[BTS] Earth Challenge (standard size)

[Florian K]

I just downloaded this map. The huge map was just way too time consuming. Unfortunately there appears to be a goody hut left in Siberia. And why is Egypt so weak. No easy access to horses and copper make them very difficult to play.

[ChanceDanger]

Aztec - Monarch - Space Race 1912 - 40177

Spoiler:

The Americas are really strong and somehow every city ended up with decent production. My best all-around city was probably Winnipeg/Malinico, though mostly because I used all the forests up north for lumbermills.

Ended up being my best Space Race by about 55 years according to my HoF. Inca rolled over before 1000 BC and then Julius picked up Asoka and Ramses as peace vassals by around 1300 AD, so I ended up racing to steal all the electricity/radio/mass media wonders (still only ended up ~40 turns ahead of Egypt's third legendary city). Might try this one from Eurasia next time.

[Kid R]

Originally Posted by Florian K

And why is Egypt so weak. No easy access to horses and copper make them very difficult to play.

Yeah, looks that way. What would an earth map be without at least one hard start though

[Kadazzle]

Rome is a little cheap on this map, as always. You can forgo Mysticism and go essentially Agri - BW -> Wheel -> AH -> IW -> Pottery -> Writing, settle the Wheat + Horse site and Cow/Pigs/Sheep site all without monuments. Then it's simply Barracks/Granary/Whip Praets. You can take out everyone but Zulu with Praets + Horse. I needed Cats for Zulu.

Add more civs. I think it should be something like India/Mongolia/Zulu/Egypt/Viking/Byzantine for the most balance. I'm bout to finish my Rome conquest game, domination isn't worth it

[monkybone]

This is my game with India:

Spoiler:

Gandhi doesn't look too pleased by his score though. Maybe my way of playing didn't suit his ideals.

It was an emperor conquest victory. Just vassaled everyone, and Egypt came for free.

I'd be careful about changing the settings though, as scores may be incomparable. Especially drastic changes such as adding a few civs, even though it would be better for the sake of gameplay.

[Matrix]

If more civs are added all the present scores will be obsolete, so that is not an option, unless it's a necessity. But why would you want to have more civs than on a regular standard sized map? There aren't too few civs, the point is that Russia is empty.

I will remove the hut in Siberia tonight or tomorrow.

Many submission in a short time span, by the way! At the moment that's not a problem, but if I get busier at work (which is bound to happen sooner or later) I won't have that much time for that anymore. So I think in time I should find a way to automate this procedure, but'll mean a lot of programming...

[aitkensam]

Played another game of this last night, this time as Aztecs.

Aztec - Noble - Normal - Domination 1806AD - 102,949

Spoiler:

Decided not to rush Incans hoping they'd cut the jungle for me but they didn't exactly help... attacked with maces and they had just 5 cities, two at size 1... Took the three good ones then vassaled him to hurry overseas. Libbed astro then got rifling and mass upgraded a lot of troops.

Rome had pwned the old world again - peace vassaled India and Egypt. Fortunately all far behind in techs so rifles went through China from 1400ish. Decided to go for Domination to see if it made score better; took a while (64% is a hell of a lot...), was almost at bottom of Africa when I hit it. (Seems like the score is higher this way than conquest though - 100 turns before the end predicted score was ~70,000 which I guess would have gone down if I'd not been keeping cities - who knows..).

[monkybone]

Domination is usually better than conquest. It does take more time, but the cities you take will add to the score by land and total population during that time. Capturing every city of some civ will usually in the end give you a higher score than vassaling them as soon as possible, even though it takes more time. However, chain-capping all the civs in a very short time might give such a huge time bonus that would exceed the land+pop bonus.

To increase the final score, try to maximize the pop in your home cities when your game nears the end. Stop whipping, and focus food rather than production when you know your army is large enough. If you got a lot of seafood and a GM to spare, found sid's sushi to get an even larger pop bonus (or cereal mills depending on the resources available). There are also other tricks to increase the final score, be creative in the process of maximizing these things: wonders, tech (having tech trade on gives you a benefit here), population, land and end date. Probably culture or even gold as well, I'm not sure.

