Challenge #5: Million Dollar Monty

Love makes the world go 'round... Love of Gold.
- tagline for Heist

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We're proud to present you the "Millin Dllar Mnty" challenge, a continuation of the series that includes classics like:

The Mini-Me Challenge
Let's Get Cultural!
Lust for Gold
Land Grab

In this game you'll have to guide the Aztec Empire through peace and war to the highest amount of gold gold by the year 1800AD. That year we can use the gold to cure disease, stop famine, make the world go round, etc. But until then, be greedy my friends!

Settings
Leader: (Million Dollar) Montezuma
Difficulty: Prince
Build: Civ IV vanilla
Map: Continents
Size: Standard
No. of Rivals: 6
Speed: Normal
Option 1: Peace or war. You choose.*
Option 2: No Barbarians.**
Victory condition: only Time is enabled.

Purpose: Have the highest amount of gold in the treasury at 1800AD.
Finish date: Sunday, October 8th

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* Based on the votes at the end of Challenge #4
** After careful thinking I decided peaceniks don't need to deal with barbs. They're already in the race to get as many religions as possible, so I spare them the need to fight off barbs. Careful though, the other AIs might not be so obliging.
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The game has been tested and we are not alone on the continent... this time. I had three starts alone on a continent, one with only one AI, another one with a very stupid placement. So um, yeah, I'm not doing this again. Eva.

You have my assurance: the challenge is very playable. All you need is to download the save, play up to 1800AD and report back with your save until the 8th of October. You can replay as many times as you want. Please post any strategies in "spoiler" tags.

Good luck everybody! And may the cash flow.

Here's the opening screenshot and the save:

Final official scoreboard

lilnev..................................149097
Raiser.................................111021
Tauro..................................81617
Qwack.................................75223
Welnic................................51559
scherbchen.........................47854 / 47333 @1790
PaganPaulWhisky.................25143 (treated as OCC)
Putchuco.............................25022

[size=-2](Let me know if I missed any saves.)[/size]

And the "biggest jackpot" winner is: lilnev!


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I will keep a separate scoreboard here for anyone who still wants to try this.

i thank you, and here we go again.

Nice choice of tagline, btw.



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1:06 am. When did you start?

A very relaxing game and enjoyable challange! I went with an oddball peacenik strategy to change things up a bit since I am usually a war monger. I am sure my total will be easily beaten since I messed up in a few areas. My grand total gold was 25,143.

This game is more along the lines of how I like to play, so will give it a shot.

I usually pour all my gold into research and upgrades (fast buys) but will horde it this time and see what happens.

Besides the usual getting smooshed by Alexander, that is.

Just wanted to mention that I found the presentation of the options to be unclear. After some thought, I'll just open the map and play it, but I have no idea what I'm being told in that section of the intro.

Having loaded the game and checked out settings the only option active is no barbarians (so its not always peace).

I have made it to 1120 AD, and I am having a good time. I am having trouble staying focused on rembering what the goal is, but I tell myself that getting a good start and taking care of the fundamentals should work fine. But I do know that that is incorrect, if you are thinking about making money the whole game then things would work better.

Raiser said:

i thank you, and here we go again.

Nice choice of tagline, btw.



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You're welcome & good luck! I had the tagline chosen since we started thinking about the challenge. I was just itching to use it.

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Welnic said:

1:06 am. When did you start?

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I posted the thread at 1:43AM CET. The advantage of living in France. Wouldn't have had time to post it this morning, so I thought I'd go with the early choice.

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PaganPaulWhisky said:

A very relaxing game and enjoyable challange! I went with an oddball peacenik strategy to change things up a bit since I am usually a war monger. I am sure my total will be easily beaten since I messed up in a few areas. My grand total gold was 25,143.

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I'm glad it all worked out! 25,143 is impressive (I think ). Plus it's composed of the first non-null digits, albeit unordered. I'll check the save tonight and post the scoreboard in my second post in this thread once we get a couple more tries. That post will be updated with the new submissions and there will be no other scoreboard in the thread, just to keep things simple.

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Wlauzon said:

This game is more along the lines of how I like to play, so will give it a shot.

I usually pour all my gold into research and upgrades (fast buys) but will horde it this time and see what happens.

Besides the usual getting smooshed by Alexander, that is.

Click to expand...

Welcome, and I hope you have a good time trying this!

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VoiceOfUnreason said:

Just wanted to mention that I found the presentation of the options to be unclear. After some thought, I'll just open the map and play it, but I have no idea what I'm being told in that section of the intro.

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Option 1 is not an option per se, more of a non-option. At the end of Challenge #4 several people have debated whether to make this a peace only challenge or a normal one, allowing peace or war. Peace or war won, although there was fierce competition until the end, including backstabbing, trading propositions, etc. So instead of having the peace only option, you can do whatever you want.

Option 2 is pretty self explanatory, so I take it you were confused by option 1. By the way, the "careful considerations" were that while you can sidestep going to war with the AIs putting your diplomacy to good use, there's no way to avoid barbs. Only choice: build units, fight off barbs. One choice is no choice, so I told the barbs there's no place for them in our civilized world.

Or what he said:

pigswill said:

Having loaded the game and checked out settings the only option active is no barbarians (so its not always peace).

Click to expand...

wheeee there goes my friday night

First try: 25,305. Strategy:

45853, first try.
Probably we can make about 75K without troubles

P.S.
My research was very slow compared with the AI on this level. I was beaten for the GL and for many other wonders and liberalism ( 2 turns)

Jet & Tauro, could you post your saves at 1800AD please?
Thank you.

ok, I'll make an account at filefront.

May I retry with the knowledge of the map?

Tauro said:

ok, I'll make an account at filefront.

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You can attach saved games without doing anything like that. On the page where you enter your reply (not Quick Reply -- Go Advanced), if you scroll down a bit you'll see "Additional Options" which include a "Manage Attachments" button. You can upload the save that way.

May I retry with the knowledge of the map?

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Absolutely.

Sorry, I feel a bit dumb

Dr Elmer Jiggle, thanks for providing assistance for Tauro.

And I remember there's a thread in which a poster gave a step-by-step method on how to post images, attach saves, etc. I'll locate it tonight or tomorrow and quote it here.

Tauro, since this is very informal, we decided we can try the challenge any number of times. If you can improve your first try, by all means, do it. Consider taking some notes on the overall strategy, it would be interesting to see how you achieved it.

a humble 37104 here. my last Great Merchant spawned in 1795... yeah i surely know how to manage my Great Persons

but now i know a bit more about how goes about these things so i will definitely give this another go (or more )

It seems like this would play out like a cultural win, except instead of turning up the culture slider you turn up the gold. Expand, spam cottages, build/buy the building multipliers, then turn off research and just sit for a few hundred years. Biggest question is how far to tech. Liberalism and Printing Press seem obvious, but do you want Democracy? Economics? Rifling or Military Trad for defense?

peace,
lilnev