Challenge-XVIII-06

[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 - "Fall of the Inca". 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 << or >>>BUFFY MOD 3.19.004b<<<.
(*) Games to be submitted via the >> Civ IV Hall of Fame Website <<
(*) New players, please >> register << using your CFC forum name​

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Space Colony (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Monarch
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Tiny
• Speed: Epic
• Map Type: Terra
• Civ: Portugal (Joao)
• Opponents: Must include England (Elizabeth), India (Gandhi)
• Version: 3.19.003 or 3.19.004b
• Date: 25th January to 24th July 2017

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

 

[neilmeister]

I felt like I messed this up properly... couldn't get the rhythm of whipping, messed up the conquests of neighbours... but looking at the HoF, my game will take #1 (previous game spent almost 10 years at #1). Can't believe it.

Anyway, Carrack was slightly useful in getting a jump on the others to settle the New World, Fetoria was also useful. I have to say, I think Joao is my new favourite for watery maps

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Good job

I've got Map Finder running for this one, Joao on Terra is fun.

 

[Pangaea]

Been playing this one as well as I like space games. Never played Epic before, but it's been okay. Not as arduous as Marathon. A challenge I've run across is to stay under the domination limit. So many fine spots in the new world, and thanks to Carracks we can settle it very soon. Totally agree that Joao is a very fun watery map leader to play, so great choice there. Never played him before. The Feitoria is a very good building. Not as strong here as it can be, because (in my game at least) there are few AI cities left, so the main benefit with Feitoria isn't better trade routes, but more sea commerce.

Hope to complete this game this week, but the end game is slow, and I'm slow, so maybe next month instead

Will definitely beat the old #1, but as it's already taken... we'll see. I find it hard to judge finish dates.

 

[Pangaea]

The end game killed me. Turns were so slow, so for fun I started a new one. Then another. 3 turns in, and an intriguing event

Spoiler :

Usually don't get any free techs, so this is insane! Nothing visible nearby yet, but it's early.

Hopefully lucky with other resources, land and location of AIs too. The last game was quite promising, but after exploring all the land, stone didn't exist, and marble couldn't be gotten without mowing through most of Mansa's land. Too much jungle as well, so after taking a couple of cities it was borderline pointless to continue.

The BW-game isn't ideal either. The food is poor (just a green cow) and the city isn't riverside (no levee ), but there are two golds, a few floodplains and nearby marble. And free BW!

Obviously I should complete the first game, but the period of spreading corporations is brutal, and I got fed up and needing something else. At least for a while.

 

[Thlypsis]

Had a great mid-old-world start and greedily settled all over the resources. Thought I was playing as well as possible but a 1841 finish isn't record-setting, so crusty Civ fundamentals, I guess.

I thought it would be fun to add Peter as a punching bag, but it just slowed the tech trading down. The modern military buildup endgame was fun.

 

[nocho]

Got the exact same date as neil with 1724AD, slightly higher score though.

Added Mansa. Killed Liz, then reduced Mansa to 3 cities when Gandhi offered to be voluntary vassal. He did help quite a bit teching along. I avoided him getting astronomy or flight, but none the less he managed to settle cities on the other continent, which greatly puzzled me and which made keeping under the domination limit quite a challenge.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I added 2 more AIs in order to reach the maximum number allowed, with the plan of either Axe-rushing or Chariot-rushing. Since I needed Animal Husbandry early on with the map that I played out, it ended up being Chariots, although I lost quite a few Chariots against AI Archers and had to forgo early Wonders for a while just to get enough Chariots.

I made use of the cheap Workers and cheaper Settlers to spam a lot of them--the AIs were not really good candidates for Worker spam, so I took the AIs' Cities and self-built my own Workers.

I used Carracks as a means of delaying Astronomy for almost as long as possible, while still grabbing a lot of the good spots on the "New World" continent. Doing so meant that I greatly extended the life of The Colossus, at the cost of not sharing Resources with the "New World." Since I was able to hook up a couple of Happiness Resources relatively early on in the "New World," this delay in sharing Resources across of the continents didn't really hurt me that much.

Corporations were used on the path to victory, but building and spreading the Executives take a lot of real-life time, so I missed submitting my game for the corresponding Gauntlet by quite a number of days.

As opposed to denying the surviving AIs the chance to build Cities in the "New World," I used our cheap Settlers to build Cities for those AIs, essentially using our Imperialistic Trait as a way to really "walk the line" in terms of the Domination Land Limit by having AI Cities produce competing Culture.

There was a point where I was set up to create a few island Colonies, but I couldn't figure out how to make that option work. I did some testing and then I found out that the "No Vassals" option, which I'd left checkmarked from a previous game, meant that I couldn't have Colonies. I'm still not sure which option is better--having the extra Happiness from a couple of Colonies would have helped a lot, but then having to worry about a Vassal pushing us over the Domination Land Limit would mean a lot more planning would be involved--probably building Privateers just to sabotage your own Vassals' Galleons is a way to control AI expansion, but doing so also requires a lot of monitoring and can be subject to failure when your Privateer inevitably loses one of many naval battles.

I avoided him getting astronomy or flight, but none the less he managed to settle cities on the other continent, which greatly puzzled me and which made keeping under the domination limit quite a challenge.

It is possible for an AI to build Transports (via the Combustion tech) and thus send Settlers overseas without having access to Astronomy or Flight. Perhaps that's the situation that you experienced?

Certainly, with Colonies, such unexpected happenings are even more likely, since a Colony will get all of your techs at the time of founding the Colony, and even if your Colony doesn't settle overseas, it may trade the techs that enable overseas settling to your Capitulated Vassals or Peace Vassals.

 

[Pangaea]

Time sure flies, and I can forget about finishing this in time. But wouldn't beat Dhoom anyway. Yet another game to add to the list of "maybe I'll finish it one day"

 

[bcool]

Not sure if my game will count (might have missed the deadline and I had issues with the save files since I reinstalled the game) , but I tried a slightly different strategy with Joao than a normal space game. I got optics around 1AD and settled a lot of cities in the new world with the carrack, (built the Hanging Gardens once they were all settled), then got astronomy as quickly as possible to get the nice trade routes going as quickly as possible (even before education). The trade routes saved my early economy (I think this was better than milking the colossus), and then it was a corporation fueled space victory. I went for mining inc as quickly as possible then assembly line for the factories then went for refrigeration instead of medicine since the culture from sushi is annoying when you are on the edge of the domination limit. I also made a point to build lots of cities earlier than I normally do, since with the trade routes from the new world cities new cities quickly pay themselves back even without any improvements or corporations. Tried to fill my area with almost as many cities as possible. Avoided building libraries in the new world to avoid the 2nd border pop with some success.

If it gets accepted it was a 1460 AD space victory.

Well the files were corrupted somehow, oh well. Here are the saves I have if anyone is interested.