The Ecofarm Challenge

Ok all you l33t hax0rs.

I throw down SP gauntlet!

Rules
"Play now"
Immortal difficulty
Quick speed
Standard Size
Climate of choice
Map of choice
Civ of choice

I. Post 2 saves
A) How it got set up save. Turn 100-150 (at beginning of first war, when civ is developed, at completion of primary plan or etc...).
B) Victory Save. Within a couple turns of your win. I should be able to load your save, click enter 1-4 times and see victory.

II. No loading.
A) You may declare a load for a death of hero/super unit, give percentage or circumstance of its death.
B) You may declare load because of dumb mistake (such as accidentally changing civ whan you complete a tech).
C) You may declare a load for any reason you like, no problem.
D) You need not declare loads because of multiple play sessions.
E) Aside from (D) above, do declare any loads and why, please.

III. Enjoy
A) No matter how "cheater", your win counts if you abide by the objectives/rules above.
B) Use random or favorite civ and/or the map that works best for you.

I have save(s) for Svalt. I hope to see other civ wins.

Soon, we'll have .32 and a thread will be opened for it. Best you get some practice and street cred from old skool .31 now

Archipelago Lanun, Rocky Khazad, Cold Doviello... think you got the max? Let's see. Don't be bothering anyone with "I'm sure I will win". The victory save is of utmost importance.

I'm not much of a Quick player but I think I might try it out for a game.

Even on quick, standard size can take 6-15 hours so note the edit:

D) You need not declare loads because of multiple play sessions.

Click to expand...

GL, you'll need some

Hmm...if I make a modmod that gives one civ an insane advantage but doesn't change enough to make the saves incompatible would that work?

How does letting the Insane trait grant about 100 free promotions to all unitcombats, +100 xp per battle, -95% required xp, +100 turns summon duration, +10000000 starting gold, +10000000 gold from pillaging, free upgrades, +1000% GPP etc. sound? I'm pretty sure huge benefit out of these early on would make such bonuses unnecessary for the last few turns of the game.


You said "No matter how 'Cheater'"



While I have no real interest playing an unmodded version, I would never give myself that much of an advantage. I typically give my rivals as big of a boost as myself. Winning is rarely my goal (I often turn off all victory conditions), so this challenge isn;t for me.

Ecofarm said:

II. No loading.
A) You may declare a load for a death of hero/super unit, give percentage or circumstance of its death.
B) You may declare load because of dumb mistake (such as accidentally changing civ whan you complete a tech).
C) You may declare a load for any reason you like, no problem.
D) You need not declare loads because of multiple play sessions.
E) Aside from (D) above, do declare any loads and why, please.

Click to expand...

Hmm - not getting this bit...

"No loading unless something goes wrong, then it's ok if you tell us?"
"No loading except between sessions" may be more useful for a "challenge" game.

I don´t really understand what the challenge part is here, but I played with those settings and won a Khazad domination victory at turn 196. Could have probably done it a lot faster, but I always get into builder mode after a few conquests. Playtime was 3 hours.

No rules about victory settings?

westamastaflash said:

No rules about victory settings?

Click to expand...

Any victory. The point is to get a look at/learn from a well-played game.

Turinturambar said:

I don´t really understand what the challenge part is here, but I played with those settings and won a Khazad domination victory at turn 196. Could have probably done it a lot faster, but I always get into builder mode after a few conquests. Playtime was 3 hours.

Click to expand...

The challenge is to post a save of a victory under the rules above. Do you remember how many points?

Vehem said:

Hmm - not getting this bit...

"No loading unless something goes wrong, then it's ok if you tell us?"
"No loading except between sessions" may be more useful for a "challenge" game.

Click to expand...

I'm new at this, good point; however, if someone loses a hero on a 99% during an otherwise very fun game... is it best to slog on without, accepting the challenge presented to you by circumstance or reload and continue the romp with mega-hero? I leave the choice up to the player. Personally, I'l scrap a late game rather than reload unless I make a silly error such as clicked on the wrong button/didn't mean to hit enter/etc.

-----

Also, include a story of the game if you have time.

Please, no more "oh yea, I've won that before easy" without victory saves. Failing to provide a save and yet running one's mouth will not be considered good sportsmanship.

Great Plains with Tasunke/Hippus on Play Now! Standard Immortal Quick. Not a single load.
Victory on turn 92 by conquest.
Heres a zip with turn 60 (the turn i attack Khazad) and turn 92, after everyone is dead (just finished off Auric), when you hit next turn you'll get victory.

Was that too early or do I need to wait til turn 100+?

Ok, I toke the lanun and tiny islands. Perhaps this was not the best game, but certainly the most easy.
My score was 18367. And it took 6 hours with breaks. Oh, I didn´t play now... dam it. But no loading.

Ugh 300 turns into my attempt to do an Altar victory on Medium / Small islands with elohim. Hannah was selected, and she summoned basium (but inexplicably only had 2 cities so her and bas each are basically doing a OCC). Have all the altars but the final, and founded the Order, and have a stack of Monks / Sphener / Valin / Confessors. Hannah has been annyoing me to death with a incredibly powerful Black Wind that I seem powerless to stop (fireballs aren't hurting it at all, and I am still a few turns away from dang frigates). Hyborem and Tebryn are fighting Hannah and Basium, and to keep hannah / bas happy I have declared war on them several times (but AI doesn't seem very good at launching sea attacks).

I am not very good at Immortal, it seems. Oh well. I'll keep slogging along. My science is awful I don't have high priests yet...

