Introduction :

This game was played for the first CIV4 Gauntlet.
It had the following settings :

Difficulty : Prince
Mapsize : Standard
Victory : Spacerace (though ALL victory conditions must be enabled!)
Starting Era : Ancient
Speed : Epic

Note that the game was played with Version 1.09 but the screenshots are
made with 1.52 because the patch update converts savegames automatically.

It was allowed to choose no babarians which obviously almost everyone did.
All standard maps could be used, i refer to that later again.
You had to choose at least four enemys, i go into detail for that later too.
Since the game is pretty new i will go into some details of the basics things
if appropriate.

Some global thoughts on strategie :

Since the goal is an early space race victory one will have to go through the
ages with ligthning speed. The Apollo programm and spaceship parts are very expensiv
which requires quite a bunch of cities with good production capabilities.
As a conclusion i wanted to build up a huge empire with many cities to ensure that.
I think the details on how you manage to get a huge empire fast is the key to
this gauntlet.

First tries :

Thus i thought about conquering some land from the computer enemies relatively early.
Thinking about the best early game unit Pretorians came to my mind and i managed to
get a ~1670 victory at least which wasnt too shabby but it turned out that by the time
you have Pretorians the enemy cities get defensiv bonuses so you have to build a lot
of units which slows you down to much in other aspects so i abandond that idea for
a while.

In the next games i tried to play pacifistic and grab as much land as possible.
I went with Ashoka because those fast workers seemed really to be a very nice
benefit in the early game stages. Again the result was about ~1650. This time
the biggest problem was that i lack land for expanding. I began to realize here
that you have to be very picky about city placement. Those Cities which arent placed
neither at rivers nor between hills are just a waste because they higher upkeep
but give you almost no benefits in return. Some other thing that i realized was that
my income even with something like 15 Cities was consederably low and that the
finantial trait is a must for this gauntlet to overcome this.

Choosing the Settings :

Lets talk a little about who you want to have as enemies here.
Obviously peacful techtrades would be prefered, the problem however
is that there arent such much obvious choices for this in the game.

Mansa Munsa :
The clear number one choice from my point of view. He is always very peacful
and good at discovering new techs which he likes to trade with you.
His traits spiritual and finantial are perfect too because they dont
interfer in any aspect (but religion).

Ashoka :
My next choice is Ashoka, i think this is a little bit more difficult
to observe and i guess number two choice for many might have been Ghandi.
The advantage from Ashoka over Ghandi is that Ashoka doesnt have the
industrial trait otherwise they tend to be pretty similar.

Ghandi :
As mentioned above this is a bit tricky. Ghandi likes to build things like
the Oracle quite fast. So if you want to keep those wonders until later in
the game you wouldnt want to choose a leader with ind trait. However i tend
to build the early wonders pretty fast so that this isnt a problem in my case.

Elizabeth :
The fource choice is quite difficult because there isnt a fourth peacfule
techtrader in the game to my knowledge. So what i want is someone who
at least doesnt annoy me. Note that all four enemies i have choosen dont start
with a scout. This seems a minor detail but it isnt !
It will allow you to gain more advantage from bonus villages which make up
for a faster start. For example someone like Cyrus would be a good choice too
if he didnt start with a scout.

Mapchoice :

What you want is a map with as many landtiles as possible. Note that maps like
Great Plains are smaller and dont nessessarily have more landtiles as for example
Pangea. After some trying i choose balanced map. The reason for this is that you
alomost always have a decent start location, many rivers and floodplains in general
and many forest tiles too. Resources are abundand, the only thing that is missing
sometimes is marble - well one cant have everything. The sealevel is set to low for
obvious reason. Climate stays on default.

Civchoice :

Important factors here are traits, starting techs and unique units.
To my knowledge the fastest start is with forest chopping heavily thus the
minig tech has the highest value at the beginning because it leads to
bronze working. I find to get early pottery very useful so Agriculture and The Wheel
would be my second choices. Mystic is not bad because it allows to build Stonehenge.
Fishing is a little odd but at least it leads to pottery. Hunting seems really worst
one here.

The better unique units are the early ones like jaguar wariors, pretorians,
War Wagons, Immortals and such, everthing which comes later is quite
useless for this gauntlet.

Trait choice :

Aggressiv :
Total useless obviously for a peaceful game.

