Earth challenge (huge size)

[Smwat]

Ah, the finish date was 1812 AD

 

[yendor]

Just added six games on Chieftain. Kinda got a better hold on the nuances as I played the follow=up games... I used the form to submit but for this forum I will list them all here also:

Race Win Score Date
Inca Space Race 46778 1864 AD
Maya Domination 58857 1850 AD
Mongol Domination 72198 1770 AD
Aztec Domination 95967 1720 AD
Mali Domination 85664 1732 AD (terrific Zulu Defense!)
Native American Conquest 94795 1702 AD (just cuz I could!)

 

[m00n]

You... You played this map six times?
I guess the unit numbers are lower on Chieftain and the game runs a bit faster but still that's a lot of efford

 

[dilettante]

Sitting Bull
Noble / Space Win 1959AD
14866
I have such terrible scores. I have to finish games earlier than 1900AD. ideas anyone?

Highlights:
I owned North and South America. Relatively peaceful... ask Monty and HC.

Cathy invaded... Twice... and we became good friends.

Shaka, the heavyweight, didn't even once try to leave Africa after conquering all of it. I had to bribe him to cross the Red sea and finish off RammyII.
He didn't even had the nerve to threaten war and send a galleon my way. No cold wars or anything. Way to snub me Shaka... when I'm 8 FREAKIN SQUARES away from you!! What a tease!!!

As I was rolling the Inca, Pachacuti was born and joined my conquest to destroy his people. I thought that was funny. Very Itachi-like

Sury sent a menacing 12 galleons... full of war elephants... in 1890... when I had Marines... I had to stop and think if he was threatening war across the pacific and all he had was THIS? Definitely WINNING

The warmongers were peaceful. The peaceful bastards were mongers. Bizzaro world.

Action finally happened near the end when the two heavies Cathy and Shaka finally got into it. Shaka drove all the way to St. Pete and Nuked Moscow. They've been picking on the small frys around them all game and haven't gone against each other.

Oh and I was bored and nuked the hell out of the barbarians.

I accidentally negotiated peace with Sury using the UN. So with nukes to spare and no civs to declare, I went after the uncivilized. I'm evil I know.

Spoiler :

 

[Matrix]

Scores updated again. I just noticed I forgot Smwat's score, though. I'll add him later.

Only the Zulus are 'unattached' to the rest of the civilizations now. In case you wonder why Russia is so strong, that's because dilettante played his best game with the Russians and we have no one else who played with Russia as well as with another civ.

Also, I've been quite busy at work lately and still no proper internet at home. So no more laborous updates, points of views and all that at least until next week.

 

[guspasho]

I want to play this but I suck at domination. I tried Vikings and then got stuck trying to take down the Romans. I tried Russia and took down the Vikings with an early Axe rush and then got stuck trying to take down the Romans. Either I should play Rome - I don't like the city location options I have available - or I should read up on strategies for domination wins. When I played Russia I went pretty far before giving up, I conquered all of Europe but Rome wasn't dead, it was going to take me a while to build a fleet that could cross the Mediterranean, and someone else built the Apostolic Palace so meanwhile I kept getting forced to defy resolutions to return Roman cities. It wasn't pretty.

Long story short, I'd like to play this map a few times, but I don't know how to play for a domination victory. I don't know how to balance the massive war/expansion with maintaining a tech lead. I was still fighting with axemen when I got a notification that Shaka switched civics to Police State! Can anyone point me to some good strategy topics for dominating in BTS?

 

[WithTea]

Guspasho go for a different win. I went cultural with the Native Americans. Egypt under Ramses is a VERY strong contender for a cultural win. On the present map Catherine is set up for a good strong cottage build up. This would lead to an astronomical (puns always intended) lead tech wise once you hit laboratory (Russian special building = massive tech). A couple of cossack expeditionary forces would be able to knock down most stacks of doom. Play defensive. The Malinese would give you a good balance for trying a religious, space, or cultural victory. Don't stomp everyone. Think long term.

A few simple things that will make things easier in BTS:

Spoiler :

Golden Ages: Not just a boost in overall production and money, but Great People too. If non-spiritual use them as a free government change time.

Religions aren't just "religion." They are ca$h. Found a religion and use a prophet to build a shrine. Think early corporation instead of spiritual path.

Culture is war by another name. If you take a city with catapults and horsemen or with a beautiful city nearby that everyone wants to visit, you still take the city. (Also if you do have to go the horsemen route, moving units through your own territory makes war much easier.)

 

[Skallagrimson]

Long story short, I'd like to play this map a few times, but I don't know how to play for a domination victory. I don't know how to balance the massive war/expansion with maintaining a tech lead. I was still fighting with axemen when I got a notification that Shaka switched civics to Police State! Can anyone point me to some good strategy topics for dominating in BTS?

