Quest for Glory - Deity Challenge #5

[Nizef]

The Grind

I hope the new year has begun well for you all. And for those of you who have already tried the GotM Christmas special, I now post a game that will drive you crazy. As a matter of fact, after @vadalaz and my own test runs, I made the map easier!! It was too "outlandish" otherwise. We play as America on a large Arborea map with Standard speed. All AIs are reachable without researching Astronomy but naval activities are required. Furthermore, some of the AIs start with 3 Settlers, just to spice it up a little. The terrain is terrible, the AIs are doing great and hopefully you will feel unsure and insignificant... The task here is to go for Domination and I am sure that even the best players will find this to be a handful. Enjoy it if you can, ha ha!

 

[basior]

This is a no joke situation Gave it an hour yesterday and felt like I was goin nowhere. I think this will take some time. Any luck with progressing here guys?

 

[5ilV3r]

My progress on turn 107.



Good
Settled 4 cities.
Got a religion with Pagodas
Got the Pyramids, so have 2 turn roads and 1 turn repairs

Bad
Japan dow me and pillaged a caravan. However, Hong Kong who were an ally razed one of his cities (lol).

Ugly
The terrain for domination. Its forests every which way you look. Not really sure who to go after at this point.

 

[Nizef]

Ugly
The terrain for domination. Its forests every which way you look. Not really sure who to go after at this point.

I never promised you a rose garden for this one. The whole idea is that there are obstacles all over the place... But anyone who gets the job done will definitely get my admiration!

 

[fiddlesticks]

I played to about turn 220. I was first to ideology and took order and am about to get the first third tier policy. With worker faculties my science is still only about 830 but I’ve got a healthy lead and am pumping out B17’s and paratroopers now.

I founded 4 cities. New York on the silver by Mt. Kailash, Boston by a desert mountain and got Petra, and Philly to the east on the hill.

I’ll take Tenochtitlan in 5-10 turns and Sukhothai won’t be a problem. Getting to Assyria could be tricky, but he has good happiness wonders and should be next. I might have to use carriers.

Can paratroopers paradrop from carriers?

But I’ll definitely need to tech to stealth bombers and nanotechnology to make jumping around the map easier. So maybe I’ll take Japan and Austria out first. Japan has Zeus.

Happiness and gold are okay so I see a path to victory but it will be challenging for me (and my old laptop ).

 

[basior]

This game is a real drag!! Currently at around turn 250. Conquered my continent (Monty, Siam and Japan) and first Assyrian city. Currently in a process of transporting my land units and getting some more gold form Monty. Xcoms should be online in about 10 turns or so. Learning a lot form it - mostly about modern era warfare and diplomacy. I hope to Finnish it in a couple of days. Thank you guys for putting up such a challenging map

 

[fiddlesticks]

Another hour and a half this morning only produced five turns to 227! I have a favorable peace deal with Siam (+100gpt) so I'll leave him for a while.

Next steps - pummel Monty and get B17XP. Nanotech or stealth first will be the tricky decision. After my last natural great scientist in about 20 turns I'll take spaceflight engineers, bulb satellites, engineer hubble, and then have two scientists to work with.

 

[fiddlesticks]

Achieved America's Unipolar Moment Turn 275.

Challenges:
-Overcoming mediocre land
-Few local city-states to ally
-Boosts to the AI

Strategies:
-Set up cities with observatory and sea trade route potential
-Be first to ideologies
-Win world's fair
-Steal a few techs

 

[fiddlesticks]

America is the white line, Austria the red and Zulu the brown. The Aztec were the civ I had to grind down more than the others to clear the coast and prevent recaptures on the way to Tenochtitlan.

 

[fiddlesticks]

This was definitely a tough challenge. Thanks @Nizef and @vadalaz

How did you fare with this map?

 

[vadalaz]

All credit goes to @Nizef - I only played 50-60 turns and provided a bit of feedback on the first version of the map. My impression was that delayed domination was the play here. My idea was to set up an XP farm at Hong Kong (not the most convenient one...), then start killing things with well-promoted XBs and later Frigates. Not sure how well this would've worked - artillery or bomber rush seem more reasonable.

 

[fiddlesticks]

My thinking was along those same lines. I used Hong Kong to farm some XP, and later a war with Japan while I was friends/ally with Hong Kong. The resulting highly promoted scarcher turned into a really useful machine gun during the Aztec and Assyrian campaigns. The first citadel from this was very handy in fending off Aztec units at the start of the domination push.