Creative :
You save shields for Stonehenge and can spread very fast, cheap
theatres are nice too if you plan to build them.I have other plans though
(look for Taelis game to see the power of creative).

Expansiv :
+2 Health seems really like a waste for me on prince level that is
because happyness is the limiting factor for citygrowth normally.
The cheap granaries could be something though, i havent tried this
but combination of cheap graneries and slave rushing looks tempting.

Financial :
I think this is cleary the best trait for a boom game and since all
top players in the gauntlet used it this seems to be right. More gold turns
into more science and faster launch.

Industrial :
The cheap wonders are nice, cheaper blacksmith is something very good for
sure too. The thing is wonders are weaker as in previous civ versions and
thus you dont have to build that many, industriell seems better for
other game types as space race.

Organized :
If you plan to have a huge empire this is certainly something. The half cost
of government upkeep is nice but what i find even better is that you might
choprush law courts in new cities easily due to their half priced cost, this
seems kind of overlooked by so many people who think organized is the
worst trait of all.

Philossophical :
Certainly very nice, i dont plan to build that many wonders though so
nothing i want to have but i think it could be valuable if played right.

Spiritual :
There are some weird things going on with that trait. First it was totally
underrated because no one seemed to understand that no anarchy is actually
something. However i think its not that good because you can some
times change two government properties at once in early game during one
turn of anarchy which weakens spiritual a little bit.

Since my plan is to build up a huge empire my choice will be Washington with Fin/Org.

Starting Position :

Now we can begin the game. Of course the starting position will have a great
impact on the game later so it better should be a good on.
A river is a must in my eyes, some hills are nice too, floodplains are
really wanted and last but not least special resources are nessessary.
With all those requirements you might need some tries until you get a good location.
Here is what my starting location looked like :

http://xs61.xs.to/pics/05521/Start_Shield.JPG (http://xs.to)

As you can see i got lucky to start on a hills/plain square. Building on this
kind of square gives you a +1 production bonus in that city which is really quite
something at the very beginning.I like to build on squares with special resources
that arent accessible at the beginning too, e.g. wine or sugar.
There are some floodplains and special resources. Only thing that is missing are
enough hills.

Beating the first AI :

As said before my general plan is to knock down one AI quite fast to have more space.
Now playing on epic makes a real huge difference. That is because unit movement stays
the same but almost everything else is slowed down. That means that you can hit the
enemy faster as in a normal game. I did some tries and observed that the AI only got
two warriors at the very beginning. Damaged units tend to die very easily so my plan is
to sacrifice two of my own warriors to weaken the defenders and then crush them. To
make success much more viable i build a fifth extra warrior. I quickly find Mansa Munsa
in the game at a very nice city location and take him done with 5:2 warriors as planed.

http://xs61.xs.to/pics/05521/Upkeep.JPG (http://xs.to)

Of course here some luck is needed if for whatever reason you loose that first battles
you might as well start a new game or if the start location of the AI is really bad
i would start a new game as well.
The only drawback is the upkeep cost caused from the huge distance to the
capital.You have to take in mind that one gets a plundering bonus while conquering
the city which kind of evens this out. Seeing it like this building
a couple of warriors doesnt take you back because spending the resources
for development doesnt give you more than one additional city too.
The advantage gained is that you have got much more space on the map now.

Empire development :

After the fifth warrior is build its time now to think about whats best next.
The best option at the beginning is easily to chop forest with workers.
So what im doing next is building a worker, oh no wait im building at least
two workers before anything else now ! Next step is to chop forests like mad and build
settlers and more workers. Some workers will start now to build cottages on flood plains
which will give you 3food+3coin (without financial it would be only 2 coins !)
and speed up your research. Note that your palace provides you already with 10 coins
which makes a library in your capital a nice addition. Suppose you have 10 Science from
palace and two floodplains with cottages giving +3 coin each making totally 16.
That means a library enhances your science quite a bit in the capital.

http://xs61.xs.to/pics/05521/Financial.JPG (http://xs.to)

Good places for cities :

Now that you have some settlers where do you want to build your cities ?
By far the best place is on a river location preferably connected to your starting city.
If possible you want to have some hills within the city radius too.
The Traderoute between those two cities will give each city +1coin totalling +2coins
for free which is really something in the beginning that you wouldnt want to ignore.
Furthermore cottages on river start with +3coins (with financial) and only with
+1 coin on non river squares which is a huge differnce. Not that important but freshwater
will give you an additional +2 health. Conclusion - build at river sights as longs as
possible !


