RA Free Strategy: Challenge #1

[ifinnem]

Ok so based on the discussion here lets get this challenge underway

Lets operate roughly along the lines of the HOF gauntlets (i.e. avoid cheesy exploits like Liberty/Autocracy Policy Switch and Building Oxford multiple times, avoid reloading etc.). Not gonna be overly strict but you all get the idea

Victory Condition: Space (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
Key restriction: Player may not enter into any RAs (AIs will still use RAs among themselves)
Difficulty: Immortal
Map Size: Standard
Map Type: Continents
Speed: Standard
Leader: Any (DLC ok)
Opponents: Any
Version: SV7 (1.0.1.332)

Earliest finish date wins!

Lets run this for a couple of weeks with the option to close it earlier / launch challenge #2 sooner if that makes sense. Closing date thus: Sunday November 20th

Note: When posting your updates/game results try to note some key elements wrt to generation such as #GS produced, bpt at 100, 200 and 300 turn marks, SP path, key science related wonders, etc.

Good luck to all

PS Personally I'd appreciate if everyone could post their starting saves also. Thanks

 

[ifinnem]

Feel free to post your initial thoughts on civ chosen and basic approach (unless you feel its a secret worth keeping till the challenge is over )

I feel like I should probably try a non GS approach but not sure I have the patience to crank all the way through it. Nevermind the fact that my play is hardly optimal to try and point out the merits off such an approach. Gonna chew on that for a while

 

[Tabarnak]

Count me in!

Lot of immortal players around, this should be fun to compare strats. Before last patch i was a big whiner about RAs. They are a bit better now, but still OP imo.

Pick peaceful civs and bully them.

 

[RedRover57]

It would be much better if you would post one starting save and everyone play the same game. And don't pick all of the pushover AI's as opponents. I never saw the point in playing "cooked" games, where the only challenge is having the patience to reroll multiple times until you get the perfect setup.

 

[Rex_Mundi]

I immagine patronage could be an essential part to a non-RA science victory. So maybe Arabia, Greece or Polynesia, who get to meet more city states.

 

[Barth]

It would be much better if you would post one starting save and everyone play the same game. And don't pick all of the pushover AI's as opponents. I never saw the point in playing "cooked" games, where the only challenge is having the patience to reroll multiple times until you get the perfect setup.

I think the idea is to allow people to really experiment with their approaches. Locking everyone into the same civ would reduce the number of strategies you can try. Not to mention that those of us without any DLCs would be out of luck if a DLC civ is included

 

[chazzycat]

I imagine that with GS hoarding allowed, the results will be somewhat similiar...wide empires with lots of GS. But this is still interesting, I will give it a shot.

Is Babylon allowed? I kinda think that would be unfair to non DLC players.

 

[ifinnem]

@rover - thanks for the input but since the purpose is to try new approaches to teching I don't want to specify a civ

Also and since there are no prizes if people really want to re-roll a million times go ahead but that's kinda missing the point...

Ideally some of the successful approaches are repeatable rather than relying on an ideal set of circumstances. Personally I don't have the approach to re-roll more than a few times so maybe I underestimate how much others are inclined to do so

Challenge 2 might go from a few starting saves or restrict civs

 

[ifinnem]

I imagine that with GS hoarding allowed, the results will be somewhat similiar...wide empires with lots of GS. But this is still interesting, I will give it a shot.

Is Babylon allowed? I kinda think that would be unfair to non DLC players.

Yeah Babylon was the first civ I tried when thinking about a non RA game. Feel free to take them - somebody needs to so that the GS spam finish time bar is set to compare other approaches to

 

[chazzycat]

true, true. Hopefully everyone doesn't take them

 

[ashye]

I gave this a shot, my first attempt stumbled across some ridiculous luck. I'm still fairly new to this game, so I might have missed a few opportunities.

Babylon, Immortal, Standard, Continents, Standard, Random opponents
Victory: Turn 279

I happened to start out literally 8 tiles away from both Persia and Siam, which I ended up rushing down with Bowmen and (almost) eliminating both by turn 70. For some reason when I usually try this I start getting destroyed by happiness issues but apparently all of the cities I took had enough unique luxes that I never dipped into the negatives for a long time. Ended up almost completely colonizing my island, never built another unit past turn 50. After that, I went for Astronomy, annexed Siam's capital and purchased a Caraval to meet all of the other civs. I then spent the rest of the game buying all of the CSes and keeping Greece from buying up my CSes. Strangely, the AI let me build whatever wonders I wanted to, pretty much. Notre Dame with Liberty GE (slight unhappy issue at this point, but pretty much never again), picked up HG around 120, the Oracle around turn 150, Louvre in the 200s (for GAs to pop for golden age, though it ended up being unnecessary). Around turn 100 I was at ~60 bpt, by 200 I was at ~315, but I picked up Scholasticism shortly afterwards which boosted bpt by about 160. Public Schools came in shortly afterwards and I ended up at about 815 bpt by the time I finished my research at turn ~250. I got 9 GSes, with a 10th from Writing which got planted. I miscalculated and never ended up using Oxford, so that probably could have shaved off ~8 turns or so. Even at 800 bpt it would take 2-3 turns to research Renaissance techs, so the game felt pretty slow. Germany didn't start conquering the other continent until pretty late, so didn't have much competition.

Tech path: Beeline writing, pick up archery, beeline Education, beeline Scientific Theory, beeline Rocketry. Pretty simple.

