[BNW] Any Civ 5 Fans Interested In My Little Competition?

[KingVercingetorix]

Replayed the part from nc onwards; got it down to 162. I might have been able to get it down to sub 160 if I built globe in my expo instead of half building the forbidden palace... but i think im done.

btw im pretty sure this map was slightly edited; just occured to me while playing that sri pada is not allowed to spawn on mainland of Pangaea maps. I think grand mesa was originally there and jungle grassland tile housed mount kili?

Excellent work there. Is this one of your fastest culture wins or have you done better?

I didn't know about Sri Pada not spawning on land. Now you mention it you got me thinking, I've only ever seen it previously on water tiles. How does one go about editing maps? Is there a program in the Steam Workshop or one I can find on the internet? Seems like it could be fun making my own map.

I know nothing of the history of this map. I simply found a video on YouTube where someone wins a science game on it. I don't believe they rolled the map themself. It was a fun map however and I've personally never played a stronger Spain map than this.

 

[fimbul]

Its not my fastest culture win but going faster would mean sacred sites.

IGE allows you to edit maps. TBH i dont think it is the strongest spain map - i like it when mount kili is around. Lakes map script is probably the best one for spain.

 

[beetle]

I really enjoyed this map, but it still took me 300+ turns for a CV.

AIs really hate when their neighbour has more than 1.5 * [average number of cities], it's one of the strongest diplo debuffs in the game.

This is true.

So in the beginning when AIs all have 2 cities and you settle 4 or 5 quickly, your neighbours will hate your guts.

I remember @Acken posting the code that showed that 4 cities will never trigger the hostility. So much fun to have a deity map where you can stand up three expos so early!

 

[Acken]

Yes there is a min threshold before it applies by I cannot remember if it is X > 4 or X >= 4.

There are also rules for proximity and military. If you are far from someone it doesnt apply etc...

Edit:
Found the relevant code part (it starts at 4):

Spoiler :

bool CvDiplomacyAI::IsPlayerRecklessExpander(PlayerTypes ePlayer)
{
    // If the player is too far away from us, we don't care
    if(GetPlayer()->GetProximityToPlayer(ePlayer) < PLAYER_PROXIMITY_CLOSE)
        return false;

    // If the player has too few cities, don't worry about it
    int iNumCities = GET_PLAYER(ePlayer).getNumCities();
    if(iNumCities < 4)
        return false;

    double fAverageNumCities = 0;
    int iNumPlayers = 0;

    // Find out what the average is (minus the player we're looking at)
    PlayerTypes eLoopPlayer;
    CvPlayer* pPlayer;
    for(int iPlayerLoop = 0; iPlayerLoop < MAX_MAJOR_CIVS; iPlayerLoop++)
    {
        eLoopPlayer = (PlayerTypes) iPlayerLoop;
        pPlayer = &GET_PLAYER(eLoopPlayer);

        // Not alive
        if(!pPlayer->isAlive())
            continue;

        // Not the guy we're looking at
        if(eLoopPlayer == ePlayer)
            continue;

        iNumPlayers++;
        fAverageNumCities += pPlayer->getNumCities();
    }

    // Not sure how this would happen, but we'll be safe anyways since we'll be dividing by this value
    if(iNumPlayers == 0)
    {
        CvAssertMsg(false, "0 players to evaluate when trying to identify if someone is a reckless expander. Not sure how this would happen without the game being over yet.");
        return false;
    }

    fAverageNumCities /= iNumPlayers;

    // Must have way more cities than the average player in the game
    if(iNumCities < fAverageNumCities * 1.5)
        return false;

    // If this guy's military is as big as ours, then it probably means he's just stronger than us
    if(GetPlayerMilitaryStrengthComparedToUs(ePlayer) >= STRENGTH_AVERAGE)
        return false;

    return true;

}

 

[Grendeldef]

One has to restart playing at some point but while crawling through this it was quickly obvious, again, that the game isn't suppose to beat or even give a serious opposition but to annoy oneself - still bloody good addictive fun.