I gathered from the type of map and description that slogging a 1-2 tile a turn army around the map was not going to be fun or feasible. My plan was delayed domination too via radar for the American UU and paratroopers.

I only built 2-3 naval units, but with bombers helping, these privateers generated a modest 8-10 unit navy that was helpful in the Assyrian and Austrian campaigns and in defending sea trade routes.

 

[Nizef]

This was definitely a tough challenge. Thanks @Nizef and @vadalaz

How did you fare with this map?

My first try was not going well (the map I played, Japan also started with 3 settlers and I was not picking up the science game fast enough to encounter Oda´s aggression). So I gave it up around t160. In my second run I turtled to XComs and B17s, and found myself doing pretty well, taking Kyoto, Sukhothai and Tenochtitlan. But that was only around t290. However, I figured that the map was winnable (and after giving Oda only two settlers), I felt comfortable that better players would indeed be able to win.

 

[basior]

Finally - a win on t273.

Played really sloppy last 15-20 turn to have this thing finished. This resulted in loosing some units, neglecting naval movement (no carriers near Ulundi etc) and wasting tanks and RAs potential. I felt like building army other than planes and paratroopers/Xcoms waste in general. Got pretty god Arty timing (circa t180 with schools already up) but seeing for the first time how Xcoms work just blew me away. Ulundi was taken just by slamming them into the city (4-5Xcoms for 2 turns). KI thing they can be even deadlier with this lvl3 Siege promotion.

Now when I thinking about alternate game plan I would do an early war with Japan to get more city spots. Go hard on science till Paratrooers/b17 and start from then.

Regarding my warpath it was -> go 4 cities tradition with sea trade routes -> rush to public schools -> start t180 with monty then Siam -> Japan - > Austria -> Assyria -> Suleiman -> Ghana -> Theodora -> Shaka

Great game overall, learned a lot My main thought is to give yourself time to plan out those late 50-60 turns. Large maps require more in advance planning and patience with micromanagement (but it's worth it

 

[basior]

My thinking was along those same lines. I used Hong Kong to farm some XP, and later a war with Japan while I was friends/ally with Hong Kong. The resulting highly promoted scarcher turned into a really useful machine gun during the Aztec and Assyrian campaigns. The first citadel from this was very handy in fending off Aztec units at the start of the domination push.

I gathered from the type of map and description that slogging a 1-2 tile a turn army around the map was not going to be fun or feasible. My plan was delayed domination too via radar for the American UU and paratroopers.

I only built 2-3 naval units, but with bombers helping, these privateers generated a modest 8-10 unit navy that was helpful in the Assyrian and Austrian campaigns and in defending sea trade routes.

Nice move with the privateers. Did you fight near your territory? Did you build any carriers later?

I think this map could be won in t245-260 range with a very optimized playing.

 

[fiddlesticks]

That's right, there were a few times enemy civs would sail a navy my way and I'd have excess bombers with no forward base to go to, so they'd bomb the fleet and the privateers and afterwards destroyers would capture the ships.

I never built any carriers after all. The range-promoted bombers were enough to capture the easternmost Assyrian city and then I could expand westward from there.

My slow-down mistakes were researching refrigeration before beelining stealth and nanotech and taking stealth before nanotech. I never really needed the extra oil as I got enough from city-states and conquest, and I think B17s with XCom's would have been a faster plan to get the last few cities.

 

[5ilV3r]

I am still working on mine, around turn 200. Took me way too many turns to get through Siam (tech leader and had defender of the faith). From the way the politics played out he was the best target for me. I've started going after Japan next.

@fiddlesticks Nice - how did you know you could built Petra in a secondary city, usually almost impossible to get in your capitol...

 

[fiddlesticks]

Thanks @5ilV3r. On Arborea maps there's not a lot of desert, so it was a gamble that paid off in a nice productive city with a unique luxury. I sent an early food caravan there to bolster its growth, and also bought the tiles up to Hong Kong and did a few chops to speed it up.

It's really interesting to see how differently the AI develops in different players' games. In a domination game these differences really change up how the game progresses.

 

[lerrocco]

Finally - a win on t273.

@basior , I meant to ask you before, do you use a mod for your maps? Your oceans are almost black compared to my blue..

 

[basior]

No, I don't use any mods. I'm playing on Mac and sadly couldn't install EnchancedUI - so gave up on mods completely.