http://www.civfanatics.net/methos/hof/staff/gauntlet.gifWhile 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!


Settings:

Victory Condition: Score (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
Difficulty: Monarch
Starting Era: Ancient
Map Size: Standard
Map Type: Inland Sea
Speed: Quick
Required: Always War Checked
Civ: Greece (Pericles)
Opponents: Must include Babylon (Hammurabi), Carthage (Hannibal), Egypt (Ramesses II), Persia (Darius), Rome (Augustus Caesar), Sumeria (Gilgamesh)
Version: 3.13.001
Date: 10th May to 10th June 2008

Must not play as Inca.

The highest score wins.

playing greece somehow exludes playing inca, I think ;).
Having just (painfully) played a monarch time game, I don't think I'll go for this one.
It seems pretty hard though.

Always war, monarch... pass. I'm still simmering from the last time I tried an "always war" gauntlet.

@cabert: it doesn't have to be a time win, its win however you like and highest score wins

@cabert: it doesn't have to be a time win, its win however you like and highest score wins
ho, I misread it.
I may give it a try then.
It's still tough.

I wonder if WastinTime will try his hand at this one. :)
His score game on Chieftain was insane!

Nice gauntlet! Should be hard game to win, and a very hard game to get a high score.

Inland sea is a good twist for AW since you only really have to defend in two directions.

It will be a pretty tough gauntlet I think as defending against horse units is hard as they can pillage you very easily, looking forward to giving it a go.

I tried last night, and it was brutal. I managed a quick great wall for the extra GGPs. I had a sweet starting position: Hills with pigs and sheep, a plantation resource. Iron popped in my BFC away from AI traffic. Not once did they try to pillage anything. I had two cities on plains hills. Wheat and corn also. It~s too bad it had to be an Always War game to ruin it. :(

When you are against that many AIs always at war, it~s tough to have enough units. I would love to watch one of our experts play this one. I was great in the beginning when I first got Phalanxes, but next thing I know the AI has longbowmen and Macemen. Yeesh. once they use spies to pillages resources, its tough. Then bring in Hannibal special units and the Vultures....on man. But it was my suggestion! lol

Yeah, so I had nothing to build in the build queue, but archers for a long time, which brought my economy down. I started building workers and setlers to slow unit accumulation down. If I had just been able to research and build castles in time., bu tyou need Machinery...expensive.

Not that I will be able to win this one, I don~t think, but any advice? I was thinking ragin barbs to slow the AI slow, if I already have the GW

Raging barbs is probably not a good idea as generally it just gives free XP to your neighbours. You should be spending early hammers in trying to hinder the growth of your closest neighbours (pillaging resources/razing cities).

the advantages of raging barbs are that they will slow the AIs tech pace and exploration and keep them smaller. it also will keep killing their units off. just GW becomes essential for you and as Ozbenno says the AI gets a lot of free XP

Just to clarify, but this is an Always War with technology trading? I've tried this gauntlet a number of times with various strategies, but I die in medievil times by falling behind in the tech race. I've tried with the Pyramids + Great Library + SE which helps, but all my other cities are busy pumping out defensive units all game. I can't for the life of me make any head way attacking (or even harassing) either of my neighbours.

So, for everyone else, does the game quickly degenerate into 6 different enemies throwing stacks at you? I got some nice stacks in my frontier cities but couldn't ever move on the opponents.

If "No Technology Trading" is checked, I'd have a shot, but as it stands I feel like this is "impossible" (for my skill level ;-)).

I haven't had a go yet, but the difficulty level might be a tad too hard considering the always war and quick speed.

Yeah, the difficulty level, quick speed and tech trading enabled is probably going to make this beyond my ability. I may try a game or two though.

Totally gotta go with raging barbarians -- that made a huge difference vs. no barbs which I was going with before. So far, raging barbs + high sea level has helped make this possibly doable. I just quite in ~1500 AD after having taken over Darius and having the score lead until ~1200. But I made some poor choices, and captured one city too many, had economy grind to a halt, and started to lose the tech race.

I'm thinking spying will be critical in the mid-game to help stay up in the tech race...

A monarch AW with "No Tech Trading" unchecked is worse than Deity, and Darius and Hannibal are the best (worse) opponents you can have.
Not to talk about the speed.
I guess no one will submit a victory.
Try to be less imaginative next time.

It´s tough and I doubt I will be able to pull it off, but some will.

