Challenge-VI-01

Tachywaxon said:

I am looming for now, but I think you've already grown too powerful. Hmm...

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Don't loom. jump in. More the merrier they say.

PS. I have yet to meet "they".

Htadus said:

Don't loom. jump in. More the merrier they say.

PS. I have yet to meet "they".

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I can't for now. My SGOTM team is my principal preoccupation.


BTW, bcool , how the hell did you jump in so fast! I was here for 10 minutes...
and yes, I will play tonight.

Question: My dad always plays my 4000 B.C game save so if I do win my game will it be accepted? I promise I didn't look at his game for resources or anything.

Thanks for the answers, short and long! So I am allowed to have as many as 10 opponents on a standard sized map, yea....I don't have to build all those cities myself now.

shoshonte said:

Question: My dad always plays my 4000 B.C game save so if I do win my game will it be accepted? I promise I didn't look at his game for resources or anything.

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I am not sure to understand well: your dad is using the same starting save as yours. So you are playing independently your games.

Unfortunately, even if you have good will, the verifier has a mean to detect those who goes past 4000 BC multiple times. It is instant disqualification. It is stern I know, but that is why I like competition here, because we can play fair.

BALETED!

It occurred to me that my mentioned topic would be better addressed to mods directly, to see what can be done.

Yeah it doesn't matter really. My dad is currently really mad at the game and to let off steam is rolling through catherine and her vassals with infantry. Seems to have not to have got enough votes with his Hindu nation to pull off a W on this one. If he does win it will probably be late 20th/ early 21 century because Catherine is on the other side of the map through Joao and Monty (though Monty and Toki are both her vassals so that will take even longer to roll through both Monty and Catherine)

We just enjoy playing against each other and it wouldn't be fair if me or my dad got better starts than each other so we play with the same starts.

Still unable to win this game. It seems like no matter what you do it's impossible to get enough votes for UN victory. I could give the civs my literal shirt off my back and they still won't be pleased enough to vote for me. I'm going to keep trying this till I win though.

shoshonte said:

Still unable to win this game. It seems like no matter what you do it's impossible to get enough votes for UN victory. I could give the civs my literal shirt off my back and they still won't be pleased enough to vote for me. I'm going to keep trying this till I win though.

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@shoshonte
I know I can't claim to be an expert - especially as my only attempt at game 1 so far is a pretty awful date - but I might be able to give some useful advice.

I often feel, with diplo games, that I need to be able to visualise the winning situation. Who I'm up against, who will vote for me, who won't etc. Once you can see the winning position that you would like to achieve, then you can make moves to help it come about.

If you can't really see where the win is coming from, it's a fair bet that the situation is too muddled and unclear, and the win won't be achievable.

That's why many players will go to war in a game like this - taking out a few of the AI simplifies the final position to the point where you can control it better.

When thinking of the voting at the end, pay special attention to who is going to be your rival in the UN. If this is someone who is popular amongst the AI, then you are in trouble! Even if you have (say) +11 with a voter, and your rival has +9, they are still likely to abstain - or even vote for your rival! Just a glitch in the AI, but commonplace enough for you to want to avoid that situation at all costs.

I like an endgame with only 3 or 4 of us left. My rival gets his own vote. I get my vote, and the 1 or 2 remaining AI. It helps if I can still be sharing a religion, and some useful civics, with my supporters at the end. Better if the rival is the only one running a different religion.
Also, being a large empire has its benefits. If I have over half of the world's population, getting the remaining winning vote margin is much easier than if I was a small population and needed every vote going.

Thanks. I'll definitely try those tips out next time I play which is going to be right now

We got a day off school today so I could play as much as I wanted. My tech rate is slower than my last 2 games but I have the bonus of actually having a shot at winning this game since literally every Civ except for Monty is pleased or friendly with me. It's going to take me a while to get to MM though. I'm only teching my way through physics and it's 1780 A.D lol

I gave this game a try.
First I wanted to add a few good guys:
Mansa for trading, Hatty for spreading a religion around, Frederic and Lincoln just because they are nice guys.
Then I made sure that the nice guys (+ Cathy who is almost nice) are up in the North (player starts in the South, AI1 in the North, AI2 in the South, AI3 in the North and so on) and I am down South with the bad guys.
At Prince it is still possible to wander into empty capitols, so my plan was:
Start with a capitol on floodplains, that means there is a AI capitol not far to the south, take this capitol, build 2 more warriors and take one more AI out (I took out Toku and Joao).
Kyoto was building workers and settlers for most of the time, Lisbon became my production city for wonders (Oracle for the CS slingshot, Hanging Gardens, Pyramids, Hagia Sophia and National Epic to Produce Greant Engineers), Paris was my commerce and research city with cottages and built Great Library and Oxford.
Hatty and Mansa spread Judaism all around (exept to Brennus and Monty who were Buddhist).
Since I was next to Brennus, at one point in time he declared war on me. I convinced all the good guys to join and soon they all were friendly with 12+ points. The war was completely uneventfull. I had to rush a few Longbows, he marched a few gallic warriors into my territory and parked them in a forest. I parked a maceman next to them also on a forest tile and there they stood for many turns doing nothing.

