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: Domination (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
Difficulty: Emperor
Starting Era: Ancient
Map Size: Large
Map Type: Pangaea
Speed: Marathon
Civ: Rome
Opponents: Any
Version: 1.74.002, 2.13.002 or 3.13.001
Date: 10th July to 10th August 2008
Must not play as Inca.

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

Hmmm, this one sounds like it might actually be possible to complete, so long as iron can be found near the starting position.

If not...you can easily restart.

Winner of this gauntlet should be able to get a front page HoF spot since there are close to ideal settings = Rome/Marathon/Pangaea

Winner of this gauntlet should be able to get a front page HoF spot since there are close to ideal settings = Rome/Marathon/Pangaea

The-Hawk owns Immortal with Julius at 620 AD for this map size and type - beating that will take some effort.

Will he take up the challenge and defend his Emporer square? It's Toku at 930 AD on pangea. It would be nice to see more of the top players taking this one on.

I'm into my third attempt. I have decided that I need gold or gems in my start because in the first two attempts I was getting praetorians far too late.

It does take a while to get used to the marathon time scales when it can take 40 turns to research something and 30 turns to build a workboat.

Plus the large map is pretty big. It's going to take ages to actually finish a game. In my current game I have ended up with Sitting Bull next to me. I think if this is not successful that I will make sure I don't have Sitting Bull next time. That guy is a pain!

The-Hawk owns Immortal with Julius at 620 AD for this map size and type - beating that will take some effort.

Will he take up the challenge and defend his Emporer square? It's Toku at 930 AD on pangea. It would be nice to see more of the top players taking this one on.

I haven't decided whether to play this one. I am taking forever on all-expansions EQM and I already have all of these boxes checked. On the other hand... I love playing Praets :D.

930 AD should fall easily. Not sure why I played Toku, must have been to fill an EQM spot. Rome will do much better. It will be interesting to see if anyone can finish with just Praets and Cats. Maybe no, on a large map, knights might be needed to cover the distances.

In my current game I have ended up with Sitting Bull next to me. I think if this is not successful that I will make sure I don't have Sitting Bull next time.

I would never play against a Protective civ in this gauntlet, nor a Creative one.

930AD seems very difficult. I am in 1500AD and have only taken out 2 AIs and am only at about 20% land. It takes forever to build any units at marathon speed.

As for Protective AIs - my default position is never to choose opponents or use Map Finder - unless its impossible to do otherwise (like on a Deity gauntlet) because it still seems like cheating to me.

It's only cheating if it is against the rules. Remember...most of the players that you are competing against are using both. For the competition to be even, you should too.

I feel like I am cheating the spirit of Civilization if I do those things. I know it makes things harder, but you've got to have fun. It's only a game.

there's nothing wrong with that - you just aren't likely to get one of the best times, is all.

I play these like entering a marathon. Getting over the finish line is achievement enough for me. I am still on my third attempt. Just got grenadiers and have knocked Sitting Bull off the top of the power chart. That continent is still pretty big though. So many cities still to take. Cannons are 20 turns away. They should help. Shame Sitting Bull has absolutely no wonders I can take over and benefit from.

The hardest part about this game is that it would take forever to actually complete the game... The game itself would prolly be rather easy given the overpoweredness of praets on marathon and pangea... I imagine warlords will be best for this though as augustus' traits rocks...

I gave up in 1760AD when Kublai Khan's magically upgraded Infantries showed up. What are some other general tips for better success in this gauntlet?

I'm pretty sure 930AD are going to be beaten by someone. It's 684 AD and I have a little more than 29% (I need 56%), but I have never gotten a top Gauntlet date and it's my first try. I'm playing Warlords/Augustus against Brennus, Isabella and the both leaders of India, America, Egypt. I took two extra leaders, this way I have a lower Domination limit and the AI has less room to expand.

Until CoL/Currency the cottages were only to keep me at green by 0% research. My research came from scientists and deficit research due war spoil and techs sold by gold.
I had 12 cities before CoL or currency.....Now I have more than 20 and I can keep the slider between 50%-60%. I built a lot of courthouses, the Forbidden Palace and I have two shrines.

Next game I'll play without Vassals states, so weak civilizations will not become Vassals of strong ones. The game is taking a long time to play, a lot of MM early to get every possible coin and avoid strikes. Early on the happy cap was my biggest problem, I had to make some trades I usually would not do just to get one more happy face, three :) are hardly enough.

Game Report:

Coastal Start / build workboats/warriors at the begging


Wars:
Turn 25 (3640 BC) War against Asoka, I stole a worker. I got peace only at Turn 119 (2230 BC) because I tried to kill a scout and failed two times in a row.
Turn 164 (1555 BC) War against Ramesses II. He made the mistake of settling near the double gem spot. I took few cities, raze others and the war finished Turn 201/1200 (1000 BC). He has now two cities.
Turn 207 (940 BC) War against Isabella(Spain). Peace at turn 226 (750 BC), I left her with one city.
Turn 242 (590 BC) War against Asoka, I eliminated him.
Turn 308 (70 AD) War against Gandhi(India). Peace at turn 340 (500 AD), I got one crapy city that I gave to another AI.
Turn 351 (500 AD) War against Gandhi. I took his last city.
Turn 352 (508 AD) War on Hatshepsut(Egypt). An AI asked me to join the war, I was going to declare in a few turns anyway. I'm still at war with her. I think one more city to take.

Techs:
Turn 46(3325 BC) Bronze Working
Turn 70(2965 BC) The Wheel
Turn 128(2095 BC) Iron Working
Turn 153(1720 BC) Agriculture
Turn 182(1285 BC) Animal Husbandry
Turn 209(920 BC) Writing
Turn 247(540 BC) Alphabet - I was the first to Alphabet.
Turn 248(530 BC) Mysticism, Pottery, Sailing, Hunting, Masonry (by trade)
Turn 249(520 BC) Meditation, Polytheism (by trade)
Turn 254(470 BC) Priesthood, Monotheism (by trade)
Turn 269(320 BC) Archery (by trade) - this one I almost passed but I did want to build some archers to left in the cities after the Praets took them.
Turn 289(120 BC) Drama - for a new trade round - it was not so good as I expected
Turn 290(110 BC) Monarchy, Mathematics (by trade)
Turn 305(40 AD) Calendar
Turn 320(190 AD) Code of Laws
Turn 334(330 AD) Horseback Riding (by trade)
Turn 335(340 AD) Construction (by trade)
Turn 338(370 AD) Currency
Turn 346(450 AD) Compass
Turn 347(460 AD) Literature (by trade)
Turn 355(532 AD) Civil Service
Turn 369(644 AD) Paper
I regretted researching Paper, I think Engineering first would be better. I just went into Lib race without a second thought. I'm researching pretty well now and I cannot trade maps - the game may crash if I do that.

I've decided to try this after all. I'm well into my first attempt.

I started with a major brain freeze... set the map to low sea level. Now I need to dominate a massive continent :rolleyes:.

Since then, I'm doing pretty well. It's about 70 BC and I've conquered over half of my massive continent (I think I'm about 70% to the population limit). I've made one bad decision... after finishing construction and code of laws, I researched Feudalism. I figured I was going to need knights, took me forever to research it because of my strained economy. Now it looks like I will finish with Praets and Cats. I should have gone right to Drama so I could run the culture slider sooner. A couple of more AI's to go, then I should be able to backfill with settlers. I probably should have been building settlers already, I think I've screwed this timing up. I suppose I'll end up needing to take more AI cities to get to the land limit :groucho:.

Once I finish this, I'll try again with high sea level. Next time, I'll stop research after construction and build settlers sooner.

Now it looks like I will finish with Praets and Cats.

Can someone explain how this is possible? How do you take over everyone so quickly? The AI in my games get new techs so quickly that I have to keep up otherwise I would need a million praetorians to take out embedded riflemen.

There's nothing new about the praetorian rush on marathon speed. I seem to remember Moonsinger wrote a guide about it in 2006 or something.

Research IW
Hook iron
Build praets
Don't wait for overwhelming numbers, attack as soon as you think you have enough (or even before!)
Attack your neighbours
Raze any city that isn't financially viable
Keep attacking one after another

Once you've taken out 3-4 ai's you can decide if you want to stay backward and just keep pumping praets, or decide if you want to build infrastructure and commerce.

Never stop warring with your praets, keep them busy. If you have fully healed praets that aren't moving to their next target then you aren't pushing hard enough.

Don't worry about starting wars on seperate fronts either. Hopefully once you start seeing the power of the early praet you will get a feel for how many it takes to mow down each civ.

If you have alphabet don't foget to pick up some techs via peace treaties and then finish off the crippled civ at your convenience.

The only thing that can slow you down is your commerce generation. Just because you see a shock promoted axeman on a hill in a walled city doesn't mean you now need to tech all the way to Civil Service before you can declare war on that AI... just bring more praets :)

Oh, and if you really want the best out of praet rush you'll have to forget about the "spirit of Civ" and do silly things like regenerating a lot of maps, choosing non-aggressive non-protective leaders as opponents, high seas etc.

Can someone explain how this is possible? How do you take over everyone so quickly? The AI in my games get new techs so quickly that I have to keep up otherwise I would need a million praetorians to take out embedded riflemen.

The AI will expand quick but only have a few units so you just need to bring huge stacks. 20 Prats to start should roll a couple civs. Backfill the losses and roll a third. By then you should have caps and highly promoted prats. Roll one more civ. The whole time designate one or 2 cities to build settlers. Then when there is a large open space. Plop them all down at once. Run the culture slider as high as you can and then you win.

Of course this is still theory since I haven't started this one yet but it works on monarch with any civ so there is no reason it shouldn't work on this level with Augustus the great equalizer.

So no libraries then?

So no libraries then? Library in your capital once you have rolled a couple of civs and you are whipping away useless citizens. Personally, I like one praet rushes. A single preat can take out a 2 archer city. Spread them around the neighbourhood to take out the metal and horses before going for the cities. Keep your first preats moving farther away from your capital to get about midway. NEVER trade Alpha to any AI, that will slow them down a bit.

