Challenge #6: Ironman

lilnev

King
Joined
Aug 22, 2006
Messages
949
"To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead."
-- Samuel Butler

"War is the business of Barbarians."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte


Howdy folks. The challenge this time is "last to die". We've chosen appropriately hard settings:

Immortal difficulty.
Standard size.
Normal speed.
Pangaea, temperate, low sea level.
Five opponents (gives a little more space for the barbarians to spawn).
All victory conditions enabled. Good luck using them.
Raging barbarians.
Always war.

You are Cyrus. Expansive/Creative, Hunting and Agriculture, Immortals (replaces chariots, +50% vs Archery units, 30% chance to withdraw, does receive defensive bonuses).

The winner will be the person who survives the longest. Ties will be broken in favor of the person who killed the most enemy units. In this competition (unlike HoF or GotM), you may restart from the beginning and replay the game as many times as you like. You may not replay from later saves, of course. You're welcome to post whatever you like in this thread, but please use the spoiler tags to hide any information that would "spoil" the game for someone who wants to play without unearned knowledge. The contest closes Sunday, October 22, at midnight (though if you're still having fun, please do keep playing and posting after that). Note that you cannot save the game after you've lost, so you should save it the turn before you expect to die. The starting save is attached below.

Good luck,
lilnev, First Citizen

p.s. Sorry I forgot to take a screenshot of the starting position. Perhaps someone else can? Also, I'll be gone until Monday. If issues come up, work them out amongst yourselves.
 
The contest has now ended, and the winner is ...

Garath -- 1830 AD

Congratulations to the new First Citizen!

Garath achieved this impressive finish by refining the methods of second and third place finishers Splattery (1818 AD) and Raiser (1812 AD).

Thanks to all for playing and posting, I've enjoyed my term in office. Look for the new challenge to be posted by Garath this Friday. If you'd like to influence his decision as to what that challenge should be, jump on in to the forum.

peace,
lilnev, Former First Citizen
 
yay! just two minutes after me being obnoxious about not having the new challenge up NOW! :D

i´m really going to suffer here, my early warmongering is abysmal as is. i can only learn from this one...

thanks for putting it up, lilnev :king:
 
Thanks lilnev.

Good luck all.

Go Ironmen!
th_flex.gif



---


For what it's worth, I've put a screenie of the opening position here >>>
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0088.JPG
(It's in a spoiler to keep the thread tidy. I like a tidy thread. :) )


---
 
wow that was scary... but fun :D

940 AD on my first try! feeling very proud of myself i might add, i thought i´d succumb to the barbs but the "we don´t like lilnev" alliance brought me down.

how does one post a save of this anyhoo? not that this finish will be worth showing once the warmongers rear their speary heads, just curious.

very nice starting position i think. i was stumped where to put my second city, 2 choices basically....
 
For attaching a saved game; see HERE.

Congrats. I should have guessed you'd finish first. "U :borg:".

:p

I'm still early era at the mo', but weathering the storm nicely.


---


scherbchen said:
"we don´t like lilnev" alliance brought me down.
Yeah, I noticed we are playing under the name of lilnev, not 'Ironman Challenge'. I like it. It gives me a sense of power and a smell of victory. ;)


---
 
well at least i am fast! shoddy and hurried workmanship, that´s what you get here folks... and ye better like it that way!

i was just wondering where to find the *defeated* save, raiser, or is it only possible to save the turn before one goes down? never looked for those saves before, can´t really find them atm (too busy making each new attempt worse than the first one, business as usual). maybe if somebody knows where to locate it, gimme a pointer. otherwise i will find it eventually.

i also like playing as lilnev, when i get my butt whooped i just blame it on him :p
 
Ah, I was wondering why you asked. As you have posted saves before. :crazyeye:

I was just going to post the save that was taken on the morning of my civ's final year. i.e. Don't forget to save every turn as the grim reaper draws near.

Maybe there is another way? I've never thought about it.


