Challenge-XIX-09

[Kaitzilla]

Oh hey, this game is the current GMajor 155.
Deadline is Nov. 24th for it.

 

[PsyMar]

So, I've never won a G-major, nor have I won a Noble game on BTS (I have on vanilla). Any advice for just getting the space colony first? Something really basic? I already see I should use willem or pacal (willem is my favorite since Catherine's traits changed in Warlords) but I'll investigate further on that. Also, what sort of things should I look for with mapfinder? I've never used that before.

PS. My only previous gauntlet win was a minor in 2008 (!) so I'll really need some help....

 

[Major Tom]

1. You want a financial trait and expansive or someone with extra healtbuildings.
2. Start must have food and gold/gems and rivers.
3. Grab maximum land (half the map), but after AI have cleared jungle for you.
4. Save some forest.
5. Either go for stateproperty or corps (mining and cereal mills on this map).
6. Read a strategy article about spacewins for the endgame.
7. Good luck and welcome back!

 

[PsyMar]

Thanks! I think I'm going Pacal for Ball Courts and bronzeless holkans, because 1) I often don't find bronze, 2) I find happiness to be a bigger problem than health on noble, and I usually beeline construction anyway after BW.

My first win back in vanilla was a space race so I think I will be more or less OK there, if I get a good start. I'm usually bad at war, but if I can settle fast and hit a few neighboring civs with my warrior(s)...

EDIT: Is there any way to save my custom game settings so I don't have to repick leaders every time, and how do I actually set up the map finder?

 

[Major Tom]

Sorry, this is the Terramap. I am mixing this with challenge #5 so forget about jungle and here is Sushi what counts. Also settle the New World early is good, lot of fat land and forests.

 

[PsyMar]

I seem to have a great starting map -- 2 foods, 3 flood plains, and 2 gold. Unfortunately I can't post a screenshot because BtS is crashing trying to load it. I could give you the entrails (stack dump) but I doubt that's of any use to anyone here, the bug may be in wine, or I may just not have enough cache or something.

Edit: it's crashed twice now at the exact same assembly instruction. Not that that helps me any, but it does tell me it will keep happening. I'll look into my other computers, one runs xp albeit with 512 MB of RAM.

EDIT next day: Nope, that one runs out of video RAM. I'm now putting it back on Linux, but instead of Wine I'm using VMWare Player to run WinXP.

 

[PsyMar]

Fifth different installation but it seems to work! I'll be starting the gauntlet tomorrow.

EDIT: OH MAN. That start. 2 gold, plains cow, plains wheat, and two fresh water flood plains, all in the BFC if I move my settler 1w to my warrior. And settling revealed a goody hut just offscreen! I have to screenshot this. And, attached until someone can recommend an image hosting site.

 

[PsyMar]

Sorry for the triple post, but I think this is worth a bump. I'm not gonna finish in time for the gauntlet thanks to my computer making it so it takes 10-30 minutes per turn now. I'm up to 1778, and after beelining for cereal mills I discovered the great merchant requirement (oops I never even got one) so now I'm backfilling techs like railroad and trying not to lose to Catherine/Caesar (both have bigger military) or Catherine via the Apostolic Palice (she is the only candidate as she controls it and is hindu, which nobody else is -- I am going to switch to hindu just to try to steal some votes in case she goes for the victory!)

So... yeah, 200 turns left or so probably and I can't physically do that in 1440 minutes, or whatever it is (what time /exactly/ does the gauntlet end anyway?)

I'll still submit this for the challenge if I hold on for the win, though!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

what time /exactly/ does the gauntlet end anyway

Officially midnight tonight (24th) Server time, however the update is not due until tomorrow and I have a busy day planned so likely to be Sunday evening UK time before I run the update. Any games submitted before the update will be included.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Officially midnight tonight (24th) Server time, however the update is not due until tomorrow and I have a busy day planned so likely to be Sunday evening UK time before I run update. Any games submitted before the update will be included.

Ah!
Just made it in time.

