Challenge-XVIII-08

[Noble Zarkon]

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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 - "Fall of the Inca". Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but your best submission 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 << or >>>BUFFY MOD 3.19.004b<<<.
(*) Games to be submitted via the >> Civ IV Hall of Fame Website <<
(*) New players, please >> register << using your CFC forum name
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Settings:

• Victory Condition: Domination (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Monarch
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Small
• Speed: Normal
• Map Type: Oasis
• Civ: Egypt (Hatshepsut)
• Opponents: Must include Byzantium (Justinian), Greece (Pericles)
• Version: 3.19.003 or 3.19.004b
• Date: 25th January to 24th July 2017

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

*** Note due to concerns over the number of marathon games we have made a number of changes to the settings for this one ***

 

[lymond]

hmm..this is a rather unfortunate map for Ms. Hatty

 

[neilmeister]

Unless you lose 6 odd turns by moving your settler north in the hope of horses. I think that will be my plan when I eventually get to this game

 

[Noble Zarkon]

No horses where we start - forgot about that

 

[neilmeister]

This game should (staff approving) have a very lacklustre #1.

Got tired of starting ~15-20 games and never having luck with horsies, so in the end just decided to do it the old fashioned way. By the time I got metal connected I had Oracled CS and had teched Machinery.... so it was Maces & Cats, then Trebs.

If my date isn't beaten by at least 1000 years then people aren't trying!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

This game should (staff approving) have a very lacklustre #1.

Game accepted, well done - the lack of horses with this setup is rather unfortunate!!

 

[lymond]

I got 520AD with WCs. Hit horses on the 3rd roll or so. It's still kinda hard for really fast dom, just simply to losing at least 10 turns at the start, as one is slower to getting the chokers out. So some AIs are bound to get metals up. My problem here was not starting the settler train earlier. Just kinda forgot about it and then was in a mad rush to fill in the gaps. Still, with more focus gameplay I agree that much earlier dates are certainly in order.

Ha..so different from your general HOF roles since you are not rolling for resources. In my case I roll for position on the map and try anything where I'm positioned towards the middle, which you can tell by a) can't see map edge b) desert to the north.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It seemed easiest to just settle in place and settle a City #2 or #3 to obtain Horses, so that's what I did. Some of the starting areas on this map type can be quite poor, but I believe that I rerolled less than 10 times before I found a "good enough" start to play forward.

I ended up settling before moving our Warrior (oops) and missed grabbing a Gems Resource in my big fat cross, so my second City was settled nearby in order to grab it, with a third City being settled to grab a Horse Resource.

The AIs were unprepared for War Chariots. One AI Oracled Feudalism, but masses of War Chariots just took him down before his Longbowmen could get much of a Fortification bonus after having been upgraded from Archers (upgrading a Unit takes away its Fortification bonus--"Let me leave my post temporarily while I go into the cloak room and switch my gear for better equipment").

Ultimately, the AIs weren't REXing quickly enough and Settler-spam was required. I saved most of my settling until the last couple of turns of the game, ending the game on my first turn of Strike, which means that I didn't lose any Units to Strike, thanks to the 1 turn of grace period. "We trust that you'll pay our wages next turn. Right? Wait, what do you mean that you've taken over the world and therefore have changed the entire meaning of currency in a way that all of my years of hard labour have been meaningless?" (Don't let real-world Corporations get away with doing exactly that!)