Try it like this: in the beginning all cities are unit pumps. After the first AI is taken down, those cities farther away from the capital will suck more as commerce cities, so they become the new unit pumps (massively slave-whipping to give them some basics like courthouses, forges, libraries and possibly barracks, with one "cav city" pumping only cavs with both barracks and stable). Then the first unit-pump cities become your new commerce layer. In rings 1 to 2 cities deep from the borders of the empire, they're all pumping units and slave-whipping useful buildings when at cap (or flipping scientists if research is lagging). Those closer in to the capital start working more on buildings and commercial or production specialization. When the inner core cities are optimized and have built all their beaker or hammer or gold-producing buildings, they can either go to wealth or reseearch, or in a war flip back to unit pumping, by which time the next layer or ring of cities can build up in commerce specialization or take some time to build some "nice to have" shiny wonders if they're prod cities.

The advantage to this approach is that newly-taken cities will tend to have more unhappy citizen sitting around desperate to be whipped, and due to cultural limitations you won't grow them enough to make them productive commerce cities. Flipped specialists will make them pay for themselves for the most part after the initial whipping, and then hammer yield tiles make the new generation of units.

Sometimes all this is easier said than done, lol.

 

[strijder20]

Playing the Vikings at Noble atm - Their start position is actually fabulous, if you can take Cathy out (which I did). Hopefully I'll be able to post my game this evening.

 

[strijder20]

So, I won with
The Vikings
Noble
Epic speed
209066 (normalized) score
Domination
1490 AD

Here are my screenshots:

About 0 AD: I took over Cathy, she just got archers when I attacked her, but I had more axes than she had archers, so it was a breeze. I also attacked Caesar with axes and catapults. It was very easy too: because iron wasn't anywhere near him, he only got five praetorians out in total.


Here you see upgraded axes from the Russian and Roman war crossing Suez, reinforcing my armies which have almost taken over Egypt. I have trebuchets by that time.



Aren't you supposed to WIN battles at 100.0%?





Here you see my golden age of the Taj being prolonged by the Sports League event ( Statue of Zeus was in the Egyptian capital). I'm taking over Asoka's land with trebuchets, berserkers, muskets and cuirassiers.



I prolong the golden age of the Taj which was prolonged by the quest with two GP.



Galley in ocean? Qin, have you used the worldbuilder?...
As you see, I'm fighting Genghis, Qin and Mansa simultaneously here. I was bored of mauling one player's longbows with rifles and cannons, so I decided to maul the longbows of three players with rifles and cannons.
Later in the war I fought Genghis' longbows with infantry - tech rift, anyone?





About 100 cities

View attachment Save Ragnar.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[guspasho]

Playing the Vikings at Noble atm - Their start position is actually fabulous, if you can take Cathy out (which I did). Hopefully I'll be able to post my game this evening.

That's funny because I've been trying to play a game as Cathy and my first move is to axe rush Ragnar because their land is so resource-rich.

Anyone know what makes Russia so easy? I'm trying to figure out how to take advantage of it but I get bogged down in overexpanding and micromanaging.

 

[DesertPfox]

Just finished a game with the Romans. After a praetorian rush a just had to put in the hours it takes to finish the epic speed/huge map.

Romans - Emperor - 1748 AD Domination - 228377

 

[Skallagrimson]

Gave up on a game last night running the Vikings under Monarch. The "no tech trading" takes a lot more getting used to than I thought, as I was lower tech than I'm used to being during the early war phase, and while I did have initial results against Caesar (who DoW'ed me, my choice would have been to take out Cathy first), I got stuck on a hilltop city in Central Europe with no trebuchets opened up yet (Engineering seemed forever off without being able to trade the way up there) and swords were dying against longbows, and berserkers were dying against crossbows later on. I've identified some things I could do differently to get my tech up to snuff faster (wasn't building workboats soon enough because I was assuming barb galleys would just snuff them right away if not defended by triremes, but lo and behold the world is so packed with civs that hardly any barbs spawned anywhere, and certainly no barb galleys--more workboats sooner = more scientists!)

 

[Civ'ed]

I'm playing on Settler for this one, just to see if I can get something that's NOT domination...

 

[guspasho]

Gave up on a game last night running the Vikings under Monarch. The "no tech trading" takes a lot more getting used to than I thought, as I was lower tech than I'm used to being during the early war phase, and while I did have initial results against Caesar (who DoW'ed me, my choice would have been to take out Cathy first), I got stuck on a hilltop city in Central Europe with no trebuchets opened up yet (Engineering seemed forever off without being able to trade the way up there) and swords were dying against longbows, and berserkers were dying against crossbows later on. I've identified some things I could do differently to get my tech up to snuff faster (wasn't building workboats soon enough because I was assuming barb galleys would just snuff them right away if not defended by triremes, but lo and behold the world is so packed with civs that hardly any barbs spawned anywhere, and certainly no barb galleys--more workboats sooner = more scientists!)

