Listing just the results intentionally without dates, since the scenario wasn't a race or competition.

Conquest Victory
fluffyflyingpig

Domination Victory
LKendter
Miguelito
BRickAstley

Spaceship Victory
The Reverend Doctor

Alternative Victory
GermanJoey
ljubljana
Whosit

Retired games
LogicalTautology
timmy827
RefSteel

Spaceship Loss
Huinesoron

Well, this was a success, with a dozen players. Of course the genesis of the idea was Sirian's comments about "back to basics" in that thread. What's more basic and classic to RB lore than the Pink Dot. Nice straightforward adventure. The map can promise early excitement to draw players in, which looks to have worked.

   

Map design: I drew the entire tundra area. The original pangaea coastline was on the row with the cow. Russia started about five tiles north on the original coastline which I moved south. Moscow had to be pre-settled or else players would just walk the initial settler out to a pink dot; I've gotten burned on that in scenario design before. Moscow is carefully designed to look terrible but play fine anyway in the early game: five good tiles (2x deer, 2x plains hills, clams) are plenty to start pushing out settlers, plus two lighthouse lakes would help a bit later. I designed two specific tiles for pink dots: the coastal plains hill towards Zara (cow, rice, gold, floodplains) and the 7-resource plains hill towards Brennus. The rest of the resources (and lots of floodplains) were added in gradually, not tailored for specific spots but just a broad belt of riches. The scout's starting location pointing towards the floodplains and Zara's pink dot was 100% intentional, to get players started.

I didn't really realize that this would turn into an economic-crash game. But of course that follows, with an economically useless capital, first-ring cities at a great distance, and those cities would spend their first 4-5 sizes on resources and get to working cottages very late. But that turned into an interesting curveball anyway, and nicely skill-rewarding for those that do know how to deal with it.

The AIs were just selected randomly. I thought I remembered Kublai, Napoleon, and Brennus all as middling warmongers; didn't bother to look up the actual AI aggressiveness. I didn't change their locations or starts at all. So yes, I didn't really realize how much of an empty backyard Brennus had. It also slipped my mind that Zara is Creative which would offset the player's own Cre trait, would have replaced Zara if I'd caught on to that.

The major topic to discuss is the alternative win conditions. We've seen many times before that players don't bother to play out the second half of a game. Like it or not, that's the reality in today's attention-deficient gaming age. So I tried to identify a winning position by way of thresholds that would pretty much guarantee you wouldn't be losing. 75% power means you won't lose to conquest in the short run; 50% score lead means you won't be losing by military in the long run; 5 techs mean you won't lose by space and can find a military advantage to stop culture if necessary. In other words, I was trying to identify what "domination" really should mean. Two things surprised me.

One, that most of the players played it out to game victory anyway even with the alt conditions present. Some just never managed the tech or score lead over Brennus, but some wanted to play it out anyway.

Two, that there was an enormous spread in time to meet the conditions. Some players managed it just with the land grab in barely 100 turns; some never did. I had expected that you'd grab land, consolidate tech through the middle ages, attack somebody at the usual spot around cuirs/cavs/rifles/cannons to secure a score and power lead. Results turned out more widely than that. Lots of ancient war with horse archers that I wouldn't have expected.

What this all tells me is to keep Adventure scenarios open-ended. Make sure players can go in whatever directions they want. I personally like, and many of my sponsorships run towards, ideas that highlight a narrow game element for focused competition. But railroading players draws narrower interest. Sirian was right that there's a market here for back-to-basics gameplay, and I'll look to find more such ideas.

Thanks to everyone who played!

I've had (and sadly continue to have) too little time to give this one a real go, but before I start reading the other reports, I figured I'd at least post a screenie from the early date I managed to reach (turn 107, still a bit before the calendar switch).




Not sure which to call my Pinkest Dot:
Yekaterinburg? (Actually my first self-planted city in spite of being "out of order" for the in-game naming scheme) I planned to eventually put the Palace there for a monster commerce capital, figuring I'd absorb Zara early.
St Pete's? I still have at least two decent fillers to fill the gaping hole between it and the rest of my empire, and this (or Bibracte) is a decent choice for the FP.
Yaroslavl'? Nabbing some critical elephants, swarmed by enough barbarians that I can already qualify for the Heroic Epic without a war in spite of spreading the xp around some, this plant is simply a ridiculous reach spot that should not (but will) go unpunished by my enemies.