[gram123]

Egypt - Emperor - Cultural - 54944 - 1848 AD

Got 5 different religions in Euroasia - made quiet some tension. Forced me to run Free Religion, for a while Rome fought India at my land :P was pleased with both until things got nasty so i had to choose side.... Choose Rome, because they were techwise in front of india. Ganged up with them against India, then backstapped Caesar with absolutely no bad feelings... Drafted like 20 riffels during those to wars with proved to be enouth for those two. Then went for all the religius buildings to get culture. With like 20 turns to my cultural victory Shaka decleared me from pleased with a army 5 times as big as mine. Won the turn after his first attack on my capital. A attack he didn't manage to do very well as I lost nothing...

Spoiler:

[Bugg123]

Well... this was the thread for standard size.. I played huge, so moved it

Good map, though

[Rom_Addy]

Rome - Deity - Conquest Victory 1610AD - 347587

Having an archer makes it impossible to rush the first city, but it's a guarantee you'll take the 2nd city of an AI. The AI does some pretty stupid stuff. After he builds cities he sends units to those cities. I killed Egypt in 2 turns with chariots. 1 archer was 2 tiles away from both cities (that weren't roaded). The capital was defended by one axe, and the other city by one warrior. India had both iron and copper, but they had no roads. So I char rushed them as well. In the meantime Zulu took my favourite wonders : the Great Lighthouse and collosus and they were ahead in tech (They had feudalism). I didn't even had catapults, but using superior numbers I somehow managed to defeat them.

I was really pissed off that the Inca took Stonehenge, so I organized an expeditionary mission with 2 galleys and my best 4 units in them. I declared war on the Aztec first to take Panama so I could get to the Incan capital faster. With a bit of luck, the Incans didn't provide a very strong opposition and I was able to take their capital .

In the second wave of major attacks I declared war on China and sent 6 galleys full of troops to Aztec. It went extremly slow versus Aztec, with no major progress. The chinese were a hard nut to crack. Getting knights proved decisive in both wars. Than I went for astronomy, and I redeclared war on Aztec and Inca. The progress I made was really slow. Just after I got cavalry things began to change, and I captured cities one after another... till I've won. I was so close for a domination victory : 63,85%, but in the end it was a conquest victory.

[Kadazzle]

Immortal
Rome
Normal
Conquest
4726 / 312,877

[Matrix]

Civ: Zululand
Difficulty: Monarch
Score: 2840 points
Date: 1989 AD
Result: Cultural defeat (Huayna Capac won)


Currently I'm playing as the Aztecs, also on Monarch difficulty, and that's going a lot better!

[DesertPfox]

Egypt - Emperor - Conquest - 1790 - 147473


Additionally, my China conquest was 144622 not 114622.

[Yoshiegg737]

Originally Posted by DesertPfox

Egypt - Emperor - Conquest - 1790 - 147473


Additionally, my China conquest was 144622 not 114622.

In your screenshot, it looks like you are Ghandi's worst enemy, and yet he is friendly with you...

[DesertPfox]

Originally Posted by Yoshiegg737

In your screenshot, it looks like you are Ghandi's worst enemy, and yet he is friendly with you...

He peace vassaled me way early in the game. I choked the Romans with my archer, took them with axes. When I was getting ready to attack Ghandi, he offered to peace vassal and I took it so I could take the zulu's early. I either war vassaled or conquered all the other civs at the end so I think even though he was happy to be my slave, I was essentially his only enemy.

[Rom_Addy]

Inca- Deity - Diplomatic Victory 1735AD - 237274

[goldys_lackey]

Hey! First scenario challenger here after watching themeinteam's "let's play." He was Shaka and played one of your earth maps. Will post my miserable results - probably within the hour!

[Matrix]

Civilization: Aztecs
Score: 38513
Date: 1970 AD
Result: Space Race Victory
Difficulty: Monarch

I almost had a domination victory, but my space ship arrived sooner.

This was a really smooth game, and judging on the other results here I expected a much higher score! I guess I'm really that bad.

[ChanceDanger]

Finally got around to doing a Eurasian Civ.

Rome
Score: 132723
1802 AD Conquest
Monarch

Well that was a romp, Wiped out Egypt then went on a vassaling spree. Highlight was probably losing infantry to Incan and Aztec longbows.