The Apollo Challenge Lineup - Game #1 - African Union

[metagross]

Just a suggestion for the future - instead of a recommended victory type, I would prefer optional rules to follow. I feel this is especially needed with the state of BE right now, where no matter what victory you choose to pursue, the optimal strategy is always the same - spam cities, spam trade routes, win.

 

[Acken]

I understand the concern but when deity challenges in civ5 started to make arbitrary rules in the past, the game didn't really become more interesting and people started to flee that kind of games (some were really silly). It's also hard to come up with widely accepted rules.

Due to this I'm mostly against but strongly suggest that you put handicaps for yourself and share the experience if you'd like.

 

[TLHeart]

NO silly rules, play the game as is has worked quite well over on civ 5... and I have learned a lot from them...

Onto this first game, loaded the game, went my merry way of building and ignoring the AI... did sign a cooperation agreement with arc, and sent her a trade route...

and she destroyed shaklton and back stabbed me.

not a good plan, as Poly and the ARC ganged up on me, and even with my rangers and marines, they wiped me from the map by turn 70....

Took a couple of days, but loaded up again, but this time change my tech and build order... and made sure to befriend Poly, and NOT the backstabber ARC..

Poly forward settled on me, but my 4 city core, is doing well, and we have been best buddies.

The slavs have asked for and I accepted a war against the ARC...10 turns to go...

will see how that goes.

 

[teqofc]

Just a suggestion for the future - instead of a recommended victory type, I would prefer optional rules to follow. I feel this is especially needed with the state of BE right now, where no matter what victory you choose to pursue, the optimal strategy is always the same - spam cities, spam trade routes, win.

Yes the current state of the game is too easy when you barely pay a penalty for lots of unhealth and the wider you go the easier it gets. However I'd rather see people impose their own handicap to make the game more challenging. That's why I went with 6 city max and no points in Knowledge.

Try a 3-4 city max or OCC or whatever restrictions you want to put on yourself to make the game more challenging. Try to puppet every city on the map or something like that I don't want to be forced to play with X amount of rules on everybody, I think that would be pretty boring.

 

[Esperr]

If you want a good restriction, no affinity units.

 

[Thrar]

Turn 229 Promised Land.

Spoiler :

Got two early cities towards Hutama and one towards ARC. Prepared a bunch of rovers and mobile artillery for the inevitable ARC backstab, with upgrades from affinity coming early in the war. I took over all her cities, settled the central wildlands and the eastern island for a total of 10 cities.

After that it was basically just building up Purity through tech. I forgot to conjure earthlings several times, could have ended in T225 otherwise.

 

[A+ombomb]

T210ish NoSpy Supremacy, many many details in Spoiler.

Spoiler :