I wish I could get in on this one. my computer just crashes on large maps these days :mad:

The AI will expand quick but only have a few units so you just need to bring huge stacks. 20 Prats to start should roll a couple civs. Backfill the losses and roll a third. By then you should have caps and highly promoted prats. Roll one more civ. The whole time designate one or 2 cities to build settlers. Then when there is a large open space. Plop them all down at once. Run the culture slider as high as you can and then you win.

Of course this is still theory since I haven't started this one yet but it works on monarch with any civ so there is no reason it shouldn't work on this level with Augustus the great equalizer.

How are you planning to run the culture slider? are you going to research Music? I've never seen you even research Writing on a Marathon Domination game much less Asthetics, Literature, and Music!

In my 5th attempt, everyone keeps declaring war on me. How do I stop having to fight 5 AIs at once?

In my 5th attempt, everyone keeps declaring war on me. How do I stop having to fight 5 AIs at once?To be really successful here you should jump over your shadow and use MapFinder to get a starting spot on plains-hill and with 2 good commerce resources (gems,gold) in your BFC. Select your opponents as described above and start teching to IW. With this nice starting position and a 2nd good production city you should pump out praets - and don't forget to chop like crazy, you won't have big cities and therefore don't need the forest.

In my 5th attempt, everyone keeps declaring war on me. How do I stop having to fight 5 AIs at once?
In my game one AI did DOW me but I made friends and enemies, I choose one religion and attacked mainly AI from other religions, so half of the AI did not have so much "you declared war to my friend" modifier. When I was dowed, I could bribe another three AI (Pleased and Friendly) to help me. I think the Power graph helps a little too, my power was the highest.

No libraries :)

Don't know why I'm grinning, for some reason *I actually built libraries even though I knew it was stupid*. Don't ask me why. I'm a compulsive builder. I'm working on it, I know I have Civ issues :)

How do you get any research, at 0% science, with no libraries? Or does your capital supply 100% of your science needs with its 2 scientists?

Also, which AIs should I prioritise? The weak ones because they're easy, or the ones that are miles ahead on power because you don't want them to get any tougher, or the near ones because they're closer, or the far ones because you can do the near ones later, or the unfriendly ones because you don't want them to attack you?

Do you finish off the AIs you attack, or leave them hanging around with one city to trade with so you can concentrate on the others?

How do you get any research, at 0% science, with no libraries? Or does your capital supply 100% of your science needs with its 2 scientists?

Also, which AIs should I prioritise? The weak ones because they're easy, or the ones that are miles ahead on power because you don't want them to get any tougher, or the near ones because they're closer, or the far ones because you can do the near ones later, or the unfriendly ones because you don't want them to attack you?

Do you finish off the AIs you attack, or leave them hanging around with one city to trade with so you can concentrate on the others?

It depends :lol:

What have you been doing? Tech BW, IW. Grab copper if you can but if you don't have iron handy regen the map. Don't choose creative, aggressive, protective civs.

6 axes will take the first capital, after that it's praets. I usually spread out from my capital, but explore the map and decide where the dom limit will be reached. Only move your units towards the enemy, never back up. 2-3 praets can take most cities so when you pick an AI, try to hit a few of their cities at once, don't build a huge stack - many smaller ones are better.

If you can post a save after IW we can discuss what you've done to that point and where to go from there.

So no libraries then?

No time for libraries or anything else other than units and settlers. If you got a good food spot then granaries will reduce the cost of whipping troops out.

How do you get any research, at 0% science, with no libraries? Or does your capital supply 100% of your science needs with its 2 scientists?

Also, which AIs should I prioritise? The weak ones because they're easy, or the ones that are miles ahead on power because you don't want them to get any tougher, or the near ones because they're closer, or the far ones because you can do the near ones later, or the unfriendly ones because you don't want them to attack you?

Do you finish off the AIs you attack, or leave them hanging around with one city to trade with so you can concentrate on the others?

If you can get CoL then you can run as many scientists as your city can support. I think it is on the way to caps anyway.

I finished the first game, probably the worst date (1185 AD), but the score was good 220K. I really built a powerful empire, soon after the recovery phase of my economy (after CoL and currency) I could just keep every city. The last ones, I usually built a theater before a courthouse because I want the border to pop up as soon as possible (I was creative but this cuts the number of turn by the half). I overbuilt, I know.

If you have code of laws, why not run Caste System? A GA will peop your borders quickly too, and no Theater necessary with Caste System.

OK, first try done... just submitted 140 AD. Assuming it is accepted, I'll post some tips from this game tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure the winning time will be in the BC's.

I'm also pretty sure I will try again, I really love this gauntlet. Julius is made for domination. Biggest question on my mind is vanilla or BtS.

If you have code of laws, why not run Caste System? A GA will peop your borders quickly too, and no Theater necessary with Caste System.

I guess I love slavery too much, I didn't want to loose the ability of whipping units, besides newly taken city has too many :mad::mad::mad::mad: citizens. I usually use Caste System in war time if I am spiritual. I could build culture too and use the culture slider, if I want to.

In my 7th game, I am in 680 BC. I have 7 cities. Bismarck is dead and De Gaulle is almost dead. I am number one in power and number 2 in score. I have about 20 praetorians, split into two forces, one going East and one going West. Each force has a great general medic attached. I am about 10 turns away from Code of Laws, breaking even at 30% science thanks to gold in my capital. I am running Slavery and Hereditary Rule. All my praetorians now start with Drill thanks to a successful quest (not sure how useful this is).

What should my general approach be from here?

Just finished my first try. The Praetorians are great fun but reading this thread I don't think I made very good choices in my original settings (choosing Augustus instead of Julius for example). I'm very poor at Domination - never seem to get the balance right & I always keep too many cities too early. Got into a horrible mess with my economy and very nearly went bankrupt at one point but ... I did finish in 772 AD, assuming the game is accepted. Way short of 140AD :blush: but I needed an Emperor gauntlet, so I'm happy :) Might give this another try - it was fun to play.

Harbourboy:

How many AI's left?

There are two distinctly different ways to play this gauntlet. (Just off the top of my head, haven't thought too deeplpy about it...)

One option would be turning off research after CoL and trying to take out the whole continent with praets (except for the last few furthest away civs). Raze all cities except for any exceptionally good ones (ie not too far from your capital, lots of food and commerce resource tiles and forests to chop). Once you feel you have enough praetorians for the job you start building and mass chopping settlers. With 7 core cities you probably need about 25 or so settlers. Space the settlers out so that each can cover 21 tiles (this is ideal, you may need more settlers and some overlap if you don't have too much land available). Then revolt to caste system, put down all your settlers in one turn, run artist specialist in each one and get your victory. Just guessing, but it might be around 1000-1200AD?

I think I'll start another game. Just a few questions:
1. Warlord or BTS? - It think Warlord is better than Vanilla, because you get a few Great General and you can have a medic 3 chariot to heal your troops faster. Creative/Organized means your borders pops, all cities you take early on will have one or two border pop.
2. Best start? Coastal? Gold or Gems? Coastal + gold I guess is the best, you need food to work the gold and it's better that you don't need to built farms.
3. If it is not coastal, would you build few warriors to steal workers from the AI?
4. I'm researching BW/Wheel/IW. Once I read that we don't need any other techs, Mysticism being the next one, probably to whip a Monument in few cities.

I keep having barbs on, which isn't too bad for training guys, but is a pain until you get guys who can defend some...

It's about 800 AD now. There is still Washington, Gandhi, Peter, Lincoln, and Roosevelt going strong, plus I think Hatsepshut has one city left. It just feels like really slow going and it will get even slower when Washington discovers Gunpowder. The arrival of trebuchets is helping though.

It's now 1374 AD and I have 47% of the land so if I can just steer clear of all the Grenadiers that are running around, I may even be able to complete this game.

OK, first try done... just submitted 140 AD. Assuming it is accepted, I'll post some tips from this game tomorrow.

I really hope you do !

I'm also pretty sure I will try again, I really love this gauntlet. Julius is made for domination. Biggest question on my mind is vanilla or BtS.

I very rarely play domination so the reason for this is probably glaringly obvious but ... why Vanilla rather than Warlords? You can get sufficient opponents with peaceful traits in either version but Julius in Warlords has more frequent great generals and cheaper settlers. To me these look like quite serious advantages but you've obviously got something else in mind that I'm not aware of/haven't thought of.

I don't play BTS at the moment so I can't compare that expansion with the others.

The AI is much thougher in warlords than in vanilla, although augustus' traits in warlords is killer(though cheap granaries are nice too i guess...).

Hooray, finally finished in 1480AD. That swordsman quest certainly helped! Thanks for all the advice.

Civ: BtS Julius. Organized is a massive trait for larger map Domination, so Julius was a no-brainer vs. Augustus. I decided Imperialist Great Generals were sufficient to justify BtS.

Opponents: 14, all non-protective, non-creative.

Settings: No vassal states, no barbs, low sea level (OK, low sea level was dumb :blush:)

Start position: So-so start… 3 golds, 1 pig on a hill, 1 FP, a couple of grass hills. There was no plain hill available that would get all three golds in the BFC (and I always look to settle on a PH). Also, the city was food poor. I settled on one of the golds.

Cities from Settlers:

3985 (turn 1): Rome
2390 (111): Antium – selected a site with copper – poor commerce
2260 (124): Cumae – iron site – poor commerce
1960 (154): Neapolis – another iron site – poor commerce
110 AD: A whole bunch of cities

Build Order in Rome: Worker, Warrior, Warrior, Barracks, Warrior, Settler, Settler, Worker, Settler, military units forever
Build Order in Antium: Worker, Barracks, military units, Courthouse when available, military units forever
Build Order in Cumae: Barracks, military units, Courthouse when available, military units forever
Build Order in Neapolis: Barracks, military units, Courthouse when available, military units forever
Early captured cities (before CoL): Barracks, military units, Courthouse when available, military units or wealth forever
Later captured cities (after CoL): Courthouse, military units or wealth forever
(Many of these cities built settlers way near the end)

Tech Order (not sure I have this right, not 100% sure which were trades):

3655 BC (turn 23): Hunting (hut pop)
3596 (27): Agri
3160 (56): AH
2770 (82): Bronze
2330 (117): Iron
2240 (126): Wheel
2080 (142): Writing
1850 (165): Mysticism (this must have been a hut?)
1790 (171): Alpha, trade for Meditation, Pottery
1780 (172): trade for Masonry
1700 (180): trade for Sailing
1420 (208): trade for Priesthood
1360 (214): Math
1160 (234): trade for Polytheism
1150 (235): trade for Monotheism
1130 (237): trade for Monarchy
840 (266): Code of Law
830 (267): trade for Currency
820 (268): trade for Calendar
680 (282): Contruction (started Feudalism – maybe a mistake?)
380 (312): trade for Aesthetics.
290 (321): Feudalism
170 (333): Drama (research turned off)
80 (342): trade for Theology (for Theocracy, but never changed)

Civics:

2755: Slavery
1130: Hereditary Rule and Org Religion
280: Vassalage

Great People: 6 Great Generals, all settled in cities. I got a Great Prophet from Henge very late, he didn't even have time to move to a holy city to settle. Would have liked the commerce from a shrine, so maybe next game I build a city with a temple to pop one.

