Challenge #4 - The Mini-Me Challenge

[DaviddesJ]

I think at some level the strategies that work can be adapted to a more "regular" game.

OK. I don't.

For example, let's suppose that in this challenge someone wins using an aggressive military razing strategy to accumulate gold and that the closest peaceful game has only 1/3 as much gold. That, to me, would indicate that using your military to finance the economy is a really strong strategy.

I wouldn't agree. I think that if you're playing at low difficulty levels, long beyond the time at which you could just conquer the world, the best methods to achieve certain artificial goals really have nothing at all to do with how you would play a real game, against serious opponents, fighting just to win.

 

[carl corey]

You might play them in an extreme way, but I think at some level the strategies that work can be adapted to a more "regular" game.

I agree with that.

LandGrab proved that in Warlords you can expand really fast and use your cities to build research and it gives you a viable alternative to cottages and specialists. Or maybe alternative is the wrong word. More like a good complement.

Lust for Gold could very well play like a cultural victory. Use diplomacy to make everyone peaceful while you only concern yourself with religion. Then use the money from the shrines to rush buy cathedrals/culture wonders.

Let's Get Cultural was pretty much the next step from Lust for Gold.

Mini-Me was about pushing the tech advantage to extreme to make war while you have the better unit. A clear road for conquest, despite the low difficulty level.

The money one could be one that lets you accumulate gold for later use. Maybe get the Kremlin and rush buy a military for the "end of the world", or rush buy cathedrals for culture if you go the religious way, or beeline for the UN and rush buy it while setting yourself up for being elected for a diplomatic victory. Or labs and the space elevator for the Space Race. Instead of planning for an early game win this is planning for a late game surge to get ahead in whatever race you're in. Peace only takes some of the bite from it, while also making diplomacy less important, and does the same to balancing your research - to get a decent amount of military units if peaceful, or a huge amount of advanced units if attacking.

I'm back to "war and peace" now. I'm really not afraid of Raze-all-cities, since it will be Prince, not Warlord. If you can do it, good for you, but not everybody can.
Also, as has been explained, merchant trade mission may even be less important than settling a great merchant. So either no GMs at all, or everything is allowed. I'm starting to lean toward anything is allowed. (more "real game" again)

 

[Raiser]

I agree with everybody. You are all correct.


Yes, setting an unusual 'target' is inherently artificial.

Yes, you can still learn something from them about Civ strategies.

Yes, it doesn't always apply to a 'real' multiplayer game situations.

Yes, but they are still fun for their own sake.

If the idea is to play challenges that are varied then some of them should be 'Peace only' games, but it should be a minority of the challenges as it is an extreme situation. In the same way that setting the game with an Arid climate, for a bit of variation, should make up a minority of the total challenges.


To summarise:
'Peace Only' would make different players attempts to complete the challenge a more comparable thing, because the random vagaries of the different AI's, as they struggle to achieve the standard victory conditions, would be removed.

'Peace Only' would allow players to focus all their efforts on achieving the goal, rather than test their skill at defeating/controlling the enemy while achieving the goal.


'Allowing the AI's to be combatative' would make this challenge more comparable to a real game and therefore make any lessons learned more valuable.

'Allowing the AI's to be combatative' would give the player more options as to how to achieve the goal.

Two all. So let's call it a draw.


That leaves us with the decider. What are you in the mood for?

- A more focused and artificial game with Peaceful AI's?
- Or a more open and random game with Combatative AI's?

Both are fun. Both are interesting.



---

 

[carl corey]

If we end up with 2-2, and I hope not since we still have time until Friday, I'll switch to Peace Only. No need to come up with artificial rules on how to make the decision. And I just remembered I proposed some weird challenges before, that might not resemble "normal" games. So yeah, I agree that not all challenges have to be "normal".

Let's see where this takes us. And if we do end up with Peace Only, play it out and see it's too simple, etc, we can keep it in mind for future games. It's true that there will still be much to play for, even without worrying about war, we'll see then just how much.

One more thing about map type: in one game I tried a trade mission to another continent and it was less than one on my own! I think city size influences more than distance. So continents or pangaea are both ok from this point of view.

Raiser, how do different eras starts play? I've never tried one. Does everyone get all the techs from the previous eras? I've just thought that we might actually play one to test late-game concepts without having to resort to artificial rules in order to make the game faster. I'll give it a try one day before proposing it.

 

[scherbchen]

why can´t this be a regular board where these matters are decided through insults and namecalling?

you guys need to play more mmorpgs and shooters!

 

[carl corey]

schrebchen, come on, give us your opinion on this!

 

[Raiser]

why can´t this be a regular board where these matters are decided through insults and namecalling?

you guys need to play more mmorpgs and shooters!

OMGawd I hedhs0t j00 U HaxX0r!!! U Sux!!! I Rox!!!


Happy now.


---

 

[carl corey]

My eyes. >.<

 

[scherbchen]

now that&#180;s more like it

i never played a no-war game before, so i couldn&#180;t really say either way. gonna try one out tonight...

 

[Raiser]

Raiser, how do different eras starts play? I've never tried one. Does everyone get all the techs from the previous eras? I've just thought that we might actually play one to test late-game concepts without having to resort to artificial rules in order to make the game faster. I'll give it a try one day before proposing it.

Not a fan of non-ancient era starts myself.

With a medieval era start, for example, the players get 2 settlers, 2 archers, 1 worker, 1 explorer and all the techs up to CoL/Drama/Compass.

You end up with a dull start, as the next tech costs 1000-ish research. Even with 6 units and a few upscale civics it still takes many, many turns to get your first new tech, as Cottages still take 70 turns to grow to a Town.

Also I never feel like I can build a coherent strategy when I start with a load of techs but a low production and commerce base.

