The Vox Populi Challenge No. 1 - Mangas & Music

[chicorbeef]

Next time, use Strategic Balance in the settings. It's boring to fight with spearmens only early-game

Spoilers, dude.

 

[Grabbl]

Spoiler :

@Noob Fanboy: Thanks for the proposition, probably it won't happen as I hate guaranteeing strategic resources (that makes them less strategic in my opinion). But I also distribute resources by hand (not this time, to be honest), and in this case I liked the idea to force you to fight for them (especially to be able to use Samurai well). We'll see about the settings in the future.

Spoilers, dude.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

Spoiler :

Come on, without horses iron and ancient ruins terracotta army is a useless wonder

 

[Grabbl]

Spoiler :

You're right probably, the strategic setup was quite extreme, I could have put at least horses in an easier position. It won't be always that extreme for sure.

 

[peterw1987]

I just recently back after long hiatus from civ 5.

I will give a try, since I like to compare how I am playing to other player. But I dont see many participants here.

 

[nemoens]

Okay, here's my Immortal attempt

Spoiler :

It was better than conquered by 1100, but I still didn't make it the distance. China won a culture victory in 1882, which is the earliest I've seen it done since the introduction of the Ideology requirement. They adopted freedom by 1680 when I was barely finishing up Artistry, and benefited from basically nobody trying to stop them whilst Spain and England battled it out at Sea.

Meanwhile, I played about the most cowardly game of Civ I've ever played, trying desperately not to upset anyone enough to invade me and prioritising defensive buildings to avoid being too soft a target. I got boxed in early by the expansionist Celts and Spanish and never got past four cities as I was struggling with early Tradition unhappiness. I basically played the Japanese like underpowered Arabia, which clearly isn't the right way to go but I never felt confident going to war as my neighbours had me out-teched and outgunned by a long way throughout. Immortal is tough in VP, massive respect to anyone who can win this set up.

I didn't go to war once in the game, or generate a single GG/GA.

Focusing on peaceful generation of Great People was definitely slower, but avoided me getting absolutely steamrolled at least, albeit total Chinese cultural domination came very quickly and nobody seemed particularly interested in preventing it, with no Travel Ban proposal at the World Congress and very few wars with China from the other major nations.

Final score was 5 works of art, 6 of music and 6 of writing.

Not my finest hour.

I might have a go at Prince too if that's alright?

 

[Grabbl]

Okay, here's my Immortal attempt

Spoiler :

It was better than conquered by 1100, but I still didn't make it the distance. China won a culture victory in 1882, which is the earliest I've seen it done since the introduction of the Ideology requirement. They adopted freedom by 1680 when I was barely finishing up Artistry, and benefited from basically nobody trying to stop them whilst Spain and England battled it out at Sea.

Meanwhile, I played about the most cowardly game of Civ I've ever played, trying desperately not to upset anyone enough to invade me and prioritising defensive buildings to avoid being too soft a target. I got boxed in early by the expansionist Celts and Spanish and never got past four cities as I was struggling with early Tradition unhappiness. I basically played the Japanese like underpowered Arabia, which clearly isn't the right way to go but I never felt confident going to war as my neighbours had me out-teched and outgunned by a long way throughout. Immortal is tough in VP, massive respect to anyone who can win this set up.

I didn't go to war once in the game, or generate a single GG/GA.

Focusing on peaceful generation of Great People was definitely slower, but avoided me getting absolutely steamrolled at least, albeit total Chinese cultural domination came very quickly and nobody seemed particularly interested in preventing it, with no Travel Ban proposal at the World Congress and very few wars with China from the other major nations.

Final score was 5 works of art, 6 of music and 6 of writing.

Not my finest hour.

I might have a go at Prince too if that's alright?

Of course you may try on Prince, you're very encouraged to do so. I will put your second try for Immortal in the ranking, but out of concurrence as only the first try counts.

 

[peterw1987]

Is it okay to attempt this with 4-20-5 version?

 

[Grabbl]

Is it okay to attempt this with 4-20-5 version?

Yes, that's the version you should play with.

 

[peterw1987]

Spoiler Spoiler- do not open before try :

I have attempt on immortal difficulty, I admit that I do not get wipe out, but the resource in our area is too scarce... Only some banana and stone... Even with 1 worker, I quickly run out of resources to improved...
Gold problem also inevitable, no resource/luxuries to trade.

I will try lower difficulty to submit to this challenge, and retry immortal difficulty later(even thou I have been disqualified for retry-ing)

 

[void_genesis]

Here is my attempt at level 4

Spoiler Spoiler :

I founded three cities to quickly get the whale monopoly. Got god of the sea and founded with orders for extra promotions. Took out wittenberg for scarce iron, the almost wiped out arabia, then celts, then carthage. After that I took out sweden then poland. To keep the war machine rolling I took out the remaining vassals and city states and managed to squeeze one final great admiral out, and was pretty close to another great general when all the enemies were gone. I then annexed and razed all my non-essential cities, plunging my happiness to -100 and generating a few partisans, but not enough for a final GG spawn. If I had razed more slowly maybe I could have kept under -20 happy for longer, but time ran out either way. I also tried pushing my corporation (the one that gives bonuses to great people rates per city) in all cities at the end but should have done it sooner while still fighting. Might have been worth keeping all cities that could take a franchise to push out a couple more great works from my three core cities guilds. I ended up with 21 writing, 28 art and 15 music, for a total of 64 great works. Do we not count great works stolen from others? If so the score drops to 49. Adding in themeing of non-stolen great works only increases my score to 75. I could have got a few more but turned all my archeologists sites into landmarks as I was worried about running out of slots, so missed out on themeing the louvre with its four slots. Final happiness was 160.