T0 – Nice themed setup, Africa + growth + clinic makes sense. Settling on Coast is great, having the surveyor for early trading is even better.
T1 – Settled in place, went for Relic, intention to buy the Worker from AI money or get one free from Policy (I always take Machinery so kind of didn’t know if I made the right decision). Pioneering for Trade Routes and City Spam ASAP.
T2 – Ais show themselves, 3 on coast, great for trading. ARC nearby, not so great for living.
T3 – ARC offers Open Boarders, perhaps we can be partners?
T4 – Magan grows to 2, started an expedition on alien ruins.
T8 – Relic built, started on Worker. +1 Health from Clinic Quest.
T9 – Got an Alien Drone from ruins, awesome.
T10 – Satellite falls.
T12 – First Virtue, Prosperity opener.
T15 – Expedition started on satellite.
T16 – Pioneering done, started on Ecology for Trade Route protection.
T17 – ARC offers Cooperation, nice. Worker built, sent to Tubers, started on Depot.
T20 – Expedition at the Satellite gives me 80 production, awesome. Depot built, started on Trade Vessel. Granted the refugees refuge (thinking Supremacy since I like that wincon the best). Policy available, picked Homesteading.
T21 – Hutama gets angered at my excavations, told him to chill.
T22 - +1 Culture from Relic quest.
T23 – Trade Vessel built, sent to Central for 10e5s. Worker sent to work on fruit. Magan starts building another Trade Vessel.
T24 – Hutama offers Cooperation, we all playing nice so far. Suzanne is delighted at our trading.
T25 – Hutama offers Open Boarders.
T26 - +1 Production from Depot quest.
T27 – Ecology done. Approved Shackleton – ugh. Researching Chemistry.
T28 – Drone finds first Pod. Policy – Free Colonist. Sending him north since Shackleton took south.
T29 – Hutama founds Jimboomba right to the east, fortunately leaves enough space for my second city. Trade vessel built and sent to Khrabrost for 8e2s. Rushbought the Fence. Started building Soldier to get rid of Shackleton. Switched Research to Physics for Rangers.
T30 – Vadim is delighted.
T31 – Sold Open Boarders to Vadim for 50. Ayaan settled between Firaxites, got a Soldier from the quest. Lets take down Shackleton. Continuing research in the Refuge quest.
T32 – Sold Open Boarders to Suzanne. Drone finds another Pod – Solar Collector. Awesome. Second soldier built, marching to Shackleton. Work starts on a Vessel for Ayaan.
T37 – Finished Physics and Chemistry, started on Robotics (18 turns). Expedition started on a Derelict Settlement. Attack on Shackleton begins.
T39 – Gonna need that Ranger for Shackleton. Building that after the Vessel.
T43 – Kozlov asks for Cooperation. Ranger built, Policy gets me Worker. Building another Vessel.
T44 – Daoming asks for Cooperation. Ayaan is settled, work starts on Relic. Rush-bought Trade Depot.
T45 – Hutama mad at me for settling cities. I said CHILL, man. Ayaan first Trade Route goes to Capitol.
T47 – Expedition done for extra Culture. Magan started on Colonist.
T48 – Ayaan second route goes to Central for 11e11s.
T50 – Ayaan completes Relic, BO goes Recycler, Clinic, Vivarium, Laboratory. Hutama founds Rangi right at my doorstep.
T52 – Robotics done. Autoplant in Ayaan BO. Research plan is Engineering, Genetics, Power Systems, Tactical Robotics. Quest decision Domesticate Wildlife. Research order changed to Genetics, Alien Lifeforms.
T54 – Magan finishes Colonist, starts on Autoplant. Sold OB to Hutama.
T57 – Shackleton falls, Thabo takes its place. Explorer finds another Pod, completes quest.
T58 – Virtue goes to Labor Logistics.
T63 – Completed Autoplant and with it the quest, Supremacy 1. Less details from here on out.
T66 – Completed Alien Preserve and rush bought another to complete the quest, Supremacy 2.
T67 – Started Tactical Robotics (21)
T71 – Reversed Polarity. Thabo one Route to Capital one External.
T83 – Tactical Robotics done, Supremacy 4. Started building an army of CNDRs.
T89 – Only now do I get Autoplant quest.
T90 – 1 CNDR built, 2 bought, declaring war on ARC, letting her come to me.
T94 – Suzanne doesn’t come so I take the war to her. Central falls and is annexed. I make a decision to ignore unhealthiness. I buy 3 more Firaxite from Elodie, rush buy another CNDR and declare a parallel war to Hutama, with 3 CNDRs waiting.
T98 – Puppeted Hutama’s Rangi.
T100 – 108 Beakers per Turn – Checkpoint.
T101 – Suzanne’s Axiom is Puppeted.
T103 – Hutama’s Jimboomba Puppeted. Peace treaty, gives up Pembela. Left with Capitol and one small city. See you in 10 turns Hutama.
T105 – Puppeted Suzanne’s Liberty (how ironic). Got Mind over Matter, now only -50 Unhealthy. I guess some diseases you can’t fight with just Mind.
T106 – Suzanne’s Vanguard Puppeted. Only has 1 small city left. I take everything she has in a Peace Treaty. My army has their eye on Vadim after Hutama is finished.
T120 – Freeland falls and is puppeted. Hutama left with one city. Science at 267 Beakers per turn. Military moves from Hutama to Rejinaldo. Down south, Army from Suzanne’s war declares war on Vadim and waits.
T127 – Richport falls, marking the effective end of war with Hutama. Current imperium on screenshot.
T128 – After wasting a few units attacking my CNDRs, Vadim gives me Uspekh (Russian for Success, how’d that work out for you huh, Vadim?) in a Peace Treaty. I accept and regroup. Attacking Uspekh would have been a point due to a chokepoint from north.
T133 – Researched Orbital Networks, bought Petroleum from Daoming, bought Lasercomm, launched. I make the decision not to take over anymore cities so as not to limit inland trading partners. I take Eudaimonia, 19 Unhealthy. Science at 380 Beakers per turn.
T154 – Supremacy 10, 446 Beakers per Turn, 12k Energy stored with 400 per Turn. Around 20 turns away from Supremacy 13, enough Energy to buy an Angel every turn. So I estimate T210 victory. I can’t really be bothered to play it out seeing as the game is essentially won and it would just be 60 turns of choosing trade routes.

