AZ-05: Dan Quayle Challenge

[azaris]

For those who don't know, Dan Quayle was vice president during the George Bush administration and later failed in his bid to become the Republican candidate for 2000. He is most famous for his jumbled phrases and awkward comments made to the media. He has become such a cult figure that gaffes not actually made by him have been attributed to him. He is also famous for being the lowest leadership rank attainable in several incarnations of Civilization, usually reserved for players who suffer conquest losses at low difficulty levels.

But truth be told, Dan Quayle had a pretty successful political career. Certainly he is not the worst political leader in the history of the world. To undo this injustice, we honor a SG to Mr.Quayle and his unforgettable verbal inacrobacy. We play as Dan Quayle of the Americans. Our goal: win the game with the lowest score possible and obtain the leadership abilities of Dan Quayle!

Version: Beyond the Sword 3.02
Mods: NO
Leader: Roosevelt (but really Dan Quayle) (Americans)
Difficulty: Monarch (no, we're not going the easy way and playing Settler)
Map: Pangaea
Size: Standard
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Opposition: 6 random AIs

Variant rules:

• Dan Quayle believes that negotiations are the key to diplomacy. We can never declare war on anyone.
• Must win game with rank of Dan Quayle (or lowest rank attainable).

Playing as Dan Quayle entails we emulate our idol. That means reports and discussion should contain amusing Quayle-like verbal blunders. Bonus points for topical references to actual quotes by Dan Quayle. This is a humorous SG, so serious micromanagers might want to look elsewhere. There probably also won't be much warmongering, diplomacy will be essential. Turnsets are 20/15 turns in peacetime and 10 turns if, heaven forbid, someone should invade us.

24 hours got it, 48 hours to play.

Roster:

azaris
tycoonist
shyuhe
NoChildren

And remember:

"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." --Dan Quayle

He was talking about us!

 

[pawelo]

This one promises great fun

However, it's a little bit above my difficulty level and I would be a burden to your roster. Lurker's subscribe for me

Hey, how about a more recent variant : the George W. "You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war President. No President wants to be a war President, but I am one." * Bush game ? Something like "Always War" variant, but warring with only one foreign Civ at any given time ? And try to get the diplo victory


* Des Moines, Oct. 26, 2006

 

[Killroyan]

Lurkers comment:

Environmentalism is a must I guess??

 

[sunrise089]

This seems like a really tough game. Is it even possible to win the game and have the lowest score?

 

[azaris]

Good question - let's find out. I know it's possible to win and score only a 3000-4000 points on the ranking, that's Ethelred the Unready.

 

[LlamaCat]

I don't think you can win the game and get the Dan Quayle rank. But what I really want to say is: inacrobacy? Is this a word Dan invented himself once?
I find it amusing that someone in Finland is setting up this kind of game

 

[azaris]

Less spam, more signups, please.

 

[Sealot]

Lurker's comment:

You should try to check from the XML file which is the highest score that you get Dan Quayle rank with each difficulty level.. If it's even possible to check that. Near achieving the choosen victory condition you could starve/lose cities and such to make your score lower and under the limit. Good luck!

 

[azaris]

The scoring is explained here. To obtain the rank of Dan Quayle one needs to have less than 0.3 times iMaxScore. The difficulty modifier for Monarch is 1.4 and iMaxScore for a late win on a standard map is probably something like 15,000 points, so we would need a score of less than 3,200 points.

As Sealot correctly points out, sandbagging by giving away/starving cities in the end is necessary. There are really only three ways to accomplish the task at hand:

1. Cultural victory w/minimal wonders and cities (might not be possible due to points for wonders).
2. Diplomatic victory with exactly the right circumstances (needs a lot of luck).
3. Backdoor conquest where we kill off everyone except one city and then wait for thousands of years until we grab a conquest victory on the last turn.

Option 3. is boring to say the least so I threw in a rule that makes that harder. In one test game I managed something like 4,000 points in the final score (cultural victory).

 

[tycoonist]

count me in! through many days of noble and lower (personal dark ages) i have attained many miserable scores, however i have never hit Dan Quayle on prince or higher. anyway, sounds fun.

going cultural on new monarch is a big ask considering that we couldn't even take out some of the opposition thanks to the war rule. diplomacy is the one i favour and i would like to try out some of the new un/apolistic stuff as well.

 

[azaris]

Welcome, tycoonist. The rules are still open to discussion, but we don't want it too easy.

 

[shyuhe]

sign me up as well. I'm going to have to start digging up old Quayle quotes. Too bad he didn't claim to have invented the internet.

 

[azaris]

Right, we have one vote for diplomatic victory. AP or UN? Getting to Mass Media is a lot of tech which counts towards our final score. The AP comes much sooner, but then we need to aim at Theology from the start.

I think founding and spreading religions is required anyway to keep the furriners happy. One idea I had about an AP victory is that it can be done with two religions. One which you use to build the AP, and another one which you spread. Ideally the second religion becomes widespread while the first one we only spread internally.

Americans do not start with Mysticism so we won't found Hinduism or Buddhism. Build Henge, use the prophet to lightbulb Theology, rush AP? Then grab Philosophy and maybe Code of Laws from the Oracle? Or we could hand pick the AIs to exclude Mysticism civs to give us a fairer start?

I'd like to establish what our plan is before I roll a start.

EDIT: About the difficulty; I've found BtS on Prince is not at all challenging once you adjust to the changes. Therefore this series now moves up a notch to Monarch. Even if we get hammered it's a win-win situation, we get the leadership abilities of Dan Quayle* in the end.

*ObFact: Did you know the internal name for the final ranking table is called DanQuayleScreen?

 

[AlessioCerci]

Lurkers comment: I've found that AP diplo wins tend to be quite high scoring because of the early finish date.

 

[shyuhe]

ideally, a time score will result in the lowest possible score. The faster we finish, the higher the score will become...

 

[Bianezzi]

It is possible to win and get a Quayle, I did it quite a few times.

 

[NoChildren]

are you looking for mor players still?
in that case count me in.

 

[azaris]

Right, now we have a roster.

Time victory entails we have the highest score at the moment. I doubt that's possible while achieving Dan Quayle. We're going to be far behind even the most backward AI civs.

The point in the AP victory is that it can be delayed - it only obsoletes when we learn Mass Media.

 

[Xyqtt]

getting Dan Quayle is doable. A freind of mine only won trough late game cultural victories whit 3 cities. Building a lot of wondrs. And always got don Quayle as leader ranking. On noble tough

 

[azaris]

Our hero:



Our start:



Thanks to that lake we could settle in place and get decent production from those hills. Lack of health resources is worrying, so don't chop those forests whatever happens until we can rectify the situation.

I jury-rigged our opposition so that none of them start with Mysticism. I'll wait for comments before starting. Are we going religion grabbing off the bat or what?