So do you need to go for a Time victory to qualify for participation? - or does the "score victory condition" only mean that the gauntlet games will be graded against each others on the best score and any win condition is acceptable???

So do you need to go for a Time victory to qualify for participation? - or does the "score victory condition" only mean that the gauntlet games will be graded against each others on the best score and any win condition is acceptable???
Any condition will do. The gauntlet is ranked by score only.

Still no game submitted. I guess this one is tough.

I don't think I'll be able to win it.

I had one decent game where I took out Hannibal between 2000BC and 1AD.

But my land and tech lead wasn't enough and I couldn't make any inroads into the others civs. Without being able to conquer or even pillage any more AI's, my lead was eventually cut down and I abondoned it around 1700AD once it was clear that I was eventually going to be overrun by enemy stacks. I still hadn't lost any cities to the enemy, but I could see it was just a matter of time...

Monarch is too hard when combined with Always War/Quick Speed/Standard Map. The BTS AI makes it harder too since they seem to come with massive stacks making it hard to pick off units out in the open.

You would probably have to be able to take out 3 civs before 1000AD in order to go for a domination victory. There is a remote chance you could get a cultural victory if you had a couple of cities dedicated to popping Great Artists. Problem is, that the cultural techs and buildings are a sidetrack from the military techs that my first game was focussed on.

I tried a few tech races for diffrent military units with moderate success.

Basically I looked for a starting location with gold and food and then I want for a very fast expension to 7-8 cities. Started teching like mad with pyramids and great liberary.

My frontier held up ok in some games however but just as I start to approach my target technology I get run over by trebuchets and knight (or catapults and knights). Once the AI gets techs that produce units which u "cant" kill in the field and mix them with catapults your pretty much dead.

It may be possible to reach a key tech such as rifleing and start massing riflemen though, I was about 1 tech away when one of my cities fell and I didnt have ivory for useful warelephants that game.

Right now Im running same strategy as above except with a much earlier attack with warelephants + catapults. Im doing quite ok having killed ramsess II at 1200 AD and I have about 25% of the landmass. Well se if it holds up.

Culture is another interesting posiblity for victory.

Currently controlling 30% of the map, 1 and a half opponent eliminated. Tech advantage and first in score @ 1650 AD. Looking good :)
First time on quick war game though, wonder if Ill hold up

Edit: Hope of victory lost by 1880 AD - just as I reached infantry. Computer was about equal tech. Made some bad troop movements and got part of my invasion army killed. Then the invasion "front" was swarmed by cavalery :cry:
War weariness turned out to be a huge issue... I had like 6 unhappiness in some cities and 4 in most even though I was in Police state. Was really hard to keep population content

If you can get a win my money is on you to win the gauntlet, this one is hard.

Could "aggressive AI" help out by creating war between the AIs?
This would prevent them to walk through the civ's land and bind a lot of their capacity.

I tried aggressive AI in one game. They didnt make war with each other however they sent thier first wave of attackers earlier - so in that particular game it was only really really bad :) They didnt war each other either.
(i didnt scout more than 2 AI either so that was not the issue, maybe unluck but I dunno)

they are going to really like each other due to the shared war bonuses and I can't think of an AI ever DOWing when already at war so I think agg. AI would be a mistake

Mh, your argument is weakened by the fact that they meet their neighbors before they meet you (except for your neighbors). I would really avoid scouting in this game, so you meet them as late as possible. Don't know if I'm able to try it, but I'd like to.

This is a tough gauntlet:eek:
I'm back in the lead in the 1880s, I'm going to try for a space race victory.
I'm on my 15th great general, some turns I've had to kill more than 40 attacking units.
I only took down one AI (badly:p) then set up two point cities at either end of my area (hills, lots of culture, clear cut everything) and then destroyed wave after wave of AI units -- it got kind of menotenous. You need a kill ratio of at least 20:1:twitch:, so it is always a race to the next killer unit.
Hannibal is the worst problem, he techs well. He did however attack Ramesses and turn around a dozen Egyptian cavalry:)

I think a culture win would be a better idea, switching over once you have rifles.:confused:

He did however attack Ramesses and turn around a dozen Egyptian cavalry:)

Ooops, I've been using Hatty instead of Ramesses, lucky I haven't won yet!

Cultural might work.

I've also thought about AP victory. You could have some settlers and missionaries on your borders and build a city with your religion in it as each civ approaches. With no city razing you could get lucky with each of your opponents each capturing a single useless city with your religion.

