The Apollo Challenge Lineup - Game #1 - African Union

[Acken]

I personally finally finished that game and managed a T211 purity victory (after having too little time these past days)

Spoiler :

I went with the classic stuff of spamming cities then try to go back healthy and then just beeline affinity tech, build the stuff, wait 20 turn, win. My first purity victory by the way.

For virtues I went 3 in Prosperity, 4 in Industry, Rest in Knowledge. Really like that virtue planning so far.

For techs it was pretty standard too, pioneering, auto plants, bionics then affinities (holomatrix quick). Gate was finished T187 and I forgot to click the thing 2 turns I believe (they really should just make it automatic).

Final SS but my trade routes were on hold and I was queuing random buildings at the end because I was too bored, could probably reach 900+ bpt if I had affected TR and managed my cities but it is useless since you are limited by the exodus gate no matter what you do in those last 20turns.

Spoiler :

No free affinity from ruins but acceptable quests allowing for battlesuits T100 to kill ARC. No special exploits, a few gpt for gold loans. There's a lot of room for improvement since this was my first promised land victory and only 3rd complete game and I could seriously tone it down to T207 first by not making mistakes with earthling and planning a road for them. Also faster research is possible by just focusing cities on it.

And finally I'd expect an artist + worker + good map to roll even better times.

The last 50 or so turns were SO boring with that mass of TR. Game recording is available in LP subforum.

Next map is the week-end of the 21st by the way.

 

[Roxlimn]

Once you're done building the Exodus Gate, delete every Trade Convoy or Vessel that dares to bother you for directions. You'll find it cathartic.

 

[Acken]

I put them on sleep kind of same effect

 

[Lucius_]

Let me start by saying, I've never participated in any of the Civ challenge series before. I really enjoyed it. It's really interesting to see how people did things differently. So here goes.

Spoiler :

I ended up winning a Promised Land victory on turn 225. I really didn't like this start very much. I only found 1 resource pod the entire game and my early affinity quest asked me to build a biofuel plant (the one that requires algae) which I was not able to do because no algae in Magan. I also did not find any free affinity upgrades from ruins early on. Also, this is the first map I've seen that didn't have a big affinity strategic nearby. Everything close by was small stuff, like 3 firaxite or 2 floatstone. None of those nice 7-10 resources that make affinity choice obvious.

Here's the victory screenshot:

Spoiler :

So since the starting area was so cramped I knew I'd have to deal with at least one neighbor. I built my first 3 cities and went after Polystralia once I hit Purity 2, which I feel came really late (t80ish?), but left him with one city. After that, the game was fairly straightforward. I had space to expand westward. I maintained a coop agreement with Brasilia and KP.

Interestingly, after I settled a couple earthling settlers, SF, ARC, and Polystralia all DoW'd me. I quickly took Rangi, which got Hutama off the continent. I defended against SF's attack and took Vanguard from ARC about 2 or so turns before winning.

 

[Esperr]

Even without ruins, there are still quests. Especially the Autoplant quest (and to a lesser extent the UF quest) can mean a huge difference. If you have 5 cities, that's 5 trade routes that could be up and running 10-20 ruins earlier. Of course the inherent problem are the trade routes, just saying that comparing times may not be really telling as-is.

Ive found that the biggest factor in win time when not going for contact is the auto plant quest. Ive reloaded and restarted games and there is a huge correlation with win times and when that third route goes up. Nothing seems to shave off nearly as many turns.

 

[tombakerwho]

First harmony victory, mainly following the quest instructions for what to do next

Spoiler :

Initially wanted to go 100% peaceful, but ARC is predictable in its aggression and backstabbing, so early game I put some hammers into gunners and took out one of her expansions with a counter-attack. ARC also appears to like high city defenses, so I did not attempt to capture her capital. Luckily, ARC was not 100% stubborn in this game, and did accept peace. Fortunately, despite some close settles, a few trade routes appeared to be enough to keep Polystrailia friendly.

Settled the central area for Xenomass, but the terrain was pretty terrible, which resulted in some very slow tile improvements.

