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

[yogiebere]

I think a better challenge would just be all up GPs born or bought. Then there are more options besides beelining TtGoG.

 

[Cypher007]

Wasns one of byzantiums UA , the ability to start purchasing great people by Classical?

 

[ColonelCarter]

Yes, but the "To the Glory of God" Reformation belief that is the focus of this challenge still has its Great People purchasing locked behind the Industrial Era. You'll only be able to buy so many Prophets & GP from your Ancient/Medieval policy trees before they become too expensive.

 

[Grabbl]

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

That's weird, I can't explain that. Is it like that for someone else? The fresh-water access by oasis shouldn't prevent building the well, right?

I think a better challenge would just be all up GPs born or bought. Then there are more options besides beelining TtGoG.

I wanted to make it a bit more specific. Beelining TtGoG is the strategy to go in this case, obviously, but otherwise it would be narrowed down to Tradition -> Aesthetics as well. Also, I have no real possibility to count all GPs

 

[peterw1987]

Lol. That is river tile next to starting tile and mountain. It is 1hex river thou and barely noticeable unless you hover and wait for the tooltip

 

[Zestikios]

I recently found about this challenge. I big thank you for organizing this, its super fun! I did the prince one

 

[CrazyG]

I started the challenge on immortal but didn't finish. Some thoughts in the spoiler

Spoiler Feedback :

I loved how close we were to the Ottomans. Was this intentional because of history? I really enjoyed the incredible early pressure it put me under, at first I was thinking its a game about greedy snowballing to maximize faith, but early war was very important. After you handle the Ottomans, the Celts are in your face. Tradition seems really obvious for this challenge, but the start made it difficult. Overall I really enjoyed this.

I would have liked it much more if this map had 8 civs instead of just 6. I think it would make the religion situation a lot more interesting. I founded last so there were 5 religions. After I conquered the Ottomans, every single civ had their own religion. Not much spreading going on there, especially since the next neighbor, the Celts, has no pressure. I was expecting to really have to consider spending faith to spread or using it for holy sites, but it seemed like an obvious don't spread decision to me.

365 turns is a long time. Once I had a decisive victory against the Celts, all that was left was to turtle and spam faith. I suspect I would win way before turn 365. It would have been much better for the long game if there were more civs. I also don't like this mapscript (6 horses in one tile? Strategic horse monopoly for controlling 9?), but that is a personal preference. I did really enjoy playing, I just wish it was a bigger map.

 

[Grabbl]

I started the challenge on immortal but didn't finish. Some thoughts in the spoiler

Spoiler Feedback :

I loved how close we were to the Ottomans. Was this intentional because of history? I really enjoyed the incredible early pressure it put me under, at first I was thinking its a game about greedy snowballing to maximize faith, but early war was very important. After you handle the Ottomans, the Celts are in your face. Tradition seems really obvious for this challenge, but the start made it difficult. Overall I really enjoyed this.

I would have liked it much more if this map had 8 civs instead of just 6. I think it would make the religion situation a lot more interesting. I founded last so there were 5 religions. After I conquered the Ottomans, every single civ had their own religion. Not much spreading going on there, especially since the next neighbor, the Celts, has no pressure. I was expecting to really have to consider spending faith to spread or using it for holy sites, but it seemed like an obvious don't spread decision to me.

365 turns is a long time. Once I had a decisive victory against the Celts, all that was left was to turtle and spam faith. I suspect I would win way before turn 365. It would have been much better for the long game if there were more civs. I also don't like this mapscript (6 horses in one tile? Strategic horse monopoly for controlling 9?), but that is a personal preference. I did really enjoy playing, I just wish it was a bigger map.

Spoiler :

Many thanks for the feedback!

The Ottomans being a direct neighbour was indeed for historical reasons, I hoped that your relation to them wouldn't stay friendly.

For the larger maps: I would really like to go to Standard-sized maps. Until now, I have avoided it to shorten the turn times, especially for players with not-so-strong hardware. In the future, I'm now considering to leave it at small for long challenges, but take a standard map for shorter ones. I chose this challenge to be so long to be sure that it's not only a race to Industrial and then faith-buy a GP every five turns. Frankly, I'm very bad at estimating how far people will be at what point (and it also varies a lot, given the former challenges). For high-difficulty players, I understand that turn 365 probably is a complete game most of the time (or even more). And sorry for the map script, I wanted to try a non-standard map script for once, but didn't check the total quantities of strategic resources to balance monopolies.

