Challenge-XIV-02

[Sun Tzu Wu]

When the builder has discovered Mass Media.

Sorry, I do not believe this is correct.

The Apostolic Palace is not obsolete for all Civs until all Civs have Mass Media. However, when The Apostolic Palace Resident acquires Mass Media, TAP is effectively dead until the next scheduled TAP Resident election.

Someone would need to verify the above. I'm not asolutely certain of it.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[cas]

~1930AD if I got all the settings correct. Can't remember if it was 1929 or 1931. Used Lincoln. Tried Roos, but Lincoln is better.

That was with a (edit) 1gem, 1fur, 2deer, cow start on a lake in the corner...so there is room for improvement if you are lucky enough to get on a river with better resources. Also mistimed the last(5th) GA by 5 turns...might have shaved 1 turn off the end if I timed correct. Always lose a couple of turns in micromanagement, but that's about it.

Had copper, but no aluminum. there were 2 total aluminum on the map. Also had coal, but not really since I used National Park.

I may try this again letting mapfinder run until I get a perfect river start and luck with huts. Some oasis maps have a few aluminum, so it might be possible to get one AI with 2 if you are super-lucky.

I don't think using Aluminum Corp and forgoing National Park will do better....because research rate will be the limiting factor. But I could be wrong.

cas

 

[enKage]

1985 AD 2 more turns and Zara will slice me into pieces, 10 more turns and Mansa will win by culture.

I was not expecting playing the game till the end, as I rolled nonresource start and I wanted only to try strategy. - I got 4 floodplains, plaincorn, 1 non riverside grass hill. Of course settled by the river. All teh rest plain forest or grass forest. Strategy was to get to NationalPark and shine, by that time developing cottages (all floodplains, 1 riverside grass, 1 non riverside plain. Edu 200AD, Oracled CS, libbed Biology. 3 archers were enough to fight barbs.

Having no stone and marble I had to abandon some wonders. I skipped Mids (I wanted to develop cottages and work only 2 scientist and engineer for some time, 9 beakers was not worth it), GLib - no need as I wanted SciMeth asap. Oracle, MoM, NE, Oxford, HE, National Park and some late wonders for happiness. I built also APalace foor confucianism, to block religious victory, +8 base hammers (monastery + cathedral+ temple + shrine) was a nice bonus

Because I wanted NP strategy, I skipped Globe (I had later 9 happiness from preserves, 3 from temples, additional 2 from cathedral, trading resources and so on). My set of NWonders was in order of apperance: NE, Oxford, HE, NP, Ironworks. I got coal in cultural borders, but were blocked by National Park, so I went 9 turns intoRobotics and doubleengineered Space elevator.

There was my first OCC with no Globe, next one I will try with Globe but no National Park.

Settled a lot of scientists and engineers, ran 3 golden ages + TajMahal (TM was the first Golden Age). Research - around 1100 beakers per turn after laboratory. Production into SS - over 400 hammers.

The date 1900 should be easy to beat with a start similar to mine but with more than only 1 reesource.

I got some nasty random events, but also was gifted 1 settled merchant and scientist from events. Losing a forge 1 turn after it is build is not fair

 

[AgedOne]

What a fascinating write-up, enKage.

I would not have thought that this could be achieved without any commerce resources. But you've shown that it can be. I must have another look at this today. I think I may have been wrong in holding out for commerce resource starts, and then looking for those with enough food. If I look first for food starts, then I may play a very different strategy from my first attempt.

Your strategy differs from mine in several ways. I felt that Mids and GLib were essential, too.

This really calls for another look!

 

[lymond]

Wow, that is brutal. I didn’t even know that event existed. Thanks for reminding me to check the “No Events” option.

Is that an event or just the standard fail rng from not building all the engines?

As a note: I chose Oasis as it is not often a friendly OCC map. I gave option on American leader. I think all have decent OCC traits with Lincoln obviously being the most suited. However, I think I may go Roos here even though Org is completely wasted on OCC. IND is still a very nice trait to have in OCC because some of those early wonders are so crucial.

 

[dohh]

hey, as I figured out, it WAS a standard fail. What made it epic, was a fact, I had to experience it twice before googleing it

PS: HoF chart doesnt show my game #2, but in "my submissions" it shows ACCEPTED...

 

[AgedOne]

... 3 archers were enough to fight barbs...

I just had another look at this game, and all I can say is "I need the Great Wall!! "

My 4 archers were completely overrun by the barbarians, to the extent that everything was being pillaged and I was losing valuable research progress. I packed that game in after about 70 turns of mayhem. Next time, Gt Wall. Definitely!