SPs: fill Liberty, tradition opener + Aristocracy (this was a mistake, should have gone Patronage from the beginning), Patronage to Scholasticism, fill out Rationalism except for Scientific Rev, Legalism, Sci Rev to finish the last two techs. Was producing about 250 cpt by the end, of which about 180 was from CSes.

Persia's last city was in a ridiculous place to assault, so I was basically at war with them for the entire game. Pillaging their farms with my Horseman and stealing their settlers helped me get my infrastructure up quickly. I didn't feel like giving them the chance to denounce me.

I was wondering about this, but I haven't been able to find any concrete details anywhere: how does number of cities affect GP production? From the in-game details it seems like annexing cities will increase this cost, but I haven't yet seen it change the numbers or anything. I was contemplating annexing all of my cities just to be able to control production a little better but I was a little wary of this.

Looking forwards to some faster times. This playthrough could definitely have gone better.

 

[ifinnem]

Nice work - thats a great way to get us going and nice to see a Babylon benchmark time.
Looks like you had some good fortune but clearly played a solid game also.

FYI the # cities does not affect GP thresholds, it simply goes up by 100 everytime you produce one

 

[ifinnem]

true, true. Hopefully everyone doesn't take them

Looks like you'll need to come up with something else as Ashye beat you to showcasing Babylon

 

[chazzycat]

I know, right? stupid job...

I prefer the population approach anyway. I'll give it a go over the weekend.

@ashye, nice first post! You definitely did have some luck there (oracle turn 150?? ) but also seemed like a well played game.

 

[ifinnem]

About 120 turns into my first approach (2nd map/attempt at this strategy after the first one went down in flames very early )

Up at 100+ bpt with a boost coming soon. Crucial point in the game where I start trying to take down the neighbors - choosing between the easier one who has TGW and the larger one who has a nasty UU as my first conquest...

Essentially I'm am trying to combine a tall core with a wide puppet TP sprawl (leveraging small food buckets at low pop and FT for from TPs) to generate large bpt - time will tell how effective it is

 

[Tabarnak]

I'm pretty sure that annexing a lot of cities will be very valuable for this kind of challenge. Good way to leverage the courthouse feature(bug?). Run da scientists!

 

[The Pilgrim]

I know, right? stupid job...

Yes!!!

All of a sudden so many interesting ideas popping out and absolutely no time to bring them to life. Murphy's law. I really want to take part in this.

I'm pretty sure that annexing a lot of cities will be very valuable for this kind of challenge. Good way to leverage the courthouse feature(bug?). Run da scientists!

Someone said India?

 

[RD-BH]

I can lose this challenge in 500 turns!

... I'm that good.

Trying Persia, CSs, and lotsa food.

 

[qalsip1977]

I went with Korea, ToA, HG, lots of specialists. I went peaceful. Had Askia, Persia, and Egypt nearby. Askia was, of course, dominant in my area. I only managed 2 cities by turn 178 and I had just finished Military Tradition. I'd been at war with Askia and had fended him off pretty well once, but he came at me a 2nd time with upgraded units, and I just couldn't withstand his assault.

I tried another game with Babylon. I had a fairly isolated start and got 4 cities up pretty quickly. I had Military Tradition done and was researching Scientific Theory at turn 200. I was far enough away from everyone that I had been fairly safe the whole game but (again) an aggressive Askia came and steamrolled me.

Not sure if I was keeping a good pace or not (science isn't usually my thing)...but the moral of this story is...I hate Askia!

 

[Hpuk]

Hello.
Been reading this forum for a couple of months now, decided to try this since it seemed interesting.

I normally play emperor, since I lose to early rushes very easily on immortal, and figured this was a good time to give immortal another go.
I had multiple failed attempts with Aztecs, thinking that their jungle bias and great food would be useful here.
Eventually chose to use Germany instead, since they're the only civ I can actually manage to compete against immortal AI with.
I decided to try and get as many great scientists as I could, so I picked all the wonders that gave points for them, though some AI managed to snatch Brandenburg Gate a few turns before I completed it.

Started on an island with 4 CS and Alex. As I've had bad experiences with AI rushing me, I beelined Civil Service to get some landsknechts out.
Surprsingly Alex never did DoW me, even though we were the only civs on our island, so I did manage to hunt some barbs, though I only got 2 brutes from them.
I had to DoW him instead, and had no real trouble getting both his 2 cities with only (his capitol had the Hanging Gardens, Great Lighthouse and The Colossus ) 6 or 7 landsknechts and two brutes.

Rest of the game was peaceful for me, no one DoWed me. Starting on such a secluded island really makes any difficulty much easier.
It was very late turn-wise before I finally got a caravel out to meet the others for some trading.
In the end I played the game with only 5 cities (3 self-built 2 from Alex), which I suspect is way too little, especially since I left enough room on my island that after turn 220~ I had Suleiman and Napoleon moving in there with me.

For Social Policies I took the Liberty tree, the two specialist (three if you count the opener) ones from Freedom, and then worked on Rationalism, starting from the left path and finishing with the 2bulb one.
In the end I had miscalculated a bit, and actually got 2 extra great scientists to bulb, totaling 12.
I didn't have much production, and not enough cities to build all the parts at once, which was a bit disappointing.

In the end I launched my ship on turn 255, would have been 254, but my automated worker decided to sit in my capitol not letting me go there with the last part of the ship.

Various notes:
I produced 12 or 13 Great Scientists, used one to bulb astronomy to get to Renaissance for Freedom, rest were used at the end of the game.
Turn 202 I produced 476 beakers per turn.
Sorry I didn't take better notes, since I wasn't originally going to post here.