Then you try to manipulte the voting number so you can have <75% on the turn the votes are cast and then >75% after. Viola!

Having AI war vs AI must be really lucky?!
Ive tried 5 games now or something :crazyeye:. Havent ever seen them be aggressive with each others.

How do you submit a gauntlet game anyhow? Do you just submit it the same way as a HOF game or is there some other way you need to do it?

Yes, you just submit it the normal way. The magnificent HoF admins have a filter system that will automatically enter your game into the gauntlet competition as long as the settings match up.

You can check this if you want by going to the results page for the gauntlets and seeing if your game shows up for the gauntlet in progress. It show up once it has been accepted (but you will only be able to see your own entry until after the gauntlet is complete).

ANDDDDDD, that games not going to work either.
I had hoped that the more expensive end game units would slow the volume a little. Nope. Had to kill over 40 cavalry in one turn, then I was bombed by those silly ballons (nobody in history used dirigibles to bomb troops:p), and I calculated I wasn't going to finish the techs in time anyway.....
....and I just didn't have the stomach for 120 turns of pounding to try for a doubtful score win:cry:

I think cultural is the way to go.
Ah well, back to Mapfinder:)

[QUOTE=ssjos;6870191]Having AI war vs AI must be really lucky?!
Ive tried 5 games now or something :crazyeye:. Havent ever seen them be aggressive with each others.

It didn't last long, and no cities were taken. Silly AIs have no idea how to run a good war. :lol:

Hmm I played really well through early and mid game but in the end I didnt do all that well.
Lost a huge army of riflemen, trebuche and elephants(50+) when I tried to attack my second AI -Hammarubi-.

Switched the defensive frontier to the recently invaded lands of gilgamesh and planned an invasion of darius lands close to my capital instead. This went better as Darius sortof sucked. Even though I thought I was over after my failed attack on Hammy I actually invaded Darius lands quite easiliy.

Planned to keep on invading Ramsess and so forth but way to late I relized that there would perhaps not be time to compelte a domination victory anyhow. 8-11 turns of city revolt in quick gamespeed is just sick - and its really hard to advance futher with the AIs cultural borders and railroad giving him 100% mobility and me 0 mobility. I decided to try to go for spacerace instead.

Lost space elevetor by one turn(because initially I didnt think about building it) and the AI started showing up with gunships and mech infantry :cry: Anyhow, lategame could have been done better.

Has anyone been able to beat this one?

I had a good start going, and thought that I had a good strategy to shoot for a cultural victory. Having that many opponents always at war is just overwhelming...especially on quick speed.

I will probably give it a try a few more times (the losses rack up quickly), but I am not too confident with these settings.

Has anyone been able to beat this one?


I haven't, has anyone else?

I haven't, has anyone else?

I actually manged to beat it :) Se my previous post for some details

Anyone try OCC? with only one city to defend you might have a space race?

I tried aggressive AI in one game. They didnt make war with each other however they sent thier first wave of attackers earlier - so in that particular game it was only really really bad :) They didnt war each other either.
(i didnt scout more than 2 AI either so that was not the issue, maybe unluck but I dunno)


Aggressive AI makes them have -2 relations to YOU only (at least some stat block claimed so). So it means they will just come after you not after everyone. Better catch them offguard and have good relations.

-Dracandross

Anyone try OCC? with only one city to defend you might have a space race?

Does OCC change the score calculation? If not, the AI having several cities would make them have a higher score due to land area and population. It doesn't matter if you win...what matters is that you have the highest score on the board when you win (or when time runs out).

well at the moment your actual score isn't that important as only 1 person has managed to win. but OCC is bad for score as you have a very small population and land area

Actual score is important becaue the victory condition for the Gauntlet is SCORE. As I understand it, a score victory is achieving any victory condition with the highest score of any civ in the game.

This seem a real challenge. I saw this 3 days ago and played 3 games tp 1200AD's. I gave up when I realized I made very bad decisions. Typically all I play is xOTM's only. So being able to start over with a new map is cool.

I learned it is better to have both food and commerce in the capital to do well and have many production cities. My goal was to settle about 4 cities and claim about 4 by 500 AD.

For the current game I got a good site with 2 gems and corn and sheep and alot of plains. Founded the second city to west of capital claiming gold and a phant and became a production city. Went mining, Aggri, AH, and BW. No horses and copper. Hummm quit or not......Not.