I failed pretty horribly on culture output, which caused unhealthy issues for most of the game. I then tried to correct that using tons of biowells, which caused energy issues, which I then needed to correct with solar collectors. Probably better to just focus on more culture, and then use virtues to fix the health issues.

Late game was a bit interesting, Polystrailia completed its Mind Flower before mine, so I had to DOW him, and then rush in with Xenocavalry to destroy it. ARC was massing troops at the same time, and the Slavs were also probing my defenses, so I had to pay ARC to go away and reserve a lot of units for border partrol, which limited my ability to inflict serious damage on Polystrailia before requesting a peace treaty. Instead, I pillaged as many manufactories as I could find, and then gambled that I would get transcendence before Hutama rebuilt his Mind Flower.

 

[Soffacet]

Finished the map today. Promised Land on T218. General gameflow was:

Spoiler :

Purity 3 --> RX to Ayaan, Thabo, Jenali (see map). Might --> Martial Meditations --> Gunner rush ARC, capture Central, Axiom, Vanguard. Kozlov tries to steal Vanguard but fails, and then denounces.

Beeline all Purity leaf techs. Institute = Nanotechology. Start Exodus Gate on ~T155 but it takes like 30 turns to build even with all cities sending ITR to Magan. I had no Borehole or Skycrane or even LEV Plant at first but I researched & bought those as the gate was going up. I kept filling out Might and Prosperity for extra strategics and positive health. Probably not the best, but it was ok. Didn't build a single Academy.

Kozlov DoWs and actually has a large army of CNDR, but is stonewalled at Vanguard by Guardian and Battlesuit. He constantly refuses peace and I farm his units for like 50 turns. Eventually I kill him with Planet Carvers and Dragoons. Mostly I needed to raze his city south of Bongani to make room for Earthling Settlements.

I think I forgot to summon an earthling at least four times. That's honestly the most annoying part of this VC.

Spoiler :

 

[Manannan]

Got halfway to a contact victory, got bored, saved it for later. Might return to it eventually.

Just a little request for some of the weirder maps for the next challenges. Rolling a rough start on Taigan or Equatorial adds some challenge (and thus fun) to the game, would like to see them for an APC.

 

[Acken]

The weird thing with transcendence is that it's a victory that scales well with the number of cities, you can probably finish the victory in less that 15 turns just after reaching harmony 13.

Other victories take longer, supremacy is in the 25 and promised land around 35.

 

[alpaca]

The weird thing with transcendence is that it's a victory that scales well with the number of cities, you can probably finish the victory in less that 15 turns just after reaching harmony 13.

Other victories take longer, supremacy is in the 25 and promised land around 35.

Not sure I quite agree with those numbers, although I do agree with the general sentiment.

Building the wonder usually only takes 5 or 6 turns due to the huge internal trade route bonuses. For transcendence, you can build Xeno Sanctuaries everywhere and rush buy a few stems when you get it, so I think it's reasonable to push it down to 5 turns (I don't have a lot of experience with this VC), which would give you something like 7-12 turns, 15 on the off-side

Emancipation finishes exactly 12 turns after the gate goes up because you will simply buy an ANGEL every turn. This puts it at 17-18 turns

Promised Land should not take more than 21 turns since you should shift your colonists using Phasal Transports. If you can get one of the city spot close enough to your capital for magrails to take the colonist there in a single turn, 20. That puts it at 25-27 turns.

That said, it's hard to evaluate the tech path going there. On paper, all of them take the same XP, but some powerful techs are more useful for one side or the other. Cognition, for instance, is extra juicy if you go for Supremacy. On the other hand, getting the Cash Collector satellite (as I call it), which is quite excellent and spammable, is a large deviation from your normal path if you don't go Harmony. Similar things can be said for farms and purity.

Purity's main advantage right now (and the reason why I often go for it) is that Servomachinery is a 25 xp tech that comes directly after Bionics. This means you can pop it with the institute quest and combine it with the 12 xp and 18 xp techs to get battlesuits pretty early. You also want Bionics for the Biowells, which is an extra bonus.

