Game challenges you've set up for yourself.

Cafe Society
1

I love playing Age of Empires: The Conquerors. But it can get pretty boring after a while of whipping everybody’s butts. So I decided to play the Spanish and build only priests as military units. I couldn’t win (I’ve set the win to Conquer because I don’t care who builds a Wonder. I wanna fight) without scorpions to protect the priests. I’m going to try this again but on easy and only one opponent.
I’ve beat 3 other opponents building only trebuchets.

In Zuma, I’ve been trying to line up six pairs of two colored balls with single balls of the same color in reverse order on the other side and then shooting 3 of the same colored balls where they meet but have had no success.

2

Windows Solitaire - beat it without cycling the draw deck

Minesweeper - beat it in ever-decreasing amounts of time.

Any RPG - Achieve maximum level, find all items, explore all secrets.

3

Yay! Somebody else who does this! I can’t afford to buy all the new games that come out, so once I can win a game, I go back through it, handicapped.

Diablo II: No buddies. Barbarians: No whirlwind. Amazon: No valkyrie. Sorceress: Only one element.

X-Wing: No wingmen. They’re pretty useless anyway, but still.

FPS games: No shotgun. No rocket launcher.

NeverWinter Nights: No buddies. No teleporting back to town in the middle of a fight to heal.

4

Minesweeper beat it without marking the bombs,
Anything like Civilization games, try and recreate history with your country, diplomatic world conquoring can be a good one as well (buy off all your enimies).
Civilization Call to Power was a great game for alternative winning strategies, lawyering your enimy to financial ruin was a good one.

5

depending on the game - x number of death = time to stop and do something else.

6

I remember waaaaaay back when on the Apple II+ playing Karateka so much that I resolved to 1) only use punches (won it that way), 2) somehow defeat Akuma in the princesses’ room so she’d bloody realize I was there to rescue her and not kill me if I approached her incorrectly. (Never pulled that one off, though I got close)

7

In Age of Mythology, trying to stand fast against two (or even three) opponents on Hard difficulty with no allies is a fool’s challenge, but darn is it fun. Since you can’t get appreciable amounts of gold with trading carts, the opponents have you outnumbered, they have more resources, and even on a map with a pinch point, you basically have to get a four- or five-to-one kill ratio to even think about winning.

My fiancée and I just recently (finally!) won a two-on-three game on Hard, but we had to set our handicap at around 20%. Our goal is to do it with no handicap, but damn, it’s hard.

As for Diablo II, I still haven’t managed to take a character all the way through 1.10 yet.

8

Rise of Nations T&P: Similiar to what Biggirl does in AoE, I like sticking to one unit type. Nothing like watching 60 bombers take off to hit the enemy, or launching a wave of 50-some cruise missles. It’s just damned satisfying.

Joint Operations: When I play as a medic, take only a pistol. As a USMC rifleman, a M-16, no doo-dads. Et cetera. I try to impose ‘realism’ on myself, at least with gear selection. My favorite lately has been taking the USAF Combat Operator and just ‘crew cheifing’ someone elses chopper, calling out SAMS, manning guns, letting the pilot know when people are getting on or off. Suprising fun.

9

Heck, I’m doing that deliberately, specifically to increase my power. And I have a barbarian without whirlwind, too, and he’s a singer (primary attack is War Cry), at that! On the other hand, I do play online with other Dopers, so they can cover my weak spots.

The only deliberately underpowered thing I’ve ever done in Diablo II was kill the Diablo Clone (hardest monster in the game; only spawns under special circumstances) using a level 55 character and no elite equipment. Once I’d proven that it could be done, though, I leveled up more and gave him some better gear.

Some more of mine:
Minesweeper: Three possibilities. I either don’t mark any mines, or I mark all, and only clear areas using the “clear-all-around-this-square” doubleclick. If I’m feeling particularly masochistic, I crank the number of mines up to 150 (only beaten that twice).

Scorched Earth (old trajectory game): I only ever play against nine computer opponents, all allied against me, all on maximum difficulty, and all in the special triple-turret tank available only to the computer players. I’ve also been known to kill all nine opponents without firing a single offensive weapon (just things like Riot Blast and Dirt Charge), and once I even pulled it off without firing any weapon at all (use a lot of fuel to undermine the enemies and collapse them, or drive on top of them and stomp them to death)

Dark Reign (RTS): I play with one computer ally, against a team of six enemy computers. Then, I try to ensure that my ally kills more units and buildings than I do.

Myth II (Real time tactics): I don’t tolerate any of my units dying at all, and where possible, I go for no damage taken, as well. This actually ends up paying off, since your units accumulate experience if they don’t die, and become more effective in later missions (subtle things like ranged units having better aim, but it makes a difference).

I’ve also done the “no casualties” thing in Starcraft (missions only), and there’s actually one Warcraft III multiplayer map where I can pull it off, too (against seven allied AIs at the “cheating” difficulty level).

