[NFP] Community Monthly Challenge

[Francel]

New thread concept: Each month, fanatics compete to win a singular and specific objective. The winners will receive “epic bragging rights” and be immortalized here.

Example: By turn 100 (standard speed, emperor+), create the vampire castle supplying the highest total yield to your capital city.

Update:
This thread is getting a facelift!

Here are some of the changes going forward:

1) "Weekly challenge" is now "monthly challenge." That's right, you will now have an entire month to prepare a submission. Challenges will begin on the first of each month and last the entire month.

2) There are now two brackets for participants - A) Deity level for the "hardcore" users and B) Prince-Immortal - we'll call them masochists and sadists, respectively (just kidding). Maybe Contender level and Contestant level?

3) Rules and conditions will be made more explicit, so there's less ambiguity and uncertainty.

See below for description of the current challenge
_______________________________________________________

If enough people participate, challenges will continue to be offered.

Your feedback, questions, and suggestions are welcome.

Have fun!

Challenge Winners

Challenge #1: Highest appeal national park as Bull Moose Teddy
enKage (62 appeal)

Challenge #2 (Feb 2021): Highest yield of a single ley line at the start of Industrial era
enKage (deity) - Brazil - 73
AriaLyric (prince-immortal) - Kongo - 76

Challenge #3 (March 2021): Vampire with the highest possible combat strength by the year 1800 on standard speed
AriaLyric (prince-immortal difficulty) - Gran Colombia - 152 combat strength

Challenge #4 (April 2021): Have the city with the highest total population and amenities by turn 150 on standard speed
PiR (prince-immortal) - Maya - 59 (21 population and 38 amenities)
Bangau (deity) - Kongo - 39 (24 population and 15 amenities)

Challenge #5 (May 2021): Historical simulation as judged by Andrew Johnson
Planktonic - England (Victoria) - The sun never sets on this globe spanning empire

Challenge #6 (June 2021): Reach the final stage of Climate Change in as few turns as possible
Bangau (deity) - Germany - at turn 175 [bonus challenge (reduce global emissions to zero): 9 turns]

 

[Francel]

Weekly Challenge #1: The first challenge features Bull Moose Teddy and leverages his Parks and Antiquities ability, and potentially the new preserve district as well. Your task is to create a national park with the highest total appeal (the sum of the appeal of the four tiles contained within the park) by turn 300.

Stipulations are as follows: Standard speed, emperor+ difficulty, no mods except for official Firaxis content. No NFP “add ons” allowed except corporations mode and tech shuffle (both optional). Entries must include a picture. Description of your strategy/approach is encouraged.

The first weekly challenge takes place from approximately Monday, Feb 1st, 1 pm EST to Monday, Feb 8th, 1 pm EST.

 

[enKage]

I highly prefer RR Teddy, but I run a game.

Let me show you my Philadelphia. The city makes 932 tourism BEFORE multipliers from open borders, trade routes, film studio, cards and gov penalty applies (so it easily should translate to nearly 2,5k tourism city), and 882 tourism comes straight from national parks - I made one huge composed of 5 diamonds.

I really wish that volcano was Kilimanjaro or crater lake, but map generator refused me any natural wonders also great majority of forest were planted, so there is huge space to improve with better map.

Anyway, the strongest diamond in this park is the last added segment as I waited for borders pop and has 62 appeal, what you can see on tourism layer (62 appeal, +50% from techs gives 93 tourism and Golden Gate rises it to 186 tourism). The most southern part has 61 appeal. The whole park complex has 294 appeal

I had pretty annoying start in a no food basin with very limited expansion, so the Khmers must have died. Later I expanded to Zulu, but the moment wasn't the best - I declared when they had 55 strength walls, after few turns it turned to 90 (discovering armies rises it so much? wow) so it took ages before I was even able to take a single city.

Golden Gate is mandatory for +5 appeal on tile

Starting / final attached
Deity, continents and islands, standard all random

 

[Francel]

Wonderful stuff @enKage

You are obviously "in the lead" as the only entrant so far, but beyond that, I like your style 62 of course is an average of 15.5 appeal per tile in that national park!

