While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we like to run time-definite competitions between updates that we call Gauntlets. Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but any games meeting the settings will be counted towards the Gauntlet.

(*) Please read the >> HOF rules << (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/rules.php) BEFORE playing!


Any submissions meeting the following criteria will be considered Gauntlet entries:

Difficulty: Emperor
Mapsize: Small
Victory: Cultural (though ALL victory conditions must be enabled!)
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Any
Submitted on or before: January 24th.
Patch: 1.52 (Please note that there are new settings with this patch, and there are HOF rules about them:
New Random Seed on Reload (1.52 only) - Must not be checked
No Cheating (1.52 only) - Must be checked

Marathon is allowed, still covered by the "Any game speed may be used."



Whichever game has the earliest finish date will be declared the victor. The winner (and settings for the next Gauntlet) will be announced with the next Hall of Fame update.

While each map can only be played once, players are more than welcome to generate new maps and submit multiple games. Also, as everyone is playing their own distinct maps, there is no need for spoiler limitation within the forum. In fact, we encourage detailed posting of strategy and gameplay, although all conversation about this Guantlet should stay within this thread.

Any games not finished before the submission cutoff may still be submitted to the Hall of Fame as general entries.

New players:
Please note that we need two files for Hall of Fame submissions. A save from your initial 4000bc turn, and the turn after you win. For the last file, when you win the game, you'll be displayed your sequence of victory screens and then be prompted if you wish to exit or play "just a few more turns". Select just a few more turns, and then save the game immediately without playing further.

This one looks very interesting :)

Yeah unlike the space victory I don't think you'll be able to completely prevent the AI's from making war with you unless you have your own continent. Generally the AI's don't like when their borders are getting crushed by extreme culture.

I don't think continents is the way to go, though, since you can tech to liberalism faster if you are in contact with everyone. Although, a faster tech pace means fewer wonders. There's definitely a lot of challenges and tough choices to make. I think it will take us many many tries before we nail down the best way to do it.

Alot better than the previous gauntlet ;).

Yeah unlike the space victory I don't think you'll be able to completely prevent the AI's from making war with you unless you have your own continent. Generally the AI's don't like when their borders are getting crushed by extreme culture.
It's actually really easy. In all of my HoF culture attempts (including the 1448 AD small Emperor culture game), I only was attacked once, and that was my own fault. If you trade techs, relationship management is easy, despite having a -1 or -2 for close borders.

It will be interesting to see how this will be done. I will start by simply optimizing my basic strategy (which is obvious enough by looking at the 1448 game). What I don't know is if any of these alternative strategies might work better:

1) Build more wonders. From a cultural perspective, 2 wonders (or one wonder that has doubled culture - say +16 culture/turn) is equivalent to financial. So is Ghandi or Qin a better civ to use?

2) Get more religions. You can get 5 religions to spread to you without founding any. But 6 or 7 religions would mean an earlier win. Is it possible at Emperor?

3) Build more great artists. This one seems the least likely approach to me, but with a very fast win (say 1250 AD, which I suspect is possible - it certainly is on low difficulty levels), there is less time for cottages to develop, so relying on commerce to win may not work as well. That said, an artist specialist is +6 culture/turn if you build Sistine Chapel.

4) Go to the media techs. I stop before the late culture wonders. Is it optimal to go for them?

and the most intriguing approach to me -

5) Conquer your way to a cultural win. Incans seemed particularly well-suited for this.

It's actually really easy. In all of my HoF culture attempts (including the 1448 AD small Emperor culture game), I only was attacked once, and that was my own fault. If you trade techs, relationship management is easy, despite having a -1 or -2 for close borders.

It will be interesting to see how this will be done. I will start by simply optimizing my basic strategy (which is obvious enough by looking at the 1448 game). What I don't know is if any of these alternative strategies might work better:

1) Build more wonders. From a cultural perspective, 2 wonders (or one wonder that has doubled culture - say +16 culture/turn) is equivalent to financial. So is Ghandi or Qin a better civ to use?

2) Get more religions. You can get 5 religions to spread to you without founding any. But 6 or 7 religions would mean an earlier win. Is it possible at Emperor?

3) Build more great artists. This one seems the least likely approach to me, but with a very fast win (say 1250 AD, which I suspect is possible - it certainly is on low difficulty levels), there is less time for cottages to develop, so relying on commerce to win may not work as well. That said, an artist specialist is +6 culture/turn if you build Sistine Chapel.

4) Go to the media techs. I stop before the late culture wonders. Is it optimal to go for them?

and the most intriguing approach to me -

5) Conquer your way to a cultural win. Incans seemed particularly well-suited for this.

Maybe with the reduced number of opponents the AI's are less likely to go to war due to close borders since they have enough cities via expansion but I know when the map is tight they will declare really early. Just another reason to require the default number of opponents.

1) I think philosophical is equally valuable to industrious.

2) Easily possible if you choose your opponents carefully and with only 3 of them.

3) I think this is how the winner will do it. At least 2 high food cities and probably 3 generating artists all game under caste system.

4) Every time I've tried this it's been a huge waste of time. First of all, you tend to start falling behind in techs at this point. Then when you get to the tech those wonders take a ton of hammers to build. Then you end up getting beaten to them by the AI's half the time.

5) How does this work? What can you gain by attacking other civs when going for a cultural victory? edit: After thinking about it some more this has great potential. You can take out 2 civs so that's 2 less civs to compete with for wonders and religions. You also get 3 capitals to be your 3 culture cities. I'll try this one out in my next game.

4) Every time I've tried this it's been a huge waste of time. First of all, you tend to start falling behind in techs at this point. Then when you get to the tech those wonders take a ton of hammers to build. Then you end up getting beaten to them by the AI's half the time.
If you factor in The Kremlin and rush buying, it might make sense. I suspect not, but I would have to do the math. You have to consider the extra time it takes to research the techs (where you aren't running at 100% culture) against the extra +100% or so culture you will get once you are there. But yeah, since you will already be at +400% or so just from Cathedrals/Free Speech, delaying the 100% culture seems unlikely to help.

But perhaps someone running a specialist strategy will be using Representation, thus getting science and culture simultaneously.

5) How does this work? What can you gain by attacking other civs when going for a cultural victory?
Two things - possibly faster expansion (quechas are easier to build than settlers and workers) and better city sites. AI capitol locations are often ideal sites for either cottages or specialists. My fastest Monarch cultural win (not submitted to HoF since it's not eligible) is, by a small margin, with the Incans on a tiny, very overloaded map. <edit - I see you figured it out while I was typing>

What speed do you think is going to work best?

I have won culture victories on both norml and epic speeds. I got a faster victory with epic. I know you need more culture to win on Epic but if you can get developed quickly you can overcome that deficit. I am leaning toward trying Epic speed.

What does everyone else think?

I think just like all other games you get the most benefit the slower the speed. So marathon would technically be best. But since I think marathon is way too slow I'll be playing on epic regardless.

Marathon or Epic. Winning with 100 turns left on Quick is pretty good, but 100 turns left on quick is a lot later (by calendar date) than the equivalent 400 turns left in Marathon.

Quick does have one strange property though, that does affect cultural games - While the speed moves at 67% of normal, you only need 50% of the culture to win (I took advantage of that in the deity HoF games).

Marathon or Epic. Winning with 100 turns left on Quick is pretty good, but 100 turns left on quick is a lot later (by calendar date) than the equivalent 400 turns left in Marathon.

Quick does have one strange property though, that does affect cultural games - While the speed moves at 67% of normal, you only need 50% of the culture to win (I took advantage of that in the deity HoF games).

I think you have the right idea but the way you explain it is sorta weird.
The number of turns left doesn't really matter, its the number of turns played that is most important.
Some related calculations (It would be nice if someone could check a little bit, eventually I'll put in all in Excel or something) :
Number of turns to reach certain key dates on different speeds ( Q / N / E / M) :
2000 BC 40 50 50 200
1000 BC 60 75 90 300
0 BC 85 115 140 400
1000 AD 110 160 230 600
1250 AD 120 185 280 725
1500 AD 130 210 330 850

The last two dates are where I expexct the finish dates to lie between.
The way the earlier goes is somewhat important though, because of culture doubling which is happens after 1000 years for culture buildings\wonders (except palace) if my testing is right.

Now suppose I use the normalization factor of .67/1/1.5/3 (I know this is a big approximation, but it gives a rough idea)

2000 BC 58 50 33 67
1000 BC 90 75 60 100
0 BC 127 115 93 133
1000 AD 164 160 153 200
1250 AD 179 185 187 242
1500 AD 194 210 220 283

Interestingly, I had done a brief testing for this in the game, and found that I could get much further at a certain date in Quick mode.
I didn't check further and expected the tendency to continue so did most of cultural practice in quick.
It seems that the tendency reverses itself.

Now what approximation have we made.
On slower speed, you get more unit production and a LOT more unit moves per normalized turns.
So faster workers and settlers production and movement but also potentially more war.

There is also that weird fact (that walker pointed out, but I had noticed before and was an extra reason to test on quick) that culture needed is actually (.5/1/1.5/3) so quick has a small advantage there, but most culture comes at the end so is not such a big deal in terms of sheer number of turns saved I think.

Regarding starting civ.
Spiritual and fast workers are greatly weakened at slow speeds so I think Gandhi is not that strong.
I will take Qin or Elizabeth, so basically Philo vs Industrious.

So I did a test game, with Qin, three civs (Mali, Egypt and Persia), continents, no barbs.
I waited until I had stone to get a game rolling.
Since I had a lot of forests, I started right away with a worker, and then rush-chopped a settler to go get that stone. My first techs were Bronze working ( and I got half-lucky because I popped it out of a settler's hut while I had it halfway discovered :) ), wheel to get some roads and Masonry to build a quarry.
My strategy was to go for early wonders and great artists, with a couple of religions if possible : that's why I went rapidly for Code of Laws, giving me a religion, and a nice civic (caste system) for those great artists.

I settled only three cities, and built only two warriors for the entire game. That's why I picked the other civs, they are usually not aggressive, and are not industrious.

I managed to get the Pyramids, Stonehenge, The Sixtine Chapel and the one that gives you 25% defense in all your cities... Darn I forgot its name :)

Thanks to a great religious leader that I saved, I was able to discover Theology and get a second religion. Then Cyrus and Mansa Musa, who shared my continents (Hatty was all alone), were kind enough to send some Jewish and Taoist missionaries, helping me with temples, monasteries and cathedrals.
I got beaten by two turns on philosophy (nice civic plus religion), and lost two wonders by 1 or 2 turns (and I lost Notre Dame but that wasn't even a contest)
Once I got to Education and the universities, I discovered Printing Press and then switched to 100% culture. Well, 90% actually... I won the game in 1949, with a score in the 6,000ish.

Since this was a learning game, here's what I think I learned :)
- Three cities are enough if you've got great spots. Building more to get Oxford or Shakespeare isn't worth it IMHO because you'll waste a lot of times building settlers. Plus on a small map size it's kind of cramped anyway :)
- Maybe I should have built three workers. There are going to be useless by the end of the game, but a third one would have been nice to get a fast start going : two is not enough to build infrastructures for three cities really quick.
- Getting the Pyramids is great because it gives you a lot of culture point, and allows you to grab a nice civic really early on (representation). You don't have to go to constitution to get it.
- Maybe I should have switched to max culture earlier. I did it in the late 1600, but I'm not sure getting education and Printing press are really worth it. What do you think ? At what point should the switch be made ?
- I focused on great artists and that is a must. I got somewhere around ten of them, and they helped a lot. I culture-flipped one of Mansa's city, only to destroy it because I really did not need it.
- I avoided all marble-based wonders since I did not have any marble. I think a game where I would have had both would have been a killer, and that's what I'm going to aim from this gauntlet, if I keep with Qin : Fin/Phi is a deadly combo too...

For the first time ever, not one but TWO AI civs gifted me tech ! That was weird. The first time I thought he was asking me tribute, and had to read it twice to be sure it was a gift :lol:

I am going to try a game tonight. I think more than 3 cities are going to be needed to get a good tech pace going so you can switch to 90% to 100% culture faster. I have not played on a small map yet so I may have to revise this opinion. I am going to shoot for 4 to 6 cities. I am also leaning towards Pangea or Balanced type maps to make sure I have contact with AI for tech trading.

I think your choice of opponents is good. I was thinking about Mansa Musa, FDR, and Asoka. I really think non aggressive AIs without Industrious are they way to go.

I am torn between starting with Elizabeth or going with the Incans and an early Quechua rush to get some enemy capitals. I may try both options and see how well I do with each.

I will report back with my findings.

I did a similar calculation for game speed - you need much less culture per turn on Quick, just taking number of turns and required culture into account.

I'm not quite sure what changes between Quick and Marathon - other important per-turn factors are:
*Speed that cottages develop
*Points required per GP
*Spread of religion
*Speed of wonder production

Anyone got the low down on the ratios of those things for each speed?


Depending on the answers, the relative importance of GP to cottages to temples(cathedrals) will change.

It's possible that Mansa Musa (spi/fin) may be a good leader - if you have 6 cities and want to build 5 temples in each, then spiritual becomes useful. You could still have a GP city, and would get maybe 70-80% as many great people as a philosophical leader.

Plus skirmishers look to be decent for an early rush, should be able to capture 2-3 cities (maybe not on Emperor?)

Opponents should probably be spiritual, as they are more likely to go for the religous techs.

I'm thinking quick speed, battlegrounds map, keep restarting till an early rush yields 3 extra cities (worker->barracks->10-15 skirmishers). Settle another 2 high-production cities for production of military units. (I've tried this a few times, but haven't got lucky yet - the third enemy city usually has >60% defence bonus and ~5 archers)

Beeline for drama then music, hope for lots of religious spread, pump out the temples, and cottage everything in 3 cities. Go high-food GP farm in another city. Try to get at least 2 cathedrals per city, 4 would be optimal, but would require 6 religions.

Maybe just stop research with music and hit the culture slider really early? Cities would only be around size 8-10, so producing 50-100 commerce as cottages improve. Double that with 2xcathedrals, and it would only take ~100 turns to get to 15k culture. Less with a few great artists thrown into each city.

Skirmishers with a few city defence bonuses are quite good defenders, especially in high-culture cities.

I'm not quite sure what changes between Quick and Marathon - other important per-turn factors are:
*Speed that cottages develop
*Points required per GP
*Spread of religion
*Speed of wonder production

Anyone got the low down on the ratios of those things for each speed?
The ratios more or less work for everything, except for:

1) The amount of culture you need.
2) Anarchy (all the 1 civic changes that take 1 turn on Marathon, take 1 turn on quick).

Otherwise, cottages run 33% faster than normal. GPP required for great people is 67% of normal. The amount of culture you get for a great work is 67% of normal. Wonders cost 33% less. Etc...

I don't know if religion spread is an issue or not. Interesting question if that is scaled.

When calculating quick vs marathon, you'll want to target 1400 AD or better, I think, in your calculations. The problem as I see it is that gives you 125 turns at quick to do the same amount of work (less since you get the cultural discount) as 800 turns of marathon play. I'm not sure it's competitive for most strategies. I've got one idea I'll try at quick, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Ghandi absolutely dominates at quick with those fast-chopping workers. But Saladin is temping too...

what about the culture given from a great work? Or a super specialist? Do they change with game speed? I would imagine that they would be constant, which means that on quick it is better to create great workss rather than super specialists.

Looks like marathon will be the way to go then, with lots of GP artists. It's unlikely that any quick strategy will beat that. *sigh*


Fast chopping vs. half price temples is an interesting issue. On emperor and a small map, with teching stopping pretty quick, I think it's going to be a big advantage to have an early UU, and that might tip the balance.

what about the culture given from a great work? Or a super specialist? Do they change with game speed? I would imagine that they would be constant, which means that on quick it is better to create great workss rather than super specialists.
Artist super specialists give +12 base culture/turn at all speeds. Culture from the great worked is properly scaled. So something like 2680 at quick, 4000 at normal, 6000 at epic, and 12000 at marathon. So the super specialist vs. great work decision remains exactly the same - based on how many turns you think you have left and what your multipliers are going to be, you can determine if you should go the super specialist route or not.

Looks like marathon will be the way to go then, with lots of GP artists. It's unlikely that any quick strategy will beat that. *sigh*
Maybe. In my typical games (commerce based, with a healthy dash of great artists), I might get 12 great artists. That's "only" around 30% of the needed culture.

Another way to look at it is based on how much culture my cities are generating at the end of the game. In a good game, I might be getting 2000 culture/turn between the 3 cities combined. So each great artist (used for a great work) let's me win 6 turns earlier. Significant, but hardly the dominating factor.

The real key is how high you can push the culture/turn and how fast you can get to that point. Great artists are just gravy.

But I think the idea of a quick game beating 1400 AD is unlikely (of course, I haven't beaten 1400 AD on Emperor yet - nor have I managed to replicate the 1448 AD win in either of my early attempts at this gauntlet).

since culture victories have variable requirements (other than 100k) do you think it is worthwhile changing the graphic in the hof from 100k to something non-numeric?