Supremacy has to hard research a 25 xp tech to get their UU, which significantly delays your CNDRs, although at least their 25 XP tech is unlocked by Cognition, which is great.

Harmony has to take a crappy 25 xp tech from bionics or delay the tech pop to research another tier 3 tech in order to pop or hard research Cash Collectors. Of course, all this changes if you get an early free affinity or a finishable quest.

All in all, you probably still get faster finish times with Transcendence on average, but I think we should only really compare times for the same victory type, and even then it's shaky due to the large inherent randomness in quests and pods/ruins.

 

[Wing]

Emancipation on turn 229.

Fielding declared on me on turn 72, but I held it off and later took her capital. Hutama was just a few turns behind me with a mind flower and a couple of others had just finished exodus gates.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Phew! Done. It was turn 240ish, sorry for no screenshot, but this post isn't about me winning, it's about BUGS!!!! But let's start from the top:

1. I settled about 6 cities. First directly in front of Hutama's nose, which may not have been needed. I rushed the free Colonist to get there. Spread out the rest around resources. The starting location is quite rich in Titanium. Which led to:

2. Trying to beeline to Battlesuits. It wasn't really as fast as I'd wanted but they were there. ARC backstabbed me because THAT'S THE ONLY THING THAT WOMAN DOES, damn her to heck. She came at me hammer and tongs. I had the usual defensive garrison and was waiting for the Institute quest to trigger. It was kind of delayed but eventually it got me to 3 Purity. I had some energy saved up and bought a Gene Garden for a quest and that was Purity 4. And since I still had plenty of energy stored up, I just summoned 4 Battlesuits. Needless to say, that was the end of ARC and I FELT AS GOOD AS I'LL EVER FEEL

3. Fast forward, Hutama gets the Mind Flower up. In hindsight, he shouldn't have been allowed to do that but heh, I allied with Rejinaldo, my upgraded Battlesuits RIPPED HIM TO SHREDS LOL.Or maybe it was the fact I made so many of them because I was kind of bored.

ANYWAY, I raze everything, but Rejinaldo puppets his cities, the dumbass. The tile with the MF belongs to Rejinaldo now but I had my Exodus almost done and I figured I'd just overtake that.

Which I did but not how you'd think. You see, my mouse is a bit borked. The left click is worn out and a click is often registered as three really really fast clicks, because the foil separating the mechanical contacts got worn out and the left button bounces freely before returning to zero position. Not wanting to act like a physics teacher, but this is what broke the Exodus Gate summon thing, I would summon an Earthling but three of them would come out stacked on one another! Now I know they did code in a way to stop the double click cheat but I'm willing to bet they set the time between average two clicks to be a lot longer than what my, broken, mouse, can do. It also works when assigning Earthlings to settlements. Even though there WAS one, the game bugged out and registered 2 of them coming in the same turn.

Not wanting to cheat (btw the save/load cheat does indeed work still), I delayed the Exodus by as much as I'd like to see how late would be too late. And the winner was.... Hutama!! Who only ended up with one city on a different continent I honestly couldn't be arsed to hunt down. Oh and, his Mind Flower wasn't even in his territory, the hell? There was a strange yellow circle on the MF all the time. I even tried to DoW Rejinaldo to kill off the MF but I COULDN'T, I couldn't pillage the tile and I couldn't attack it from an adjacent tile. Soooooo, that's how it went doen, basically

 

[metagross]

Looking forward to Game #2. I think I will limit myself to 3 cities and will try to role-play as much as possible

 

[Arnold_T]

I didn't really know what I was doing, having not gone for the Promised Land victory yet, but I started off by getting aggressive with my neighbours and taking the cities of Central and Freeland for my own. I kind of expected those AIs to go into a game end war with me, but they never attacked once! When the slavs started settling close to my territory I took two of his cities away from him too. I had ten cities at the end. This was the first game I played at Apollo. Now I see what everyone's saying about it being too easy. You shouldn't be able to win at the hardest setting when you don't even know what you're doing! I guess it was kind of close though since the Pan-Asians were only about 10 tens behind me in building the Exodus Gate. Thanks for the game Acken!