Highlight of the game so far, AI-being-AI category: Zara, who's been scaring me for in-game centuries with Enough On His Hands and the largest army, finally makes his move ... by marching a stack of three axes and a sword through my open borders toward [VERY late Edit: Zara!] and the far side of the world.

I had this idea of making it so you could really really customize the way a game started out, but there's enough obscure about the map generation algorithm (and I don't care all that much about it; being able to customize the frequency of terrain types would be interesting but not a major focus of what I was thinking about) that I'd rather not touch it, so rather than producing a save game completely from scratch, I thought I would generate a starting game and modify it -- if this can be done.

Would it work to simply run magic.exe in a directory that didn't have a copy of wizards.exe?

Here's my report:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JzXS...sp=sharing

Copious thanks to T-Hawk for the game and the map, both of which were excellent

Here's hoping for more of these in the future. I had tons of fun with this one.

(It says 'Civ General Discussion', right? Not just 'things relating to actual games, current or planned'?)

So: a scenario, under Civ 4. Your civilisation is trapped in a box - completely walled in by a single-thick line of peaks. There is no way around it (no hidden passageways or water routes or the like). The Box holds a decent chunk of land, with resources and all, just... no exits. The AIs outside are as normal - just with your box in the middle of them.

My question is, what are your options? Obviously Spaceship, Time, and Cultural victories are still on the table (and probably easier, since you don't need a military). But what else? My thoughts:

-Exploration is probably limited to what your borders expose outside, at least until you can trade for maps. Is it possible to pop a Scout from a hut? If so, and if you pop the hut with your borders, that might get you a unit outside.
--Do borders operate as normal across peaks? How about religious auto-spreading?
-Depending on the shape of the Box, you might be able to culturally steal a city outside. For that matter, if the Box is U-shaped and a barb city spawns in the centre, an AI might take it and gift it to you! (Hey, it happened to me in Adventure 61 just now!)
-Assuming borders do go as normal over peaks, you should be able to meet the AIs, which means Diplo victory is on the table, too.

But what about military? Off the top of my head, you'd be entirely trapped until, uh, Flight? The various planes and missiles can cross the Box, but the only ground unit... do paratroopers still operate that way? I know they did in III, but I don't think I've used them in IV.

Is there any way to convince the AI to gift you a unit? How much damage do they have to take to gift you a city - could you bully them into it just with bombers? Is there anything at all useful in the espionage packet?

My thought is that, unless you get lucky with city placements, war-based options are off the table until you hit the very end of the tech tree. But... this is Realms Beyond! I'm sure you can tell me why I'm wrong.

So, between a late start, and family visiting over closing weekend, I didn't make time to finish even the abbreviated win condition, or write a good report, or even dotmap “properly”. Here is the plan:

“protect rice” and “4” are actually the two most important/best. 2 is also really good but not next to visible borders (giant dice roll - where do Brennus and Zara send first settlers in all games? I had no idea if they had good sites in other directions). Capital plan was very vanilla - worker first, camp/camp/mine, grow to 3 then start settler.

NUTS. Zara also founded a city invalidating “protect rice” this same turn. Nearly stopped playing here. Wonder if doing just one warrior at cap and settler at size 2 would be better. I also screwed up by researching Wheel-Fishing-Pottery before Bronze Working. Had thoughts of doing granary whips for most settlers, which was mistake; that’s best for pumping them out really quick after ~turn 45 but not for immediate results. Having BW earlier would have maybe allowed one chop; the worker had tasks of dubious value for about 5 turns with my BW delay.
So, moved my first two sites one tile each





Tried to rush a library in Novgorod - a creative civ might just be able to swipe the pigs despite my 2nd ring/his 1st ring - but

yeah fast monument (he build stonehenge) meant that wasn’t going to happen.
I did get my original “2” and “3” in the north though with some delay

whipped the other settler for Rostov (under the interface at turn 59, those sites were a good distance from Mongolia. But this

meant my two interior cities were invalidated until I could spare military to take the barb city, and that would be a while. Settled city #6 as the crab/deer fishing village instead.

