The Vox Populi Challenge No. 1 - Mangas & Music

[Grabbl]

Dear friends of Vox Populi!

Welcome to the first non-test edition of the recently (re-) introduced Vox Populi challenge! From the
Challenge No. 0, you may already know the concept, if not, don't worry, you'll learn everything. Don't hesitate to participate, there will be even a prize waiting for the winner of the 12-challenge-season (see below for more).​

The subsmission date has passed for this challenge, scroll down for the results and don't miss the next challenge!

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-vox-populi-challenge-no-2-polygamy.632143/

​

With the freshly-released 4-20 version of Vox Populi (and its hotfixes, don't miss them!), you have the pleasure to establish the Japanese culture of Manga and Music. Inspire Japan's writers, artists and musicians to create masterpieces and show the dominance of the Japanese culture over all those pitiful civilizations you will find in this small world.

Before we go into details, please make sure you know the rules. Especially, don't share ingame information unspoilered, not even the number of points you achieved. I don't want anyone to be discouraged by your large amount of great works, or to know prior to his game what number he has to beat. In spoilers, you are very welcome to describe your game, of course

Spoiler Game Rules :

1) The Golden Rule: Don't replay, don't reload, send in your first try! It is recommended to set your auto-save frequency to 1 turn for this game. If you have a crash that forces you to replay, write it in the mail afterwards and try replaying as closest as possible to what you did before the crash.

2) Don't exploit any bugs you may find. At the moment, I'm not aware of any exploitable bugs, but just in case, don't overuse obviously bugged mechanics (like the infinite tribute-bug a few patches ago).

3) Don't share ingame-information unspoilered! If you want to share strategies or ingame information in this thread, use spoilers and write "Do not open unless you already sent in your game." on top of it. A separate thread for spoilers would be good, but I don't want to spam the main forum for this pilot.

4) Don't look at spoilers if you didn't finish your game!

5) Don't use cheat tools (Ingame Editor, Info Addict...) and don't open the map in some editor or else.

6) Don't use any additional mods besides full Vox Populi (1 to 6, either EUI or non-EUI) as I'm not sure whether I will be able to open your savegame files if you do.

Now, the details of the challenge:

Possess as many Japanese Great Works of Writing, Art and Music as possible until 1945 AD (turn 365). Japanese Great Works arranged in a themed set count twice (! Museums only count as themed if the big theming bonus is in place (e.g. same era AND same civilization!). If you send a save from a later turn than 365, you will get penalized by one Great Work for each 5 turns after 365 (rounded up). Tiebreaking is happiness.

The challenge can be done on difficulty 4 (Prince) or 7 (Immortal). The goals and settings are the same for both challenges, the map and (possibly) other civilizations are different. You may play (and send in) one or both challenges as you don't gain in-game information for the other challenge.

Submission deadline is Sunday, the 6th of May 2018, 6pm Eastern Time (midnight in Central European Time). You can submit by personal message to me, posting your save in this thread, or sending it to vox-populi-challenge@gmx.net. Don't forget to write the name under which you want to appear in the ranking if sending by e-mail!

Spoiler Game Settings (Attention, Raging Barbarians!) :

• Map: Continents, Small
• Research Agreements, No Tech Trading
• No Ancient Ruins
• No Events
• Raging Barbarians (!)

If something is not clear, read the following spoiler, then ask a question if still unclear:

Spoiler Challenge Specifications :

• Only Japanese Great Works count (that is: created by a japanese Great Person).
• Artifacts and writings from hidden antiquity sites don't count, no matter from what civilization.
• Works and Artifacts from other civilizations can be used to theme buildings and make Japanese artworks in the set count twice.
• Museums count only as themed when the big theming bonus is in place (e.g. both Art is Japanese and from the same era!),
• You may send saves from earlier turns (e. g. if you are about to lose a war and fear that the number of Great Works you have will decrease).
• Your score ( # of Japanese Great Works + # of Japanese Great Works in themed sets) will be reduced by (turn number - 365)/5, rounded up, if you send a save later than turn 365.
• Two (or more) players with the same score will be ranked by happiness (the number on top of your screen).
• This is a soft limit so that in case you forget about the time limit, you are still able to send in your save. You may of course "abuse" it by creating more than one Great Work between turn 366 and 370.

