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: Diplomatic (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
Difficulty: Noble
Starting Era: Ancient
Map Size: Small
Map Type: Any
Speed: Normal
Civ: Mongolia
Opponents: Must include Aztec (Montezuma), Egypt (Hatshepsut), Greece (Alexander), Japan (Tokugawa), Russia (Catherine), Spain (Isabella)
Version: 1.74.002, 2.13.002 or 3.13.001
Date: 25th May to 10th June 2008
Must not play as Inca.

The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

can you still self vote (w/ majority to win) in warlords and vanilla?

Yes, you can self vote to win by UN in all versions of the game.

Hey, please forgive a newbie question here, but does the Victory Condition of "Diplomatic" include the AP religious version?

It is hard for me to tell, Civ sure thinks AP falls under Diplomatic (if you uncheck that box, you can't win by AP)... but I have seen some remarks on HOF that suggest religious is separate.

Thanks in advance!

For HOF purposes, diplomatic victories are UN victories and religious victories are AP victories.

Tricky selection of opponents for a diplo win. Balancing war and relations should be interesting to say the least.

maybe play this one as a diplomination, I can't see monty and toku voting for me somehow

maybe play this one as a diplomination, I can't see monty and toku voting for me somehow

Set monty on toku. Pick up points for mutual war with monty at the expense of toku's pop/UN votes. Or warrior rush both. Fastest time will be with only the number of cities needed for Oxford.

Yes, you can self vote to win by UN in all versions of the game.

Are you sure you can UN autovote in BTS 3.13? :eek:

"Any map type"... I suppose pangaea style should be the best bet, but at Noble, playing Terra and being able to get an easy boost in pop from colonizing New World could also work. Just need to be careful on hitting land/pop limits.

As always, the tricky part is getting the #2 in pop to be the unpopular one. In the few quick starts I had, Hatty was the ugly duckling. But how to make sure she (or Toku) would be the voting rival?

"Any map type"... I suppose pangaea style should be the best bet, but at Noble, getting a free boost in pop from colonizing New World could also work. Just need to be careful on hitting land/pop limits.


Couldyou explain what this means, please. Thanks

Sorry, I meant (but obviously didn't type it) that playing Terra maptype could be advantageous for the reasons I outlined before.


EDIT: I managed to submit an entry, and I was quite happy with my 11xxAD date until I realized fastest date on these settings is 590AD. :lol:

I think I'm going to give this one a whirl. Do anyone think I'm insane to try for a gauntlet for my first solo Civ4 game? I wonder what the general strategy ought to be. Obviously I'm going to beeline Mass Media. I hope to pick up Alphabet quickly, then Masonry or going for the Bronze/Iron Working techs as on a small map with six opponents, I'm likely to start near one or two civs, and enemy capitals make nice cities. Anyone know the OCN for small maps? Any other important techs I ought to snag that aren't required? I think Education for Uni's and Oxford is a given, but I'm not sure one the rest. I'm not sure how to use GPs exactly either.

EDIT: I managed to submit an entry, and I was quite happy with my 11xxAD date until I realized fastest date on these settings is 590AD. :lol:

Are you sure? Diplomatic,Noble,Normal,Small on QScore Query gives the best date at 1640AD which your submission would easily beat. Did you get the right settings? The Diplomatic,Noble,Quick,Small has a date at 590AD. That must be what you looked at.

As always, the tricky part is getting the #2 in pop to be the unpopular one. In the few quick starts I had, Hatty was the ugly duckling. But how to make sure she (or Toku) would be the voting rival?

Gift biology to your chosen opponent.

But how to make sure she (or Toku) would be the voting rival?
How about gifting her a few cities captured from one of her neighbors? :)

All good suggestions. However, in the game I submitted:
1. I hadn't researched none of the necessary techs (Engineering, Gunpowder, Chemistry and Biology) by the time I won;
2. I captured no city at all, even if I had to declare on her 3/4 times just to get +diplo points with the rest of the gang - everyone else was at war with her at least once, as she was the only hindu civ among a horde of buddhists. Surprisingly enough, she was able to hold her own, and even managed to capture one of Alex's cities and still be #2 in pop at the end. :D

Set monty on toku. Pick up points for mutual war with monty at the expense of toku's pop/UN votes. Or warrior rush both. Fastest time will be with only the number of cities needed for Oxford.

