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: Cultural (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
Difficulty: Immortal
Starting Era: Ancient
Map Size: Standard
Map Type: Archipelago
Speed: Epic
Civ: Any
Opponents: Any
Version: 1.74.004, 2.13.004 or 3.19.001
Date: 9th November to 9th December 2009
Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

Damn, I wish I had the time to play this one. Looks pretty interesting.

Elizabeth in BtS for the win again?

I think I might be able to find time to give this a try if BLubz will give me a kitchen pass from the SGOTM.

I also think that Lizzy on BTS will be the winner here

I'll have to defend my #1 position on this table that I've had since May 2006.;) I don't think 1838 is going to hold up.

Got it started with a quick 1690AD six city squeaker with Lizzie.

It was a totally standard liberalism beeline/culture switch. The land was not optimal though, production poor, and only 6,6,7 cottages. Best GP farm could only sustain six GAs too.

AIs were close to UN (Gandhi built Hollywood), and everyone was happy, so they would have won soon that way.

Funny thing happened, that I have never seen before.
Lincoln shared the island with me, but before the finish he moved his palace to another island, and then he liberated his old core cities as a colony!
AIs were generally colony happy, with five AI spawning six total.

In my first serious attempt into the Immortal EQM foray, I put up a 1752 finish. I chuckled when I did an Ad-Hoc query to Imm/Epic/Cult/Standard and saw one of my first (weak) immortal victories at 1911. I have made some strides since then.

My first win on immortal! I barely won in 1873 playing as Carthage.

Boy, I wish I'd defied the resolution for global civic emancipation - that really messed up my GA farm.

Posted an 1810, 6 city, 2 religion win with Lizzy.

My first win on immortal! I barely won in 1873 playing as Carthage.

Boy, I wish I'd defied the resolution for global civic emancipation - that really messed up my GA farm.

:banana::banana::banana::banana:

:w00t:

:banana::banana::banana::banana:

My first win above Monarch!!!!!

1851, currently 5th! (I know, it's early yet)

Played as Gandhi. There was a lot of good fortune for me in this game.

I started out on a nice sized island by myself, but with coastal neighbors, so was able to trade and get nine cities founded.

Culturally took a German city, which proved extremely valuable, as he was the only one to declare war on me (rifles and artillery against longbows and cats :eek:), but I was able to end the war quickly by giving him the flipped city back.

I got the castle quest, which gave me a +3 relations with all leaders, which kept me out of war for the rest of the game.

Murphy's law of cultural victories: if the stupid governor assigns a non-artist for even a turn you will end up getting the wrong great person. :(

1732, but should have easily been in the 1600s if I had planned it better (put too many multipliers in the capital and it finished well before the others). At least it was way better than my first attempt, where I tried for 9 cities and killed my slider.

16xx with Isabella. Couldve gotten within 1500s if i didnt pop a prophet w/ 9% chance. Also, privateers are annoying at the end. Each ai found at least one colony, including me.

Back to cultural games!
I never knew how to play them in BTS... and I haven't improved yet. Very awkward game.

Eliz, 3 clams start. Beeline hindusim, then BW. First 3 builds are WB. Worker steal Washington, get peace much later on. Early Lib and academy. Miss CS sling by 13 turns, could have got CoL sling ages ago. REXing quicly is what cost me the sling.

Musa got Alpha first while I beelined CS and Music, but he wouldn't trade it :(.
I am so stupidly trying to get CS fast to recover from the failed sling that I lose being first to Philo even having a GS for it because I resist to research Medi myself :blush:.

1000BC, 5cities, 6Workers, 40bpt, CoL, Alpha, 3reli. The game is over, now it is only a question of milking it to the end.

1AD, 7+cities, 11Wor, 170bpt. 3reli, 0cath, only Liber left to research. 8cottages in capital, 0 in cottage city (which I settled far too late, it was my 5th :(), no NE in GPFarm. Parth, MoM, 1/2Sist.

Liber 205AD, take PP to trade Natio from Musa. GA used for GAge could have saved 3t of revolution, but I preferred to keep it to bomb at the end, which only saved 4 turns, another mistake.