 

[Francel]

Weekly Challenge #2: As the first weekly challenge comes to a close, it's time to announce the next one. Maybe more people will participate if the challenge feels a bit more accessible. Thus, you can choose any civ. This time, the objective is to have the single ley line with the highest total yield at the start of the industrial era. How you achieve this might depend on your creativity, but should entail recruiting lots of great people. Yes, you have to promote the Hermetic Order as soon as tier 3 becomes available.

Stipulations are as follows: Standard speed, emperor+ difficulty, no mods except for official Firaxis content. No NFP “add ons” allowed except secret societies and corporations (optional). Entries must include a picture. Description of your strategy/approach is encouraged. You must have at least 6 total civilizations in the game, and proportionally more if you play on a map larger than "small." I may not think of every rule to put here, but please play honorably.

The second weekly challenge takes place from approximately Monday, Feb 8th, 1 pm EST to Monday, Feb 15th, 1 pm EST.

Update: enKage officially week 1 winner - congrats!

 

[enKage]

Just a quick relaxing game on lower difficulty.
Few turns after zero relics tourism victory industrial era starts, 71 total yield:

This is without mass projects and without divine spark, so can easily be beaten by many many yields.
I also misplaced Mbwila and noticed later that I block one preserve

Anyway, civ choice is very limited, Kongo is obvious with possible alternative of Brazil running projects. I don't like Brazil, I love Kongo, simple.

Emperor, small continents, everything standard / random

 

[Francel]

Please consider submitting an entry for the contest, even if you don't beat enKage's impressive feats. If more people don't participate, there probably wouldn't be much reason to continue. So please, please - submit yours!

 

[Mr. Salt]

I've only got so much time on the weekdays, but I'll try to submit something!

 

[PiR]

It's hard to complete such a feat in a single week indeed.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Not that you are going to get many entrants but monthly challenge might work better.

 

[Francel]

Hmm. I wasn't expecting people to be perfect/reach a theoretical maximum - just to give it a shot. I thought playing a game up to industrial wouldn't be too time consuming. Any other opinions on whether two weeks or a month would be better? Thanks.

 

[fy00sh]

I'd probably like to participate, even if I'll probably never get the highest score. I'd say a month would be preferable but two weeks could probably work, I tend to take about a week to finish a standard speed game and I wouldn't want every game i play to be challenge-related, but every other is fine. My two main questions tho are: 1) would purely cosmetic mods be fine? I imagine they'd be fine as long as they don't impact gameplay at all but figured I'd make sure first. And 2) how would people feel about lowering the difficulty threshold down to prince, or (and I think this is the better solution) allowing submissions from any difficulty level, but giving higher scores to people who play on higher difficulties? that way someone like me who never ever plays above prince difficulty can participate without changing the level they play at, but also people can't just get easy wins by playing on settler?

 

[Baigan]

I was working on a submission for last week's challenge, only to discover that this week's challenge is almost over.

Even if I don't have time to submit, I enjoy thinking about the challenge!

 

[Francel]

Thank you to those of you who responded. Your feedback is truly appreciated. Will be announcing some changes shortly, but I think a monthly format will be used going forward. Therefore, if you were thinking about submitting, you have an extension.

Also, I think there will be two tiers of difficulty from now on. Accessibility is important to me.

Finally, next month’s challenge is going to be fun. Stay tuned...

 

[Francel]

This thread is getting a facelift!

Here are some of the changes going forward:

1) "Weekly challenge" is now "monthly challenge." That's right, you will now have an entire month to prepare a submission. Challenges will begin on the first of each month and last the entire month.

2) The current challenge, which was supposed to end yesterday, will now last until the end of February. Hopefully more people will participate.

3) There are now two brackets for participants - A) Deity level for the "hardcore" users and B) Prince-Immortal - we'll call them masochists and sadists, respectively (just kidding). Maybe Contender level and Contestant level?