Important Techs :

Which techs you choose when can easily win or loose you games. At first
i want to have a look which techs are better than others in general and then
see what is best to go for early on.
In my understanding those techs whitch either offer new goverment styles or have side
effects are far superior than others. This is because they take effect at once (or one
turn after anarchie) without any additional investments. Look for example at the tech
'Education' it looks quite good but until you got those universities it will take a while.
'Printing Press' on the other hand will take effect at once.
So its not suprising that those kind of techs are the one i prefer in early game also :

bronze working : allows to chop wood
pottery : allows to build cottages
alphabet : allows trading techs
currency : +1 trade route per town/ allows tech for money trading with AI
code of laws : ability to build law courts.

So my techpass almost always looks something like that for this gametype :
bronze->wheel->pottery->writing->alphabet->math->currency->code of laws.

Early Wonders :

Since i dont have creative trait Stonehenge is a must for city range growth.
I consider the Oracel one of the best wonders. I tend to build this almost always
pretty early in oppostite to many other players who keep it for more
expensive techs. I find a smaller early boost more important than a huge boost
later in the game, so i often take it for either currency or code of laws.
I found it useful to build Stonehenge and Orakel in the same town because
this almost halfs the amount of time which you have to wait for your first
Great Person (which will be a very useful Prophet).

http://xs61.xs.to/pics/05522/wonders.JPG (http://xs.to)

The power of Pyramids is really dependent on what you plan to do, for my game plan I
absoultely need them. You really want to have stone do build them otherwise they
are just to expansiv which means game over if you plan to use them by all means.
Another good 'trick' is to build them in a city where you have the
organized religion bonus. I tend to use the missionar you get by discovering
confuziusaism for exactly the city i want to build the Pyramids in.

Note that it is of importance which kind of Great Persons the Wonders produces.
Engeniers and Scientiests are by far the best so wonders that produce them are
a little more worth as those who produce Great Artists which are almost totally useless
in my point of view (music gets you already one Great Artist for Golden Age usage).
So i dont really like to go for the Parthenon even more because you need marble for
it which you often dont have available on balanced map.

Great Light House and Kolossus are a waste because coastal cities are a waste if you
dont have access to two ozean resources at least. Furthermore there effects are outdated
so pretty damn fast :( .

The Great Library sounds like a good choice for me because its always nice to get
a Great Scientist and the effect of the wonder itself isnt to shabby either.
Unfortunately i didnt had really good production cities in that game for a long time
so i build only the minimum amount of wonders you want to have.

Solving the production problem :

Now we come to a keypoint for this game - buying buildings.
As you might noticed already i tend to build cottages everywhere, this has
however one major drawback i cant really build much anymore if the forest is
chopped away. To overcome this i do the following which has worked pretty well
for me. I build the Pyramids to have early access to universal suffarage and
go for early Banking in the tech tree. Now i lower my science rate for a while
and start rush build banks in my bigger cities (half priced banks really help
with that) that way i got a good economy pretty fast and will be able to rush build
all i need even with something like a 50-80% science rate. Note at this point that
many players tend to think of the aditional shield for towns as the major
advantage of universal suffarage - i dont ! (at that point i dont even have one town).

http://xs61.xs.to/pics/05521/High_Income.JPG (http://xs.to)

However this doesnt work for wonders, so to keep one or two cities with low science
and high production really might pay off in the end.

Midgame wonders :

With a huge empire i find the Hanging Gardens particulary useful.
I always try to build them so that they will get finished by the date
i found my last new cities to get maximum effect out of it.
Notre Dame is bit awkward if you have access to so many resources anyway
so i skip it in this game.
Angkor Wat and Chitzen Itza are totally useless ...
After discovering Democracie there will emerge one of the most useful wonders
of the game - the Statue of Liberty, one free specialist is like Mercantilism for free, now thats really
something. The drawback however is its huge price. It takes me ages to build it
in that game again my lack of some production power house really cost me a bit.
Later on there comes the Kreml, well i guess that would reall fit in here but i dont really
want to waste time for researching communism.