Not sure, the minimum number of cities for Ox is 1 through an OCC

mutual war will get you a lot of diplo votes, but diplomination is a guaranteed win

All good suggestions. However, in the game I submitted:
1. I hadn't researched none of the necessary techs (Engineering, Gunpowder, Chemistry and Biology) by the time I won;
2. I captured no city at all, even if I had to declare on her 3/4 times just to get +diplo points with the rest of the gang - everyone else was at war with her at least once, as she was the only hindu civ among a horde of buddhists. Surprisingly enough, she was able to hold her own, and even managed to capture one of Alex's cities and still be #2 in pop at the end. :D
Hi Conq,

because diplo is not my favorite victory conditions, could you give me some hints? Like map, map settings, research strategy? I just submitted 1540AD with a Hemisphere Map and fully cottaged home island and I don't see a chance to get better here :( Thanks in advance

Being a Noble level game I aimed for a pangaea style map (I used Terra) where I could contact everyone early so I could trade the initial techs and more importantly, get to build up good relations from the beginning. Oracle CS then Edu then beeline MM. Radio from Liberalism. Racking up GE points also helps (pyramids, HG, etc) to rushbuild UN.
Also settle a couple fishing villages and try to get as many GS as you can, they help bulb your way to MM.

Being a Noble level game I aimed for a pangaea style map (I used Terra) where I could contact everyone early so I could trade the initial techs and more importantly, get to build up good relations from the beginning. Oracle CS then Edu then beeline MM. Radio from Liberalism. Racking up GE points also helps (pyramids, HG, etc) to rushbuild UN.
Also settle a couple fishing villages and try to get as many GS as you can, they help bulb your way to MM.Thanks for the fast reply. Just a couple of additional questions ... How many cities did you found? Do you need a production center for military units? What about religions? Do you had any wars?

Having a Great Engineer seems highly advantageous to a fast finish, in order to rush the UN. But it's pretty inconvenient to get one in Vanilla. I've tried building the Pyramids in my second city ASAP, and getting my engineer that way. But for that to work I need to delay my GP farm from churning out Great Scientists. Once the GP farm starts generating Great Scientists, the Pyramids city is not generating enough GPP to ever generate a GP.

I suppose I could build the Pyramids in my GP farm. I'll be running a lot of scientists, so my change of an engineer is low for each GP. But I'll generate a lot of GPs, so hopefully I'll get lucky once.

I could also try building the Pyramids in my capital, which should allow me to get my GE sooner. But I've usually got other things I need to be doing in my capital.

I can increase my chance of a GE with a forge or the Hanging Gardens, but IMO those come too late to be useful.

Thoughts?

I just submitted a 1140AD finish as Kublai on Inland Sea, Warlords.

This game is all about lightbulbing. You accumulate GS until SM, then bulb-bulb-bulb until Radio, which you can take with Liberalism. The MM tech is relatively cheap, and if you are lucky with a GE, you're all set.

To get the GE I usually build the Pyramids, then Forge for an Engineer, then Hanging Gardens, then units. In the beginning it gets overwhelmed by the GSs, but if you assign a bunch of Scientists like 8-10 turns before finishing MM, you get it on time with something like 92% probability.

My game was also very aggressive, since all AIs were of different religions, and there were no religious 'clubs' to join. So I simply killed enough of them as to get 45% pop, and befriended Hatty, she was #3. Izzy was #2 and annoyed with me for not sharing her religion, but I managed to sign OB with her and get passage to Toku, and capture 3 of his cities shortly before the vote. If Izzy would become #3 for some reason, I'd simply gift her a city or two.

There was also Monty, but small and insignificant.

I just finished this. Not a great date at 1770 AD, but it would have been 2nd before this gauntlet, so it isn't bad for my first solo civ4 game. I killed off Hatty and Catherine from off my land mass quickly. Got a great engineer from pyramids that knocked 800 off the UN. Got sidetracked early to get catapults (no way to defeat capitals efficiently without those) and Macemen, turned out the wars ended before I could be bothered to upgrade, so I could've easily skipped out on Civil Service. Bulbed several techs, got Radio from Liberalism, but Hatty got the Oracle super early so I missed out on that.

After building the UN the world turned out to be quite interesting. Tokugawa had managed to found Taoism and stuck to that. Isabella had founded Bhuddism and stuck to that converting both Montezuma and Alexander. Hatty and Catherine had found the rest and I and them were Hindus (until I destroyed them, of course). Thus I switched to Free Religion so I was up there. I had hoped that Tokugawa would be my opponent, but it turned out that Isabella outpaced him. I went full throttle on Espionage and influnced her civics to Free Religion and that brought the smaller Alex and Monty to my side. I had traded with Tokugawa's worst enemy so he Abstain during the secretary general election. I was only about 7 votes short for the diplomatic.

