The Deity Challenge Line-up #18 - Babylon OCC

Thanks for the map, consentient!

I just wrapped up with a turn 317 science victory. A bit slow because I redirected resources to fighting ideological wars once I knew I was miles ahead in tech. I didn't even get Hubble.

I don't often play OCC but enjoyed this one, in large part because I was able to play through in one night.

EDIT: Sorry, I meant I didn't get the International Space Station. I did get Hubble.

consentient said:

For the purposes of strengthening the DCL community, then, I would ask the newcomers to stick with us and try some of the other past and future challenges, even if they're not quite the same as this one, and some of them are somewhat harder.

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Playing past challenges seems very difficult now that a new map shows every 10 days rather than every 2 weeks

We've now had Raging Barbs and OCC. So expect some other tinkering in the future.

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Tilted axis map with raging barbarians. Savages coming from the north should sound familiar to some people

consentient said:

I am very reluctant to post a map that is actually really, really awful for several reasons

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I think you are right on this. Just because this is the "Deity Challenge" doesn't mean every map should be as hard as possible. Deity itself is a challenge to lots of players. Now, if someone ever comes with a really hard map, why not create an "Impossible Start Challenge" thread and post it there for those top player that really want to test their skills.

IronfighterXXX said:

I'm at 186 and only one cap remained. However Cusco is defensive monster surrounded by hills and mountains (and has Great Wall ); and my main army is about 15 turns from it so unfortunately rather not be sub 200T victory.

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And not a single of those AIs you let live rebuilt their capital yet
The only game i attempted OCC DomV previously (Emperor difficulty) i found out that when a civ has lost it's original capital, the next city they found will be the first one in the list not already used : that is the capital, and the game will consider this new city as their original capital.
Now, maybe something changed in a recent patch, or maybe it was G&K and this changed with BNW.

I was also trying a domV cause science really flows in with Babylon and i like going for something silly but the requirement to annihilate every civ totally makes the game slow

kb27787 said:

You are obviously not familiar with the way of peace to say such a thing...

A true peacemonger keeps the world as peaceful as possible and would prefer the other AIs be friends

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For sure you are right that I am not very good at peaceful play. There was one time I had a game that was completely peaceful and I didn't make any bribes, and that was Sweden, but I had a significant tech lead, and soooo many GP, and the AIs only interest in me was missionary spam.

There were very few wars and my musicians helped me to the earliest CV I've done: T260 or something. At that time I thought it was quite slow, but I can't seem to tech to the later eras anywhere near as fast as the good peace mongers. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. In my last game, to practise science I had truly massive cities and a decent BPT but techs were still 8-10 turns. And the AI was only 2 techs behind, so if I made RAs with them I was worried they might catch up, no?

Also, when I don't keep them at war, their total culture becomes insurmountable. I've had AIs with 70-90k total culture. I'd need like 8 faith-bought musicians to even have a shot.

Bob Morane said:

Playing past challenges seems very difficult now that a new map shows every 10 days rather than every 2 weeks

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So just play the ones you like the most

Tilted axis map with raging barbarians. Savages coming from the north should sound familiar to some people

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I've never played Tilted Axis. Seemed crazy from the description.

the next city they found will be the first one in the list not already used : that is the capital, and the game will consider this new city as their original capital.

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If this is true it makes OCC DomV much harder than I thought, and is truly bad coding.

@helicon: Do you have a screenshot of your win?

consentient said:

I've never played Tilted Axis. Seemed crazy from the description.

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North half of the map is frozen (snow/ice) and useless to settle. OTOH barb camps can spawn there. With Raging barbs you are almost guaranteed to keep a constant supply of culture if you choose to go honor and/or are Monty

If this is true it makes OCC DomV much harder than I thought, and is truly bad coding.

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I'm 100% sure it was true at some point. Might have changed of course.

If it was once true (I've no recollection), it no longer is true. In OCC domination, it is enough for you to conquer the original "original capitals" (which are instantly auto-razed in OCC).

Browd said:

If it was once true (I've no recollection), it no longer is true. In OCC domination, it is enough for you to conquer the original "original capitals" (which are instantly auto-razed in OCC).

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Can confirm this.

consentient said:

3. The maps in the DCL that have had the worst starts have had the fewest finishers and I want to work to bring the average number of finishers above 20 for every map. That's my target.

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Out of curiosity, which were those?

Personally I admit I don't have a ton of interest in single player Civ 5 these days, I mainly play games with friends (anywhere from a FFA with several AIs to teamed up against the AI (like 2v2v2v2)). I did the Poland Deity challenge since I had only played Poland once before in a multiplayer OCC on Immortal (randomed into it) and wanted to get both the winning achievement and the Poland space victory achievement.

