Al Gore Challenge

[Crossfire]

I decided to give it a try. Using Willam, no brokering, trading only on the path, but I am allowed to build on a tile even if there is a forest. I am playing Prince and Asoka attacked me pretty early. It was hard defending again her chariots with just Axes but once I got Pikes she left me alone. I am doing ok on tech except for Mansa who is a little in front of me. I have had good luck filling in techs by trading and finally can start spreading farms. I found this one of the harder issues to deal with. I can't imagine playing with NO chopping. I am not building forges, etc. though.

[Norselord]

I decided to give it a try. Using Willam, no brokering, trading only on the path, but I am allowed to build on a tile even if there is a forest. I am playing Prince and Asoka attacked me pretty early. It was hard defending again her chariots with just Axes but once I got Pikes she left me alone. I am doing ok on tech except for Mansa who is a little in front of me. I have had good luck filling in techs by trading and finally can start spreading farms. I found this one of the harder issues to deal with. I can't imagine playing with NO chopping. I am not building forges, etc. though.

How did you manage pikes?

I got annihilated again last night, this time by a rush from Shaka. This was after setting up only 3 quick cities in a row to completely block anyone off from a sweet 6-9 city peninsula, that i could backfill at my leisure.

Any aggresive civ with an early UU is doom at prince level.

Gonna knock it down to noble and give it a shot again.

To those that have managed to get to computers, was the internet already built by another civ? Cuz that would royally suck. If you were the first to build the internet, how many techs was that worth? what was the percent jump in score?

Also, Asoka is a dude

[wodan11]

The problem with setting up on a bottleneck and backfilling is that it almost guarantees an early war, even from a non-aggressive civ. Against Shaka, that was lunacy, with this strategy. The outcome (admittedly in hindsight) seems 100% predictable. Unless they have room to expand, they are going to attack, no doubt about it.

[Norselord]

The problem with setting up on a bottleneck and backfilling is that it almost guarantees an early war, even from a non-aggressive civ. Against Shaka, that was lunacy, with this strategy. The outcome (admittedly in hindsight) seems 100% predictable. Unless they have room to expand, they are going to attack, no doubt about it.

I had copper in my BFC and after pooping out a couple of settlers, warriors, and workers (not in that order) I had just started building axes in anticipation of that invariable Shaka pounding. But I had no chance with 2 warriors and an axeman in my capital against his 3axes and 4impis.

[Crossfire]

Like I said, I was pretty successful at trading for techs in the research path. For the most part the only thing you can not trade for are those techs in the hunting line and aesthetics thru music. I had to make some bad trades in the beginning in order to get to some of the better techs but I had 6 quick cities with gold in 3 of them and most had at least one farmable resource and I could put down some cottages in most. The hardest part was trading far enough along to get Monarchy so that I could generate some happiness. Later I built Notre Dame so that got me some extra smiles. I can just start building gun powder units and I have a happy Peter on one side of me so I just might survive but I probably won't get to play again until next week.

This is a pretty fun challenge and should help my skills get tuned up for Civ V.

[Norselord]

Cross, try the challenge without any tech trading, even if it is on the path -- it's insane. As compensation allow pollution buildings and chopping.

I am obsessed with this silly challenge. I think this challenge has taught me loads about the game, its funny how you learn to make do when your resources are limited.

Would this challenge be viable as OCC?

[Blaupanzer]

OCC only if the city food resources were all agriculture, ie, farmable. You don't get AH for the meats(pigs, sheep, cows) until very late in the game. Also the no horses might matter a bit more when you are rushing units from bottleneck to bottleneck for OCC.

Finished. Definitely do NOT recommend this challenge on marathon. Won a spacerace victory in 1983 (April).

Was lucky on neighbors. Caught Spain completely unprepared. Ripped a hole through the Byzantines, but left a shell to buffer me from the rest. Fought two wars to preserve that shell, taking his cities back from third parties, and then liberating his cities. Gained one new city from each of those wars. That was it for wars, although I had the number 1 military by a substantial margin. I could have done a lot more, but that didn't seem in the spirit of the challenge.

[Blaupanzer]

The internet yielded between 12 - 15 techs, a dozen in a rush, then a couple more within a few turns, eg, biology and artillery. Will return to standard size, epic-speed and try again someday, but not today.

[Crossfire]

I had a chance to play a while tonight and I just got the Internet. I got 11 free techs but then I had already traded for 8 or 10 when I finished researching Computers. I was still ahead of everyone when I hit Computers but then I had a nasty war start with Peter over my only oil which just ended and I am not sure what happened while I was busy trying to defend myself. Fortunately my timing was good and I got to Computers and could trade for Rifling just in time to start building tanks to hold off Peter.

Without forges, etc. I am not sure I can build the space ship before Mansa Musa though. The 3 Gorges Damn has taken 42 turns to complete at my best city.

So far I have found that the lack of civics when I want them and the lack of decent military forces is the hardest part of this challenge. I might try another without tech trading next week.

[Blaupanzer]

Power brings pollution (2 green faces). Thus, you shouldn't build the dam, which won't do you any good anyway without factories, also verbotten.

Space ship race may need a little military assistance, if you follow. Zip over to Mansa and take one of his main cities. He is notorious for a weak military in most games. Meanwhile plug away at your own ship. Note, there is a percentage chance of mission failure with each "optional" part not included. Try to launch a complete ship. Hopefully, you have a couple of cities with a lot of railroaded lumbermills to give you production enough.

[Crossfire]

Hah, I am so used to getting dams that I forgot it doesn't help without forges and factories. Ah well, I was ready to play a new game anyway. I think this time I will be more strict and not chop.