Challenge-XVIII-09

[Noble Zarkon]

​

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
​

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Religious (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Settler
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Small
• Speed: Normal
• Map Type: Boreal
• Must Not Be Checked: Random Personalities
  
• Civ: Spain (Isabella)
• Opponents: Must include Celt (Boudica), Germany (Frederick), Korea (Wang Kon), Native America (Sitting Bull)
• 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.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

For this particular challenge, what are some of the factors that we will need to take into account?
1. Learning Theology, probably via The Oracle
2. Spreading the Apostolic Palace Religion to each of the AIs
3. Actually building The Apostolic Palace
4. Sufficiently pleasing at least 1 AI to act as a Voting Buddy
5. Having less than a certain percentage of the total Apostolic Palace votes ourselves, but getting more than said percentage when counting the Voting Buddy's votes (I think that the number is 75%, but please confirm for me or correct me)

For Theology, we need Monotheism and Writing. Assuming that we will build The Oracle, we also need Priesthood. There shouldn't be any real competition for The Oracle, so a start with Marble probably won't be necessary, especially since The Apostolic Palace doesn't need Marble.

Getting Writing allows for Opening Borders with most or all AIs, which means that we can probably get +1 Diplo Attitude after 25 turns of continuous Open Borders (although we might incur negative Diplo Attitude for Opening Borders with an AI's Worst Enemy and then refusing to cancel said Open Borders trade).

Bronze Working and Mathematics would also be of help for Chopping out The Apostolic Palace, while Alphabet would be of help to get +4 Fair and Forthright Trading Relations Diplo Attitude bonuses (although possibly also -4 You Traded with our Worst Enemies Diplo Attitude penalties if we are not careful to whom we gift techs).

Theoretically, we could rely on auto-spreading of the Apostolic Palace Religion, but in all likelihood, it will be faster to move Missionaries across of the map than to build Roads and wait for random spreading, since random spreading requires a Trade Network connection. So, it might make sense to stick with the minimum number of AIs required (four), to reduce the number of Missionaries needed.

Since we'll be founding multiple Religions (Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity at a minimum, and possibly Buddhism if we want the AIs to be united amongst each other for no Worst Enemies), we'll probably want to consider spreading the chosen Apostolic Palace Religion to at least a second City of ours, to allow for 2 Missionaries to be made simultaneously when making Missionaries for the AIs and to also give us a couple of more votes, to reduce the number of AIs who will have to vote for us.

Since it's Settler Difficulty, I believe that most AIs like us by an automatic +2 or +3 Diplo Attitude without even having to do anything, so we shouldn't need Favourite Civic bonuses to get at least one Voting Buddy.

By building The Apostolic Palace ourselves, even if we aren't the highest in population points for The Apostolic Palace's Religion, we'll be a candidate for the AP Resident position, which is a position for which we'll want to be elected, in order to call the Religious Victory vote, instead of relying on an AI to randomly select that AP Resolution.

By liberally gifting techs, we'll also likely easily be elected as the AP Resident and it shouldn't be too hard to get enough of the AIs to like us in order to vote for us to win on the first AP Leader Resolution.

So, the toughest part of this challenge will be to balance the completion of all of those tasks. Playing through a couple of games will probably be a good way to figure out which factors are the bottlenecks, so that we can focus on trying to speed up the completion of the factors which end up slowing down the victory date the most.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Theoretically, we could rely on auto-spreading of the Apostolic Palace Religion, but in all likelihood, it will be faster to move Missionaries across of the map than to build Roads and wait for random spreading, since random spreading requires a Trade Network connection.

It's Settler - by the time you have the AP built most AIs will not have more than 3 cities so you can gift them a city containing the AP religion the turn before the DV vote comes up .

This has been a popular challenge as it is also running as the current gauntlet, an amazing date in the lead!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I rolled a few starts manually until I found one with at least 3 visible Resources for the capital. Basically, I did not play with high requirements for the starting area.

Marble was not needed at all, and since it takes about 3 turns to tech Hunting, having multiple Deer Resources does the trick.

I found that the biggest bottleneck was researching the techs to be able to use The Oracle on The Apostolic Palace. I had to wait to complete The Oracle for several turns while I researched the required pre-requisite techs.

The second biggest bottleneck was pre-Chopping and Chopping The Apostolic Palace itself.

Once The Apostolic Palace has been built, the game mostly plays itself, since Settler Difficulty Level AIs love us so much by default and it's a trivial matter to get Alphabet for tech gifts to the AIs while building The Apostolic Palace and waiting for the Religious Victory Resolution to become available.

As a strategy, I would recommend either making all of the AIs plus us run The Apostolic Palace Religion or making none of the AIs nor us run The Apostolic Palace Religion.

In that way, you'll get the positive Religious Diplo attitude. Also, in doing some rough spreadsheet calculations, the numbers seemed to work out better that way--for a while, my plan was going to be to run against an opponent who was running The Apostolic Palace's Religion while having my Voting Buddies and me running a different Religion, but I found it hard to come up with the needed 75% of the votes going to us.

Getting 75% of the votes (while having less than 75% of the votes ourselves) is a lot more doable if all of the AIs and we are running the same Religion as each other, as either all votes are not doubled or all votes are doubled, essentially resulting in the same percentages.

If there are 20 population points, 75% of them would be 15; once you start to think of population points in this manner, planning becomes a whole lot easier. An important point to recall is that Cities without the Apostolic Palace Religion in them will not count their population points toward voting.

I did end up giving away one City with The Apostolic Palace Religion in it, since that AI's capital was about 16 turns' worth of movement away from the City which built my Missionary, and the Missionary wouldn't have arrived in time for the first possible Apostolic Palace Resolution.

 

[neilmeister]

Gifting cities seems the way to go. I started in the corner but it was no problem, my missionaries only had to manually spread to 2 civs.

Obviously missed the Gauntlet but somehow beat the current #1 by 2 turns.

edit: I also got a settler from my first hut, I was hoping for a worker but I think it worked out better