The Vox Populi Challenge No. 11 - Ganna

[Grabbl]

Dear community of Vox Populi!

This challenge's submission date is over, don't miss the next one!

Christmas is nearing - with all the family tension and stress that might come with that. But don't worry, you can always take a break while playing the 11th Vox Populi challenge, hopefully leading the Tewahedo Church to a glorious future. No matter whether you already know the challenge, or this is your first time, read on and participate!

Continuing the path of getting feedback, I'd like to know your opinions on the length of individual challenges today (see the poll above). Anyone that in principle could imagine to participate in the challenges is welcome to vote. As a general explanation: The last (10th) challenge was far on the short side at least for the prince difficulty. In general, I aim for an average length of around 200-250 turns. In addition to that, you are again very welcome to provide detailed feedback also on the nature of the challenges (too hard, too easy, whatever you don't like in general).

​

I hope you did live out your violence fantasies in the last war-oriented challenge - this time it might get more peaceful (however, a nice little opportunistic war isn't necessarily bad, is it?). In an increasingly secular world, show that the idea of religion still is something worth pursuing - at least if it's your religion. Wouldn't that be a great christmas gift for the patriarch?

I understand that after this confusing paragraph, you're very curious on what the goal of this challenge is, but before you continu, make sure that you have Vox Populi version 12-18 / 12-19 with the newest hotfixes installed. The thread is called 12-19 while the installer is called 12-18, that's why there are two numbers there. Please make also sure that you play with the "normal" Vox Populi and didn't edit any files (as suggested by G in the version post), or restore the original values for this game.

Also, please make sure you know the rules. Especially, don't share ingame information unspoilered, not even the number of points you achieved (or the turn where you finished the challenge). I don't want anyone to be discouraged by your score, or knowing what numbers he should aim for. In spoilers, you are very welcome to describe your game, of course

Spoiler Game Rules :

1) The Golden Rule: Don't replay, don't reload, send in your first try! It is recommended to set your auto-save frequency to 1 turn for this game. If you have a crash that forces you to replay, write it in the mail afterwards and try replaying as closest as possible to what you did before the crash.

2) Don't exploit any bugs you may find. At the moment, I'm not aware of any exploitable bugs, but just in case, don't overuse obviously bugged mechanics (like the infinite tribute-bug a few patches ago).

3) Don't share ingame-information unspoilered! If you want to share strategies or ingame information in this thread, use spoilers and write "Do not open unless you already sent in your game." on top of it. A separate thread for spoilers would be good, but I don't want to spam the main forum for this pilot.

4) Don't look at spoilers if you didn't finish your game!

5) Don't use cheat tools (Ingame Editor, Info Addict...) and don't open the map in some editor or else.

6) Don't use any additional mods besides full Vox Populi (1 to 6, either EUI or non-EUI) as I'm not sure whether I will be able to open your savegame files if you do.

The exact goal for this challenge:

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Until turn 250 (1700 AD), get as many followers of your religion as possible.

Tie-breaking is net happiness (the number on top of your screen).

Important: I was notified that you can't see the number of followers of a religion in the game. If you want to see your current progress, you're free to use Whowards Pick'n'Mix mod "UI - Religion Spread" for this challenge:
http://www.picknmixmods.com/mods/CivV/UI/Religion Spread.html
You can then see the number of followers of each religion in the Religion overview under the "World Religions" tab.​

Submission deadline is Wednesday, the 16th of January, 6 pm Eastern Time (midnight in Central European Time). You can submit by personal message to me, posting your save in this thread, or sending it to vox-populi-challenge@gmx.net. Don't forget to write the name under which you want to appear in the ranking if sending by e-mail!

That's almost 4 full weeks, so I hope that despite the holidays (hoping you get them) and possible christmas things, you have enough time to submit if you want to. Also allow me to emphasize that Chill Barbarians is active in this game - partially because I forgot to uncheck it, but also because it's christmas and the barbarians deserve a bit of holidays, too.

