Acken Challenges - #1 Carthage Immortal (6)

If you have issues making this work please let me know.

Welcome to this challenge !



First to participate and share your experience you must download the mod here by simply clicking subscribe on the mod workshop page :
Workshop link.
OR download it here manually:
Dropbox link

If you picked the workshop version you are set to go ! If the mod doesn't appear in the game menu, try downloading the mod manually.
To install the mod manually just pick the file above from dropbox and drop it in your mod folder. If the mod doesn't appear in the game menu, open the file as if it were a ".rar" file and extract the directory in it to your mods directory. It it still doesn't work try deleting your cache folder in the civ5 documents folder and then restart the game.

PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT ONLY THE MOD IS ACTIVATED (that you do not have NQMod installed as a DLC for example). This save also uses version 6.

Sadly the mod is not compatible with the mac version of the game. You would have to emulate windows to be able to play on a mac (mac users may help you with this).
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I have decided to make the first challenge on Immortal. It should provide a pretty interesting challenge for Deity player nonetheless and definetely a tough one for immortal players.
Note that the mod introduces a DemiGod difficulty between Immortal and Deity.
I have decided to move Immortal to level 6 as a result but most of the AI bonuses are the same as the base game Immortal.

You will play as Carthage with the following bonuses compared to Vanilla:
-Carthage get a free Cothon instead of a free Harbor. The Cothon is a special harbor that gives 2 gold to ocean tiles.
-The elephant cost less than it used to (75 instead of 100).
-The Quinquireme, like the Trireme, is stronger but cost a little more (60 instead of 45).

Starting area:


Settings:


There are no particular way of winning that challenge. Just win it and share your thoughts and strategies.

The mod change list is a bit long but here are a few pointers to remember when starting the game:

For a more detailed list go there:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14107218&postcount=736


Hints for the map/civ :


And most of all : good luck and have fun.

You'll find the save game below.

Liberty + Messenger of the Gods should work well enough with Elephant rushing. I played a few Demigod games on this mod in v5 and then decided to dial down to Immortal which is kinda fair

thanks acken for the map, started to play it a bit.

Looks like it's allready a win, just lack of a plan, i remember that diplo is pretty hard in your mod cause AI just kills every single citystate, is it still like this? in my game an AI in the other continent allready destroyed 2 city state.

started with a full tradition 3 coastal city getting me a T69 national college (free calendar + writing from ruins couldnt resist to rush it), then settle a 4th coastal on an island in the middle of the empire, picked exploration and +3 prod for coastal cities, now i have to chose, make more cities, take north AI cities with frigates, try the diplo, or just go for culture thanks to the 3 insane cities i have.
capital picked oracle greatlightouse, and south expo built a late petra, i'll probably wonderwhore and go for culture.
i'm at T92, education in 4 turns, got 3 galleas and 3 elephant allready to try to handle the scary north AI.

feedbacks : the free harbors are just insane(maybe a bit too strong in this map, but it's map dependant), the fish boat and lighthouse changes are just really good(coastal starts are way better and i like it).
didnt notice it in the last versions of your mod, but AIs are not expending enough and some of them are just out of the game allready cause of that.

The ai expands normally usualy with 4 5 cities before t100 which is normaly on this difficulty and then more later.

I'M SO EXCITED TO BE FINALLY PLAYING THIS CHALLENGE!!!

T135

I am the dominant force in the game. I'm only a few techs behind the leader having totally disregarded science and only just got universities up. When I found the neighbour to the North, I decided to take him out before he got too uppity, and my hand was pushed for me when he stole my expo location. So I cranked out the QQs and a few token land units (Ancient Era save a couple of CBs) and wiped him down to one pathetic city. His capital gels nicely with my UB and pantheon, though I doubt the latter spreads across, does it?

I then beelined Steel and built a bunch of Longswords to hassle the desert dwellers with. I lost a few units due to not really being used to warfare on this mod yet, but it wasn't too bad.

Surprises: I have several wonders I would ordinarily never get, including GLoA and CoR.

Debating what to do next. Am I too late for Frigate rush? Prob not. Frigates + Cannons and Knights might be enough to clear the map. But does the AI get going in the midgame more than in the basegame? I'm not sure really.

The other option is wide Culture, but really I wanna push for Domination. Next step might also be to see if I can take with a ton of Muskets and a couple of Cannons.

Unlike some of the other players above, I have seen the AI expanding, and successfully waging war. The have been completely conquered.

Fun game so far. I've recorded my game and you can watch it here (thumbnail has AI spoiler). Also, I can share savefile, screenshots, or whatever if needed. I know my writeups aren't quite as detailed as others, sorry.
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Acken Mod is amazing for getting early/midgame wonders because the AI does not get any production bonuses towards wonders anymore and generally invests much more into military and science, compared to the base game.