 

[lymond]

PS: HoF chart doesnt show my game #2, but in "my submissions" it shows ACCEPTED...

I'm looking into it. It appears there are other submissions out there for this game that haven't posted to the chart. Your game looks to be valid.

 

[zbgayumn]

First, for the admin: Please don't reject my submission because I forgot to save in 4000 BC. I did include the save at 3960 BC.

Second, thanks to all the folks commenting in this thread for the various tips.

I chose a start with Deer, Cow, and Rice visible. It turned out to have Gems as well, which was awesome. It also turned out to be in the bottom right corner, which made it easier to defend. Still, I was really relieved when the Great Wall went up. I meant to oracle CS, but I didn't get to math, and I was worried about it getting too late (it was around 900 BC). I got Philo, which was still pretty good because I got into Pacifism really early. I had 3 GS's before 1 AD. I eventually got the 'mids, GLib, U of Sankore, Taj Mahal, Broadway, and Rock n' Roll.

I've never played an OCC until now, and I was kind of amazed how easily I could leave the AI in the dust early on. Even in the late game, they barely caught up, and I was gifting techs left and right. I launched the spaceship and won on Jan. 2039. I lost 3 turns by building an extra thruster, but I wanted to see how many travel turns it would save me. 2 turns saved; 5 turns to build.

Edit: Well, nevermind. Apparently, I didn't load the HoF mod when I started this game.

 

[TheSunIsDark]

You don't need The Great Wall. Fogbusting warriors work fine.

 

[lymond]

Charts should be fixed..sorry

(yep...Great Wall should not be required here if you know what you are doing)

 

[shulec]

First, for the admin: Please don't reject my submission because I forgot to save in 4000 BC. I did include the save at 3960 BC.

Second, thanks to all the folks commenting in this thread for the various tips.

I chose a start with Deer, Cow, and Rice visible. It turned out to have Gems as well, which was awesome. It also turned out to be in the bottom right corner, which made it easier to defend. Still, I was really relieved when the Great Wall went up. I meant to oracle CS, but I didn't get to math, and I was worried about it getting too late (it was around 900 BC). I got Philo, which was still pretty good because I got into Pacifism really early. I had 3 GS's before 1 AD. I eventually got the 'mids, GLib, U of Sankore, Taj Mahal, Broadway, and Rock n' Roll.

I've never played an OCC until now, and I was kind of amazed how easily I could leave the AI in the dust early on. Even in the late game, they barely caught up, and I was gifting techs left and right. I launched the spaceship and won on Jan. 2039. I lost 3 turns by building an extra thruster, but I wanted to see how many travel turns it would save me. 2 turns saved; 5 turns to build.

Edit: Well, nevermind. Apparently, I didn't load the HoF mod when I started this game.

Unfortunately, the game was listed as requiring version 3.19, not 3.19.003. I apologize if this caused any problems. The initial post should be corrected soon.

 

[dohh]

geez, WP Pollina, You ended game 100 turns faster than me:O I wonder what I did wrong, I did surely play fast, and could have saved maybe 10% if I made no mistakes at all... but this...

If You dont mind, please share Your secret. Probably You would need to feed techs to AI to keep them helpful in tech trade? My main problems:

1) ai were so backward, i needed to tech everything myself
2) to avoid getting AI too powerful I had to "involve" in politics with my armed forces and got raher bad relationships = no aluminium.

 

[dohh]

Charts should be fixed..sorry

(yep...Great Wall should not be required here if you know what you are doing)

Lymond, it possible to post another try to same challenge or result is fixed from first submitted try? I see, I must have made many mistakes from results

 

[TheSunIsDark]

You can try again, with a new map that you generated yourself, but not with the same map.

 

[AgedOne]

One submission in, but it was cringingly awful and I will definitely submit another, better attempt later.
However, for the moment, a 2033AD entry will be looking up at the rest of you

For the record, this was a start without any commerce resource, but 2 corn, many floodplains and eventually many forests within borders. However, only 2 hills for mining meant that my productivity was severely limited. I also managed to miss all resources that might have been hidden: copper, iron, coal, aluminium.

 

[lymond]

Lymond, it possible to post another try to same challenge or result is fixed from first submitted try? I see, I must have made many mistakes from results

You can submit as many games as you like ....just not the same map, ofc

Dohh...looking at your map, I'd say the biggest issue was lack of good food resources. Gems are good, but make sure you have a start with at least 2 solid food resources. Other than that, focus on Civil Service and Edu asap. Mids is a good choice of wonder, but try to avoid building useless wonders. If you have nothing to build, build research. AIs at this level will be little help. However, you can try to prop an AI or two if you know you will stay friendly with them, but mostly you will rely mainly on yourself.