Spoiler Game Settings :

• Map: Pangea, Small
• 6 players
• Research Agreements, No Tech Trading
• No Ancient Ruins
• No Events
• Chill Barbarians (it's christmas )

If something is not clear, read the following spoiler, then ask a question if still unclear. When you find an error, something is not working etc. please notify me as fast as possible as in a few days, I won't have access to a computer with Civ 5 on it till next year.

Spoiler Challenge Specifications :

• In the very improbable case that you don't manage to found a religion (if you're doing the right thing and build Stele first, I don't really can imagine that happening), you can also conquer a holy city to take over a religion.
• There are no further requirements for your religion, in particular I don't care whether it has been enhanced or not - however, my pre-game strategic thinking dictates me that it's probably wise to enhance at some time, but I might be wrong.
• As always, you can submit an earlier save if you think that your follower count will decrease, or stagnate and your happiness will decrease.
• A strategic advice: Keep in mind that faith buy costs change at era transitions and some policies change them, so pay attention to your timing, especially with the free technologies Ethiopia gets.

This challenge is the eleventh of a season of 12 challenges. After the submission deadline, I will rank all participants (divided by difficulty level) and you will get 15/13/11/10/9/8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1/1/1/... points for the 1st/2nd/3rd... rank. At the end of the season, your best 10 results will count for the final ranking.

The winners of the season (one for Prince, one for Immortal) will be granted the opportunity to become a part of the game as a Great Person of their choice (Prophets excluded). Thanks to Gazebo for this contribution to the challenge!

To get you into the right mood, otherwise completely unrelated, here's one of my favourite arias of the Christmas Oratorio, with the all-time greats Nikolaus Harnoncourt (conductor) and Peter Schreier (tenor):

Now... download the save for your difficulty, make sure you have Vox Populi version 12-18 and you're ready to go!

 

[Grabbl]

The long waiting is over and the results are there (for a short explanation for the delay):

Over Christmas (yes, it's that long), not a whole lot of players found the time (or rather: did want to invest it) for playing, but nevertheless, that's how it worked out: Congratulations to Dejagore and Nemoens for winning the Prince and Immortal challenge (and Nemoens just lacked 10 followers for the double win...).

And that is the leaderboard: The podium places among the prince players are settled, only Loafery can still jump on a shared third place if Nemoens doesn't participate in the next challenge. With his second win of the season, Dejagore manages to (even theoretically) secure the victory, and Thomas8 the silver medal (perhaps suprisingly with his best individual challenge being two third places, but just a consistently good participation overall).

But the same Thomas8 is now safely winning the Immortal competition! Nemoens jumps a few places there and has a good shot for second place in the upcoming season finale.

 

[nemoens]

Possibly dumb question, but how can I see the total number of followers of my religion? I can find cities easily enough, but is there a follower count somewhere?

 

[Grabbl]

I honestly thought that there was a column for followers next to cities on the world religions tab, I was so sure I didn't even check it. Turns out I was wrong, however.

Luckily, there is a Pick'n'mix mod by Whoward that adds this column:
http://www.picknmixmods.com/mods/CivV/UI/Religion Spread.html

You're free to use it for this challenge, hopefully it works for everyone. I just tried loading various saves with and without it, so it should work and doesn't affect the mods needed to load a save. You're also free to use the religious map that it adds, of course, as it doesn't give you information that you wouldn't have without it.

Thanks for notifying, and sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[loafery]

Was never a warmonger

Spoiler :

I think I had 428 followers by the end of it. I could've done better by probably conquering the Celts and not automating the Missionaries but it's such a tedious task when you have two coming out every turn. And India was really hard to convert because they were so far away and I couldn't out pressure them. I just tried to get my pop as high as possible so my innate followers were high.

War was a pain which meant I couldn't send Missionaries to their lands anymore. I merely defended and not do any conquering myself because I never really fancied a Warmongering style of play in Civ. I liked this particular challenge because you had the choice to do it peacefully more or less.

 

[nemoens]

An enjoyable Christmas break game, that one. Don't usually go big on religion...