For research, I managed to get biology and traded it to Alex and Monty to boost their votes counts. Espionage-wise I knocked Isabella out of Mercantilism using more spies and I switched myself to it. (It was Tokugawa's favorite and he was in it.) I even managed to get a +1 forgiveness bonus from Japan. I even built some more towns.

It paid off, Japan abstained again, but between Monty, Alex and I got voted in. There's a lot I could do to save time, choosing a different map type would help too. (I used Medium & Small) and that delayed contacts too long.

I just submitted a 1140AD finish as Kublai on Inland Sea, Warlords.

This game is all about lightbulbing. You accumulate GS until SM, then bulb-bulb-bulb until Radio, which you can take with Liberalism. The MM tech is relatively cheap, and if you are lucky with a GE, you're all set.

To get the GE I usually build the Pyramids, then Forge for an Engineer, then Hanging Gardens, then units. In the beginning it gets overwhelmed by the GSs, but if you assign a bunch of Scientists like 8-10 turns before finishing MM, you get it on time with something like 92% probability.

My game was also very aggressive, since all AIs were of different religions, and there were no religious 'clubs' to join. So I simply killed enough of them as to get 45% pop, and befriended Hatty, she was #3. Izzy was #2 and annoyed with me for not sharing her religion, but I managed to sign OB with her and get passage to Toku, and capture 3 of his cities shortly before the vote. If Izzy would become #3 for some reason, I'd simply gift her a city or two.

There was also Monty, but small and insignificant.

Nice time.

Did you build Oxford? I'm currently operating under the theory that Oxford comes too late to be useful (if one is aiming for a time like yours). But Mass Media is taking me a long time to research without Oxford.

Did you do an early axeman/chariot rush?

Did you build Oxford?
No. I built a single University in the capital.
But Mass Media is taking me a long time to research without Oxford.
In my case it took like 5 turns or so. By that time I was running a bunch of Scientists under Rep. all over the place.
Did you do an early axeman/chariot rush?
Yes, a Chariot rush.

I went Agriculture -> Mining (because of Gold) -> AH -> Writing -> Alphabet, built the second city by the horse, and rushed Catherine. This way I had two forested cities for wonders, so I built GL in my capital, and the Pyramids in Moscow.

It is allowed to add a 7th opponent right?
I mean there 6 opponents that must be included but small map is up to 7 opponents according to HOF rules?

It is allowed to add a 7th opponent right?
I mean there 6 opponents that must be included but small map is up to 7 opponents according to HOF rules?

I'm new here, but I believe the answer is yes.

It is allowed to add a 7th opponent right?
I mean there 6 opponents that must be included but small map is up to 7 opponents according to HOF rules?Yes - you always can fill the rooster up to the allowed number. In this case you can add 1 more opponent. (But you cannot discard some of the required ones ;))

No. I built a single University in the capital.

In my case it took like 5 turns or so. By that time I was running a bunch of Scientists under Rep. all over the place.

Yes, a Chariot rush.

I went Agriculture -> Mining (because of Gold) -> AH -> Writing -> Alphabet, built the second city by the horse, and rushed Catherine. This way I had two forested cities for wonders, so I built GL in my capital, and the Pyramids in Moscow.

*Five* turns for Mass Media? That's way ahead of my pace. Even if that's counting the effect of bulbing one Great Artist. How many cities did you have at this point? I've been keeping only a half dozen or so, in order to keep my economy from crashing. But maybe I should keep more and generate all my research from specialists.

*Five* turns for Mass Media?
Well, yes, according to my game log. :)

Turn 158/460 (960 AD)
Tech learned: Radio
Research begun: Mass Media (6 Turns)
Turn 163/460 (1030 AD)
Tech learned: Mass Media

How many cities did you have at this point? I've been keeping only a half dozen or so, in order to keep my economy from crashing. But maybe I should keep more and generate all my research from specialists.
I think I had about 12 and counting. :)

I simply set most of the cities to build wealth and raise the science slider to 80-90%.

In my game it was likewise, I began MM t162 and completed t169. Answering HHG's earlier question I had only 4 cities in the Old World but founded 3 useless ones in the New World. Probably I'd be better w/o those. If I could find the time I'd try another run with OCC.

Ok, this is strange. I've eliminated everyone but Hatty (who loves me) and Tok (who hates me). I've built the UN and am Secretary General. Votes have come up twice so far but no option for Diplomatic victory. I'll admit that I normally don't go for the diplo victory but I thought that diplo victory was an option on the proposal list. Playing BtS.