This challenge is the first of a season of 12 challenges. After the submission deadline, I will rank all participants (divided by difficulty level) and you will get 15/13/11/10/9/8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1/1/1/... points for the 1st/2nd/3rd... rank. At the end of the season, your best 10 results will count for the final ranking.

UPDATE: The winners of the season (one for Prince, one for Immortal) will be granted the opportunity to become a part of the game as a Great Person of their choice (Prophets excluded). Thanks to Gazebo for this contribution to the challenge!

Now... download the save for your difficulty, make sure you have Vox Populi version 4-20 and you're ready to go!

Results:



Season Scoreboard:

 

[Tantro]

Great challenge. Sounds like a lot of fun. Going to participate on Immortal but first I want to run a random game with raging barbs on to get a feel for how bad it is.

 

[Stalker0]

Just checking this:

• Only Japanese Great Works count (that is: created by a japanese Great Person).

So Japanese artifacts from regular antiquity sites.....count or don't count?

 

[Grabbl]

Just checking this:

• Only Japanese Great Works count (that is: created by a japanese Great Person).

So Japanese artifacts from regular antiquity sites.....count or don't count?

Don't count.

Edit: Just remembered: They don't count no matter if you dig them up with an archeologist or plant a Great Person improvement on them (I still need to get used to this mechanic).

 

[LegendaryManPig]

Huh, I usually play on king/emperor, but I guess I can try immortal. Anyways, Japan is probably my favorite civ (not that I'm particularly good at them or anything) so hopefully that'll help some.

 

[Tantro]

Wow, nice job on map picking. Feels like a tailored experience. I encourage people to try the challenge.

 

[Grabbl]

Huh, I usually play on king/emperor, but I guess I can try immortal. Anyways, Japan is probably my favorite civ (not that I'm particularly good at them or anything) so hopefully that'll help some.

Hmm, I could have suspected that Japan is your favorite civ

Wow, nice job on map picking. Feels like a tailored experience. I encourage people to try the challenge.

Thanks, I didn't even have to modify it that much, just got lucky



An important update:

On the proposal of Gazebo, there will be a price for the 12-challenge season for each of the two difficulties: The winner of each will get the opportunity to be eternalized as an ingame Great Person of his or her choice (Prophets excluded) So, if I were you... I'd participate! Many thanks to G for this proposal and the opportunity for you to finally become famous by playing Civ!

 

[LegendaryManPig]

Well, Immortal rekt me, but that's kinda what I expected I guess I'll just stick to Prince then!

 

[Rean]

Spoiler Do not open unless you already sent in your game. :

Finished it just now, Prince difficulty. By my count, I ended up with:

• 28 Japanese Great Works of Art, 1 of which wasn't themed
• 26 Japanese Great Works of Music, all themed
• 25 Japanese Great Works of Writing, 3 of which themed

But counting them was a painful process so I might've slipped up somewhere.

The game itself was quite fun. After I gained access to Samurai I was pretty much constantly at war on my own continent, and eventually went over the other continent. Sweden had apparently wiped out Poland long before I arrived but was still miles behind technologically, perfect for farming xp.

I liked this challenge more than the last, as it makes you go to an extreme you wouldn't normally go to in the pursuit of as many works as possible, which is fun to mess around with and gives you a different perspective on aspects of the game you might've otherwise overlooked. It'd be nice if future challenges would try to do similar things (For example, stacking the thousand and one nights bonus of Arabia as high as you can possibly get it).

 

[Grabbl]

That reminds me of something: In case you counted your great works, you're very welcome to let me know the number (via pm, spoiler ....), that makes counting errors less probable

Spoiler Do not open unless you already sent in your game. :

@Rean: I must admit that I'm quite impressed with that number... Let's see what we get at the end

Thanks for the feedback and the proposal, I'll try to find unique tasks. It is also a goal of the challenge to explore a bit what can be done with a certain mechanic and strategy consequently played (for me, it's usually more than I thought). Ultimately, the challenges probably will be a mixture of more general and more specific ones, and I'll try to design them so that in one way or another, you can use unique abilities and components of the civ you're playing.

 

[pineappledan]

A “Dynasty Warriors” one, where you see how high you can stack china’s UA bonus pre-medieval would be interesting

 

[Grabbl]

A “Dynasty Warriors” one, where you see how high you can stack china’s UA bonus pre-medieval would be interesting

Argh! Everyone is spoilering my ideas

Regarding the hotfix: Please download it and play with it! I know that the happiness change is not exactly minimal, but there is no other choice (as even a CTD was hotfixed...).