4) Rules and conditions will be made more explicit, so there's less ambiguity and uncertainty.

_____________________________________

Clarified rules for the current challenge:

Objective: Present the single ley line tile with the highest total yield on the first turn of the industrial era. You must have a governor's promotion available and use it to promote the hermetic order on the first turn of the industrial era, and the total yield of the ley line on that turn is your score.

Notes: You may use any civilization. You must use secret societies (obviously). You may also use the corporates mode, if you like. No other NFP modes for this one, including apocalypse, dramatic ages, or heroes. You may not use any non-firaxis mods, with the exception of visual mods that do not affect gameplay in any fashion. You may play on either prince-emperor, or deity (see above). You must specify the difficulty level, and include a picture of your entry.

Further stipulations: You must play on at least a small map, and you cannot artificially decrease the number of opponents or city-states, although you can increase the number, if you like. You may use the natural wonder and city-state pickers as you see fit. Although, as before, I may not think of every thing to list here, please no exploits or otherwise "gaming the system" to get an advantage.

Tips: How you accomplish this task is up to you, and may entail some creativity, but will probably involve patronizing lots of great persons.

Duration: The remainder of the month of February. New challenge will begin March 1st.

Any questions?

Thank you!

(Apologies to enKage, who already submitted - you are immortalized as our first winner!)

 

[enKage]

I had a great fun don't worry, as Kongo and America are among my fav civs

 

[enKage]

Kongolese GWAMs and Merchants and more districts vs Brazilian Carnival and refund is a hard choice and a matter of personal preference, and though I highly prefer Kongo, I went a qiuck game with Brazil.

Deity all random, continents and islands. Did not have cash to buy 4th sanctuary as well as I didnot want to manipulate the game to choose Hongkong and Bologna (or it is Geneva? I never know which one give bonus GPP)

73 yields

 

[fy00sh]

Just completed my attempt, managed to get one with a yield total of 76! ^_^

Playing as Mvemba A Nzinga (4th jersey because it looks best), prince difficulty, standard map size, disaster level 3 (really glad i did this!!), no mods that affect gameplay enabled

Early game managed to get Bologna just to my south and instantly suzerained them. Also got Kandy and the Vatican which aren't particularly helpful for this challenge per se, but were definitely thematic for Kongo.

Then I was alerted to my neighbor being Korea by them placing a city right where I wanted one, which immediately flipped to me after they built me a nice little campus.

From there I mostly just prioritised getting as many cities down as I could and building markets, libraries, and amphitheaters. Got the Great Library in Mbanza Ntemo (formerly Gwangju) and quickly got Pingala his middle promotion in a city with a library and amphitheater. Noticed Eyjafjallajo:kull way on the other side of Korea and put down a little colony there, so I could use the adjacent ley line for my super high yield tile. Made sure to build a preserve next to it, and due to poor planning only barely got the conservation civic before Industrial, almost missing out on 2 science production and gold.
Probably would've done mush worse on higher difficulties. Most of what got me that high was that I was literally uncontested in great merchants for the entire game. I just got all of them.
Of the yields on that ley line, 5 production, 12 gold, 12 science, and 24 culture came from great people, with the rest coming from the terrain (1 food), St. Basil's (1 food production and culture), preserve (2 of each yield), and Eyjafjallajo:kull (1 production and 7 food from eruptions, 1 culture from adjacency).

This was really fun, looking forward to next month's challenge! ^_^

 

[Francel]

Wonderful! Ya'll are doing a bang up job! Next month's should be fun. It will involve... vampires (with a good mix of tactics and strategy thrown in).

 

[Baigan]

19 points on Immortal. Stupid game. Received two joint declarations from Rough Rider Teddy and Gitarja, plus I had to compete with Mvemba and Mansa on the other continent. I'm pretty sure I found a bug with Temple of Artemis, too: it didn't update its Amenity count when I placed improvements after building it. At least I had a nice 7 city Colosseum.