As I don't do Tradition starts I went for 6 cities Liberty pre-NC and 7th ~150 to act as stepping stone to invade Siam. I would've started with 7 or 8 if the other lazy leaders had bothered to expand even a bit.
Settled on site as the start was way too good a place to start wandering around looking for even better one. 2nd city by Sri Pada and 3rd near GBR. Early war with Ahmad to recruit few of his workers but peace without taking cities which is a novelty.

The 1st 100 turns were sort of ok, got few wonders which seemed appropriate for a Cult VC which was the great unknown to me even when I actively played but when India & Siam surpassed me in tech I switched the course which wasn't that convenient without much of units nevermind promotions. Anyway taking most of India wasn't too bad though GW slowed things down and the terrain in general was crappy. By the time I took Delhi Ramalamasimsalabim had taken taken lead in all things that matter so he had to go next - for good. Really unsuitable location of Sukhotai reminded me of GSs so I took a detour and bulbed for arties and wiped him off. Meanwhile William backstabbed & DoWed and apart from Morocco & Byzantium I got denounced - not that itself but I had no defending units on my borders so I couldn't dig the nearby sites.

Getting the artifacts took forever and even then they were for the 1st 30 turns all ancient so I couldn't fill in the Louvre. The same issue was with the works of art - only freakin' medieval so I had to wait for capping the Siam's main cities to fill even Hermitage. Other than that the main 'problem' was the distance from my cities to India so my GMs took ages to get there. Sure, I could've sold a city to him but that just doesn't belong to practises I'm willing to do - I like my cities besides in general I'm in civ building business not trying to beat a crappy AI. So after few minor obstacles a CV @192 while I still had 2 GMs swimming to India.

Full Liberty, the some Aesthetics, Tradition opener, left side of Patronage, Exploration opener, Autocracy opened somewhere @145, then Aesthetics filled, Tradition filled and then rest to Autocracy while waiting the win. I decided to stay away from Piety & Honor just to do things a little differently than usual.

In the end my cities were 26,22,28,18,24,16 & 6 and two puppets in their teens, 900bpt, 590cpt & 140fpt with 1700 left over - next GM was to be 2500f and in the last few turns I still bought 2 inquisitors just to dodge few foreign prophets. The main issue with population was that 3 of my cities waited almost 100 turns for the Crabs to be available for the love of the King and the fact that I couldn't fit the Aqueducts nicely on my build queues in a timely manner.


The map has its virtues but in general I can't stand maps like these - Venice didn't have a chance with its effectively inland location, the poles are blocked from circumventing and the narrow land masses in the middle cut the in half - I only met Siam & Austria @80 or so and by the time WC started Morocco had met only me & India. Also I had tons of moving issues due to CSs building tons of units.

In general I think Tradition is far superior on this challenge but I doubt the difference is anywhere near ~30 turns I just had a change of heart way too late and I just have no clue nor the will how to optimize CV besides in the later game I was more keen on killing stuff than actually winning.

Thx for the sharing anyway - a huge motivational boost to see how others are playing the same maps; as always.

 

[beetle]

Full Liberty, the some Aesthetics, Tradition opener, left side of Patronage, Exploration opener, Autocracy opened somewhere @145, then Aesthetics filled, Tradition filled and then rest to Autocracy while waiting the win. I decided to stay away from Piety & Honor just to do things a little differently than usual.

Thanks, your post inspired me to play this map a few more times. I was able to get an 8 city peaceful CV at around T300, which is absolutely fine for me. I also tried Liberty/Piety with 8 cities a couple times, but Gandhi would launch before I could pull that off. I will probably come back to this for a 3-city HCA run, which I think should be pretty straightforward.

 

[Grendeldef]

For one this is a good and/or easy map to train & fiddle with Liberty if one so wishes as the guaranteed religion can be used to overcome the early happiness issues.

Also, there were at least 4 good city spots left unsettled because I didn't want to piss others off anymore as they they really didn't want to expand at all. Hard to come by with a logical reason to expand anymore for a CV but as an experiment, sure why not. After a reasonable forgetting period I might replay the to something different.