The funny thing is that in conquest it wasnt even 100 K needed for all map sizes either.
I say we just keep the note and get rid of the number since there is only one type of cultural victory in civ 4 (in civ 3 there were 2, so we needed to distinguish).

I ran a comparison of dates across game speeds. There are significant differences in the timeline.

Quick is the best speed to "beat the clock" if you finish before 200AD. Later than that Marathon is the way to go.

The Marathon advantage spikes right around the optimal finish date for this gauntlet, so I don't see how any other speed can compete.

Game progress vs Date
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/finish_date1.jpg

Deviation from Normal speed
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/finish_date2.jpg

I have started a few games but my usual strategey of expansion at Prince Level is not working very well on Emperor. This is my first attempt at Emperor level games. I have found that getting a 3rd city before courthouses generally drops my science % to 20%. Any suggestions on how fast to expand?

I am thinking you need to wait until your initial city is size 2 and then hold at two cities until you can support them.

As for the Tech path, I have been using Elizabeth with the following progression.

Bronze Working, Mysticism, Polytheism, Priesthood, Writing, Code of Laws (Oracle), Alphabet.

Should I really be pushing hard to Oracle or should I spend some time getting improvement techs. Also is Alphabet really worth it that quickly. In the short term it hurts my city development but in the long term, I can trade for the missing techs.

I am having a pretty hard time finding a strat that will work effectively for a cultural victory with these settings. I barely ever go for a cultural win normally and when I do I usually try and get 9 cities or so. With being on this small map at emperor settings it seems impossible to get 9 cities unless you war someone. I haven't completed the gauntlet yet, I get to the point where I know I won't succeed and then move on to try something else.

I see a couple of viable strats but haven't perfected them yet. Here is what I have played around with:

Play as Ghandi and go for the 1st 5 religions: buddhism, hinduism, judaism, christianity (oracle), confucianism, in that order. Grab as many world wonders as possible.

Play as Qin and go for a few early world wonders and focus on cottages.

Play as Elizabeth and go for massive GP.

Play as Huayna and rush with quechuas to take out a civ or two. Then you could try and grab up several religions and settle 9 cities.

Choosing opponents is difficult as well. There are a couple of options. You could go with spiritual opps so that you can try and leech the religions off of them or you can go with non-spiritual opps to try and found the religions yourself.

I tend to go with the later and choose:

Mao
Peter
Washington

I think it is important to stay away from industrious trait leaders though. Allows you to get a couple of world wonders. However if you plan to avoid world wonders you can pick whomever you want.

Washington bases research decisions heavily on religion from what I've seen. In all my space race games for gauntlet 1 he would grab up half the religions, even with Hatty in the game. Mao also tends to get Confucianism and Islam quite often. I would choose Peter, Cyrus and Victoria. Cyrus and Victoria will once in a while go for Buddhism or Hinduism right away but it's pretty rare.

I am having a pretty hard time finding a strat that will work effectively for a cultural victory with these settings. I barely ever go for a cultural win normally and when I do I usually try and get 9 cities or so. With being on this small map at emperor settings it seems impossible to get 9 cities unless you war someone. I haven't completed the gauntlet yet, I get to the point where I know I won't succeed and then move on to try something else.

Try it with 4 to 6 cities. You only need 2 temples/cathedral on a small map, so ultimately, you only need 6 cities in order to build a cathedral for every religion in each of your 3 culutre cities.

I say "4 to 6", because sometimes the early natural size is 4 or 5 cities. That isn't a major problem, as long as you can build 1 or 2 additional cities anywhere in the margins around 750 AD. Overlap here is actually good as you can use the new cities to work cottages that are in the fat cross of your 3 culutre cities (since the core cities probably won't be big enough yet to work all their own cottages).

Shillen: I agree, Washington does go after some religions pretty heavily. I have loss hinduism to him 1-2 times when i ahve tried for it. Mao has never beaten me to a religion, except taoism. I just select those three out of habit, I will try tossing in Cy and Victoria next game.

walker: I am pretty new to civ 4 and haven't picked up some of the little tricks yet. I had not thought about over lapping excess cities in order to work cottages to get htem to towns yet. Thanks for the tip.

Found out something new in my current game -

If a city with a foreign national wonder that you haven't built yet flips to you, you inherit that national wonder, which prevents you from building it yourself.

I just flipped a city with The Hermitage :mad:

I'm going to try with an initial warmonger strat then migrate to culture. The conquest should give extra religions, very nice city sites, and remove opposition. The extra room will give me the 9+ good cities I need to churn out all the temples and cathedrals I'll need to get the culture ball rolling. With a small map, the extra space will be nice. I'll get one city going as a great artist factory.

I'll probably go Inca - Persia's tempting too though, but I think the winner will have the financial trait.

This should be a very interesting challenge.

Okay after realizing that what I thought was an emperor win was in fact a monarch (arraaarrgh), I started again, this time with Saladin. What I wanted to try was to grab Buddhism and Hinduism, then wait for a great religious leader to get Code of laws, and then pursue to drama, liberalism, switch to 100% culture and focus on great artists, and see what happens.

I chose peaceful civs, without the industrial trait or the spiritual one to give me a headstart for the early religions : Washington, Cyrus, Victoria.

The first thing I noticed is that you want to be alone on your continent. If not, the best spots are going to get settled really fast.
My opening move was Meditation, Polytheism, Priesthood, then Mining and bronzeworking.
My first city prod was warrior or obelisk, then Monastery once I had meditation, then temple once I got priesthood to start the great Religious leader, then worker. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but if you want an early religious leader then it's the best thing to do, because Saladin does nto have any useful techs for an early worker, and if you go for bronze working first you will get beaten to the early religions.

Anyhow I got Buddhism and Hinduism, then a great leader, then Code of laws.
I founded three cities only, and one of them got judaism so I had a fourth religion to build temples, monasteries and cathedrals.
Everything basically went pretty well right up to the point where I discovered philosophy. I decided to switch to 100% culture and wait for liberalism to be more accessible.
But the thing is, having only religious buildings, librairies and theaters is a bit light to get an fast cultural win.
That, and having the religious wonders is actually a bummer because if you get unlucky (like I did), you can get 6 religious leaders in a row even with 5 artists in the city ! I had a 25% chance of popping a religious leader, and I got it 6 times in a row. Not good :(
But it would'nt have made any difference anyway, since by the time Washington won with a SS victory in the mid 1800s in was only in the 25,000 culture point per city.

So I don't think a purely peaceful strategy is going to work for that gauntlet. You not only have to get lucky on the great artists (or maybe try not founding any religions so as to get only great artists points in your cities but I'm afraid that will only make matters worse because then your religious cultural buildings will come to late if you wait for your neighbours to convert you), but you've got to cripple the AI.
It's too bad, because from what Firaxis said I was under the impression that a peaceful strategy would be viable on the higher level, but apparently you'll have to do some kicking...

Anyone tried something else ?

I'm going to try with an initial warmonger strat then migrate to culture. The conquest should give extra religions, very nice city sites, and remove opposition. The extra room will give me the 9+ good cities I need to churn out all the temples and cathedrals I'll need to get the culture ball rolling. With a small map, the extra space will be nice. I'll get one city going as a great artist factory.

You're probably right. The thing you'll have to watch out for is the Space Ship race. If you leave someone unharmed, they WILL get the SS really quick, too soon for a cultural win, methinks.

And watch out for the financial penalties with 9 cities... ;) I'm not sure you need that much, unless getting Oxford and Shakespeare are vital.
With three cities I managed to get 4 cathedrals.

Actually if you are going to get anywhere near the top of this guantlet you are going to need a 1300-1400AD culture win. The other civs won't have a chance to get a SS victory before that.

You will only need 6 cities to win. Since it is 2 temples per city for a cathedral on a small map you don't need 9.

You don't want to be on an island by yourself. You HAVE to tech trade to get some of the infrastructure/improvement techs. That means you need early contact. Also, you need to get several religions. You can't found them all yourself and religions barely ever spread to another continent if your city already has a religion.

I just had an amazing start with Ghandi. Was on a balanced map (pangea may be better) with cyrus, peter, and mao as my opponents. I founded 3 cities and culture flipped 3 more. Worked out rather nicely. Mao took out Cyrus around 900 AD which gave me some breathing room on one of his cities I flipped. I was doing pretty good. My capital was around 35k culture and my next two were around 10k at 1050 AD. Had 10 turns or so left for liberalism. Was going to starting hitting GL hard after that until I got nationalism then go 100% culture while I built the hermitage.

Anyway, was doing great until Peter declared war. I held him off of one city by upgrading the warrior to a pikeman. He sacked 2 more. I would have been ok with a cease fire and leaving it at that, they weren't any of my top 3. But he wouldn't declare peace. It sucked. He had a ton of knights outside my capital so I ended it. Hated to see it go down in flames.

Going with Inca and taking out a civ with quechuas in the beginning may be very viable but not sure if it will win out.

I am liking Ghandi right now. I can grab up 4-5 religions if no one else starts with mysticism. I can also get some nice world wonders with him as well. Although I don't know if either of those points are good. Founding religions and getting the early wonders can pump out several prophets instead of artists. Will have to play around with it for a while.

I think the next game I play with Ghandi I am going to pump out a few swordsmen early. Whenever 2 civs war and one is about to lose I am going to try and steal a city or two. If they are better than my top 3 I will keep them, if not I am going to gift them to my closest neighbor to avoid war. May be a decent idea.

The first thing I noticed is that you want to be alone on your continent.
Try a pangea or balanced game with the tropical setting. Tropical provides more good commerce sites and the AI tends to be slow in settling jungle. So you can usually pick up great commerce sites with your 4th or 5th city.

But the thing is, having only religious buildings, librairies and theaters is a bit light to get an fast cultural win.
Not necessarily. If you get the right city sites, you can get 120+ commerce/turn with cottages and trade routes alone. This can provide the bulk of your base culture. Of course wonders are nice too. Unless...

That, and having the religious wonders is actually a bummer because if you get unlucky (like I did), you can get 6 religious leaders in a row even with 5 artists in the city ! I had a 25% chance of popping a religious leader, and I got it 6 times in a row. Not good :(

I've quit going for The Oracle in high difficulty games, because even when I get it, the Great Prophets tend to screw up my game. It's a tough call, since a Holy Shrine provides decent culture and obviously a lot of cash. But I personally avoid Stonehenge and The Oracle. I do like great engineers though (you can rush critical wonders and if you get too many great engineers, you can also rush not-so-critical great artist point wonders), so I far prefer The Pyramids as my early wonder.

If you do go with an islands game (or some other variant where you are alone), grab The Great Lighthouse. With harbors, this can mean 2 additional +8 commerce trade routes/city. That's equivalent to 2 towns! Great merchants aren't a disaster either, since you can merge them into your great person city for the incremental cash (always welcome), extra food, and additional incremental culture (if you build Sistine Chapel).

So I don't think a purely peaceful strategy is going to work for that gauntlet. You not only have to get lucky on the great artists (or maybe try not founding any religions so as to get only great artists points in your cities but I'm afraid that will only make matters worse because then your religious cultural buildings will come to late if you wait for your neighbours to convert you), but you've got to cripple the AI.
You don't have to get lucky on great artists if you avoid the "wrong" wonders. Also, late religion is not a problem (as long as it's not in the last 100 turns). While I do try to spread the religions to 6 cities as soon as I can, I generally won't build the religious buildings early at all. When it comes time, I'll spend a number of turns at 0% science and minimal culture (whatever my happiness will support) and buy the buildings. I often buy 10,000 shields or more worth of buildings (primarily temples, cathedrals, and any missionaries for religions that aren't fully spread yet). Delaying 100% culture in order to rush buy this infrastructure has had a very nice affect on my end dates and it's made me far less dependent on actual production values of my 3 culture cities. If I get an all jungle/grassland city (which I've had before), I can happily operate with that 1 shield for the entire game, knowing full well that it is going to be a culture powerhouse when it needs to be.

90% of your culture is going to come in the last 200 turns (marathon speed) of the game. So the actual date that you build a particular culture-producing building doesn't really matter much. If you need a bank or aqueduct more than you need the temple or monastary, don't be a slave to the culture-producing buildings.

I just had an amazing start with Ghandi. Was on a balanced map (pangea may be better) with cyrus, peter, and mao as my opponents.
Why those 3? Well, I understand you want to grab the early religions. But a combination of Mansa/Hattie/Ghandi (substitute Cyrus for Ghandi in your case) will never attack as long as you are reasonably compliant to their demands and trade techs like a maniac (which you should do anyway). If anyway slips to "cautious" due to a different religion, buy them off with a trade or tech gift.

With a completely peaceful triumvarate of opponents, you can get away without building anything bigger than a warrior for the entire game (and you wouldn't need those, except for the unhappiness that exists when you leave your cities ungarrisoned). That seems like a preferable builder strategy, even if it means sacrificing an early religion (which will probably spread to you at some point anyway, either naturally or through a flipped city).

The one caveat is at the end of the game - make sure you save some great artists for the last turn. I'm not exactly sure where the AI appears to believe that you are actually going to win, but it appears to be above 145K or so in all 3 cities. The AI will attack in this situation. So having a couple of cities well below that threshold that get culture bombed is required for a completely peaceful win.

For what it's worth, I ran through two games on Quick with Qin last night and finished right around 1930 in each. I founded three religions--Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity--and balanced the shrines between the three culture cities best I could (I wish you could pick what cities religions will be founded in!). I built three temples and monestaries in each.

This was a custom continents map with six continents and three opponents: Cyrus, Liz, and Cathy. My (still-operant) assumption is to avoid aggressive civs (for a peaceful game), industrious civs (to minimize wonder competition), and religious civs (so I can found them myself).

I chopped Stonehenge right away for the great prophet bonus. I also chopped Pyramids (with stone), used a great engineer to build the Sistine Chapel, and chopped the Parthenon. After that, the tech bonus that the AI receives at Emporer prevented me from competing in the wonder game.

Observations: I don't think quick speed is the way to go. I'm going to try marathon next to see how the math changes. I also don't think Qin is the best leader: industrious just isn't as useful as philosophical at the high levels, because you will only be in the running for the early wonders anyway, and you can always chop those. Plus with Pyramids, you will gain an engineer or two. I'm going with Lizzy next.

Also, it's really easy to play a peaceful game if you give the AI lots of land to expand into. They won't bother with a measily 3-5 city empire if there is a lot of room to grow already. You don't need to hand pick spiritual civs to do this, and in neither game did anyone attack me, even when I was close to the cultural victory in all three cities. So while it might be a good idea to save some great artists as walkerjks suggests, I personally didn't find it to be a factor in either of these games. Might as well give the AIs their little tributes too. It doesn't hurt you in your single-minded quest for culture.

For what it's worth, I ran through two games on Quick with Qin last night and finished right around 1930 in each. I founded three religions--Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity--and balanced the shrines between the three culture cities best I could (I wish you could pick what cities religions will be founded in!). I built three temples and monestaries in each.

You won in 1930 ? How did you avoid the other civs building the Space ship ?

Walkerjks : thanks a lot for the great advice :)

Why those 3? Well, I understand you want to grab the early religions. But a combination of Mansa/Hattie/Ghandi (substitute Cyrus for Ghandi in your case) will never attack as long as you are reasonably compliant to their demands and trade techs like a maniac (which you should do anyway). If anyway slips to "cautious" due to a different religion, buy them off with a trade or tech gift.

I have been straying away from spiritual civs so I could grab the religions, however I may try that combination since none start with mysticism. I have thought about starting as Saladin myself, I don't need the industrious trait and the Phi trait could help more. However Saladin starts with the wheel instead of mining, so I have to research mining get be able to chop rush anything, not to mention before I can research masonry/monotheism. So that is a turn off from him.

Getting ready to make one more run at it with Ghandi and play against Cyrus, Hatty, and Mansa. I enjoy founding the religions in the beginning and getting the oracle which gives me theology. This gives me something to trade with once I get alphabet. Having the religions is easier than having to wait for them to spread, but it may not be necessary.

If Ghandi doesn't work out this time I am going to go with either Elizabeth or Qin and see if I can get to alphabet and then music first. If go for that I shoudl be able to get the extra great artist and trade for everything below that. I am also thinking about trying to rush for liberalism and get the free tech. Would let me trade for just about everything up until that point.

I just finished my first marathon attempt with Liz, and this one went much better. I won in 1719 this time, shaving over two centuries off.

That's still practice, but I feel pretty good about the progress. I could have finished earlier if I had access to marble. The big holy buildings--catherdrals, etc.--are all double production speed with marble. This makes marble more important than stone by a long shot in this gauntlet. So if you have the choice between a start near stone and a start near marble, take the marble and chop your Pyramids sans le rock.

But I had stone. Oh well. I can also say that it's possible to get a few good wonders, even with a non-industrious leader on Emporer. I landed Stonehenge, Pyramids, Parthenon, and the Sistine Chapel. Those are the exact same wonders that I landed with Qinn last night. So much for the industrious trait. Choose philosophical or spiritual instead.