---
 
first thoughts, brought to you by the :borg:

this is after 2 runs, so please don´t take this for granted and feel free to critique heavily

Spoiler :


i think one should at least get 2 extra cities, first down by the horses in the south on a hill. AIs will usually go for this and you get immortals. 2nd by the copper in the north for axemen and spearmen, no need to build that on a hill, only barbs there and 2 promoted archers will hold it nicely.

as i usually play without barbs (so this is all new for me ^^) i was surprised to learn that you can´t get your units past 10 xp on barbs only. so what are good early promotions? trippl first strike on *use anywhere units* seemed to work for me, some hill defenders to fish for barbs are also nice.
 
I've just finished my first crack at it and got wiped out in...

960AD.

So that's one turn later than scherbchen :p

I even outlived one of the AI factions! That was fun... until the last turn.

I'm not sure if it's possible to locate a game-over save, so maybe it's worth saving just before you end your final turn. It was pretty obvious my last turn was going to be the final one at any rate.
 
scherbchen said:
first thoughts, brought to you by the :borg:

this is after 2 runs, so please don´t take this for granted and feel free to critique heavily

Spoiler :


i think one should at least get 2 extra cities, first down by the horses in the south on a hill. AIs will usually go for this and you get immortals. 2nd by the copper in the north for axemen and spearmen, no need to build that on a hill, only barbs there and 2 promoted archers will hold it nicely.

as i usually play without barbs (so this is all new for me ^^) i was surprised to learn that you can´t get your units past 10 xp on barbs only. so what are good early promotions? trippl first strike on *use anywhere units* seemed to work for me, some hill defenders to fish for barbs are also nice.
In response:

Spoiler :
Founding one extra city is the absolute minimum assuming you don't settle in place. There's no way in the world I'd have survived as long as I did without hooking up the copper, but once the capital fell to Monty and Toku's combined forces (Monty had already exterminated Alex by that point) and that got pillaged it was rapidly downhill from there.

As far as early promotions, Guerilla I and II are good for fog-busting archers and in this scenario I'd probably save the 3rd promotion for when I have to pull them back home to face the AI onslaught (maybe get CG with it). If you don't get immortals or axes online early, it's probably worth training up one or two cover-promoted archers too, for a bit of proactive barb-bashing on any that sneak past your fogbusters.
 
Grats. 1000AD seems to be the first benchmark to beat. I doubt that'll post today (cos Sopranos is on soon. )


Spoiler :
scherbchen said:
trippl first strike on *use anywhere units* seemed to work for me, some hill defenders to fish for barbs are also nice.
Yeah, I've got a shining circle of defenders as fog-busters. They are soaking up the raging barbies. And I tried throwing them out at passing early units in a tactical way to push up the promotion tree for a few select units before the real deal arrives in force.

I think a careful route through the promotions tree may pay dividends here. I'm trying to make use of some mobile healers to quicken my defenders recovery times.


---
 
edit: ack, posted total crap here... remind me to read posts in full before i respond. sorry
 
First time playing on imortal for me. First run over i died on the barbarians. Didnt know there were that many. In the middle of the second one now
Spoiler :
Seems like it is possible to get almost 10 goodie huts(If you settle in place send the scout you get there west the other one east start researching animal husbandry pop the eastern and western goddie hut so sent both scouts southward slightly towards the west you will get archery from the hut right under you:D I also got mysticism at another otherwise mostly gc) which is amazing. Also it might be an idea to just move your starting city so you can get the copper with that and build your second city down with the horses. Is it possible to get any wonders on this dificulty? Here walls and castles might actually be worth it. Is it possible to build forts upon resources? What do you guys build first? I try to go with worker.
 
oyzar said:
First time playing on imortal for me. First run over i died on the barbarians. Didnt know there were that many. In the middle of the second one now
Spoiler :
Seems like it is possible to get almost 10 goodie huts(If you settle in place send the scout you get there west the other one east start researching animal husbandry pop the eastern and western goddie hut so sent both scouts southward slightly towards the west you will get archery from the hut right under you:D I also got mysticism at another otherwise mostly gc) which is amazing. Also it might be an idea to just move your starting city so you can get the copper with that and build your second city down with the horses. Is it possible to get any wonders on this dificulty? Here walls and castles might actually be worth it. Is it possible to build forts upon resources? What do you guys build first? I try to go with worker.
Spoiler :
I think my opening build order went something like:

Warrior-warrior-archer-archer-archer-archer-archer-archer-archer-worker :crazyeye:
 
I died in 475 AD way later than i thought i would making me think making it over 1000 AD shouldnt be THAT hard
Spoiler :
I Realy need to learn to fogbust those barbs RELAY stunted my development.
 
