Found a way to make the game longer and more challenging

[DrCron]

Hey everyone, this week I tried something different and had a lot of fun. I struggled to win, and only got the lead in the last 10 turns or so (standard speed, HK difficulty):

It's a simple idea really: force everyone to an isolated start. In this case it was 8 cultures and I created a map with 8 continents. I moved the island setting to "few" which I think increased the separation. I was especially isolated, it took me a while to meet anyone, and couldn't really attack until very late in the game (I even used the Germans to actually get the most out of their combat bonus on naval units).

It was a completely different type of game. Even with a Phoenicians + Carthaginians start the game is very slow. I was behind in science during most of the game, so I was never really strong enough to attack the fame leader. Still, since the game was slow for them too, they couldn't get so much science later on, so I was still the one to end the game by researching everything.

You can see in the graph that by turn 200 I wasn't even top-3, which made the late game way more interesting than it usually is. I strongly recommend trying this setup for those who are usually getting ahead early on and getting bored in the late game.

 

[Jkchart]

Some of the avatars that people have created are actually fairly challenging to play against. In particular, my sworn nemesis is @AntSou (sorry buddy) who usually is in the top 3 or leader for the majority of the game.

My most recent game I had played Assyrians for a start and was locked in a war with the other two Empires essentially for the first 200 turns, so I didn't get to prioritize certain things and the AntSou avatar had a lead of 2500 points for most of the game. I literally pulled ahead by about 400 points on the turn the game ended because i was focusing on projects and buying up the necessary resources, and slapping down public schools and farms for insane science and population growth as the Turks. If you pick the right avatars too, I've noticed the AI can be fairly competitive. I haven't won every one of my games - many if not most, but i think the Avatar system really helps the AI be competitive.