Easiest/Hardest UHVs

[Temujin8k]

UHV's I've tried on their latest version of goals (not necessary the balance), with personal commentary:

• Greece - I have not yet figured out the timing to start conquests for #2. And I had Philosophy get snatched the last time I tried.
• Phoenicia - I would like to think of this as one of the puzzle civs too. Building the Great Cothon ASAP is important.
• Polynesia - Relatively easy also, as long as you don't forget to focus on culture whenever possible.
• Rome - #1 and especially #2 are a challenge, but once accomplished #3 should be pretty easy to attain.
• Korea - Used to be pretty easy with #2 only requiring Printing. Tried one run with the new goals; for the love of God I cannot get Education on time.
• Byzantium - I always do a Rome UHV run when I want to play this, I think it yields the best starting situation as you have complete control over your spawn area. I eventually grew tired around 1380; didn't realize the quantity of army I had to train just for a few Janissaries.
• Moors - I find #1 hard, not sure if it's just me not being militaristic enough.
• Java - I thought I'd struggle with this UHV, so I was happy to actually pull it off. The war-Japan-send-War-Galley strat somehow worked as a guarantee as well. Great Prophet still needs a buff for spreading across islands though. Always. Find. A. Muslim. Civ!
• England - Doable on Marathon, but that was builds ago. I should probably try it on Normal... (I thought I already did)
• Holy Rome - I must not be good enough, but I cannot conquer Jerusalem by 1200. Have I mentioned that I only barely conquered Rome as well?
• Rus - I haven't figured out a way to defeat 25 barbs yet without doing anything. To be fair, I usually only play Rus to setup a Russia run lol.
• Portugal - The only exception I'll make for this list (haven't tried it recently yet). Is it just me or do I actually have to use the culture slider for #1?
• Italy - Nuff said.
• Russia - My most recent UHV win. I thought I wouldn't be able to clutch #3, but I underestimated Russia's size and production potential. I got Satellites in 1956; clutched all 60 units by 1969.
• Ottomans - I was not pushing to complete #2, but somehow I did. Then I thought #3 was hard. Then I pulled it off too... oh wait, it was on Marathon.
• Iran - I am not a diplomat and I cannot figure out #1. I just love building Image of the World Square because why not? I am trying to pull off a Nader Shah though and get #3 as well.
• Argentina - I could get #1, but not #2... and yes I don't like it that I'm practically stagnant in tech at all.
• Brazil - I actually pulled this off recently on a 1700 AD start. For some reason I was able to get Wembley, and personally that was the only difficult wonder to grab out of the three. Let me recall if I used any cheats on this...

 

[Dracosolon]

Appreciate all the comments y'all. Lots of good discussion. I ended up starting a 3000BC USA game and got the first UHV by conquering Mexico just in time. I think the spawn ended up being pretty lucky. 2nd one seems straightforward, I'm guessing I'll have to strategically conquer enemies with tanks and marines for the last one. Do civs have to be friendly for the last goal? Hopefully I'll have some time to finish the game this weekend. I'll probably try some of the easier civs mentioned here once thats done. I remember trying Babylon in the past but never figured it out. I always got beat by China for some tech or Egypt/Greece for some wonder.

American's UHV3 counts your allies, which means vassals and civs you have a defensive pact with.

 

[Apple111111]

Is nobody in the thread mentioning China? I feel like that one’s super difficult because you need a huge empire and need to plot around several phases of barbarians and invaders, yet you need to be the tech leader with one of the worst tech modifiers in the game whilst doing so.

 

[NL13]

Is nobody in the thread mentioning China? I feel like that one’s super difficult because you need a huge empire and need to plot around several phases of barbarians and invaders, yet you need to be the tech leader with one of the worst tech modifiers in the game whilst doing so.

I don‘t think it‘s that difficult once you get a feeling for the places where barbs spawn. You can place archers on hills around your border, so barbs attack them instead of entering your territory. As long as you don‘t get greedy with your expansion you‘ll be fine. Going for a more central spot for your capital instead of Xi‘an also helps a lot imo.
Your land and expansion options are definetly strong enough to be around the first renaissance techs once the mongols spawn.

