Challenge-XI-06

[shulec]

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.

(*) Please read the >> HOF rules << BEFORE playing!
(*) Games must be played using the >> BUFFY MOD 3.19.003 <<
(*) Games to be submitted via the >> Civ IV Hall of Fame Website <<
(*) New players, please >> register << using your CFC forum name​

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Space Colony (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Emperor
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Standard
• Speed: Normal
• Map Type: Inland Sea
• Required: No Tribal Villages, no random events, aggressive AI, one city challenge
• Must Not Be Checked: permanent alliances
• Civ: Inca
• Opponents: Roosevelt, Stalin, Joao, Wang Kon, Montezuma, Darius
• Version: 3.19.003
• Date: 27th July to 30th November 2013

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

 

[Conquistador 63]

Looked fun, so I tried to play this one.

Launched my SS in 1842AD...to no avail, as Mansa won by UN at the same date. He acquired too many vassals, I probably shouldn't have helped him too much.

Not sure I'll tackle this one again.

 

[neilmeister]

Ooooh, a new challenger series, and its a month old already.

Time to dust off Mapfinder and get it searching.

For OCC, do we recommend Stone/Marble or lots of forests for a late game powerhouse National Park/NE combo.

I guess I will start off with my usual Gold/Corn or Pigs combo.

 

[neilmeister]

Had 2 attempts so far... really rusty at OCC space.

Anyway, improved my first attempt from 1929 to 1910.

Anyone looking to do this, some hints:
- get lots of forests (build national park)
- get lots of river tile (levee helps a lot)
- Oracle CS
- beeline GLib, NE, Oxford, NP in that order. Parthenon helps a bit
- first GS build academy - prioritise this!
- settle most subsequent great people
- include someone everyone hates - Willem in my game, but DeGaulle would do. Join and bribe others into wars.

I think I am done with this one for now......

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I haven;t done Civ in a while, so I figured I would give this a shot. After several poor attempts, plus one which I lost to Mansa's spaceship and another which I lost to Joao's stack I got 1892 (assuming I didn't screw something up)

I hadn't realized just how powerful settling GP's are - I've been using them for bulbs a lot, but this time, I just settled almost all of them (bulbed philo).

Stopping my builder traits was key - I had been overbuilding wonders...

There was a lot of AI blood in this one - Stalin, Monty, Wang and Roosevelt all bit it, and Liz was getting beat up by Mansa and Vicky.

 

[shulec]

I haven;t done Civ in a while, so I figured I would give this a shot. After several poor attempts, plus one which I lost to Mansa's spaceship and another which I lost to Joao's stack I got 1892 (assuming I didn't screw something up)

I hadn't realized just how powerful settling GP's are - I've been using them for bulbs a lot, but this time, I just settled almost all of them (bulbed philo).

Stopping my builder traits was key - I had been overbuilding wonders...

There was a lot of AI blood in this one - Stalin, Monty, Wang and Roosevelt all bit it, and Liz was getting beat up by Mansa and Vicky.

The early roadmap for this one is pretty clear. After all these years playing civ IV, I still don't know how to win a space game. I have learned that bcool is a Spacemaster and Pollina is awesome at capitalizing on game mechanics. Jastrow seems to be the XOTM space guy, but I have not seen an S & T thread on how best to do it. Now OCC is a unique game that depends heavily on the difficulty level.

I have a game pending for one of the other HoF mods to approve at 1907 AD.

Here is my game plan. High food and luxury with FPs, forests and riverside tiles. Stone and marble are a bonus, but less so with an Industrious leader. Farm, mine, cottage, then pre-chop forests outside BFC. Farm, mine, and cottage while running science specialists to get the Academy. Oracle CS, build the Pyramids, then the Great Library, while concurrently focusing on Education and the Oxford U. After this point, I really don't know what is best. I try to get Astro for observatories and liberalize Medicine for environmentalism and National Park fueled forest preserve research. I then target superconductors for the Research laboratory. Then I work my way to Fusion.

Along the way, I try to trade the shift out of my techs to keep the AI feeding me techs, while not compromising my Oracle and Liberalism goals.

I have learned that the AP is a waste. I still like the detour for Music's GA. I like the free GM from economics. I feel the GSpy from communism is a beaker waste. MoM is invaluable for late GA's. Maximizing GA's to get 6 (Taj + 5 GP GA's) (can you get a six GP GA???)

I know other strategies don't use the National Park (Kills coal) or Forest preserves. H. Capac might be good for trying a huge cottage game. I still feel that the National Park/representation specialists are key.

BTW, in my game, tech monster Joao, my immediate neighbor to the north, with vassals Mansa and Stalin declared on me while I was researching Fiber Optics. I quickly built one Tactical Nuke. Luckily, I had a defensive pact with Roosevelt who came in and saved my ass. I nuked Joao once, he made peace in 5 turns, and we became buddies (nuke love!).

If you (Automated Teller) or anyone can share an optimal path after Oxford, I would love to hear it!

Stopping my builder traits was key - I had been overbuilding wonders...

When you aren't building wonders, what are you building? Building research seems weak, but I bet I did it for at least 20 turns.

 

[shulec]

FYI, the first time around, with a lessor AI, much better results were achieved:

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I looked for a map with forests, rivers, marble, a farm resource and a mining resource. Try to settle on a PH if you can (I think this time I was unable).