And 95%+ of the Deity games I lose are ones with complete runaways (usually far away so hard to do much about it without basically going domination). I'm used to going for reliable victories over fast victories in many cases (such as in the Poland game where I took out Korea). If anything I'm worst at early war prior to Artillery/Flight/Frigates unless I have crazy units like Keshiks/Camel Archers/Horse Archers. I recently started a Marathon Immortal (first time playing Marathon, some things are really, really weird) game with a friend where I rolled Assyria so I decided to try early war with Siege towers -- so far I've annihilated three of the six enemy civs and not even at crossbows yet (though Marathon, so, y'know) with a force of three composite bowmen (who don't even have logistics yet) and two Siege Towers (though one died taking out the second AI).

The point of all of that is that if I player single player Civ 5 I'm mainly looking for a game where I actually am worried about seriously struggling to win (potentially requiring multiple tries) and/or something to practice early warring. Could take a look at some of those earlier challenges, which of those would fall into one (or both) of those two categories? I just have rather limited time for Civ 5 right now, sadly, and doubt I can regularly participate in the Deity challenge (and others may fall into the same board -- aka, the people who finished this Babylon game may include quite a few who haven't any other DC games).

DCL 14 and 10 are probably among the toughest if you want to try those. Especially 10

10 is definitely the toughest, and if you want to see the popularity, check out the 2nd tab on the spreadsheet Balkoth.

If there is enough call for another map as tough as DCL #10, and someone else can pick it, I'm happy for it to go up, but I don't think that enough people want it. Even the harder maps I've posted have garnered significantly less finishers, let alone the Grendeldef era.

My first OCC game,Diplo win a turn 315 s

I really enjoyed the fast pace of the OCC for a change

Bob Morane said:

I think you are right on this. Just because this is the "Deity Challenge" doesn't mean every map should be as hard as possible. Deity itself is a challenge to lots of players. Now, if someone ever comes with a really hard map, why not create an "Impossible Start Challenge" thread and post it there for those top player that really want to test their skills.

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We have tried other types of series like the IDS... which nobody really has interest in playing. Perhaps 3 people post if that. Maybe 6 people download the map. Also we started the turn 81 series which is turning into the pass it back and forth after 80 turns played series which is fine but once again not many players. We do not need another series... that is for sure. This series is doing just fine. I just thought that we were supposed to get 1 map out of 3 that was really ugly. Ugly start/land. I remember the discussion after the DCL 10 map which if I can win it via Domination, it really isn't as hard as others claim. I seen other players win it via CV in a much faster turn time so once again... how hard is it really?? I am by far a sub par player. Anyways... it really does not matter to me. If players think that easier starts/land will get them to play and post I am all for that. I can always play my own more difficult games by myself or post them up on the IDS thread as I have done in the past.

On another note I have been tracking everyones games from the ICL 13 and DCL 16 and on. I made the player pages but did not publish them to see if anyone cared. It is pretty obvious nobody does since I have not had one remark about updating pages. I did get one player just recently sign up to the statistic site so that is encouraging.

I think the best thing for me to do is to only make player pages for players who actually want them or are going to view them. So if you want your record and stats to show up on the DCL/ICL Stats web page... just send me a Private Message on this site or email me as well as telling me you want to participate. If a player is going to participate they will need to start showing some more stats and turn times or I will just put them down as a win/loss type of stat. This will make the work easier on me as well since I have many player pages of winners and losers but only one or two sentences of what they did in the game which isn't worth a player page IMO.

If a player loses they should put more detail in what they did as well to help others to learn where they went wrong. It helps just as much as someone posting all the things they did correct when they win but when they lose they just say .... I lost and thats it which doesn't help anyone or help any type of statistics for that game.

The whole thing really doesn't matter to me. I am just as happy to play the easy DCL as well as the more Difficult DCL and post up win or lose. I have posted most of the ICL games which are never difficult no matter what happens so it is not a matter of easy or hard.

Overall I'm pretty happy with result - t201 on continents and OCC is not bad even despite OP land.

What I could do better - I really shouldn't care about production penalty due to exceeding unit cap (even didn't now it's maxed on 70%) and should made two artileries armies instead one.

However even with one sub 200T was easy doable if I cared more about troop movements, but moving troops across the half of world is not my idea of fun

@consentient

I didn't take any screenshots on the turn I won, but here's a few about 40 turns later. I played on to continue that ideological war.

@Fluphen Azine

Here are the TOTAL number of Finishers for the DCLs since Dinglebirdy fell off the face of the earth.

#9 = 11 finishers (12% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 3
#10 = 6 finishers (10% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 3
#11 = 8 finishers (9% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 1
#12 = 7 finishers (7% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#13 = 10 finishers (14% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#14 = 4 finishers (4% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#15 = 8 finishers (9% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#16 = 6 finishers (7% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 1
#17 = 6 finishers (7% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#18 = 19 finishers (17% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 1

From these numbers, I think we can discount any idea that difficulty is the main factor affecting the number of downloads, and I'm not afraid to post a difficult map for fear of 'scaring people off', but these numbers are really, really low.

