Challenge-I-10

[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: Conquest (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Deity
• Starting Era: Modern
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Pangaea
• Speed: Quick
• Required: Aggressive AI
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians
• Civ: Ottoman (Mehmed II)
• Opponents: Must include America (Franklin Roosevelt), Ethiopia (Zara Yaqob), Germany (Frederick), India (Gandhi), Netherlands (Willem Van Oranje), Russia (Stalin)
• 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.

Note the modern era, tanks are the way to go here. As taken from the suggestion thread by Sun Tzu Wu.

Tanks vs panzers? Better have some air. Or just voluntary vassal him.

Frederick is a peacemonger. He doesn't spam many tanks. Last time this played as a gauntlet, I included him and I think I killed a total of 2 panzers.

Chances are he won't have oil anyway.

Ouch!!!

I have won my first attempt ... but it turned out as a Domination-victory
The last capitulation put me by 2% over the limit, and I didn't check that before hitting ENTER ...

Then again, it was my first, real Modern-start-game, and I've won it even if I made 3 mistakes: 2 false Civics at the start, getting a 10-turn-peace when my units were ready to strike on 3 different cities, and a wrong tech-path at the beginning ...


It's still my first Deity-victory, though


EDIT: Oh, and Fred was no big problem. He was my neighbor, and had to capitulate while still building stuff like Settlers and Cavalry. I only had to kill 2 Panzers, IIRC. Everybody had Oil, though!

ChrisFromLux said:

Ouch!!!

I have won my first attempt ... but it turned out as a Domination-victory

Click to expand...

same for me
although I checked if I needed to gift back a city or 2

cabert said:

same for me
although I checked if I needed to gift back a city or 2

Click to expand...

Well, sorry for you, but at least, I'm not alone, then


I'm wondering how WastinTime did his 1976-game, though?
By that time, I had vassalized only 2 AIs in that 1st attempt.

The RNG must have been on his side then. I have a 1985 AD win that went almost as fast as it could have (except Gandhi didn't put enough roads in his territory for me to rush by as I vassaled him). Also, Fredrick was the last guy, so I settled for ICBMs everywhere to finish off. Getting 9 fewer turns seems really, really hard (27 fewer tanks, for instance).

The RNG doesn't really play a part in this challenge. I just made tanks as fast a possible (3 every turn starting around turn 16 I think). By the end, I had twice as many tanks as I needed. It should be winnable in 40 turns.

Maybe my map was more compact? You need to railroad everywhere as you go.

Well, I finally managed to win this as a Conquest-victory

The date is 2002AD though, so nowhere near WastinTime or narri's victories.

WastinTime said:

I just made tanks as fast a possible (3 every turn starting around turn 12 I think). By the end, I had twice as many tanks as I needed.

Click to expand...

I also had too many tanks at the end, but I got started much too slow.
Cities build workers first, 2/1/1, to have 2 per city. Then factory, power plant, barracks, health-buildings , Tanks, Tanks, Tanks ...


I DOWed the 1st AI 10 turns later than you did and 9 turns later than narri
You had won the game when I DOWed my 2nd AI; narri had won when I DOWed my 3rd AI

Even if I hadn't built those unnecessary health-buildings, I don't think I would have been able to DOW that much earlier.


Interesting to see that none of us 3 adopted the same Civics

cabert said:

same for me
although I checked if I needed to gift back a city or 2

Click to expand...

I nearly failed again.
Probably, you made the mistake I avoided just before hitting ENTER.

What I did:
- accept capitulation of the last AI and exceed the land limit
- liberate enough cities to pass under the limit again
- avoid border-popping in all cities
- liberate all cities that are 1 turn away from coming out of revolt

And that last action nearly gave me a Domination-win again, because liberated cities get all their original tiles back immediately. This put me some 15-20 tiles above the limit again

I made a couple artillery. That helped my first few tanks with low experience win. However, those units were mostly a waste since they moved too slowly.

And I built the Pentagon.

