American Challenge

[bazooka82]

In all my RFC games, you never see a super powerful America. The strongest I ever seen was to the rockies. So I propose a challenge:

1. Achieve Manifest Destiny by 1861 AD (Make America from sea to shining sea)
-Can only be in historic American territory (yes, no cheating in mexico)

2. Defeat Mexico (aka whoever is controlling Aztec spawn area)

3. Become leader of United Nations at least once. (Apscolic Palace doesn't count)

4. Control Alaska by 1951 AD

5. Have at least 3 overseas colonies

6. No European colonies in Caribbean or Central America (Canada is fair game)

7. Create Atlantic-Pacific Canal by 1914 AD

Edit: Challenges added:

8. Build following wonders:
Pentagon
Statue of Liberty
UN
Hollywood
Graceland
Internet
Three Gorges Dam (or Hoover dam for Americans)
Manhattan Project

9. Complete Apollo Program first.

10. Build small wonders:
Mount Rushmore by 1925
Stock Exchange by 1929

11. Prevent spread of police state (only one civ may have police state)

12. Prevent spread of state property (no more than 2 civs in asia, no more than 2 in europe, and 0 everywhere else (russia is included in the 2 civs both europe AND asia))

13.Adopt and Maintain Universal Suffrage, Emancipation, Free Speech, Free Religion, and Free Market by 1865; never switch back. Exceptions are Free Speech and Free Market. You are allowed to switch to Nationhood and Enviromentalism.

14. Control Babylon (Iraq) spawn area by 2000 AD

15. Prevent Nuclear War (no more than 5 nukes may detonate ingame)

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Um, I'm not boasting of my prowess, but it's actually quite simple if you don't go for the UHV and count conquests as colonies). I've probably done it once or twice already playing spaceship games.

 

[Metal Alloy Man]

You guys should try my Maya challenge if you want a real challenge.

 

[Mowque]

What USA are you playing? America always becomes super strong, with West Coast fully colonized, and well delveloped. Rarely do they war with Europe but they often take Number 1 score in a 'clean' game (One where i don't screw them up on purpose)

 

[onedreamer]

Um, I'm not boasting of my prowess, but it's actually quite simple if you don't go for the UHV and count conquests as colonies). I've probably done it once or twice already playing spaceship games.

uh ? I've done all that while going for the UHV. Except maybe the first condition, since I don't understand what it is.

 

[kbk]

America is either really strong (little N. American competition), or really weak and often a vassal to someone. It all depends on if they are blocked in. In the games where I've let the game autoplay until America spawned, I've almost never had problems making them really powerful (even on emperor).

You could add a few more things:
Apollo Program
Manhattan Project
Internet

And a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head that were American achievements.

 

[thadian]

how about conquer Baghdad? (no pun intended)

 

[bazooka82]

America is either really strong (little N. American competition), or really weak and often a vassal to someone. It all depends on if they are blocked in. In the games where I've let the game autoplay until America spawned, I've almost never had problems making them really powerful (even on emperor).

You could add a few more things:
Apollo Program
Manhattan Project
Internet

And a few other things that I can't think of off the top of my head that were American achievements.

Should I add every american wonder?
Also, should i have a pacify the middle east objective (thadian in mind) (make everyone in middle east live in peace)

 

[KnightoftheStar]

Should I add every american wonder?
Also, should i have a pacify the middle east objective (thadian in mind) (make everyone in middle east live in peace)

That is MUCH easier to do in Civ than in real life, usually there is one, maybe two civs in the MidEast when America is on the ascendancy or its a smattering of independent cities, not to mention in Civ if it comes down to making a mess no one really objects to enforcing the peace of the grave.

 

[kbk]

not to mention in Civ if it comes down to making a mess no one really objects to enforcing the peace of the grave.

Nor do you ever see much in the way of retaliatory nuclear strikes.

Here's what you'd need to do to make this challenging. Build the following wonders:

Pentagon
Statue of Liberty
UN
Hollywood
Graceland
Internet
Three Gorges Dam (or Hoover dam for Americans)

Small wonders by a certain date:
Mount Rushmore by 1925
Stock Exchange by 1929
Apollo Program by 1969
Manhattan Project by 1944

Adopt and Maintain Universal Suffrage, Emancipation, Free Speech, Free Religion, and Free Market by 1865; never switch back.

