Strategy Challenge startup/ SC #1 Pre-challenge discussion

[Betafor]

Well, i decided to go ahead and make the topic, since we kinda needed the discussion in a seperate topic than the Lust for Gold.

Previous discussion found here : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=183141

Basically, here is the deal for the newcomers - The idea is to create a series like the ALC or Emporer's challenge, but instead of focusing on one game, a challenge will be provided by the host along with a starting save save(to be decided per game/ possibly the winner of the previous challenge) such as -

- total gold from religion (same as lust for gold but including modifiers = teching to wall street could have a huge effect)
- switzerland (total gold, regardless of source, including modifiers)
- production powerhouse (max hammers in one city)
- beaker street (max beakers from one city)
- greatest city ever (max number of settled GP)
- greatest city ever II (max total beakers, gold, culture, hammers /turn in one city)
- greatest city ever III (max pop in one city)
- greatest empire ever (max total population)
- greatest empire ever II (max number of techs)
- greatest empire ever III(max number of cities)
- we need a hero (max xp for one unit)
- army of veterans (max number of level 5 units)
- infinite army (max gunpowder units)
- happy nation (best approval rate)
- friends for ever (highest relation modifier towards any other leader)

culture challenge is already mentionned (one or 3 cities)

All this must be given within a specified time limit, or no limit at all. As you can see, there are a lot of options, and a LOT more than just on this page.

In order to keep the series fun, some will have twists, such as super early or late cutoff dates, archipegalo maps, fractal maps, Mystery maps(player doesnt know what he's playing), wrong number of civs for the map size, the possibilities are endless-

The difficulty level will switch between Prince for harder challenges and monarch for easier ones(this is where most people play in this forum)

Contestants will not only have a set amount of turns, they will have a set amount of days to do this - It has already been requested that it include at least 1 weekend, and it is my personal opinion it should be at least 7 days. But this is why the thread is here, to discuss this.

The winner- hmm... I guess you could put it in your signature... And I think the winner should have the option to create the next challenge.

Since vanilla CIV is more widespread, warloards is out of the question(for reasons already stated)

Well, your thoughts? The only problem i could think of is that the host picks a "bad" challenge somehow- most likely a product of not having one set host per each challenge. However, there will be pre-challenge discussions, so it's not like the players willl be blind... Probably the first few SC's will have to be generic in things like map type/size/ect before we start playing around with custom gaming.

 

[cabert]

hey! you're quoting me without my name!

basically, you said it all.
IMHO, a pre-challenge discussion is just what it takes to be good (although Mice proposed all by himself 2 very good challenges).
For example, if we go for Switzerland, we can give specific rules (such as no subsidies exploit), or chose between gold from one city or nationwide...

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Some randomly organized thoughts ...

The difficulty level will switch between Prince for harder challenges and monarch for easier ones(this is where most people play in this forum)

I'm not sure if this is true (I'm also not sure it isn't). I would have guessed that more are at the Prince level than Monarch, but that's purely a guess. At any rate, I would suggest that you start out with the first few being at the lower of whatever difficulties you choose.

Contestants will not only have a set amount of turns, they will have a set amount of days to do this - It has already been requested that it include at least 1 weekend, and it is my personal opinion it should be at least 7 days.

If you start on a Friday then you can get two weekends for an extra 2 or 3 days total.

Well, your thoughts?

You might consider as a variant of your "greatest city" challenges, doing something like a "3rd greatest city" or "5th greatest city." The idea would be to judge the cities against the same criteria (whatever those happen to be) but look at the nth best instead of the best. That would mean you'd need to work a little harder to get several power cities instead of putting everything into one at all costs.

 

[Betafor]

hey! you're quoting me without my name!

Edited - sorry was multitasking at the min, forgive me

I've got nothing to do all day, so i'll be checking this thread often.

Some randomly organized thoughts ...

All good ideas, about difficulty level, I play prince, and as such my personal motive is to keep it at prince, but we want to spread this to the wider variety - the question is - is it more efficiant for prince players to play at monarch or vica versa?

EDIT - How about earliest (specific type of?) victory (with given settings?)

 

[pigswill]

You're likely to get more monarch level players going for a challenge on prince than vica versa (and of course lots of noble level players might have a go at prince but wouldn't jump two levels).

 

[carl corey]

Nice, it's up and running.

Hmm, about earliest victory... I had an idea of playing with (or without) the civics a little. How about:

1) No civic changes. You won't complain that Slavery is overpowered, won't ditch the game because you're a die-hard atheist and don't even want to hear about organized religion , etc. That would mean all sorts of problems, like less happiness, less empire efficiency, but I don't know, it could be fun. How about earliest domination/conquest victory with these settings? Oh, and Pyramids: forget about them.

