Challenge-XVI-03

[Noble Zarkon]

While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we are running a series of ten games called the Hall of Fame Challenge Series. [Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but your best submission meeting the settings of one of the games will be counted towards the Challenge.

(*) Please read the >> HOF rules << BEFORE playing!
(*) Games must be played using the >> BUFFY MOD 3.19.003 <<
(*) Games to be submitted via the >> Civ IV Hall of Fame Website <<
(*) New players, please >> register << using your CFC forum name​

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Domination (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Monarch
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Standard
• Speed: Normal
• Map Type: Pangaea
• Required: Raging Barbarians
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians
• Civ: China (Mao Zedong)
• Opponents: Must include Aztec (Montezuma), Mongolia (Kublai Khan), Rome (Julius Caesar), Russia (Catherine), Viking (Ragnar Lodbrok), Zulu (Shaka)
• Version: 3.19.003 or 3.19.003s
• Date: 30th May to 25th November 2015

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

This was a pretty simple game - more people should be playing it, cause it's fun

Final score will be a lot better than mine - my pangea was long and skinny.

The simple/fun way to do is high water and max opponents and make sure you have cho-ko-nu.

I'm sure the way that will win will mean having HA.

 

[enKage]

Of course enable random personalities here ;]

 

[neilmeister]

Just finished my first attempt, and I have now learned my lesson about taking an existing 4000bc and just generating mapfinder saves off it.

Everything was going great, beelined HA's and conquered Shaka first, just after he built the great wall for me, thanks Shaka!

GK was next, then Cathy, about the same time I got Feudalism. Started on the Romans and I couldn't figure out why he wouldn't vassalise! Eventually have a look at the settings and notice 'No Vassals'. WHAT!?!? Now I have to conquer almost everybody the hard way.

My date could be improved at least a few hundred years if I had been able to make JC (and Monty, and Gandhi) a vassal instead of conquering every last city.

 

[elitetroops]

Played this fast and sloppy, with a quite bad pigs+clam+fur start. No thinking, just whip axes and chop heads. Finished 100BC. Can for sure be improved by a lot. I totally overestimated the AI as I teched construction for pults, should have picked HBR instead as I was about to conquer horses at that time. Could have done it with nothing but axes as well, but HA would've been faster.

The trick here is to choose the right map. If you play cylindrical high sea level, the map will usually have between 550-750 land tiles. Toroidal can be much smaller. And of course max AI to lower domination threshold further. My map had 376 land tiles and dom limit was 211 tiles. if you go 6 opponents on a 700 tiles map you need more than twice that. With such a small map raging barbs makes no difference, don't think I saw a single barb unit all game. And no AI ever got a chance to expand past 3 cities.

Not sure if random personalities would make much difference here. To grab the last few tiles I chose to attack Ragnar, as Gandhi was too strong.

 

[neilmeister]

Nice date and good thinking on the settings.

I reopened my save and I needed 396 tiles for domination.

 

[elitetroops]

The toroidal pangaea script is odd, almost like it's broken. I noticed when I created maps yesterday that it adds land in big chunks. There was a few maps with 372-376 tiles, then there were maps with 440-450 tiles, then over 500 tiles, but nothing in between. The largest was >750 tiles.

I don't think mapfinder can look at total land, so it's not of much use here. Not that the start much matters as you can stop teching after math and currency. A small map with tons of forest is all you need, then hopefully a strategic resource nearby.

 

[Seraiel]

The problem I see with Tororidal is, that the maintenance is just so high. I'm currently playing Huge / Quick as you know, and I generate Flat maps again, after Tororidal would have either limited me to a 3-city-empire, or I'd have had to pay more maintenance than I could have afforded. Maybe I'm gonna convert to Tororidal again though, because the other AIs also get weaker with less land, and I'm not sure, but I think maintenance should cripple them aswell.

 

[Seraiel]

Just to make sure, that we talk about the right thing:

On Large, most maps I create with toriridal have around 850 population. The increase that happens with going back to Flat worldwrap isn't even that large, even though there are maps that have 1050 population, many also only have something like 950, so marginal increase. What makes it look like there was a big difference is, that Tororidal sometimes creates the famous "Micro Pangaea's" , that only got 650 population, which is about half of the biggest Flat ones. Those maps are rare though, and it's extremely hard to get a decent start + a Micro Pangaea. Still, it could be worth playing one, even if it has a worse start, 200 less pop are 25%, that's really a major difference.

Or do you guys take the the "land-parameter" as a measure of judgement?

 

[Seraiel]

Ok, there seems to be something completely wrong with those tororidal maps. Created a few more and this time took worldbuilder to look at them. All of them seem to be a lot more compact as the Flat ones, they're basically a big "blob" of land, and what this mainly leeds to, is the land being a lot better than the one of Flat maps. There is nearly no Tundra and almost no Deserts at all on the Tororidal maps, even with choosing Cold climate.
Still not sure if they're really that much smaller, except for the Micro Pangaeas, because the land-tile-counts aren't that hugely different. It seems they're much smaller, but in reality, they're just much more compact. Flat maps sometimes are very snaky, even with choosing a solid shoreline. The amount of ocean seems to be almost the same, it's just completely differently distributed. The Micro-Pangaea's on top also have an island, which may not matter. Ofc. the maps are a little smaller, because less population with less Tundra ofc. means less land.

