Challenge-I-07

[IMG=right]http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/images/greatgeneral.jpg[/IMG]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: Space Colony (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Emperor
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Inland Sea
• Speed: Normal
• Required: Aggressive AI, One City Challenge
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians, Permanent Alliances
• Civ: Germany (Bismark)
• Opponents: Must include Arabia (Saladin), China (Qin Shi Huang), England (Elizabeth), India (Gandhi), Ottoman (Suleiman), Viking (Ragnar Lodbrok)
• Version: 3.19.002 or 3.19.003
• Date: 1st January to 30th April 2010

The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

A one city challenge! Bismark isn't the worst leader for this and the AI likewise.

Well I started things rolling with a 1961AD uninspiring win.

Decided to add a couple extra players to the board, Tokogawa and Sitting Bull, hoping to limit the AI expansion and provide a couple of easy targets. Didn't have a great start, 2 gold, corn and 2 spice.

Managed a CS-slingshot and built Pyramids and Great Library early.

Then the warring started. 4 of the starting crew ended up dead (Toko, Sitting, Qin and Gandhi). I ended up at war with Toko once (in his death throws to get diplo) and the scary Ragnar declared on me once but he never showed up thankfully. Saladin/Sulemain/Ragnar kept beating on Lizzy in the end game to me to sneak home.

How'd you get that game published already?

Nevermind. I see it's not published, just listed in the gauntlet results like the old days.

WastinTime said:

How'd you get that game published already?

Nevermind. I see it's not published, just listed in the gauntlet results like the old days.

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All the results for these games are going to be visible once the games are accepted.

Ozbenno said:

Well I started things rolling with a 1961AD uninspiring win.

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I can get CS-slingshot about 1400BC, pyramids, GL and Globe about 1AD, but then if I don't get attacked I lose in the modern age. Also, never seem to have iron, coal or aluminum, although sometimes I can trade for the 1st 2. Can OCC's own vassals?

playshogi said:

I can get CS-slingshot about 1400BC, pyramids, GL and Globe about 1AD

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All good except for Globe, you should be looking to have Oxford Uni done by 1ADish, Globe can wait until later. My tech route (in terms of end-priority) was Writing (to run 2 scientists for Academy straight after building library), CS sling, Alphabet (trading), Literature (GL), Education (Oxford).

playshogi said:

Also, never seem to have iron, coal or aluminum, although sometimes I can trade for the 1st 2.

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The game I played I didn't have iron or copper but did have coal and aluminium. Coal is a tricky one as if you plan on building National Park, you can't use it for Ironworks (but workers can still build railroads), can trade for iron and copper (the price is very cheap in the late game when you need it for SS parts and maybe ironworks) and if you don't have Aluminium you could try founding Aluminium Co.

playshogi said:

Can OCC's own vassals?

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Ys but unlikely in this scenario, your power would have to be much greater than theirs and comparable to the other AI.

there would also be a problem keeping a vassal if you got one as they'd expand into all the space you just cleared and break free.

Usually my problem (at this level) is getting to build the spaceship before the AI do, though in this game the aim seems to be not getting DOWd. Then hoping the AIs are all too busy fighting to tech properly.

Staying out of war is key. He put a culture whore in the game so if you don't wanna get pantsed by culture in the 1800's you'd best deny some of the marble wonders and a religion or two, maybe including sistine chapel.

Doing that removes culture as a viable threat from the AI, so you just have to hot-foot it to computers first .

Submitted a 1930-40 something game to get my series started.

A nice OCC seemed like a good first game. Added Mansa+SB to the mix and set high seas/rocky climate.
Was going to MF it, but the first load produced gold+marble+sheep(plains)+tons of forests and river, so I gave it a go. Turned out I had pigs(grass hill) too.

Borders with Qin+Mansa. Both were hated, so I was pretty safe for most of the game. I even went with Qin's budhism as soon as mono became available.

Went for CS-sling, but Mansa built Oracle around 1500BC. Fortunately he took Metal Casting, which, although not as good as a CS-sling, did allow an early forge.
Built pyramids+GL+NEpic before Oxford around 300AD. Then on to biology from liberalism, while settling GP.