Initial War Plan: Ghandi and Izzy were to my east. All the others were north or west. Mansa was very close to my west. Ghandi had some nice cottages going and I needed commerce badly. So, initial plan was to conquer Ghandi first, Izzy second, then northern AIs, then westward.

Actual war Plan: Before I was ready to attack Ghandi, Mansa build Stonehenge right next door. Henge is really huge, gives all the captured cities a free expansion without worrying about building a monument. So, by building Henge, Mansa volunteered to be the first AI to go :D. One concern, there was a major Jewish block formed and Mansa was part of it. I figured I’d see some dogpiling :cool:…

Wars:

1510 (turn 199): DOW on Mansa. Sure enough:
Fred DOW on me.
Roos DOW on me.
Izzy DOW on me. (which means Izzy volunteers to be second AI to go and Ghandi gets to live longer).
1420 (208) Peace with Mansa. (I kept 3 cities, razed 0.)
1370 (213): Peace with Fred (no cities attacked)
Liz DOW on me.
1300 (220) Peace with Roos (no cities attacked)
1210 (229) Peace with Liz (no cities attacked)
1170 (233): Roos DOW on me.
1160 (234): Peace with Izzy (kept 3, razed 1)
1070 (243): Peace with Rooz (no cities attacked)
1050 (245): DOW on Ghandi
Fred DOW on me.
980 (252): Peace with Fred. (no cities attacked)
970 (253): Ghandi dead (kept 2, razed 1)
830 (267): DOW on Izzy (time to finish off)
Fred DOW on me.
760 (274): Izzy dead (kept 1, razed 2)
710 (279) Peace with Fred.
680 (282): DOW on Lincoln
550 (295): DOW on Mansa
520 (298): Lincoln dead (kept 6, razed 2)
470 (303): Mansa dead (kept 1, razed 1)
350 (315) DOW on Liz
Fred DOW on me (4th time! Freddy wants a whuppin :lol:)
Ramasses DOW on me.
260 BC (324): Liz dead (5 kept, 2 razed)
250 (325): DOW on Pacal
240 (326): Peace with Fred. Peace with Ramasses.
130 (337): Payback: DOW on Fred. :p
Roos DOW on me.
90 (341): Pacal dead (kept 6, razed 0)
0 (350): Fred dead (kept 5, razed 0)
50 (355): DOW on Washington
70 (357): Roos dead (kept 7, razed 0)
End of game: Had captured 3 of Washinton’s cities, razed 0.

War stats:

Cities captured: 51, kept 42, razed 9
Built 108 Praets, lost 48.
Built 55 Cats, lost 50
Built 25 Spears, lost 3
Built 3 Warriors, lost 0
Built 11 Axemen, lost 3
Enemy units killed: 325
I was at peace for the first 198 turns. Once I started warring, I was at war 131 out of 159 remaining turns.

Challenges:


I was very commerce poor at the start. It wasn’t until I got a couple of Ghandi cities in my third war that commerce and research picked up. Early tech path was slow, CoL was late. This meant slow conquest.
As you can see, I do not like razing cities, unless they are complete crap. However, this makes commerce management a challenge (which is why Organized trait is huge). It is critical to get CoL before you’ve taken too many cities, or research will slow. Once you have all your teching done, then who cares if the economy is crap. I ran many turns with negative commerce at 0% research.


Answers to some questions/comments elsewhere in the thread. My apologies for not quoting people. I’m pulling this long post together in MS Word, quoting would be too much cut/paste. If I missed any questions, please post a reply.

20 Prats to start should roll a couple civs: This is too many. 5-6 Praets, then off you go.

So no libraries then? None. No granaries, no forges, no libraries, no temples. Couthouses and military.

In my 5th attempt, everyone keeps declaring war on me. How do I stop having to fight 5 AIs at once? You don’t… I had 9 AI’s DOW on me. Ignore the far away ones, counterattack the close ones. Be happy, war is good… :yumyum:

Also, which AIs should I prioritise? Initially, I go for close AI’s with fat, juicy cities. Early wars are about expanding your production and providing coins to keep your economy from crashing. Later, my decision process is pretty simple… who is the next closest AI (so my armies don’t have far to travel).

Do you finish off the AIs you attack, or leave them hanging around with one city to trade with so you can concentrate on the others? Usually I kill them off all the way to prevent unhappiness and/or culture pressure. In two cases I left a city or two because they were crappy and my armies were depleted.

If you have code of laws, why not run Caste System? Having Henge helped. But even without Henge, I would stay in slavery for whipping Courthouses to minimize the damage to my economy of all the cities I was keeping. Late in the game when I wanted fast border pops, a switch to Caste was 5 turns of anarchy. I decided that was too much of a price, especially since I had Drama.

Why Vanilla rather than Warlords? Common wisdom says the AI wars much more poorly in Vanilla. I often play Vanilla for this reason. However, having Great Generals for the +2 EP is nice too.

although augustus' traits in warlords is killer. I have to admit, I never even looked at Warlords and missed the creative trait. That is a good one. I think Julius on BtS might be better (he is definitely better than Augustus on BtS).

Last Word

Long post, all in the spirit of sharing info in Gauntlets so that we all improve. Please post comments, questions, disagreements and upgrades. I hope one of you take some of these ideas and knock me out of position #1 with a BC finish date. :)

The-Hawk, great write up. Thanks!

I tried a BTS game but I don't think it would be faster than 500AD so abandoned it.

Your strategy is pretty different to what I tried, but you have made it work remarkedly well. I thought the best way to play would be with less research, more city razing and 20-30 settlers plopped down to get the land %.

Hawk - does this mean you did not do the much hated (by me) settler spam strategy?

How did you stop your cities from being take over by the AI counterattack (that always seems to happen to me)?

Why is Organized so important. It gives -50% civic upkeep. It does not reduce city maintenance nor troop maintenance.

Is the double production speed of courthouses the important part?

Am I missing something?

The-Hawk, great write up. Thanks!

You're welcome.

I thought the best way to play would be with less research, more city razing and 20-30 settlers plopped down to get the land %.

I'm not sure how much less research I could do. I think CoL and Construction are minimum essential (probably Currency too, but I traded for that). Beyond those, all I researched was Drama for the culture slide. This speeds up late culture pops, but is not necessary.

It is true I did little razing, but I still needed to settle ~25 cities at the end. I moved so quickly that there was still open unsettled space, especially to the south (ice and tundra).

Hawk - does this mean you did not do the much hated (by me) settler spam strategy?

See above... spam, spam, spam ;).

Why is Organized so important. It gives -50% civic upkeep. It does not reduce city maintenance nor troop maintenance.

Is the double production speed of courthouses the important part?

Am I missing something?

You aren't missing anything. Civic cost rises with population and number of cities. In a domination attempt, this can get pretty big. At the end of my game I was paying 129 gpt, I assume 50% civic savings means I would have been paying 258 gpt. At that time, I was running -10 gpt at 0% research, so I would have been at -139 gpt without Organized. I could tolerate -10 gpt because of the gold from captured cities. However, -139 gpt would have been unsustainable. Since people usually have well established economies, I think the advantage of -50% civic cost is sometimes overlooked. In a game where you have a crap economy, it is critical. Also, as Courthouses were the only buildings I built, the double production speed was a very nice fringe benefit.

@ The-Hawk: Thanks for the write-up - really interesting. I think the critical piece of advice for me is to run slavery & whip the courthouses because I tend to keep cities too and run into economy problems as a consequence. The other thing that would really have helped my war weariness was trading for calendar, which I never managed in the whole game. By around year 0 the AIs would rather die than trade ...

I tried a couple of starts with Julius on BtS. Without Henge nearby, his lack of culture is pretty painful. I think I'll give Augustus/Warlords a try for a while.

I'm also having a heck of a time rolling up a good map. I'm jamming AI's in, mapfinder stops every 8-10 turns because I discover another AI. Oh well, I've had a book I've been wanting to read... reading by my computer so I can restart mapfinder every 5-10 minutes :lol:.

No worker steal? Interesting... It seems to me that stealing a significant amount of workers are going to pay off... Also granaries are good if you ever plan to grow above size 6... Whyever would you want mansa? His UU is actually somewhat good you know.. Best would be to have civs that are not protective and have very low unit% build...

Tried this once, and it was ended quickly, as I realized I need No Barbabarians.

So, started again. Both games shared a common trend, me getting no space to expand, whatsoever. I REALLY got sandwiched, in this second effort. Got 3 cities down, and was going to give up if I didn't get Iron, as I had zero room to put even one more city down. How lucky I got, though, getting Iron within my capitol radius.

So, it's now around 500 BC, and two civs are gone, and I've got some heavyweight Praetorians. Problem is, just like you recent guys have mentioned, I don't like to raze either. Especially with the land grab in my area.

Which bring up the question: How do you raze cities and save your economy, when you know another civ is going to steal that land, if you don't keep the cities?

Have I just been unlucky in my games? This last one seemed crazy. I met all 14, so fast, I was stunned.

So, end of story, my economy's in the tank. Getting the iron, I had a fighting chance. But, at 40% science, I'm losing 35 per turn. At 0% I'm still losing. I have about 10 turns, I reckon, and I'm a goner. I could try and take more cities, but it'll take some time, and none of my nearest neighbors seem to be the easier prey.