Hermitage in cottage city. Taj Maj GAge allows Mercantilism and 5 turns of whipping around 500AD to whip a couple of cathedrals per city.

One thing I still do right is keeping the trading game going, I am always ahead of them in techs even when I am always at 0%, and in addition I raise thousands of gold.

2 religions catch too late, I build the 7th and 8th cathedrals later than 1000AD.

Hurricane destroys cathedral and Sistine's monastery in capital. Sigh. I forgot to turn off events it seems.

Privateer interpheres with my getting-2-more-GA-through-starvation, delaying my victory 2 turns.

My 3 cities:
Cottages: 11 5 0
Cathedrals: 4 4 0
Multipliers: 4 5 2
cpt: 1000 700 200
Bombs: 1 5 10

Total GP: 18, 2 GS for Acad and bulbing, 16 GA for bombing.

I have taken the first position.

Isn't the guy who wrote the strategy guide excluded from competition? ;)


Oh, and by the way, privateers suck ash!!!

Got the top spot for now. :p

I thought I was going to lose this game. While I'm at the middle of cathedrals-building, Washington placed a hellish stack on our borders - 8 trebs, some cats and hordes of knights and war elephants. Though he is at Pleased with me, I'm afraid he is still going to DoW me as my cities are only protected by chariots and archers (way too powerless). Got a 10-turn peace from making a friendly request (thank lord, I just asked for his World Map; good thing he agreed) and mad-rushed muskets (though I am actually planning to produce the defenders non-stop but not yet at this point). And thus, the war never came. But heck, if not for this, at least 10 turns could have been shaved. I forgot to build a military city early game - big mistake.

I wasn't first on Philo so I only had 4 religions - Hinduism (from the civ that I rushed), Confucianism (from Oracle), Theology (bulbed) and Islam (manual research). I deliberately left one of my cities without religion so the AIs would spread the other religions to me. But oh well, they are too lazy.

I was also running low on workers so very little cottages. I had 5 in one of my legendary cities and none in the other two. How crazy is that? Dates near 1000AD should still be possible - with cottages.

I checked the entries from the other players (they are already in the HoF tables; well I think there are no other else who would be playing standard, archipelago, immortal culture at around this time). It seems people don't like building the 'mids (you don't want to research all the way to democracy just to have universal suffrage!) and the oracle. From my experiences they are very necessary - along with the usual parthenon and sistine chapel.

I really hate epic speed (and the faster ones, of course) - war results and worker stealing are sub-optimal.

Hope that there will be a deity gmajor soon...

1859

well i went for holland, and planed to use sushi as main fuel for my culture. For this i played a pretty aggresive game in the start wipeing out isabella.

as a unique touch i guess i built a massive empire with 30 cites and twice the score of any opponent

my luck on founding relligions, and spreading them was just terrible, the main religion of the land, also that of apostolic never spread to me...

i had spiral minaret, university, but missed out by a few turns on sistines chapel... also apostolic was built for another religion.

in another try i had all 4 of those for the same regligion... building a temple was just imbalanced. also the leeve of the dutch paired with financial windmills, in goldenages are realy great... every tile in the Fatcross of my capitol had both coins, and hammers...

i guess the big problem was that the ais just couldnt keep up. I realy needed some tech trades from liberalism to steampower.. but noone had anything to offer. Archipelago slow as always.

i guess with apostolic on my side, and a more apt mansa musa i could have finished in 1800.

ohh and 27 GP total with +2 comming in a 5 turns, i had 5 Golden ages

1800. Shaved off a few turns, but with only 4 cities. I can definitely do better.


EDIT:


Added a 1764 six city two religion win with Lizzy. No real GP Farm, so pumped GA by committee (6,5,4 artists). Would have been a few turns faster, but I foolishly accepted Sci Meth. as a gift from Mansa and has to wait a bit longer for my last GA.

Think I could shave a good bit off if I could get more than 2 darn religions early enough. Not sure why they are not spreading.

This was a really fun Gauntlet. This was my first attempt at an insanely early Culture win (1792). It was hard to stick to the script while war raged around me. It goes against all of my Civ instincts to neglect my defenses, not grab land, and allow myself to fall behind in technology for the sprint to the Cultural victory.