I founded six cities, all coastal but one to take advantage of the financial trait. Obviously, you will want to be operating under the caste system and pacificism as soon as you possibly can. I received probably around a dozen great artists, four great prophets, and one engineer. I played against Mao, Cyrus, and Catherine. I managed to found three religions again, the same ones (Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity).

I was only attacked once the whole game: a half-hearted effort by Cyrus, who only sent one knight and two cats. I bribed everyone. I gave away everything I didn't need. For example, copper late game is pretty useless, as was the stone, after I fell behind in techs. Also, you may want to give away or trade your luxury resources. You won't need the happiness bonuses when you're running a culture bar at 70-100%.

I noticed that the AI researched techs WAY WAY faster at marathon than at quick. So you may want to plan for that.

If I do this again, I will stay with marathon and Liz, and switch to tropical climate. I will wait till I have a start near marble with land for three well-fed cities for culture/great people farms and a few others to help with tech. I may try a pang map to take advantage of tech trades, but I really hate the idea of playing for hours setting up a win, only to have it snatched away by a sneak attack. One small continent is all you really need. An ideal situation would be continents so close that you meet your neighbors early, but with water between you to disuade them. I guess I'll keep the sea level low, to encourage more land and narrower boundaries between continents if I don't try a pang map.

@Masquerouge: I've noticed that at quick speed on small maps, the AI doesn't develop tech as fast. When I won those games in 1930, only one opponent was even building the SS, and he wasn't far along.

What's the best time so far with this gauntlet?

That's still practice, but I feel pretty good about the progress. I could have finished earlier if I had access to marble. The big holy buildings--catherdrals, etc.--are all double production speed with marble. This makes marble more important than stone by a long shot in this gauntlet. So if you have the choice between a start near stone and a start near marble, take the marble and chop your Pyramids sans le rock.
Not quite true -

Stone doubles production - Judaism, Christian,
Marble doubles proudciton - Islam, Hiduism
Copper doubles production - Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism

Marble is most important though.

I could be wrong but I think all the wonders that give great artist points are sped up by marble. So based on that I prefer to have marble than stone nearby. Both is great of course.

A question for the warmongers -

Which scenario (starting with the Incans) looks better to you?

1) Start with 3 opponents, and conquer 1. This leaves you reasonable maintenance and 2 opponents to facilitate trades.

2) Start with 4 opponents, and conquer 2. This leaves you bigger, and you still have 2 trading partners.

3) Start with 3 opponents, and conquer 2. This leaves you biggest, but with only a single trading partner. I would want to leave Mansa. You can't conquer him anyway with quechas (you could obviously leave him out of the game), but he is one of the only leaders willing to trade tech even he is the only civ with that tech.

Any thoughts? The thought of a single opponent is attractive as you should be able to get wonders (and late religions) fairly easily. I'm not sure how much this slows down overall tech pace.

I'll probably also try this one (though it's a bit too random for my tastes):

4) Start on a ring with 11 AI opponents and 1 tile width connections. Conquer your immediate neighbors. Defend your choke points against whatever your crazy neighbors throw at you.

@Masquerouge: I've noticed that at quick speed on small maps, the AI doesn't develop tech as fast. When I won those games in 1930, only one opponent was even building the SS, and he wasn't far along.

What's the best time so far with this gauntlet?

He. That's good to know. I'll give a try at quick then.

On a side note, I was pretty disappointed by Hatty in my last game. She declaredwar on me ! Hatty, you just bought your ticket off this gauntlet :)

Hatty kept getting hiduism before I did, so I took her out. Mansa kept getting the oracle before I did. When playing for religions like I do those two aren't viable. My last game with was Cyrus, Peter, and FDR. Cyrus and FDR both seperated me from Peter. They both declared on Peter. I was doing ok. I turned down declaring war on Peter a couple of times. They made peace, then war again. I thought FDR popped up and asked me to declare on Peter so I said yes. It was the other way around :( FDR stomped me pretty bad. Would have done ok but not great.

I am sticking with Cyrus and Peter. Not sure who will be #3, maybe Frederick or Bismarck but I can count on both to war at some point.

Which scenario (starting with the Incans) looks better to you?

3) would be nice if you could do it costeffectiv.
I noticed that there isnt too much danger to get Domination win because land % you need seems to be higher on higher levels.
With Incas the aggr trait is a waste after that however. I looked out for some civ with good UU and better traits but there doesnt seem to be anything eye jumping. Egypt could be worth a try also.

A question for the warmongers -

Which scenario (starting with the Incans) looks better to you?

1) Start with 3 opponents, and conquer 1. This leaves you reasonable maintenance and 2 opponents to facilitate trades.

2) Start with 4 opponents, and conquer 2. This leaves you bigger, and you still have 2 trading partners.

3) Start with 3 opponents, and conquer 2. This leaves you biggest, but with only a single trading partner. I would want to leave Mansa. You can't conquer him anyway with quechas (you could obviously leave him out of the game), but he is one of the only leaders willing to trade tech even he is the only civ with that tech.

Any thoughts? The thought of a single opponent is attractive as you should be able to get wonders (and late religions) fairly easily. I'm not sure how much this slows down overall tech pace.

I'll probably also try this one (though it's a bit too random for my tastes):

4) Start on a ring with 11 AI opponents and 1 tile width connections. Conquer your immediate neighbors. Defend your choke points against whatever your crazy neighbors throw at you.

I have been thinking about this very question.
My first tried I conquered 2 out of 3 as fast as I could but the maintenance killed me.
I'm still thinking what my new approach would be.

I have been thinking about this very question.
My first tried I conquered 2 out of 3 as fast as I could but the maintenance killed me.
I'm still thinking what my new approach would be.
Maintenance is a problem under any scenario. In the Inca games I've tried so far, I've researched wheel and pottery first. In the peaceful games, I go Bronze and then wheel and pottery. If I can't start building cottages when I get my 3rd city, maintenance will slow the entire ancient age down.

This was my first try at an emperor and culture win so I think I did pretty well other than I did not get the win after having three cities at legendary (around 1822).

Me – Elizabeth
Asoka
Isabella
Mansa
Map - Pangea Small
Speed – Epic

I restarted until I had quick access to stone, coast, and two bonus foods. London had stone, hill pigs, rice, and a 4-tile inland sea. I built the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Great Library, Statue of Liberty, Hanging gardens and Notre Dame. National wonders included Forbidden Palace, Globe Theatre, Hermitage, National Epic, Oxford University, and Wall Street. I tried to group wonders in the three culture cities.

Tech was Bronze, Masonry, Myst, Animal Husbandry, Wheel, Agg, Writing, and Alpha. I think (don’t have my log at work) I popped one or two early techs from huts. Trade for most of the early techs with alphabet. Only one civ had Iron Working so I researched it next. Then went Lit, Dram, Music (I was First). Not sure on the rest but I was first to Liberalism. This seemed strange because Asoka and Mensa were way ahead of me on Techs. I was in third place the whole game.

I had a total of 10 cities three were flipped from Isabella. The culture cities were the first the founded. York (2nd) was in a flood plain with access to gold and Bronze. Notty (3rd) was on an inland coast (1f, 2c) with pigs. I was originally going for coastal cities with Collasas but Mansa built it before I researched Metal Casting. Also one city was founded on a coast with river access and Gems. Turned out to be 2nd in commerce to the capital.

I founded no religions but had 4 spread to me. Late in the game (1590) I realized I should drop Culture to min for happiness and use gold to rush cathedrals and temples. I had +200% in London and York and +300% in Notty. Until Pacifism I never selected a religion and then went to Buddhism (Asoka and Mansa both had Buddhism). Upset Isabella but was able to keep her cautious or better until Asoka took her out of the game.

Built one axeman for happiness and then used the few troops from culture flips in other cities. Never had war declared on me. Only war was Asoka vs. Isabella.

Mistakes I made included not spreading religion to minor cities fast enough and not building temples earlier. I had a city with cows, rice and fish that I didn’t set to GP farm earlier. York and Notty I did not put Artist Specialist in until late supported 3 and 2. Also due to either how slow I was or how fast AI was they converted to Emancipation around 1600. At the time I was running minimum culture in order rush cathedrals so had to beeline to democracy.

Now the biggest issue I had my cities to legendary around 1820. The game didn’t end and I didn’t create a save file until around 1860. If I look at the victory status screen it shows that I have 3 cities but I have not received the win. I played until the 1900’s and no win.

Now the biggest issue I had my cities to legendary around 1820. The game didn’t end and I didn’t create a save file until around 1860. If I look at the victory status screen it shows that I have 3 cities but I have not received the win. I played until the 1900’s and no win.
Could you send me the save file? Send it to hof@civfanatics.net and I'll take a look.

Oh, and welcome to CFC! :dance::band::banana:

I tried the early rush with incas, but its heavily map dependant or I just haven't much experience (skill) with them yet.
They aren't all that effective, you are literally throwing away hammers both using them and building them (because of the new chop rules where you can't have excess greater than the cost of the last build). I'm able to take some cities but ultimately the losses are great enough that I need a large starting force or try it a bit later with maybe theocracy to get woodsman upgrades to speed up the process or some other useful combination.

Skirmishers are even worse, the extra first strike and natural 4 power should make the better than the inca but they aren't two times better thus the cost ratio doesn't compare.

In light of those failures I figure the old standby of swords will work just as well and not require much of a early sacrifice, but thats even if you want to try early conquest. Which I don't think it required and maybe not even effective but we'll see what happens with the gauntlet.


I'm now of the opinion that pyramids is about the only close to required wonder and then getting an engineer from that to rush another useful wonder, maybe Sistine's is a good opening. I've stopped bothering with stonehenge and oracle mainly because of the prophet points although getting these coupled with an early caste switch might prevent you from ever getting a prophet. Worth the effort in lower difficulties but I haven't tried it yet at this one.
My reasoning is that you get a base +12 culture from a great artist and an additional +2 from Sistine's. Sistine's effective culture is massive if you have specialists which is why I feel getting an engineer to grab it quick is worth spending an early leader on. And so no other super specialist is as good joining, nor are any of their buildings. As to the question of where to join, I've been joining early ones to my capital as I know whether its going to be one of the three, and if it far outpaces the others, that just means less great works need to be built there at the end. YMMV


On other topics I tried a coastal based game and it was very effective. For one the early lighthouse is fantastic for commerce. Getting all your cities on the coast with good land is a challenge though. The lighthouse coupled with the colussus and a financial civ might allow you to drop to 100% culture quicker and in so doing make those coastal tiles more powerful than cottages. It would be tough to achieve but an interesting map with some well played lakes on coastal land with both of those wonders could quickly and easily win this in the midgame from mainly culture slider (and the rest goes to cash rushing the cathedrals).

The key to rushing with quechuas is to take your first one and head to the nearest capital. It is on a hill you may as well start over. If it is on flat ground just move your quechua next to it. If you get there early enough they will have 2 archers and send 1 to attack you. If it is later they will both defend. Defend the initial attack and go for the vs archer promotion and let him heal. Then hit the city. If another archer popped up will take you a try or two. Should be easily sackable though.

I don't know if it is worth going for taking out a second civ though. If you do plan to hit a second civ I would research bronze working first and have your capital work on a barracks from the beginning. Whenever you take out the first civ use their worker to chop rush quechuas in your capital.

I would keep the first capital but I would probably raze the second capital. If you keep it, it will kill your maintainence. You can live off of the cash from taking out the cities for a little while.

I doubt playing as the inca will be in the top 3, but it is a viable strat. Easier to master than some of the others.

I managed a 1598 win. Qin vs Washinton, Mansa, and Victoria on a small marathon Pangea.

I don't think I'll play with Victoria again.. she likes rushing Music too much.

Towards the end of the game I had one of those thunderbolt moments when I realized I was doing something totally wrong. I think on my next game I'll be able to shave a century or two off that time.

More later.

- Bill

@walkerjks: thanks for the heads up about the marble vs stone production bonuses on the holy buildings. Good to know.

I tried playing as Ghandi on team battleground LvR. It wasn't that bad, I got stuck with Mao who declared war and pretty much killed me. It has some possibilities though. I think that map may be a decent choice. Either for playing Incas and quechua rushing your one opponent or picking extremely peaceful civs. If you city is near the coast your cultural boundaries will leak far enough out to see opponent galleys and make contact.

Something else about that map is that each side has all of the resources. I made sure I had marble from the start. I ended up with iron and mao didn't have any. I probably should have built swordsmen and taken a few of his cities or even wiped him out. The problem was that he had horses and I didn't, so he got me with horse archers and cut off my copper. Couldn't make pikes to hold him off.

The only bad thing is that it is a small map. So you will have close borders from the beginning. I only had the chance to found 1 city. Flipped 2 more and probably would have flipped 1-2 more. I had a space in the corner blocked off that I would have settled eventually too.

I think my next try may be with the incas and try and take my opponent out. Would give me lots of freedom to build once my cash situation gets better. I will see how it goes.

[QUOTE=Dianthus]Could you send me the save file? Send it to hof@civfanatics.net and I'll take a look.

Just emailed the file let me know what I or the game did wrong.

Managed a 1430 win, again as Qin. Opponents were Washington, Elizibeth, and Mansa. Small Temperate Pangea Marathon.

I built almost every wonder on my path to Liberalism, intentionally losing the Parthanon with about 1000 hammers in it to fund the thrust to Calendar. I'm not sure which one of the AIs it is (didn't check), but they always prioritize the Parthanon.

I made one major mistake during the game. In the late game, where you're basically just clicking "next turn" and waiting to win, I had forgotten about one automated worker. When I finally noticed him he was at my capital, uprooting towns to put in farms!! That screwup cost me about 5 turns, as my capital fell from being culture-leader to culture-lagger. I didn't even reassign that worker -- straight execution. I you have to make an example of things like that.

I also manipulated my great people poorly. I had maybe a half dozen of them in the game.. only two artists. With a little planning, I could have gotten three artists and trimmed 20-30 turns of my time.

Given that I had both marble and stone, and that there was no war, and that I didn't make any major blunders, I'd put the minimum time for this gauntlet at around 1370ish. Anything less and you're clearly a better gamer than I.

- Bill

Go under options and check that automated workers leave existing improvements. It helps out a LOT from that stuff happening.

Has to be Mansa that goes for the parthenon, he gets oracle on me.

Does anyone know the trigger for culture victory on marathon?

Does anyone know the trigger for culture victory on marathon?
<<SpeedThresholds>
<SpeedThreshold>
<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_MARATHON</GameSpeedType>
<iThreshold>150000</iThreshold>
</SpeedThreshold>
<SpeedThreshold>
<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_EPIC</GameSpeedType>
<iThreshold>75000</iThreshold>
</SpeedThreshold>
<SpeedThreshold>
<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_NORMAL</GameSpeedType>
<iThreshold>50000</iThreshold>
</SpeedThreshold>
<SpeedThreshold>
<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_QUICK</GameSpeedType>
<iThreshold>25000</iThreshold>
</SpeedThreshold>
</SpeedThresholds>

The aggressive approach with Huaynac worked fine, but not fast enough, resulting in cultural victory in 1646, marathon, panagea, 4 opponents. I'm sure I could have done better with a more cooperative AI; it took ages to get the final AI, Mao into my confidence. I also didn't know what the victory conditions were exactly (thanks Denniz), and didn't go into pacifism as early as I could, so I'm sure this time could be improved a lot.

I think the big problem with this approach is that the aggressive trait isn't useful after the initial conquest. A leader with philosophical trait churning out great artists with metronomic regularity is going to be my next effort.

I managed a 1332 AD win (which was preceded by a 1366 AD win) using Elizabeth as a balanced, low sea level, tropical map against Mansas, Hattie, and Gandhi.

I had no stone or marble, but managed to build The Pyramids and Parthenon through normal means and the Sistine chapel and Spiral Minaret through great engineers. I also built The Colossus late in a non-culture city to give a very small boost to my only coastal culture city (I was only working 2 coastal tiles - so spending the time in the city building the COlossus on "wealth" would probably have been a better decision).

I only had 4 religions. I founded Taoism and Confucianism (in that order). Buddhism and Hiduism spread to me early. I also flipped a Christian city too late to exploit it. In both of my games, the early 3 religions got split evenly among the AI opponents, which made them all late to Code of Laws and Theology.

A couple noteworthy choices:

1) Initial expansion is handled differently than most people are probably used to. I build an initial worker who has time to mine a hill before bronze working is complete. Once bronze working is complete, the second worker is almost done. I chop rush the remaining second and a third worker. I then chop rush 2 settlers, another worker, and another settler. So basically 3xworker, 2xsettler, 1xworker, 1xsettler. This generally menas clearcutting anything around the capitol.

Here's the key though - I don't settle any of the settlers until I research pottery. I want my time at 30% to 60% science to be as short as possible. Which means I want cottages to support the new cities almost immediately. So I will move my settlers in place. Sometime before I actually get pottery, a worker will move to each city site as well. Once I get pottery, all 3 cities are founded and cottages are started immediately. It's slower to get cities 2 and 3, but I also get out of the tech deficit very early.