I tried playing Ragnar on this map once and thought I should at least conquer Rome with Berserkers, but that caused me to get bogged down and give up too.

The Vikings should be one of the best civs to play for this game because their start location is so resource-rich, which is what you need to make up for the lack of tech trading. Lots of seafood, venison, furs, silver, sugar, gold up in Iceland, dyes in England, etc.

I think the best way to play them is stay peaceful and tech until the Industrial era. Build Nidaros 2N of start and the second city on the north end of the Baltic, between the sea and the venison, cottage spam along all the river tiles, build Colossus and Great Lighthouse, build scientific wonders in Nidaros, and settle great scientists in Nidaros, expand around the entire Baltic and North Seas, though you might not have time to capture the south shore, try to grab the horses in Germany, fill out Finland and the Baltic so you German city isn't isolated, colonize Britain, Ireland, and Iceland, and just sit there teching for a while, you should blow past everybody. If Rome or Russia declares, take one of their more valuable cities nearby and then sue for peace, or raze their improvements and crush their armies then ignore them. When you get cavalry or tanks everyone else will probably still have longbowmen and you can then steamroll everybody.

Check out all the resources you get and compare it to Rome, I'm not sure how Rome manages to do very well at all: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10603715&postcount=305

 

[Skallagrimson]

I tried playing Ragnar on this map once and thought I should at least conquer Rome with Berserkers, but that caused me to get bogged down and give up too.

The Vikings should be one of the best civs to play for this game because their start location is so resource-rich, which is what you need to make up for the lack of tech trading. Lots of seafood, venison, furs, silver, sugar, gold up in Iceland, dyes in England, etc.

I think the best way to play them is stay peaceful and tech until the Industrial era. Build Nidaros 2N of start and the second city on the north end of the Baltic, between the sea and the venison, cottage spam along all the river tiles, build Colossus and Great Lighthouse, build scientific wonders in Nidaros, and settle great scientists in Nidaros, expand around the entire Baltic and North Seas, though you might not have time to capture the south shore, try to grab the horses in Germany, fill out Finland and the Baltic so you German city isn't isolated, colonize Britain, Ireland, and Iceland, and just sit there teching for a while, you should blow past everybody. If Rome or Russia declares, take one of their more valuable cities nearby and then sue for peace, or raze their improvements and crush their armies then ignore them. When you get cavalry or tanks everyone else will probably still have longbowmen and you can then steamroll everybody.

Check out all the resources you get and compare it to Rome, I'm not sure how Rome manages to do very well at all: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10603715&postcount=305

On iPad at the moment, not able to post screenshots, but my second go at running the Vikings (Egil Skallagrimsson in charge of the Northmen to be exact) did much better last night. There was a sort of built-in diplo peace as Taoism spammed all over the Old World and the only one bucking the lovefest system at first was Shaka making unsuccessful runs at Ramses (who had the shrine and was apparently making fairly wise use of the economy to outclass Shaka's units). Rather than deliberately anger Julius I gave in to some of the more trivial demands (oh you want a deer? I have like 50 so sure, go choke on it!) High resource count allowed me to resource trade and it seemed forever between slave whips and a city re-hitting happy cap, which gave me somewhat of a dilemma: farm it up for faster whippable growth or cottage to leverage Financial? Why not both?

Cathy DoWed me before I was ready to fully go on the offensive so I just took one of her cities before taking about 150 gold and a peace treaty. I kept up the unit prodution, nursed the tech tree better (knowing I HAD to build prerequisite techs and couldn't trade anything to backfill, interesting new twist to the strategy) and opened up Berserkers while Cathy still had axes and swords, Play time! Late last night I gave myself my first taste of Cathy Goes Down ...with a curb-stomp of a fight. It was slightly more hairy than I thought it would be taking her first city in the new war because she'd traded for ivory and had spammed ellies. I was confident that my 2 pikemen and 4 spearmen stack-defending would beat 'em down, especially since I was besieging her city from a forest (is there a bug where Cathy just won't chop? WTH, she gave me a perfect wooded avenue of approach twice now!) But lo and behold my GG healer, who was a pikeman (long story), was the only one of my units to die. So I reloaded from my prewar save and instead of going up the Medic lines for the GG, went up Woodsman to W3, and it not only survived the siege that time but was able to whack a couple extra ellies during the march to Moscow. Most fun you can have with your clothes on, I swear!

All these resources and an idiot Cathy is making Monarch feel like Noble (had to double check my level a few times). Gotta admit I owe a lot of it to the Taoist Ikea Buying Lovefest that kept me safe long enough to tech my Berserks. Would have been a struggle (or at least more expensive buying Julius off) otherwise.

