Challenge 1 Sum Up

That's the end of Challenge 1. From my personal knowledge, I heard that about 10 people expressed interests on the challenge.  Eventually, we have 3 players who finished it and emerged victorious!

The first entry submitted was thwsl's Cultural Victory. When I asked thwsl for his secret of not being declared war and run over by any of the crazy neighbors, he admitted it was pure luck. While the other two stories recorded numerous invasions on Persia - many by seemingly friendly neighbors - this long lasting peace appears even more intriguing.

Besides, Wu Zetian or Elizabeth, none of who are affected by Mesopotamia poverty, have to be slowed enough to reach their respective Culture and Science victories. Thwsl mentioned that Wu Zetian wiped out Catherine then decides to go for Culture. Certainly that distraction slowed her down. How about Elizabeth? She seemed to do very well in thwsl's screenshot. Maybe she decides to go Conquest? I am not so sure about whether people can reproduce this Cultural Victory. But we all know variation could happen from game to game. (And thwsl is a extremely good Civ5 player.)

The second entry submitted was my own Diplomatic Victory. To be honest I have only seen about 1/2 of the game's content so far (most of my time is spent on writing stories!), so I went with the easiest and the fastest route. I guess I am one of those obsessed with the Hall of Fame rules - here is the save file, now go and see who finishes first! I hope this Hall of Fame never heads towards that direction, though. The game becomes very boring that way as a few turns of difference could be caused by luck and nothing else. I wish to show case the best played games. (I did my best to finish it as soon as I can, though.)

My Diplomatic Victory also exposed a few "shortcuts" of Level 9. First, some AIs are born in poor places and have very low research rate. Beating up these poor souls become very easy. Persia, Arabia, Egypt, England, China, and sometimes Ottoman are the luckier bunch (in the order of the amount of luck) who had enough income. Greece breaks even (but went completely broke in thwsl's game). Spain and Russia, on the other hand, failed miserably. However, given that Mesopotamia is probably one of the "poorest" official maps, this failure rate of 25% is acceptable. I guess that's just how the world runs. Some got unlucky and got dogpiled by oppurtnists.

The second shortcut is to run the empire with Patronage and collect City State allies that almost certainly cannot be bought away. This indeed makes the game easier, but the fact that AIs no longer have thousands of gold every time before a war is totally worth it. Also, since the player is also poor, each City State's alliance is usually hard earned. Now the relationships are even more memorable. Not just getting a few thousands from the AIs and dump it all on the CSs. That being said, if I can find a solution of the Patronage shortcut I would gladly fix it.

The third entry submitted was Crossgate2003's Conquest Victory, which has been extracted (I used only about 50% of his original pictures - this is a huge story!) and featured on the blog. I believe this story will serve as a textbook classic to show players how to handle late-game wars, and how to prepare for it. I have learned so much from this game. Many things are executed perfectly - even an overwhelming invasion can be handled. I can only show my respect to Crossgate2003.

Some may think that Elizabeth and Wu Zetian's delayed victory made the game a lot easier. Of course, every game has some luck component. Even if Elizabeth and Wu Zetian moves their victories dates forward by a bit, he could first attack them and then deal with Alexander. But we all love to watch Persia and Greece fight, right?

I am also glad that the Level 9 MOD successfully made a conquest victory, and any victory, very interesting all the way to the end. Normally the game lost its appeal after mid-game. But Crossgate2003's victory only became more interesting and exciting towards the finish. I am quite proud that the MOD actually worked!

So what next? The new patch .332/.348 is out and I am certainly going to announce Challenge 2. So far, I don't think there is anything to be changed further in the MOD. Version 2 beta will be released as Version 2.

However, there won't even be a "MOD" required for Challenge 2. This will be a very special and interesting challenge in celebration of the Hotseat mode! A whole world opens up for discovering the potential of Civ5!