You can use the early settler to explore a bit. A perverse result of no barbarians, to be sure.

The big risk is losing one of my city sites to the AI. This happens, but when it does, I simply move the settler to the next best spot. No big deal.

2) My tech research is optimized to grab 1 religion (at least), have lots of trade value, and get to Liberalism first. I concede the early religions and music. My path in both games was:

Bronze -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Masonry -> Alphabet -> Drama -> Philosophy -> Liberalism -> Printing Press -> (Communism) -> Nationalism

In this game, I skipped Communism since I only had to rush buy for 4 religions (and fortunately, 3 of the cathedrals required copper for double production) and 1 of my cities had hish enough production that it didn't make sense to rush buy there. There simply wasn't enough total rush-buying to justify the extra 100 turns of research to get to Communism. That isn't always the case (The 1366 game I had 6 religions and all cities were low production).

In this game, I had gold at my initial city, which accounts for the very early pottery date. In non-gold games, I get it around turn 103.

I'm not at all convinced this is the ideal strategy. I think a 1300 AD win is very possible under better circumstances with this strategy. But I still think the proper war strategy might work better.

Edited to correct mistake about religion founding.

I am PISSED!!!!!!!!!

I have given up on going with Ghandi & trying for religions so I thought I would give your strat a try. Played as Elizabeth but I change the opponents a little. You mentioned that they all split the religions so they were slow to code of laws and theology (which I wasn't thinking and thought you wanted them to get to it earlier to trade for it, just now figuring out that is backwards), so I thought about just putting 1 religious leader in there to see if they could get it faster. I chose Ghandi, Cyrus, and Peter. I have never really had a problem with Peter in past games unless he is really provoked.

I restart until I get a nice starting location. Was 1 space off a river with several flood plains. Had stone 2 spaces away and some health resources nearby. I explored around and found that I was in the middle of a wide peninsula. Found 3 GREAT locations for cities that blocked off the rest of the peninsula to settle later. Everything was going good, was 4 turns ahead of your to pyramids but I rush it a little.

I could see the edges of Ghandi but no one was even touching my borders so I thought I was going to get lucky and not make anyone mad when my borders expanded. About halfway into researching drama Peter has chariot outside one of my cities. For NO REASON he declared war. We were +1 relations before that. No negatives. Well, my warrior managed to somehow win against the chariot. He didn't come back for 15 turns or more. He refused to talk to me, was going to give him something to make him happy.

He then takes on of my cities. I thought "not too bad I can get it back if he declares peace". Then he razes a good city and procedes to take my capital next.

I hate Peter.

Have a couple questions for you walker.

1) Do you build all cottages or do you put in farms as well to help when you need to grow fast?

2) Do you put the farms on plains or grasslands?

3) Do you concentrate on growing your cities as fast as you can (waiting for happiness of course), on production to get that out of the way, or on working the cottages to get them to upgrade ASAP?

My advice: never build a holy shrine in your GP farm city. Despite only having a 15% chance of a prophet my GP farm city managed to spit out two prophets in a row. Say goodbye to 24,000 culture (marathon speed).

Have a couple questions for you walker.

1) Do you build all cottages or do you put in farms as well to help when you need to grow fast?

2) Do you put the farms on plains or grasslands?

3) Do you concentrate on growing your cities as fast as you can (waiting for happiness of course), on production to get that out of the way, or on working the cottages to get them to upgrade ASAP?

1) Cottages and more cottages. The only exception is a rare one - if I found a city in the jungle with 0 food resources (happened in the 1366 game), I will farm a couple spaces to get population growth jumpstarted. If I have +4 food, growth is fast enough for me. Later in the game (when I have Code of Laws and Pacifism, I will replace some cottages with farms at my great person city. If the great person city is a culture city, I keep some cottages around and strike a reasonable balance between specialists (7 is nice) and cotttages. If the great person city is not a culture city, I irrigate everything. I might as well push the great people to the limit.

2) Grasslands, only because 3F, 1C looks like the farms is actually accomplishing something, whereas 2F, 1S, 1C looks like I could do better with a cottage. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, as long as I have +4F, but it's a psychological thing for me.

Of course in the aforementioned jungle city, I often won't have any plains to farm.

3) There are two cases here -

Case #1 - the culture city - Grow at +4 food (I'll switch to faster if I get a big boost in happiness). Otherwise it's commerce. I normally have set my city automation to emphasize commerce only. I may to manually tell it to work a food bonus square. I will build mines, occasionally use them (again, for world wonders, or for oddball stuff like The National Epic), but never go overboard. I would rather keep the cottages worked and growing than get buildings built.

Case #2 - the non-culture city - I still like to keep growth reasonable (+3 food or more), but I am more inclined to work mined hills (particularly mined grassland/hills) alongside the food resources and some cottages. I want these cities to be churning out missionaries at a reasonable rate mid-game.

I don't spread any religions until all 6 (or 5 or 4) of my cities have a religion. I let natural spread work first. Then I will dedicate a city to generate missionaries for each religion and spread them myself. Temples are the priority after religion spread. In my log, you will see a fair amount of religion spread activity between 0 AD and 1000 AD.

So by the time I hit Liberalism/Printing Press, I generally have only built 1 monastary for each religion, but each religion is more or less completely spread throughout my civ. Perhaps 30% to 50% of my temples are built. Then I have to make the decision to go for communism or start buying immediately.

Ok, thanks for the tips. I guess I am just too used to building buildings that aren't necessary in this gauntlet. I need to concentrate on commerce more.

One thing that I have about all cottages is that your population won't get high enough to work them. My last try at the gauntlet I was only at 12 pop or so in my culture cities and had 15-20 cottages on some. I was thinking about building no more than 15 cottages and the rest farms.

What buildings do you build in your culture cities? I think I build too many. I usually try and get library, granary, aquaduct, theatre, monasteries, temples of course, and then cathedrals. If I have time I go for universities as well but I think that is a waste now. I try and get the buildings built as fast as possible to get them out of a way but that can sometimes sacrifice commerce. I am probalby just better off waiting until the end and rushing temples and cathedrals.

What buildings do you build in your culture cities?

Granaries, obelisks (very cheap culture that will double by the time the game is done), temples, catehdrals are the only truly mandatory buildings. Temples aren't even mandatory if you you end up with more than 6 cities with that religion (happens if a couple cities flip before 500 AD). Libraries almost always get built. Theaters always get built. Theaters are very cheap culture that when doubled are almost worth a cottage. At least some monastaries will get built (but only all of them in a high production culture city). Universities come after monastaries (50% more culture for more than 50% more cost than monastaries). Harbors go into coastal culture cities. Aqueducts and grocers are on an as-needed basis for health. Banks are situational (I usually build a couple somewhere, such as a city that has multiple great artists added as super-specialists) or a flipped holy city.

Note that I don't actually research guilds or banking, but usually get these through trade (or unsolicited gifts, if the AI is doing fairly well).

Once nice thing about the balanced map is assuming you build 3 culture cities, 1 great person city, and 2 "extra" cities, you can usually place the cities in such a way to capture most of the health and happiness resource types (at least after a couple border expansions).

One thing that I have about all cottages is that your population won't get high enough to work them.
I forgot to comment about this bit. City placement is pretty critical. I tend to place culture cities (well, all cities, really) in range of 2 food resources, because that allows me to work many more plains. The exception is the pure jungle location, which is pretty much ok with or without food resources, though you do need some irrigation in the latter case, so having a banana or rice resource in range is better.

I've absolutely been taken in by spots that initially look spectacular, but once I get into the game I realize that the single food bonus is only a 4F spot and there are far too many plains to work more than 10 or so cottages at once. For this guantlet, I had to become much more careful about knowing exactly how many food a resource would give me and count exactly how many cottages I could work at max population so I wouldn't get any nasty suprises at the end of the game (two cities cranking out 900 culture/turn while the lagger is at 500 culture/turn). 13 is fine. 15 is really good. I count coastal as half a cottage, certain resources (the ones that give you 4 to 6 culture when worked) as half a cottage, and being on a significant river is worth an extra cottage due to the sum of the +1 bonuses. Gold and silver are worth 0 cottages, because while they provide a cottage's worth of culture, they provide no food, so they replace working another cottage or having another artist specialist. Grassland/gems, however, is worth a cottage. Having enough forest to chop rush an early wonder is worth 1 or 2 cottages. I'll build The Pyramids somewhere, but it's far better if it goes into a cultural city.

Don't forget to count grassland/hills as cottage spots as well. They are equivalent to plains. I might mine them early to get the valued 1F, 3S production and convert them into cottages before I get fully into buy mode. They still will have time to get to village status and provide 5C by the end of the game.

Of course, I don't have to really commit to a particular city for culture until liberalism or so. The +50% culture buildings don't do a lot of good before then (cottages aren't developed enough and you aren't running the culture slider high yet), so if another city overtakes one of my initial 3 due to a couple of wonders, I won't hesitate to shuffle the culture cities around a bit.

Wow Walker, that's really impressive. Nice job.

1430 following your strat. I made a couple costly mistakes. I missed pyramids by 4 turns which meant not having that extra 3 happiness which hurt growth a lot. My cities also got too spread out, should have kept them close by. For some reason the map had very few happiness resources. I had gold and hatty was willing to trade me spices. Other than that I was out of luck.

Going to give it another go tomorrow. I will be happy breaking 1400 for this gauntlet but would love to make top 3 again.

1450 AD win using Incas on a high sea levels balanced map against my usual opponents.

Gandhi started 5 spaces from me (as the crow flies - 10 by foot around a bay) and was conquered before he settled a 2nd city (he had the settler built - I captured it).

I conquered Isabella as well (3 cities), giving me Stonehenge and the Hindu holy city.

I wasn't blown away by the quality of either capitol, though both did end up being culture cities. I really didn't like the lack of control of city site selection. On the other hand, I did really like the excess food at all of the AI cities. Even though my 3 culture cities were only fair (generating 2600 culture/turn combined at the end with 5 cathedrals in each), all 4 non-cultural cities were generating 50+ great person points a turn. Despite not being philosophical, the great people were flowing steadily.

I also didn't like having only Mansa left as an opponent. The quality of trading went down considerably, since I could only make 1 trade for each tech I got. I probably ended up with more wonders (I built Notre Dame, for example, which I have never done in other games), but I had to research more myself.

One important note - I have rejected mercantilism in the past as basically rubbish. Better trade routes are almost always better than a single specialist. When you don't have economics or corporation, however, and you are on a pangea-style map, you only have 2 trade routes. You may lose +2 to +4 commerce by switching to mercantilism, but that is more than offset by the +4 (+6 with Sistine) culture from an extra artist specialist. Plus you get the extra specialist in all your great person cities. I'll have to more seriously consider mercantilism in future games.

After this game, I still think there is a lot of promise in good warmonger dates. I need to raze some cities (to reduce early costs - I can always rebuild in the area) I capture. Inca on an LvR battleground is the next attempt.

When do you usually build your 5th and 6th cities?

Alright, remember that earlier post where I guesstimated that 1370 was the bottom end for this gauntlet?

I am stupid.

I took some elements from the Elizibeth players here and managed a 1296 win.

Me: Elizibeth, on a Small Low Sea Temperate Pangea Marathon.
Against: Asoka, Roosevelt, and Mao

I changed my opponents this game. I usually avoid Religious civs, but I had the idea that if one civ founds all the early religions, there was a good chance everyone would join their state religion, and there would be no war. So I picked Asoka (who loves him some religious tech), and Roosevelt and Mao, who are builders who couldn't care less. The strategy worked out -- Asoka discovered everything, and save for one Indo-Chinese war, it was a peaceful Buddhist world.

I really micromanaged my Great People this game, as which is opposite my usual playstyle. I had 11 Artists, 2 Prophets, and 1 Engineer. The engineer built Notre Dame in a city that needed it, and one of the prophets discovered Theology for me. The other prophet made his living as a super specialist.

You can guess what I did with the artists. I stored them up (I had nine on the board at one time) until it was obvious which cities would need them and in what proportion (post cathedral-building-orgy), then popped them all at once. My culture graph has a nice spike that just makes me smile.

I made one hideous error that I've personally vowed never to repeat. One of my great people farms has a single unit of food, right? Not enough for a full specialist, but the worker is just wasting his time out there gathering. So I decided to add another Artist and starve the city down a population point. Good plan, right? I can even cycle this up and down.

Again, I lose track of things. And before you know it.. the city starves down a population point, and I'm not watching. The next turn.. an artist starves. And another on the next turn. And the next. And the next. Until I'm left with a 1-population former GP farm.

Man, I'm an idiot.

Luckily, it built itself up again.. it might have produced another Great Artist if this blunder hadn't happened, but that artist would only have shaved off about 3 turns from my overall time. So it didn't turn out to be a huge disaster... but it easily could have.

- Bill

1262 AD Inca on a Team Left vs Right tropical Team Battlefield againt Gandhi, Hattie, and Mansa.

I was on the same side as Gandhi. It seems to me either Gandhi or Hattie will do. Restart if stuck with Mansa. Build about 5 quechas. You probably only need 4 quechuas total to take out the AI on your side (they will likely have 2 archers defending the capitol). If they are built on hills, give it a try, but restart if the attack fails.

In any case, you should be able to conquer that opponent before they settle a second city. In fact, a good trigger to declare war is the appearance of their first built settler. Capture it and you can get 2 workers out of the war.

In this game, I built 5 quechuas total (the last wasn't necessary), I conquered Delhi on turn 59. In the process, I got 2 workers. Furthermore, Delhi was the Hindu holy city. I never did found a holy shrine (I had a great prophet, but I really didn't want to up the great propeht sources in Dehli. In hindsight, the holy shrine would have been marginally better than the prophet super specialist).

At turn 59, I stopped all war. It seems a little silly to use the UU and one of the leader traits for a total of 59 turns, but the Team Battleground LvR map is built for this. Conquer your one opponent very quickly and then go into normal builder mode.

Your capitol and the enemy capitol should provide two great culture city spots. The jungle in the middle should provide a third spot (and perhaps a couple of potential spots). I placed all other cities based on access to resources and excess food potential. I wanted every other city to be a great person city. In the end, I founded 6 more cities (beyond the capitol and captured Delhi) for a total of 8 cities. Initially, all of these cities were cottaged up to speed research. Once I stopped research (in 575 AD), the other cities had cottages replaced by farms. My 5 great people cities supported a base 6, 5, 6, 6, and 7 artist specialists. This could have been higher with more time (more grocers and aqueducts and more time to grow would have led to higher population sizes), but every city produced 1 great aritst and most produced 2. There was space for a 9th city, but it controlled no resources. So I left it empty, and Hattie settled it. This proved fortuitous in getting Judaism, when the city flipped to me.

My research path changed a bit from Elizabeth games. In this case I went:

Pottery Bronze -> Masonry -> Priesthood (to build Oracle) -> Code of Laws (free Oracle tech) -> Alphabet -> Monotheism -> Theology -> Liberalism -> Divine Right (to get Islam) -> Printing Press -> Nationalism

I obvioulsy went after late religions more aggresively. I ended up founding Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. I missed out of Taoism by at least 20 turns. I captured Hiduism. Buddhism and Taoism spread naturally. I flipped a city with Judaism with about 130 turns to go. So I had all 7 religions, and had time to build 20 of 21 possible cathedrals.

I built Pyramids, Oracle, Sistine, Stonehenge, and The Parthenon normally, and The Spiral Minaret and The Taj Mahal through great engineers. In hindsight, Stonehenge might have been a mistake. The +16 base culture/turn is nice, but it replaces 3 obelisks (+2 base culture/turn at the end), so the net is lower. And you'll get a at least one great prophet to deal with, which is about my least favorite great person in a culture game. It's hard to say whether Stonehenge is really a net gain or loss. I suspect a small positive (as long as it goes in one of your culture cities).

Whew. Alright.

1256 on my usual Small Low Sea Temperate Pangea Marathon.

This was essencially the same as my previous attempt, except I put even more empathsis on getting Great Artists out. I believe I produced 14 this game.

My One-Religion-World strategy backfired on my pretty badly this game. Asoka took Buddhism and Hinduism, as expected, but Mao grabbed Judism, leding to a schism on the continent. This was bad -- there was constant fighting going on. I even had to repel and invasion once myself. Luckily, my crushing tech lead meant I could bribe Roosevelt to attack Mao whenever he went after Asoka. In this way, Mao lost a little ground with each attack, and in the end was eliminated.

I also had problems with happiness... my area of the map was health-heavy, happiness-light, and I couldn't exactly spare the time to build the multiplier buildings. This meant that many of cottages didn't get worked high enough by the end of the game, slowing me down a great deal.

The starting location was almost ideal. Two gold hills and corn on a river. I founded on one of the hills and had an extremely nice +2f +2p +3c city right from the start, with a second gold mine on the way.