Plopped my second city at a distant choke point to reserve space for 4 more really sweet cities. Accidentally took a 7th city later with Culture and kept to avoid close borders tension (and because it was profitable). I made beelines for Alphabet, Music and Liberalism (missed it by 2 turns). I made insanely bad trades to keep current and to raise Trade Relations. After Liberalism, I turned off all research and was eventually able to research Gunpowder just on the 1 Research point each Artist provided per turn. Very strange. I think the Musketeers I pumped out at the end might have kept me alive...

I kissed the butts of the 6 Major playahs and had +5 to +8 relations with most of them. I denied all 7 of the whiney Vassals. Not one of the Vassals gave in to my demands (probably because I was ranked 14th in the Soldiers demographic, despite paying 15 Coin/turn in Unit Costs). I took a Defensive Pact with my peaceful Indian neighbor, and nobody was upset. The Foreign Advisor Relations diagram was a tangle of 161 Red, Cyan, Green, Blue, and White lines. It looked like a Spider web on Acid (me and the spider).

I let my evangelical neighbor spread his favorite 2 religions through most of cities and caught a third religion from a bathroom toilet. I was elected Apostalic Leader throughout the game, allowing me to cut trade ties with the heretics that I wasn't trading with anyway. Did I start all of those wars? Oops. ;o) I kind of wish I hadn't fomented tension between players, since I took a few Relations hits with Major players begging me to join there wars. Risky...

When the wars started, I swept in and traded for all of their newly available resourses. I avoided trading with the Vasals since they were pissing everybody off. I love being ranked last in the Exports demographic despite trading away every single resource I own (including tons of spoiled fish to Sid's Sushi). This allowed me to keep the Cultural slider at 90 or 100%.

Luckily, my first 9 GP's were Great Artists (thanks in part to my micromanaging all of my cities). Most of my cities produced one GA. About 12 GA's in all, 5 of which came from my GP farm city (Sistine Chapel + 4 Food tiles+National Epic+Globe Theatre). Didn't really need Caste System until late in the game, since most of my other cities couldn't handle more than 2 Artist specialists anyway.

I think all of us who finished this Gauntlet are at least a little lucky not to have been crushed by our "friendly" next door Civs. There were lots of interesting sea battles right off my shores, including lots of highly promoted Frigates taking out Privateers before they could do me any harm. Thank you neighbors! The last 50 or so turns were nerve racking as I watched Destroyers and Infantry run around, hoping they wouldn't jump me.

It's better to be Lucky than Good.

HammerTime

Second try, very interesting experience.

Eliz moves down from a PH to a FP to settle there. Is she crazy? By doing this she gets access to another clam and to a desert gold tile.

Myst-Poly, get the religion, while doing WB-Worker. Pott, Wri... insert masonry for marble and still research gets to CS sling 4 turns before the second city has produced Oracle.


In 1300BC, I have traded for Alpha, got CS sling, just built my third city, 3reli(2mine), I'm about to get a second Worker. Everything looks bright, right? No.

No library, no Academy, no infrastructure in the capital and, above all, very little development in my other 2 cities. In addition the map doesn't have a good GPFarm and I am running out of space to settle. The second city can't get cottages, I'll be trying a hammer city instead.

Short time in Castes for Academy, then Slavery. My capital whips settlers, workers, granary, library... just at the time it should be enjoying the bureaucracy bonus by working maximum tiles non stop. No good.

I get NE but hire no specialists, my other cities still need slavery for granaries.

Lost Parthenon by 1 turn. Got Philo first, but lost the Music GA by 3 turns. Ended research 500AD, much later than the other game, where I was unable to trade for Alpha early and unable to get the sling.

1AD stats: 7cities, 5Wor, 200bpt, Educ+Liber left, 3cott, 1GS, 4rel, 5tem

End game: This time I wasn't able to play the trading game, mainly because I wanted to be sure of TajMaj by keeping Natio to myself.
8cath, 750-800-200cpt, multipliers x4-x5-x2, cott 6-0-0. 1GS(Acad), 2GP (shrine and late GAge), 14bombs 2-2-10.