Ragnar and SB went in and out of war, but otherwise it was world peace for a long while, until Qin got DOW'ed by three civs. He was blocking the northern civs that hated me, so I was worried he would cap and leave the path open. I started to build an army in case, and gifted him gunpowder. He held out, losing a couple of cities, before someone else complicated the picture.

From then it was a slugfest, with everyone except me involved somehow.
Ragnar suddenly DOW'ed his friend Mansa, and somehow took his capital deep in malinese territory within a few turns. He capitulated soon after, leaving Ragnar a clear path towards me. There was a point where I would have been a sitting duck, but luckily Ragnar targeted SB again.

I got a stack of cannons and was pretty safe from then on. I set Ragnar on Liz+Gandhi, who were threatening culture. In the end, he had four vassals and more than 40% land.

Fluroscent said:

Submitted a 1930-40 something game to get my series started.

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Well done

I set No Vassals as an option in my game to stop anyone getting too powerful and ensuring wars went on longer.

I get AD civil service in OCC and still win. I do like going the music line though ---> getting sistine SEVERELY nerfs AI culture attempts, and with all the settled specs nobody will ever encroach on you.

I've never been able to get > 1k beakers, until recently when I started saving almost all forests and using NP to get 5-6+ specs. Working those tiles under environmentalism is serviceable...the yield is absolutely ridiculous if you count the spec too.

But AI slowdown/denial strats are not conducive to a good finish time.

The problem with National Park is that you lose coal and if you don't have coal, you can't build Aluminum Corp. which you need if you don't find actual aluminum. I've built Hermitage and a couple cathedrals for maximum culture reach with a legendary city. (I had to smack down Ragnar to get the coal and iron in my cultural influence.) I'm not sure why you beeline to computers, is it for Internet?

If you're really lucky and have access to coal, iron and aluminum, State Property becomes a good civic for the extra food from watermills.

playshogi said:

The problem with National Park is that you lose coal and if you don't have coal, you can't build Aluminum Corp. which you need if you don't find actual aluminum. I've built Hermitage and a couple cathedrals for maximum culture reach with a legendary city. (I had to smack down Ragnar to get the coal and iron in my cultural influence.) I'm not sure why you beeline to computers, is it for Internet?

If you're really lucky and have access to coal, iron and aluminum, State Property becomes a good civic for the extra food from watermills.

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No alum co though when I play these types of things I go riverside so at least I can get power eventually. Don't forget that you can frequently buy aluminum for massive GPT that you have anyway.

And yes, computers is for internet. Internet allows you to beeline genetics + fusion (possibly robotics also) while the AI techs at least rocketry but possibly satellites and composites (or ecology) for you.

NP also makes ironworks less effective, so it's a tradeoff. However, I wind up with lots of priests/engineers, and find I'm often more limited by tech than production actually.

TheMeInTeam said:

NP also makes ironworks less effective, so it's a tradeoff. However, I wind up with lots of priests/engineers, and find I'm often more limited by tech than production actually.

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Especially as NP means you can have all those unhealthy production buildings (industrial park, factory, hydro/nuclear plant) without becoming unhealthy.

In my game I found that science was the limiting factor, all the parts could be built in less than 7 turns while each tech was at least that many to research. Didn't bother with Internet though (I think Medecine was the only useful tech I would have gotten so wouldn't have been worth the hammers).

That was fun. First time doing OCC and first time in Emperor difficulty. Got 1939 AD using similar strategy to those already done. Put in Toku and SB as well as the required opps. Got gold, sheep on a hill, and pigs (and it turned out that I settled directly on a horse ). CS-sling 1400 BC to pyramids and GL, etc.