Wonders seemed to last long, and with lack of a cottage/Bureau capital, obvious play was to use the stone, Math and all of Moscow’s forests to get the pyramids, done t97. Did not actually use too many Rep specialists - the happiness as a whip buffer may have actually been more useful! - but considered that a “way to tech in the back pocket, now let’s war like mad to get this over with”. Burnt the barb city t105, and settled #7/8. (moved one 2e from my original dotmap “fill”, to get the wheat). Next research to Construction, and start whipping swords, cats, and axes.

Diplomatically, Kublai’s Judaism became dominant and he helpfully went into missionary mode. I adopted, along with an OR detour, and so did Zara + Napoleon. Brennus was buddhist. Originally I planned to conquer Celts and leave my religious friends alone, but eventually changed due to the huge amount of empty land the Celts had available - Zara had 5 cities, Kublai 4, Nappy 3, and Brennus had room for 15. Conquering celts was recipe for neverending war as they kept filling the gap. I was confident that if I left them alone, Brennus would crash economy with bad cities and I could get 5 techs ahead for the new victory condition. Also Zara started plotting (he can at Pleased) and I was likely target. So started war t119 with Zara.

This report is rushed but there’s not much we haven’t all seen before:

-as far as cities, I designated Rostov (gems/corn/gold/banana/horse) as the new cottage city, and eventually moved Palace there (anticpated Bureacracy but didn’t get to civil service ever). The two late ones that waited for the barb city clear got a few cottages to pay bills. Rest were mostly specials/farm/mine and whip.
-after construction went currency->MC->CoL mostly fueled by plunder cash. research low as I kept whipping units instead of turning food into scientists, and actually delayed HBR for this reason. Didn’t need elephants to smush Zara.

That was plenty. New discovery: Brennus asked me to cutoff trade with Zara a few turns earlier and I did since I was planning war. Apparently since we had recently inked the deer sugar trade it lasted thru the embargo until actual hostilities. Never knew that.
Also compared to other games I played, I got more use out of bombard defenses. Usually I prefer to just throw catapults and not let the AI whip more units instead of waiting, but this game I had more catapults and AI had fewer cities with walls so bombard made more sense.

Zara made the war easy, threw his stack across a river and up a hill

Keep tech moving forward via courthouses. (building wealth with hammers is usually better, except you can’t whip and chop wealth).
Once Ethiopia out of resistance, the Palace move to Rostov was probably saving me cash from being more centered at least.
Also did a late Great Lighthouse (350AD) and Colossus (560AD) in Moscow with remaining forests and whip overflow).
Next order was Calendar (whip overload, need happy fix) and HBR for elephants finally.
Zara dead 475AD, leading to this amusement

Brennus declared on me, but was super lame

That’s literally all he sent in 9 turns of a war he started. Snore. Guess all his cities mean he has no free units for actually attacking.

Napoleon had several horse archers, so paused war a bit to heal, merge my main stack, and add a couple elephants/spears. During this time his horse archers ran around my territory, I guess heading towards a barb city in the far east. So that made things easy, when I declared his forces were scattered around my borders in 2’s and 3’s instead of concentrated in a stack, and easily cleaned up; no group of HA’s at home that could flank my stack.

That cost a grand total of 1 catapult. I had a scout with open borders before declaring, and know Napoleon has no substantial units left; will roll right over him.


So called it a game here due to lack of time. Not achieved our new win condition yet, but close. I’m already up 5 techs on Brennus (priesthood, CoL, HBR, Alpha, MC), he’s up Monarchy on me but I should zoom past with plunder gold. not 50% ahead of him in score yet but would get there with French + Mongol land I think, and I’m well in the outright lead on soldiers.

The title should make more sense with my full report, which will probably be put up tomorrow. For now, I want to register my completion of the game based on the special victory conditions.