I think I only built 1 worker instead of 4, but you might have the better strategy there. Those are a good investment

My first attempt last night, I built 3 workers first thing, and it didn't feel like enough - improvements were behind growth, especially hooking up health and happy.

@ChrisFromLux, I think a hospital is definitely a good investment here, assuming you need it in the given city to hit tank/turn.

Did you guys get auto-spread? I was only getting the Theo bonus in one city, which kinda sucks.

babybluepants said:

Did you guys get auto-spread? I was only getting the Theo bonus in one city, which kinda sucks.

Click to expand...

No, That's why I start in Org. Rel. To make missionaries.

I got a 1995 victory, usedtheo straight away, to get some autospread, but it only works in "your" cities.
however I got level 4 tanks in all 3 original cities quite soon (vassalage pentagon, theo + barracks+1 settled GG)

the thing is I never managed 1 tank per turn in those cities.

Second try, ended up 1 turn short of the lead (1978 AD - 45 turns). Started using WastinTime's strategy, but with more workers to take advantage of Serfdom. Most wars ended up 2 or 3 turns max with the massive tank SoD, a lot cleaner than last time. Nukes helped kick Stalin, the last holdout (who surprisingly didn't make many units anyway).

Too bad the other games in this series aren't as straightforward as tank, tank, tank, tank...

WastinTime said:

I think I only built 1 worker instead of 4, but you might have the better strategy there. Those are a good investment

Click to expand...

Yes, I am quite sure they are. There are so many Workshops, Lumbermills and Railroads to build in your 3 cities, to get these Tanks rolling.

Later, they can convert those stupid AI-cottages and farms into workshops as well, as with Capitulations, you won't get many workers from the AI.

babybluepants said:

@ChrisFromLux, I think a hospital is definitely a good investment here, assuming you need it in the given city to hit tank/turn.

Click to expand...

I'm not so sure anymore. IIRC, they take ~3 turns to build in your still-underdevelopped cities. In those 3x3 turns, you could probably build another 5 Tanks and start attacking earlier.

babybluepants said:

Did you guys get auto-spread? I was only getting the Theo bonus in one city, which kinda sucks.

Click to expand...

IIRC, I didn't get any auto-spread. But I ignored Religion completely and immediately started in Free Religion.

WastinTime said:

No, That's why I start in Org. Rel. To make missionaries.

Click to expand...

Are you sure that is worth it?

'Lose' 2 turns in a city to build 2 missionaries, plus another full turn in anarchy for switching back to Theocracy, only to start with 7XP-Tanks instead of 5XP-Tanks (if you run Vassalage)? You still have to win 2-3 battles to earn another promotion.

Or did you immediately run an Engineer to get a Golden Age and switch for free?

If you're getting tank/turn, why exactly do you need level 4 tanks? I'd imagine OR + vassalage would help to get the factory/power set up, and from there it'd just be unit production, with little regard for experience past the useful 5 xp threshold.

I want to win the AW game first, but I imagine I'm going to start off just spamming 5 xp tanks. Wastintime even said he had more than he needed by the end, which implies the bottlenecks are 1) setting up the production and 2) actually getting them to the enemy.

TheMeInTeam said:

If you're getting tank/turn, why exactly do you need level 4 tanks? I'd imagine OR + vassalage would help to get the factory/power set up, and from there it'd just be unit production, with little regard for experience past the useful 5 xp threshold.

I want to win the AW game first, but I imagine I'm going to start off just spamming 5 xp tanks. Wastintime even said he had more than he needed by the end, which implies the bottlenecks are 1) setting up the production and 2) actually getting them to the enemy.

Click to expand...

Are you replying to my post?

I was wondering why WastinTime built missionaries and adopted Org. Rel. first ...
I went with Free Religion right from the start, and built 5XP-Tanks due to Vassalage and Barracks. The first 2 Great Generals were used to create 2 Super-Medic-Explorers ...

When you settle your first cities, you have some infrastructure to build before you switch to tanks full time. OR adds 25% to your hammers towards these buildings, which saves setup time.

I don't see how that falls behind some extra in captured cities and irrelevant research.