Challenge-I-08

[Ozbenno]

Well done, might have to try OCC and see how it goes then.

When you say poor resource wise, did you have any metal or horses (you must if you had Cossacks).

 

[playshogi]

From this sheltered city, on a hill, behind a river, I've killed 107 units on the "Field of Death" while losing just 2 longbows. But I don't know what to do next. I've got no copper or iron. So, I guess I just tech to Rifling.

 

[Ozbenno]

Are you playing OCC? If so, you have an almost perfect location.

Without horses or metal, Rifling or Military Science would be the way to go I think.

 

[Fluroscent]

When you say poor resource wise, did you have any metal or horses (you must if you had Cossacks).

I mean I only had 1 deer, 1 wheat and stone in the BFC, rest was four grass forests, a bunch of plains forests, some hills and even some regular unforested plains. Not exactly a prime OCC spot.
I did have horses for cossacks, but no other strategic resources. Funny how IW is pretty much a dead end tech, and I only researched it fairly early because I had those unforested tiles that may have had some iron Otherwise I might delay it until after gunpowder at least. Same with AH if no sheep.

The way to win this (if going for OCC/conquest) is to realize that you cannot afford to lose troops on a regular basis if you are ever going to "break out". You will need a defensive force for a long time that will kill intruders at 95%+ odds. This can be done with fast muskets if you station them so that you can attack enemies on non-defensive terrain, while you stand on forest/hill/fort/whatever.
Once you can kill stacks with no losses, you can start reaching quantities to actually send out stacks strong enough to wipe out civs. Rifles are a safe bet if you tech fast enough, trebs to bombard culture is good, as these AI tend to have quite a bit of it, and you want to avoid losses if possible, 80% odds should feel uncomfortable on attack. The offensive stacks should have one purpose, to raze cities. Ignore stray units and other things, unless you can kill a settler. Try to carve a path through their core cities first to cripple them. They will quickly resettle lost sites at first, but they cannot keep up if you keep razing cities.

The AI techs slowly on this map, so you can easily have rifles vs longbows for a long time. And always remember the GG medic.

Wonder spam as much as possible early on. Chicken Pizza is actually a great build to deny the AI the bonus.

 

[playshogi]

Sadly, I was defeated. I was distracted by wonder-spamming. I had a GE so I detoured to pick up the AP and was happily building UofS when my 15 longbows were crushed. On a replay, I went straight for gunpowder and built more units and survived easily. I even popped iron on the mine.

 

[shulec]

I took the "easy" way out on this one. For me, capitalizing on great luck was a huge factor. I got a very isolated start. The AI was slow to find me and I had a barbarian city providing a choke/barrier until it fell well into the 1900's. For some reason, the AI left this city alone. (Thank you!) I could only manage 5 cities in my limited space.

I almost didn't get a religion. I was too slow to get CoL or Theology, and kept waiting for a Phil bulb, but couldn't get a GS. I eventually got Islam/Divine Right. I built one cathedral, and three cottages. The Pyramids, Sistine Chapel, and Parthenon saved me. I was able to tech well at 0% after I went to Free Speech. I missed Liberalism by one turn at about 1500 AD. It really didn't matter. My passive teching with Representation kept my research moving along. I researched up to Steam Power before the game ended. I popped 9 GA. I got several other GP due to wonder GPP dilution.

My finish will not win any awards!

 

[narri]

I rolled a start where I ended up on my own island! I thought I could start conquering from the sea, but forts don't work as canals unless they're in your culture (arrrgh...). Furthermore, the horses on the mainland that should have been mine somehow never got into my culture (though it was surrounded on two sides).

I actually should have gone space on that that one (seriously!), but I mucked up a conquest attempt. My national wonders picks were for more military-oriented, so I didn't have a good fallback. Gave up in the 1800's as Asoka became strong technologically. If you ever roll such a start, a hybrid spy/research strategy may be in order. I got 3 GS to start (settle,settle,scot), so I was stealing quite a few techs early.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Iso on this script must be some kind of rare...

 

[playshogi]

Iso on this script must be some kind of rare...

How about this one?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How about this one?

Cute, but about 40 rolls hasn't reproduced it for me.

I'm getting really tired of this, too. Even 1 of those starts I and I can win this and move on .

Edit: Seems like I'm over 100. Trying to roll an "ideal start" isn't fun . I'm having a hard time even finding a start with a choke point (only have had one in > 100 tries)

I broke down and got mapfinder, but I can't get it to start. Alt-M just brings up the reminders tab. I checked the install vs in-game defined directory and they match. Edit: Figured it out ----> alt + control + g as of BUFFY update. Google <3 me forever.

Winning this on the other hand...we'll see what mapfinder can do for me X_X.

