Monthly Challenge: Robots > Tips?

[Hellion03]

I've played the robot challenge three times now and am overwhelmed by GDRs and advanced barbarian units by turn 15. Anyone got any tips besides don't bother?

[grognardgary]

I thought the first two in the serious were pretty much a waste of the two hours I put into them, this looks even worse. So the only tips I've got just from the start point build production with your builder and get aircraft in that hangar asap, I hope they are stealth bombers I've heard those are decent against GDRs other than that you are on your own,

[Harashiohorn]

Rush two settlers T1 (one off of the Pantheon Bonus and buy one with gold). Send out the settlers via the water.

Not to spoil, but there are some fairly cheesy spots nearby where it is trivial to prevent Giant robots from being able to attack.

Build Harbors in those cities and they will automatically get a lighthouse and become food stable.

Once you have those cities set up they form the basis of your growth for a majority of the rest of the game.

Your capital will get plundered some by the robots but they cannot raise it and are not particularly interested in attacking it, so just build and encampment and one ranged unit and you can gradually wear down the robots that don't automatically get bored and leave.

It becomes pretty easy to seal off certain geographical directions from barbarians, and so it then becomes fairly easy to build a nice decently sized empire in said areas.


Edit: Having now won the Scenario on Emperor, use your capital to fight the initial wave of barbarians as "bait" if you will, while other cities actually play more normally. Past that initial wave everything behaves like normal barbarians (on a low difficulty), so you can just rapidly expand and snipe encampments. Don't bother trying to build a big army (unless you want to play Conquest), you can forward settle really aggressively without one by sealing then filling space. I finished with 13 cities which felt low.

[Hellion03]

Thanks for the tips

Originally posted by Harashiohorn:

Rush two settlers T1 (one off of the Pantheon Bonus and buy one with gold). Send out the settlers via the water.

Not to spoil, but there are some fairly cheesy spots nearby where it is trivial to prevent Giant robots from being able to attack.

Build Harbors in those cities and they will automatically get a lighthouse and become food stable...

Thanks for the tips. I won the scenario on my 4th try. Getting up a couple of cities with Tundra farms is crucial. So is having a science district in each city.

First tech to go after was jet bombers. They're most effective against GDRs. I got lucky, the World Council met and I was able to vote up 50% off unit production and was producing jet fighters in 5 turns.

Once you have defeated the barbarian in a camp, deploy the jet fighter on the camp to eliminate it. No other military units are needed, just jet fighters.

[Sir Rounded]

There are different approaches that you can take with this scenario. In contrast to some of the tips above, I won the scenario (on prince) without creating any science districts, tundra farms or airplanes.

I found the main thing that helps your score is settling as many cities as you can. I built the cities and encampments close enough together to form network of safe spots about two tiles apart for my settlers and builders.

Halfway through when I fell into a dark age, I chose the perk that gives era score for aerodrome buildings, and had most of my cities build those.

It can also help to have one of your cities build a spaceport and do the moon landing project, since you can get quite a few era points by revealing all the natural wonders and making contact with the other civs.

[Goof]

wait, how do you select the difficulty? My games are always prince and way too easy but when I hit the play button, it just puts me straight into the game

[KingKickAss]

Encampment/City covering an Industrial Zone. Machinegunners in them. The rest of it is just getting your score up like making the Mountie, districts, etc.

[jmlapointe808]

The concept I initially thought was novel and possibly interesting, but it ends up being pretty lame. Killing the GDRs not difficult, but then it's just a rush to a score victory (or loss), so you have to figure out what will max out your points compared to the AIs, that are too far away to have any interaction with. Tried once, lost by a few points, life's too short for me to spend more time trying again and again just for a points victory.

[CheechWizard]

I built Military districts in my first 2 cities. (2nd city with pantheon settler.) I assigned military governor in first city with promotion for city to get 2 shots per turn for city and 2 shots per turn for military district. Built ranged units for each city. jmlapointe808: winning is just surviving for 100 turns, no points. And I survived 100 turns and won.

