Challenge-XIV-09

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.


Settings:

• Victory Condition: Diplomatic (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Monarch
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Standard
• Speed: Normal
• Map Type: Rain Forest
• Required: Raging Barbarians, No Vassal States, No Random Events
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians
• Civ: Maya (Pacal)
• Opponents: Must include America (Lincoln), Egypt (Hatshepsut), France (Napoleon), Ottoman (Suleiman), Portugal (Joao), Viking (Ragnar Lodbrok)
• Version: 3.19.003
• Date: 1st May to 30th November 2014

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

Haha

Agri - Road Pottery - BW - Hunt or Hunt - AH - BW

Even woodsman1 holkan should win a defensive battle with barb axe

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More AIs - less barb problems but harder diplomacy, anyway I will add probably Gandhi to be the worst enemy of everyone

1585 is maybe not great. It is strange there are so few good DiploMonarcg submits, so even 1585AD is in top 5.

The game was harder than I expected and rainforest really does not help much. Low on happines and health and very tough expansion + raging barbs on the other hand are a great challange.. Adding Gandhi helps a lot.

I suyppose having stone in BFC is a huge handicap - I spent too many turns on building Mids using only whip overflow and 3 mines.

In keeping with my theme of submitting a truly awful game just to get my name up on the board, followed sometime later by a mediocre game to improve on the truly awful one, I have just uploaded an 1832AD finish for your consideration.

I went for the peaceful OCC method, but didn't progress particularly fast through the tech tree. Never got any Gt Engs to help me, and finally completed the UN in 1780AD.
Diplomacy was somewhat interesting! I added 4 extra AI who I would hope to persuade over to my side. Everybody hated Ragnar and Napoleon, waging a succession of wars against them, which helped me of course. Joao was disliked, but not so enough for any mass dog-piles to erupt.

My rival was going to be Suleiman or Hammurabi. I couldn't tell which, and it changed at the last moment before the UN, and again before my first victory vote. I had to play various games with civics, bribing my rival to switch out of civics that made them popular with other voters, and also bribing the electorate so that they would share civics with me and vote for me.

On the 3rd vote, I got it.

I got a 1540 victory on this one if it gets accepted... Start position had only one food resource, but quite some commerce (silver, fur, dyes) and riverside. Hills too, which on rainforest isn't a given. I had stone and marble not too far away, so I had some fine wonderspamming, GW and mids among the first. 4 GAges with MoM, managed a GE for UN from mids city at 60% odds. I added Gandhi and Mansa who ended up voting for me, like Hatty did. Nap, Rag, Sul perished and of course Joao ended up as UN opposition. Lincoln was too far away to matter or bother.

I submitted a victory today, but I had a crash that may disqualify me. I would swear I had that autosave interval fixed, but the crash set me back two turns I think. I did my best to replay them exactly, so I'll take this opportunity to ask for leniency. I'm not exactly posting a competitive date. It was something like 1862.

I didn't add any AIs, and the diplomacy actually worked out great. Napoleon became everyone's worst enemy, and Joao actually used the AP to declare war on him. I had a Jewish bloc that was super-friendly with me, so it was just my slow progress toward MM and building the UN that got the better of me. I won easily on the first vote.

........

did OCC with a decent start position. 1600AD. Lincoln and Hatty were both eliminated. Nappy was my neighbor and unfortunately also the UN competitor, so I had to keep him happy all game while trying not to piss off everyone else. Took 3-4 votes before I could get everyone on my side.

Could improve to ~1500AD with OCC but I won't play this one again. I dislike Rainforest map script and Pacal.

Now to see if I can do challenge 3 with OCC.

cas

Just submitted a 1210ad effort, which should hopefully take #1, at least temporarily.

This was the last of several attempts, great person randomness is huge, as well as expansion space.
I was torn about building Great Wall, as the GP pollution derailed a few of my early attempts, but it was even worse without it, having to prioritise Archery & Archers sucks.

Just submitted a 1210ad effort, which should hopefully take #1, at least temporarily.

Click to expand...

Nice job, Neil! I was waiting for someone to beat my game, so that I would finally have a reason to try that one again. (The endgame in my first attempt was extremely bad. I easily could have finished ~10 turns earlier.)

Any chance you will for once finish a challenge series, despite your distaste for non-ancient era starts?

I was torn about building Great Wall, as the GP pollution derailed a few of my early attempts, but it was even worse without it, having to prioritise Archery & Archers sucks.

Click to expand...

Yeah, playing this one without TGW is very annoying. With stone, you should be able to build it in a secondary city to avoid GP pollution in your capital.

There are still 101 days to go, so I think I might finish, despite all the horrible non ancient starts.
Everyone has something they dont like: huts, events, inca... mine is definitely different eras.

I overbuilt in most of my cities, and screwed up my oxford planning, I was stranded with 5 uni's, but I doubt it cost me more than 5t.

Good luck, now I will go back to game 1, I rage quit that after twice losing 4 & 3 warriors attacking a single warrior in the last city left on t55 & t51

My second attempt was much better. Capital had wet corn, stone and elephants, but no gold/silver/gems. On a rainforest map, I usually prefer early production to commerce, especially with FIN leaders.

Built TGW and The Oracle (CS) in my second city and Pyramids, Hanging Gardens and a late Hagia Sophia in my capital. I settled an amazing GP farm that had a ton of food and, equally important, decent production to quickly build GLib and NE.

My neighbor Suleiman had marble, so I rushed him with HAs. One of his cities had 4 forests and enough food to grow to size 18 in time, which meant I could build the UN in one turn, with one GE that was born 1t before Mass Media. 1110 AD finish.