10

In the original Diablo I started playing a naked mage – couldn’t use any weapons, armor or jewelry. All he ever carried were blue potions. There were some guys that went even further, and made their character carry the worst weapons and wear the worst armor they could find – like the broken staff of clumsiness or what ever. If they ever found anything with a worse penalty, they had to drop what they had, and take on the new item. That made the game . . . challenging!

11

More fun with paladins in Diablo II–

Play a Paladin. Only use quarterstaff. Call it a monk.

I always played my paladins as archers up until they got Zeal at a high enough level they did more damage HTH, but I guess that doesn’t really count as limiting them…

My son had a bizarre time playing an unarmed paladin. He got Thorn Aura up to level 20, then he’d just run around and let the monsters pound him and die…

I’d play StarCraft and never build any of the advanced stuff; i.e., I’d play Terran and only build tanks and wraiths, for Zergs I’d get the shooting guys and the flying guys…

12

I’ve played the two Hitman games with weapon restrictions (only a pistol, or a rifle with one bullet, etc). Never made it all the way with only the choke wire.

These games are also fun when you try to kill everyone on a given level (you can’t do this on a couple levels in II). Guards, other hitmen, innocent bystanders, it doens’t matter. Surprisingly hard.

I’ve heard of someone who got through Half-Life with only the crowbar. Can’t see how that’s possible in a couple of places, but that mgiht be the Holy Grail.

13

AoE2 with everyone against me was hard.

No, scratch that. It was Hard.

D2 playing without using potions was hard. It was easier than AoE2, but it was still hard. However, after getting two characters past NM Baal (didn’t die once getting there, though I did die once or twice doing runs), I decided I needed more of a challenge.

No vitality (with charms her life ended up being 309 at level 80), no potion character. I got her to Hell Ancients, which proved too difficult for me to get past. I’ll pick her up again eventually and try Hell Baal a few times (I DLed a prog, got myself worldstone 2 wp).

In Civ3 I like to play games to see how totally anachronistic I can get a civ. In my current game I’ve had railroad since the 11th century. I’m in the 16th century and I’ve had tanks for a good bit of time now. This is on Regent, and it’s the most anachronistic I’ve been able to get a civ. Then again, knocking out two civs before 2K BC helped with getting a good land mass…

14

This isn’t nearly as difficult if you can get your hands on an upgraded Ribcracker. It’s a formidable weapon and extremely underrated.

15

hah! i had to fight through half-life with a pair of chopsticks, and there weren’t even any chilli to go with them head crabs!
op: i played through AvP at night in the dark with headphones without screaming, not even once.

16

I always had great fun playing the One City challenge several times in Alpha Centauri. Yes, that meant winning by transcendence with only one city. Any captured cities had to be destroyed or handed over to another player before the end of the turn. The biggest limitation was only being able to build one improvement or unit per turn. I’d have whole continents and oceans covered with crawlers ferrying resources back to my city, giant rivered solar parks, huge forests of kelp since land was needed for minerals and energy. Almost all my military was mind worms, isles, and unity rovers, since I couldn’t afford to take a turn of production to make a military unit, I always needed more crawlers, formers, or improvments. In some ways this was an easier game than normal, or at least faster since there were fewer units and cities to control, and no need for conquest, just defense.

I’ve never tried this in Civ3, the new rules seem to make it nearly impossible, since you won’t have more than one or two special resources in your territory. There just won’t be any uncolonized space that you can put colonies down on, and there isn’t any equivalent of crawlers. Anyone try this in Civ3.

17

One city challenge, eh? That sounds significantly difficult. I’d have to research the government/civ types to see which one would be best (probably the one that gives the cheapest military; I can trade for tech).

18

I invented a little game that I have been playing since I was about 10 years old.

The game requires a ball (any ball) and ceiling.

You lie on your back (on the floor, on a bed, on a couch, it doesn’t matter) and try to throw the ball as close as possible to the ceiling without hitting it.

If you manage to get 3 throws within ~ inch of the ceiling, without hitting it, and without incurring 3 outs, you win.

An out is any of the following:

A) Ball hits ceiling
B) Ball hits floor (or whatever surface you are lying on)
C) Ball hits any part of your body, other than your hand
D) Ball doesn’t come within ~ 1 foot of the ceiling

I usually play 10 rounds, keeping track of my overall score.

When I was a kid, I used to pretend that I was forced to play game by some deranged madman. If I didn’t win at least 5 out of 10 rounds, the madman would chop off both of my arms! :eek:

What can I say, I read too many Robert E. Howard books when I was a kid. :wink:

19

For any RPG try playing naked.
(I mean don’t let your character wear any armor at all)

20

I’ve gone through Hitman 2 getting “Silent Assassin” on every level by only taking the fiber wire and chloroform with me. I allowed myself to pick up guns from guards (to complete the costumes, don’cha know), but never fired more than one bullet per level.

Also, it is possible to play System Shock 2 using only melee weapons, but I need a lot of Agility and a heap of speed helpers because the majority of the action is to run like the coward I am.