[BNW] NEW Community Challenge Game series - Game 2 - Greece (Demigod)

[consentient]

Back in the day, there was a fair group of people on here that all used to play challenge series, where we'd all play the same map and share our playthroughs. The first ones were called Deity Challenge Line-up (DCL) and Immortal Challenge Line-up (ICL). Later there was one called the Community Deity Game (CDG).

Those who know, know. Those who don't, come and play this new shared game with us anyway!

- - -

I probably won't post any maps where a Domination victory isn't possible, because that is generally how I like to roll....and I won't be doing maps for all the civs, only the most interesting ones...(so no Iroquois or Carthage most likely!)

But I will try (as I always have) to provide fun and interesting maps that suit all playstyles.

I will rotate the difficulty from Immortal, to Demigod (Deity with a couple of bonuses) and Deity.

Maps will be posted on a roughly fortnightly basis.

I will make regular use of different mods, that in my opinion objectively improve the game.

Provisional Schedule: -

Spoiler :

Game 2 - Greece (Demigod)
Game 3 - Babylon (Deity)
Game 4 - Prussia (Immortal)
Game 5 - America (Demigod)
Game 6 - Persia (Deity)
...and so on...

- - -

So welcome to Game 2:

You play as Greece, on a Hellblazer Pangaea map, on 'Demigod'.

There are no suggested victory conditions, so play any way you want.

Have fun!

- - -

Starting Location:

Spoiler :

This map is a Deity map but with benefits to the human player. I call this 'Demigod', since it represents a kind of difficulty between Immortal and Deity. Many of us on these boards view this as the "sweet spot" for challenge vs. fun, because sometimes Deity can be a slog and Immortal becomes too easy for some players.

So...we have Alex, master of the City States...however there are 7 other civs that stand in his way

Spoiler civ-specific info :

and two of them in particular can be VERY problematic in terms of citystates

Spoiler very-civ-specific info :

(Austria and Venice)

. Can you make best use of these alliances and triumph over your foes?

You will have to install the Hellblazer Map Pack and the following Mods to play this challenge:-

- Historical Religions complete
- Maps: Improved CS Luxuries
- NaturalWonders - Equality
- DLL - Various Mod Components
- Policy - Reveal Capitals
- Religion - Fixed Pantheons
- Religion - Fixed Prophets
- Global - Capture Great People
- Global - City States No Allied Skirmishes
- Global - Grateful Settlers
- Global - Separate GP Counters
- Goody Huts - No Automapping

Most of these mods just 'fix' the game in my opinion by putting right things that are clearly oversights of the developers. For you to have alliances with 2 CS and they wage war on each other is just clearly silly, for example. And since this is Alex, I wanted the CS alliances to be as valuable as possible so you can make the most of the UA.

I hope you all enjoy!

I will put the save file and screenshot of starting location here in around 24 hours. If you need any specific help installing the mods, let me know and I'll do what I can.

 

[mbbcam]

I probably won't be able to try this, I'm afraid, as I'm on Mac, and my BootCamp partition seems to have got corrupted recently. I will have to try and reinstall it. Moreover, I think this game would probably just be too difficult for me at the moment. I may have another go at the first game and see if I can do a bit better. But I agree that some of the Mods are things that really ought to have been in the base game.

 

[consentient]

If you can get Windows working, I'd recommend trying this map. There is a lot of potential for very strong play in the early game here. It's a stronger map than the Spain one, if anything. The Deity AI might still be a struggle in the midgame but I'd say that all early game practice is useful

 

[mbbcam]

OK, thanks for that. I'll see if I can find all the bits to get it reinstalled.

 

[penguin74]

Got as far as turn 53 but when I loaded the save today the file was corrupted and crashed the game. I deleted and redownloaded figuring I'd start over but it still happens. Is something wrong with the save file?

 

[beetle]

That’s too bad, some of these mods require DLL and so are not Mac compatible, so I doubt that I will be able to play this. I am not interested in Boot Camp, but I recently got Wine to run SMAC, so I might try that.

 

[BlackWizard]

I didnt read description of all mods but iron is visible on starting location screenshot?

 

[claudiupb]

Spoiler :

You already have bronze working and a hoplite to begin with. I got an unit upgrade to pikeman and immediately proceeded to sack

Spoiler :

Rome

Unfortunately that deterred my focus from actually extending and by mid game I was in trouble so I might replay from 0.

 

[claudiupb]

I have to ask a question about this game. Potentially mega spoiler ahead.
@consentient

Spoiler :

Is this save somehow scripted so that everyone declares war on you on year 300? This happened in my game and it was rather unexpected, I was in good relation with some of the AI but all of a sudden 5 DOWs in the same turn. And the weird part is that they were at war among themselves, either this is scripted which is brilliant or the mods are messing up the diplomacy.

 

[claudiupb]

Got as far as turn 53 but when I loaded the save today the file was corrupted and crashed the game. I deleted and redownloaded figuring I'd start over but it still happens. Is something wrong with the save file?

