Most Difficult Victory option in GOTM11

[cracker]

There are two of these polls related to your vote for the most difficult victory option for GOTM11 as Japan on the small map.

Please make sure you vote here for your choice as:

The Most Difficult Victory Option to win on this map with this civilization.


The other poll asks you to vote your choice for the second most difficult victory condition. Please try to not choose the same answer for both polls.

 

[thefrenchzulu]

I voted, but have got no idea? Recon diplo might also have been diificult.

 

[col]

Once you get a winning position, you can win by any of the methods except diplo. If you just leave the other civs with 1 or 2 cities then you can take your pick.

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by col
Once you get a winning position, you can win by any of the methods except diplo. If you just leave the other civs with 1 or 2 cities then you can take your pick.

Col,

I posted the poll to see if YOU had any idea or any opinion of what the most difficult victory condition would be for this game.

I already know the answers in this case, I am just trying to see if you know the answer.

 

[Yndy]

I refer to the most difficult as the most time consuming as I think this one could have been won by any victory with patience. COme to think of it in my game France had a huge culture and 5 wonders before I took it around 10 AD.

Overall culture would have meant witholding a domination victory until you would get to 100,000 culture.

IMHO of course.
Cracker, when will you release "the correct answer " ?

 

[Zachriel]

Well past the point where Tokugawa could have destroyed his rivals, or dominated them; well past 100,000 culture points; having moved the Palace and spent much of the game in war mobilization forestalling a City Culture Victory; with a Great Leader at the ready to complete the Spaceship; with control of the United Nations, and nearly everyone Gracious and indebted to Japan for technology and gold; the Magnanimous Tokugawa decided to let everyone live and achieved a Histographic Victory!

(This was the last Victory condition required in my GOTM series. The two main difficulties of the Histographic Victory were the shear length of the game and the assiduous avoidance of other victories.)

 

[col]

One of the things that playing in the tournament has really brought home to me is how different a game targetted at one particular victory condition is.

Dom/Con play pretty much the same for most of the game. You may need to rush a few temples at the end and infill with settlers in a dom game.
100k Culture plays differently from the start but needs a bit of dom/con to cut down rivals to make sure you have twice as much as the nearest.
20k culture plays more like OCC.
Spaceship is the weakest part of my game. I cut down rivals too quickly and slow the overall research rate too much.

 

[flexo]

I got the 100,000 culture points one by misstake. I had not anticipated it at all. So I didn't have a save the turn before.

I had no early wonders cause the french bastards built almost all of them, they had some kind of wonder production facility up there and they got almost all of them. I took them from them ofcause cause we couldn't have that. So I didn't expect to get any culture for that, but when I later looked at them they had generated some culture, Is that pre conquest culture point or what is that ?

But I guess my vote goes for Space race cause that was what I was going for but to my horror no aluminum popped up on the start island which I had fortified to the max leaving the rest to the others.

 

[Karasu]

I would say Diplo.

I think that, with so small a map, it is really hard to be dominant enough to be a candidate for UN elections and at the same time nice to everybody on the planet.

But then, I am not so experienced with this game, so I may be wrong. I'll patiently wait for Cracker's enlightening wisdom...

 

[ProPain]

Flexo,

If you have autosave on, you'll find save games of the last 5 turns played in the AUTO folder. If you haven''t played another game up to the date of the GOTM end date, the saves will probably still be there.

Most difficult option, 20K culture in one city for me. I suck at culture/OCC, more of a conquest/domination type player.

ProPain

 

[cracker]

I am going to weigh back in on this discussion and see if we can converge on what we think is the toughest answer.

This game is with Japan on a tiny Map.

Japan is Religious
and Militaristic.

Half price Barracks and Temples are immediately available to every town so you can start building Vet military within 30 turns or the start of the game OR you can start pumping out culture.

A big limiting factor on this map is the tiny map size and how it effects the optimal number of cities. With nOpt set to 12 and the map size tech rate set down to 160 (versus 16 and 240 on a standard map) the scientific research rate will be maxed out at somewhere between 18 and 20 cities compared to 24 to 30 cities on a standard map.

Another big factor is that the nOpt number cripples the AI players when they get near that city number. The AIs will never build or keep captured cities over the nOpt number unless there is a key wonder at stake.

I think its pretty clear that the domination and conquest victories are the quick and easy choices for this map. It would easily be possible to win these victories with researching, trading, or exorting only Bronze-Iron-Alphabet-Writing-Mapmaking-WarriorCode-HorsebackRiding. Only 7 techs that you don't have at the start and to make matters easier China and France will have two of these to "donate to your cause."

Early Domination will probably be tougher than early conquest in this case because you have to build or capture enough towns to get at least 2/3rds of the landmass and population. The counterargument is that some people will fall into domination by accident because the AI players will be severly handicapped by the optimal cities number. With no civs starting on the two intermediate islands, the terrain squares on the home continent plus these two landmasses exceeds the domination limit

The culture victories are a cake walk in this game because the early temples double in culture value after 1000 years. Lack of luxuries on this map will force you to build cheap cathedrals in every city and to go for the Sistine Chapel. You could turn off all scientific research after Education and just hit click and return while you playe with your weapons and hack at the barbarians and let your culture grow to 100,000 points. Japan is the only religious civ on this map so the deck stacked in our favor for culture out of the box.

20,000 culture in one city is tougher because you have to focus all the wonders and improvements in one city. Lots of unit building in other cities and then shift them to this city to disband and rush any improvement in one turn so you can keep all the other turns assigned to building wonders. Build cities on the frontier and give them to your last remaining vassal until you get them up to 8 or 10 cities and then attack the vassal with elite units to farm great leaders and rush wonders in this one main city.

I think space shuttle is tough on this map (although eventually you will get there) because the tech rate and city count is so crappy. You have to keep your enemies alive AND productive in order to get to the space shuttle techs quickly.

Diplomatic is really tough because the first two civs will have to die without angering the other two (or three). The civs are crammed together in two groups of three so conflict is almost guaranteed. It will be hard to be friends with all of them at the same time when they will be mindlessly trying to kill each other. You can't win a diplomatic victory when there are only two civs remaining and the three stooges on the other continent (Otto, Sleezer, and Jerkses) will be trying to kill each other off so "there can be only one"

Otto gets the crappiest start position sympathy award but our location for Kyoto runs a close second.

If I were the great GOTM control god in the sky, I would have editted in big pile of land south and east of the stooges and would have relocated Otto down there connected back to Larry and Moe via a land bridge. At least that way we would have had some competition on this map.

 

[Serg]

Good analysis, cracker!

 

[Karasu]

Wow, cracker I only had a glimpse of the kind of game it was, while you have a thorough and complete view of all the options. Well summarized!