 

[Logoncal]

The UHVs ive done in the mod are 2: France and England
France's difficulty comes primarily on the early game, and now that they got nerfed even harder i think thats an even more difficult part of it. After you slog thru it, Getting the legendary paris is easy peasy, because GA settles are exploitable AF. The territory is tricky only in the US, in Europe you just roll in everyone.
As for the wonders. Keeping tech lead isnt hard when you roll thru people, but i do warn that you take Social Liberties asap cause its not an euro that you need to worry to lose the Louvre....

As for England, GOD THE EARLY GAME SUCKS. I have never witnessed the most random and annoying barbs in the entire mod, trying to balance tech, infra and taking the isles is a *****. But when you DO get the colonial techs in around 1500, youre smooth sail unironically. You just need to be extremely stingy on tech trading to keep the lead, try a conqueror event and spam units in the colonies to seize the asian/african colonies and spike the rails in Africa.

As for the boats: Spamming galleons seems the trick as you make lvl 3 boats and transports that can tank privateers.

 

[xerxess]

From all the UHVs I've attemped, I'd say the easiest ones would be:

• Polynesia
• Phoenicia
• Java
• Babylon
• Khmer
• Rus
• Toltecs
• Norse

Overall I think these are the ones that once you have figured out how to do it, is pretty straightforward.

The hardest ones:

• Malaysia
• Japan
• Inca
• Maya
• France
• Turks
• Persia

Some of these I've failed to pulled it out but I know they are doable (France, Maya, Japan), some requiere a bunch of luck (Persia, Malaysia) and some are just impossible (Turks).

 

[AOS9001]

I've won Inca post-Panama cape change by sending a great merchant overland to a mega Aztecs that kept Central America free of barbarian holkans, then camped him in Yucatan until the Spanish caravel appeared. Very lucky game!

 

[lethrgy]

Appreciate all the comments y'all. Lots of good discussion. I ended up starting a 3000BC USA game and got the first UHV by conquering Mexico just in time. I think the spawn ended up being pretty lucky. 2nd one seems straightforward, I'm guessing I'll have to strategically conquer enemies with tanks and marines for the last one. Do civs have to be friendly for the last goal? Hopefully I'll have some time to finish the game this weekend. I'll probably try some of the easier civs mentioned here once thats done. I remember trying Babylon in the past but never figured it out. I always got beat by China for some tech or Egypt/Greece for some wonder.

american civ difficulty is pretty good imo, i was able to clear the first two UHVs recently but the last goal kinda has an argentina waiting around for the turns to process kinda thing going on. i gave up at about 45% econ/military in the 1950s because i just got so bored and wanted to play the most updated dev version lol. 75% is a more brutal goal than expected, i vassalized/conquered all of france/spain/germany/russia/china and had defensive pacts with britain and the dutch to only make up 45%. the first 100 years of america are really fun though, spamming GPs and debating on which cities to found are very fun

 

[Zaddy]

The thing about the American UHV is that it doesn't count vassals of allies for the global power/commerce calculations (as far as I can tell? I'm open to correction), which means even if you ally all the superpowers and have clearly run away with the game, you can still struggle to hit the threshold. If ally vassals were counted, I think it would be less obnoxious.

 

[lethrgy]

didnt know about that but it would make total sense to me. alternatively, i could just say screw the alliance and just remove them from the game completely but i was really itching to jump on the updated dev version lol

 

[Leoreth]

The thing about the American UHV is that it doesn't count vassals of allies for the global power/commerce calculations (as far as I can tell? I'm open to correction), which means even if you ally all the superpowers and have clearly run away with the game, you can still struggle to hit the threshold. If ally vassals were counted, I think it would be less obnoxious.

It is supposed to.

 

[AOS9001]

An aside, but sometimes I do miss the oil resource conquering goal from vanilla RFC. Could be a fun personal goal for an America game, control 50% of the world's oil resources...

 

[Hickman888]

An aside, but sometimes I do miss the oil resource conquering goal from vanilla RFC. Could be a fun personal goal for an America game, control 50% of the world's oil resources...

My dream is to have one of the American goals to involve producing a set amount of yields from corporations by a certain date. And since oil is one of the more lucrative resources to obtain to feed the wealthy Oil industry, I'd imagine it could play pretty similar to the goal that you're describing.