What to do...what to do....

Ha, ha, ha. :lol: Shame on you FIRAXIS. What is wrong ? My units cannot even win 30% of 80% odds battles. My praets die like flies against archers at more than favourable odds. I lose 5 or 6 battles in a row at 80-90% odds. Is this normal ? I win the games, but I do not come close to 140AD. Not even 1500AD. Who did program the combat system ? This is ridiculous.

OK, just submitted game #2 (Augustus, Warlords). I hope it is accepted... 240 BC :). Here is a classic domination power curve:

183326


No worker steal? Interesting... It seems to me that stealing a significant amount of workers are going to pay off... Also granaries are good if you ever plan to grow above size 6... Whyever would you want mansa? His UU is actually somewhat good you know.. Best would be to have civs that are not protective and have very low unit% build...

RE: Worker steal. I almost never worker steal in BtS, the warrior and worker get killed too often. Also, I am concerned that if I worker steal, the AI will start building units because we are at war. Might as well leave them fat, dumb, and happy until I come for a real war.

RE: Granaries. I tend to limit city population well below the happy cap so I don't have war weariness. Also, many of the cities I capture have granaries. High food cities with a granary whip, my killer prod cities don't.

RE: Mansa. Good point, didn't really consider his UU. However, vs. Praets, they really weren't a problem.

I have just submitted my second game, I hope it will be accepted. It's a 620 AD win. I improved about 500 years.

Cool. I am currently in 4th place.

I too did not bother with granaries, as my cities were blasting past the happy cap at light speed anyway.

Just finished my Monarch EQM (almost, have to replay one game because of a disallowed crash) so I started my first attempt. Used 13 Ai, got fish, gold, Grassland gems, pigs, 1 FP, in my starting cross. Beelined Iron working and popped iron in the BFC. Rolled 2 praets on DeGuille and took Paris (was on train leaving Paris at the time; ah the irony). Took out DeGuille, ghandi, Asoka but turn 225, kept 2 french and 3 indian cities; breaking even at 40% and almost to caps.
Gonna continue at work tonight; hopefully the success will continue. Biggest problem is the slow production of units but with 6 cities now hopefully they will start to really crank them out.

Which bring up the question: How do you raze cities and save your economy, when you know another civ is going to steal that land, if you don't keep the cities?

I guess no one noticed my post(sigh). This would be my first ever Emporer win, so I need all the help I can get. Anyone got any answers, or is this a stupid question. I think not on the maps I've gotten. Has no one else gotten land crushed? If I razed even one city, I'm sure it'd be replaced in a heartbeat.

I haven't razed many cities in my last game. I played high sea levels with the max number of civilizations. The capitals were quite near and they were good cities. I was helped because I got a double gem start, with copper in my BFC. My second city had two gold mines. The third one, I got from the AI, had an Oasis, another gold and it was settled over Iron. The two were very near my capital. I was teching so fast, that I didn't research drama for trade, because no AI had any good tech to trade.

Keep as many cities you can, raze the really crappy ones (tundra, ice, no food), get Alphabet, then beeline CoL and build those Courthouses.

Which bring up the question: How do you raze cities and save your economy, when you know another civ is going to steal that land, if you don't keep the cities?

I guess no one noticed my post(sigh). This would be my first ever Emporer win, so I need all the help I can get. Anyone got any answers, or is this a stupid question. I think not on the maps I've gotten. Has no one else gotten land crushed? If I razed even one city, I'm sure it'd be replaced in a heartbeat.

In my 240 BC finish, I believe I only razed one city. I keep them for two reasons:

The critical path for finishing is killing AIs, so the more cities building military, the better.
As you mention, if you leave gaps the AI's fill them.


By far, the hardest aspect of this game style is not crashing your economy. Some things I think about:

It is critical to get to CoL before the research slider is too low. However, you can't simply build a massive commerce economy to get there, or you lose the advantage of quick Praets. Once the AI's get to longbows, the conquest starts to slow down. In my 240 BC game, no AI reached Feudalism, I was killing archers and axemen the whole game. This balance between aggressive attack versus getting CoL. requires some finesse, I simply don't have a rule of thumb on how to strike the right balance. IIRC I am usually teching at 30-40% when going for CoL. I also try to get Alpha early to trade for most of the CoL prerequisite techs. The nice thing about having early CoL is you can then trade for another critical tech: Currency.
Once I have research CoL, Contruction, and Drama, I turn research completely off. Typically at 0% research I am still negative commerce, but that is survivable if you keep up aggressive conquest. IIRC at one point towards the end of the 240 BC win, I was running around -100 gpt with 10% culture slider.
Once I'm done research, I sell techs for almost any price. Getting a couple of hundred gold, even for a tech worth 1500, keeps the conquest in motion. I especially focus on selling (or gifting) Calendar and CoL. My hope was AI's would build some courthouses and also improve key tiles before I captured their cities. Ironically, in this game I was too fast, I did not capture one courthouse.
Attack, attack, attack... gold from captured cities is my commerce engine.
Towards the end, when distant cities really can't get units to the front on time, they all are building wealth.

Hmmm. Well if construction is not required, why not play Julius on vanilla, build/chop stonehenge (without stone), and use the GP to bulb CoL? Then you could shut off research at alpha/drama and you have 1/2 of Augustus's creative trait, cheap granaries, and vanilla AI. Just get both med and poly and don't get masonry until after you bulb CoL.

Why waste time building Stonehenge when you know that one of the AI players will build it for you?

Why waste time building Stonehenge when you know that one of the AI players will build it for you?

Sure someone will build it - but how do you know that it will be built in a city that you will capture in time to pop a GP before you need CoL? If you capture it at all that is, it might well be on the other side of the large map.

Plus you won't have IW or pottery for a while so you can't build anything besides a barracks or worker/settler anyway. I'd certainly trade a settler for stonehenge - the AI will build them for me too :mischief:.

Which bring up the question: How do you raze cities and save your economy, when you know another civ is going to steal that land, if you don't keep the cities?

You don't have to raze any. The ones you want to raze you keep initially, but then immediately chop all the forests into praets, slave down to size 1 building praets, pillage any significant improvements and then gift/trade them away to someone. Then you recapture them as you near your victory.

Welll this has turned out to not be as straight forward and easy as I thought it would be. My first attempt started out okay but really wasn't going anywhere fast so when the computer crashed, I wasn't heart-broken.
My second try went better but not good enough. First city had 3 GL gems, fish, clams, and bronze, settled second city by iron and third was 3 more gems but no food so it grew slow. I was teching ridiculously fast and got the early tech lead. I got IW and even was first to CoL so I founded Confusionism. I rolled 2 civs (13 total on map) with Axe and a couple of Praets and had 5 cities early. The gems kept research up so I stupidly kept teching. I think this was part of my downfall. I was so preoccupied with the tech rate, I forgot several steps. I bypassed construction so my capt's were late because I thought, "Hey with Feudalism I can get vassals and end quicker". After I got Feud, I remember that I had "no vassals turned on" so I wasted 30 turns to get LB and then left Hatty alive in the frustration to capitulate her. I then went back and got construction but by this time. Everyone had LB and SW so I stupidly switched over several cities to build wealth and tryed to out tech everyone to Rifleman. This proved futile. I continued to roll but I kept hitting the lower civs near me.
By 800 AD, I had a long snaky empire along the top coast and was at 35% on both (25 short of pop and 17% short of land). This is when it hit me that I forgot to get drama and since PP was 40 more turns, I wasn't likely to ever make it to rifles. I got drama in a couple turns and was rolling the second last civ I would need to roll when Hatty and Bismarck DoW'ed on me. Bis was far and had no troops so I didn't care but Hatty has enough to take back her captured cities (including my FP). I wasn't too concerned and all my troops were on the other side of the world so there wasn't much I could do anyways. I figured I would finish what I was doing and then get her back. At this point, number 2 and 3 DoW on me. Number 2 was furious and had few troops so I took one of his cities. Number 3 was pleased and had a ton of troops. He was on my backdoor (each city had one LB) so he rolled 3 cites on the first 2 turns and I had no answer so at 925and I quit.
Once the boss leaves, I'll try again.

At least you got your Monarch EQM requirements out of the way before wasting 2-3 nights of work on attempting this Gauntlet. I have been having trouble finishing my Time victory on an Archapeligo map. I think I will just knock out the Archipeligo and the few leaders that I have left and then use my time victory as practice for this Gauntlet. Having Caesar conquer the world within 2% of domination limits and then milking the score with one or two opponents left ruling crap cities that produce nothing is a better way of getting a Time victory than trying to get a PA on an Archapeligo map anyway.

I've just finished my second attempt which went much better than the first, despite an unpromising start. Hopefully the game will be accepted, if it is I finished in BC this time, a big improvement.

The interesting thing about domination games is that they all play so differently. It's like The-Hawk said - it's a matter of finesse & what works to get the right balance in one game might not work in the next.

My start in this game was really not good - 1 gold, 1 flood plain, 1 food source, plains hill start. I would have liked 1 more gold or gems or whatever but the map is so crowded that map finder stops every couple of minutes. After a few hours of restarting map finder I gave up & just went with the best start I had. One thing it did teach me was the value of a plains hill start, which is not something I always worry about.

My research was very slow all the way through - didn't get catapults, just barely made it to currency & finally discovered drama on the turn when I hit the domination limit. The AIs were very little help tech-wise - managed to trade for the Code of Laws precursor techs and I think I forced maths out of someone, but otherwise nothing. No-one got to feudalism and I had to research currency myself to save my economy - only just made it in time.

To be honest, I don't think cats are really necessary - nice to have if you can research them quickly but I didn't miss them. I had one city where I really could have used them but in fact losing half my army to take one city towards the end was quite a help. Cut down my unit support/supply costs just in the nick of time, and I still had enough units to take another city to finish the job.

Biggest thing I picked up from this thread was rushing courthouses which really did work pretty well, and running maximum number of opponents. I always forget that the number of opponents affects the domination limit - I only needed 51% of the land in this game, whereas I needed 60% in my first game with minimum opponents. Big difference!

@ The-Hawk: Thanks for the advice, really excellent stuff and clearly explained. I would never have improved my time so much without this thread and your comments in particular.