 

[Tantro]

Well, that was fun.

Spoiler Do not open unless you've done the challenge :

Headcount:

Writers: 18 (3 themes)

Artists: 20 (6 themes)

Music: 21 (5 themes)

Highlights:

First great general! War against Spain is going well. Waited until she improved the horse at Seville before taking it so that I could immediately reinforce my assault with horsemen. Tempo was key to securing an early foothold past the desert around Toledo. AI made the questionable decision to found Toledo after I took Seville. Free culture/science + horseman kill.



Spain Capital goes down on turn 123. Wall in Madrid slowed my push a bit. Instead I captured the southern hill and pillaged everything to strangle her reinforcement capabilities. My prize is three wonders, a Religion, a decent city which I later annexed and a very important marine connection to the eastern sea.



Fast forward to victory over the Celts. Well, I got the Reformation wonder some turns after taking Edinburgh which was paramount to a decent great people count. 3 generals and admirals, 3 writers, artists and musicians totalt bought with faith across the game.



China makes the stupid decision to move the first nuke to Shanghai. That a-bomb would've wrecked my fleet but AI messed this one up. My plan is to take Beijing for her juicy cultural wonders. Desperately hunting theming bonus, that's a first.



Brazil is a c**t hair away from cultural victory, that's 98%! Still plenty of time before 365 and I've yet to capture Beijing. I already have a golden age for ca. 500 extra culture per turn so I declare war and pick a different ideology. China manage to repel passports and voted for a travel ban later. Phew, that was a close one. It kept ticking down to 92% at the end of turn 365.



Final overview of my empire at 1945. Got my wonders and China is now my vassal. The most exciting game I've had in a long time and I've proved to myself I don't need a "legendary" start to have a shot at victory on immortal. I'll play this one out. With 800 hours of VP this will be the first game I'll see to the end.



Resolutions.

Attachement: Save file

 

[void_genesis]

Are we using the 4-20 version before or after the hot fix to deal with the weird mid-game happiness cliff?

 

[Grabbl]

Are we using the 4-20 version before or after the hot fix to deal with the weird mid-game happiness cliff?

Always with all available hotfixes. It's not optimal with the current one (4-20-5) because it changes happiness quite drastically, but there is no other option.

Short: With the hotfix.

 

[Diverman]

Challenge accepted

Spoiler Do not open unless etc, etc... :

The map settings and the civs (randomly chosen?) were interesting, it was a fun game. I chose Prince Difficulty to wonderwhore peacefully, with some wars to get GGs and GAs. I thought I did well, but I realize I should have been way more aggressive to get all the benefits of the Japanese UA. Maybe I'll retry the challenge in Emperor difficulty if I have the time.

Great Works count :
Writing : 12 + 2 themed = 14
Art : 20 + 19 themed = 39
Music : 17 + 15 themed = 32
Total = 85 points

 

[nemoens]

Okay, this looks great. I'm going to give it a try on Immortal and probably regret it, I'm usually playing on Emperor but think I might find Prince too easy.

For a first attempt on Immortal, I'll probably be happy to not have been conquered by 1945...

Edit: Okay, got conquered by 1100 AD. Perhaps Immortal is not for me.

 

[Grabbl]

Okay, this looks great. I'm going to give it a try on Immortal and probably regret it, I'm usually playing on Emperor but think I might find Prince too easy.

For a first attempt on Immortal, I'll probably be happy to not have been conquered by 1945...

Edit: Okay, got conquered by 1100 AD. Perhaps Immortal is not for me.

Spoiler Don't open if you still want to play the challenge on immortal difficulty. :

I have to admit that this Immortal game also is not a particularly easy one, judging from my knowledge of circumstances

Also, I'd like to remind everyone that you can also submit saves earlier than 1945 (may make sense in case you get conquered) - 1100 is a lot earlier of course, and you'll probably have no chance of a very good rank, but at the moment the participants for Immortal are quite... singular. So, if you feel like it, I accept saves from any stage of the game before 1945 (and afterwards too, actually, just with the penalty described in the first post).

 

[nemoens]

I'm going to give it another go on Immortal, but think it may have a similar result... I think a second attempt from scratch is strictly against the rules but I think I'm unlikely to trouble the leaderboard anyway and want to participate.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

Next time, use Strategic Balance in the settings. It's boring to fight with spearmens only early-game