[NFP] Community Monthly Challenge

[Bangau]

So sayeth the Wiki

What? I did not know this. Good find. Well, that's a restart of my game, let's see what's possible on a duel size map!

 

[PiR]

It's like my fourth try but there is so little coal on Duel map.

I'm trying to do both aspects of the challenge, but it seriously complicates it.
Polluting = rush science, beeline industrialization. Korea is great for this. I'm impressed how many techs we can skip and how campus research grants can boost everything, I had never explored that so much.
But to capture the CO2, the rush needs to transform into culture as far as the future era. Having neglected it seriously slows the total completion.

 

[Bangau]

Decided to finish the standard size game with Germany I was already playing first: reached Phase VII at turn 196 (deity). Luckily the way back was way faster: turn 205 my CO2 contribution went below 0.

These are the settings I used:

Spoiler settings :

Spoiler turn 196 :

Spoiler turn 205 :

General approach:

• Play Germany for the cheap industrial zones to pollute to the max. In hindsight a great science CIV could be better, because the time it takes you to get to coal is probably more important than cheap IZ. Hadn't played Germany in a long time though, so was fun to go mass production with them.
• Chop everything: basic rule when trying to get somewhere fast in Civ VI. And for this challenge it helps even more since the pollution gets worse the more trees you've chopped.
• Go wide: first go religious and use the faith to get a lot of settlers and builders with monumentality.
• Go aggressive: capturing cities and using them to chop trees and pollute is faster I think than waiting for the AI to start polluting...
• Build units that pollute, and use them to wage war.
• Build railroads, adds to the pollution and helps move your units and builders around.
• I'm not sure of this, but I think that you need to actually use the energy your plants provide to have them pollute. Anyone know? In any case I build as much tier 3 buildings as possible to max out the amount of energy my cities used.

The way down was easy:

• Turn all powerplants into nuclear.
• Discard all units.
• Run the Carbon project in every city with an IZ (I had many...)
• Change the government to the one that's gives 3 power per city: I believe clean energy is used first before dirty energy.
• I also bought hydro powerplants on dams and build a bunch of clean energy improvements. Not really sure if that's necessary, but it fits the theme of the game.

't Was a fun game! Thanks for the challenge. Might try a duel map now to compare...

 

[PiR]

Congrats!!

I'm not sure of this, but I think that you need to actually use the energy your plants provide to have them pollute.

I had the same feeling. It seems I had very little coal consumed because my cities needed little power.

 

[Francel]

AI Babylon has 30 techs, twice Korea (15) and more than double me (14):

Here's a classical era cavalry:

They should have replaced Hammurabi with Saruman:

 

[Aa602213x1023]

Hats off to Bangau. I tried one more time and hit Climate Change Phase VII at turn 202; Bangau's Turn 196 is impressive indeed!

Thanks for thinking of a fun challenge for this month. I always like these sorts of creative ideas as a way to keep the game feeling fresh. Also, I'd forgotten just how powerful Germany's production bonuses can be; I might have to try playing as Frederick in a "real" game sometime soon.


Settings: Deity difficulty, Highlands map, Disaster Intensity 4, Standard Speed, Standard Resources, Secret Societies and Heroes mode.

 

[Vargas1]

Here's a classical era cavalry:

That's interesting, since Babyloning to cavalry means getting to Feudalism quickly (unless they hard-researched Stirrups, which seems unlikely). And then would presumably need at least a handful of turns to build/upgrade to a knight and then go kill something with it. Turn 75-80ish Feudalism isn't that crazy, but I'm a little surprised the AI had the planning required to get there on the civics tree in order to get to cavalry on the tech tree. I've tended to find that Babylon's strengths were mostly wasted on the AI since it didn't have the ability to make those connections, but maybe they deserve more credit.

 

[Francel]

Chopped every tree, spent every coal, best I could do: Turn 222 (Deity, Gaul). It was fun "being bad" and wrecking the environment. Cool challenge!

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Hi everyone,

My apologies for only now getting back to May stuff! I got suddenly swamped with tasks for my academic work as well as for Firaxis stuff and lost track of the days.

Here's my take.

Francel


Ra-Kedet on more or less the right side, though should be nearer the coast.
pyramids of Giza are further to the south and on the west bank, not the east. The sphinx is in the right spot, though. The theater square district on the Red Sea should likely be a Commercial Center or, better yet, a Harbor district out into the sea. This was a branching off-point for Egyptian trade across that body of water.


While the Perisan cities aren’t in quite the right place, the conflict with Persia in the 7th century BC is entirely appropriate – indeed, Egypt faces conquest by the Persians during this time (so, to be ENTIRELY accurate, your success against them isn’t terribly accurate)!


Planktonic


Canada is perfectly represented here, with each city in its right location. Let’s look in more detail, though. Let’s take Vancouver – the actual city is on the south side of the river, as is the campus. Europe is here in a clash between gameplay and history – Britain had focused on his colonial empire overseas and so had little to colonize there on the continent (alas the wilderness ruin that is Europe on this map…).


The rest of the map is really impressive. I particularly like the Hindu India section (though religion in the area is always a dicey prospect – Islam, “Hinduism” [itself a colonial-era amalgam of a diverse indigenous tradition], Buddhism and Jainism were all present).