Well, third time was the charm. I had another 3 gem start and 2 clams so the start was good. I had to settle a good distance away to get Iron so my first praets were kinda late (around 1500 BC). As I built my first one, I got the swordsman quest so I rushed out ten and got CR1 for all of them and then gave them their first promo to CR2. With that stack, I rolled DeGuille and one other civ. I lost none but got 5 new cities to go with my 3. The gems kept my research up at 60-70 all through CoL. I had to drop to around 30 to get Drama (Mansa traded Construc to me for CoL and some gold). By the time I got drama, I had whipped courthouses in all my cities so I was able to run at a loss of 25 or so with the culture slider at 10%. I had about 10 techs that Cyrus didn't so every 10 or 15 turns I would sell him a tech for all his money (100-200 each).

I ended up rolling over 7 of 13 civs to get the domination and ended on a golden age making 40 per turn at 70% culture slider.

It won't set any records at 610AD but it's my second major down and I more than tripled my personal high score with 328,977.

Thanks everyone for the hints and tips.

So whats the next gauntlet?

I'm trying for the third time. It's almost 0 AD and I have almost 40% territory. If I can win this game, I'll probably get a better date. If I don't take down any more cities, I'll get over 40% when the borders starts to pop up. I have now to MM a little to reduce my deficit, about -170 per turn, 0% research. I have almost 2000 in the bank but I need to take a measure before it's too late. I think it's a little exploit, but in Vanilla and Warlords you can demand all AI's money just before DOW. I got once over 800 gold this way.

In my 240 BC finish, I believe I only razed one city. I keep them for two reasons:
The critical path for finishing is killing AIs, so the more cities building military, the better.
As you mention, if you leave gaps the AI's fill them.
By far, the hardest aspect of this game style is not crashing your economy. Some things I think about:
It is critical to get to CoL before the research slider is too low. However, you can't simply build a massive commerce economy to get there, or you lose the advantage of quick Praets. Once the AI's get to longbows, the conquest starts to slow down. In my 240 BC game, no AI reached Feudalism, I was killing archers and axemen the whole game. This balance between aggressive attack versus getting CoL. requires some finesse, I simply don't have a rule of thumb on how to strike the right balance. IIRC I am usually teching at 30-40% when going for CoL. I also try to get Alpha early to trade for most of the CoL prerequisite techs. The nice thing about having early CoL is you can then trade for another critical tech: Currency.
Once I have research CoL, Contruction, and Drama, I turn research completely off. Typically at 0% research I am still negative commerce, but that is survivable if you keep up aggressive conquest. IIRC at one point towards the end of the 240 BC win, I was running around -100 gpt with 10% culture slider.
Once I'm done research, I sell techs for almost any price. Getting a couple of hundred gold, even for a tech worth 1500, keeps the conquest in motion. I especially focus on selling (or gifting) Calendar and CoL. My hope was AI's would build some courthouses and also improve key tiles before I captured their cities. Ironically, in this game I was too fast, I did not capture one courthouse.
Attack, attack, attack... gold from captured cities is my commerce engine.
Towards the end, when distant cities really can't get units to the front on time, they all are building wealth.

It seems to me that a way to counteract the economy crashing is to raze crappy cities, though, and build a ton of settlers who all settle at the same time to get over the top. it seems to me that instead of needing cities building wealth, they can build praets to kill cities that settle in the gaps, no?

If my game is accepted, an 80 AD victory. I'm quite happy.

It seems to me that instead of needing cities building wealth, they can build praets to kill cities that settle in the gaps, no?

Could be, it'll be interesting to see whether the settler-spam or rollercoaster-economy method proves the winner in this gauntlet. But it's not a choice between building wealth and building praetorians in the early to mid-game - currency only comes through towards the end of the game if the time is fairly fast. More accurately, it would be a choice between building wealth and settlers towards the end. Earlier on, you might even have to choose between building praetorians and building settlers in order to obtain the number of settlers required?

I'm wondering whether the settler method is more effective with a very early good unit (say, er, the quecha) when it's possible to cripple the AI much earlier and resettling is reduced?

I built a total of 3 settlers in my last game :mischief: and probably could have finished a little earlier if I'd spammed 2 or 3 cities in horrible tundra/ice sites towards the end. I did raze quite a few coastal cities that weren't viable early on - can't remember exactly how many but could have been up to half a dozen.

If my game is accepted, an 80 AD victory. I'm quite happy.

well done :goodjob:

It seems to me that a way to counteract the economy crashing is to raze crappy cities, though, and build a ton of settlers who all settle at the same time to get over the top. it seems to me that instead of needing cities building wealth, they can build praets to kill cities that settle in the gaps, no?

Settler spam is "conventional" wisdom for Domination. My theory is its better to put hammers into military than settlers. Once I have CoL and Construction (and maybe Construction is not necessary for a very fast game), I could care less if my economy tanks, so I keep all cities.

As Misotu says, it will be interesting to see which approach gets the lower score.

Btw, Misotu, Congrats to you too... BC seems like a pretty challenging benchmark.

Thanks :) I expect someone will pop up with a 1000 BC finish or something eye-popping, but I'm happy!

1000 BC would be... impressive.

One thing I've found is that if you have a lot of opponents and small map size, you get guys right near by - in fact, I've had mapfinder stop because there are AI units within sight of my settler on 4000 BC!!

One thing this means is that you can steal a worker by turn 6 or so, so I may just stop making workers. And if you can get copper, you can go warrior/warrior/barracks/axe/axe/axe, and rush pretty quickly. I had one game going where I had an axe with city raider 1-3, combat 1 and whatever the anti archer one is, and was just 2 points away from the next promotion when he died :(

Well a 300AD finish from me using Warlords/Augustus, good enough for 5th of 9 at this stage. Thought I was going to get BC but some sloppy play delayed me quite a bit. The economy was the main issue throughout the game until towards the end. I bascially hit Code of Laws at 50% research the turn before I went broke and whipping the courthouses took me from-110gpt at 0% to -70gpt. Needless to say I never raised the research above 0% again. Luckily soon after, Asoka decided to trade me Currecncy for Col/Alphabet so was able to put cities on periodic wealth to deal with money issues and I popped a GP for a shrine.

Strangely of my 14 opponents I only ended up killing 2 off (Peter/Gandhi) as others (Vicky/Hannibal/Cyrus/Nappy) had island cities which I was not interested in capturing and others had cities I never found, just get peace and redeclare on someone else. I was usually at war with 2/3 civs at any time and never razed a city.

The start location is key in this one and I have found the map generator being less than helpfull in some cases...
Submitted 410AD finish for now, but feel that 1AD could be done under the right circumstances.
Cudos to anyone with a BC finish.:goodjob:

You are right about the start location ... my good game was not a particularly propitious start in terms of the resources within the fat cross, but was, on reflection, very helpful in terms of its general location within the continent. I was inland, with AIs located in a circle around me, and so my capital ended up being, well, not exactly central to my final empire but *reasonably* central. I think a coastal start position would be tough for this challenge, unless you are doing the settler spam route. If you're planning on the rollercoaster-economy route, then a fairly central capital is a serious help.

Tech Order (not sure I have this right, not 100% sure which were trades):

3655 BC (turn 23): Hunting (hut pop)
3596 (27): Agri
3160 (56): AH
2770 (82): Bronze
2330 (117): Iron
2240 (126): Wheel
2080 (142): Writing
1850 (165): Mysticism (this must have been a hut?)
1790 (171): Alpha, trade for Meditation, Pottery
1780 (172): trade for Masonry
1700 (180): trade for Sailing
1420 (208): trade for Priesthood
1360 (214): Math
1160 (234): trade for Polytheism
1150 (235): trade for Monotheism
1130 (237): trade for Monarchy
840 (266): Code of Law
830 (267): trade for Currency
820 (268): trade for Calendar
680 (282): Contruction (started Feudalism – maybe a mistake?)
380 (312): trade for Aesthetics.
290 (321): Feudalism
170 (333): Drama (research turned off)
80 (342): trade for Theology (for Theocracy, but never changed)



Your tech pace amazes me - I just had a 2 gold, cow and pig start and it's 1585 BC and I just finished Writing - in your game, you have had Alphabet for 13 turns!! I think this is a case of not starting on a river, so ALL my commerce is from the palace and the two gold hills

ahh. There seems to be more turns in BTS than Vanilla for a marathon game (1500 vs. 1200), so that explains that. Well, I'll stop trying to figure out how to keep up!!

ahh. There seems to be more turns in BTS than Vanilla for a marathon game (1500 vs. 1200), so that explains that. Well, I'll stop trying to figure out how to keep up!!

Note that The-Hawk said he wasn't sure which were trades. In my game I traded for Alphabet after partially researching it.

Sun Tzu Wu

actually, I think he researched it. I've gotten a similar result in terms of turns - not quite as fast, but similar - but the years were much later. I've found that I'm almost always the first to alpha, though I may not be the first to writing.

It might be interesting to blow off writing/alpha and go to priesthood and try building oracle to get CoL first, but then you still have to get to alpha somehow to get the techs you've missed...

Hi all,

I've been tied up for a few days, haven't had time to answer questions. I'll get back to them all in a couple of days when I have some time.

PS. I posted 400 BC a few days ago, but someone has beaten that time already. Hopefully they'll 'fess up and post some pointers too ;).

400 BC? Wow.

I'll have my first major gauntlet game, but it will be 400 AD or so - nice start (4 gold, 3 FP, cow), but I'm not so good at understanding when I'm overstretched ;) nothing like attacking 3 civs at once and losing 4 or 5 17 XP Praets and having to give back the cities you took cause your economy is crashed and you still need construction, calendar, currency, drama... and you have pissed off so many AI by stealing workers that no one will trade with you ;)

I tried again and got BW from a hut saving 20 or so turns and then ended up finishing 18 turns later than my first game. I did get 360k on the second game so I was excited about that.
My problem is not stretching to much but not enough. I almost never break my force in to more than maybe 2 stacks and always concentrate on finishing one civ off before I start on the next. I also hate to attack a city and be a unit or two short so I tend to wait longer and overkill. I'll attack a city and have 15 extra units instead of a couple extra. I'll try again if I can ever get a win on the emperor minor going right now. It has turned out to be harder than I expected but then again I am much more comfortable on monarch than emperor.