Great- now I can read how everyone else went. Looking forward to the next challenge.

 

[Grabbl]

Thanks for your participation!

I'm curious how many immortal tries will still come in... At the moment, there is not much competition.

Spoiler Do not open if you still want to submit an Immortal save. :

I'll admit that the Immortal game is not an easy one for that difficulty, however

 

[peterw1987]

Spoiler Done Challenge Prince :

Finally finish my challenge for prince difficulty(since immortal difficulty is too insane...)
I literally finish the game in turn 230-ish(cultural victory), and turn 260-ish(domination victory), and just spamming next and building spree until turn 365. (thus my result maybe not the most optimal one, because I am too lazy anyway.

Got god of sea pantheon, mastery, and mandirs for religion, sainthood, and to the glory of god (for maximum Great Person spamming spree).

From my own counting,
GW of writing : 22, and 3 theming bonus
GW of art : 24, and 19 theming bonus
GW of music : 18, and 17 theming bonus
(not included stolen one)

Maybe I am mistaken in my calculation. But nevertheless, this challenge is fun. I never truly know Japan true power in generating culture and great person. I always thought Japan is for domination victory.

 

[Sruixan]

I don't know if you're still particularly hankering after entries, but if I'm allowed to be a little bit flexible re: the immiment deadline I can probably drag my Prince game to submission point? The plan was to polish it off this Bank Holiday weekend, and then the weather had to go and be atypically fine, beyond what I could justify staying in for. Nevertheless, I'm at turn 338, so I could definitely finish up tomorrow; I'm far enough in that I'd like to finish the game no matter what, so I suppose it doesn't really matter to me whether or not I can submit late. I'll see what I can get through in the next hour or so before I go to bed at the very least...

 

[Grabbl]

I don't know if you're still particularly hankering after entries, but if I'm allowed to be a little bit flexible re: the immiment deadline I can probably drag my Prince game to submission point? The plan was to polish it off this Bank Holiday weekend, and then the weather had to go and be atypically fine, beyond what I could justify staying in for. Nevertheless, I'm at turn 338, so I could definitely finish up tomorrow; I'm far enough in that I'd like to finish the game no matter what, so I suppose it doesn't really matter to me whether or not I can submit late. I'll see what I can get through in the next hour or so before I go to bed at the very least...

You are lucky, Ingame Editor crashed my game that much this evening that I don't have time anymore to make the ranking now If it arrives before the ranking is made, I can include your save. Hopefully, by tomorrow evening, I'll have it done though.

 

[Sruixan]

Well, I very nearly didn't make it, but here we go: I've got to dash right now so as much as I'd love to double-check my count I sadly can't...

Spoiler :

...but future me can, and thank goodness he has done - I said 91, but it's actually 94:

Writing: 17 pieces + 3 theming bonuses (1 in the GL, 2 from Globe) = 20
Art: 19 pieces, all themed (12 from museums, 2 from Parthenon, 3 from Uffizi, 1 in the Hermitage, 1 in the Louvre) = 38
Music: 18 pieces, all themed in broadcast towers = 36
Total: 20 + 38 + 26 = 94

Regardless, this was great fun - my first standard speed game in about a year, and I only nearly got my ass handed to me twice! I might say more later, but again, gotta dash...

 

[Grabbl]

The results are there!

I decided to list Sruixan and Nemoens out of concurrence because everything else is not fair to the others. As you see, there are no scores that are very close for the Prince challenges, so forgive me that I didn't recount (if my results matched yours more or less), I may have missed a great work somewhere (or counted a Carthagian one ), but that shouldn't change the ranking. Also, by interpreting my own rules, I came to the conclusion that the Parthenon Frieze is not created by a Japanese great person (even when you built the Parthenon yourself) and therefore doesn't count. Again, I don't see that that would have made a difference anywhere.

Also, while it seemed clear for most of you, perhaps not for everybody: If there is a victory (yours or one of the AI's), this doesn't touch the challenge! Simply hit "One more turn" and keep playing to achieve the goal you're supposed to.

And the Scoreboard for the VP season. As written, you get 15/13/11/10/9... points for the 1st/2nd/3rd... place, at the end of the season your two worst results won't count (so that you can go on vacation sometime ).

Thanks to everyone who participated (or tried to) and let's hope that some Immortal players will still emerge to give a bit of company to Tantro (and Nemoens). The next challenge isn't easy on Immortal as well, but... that's why it is called immortal.

And: Don't miss the next challenge

 

[LegendaryManPig]

Sorry for not doing this one. I didn't have a lot of time I could do it, I'd like to say that was the reason for it, but honestly I mostly forgot about or didn't feel like it when I did have the time. I'll probably (hopefully) have more time to play soonish, but no promises.

 

[void_genesis]

Are we allowed to submit both prince and immortal efforts for the same round? Could be good to get a feel for the civ and challenge on lower difficulty then challenge yourself again at the higher level.

 

[Grabbl]

Sorry for not doing this one. I didn't have a lot of time I could do it, I'd like to say that was the reason for it, but honestly I mostly forgot about or didn't feel like it when I did have the time. I'll probably (hopefully) have more time to play soonish, but no promises.

Don't apologize, it's a game and I hope very much that you have other things to do in your life, too

Are we allowed to submit both prince and immortal efforts for the same round? Could be good to get a feel for the civ and challenge on lower difficulty then challenge yourself again at the higher level.

Yes, absolutely! This is to encourage people that usually play on Prince (for example) to also try Immortal, I don't want them to be exclusive.