I'll wait a few days for this game to sink in and see if I can come up with anything else I could have improved on.

- Bill

<- Begins to hate Mansa Munsa

He ruined almost all my games so far, just bad luck or do you experience continious crazyness from him also ?

I stopped playing with Mansa. I found that Financial civs expanded way too fast for my liking, picking off spots I had marked as my future GP farms.

- Bill

I don't really like mansa either. He tends to go for different stuff every time I play him. Hard to predict. I am having problems getting religions. Last game I founded Taoism and had hinduism and confucianism spread to me. Flipped a Christian city just a before I won but couldn't use it. Ghandi is building the Oracle and grabbing theology with it and beating me to code of laws. Last game he also beat me to the Parthenon which kind of sucked.

I am going to try playing as the incas again and see what i can pull off. I am going ot play with 2 non-spiritual civs and either ghandi or hatty. Restart until they are on my side. That way I can grab their holy city and be free to grab the other religions myself. Not sure if it will work though. We will see.

I am also thinking about playing as Ghandi but following the same strat I was using with Elizabeth with 3 non-spiritual civs. Either grab hinduism in the beginning or wait until I get alphabet and try and grab judaism if it is still available. Could build the parthenon and oracle that way I think. If I build Stonehenge I can get a great prophet to research code of laws and use the oracle for theology. So that would give me confucianism, taoism, christianity for sure, plus atleast 1 spread to me. Possibility of grabbing hinduism and judaism. If I get another prophet grab Divine right to get islam. Would be nice to have all 7.

I just never have any luck getting more than 2 to spread to me and founding 2-3 myself.

IMO Gandhi is the worst possible opponent for this game. His biggest strengths are grabbing all the religions and building all the wonders.

... which makes him the best possible target for the Quecha rush. :D

Ghandi is one of my favorite people to play with but he hasn't really worked out for any of the gauntlets yet.

I just finished a quechua rush with HC. Finished mid-1400's. I was hurting for cash early, had to wait to settle all my cities so some were behind. Founded 5 religions and had one come to me. Managed to get the last one in the end but didn't have time to use it. I missed the parthenon by 4 turns. I think that is a pretty important wonder in this gauntlet. I only managed to churn out 2 prophets (grabbed theology and divine right), 1 engineer (completed the Taj for a golden age), and 7 great artists. Missed music by 1-2 turns or I would have had another.

There are a couple things I think I am going to try with Elizabeth tomorrow. So far the quechua rush seems to be the best strat but I think liz may be able to pull something off.

If the resources are in the right place I am going to try and make a U with my cities next game. Let the comp settle in the middle on purpose, then flip'em later. If I space it out just right I can flip it in time to actually matter.

So I joined the bandwagon and tried a Quecha rush. This time I played on a balanced low sea level map against Cyrus, Asorka, and Mao. I finished in 1432 this time, a lot better but still quite a ways from the big scores.

I chopped Stonehenge and The Oracle for Theology. I landed the Pyramids the old fashion way since I had stone. Later, I built The Sistine Chapel and the Hanging Gardens. I had two great priests and used one on a shrine and one on a tech. In addition I had two scientists and about seven artists. With Liz and the Parthenon I was able to get about twice that.

Food is everything in this gauntlet, eh? That and a lot of cottaging. I had to fend off one major attack from Mao. It had me worried, but I was able to chop some knights with my last forests, and that saved me.

I eventually got all of the religions but one. I flipped two cities. I should have let the second one go in retrospect.

If I had access to marble, I could have shaved a lot of time off. I'm not sure if the Quecha rush is worth the loss of the philosophical trait.

I think maybe the ideal would be the same game I just played, but with Liz and a map that allowed the possibility of having marble, stone, and copper. I could wait a while on the stone, but I want marble right away. I would settle more aggressively to make up for the lack of the Quecha rush.

But each of these takes so long on marathon, and I'm SUPPOSED to be working on my dissertation...

If you are doing a quechua rush then play team battlegrounds left vs right. That way when you take out one opponent you have the entire side of the map to your self and it is divided by water. You will have all the resources you want, including the marble, stone, and copper. I like to have marble close to my starting location if possible, but not required, I can usually get it in time for the parthenon.

Is it true that Obelisks are still producing culture after you have researched calender ?

Is it true that Obelisks are still producing culture after you have researched calender ?
Yes (except for Stonehnege provided obelisks, which go away completely, though Stonehenge still produces culture).

Monastaries also continue to provide culture after Scientific Method.

How can you make missionaries after scientific method if you don't already have a monastary? Do you have to change your religious civic or is there another way?

Just finished a 1492 pangaea game with Elizabeth. Got lucky at start as I got Bronze working from a hut about 5 turns in, and got a couple of workers then 3 settlers from my capital. After I popped Bronze I researched the Wheel and Pottery and started dropping cities. I then got Mysticism then dropped research to 0% and planted a few other cities to make 6. This was pushing my finances heavily, but I pulled it off and was ahead of my opponents (Cyrus, Washington and Frederick) researching maths before them (no point researching alphabet first when youre ahead) . Early Iron working was essential to chop jungles. As I had marble nearby I built the oracle, getting Code of Laws and founding confuscianism. I then got philosophy/taoism, then worked through to music then liberalism (via theology, which i researched to get sistine chapel). then I went through and got up to democracy (about 850 AD) then followed the advice given earlier in the thread about buying cathedrals. I dont think this was worth the 50 turns to go past nationalism (I didnt get Pyramids) so you learn. Kept no state religion throughout (unless asked to switch) until I went 100% culture when I used pacifism. At the same time, i got my workers to farm over the grassland near my support cities, then loaded them with as many artists as possible. In total I got 13 great artists (1 early game, 1 with music, 11 at end from those three cities) and 1 prophet (which I used to found Islam). The only other wonder I build was Sistine Chapel, but it's bonus wasn't useful as I only had the free mercantile specialist in my culture cities (they were all working towns).

In hindsight, I don't think founding a religion is very relevant. As long as you're well connected to everyone else, you'll get plenty spread to you. I founded Confuscianism Taoism and Islam, and each of those only made it to two or three cities - it was Buddhism and Hinduism that got everywhere. Secondly, you wont produce many great artist points before you implement pacifism, so the philosphical bonus is only in effect +50% GPP. Overall great artists provided a third of my culture. However, I dont think they are the key. not even cottages. I reckon it's all about the wonders. In my 100% culture phase, it was really more like 70% culture due to upkeep, so each town was producing (with printing press) bout 6 culture points before multipliers. The Oracle was producing 16 culture points before modifiers - almost three times as much! If you get your early settlers out of your capital by chopping, then chop out early wonders in your other cities you get a couple of powerhouses working throughout the game. I think the way to do it is not use commerce cities for culture, but production cities. Naturally they will have cottages as well, but need farms and mines to build wonders, temples and cathedrals. I reckon Qin's the man to go for.

Answering your question ben, you can build missionaries from cities that had built monasteries prior to scientific method. Changing to organised religion is still an option I believe, but I haven't tried it personally.

Just finished this latest gauntlet with an appalling 1917AD finish. Still for a first time cultural victory attempt on my part I think I didn't do half that bad. Played Ghandi archipelago VS greek, egypt and Mao. Managed to get all 4 early religions so with that in the pocket I think I should have done a lot better. I missed out on the pyramids by about 8 turns so perhaps that is the cause of a much later finish....

Hmm i wonder what happens if you build obelisk in your three culture cities and after that Stonehenge - did anyone try this yet ?

If you start the obelisk before Stonehenge, you're allowed to finish it after Stonehenge.

I just finished a game with HC. I managed to take Ghandi's capital which had founded both hinduism and buddhism. After teching masonry I went for Poly then Mono to found Judaism, then priesthood. I then built the oracle to get theology, and used a great prophet to research code of laws. I used another great prophet to tech half of divine right, was beaten by 2 turns or I would have founded all the religions.

This only took maybe 50 turns to almost get all the religions and I made that up by trading for a ton of techs. The problem is that you don't have a larger enough financial base to buy all the cathedrals fast enough. I had 7 cities, tried to flip another but didn't work. When I was at 0%,0% I was only making about 500 gold a turn. Considering the cathedrals cost 1k gold and I only had maybe 6 built before then, I was forced to spend 60 turns to get the gold to buy them. Not to mention the turns I used to get some temples as well. I agree with Gaz, religion may not be the proper way to go with this.

Going to try something new. We will see how it goes.

I dont think its a good idea to priorize relegions that heavily, with only three opponents its very likely that the ones you didnt found yourself will spread to your cities and thats all you really need.

I have had a lot of trouble getting religions to spread to me. Especially if I am playing with HC on team battleground left vs right. However the shortest path to liberalism will let you found every religion. Founding a religion also gives you a free missionary, which saves a little bit of building.

I just tried something different. I played as HC and took out Ghandi. My tech went like this pottery-bronze-liberalism :) I teched alphabet while waiting on the oracle to finish and give me code of laws, but by then I had alphabet finished so I grabbed paper. As soon as I hit liberalism I switched over to 100% culture (although it was 70-80) and that was around 800 AD. Was going to see if not going after cathedrals would save any time. It didn't. Finish was in the late 1600's. Getting the religious buildings is pretty important to finishing with a decent time. Doesn't matter if you found them, but you do need a couple cathedrals. Also, switching your support city to GP city too early hurts since you pop isn't as high as it could be. Need to find a nice medium.

Something else that hurt me a lot was that I had several happiness resources and few health resources. Also I had a limited number of food plots to build on. Which caused some growth problems early.

Next game I am just going straight for liberalism and going after stonehenge, the pyramids, parthenon, oracle, sistine, and maybe notre dame.

If you start the obelisk before Stonehenge, you're allowed to finish it after Stonehenge.

Didnt work for me, however i was building the missing Obelisk in a different city. As soon as Stonehenge finished it wouldnt let me finish the last Obelisk anymore.

In case anyone is interested, I tried a version of the Incan Quecha rush. In my version I replaced "Incan" with "English" and "Quecha" with "Piles of Warriors". This 'strategy' doesn't get a thumbs up from me, because two archers can hold off ten warriors with ease.

I'm still not sold that early offense is the way to go.

- Bill

All of my latest attempts have ended in failure due to missing Pyramids by a couple of turns. I have been playing with Elizabeth on Balanced Tropical Low Sea Level maps. I have noticed that most times Marble is not available as a resource and Stone is in short supply.

My latest attempt I thought was going to be great. There was a very long river with two excellent city spots. One had 7 or 8 Flood Plains and all the remaining tiles as grasslands or plains. The other had wheat and a good number of grasslands. The third city spot had access to fish and crabs and corn with plenty of grasslands plains.

My capital had wine so my early tech growth was good. Went Bronze Working - Pottery - Masonry-Alphabet-Drama-Liberalism. As soon as I got Masonry I switched to making Pyramids. I did not have access to stone so I dedicated two settlers to clear cutting any remaining trees around my capital. I was just finishing the last chop that would put me real close to Pyramids and Peter managed to finish them. I tried to continue cranking tech to 100% but Mao eveuntually declared war on me and took one of my culture cities. Sad part is originally everyone was the same religion and then Mao up and decides to switch to a different religion.

To change pace I think I am going to try a Quechua rush. Maybe I the computer will not hate me as much.

@BlueRenner,
An early offense is possible with Liz if you beeline for copper and wait for a start where it is close by. Build a worker right away and chop some axemen while you research pottery by way of the wheel (to connect the copper). Since you won't have the wheel when you start chopping, you can pre-chop forests while you are waiting, then pop them out. Then switch to building cottages with the worker and immediately send the 5+ stack of axemen to the nearest city with lots of food and a worker to steal.

I have not been able to do this and still get the wonders I normally would, however. It usually costs me at least one big one (Pyramids, Parthenon...) due to the loss of forests. It might be worth it for access to marble and a good culture city sight, though, for example.

Yeah. I considered waiting for Axes, but every instinct I have tells me that's too slow, and I'm getting too distracted. I'm really not sold on the 'offense' theory of this Gauntlet. I'm probably just going to continue my straight builder route.

After a couple days of playing Team Battleground maps of varying sorts, I think I'm going to stop and go back to my beloved Pangea. I'm finding it very hard to put down enough GP Cities.. to beat my last time, I'm going to need at least three. The relative abundance of seaborne bonuses on the Pangea map really helps for this.

- Bill

I wasn't going to post until after I've had a chance to play a map all the way through, but I don't know if I'll have time to finish by the 24th, so I'll post a thought here and see what you all think.

I've been trying highlands maps using clustered peaks, thin peaks (for less mountains and hills, still plenty of them around), and small lakes.

This gives a HEAVY production map with LOTS of forest, and slows the AI down considerably. I had no trouble keeping up in score even without building any military. I haven't played long enough to see if I will be able to catch up in miltary fast enough yet, but on the quick game I started last night I've grabbed 3 religions so far (hinduism, judaism, and confucianism), lost out on buddihsm and christianity. I've built stonehenge (first build), oracle, and parthenon, and popped (believe it or not) 10 huts, scout from first one then bronze working, gold x 2, Wheel, gold x3, pottery, maps.

I'm only at 880BC, but I have 3 cities, 3 religions (2 in Delhi, 1 in Madras), 3 wonders, will have stone soon to build Chichen Itza, and have gotten 2 great prophets that both built shrines. I need to build a few more cities so I can get some military going (I have copper hooked up so I can build axes if I have to). Still have a bunch of forest I can chop.

I'm posting my turn log here if any wants to wade through it. ;)

EDIT: BTW, I'm playing Gandhi vs Liz, Mao, and Washington at quick speed with no barbs.

Pfft beaten by 10 minutes. Im doing what Xevious said, with Mao, finished in 1412 AD but sure I can do better. Got most of the wonders going before Modern Ages. Still not sure when a good time to stop teching and save money is, before Liberalism or after?

If you start the obelisk before Stonehenge, you're allowed to finish it after Stonehenge.


I haven't found that to be true. What version did you last try this? IIRC my evidence was in 1.52 and the obelisk was removed and I even lost the production towards it. Thats the case even if you finish it the exact turn stonehenge would be finished and the city is higher in the quene.

My current thoughts are as follows.

After trying both military and non military strats, I've come to the conclusion that playing Elizabeth (or possibly Quin) is superior to the military strat.

Essentially, the question is whether the initial military rush will beat the advantage of extra great artists.

I can usually bust out 9-11 GAs without the philosophical trait, and that's with only one main GP factory city. I reckon if I focus better on GPs, I can crank out at least an extra 5 GAs using lizzie, which is 60k culture on marathon or 20k per culture city. With cities towards the end popping around 500 culture/turn, that's a saving of around 40 turns. So the military strat must be able to gain you at least this much in terms of turns.

I don't think this will happen. If you get a good start with Lizzie, you can spawn out 3-4 settlers for new cities by the time you get bronze working and pottery (80 turns?), and you get to choose where to place the cities. Plus, you get the advantage of extra tech and religions from the other civs. Admittedly you do not have as much room to expand as you do after wiping out 2 opponents but this is less important in a culture game.

The axeman rush is something potentially viable I think, but you'd need some luck. Axemen cost a lot less than settlers, so you could still, in theory, chug out a few axemen and a settler+ worker or two before founding pottery, and I can believe the advantage in terms of expansion options would pay off. I doubt the issue mentioned with finishing pyramids in time is a problem; you won't be starting the 'mids until you have pottery and a few cities anyway (not the way I do things at least).

So, I'm going to continue with Lizzie (philosophical is the best trait here imo, followed by financial) on a culture map, using balanced, as this is the largest map. My first go finished in 1432, but I'm sure I can finish a lot quicker with better focus on GAs.

I'm curious when other people turn off science and max the culture slider. I always do it after getting liberalism - I have the pyramids to allow universal sufferage and representation so there's no need to chase them.

Alright. Finished a game in 1226. I don't think we've quite bottomed out on this one yet.. I think I can trim a good 15-20 turns off this time with a few minor tweaks.

Me: Elizabeth, pure builder strat
Vs: Asoka, Washington, Mao

This was my standard game, played on a Balanced map, instead of a Pangea. Wow, this makes a LOT of difference. I highly reccomend anyone messing around with Team Battlegrounds or Pangea immediately switch to Balanced. Its incredibly helpful.

In this game I produced 15 great artists. The game would have been shortened by about 10 turns if I would have had one more... and I probably would have if the Indians hadn't started taking away farms on one of my GP cities. I didn't even know that could happen, when a city has 6 artists pumping out pure culture!

The game progressed as usual, with me grabbing all the early wonders, and then the Hanging Gardens off a Great Engineer. Asoka founded all the early religions, and I went Hindu right after I got Philosophy. (I find its better to wait before adopting a religion, as Asoka has a nasty habit of flipping around sometimes). There was some early tension when Mao adopted Confuciansim (from me!), but I sent in a few Hindu missionaries and he eventaully saw the light. After that, no one ever approached declaring war on me.

