Most challenging landscape + position

[aneta.vratna]

After so many wins in Civ1 emperor level...
I seek for new challenges in this wonderful game.

One challenge could be: very tiny islands scattered over the world - you get little of trade, little of science - very slow moving forward in discovering technologies. So yes - this landscape is challenging. But because of the lack of techs, it is also boring.

So I like more a big world, having oponents not far.

Last week I voted for 5billions (low hills), big -> I got semi-big world, but with some 8*16 mountains place (occasionally broken with nice lakes) - very nice countryside.
I was placed on one side of these mountains, and other 3 civs on each shore.
The challenging stuff was, that my neighbours were: Mongols, French=waging war all the time, tying my units in defensive positions on those mountains.
On a continent of 1/3 size of our- Russians destroyed Aztecs and had that continent for their own. The English were scattered on 2-3 even smaller continents.
By the time the Russians arrived - I was still just counterfeiting Mongols with Chariots, and Russians had some 10 sciences advance...
= this was pretty challenging: lot of un-fertile mountains, vicinity of several aggresive civs constantly bouncing at me.

What about your most challenging / least boring types of game set-ups ?

 

[Posidonius]

I seek for new challenges in this wonderful game.

Try building cities only on mountains. Obviously, your capital must be on a productive square in order to whelp out a first Settler, but after that you could build every other city on a mountain square. This would force you to stay in Despotism to ever have more than one Settler active at a time, and might require using the Fast Settler cheat to develop the edible squares around mountains quickly before you get wiped out.

Your trade-arrows would be low and you'd need to go flat-out for the Railroad, your only saving grace for progress. Wouldn't need to irrigate grasslands or rivers under Despotism, and hills would take on extra importance: the decision to irrigate or mine a hills would be critical. But your cities would be much safer, since each fortifying unit would get the +200 bonus.

Main challenge would be getting yourself over the level of one military unit per city, so you can do more than cower on your peaks. I would think that your capital must become a supply hub, pumping out military units as fast as it can, re-homing them for defense and campaigning. And the capital would need max food to put out Settlers as well, re-homing them so the slow-growth mountain cities don't have to spend the shields and population making their own Settlers. The capital must also make Caravans to help mountain cities build improvements. And of course, the capital would need to look after its own needs: Granary, Barracks, Temple, et cetera.

The idea to try this came to me several months ago, when i was virtually forced to build a city on a mountain to access two fisheries and a plains which no other city could reach. The city did all right, but needed plenty of help from neighbors. So i started to wonder: could such a Hermit Civ survive long enough to grow?

Sounds like an extreme challenge, more than one hand tied behind your back, but that's what you are asking for, right?

 

[Osvaldo Manso]

Try playing the English on the Earth map.

 

[tjs282]

Try playing the English on the Earth map.

That's actually quite feasible, even at King (the highest level I consistently won a Space-vic at, on Earth, without using exploits/cheats) -- provided you draw the 'right' opponents. (Also helps to start off with a couple of Fishes in London's BFC!)

In one game as the English, I sent my Warriors across the Channel, took Paris, and then bottled up the Romans temporarily while I colonised Europe from the Bosphorus to the White Sea and settled along the coast of north Africa (IIRC, I was also lucky enough to draw the Babs and Egyptians as opponents, and bottled them up just like the Romans). Having done that, and chased the incoming Mongol hordes all the way back to Samarkand, the whole of Asia and Africa then became mine for the taking -- once I finally attacked Rome, the Russians were forced to spawn in Australia I also started colonising North America, sailing via Greenland -- I think Abe took those cities from me in the end, not that it helped him much, with the Germans opposing him from the south.

In a previous game, I had tried colonising Australia about 5000 years too early, with the intention of then moving north through Indonesia and SE Asia. That plan didn't work out so well, because the distance corruption crippled the reconstruction of Buck House (in Perth), putting me too far behind from the start.

The most difficult Earth start for me (as a habitual Builder) was always the Mongols, where I could hardly ever even get off the ground (as a habitual Builder). I did eventually win one of those, but only by using a much tighter initial city-placement than I usually used (and with lots of Horses!), and going for all-out Cavalry/Chariot war instead.

And although I could usually establish pretty good early Builder-empires as the Chinese or Indians on Earth (much better than the Civ-engine ever could, anyway!), I don't think I ever won with those 2 civs -- my empires usually ended up getting rolled by Russian/Zulu Knights... or Aztec Tanks.

 

[Volcanon]

The hardest start is a one tile grass without shields island (with many ocean tiles in every direction) with no fish. No shields except your home tile. On Chieftain you might still win but not at Emperor or King when the AI gets something more normal.

 

[SkimJab]

One of my most recent games I was playing on prince and went with small islands and moderate everything else. I landed myself on an island just barely big enough for 3 cities. There where mountains on the east and plains on the west, with a big river cutting the island in half. I wasn't really building my defenses to much considering everyone needed boats to get to me, but I had 3 Phalanx in each city. I had one city on the water for obvious reasons, and I made it the city in the mountains.
I got boats and started pumping them out like nobody's business. You'd think my trade was in boats. Thing is, the map looked like this.

My island is Squared. I sent countless boats to Davy Jones Locker.
France came by and destroyed me with boats full of catapults.