Spoiler :

As before, Prince was surprisingly easy here. The other civs didn't really focus on religion, certainly not to the extent that I couldn't swamp them. With the start being right in the middle of a mountain range, the mountain faith pantheon gave me a religion very early on, and the food+GAP for spreading meant my Holy City ended up on something like 37 pop by the 250 turn mark. Didn't do much warmongering, although I did capture one Celtic city because they were getting on my nerves and proving hard to convert. India clung onto to Hinduism pretty hard, which gave me lots of food and GAP from continually converting a huge city after the Inquisitor had popped. Very exploitable little combination that one, as it scales with the number of new followers.

703 total followers, I think. Only Celtic Catholicism that I couldn't quite crack. Now, for Immortal, and the inevitable hammering I'll get on the other side of the difficulty coin.

 

[Thomas8]

Finished Prince

Spoiler :

Progress/Fealty/Imperialism

-I was able to found religion with Goddess of protection (extra healing) and food/Golden Age points bonus when spreaded - which was usefull.
-Celt declared war on me after I found religion - but I was able to push her back and took 2 cities from her, but I was unable to get Holy City of Edinburg from her.
-I was able to spread religion to Indonesia -> good thing he had no religion - so he adopted mine
-Arabia and India got 2 other slots for religion
-I attacked Arabia - but he quickly bought Camel Archer and was able to push me back
-Rome stabbed me in the back - so I peaced out with Arabia and Vassalized Rome (+ converted him from Islam to my religion)
-During that time Arabia made pact of defense with Indonesia who was second and third strongest player - so I didnt want to fight both of them.
-Luckly Arabia quickly switched Defence Pact to Celts and I was able to resume war in the North
-I hold easily Celts while I conquered Holy city of Islam and Vassalized Arabia - I decided not to push attack on Celts in final turns.


Result:

Spoiler :

363 people in turn 248

 

[nemoens]

And finished Immortal too

Spoiler :

I didn't manage to dominate in quite the same way I could in Prince, but this is a fairly solid effort I think. 472 followers in total, did a lot of work with pressure in this game (Churches + the pressure reformation) and got a bit of a bonus with the Ottomans not founding (although they were still the only Civ to attack me, despite sharing a religion, the gits). I'm getting better at these challenges simply by realising you absolutely shouldn't play like you're going to try and win the game under normal conditions and just focus absolutely and completely on the goal.

 

[Grabbl]

Thanks for all the submissions already! Make Ethiopia Great Again!

@nemoens: I just saw that you didn't upload your Prince save, hope you still have it (your post last year suggested that you finished the challenge).

 

[Dejagore]

Finished Prince. Hopefully I will find some time to try Immortal scenario also. Thanks Grabbl.

Spoiler Spoiler alert :

This was really peaceful scenario. I haven't conquered any city. All the wars that I had were a defensive wars against Celts or Arabia mostly. Around mid-game I thought I made a mistake with reformation belief and recruiting missionaries too late but eventually in 250 turn there was no city on the map that had other Religion than mine. Was fun although it's a shame that there is no Religion Victory condition in Civ 5

 

[nemoens]

Thanks for all the submissions already! Make Ethiopia Great Again!

@nemoens: I just saw that you didn't upload your Prince save, hope you still have it (your post last year suggested that you finished the challenge).

Good spot, have edited it in. Mild oversight...

 

[Thomas8]

Finished immortal

Spoiler :

I dont really have much time to write game description, result in second spoiler

Spoiler :

Followers 396

 

[Dejagore]

@Grabbl - Don't want to be offensively curious but do You have any ETA for the results ?

Regards!

 

[Grabbl]

Dear loyal participants of the challenge,

I owe you a great apology for disappearing for such a long time (over a month it has been finally). I don't want to bother you much with my private affairs, but I had a rather stressful time (university and some family affairs did take a lot of energy, but be assured that it was nothing too bad, and even some quite positive and rather romantic things happened to me - but also that can take quite some time ). Anyways, I didn't forget you and am sorry for the great delay, as well as very happy to be able to finally announce the results of the christmas challenge (second post to see them).

Have fun, and don't miss the next challenge!

 

[nemoens]

Welcome back! Looking forward to the next instalment.