Maximizing effect of cottages :

Since i do have them everywhere i now go for all techs which help my cottages in
any way, those are :

printing press : +1gold for villages and towns
liberalism : allows free speech
democracie : allows emancipation

Now those villages and towns start really to kick in. The techpace is now pretty
fast and i have still some money left to buy some buildings. Note that with the
change to emancipation you will loose the 50% worker speed bonus. Thats why you
should build additional workers now which i didnt do in this game at first because
i noticed that way too late which cost me quite a bit.I dont know if this was a good
idea to delay free speach a bit and therefore use the free tech from liberalism
to get the extraexpensive democracie tech(i hoped changing both in one
turn of anarchie is possible but this happenend not to be the reality).

The good news now is that the computerplayers likely have the techs for you
which you need for discovering Astronomie, namely compass and optic.
Next logical step is to get Astronomie and rush build observatories everywhere
which will speed up Tech pace again.

Preparing for the apollo programm :

Now its about time to prepare for building the Apollo Programm. It is really cost
intensiv so i recommend finishing Iron Works before which isnt that easy if the tech
pace is something like 3 turns per discovery.

http://xs61.xs.to/pics/05521/Ironworks.JPG (http://xs.to)

1. The text that you have entered is too long (20120 characters). Please shorten it to 20000 characters long.

Well there wasnt much more to come, this kind of limitation is very odd anyway.

I just realized that this isnt wanted and considered as ego posting. Please delete.
Huh? :confused: I noticed your post last night but didn't have time to read it. I was looking forward to reading it this morning. There is nothing wrong with posting what you did. Before, during or after. Part of the fun is learning from others and discussing different approaches. The ego part is why they call it Hall of Fame. :D

Did you save your post?

I just realized that this isnt wanted and considered as ego posting. Please delete.
It definitely IS wanted! Though maybe you could write even more ;). See >> this thread << (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=81424) for something to aspire to!

Seems i got up with the wrong feed this morning and reacted oversensibel to some things, thx for encouraging me to post it.

Very interesting early use of Universal Suffrage. I'll have to try that one of these days to see how powerful it exactly is. A pity you *need* to build the Pyramids to make use of it that early, as my latest strategies tend to ignore it (instead producing a few more workers / settlers).

The only tech choices I really did different was that I pretty much ignored Currency (until much later) and that I didn't bother with Feudalism (as it isn't a prereq until very late in the game). Caste System instead can be very powerful (although I didn't use it effectively enough ;().

Seems i got up with the wrong feed this morning and reacted oversensibel to some things, thx for encouraging me to post it.
Thank you for reposting it! While I like to see all Gauntlet material stay within the Guantlet thread during the actual competition, the whole point of this forum is for stories and education, not just administration.

Suffrage is handy with a Spirtual Civ since you can switch over once you've amassed a bunch of gold to do some rushing for 5 turns and then switch back. I've done this mainly at the tail end of a wonder or just at the beginning (2nd turn of building) to rush them.


Anyway, nice post, but I can't read german? so your shots aren't very useful where text is concerned.
In referene to your start I'd be more likely to move south a ways to get more floodplains. I've been finding cottages on a floodplain are one of the best tiles for a growth and science game. It lets you still make those much needed cottages and still gives 50% more growth. Then later once you've grown past the available floodplains you can pair them up with whatever you need be it extra food by using grass, or extra hammers by using plains.

BUT, with those silk tiles I would stay put, however, you should have built cottages on those silks long before those grass spaces. By the time you reach Calendar those tiles would have already exeeded what you would get with a plantation not to mention they start equal to a town, and still grow as normal. I may even have improved them before the floodplains!

Very nice hint about using spiritual and universal suffrage, I didnt think about using it that way yet which will grant you the effect of represantion and universal suffrage at the same time almost - sounds hillarious :P.

I agree that 1S or 1SE for the capital location looks a little better in general, however the production bonus of the capital base square fits pretty good with my strategie to destroy one enemy quickly. That is because timing this is very crucial, if you arent fast enough AIs will sometimes have an archer ready for you.

I missed thinking about building cottages on those silks during the game, thanks for pointing this out. Thinking about it now this should turn out better the way you suggested, i would rather build the first cottages on the flood plains still though.