A HUGE problem is that I'm going too darn fast! By the time I stop researching tech (260 AD, here), my cottages haven't developed enough to produce enough cash, and then later the same problem occurs when that cash isn't converted into enough culture. I think on my next few games I have to REALLY focus on getting the populations of my 3 culture cities up as soon as possible, and have them all out working cottages at the first opportunity. There quite literally is no time for hammers.

This was also my first game where I had the option of going Mercantilist. On reflection, I don't think it made any real impact. However, it think it can tip the scales in my favor by a small amount, and is a good idea in principle.

I'm going to give it a rest for a few days and then try again. Like I said, I'm fairly certain I can beat this time.

- Bill

Did you have Marble ? I have stayed away from Balanced yet because i never seem to have Marble on this map.

I think phil trait is overrated. One Artist offers 12000 points but how many turns do some extra Artis save you ? - not too many if you run with ~1000 culture per city at game end , e.g. 6 extra Artists would save you ~24 turns.

Marble is a problem for me on balanced as well. It is about 50/50 on stone on that map as well. I don't really like balanced for this gauntlet. If you get a good capital spot then it is hard to find spots with 2+ food resources to build your other cities without half the spaces in your city borders to be mountains and deserts.

Pangea is ok. I like doing the team battle grounds LvR and getting half the map to myself, you get all of the resources, but not sure if that is the way go. Highlands looks promising but is kind of sparce on the resources. You also lose about 3-4 squares on even the best location due to mountains and deserts.

I can't wait to see the results from this gauntlet. I think we could see 3 different leaders on 3 different maps for the top 5. Would be something different.

On the 1226 game, I started with marble two squares north of my capital. It was very, very useful, as I'm sure you can imagine. No stone, but I also had bronze and iron -- though I never built a mine on it! I cottaged my iron-on-grassland square.

In my games, my culture cities are typically producing between 500-550 culture-per-turn in the final moments. The lead up is much slower, with them slowly building from around 200/turn to that peak.

Furthermore, in the 1226 game my artists were not evenly distributed. My capital only needed two, one city needed six, and the other needed seven. So one city recieved a 72000 culture bonus, which translates into a 144 turn savings for it.

Philosophical overrated? I think not. Especially since I haven't maxed out the number of artists I get in a game. I think its quite possible to recieve around 20.

- Bill

My latest effort was a relatively poor 1370 AD, with Elizabeth vs Asoka, Ghandi and Hattie on a balanced map - very similar to BlueRenners approach.

I'm sure artists are the key to a quick finish, along with early towns and population growth. I popped 11 GAs even having starved down my main GP factory by mistake, and also popped a GE and a GS.

A single GA is 12k culture. That's between say 12 and 30 turns quicker a town can reach legendary culture. You'll tend to use them more on your worse culture towns (say 400/turn) which is the equivalent of gaining 30 turns. You can pop 15, 5 per city, that's a gain of 150 turns, 300 years.

I'm convinced the right map set up in terms of resources and terrain will determine the best times. It will be interesting to see when the results come in.

If you start on gems, gold or silver, early research to get to bronze and pottery is maybe a third quicker, 20 turns or so at least I'd reckon. So I have been regenerating the map until I start with one of these.

The other key is lots of food squares (resouces, and or GP) to make GPs with and grow your cities fast.

I just finished a 1406 with Liz. That's probably my last effort, as I'm going to get real busy in the rest of my world starting soon.

I was frustrated to receive 2 prophets and a scientist. My advice: don't grab the Great Library, even if it's easy.

Regarding the marble on a balanced map. I restarted dozens of times for hours on end and never got a spot near marble. I was just about convinced that there is no marble on balanced maps. Then on my last try I had not one but TWO marble squares, right next to each other. I had never seen that before. I wasn't aware that stone and marble resources can be found in adjacent squares.

I never switch to a religion in my games for this gauntlet. I do this to keep the peace. What do you think? Is it worth it?

Religion is necessary in the Great Artist strat, to take advantage of Pacifism.

Which leads me to a story about my last game. It was strange.. for some reason Asoka's religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism) didn't spread. So when I founded Confucianism, both Caesar and Cyrus joined up. I hadn't chosen my religion at this point, so I was faced with a choice: Use my Stonehenge-prophet to build the Confucian Shrine and spread it agressively, knowing I'd be a different religion from Mao and Asoka, or deal with two civs right next to me of opposite religion. Tough choice.

Since I've never gone with this option, I chose to go Confucian and build the shrine. The money coming in was great.. but it was ultimately my downfall. Once Mao got tired of beating on Asoka, he turned to me. That was game over.

In retrospect, what I should have done is that in the first Mao-Asoka war, I should have allied with Mao (we shared a long border) and then gotten the armies of Confucius to all pile on. The ill-will generated by warring with Asoka would be negated by the fact there would be no Asoka, and Mao would then have turned on Cyrus... which would have given me enough time to win, I thinking.

Another downside of the shrine is that it was in one of my GP cities. Mental Note: NEVER DO THIS AGAIN. The GP point that the shrine produces seems to totally overwhem the 18 GP points produced by 6 artists. From that city I recieved 3 Prophets and 1 Artist. It was sick.

Also, I didn't have stone or marble. I don't see this as being a major hinderance. The empathsis put on Marble by some of my fellow Famers is totally unwarrented, I'm thinking. Bronze is much, much, much more important, and thankfully more common.

Obviously, I don't know how that game would have turned out, but given that I stopped researching around 160 AD, I'm thinking it would be respectable, at least very least.

- Bill

Another downside of the shrine is that it was in one of my GP cities. Mental Note: NEVER DO THIS AGAIN. The GP point that the shrine produces seems to totally overwhem the 18 GP points produced by 6 artists. From that city I recieved 3 Prophets and 1 Artist. It was sick.

:nono: As my one piece of advice in this entire thread I said not to do that a couple pages back. I was trying to spare you guys learning it the hard way like I did.

@BlueRenner:
So the 100% great person bonus from Pacifism only works if you have a state religion in the city--is that true? I never knew that. I was in Pacficism most of the game, assuming that I was getting the bonus. No wonder I received so few great artists.

Ayup. Pacifism only gives the +100% GP bonus in cities with your state religion.

This is why I put so much thought into my current "One World Religion" strategy, so I can get all the bonuses without incurring any of the enmity.

- Bill

I've not found religion to be a problem using a pacifist strat. I don't found any religion before taoism or confucianism, and don't generally bother choosing a religion before I hit philosophy (when it's needed to make use of pacifism).

By this time I'm usually very sweet with all the other civs, having traded with them all nicely for ages. So when I finally switch to whatever religion none of them get too fussed about it and they still all love me. I've done this reliably in 3-4 games now, never fails with the right opposition. I use Asoka, Ghandi and Hattie.

How far do you go in teching? Do you stop after liberalism or do you go to nationalism to get the hermatage (I build the taj with an GE) or do you go to communism to get the kremlin to cut your costs in half?

I have tried all three. Best finish was liberalism but last game I went to nationalism and started the golden age while I was collecting cash. It worked well but I had a city that was way behind that I couldn't catch up.

How far do you go in teching? Do you stop after liberalism or do you go to nationalism to get the hermatage (I build the taj with an GE) or do you go to communism to get the kremlin to cut your costs in half?

I have tried all three. Best finish was liberalism but last game I went to nationalism and started the golden age while I was collecting cash. It worked well but I had a city that was way behind that I couldn't catch up.
I'm increasingly convinced that Liberalism/Printing Press/Nationalism is the place to stop. Nationalism is still a "maybe", however. Communism is often a "100 turns of research to save 120 turns of running a low culture slider" sort of decision. Hard to estimate, and my best games are those where I just bite the bullet and buy selectively at full cost of 3 gold/shield.

Printing Press is a very nice boost to commerce. And you can generally trade for the pre-reqs to make it your free liberalism tech.

Nationalism is going to make a difference of 150 to 200 culture/turn at the end of the game. Less earlier when you aren't running a high culture slider and your cottages aren't as developed. Optimistically, say an average of 125 culture/turn for 200 turns. That's a not trivial 25,000 culture. Compare this to the culture cost extra turns of research (though at a time when your cottage output is still relatively low). Your rush buying will be delayed, and ultimately, your switch to high culture slider will be delayed.

You can often (but not always) trade Education for Civil Service the turn before you get liberalism, which allows Nationalism to be the free tech, instead of Printing Press.

Of course the decision may change a bit, if you are generating significant science through specialists/Representation. In this case, it might be possible to simultaneously collect cash for rush buying and still research Nationalism in a reasonable amount of time.

Tried the Inca rush again and while ultimately successful, it was a dismal failure.
I took one city from Washington that was about 8 tiles from my capital. Then healed up my units and marched east and saw Victoria's borders, she had two cities at this point. Spying a settler on the move with one archer guard and another archer trailing I warred and took the settler, then marched to her capital. The trailing archer headed back but didn't get its +25 fortify bonus which allowed me to take this city with only one lost warrior. I kept the city and then marched on her last city figuring I would raze it. After taking it the fog reveals marble within range! I already had a city lined up with stone (was to be my first actual settler but 5th city.)

All this completed before 100 turns in marathon. Now to the problem, once I got alphabet Elizabeth wouldn't trade techs. She acted as if she had a monopoly, which she did, but at this point (and I assume duels) no trading could go on at all. Sounds like a bug to me, but at any rate my strategy banks on trading.

I don't think any quechua rush will work unless it is team battleground left vs right. That means you only take out one opponent and you get half the map to yourself to be settled at your own pace. And you still have 2 guys to trade with.

Man, you guys make me want to play this one just one more time...

http://www.bridgekeeper.net/start.jpg

This is one element short of being the perfect start for this gauntlet: there are no hills/plains I can move that settler on to so to get a +1p in the city, while still allowing work boats to be built. I'd absolutely love it if that first gold hill was 1 tile south, so I could settle on it on the coast.

Yeah, the generator throws out a lot of garbage starts, but every once in awhile your eyes just pop.

- Bill

Wow. Let us know what your other two cultural sites look like.

I would never settle on a gold hill. You're losing 6 commerce if you do that. Not worth it for 1 extra hammer early on.

Say never never ;) , if you have a location short on food and several bonus commerce fields it would be the way to go - well for gauntlet you would of course start over.

This startlocation looks fantastic, which civ are you playing in this one BlueRenner ?

Think he is a lizzie man.

Yeah, you can get fantastic locations every once in a while. I tend to think the better the starting location, the bigger the chance that you will get screwed for some reason. I had a great spot, pig, pig/hill, corn, stone 2 squares away. Had 2 plains hills and 1 plains, rest were grasslands and almost all were on rivers. I then proceeded to see that the next 20+ squares in both directions were mainly desert :(

I would only settle on a Gold Hill on the condition that it will give me +1p in addition to the +1c, AND I have another gold hill nearby.

The important thing about settling on a hill is that it gives you that extra free production for the whole game, but it also gets you that first worker 5 turns earlier. I haven't measured precisely how much faster it gets you the first settler, but I imagine its on the order of 10~12 turns. Hard to underestimate that, especially since my entire game is built around settling AI territory before the AI can get there.

I've found that while a single Gold Hill is good, two tend to be overkill. I'd rather take the production and the commerce now, than wait 100, 150 turns or so until I can afford to work both. By that time, the cottages should be the dominant tech force, anyway. With those clams, though, its a very debatable call.. it'd be fairly easy to work both hills and still grow once the city hits size 5.

And, since godonut asked...

http://www.bridgekeeper.net/york.jpg

http://www.bridgekeeper.net/notty.jpg

These two sites are merely adequate. I tend to save the really fantastic spots (bonus wise) for my GP cities. They tend to need it more.

And yes, it is Elizibeth.

- Bill

Nice start, what map config?

Now if that hut gave you bronze then you're all set.

Also I'd settle on a gold if the placement is good and I had an extra. A solo one I wouldn't unless maybe it was a desert hill. You do lose a lot doing that though, I'd rather settle on a dye or another weaker resource for that bonus gold.

Small Balanced Tropical.

See, the evil thing is that its impossible for that hut to give me bronze working, or any tech at all.

If I settle my city right where I am, the cultural borders will pop the hut. Then if the random generator decides that its a tech hut... it will fizzle and I'll get nothing, because my tech tree hasn't started yet, because my city isn't formally up and running yet.

Its a bug. A very annoying bug.

I tested this out on another map. I popped a 1st turn hut with a city and the hut just vanished. I blinked, then reloaded. Did it again the exact same way.. and the hut vanished again. Reloaded, moved the settler 1 square away, so the cultural border didn't pop the hut, then popped it with the warrior. Sure enough, I got Hunting.

Beware. Try not to pop huts until your first city is solidly founded. You run the risk of tossing away a tech.

On a totally different topic, I'm not at all sure I want Bronze out of that hut. There are interesting dynamics going on here, mainly revolving around the Gold Hill. On Marathon speed, there's time to build a mine with your first worker before you get Bronze. This means while your worker is chopping for the next 20-30 turns, that city is working the gold, pulling in what amounts to double tech, getting you to Pottery faster.

If you get Bronze right away and skip the mine to go straight for the chop, you lose out on the early gold mine and the double tech it produces (unless you don't chop right away, which is something I've never been able to discipine myself to do). I'd much rather pull Agriculture.

- Bill

Bronze is better if you mine the hill first, but I doubt I could do that either. I would say popping wheel would be good. I like popping mysticism but that is just me.

Do you happen to have that save file where you popped a tech hut with your cultural boundaries? If so, try going to the tech tree and setting you first research path. Then pop it. Also, if you set your first research path and save the game before you regen the map, it will save the tech path. I do that to avoid having to keep hitting bronze if a settle a new city.

Oh yeah, forgot the reason I posted in the first place. I had my best finish with Lizzie, 1466. I have been doing better with Huanya though. I thought I played the game amazingly well. Didn't make any real big mistakes. I was beaten to Oracle by a decent amount of turns which hurts me a lot. I I use the Oracle for Code of Laws so I can bypass drama. That probably cost me a few turns right there. I missed the Sistine Chapel by a few turns but that isn't a huge deal, and I did like the cash I got from it. I missed Liberalism by 2 turns. Which hurt a lot. Took me 18 turns for Nationalism I think?

Another mistake I made was that I flipped 6 cities, 5 during culture phase. I was stupid and saved them because they were in good locations and decent sizes. I should have traded them off, I didn't htink about that. I could have gotten some free tech out of it.

All together, I think missing the Oracle and Liberalism cost me 25-30 turns, maybe more. By keeping those cities I flipped it cost me about 15-20 turns of running at 80% culture, so maybe 5 turns on that. I could have finished 1390 or so with Lizzie.

I have no idea how you guys can get sub 1300 with her, I really don't.

Anyone with a sub-1300 game care to share their ending save file so I can look at city placement, buildings, etc.

I don't have the cultural-popping save game anymore. I was using the Autosave, and it got overwritten. I'll try the tech-tree-first plan next time I come up against the bug. Good idea.

I've attached the turn before victory save on the 1226 game. Go nuts.

- Bill

Thanks! That helps out a lot. I think I figured out my entire problem, I am doing WAY too much. I build too many buildings, improve too many tiles, and overall put in more work than I need to, but in turn it takes me a lot longer to do that work. I will try playing a little more minimalistic tomorrow and see what I can come up with.

My research times are about the same as yours, but I spend too much time building unecessary stuff that I shouldn't be building. I over-develop my GP cities as well. Taking the extra time to develop them is killing my GP production.

I don't think any quechua rush will work unless it is team battleground left vs right. That means you only take out one opponent and you get half the map to yourself to be settled at your own pace. And you still have 2 guys to trade with.
One other advantage of LvR Battleground is that trade is "overseas". This allows mercahnt specialists and great merchants to become viable strategy components.

Traditionally, merchant specialists are desirable in your non-culture cities because they allow your to generate more cash, which allows higher science or culture slider. The downside (which is huge in connected games) is that you don't really want great merchants. This changes a bit in disconnected maps. A great merchant can be turned into 5000+ gold late (around 1000 AD)which can potentially be turned into more than 12,000 culture in your 3 culture cities, depending on the overall state of your economy (how big a cash deficit you run at 100% culture). Alternatively, a great merchant can be used earlier for 3900 or so gold, which can be used to rush buy cathedrals. You definitely don't want a lot of merchants, but the disconnected maps give you a bit more flexibility in what you generate.

In any case, a minor optimization that is useful is to turn all your specialists in your non-culture great person cities into merchants as soon as that city has produced its last great person. The extra income may allow you to run the culture slider at 100% for a bit longer, which may mean a turn or two savings on the win date.

I always thought you can only have five religions in one city but now i read somewhere you can have seven, is this true ?

You can have all religions in a city, but it gets increasingly difficult to seed them so for most purposes 4-5 is the practical limit. You can have every holy city in the same city as well.

I have gotten all seven religions in my cities several times. Like Smirk said, once you get 4-5 it is hard to get the others to spread. The random missionary from your opponents won't spread the religion to you very easily. The only times I have gotten all 7 religions have been when I have founded the first 6 and don't actively spread them. Whenever someone founds Islam they are all about spreading it to other cities, you can usually pick it up.