And the early religions are a bit of a lottery based on the order that nations found there 1st and 2nd cities. If you throw down your settlers quickly you can usually get given two early religions and a couple of free missionaries. If you scout about for good locations you end up with nothing on the religion front.


---

One more thing about map type: in one game I tried a trade mission to another continent and it was less than one on my own! I think city size influences more than distance. So continents or pangaea are both ok from this point of view.

Agreed.

The gold reward is a multiple of population of the city visited and distance from that city to your capital. I've always sent my GM's across the sea to find a large AI capital. Never tried experimenting with the distance. It could be a lesser factor.


---

Yet one more thing. For a total wealth challenge maybe we should have Prince diff if we go with Peaceful AI's, but Noble diff if we go with Combatative AI's. Just to keep it inclusive of broader range of players.


---

 

[carl corey]

Ouch, the non-ancient starts don't seem much fun indeed. I'll definitely try one though, but I don't think it will turn into a challenge proposal.

Understood about Peaceful vs Combat difficulty. Out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea what level the "usual suspects" play on? I'm winning easily on Prince but haven't had the time to jump to Monarch - said the same thing a couple of month ago. Noble/Prince seem good difficulties for these challenges though as Raiser already said, since we're trying new things. Warlord and lower seem too unchallenging, while Monarch would mean we'd try more to survive than meet the challenge.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea what level the "usual suspects" play on?

I'm not sure if I count as a usual suspect, since I haven't actually played one of these challenges yet, but ...

I play on Prince. In Classic, I win easily on Prince. In Warlords, I always win but it's often a close game until fairly late. I'm not sure why the difference.

I've played on Monarch 3 times, all 3 in Warlords. First was a victory, second was about 20 turns away from a sure win when the game just got so slow and crash prone that I abandoned it, third I quit too early to say where it would have gone because I decided that I find Monarch really annoying.

 

[Raiser]

patagonia, PeteJ, Raiser play Civ IV on Monarch.

parachute4u, pigswill, mice, cabert play Civ IV on Prince.

Nobody gives Civ IV as Noble.

This is according to the user profile info. A lot of people have left it blank.


I find both Prince and Monarch feel very similar. But I think the majority of the challenges should be on Noble, as the real opponents are each other. Raising of the diff setting just makes it more of a chore and gives less time for replays.

That said, I think, Warlord diff on the Mini-Me challenge was a mistake.


---

 

[carl corey]

Well, it was definitely different to go all out with the wars. I've almost always moved up after winning a game or two at a certain level, except for Prince, so I never got to the part where you mount an army and then procede to wipe out everybody. Everything was more fought from my part. Good to relax from time to time.

And thanks for taking the time to look in the user profiles.

 

[patagonia]

The gold reward is a multiple of population of the city visited and distance from that city to your capital. I've always sent my GM's across the sea to find a large AI capital. Never tried experimenting with the distance. It could be a lesser factor.

I'm sure I remember reading on here that trade missions reach a threshhold above which distance becomes a less important factor than city size. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it seems that as long as you're travelling as far as another civ's capital, you pretty much max-out the distance contribution to the money generated (unless you started very close to them).

Great plains or lakes might make interesting map-variants for this game. Space seems to take longer to get filled on those than on continents/pangaea and if we do end up going "always peace" then balancing REX with avoiding sending a pre-currency or CoL economy into the toilet is going to be vital.

 

[cabert]

patagonia, PeteJ, Raiser play Civ IV on Monarch.

parachute4u, pigswill, mice, cabert play Civ IV on Prince.
---

I don't play prince anymore.
I'm just to lazy and unfocused for the emperor jump, but i gave it a few tries, and well, i survived
I'm now a confirmed monarch (won all my monarch games in the last 2 months, including warlords, and scenarios!!!!)
But prince is a good test level, where you can afford some funny moves.

I'll change my profile accordingly... didn't even remember i did fill something there

 

[Welnic]

This sounds like something that I would try. I would lean toward the peace only setup, mainly because I have never tried that. I have been playing at noble so far, but peace only on prince sounds fine. Or prince with war on. I do think that I could relax more and get into to stupid civ tricks on noble, though. I would go for continents over pangea. But some other map would also be fine.

 

[pigswill]

In terms of 'level' I'm at the stage of complacent at prince/ uncomfortable at monarch.
Prince seems like a good mid level.
In terms of always peace I'm not in favour of it and would prefer a standard type game (no always peace, no always war, barbarians but not raging barbarians etc). I think that one part of the challenge series is obviously to win the challenge (but only one person can do that) but the other part is to learn more about a particular aspect of strategy; non standard settings would make this learning less transferable to other games.

 

[scherbchen]

same here as far as difficulty levels go, i have a pretty easy time on prince but as soon as i enter monarch i can only win with a sizeable number of reloads and even then it´s more of a chore than happy gaming (especially on warlords where i always seem to find myself at war with another big civ on my continent that subjugates the others as vassals, resulting in me having to fight 3/4 of my continent) or my opponents merrily becoming vassals of a peaceful big civ mid-war).

after having played a game on all-peace now i am also none the wiser as to which would make for a more interesting challenge. it was however a nice and relaxing change to play a peaceful builders game (something i always tend to do anyways when playing regular civ games). it gets tedious towards the end-game when almost everything is built and the land completely improved, but i don´t see that as a problem for our challenges since the deadline is quite early.

 

[Lynxx]

I am for the option peace only as it would give us a different game to what we normally play. And that is, after all, the purpose of this challange.

Dont change the difficulty level as it would exclude many players and it is easier to try out new strategies on lower levels. Im a emperor player myself, but I often find myself playing the lower difficulty levels just to increase the fun of the game, in other words: i get more options how to play my game without getting my arse kicked...