Lessons learned:

- Development is all. Even the CS sling is secondary to getting our second city founded. I think going for an early religion was a big mistake both games, setting me far behind
... so getting down the PH was a mistake after all.

- For initial site, don't get too carried away by resources. A few resources and a good bunch of green riverside tiles is better in the long run.

submitted a second try, which is only 3 turns ahead of my first entry <sigh> could have won maybe at least 10 turns earlier had I not forgot that civil service is needed for nationalism. grrrrrrrr.... so after liberalism, the free tech that I picked was divine right... what a crappy situation - effect of inadequate sleep; you're cognitive ability takes a dive.

I really missed a nice opportunity here. This is the only time I was able to build GLH (it's archipelago, so this time, this wonder has use) while still successful with the wonders in my strategy. Also, I had 6 religions (3 from the AI and 3 founded by me) which I think is rare.

Results:

G-Major 63 (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/gauntlet.php?show=major&gauntlet=192) - Cultural, Immortal, Standard, Epic on Archipelago
1st ryzax 1315 AD
2nd jesusin 1380 AD
3rd Infantry#14 1620 AD

Congratulations!

Well done to everyone who completed this, the winning dates are very impressive. :goodjob:

Sometimes I think the people who are good at Civ are playing a different game to me ... 1300s? Wow. :)

Congratulations, ryzax! :clap:


Well done to everyone who completed this, the winning dates are very impressive. :goodjob:

Nah. Dates around 1100AD are much more like it, I'm sure ryzax will agree.

Sometimes I think the people who are good at Civ are playing a different game to me ... 1300s? Wow. :)

Would you like to level the playing field? Why not post a description of your game and let everybody comment on your strategy?

Congratulations, ryzax! :clap:




Nah. Dates around 1100AD are much more like it, I'm sure ryzax will agree.

Thanks :D
The last time I won 1st on a gmajor was gmajor36 and this is gmajor63 (the digits are switched :lol:) and they are both cultural.

Yeah, 11xx should be the target date to think that 1100 is only 20 turns away from 1300. If this was on marathon, a more insane date will arise :lol:

Phenomenal games Ryzax and Jesusin!

Why not post a description of your game and let everybody comment on your strategy?

I will take you up on this offer. I finished this one four times, submitted three. I had finishes of 1704, 1734, 1736, and 1752. I felt I played fairly different strategies for all four games. None of these is anywhere near the 1300's, so I must have some major strategic flaw that I am repeating. My "ace-in-the-hole" strategy was to form permanent alliances (obviously, this did help as much as I had hoped). I did not do this for my 1734 finish, so I will focus on that.

The major flaw in my game: no marble. Secondary flaw: a lot of jungle. Biggest advantage: a lot of food.

I played as Elizabeth. My opponents were cream-puffs: Frederick, Mansa Musa, Hatshepsut, Roosevelt, Joao and Ghandi. I played high seas and snaky islands to maximize land. I built 5 cities and culture flipped two. One of my culture flips gave me a fourth religion. My legendary cities were two cottaged cities and my GP farm. I built one production city and a second GP farm. I did not steal any workers. My first two founded cities were blocking cities. I did not build any wonders since I did not have marble. I can't recall if I tried to build any wonders, but suspect that I didn't. I did not whip any cathedrals. I had a hard time running at 100% culture after the free speech switch. I did change all of my capitol's initial mines, elephant camps, and rice to cottages. They all converted to towns by the end of the game.

4000 BC

London, capitol founded 3975 settle 1S of starting position on Spices. Legendary city.
Tech path Sailing (goody hut)>Agr>AH>Wheel>Pott>Myst>Writ>Aesth>Catch up trades.

http://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/AStartingposition.jpg

925 BC

London, capitol founded 3975 settle 1S of starting position on Spices. Legendary city.
York founded 2300 BC GP farm, blocking city, 2 seafood, rice, riverside, jungle, jungle, jungle, choke point. Legendary city.
Nottingham founded 1875 BC Production city, blocking city. Gold, 2 seafood, some desert.
Hastings founded 950 BC. A lot of grassland, some riverside, jungle, jungle, jungle. Legendary city.
http://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/Amapat925BC.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/ATechsitat925BC.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A3religionscreen925BC.jpg

1st GP: GS, 455 BC, academy in capitol.
Research Philosophy and found Taoism 245 BC
Discover Music 370 AD.
1st liberalism 505 AD, Free tech: Nationalism.
Switch to free speech 730 AD.
Discover economics at 1220 AD.
Democracy never discovered.

