The Apollo Challenge Lineup - Game #1 - African Union

[GAGA Extrem]

Turn 230, Transcendence, with VERY suboptimal choises (including forgetting that I wanted to go down to Eudaimonia first and instead unlocking Knowledge stuff ). Also lost one city because the AI attacked 1 turn before the rocket battery was up. Quite annoying. I guess without any missplays you should be able to finish that one around turn 200-210.

Some observations from the game:

Spoiler :

(1) PAU is by far the worst faction. Dear god that +10% growth is useless. I am pretty sure I could have cut ~10 turns from that just by playing PAC or KV.
(2) Starting location and map was good. Lots of early game ressources around.
(3) Don't bother with settling inland. I had 2 inland cities that were useless, instead I should have placed another settlement on the arctic island NNW from the spawn.
(4) Even 1-tile island cities are insane thanks to Trade Vessels.
(5) In general coastal cities are WAY more powerful than landlocked ones, even if they have lots of good terrain nearby.

 

[Acken]

Good job people, I've started to put results in a spreadsheet. On a side note, I will only write there games that are finished.

 

[metagross]

Good job people, I've started to put results in a spreadsheet. On a side note, I will only write there games that are finished.

Fair enough. Finished my game with a T194 Emancipation. I could have been so much faster but at one point I ended up at 23/24XP at Supremacy 12 Just 1XP short of the Emancipation Gate. I had to research 2 more techs costing me 10 or so turns. And I got True Angels too late, causing me to end T193 with 996/1000 Strength sent through So many near misses!

Spoiler :

The Science and Energy numbers are not really accurate since I let all Trade Vessels sleep in the last few turns when I knew the time was set.

 

[Esperr]

Can you post BO? That's so fast, even when I get battleuits at T100 its still a struggle to take down even one guy, let alone two. I think it might be that I build to many buildings.

edit:and how did you keep your health positive with all those cities? And are you just puppeting everything?

 

[metagross]

Me? My BO is in my previous post pretty much. It's pretty detailed up to T50 or so. I can't speak for Battlesuits but 3 CNDRs take down any city up to T130ish at least. Puppeting almost everything, I took over a few cities to rush buy a Trade Depot there, though that might not have been optimal.

As for Health, I went as far as -70 at one point. Prosperity Policies along with later buildings eventually even it out without even trying.

 

[Esperr]

Me? My BO is in my previous post pretty much. It's pretty detailed up to T50 or so. I can't speak for Battlesuits but 3 CNDRs take down any city up to T130ish at least. Puppeting almost everything, I took over a few cities to rush buy a Trade Depot there, though that might not have been optimal.

As for Health, I went as far as -70 at one point. Prosperity Policies along with later buildings eventually even it out without even trying.

That's what im not understanding, in my first game I had four battlesuits on t110 and every city was a struggle to take and I had to constantly build suits and buy them to keep the war going, just to take over the ARC at t130ish and then lose to daoming promised land at 220.

 

[metagross]

Strange. For my entire war with ARC and Polystralia, it always took roughly 5 attacks (3 turn 1, 2 turn 2) from CNDRs to take a city down. No one had their affinity units yet and their other units were mostly unupgraded. City strength around 30 IIRC.

 

[Esperr]

Strange. For my entire war with ARC and Polystralia, it always took roughly 5 attacks (3 turn 1, 2 turn 2) from CNDRs to take a city down. No one had their affinity units yet and their other units were mostly unupgraded. City strength around 30 IIRC.

I just reloaded a save to see, on t110 central city strength was 58, and most ARC cities were in the 40s except for the newer ones, and hutamas cities we're all chilling in the 40s as well. I wonder what triggers the comp to focus on defence so heavily or if its just random.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

All VC are considered equal if I start recording them on a spreadsheet don't worry

So what's the point in suggesting type of victory at all since people who follow it (promised land) will be probably the slowest (well, at least if it will be enough good participants )

 

[Acken]

So what's the point in suggesting type of victory at all since people who follow it (promised land) will be probably the slowest (well, at least if it will be enough good participants )

Well I think you misunderstand, when I mean all victories are considered equal this is just for reporting. There is no internet reward as in an official gotm for fastest time.

People are then free to play whatever victory they want but for those that like imposed victories I have added the opportunity to have one. I know competitive people like it better that way and will use this opportunity to have a "race" with other people on this particular victory. Due to the unofficial nature of it, there is no ranking after it like for the Civ5 series.

But when it comes to just gather everyone's time, there is no preference (though the victory type is indicated).

Obviously the subject is open for discussion and if people dislike the idea let me know

 

[Darvon]

I don't understand what the challenge is meant to be?

Win a game of BE using any victory condition from a decent starting position?

 

[Acken]

I don't understand what the challenge is meant to be?

Win a game of BE using any victory condition from a decent starting position?

Read OP

I am 100% aware CivBE isn't challenging for Civ veterans but I won't impose arbitrary rules. If you find the game too easy I strongly suggest you then try to achieve a fast victory (fighting for it with other good players) or chose your own handicaps.

