, and Monty. Oracle->CS sling somewhere around 1500BC. Liberalism->Radio somewhere around 1350AD. Got a little unlucky with the GPP, but not too bad. 1GE (partial rush UN), several GS (academy and bulbs), 2 GA...one free from music (partial bulb MM), but also 2 Gspy (settled) and 1 GPro (settled early). Probably should have saved the 2nd Gspy for a Golden Age late.

Wonders: Gwall, Oracle, GLibrary, NE, Oxford. I spent some hammers building musketeers for missionary escorts and taking a a couple of barb cities. Pyramids would have been better in hindsight, but I was concerned one of my 3 allies would found Theology religion and switch. So I wasted a lot of hammers in missionaries and musketeer escorts. No one reserached Theo by end-game for some reason.

cas

edit: spelling muskEteers

 

[Jouzou]

Another HoF noob here. After watching TMIT play the last challenge series on Youtube, I decided to give it a go myself. I very likely won't be able to finish all ten, but I'll try to manage at least a few.

I regenerated three or four times and decided to go with this start:

Spoiler :

Settled in place. First techs: AH - Mining - BW (found copper 4N1W of Paris) - hunting (there's another fur resource in the BFC of Paris, so definitely worth it). As for neighbours, I'm between Monty and Cathy. No idea where all the others are. I figured, "Get them while they're young", and promptly axe rushed Monty. I ran into some barb trouble because most of my soldiers were on the war front, but I managed.

Here's the empire at 1050 BC where I saved after killing Monty:

Spoiler :

The following turns will probably be typical post-war play: get the economy (and research) going again, build infrastructure etc. Also, I have a serious worker shortage and I should settle the land between my old and new cities pronto. Monty was also nice enough to found hinduism for me, so I got a religion and a holy city as a bonus prize.