1250 AD

Seven cities.
Found Canterbury 215 AD. Second GP farm.
Flip Walata 890 AD, Pick up 4th religion
Flip Brega 1190 AD.
http://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A4empireview1250AD.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A5Coreempireview1250AD.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A6Techsit1250AD.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A7Religiousscreen1250AD.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A8Financialscene1250AD.jpg

1734
Victory.
Great artists 14. Great scientists 1.
London 4 cathedrals
Hastings 4 cathedrals
York 0 cathedrals
If I remember correctly, I bombed 1 or 2 great artists in Hastings. The rest went to York.


http://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A9Settingsscreen.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A10Cityscreen.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A11techsit.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A12financialsit.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A13religiousscreen.jpghttp://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad265/shulec/A14GPstat.jpg
Player log:
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?show=playerlog&dsply=&entryID=18873

Admittedly I've only just started playing civ4 again after a 3 year break, and admittedly my knowledge of anything beyond the basics is still pretty sketchy. But my impression of culture victories so far is that the primary limiting factor in getting a good date isn't how fast you produce culture, but how fast you can pop out enough great artists. Cathedrals & cottages to boost the culture rate outside the capital help, but 2 more great artists over the course of the game means 6k or whatever culture for each of your 2 non-capital cities. I dunno what culture per turn you can generate from producing it in a wonderless city, but my first guess (number pulled direct from my butt) would be 200ish.


Which means that

I did not build any wonders since I did not have marble. I can't recall if I tried to build any wonders, but suspect that I didn't.

would mean lots less great artists which means much slower date. I think.

Though typing that out has just given me an idea or two for better beginner strategy for me to aim for culture. I think that'll be my next game...

I dunno what culture per turn you can generate from producing it in a wonderless city, but my first guess (number pulled direct from my butt) would be 200ish.

In the above write-up, my capital and other cottage city were both putting out 700 to 750 cpt near the end.

Yep, number pulled out of my butt indeed.

Cathedrals & cottages to boost the culture rate outside the capital help,

they REALLY help


I dunno what culture per turn you can generate from producing it in a wonderless city, but my first guess (number pulled direct from my butt) would be 200ish.


if you build cathedrals, that wouldn't be the case. you can go all the way to 600-800 (I'm assuming you have towns and specialists and is running free speech)

I will take you up on this offer.

Thank you for this opportunity. I'll criticize your game and then someone else will criticize my comments and we all will have learned something :)

Many little things to comment:

- Beeline. What did you get Myst for? Beelining CoL would have given you free border pops. Beelining Alphabet would have given you Myst. I think that researching both Agri and AH is a bit too much. And then Pottery too!

- Build 6 cities. Culture flipped cities come too late.

- Think of 1AD as the end of the preparation phase and 1000AD as the end of the game. Then play accordingly. "800cpt at the end of the game" is not valuable data. The end of the game is variable. Talk about 1000AD, not about the end of the game.

- Keep your elephants connected. A cottage built so late will have no time to be useful at 1000AD. In addition, you can easily sell it for 10gpt, helping you to keep 100% culture.

- Revolt to FS immediately. Why wait? There's no reason.

- WW: Sistine's is too good to pass up, with or without marble.

- GP generation. 15GP is a good figure... for 1200AD ;). When did you get your NE? When did you switch to Castes and hired maximum artists?

- How many workers per city did you have at 1AD? With so much jungle, 2 is a good reference value.

- Cathedrals are expensive. If you don't use slavery nor US, then they won't be all up and running at 1000AD.