I am hyper-cautious too, but I do break my army into more stacks initially, and then pull them back together into one or two stacks, which you might find comfortable if, like me, you're not a gung ho warrior :) Before declaring war, I break my army into several stacks and try to attack as many of the cities belonging to a single AI as I possibly can, all on one turn. For archers/axemen I generally try to get a ratio of roughly 2:1 attackers:defenders but it varies a lot - a ratio of maybe 1.5:1 for cities that aren't on hills for example. I get them all in position and then go for 3 or 4 cities at once, usually taking all of them within a couple of turns. Then I consolidate the troops, as they heal, into a single force, or sometimes two forces, to mop up the rest of the AI's cities. I have found that this way I don't give the AI the chance to build a load of extra defenders because it has almost no warning of the attack and, although there's a delay while I get my troops in place and build the extra troops I need, it actually ends up being faster than simply attacking a single city as soon as I am able to do so.

I know *exactly* what you mean about hating to be a unit or two short. With this method, if you do get dead unlucky on one of your targets and lose out by a unit or two, you have the consolation of having taking two or three other cities in the same turn and your newly-promoted consolidated army will swing by and take the city out with no difficulty within a few turns.

I posted 400 BC a few days ago, but someone has beaten that time already. Hopefully they'll 'fess up and post some pointers too ;).

I'm third at the moment - 320 BC. So ... the burning question. Did the current leader settler spam or no? :mischief:

How do you guys know what has been submitted? I can see Misotu's 320 BC game, but that's the fastest I can see in the table.

How do you guys know what has been submitted? I can see Misotu's 320 BC game, but that's the fastest I can see in the table.

You can only see where your game stands in the gauntlet table until the guantlet is ended. You have to login to HOF first and then go to the gauntlet page.

However games submitted before the mid-month HOF update are published then and you can see them in the regular HOF table (if they are in the top 10of course) which is why you can see Misotu's earlier effort.

Some people intentionally delay submission until after the update for this reason :mischief: (but it's not me at #1)

ahh - got it :)

Some dumb questions and some strategy questions:

1) Land domination limit only pertains to land tiles, right? not coast or ocean or lakes? Do es impassable terrain count, particularly mountains?

2) Is there a way to see how many tiles you need for domination before you get to within whatever % triggers the alert?

3) Do you guys keep all the workers you end up with? I had about 40 at the end of my game and started to just disband them to save costs. I'm wondering if giving them away to civs you will target is useful.

4) I have been doing a lot of worker stealing early and I've found that it's a really, really good way to upset a wide variety of civs, to the point where no one wants to trade with you. How many civs do you guys generally keep on good terms with?

5) I may try one with caste system instead of slavery and can maybe just shut down research after CoL completely, though currency is tough to pass up. Not being able to whip sucks, but get an expansion with a new city after 10 turn is pretty good.

6) Do you guys take a state religion? I didn't realize that if you don't have a state religion, you get 1 cpt for every religion in your city, so if you don't have a state religion, the cities you capture will (usually) expand in 30 turns on their own!!

Hi guys -

First of all, thanks for all the strategy tips that have been posted here - it has really opened my eyes up to the magic of this game.

Imagine my surprise when I went with a slightly different strategy than posted and then got the #1 spot (so far). Here are some tips which should enable someone to beat my time (I could easily have cut 10 turns off with more careful play).

I used an early rush, followed by settler spamming. My next post will have more detailed strategy.

First some answers to the questions:

1) Land domination limit only pertains to land tiles, right? not coast or ocean or lakes? Do es impassable terrain count, particularly mountains?
>> Land tiles only. Don't know about mountains.

2) Is there a way to see how many tiles you need for domination before you get to within whatever % triggers the alert?
>> You can see where you are in the victories screen (F8).

3) Do you guys keep all the workers you end up with? I had about 40 at the end of my game and started to just disband them to save costs. I'm wondering if giving them away to civs you will target is useful.
>> Yes. If you really don't need them then disbanding is okay. You may be better off building cottages instead of disbanding. Cross continent roads are good too.

4) I have been doing a lot of worker stealing early and I've found that it's a really, really good way to upset a wide variety of civs, to the point where no one wants to trade with you. How many civs do you guys generally keep on good terms with?
>> Worker stealing is so good, especially in epic/marathon games that it doesn't matter whom you make upset. In these timed games a faster start means an earlier finish and less developed opponents to kill. In this major I didn't trade much.

5) I may try one with caste system instead of slavery and can maybe just shut down research after CoL completely, though currency is tough to pass up. Not being able to whip sucks, but get an expansion with a new city after 10 turn is pretty good.
>> Slavery is too important to pass up. I used a settler rush and since my pop % was really high I whipped all the cities I could to build them faster. I didn't have code of laws so changing civics wasn't really an option.

6) Do you guys take a state religion? I didn't realize that if you don't have a state religion, you get 1 cpt for every religion in your city, so if you don't have a state religion, the cities you capture will (usually) expand in 30 turns on their own!!
>> I didn't - I didn't want to spend the 2 turns of anarchy and I was pretty much killing everyone I met so a shared religion seemed less important. Plus you don't have any time whatsoever to spread your religion.

-- Manic

Some strategy for a sub-700BC win;

Opponents and settings I picked on protective and non creative opponents although I think only non-protective is needed. Protective leaders' units start with defensive promotions and they tend to build more units which greatly reduces your ability to conquer them. I used 14 opponents to lower the dom limit.

Initial start: I think you need gems. You don't have time to set up the agriculture/mining to support gold and food (such as corn). With a two-gem start you can build a worker, then mine the two gems and then you don't need early side techs like agri. A start in the center of the map is also very important otherwise your supply lines will be too long and your city maintenance will be too high.

Early Strategy Your goal is to build praets, which means you research bronze working and then iron working. With the right start (two gems) you don't need any other techs since your workers have nothing else to do. Once you mine the two gems you chop forests to build two settlers, with the second one finishing at the same time as you complete IW. The reason for this is you need to settle near iron and don't want to wait. The first settler builds in a production spot (perhaps near copper or on a plains hill). The second one builds next to iron and hopefully another resource (cow works well). Now you research the wheel to hook up the iron while your cities build barracks or workers. Because hooking up iron takes a lot of time, you should not chop rush the barracks, instead saving the push for quick praets. You'll need to switch to slavery early because whipping out improvements is important for high food / low production cities. I didn't whip to build praets.

Worker Stealing This is a must. The early workers are key, since my strategy involves chopping a lot of forests and hooking up iron quickly. I don't bother with copper except for the straight +3 production on the tile. You need to steal workers early because after a certain number of turns (50 or so?) they are protected by archers. It doesn't matter who you attack, just get out there and steal. Sometimes you need to patrol an area to find the worker: if you see a gold, a worker will be mining it soon.

Attack plan Build praets right away, chopping down every forest in sight. Your cities will never have health issues and there are no future things you need. If you are fast enough, 3-4 praets is enough to take out a civ very early on. I keep good cities early and tend to raze marginal or far away ones. In all my games I only went to war with at most two civs at a time. Nothing wrong with letting up on a civ and then killing them later.

Tech BW, IW, wheel, agriculture, animal husbandry, pottery, mysticism and then 0% tech. I didn't quite do this but I would next game. You don't need any other techs, and if you are planning to beat my time you won't do it by researching construction or even code of laws.

Key Wonder You absolutely need stonehenge for the +1 culture or else your cities cultural radius won't expand. I never got to code of laws although I did in previous games with decent results. If you have CoL you can switch to caste system and give everyone an artist to grow much faster than the 30 turns it took me. In that case you don't need stonehenge. I won't recommend building it because you don't have time and getting masonry will take a long time.

End game Once it looks like you are going to clear enough land, switch every city to build settlers, and then plop them down all at once. In the meantime, keep every city you capture and hope you have enough of a gold store to last until you are no longer at war. Then plant your settlers, switch to caste system for the artists (if you got that tech) and let your economy crash and all your units disband. Settlers don't disband but workers do. A trick is once you are close to enough settlers, set the remainder of the cities to research which can help you hit CoL if you are close. I didn't plan my techs very well so I ended up hitting CoL just as all my cities expanded after 30 turns of waiting.

-- Manic

Well, the % doesn't give you a good idea of exactly how much more land you need.

As it turns out, I figured out how to do that - it's a little cheesy, though.

If you go to the HOF mod1 screen, you can set the territory warning to be 50%, which means that (in a game like this), you should get the warning when your city expands - if not then, when it expands a 2nd time or you place your second city.

Good game manic bob. Thanks for the tips.

I can vouch for Manic Bob's suggestions (which I figured out after my first game where I wasted a bunch of money on techs that weren't worth it). Just played a game and got a pre-700BC finish that will probably take the top spot.

Settings:
BtS, Julius Caesar
Pangaea, Solid, High Seas
14 opponents, none aggressive, protective, or creative.
Start with 1 corn, 2 gems, 15 forests in BFC

Techs:
Agri, BW, IW, Wheel, AH, Hunt, full stop. Traded for Pottery, Writing, and Myst, but only ever used Myst.
Built: 3 settlers before IW, 0 workers (all workers stolen). Then lots and lots of praets and a few monuments.
Kept every city possible. Fought until I was broke, killing 10 opponents. Then built a couple dozen settlers. Good times.

Well, the % doesn't give you a good idea of exactly how much more land you need.

You can tell exactly how much more land you need by doing this: hover the mouse over your own name in the leader list, where it tells you what your score is, and how it is made up. If you look at the number of points you're getting for land, it tells you there how many tiles you control out of the total number of tiles. The total number of tiles, of course, represents 100% so ... divide by 100 and this gives you the exact number of tiles required to increase your score by 1% and from there, of course, you can work out how many tiles you need to hit the land domination limit.

@manic_bob & ShannonCT:

Great games & thanks for the write-up :goodjob:

I'm confused by a couple of things though (probably because I haven't played BtS yet).

ShannonCT, how did you trade for writing, pottery & mysticism if you didn't have alphabet? Are you saying that the AI researched Alphabet? :eek: That would be very different from Vanilla/Warlords ... Or don't you need alphabet to trade in BtS?