 

[playshogi]

I have mapfinder look for starts with 1 seafood and you get your sheltered starts easier because 1 side has to be water and you might get lucky with the edge or mountains.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I see...I was trying to force it to give me 8x coast.

 

[Fluroscent]

I'd search for stone only, and then just load them up until you find yourself in a corner. Most of these are winnable.

 

[shulec]

Winning this on the other hand...we'll see what mapfinder can do for me X_X.

I used mapfinder because I was tired of entering all of the game settings/civs on the custom game page for each start. For some of these games, I think the surrounding map is more important than the BFC. What worked for me was to do a mapfinder search and save every map (set a rule for forest 0-999). I move the saves to my BTS save folder, and load as needed. Then I would be able to scout my local region looking for choke points. If the map stinks, then I exit to the main menu and load another one (its quicker if you don't load a map while in a game.)

If you load one of you mapfinder saves, you can still regenerate a new map if your starting position looks brutal. I generally don't have the patience to set up Mapfinder and walk away for the few hours needed to get a several maps with a stacked starting position. I thought this was the quickest and least labor intensive approach.

 

[ZPV]

tbh, I don't think it's really necessary to go for OCC+chokepoint.
I've rolled out a game (played to 700AD, I expect to win 15-1600s) with copper at the start, raging barbs + great wall. Top-middle, not particularly protected by mountains.
3 founded cities, all with some sort of commerce resource, and several food resources.
Tech isn't fast, but it doesn't need to be. With 20ish highly promoted units (mostly axes) at home killing invaders with barely a loss, I can afford a city-killer stack of cats, swords, and axes which is rolling through China (w/ longbows!) without too much trouble.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I must be using mapfinder incorrectly. I ran 3000 regens while sleeping while telling it 6 coast 1 seafood, and got 0.

Is defining more than one group mandatory then?

And yes, I know its possible to win this w/o iso, it's been done. But I'm getting annoyed with the map. I had a map where I oracled civil service and had maces before anybody sent catapults my way. Even with maces and very close to trebs (3 turns out), I lost to classical garbage. My problem is that the AI is willing to sit in my territory w/o attacking or blow by my defensive stack and head for cities. Attacking it gives me more losses than I'd like (losing maces to the likes of swords/axes really sucks esp at >95% odds). If I can't at least get a semi-choke or corner position, I wind up with 15-20 unit stacks from multiple sides and that's death.

They WILL pillage if you just park in cities.

 

[Denniz]

I must be using mapfinder incorrectly. I ran 3000 regens while sleeping while telling it 6 coast 1 seafood, and got 0.

Is defining more than one group mandatory then?

No. 6 coast may be too high. I assume you didn't select for exactly 6 coast and 1 searfood but rather 6-999 and 1-999. Otherwise that could work against you.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No. 6 coast may be too high. I assume you didn't select for exactly 6 coast and 1 searfood but rather 6-999 and 1-999. Otherwise that could work against you.

The screen shot above has like 14 coast tiles and multiple seafood. I used 6-999 and 1-999 yes.

I find it hard to believe he got a 14 coast + seafood start on the same script when after ~3500 trials I haven't gotten even 1 6 coast 1 seafood start, which is why I'm asking. Literally, every other item in the rule builder is 0-999 (except hills, capped 0-6 and desert and jungle which have a min 0 max 1, although virtually no start on boreal is going to be giving us desert or jungle!)

Considering I have personally rolled more than 1 6 coast start before running mapfinder, and then after 1000's of trials it didn't save one map, something is very, very likely amiss with its decided to keep a map. Otherwise I've come up with multiple starts that have < .0001% chance of occurring by hand, and the poster above has yet another . Way more likely I'm doing something wrong in mapfinder.

 

[Ozbenno]

Just select 1 seafood in Mapfinder and check them all out, might be easier. I've never used coast as a selection so not sure what you're doing wrong.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Just select 1 seafood in Mapfinder and check them all out, might be easier. I've never used coast as a selection so not sure what you're doing wrong.

Coast didn't work. Salt water did.

I also learned that this isn't necessarily the best idea. It's not fun once they start getting tac nukes, and eventually one AI will get a navy (unless maybe I can get a very thin patch of coast such that I can culture block coastal cities) and then you have to make units anyway, though less which is nice.

But getting hit by even one nuke is pretty fatal, which means a diversion to UN and hoping the AI leader calls to ban them, all for a crappy finish time.

Maybe back to rolling a 3x gem start and hitting bur with the oracle. I'll just have to copycat trebmace the AI to hell like everyone else. It's a long time before the AI gets anything better than classical offensive troops in this format. Possibly just using the maces to buy time until rifling and then moving out would be even safer ---> lots of GG's means well promoted rifles.

So maybe I'll be using mapfinder differently than expected :/.