Goodluck for your domination consentient, i was going for it but not enough coastal capitals to really take advantage of my super naval start.


to acken : in my game 2 AI stayed with only 2 city by turn 90, and noone did settle more than 4 early on (they just go and conquer more cities) but they doesnt settle the free land, it's turn 121 and there is only 13 cities in the starting continent +1 in island(me).

Strange i guess its just the randomness of the ai at work. Ill think about forcing a minimum a bit more. Glad to see things were not totally uneventful in your continent

I tried to load up the game with the V6 version you posted in the mod thread, but it said there was DLC missing. Anyone else experience this?

Oh this may be a mistake on my part forgetting to disable some civ5 map dlc. Ill look into it i believe there is a way to fix this.

Doh. Anybody know how to solve this ?

Acken said:

Oh this may be a mistake on my part forgetting to disable some civ5 map dlc. Ill look into it i believe there is a way to fix this.

Doh. Anybody know how to solve this ?

Click to expand...

Make another map with the exact same settings - specified AI (even if not specified the first time), map type, everything, and save the T0.

Then open up both saves in a text editor and take just the header from the new, clean file with the map packs disabled, and copy and paste it OVERWRITING the same data in the old file that references the map packs.

If you can't get it to work, I can do it for you now, after mbbcam kindly showed me how to do it.

Just send me a PM or email with the requirements or with the new clean file.

Good will do as soon as i get home sorry for inconvenience

@consentient

you don't happen to know how one can do this to multiplayer saves, right? i just want to fix up a map with IGE in SP, convert it to MP save and give all my friends some pretty NW so that I can increase AI difficulty

Alright consentient method worked. I had to do it with a hexadecimal editor though.

Maybe your text editor is better for this task and directly make the copy of the data rather than the gibberish converted text.

The file in OP was changed and no longer should contain mappacks (scramble stuff and explorer maps).

@Consentient: The map was purposely chosen for not being too hard. Maybe I undertuned but I had a way harder one at first and finally decided against it because it was a bit too much.

That's good, and I kinda take back what I said because the two DemiGod games I started this evening just to try them out were disastrous. One of them was the one I'm talking about on the Mod thread with the triple DoW T60 :O

Maybe I'll stick to Lvl6 after all...

EDIT: @YCJ - sorry, no I don't know anything about MP saves. MP is a world unto itself. Maybe ask Klaskeren?

I'm at T200 now, and am thoroughly enjoying playing this mod for the first time. It is clearly more challenging than standard immortal, especially in the late game. It seems not quite as hard as standard deity- I like that it is possible to build early wonders, and that the AI seems to fight a bit more intelligently.

Quick question: Is the way you buy great people different? I have finished Tradition, and have been in the industrial era for some time, but I cannot see any options to buy great engineers.

My game so far:

Puhi said:

I'm at T200 now, and am thoroughly enjoying playing this mod for the first time. It is clearly more challenging than standard immortal, especially in the late game. It seems not quite as hard as standard deity- I like that it is possible to build early wonders, and that the AI seems to fight a bit more intelligently.

Quick question: Is the way you buy great people different? I have finished Tradition, and have been in the industrial era for some time, but I cannot see any options to buy great engineers.

My game so far:

Spoiler :

I did a 3 city tradition NC, followed by two island cities shortly thereafter (the fur and copper islands). I totally underestimated my ability to defend my cities with this mod. Denmark schooled me several times. Once I even had 8 galleass, and he still steamrolled through my northern expo with his beserkers. I had to reload and prioritized steel. I built a couple of longswords, and then he didn't DOW me until I had navigation, so I rolled through him with frigates. I like how defending your cities is so much harder now.

On the other continent, Russia has run rampant, eliminating India and Rome- Poland is hanging on, but Russia is becoming a monster. After taking out Denmark, I concentrated on culture and production. Morrocco took out the Celts, and my spy tells me he is now plotting against me. Of course he is. I learned my lesson earlier, and I will have plenty of units on hand. If he doesn't DOW me, I probably will take the initiative.

I just built my 4th factory, and get the first pick of ideologies. I have no idea which one to choose. All 3 would help, no doubt.

Click to expand...

You should be able to buy GE's just fine, although I haven't done tradition in a long while in his mod. Other Great Person purchases work fine (to the glory of god and rationalism). Do you have a religion in your cities to purchase said engineers?

As far as ideology goes, it depends on your aim. Freedom is really, REALLY powerful for SV in Acken's mod. Order is now an amazing infrastructure tree for wide domination/culture empires, and Autocracy is still what autocracy is.

No reason you cannot buy ges. You need a religion in the city though.

he probably doenst have a religion in his capital, in my game turn 160+ i have 3 follower of the western relegion for my 29 pop cap... so i think it's the same for him.

Acken said:

Sadly the mod is not compatible with the mac version of the game. You would have to emulate windows to be able to play on a mac (mac users may help you with this).

Click to expand...

I'm confused by this. I'm playing on a Macbook and your mod works fine as long as I create a new game myself. It only crashes when I try to load this savegame.