The Vox Populi Challenge No. 4 - To the Glory of G

[Grabbl]

Dear worshippers of Vox Populi!

This challenge is over, scroll down for the results and don't miss the next one: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-vox-populi-challenge-no-5-power-through-trade.635364/

The wait has an end: Finally, the fourth Vox Populi challenge is about to start! It's no surprise who is the civilization you'll lead to glory this time, no matter if you know it or not, keep on reading and participate!


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I'm very happy to finally present to you the next Vox populi challenge, after more than a month of "summer break" (or winter break, depending on where you live...). As suggested in one of the numerous balance discussions going on in order to improve Vox Populi, you will have the opportunity to build a magnificient Constantinople and prosperous Byzantine empire - and let's hope you'll survive the Ottoman's assault in 1453. Your goal is to purchase Great People (Details below). But first, make sure you have version 7-15 of Vox Populi installed.

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Before we go into details, please make sure you know the rules. Especially, don't share ingame information unspoilered, not even the number of points you achieved. I don't want anyone to be discouraged by your large amount of great works, or to know prior to his game what number he has to beat. 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.

Now, the exact goal for this challenge:

Acquire the maximum number of Great People until turn 365 (year 1945) by

1) faith purchase (no matter what type of GP)
2) birth or purchase of Great Prophets

You may of course use them, you don't need to keep them alive until the end of your game.

Tie breaking is your empire-wide faith income per turn.

If you fail to send in your save at turn 365 (but later), you will get a penalty of one great person per turn of delay.

This challenge - again - is a long one, but since you can only start purchasing Great People by Industrial (Pro Tip: Try to reach industrial a bit before turn 365 ), I wanted to give you some time to pull your awesome infinite-faith-into-GP combos. As a general remark, be aware that there seems to be a bug causing barbarians to severely damage cities (that's why the setting is "Chill Barbarians" this time).

Submission deadline is Sunday, the 12th of August, 6pm 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!

Spoiler Game Settings :

• Map: Perfect World, Small
• Research Agreements (Tech Trading is enabled as some idiot forgot to check the box)
• No Ancient Ruins
• No Events
• Chill Barbarians

If something is not clear, read the following spoiler, then ask a question if still unclear:

Spoiler Challenge Specifications :

• I will check the number of GPs you purchased by looking at the faith cost for the next one. That's why - in all generality - all ways of acquiring GPs count that increase faith cost of that GP type.
• That means that all other ways of acquiring GPs (free from wonders, born...) don't count.
• Of course, I calculate how many GP you bought by looking at the faith cost, but I don't take "rare" faith cost as the measure (so making choices that lower faith costs are a good idea obviously.
• Every type of Great Person counts the same (though be reminded that faith cost raises per type, so purchasing only Great Scientists is probably a bad idea).
• What you do with the Great Persons after you purchased them is irrelevant.
• You are free to take any belief you want, but I'd suggest that you don't miss one particular reformation belief (guess which one ).
• Renaming your religion to something that pleases me doesn't give you extra points, but in case that you are tied with someone after comparing faith per turn income, you'll win the tie.
• You are allowed to send in your save in earlier turns than 365.
• As always, any civ winning the game doesn't change or influence your goal.

This challenge is the third 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!

Now... download the save for your difficulty, make sure you have Vox Populi version 7-15 and you're ready to go!

 

[Grabbl]

Results of the challenge:



Congratulations to the winners Zestikios and ColonelCarter! Again, the first place for the Prince challenge needed a tie-break, good work!

... and the scoreboard for the season (one third is over now ):



The leading positions remain untouched, but Dejagore jumps on the podium for the prince challenge. I'm happy to see so many new faces for this challenge

 

[pineappledan]

If someone won the challenge, could they instead choose a Great person in history to add into the game instead of themselves?

ie. If I won, instead of having Pineappledan as a Great Person, could I ask that Arthur Currie be added to the game as a Great General, or Gan Ying as a Great Merchant?

 

[Grabbl]

If someone won the challenge, could they instead choose a Great person in history to add into the game instead of themselves?

ie. If I won, instead of having Pineappledan as a Great Person, could I ask that Arthur Currie be added to the game as a Great General, or Gan Ying as a Great Merchant?

The possibility to do that depends entirely on Gazebo's grace, but I don't see why he shouldn't agree with this At least if the person is not offensive / inappropriate.

 

[Grabbl]

What was written here, was wrong. Don't be afraid, there is no bug, play the challenge and enjoy

 

[Gazebo]

If someone won the challenge, could they instead choose a Great person in history to add into the game instead of themselves?

ie. If I won, instead of having Pineappledan as a Great Person, could I ask that Arthur Currie be added to the game as a Great General, or Gan Ying as a Great Merchant?

I.C. Weiner as a Great Merchant, got it. (yes, nominations are fine, so long as the nominated person is not a total d-bag.)

G

 

[pineappledan]

Great Writer: Timothy Dexter

Excerpt from A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress:

...I was to be one grat man mars got the beth to be onnest man to Doue good to my felow mortels I can swep my hous and git all a Noue and goue out of hell Law and trouth and Reason on my side it must be done when I git my worthy widdow it is Dun Not one word of anger as Long as I Live to a good woman I am firme..

 

[Recursive]

I.C. Weiner as a Great Merchant, got it. (yes, nominations are fine, so long as the nominated person is not a total d-bag.)

G

According to Season 4, Episode 10 I think he'd be more fitting as a Great Scientist...or maybe a Great General/Admiral with some slight sacrificial tendencies.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Is it not possible to submit entries for old competitions? I think I mentioned before I really wanted to participate, but my legal qualification exams only just finished so I can't put together 10 entries since I've missed the first 3...

