Earth challenge (huge size)

[lymond]

Gazpacho - BUFFY is fine but is a bit outdated. I only use it for GOTMs/SGOTMs now. BUG/BULL in custom assets or, even better, BAT is the way to go.

Here's the deal:

1) BUG/BULL in Custom Assets loads whenever you run basic BTS, that is, you don't have to "load a mod". It's just there. Saves created with this setup can run with or without the mod, which is why it is used often for non-WB save forum games.

2) BAT is the latest BUG/BULL plus nice graphics. It is a stand-alone mod, meaning you need to either load the mod or create a shortcut that will load it automatically. I think it creates one anyway, but it is pretty easy to do.

Worldbuilder saves are essentially the same as scenarios. Place the file in your BTS>Saves>Single>WB folder. When you load BTS use the "Play a Scenario" option and you will see "Earth Challenge" in the list. You can pick your Civ, Difficulty and Speed at that point.

edit: oh... and regarding the two options I described above, I use both depending on the game. I always use BAT for personal games

 

[huerfanista]

I played all of these with no events and no huts, emperor difficulty.

Rameses 1794AD domination, 183K:

Spoiler :

Shaka 1490AD domination, 367K:

Spoiler :

Mansa 1655AD, 315K:

Spoiler :

 

[Skallagrimson]

It's a challenging map to be sure. In the Old World there's always some AI on the opposite end of the land mass who becomes too huge of a threat to be able to easily stomp (impossible early game, supremely difficult mid-game and still rather difficult late game) militarily. Religion blocks are a huge problem as they can produce dogpiles when you're not part of it, or stifle your conquests if you are. Certainly takes more finesse than the random fractal maps I'm used to generating, which is a good thing. Take me out of my comfort zone...

 

[Amao]

Why hasn't this thread moved over to S&T? Just saw this thread yesterday. I played many games in late spring. But now I'm fully booked.

 

[lymond]

Why hasn't this thread moved over to S&T? Just saw this thread yesterday. I played many games in late spring. But now I'm fully booked.

ha...i made that suggestion when the game was first posted. I think it would get a lot more hits over on S&T

 

[Matrix]

Hi guys!

Just wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten about this baby. It's just that work has gotten busier, so I can't work on it at work anymore, and I did a complete reinstall of my computer at home and all my e-mails all locked and stored but inaccessible until I've installed a new e-mail client and am able to import them again. (The submissions are sent to my e-mail address.) In a few days I will update this thing again.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Finally got a Monarch victory (dom) but it was late game, very late game, with not a particularly high score as a result. Will try again after I'm done with a fractal experiment I'm on at the moment.

 

[strijder20]

I tried playing Rome on settler to see if that would give me a better score.
The answer is : no, in my case.

Scouting reveals me all oil:

VERY useful:

These are the horse archers I got from horse-whispering quest:

Seems I ran out of Roman names:

And I won by 880 AD.

With a score of

113620.​

​

Julius has displayed the abilities of Augustus? Perhaps it's because they are family.

.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Doing an extremely fun Cathy run (renamed myself to Ivan the Terrible) on Noble right now. Diplo from Russia is easier than I thought--there are backstabs from Mongolia but China keeps Genghis busy enough to sue for peace whenever I show up with more than a handful of HAs. Picking off Egyptian cities is cake because Ramses is everyone's bottom b****. Civics choices keep Raggie and Julius calm enough for DoW prevention and Shaka's happy (for now) via religion and common enemy. I've dropped to one unit-pump and am building mad infrastructure until I hit Mil Trad, after which I'll go total war and stomp, starting with Genghis.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Another super-fun thing to do on earth maps is to go into WB and rename all cities to what the real city name is for their location (e.g., Istanbul for coastal Turkey). No peeking, I swear!

 

[strijder20]

Doing an extremely fun Cathy run (renamed myself to Ivan the Terrible) on Noble right now. Diplo from Russia is easier than I thought--there are backstabs from Mongolia but China keeps Genghis busy enough to sue for peace whenever I show up with more than a handful of HAs. Picking off Egyptian cities is cake because Ramses is everyone's bottom b****. Civics choices keep Raggie and Julius calm enough for DoW prevention and Shaka's happy (for now) via religion and common enemy. I've dropped to one unit-pump and am building mad infrastructure until I hit Mil Trad, after which I'll go total war and stomp, starting with Genghis.

Diplo? Keeping AI pleased? Waiting until MT for warring?

NO WAY!
How do you even DARE to think about 'peace'?
Just kill all those puny AIs! They do not deserve to be in the presence of a human player like you?

You, as a player who is probably slightly more experienced than me, could probably war even better than me. And if you are going for score, domination seems the best choice. And isn't it better to start soon than late?
I think killing the AIs for their land is the best way to high scores, as they can't tech-trade anyway.
Anyway, let me know your score

 

[elohssa]

If you are playing against Andorra or San Marino (currently tied for last in the FIFA rankings) in World Cup qualifying you are almost certainly going to win (much as in Civilization, as almost nobody finishes, let alone even posts their losses). The question is by how much you are going to win (ie.your score). If you play a 3-4-3 formation (ie. go for a domination victory) you are much much more likely to win 10-0 (or some similar score) than if you play a 1-5-4 formation (ie. go for another victory type). There is a chance you will win by a greater margin with the 1-5-4 formation, just as some cultural or space race victories score better than some domination victories, but if you want to maximize your chances of getting a high score you would play a 3-4-3 formation (ie go for a domination victory).