Not sure that it matters but I am so close to a domination victory that I've had to gift a couple cities to Hatty to keep from going over. but I'm still within 2% or so.

Playing BtS.
BtS does not allow for self-voting. You need at least 3 civs, less than 66%(?) pop, and bribe #3 to vote for you.

It also has another disadvantage, you need an extra tech (Aesthetics) for the GLib, but the # of turns is identical before 1000AD.

BtS does not allow for self-voting. You need at least 3 civs, less than 66%(?) pop, and bribe #3 to vote for you.

It also has another disadvantage, you need an extra tech (Aesthetics) for the GLib, but the # of turns is identical before 1000AD.Ahh - so you played your game in Vanilla? I played all my last games in BtS, because I like the graphic more than in Vanilla.

Ahh - so you played your game in Vanilla?
Warlords, actually.

Building wealth/research sucks in Vanilla.

But I did not self vote. :)

BtS does not allow for self-voting. You need at least 3 civs, less than 66%(?) pop, and bribe #3 to vote for you.

It also has another disadvantage, you need an extra tech (Aesthetics) for the GLib, but the # of turns is identical before 1000AD.

Ok, so with myself there are 3 total civs left so I just need to gift more cities to get under 66% pop. I didn't realize you couldn't self vote in BtS. I would have just ended the game 1000 years ago with conquest or domination and submitted to the HOF, just not counting as the G-Minor.

Oh well.

Tried a peaceful game yesterday in Bts. Never tried diplo before so I dunno.

Did ok though, founded 5 cities and ran pyramids, forge and hanging gardens in my second city for GE. After a while Toky attacked me but I had maces so he got smashed and I took one of his cities instead.

Built UN in 1 turn so that I got to vote for diplo win in 1170 AD.

However I messed up the diplomacy during the last couple of turns as I thought I would be up against second in score(cathrine) when infact I was up against Izzy (who had second pop?). Anyhow, I converted religon to enable me to get Izzys vote but as she was my opponent I failed to get the number of needed votes by 1 AI (monty, who disliked me for my new faith).

So if I had not messed up I would have won by 1170 (or the turn after? :s)


TIP: Chopping could be an alternative/complement to Great Engineer. If I am not mistaken you can accumilate chopping production without any limit by building wealth or research in the city u intend to build UN in. This way you can chop an entire forest on the edge of your empire and store the won production to unleach it the turn MM is completed.

Another interesting mistake is that I traded athetics and research literature (somewhat late) for great lib. I completed great liberary 3! turns before scientific method was done :cry:

This is a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I keep building my diplomacy block keeping one AI hated by everyone. Unfortunately, either Alexander or Montezuma always backstab me. This last game I was in the lead tech wise, eliminated Tokugawa early and was pressing the Egyptians. The Egyptians were the hated civ on the map since they were the only Hindus.

Alex shared Budism with Spain and me. Instead of helping me fight Egypt, he declared war on Spain out of the blue and capitulated her (without even taking the holy city) after about 50 turns of war. They both rebuilt their forces and declared war on me, even though I was their only friend on the map with Budism and long term good relationship including bribine et al. They used combined arms to take out my capitol and my largest city while the bulk of my forces were deployed in Egypts lands hell bent on conquest.

Time to start over again. Third (or is it forth?) time's the charm...right?

edit: My biggest problem was that I declared war on Egypt too early. I had rolled Japan and had about 8-9 UU left and wanted to continue rolling. I should have taken a break for about 20 turns or so to build a stronger force to attack Egypt. My initial stack was one unit short of taking his capitol and he was able to refortify before I could heal. That doesn't change the fact that the AI behavior for some of the aggressive civs is completly senseless.

This is a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I keep building my diplomacy block keeping one AI hated by everyone. Unfortunately, either Alexander or Montezuma always backstab me. This last game I was in the lead tech wise, eliminated Tokugawa early and was pressing the Egyptians. The Egyptians were the hated civ on the map since they were the only Hindus.

Alex shared Budism with Spain and me. Instead of helping me fight Egypt, he declared war on Spain out of the blue and capitulated her (without even taking the holy city) after about 50 turns of war. They both rebuilt their forces and declared war on me, even though I was their only friend on the map with Budism and long term good relationship including bribine et al. They used combined arms to take out my capitol and my largest city while the bulk of my forces were deployed in Egypts lands hell bent on conquest.