Also, I wondered why you chose Julius rather than Augustus with his creative bonus? Or do they have different traits again in BtS ?

manic_bob, which version did you play? I assume you chose Julius too, since you're wanting Stonehenge ...

Augustus is Industrious instead of Creative in BtS.

And yes, several of the AI researched Alpha in my game, though only one was willing to trade with me after so many war declarations on their friends.

thanks, Misotu!! I had no idea.

Another key bit about playing this Gauntlet in BtS or Warlords is that settlers don't disband in BtS when your units go on strike. I believe they do in Warlords. So if you can kill around half of the AI before you go broke, you can spam settlers at your leisure and not worry about getting a bunch of them built and in place while you're still fighting. This advantage in BtS might make it competitive with Augustus's creative trait in Warlords.

I think it's pretty clear that vanilla is the least good option :( fewer turns, no great generals, not as good traits, just balanced by the stupider AI.

Well, the % doesn't give you a good idea of exactly how much more land you need.

As it turns out, I figured out how to do that - it's a little cheesy, though.

If you go to the HOF mod1 screen, you can set the territory warning to be 50%, which means that (in a game like this), you should get the warning when your city expands - if not then, when it expands a 2nd time or you place your second city.
... and if you want to know how much settlers you need to cover the required landmass I can post a small bourne-shell script here, for which you need "cygwin", "mingw" or a Linux host to run ;)

Another key bit about playing this Gauntlet in BtS or Warlords is that settlers don't disband in BtS when your units go on strike. I believe they do in Warlords. So if you can kill around half of the AI before you go broke, you can spam settlers at your leisure and not worry about getting a bunch of them built and in place while you're still fighting. This advantage in BtS might make it competitive with Augustus's creative trait in Warlords.

There is also a timeline difference in BTS. You get more turns for the same date.

I'd say the #1 downside of BTS is having AI's whip archers as you march your praets up to their cities.

Well done ShannonCT and manic_bob !! :goodjob: :clap:

I was starting to wonder if a minimal tech strategy would work. In my 400BC win, I never got currency (nobody had teched it when I won). My economy was challenged (IIRC I was running -150 gpt at 0% research), but I could survive. However, turning off research before CoL did not occur to me. I think I'll give this a shot.

BTW, early congrats to all. IMHO, this is turning out to be a great Gauntlet. I didn't expect 12 people to submit on an Emperor game, better yet there is good sharing in the thread. When people collaborate on improving the overall time, gauntlets becomes very educational. If someone can pop a 1000 BC finish as a result, we ALL win ;).

Thanks TheHawk!

After ShannonCT beat me out of first place I decided to play again and managed to crack 1000BC! My game hasn't been accepted yet but I suspect I'll be back in first place. I used the same two-gem strategy I use in nearly any difficult game - it is the fastest way to any early tech.

What made my last game better was that I was able to steal 3 workers. Then when my city grew to size 2 I chopped like crazy to get two settlers. When I hit iron working hooking up iron was fast, and I then I chopped nearly every forest still left to get some very early praets (turn 130?). Only then then did I improve the land around my new cities (this is a counter-intuitive strategy). I think it worked because if you attack early enough the opponents do not have axemen and the cultural defenses are low; taking out a civ without loosing any praets is not uncommon. After a while I had several praets with city raider I,II and III.

I also used some strategies I learned from the forums: pre-chopping forests. I had one settler down (and had improved the one square (copper) I could) and the other one waiting for iron to be discovered. I "prechopped" five forests. This is where you chop for 8 turns (22 turns mining on a forest hill) and then stop the worker. When you come back later it only takes a turn or two to chop the forest and you get the full production. This jump started my praet production significantly.

I think this has been covered, but with the turn off tech early strategy you only build barracks and then only in cities that are going to produce military units. I conquered a few places in the mid game and did nothing but produce settlers while the captured workers chopped every forest around, even the ones that were outside of the cultural boundaries (you get less but it is still worth it). With the 50% production bonus for Julius this went well.

Finally I used the tropical setting for my games. The idea was to get more double-gem starts (which works) and also to slow down the opposition since there is much less land to use (much of the world is covered with jungle). In practice the second part didn't help much and it did hurt me a little bit when trying to found new cities. I had to stop a game because I didn't have a second good spot for a production city and iron was in the middle of a big jungle. All civ starts are in non-jungle areas so it doesn't hurt captured cities much.

This is a great guantlet!

-- Manic

Well done MB! I think you've hit on the optimal strategy. Now it's just a matter of who can execute it best, and get a little luck on the way.

Did I mention that my pre-700BC game was also pre-1100BC? ;)

The following is edited due to ShannonCT and manic_bob kicking butt...

If someone can pop a 1500 BC finish as a result, we ALL win ;).

My game is also pre 1100BC but not by much, so it will be close but I suspect you're ahead. I misplayed and cost myself about 4 turns which apparently may now matter.

Not sure I'm going to give it another go and may have to settle for second place.

-- Manic

good lord. I'm amazed. I'll have to try again - I can't catch 1000 BC, I don't think - not in vanilla - but those times are amazing...

If someone can pop a 1500 BC finish as a result, we ALL win.

I think 1500BC is probably around the upper limit of this gauntlet. If I went back to a 2000BC save and replayed, I could probably get close to 1500BC.

The first 150 turns of my game went very well. My starting location got me to IW very early and was very productive as well, so I got a big army rolling early. I captured the Hindu and Buddhist holy cities early, so they both got 2 border expansions in the end. And I had some good luck in combat, not losing a single Praet until my 4th AI. The early wars meant I faced 96 archers and only 4 axes (and a few chariots) in killing 10 AI.

The two places I could have improved were:

1) Capturing Stonehenge earlier. I captured it 25 turns before my victory, making it useless. It was rather far away and not along my main battle lines, but I could have sent a small force to get it earlier. Or if the game had been different and it had been built by someone else, I could have some border expansions from more cities.

2) Switching to settler production earlier. I built ~6 praets that got disbanded before they ever got to the front lines, and partially built some others. I should have done better in calculating when my economy would crash. In my first try at this game (230BC) I ran out of space to put settlers because I should have eliminated 1-2 more AI. In my best game, I had lots of empty space at the end where I could have settled more cities.

Okay, I'm still 2nd, albeit by a much smaller margin.

I'm not sure that 1500 BC is possible, but I could see 1350.

Shannon, it is very interesting that you didn't need Stonehenge. I wouldn't have won without it in any of my games.

Okay, I'm still 2nd, albeit by a much smaller margin.

Did I mention that my pre-1100BC game was also pre-1300BC? :D

Shannon, it is very interesting that you didn't need Stonehenge. I wouldn't have won without it in any of my games.

If you kill enough AI and free up the space, you can always get more tiles by plopping down more cities. In BtS, settlers never disband, so you don't have to worry about beating the economic crash. So Stonehenge will help some if you get it early enough but it's not necessary. And Stonehenge is only going to help the cities that you capture and the city where you build the Henge. It takes less than 30 turns after your economy crashes to spam enough new cities to get domination. Those new cities never need to get a border expansion anyway.

Those are just ridiculous times. I am rolling well in my current game but it's 400BC and I'm at about 19% on both.

There is also a timeline difference in BTS. You get more turns for the same date.

I'd say the #1 downside of BTS is having AI's whip archers as you march your praets up to their cities.

I'd rather the AI whip Archers as my Praets approach than Axemen.

I am assuming that the rediculous times are being accomplished through some lucky huts popping necessary techs (BW and IW) to shorten the early game.

I didn't pop any techs from huts. Just ~120 gold. That did let me support 4 built cities without turning down the research slider.

The main way to get fast research is to start with at least 2 gems, and steal workers to mine them ASAP. Build warriors to start rather than a worker, so you can grow your city and work more tiles, improved by the workers stolen by all of your warriors. Beeline IW with possible detour for Agri.

The main way to get fast research is to start with at least 2 gems, and steal workers to mine them ASAP. Build warriors to start rather than a worker, so you can grow your city and work more tiles, improved by the workers stolen by all of your warriors.

I've been playing around with gem starts, I'm not completely convinced. My three concerns:

- Two gem starts are often jungle infested, it is not easy to find good sites for cities 2 and 3.
- Again, just gut feel, but it seems like these gem starts are not as hammer rich. Especially since many of the starts lack a plains hill.
- I'm wondering if it takes too long to steal the workers (vs. building one straight away). Maybe I'm impatient waiting for one to show himself and it feels longer.

I think I'll try a couple of gold based starts with the same philosophy: agri, BW, IW, maybe full stop, maybe AH.

Then again, last nite I rolled up a 3 gem start on mapfinder, I suppose I should try that one too ;).

They may not have as many hammers, but then, you grow faster with the gems then with gold hills.

Did I mention that my pre-1100BC game was also pre-1300BC? :D


Nice going ShannonCT !

Do you have any issues with the excessive numbers of archers being whipped by the AI under slavery?

Nice going ShannonCT !

Do you have any issues with the excessive numbers of archers being whipped by the AI under slavery?

My first three victims never had time to adopt slavery. Of the others, I'm sure there was some archer whipping going on. But they couldn't really stop CR2 and CR3 praets, especially since they weren't getting a fortification bonus. The most annoying part of the archer whipping was that the captured cities weren't as populous as they could have been. So they couldn't produce settlers as fast as I would have liked.

My guess is probably not based on that time finish.

Two gem starts are often jungle infested, it is not easy to find good sites for cities 2 and 3.
- Again, just gut feel, but it seems like these gem starts are not as hammer rich. Especially since many of the starts lack a plains hill.

My 2 gems start wasn't too near jungle. I found sites to build three more decent cities around Rome. My capital had 6 grass hills, but I only mined 2 because I thought it was more important to whip Praets and get them out early. With 15 forests in the capital's BFC, it never lacked for production. I guess if you leave Mapfinder running long enough searching for 2 gems, you should find a good location.

- I'm wondering if it takes too long to steal the workers (vs. building one straight away). Maybe I'm impatient waiting for one to show himself and it feels longer.

I stole my first worker on Turn 25, and got him back to Rome on Turn 29. It takes 30 turns to build a worker if you don't settle on a plains hill and 24 turns if you do. If you can have a couple warriors stalking AI resources like corn/wheat/rice or gold/gems by Turn 20, you should get some workers back to your capital with good speed.

