I got Humankind...

I saw one with „hameau“ (hamlet) here and another one here.

This one is also on „nation“.

But this one is on „Humankind“.

A bit of everything; I found a „town“, a „civilization“ and a last one in „nation“

It doesn't seem very fair for a leaderboard...

Kudos for your game! I thought I saw another around here. I went with Hamlet to get to T18, but lost several turns due to not running through war support. On Nation, this really is not a problem, because the traitor badge lets you mow down units such that the war really hangs on winning those sieges. On this play-through, I just encountered skeleton crews in London and Bordeaux, with two units separately wandering Brittany. My guess is one of the lower difficulties provides the right balance, but we shall see... I also prefer to play on something harder than Hamlet/Nation.

My game was pretty poorly played, but thanks. 

I thought the difficulty was the same for everybody but it doesn't really matter to me, the scenario is not difficult at the highest level, there's no challenge but the clock, and I know I can't compete for a good place on the leaderboard.
There are many (better) players who will enjoy lowering the number, I wish them all good luck and a lot of fun.

And, of course, kudos for getting it to only 18 turns!

Also: I am noticing quite a spread in difficulties so far. Perhaps it defaults to last used. Is the scenario intended to be played on any difficulty?

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was wondering how people got to win so early, thinking I was doint it very wrong. I only play on HK difficulty so I guess the scenario was always loading on that one for me.

Hey Amplitude, why are you doing a contest on a scenario that doesn't have a fixed difficulty????????????????

I reckon at this point you should update the original post adding one ranking per difficulty or something like that.

Bravo!
Mainly for the courage to keep playing it again and again... and of course because it might not be technically possible to do a lot better.
Well done!

12 turns?! OMG

Please post YouTube after Sept 14th.

Thank you! Patience, micro, a plan :)

Pretty sure hardware would not support recording, and I imagine it would be pretty tedious to watch, but we can revisit in a couple weeks if there is interest.

With so few turns, you could almost do it with screenshots and few explanations.

Agreed! Don't want to get ahead of myself :)

I knew it could be done in such a short time frame, but I kept hitting that RNG wall. I might be able to optimize it to 11 turns based on my own understanding of how to do the run, but I think it's highly unlikely.

I am curious whether we will observe convergence on identical/analogous optimizations or if there are distinct strategic approaches, at least to the primary victory condition. Best of luck, especially with the RNG!

saxogrammaticus wrote:

I am curious whether we will observe convergence on identical/analogous optimizations or if there are distinct strategic approaches, at least to the primary victory condition. Best of luck, especially with the RNG!

I suspect we're probably doing mostly the same things. As far as I can tell, the map isn't particularly conducive to significant variation in the optimal runs.

Not sure whether this will help anyone, but it appears these quick victories may only be possible due to changes in vassalization cost introduced by the Ibn Battuta Patch.

Daarkarrow wrote:

Vassalization

Forcefully Vassalizing an opponent after a war will now be cheaper if you have more Fame than them. Roughly every 200 Fame should provide a 10 point reduction in War Score Cost. We also fixed the bug where (re-)vassalizing an empire after they tried to break free wasn't free as intended.

On my own runs, I have cleared the vassalization cost with as little as 3 warscore remaining, indicating that negotiating with ~200 less fame would have left vassalization off the table. When I checked my most recent submission, clearing the next 200 fame milestone lowered the cost by 7 warscore. Negotiating in warscore has always been somewhat confusing to me, and it is unclear whether the patch's discount triggers every ~200 fame or if the fame difference divided by ~200 fame cleanly generates a discount, for instance.

Anyhow, the mechanic may not make up for a mysterious city that you can't find, but it does suggest an advantage to maximizing fame prior to negotiating peace. If you already figured this out, congrats :)

saxogrammaticus wrote:

Not sure whether this will help anyone, but it appears these quick victories may only be possible due to changes in vassalization cost introduced by the Ibn Battuta Patch.

Daarkarrow wrote:

Vassalization

Forcefully Vassalizing an opponent after a war will now be cheaper if you have more Fame than them. Roughly every 200 Fame should provide a 10 point reduction in War Score Cost. We also fixed the bug where (re-)vassalizing an empire after they tried to break free wasn't free as intended.

On my own runs, I have cleared the vassalization cost with as little as 3 warscore remaining, indicating that negotiating with ~200 less fame would have left vassalization off the table. When I checked my most recent submission, clearing the next 200 fame milestone lowered the cost by 7 warscore. Negotiating in warscore has always been somewhat confusing to me, and it is unclear whether the patch's discount triggers every ~200 fame or if the fame difference divided by ~200 fame cleanly generates a discount, for instance.

...but it does suggest an advantage to maximizing fame prior to negotiating peace.

Actually, I hadn't considered the fame boost to vassalage.

I have now shaved another 2 turns off my score. T25 now.

Basically build wonders at the end. I was using this strategy to maintain stability to prolong war until vassalage is possible, but it looks like it can positively contribute to that end.

Thanks!

DrCron wrote:

Also: I am noticing quite a spread in difficulties so far. Perhaps it defaults to last used. Is the scenario intended to be played on any difficulty?

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was wondering how people got to win so early, thinking I was doint it very wrong. I only play on HK difficulty so I guess the scenario was always loading on that one for me.

Hey Amplitude, why are you doing a contest on a scenario that doesn't have a fixed difficulty????????????????

I reckon at this point you should update the original post adding one ranking per difficulty or something like that.

As you can imagine, it was a bug that we saw too late, and yes, we will have ranking depending on the difficulty to make it more fair.