In short, I have to rule in favor of Planktonic here, although I do like the attention to district placement and other details on Francel’s map!

 

[Evie]

Planktonic


Canada is perfectly represented here, with each city in its right location.

Well, except Yellowknife, which is by that map somewhere in Saskatchewan between Lake Athabasca and...I'm guessing Reindeer Lake though it could be a very weird lake Manitoba, and Whitehorse which is (again by that map) somewhere in the Northwest Territories.

Whitehorse should actually be almost on the coast, on the Alaskan border (it's notably west of Vancouver) and Yellowknife northwest of the southernmost of the two two-tile lakes.

 

[PiR]

Thanks a lot @Andrew Johnson [FXS] and both to @Francel and @Planktonic who participated in May

 

[Francel]

Thanks Mr. Johnson. I really appreciate you taking the time to comment. Congrats to Planktonic!

 

[Planktonic]

Thanks Francel.

And thanks also to @Andrew Johnson for your time and interest, and to PiR for stimulating the challenge. It was quite fun to think through how to do this.

Cheers all !

 

[Bangau]

The Duel map size does matter a lot! I tried a similar game to my earlier one with Germany, one on one against Canada and got a finish time of turn 175 (deity):

Spoiler phase vii :

I was somewhat lucky perhaps getting enough coal, although almost all of it was on Canadian territory. Wasn't planning on waging war, but that left me no choice.

 

[Vargas1]

I have yet to participate in one of these (I started trying to develop a true-to-life US but lost patience), but I just want to say that I really enjoy reading them and think it's a great idea. Looking forward to seeing what comes in the future and to hopefully developing enough patience to try one out.

 

[Francel]

The scheduled host for next month needed to step out, so I am stepping in! Can’t wait to see the wondrous results you amazing people produce. Exciting!

 

[fy00sh]

Unless there's any last-few-hours submissions, here's how the rankings stand for June's Challenge. Since all submissions were on Deity level, there's no need for separate brackets ^_^

1st - Bangau, at turn 175 (bonus challenge: 9 turns [196 to 205])

2nd - Aa602213x1023, at turn 202

3rd - Francel, at turn 222

Thanks to everyone who submitted, glad I was able to host for a month! Also, let me know if I made any errors

 

[Francel]

It's a new month. I'm updating the first page to reflect our recent winners. Congrats all! Meanwhile, here is the new challenge for July:

Sim Citylization - Construct as many wonders as possible within the borders of a single city by turn 175 on standard speed

You'll have to make some tough choices - do you crank our early settlers for domestic trade routes? Do you spend time and land building districts? Do you sack your highest yield tiles to plop wonders? As you progress, the cost of wonders will increase, and land will become scarce. Perhaps some great persons will be able to lend a hand.

Further stipulations (Important, please read fully)

-The size of the map must be small or larger. You may not decrease the number of opponents or city-states at the start (Thus, on small size, you must have at least 5 opponents). You may use city state, civ, and natural wonder pickers. You may choose the level of disasters, as well as things like world age, wet or dry, resource abundance, and legendary vs normal start. The only mode enabled for this challenge will be barbarians (keeping it a little simpler for everyone). No mods/cheats/exploits/glitches that give an unfair advantage are allowed. You may "reroll" for better RNG.

-As usual, there are two tiers of competition - deity and prince through immortal.

-Any questions or complaints?
___________________________________________

Can't wait to see what people manage to come up with!

 

[Bangau]

Thanks to everyone who submitted

Thanks for the fun challenge!

To be precize: I did the challenge twice and finished at 196 the first time (went back to zero by turn 205) and finished at turn 175 the second try.

 

[Aa602213x1023]

It's a new month. I'm updating the first page to reflect our recent winners. Congrats all! Meanwhile, here is the new challenge for July:

Sim Citylization - Construct as many wonders as possible within the borders of a single city by turn 175 on standard speed

I gave this a whirl with China and came up with 15 wonders at turn 175. A screenshot and the game settings are below.



This comes with a significant caveat, though. I remembered after I started that the normal handful of mods I usually play with includes one that allows for the removal of luxury and strategic resources. This mod doesn't normally have a huge effect on gameplay, but it proved pretty significant for this challenge, since it allows the player to clear spots for more wonders. If others want to try the challenge with this mod turned on, you can find it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=970270416. Given that there's plenty of time left this month, I may go back and try again without this mod so that I get a fair test. (The other mods I use are just a few UI changes, so I don't think they'd qualify as conferring an unfair advantage.)

A word about the game settings: I picked Brussels (among others) with the City State selector. Alas, I never even met them before I ran out of time, so I did not get to take advantage of their suzerain bonus (+15% towards wonder construction). For Natural Wonders, I selected Ik-Kil (+50% production towards wonders and districts in adjacent tiles). Unfortunately, I started too far away to take advantage of the Ik-Kil bonus. So, if I do go back and try again without the mod, I'll have a chance to see if I have the patience to keep rerolling until I spawn on top of Ik-Kil, preferably with Brussels as my neighbor . . . .

Thanks for coming up with a fun challenge!