 

[guspasho]

It seems to me the Viking start location is a little weak; did most people who played them SIP or did you move? I made 2 dotmaps, one SIP, one involving settling the capital on turn 2 (spoiler warning: resource locations for copper etc shown via signposts):

Spoiler SIP :

Spoiler move to river :

In either case I think I'd send the 2nd settler and the warrior around the Baltic to the maroon location near the lake; it could be a good GP farm or commerce city (maybe both, at different times in the game?).

I've often wondered: how does one make maps like that? I could really use it to plan my city placement.

 

[GGracchus]

I've often wondered: how does one make maps like that? I could really use it to plan my city placement.

BUG/BAT/BULL should have those, located here, and obviously click on the download thread.

 

[Skallagrimson]

On iPad at the moment, not able to post screenshots, but my second go at running the Vikings (Egil Skallagrimsson in charge of the Northmen to be exact) did much better last night. There was a sort of built-in diplo peace as Taoism spammed all over the Old World and the only one bucking the lovefest system at first was Shaka making unsuccessful runs at Ramses (who had the shrine and was apparently making fairly wise use of the economy to outclass Shaka's units). Rather than deliberately anger Julius I gave in to some of the more trivial demands (oh you want a deer? I have like 50 so sure, go choke on it!) High resource count allowed me to resource trade and it seemed forever between slave whips and a city re-hitting happy cap, which gave me somewhat of a dilemma: farm it up for faster whippable growth or cottage to leverage Financial? Why not both?

Cathy DoWed me before I was ready to fully go on the offensive so I just took one of her cities before taking about 150 gold and a peace treaty. I kept up the unit prodution, nursed the tech tree better (knowing I HAD to build prerequisite techs and couldn't trade anything to backfill, interesting new twist to the strategy) and opened up Berserkers while Cathy still had axes and swords, Play time! Late last night I gave myself my first taste of Cathy Goes Down ...with a curb-stomp of a fight. It was slightly more hairy than I thought it would be taking her first city in the new war because she'd traded for ivory and had spammed ellies. I was confident that my 2 pikemen and 4 spearmen stack-defending would beat 'em down, especially since I was besieging her city from a forest (is there a bug where Cathy just won't chop? WTH, she gave me a perfect wooded avenue of approach twice now!) But lo and behold my GG healer, who was a pikeman (long story), was the only one of my units to die. So I reloaded from my prewar save and instead of going up the Medic lines for the GG, went up Woodsman to W3, and it not only survived the siege that time but was able to whack a couple extra ellies during the march to Moscow. Most fun you can have with your clothes on, I swear!

All these resources and an idiot Cathy is making Monarch feel like Noble (had to double check my level a few times). Gotta admit I owe a lot of it to the Taoist Ikea Buying Lovefest that kept me safe long enough to tech my Berserks. Would have been a struggle (or at least more expensive buying Julius off) otherwise.

Well I spoke too soon on all that. Monarch was truly Monarch after all and the Taoist lovefest that kept me safe from Julius also bogged down my conquest of Cathy (stoppinng the wars, reassigning cities back to her... UGH I hate that!) So I figured I'd turtle up, peacemonger, techify, and try for space race, when out of the blue a gargantuan Shaka stack of the same tech level units I had, comes after me. No "stop the war" there of course, no "reassign cities" back to me, of course. The Apo palace diplo only works one way, after all. I tried replaying to build up defenses and counteroffenses to a big enough stack to counter Shaka but there was just no way. Too huge.

Restarted as Shaka to see if I could be the one to build the huge stack and go own the Vikings, but Cathy took 'em out before I could. Then Cathy became the huge dominant Overlady bullying everyone around and attacked me, but of course me being Shaka, I had already been out warmongering without any Apo palace preventing it (western world was Muslim and the palace was Buddhist so Ashoka didn't mind at all that I back-stabbed fellow Muslims!) I did lose two cities from the tsunami of cuirassiers she sent right the very turn I discovered Rifling, but after magnificant rifle-spam and forced marches up to North Africa I was able to retake those cities, completely destroy her stack of cuirs, collect tribute from her, and then get back to the business of finishing off Ramses who was trying to culture-choke me out. Fun game! I did drop down to Noble for it but only because the combination of no tech trading and no vassals makes me somewhat of a fish out of water, strategy-wise. Mistakes get made...

 

[guspasho]

BUG/BAT/BULL should have those, located here, and obviously click on the download thread.

I've downloaded BUFFY, which is BUG and BULL and the HOF mod combined - I think - but how do I run that and Earth Challenge? To play Earth Challenge the best that I was ever able to do is create a shortcut to the Earth Challenge.CivBeyondSwordWBSave file and click on that, but if I load another mod then I can't figure out how to get back. Basically, I have absolutely no idea how to deal with mods at all. It's incredibly confusing. It doesn't help that Civ4 seems to have an infinite number of redundant directories all over my system. Help!