[BTS] I finally beat an existing Hall of Fame record...

[dfg26]

...but I couldn't get Buffy mod to work so I'm not eligible to submit and you're all just gonna have to take my word for not cheating

The current best finish for:

Space colony
Noble difficulty
Normal speed
Duel world size

is 1846 AD which I just beat by one turn in 1844 AD Also I used no barbarians, one city challenge and huts were on. The leader is Gandhi and opponents Elizabeth and Mansa Musa.

Here's the quite juicy start:

Here's the glorious victory:

Ok sorry not so much strategy and/or tips, I just thought it was funny

EDIT: I think the funniest thing was actually the fact that neither of my opponents had built the Apostolic Palace by the time I launched so I made it in 2 turns just for the hell of it.

Also score-wise this was probably far from the existing record since I only had one city....

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Congratulations on your victory! It must feel great!

As for the BUFFY Mod, I wonder if you've tried to use the Assets Checker program: http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mod.php?show=assetschecker
to see if you can figure out which files might be giving you trouble with getting the Mod working. It would certainly feel even better to both beat a record and have your name highlighted in the Hall of Fame tables to showcase your achievement.

As for your game itself, I'd have chopped the G Riv For at 1 SE of the capital instead of the G Riv For at 1 SE + 1 S of the capital, so as to have a greater chance for the chopped Forest to regrow--the more Forests that are horizontally and vertically adjacent to a target square, the greater the chance that a Forest will regrow on a given square.

Also, a Forest cannot spread from an adjacent Forest that has a Lumbermill on it, so once you made the decision to put a Lumbermill on the G Riv For at 1 SE of your capital, you would have been unable to get a Forest spreading to the square at 1 SE + 1 S of your capital and thus you could have put a different improvement (a Workshop, for example) on the G Riv at 1 SE + 1 S of your capital.

I'm not sure when the AIs switched Civics, but they are both running the Free Religion Civic in your end-game screenshot. A player can only build The Apostolic Palace in a City in which they have their State Religion. If an AI doesn't currently have a State Religion, which in the case of an AI means not having any Religions in their Cities or running Free Religion, since an AI doesn't like to stay in a status of having No State Religion, then that AI cannot build The Apostolic Palace.

 

[dfg26]

I had forest preserves up to maximize research up to apollo program, then started to convert them to lumbermills and only chopped during the last few spaceship parts so i think if the forests were to spread during that time, they would have. Although i probably don't yet quite know how to optimally balance research/ production during the last stages of a space race.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

only chopped during the last few spaceship parts

That's a valid point, that you recently Chopped the Forest. That said, an alternative approach, given the likely plenty of excess Worker turns that come with a One City Challenge game, would be to pre-build an improvement, such as a Workshop or a Watermill, on top of that Forested square, up to 1 turn away from completing the improvement. That way, instead of directly Chopping, you create the improvement when you want the Hammers from the Forest and will still get to work an improved square immediately.

don't yet quite know how to optimally balance research/ production during the last stages of a space race.

Recent dogma on the forum suggests that for a game where one has enough Cities in which to build all of the Spaceship Parts with one Spaceship Part per City, then one should delay building many of the Spaceship Parts so as to focus more of the empire's resources on completing technological research of the required techs, perhaps starting to build Spaceship Parts in the Cities that will take the longest to build those Spaceship Parts so that all Cities will complete their Spaceship Parts on the turn of launching the Spaceship.

For a One City Challenge game, at the very best, one can complete a Spaceship Part at a rate of one per turn, which doesn't sound very practical to me, as it will be challenging to even maintain that production pace. The way I see it, one wants to race to unlocking Aluminium and The Apollo Program, possibly getting Aluminium in trade from an AI if you've got technologically-advanced AIs in your game, then complete The Apollo Program. Also, getting up a Research Lab will be important.

From there, it becomes an optimization problem. For the most part, I'd probably focus on building Spaceship Parts instead of Research, due to the hard limit of being able to complete one Spaceship Part per turn and the likely reality of needing multiple turns to complete some of the Spaceship Parts. Yes, it's arguable that the sooner that one unlocks Engine Spaceship Parts, the sooner that one can start building them, but if one also has several other Spaceship Parts remaining to be built at that time, then I would suggest that not enough emphasis was placed on producing the Spaceship Parts in advance of that time.

But, if we return to the idea of building improvements on top of the Forests, then all of the Forests should get used to complete some of the last few Spaceship Parts, such that those last few Spaceship Parts can be completed at a rate of one Part per turn, or as close as one can get to that ideal given the limited number of Forests remaining.