All in all, pretty fun game. I didn’t utilize Spies this game at all, so my time can be much improved by stealing Science.

Spoiler :

Just out of curiosity, when did you build the explorer to start excavating the satellite on turn 15? I am having trouble seeing it, since you said you built the relic then worker. Also, I don't know how to get the AI to give me money to build a worker - how is this accomplished?

 

[metagross]

Just out of curiosity, when did you build the explorer to start excavating the satellite on turn 15? I am having trouble seeing it, since you said you built the relic then worker. Also, I don't know how to get the AI to give me money to build a worker - how is this accomplished?

It was the same explorer. He went back to Capital for another Exp kit and the satellite fell a few tiles away. As for money, you can take a loan from AI (EpT for Energy) - it's usually a terrible deal since their exchange ratios suck but I found it useful at certain points - to buy a Trade Vessel few turns earlier or to mass buy Mind Stems when EpT is longer a concern since the game will be over in 10-15 turns anyway.

 

[Soffacet]

Started playing this map last night. I usually never take Prosperity past the T1 5, but I figure I'll at least see how good the PAU UA is if the player actually tries to activate it. If the results are bad I'll probably play it through again with the usual Prosperity 5 --> Knowledge.

 

[alpaca]

So, I achieved a turn 204 Promised Land victory on my second try.

Spoiler :

... after forfeiting my first attempt to an inconvenient backstab by the ARC that cost me 2 cities and threw me off the rails too far.

I didn't take detailed notes. It should not come as a surprise that I went for a wide strategy, using the deep prosperity build. Other noteworthy elements were:

• An early culture pop from a ruin that allowed me to settle the city spot near the river to the northwest of the starting position before Hutama grabbed it
• Exploiting trade routes to garner DoFs from everyone and sell them science to buy labs, colonists and trade depots
• Beelined to Bionics and used the free tech from a rush-bought institute in the capital (which was also useful for the specialists) to get servomachinery. I got the battlesuits around turn 105, not being lucky enough to get a useful early quest. It was still early enough that the ARC did not have their unique units, so I could conquer them. Hutama already had them, but I was able to conquer most of his cities by forming an alliance with Brasilia, who went on to become the second-strongest colony (after me).

The rest was pretty standard. All things considered, this start is really quite bad. The only things it has going for it is a coastal landing position, good early production and a nearby flood plains river but I never had a game before where I wasn't able to find a single resource pod. Having two AIs so close by is also a big problem, as between them, stations, and the huge alien-infested miasma forest to the southwest, the only avenue for expansion was going west - stretching your empire very far and necessitating a much larger early military than is normally necessary. Africa is super-weak and not having artists and the early worker was also strongly felt. The free clinic and food colonists are probably the worst choices that can be made.

