Preparing for Deity Challenges

[Lord Yanaek]

OK. So Civ 6 will be out in a few days. The strategy sub-forum is now online. We can be sure there will be some Deity Challenge for Civ6 sooner rather than later, as well as Game of the Month and Hall of Fame so we non-top players should better get ready for those

If people are interested i plan to create a few games as a Training series similar to how Deity (and Immortal) Challenges works for CiV. I would submit a map every 2 weeks,we could all play sharing strategies and what works or doesn't work. Unlike the other series, this one won't be on a fixed difficulty but rather increase as time passes and we become better. Hopefully by the time one of the really good player starts a Deity Challenge we might know enough to participate without being utterly crushed.

So, are you guys (and girls maybe?) interested or is too early to start something like this and you prefer to explore on your own for some time? What difficulty would you like to start at? Do you have a favorite civ you really want to start with?

As for myself, i was planning to make the first game at Emperor cause from the streams it looks like Prince will pose no challenge to anyone familiar with any previous Civ game. Similarly, i suspect King would be really easy for veterans but if you don't feel comfortable starting with Emperor i'm OK for one game at king. I would go with Rome as civilization because they have a mix of abilities that will obviously lead to a robust start, opening the path to any victory. I could take another civilization but i would like to avoid one that's very specialized towards a single victory (or worse, forbids one like Kongo) as i plan to keep at least the first games open to any victory condition. I will definitely not put Aztecs in before 3 months after release when they become available to everyone.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

Wasn't here much for Civ5, so I am not even sure what you are talking about GOTM means that somebody posts his map, mainly under some standard settings I guess (standard/standard/pangea), and everybody who wants to participate plays the same map? And to goal is to have fun and compare your results/playstyle with others? And Deity Challenge being the same, only for Deity difficulty?

If that is the case, sign me in. I guess I'll be ready for something like that after 5-6 days of my own playing. Emperor sounds just about right, I will play first game on King, but expect to be on Immortal pretty soon.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

GotM was the "official" series with a dedicated staff and submission/validation system while the Deity Challenges (there have been at least 3 series for CiV since i started playing it in G&K days) was community based (last series is still running under "Community Deity Games" name) and hosted in the Strategy sub-forum. And yes the idea was that someone would submit a map, everyone who wants to play would download it and being the same map we could compare strategies to see what worked best. There have been some loose "rankings" for some of the Deity Challenges but truly the main goals were having fun and sharing ideas so that everyone would improve better than if they were playing their old (t)rusted strategy in their own corner all the time.
In the case of Deity Challenges, being there and being Deity maps they also encouraged some players (myself included) to try and play at that difficulty rather than being content to stay at a lower difficulty.

 

[Browd]

You can visit the Civ V GOTM forum here. The current games being played are (1) Ethiopia pursuing a One City Challenge Diplomatic victory on Immortal difficulty, Small Archipelago map and (2) England pursuing a Diplomatic victory on Emperor difficulty, Quick Speed, Large Archipelago map. You can also play older games and compare your results to those of others.

 

[Acken]

OK. So Civ 6 will be out in a few days. The strategy sub-forum is now online. We can be sure there will be some Deity Challenge for Civ6 sooner rather than later, as well as Game of the Month and Hall of Fame so we non-top players should better get ready for those

If people are interested i plan to create a few games as a Training series similar to how Deity (and Immortal) Challenges works for CiV. I would submit a map every 2 weeks,we could all play sharing strategies and what works or doesn't work. Unlike the other series, this one won't be on a fixed difficulty but rather increase as time passes and we become better. Hopefully by the time one of the really good player starts a Deity Challenge we might know enough to participate without being utterly crushed.

So, are you guys (and girls maybe?) interested or is too early to start something like this and you prefer to explore on your own for some time? What difficulty would you like to start at? Do you have a favorite civ you really want to start with?

As for myself, i was planning to make the first game at Emperor cause from the streams it looks like Prince will pose no challenge to anyone familiar with any previous Civ game. Similarly, i suspect King would be really easy for veterans but if you don't feel comfortable starting with Emperor i'm OK for one game at king. I would go with Rome as civilization because they have a mix of abilities that will obviously lead to a robust start, opening the path to any victory. I could take another civilization but i would like to avoid one that's very specialized towards a single victory (or worse, forbids one like Kongo) as i plan to keep at least the first games open to any victory condition. I will definitely not put Aztecs in before 3 months after release when they become available to everyone.