No European cities in N. America or the Caribbean (Cities or Vassals) in 1900.
Have contiguous cultural boundaries for the lower 48 states and settle Alaska and Hawaii, by 1950

Vassalize or occupy Japan and Berlin by 1945
Vassalize or occupy Khmer by 1972.
Vassalize or occupy Iraq by 2000.

 

[bazooka82]

Ok, I'm gonna add some of your suggestions, but i object to some others:
Free Market: I usually switch to enviromentalism as soon as i get medicine, but I'll change it to free market OR enviromentalism.

Vassalizing or occupying Berlin: Naw, I like prevent spread of police state.
Vassalize of occupy Khmer: Just prevent the spread of State Property in Asia (no more than 2 asian civs can have it (including Russia)

Manhattan Project: Just build it before 1945.
Apollo Program: Be the first to build one.

 

[thadian]

i agree that you really have to mess america up to hurt them but here is another thing thats fun.

Playing as ANY NON AMERICA country (preferably the aztec, so you can make them tough enough to challenge you later), play for 50 turns, use worldbuilder to export the save as a scenario and load yourself as america - with an angry britan, angry france, angry japan and strong angry monty.

 

[kbk]

Ok, I'm gonna add some of your suggestions, but i object to some others:
Free Market: I usually switch to enviromentalism as soon as i get medicine, but I'll change it to free market OR enviromentalism.

Vassalizing or occupying Berlin: Naw, I like prevent spread of police state.
Vassalize of occupy Khmer: Just prevent the spread of State Property in Asia (no more than 2 asian civs can have it (including Russia)

Manhattan Project: Just build it before 1945.
Apollo Program: Be the first to build one.

The problem with preventing the spread of police state or communism, is there isn't really a way to do it. Besides, the US didn't really prevent the spread of Police State, instead we encouraged it to prevent communism, and later to pit allies against enemies or provide economic opportunities (hello, China). Instead, I simply proposed you reenact and win the major conflicts of the 20th and 21st century.

America is the picture of Free Market. Using it and suffering the Depressions is part of the challenge. If you think we have an environmentalist economic policy, check again.

 

[thadian]

i agree with KBK.

One way to ensure you are taking on the "american challenges" is to settle/conquer a city in Khmer, settle hawaii, and alaska. obtain control (by any means) of the city i have seen called "Baghdad" and south africa. All the while, no country should HATE your guts, you should have to maintain a +4 or better civ relations with everyone.

I think that Baghdad, Vietnam, South Africa, Hawaii and Alaska is good enough for me.

 

[bazooka82]

South Africa? FYI thats British.

BtW, what are we doing right now? Making CO2 ommision crap and fuel mileage stuff. If you think that isn't enviromentalism, recheck your dictionary.

Anyway, I said there could be 1 asian communist civ.

I think we are hated in some parts of the world (hello, president of Iran), like african and middle eastern countries.

 

[thadian]

we are hated yes, but - we use enough political tact to remain tolerable, and the only nations who hate us are ones that will never be able to do much anyway.

I didn't know SA was british, thanks for the info

BTW, take a read at some of our orwellian-worded laws. Cleaner Skies act? give me a break. ANWR drilling? Oh, and the Co2 cap thing is worthless, its actually cheaper to pay the fine than to abide by the law. It will take more than an environmental president to change my mind - it will take a serious change of policy that matters.
(nuclear is clean? give me a break, what am i - stupid? here, lets just bury it in a dormant volcano, how is that for environmentalism?)

I like the one you added about no nukes!

one asian communist civ.... hmm. I think there is a way to implement the "vietnam" war and i think you have the right idea, better than my idea of conquer parts of Khmer. How do you do that though, i mean i have a hard time trying to get civ's to change civics - i just dont see it as something plausable to do.

should the manifest destiny include hawaii? i thought about it, and i think Alaska would cause too much instability.

I was also thinking one last effort to remain in free market and not environmentalism. Look at the reality of america - we suffer a depression every 5 years. Now, we have funny number-rigging systems in place to pretend otherwise. we rigged the unemployment system to count less than 30% of the jobless as unemployed and by "bringing in more wal-marts and burger kings" we are "replacing the high paying factory jobs lost". We are in free market, look at NAFTA, CAFTA and other international trade policies we have. For or against, i wont argue that, but i think us having those policies (correct me if i am wrong but i think we authored those policies ourselves) makes us a free market.

