What the heck is a Quattromaster? Good Question! The HOF at CFC have put together a list of requirements before you qualify as a Quattromaster. You need to submit (and get accepted) games that cover the following criteria ...
- Machiavelli - games that cover all the victory conditions
- Map Quest - games that cover all the valid HOF maps
- Inferno - games that cover all the difficulty levels
- Tempi Trophy - games that cover all the speeds
- League of Nations - games that cover all the CIVs
- Gauntlet - one major and one minor HOF gauntlets
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Deity Level - there is no way I am winning this if I start at 4000BC so I start with all techs known. I also selected the Celts as they are spiritual and I wanted to swap civics a lot and couldn't afford the wasted turn at this difficulty level. Finally, I selected the duel map to control how long the game went. Tech was also turned off as I was planning to use the cash for other things. All improvements were aimed at production (mines, mills, railroads) or growth (farms, lots of farms).
Below is a snap shot of my map after I won the game ... I didn't know where the opposition started but it turned out that I got lucky (see map for their starting location). I was also careful to select a map that gave me access to Oil, Aluminium and Coal ... the first two are critical while the third is a 'nice to have'.
My civics to start with were Universal Suffrage, Bureacracy, Serfdom, Environmentalism and Theocracy (I'm not sure but I might have selected Organized Religion before for the boost in building production). Universal Suffrage was so that I could cash rush a worker from each new city while Serfdom was so that they would get the 50% working boost (after the improvements were in place, I swapped to Emancipation to avoid the happiness hit). After the cash rushed workers, I swapped to Police State for the military production bonus, built factories and coal burners (for power), rushed the Pentigon with a Great Engineer and then started pumping Stealth Bombers. As this was going on, I was watching Mansa's access to Oil and as soon as he had an oil well on the Western Oil, I declared war. I think I had just built my first or second Stealth Bomber so I could bomb that oil well - no aircraft or tanks for him. From there, it was just a matter of building Modern Armour, bombing his defenses down to 0% and reducing the health of his city defenders while the Modern Armour rolled over him. I only lost 1 Stealth Bomber in the whole game.
My city placements were designed to get the resources listed above
(blue-green dots on map). Mansa built cities on the yellow dots (four
in total, note the one down in the South East corner).
This was another future start at Monarch level with a crazy rush to aluminium, coal, factories, space elevator, etc and then hammering (with some chops) out space parts. I only build 1 Modern Armour as 1 city had no space items to build on the last round. Check my power graph ...
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This was a fairly straight forward game with the extra commerce really coming in handy. I got the circumnavigation bonus and found the first five civs fairly easily. The sixth took me ages as he was tucked up near the north pole and only had 4 tiles to rub together - a very poor start. No one would trade with me as I was everyone's worst enemy - actually, I was their only know civ - so worst enemy by definition. I war'ed late but didn't wipe anyone out - three vassels at the end. The last 30 tiles or so (for domination!) were rushed settlers grabbing any small island that could help my tile count.
The best part of being a financial civ was landing the Colossus and then kicking off a golden age ...
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This game was meant to be a diplimatic victory but everyone ended up hating me. They would declare war and just before I wiped them out, they would vassel themself to another AI. Thus I had to keep fighting. It ended up being very poor vassel decisions for England and (almost) Rome. I went over the domination limit 1 turn before wiping out Rome and building my first tanks - very annoying. I was saving a Great General for my first tank (he would rock) and I actually got another one (Great General) on the turn after my domination win.
Why do AIs do this? I don't think a human player would. Korea was watching me take down Hannibal. I had just captured his capital, razed a small city between it and Korea and signed a peace treaty. Korea decide to place a city on the red circle. 1 Turn later, they get a Great Artist and decide to culture bomb that city (it pushes their boundry out to the red line.
Good idea for Korea in the short term with all those floodplain towns there but ... it causes two of my brand new cities to starve. That will not do ...
Ruff_Hi QM11 declares war on Wang Kon!
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This was a fun game, started on the same continent as Cyrus and killed him off with an axe / Hwacha rush, then teched to combustion and totally controlled the waves. Killed off Monty via the Serian Doctrum (stacks of units on transports with destroyer protection razing all coastal cities) before landing tanks and bombers to finish off the inland cities. I then used the flood of settlers with artists to quickly reclaim the now deserted tiles to reach my land domination limit. However, no victory ... I hadn't reached the population limit. How many times have you seen that!
War anger was killing me and I had whipped in tons of jails, thus reducing my population too much. I had to put my cities on max food and wait a few rounds.
Screenshot below is during the Serian Doctrum stage ...
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I decided to test out two of the new character traits ... Charismatic and Imperialistic. Basically, lots of highly promoted units and fast. I guess this game was going to be all about war ... and it was. It started with a Axe rush, then got promoted into a Mace rush with phants, cats and Trebuchet thrown in at the end. I had been reading about Trebuchets and how the aren't better than cats in the open field. True enough but give them CRIII and they are unstoppable. The extra hammer cost wasn't really an issue as my capital was kicking out over 90 hammers a turn anyway. I won via conquest and who had the fun of being on the head kicking end (see graphic below ... almost all aggressive civs and selected randomly too). Sure, it is only Noble but you actually have to play at this level to get your QMs.
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Just a quick 'tiny' map game to round out my map requirements. I was missing inland sea, so I played this marathon game to be able to cross that off my list. Built the oracle and selected HorseRiding, then build horse archers with Flanking II (ignore first strike) and killed off Japan. I didn't notice that the map was also telling me to smash things until the end of the game.
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In the end, I raced through the leaders that I hadn't played to knock that part off. I also played a QMajor under the wrong version of the HOF mod and my submission wasn't accepted - had to repeat the Major (sigh). However, due to my Major being submitted in the first two weeks of its run and not submitting any HOF games after that, my QM status was not initially recognized ... however, a few quick PMs to the right people and, bingo!