Spoiler :

Only need around 13,000 raw on Epic Speed + Noble difficulty to get the 1 turn big techs, so there's no need to conquer 75% of the world with colony abuse.
I forgot it wasn't Deity/Marathon, so I way overshot and wasted a lot of beakers.
Also, Great Scientists bulb Laser if you tech Satellites, so take care bulbing Fission/Fusion.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Ah!
Just made it in time.

You did and with a great result that will take #1 for both Space Colony and Score in that slot.

Unfortunately it looks like you missed 2 of the mandatory opponents (Hatty and Liz - you had Ramesses and Churchill instead) and therefore the game is not eligible for the Gauntlet or the Challenge

 

[Fippy]

Ouch that's a shame with mixed up opponents, always makes me paranoia too in double checking if i have the right ones for challenges..

 

[Kaitzilla]

You did and with a great result that will take #1 for both Space Colony and Score in that slot.

Unfortunately it looks like you missed 2 of the mandatory opponents (Hatty and Liz - you had Ramesses and Churchill instead) and therefore the game is not eligible for the Gauntlet or the Challenge

Open up my 2nd or 3rd save and you'll see England and Egypt dead at the bottom of the scoreboard.
They were then pushed off and replaced when I got my 4th and 5th colonies due to the game's limit of 17 AI.

I checked and it is super hard to notice, but if you open the midgame Event Log (Control+Tab) in the top left of the screen (or in final save log but it takes forever) and scroll all the way back to the beginning, it says I DOW'd Elizabeth in 2925BC and Hatshepsut in 2025BC.
The game hates me and made Ramesses and Churchill two of the new colonies I later founded.

I needed the extra colonies for +1 happiness each, and the 5th+6th colonies raised the Dom limit from 51% to 54%.
Sitting Bull adopted Emancipation and killed every single spy sent to flip him back, so it backfired a bit.
Hurray that it was accepted!

 

[elitetroops]

That's interesting. I would have thought that the HoF submission checker had the power to look up opponents from the starting save...

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Open up my 2nd or 3rd save and you'll see England and Egypt dead at the bottom of the scoreboard.They were then pushed off and replaced when I got my 4th and 5th colonies due to the game's limit of 17 AI.

I checked and it is super hard to notice, but if you open the midgame Event Log

Very interesting, first time we have come across this issue I think!

Actually there's a much easier way to confirm-

43 2925 BC You have declared war on Elizabeth!
79 2025 BC You have declared war on Hatshepsut!
153 305 BC You have declared war on Huayna Capac!

I had to go into the database and replace 3 of the final leaders with the ones you started with (the Incans were missing as well) and now it shows up ok!

Will have to investigate how we handle this in future and as elite mentioned whether we can extract the info from the opening save.

EDIT: If you anticipate this happening in one of your games I strongly suggest one of your saves shows all the mandatory opponents on the scoreboard as Kaitzilla did here.

 

[Fippy]

Just a personal opinion, but i would have given Kai any benefit of doubt anyways
And even if 1 other AI was picked, i would have let it count.
We are on a 10+ years old game, after all. Then again, i realize it might not be that easy..
but Church would be a downgrade from Lizzy for example, so common sense could be used in cases where there really was a mistake.

 

[PsyMar]

I won't be in time, but I might get space race pre-2000, which would be a PB. (and my first Noble BTS win.)

I think kait's issue is maybe an argument in favor of "no vassal states", but that's just my opinion. (I'm using state property to keep maintenance reasonable)

 

[PsyMar]

I finally finished after finally getting the steam version to work natively on windows 8 (the trick was to use the "beta" original version, rather than the steam version, to make the HOF mod happy.)

Space Colony victory in Jul 1942, which is my first BtS Space victory, my 7th submission to the HoF. My only previous space victory was a space /race/ victory, in 1.74, which finished in real life year 2008 and in-game year 2012.

Score of 24255 is about triple my previous high score, so yay!

EDIT: The bad news is, I'm apparently hall-of-fame ineligible due to the few dozen times the game crashed (usually right near the start of a turn, so I was able to replicate all my actions, but I don't have all the save files to prove it and it was kind of insane how much it crashed. I may have tried six different operating systems before I got it going properly, and I only have three computers!)