The diplo situation was really, really lucky and easy for me:
1) Two adjacent opponents are Qin and Saladin
2) Saladin founds Hinduism, spreads it to Qin and myself; end up friendly with Saladin and trade a few techs here and there (but mostly keep him in the dust after Education). Qin also ends up friendly for a long time until he switch to Taoism (which he founded). Doesn't matter at that point.
3) Gandhi (the culture threat) starts out next to Saladin and founds Judaism
4) Saladin aims at Gandhi and crushes him, eventually getting the vassal
5) Saladin gets distracted with more war later, and only starts a few space parts by the end
5) Qin aims at other people (like Suleiman and Ragnar).
6)Toku is diametrically opposite of me and does his little war dance to distract everyone

Worst that happened was that Ragnar managed to get a few units to me, but I had infantry by then vs. Curiassers. Yay. Amusing thing was that a WW1 situation had just started exploding around me (a bunch of DP's were signed, and someone declared war) when I launched. Perfect way to leave that world, as Ragnar began to nuke his enemies to hell (while leaving little old me alone )

Well, I put a ship on the new planet a very very late 1988 AD. I went my mass forest NP strategy, but I had a few things I hadn't thought through as carefully:

- I only had a plains cow and one irrigated corn for food. More would have made me dramatically faster
- I had no commerce resources at all in BFC, just the 2 foods and one flood plain.
- At least I had stone

In addition to the land I chose itself, I ran into issues with Ragnar surprise DoW despite having 2 people with which he was annoyed and being pleased with me (RNG butt secks just b/c I bordered him, I knew better than to refuse demands). I held him off but it was right when I was getting oxford, which was already late.

Civil Service in ~ 800 AD, Oxford around 1200 AD, ugh. Part of the problem too is that I did run for the music artist + sistine, which is *great* for AI culture denial but not for fastest finish time I guess. Gandhi kind of threatened culture until somebody killed him. Actually, by the end of the game everybody died except sully, ragnar, and Sal. I launched while holding a DP with sal, and after launching spammed tac nukes which I traded for (ragnar was in war mode but only around industrialism and w/o nukes ---> he declares, his SoD dies as I had about 8 tac nukes, 3 in a fort 5 in berlin).

I had no vassal states on of course since that keeps bad blood longer (diplo deflection). It was frustratingly slow though. Even with IW + NP + Oxford + globe + NE, AFTER plastics (for power plant) building research still only 1200 BPT. Too many artists . I got to internet first however and that was good for a lot of earlier techs, rocketry, satellites, and about half of composites (it was worth going computers ---> superconductors instead of alternatives for sure).

The ending was a little tense as Sully was about 30 pop from UN and only needed a docking bay when I landed. He had everything but future tech, I just got there a little sooner in a very slow game.

Edit: Even in a very artist heavy game, my capitol had 97 base hammers at game's end. Now, I settled a couple guys since I wouldn't get enough for a GA, so let's say for most of the space race I was ~ 90 base hammers.

100% power
100% aluminum (I had it in BFC, but you can usually buy it if you manage diplo)
50% Iron (I DIDN'T have it, so I bought it)
50% Capitol (bureaucracy is the only civic in that line that makes sense in OCC)
25% Religion

The hardest part to construct, the engine, can be built in 5 turns like that. Even if you only have ~200% bonuses (no aluminum, only iron in IW), you can STILL build an engine in 7-8 turns. You'll have a hard time teching any new space techs much faster than that regardless.

So in OCC the biggest factor end-game is still tech, not .

Well done winning that, CS in 800AD . I had even less food in my game, and actually cut down three forest to farm some regular grass. But gold really helps getting CS faster, which is so crucial.

Most important is having those forests for a strong NP though, and of course a nice river for the huge commerce/hammer(with levee) boost. I maxed out at almost 1500bpt before beginning to cut down the forests.

Gandhi tends to get killed here, and if noone takes initiative in time, Ragnar is easy to bribe..

Maybe I'll have to play another run here before getting an entry in all the others

TheMeInTeam said:

it was worth going computers ---> superconductors instead of alternatives for sure.

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Forgot about that route to Superconductors.

The other route needs Astronomy, Sci Methods, Physics, Biology, Electricity, Refridgeration (just thinking about lateish techs), what do you need for Computers?

Having Astronomy and Biology on the route (for Refridgeration) is handy as National park and observatory are better to have as early as possible.

Computers requires plastics + radio. Radio traces pre-reqs back to astro (through physics). Plastics needs industrialism (going back through the steel-combustion line and also the path to assembly line).

I detoured for bio because it opens NP and it tends to be strong trade bait.