Spoonwood's Challenge

[Spoonwood]

After having played several HoF games, I've sort of gotten the feeling that if you play focused for one type of victory condition you miss a lot of aspects of the game... even at upper levels. Or at least strategicially you might. For a conquest or domination game, you probably don't need a whole lot of libraries or universities, and you don't need to emphasize research all too much yourself. Banks and stock exchanges have minimal use in a space race or diplomatic game where you can just sell tech for gpt. Military has its use in a space, diplomatic, and 20k game, but at best it yields you more territory for more science or some nice MGLs... at upper levels you want trading partners here to the end (and good relations), so you don't really want to take on the big dog and have a full blown out war. Histographic games don't require or really want all too much culture.

So, here's my variant, which I think covers a slew of the aspects of the game. It should work best at upper levels... probably where the AIs start getting a free settler. You play against maximum opponents on a pangea (maybe continents... definitely not archipelago) map. Your victory condition comes as the 100k. You may whip in the expansion phase so that you don't lose border towns to flips, but beyond that, you may NOT use a government which allows for whipping.

 

[RedWolf]

Just curious - What's whipping?

 

[Mathias]

Whipping is the forced-labor hurrying method of despotism/feudalism, as opposed to the cash-rushing of republic/monarchy.

 

[Chamnix]

Interesting idea, but I don't think you will get the results that you want - I suspect the only way a player will get twice the culture of any AI on a high level is .

 

[Optional]

..or eliminating them.

 

[NickyH]

..or eliminating them.

Exactly. I think you should ad one condition: Raising cities is not allowed.

 

[Mathias]

No raising cities would be OCC/OBC. Obviously, you meant no razing cities. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Spoonwood said nothing about restricted military action, though. Just get all your culture the hard way. Basically a casual 100K, as opposed to the fast-finishing feudal pop-rushed culture games.

 

[Spoonwood]

Interesting idea, but I don't think you will get the results that you want - I suspect the only way a player will get twice the culture of any AI on a high level is

Actually, I did want that. I wanted to come up with an idea that included as many aspects of the game as I could and made it so that strategically it would make sense to play that way. I didn't want archipelago, because research wouldn't make for too much of a problem then, and you probably could get lazy with the Temple of Artemis. I wanted max tribes, so that the tech pace goes faster and you have to do more research.. this way you might want/need factories and such... and you'll probably need/want libraries and universities earlier on. Along with that, comes the possibility that you want the late game Temple of Artemis... the Internet, so that the modern era becomes more sought after. I didn't want whipping, so you had more of an incentive to build banks and stock exchanges for cash rushing improvements. I don't think hospitals, mass transit systems, maybe recycling centers, and manfacturing plants will have much use in this game. Offshore platforms (for getting units to help disband rush buildings in other places) and everything else I can see as useful though.

It's basically an idea which makes you want to build as many improvements and train as many units as you can instead of focusing in on either units or improvements. Picking improvements and/or training units at the right time then becomes more important. Civil engineers also seem like a good idea.

Maybe strategically such a game would work out better by bashing more before libraries and universities, but I think would best go early infrastructre (not necessarily everything, but a decent amount of infrastructure)-bashing-later infrastructure in new cities which mostly gets bought... that way you get to the Internet faster. So, I think it ends up an ancient and medieval builder phase, then an early or mid industrial age war game which lasts until or into the modern age phase, followed by a late game builder phase. Ancient and medieval wonders might also bear a little more careful consideration, since they'll double... although maybe more military makes more sense here for earlier bashing, then again military losses and settler cost here might make at least some of the better culture wonders more worth it.

I like the idea of not razing cities, but it might not actually come as necessary. I suspect you'd want a normalish sort of city spacing for this game at first. But, eventually, you'll want a smallpox city spacing. So, you'll want a slew of settlers and you'll still need good military production from your core. This seems to imply that it would work better to keep all cities and buy settlers/workers out of those cities as soon as you can do so.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I generally play my 100K games without pop-rushing. I have used two different strategies to get decent results.

The former used a method of conjuring up lots of cash by getting the AI to run heavy deficits and is banned now for any HoF game. It worked better on the lowest levels, and was quite boring to be honest. The best result was a 150 AD finish date with America on large Chieftain.

A second strategy uses the remote palace exploit, which is not banned, to create a huge, fairly uncorrupt core area around the forbidden palace. This works better on the higher levels as there is simply more to annect and there are simply more chances of leaders etc. Finish dates are around 12-1300ish on deity, but could be improved, I think.

The former works a little bit better in C3 and PTW, but could also be used in C3C. The latter requires C3 or PTW.

 

[capnvonbaron]

I actually had a great Monarch game where I did just that... 100K late-game victory (ie, everyone was running around with modern armor by then). I was on the "alpha continent", and over the course of the ancient-, middle- and industrial ages took over the four other tribes that resided there. Then just settled in and spent the rest of my days building peacefully and maintaining (generally) good relations with the off-continent folks. Except close to the end when I decided Hammy was getting too uppity and close to a space-race victory, and so I engaged him in a massive late-game armor war with most of the world.

It was really fun and I got a lot of practice micro-managing, certainly. The only thing that sucked was that most of the really good wonders (like pyramids, sun tzu's) were built on the other continent. I think I'll definitely try it on a harder level next time.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I actually had a great Monarch game where I did just that... 100K late-game victory (ie, everyone was running around with modern armor by then). I was on the "alpha continent", and over the course of the ancient-, middle- and industrial ages took over the four other tribes that resided there. Then just settled in and spent the rest of my days building peacefully and maintaining (generally) good relations with the off-continent folks. Except close to the end when I decided Hammy was getting too uppity and close to a space-race victory, and so I engaged him in a massive late-game armor war with most of the world.

It was really fun and I got a lot of practice micro-managing, certainly. The only thing that sucked was that most of the really good wonders (like pyramids, sun tzu's) were built on the other continent. I think I'll definitely try it on a harder level next time.

Monarch? Was it on a large map perchance? Have you looked at this one:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=306672

 

[capnvonbaron]

Haha, I didn't see that... I haven't been prowling around the forums much lately, nor have I played a lot of Civ lately. It was on a large map, yes... been awhile though. I have the 4000BC save, not sure about the final save. Either way though, I don't think the final score was all that impressive. 5000s maybe.

 

[Calis]

Haha, I didn't see that... I haven't been prowling around the forums much lately, nor have I played a lot of Civ lately. It was on a large map, yes... been awhile though. I have the 4000BC save, not sure about the final save. Either way though, I don't think the final score was all that impressive. 5000s maybe.

For HoF matches it's not the score,but the finish time that is important (except for histograph games of course)...

 

[capnvonbaron]

For HoF matches it's not the score,but the finish time that is important (except for histograph games of course)...

ah -- thanks for clarifying.

I think the finish was around 1760AD. Still not really HoF material...

 

[Spoonwood]

Here's an in progress game going for my own challenge. Thing is... it's not the "cleanest" game. But, I'm not competing in this game, so why should I care?