I still like "prevent the spread of police state/communism" but how do we do it? its not like there is a function to make a civ agree not to use a certain civic, so i thought of a few things to make this more viable.

1: When a civ takes one of these civics (how long a wait before you can direct their change?) You have 5 turns beyond that to convince them to change - the other way is to use war and you can fight until they agree to change civics as part of the peace deal.
Especially when corporations enter the game, it is almost a guarentee they will all use those civics - but you CAN tell the player to not allow those civics for more than X turns.

2: United Nations can force everyone out of those civics rather rudely, but is that against the integrity of your challenge?

Should america be the leader of the UN at least one time? The more i see this, the funner it looks, especially now that you put that in about the nukes. thats a toughie, i might have to send in some inspectors via espionage and foil anyones plans to build them as best as i can.

Keep up the good work, i will likely take this challenge once i feel a little more secure about these things i mention. I am not an emperor level player, so i don't expect perfection, but it sounds fun - it will be my third time playing them!

 

[kbk]

1) Other nations civics
I think my problem with forcing a civilization to switch back from another civic is there is no real mechanism to check for it, or to report it when it happens. That and once again, although the US claims to spread Democracy, we have embraced a large number of dictatorships to support our goals. The Shah of Iran, Hussein in Iraq in the 80s and Afghanistan to throw out the Soviets are just a few.

As far as reporting your own civics, that's admittedly hard to demonstrate, but I figure we can take that on people's word. Having to check every civilization every turn to see what their civics are is just too much effort and nearly impossible to report. Never mind what happens when you don't have contact with a civ in question.

2) Free Market vs Environmentalism
As far as environmentalism, CO2 standards are a far cry. We've rejected Kyoto and any real international effort to contain pollution. We may be moving in a better direction now, but I doubt it. Besides, occupy those foreign areas and suffering Depressions is part of the challenge to keep yourself stable.

I picture environmentalism as having VERY strong checks on the market to prevent pollution or other effects. The US economy is a far cry from that, and is besides very famous for the free market system.

3) Africa
Also, the US has nothing to do with South Africa. That's the Brits. Our only African endeavor is/was Liberia, but that's kind of minor. If you want to ask for a city in Africa that's fine, but I think its too minor to matter.

4) Manifest Destiny
Alaska and Hawaii are musts. They are states, you have to do it. You don't have to settle Mexico or Canada, but you do have to keep the Europeans out. This is the Monroe Doctrine.

5) Nuclear Wars
I almost never see the AI do this anyways, to me its just not a challenge. Instead, I'd like to see nuclear proliferation: Build 10 ICBMs or something.

 

[blizzrd]

I didn't know SA was british, thanks for the info

That's quite an over-simplification actually. The Boers (Dutch origins) settled the area well before the British showed up.

 

[thadian]

should America have a condition about keeping the euro-economy healthy? Its kind of annoying when all the other worthy countries who arent in the dark ages collapse. Should there be a condition about maintaining global economy instead of civics?

Edit: Or spread the religion of corporations throughout the world? what corporations are american?


Too bad there arent:

Zulu
Native Americans


I think they would make the game real challenging, especially on the american continent, especially with my proposals about "more interactive conditions". the americans would have a manifest destiny goal, the natives would have a "no USA west of the mississippi", and both america and japan could compete for hawaii. usa and all the middle east could compete for the city (depending on who owns it) that could be called Babylon, Babyl, Babel, Babil, Baghdat, Baghdad.

 

[kbk]

should America have a condition about keeping the euro-economy healthy? Its kind of annoying when all the other worthy countries who arent in the dark ages collapse. Should there be a condition about maintaining global economy instead of civics?

Edit: Or spread the religion of corporations throughout the world? what corporations are american?

The corporations in the game are too fictitious to really give them a country. A corporations goal is... possible, but I've always disliked them as part of the game. Plus its hard to see how much they spread. You could say found X corporations though.

Spread of religion I think is meaningless to the American goals. Free Religion is the motto after all.

Again, Euro-economy? why? It's hard to keep track of, and why is this an American goal? Doesn't make sense to me.

Challenge goals should be achievable Civ possibilities within the structure of the game. That means technology, wonders, and territories. I submit that if you want to do an American challenge, start mine. The rest of you have such esoteric ideas that just don't fit within the structure of the game concepts.