1120 AD here.

Spoiler :
I opened by researching archery and played it risky and started building the barracks right off the bat. I think I finished my first archer 2 turns before the warrior attacked.

I settled on the hill to the east of the starting location for two reasons: 1) you can't pillage a river and 2) the bend at that location seemed like it would be great for the crossing a river bonus to defense. It turned out later that number 2 was meaningless, but #1 proved to be quite useful.

My second city was built on top of the copper to the north, along the river. Instant hook up, unpillagable resource. The only thing sweeter would have been to have had copper under the capital itself.

I also chose to only explore territory that was readily exploitable or fog bustable. In practice, that meant that I had explored the northern peninsula, and when it became apparent that the south and west were empty jungle, I fog busted the peninsula and let them suicide on my capital from the south. It kept the barbs away from the copper city and once I had a few axes on the hills to the south and west, it became a fairly secure location.

I made 2 major blunders and 1 minor thing that I would probably take back if I were to replay.. both blunders involved my ecconomy. In short: I tried to develop one.

1) I cottaged the plains around my copper city instead of making it a production city. I could have been building units, but fearing that my ecconomy was already at 40% with only two cities, I tried to fix it. The library I built there took way to long to complete (I didn't whip, which in hind sight would have been a decent compromise) and the city, once in commerce mode, didn't help me survive as long as it could have.

2) I build a third city on the coast to get the fish-gold-iron to the east. It was a drain on resources that took more to defend than it contributed. The city never got above size 2.. I whiped walls, and then a spearman, and then a war elephant + catapult group landed next to it and the city never recovered. I could have left my scouts there as fog busters and broken even on maintenence without having to shift units there to defend it. Really, if it isn't producing hammers it's not of much use in this challenge.

3) I took the time to research ironworking, which has no usefulness in a purely defensive war. I also researched metal casing, but I'm inclined to think that that investment paid off after chopping out a forge almost instantly and pumping more hammers into the military machine. When I was defeated I was less than 10 turns from construction, and cats might have made a difference. Not much of one, granted, but a difference nonetheless.

 
1230 AD.

Spoiler :

Lets not talk about the first game. I was in trouble anyway, but having a pair of Praets pop out of what I thought was an empty galley really ruined the occassion

Second game: Archery, BronzeWorking, Pottery to Writing, then the short way to Monarchy, because I was desperate for some happy (with a quick stop at Masonry , because I desperately needed to build something other than units). At this point, I've got two cities (on hills, archers are all I need), and I'm about to fall desperately behind the world on tech.

Then I make a mistake, and decide that with the world about to come to an end, I should rush for construction. Unfortunately, cats are not quite as useful as they should be in this situation, so that's a lot of wasted beakers.

Then I turned toward Feudalism, and Machinery (picking up Ironworking along the way). But that was it. The next thing to try for was Civil Service and Maces, but it just didn't happen that way; by then I was entertaining a foursome.

I saw a couple of knights before I went under.
 
1290 here. I got one axeman to level 8. He had more than 50 experience points!

Spoiler :

I ended up doing what I belive an almost perfect run for me thanks to a few lucky moves. I got archery(when i only had 1 turn left to research) and mining from huts. After that i teched to bronzeworking and right after that ironworking. Threw in AH after archery.
Built archers like crazy and dared to found my second village on top of the copper when i had 3 archers to defend the moving settler + two more archers and a warrior in my city. Researched pottery-Writing and then went up all the way to feudalism which i didnt reach until the very end of the game.
I settled a third city on top of the hill to the east claiming iron, gold and plenty of flodplains, this city became a really good city producing beakers and money to pay for my enormous army.
I even got a great scientist while playing which i used for an academy :D. He was a by product of my use of the scientist specialists to reach longbows and vassalage.

I didnt really get into trouble until the war elephants showed up and the final push came with the catapults. Getting feudalism earlier would have saved me a few turns, but in the end it comes down to when the ai decides to use catapults agains you. That will be the begining of the end.

I could probably extend my date with a few turns, but I dont see the point in trying that plus i got plenty of studying to do so ill leave that to all you guys instead ;).
 
Back
Top Bottom