Those times are ridiculous. My version of Civ IV does not allow Emperor domination victories until well after 1500AD. You guys must have broken versions. You should ask for your money back as you are not getting as much value for money out of each game as my version does. In My Civ IV version, war weariness is a colossal problem and I have to keep stopping and starting wars with different AIs to stop my cities from revolting on me.

Having just now made my first finish at 130 BC (after aborting a few earlier tries), i wonder whether the 1000 BC could be beat using just vanilla. I did make some mistakes (like waiting for a worker in front of a wheat with my second warrior for 10 turns before i realised that it already had farmland on it) and had the ocasional bad luck with the rng, but i don't think i could have finished 900 years earlier.... Especially since i already had pretty good luck: I got two goodie huts, one had the wheel, the other had agriculture inside.

Ah well, perhaps i will try again... I doubt i will beat 1000BC with vanilla, but maybe 500BC is possible.

In My Civ IV version, war weariness is a colossal problem and I have to keep stopping and starting wars with different AIs to stop my cities from revolting on me.

If your people are unhappy, why don't you just whip them a bit more?

oh, but i do have a question for the pros here: How in the world do you solve the financial problems?

I actually had to resort to the anarchy trick (which i hope is not forbidden - i did not see it disallowed in the HoF rules), which did slow me down a lot. But without it there would have been absolutely no way to expand rapidly enough. By the very end i lost almost 700 gold per turn at 0% research.

sorry for posting 4 times in a row, but being new to the HoF stuff i got another question: According to the HoF for large, emperor domination wins there are only 3 people that have made BC wins so far.... According to this thread, there are several that have made BC wins for this gauntlet though,

Does this mean that table is up for quite some change after the next update? It seems like the current record there has been beaten by at least two people posting in this thread.

The HoF table only shows accepted as of the last update (26th July). All games submitted since then will not be shown. The next update (10th August) will show all games for this gauntlet. If you want to check your position in this gauntlet, go to the HoF page, login and select the gauntlet link on the left hand side and then select the G-Major tab and G-Major 31 from the dro down menu. Your position and the number of games submitted should be shown. I can see I'm now 8th of 12.

The "anarchy trick" is frowned upon but not forbidden, I don't think.

oh, but i do have a question for the pros here: How in the world do you solve the financial problems?

Since no pros have answered yet, I'll answer instead. Expect your economy to tank if you want a good finish date. After you've researched the bare minimum of techs, (BW, IW, Wheel, Agri, maybe AH, maybe Hunt, maybe Myst), set research to zero and start accumulating gold. Wage all out war as fast as possible to get the cash from capturing cities. In Vanilla, you'll probably need to start building lots of settlers after you've killed off half of the AI. (This gauntlet is a lot tougher in Vanilla with no good leader traits and settlers disbanding when units are on strike.)

how does the program pick units to disband?

how does the program pick units to disband?
What I noticed from my domination games in BtS. Settlers are never disbanded, newer units before older ones, units in the field before city-fortified ones

My experience is that it won't disband the last unit in your city f it was built before the strike.

So I tried stopping research at AH and using settler spam to get an early win but with little luck. I was able to get upto 30% pop and 28% land before I ran out of money but I had captured SH so all of my borders had popped at least once and so I had no where to place new cities that would claim more land. I was right up against another AI on one side and the water on the other 3 so without Praets, I had no where to go.
The biggest problems I saw were
1. I had a long snaky pangea and started on one end. This was good for prtecting captured land but I was unable to clear out other civs in more than one direction and once I moved away from my capital, costs got high quickly.
2. I kept every city I took. Based on the protecability of my land (just close my borders), I could have kept a third of them and held out for 50 or more turns probably.
3. I couldn't worker steal anything. I could not find an unescorted worker anywhere. By turn 50, I had no workers and no developed gems (4 in fat cross), so I had to then build a couple of workers. This delayed my research and my settler production.
4. My mapfinder is set to no jungle tiles but everything surrounding my starting location (outside MF view) was jungle so after I chopped a bunch of forests, I had to spend time chopping jungles instead of building mines and such.

With all that I went broke at 300bc and had the above listed percentages so not even close to the leaders. I can't see how I could have shaved off 1000 years and added 20% of the land.

Well as soon as the boss leaves, I'll be back on the attack!!
If at first you don't succeed, ...

A snaky continent, near-jungle start with no worker by turn 50 deserves a restart. Garbage in, garbage out.

4 gems sounds pretty good, but I'd trade a couple of those gems for a nice big forest in my BFC. If you set Mapfinder to look for that, you should have a good chance of getting a big Praet army early. If there is some jungle nearby, avoid it. Chopping jungle is a waste. Workers should be (in order) improving food, improving high hammer tiles (copper, horse, iron), building key roads, chopping forests. Settle cities in the jungle at the end during the settler spam phase.

You might want to make sure you pick civs as opponents who start with mining or agriculture. I know that I picked several civs that had no worker techs right off, so their worker stayed in.

Did much better this time. The map was basically 2 big islands connected by an isthmus. I got the Sword quest so my preats had CR1 and CR2 to start. I rolled 5 civs and had one big side completely to myself. I only kept capitals so at 500BC I had >3000 gold and at 0 research was losing ~5 per turn. I had a huge army but I thought that I had enough land. I had settlers strategically placed and plopped them all down. Gold went to -300 per turn and low and behold I had 37% of the land (needed 51). :mad::mad::mad::mad:

So I built monuments in all cities and popped borders. I covered all but three open squares and only made it to 43%. I was broke, on strike and out of land. Damn!! I had it and if I would have kept rolling one or 2 more civs, I would have been sure to have enough land.

Time to try again I guess.

BTW. I just built a worker since I can't seem to get this whole stealing thing right.

I will say, I have had games where I couldn't get a worker for > 30 turns, but usually were able to snag 3 or 4 in the next 10.

I got just got 160BC (much better than my previous 610AD). It should have been 200BC. I checked the victory screen and it showed the pop and land but then the turn ended and I checked again and the pop went down just below. It took 2 more turns and then it gave me the win.
I had a 2 gem start and 11 forest. I popped BW from a hut on turn 2 but it was really too early to help much other than to speed up IW. Got my second city and decided to forgo the third (figure madrid was a fine third city). I rolled 8 civs as fast as I could, only keeping the capitals (stopped research after BW->IW->Agri->AH). After 8 I keeped all cities until I went broke. I got 2 more civs and finished the last civ off as the money ran out. Then I just settler spammed until I hit the limits.

I was able to trade IW for several techs. I like to trade it away so that the AI will slave swordmen instead of axemen. They are easier to kill. Also I made sure to only get civs that were not creative, agg, or protec.

This was a great gauntlet for me. It really helped me fine tune my domination game.

Thanks for all the advice everyone. Now that I have a BC finish, I think I will call it quits until the next update. Gotta do schoolwork eventually I guess!

I just submitted 1050 BC. I think you folks are onto the right strategy. I also suspect that critical to fastest game will be an early worker steal. In my game, I could not find a worker until turn 37. That's a bunch of wasted turns. I think maybe 7-10 wasted early turns is worth a bunch at the end... because I was slow, I was fighting way more axemen.

I also was not very efficient in my overall war strategy, I spent too much time crisscrossing my lands with Praets heading to another war.

Alas, time is running out on the gauntlet :(. Maybe I'll be able to sneak in one more try before the end.

I just submitted 1050 BC. I think you folks are onto the right strategy. I also suspect that critical to fastest game will be an early worker steal. In my game, I could not find a worker until turn 37. That's a bunch of wasted turns. I think maybe 7-10 wasted early turns is worth a bunch at the end... because I was slow, I was fighting way more axemen.


I agree, the worker stealing (in combination with 3 gem fields) is really working pretty well with a little practice and luck. The key to that seems to be correctly anticipating where the workers will be sent and havin a warrior wait for them there. Figuring out which starting techs the target civ has helps a lot with that. A little later in the game the AI is pretty much guaranteed to build roads between the capital and first setlement, or at least to send the worker over there. That's too late for catching an early worker, but it is a free worker nonetheless since usually they aren't protected by archers if you aren't at war currently.

Another perhaps helpful, but so far unverified observation is that i have the impression certain civs guard their workers less than others. i mostly found unprotected workers from egypt and india, while all others seem to protect them a lot more. But perhaps that was just coincidence ifi'm the only one that noticed that.

Turn 37 seems pretty good imo (and 1050 BC definetly is extremely good by my standards, at least if using vanilla). Sure, you could get it faster with some luck and it will take a few more turns to bring the worker home, but if you start out building warriors your city will have gained 1 size level and you have more potential for capturing extra workers.

As to axemen... i may be wrong, but i have the feeling some civs build more axement than others. Bismarck always seems to have axemen in almost every city, egypt rarely had any. Perhaps that's related to how agressive the AI is programmed to be: a civ not seeking any conquest might rather build the defensive archers and spearmen.

Since no pros have answered yet, I'll answer instead. Expect your economy to tank if you want a good finish date. After you've researched the bare minimum of techs, (BW, IW, Wheel, Agri, maybe AH, maybe Hunt, maybe Myst), set research to zero and start accumulating gold. Wage all out war as fast as possible to get the cash from capturing cities. In Vanilla, you'll probably need to start building lots of settlers after you've killed off half of the AI. (This gauntlet is a lot tougher in Vanilla with no good leader traits and settlers disbanding when units are on strike.)

Thanks, that really was the answer to my problems. In my latest game i actually still had 1500 gold saved up at 500 BC, replenished by looting cities, and didn't need to use the anarchy trick at all.

I really had a nice game with that strategy, especially since i also grabbed SH early and managed to use it due to not needing anarchy... Only problem was that i miscalculated when to start building settlers instead of praets. At 500 BC i had a ton of settlers but too little land to build on. If i keep on playing i might beat my old record, but i'm still miles away from those 1000 BC times posted here :-(

Hi guys -

Just submitted a much better game than before... Hopefully this is good enough for the #1 spot and I'll let you know if it gets accepted. A few comments:

1: Worker steals seem to work reasonably well on this map, and much better with 3 gem starts (not 2). The reason is because you can't steal as