The REAL Ironman Challenge: Win Queen's Hand on P20 ONLY

[马小褂]

Before you guys say this is impossible, no, you definitely can win queen's hand trial right start from p20 without citadel upgrades, and i've already done it.

https://imgur.com/a/YLPM3Mg

The first settlement would be the hardest one for sure. You get only one choice from blueprints/cornerstones, so it would be extremely hard to make complex food/service goods to please ur people.

My strategy was to start the first settlement on p20 with two negative modifiers for early meta resources. Ideally, the first settlement should be on the coral forest, which imo is the best biome in general. Meat and crystalized dews from the meat trees help a lot with the food situation, and dews can be sold to traders incase you need the amber to pay glade tax. Also having an easy access to dews means you can mass produce pipes and use rain engine to make people happy, if you cannot find the right building from those forced blueprints.

The first few settlements took me 7 years on average because, as u know, having no citadel upgrades sucks. But after winning the first few settlements and unlocking some upgrades, it just became a normal p20 run and every settlement only took 5-6 years.

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I didnt record the whole run above-mentioned, so i decided to do it again with recordings in case someone accuses me of cheating. This time, settlement #1 was with Barren Lands (no fertile soil) and Untamed Wilds (every dangerous glade contains two threats). It was really tough, and let me be honest with u, i did fail 4 times before i finally pull out a win. But really for a very experienced player, the first settlement is the only one you could actually lose, every settlement afterwards should be very much winnable.

My settlement #2 was also with two negative modifers, Monastery of the Holy Flame (no cosumption control nor favouring) and Flooded Mines (gain 6 more hostility per village). Man, that Monastery of the Holy Flame is surely one the worst modifers, but i did manage to win on year 8.

I've uploaded the whole run (14 settlements) in case anyone is interested. Mind you, i played on chinese version and there was no commentary at all (this heavy optimization drained the hell out of me so i cannot talk while playing), so watch at your own risk. :)

https://youtu.be/KlOAIE3SiZU

https://youtu.be/EswYtuQHFQ8

https://youtu.be/oGoTUnOGauw

https://youtu.be/SPssbBB1_LE

https://youtu.be/hy9SsereVyA

https://youtu.be/nHiyPZgLsJE

https://youtu.be/1x6PwJnR520

https://youtu.be/vkZD113qWKw

https://youtu.be/d-Rea1TUPBY

https://youtu.be/IUN56drTUJU

https://youtu.be/D-Xp1SDYU2A

https://youtu.be/ZywY22b_kPM

https://youtu.be/s2QeBFx49Fo

https://youtu.be/N8VrL96dzOA

[el Darkness]

You sir/miss are either crazy or insane, possibly both.

But congrats! This is an achievement.

[Petriefied]

What are you doing when it looks like you move a lumber mill and put it back in the same location?

[马小褂]

Originally posted by Petriefied:

What are you doing when it looks like you move a lumber mill and put it back in the same location?

you meant the woodcutters' camp? the trick is you can immediately relocate the camps once those woodcutters have finished each woodcutting cycle, the woods they produced instantly drop into the camps so they can go working again rather than having to manually transfer the woods. you gain a little bit efficiency of woodcutting by doing this trick. say, the production of one woodcutting cycle is 6s, and transferring the woods takes about ~2s. so its like +25% woodcutting speed if you are doing this very precisely.

i've never seen other people doing this trick on streams but it significantly speeds up the wood production. i would say normally you dont really need to do this kind of optimization for the most of time, its just too tedious to keep track of every single woodcutters camp and relocate them every 6s. but for a real challenge like this, i have to min-max every single detail to have a chance.

[Petriefied]

Thanks for the reply. Yea I meant the woodcutters' camp. I was only moving them closer to trees, I hadn't seen this next steps of it.

[arithmoquiner]

Originally posted by 马小褂:

i would say normally you dont really need to do this kind of optimization for the most of time, its just too tedious to keep track of every single woodcutters camp and relocate them every 6s. but for a real challenge like this, i have to min-max every single detail to have a chance.

For this reason, I will not not be doing this challenge, and I don't think we should consider it to be "the real ironman challenge". It is more a test of willingness to micromanage than it is of your strategic judgment.

[马小褂]

Originally posted by Petriefied:

Thanks for the reply. Yea I meant the woodcutters' camp. I was only moving them closer to trees, I hadn't seen this next steps of it.

to even futher min-maxing the woodcutting process, you could also move them closer to the warehouse once the camp is full, so the woodcutters could deliver the woods faster. you can do a quick math depending on how many productions are in the camp's storage, if it takes more than one delivery, its worth to relocate the camp back to near warehouse to save some moving time. this is also another reason why i constantly move my camps between trees and the main warehouse. if you have harpy as firekeeper then there is no point of doing this tho.

[马小褂]

Originally posted by arithmoquiner:

It is more a test of willingness to micromanage than it is of your strategic judgment.

i would say it both relys heavy on micromanagement and decision-makings. and lets be honest, the so called "ironman challenge" for many other games also involves heavily abusing the game mechanics and sometimes tedidous gameplay as well, but that doesnt necessarily mean the strategic part and decision-makings are less important.

its okay for ppl who have no interests at this kind of challenge at all. i mean, i make this title just for fun so i'm not really claiming this to be the "REAL ironman" or to play down those who do queens hand trial normally.

[arjensmit79]

Impressive, good job.

You set the bar high for us.

[马小褂]

i've uploaded the whole run (14 settlements) in case anyone is interested

[Stevie Nyx]

Thanks, ill have a watch. Interested to see your play.

[Jesse]

I'd love to know how people are winning at 5-7 years when all my runs are 9-10 years lol. I think my strategy has just become a longterm one. I should mix it up I think but I'm not sure how.