- And now the most important factor in my opinion: Bad development.
Look at the 925BC picture. You are bound for a late victory already.
a) Capital is veeeeery far from the rest of the cities in development. Build your first settler sooner.
b) Slavery. Capital has more pop than it can sustain, why not whip the pop excess into something useful like a worker?
c) Slavery. York is patiently waiting for a wB when it has pop3 and could have whipped it ages ago and then have recovered its pop through the seafood.
d) Powertiles. Try to measure your development in "powertiles", that is, tiles that yield a total of food and hammers of at least 4.
e) Don't build useless cities. York can be great from now on, but at 925BC it has been sitting on its single 3f1c tile for 56 turns! Not even a single powertile. It has been a handicap for you all this time.
f) I'm not sure, but... did you settle on gold? :eek:
g) You passed up the 2 gems+banana+seafood site. It might be a better Legendary city than Nottingham.
h) Get more workers. Working a not improved tile is inefficient. Working 2 not improved tiles in the same city is terrible. (I myself have this same problem... which I solve by whipping away my pop... I have to get used to building more workers).


I hope I have made my points in a constructive way and without hurting your feelings. Don't plant your cities then leave them alone, you are the man in charge here!

Please everyone fell free to disagree!

Phenomenal games Ryzax and Jesusin!

I will take you up on this offer. I finished this one four times, submitted three. I had finishes of 1704, 1734, 1736, and 1752. I felt I played fairly different strategies for all four games. None of these is anywhere near the 1300's, so I must have some major strategic flaw that I am repeating. My "ace-in-the-hole" strategy was to form permanent alliances (obviously, this did help as much as I had hoped). I did not do this for my 1734 finish, so I will focus on that.

The major flaw in my game: no marble. Secondary flaw: a lot of jungle. Biggest advantage: a lot of food.
<snipped>



Forget about permanent alliances for cultural. The game should be already over once that option is available (I forgot what tech enables that thing)

Bronze-working is extremely late. elizabeth starts on mining so getting BW should be very easy. You started with lots of food so slavery will be very useful. You don't have gold/gem at start, so you need to whip libraries and hire scientists ASAP or... try getting the Oracle, get CoL and run Caste system (the oracle is extremely cheap, you don't need marble and industrious to successfully build this; though forests and whipping are necessary). The early scientist can be settled (lizzy is philosophical so it's fine); you may build an academy if you have some gold/gem/silver - the point here is, the early scientist should be used for beaker boost. the second scientist can then be reserved for bulbing philosophy.

you weren't able to expand well enough (though it's understandable since Joao is near you... that AI just loves spamming settlers)... you could have whipped settlers/workers early on if you researched BW at the start. If on some other games, you found bronze right on your starting spot then that is a great opportunity for an axe-rush - you may forget about settlers and eliminate 1 or 2 civs (on epic; if on marathon 2 or 3 should be realistic)

..well, I guess it all boils down on not using slavery on the early stages of the game

Thank you for this opportunity. I'll criticize your game and then someone else will criticize my comments and we all will have learned something :)

Thank you for the critique. I do have few comments.

Many little things to comment:

- Beeline. What did you get Myst for? Beelining CoL would have given you free border pops. Beelining Alphabet would have given you Myst. I think that researching both Agri and AH is a bit too much. And then Pottery too! Interesting to delay some of the worker tech to beeline. Will try it.

- Build 6 cities. Culture flipped cities come too late. Easy enough.

- Think of 1AD as the end of the preparation phase and 1000AD as the end of the game. Then play accordingly. "800cpt at the end of the game" is not valuable data. The end of the game is variable. Talk about 1000AD, not about the end of the game.

- Keep your elephants connected. A cottage built so late will have no time to be useful at 1000AD. In addition, you can easily sell it for 10gpt, helping you to keep 100% culture.

- Revolt to FS immediately. Why wait? There's no reason. I believe it was due to a lack of towns, therefore, no +2 coin bonus for those tiles. Also, I thought I would have more culture because my gpt would drop too much once I left Bureaucracy.

- WW: Sistine's is too good to pass up, with or without marble.