 

[Grabbl]

Is it not possible to submit entries for old competitions? I think I mentioned before I really wanted to participate, but my legal qualification exams only just finished so I can't put together 10 entries since I've missed the first 3...

That's not possible unfortunately. However, most of the people already missed one challenge - only Diverman has 3 valid participations for the same difficulty at the moment - so it's not all lost probably.And at Immortal, if that's your size, the competition is quite scarce anyway. And, after all, participate for the fun and the glory to win single challenges We could introduce the honorably title "Emperor / Empress of Byzantinum" (and the other civs) for those

 

[ColonelCarter]

Can someone give a brief description of what the PerfectWorld map type is like? Never played on it before.

 

[Grabbl]

It generates a continent map, with more interesting landscape (mountains ranges in the middle of continents, consistent climate zones) and especially well-simulated river systems.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Spoiler :

I have terrible decision paralysis over whether to go Tradition or Authority - it's a very finely balanced starting area.

EDIT: went Authority. Probably a mistake in hindsight. I've been way too slow to getting a religion going. Don't think my faith generation will be high enough to place well. I thought I could take out the Ottomans faster than I actually managed, so I ended up picking a Pantheon that benefits from Wide when I wasn't able to go wide for a while.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Yikes, getting utterly battered on Immortal. Couldn't get to St. Basil in time and simply cannot compete with the other three religions on the map to get enough population for a Reformation Belief. I know this was supposed to test TtGoG, but I'm not even going to be able to get there at this rate.

Spoiler :

The Celts

have turned into absolute monsters and have two of the other AI as vassals. Really just having a poor game. :/

 

[Grabbl]

I realised that my knowledge of the Byzantine trait is either outdated or plainly wrong (a bit ashamed to say this...). I thought for instance that you could chose TtGoG as Bonus belief and was proven wrong... In that case, I suppose it will be common to have difficulties with reformation, but luckily you can buy the usual GPs for the challenge still and even stay competitive with that, given that everyone will have the same problems.

 

[CrabHelmet]

It's a really tough map, IMO.

Spoiler :

You are forced to pick a fight with the Ottomans so early because of their placement, or you have nowhere to expand. However, once you have done that, you're really isolated. There's only the Celts nearby, but that's no help because they're a really strong religious Civ, spreading to them is really hard. Even when you can start spreading Missionaries more widely across the map, Ethiopia and Russia will have had time to completely entrench their religion because you couldn't reach them early on. Because it is Immortal and they all have super high pops, you can't hit enough pop solely by yourself to get your reformation belief. So you have to target France, which is the point I've reached. Right now I'm in an utterly vicious religious war with France, but I'm on the losing side. Might just have to give up on TtGoG and focus purely on the finishers from Authority and Fealty. Map needed a few more non-religious Civs to let the Byzies really shine, IMO, or at least better access to Russia and France.

Still, good challenge, that's for sure!

 

[CrazyG]

I realised that my knowledge of the Byzantine trait is either outdated or plainly wrong (a bit ashamed to say this...). I thought for instance that you could chose TtGoG as Bonus belief and was proven wrong... In that case, I suppose it will be common to have difficulties with reformation, but luckily you can buy the usual GPs for the challenge still and even stay competitive with that, given that everyone will have the same problems.

I have a question about the challenge.

If you get TtGoG, you can faith buy a great person very 5 turns. Its pretty easy to go infinite from this. So isn't the challenge just whoever reforms, reaches industrial era first, and survives till the end? You of course can get prophets before that, which are effectively worth 5 turns. Not saying it wouldn't be fun though.

 

[Grabbl]

I have a question about the challenge.

If you get TtGoG, you can faith buy a great person very 5 turns. Its pretty easy to go infinite from this. So isn't the challenge just whoever reforms, reaches industrial era first, and survives till the end? You of course can get prophets before that, which are effectively worth 5 turns. Not saying it wouldn't be fun though.

I counted on that even as Byzantinum, you'll get to the point where faith production doesn't suffice to buy a GP every 5 turns due to their cost increase. I hope the game of that is long enough for that. The idea is that it is a challenge of who reforms (early enough), reaches industrial not too late and generates the maximum faith. Let's see how it will work out, however
And à propos surviving till the end: Just to be sure everyone knows this, you can hand in saves as soon as you want (also 1 turn before losing your last city, for instance). Of course, players that maintain a stable empire till the end will most probably be ahead in terms of faith production etc.

 

[ColonelCarter]

I usually play on Emperor, decided to give Immortal a shot. Really tough game, had major struggles trying to reform.
Played the Prince one instead and it was a breeze, so went back to my Immortal save and pushed through it.

Spoiler :

Conquered the Ottomans, though it took a really long time, possibly because I'm not used to how brutally efficient you have to be with combat on Immortal. Started with spears and horses, ended with Cannons and Cataphracts, with 2 peace treaties in between to regroup. Still didn't have enough population to reform cause high AI population (even though 2 civs worth of cities should theoretically be enough). Attacked Celts to try to get more population to convert, but the two coastal cities I took and peaced out after still weren't enough. Ended up buying 3 Prophets to quickly convert enough French cities to get enough. Used a Great Engineer on the Reformation building (lol) because I was too behind in tech+culture to get any wonders anymore.

 

[CrazyG]

I gave it a chance, however I cannot build a well (on the immortal start). Any clues why?

I counted on that even as Byzantinum, you'll get to the point where faith production doesn't suffice to buy a GP every 5 turns due to their cost increase.

I see the challenge goes for 365 turns, you are right.