2) "New=better". You must switch to the newest and "lowest" civic and stay there until something else comes along. For example, you get Organized Religion, you're forced to switch to it. (You better have a state religion by then or you're quite screwed...) But if you get Caste System before Serfdom you must stick with Caste System (the "lowest" of the two). Again, Pyramids shouldn't count. Maybe we aren't allowed to build them at all, and any captured city with Pyrs inside gets razed. Earliest "all lowest civics" wins. In the late stages of the game it will be a beeline to Ecology, but maybe we can stop at State Property?

 

[dutchfire]

Sounds like fun
One thing I'd like to add: don't make the maps to big, certainly for challenges that last into industrial or modern age. For the people with a like me.

 

[Betafor]

Keep in mind, carl and everyone, that we kinda have to have some security, our restrictions have to be hard coded(finish date) otherwise how would we know if you really didn't switch civics then back before u posted the save?

I'm seeing the variables for these coming mainly for the victory conditions, NOT from map changes/difficulty/ yada yada, though that would be good.

Agreed about keep smap size smaller- standard or below? I think standard should be... well... standard.

Guys, a reminder, SC#1 will probably be more generic starts with something like max culture in one city as requirement by X AD. We can add extraneous stuff LATER . I'm concerned this thread is turning away from develouping the series and SC#1 and towards what possible things we can do for SC # 27.3

EDIT - Reread that, sounded a lil mean. What i mean to say is that i'm glad we're thinking of so many ideas, but we should focus on how the whole series will work, not just ideas for challenges.

A note to all future hosts, let's try and keep things like no cheating on, ok?

 

[mice]

Good job Betafor getting it rolling.

more suggestions from me...

Max culture /turn in any 1 city by ....AD ~maybe Ghandi/continents

Max number of gold/silver/gems resources being mined by …. AD (sounds simple but you'd have to have a good economy to support those far flung cities,and defenders. Tropical pangea?)

Mansa, Monarch, Lakes, Raging barbs. See how much city population you can get by , 300 AD.

Terra, raging barbs, see how many cities you can found on the other continent by ...1800.Maybe Isabella,conquistadors

A Taoist in Tokyo. Must have a Taoist missionary standing in Tokyo by earliest date, not playing as Toku.

Whacky i know. maybe for later challenges.

Re. rules. I think it's better to allow multiple attempts. If people want to try it twice or three times, good for them. The challenge comes from thinking out the problem with/without a knowledge of the map. With Assets locked there isnt much chance of a player giving themself an advantage.

Furthermore. The person who starts up the challenge ie.posts the start, should probably play through quickly before posting it to see if the map is going to present an interesting game given the task. The leader and the map type need to be taken into consideration when you set it up.

EDIT - Reread that, sounded a lil mean. What i mean to say is that i'm glad we're thinking of so many ideas, but we should focus on how the whole series will work, not just ideas for challenges.

It's a good idea to have lively debate about what challenge is interesting. Then we'll have a better idea of what challenge people are going to enjoy.
The mechanics of it should be easy. Friday Start the thread , post the save and intro....the following Sunday -10 days later - close it and announce the winner.
The hard part is choosing the right task, and getting a good map for it.

 

[Betafor]

Note that i'm flying to New york and back on the same day tommorrow on Wednesday and so won't be able to post- I live in D.C.

Friday to the second sunday sounds good, but that means if we want to make it work by this friday, we need to get the ball rolling as to voting what the challenge is going to be for SC 1.

Well, i suppose we can get this done in the nomination system- nominate, then seconded, then voted upon in a poll

I nominate Max culture in one city by 1600 for voting(boni included), generic settings, leader = Elizabeth on prince

 

[cabert]

I nominate Max culture in one city by 1600 for voting(boni included), generic settings, leader = Elizabeth on prince

do you mean max cpt or max total culture?
anyway, i'm ok, but the target must be clear

 

[carl corey]

Looks interesting for a next challenge. I never pay much attention to the culture in my cities unless I decide to go for cultural victory, and that usually comes later if I'm not in the mood to go dominating the world.