 

[dohh]

You can submit as many games as you like ....just not the same map, ofc

Good As most setups are first for me... Never played most of them.

 

[Pollina]

geez, WP Pollina, You ended game 100 turns faster than me:O I wonder what I did wrong, I did surely play fast, and could have saved maybe 10% if I made no mistakes at all... but this...

I think you mostly have to improve your tech path and chose some AI that will actually help you (trade techs, resources and gold) and not declare on you. Lymond has some good points, too.
- Alpha should be your top priority early on. You can skip most Ancient techs and trade for them. That way, you not only speed up your own research, but also the general tech pace on the map.
- Get your multipliers up early. Education is a key tech. I got it late, you got it 30 turns later. If you play a non-PHI leader you also want to adopt Pacifism asap (right after Philo, not 1000 years later).


I’m usually not very good at OCC/Space games, and I’m sure someone will beat my date. My game was far from perfect.

Here is what I did. Feel free to ask, if something is unclear:

Start:
I wanted at least one good food resource, one commerce resource, some forests and a river. After running mapfinder for an hour I got:
1pig, 1 grass cow, 2 gems, 2 grass hills, 5 forests (with potential for more forest growth), riverside capital
Not the best start ever for OCC, but a pretty good start for the Oasis map script. I don’t use mapfinder very often for normal games, but I pretty much always use it for OCC. Finding a good start is crucial here.
Opponents were the usual suspects. De Gaulle (bad guy, everyone's worst enemy) and Peter (bad guy and decent trading partner) and a bunch of peaceful AI.

Early game:
I did not play this very well until ~500AD and made many poor decisions:
- I built TGW which probably wasn’t needed, as some have pointed out. I also built it before a library which made it even worse. Fortunately, my first GP was a Scientist and I could get my academy up early. Unfortunately, my 2nd and 3rd GPs were Spies (10-20% odds). Yuck! I really missed those scientist hammers early on.
- My early techpath was very unfocused. I obviously got masonry early for TGW. For some reason I also teched BW before Alpha when I was not planning to chop or run Slavery. I guess I was hoping for a copper resource in my BFC, but no such luck (4th ring copper). My techpath should have been: AH->Mining->Writing->Alpha->Maths->CoL->CS (Oracle)
- I teched Literature for the NE after Oracle->CS, but did not plan to build TGLib. Not sure, if that was a mistake. Without NE, I could have gotten the Pyramids up earlier to solve my happy cap problem. I probably should have gone for earlier MC or Philo instead of Literature.
- 600AD Oxford is very late for OCC. Too late!

Mid game:
- I libbed Bio (1110AD) and built the NP with 6 forest preserves (8 eventually after forest spreads). Teched Medicine right after Bio and ran Environmentalism until the end of the game.
- My neighbor Joao declared on me, but he quickly made peace again after my 2 maces and 1 musket killed his mini stack.
- Those settled spies were not totally wasted, as I could see everyone’s research. I saw some AIs were teching Nationalism when I was teching towards Superconductors. I gambled a bit and hoped I could trade for it and still build the Taj. Got Nat it in trade, but missed the Taj by a turn. I also saw that Freddy and Asoka teched Constitution for me, but I had to delay Corporation (Corps!) by several turns to get it.
- Founded Cereal Mills and Mining Inc. and traded for some grains (3gpt each) and metals (4gpt). I had to constantly sell techs to afford them. Corp yield was something like 15 food and 8 hammers.
- My research maxed out at ~1300bpt. Not great.

End game:
- Lizzy had 4 or 5 aluminum resources in my game, so I could easily trade for it after giving her Industrialism and its prereqs.
- I thought that production would be a huge bottleneck in the end, but it turned out that was not the case. I guess all those settled Engineers I popped helped a lot. I left most forest preserves up while building space ship parts and timed the chops so that I could squeeze in another thruster before Ecology (last tech) and build life support in 1t. Launched with 4 thrusters and 1 engine (14 turns travel time).
- I only ran 3 GAs, since I had missed the Taj. The last one I started with the Fusion Engineer. It ended the turn after Ecology, when my space ship launched. Nice!

 

[lymond]

Based on what I've seen in the past, 1900AD seems a good benchmark for lower level OCC space. Oasis adds a trick to it, I think, as it is pretty hard to roll whopper OCC starts. I do think 1900AD can be beat though with the right play.