 

[Seraiel]

New info:

The Tororidal maps seem to greatly differ in the amount of land-tiles. Looked for the land-tile-score this time, and there are maps that have 1150 land-tiles and some only have as little as 650! The good maps are the ones with a land-count as little as possible, because the land that's added is mostly Ice and Tundra, which the small maps mostly don't have. Seems it might be absolutely necessary to generate the maps manually, and to look for those two info's. Must be a difference like day and night if playing on a 650 tile map against someone that rolled a 1000+ one. The values ofc. differ, I looked at Large maps, you values must be less. I remember once having played a 430 population standard Pangaea.

 

[elitetroops]

I was talking about the land parameter. In this domination game population is no problem as no AI will expand to more than 3, maybe 4 cities. But the amount of land tiles required can be less than half on a micro pangaea than on a normal pangaea. Conquering 200 tiles will be so much faster than conquering 400 tiles, a better start cannot make up for that.

Maintenance was no problem at all, wasn't even close to running out of money. This is monarch and I ended the game with 15 cities, 4 of them settled in the last turns. On a normal map you'd need a lot more cities, which in my experience has caused more maintenance problems, unless you raise most cities and really mass settle the last turn. Might make more of a difference on a large deity map.

Xpost. Yes, your last post got it exactly right.

 

[Seraiel]

Thx for the confirmation elitetroops.

Just as additional information: While the population-count doesn't differ too much, the land-tile count does. Note that the population-count is made up by the "food-score" a map has, every 2 is counted as 1 population. So with a map having 700 population but only 700 tiles, this means, that basically every tile is a grassland, while a bad map with 700 population but 1100 land-tiles will have lots of Plains, Tundra and even Ice.

So there seem very good parameters that can be seen on the 1st turn, to decide which map to take. As elitetroops also wrote, it doesn't matter if the start is worse when you only got half as much land to conquer.

So me and you are probably back to rolling maps again .

 

[Pollina]

I would like these kind of games a lot better if rolling for a micro-pangaea with some commerce and horses/copper wasn&#8217;t such a pain. Took me hours to find a playable map.

I ended up with a fairly nice capital with gems and bfc copper and a 440 tiles map (255 for dom). I was hoping to find some horses nearby, but I did not spot any all game. Went the slow and steady route with axes and cats.

With horse archers, one should be able to finish much faster.

 

[elitetroops]

Beat me by one turn, eh? Challenge accepted. Played a 459 tile map with horses to be grabbed by second city.

If someone can find that 37X tile map with horses, then I think aitkensam's no1 date for the slot can be threatened. Actually, I already did find one, but lost 7 HA attempting to take the first city. Lesson learned, do not workersteal from your first target, especially not if it is Kublai with capital on hill and no room to build a second city. First war in the submitted game went much better. Declared on JC with 2 HA and in 3 turns these two alone grabbed 3 workers and 2 cities. In the meantime he had settled a third city in the middle of the jungle, so I sued for peace and got myself some techs. Probably the best return of investment ever for 2 HA.

I take back what I said earlier about mapfinder being useless. It's by far the easiest way to find micro-pangaeas. Generate a ton of maps and sort them by file size.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I take back what I said earlier about mapfinder being useless. It's by far the easiest way to find micro-pangaeas. Generate a ton of maps and sort them by file size.

Oooh, nice tip!

 

[Seraiel]

Oooh, nice tip!

Yes .

 

[enKage]

Late 600 AD.

Simcity soul has overtaken me.

Horse in 3rd city, but with such a map Pollina/Seraiel/Wastin'/elitetroops and many more will do at least 500 BC (I needed 20 cities only\).
Of course toroidal high sea solid shoreline.

Because of delay I even had to fight elephants

Everyone had copper in BFC. or iron. Of course I had nothing in BFC.

BTW stupid question as I never go for domination. How do you know how many tiles map has?

 

[shulec]

Late 600 AD.

Simcity soul has overtaken me.

Horse in 3rd city, but with such a map Pollina/Seraiel/Wastin'/elitetroops and many more will do at least 500 BC (I needed 20 cities only\).
Of course toroidal high sea solid shoreline.

Because of delay I even had to fight elephants

Everyone had copper in BFC. or iron. Of course I had nothing in BFC.

BTW stupid question as I never go for domination. How do you know how many tiles map has?

Mouse over your name on the scoreboard on the main UI. It will pop upon the lower left corner.

 

[enKage]

oh, easy :] So the map was not so small, having 456 tiles o_O. I went Dry climate so the AIs settle useless cities slowing them down and forcing them to spread their forces in those cities. Dry also gives nice range of sight and quite a lot of floodplains for commerce