Having all 7 religions is expensive. Unless you are spiritual the temples and cathedrals are extremely expensive.

1184 AD win with Elizabeth against Mansa, Hattie, and Washington on a balanced, low sea levels, tropical map.

I founded 0 religions. 4 spread to me. I built 11 total cathedrals.

I had stone and copper, but no marble (1 of my religions, Hinduism, required marble).

I built the Pyramids and Parthenon early. I built Hanging Gardens in a non-culture city (it had high production). I built Sistine and Taj Mahal with engineers.

Basic tech path was Bronze -> Pottery -> Masonry -> Alphabet -> Music -> Philosophy -> Liberalism -> Nationalism (free) -> Printing Press -> Banking

I only built cities. 4 cities seems ideal to maintain a quick tech pace, but sometimes you need the 5th. Each city served a specific purpose. 3 cities settled for cottage potential (culture), 1 for excess food (2 fish and 1 grassland/pig = 7 specialists) and great person production, and 1 for stone (and general missionary production). I was prepared to build a 6th city around 500 AD, but an AI city flipped.

I had no gold at the start, though I did have a riverside plains/wine to produce a pre-cottage tech boost.

In the end, I produced 2 great engineers and 14 great artists (including the free music GA).

Based on my relatively low religion and wonder production, I think there is still room for lots of further optimization. I also placed The Hermitage very badly (I put it in my top culture city, instead of my usual practice of putting it in my 2nd best culture city). That city ended with 165,000 culture, which is a huge inefficiency. That cost me 6 or 7 turns.

1216 AD. I was all excited to get this early finish, but now I see walkerjks just beat me :-(

I wanted to try something different than everyone else, so I played
Qin
Lakes map
against Hattie, Cyrus, Asoka, Frederick

...yes, 4 opponents. I normally do 5 but tried 4 this time. I don't have any trouble keeping the peace, so I like to have more people to trade with. One drawback is that they are all so cramped for space that they don't tech very fast, so I have to give them techs so they will eventually discover something I want.

I was able to found 3 religions Confucian, Christian, Taoism, and Hindu spread to me later.

I was able to get 14 Great People. 12 Artists. (even without the Philosophical trait -- which may be overrated.) My best GP city could only manage 4 specialists...not much food around.
I put 11 of the great artists in one city! The other one was added as a super specialist early in the game to one of my culture cities. This way I could build zero cathedrals in this city and 4 in each of the two culture generator cities.

The two big culture cities were over 900 culture by the end. They both even finished the same year...1216. One city had 150,001 points.

I only played those 4 cities. My capitol had marble, no stone, and could not even trade for it. The stone was only about 10-12 tiles away from my capitol, but I could not settle way over there early on and expect to keep my tech up.

One mistake was I forgot to get Printing Press. I shoulda been able to trade Nationalism for it. I never considered getting banking.

I think if I had a better tech start and more food, this strategy could do even better. I didn't get Liberalism until around 500AD. I've heard some people stop researching before 200 AD. Are you getting Printing press before 200 AD too? I must be doing something different if that is true. My path through the tree seems very optimized. I've tried a few different ones. I usually use the Oracle to get Theology. Then either:
A. go Paper -> Edu -> Liberalism and can usually trade for Philosophy, Drama, music, etc.
B. this game I went Code of Laws, Philosophy, first, for the religions and the Caste System and then Paper, etc. I didn't get the free Music artist obviously.

One mistake was I forgot to get Printing Press. I shoulda been able to trade Nationalism for it. I never considered getting banking.
The AI is slow getting printing press, so normally, I have to research that one myself.

Banking really depends on how much buying you will have to do (and how many of the pre-reqs you can trade for - you can often get guilds and then banking in trade. Rushing 3 banks (in your 3 commerce/culture cities) can often give you a net savings in the number of turns you have to raise cash for rush buying. I really didn't consider banks to be a part of my strategy until last week, so I it's new to me as well.

Bit of a n00b question here, but I honestly cannot figure out when it is ever a mathematically sound idea to use a Great Artist as a specialist, as opposed to having him generate a Great Work.

On marathon speed, the Artist Specialist makes +12 culture/turn, but the Great Work produces +12000. It would take 1000 turns without multiplers for a this specialist to exceed the culture his work produces.

Now, for this gauntlet a Marathon game should have a target of 600 turns (1200AD). Lets be generous and assume the specialist is in a +300% culture city due to cathedrals and the Hermitage and whatnot, and that this bonus is in effect for 150 turns. Furthermore, lets assume that this specialist was doing his normal +12/turn for 300 turns prior. Very generous. So...

((12 * 4) * 150) + (12 * 300) = 10800 culture

Which is still less than the great work, nevermind losing the flexibility of moving him around. And yet I hear stories of people using the Great Artists as specialists... I just don't see it.

What am I missing here? Am I missing anything?

- Bill

What am I missing here? Am I missing anything?
You are correct that the very early win date tends to push the cutoff date for use as a specialist much farther forward. But you are missing a couple factors:

1) With Sistine Chapel, you get an extra +2 culture/turn with the super specialist.

2) The non-cultural benefits matter. +3 science/turn under Representation is helpful (of course this benefit becomes useless after 750 AD or so - whenever you stop researching). The +3 gold/turn is worth more than +3 culture/turn. Assuming you don't have a positive income at 100% culture at the end of the game, every extra gold you have is worth approximately 4 total culture in your culture.

So perhaps a reasonable calculation of value is something like:

1000 AD and on: 14 * 4 culture + 3 * 4 "culture equivalent" from gold = 68/turn
750 AD to 1000 AD: 14 * 3 culture + 3 * 3 = 51/turn
500 AD to 750 AD: 14 * 2 culture + 3 * 2 + 3 from science = 37/turn
Before 500 AD: 14 culture + 3 gold + 3 science = 20/turn

That puts the cutoff around 1 AD. Look like I've been using them as super specialists a little too late myself (I've been cutting off at around 250 AD).

The Artist also makes 3 gold. Multiply that by 150 turns, then by +300% because it allows you to turn more commerce into culture, and that's +1800 more.

The he also gives 3 beakers with Representation...

And finally there is the border expansion benefit, especially in a border city.

(doh! too slow)

The trouble is, for a really good attempt, you'll stop researching somewhere around 250AD, which makes the extra 3 science pretty useless. Plus, you are trying to maximise culture, so why trade it off for other things unless those other things are great?

I had one more attempt at this gauntlet, and managed to somehow use the oracle to research philosphy; I got to liberalism before 300AD. It was looking good for sub 1300 finish until Asoka shockingly decided to invade (I'd been less generous with my tech than in earlier games, looks like I got a little complacent).

Hmmm.

Yes, its a bit more of a complex problem, there. The Tech argument doesn't speak to me... tech has never been a problem in this gauntlet. However, the Gold argument is very intriguing.

In my next game I'll invest my early artists and see what happens.

- Bill

I just haven't been able to finish teching before 600AD in this gauntlet, I have no idea about how you guys finished by 300.

I just haven't been able to finish teching before 600AD in this gauntlet, I have no idea about how you guys finished by 300.
Only one person has actually stated that they stop tech that early. I haven't stopped tech before 540 AD in any of my games. I suspect that BlueRenner is optimizing tech much better than I am, and I am doing something else better than he is (city placement? managing cathedral building better?).

I would guess BlueRenner is emphasizing artists (and their +4 science) earlier. The drawback to that is you can't rush-buy with artists when research is over.

I use at least one super artist in my +400% city. (Hermitage + 4 Cathedrals.)
That's 14 culture times 5 = 70.

For only 200 turns, that is 14,000. Plus all the tech and cash benefits.

Regarding ending research early...
I also researched well past 300AD that game (500 AD I think) and I didn't even get Printing Press.

I just checked my latest game that is going very well, (except no marble).
I got Liberalism on 220 AD. I went for the old CS-slingshot (Civil service from the oracle. Then run Bureaucracy)

I expect to finish this one around 1150AD.
We'll see...best laid plans...

My final attempt landed in 1334 AD (balanced, marathon). A bit disappointing as the start stop was good, but I did miss out on the Oracle, and made a few minor mistakes.

The tech path I usually go for is bronze->pottery->meditation->masonry->alphabet->drama->liberalism, trading for everything else not on that path. I skip developing farms etc (cities need towns not farms and mines for this) so there's not much need for agriculture and animal husbandry until the lack of health bonuses starts to hit you when your cities hit size 3 or so. This gives enough time to research alphabet, just.

In one game I managed to use the Oracle to slingshot philosophy and ended up getting liberalism around 250AD.

Alright, I pulled an 1140AD game.

I'm not at all sold on the whole "Great Arists Super Specialists" thing. In this game, I used two of my artists (out of 14) as specialists, and while I guess they did their job for awhile, at the end of the game I was begging for another Great Work. I could have finished 13 turns earlier with another artist out... I can't escape the nagging sensation that I shot myself in the foot there... though I haven't run the figures.

The Oracle -> Philosophy trick is my personal favorite, though very risky. In this game, I lost the Oracle to Mansa and had to go back and research it the mundane way. Life is sometimes very hard.

And yes, in my games I stop teching at or around 250AD. 220AD, in this game. I think what saves me a lot of time is that I don't go for Nationalism. I view the Hermitage as an extemely overpriced toy that is best ignored.

----

Aright, I picked through the game log and found out how much the first Great Artist Specialist made me. It came out to a total of 10024 Culture, +819 Gold, +135 Beakers. It looks like it came out pretty much even, with slight advantage to the specialist due to the gold.

- Bill

I'm not at all sold on the whole "Great Arists Super Specialists" thing. In this game, I used two of my artists (out of 14) as specialists, and while I guess they did their job for awhile, at the end of the game I was begging for another Great Work. I could have finished 13 turns earlier with another artist out... I can't escape the nagging sensation that I shot myself in the foot there... though I haven't run the figures.
Yeah, sometimes you just need 1 more great work to make the numbers balance, but there's no good way to predict this very far in advance. Use them to maximize culture as best you can and then start running the numbers 100 turns out to tweak the cities so you don't find yourself 12K culture short in one of your cities.

Congrats on the date.

Yes, amazing date, congratulations. I am still having trouble getting below 1300 and I don't know why. This guantlet is truly one to show who the better players are. I know I am following all of the basics just as well as any of you guys but I just can't figure out how to maximize the little things. I am still trying though.

Anyway, I thought about something that hasn't really been mentioned yet. Opponents need to be non-spiritual and non-industrious, working with mao, catherine, and frederick now. I have thought about settling only 3 cities. Placing them all in prime food locations, atleast 2 good food sources, preferably 3. Tech goes bronze-masonry(chop pyramids)-poly(chop parthenon)-pottery-priesthood(oracle)-writing-code of laws(oracle)-philosophy and stopping there. When you cities get to 8-10 pop convert to caste system and pump out some great artists. You can tech alphabet-drama-music while working on great artists.

The benefits of this are that you can stop teching before 0 AD and start getting Great Artists sooner. I had 4 by 0 AD. This strat focuses on GA instead of generating you own culture. You found confuscianism and taoism for sure. You will get hinduism either by founding it or getting it spread to you. Religions aren't really that important since you won't be going for cathedrals but the culture from temples and monasteries helps.

I have only tried this twice. Got beat to Oracle once and was declared war on the second time at 100 AD. I think this has potential. Having only 3 cities helps with expenses when going to 100% culture. Also, having 3 amazing GL generators is nice as well. All together you get 100 or so turns of extra GL generation, so all together that could be an extra 5-6 GA or so, maybe more. If you use the Oracle for philosophy you could gain enough turns for 1-2 more GAs but you risk losing it.

I am thinking that you can top out around 20 GA this way. Not sure what kind of culture you will be generating in the end so I don't know if those extra GAs will be enough. If I play this successfully I will let you know.

Forgot to mention, you can play this successfully with Lizzie or Mao. Lizzie is good if you have 2 cities on the coast to benefit from the extra gold while working coastal tiles, Mao gets the reduced civic cost and that helps out a lot when you aren't using any cottages.

I'm not sure an all-out great artist strategy will work. It's something I used for an 1116 AD win (don't panic - it's on settler). You can get +6 culture/turn from a great artist, which is very comparable to a village or town. And you don't really need to be financial to do it, so you can pick some other valuable trait. Additionally, specialists don't have to grow to give their full value, unlike cottages.

The problem is, until Biology, each extra specialist basically requires 2 farms, so each extra specialist effectively replaces 2 cottages. That's a bad trade-off. So to make a specialist + great artist strategy work, I think you have to research to Biology. At Emperor, that puts you too far behind.

I think it's very viable at lower difficulty levels, where you can get to Biology much quicker, and faster win wimes in general won't allow enough time for cottage development.

Hey Big_Ben,

I've been doing some of the math for a GA strategy too. 20 Great People would be very hard to get. 21 is probably impossible (assuming are target year is to finish in 1150AD) Let's say you can get 17 (out of your 18 - 20 people) to be artists plus one more for Music is 18. That's only 216,000 culture. You need 450,000 to win. You can't get the other 234,000 without cathedrals. Which means you need to generate $$$ to buy them, so cottages are required.

I think you're on the right track though. I wish there were a few more days left for this gauntlet. With 18 GA this could be won by 1100AD I think.

You can't get the other 234,000 without cathedrals. Which means you need to generate [gold] to buy them, so cottages are required.


You're overlooking the fact that this strategy is using many artist specialists. With the addition of Sistine's that is a significant culture generator all by itself.

Mm.. I don't buy it.

Artist Specialists -- even Great ones -- cannot approach the culture producing power of a set of cathedrals.

I could run a set of numbers if you really want, but I don't think it'll even be close...

- Bill

In practise you get about 1/3 to 1/2 of final culture from GAs the way I've been playing. That is to say:
- Get 3 culture cities
- All other cities GA factories to a greater or less degree.
- Sometimes I have to build a city in the middle of otherwise useless forest just to get a wonder or bunch of settlers built).

This means 2/3 of the culture is from cathedrals, buildings, and, most importantly, towns.

While I haven't yet got a sub 1300 date I know I could with a bit better luck and micromanagement - my best so far was 1334 but I popped 3 GEs on this game and didn't get the Oracle... the philosophy slingshot alone would have got me teched out 70 turns earlier...

I'm still pretty amazed by BlueRenners 1140 though. Grats on that one. It sounds like I'm aiming at most of the right things, but I'm sure I'm missing something. I reckon possibly the main thing I could do is hold off building more than 3 cities, or at least cities far from home base until after alphabet, so I don't get the slow tech problem until I've managed to trade for the basic resource techs.

My main issue apart from seems to be getting stuff built quickly enough after the tech boom. Other than getting the towns up faster to take advantage of universal suffrage, I'm not sure what to do though.

Blurenner: do you build marketplaces before temples/cathdrals, or after, or mix and match? I prioritise useful culture buildings (missionaries, at least one monastery per religion, cathedrals and cathedral enabling temples) over marketplaces.

I agree with BlueRenner re Nationalism; printing press is better as your bonus tech after liberalism so long as you've been able to trade for the machinery to get there. I presume everyone stops tecching after they get liberalism.

I used a GE to build the hermitage in my last game, which was nice, and will have gained me about 10-15000 culture I reckon (it would have taken 100-150 turns to build), so it at least uses up a GE nicely if you happen to pop one by accident.

You need 23 GAs to win a 3CC pure specialist gambit. Which is about double the GPP cost of 18 GAs.

I have never built a marketplace in this gauntlet. The things I use for happiness are:

1) Temples & Cathedrals
2) Theaters
3) Culture Slider

In that order. With the happiness resources I recieve in trade, its usually more than sufficent.

On a completely unrelated note, this Gauntlet has greatly realigned my perception of the "Creative" civ trait. Before, I had rated Creative as the 2nd best trait, right behind Financial. However, playing with Elizibeth so much has taught me how to deal with the no-culture cities initially, and how to push back at Creative civs. In all, my estimation of this trait has greatly diminished.

Goodbye Catherine, we had good times together, no?

I'm giving both Mansa Musa and Victoria serious looks for being my Civ of choice, now. I can't decide, I can't decide...

- Bill

Forgot to mention, you can play this successfully with Lizzie or Mao. Lizzie is good if you have 2 cities on the coast to benefit from the extra gold while working coastal tiles, Mao gets the reduced civic cost and that helps out a lot when you aren't using any cottages.

Have you tried Mao already ? From my imaginition i would say going without cottages and Financial trait will bring you nowhere close to the best finish dates.

Have you tried Mao already ? From my imaginition i would say going without cottages and Financial trait will bring you nowhere close to the best finish dates.
For a pure artist strategy, Mao might be better. Normally, you build cottages early to jumpstart tech growth, and then when it is time to go with specialists, you replace the cottages with farms. So losing financial means you lose some early tech growth, but you gain a monetary bonus throughout the game due to organized. Which is better probably depends on when you switch over to farms (as soon as you get Code of Laws, or sometime much later, such as right before Biology).