1-5-4 formation??? That would get Brazil destroyed by Andorra in real life

 

[guspasho]

Diplo? Keeping AI pleased? Waiting until MT for warring?

NO WAY!
How do you even DARE to think about 'peace'?
Just kill all those puny AIs! They do not deserve to be in the presence of a human player like you?

You, as a player who is probably slightly more experienced than me, could probably war even better than me. And if you are going for score, domination seems the best choice. And isn't it better to start soon than late?
I think killing the AIs for their land is the best way to high scores, as they can't tech-trade anyway.
Anyway, let me know your score

I have to agree with this. Earth Challenge is all about the high score, and the score is heavily slanted toward domination. So expand, expand, expand.

However, you could still give Matrix a lot of useful information if you aimed for same victory type with several different civs. I think right now he has a few civs he still can't compare against the others because no players that won with them played any other civs.

 

[dalamb]

I don't think it's quite right to say "it's all about high score, so go for domination." It might also be useful to go for a different victory type with each of several civs. You couldn't compare a Domination game with a Space Race, but it would be interesting to be able to say X is better at space than Y.

 

[guspasho]

I don't think it's quite right to say "it's all about high score, so go for domination." It might also be useful to go for a different victory type with each of several civs. You couldn't compare a Domination game with a Space Race, but it would be interesting to be able to say X is better at space than Y.

Way back in the first post Matrix said the goal is to determine the best players and best civilizations to play. Game score is his basis for comparison, and he is comparing domination to space race, etc.

You could play space race but that won't be very useful, because as you said, you shouldn't compare the victory types by score. So the only way to provide him with useful information is to play for the same victory at least a few times with different civs.

 

[dalamb]

I suppose I was proposing generalizing the comparison.

 

[strijder20]

Weird... I am playing as the Inca right now. Montezuma and Sitting Cow share a religion, so I thought Monty would go after me. But when I checked the 'glance' screen, I found out that Monte and Sitting Cattle were annoyed at each other - at +3! Are those hidden attitudes that high, or is it some built-in protective against warmonger hate, or is it a '-5: A first impression is a lasting one' hidden attitude which kicks in?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Yes, and it usually ends up that everyone hates Sitting Bull.

Also both their tendencies really don't help either.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Diplo? Keeping AI pleased? Waiting until MT for warring?

NO WAY!
How do you even DARE to think about 'peace'?
Just kill all those puny AIs! They do not deserve to be in the presence of a human player like you?

You, as a player who is probably slightly more experienced than me, could probably war even better than me. And if you are going for score, domination seems the best choice. And isn't it better to start soon than late?
I think killing the AIs for their land is the best way to high scores, as they can't tech-trade anyway.
Anyway, let me know your score

Well I wanted to leverage cossacks for their sweet overpoweredness and romp all over everyone in the late renaissance BUT, as you imply, that form of a dom victory came too late to be a postworthy score.

Right now I'm replaying Cathy as a space racing science nerd.

Why? Well a couple of reasons:

1) Plenty of land is available early-game to claim via REX.
2) Julius, Raggie, and Genghis have a fun little game going where whenever I'm busy fighting one of them, the other one dagger-DoWs. Turtle defense is less catastrophic than a tidal wave of units all east or all west.
3) 50% space ship bonus for research institutes.
4) At the empire size I can peacefully gain via REX, I have no problems leading the way in tech.
5) As mentioned, the UU comes too late in the game to conquer the amount of land there is to conquer prior to the 1900s.
6) Warring against Raggie's Berserkers with comparable units is sub-optimal.
7) Warring against Julius' Praets with comparable units is sub-optimal.
8) Warring against Genghis' Keshliks with comparable units is sub-optimal.
9) Tech (due to size, total beakers) zooms into the lead more toward the middle of the game, not quite early enough to have a major tech advantage over the other warmongering neighbors.
10) Kill-and-raze can be an option to open up land in some isolated parts of the map (dealing with barb city spawns later), but in most locations land razed one turn will be settled by some other AI the next. The economy early game crashes quite enough settling land peacefully--it crashes even more when you early war.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Way back in the first post Matrix said the goal is to determine the best players and best civilizations to play. Game score is his basis for comparison, and he is comparing domination to space race, etc.

You could play space race but that won't be very useful, because as you said, you shouldn't compare the victory types by score. So the only way to provide him with useful information is to play for the same victory at least a few times with different civs.

Ordinarily I'd say dom is the lowest hanging fruit for high score, yes, but Russia is a very special case. Its UB is geared toward space race and its location on the map is ideally suited to runaway teching. I think it's possible to win space even sooner than dom if the teching is done properly. I'm giving that a shot. If it's still a lower score than the doms posted here, I'll go back to dom and unlike my first go-around, won't wait for Cossacks.