 

[Esperr]

I don't understand what the challenge is meant to be?

Win a game of BE using any victory condition from a decent starting position?

Did you play the CIV V challenges? The point is that we as a community all play the same map so we can discuss strategy and post build orders and stuff like that. It to help people improve play, and help people who cant quite beat Apollo move up to the difficulty. It doesn't necessarily have to be an actual challenge, as even the Civ V challenge stops being a challenge for most people.

 

[metagross]

I played again for funsies and went with Harmony this time. T176 Transcedence victory. Funnily enough, the beginning of the game was the same with everyone being super friendly. I killed Hutama again but ARC had their own Affinity units by the time I got to her, so I decided not to push my luck.

Could have probably shaven a few more turns from the time but I miscalculated trade routes and didn't have them going to my capital for the Mind Flower, which translated into extra 5-10ish turns to build it.

I might try Promised Land next, if I have time during the week =)

Spoiler :

 

[Xenotitan]

Not having artists or worker really made things harder. The free settler came way later.

I founded one city 5 tiles south towards Central, and another off the coast and a medium sized island. Despite this Hutama still complained about me settling near him, right after he plopped a city 5 tiles from my capital. I think the AI is bugged about this again like in Vanilla V where they would get irritated if they settled near you like you settled near them.

I tried to keep Hutama and Fielding from declaring war by sending them trade routes, but this didn't work and on ~T100 Fielding declared war on me with a massive army. I held her off for a few turns but I couldn't keep her from taking Ayaan, after which I resigned.

I had been trying to get CNDRs out before war with her but the start was much slower than I was used to and one of the quests I got was familiar exotics, where the supremacy reward requires building a petrochemical plant. It wanted it in Magan, where there was no oil.

My early tech order was chemistry -> pioneering -> ecology -> whatever the embark tech is. My early build order was explorer -> OER -> worker.

 

[Thrar]

Gave up my first try at T90. I went back 10-20 turns a few times to try out different approaches but ultimately concluded that my strategy as a whole was flawed.

Spoiler :

Built worker->OER while researching Pioneering, Engineering, Chemistry and Genetics.
Got a colonist from Prosperity while building trade depot and trade vessel/convoy in Magan, second city went north by the floatstone.
Lost Gene Vault by a turn. Shortly after I got a 3rd city down by the copper and was hoping to settle further south when ARC attacked me, causing me to scramble for defense and lose Ecto Pod by 3 turns.
I did manage to hold her off, but was boxed in and could see everybody else surge ahead.

I'll have to try again from the start in a different way.

 

[glory7]

Spoiler :

Since I learned that battlesuit is just too OP, and AI is even worse than civ5, I decided to put a restriction: no DoW from my side.

I didn't even know (and still don't know) how to win with 'promised land', I had to follow the quest: I launched laser satellite, and researched nanotech. Now it requires purity lv13... okay. I am getting purity related techs now.

so this initial setting choices were far from optimal - now I learn that artist+free worker start is OP. Btw, this continental surveyor was actually good, as I could send trade cargos right away. I think more than 2/3 of sci were coming from trade routes, until say t120. I placed internal route with cap and other cities (those were really efficient ones) and usually sent others for gpt and spt.

Spoiler :

As I was running out of land, I swam across the ocean and started building cities here - there are very good spots available!

Spoiler :

list of cities.

Spoiler :

 

[teqofc]

Turn 233 Transendence Victory. Feel bad for AI so limited myself to 6 cities and didn't take any of theirs to make it semi challenging. Went 5 in Prosperity all other in Industry since Knowledge would have made it even easier.

Spoiler :

 

[teqofc]

Gave up my first try at T90. I went back 10-20 turns a few times to try out different approaches but ultimately concluded that my strategy as a whole was flawed.

Spoiler :

Built worker->OER while researching Pioneering, Engineering, Chemistry and Genetics.
Got a colonist from Prosperity while building trade depot and trade vessel/convoy in Magan, second city went north by the floatstone.
Lost Gene Vault by a turn. Shortly after I got a 3rd city down by the copper and was hoping to settle further south when ARC attacked me, causing me to scramble for defense and lose Ecto Pod by 3 turns.
I did manage to hold her off, but was boxed in and could see everybody else surge ahead.

I'll have to try again from the start in a different way.

Spoiler :

I wouldn't waste time with any early wonder in this game when you are squeezed between two civs especially when one of them is ARC who almost always backstabs even with trade route and agreement. Instead build up an early army with lots of rangers and do what you can to get to 2 affinity to get upgrades to gunners. I saw ARC getting ready to invade me around turn 85 but all she had was a few rovers, a few soldiers and some rangers. I would have murdered her with my army of gunners and marines and a few armor. I think she knew to not try given that she had 1 affinity and I already had 3

 

[Janskey]

Turn 223 Transcendence

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Tried to play all peaceful, but had a couple wars with the ARC. As you can see from the image, I didn't have more than 2 workers at any moment. Also, notice the "perfect" city spot up north. Now, that I think of it, I could have placed three cities where Xirsi and Bongani are.