For what it's worth, I tried a pure artist strategy today with Liz on settler difficulty. It was pretty cool to have a city that supported 16 artist specialists without starving (one city was producing 200+ great people points a turn at the end), but nothing led me to believe that you could pull a pre-1200 Emperor level victory off using artists only.

Yeah Orca, it would Mao would only work with a pure specialist strat. Mao outperformed Lizzie when I played with him, but the opponents you have to play with to go the tech route I want and get the wonders are pretty hostile. I doubt it will be sub 1200, but I haven't been able to acheive sub-1300 personally. So it is worth a shot for me.

On a side note, I just had a great start with Lizzie. I figured since it was the last day I would go all out and try the Oracle-Philosophy jump. I hit Drama with 4 turns left to chop the last for the Oracle. I only had 2 workers chopping. I got beat by 2 turns. If I would have sent my other two over there to finish up chopping I would have had a great game. What does make me feel better is that Civ locked up right after that. Not srue what it was, first time it has ever happened, probably a video card problem, screen went blank but comp still worked. I would have been SUPER pissed if I would have gotten the jump and then locked up.

No worries though, I have time for 1 more full run tonight. My goal is simply to get sub-1300 and I will be happy.

1182 AD.

I guess I should check the boards first. I keep thinking I beat the best year only to find a newer low when I return here :-(

This, my third attempt, was hindered by the fact that I had no marble. If there were time to play again, I'd make sure I have marble.

I tried that Balanced/Tropical map everyone seems to prefer, but there were way too many jungles on mine. Couldn't chop as much as I'd like.

I hit liberalism again around 275AD, but went on to research printing press. I always get Nationalism free...gotta have the Hermitage! Even if you don't have marble, it's the same as 2 cathedrals, but you don't need the temples or the religion spread around. With marble it's 1/2 price! Traded for banking a while later and bought banks -- which I hadn't considered before.

I went with Elizabeth this time, but just missed getting my 17th GP.
I didn't have the Parthenon (no marble).
Again, I put all the the Great works in one city and used one early artist as a super-specialist my 400% city.
I'm still not sold on Elizabeth. She generates too many non-artists early because you have to build the Pyramids and Oracle first (or at least I do.)
I think I had the exact same number of GA's when I played China (but then I had the Parthenon.)

If I had the time, I'd like to try building only artist wonders in one super city. Run about 5-6 other Artist factories and produce 19 Great Artists + the free one at Music. Put 10 great works in each of two cities. Then you'd only have to build around 3 cathedrals instead of 8+. And only 6 temples instead of 16. Furthermore, you might be able to build most of those yourself instead of rush buying. I waste 50-100 turns generating cash. If only there was more time to try again....but lucky for me there is not, because my obsession with this gauntlet can finally end. I need a nap.

Yeah, I wanted to play this gauntlet one more time. I had to choose between going out with friends and playing 1 more round. I am glad I went out, but wish I would have played one more :(

Mm.. I don't buy it.

Artist Specialists -- even Great ones -- cannot approach the culture producing power of a set of cathedrals.


HA! I'm not selling it, just pointing out the additional elements of this strategy. I tried this last month for regular old hof attempts and came to the conclusing that cottage generated culture is still stronger (as opposed to farms and lots of specialists).

HA! I'm not selling it, just pointing out the additional elements of this strategy. I tried this last month for regular old hof attempts and came to the conclusing that cottage generated culture is still stronger (as opposed to farms and lots of specialists).
It's definitely worth keeping in mind for large-map, high-difficulty cultural wins. I suspect on a large, deity game, for example, that using Roman praets to pound your enemy and then using the best food cities for artists might be a quicker win than commerce strategies.

Gauntlet Three has closed, with congratulations to BlueRenner for taking 1st and 3rd place, and to walkerjks for 2nd. Beta Gauntlet Four (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=155963) is now open.

Hey,
I submitted in the evening on the 24th. Was I too late? or maybe rejected for some reason? I thought my 1182 comes in 2nd.

walkerjks, was 1184 your 2nd place entry or did you submit a better one?

Was I too late?
No. +xcl

Is there a finish date list of the winners? Other than those found in posts in this thread? I'm curious what the top three dates were.

Is there a finish date list of the winners? Other than those found in posts in this thread? I'm curious what the top three dates were.
See if this link (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/index.php?show=diff&condition=Cultural&mapSize=Small&submit=Go) works for you. You should just be able to scroll down to the Emperor table, as it's pretty much filled with BG3 submissions.

That 1220AD victory with Huanya Capac is impressive...

- Bill

Hey,
I submitted in the evening on the 24th. Was I too late? or maybe rejected for some reason? I thought my 1182 comes in 2nd.

walkerjks, was 1184 your 2nd place entry or did you submit a better one?
1184 was the "2nd" place entry, which seems incorrect given your game.

In any case, nice standard size deity win.

No. +xcl

What does +xcl mean?

In any case, nice standard size deity win.

Thanks! I'm happy you noticed. That was just one attempt at cultural on Diety. I'm sure if it were a gauntlet, someone would blow me away. I sharpened my Diety skills running a lot of OCC (One City Challenge) and managed a Space Race and Diplomatic Victory on Diety OCC. I couldn't submit it to the hall of fame because I had "No tech trading". That option actually makes it much harder since you can't make friends by giving away tech and you can't get techs you didn't research until the Internet is built. It was funny to learn Agriculture and hunting from the internet wonder.

Anyway, my Diplo skills should be sharp for Gauntlet 4. We'll see. Have fun everyone!

I thought I was going to be way behind not breaking 1400. Actually impressed at myself for getting 2 in the top 10.

Congrats to everyone.

What does +xcl mean?
He's just adding a few more characters to avoid the 10 character limit per post. x is roman numerals for 10.

That 1220AD victory with Huanya Capac is impressive...

I got a 1132 one with Huanya Capac, too bad my games are excluded because I had to use auto save for a couple of times - my game isnt 100% stable (and i was stupid enough to say so).
While I can certainly understand the staff doing everthing to permit cheating I think they overdid here. I guess no more CIV IV for me , good bye everyone was nice to take part in the competition and discussions.

Huh. Orca, looking at those 1220AD save games, it appears that we had completely different strategies, even after you went peaceful. I was doing a very minimalist approach, while you appeared to do, well, near everything.

A writeup would be appreciated, just for educational purposes. I'm putting one together too. I can't help but think a blending of these two strategies might result in a time well below 1100AD.

- Bill

I’ll start with a basic summery and then go on to some details.

Elizabeth VS Asoka, Hatshepsut, Mansa Musa
Tropical Balanced Emperor Marathon
Cultural Victory, 1140AD

The opponents were chosen for their peaceful nature, even in the face of different religions. By tossing good deals their way every once in awhile, I was able to keep my two co-religionists (Buddhism) Friendly, while the lone Hindu AI was merely Pleased. There was no war the entire game, and I never built anything beyond Neolithic warriors to defend my cities.

I built six cities, which I have decided is more or less the optimum number. In this strategy, the winning culture results from building up high commerce in three cities and then converting it all to culture, with multipliers. Two of the other cities served as Great Person farms, and the sixth city switch-hit. I had no production center, and throughout the game my hammer-producing ability can be rated as exceptionally poor.

The number of cities had a bit of thought put into it. The main factor is that the numbers just work out beautifully for six cities on small maps. It takes two temples to make a cathedral, and you have three culture cities, so it works out perfectly if every city builds every temple you need. I also added additional Great Person farms in previous games, up to 5, and found that every GP farm after the 3rd only produces one additional artist. This is certainly something to grab if available, but nothing devastating if it is not.

However, this did not particularly hinder me, as I built almost nothing that wasn’t absolutely necessary in my cities. The standard build order was like this:

Warrior -> Granary -> Temples -> Cathedrals -> Wealth/Culture

With the rare deviation for an aqueduct or theater.

The beginning game was marked by chop-rushing all the early wonders, except the Oracle, which I lost to Mansa Musa. I’ll elaborate later on why this isn’t a devastating loss.

The complete tech path I followed:

Bronze Working (hut) -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Mysticism -> Agriculture -> Masonry -> Animal Husbandry -> Polytheism -> Writing -> Code of Laws -> Alphabet -> Theology -> Philosophy -> Paper -> Music -> Education -> Machinery -> Liberalism -> Printing Press (free) (200AD)

If there are holes in the requirements of this path, they were filled by Tech Trading with the AI. Also note that unlike other players, I avoid Civil Service and Nationalism completely. I view the cost of researching these techs, combined with the cost of building the Hermitage on a marble-less map, to be probative. On balance, I’d rather keep the time and use it for 100% culture.

I also experimented with skipping Alphabet and letting the AI research it for you. I found that they give this an extremely low priority, and often you won’t see it until after 1AD. This is far, far too long to go without Calendar, and in addition it discourages them from discovering Literature and Drama for you. My strategy was to research Alphabet myself and then quickly give it to everyone, to give them a push in the right tech direction.

The theme of this game was to have my culture cities have as many cottages as possible, and for the cities to grow as fast as possible, in order to work those cottages from the earliest date. In my calculations, a freshly-built cottage needs to be actively and continuously worked from at minimum 1AD for it to reach Town level and provide the associated gold/culture boost for the crucial final turns. Obviously, the earlier the better.

This effected my city placement a great deal. Jungle cities are dismissed out of hand – I’d never get them clear in time, especially since I was depending on the AI for Iron Working. Likewise, cities with Calendar growth resources were avoided – by the time Calendar comes around, the city won’t have enough time to grow and work its cottages. The entire theme here is explosive early growth, followed by a steady working of cottages. I gave Emancipation a good, hard look.. but in the end, it was just too far down the tech tree.

I produced sixteen Great People this game. One Prophet from Stonehenge, one Engineer from the Pyramids, and fourteen Artists from my artist-filled GP farms. I used two artists as Super Specialists, to mixed results (see previous post), and twelve to create Great Works. The Engineer built the Sistine Chapel for me, and the Prophet built the Confucian Shrine.

This is what I consider to be one of the crucial decisions of the game. Previously, I had used that Prophet to discover Theology (2160 beakers), but I decided to use him for raw gold production with the shrine (in one of my non-GP farms!). This was an amazingly good decision. By 200AD, the shrine was producing 11 gold per turn, and by the end of the game it was producing 32 gold per turn. After the rush-buying phase of the game (and while cities had nothing better to do), I was spewing out Confucian Missionaries and plastering the faith over every city on the planet. This resulted in the substantial gold income above, which allowed me to run 100% culture at the end – and make a profit! I highly advocate this tactic.

On the general subject of religion, I had Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism spread to me early. I founded Confucianism, Taoism, and Christianity. I had previously decided that four cathedrals per city is the point of diminishing returns, and that the fifth would be largely a waste of time, especially taking into account the effort that must be made to force a 5th religion into a city. Now, because I had stone, but no marble, I leaned heavily towards the stone-accelerated religions. I spread Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Christianity to every city.

Now, a few quirks.

I regenerated the map over and over until I had a starting position with gold, on a river that ran some length, with decent food resources nearby. The river and the food are self-explanatory, but the gold I consider critical. A quirk of Marathon is that, if you start with Mining, you have time to build a mine before Bronze Working finishes and the chop rushing begins. A completed gold mine produces +3p and +9gold (on a hill and on a river) and so is just as useful for producing workers and settlers as a food tile. The boost to research from this is so huge that I cannot stress enough how vital this is to the start. Absolutely everything goes faster from this point on. As a general rule: if you’re playing Marathon, restart until you get gold. It will pay off.

I also consider stone a flat-out requirement. There are only three ‘bronze’ religions, and Balanced maps typically do not have Marble. Therefore, in order to get the fourth cathedral up without having to pay double, you need stone and a stone religion.

I built three cities initially, with the intent that they would all be research nexuses until the teching stopped, when one would be singled out to be converted to a GP farm. I held off building any 100% positive GP farms until after Code of Laws, as I didn’t want to run the risk of the religion being founded there and having the shrine pollute the Great Artist stream. This is a very real concern.

Walker’s tip about switching Great Artists to Great Merchants after the city has produced its final Great Person is beyond a minor optimization – it is a major improvement that did wonders for my economy! This allowed me to run my culture slider much higher – ultimately all the way up to 100%, with a profit!

On that subject, in the final cultural push I ran into times where I had no more gold and no more tech to sell, so under normal circumstances I would have had to reduce the culture slider and accept the lower rate. However, I came up with a minor tactic that kept me going at 90% culture for almost the entire game. When I would run out of gold, I would approach one of my AI buddies and ask them very nicely for a donation to my victory, which absurdly enough they were happy to do. On three separate occasions I asked the AI for lots of 300 gold, which they willingly gave. This, the merchants, and the shrine allowed me to really push the limit of the culture slider.

After the teching stopped, my first priority was to run 0% culture and still have all my citizens happy. 0% culture means I’m getting maximum gold, which means I’m rush-building at the absolute fastest rate. In addition, no unhappy people means that all cottages are being worked. Initially the culture rate was 30%, but with liberal application of theaters and temples I was able to quickly eliminate unhappiness. The gold from the strong economy, channeled completely into liquid cash resulted in a very short buying period, which ended in 665AD. After that, it was all culture, all the time.

On a side note, I lost the Oracle to Mansa Musa. My plan had been to research Code of Laws and then use the Oracle to get Philosophy, which results in the greatest net beaker gain I am aware of (I do not want nor need Civil Service). However, this is a risky strategy as the AIs can easily beat you to the wonder. Oddly enough, this isn’t a real loss. If the AI builds the Oracle, they invariably use it to research Metal Casting, which you can then trade for. The AI tends to avoid both Metal Casting and Machinery until after you need them, so this is roughly equivalent to building the Oracle yourself, less culture and plus gold. In all, missing the Oracle is far from the end of the world.

- Bill

@Bluerenner: I didn't realize that the size of the map determines how many temples are required for cathedrals. I thought it was always three no matter what the size. Is this listed in the civilipedia? Or where did you find it please?

BlueRenner,

It's clear to me that you've got the best beaker generating strategy. It must be the gold. Too bad we didn't compare notes eariler. I think if you had taken my path through the tech tree, we'd see the best win date.

Bronze Working -> Masonry(hut) -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet -> Theology(oracle) -> Code of Laws -> Philosophy -> Paper -> Music -> Education -> Liberalism (free Nationalism and trade for Printing Press)

I get alphabet fast and trade for all the early stuff, then pop the oracle a few turns later. That's only 11 techs I research myself compared to your 17. And mine includes nationalism. (You'd be at 16 if you'd gotten the Oracle.)

With marble, Hermitage is a no-brainer, you must build it. Even without marble it's cheaper than 2 cathedrals+4temples for the same 100% culture. True, you don't get the 1 culture from each temple, but temples are expensive for 1 culture.

Makes me wanna try one more time. What a great time, good luck on gauntlet 4.

Yeah, wish he would have posted that before it was over :p gave away his secrets. I was right about what I was doing wrong though, I wasn't playing as minimalistic as I could. My problem was building things like aquaducts and temples I knew I wouldn't need later. I should have just been generating gold and that would have cut out several turns.

Again, good job everyone.

Methos, I'm not sure precisely where I came across this information.. probably just from observation. I do know on larger maps, the number of temples needed per cathedral increases, while on smaller maps this number shinks. I don't have the exact figures.

Dr. Bill, I have only one real concern with your tech tree. At what date can you expect to recieve Agriculture and Animal Husbandry? My strategy above is heavily focused on getting the cottages worked as fast as possible, and doing so means the cities have to grow. To grow, they need to be working the bonus resources to their full potential. Without farms and pastures on these bonuses, I'm concerned about the cities hitting sufficient size fast enough.

Now that I really think about it, I believe you might be correct about going straight for Alphabet. My workers spend most of the pre-1000BC game clearcutting, so they seldom have the opportunity to build farms or pastures. This might be something for me to look at within my gameplan.. build more workers, perhaps?

Also, I've never been able to get the AI to research Printing Press for me. Perhaps I've just been unlucky, but I've always had to go back and do it myself. My fast tech-finish time has a lot to do with this. In previous games where I've considered Nationalism, it has always been a choice between researching one, the other, or both... and both just seems too slow. Comparing the two, the Printing Press clearly wins.

At what date does the AI usually have the Printing Press up for trade? They start throwing around Nationalism in the late game, around 800-900AD or so, where I consider the 10 turns your so you need to save in order to buy it (marble-less) to be completely unreasonable. I see it as a trade between 5000~7000 culture in each of my three cities, against a +100% bonus in one city for the future. I just don't see those numbers working in favor of the Hermitage, though I'd love to be proven wrong here.

- Bill

It is great reading all of your advises... Thanks to especially Bleurenner I have now succeded in pulling a cluture victore on Deity. I won in 1292 and all of my opponents have finished their 5 casings.

I used to intially techline sugested by mdbill and that was no problem as the oponents whare teching really fast. I could only build Pyramids and Parthenon before the AI (I did not not even started building Stonehenge). Have any of with a doctors grade in civ 4 tried this stategy on deity?