It is a little disconcerting that we can turn such a bad start into victory around turn 200 (although, admittedly, I restarted the game and reloaded twice, once when I lost a colonist to an unserendipitous siege worm and once when I forgot to pop a new earth colonist). I'm also a little annoyed that Promised Land is significantly slower than Transcendence or Emancipation.

While I agree that it's probably not prudent to use too many house rules, there is one I would strongly suggest to implement:

Don't sell things to the AI for favors to cash in. Right now, you can sell either of 3 energy per turn, 1 science per turn, or 2 strategic resources for a single favor. This favor can be cashed in for 100 energy flat sum. That you cannot sell multiple favors at once for 3 ept each, but only exactly 1 suggests that this may be a bug in the AI deal evaluation routines and is also very annoying. It is, however, so powerful that if you want to compete for a fast victory, you cannot simply ignore it. In this game, I used this exploit.

There is also another point: Steal technology and early quests are hugely random, which can cause a large variance in victory times even if your strategy is exactly the same and the game pans out very similar otherwise. While I wouldn't go so far as to forbid them (steal tech actually seems balanced enough versus steal science, which is much more reliable for a beeline), I think it should be made clear that they should be mentioned in people's game reports.

 

[Thrar]

The free clinic and food colonists are probably the worst choices that can be made.

The clinic I would agree. I was surprised at how useful the food was though.

I tried two different initial build orders: OER->Worker and Worker->OER, working the hill for 2 production. Since there were several 3-yield tiles just outside the initial range I found OER first to work better.
Early on, a tile improvement will add +1 yield to most tiles. An extra pop is 3 yield but consumes 2 food, for a net of +1 yield as well. As long as there are good enough tiles to work it seems fine. I got out a second worker very early, which gave some really nice yields at Magan.
Sure, virtues come slower than with Artists, but getting cities started faster was definitely noticeable for me.

 

[A+ombomb]

It was the same explorer. He went back to Capital for another Exp kit and the satellite fell a few tiles away. As for money, you can take a loan from AI (EpT for Energy) - it's usually a terrible deal since their exchange ratios suck but I found it useful at certain points - to buy a Trade Vessel few turns earlier or to mass buy Mind Stems when EpT is longer a concern since the game will be over in 10-15 turns anyway.

Oh jeez, I thought that the supply pods were limited to 1 until you upgraded affinity! And I would imagine that taking loans from AIs can be really abusive given the exponential nature of trade routes.

 

[Acken]

Well the first issue with loans is the fact that they don't require a DoF. Which is weird... you'd thought that after changing it on Civ5 they would have made the same for Civ:BE.

 

[A+ombomb]

Well the first issue with loans is the fact that they don't require a DoF. Which is weird... you'd thought that after changing it on Civ5 they would have made the same for Civ:BE.

Well I just did a game utilizing loans. It's almost as abusive as trade routes, and the two together multiply each other - borderline ridiculous. All you have to do is trade science/turn for flat gold, then buy everything to accelerate growth, since science doesn't matter early persay, and you can make up the difference in science 10 fold down the line. It's really really overpowered.

I am fairly sure that despite the overpowered nature of coastal trade, that the spot 1SW of the starting mountain is slightly better, due to the +1 food on the city tile and the immediate access to +2F +1R tile. It can be used to jumpstart two coastal cities NW and SE, asap, and just use those for the coastal trade.

 

[tommynt]

cant believe some1 even think about playing this game seriously which is clearly not balanced at all yet.

Thats like playing chess vs some1 who plays with only pawns

 

[alpaca]

cant believe some1 even think about playing this game seriously which is clearly not balanced at all yet.

Thats like playing chess vs some1 who plays with only pawns

You don't really play against the AI within the game, but try to beat the highscore. It's more like playing an arcade game

To be fair, this was essentially the same for Civ5 if you played with all the exploits, especially shortly after the release.

 

[metagross]

You don't really play against the AI within the game, but try to beat the highscore. It's more like playing an arcade game

To be fair, this was essentially the same for Civ5 if you played with all the exploits, especially shortly after the release.