On Turn 141 I achieved the three listed conditions: Score is 50% greater than 2nd place, I know at least 5 more techs than each AI opponent minus any they have which I don't, and soldier count is within 75% of 1st place. Photographic evidence:

I've circled the techs that I know that the AIs don't. In the third screenshot is the tech tree, and I know all techs off the left side.









I'm 1st place in soldiers, so no problem there.



150% of Brennus' score is 2091, so I have him beat there.



So that's my technical victory! I figured someone would get it faster and I saw that was indeed true. Still working on the real report. I did not have any time this weekend at all. However, as a quick summary, I found this to be a fun and relaxing game. The AI never really gave me any trouble, and it looks like the large amount of land that the Celts had was an oversight based on what I read in another thread. All-in-all, glad to have a non-deity game I could compete in.

A new adventure! Great excuse to dust off my copy of Civ 4 and see what I can do (it's been too long...)

So pregame thoughts:

1. Surely there will be races for the good spots... so just use Cathy's great settling traits to get the cities down, worry about defending/affording them later.
2. The starting scout is hugely important to find said spots... don't die.
3. Plan to avoid a double team through the medieval era and kick some ass with Cossacks.

Let the games begin!

After clearing my immediate area of fog with the scout (and popping Agriculture from a hut.. which I'm sure most people did) here's what I was looking at for some pink dots:



I grew to size 4 and starting pumping the minimum number of warriors and settlers for the outer ring of pink dots. Zara beat me to the area around the first pink dot on the plains hill but I settled there anyway. It would take a while to wrestle the gold from Zara but the rice was firmly in my control. The other dots I settled without much issue; Brennus was slow to the area NE of Moscow and we didn't have much border tension at all. Here's my territory after settling the furthest pink dots.



Some pretty awesome ciy sites once you got a few tiles away from the capital. I especially enjoyed growing the double grass copper and corn city. Moscow basically built no infrastructure and just pumped military so that my power rating would stay competitive and I wouldn't be picked on. The other cities worked on teching me towards mounted goodies.

Something helping keep me off the AI's radar was that every civ was practicing a different religion!



I refused to adopt a religion and rested somewhat easy knowing that the AIs disliked each other more than me. The only war of the game between AIs was Kublai attacking (but not doing much in the way of capturing cities) Zara. Brennus went the entire game without being in a war. I kept looking over my shoulder at big stacks of his but would ply him with resource gifts to keep him friendly.

Here's a pic of my civ with the 7 cities I used to tech to cuirassiers.



I did a terrible job scouting and didn't realize just how much room Brennus had to expand into. If I'd known he was still building settlers I might have attacked his way; but since he was a close second in score/power I decided to pick off the weak civs to my west (not to mention I was tired of fighting creative borders in that direction.)

First up was declaring on my friend Zara in 1380AD.



My cuirs made short work of his longbows. I didn't wait long between kills to turn my army toward the next target. I declared on Napoleon in 1580 after Zara was destroyed. I'd made it to Cossacks by this point and even against musketeers was having little problem carving up his territory. Check out all the prizes in Paris.



Declared war on Kublai in 1715AD and he too didn't offer much resistance. With his territory absorbed into the greater Russian empire Brennus and I were about even in land with the continent split nicely in half.

At this point I was very confident I'd go on to win but was no where near the thresholds to end the game early. I was up 5 techs at various different points but my score never got more than 500 above Brennus and our powers would equalize whenever he reached the next military tech and upgraded. Figuring it'd be a shorter endeavor to go to space than trudge through all his territory I went full bore on infrastructure.

Brennus never declared (I had two or three cities pumping military the whole end game while the rest teched). I had 3 extra length golden ages that helped me build some nice wonders (SoL, Three Gorges, Space Elevator) and I won a spaceship victory in 1946AD.



So the last 200 years were a bit rote, but the beginning of the game landgrab and the three wars were a ton of fun. Obviously other people are going to win a lot faster and more emphatically but I really enjoyed playing this on. Thanks for hosting the event T-Hawk and getting me into some Civ again.

Report up on my website:

http://www.kendter.com/adv61-1.htm

This is a placeholder. For an unscored Adventure. That my game was not in any way competitive for fastest time.







I'll try to finish the report eventually.