I tried to tech at close to 100% by selling of techs almost immediately after I got them but was cautious to give away techs leading to Liberalism. I could save Liberalism to get Radio for free.
Brennus had the most number of cities (I did not expand towards him since the South is commerce poor. I expanded along the rivers and built cottages on floodplains for faster research rate) and became my opponent at the UN. I became general secretary very easily. Then I had a moment of exitement when Hatty all of a sudden converted to Taoism and was only pleased with me. I immediately switched to free religion, gave away another round of techs and she became friendly again.
The vote was very clear: Brennus for Brennus, Monty to abstain and everybody else for me.

The Oasis mapscript must somehow massively hamper AI's teching ability. I've been broke half the game, rarely got to run slider over 40% and still had massive tech lead from start to finish. I mean, I didn't go for aesthetics or alpha and went for math and currency instead. I finished currency, no one had alpha. I teched aesthetics, still no one had alpha. I had to self-tech it (while losing money at 0% slider) to start dealing with the AIs, it was absurd.

As for the game, got start with three pigs, cows, bananas and three hills, smack in the bottom left corner of the map. So I settled a city for copper and axerushed Toku who spawned to the east of me. Then I sent the axes on to Monty who was east of Toku, and I took his lands save for a barb city he somehow captured in the top right corner of the map (why the hell does AI go half the map to take a super-remote city??).

Cathy founded Buddhism, Brennus founded Hinduism, and Wang got confused. When Joao went Buddhist, I did the same. Eventually got lib - teched to a turn within it, then teched nationalism and grabbed MT, then set a beeline for Mass Media. Started building cuirs and went for Wang in the NE part of the map (Joao was SE, Cathy NW, Brennus N). Cuirs vs. longbows wasn't really a fight, and I went on to take out Monty right after.

With all that land, I crossed the population domination, but thankfully had only some 45-ish % of land. Joao eventually wanted a PA, but that'd have actually put me over domination threshold. Cathy wouldn't PA even at +22, thinking she was doing fine. Well, I eventually built UN in Paris (so slooow, at least bureau helped), and with Joao's support (with Brennus abstaining) won the seat and then the game over Cathy at 1810AD.

Great Job Ronald. I think that is a great time and will be difficult to beat.

Ronald said:

Then I made sure that the nice guys (+ Cathy who is almost nice) are up in the North (player starts in the South, AI1 in the North, AI2 in the South, AI3 in the North and so on) and I am down South with the bad guys.

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So that's how that works. Thanks I'll give that a try.

The map you draw makes a huge impact on the game. I have seen AI capitols with no resources. Food resources are often sparse in the south. I have seen a few maps with a ton of food. These are obviously the maps to play. Getting stone and marble hooked up are a priority. The AI expand slow enough that if no one gets two sources of marble, you can march a settler up there grab some marble. I used the marble for the Great Library, Parthenon, National Epic and Hagia Sophia. Marble comes on too late for the Oracle.

bcool said:

My date can definitely be beaten. I didn't get a great engineer despite several decent odds chances ... 50%, 33% and 12%? Ah well.

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Sorry. Those odds are bad IMHO. My following game had 100 % chance of GEnginneer. I didn't want to rely on luck on this one.
My best date on a certain immortal game had ~66% and it was horrible odds, given if I had lost it, the game is lost thereafter.

I am glad I didn't lose all I learnt...indeed I felt rusty, so I rather wasted a first attempt (which map quality was higher) to re-immerse into prince difficulty and what to do.

Here's the first step of my march...T235 = 900AD Diplo Victory.
No surprise attack this time.
Really hoping the save's going to be accepted given I had to use some early automatic saves to find again the start save...fortunately I retrieved it.

Now, I am going to give the big lines of what to do to maximize these settings.

First, mapfinder is a must on oasis mapscript given the randomness of resources distribution. Seriously, the ones without mapfinder are masochist.
Of course, with the use of this utility, nothing stops us to get some awesome start.

Mine had 2 rices, 1 gem, 1 deer, grass cow, several hills, a nice bent river, and suprisingly plenty of forests, which is nice. I wasn't afraid to only have on gem plot because the river begged to be cottaged to transform that city into bureaucratic monster, which I did. And, after looking some games just now, I am the first of the earlier submissions who built the Oxford University (T182, 130AD).

First, it is needed to say those who restricts themselves to the obligatory leaders
are couragous given the limit it can give. By definition of a standard map, 10 leaders is the ceiling of leaders we can use, that an additional 4 leaders.