- GP generation. 15GP is a good figure... for 1200AD ;). When did you get your NE? When did you switch to Castes and hired maximum artists? I am guessing I got the NE between 150-300AD. I discovered Col in 800 BC and switched to Caste System the next turn.

- How many workers per city did you have at 1AD? With so much jungle, 2 is a good reference value. This may have been my biggest flaw. I ended the game with 6 workers built, none stolen. I always fall short with worker production.

- Cathedrals are expensive. If you don't use slavery nor US, then they won't be all up and running at 1000AD.

- And now the most important factor in my opinion: Bad development.
Look at the 925BC picture. You are bound for a late victory already.
a) Capital is veeeeery far from the rest of the cities in development. Build your first settler sooner.
b) Slavery. Capital has more pop than it can sustain, why not whip the pop excess into something useful like a worker?
c) Slavery. York is patiently waiting for a wB when it has pop3 and could have whipped it ages ago and then have recovered its pop through the seafood. For some reason I got it into my head to delay civic switches to try to switch multiple civics at on time.
d) Powertiles. Try to measure your development in "powertiles", that is, tiles that yield a total of food and hammers of at least 4. I like this "powertile" concept!
e) Don't build useless cities. York can be great from now on, but at 925BC it has been sitting on its single 3f1c tile for 56 turns! Not even a single powertile. It has been a handicap for you all this time.It's usefullness early on was as a blocking city.
f) I'm not sure, but... did you settle on gold? :eek: No.
g) You passed up the 2 gems+banana+seafood site. It might be a better Legendary city than Nottingham. I considered it, but I passed it up for two reasons. 1. I needed to grab more land and block out Mansa Musa, so I went farther southwest with York as a GP farm (1st settled city) 2. The gems and banana were all under jungle.
h) Get more workers. Working a not improved tile is inefficient. Working 2 not improved tiles in the same city is terrible. (I myself have this same problem... which I solve by whipping away my pop... I have to get used to building more workers).


I hope I have made my points in a constructive way and without hurting your feelings. Don't plant your cities then leave them alone, you are the man in charge here!

Please everyone fell free to disagree!

Thanks Jesusin.

Forget about permanent alliances for cultural. The game should be already over once that option is available (I forgot what tech enables that thing)

Bronze-working is extremely late. elizabeth starts on mining so getting BW should be very easy. You started with lots of food so slavery will be very useful. You don't have gold/gem at start, so you need to whip libraries and hire scientists ASAP or... try getting the Oracle, get CoL and run Caste system (the oracle is extremely cheap, you don't need marble and industrious to successfully build this; though forests and whipping are necessary). The early scientist can be settled (lizzy is philosophical so it's fine); you may build an academy if you have some gold/gem/silver - the point here is, the early scientist should be used for beaker boost. the second scientist can then be reserved for bulbing philosophy.

you weren't able to expand well enough (though it's understandable since Joao is near you... that AI just loves spamming settlers)... you could have whipped settlers/workers early on if you researched BW at the start. If on some other games, you found bronze right on your starting spot then that is a great opportunity for an axe-rush - you may forget about settlers and eliminate 1 or 2 civs (on epic; if on marathon 2 or 3 should be realistic)

..well, I guess it all boils down on not using slavery on the early stages of the game

I have a tough time balancing my efforts toward expansion and getting the great scientist. Both rely on the capitol's food and hammer production. Thanks for your thoughts.

I believe it was due to a lack of towns, therefore, no +2 coin bonus for those tiles. Also, I thought I would have more culture because my gpt would drop too much once I left Bureaucracy.
Do the maths. Imagine a worst case, no towns, you have to go as low as 50% culture. Multipliers in your capital 100% over the 50% of commerce. In Bureaucracy you were getting 50% over the 100% of commerce, just the same. In your other 2 Legendary cities you get 100% over the 50% of commerce. In Bureaucracy you were getting nothing.


I have a tough time balancing my efforts toward expansion and getting the great scientist. Both rely on the capitol's food and hammer production. Thanks for your thoughts.
Try getting your first settler out earlier. That way your 2nd city will take over settler production when capital hires the artists.
You should start Worker-Warrior-Settler or Worker-Warrior-Warrior-Settler 90% of the games.