Quick Start Challenge Info Center

Quick Start Challenge
How to play
Timelines
Scoring
Games Index
Revision history



Civ3 Opening Plays
- Improving Terrain
- Forestry operations
- GOTM8 June 2002
- Mixed Terrain - Germany
- Flood Plain - Russia
- GOTM10 August 2002
- Grassland - Iroquois


Civ3 Example Games
- GOTM9 Japan Campaign
(ancient age warfare example)
- Index

Items below this point
are maintained seperately
from this strategy article
and may not always available.

Known Bugs and Glitches

- The Corona Bug
- The Scared2Death Bug

Welcome to the CivFanatics “Quick Start Challenge” Information Center.

What is a “Quick Start Challenge” Game?

A quick start challenge game is a test of your game playing skills and knowledge of Civ3 terrain, units, and the associated commands and tools. QSC games basically match you just against the game itself in the opening sequence. For most players, the game is won, lost, or basically set into snail pace tedium by how the first 80 to 100 turns of the game are played. Careful attention to the early moves and early strategy decisions in the game can yield significant benefits that multiply your success in every game turn that follows.

The CIV3 game is not just about taking big risks early. There are significant benefits for carefully planning and controlling the early moves of your workers and carefully managing your production choices to build the right units and the right improvements at the right timing.

A quick start challenge game basically asks you to play your best opening sequence of moves from a specific situation and then compare your approach to other players of varying skill levels. Comparison and discussion is a big part of any quick start challenge round.

Tell me more!

Quick start challenge games are only played from the year 4000 BC up to the end of the turn for 1000 BC. You should make all your moves and choices for the last turn and then save the game just as you want it to generate the final score. The scoring process will load your game and calculate the score.

You get points for everything you create: units, towns, citizens, happy citizens, territory, technologies, partially researched technologies, gold in your treasury, food, shields, wonders, improvements in your cities and towns. Just about everything improves your score.

You get an extra bonus of 25% added to your final score for submitting a written timeline of events to accompany your final save game. (So who is going to submit a game without a timeline??)

The typical quick start challenge game will only take between 4 and 6 hours to play and create the timeline of events as you go.

What do you need to do to play?

To play the quick start challenge for the CivFanatics Game of The Month (GOTM) you need to download the GOTM starting file for the month and follow all of the standard GOTM rules with one additional caveat. You may not read or post in any GOTM spoiler threads until after you have submitted your quick start challenge game files. The deadline for submitting your GOTM quick start challenge files for scoring and ranking will be the 15^th of the month in which the GOTM is open. You can still continue to play the game and submit that end result to the GOTM scoring table. The quick start challenge scoring process and the final GOTM scoring are two independent events that just allow you to use the same game play for your convenience.

You will need to master one special skill that may be new to you and this requires that you keep your choice of a word processor or spread sheet program open in the background while your play the Civ3 game. You can use the Alt-Tab key sequence to page in and out of your Civ3 game and make some simple timeline notes as you move through the game. You can keep your timeline in your own style but it must be in a text format that would be convertible to html and it must proceed from top to bottom starting with the year 4000 BC and proceeding all the way up to the end of the Year 1000 BC. You can by lighthearted or funny in your timeline if you choose but the timeline must be in English and it must cover key events as you will see in some of the examples.

There is a more detailed list of the things that MUST be included in the timeline on the timeline example page. For people who have played succession games and submitted turn reports this will be nothing new or challenging. For people new to Civ3, these timelines will form an outstanding basis to study and improve your early game play choices.

When you are done, zip your timeline file and your final save game file into one folder that includes a reasonable facsimile of your CFC username in the folder name and then email it in to the scoring table.