I spent a long time choosing the map for DCL #14 and hardly anyone has bothered with it.

In fact, my guess is that the maps that have had 10 or more finishers are ones with 'interesting' maps - the Babylon OCC gave people a chance to play OCC on Deity. The Indonesia map had a really nice 3 continent layout which suited the UA, etc...

I appreciate that some people want to play hard maps, and to them, this is my final comment, which funnily enough is one I've made every DCL since starting:

If you want to share a (really difficult map) with the DCL community, then send it to the email address, as specified. This goes for everyone. I have had a few submissions, and have used one, and would have used others if they had had the map packs disabled.

I'm sorry that your website has not had more interest.

@Tarafran

Nice win, man. Only one more finish and you're on the front page of the spreadsheet

Browd said:

If it was once true (I've no recollection), it no longer is true. In OCC domination, it is enough for you to conquer the original "original capitals" (which are instantly auto-razed in OCC).

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Ah. That would have made it much easier. Probably not going to replay this one or even try to finish it with my "utterly destroy them all" approach as there is now a new GotM and DCL19 will be out in a few days
As i said, i'm 100% sure i had this occur to me, i can even tell you the civ that rebuilt their cap was Morocco (i let them live for the TR) but maybe it was just a bug, or maybe Firaxis realized something was wrong and fixed it.

Fluphen Azine said:

We have tried other types of series like the IDS... which nobody really has interest in playing.

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I know few players would actually play it if someone creates an "Impossible start challenge" but few players would play the extremely hard maps that Ironfighter would like to see in the DCL anyway.
This was just a suggestion so everyone can have fun

Oh, and sorry i won't offer you a player page as i really don't care for my stats to be recorded. I played most of the "hard" GotM (Emperor+) over the last 2 years and submitted only one (to celebrate this new year)

EDIT : consentient : did you try to advertise this on the general forum? I purposefully avoid it but i think lots of people post there but not here. Trying to put a post on Steam might also help get more attention
Also, what's the ratio of download/finish. I think few people will post to tell you they lost their game, and probably some would not even tell you they won but just play the map.

consentient said:

@Fluphen Azine

Here are the TOTAL number of Finishers for the DCLs since Dinglebirdy fell off the face of the earth.

#9 = 11 finishers (12% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 3
#10 = 6 finishers (10% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 3
#11 = 8 finishers (9% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 1
#12 = 7 finishers (7% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#13 = 10 finishers (14% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#14 = 4 finishers (4% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#15 = 8 finishers (9% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#16 = 6 finishers (7% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 1
#17 = 6 finishers (7% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 2
#18 = 19 finishers (17% of downloads) - Difficulty rating = 1

From these numbers, I think we can discount any idea that difficulty is the main factor affecting the number of downloads, and I'm not afraid to post a difficult map for fear of 'scaring people off', but these numbers are really, really low.

I spent a long time choosing the map for DCL #14 and hardly anyone has bothered with it.

In fact, my guess is that the maps that have had 10 or more finishers are ones with 'interesting' maps - the Babylon OCC gave people a chance to play OCC on Deity. The Indonesia map had a really nice 3 continent layout which suited the UA, etc...

I appreciate that some people want to play hard maps, and to them, this is my final comment, which funnily enough is one I've made every DCL since starting:

If you want to share a (really difficult map) with the DCL community, then send it to the email address, as specified. This goes for everyone. I have had a few submissions, and have used one, and would have used others if they had had the map packs disabled.

I'm sorry that your website has not had more interest.

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It's pretty similar to GoTM ratios actually.

Example
TSG100: 181downloads for only 12entries
TSG99: 201downloads for only 30entries

And these include losses.

I don't think advertising is a problem. The strat&tips sub forum is very popular, and obvious place to go to improve your game. Plus, most of the games are getting dozens of downloads. It's just that people aren't finishing them. When I play a map and don't finish it, I put a resignation post up in most cases, saying what happened. Like in #12 when Pocatello had tech-ed like a human player and was approaching launch and I had no hope.

Impossible starts don't appeal to me. If someone wants to submit one by email, I'll look at it, and would consider putting it forward if it's at least interesting and difficult, not just boring and difficult like some can be.

FWIW, if I had been caretaker of the DCL when #10 came by, and someone had sent it in, I would have chosen the map. It IS interesting. Just very, very difficult.

consentient, I think you missed me on the list

But if you ask an opinion on DCL difficulty then I do like average and easier maps more. Sometimes I do play harder maps but if I lose it once then I do not play it again and again just to win. I just accept that I lost and that's it. But it is still interesting to read how other players are doing on harder maps.

Sorry sun8119. All sorted now and updated.

You have scored 7 science victories now. Are you gonna try for another VC on the next DCL?

Yea, hopefully. There are plenty of previous DCLs still not played.