 

[CrabHelmet]

I keep running out of time for these. I've hit turn 220, but my evening has suddenly become unfree.

 

[CrabHelmet]

@Grabbl

Can I get a tiny extension of, like, 3 hours? I'm just trying to finish it off now.

 

[Grabbl]

@Grabbl

Can I get a tiny extension of, like, 3 hours? I'm just trying to finish it off now.

Are you aware that the submission date is next sunday? But if those three hours save it for you, of course

 

[Thomas8]

Prince done. Hit Industrial era around 244 turn, I still had ton of faith to play around (and I could probably research Industrial era 10 or 15 turns earlier).

 

[CrabHelmet]

Are you aware that the submission date is next sunday? But if those three hours save it for you, of course

D'oh! Thought it was today. Man, phewww.

 

[Dejagore]

Just finished on Prince. Was *fun*. Thanks Grabbl!

PS where can i download this map script ? I think that map was very neat and it didn't bother me that there were like 6 horses on one field. Strategic balance is not so important on single player challenges for me

 

[Grabbl]

D'oh! Thought it was today. Man, phewww.

And I was already amazed by your time management skills... knowing 5 days in advance that you'll need exactly 3 hours more

PS where can i download this map script ? I think that map was very neat and it didn't bother me that there were like 6 horses on one field. Strategic balance is not so important on single player challenges for me

It's this steam mod, if I recall right (at least my file says version 5b, and that appears in their changelog, too):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=171848014

I followed their recommended installation (subscribe, then place the lua file in the "Maps" folder and unsubscribe, instead of using it as a mod).

 

[CrabHelmet]

Ran out of time - ended on turn 315. Not sure how many Great People I got - it was a lot. I have to admit, I kind of got bored around turn 280. You can see I have over 30,000 Faith. It would be impossible for me not to buy a Great person every 5 turns until the end of the game, and I'm in no real risk of losing my capital due to how well turtled I am, so it would have been just a matter of stalling the timer out. If I have been taking it more seriously towards the end, I'd have been taking better care of my Happiness, and would probably have gone for a Domination victory leveraging my navy (after upgrades).

I think most Immortal players will have beaten me, even if you add 10 to my score to account for what I could do in the remaining time. I picked completely the wrong Pantheon (Sun God), didn't found until turn 121, and managed my science pretty badly, delaying my entry into Industrial. I also just managed my Distress really badly towards the end, although much of that I wouldn't do normally, I just was rushing through turns.

The opening of this map was really fun. I liked the shock of the Ottomans so close, and having to pivot to take them on. Byzantium's little isolated island was both a blessing, as I coasted by on having basically no military for large parts of the game, and a curse, as it made spreading my religion to reach Reformation a pain in the ass. It was fun to work with.

I did think there were some problems. Turn 365 is a really long time. @CrazyG was right - once you hit Industrial and have your Reformation belief, you can buy a GP every 5 turns. The rising cost will never get high enough before the end of the game. That meant the back half of the challenge was quite anti-climatic - just going through the motions - which was a shame because the opening was so fun. Also, I thought the enemy Civs were a strange choice - having to compete against 2 other Religious Civs and a Civ which gets to religions very easily on Immortal (Russia) meant the difficulty was not buying Great Persons but achieving the state of being able to buy them.

As this was a test of TtGoG - yeah, I do think it is kinda busted, I have to admit. Having seen how awesome it is just to perpetually chain Great Persons, I can't imagine picking any other Belief combination than Ceremonial Burial + Sainthood + TtGoG + whatever the belief is that discounts Prophets, can't remember from the top of my head. It renders most other religious strategies redundant. I wouldn't say it is an unbalanced strategy per se, but it renders Byzantium extremely one-dimensional, which is a shame. I don't know if @Gazebo is still up for editing Civs though?

Anyway, thanks for all the effort @Grabbl !

 

[Grabbl]

The results are there, thanks to everyone who participated and congratulations to the winners!

Despite overall participation being rather low, we have a new record for the Immortal competition with a whopping number of three participants

I agree with you all that the challenge was a bit weird (at first, it's a race to industrial and reformation, then it becomes very slow with one relevant click every five turns). But on the other hand, the Ottomans (and others) apparently tried their best to render the game interesting.

Anyways, Venice is up next, don't miss the unique opportunity to build the trade empire you always dreamed of.