What next?

The 0cs one was surprisingly fun, the most so far I reckon. Anyone else have any other ideas? (Let's try not to repeat challenges too close.)

A bunch of the old suggestions for when we had challenges last time were rejected for various reasons either as uninteresting, impossible to define or other reasons, the ones I can see worthwhile to try still are:

1. "Size matters"= Fattest country at endset wins. OR highest NW * Land?
2. "Size doesn't matter, it's how you use it" = 4000 acres max, all set. (could be another acreage as well)
3. "No tech challenge" = All set, no tech allowed.
4. "All-xp challenge" = No LGs allowed, highest NW wins.

This is a modification of a challenge that was suggested 4 years ago:
5. "Fight club"/"last man standing" all participants hit the other players in the duel every day, all outside GDI, highest NW in the end wins, alternatively, highest NW for most time wins.

There are several of these challenges, that, similarily to some other challenges of the past become either majority or 100% a grabbing challenge or a coinflip challenge. That can be anticipated and in some cases avoided or mitigated. Or that challenge should be avoided altogether imho.

Some of these challenges have issues with balance or they will end up the exact same in practice as another challenge either on this list or that we have already done. #5 would need extra rules set up around it in a well thought out framework so that it doesn't either promote breaking game rules, or perhaps even force such rule breaking by just doing it.

If a challenge becomes boring or have 0-sense rules like 250 ICs maximum for no reason, you can count me out. :)

I knew I would be away yesterday or I would have joined this one! it looked like fun

Maybe do a challenge for most land gained or fattest country wins

Would be funny to see everyone hit each other, and if folks have human targets at the end there would likely be a furry of attacks in the last minutes to try to win fattest country

I like #2, maybe 10k to have a shot at beating the bots?

I like number 2 and number 3 conceptually.

Playing it out in my head, is 2 really who runs the best demo techer? I mean demo techer is the highest production per acre strat, and also has the flexibility of playing the market.
(I feel like whether it's 4k or 10k, it's going to be techer.)

Number 3 is an interesting one. If you hold no tech, you can't grab any right? I feel like this one might result in more strategy diversification.

5 please
Actually no, I probably do not have the time to monitor that one. lmao

KoH I will beat the bots for sure on 4k acres, probably on 2k acres as well. The reason for less acres is so that its actually different than what we normally do in a meaningful way. 10k acres would not be, it would just be the same but smaller and lower NW.

Nitell you mainly like the 0 tech challenge because you more or less play that way every set anyway. :)

3k then :-)

I think if your plan is only to get to 3k acres fast and stock and destock normally the challenge is quite boring. Imagine 6 players playing 3k acre techers the same way and circumstances such as when they play or what their tech sells at and what price of bushels they manage to find decide who is the winner. Or if I get to 3k acre techer fully built 16 turns before you on wednesday morning because I find the bots in a better place while you are asleep. How boring would that be?

Stuff that make this different than playing normally are potentially:

*Demo reselling/Recycling income become significant in comparison to your income from production(presumably teching)
*Gains from bots other than land/buildings become significant.
*MBR?

Go Lithuania!

One thing I'd like to point out is that last time we took 1 week breaks between the challenges so people could play normal in between or take a break from tryharding or even from the game for a week.
I'm not sure if that suits this crowd better but certainly the ability to use more than 2 days to chisel out the rules of the next duel and for everyone to plan how they will play it would be useful even now. Y/N?

Whatever you guys come up with I'm game :)

I don't mind skipping this set and doing a challenge next set. I do find these challenges pretty interesting!

I agree that the 3k acre challenge isn't a challenging one because it really is a 3k acre demo techer challenge and not a 3k acre challenge. lol

How about this:
1) Can we go 100% residentials, and see how well we do? It's basically fluffty casher that eats a lot of food. We can call this the 'Murica challenge.
2) Can we see how far we can take a rainbow? Can't have any 1 building type more than 20% of your land. I'll call this the Ratski challenge.

I wont go demo techer. I will beat you all if you do demo techer. :)

It is clear that Gerd is picking the best one that he knows he can win :P

We had a "ratski challenege"/Rainbow duel back in the day. I didnt participate because it had rule problems. Its really hard to define the rules and such.

If we just want crappy strats we can do;

*Theo Farmer(The only rule needs to be that you are theo and >80% Farms because any other buildings will be worse, If you really wanna bring the point home you can make a rule against indy tech as well.)
*No Enterprise Zone Casher (100% Res will again stop you from building ICs so it will be another no-spying challenge, can make it >80% Residentials, no agri/indy tech, no Enterprise Zones. Tech start allowed to turn 450? 500?)

But I gotta say these are more or less the same and the same as the tyr casher. The idea is just that we have poor income in $/acre and forced to work around that problem. There isn't a new problem we are solving, we could just have another tyr casher challenge and it will test us in the exact same way as these. :)

No, what I mean is that if everyone's idea of a 3k acre challenge is to get to 3k acres and stock as demo techer and try to make some money by reselling and stuff, the challenge is over before it begins and they need to think a bit more if they are to compete in a meaningful way. :)

A lot of demo techers trying to resell are also gonna crowd each others out of reselling profit. But if there was just one demo techer he could definatly make a proper profit that way!

LOL @ murica challenge, I like it lol

I forgot the issue on the rule problem with doing that one?

Iirc it was just hard to define what is a rainbow and no way to check it. Do you make rigid rules that remove strategizing, or do you make loose rules that allow variation in building percentages with the risk that someone wins by just being the 'least rainbow' country in the rainbow challenge? Either within the rules or perhaps slightly outside them.

Either way the rainbow challenge is the same as Theo Farmer, Tyr casher or No EntZ Casher in that it has low $/acre and the challenge is to find a way around it.