By the way, what's the "boni included" thing. Boni from what? Does the culture slider matter? Cause anyone can set it at 100% in their last turn... Maybe add the culture slider with the condition that the gpt stay positive or 0? Not sure that's what you intended, Betafor, so I'll just sit and wait. Oh, and don't worry about "sounding mean", I get what you're saying. The purpose would be to make this challenges cheat-free, so the conditions should be easily controled, right? I wonder if there's a log that also keeps the civics switch. Otherwise yeah, you can play my choices but it's hard to verify if you sticked to the rules.

Standard map is ok I think. If people start saying their computers can't handle a certain challenge we'll try to ajust the conditions then, right?

As for replaying the game to get better results: maybe we can separate this in two. One "award" for first time best and one for best overall. Knowledge like "there's copper in my fat cross but no horses" can be pretty game changing. Also, as in "lust for gold" knowing your opponents and what they will research matters. Had I known from the start Mansa Musa was going for Buddhism I would have tried Buddhism-Hinduism. I founded Hinduism before he did with Buddhism, so I probably could have had both if tried in the "right" order.

 

[cabert]

By the way, what's the "boni included" thing. Boni from what? Does the culture slider matter? Cause anyone can set it at 100% in their last turn... Maybe add the culture slider with the condition that the gpt stay positive or 0?

if it's culture/turn, i'm with carl here.
Slider is ok but only if gpt is positive
and
artists are OK, but only if food is positive (so at least stagnant growth).

That's why i think total culture is better (no "last turn" tweaking).

 

[carl corey]

Good point about artists too, cabert. Having a 20 pop. city and making all of them artists with Caste System in the last turn isn't really a strategic victory. I'm more and more inclined toward total culture myself. On the other hand... you can still starve your city in the last turns and destroy your economy just to get some more culture. But that probably won't make much of a difference. Any ideas how to prevent this too without the rules becoming too complicated?

Another thought for second (third, etc.) tries: they have to be played from start to finish. No reloading from a certain point and changing your game plan. This could easily lead to abuse. You can of course post one of these reloaded tries, but they won't count for the final standings.

 

[cabert]

Good point about artists too, cabert. Having a 20 pop. city and making all of them artists with Caste System in the last turn isn't really a strategic victory. I'm more and more inclined toward total culture myself. On the other hand... you can still starve your city in the last turns and destroy your economy just to get some more culture. But that probably won't make much of a difference. Any ideas how to prevent this too without the rules becoming too complicated?

well, starving a city to get what you want is a viable strat that i use often, why would you want to prevent it?
(example : happiness cap at size 15, you could grow to size 16, by working tiles but don't want to, so you set up a few specialists to avoid growth)

Another thought for second (third, etc.) tries: they have to be played from start to finish. No reloading from a certain point and changing your game plan. This could easily lead to abuse. You can of course post one of these reloaded tries, but they won't count for the final standings.

there is nothing to win, why bother with cheaters?
Going for cheating control will require a big organization (GotM like), and i think this isn't necessary. Let everyone play it the way he wants.

General rules are :
no exploit, no cheating, no save/reloading.

But i can tell you this : i won't spend any time checking the saves

 

[carl corey]

well, starving a city to get what you want is a viable strat that i use often, why would you want to prevent it?
(example : happiness cap at size 15, you could grow to size 16, by working tiles but don't want to, so you set up a few specialists to avoid growth)

Yeah, but it's a little different when you get your super-productive size 15 city to size 10 in the last turns just to run more artists instead of hammer/food/commerce tiles. Should the game continue, it would actually be a disadvantage. You'd probably "win" the challenge or at least improve your score, but since I see them as "first-parts" for later victories I wouldn't prefer that strategy to a more "normal" one.

But as you said, this is mostly for fun and yeah, I won't bother checking for cheating either. Play on!

 

[cabert]

Yeah, but it's a little different when you get your super-productive size 15 city to size 10 in the last turns just to run more artists instead of hammer/food/commerce tiles. Should the game continue, it would actually be a disadvantage. You'd probably "win" the challenge or at least improve your score, but since I see them as "first-parts" for later victories I wouldn't prefer that strategy to a more "normal" one.

But as you said, this is mostly for fun and yeah, I won't bother checking for cheating either. Play on!

later cultural victories can be achieved at the price of a few pop points, and i don't think the challenges lay good ground for victories. It's more like trying "extreme" strats .

 

[carl corey]

Gotcha. I guess I just haven't played enough cultural victory aimed games.

 

[Killroyan]

Very interesting and I might even try it out although my time is limited. Will watch this with anticipation.

 

[patagonia]

A Taoist in Tokyo. Must have a Taoist missionary standing in Tokyo by earliest date, not playing as Toku.

Whacky i know. maybe for later challenges.

I really like the sound of that idea