Time to start over again. Third (or is it forth?) time's the charm...right?

edit: My biggest problem was that I declared war on Egypt too early. I had rolled Japan and had about 8-9 UU left and wanted to continue rolling. I should have taken a break for about 20 turns or so to build a stronger force to attack Egypt. My initial stack was one unit short of taking his capitol and he was able to refortify before I could heal. That doesn't change the fact that the AI behavior for some of the aggressive civs is completly senseless.
Here's my hint(s): Try to defeat 2-3 of the aggressive Opponents early if they are your direct neighbors. Never attack Hatty or Cathy. One of them will normally be your diplo-opponent, so try to figure out who and focus on diplomatic points toward the other, but try to avoid a direct war with one of them before you exactly know who is number 2 on the rooster. The others will end on fighting each other if your army is big. Therefore have one of your cities build your army constantly to avoid being the target. If its possible avoid a religion. If you are really lucky, the religions are spread even and you are able to spread Conf and Tao to the civs, not having any religion yet. With 3 or 4 different religious block and yourself being religion-free you always have the chance to choose your diplomatic ally. But now the biggest hint: Try to get a really fast tech lead! So start with a 2 gems capital, built a GS-Farm and if set you cities to Research/Wealth if there's nothing important to do.

I was able to win this in around 1915. I probably could have won a couple hundred years earlier but I got tired of having the AI declare war so I over built my military and rolled but it cost me time.

Okay. First off I was close to Cath so I rolled 6 Keshik and was able to take all 3 of her cities. That gave me 5 cities and I built 2 more. Then I started to build up the military since Monty and Toku were right up on my borders. Monty decided to declare war and move a nice SoD with catapults and elephants on me. I caught his stack out on a grassland square and decimated him. I then healed my stack and rolled 3 of his cities and got him to capitulate. Shortly there after, Hatty became my vassel and I was pulling away from the pack. Everyone but Monty was Buddhist so relations were good for quit a while. I teched through to rifleman and rolled Toku but he refused to capitulate.

At this point I had double Alex's score so I went and settled the new world (terra map). Here is where I really delayed the win. I beelined MM but couldn't get a GE to pop the UN so I had to spend 25 turns building it. Just as the first vote came up, Alex and his vassals, Issy & Toku declared war. I chose diplo win and had enough votes between me and my vassal to win by 10 votes.

This is my first gauntlet win. (Major gauntlet didn't go so well)

Well I did it. Not on my first try, and not as fast as I had wanted, but I got a second Minor Gauntlet under my belt. Not bad for someone who joined the HOF three weeks ago.

In my earlier games I came to the conclusion that I did not expand fast enough. I typically had about 6-7 cities after taking out one of the aggressive AI players with an early Keshik rush. Even though I kept a good tech lead through trade, the other aggressive AIs would eventually obsorb several other AI cities through war and bring promoted SODs to my doorstep.

This time I went the other extreme. I rolled three civs early with a massive Keshik assualt destroying two (Tokugawa and Ghandi whom I added as an extra player) and stopped two cities shy of taking out Monty by about turn 120. Cathey was building a lot of wonders and Isabela had two holy shrines in her capitol. When I reached Vassalage, Hatty asked to be my vassal which dragged me into a war with Monty and Alexander. It took almost no time at all to finish off Monty, and after redeploying my troops I took two cities from Alex before he capitulated. With Hatty and Alex as my vassals, I declared war on Isabela and took Madrid (for the economic benefit of two holy shrines) and one additional city while Hatty took her other city (she only had three). At this point, I shared the map with three civs and two of them were my vassals. It was only a time race to get Mass Media and build the UN for FTW.

My mistake this time was over expanding. On turn 120 I was about 1% away from the population limit for a domination victory and I ruled about the majority of the main continent on a Terra map. The map type is what prevented an accidental domination since the other continent was unsettled. My economy tanked after the first major push and I had to run the research slider at 10% for a good portion of the game. There were only a couple of cities where I could farm some specialists and I continued to build a lot of troop since I was war mongering, so research was slow going. Hatty, my vassal, actually out teched me, but never went for Mass Media. Once I took Madrid I was able to run the slider at 90% and farm more cities. After this techs were roling in 3-5 turns on average, and I used GP to bulb for faster progress. I was able to get a GE to rush the UN which saved time. My finish date was 1884, but had the potential to be much faster had I curbed my early expansion a bit and been able to sustain a better economy.

This Gauntlet is finished. Results:

1st Andrei_V 1140 AD
2nd Conquistador 63 1180 AD
3rd EGJ 1300 AD

Congratulations!