[CheechWizard]

Originally posted by Goof:

wait, how do you select the difficulty? My games are always prince and way too easy but when I hit the play button, it just puts me straight into the game

When you first open up civ launcher there is a window with graphics that change. Wait for challenge that says prince, or challenge that says emperor. Click on the one you want to play.

[blkbutterfly]

Key is getting a Golden Age for a GDR (from the dedication).

It's similar to playing Zombies and Apocalypse modes (my favs!).

1. Rewild - GDRs (like zombies) can't see your cities hidden in forest. Later, Mounties can build parks.
2. Expand to islands.
3. In next era, use your GDR to clear out home continent and settle.
4. Go Democracy and trade with neighbours.
5. Build Destroyers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3136892784

[jmlapointe808]

Originally posted by CheechWizard:

I built Military districts in my first 2 cities. (2nd city with pantheon settler.) I assigned military governor in first city with promotion for city to get 2 shots per turn for city and 2 shots per turn for military district. Built ranged units for each city. jmlapointe808: winning is just surviving for 100 turns, no points. And I survived 100 turns and won.

If you won, you had higher points than the AIs, It's not just about surviving for 100 turns (which I did, and still lost).

[Vygandas]

8 turns left and game crashes all of the time (windows 11). pretty annoying!

Unhandled Exception
Code: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
Error reading address 0x145fc070

Call Stack
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[SleepyLab]

Originally posted by Goof:

wait, how do you select the difficulty? My games are always prince and way too easy but when I hit the play button, it just puts me straight into the game

in the launcher popup window - scroll right or left - two options will show for the challenge - one is titled Prince, the other is Emperor.

[Harashiohorn]

So rushing city spam I was able to get 30 cities founded with a two settlers I ran out of time to place.

It is definitely the best primary engine to farm score. As you get 5 Score per City, 2 Points per District, 2 Points per Building, and 1 Point per Citizen.

As a secondary engine I think Civic rush is going to be the way to go. Though I believe artifacts are unfortunately broken so you can only get so much culture in 100 turns. Civics give 3 points per.

I got 1207 score last play-through on Emperor, but suspect proper civic rushing and growth maxing cities could get that up to the 1400-1500+ range.

Though those score levels are complete overkill with respect to outperforming the AI.

Great People and Great wonders are worth snagging as gravy, and the Sidney Opera House, the Great Admiral and the Great Engineer are all east to get within the time of the game. 15 points per wonder, 5 per great person.

Military Units only need to be built incredibly sparingly (if you're score-farming), particularly since a golden age gives you a free GDR that can mop up the barbs.

As other have stated, the AI plays similar to the Zombies game-mode, and I've founded cities adjacent to a GDR only to have it shrug and walk away. I think the code might actually *need* scouts to properly initiate dedicated anti-city attacks.

All that being said, if you are really struggling with getting more Score than the AI, the second place AI usually seems to be the one closest to you, and since they are critical resource shorted, it should not be hard at all to attack if you want to. Particularly if you aggro forward settle them. So attacking them and stealing their capital seems like it would probably guarantee a very straightforward win.

[Enigmatic]

Originally posted by Harashiohorn:

So rushing city spam I was able to get 30 cities founded with a two settlers I ran out of time to place.

It is definitely the best primary engine to farm score. As you get 5 Score per City, 2 Points per District, 2 Points per Building, and 1 Point per Citizen.

As a secondary engine I think Civic rush is going to be the way to go.

I got 1207 score last play-through on Emperor, but suspect proper civic rushing and growth maxing cities could get that up to the 1400-1500+ range.

That is crazy. wp sir.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3137990050

here is mine I only got 700 points.

Originally posted by blkbutterfly:

Key is getting a Golden Age for a GDR (from the dedication).

I didn't get the golden age, but Harashiohorn said go for civics second to cities. Maybe I'd of done better if I got the golden age.