When you continue a save, you have go through the mods menu again and load the game there with all the original mods selected. Apparently for some mods this is not done automatically, and if you load directly it will crash. Just happened to me because I forgot to go through the mods menu but the next time I did this and it worked.

 

[beetle]

@consentient, that is a thoughtfully selected list of mods, thanks for that, but no good for anyone not running Windows.

 

[penguin74]

When you continue a save, you have go through the mods menu again and load the game there with all the original mods selected. Apparently for some mods this is not done automatically, and if you load directly it will crash. Just happened to me because I forgot to go through the mods menu but the next time I did this and it worked.

That did it. Thanks. Never used mods before so had no idea.

 

[raider980]

Are these mods on Steam so I can just Subscribe? I looked for Hellblazers but don't see it. I've been playing GotM and would like to play these since they are are all higher level.

 

[mbbcam]

The map pack is here:

HellBlazers Maps Pack Now Avaliable

Various of the other mods are here:

http://www.picknmixmods.com/main/home/home.html

 

[Nybelung]

There's too much mods for my taste.
I'll go back and replay some of the old challenges.

 

[penguin74]

Diplo V Turn 270

Spoiler :

Took me 3 turns 4 if you count the save I screwed up, so map knowledge helped a lot. Never played this difficulty or with mods before.

Tried Liberty first, had 5 cities up, about to found a 6th when Rome swarmed me. 2nd time through tried to open Tradition and then go Honor thinking I'd need it to stop Ceaser. It worked, but not enough to stop Washington from coming up the south while my troops were away.

Finally went for a pretty generic 4 city Tradition. Made sure to have enough troops to hold of Rome when they came, but luckily those 2 cities near him were very defensible. America attacked once, but never went after me, just tried to take city states and ended up losing Los Angeles to one of them. Maria never married a C/S as I tried to focus on stealing her alliances, and Venice was taken out by the Ottomans so they never really messed with me. Got a bit lucky when Rome attacked late with a navy I didn't plan for and would have taken Sparta if they didn't accept peace for some reason. Passed world religion and ideology and won on the 1st vote.

 

[mbbcam]

An update for Mac users: I tried this game using Crossover, but it crashes. I suspect the culprit is Historical Religions, as I was able to start another game with all the mods apart from that one (though I only played a few turns just to experiment). I haven't got around to reinstating my Boot Camp partition as I suspect it will be a long job.

 

[consentient]

@consentient, that is a thoughtfully selected list of mods, thanks for that, but no good for anyone not running Windows.

Anyone can run Windows. Running anything else to play games is folly.

 

[beetle]

Running Window is folly.

 

[Kroman]

Domination turn 315.

Wow, my second deity domiation ever, and the other one was cheeting (small pangea as Zulu, impis made it to the end of the map before becoming obsolete...). True, this was a seriously improved deity, called demigod, but still..
I never planned for DOM, but things just so happened. And modern era and later warfare is so much fun

Spoiler :

This was my second attempt. On the first I tried to go honor, due to the strong start and bonuses, and became aggresive with x-bows. I attacked Rome, and managed to get only one city... A literal legion constantly stopped my advance and 10+ x-bows had a huge problem, which seriously surprised me. While I was ploughing through the mass legionnaire army, multiple knights started attacking me from the flanks, as if the AI suddenly learned warfare, and then they payed Washington and Maria Teresa to join the war (they never accepted bribes from me, I tried) and I quit.

So the next time, with some map knowledge, I went full liberty with the plan to play peacefully. Made sure to settle both natural wonders, so strong religion from Uluru + happiness issues solved thanks to the FOY.
The game went on nicely, I even had the fortune required to constantly keep Rome and Austria at war, with each other or with anybody else.

Somewehere around arties I noticed that America is still at 2 cities and was kind enough to build some very nice wonders for me, with a non-existent army. So I though that the opportunity is just to good to be true.
I easily took Washington and New York, let him survive with some remnants in the form of two newly settled cities... It was then that the whole world became to war, with the two eastern empires, after seriously crippling Enrico, finally decided to make a global appearence. They dominated Rome, and at the same time I decided that I have better uses for my money, than constantly bribing Austria. The easy answer - give him some shells from my artileries...
Maria turned out to be a real problem (those mounted units of hers), but I gained a tech lead at the time, built some GWBs, and the fun began. From this moment it was constant war, with bombers and landships/tanks moving east at a constant pace.

The map was big enough, that it took me some time to reach Gao and Istanbul, so at the end it was modern armour+stealth bomber+SAM+missile cruisers against battleships+tanks+bombers. So much fun

For policies I took full liberty, full commerce, ratio and patronage openers. Iinitially I planned to go for order and build a spaceship or win diplo, but when I reached ideologies, I was in the middle of pacifying Maria and thougt that autocracy will be nicer. So autocracy almost filled out, some additional tennets in rationalism and patronage and I just cleared the map.

Thank you Consentient for the great map. Sure I could win faster, but the sweep in the information era was so much fun.
And it also taught me an important thing - it is never too late to switch to domination. I always tried to play with domination in mind from the very beginning and it never worked. Here, with the peaceful start and a later change of mind while having a solid empire with strong economy, it worked like magic.