True, unfortunately the randomness is really hard to account for when comparing finish times. Since the New Random Seed is off, I tried to determine a few things about the randomness:

I started a new game, sent my Explorer to the first Alien Ruins and excavated it. On T6I could get 1 Harmony level, 1 Supremacy level, Manticore, Raptor or Drone. The Seed is fixed in some way though since no matter what I did, I couldn't get 1 Purity level from it. The point is, when two players play exactly the same, within 6 turns they are positioned diametrally differently for winning - the player who got an Affinity level is now 10ish turns closer to victory, the player who got the Drone can at least efficiently explore small-ish islands that are visible with Surveyor, and the player who got the Raptor sits crying in the corner.

Another interesting thing is that even with New Random Seed turned off, building quests are still somewhat random. While reloading for the Alien Ruins result, I mostly got nothing but on a few reloads I got the Clinic quest T5. Tried it later as well and the results from reloads ranged from nothing, to Building quests, to other quests (Solid State Citizen and one other I can't remember the name of). The same goes for Stations - some reloads nothing, some reloads a station is established - but the location varies from reload to reload.

EDIT: I can imagine that getting the fastest possible time would take A LOT of reloading. You want to make sure to get Affinity levels from Alien Ruins, Production from Crashed Satellites (especially that first crashed satellite that basically gives you a free Trade Depot), Culture from Derelict Settlements (especially that first Derelict Settlement that jumpstarts you towards the free Colonist). You also want to get the Autoplant and UF quests ASAP, while other quests would be useful to have earlier as well OEM, Free spies, etc. Then you will also want to reload to get as many "lore" quests as possible, ideally getting Solid State Citizen before your free Settler when going Supremacy or Purity.

 

[Acken]

cant believe some1 even think about playing this game seriously which is clearly not balanced at all yet.

Thats like playing chess vs some1 who plays with only pawns

Party pooper since 2008.

True, unfortunately the randomness is really hard to account for when comparing finish times. Since the New Random Seed is off, I tried to determine a few things about the randomness:

I started a new game, sent my Explorer to the first Alien Ruins and excavated it. On T6I could get 1 Harmony level, 1 Supremacy level, Manticore, Raptor or Drone. The Seed is fixed in some way though since no matter what I did, I couldn't get 1 Purity level from it. The point is, when two players play exactly the same, within 6 turns they are positioned diametrally differently for winning - the player who got an Affinity level is now 10ish turns closer to victory, the player who got the Drone can at least efficiently explore small-ish islands that are visible with Surveyor, and the player who got the Raptor sits crying in the corner.

Another interesting thing is that even with New Random Seed turned off, building quests are still somewhat random. While reloading for the Alien Ruins result, I mostly got nothing but on a few reloads I got the Clinic quest T5. Tried it later as well and the results from reloads ranged from nothing, to Building quests, to other quests (Solid State Citizen and one other I can't remember the name of). The same goes for Stations - some reloads nothing, some reloads a station is established - but the location varies from reload to reload.

EDIT: I can imagine that getting the fastest possible time would take A LOT of reloading. You want to make sure to get Affinity levels from Alien Ruins, Production from Crashed Satellites (especially that first crashed satellite that basically gives you a free Trade Depot), Culture from Derelict Settlements (especially that first Derelict Settlement that jumpstarts you towards the free Colonist). You also want to get the Autoplant and UF quests ASAP, while other quests would be useful to have earlier as well OEM, Free spies, etc. Then you will also want to reload to get as many "lore" quests as possible, ideally getting Solid State Citizen before your free Settler when going Supremacy or Purity.

Yes it's true that there is even more randomness than Civ5. Can't really help it even though I may remove ruins in some instances. I doubt that will be fixed in the first patch too.

 

[metagross]

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.

 

[Acken]

Yes I know but there's no way to make quests reliable. To be fair I had the same complaint about Civ5 CS quests.