My tech path was: mining->wheel->pottery->writing->alpha. Trade for a ton of stuff - this time, i was able to get masonry and poly. Math->priesthood->CoL, Oracle CS.

Aesthetics->Lit->Music->Paper->Education. Bulb philo with the 2nd GS.
next target was National park. I picked up PP on the way. I research lib to within 1 turn and picked up sci method, then libbed bio.

After that, filled in rep parts, steam, industrialism and steel. Picked up astronomy after i could trade for compass and optics, then got to super conductors. Oh, also traded for banking when it came available and picked up the economics GP. I got all the free GPs.

My builds were:

2 workers (I stole 2), 2 quechas, lib, terrace, Oracle, Pyramids, Glib, NE, Parthenon, a couple of monasteries, forge, uni, Oxford, Nat Park, theater, Globe, Ironworks, observatory, levee, lab, factory, industrial park, hydro plant, Statue of Liberty, Apollo, space ship parts. Oh, grocer and a supermarket. Oh - and a courthouse. UN forced me into environmentalism and then someone dumped a corp into my cap. I had to buy iron and aluminum, so I didn't have a lot of gold lying around, so I had cut expenses.

Probably 1/3 of the time I was building research. I was able to leave 8 forests in my fat cross - I sacrificed two along the way - I dunno if that was the right thing or not.

research is weak, but it does add up over time. Long term, building anything for health or happy doesn't make a lot of sense, since you'll remove most of the issues with those, anyway. Units are useless, since if someone attacks you, you lose. Most other wonders give you GP points, but usually the wrong ones. If I had stone, I might have build Sankore and a temple.

To me,the hardest part was balancing building, running scientists and growing. you need to be able to get to size 20 or bigger so you can build the SS. You need to be able to build infra and you need to be able to run specialists to get more super scientists.

Civics were interesting, too. I ignored slavery, going into Bureau and caste once I had CS. Rep with pyramids and pacifism with Philo. I had been doing mercantilism in other games, but then I realized that I was losing all trade routes, so lost 8 commerce, boosted to 12 by bureau, and the extra GP points for a new scientist couldnt' help that. So I went free market when I could do that and SP when it came time to be building stuff.

oh - I also ended up bui

 

[enKage]

yeeep, after at least 10 games, 1 week, I finally did it! I dont care about late date - I am totally unexperienced with OCC games, but I managed to win on emperor!

Basically if i didnt oracle CS, had Academy + Buearo in BC and Edu pre 400 AD, i ddidnt continue so there were some more games

I was close on first attempt - I took Mansa, Willem, Hatty, Asoka for better teching. i had 2 food start and marble and stone nearby, I lost by overbuilding some wonders instead of wealth - I had at least 75% available wonders! That made me even to run 7 golden ages (6 by specialists and 1 from Taj). I also forgot that only 5 national wonders are possible and not 6 as I thought - so no Ironworks
Lost to Darius (space) but Mansa was 10 turns from culture.

Second attempt: mansa won by culture, Hatty close to wining by culture

Third attempt - Mansa got rid of me while being pleased

Then I said: no more Mansa in my games! I needed a techer - so Pericles

It was better, he is one of the most peacuful leaders, so finished spaceship at a date I didnt even expected (AI wins Spaceship pre 1900 !!!)

OK, another conclusion = no Pericles in my game

2-3 more games - it was quite good, by Willem declares on pleased So... no more Willem in my game

I stopped one day and realised, that the problem with AI's was that they were completely unbalanced! It always ended Monte and Stalin killed or vassalised so early due to outteching! With more land and more vassals they grew more and more powerful, outteching me at the end!

So final selection of AI's and little changes of gameplay *free religion instead of pacifism after a lot of specialist settled - with 1 city golden age doent change so much lately.
- Asoka - always great guy and great buddy, very easy to deal with
- Sitting Bull - possible bonus late in the game from environmentalism, not a great techer, hard to kill, not a good attacker. The other option here was Toku, but i discarded him as he is more likely to knock knock on player's borders very early
- Fred - low unit prob = he will probably not attack me before Ironworls, no typicalyy commercial traits
- Saladin - quite a lot of units, but usually back in techs, no danger of outteching me even late in the game. Often goes into wars, but rarely wins or loses - there are typical wars for warring Thats the guy I needed!

And it worked ! First game I played I lost by misclicking! (I hit Launch instead of OK after 2 SS casing 40% chance was not enaugh). I had time to build all other casings and a second engine too before AI's will get needed techs!
(the date would be around 1930 or so)


Second attemp with those opponents
FINALLY WON
a little lucky (Wang attacked). I made a deffensive pact with Asoka 1 turn before, and Asoka cleaned his stack out with cavaleries. My infantries + artillery (I had to devote to military a little instead of building Apollo) razed 2 cities, Asoka took 2 cities and Wang capitualtes. After that I made another defensive pact with him, settling me in a very comfortable situation = I was completely surrounded by my allies! So who would dare to hit directly my city ?

Stalin and Montezuma were independent and quite in good shape (in their conditions) for most of the game, so non of civs ran too far away with techs and land. Asoka was first in techs, but I took those more usefull for spaceship eaons earlier, when I launched my SS, he was still lack of at least genetics



Max beeker output I managed was ca 1100 per turn