By T50 get CS from Oracle and the race for the construction and HBR begins. Cities 3 and 4 are financial and GL factory. Built GW and the Mids in the cap. Darius was getting brave and attacking with archers. He too has no copper but stupidly found a city little far from Horses. 5 elepahnts and 2 cats take the capital loosing only one cat. Took two more cities and razed 2 and left him with a crappy city until 940AD when Hamuraby started to get annoying.

Capital built several more and now we are building Knights, Trebs and Muskats by 920 AD. City 3 built SoZ for additional head ache for the AI. We have 12 cities and we are razing all of Summerian outer crapy cities and fighting off hoards of units in the north and south. It is turn 122/1240 AD and a stack of about 25 combined arms units are heading E from south side and about 12 units, mainly phants, muskets and knights are terrorizing the north area.

Hope I can finish this game in time. Capital can build 3 knights in 5 turns and they have seven points for promotions. Almost have nationalism and then decide if we want pre-calvery units or Cannons from Liberalism.

Actual score is important becaue the victory condition for the Gauntlet is SCORE. As I understand it, a score victory is achieving any victory condition with the highest score of any civ in the game.

as I understand it, having the highest in game score is irrelevant, a score gauntlet means that anyone who manages to win the game has their scores compared, with the highest scoring victory being the gauntlet winner.

Bestje is right. According to the moderator, any win is fine and then the score is used to rank the wins. It doesn't matter what your score is in the game as long as there is a win condition.

In my winning game I settled 6 cities ASAP (by about 1,5K BC) or so - I teched BW -> Construction -> horseback.

Built pyramids in my capital, and ran specialist for science. After I reached Horseback I refocused on production. (running 100% gold more or less)

I built an army of elephants and some catapults and invaded my first opponent. Was done with him about 600 AD or so. Made alot of cottages in my recently invaded kingdom to be able to support my army.

Teched for engineering -> mercantilism and after that rifling(with liberalism).

Tried to attack my second opponent with riflemen and elephants but failed. Switched over my attacks to the opponent on the other side.

Made progress and killed of first Darius with infantry and then ramsess with mechanized infantry. (ramsess was about to complete culture victory)

Then I held my frontiers and built my spaceship (which was kinda hard in the end vs gunships and modern armor.)

The Victory condition is listed as Score. I think to achieve the Score victory condition for the Quatromaster you have to finish a game in first place. I see where Denniz said that any victory condition is okay and score is how the games are graded. He doesn't really say whether or not you have to be in first place score wise for the submission to be counted. Perhaps he can weigh in and make this more clear.

To be honest, anyone who can achieve any victory condition with these settings is a better player than me. The update is in a few hours, so we'll see how many people were able to tackle this challenge.

The Victory condition is listed as Score. I think to achieve the Score victory condition for the Quatromaster you have to finish a game in first place. I see where Denniz said that any victory condition is okay and score is how the games are graded. He doesn't really say whether or not you have to be in first place score wise for the submission to be counted. Perhaps he can weigh in and make this more clear.I am not sure what you mean by 'counted'. :confused: Any game with the settings for the gauntlet submitted during the period of the gauntlet is open will appear on the gauntlet list. They all count towards the G-Major requirements of the QM & EQM. They would also count towards whatever HOF table and QM & EQM categories that are applicable.

I hope I've covered all the possibles. :)

...but does your score have to be higher than all the AIs present in the game for it to be a score victory condition?

...or is any victory considered a score win regardless of your ranking within the game?

I don't think its really a seperate win category its just those wins that have the highest score

My mistake then. Not that my misunderstanding prevented me from submitting a victory though. I got my hind quarters handed to me several times. I had two or three good starts that were lost by mid game.

I can play games at monarch level, but when you throw in Always War, quick speed, and the slew of aggressive AI players I am quickly overwhelemed. Getting a few cities settled and building an early military isn't so tough. I was even able to take out a couple of AI players in one of my games. The remaining AI players were easily out teching me as I had to constantly build units too keep up with their assualt and research all my own techs. They were trading techs, and once they reach the gunpowder era, it is difficult to keep up.

Hats off to those of you who were able to pull out a win!

This Gauntlet is finished. Results:

1st ssjos 12679 pts
no other entries

Congratulations to ssjos and eveyone who tried!

Congrats ssjos!

My best attempt was 2 civs killed with horse archers and trying to hold fortified hilled cities on each of my flanks.

It was certainly a gauntlet that rewarded persistance and constant military vigilance.