Oooh boy I got command 4 for spehener and he just captured archeron ! Yay!

Well I finished in 5 hours, 22 minutes. My very first FFH game on Immortal. I hope I didn't mess up any settings...

Got the Altar victory with 40 some odd turns left (which was the victory I was shooting for, so yay! - I bought it with 6100 gold when it had 20 turns left to build).

Settings:
Play Now
Immortal
Quick
Medium_and_Small / Standard Size / Rocky Climate / High Sea Level / Islands
Elohim, Einon Logos

Score 6725. Boo, Tom Bombadil.

2 Loads, 1 for Orthus pop right next to me (i was not adequately prepared), 2nd because Orders from Heaven was founded in the crappier city (instead of Glens of Killybegs, with lvl 2 of the lunnotar altar).

I'm not very good, and this probably was an easier Immortal than some maps, I'm sure others could've done much better... I still had to deal with Hannah and her damn pirates, and then I invaded Tebryn on turn 359 (I needed his capital, he built a ton of wonders and after I took it, it gave me about 150 beakers / turn, which pushed me to Omniscience with enough turns left before Hannah's score victory would kick in). Sphener and Maerdero had an all out brawl, with boatloads of monks, Paladins, Corindale, Valin, and a few mages backing them up. Oh, and a Mobility I Archeron :-D. Horray for Command IV on Sphener. AC was up to around 25-30 at one point, then with the death of many ragnarok units and the destruction of the AV holy city, it dropped again.

I discovered that it's NOT a good idea to have Corindale around the Balsperaphs because they will Mimic him, and then cast Domination - I lost a Paladin to this!

I also found out the necessity of really focusing on certain techs when playing Immortal level. I was able to trade some techs with Basium as soon as he entered the game, and then later with Kandros for many, many techs, but even when I Altared to Victory, Hannah / Basium were ahead in score and had a boatload of techs that I didn't (and Hannah / Basium were stupid, with one city each!)

Attached are the saves, one right after I found the Order, on turn 171, and the other the turn before the altar victory.

View attachment EinonLogos.zip

Hm, I just wonder how you get victory points? The faster games had less points, and the long game of westamastaflash had the least point value. And I think my game was very easy ... Just build a lot of Arcane Barks, and visit the neighbours.

Ecofarm said:

Any victory. The point is to get a look at/learn from a well-played game.
The challenge is to post a save of a victory under the rules above. Do you remember how many points?

Click to expand...

Final score was something like 240k.

Here is the last autosave. Should be 6 turns to victory if you vassalize sabathiel and the balseraph queen.

smusebaer said:

Hm, I just wonder how you get victory points? The faster games had less points, and the long game of westamastaflash had the least point value. And I think my game was very easy ... Just build a lot of Arcane Barks, and visit the neighbours.

Click to expand...

I was specifically going for an Altar Victory - naturally I expected the score to be less because I have to get all the way to omniscience, as well as the fact that I'm not very good at Immortal level games. There are many, many, things that I could've done differently (Kill Beeri off early instead of leaving him around) but I wanted to kind of role-play the pacifist Einon, who only would go to war against the ashen veil because they were turning the world to hell.

@westamastaflash Oh it was also my first won game on this diffiiculty. And the biggest problem was beating the infernal. Mostly I bombarded the citys with arcane barks and wiped the rest with mercenaries. No other civ than me had the possiblility to attack. Hyborem was the only one with bigger ships.

It's great to see all these entries; I look forward to taking a look at them to gain some insight into the various civs.

Randomed Khazad. Got stuck between the Jonas and Flauros so I teched bronze ASAP then founded RoK for cash. Jonas did the usual wolf rider rush and was wiped out by axes. Flauros then attacked, but for some reason was mainly fielding hunters and junk Fellowship units and was wiped out. I then had to fight an equal sized Tasunke for the win. This actually started off very badly because the AI ran its 50+, 3 movement, level 3-5 Raider horse army around my slow infantry and repeatedly captured my border cities.

Once I finally managed to wear the Hippus down (having an early 14 defence unit in Maros helped a lot), kill their invading troops and regain control of my borders, I marched a very highly promoted Bambur/Champion/Treb stack buffed by Stonewarden/Adepts around Tasunke's core cities which he was unable to answer.

I had to reload twice due to game crashes but this only happened after the game was won anyway.

OK. I am tempted ... will start playing within the next 48 hrs. Cool idea, eco!

Next random civ to win was Luchuirp or however you spell it. I spawned on double gold which made things too easy, but it did allow a completely peaceful game on my part with just minor AI-AI skirmishing. Popped the world spell on turn 1 for an engineer and settled the great engineer too. The AIs (Falamar, Jonas, Cardith, Valledia, Cassiel) didn't seem to care about religion so I built 7 cities and had each one found a different religion.

I converted everyone to RoK, but got stuck a couple of percentage points below the religious victory threshold with no one willing to trade gems, and therefore unable to build stonewardens for inquisition. Being unable to build priests due to lack of gems seems to be an issue quite often with RoK. Rather than invade anyone I built the Mines of Gal-Dur to get iron for iron golems and marched about 10 of them all the way to the other end of the map to kill Acheron. I then inquisitioned a bunch of cities for the win.

The biggest difference I've noticed in gameplay with Quick speed is barbarians are almost no threat compared to normal/epic where they slow your opening down significantly. On quick you can just open agriculture+worker with every civ and get away with it.