It's very likely things will be a bit messy regarding unofficial shared games. It happened in Civ5 years after its release so on release for Civ6 I expect a lot of prince to deity challenge popping left and right for anybody interested. It will probably take some time before something really organized take shape.

Whether or not it will be interesting will depend on the quality of the first version of the game. I mean if 1.0 is all about spamming something I personally won't be interested for long to develop strategies. And in that case we may have to wait a while before some fixes make it enjoyable again to compare results.

On a more general note I'll probably play on my own for a while to just learn the game then see what's up on the forum. If interesting maps pop up on the forum I'll play them and compare results to see where the metagame is at.

Wasn't here much for Civ5, so I am not even sure what you are talking about GOTM means that somebody posts his map, mainly under some standard settings I guess (standard/standard/pangea), and everybody who wants to participate plays the same map? And to goal is to have fun and compare your results/playstyle with others? And Deity Challenge being the same, only for Deity difficulty?

If that is the case, sign me in. I guess I'll be ready for something like that after 5-6 days of my own playing. Emperor sounds just about right, I will play first game on King, but expect to be on Immortal pretty soon.

Yes. Basically someone rolls a map, save at T0 make a thread with the starting screen and people play it. Some simply try to beat it, others will try to finish it the fastest and others will look for advices. The rules are usually relatively loose.
Deity challenge implies deity difficulty (or whatever is max). But people sometimes make Emperor Challenge Immortal Challenge etc...

GoTM is the official civfanatic version of it with stricter rules and better organized. Difficulty varies widly if GOTM.

HoF is another beast where players play on their own map to get the best time at something specific (for example "Science victory on a Tiny Pangea with Babylon"). You can play as many maps as you want, the goal is just to get the fastest victory on the specified settings. It involves a lot of map reloads as a result.

 

[phryxolydian]

My only wish is that I get the game before Deity Challenges get really organized and on full trot - I wasn't around the forums when the CiV DCLs were on their heyday and now there's too few of us still playing, it seems... I do expect that the game will need several patches and maybe even full DLCs to really be challenging so I have a bit of time hopefully!

 

[Browd]

I wouldn't worry much about that. It took quite a while (years) before the various Civ V difficulty challenges (Deity Challenge, Immortal Challenge, etc.) got rolling. Prior to that time, folks usually just posted maps they found fun or challenging, others played the maps that interested them, and discussion ensued.

 

[Acken]

And civ5 vanilla wasn't exactly fun to run challenges on.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

I'm gonna make challenges in purpose to establish optimal strategies for fastest finish times (after some time from release), but only if there won't be any obvious one dimensional 'strategies'- like spamming trade routes in BE.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I'd guess that most of us will be too busy figuring out what's optimal for at least the first month to have much interest in challenges.

Challenges are a means of varying the settings in order to see how the equilibrium changes due to the setting tweaks, just like GotM or HoF. For that to be meaningful, first we need some idea of the basic equilibrium.

I'm sure you'll get some interest if you post a game early on, but not as much as you'll get if you wait a little while. Whether or not it's worth it is up to you.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Well, i wasn't really planning to start a "challenge" series. My idea was to figure out what works together rather than everyone in his own corner.
So when someone like Acken or IronFighter actually starts some real challenges we'll likely be better at it.

There is a saying in French "There's more inside two heads than inside one" There's probably something similar in other languages too. I was suggesting we could apply this to learning the new mechanisms

 

[Martin Alvito]

My idea was to figure out what works together rather than everyone in his own corner.

That's going to happen organically. The process is going to look something like this:

a) People start posting locally optimal strategies - "if A then B" approaches.
b) We get what the social sciences might call 'intermediate' or 'middle range' theories: generalizations that are initially motivated by empirical experience. These could be claims about the generally correct starting build/research/policy order for a civ, claims about the pathway from the midgame to the endgame for each win condition, military strategies for different units/eras and the like.
c) We start to get some framework for what optimal play actually looks like. It may look more like SMAC where there's obvious terraforming patterns but the nature of the factions/civs deeply alters optimal play, or it may be more like CiV where stuff changes quite a bit for certain civs but the general framework is fairly clear.

You don't need to worry much about people concealing information in this day and age. We've reached the point where gaming is a bit like science in that community status is determined in large part by how influential your ideas are. It doesn't make sense to hide in a bunker off the grid, have grand ideas about how to play Civ well and never tell anyone.

 

[gunnerxtr]

I'm looking forward to seeing the challenge games make a resurgence as well