I chose the usual Mansa Musa (monopoly trader and philo bulber lol: this never gets old)), Gandhi (religion founder and decent techer), Frederick (Nice leader with a nice +1 towards human...and nice backstabber for mutual struggle diplo bonuses) and Lincoln (another decent techer(which didn't happened in that game) and has fishing to have a fast start in the north).

As usual, I don't do anything randomly and I very know player numbers are sticked to respective places north or south.
I tried to get all sh*tty leaders to my side in the south to beat and whip them for workers and cities.

• {SOUTH} : Louis XIV the fine warmonger
• {NORTH} : Mansa
• {SOUTH} : Montezuma
• {NORTH} : Gandhi
• {SOUTH} : Cathy
• {NORTH} : Lincoln
• {SOUTH} : Brennus
• {NORTH} : Freddy
• {SOUTH} : Joao II
• {NORTH} : Wang Kon (I usually like, so he will survive)
• {SOUTH} : Tokugawa

What is the most important step in the early game being epic speed is to capture an early capital or two at most.

On the first turn (T1), I already met Monty. I crushed his scout and wait T4 to get his free capital. It was a nice one (gem, rice and cow and some hills). By T7-8, it is mostly too late to get a free capital.

At this point your two capitals or only one if there is a nice FPH should produce warriors to steamroll. Joao II was the next victim: He founded Buddism (weird) and his capital was on a hill. I use three warriors IIRC to invade, but I waited the needed turns to let him produce a worker. Otherwise, it is not efficient. Wait just one turn before going out of civil disorder to start work with the worker to let the border pop protect you against animals (wolves and panther). You warrior after healing must go on adventure as the time for slavery is looming.

Worker captures at repetition.
The rest of warrior troops must go on a slavery quest using cease fire and woodsman II promo.

In regards to the tech order, I made the mistake in my first attempt not gunning for Alpha. It is a strong to do so early to get trade partners. Not only you are preparing yourself for the "you have shared a technological breakthrough with us", but you are keeping the precious beakers for more useful techs like CoL, Math (if not bulbed), Currency, etc. That way you are somehow using other leaders beakers.

My goal was the usual CS Slingshot. With Louis it is even easier.

Tech order was:

AH => Writing => Alpha => Math => Meditation => Priesthood => CoL => Currency =>
Metal Casting! => Paper => Calendar => ...

Yes, I did not bulb math, but teched it in 8 turns. I prefered to use my early GScientist
for an Academy because...well...you know the why with such capital. Math bulbing is generally a waste, but on higher levels, it is often necessary. On prince, we can get way with simple teching.

~1600 CS Sling-shot

Currency first early is important to boost the research power. Research is all here early.
Why such an early Metal Casting. Industrious Forges, da! I need that GEngineer fast! Often, when taking a safe route (100 % GEnginneer odd), it is the limiting factor to create early an NE city.

I did find stone is a horrible in desert, but I didn't care...I need those pyramids and HG for more GEngineer GPP.

I got marble from a resource trade with Freddy who had three marbles plots.
Early tech trading with self-teched Alpha also means Sailing and those rivers from south to north helps to gain early trade routes.

With my second GScientist, I partially bulbed Education as I wished to prepare to Oxford University. It paid off a by a large margin.

I repeat use the AI to suck tech as much as possible, so if the occasion is given give them pre-requisite techs to those wished techs to for future trading. Early, it will mostly Mansa Musa.
The common use of Mansa is to give him CoL and then wait for GScientist...all the time he bulbs Philo. Use CS to trade with him.

The Music route was used to gain a free GArtist. I was bent to use that artist for Mass Media bulbing, but the gain is so little the Golden Age for final civic swapping and supreme milking of GPP is far better.

BUT, nothing stops us to get a late GArtist to help for mass media.
I did try at 68 %, but get a low odd GEngineer. Wasn't bad either as I completed the UN in one turn.
I let my capital Paris starving to get another one to hasten Mass Media.

Liberalism for Radio for those who don't know.

Regarding diplo, it is mainly with those in the northen aera, the peacemongers.
Those inhabiting in the south just suffer from my sadistic abuses....


I think I summarize more or less of what to do.

In a nutshell:

Free Capitals
Strategically placed AI's
Early Alpha
No math bulbing if strong bureaucratic capital
Academy
etc.

Tach~~~

Wouldn't have thought a free capital possible with these settings, might have to try this tactic...

Tachywaxon said:

Sorry. Those odds are bad IMHO. My following game had 100 % chance of GEnginneer. I didn't want to rely on luck on this one.
My best date on a certain immortal game had ~66% and it was horrible odds, given if I had lost it, the game is lost thereafter.

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Compared to your game, mine was not a good game. And, yes, as I implied my great engineer odds were a mistake. I don't know if I will attempt this game again. I'm been spending way too much time trying out challenge #8, the OCC space game.

Excellent game Tachy! Your Alphabet beeline certainly paid its dividends.

Should I expect you to beat Game 2 by +200 years too?