G-Minor 78

[Ozbenno]

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

(*) Please read the >> HOF rules << BEFORE playing!​

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Space Colony (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Settler
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Large
• Map Type: Any
• Speed: Marathon
• Civ: Any
• Opponents: Any
• Version: 3.19.001
• Date: 10th to 25th August 2009

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

 

[Ozbenno]

A nice sandbox game, inspiration came from Kamino's excellent BC game here.

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

Holy crap!!

It's good to be able to play again, I hope to give this a go. I will shoot for a pre-1000 AD win.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Pre anything AD is pretty impressive...!

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

A nice sandbox game, inspiration came from Kamino's excellent BC game here.

Do you realise you just kill the gauntlet (with the help of Kamino ofc )
edit: ok, I see large setting now...

 

[oyzar]

Pre anything AD is pretty impressive...!

Not when you have double digit cities before you normally would finish your first worker on any other speed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No, there's definitely a patience aspect there to try to maximize hut luck. Far more patience than I have.

 

[billybgame]

Yeah, to get that kind of a start, you would definitely have to really get amazingly lucky, or just spend untold hours trying repeatedly.

No thanks. I'm trying it, as I need Space Colony for the Quatro. Unfortunately, my civ choice was Carthage and I had a warrior. How do you tell again who gets warriors and who gets explorers?

Anyhow, only found 1 hut....granted it gave me a settler. And, only had one civ close enough to do the walk in. So, had 3 cities pretty quick...that's it. Got 5 now, approaching 2000 BC....but it seems most others still have one. We'll stick with it.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

this is the leaderpicker:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/leader_picker_bts.html

Find all leaders who start with hunting...

 

[billybgame]

this is the leaderpicker:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/leader_picker_bts.html

Find all leaders who start with hunting...

Ah yes..Hunting. Thanks

 

[oyzar]

You aren't supposed to settle your first settler, it is also a hut popper! The production from popping huts is way greater than what a city by itself can hope to achive (and the same is true for the next 3-5 settlers as well, probably and of course there are workers to be popped too). You can't pop techs before you settle cities though (but since settlers/workers can't pop expirience/healing either, the chance of popping settlers and workers increase quite a bit), so eventually you want to settle that first city to pop tech. Though more settlers and workers is better, at least up to a point.

What leaders are good for this? Charlemanges UB is certainly good. Darius' traits might be worth something. Agressive and Protective and industrious are clearly useless. If you settle a city on or near stone it might be well posed to build henge, negating the need for creative. Oracle edu, lib something really expensive (I dunno, aline might be good, but there might be better techs out there as well). Be careful not to trip the dom limit.

 

[Ozbenno]

I'd be aiming for getting Superconductors with Liberalism.

Organised will be good. Charlemange (for the UB), Darius, Asoka or Frederick might be good.

 

[shyuhe]

This reminds me of the settler diplo gauntlet way back when. I'd be more inclined to try this if huts were off.

 

[oyzar]

I doubt spi or phi will be worth it. Even though it is marathon(and golden ages are as such shorter) you are looking at least 4 golden ages (and more likely 5 or 6) throughout the game. That means you can swap civics for free quite often. Also there really aren't all that many civics to swap since you will be doing the same kind of economy most of the game.

Phi is obviously worth less on larger maps where you have more cities, here you will have an insane amount of cities, making it not match up to most other traits.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

spiritual isn't very useful, considering how many turns there are.

Financial is best, but I think philo is good, too.

 

[SirDrake]

Any opinions on the best map type?

To state the obvious: You want a lot of land, a variety of resources, and ease of movement (i.e., minimal island-hopping). You should expect to be able to take any prime locations from the AI, but want to be careful of hitting a domination victory.

Rainforest - Lots of land, good food, good rivers. Best of all are the mountains-- they tend to run in tight clusters/ranges, so you don't have 2-3 peaks mucking up good city locations. I also assume (correct me if I'm wrong) that those mountain tiles still count towards domination, making it easier to conquer without triggering.

The bad: Missing lots of resource types.


Great Plains - Lots of land, okay food, okay rivers. Good variety of resources.

The bad: Food is scarce in the mountain regions, and there are no trees to chop on 2/3 of the map. Also, to acquire a full spread of resources, your empire has to span the whole world from east to west. Tricky.


Inland Sea - Lots of land, decent rivers, good variety of resources.

The bad: Nothing I can see. You do have to deal with some deserts and mountains, but they are less intrusive than on pangea. I'm trying this one for now.


Any other observations? Better suggestions?

-J

 

[AutomatedTeller]

lakes, maybe? Pangea should be fine for this, to be honest - you need 1 military city and a couple of cities for production and the rest commerce.

 

[billybgame]

I did Terra, as it seemed to be a pretty good option(and it was). Mainly, because I also needed that for Quatro.

Quick poll..how many cities for other players? I've been all peaceful, other than taking out the Romans with a walk in. I should have 20 cities soon. I get the feeling I'll be way behind some, with my game, though.

Edit: The only bad thing about my area is I got some jungle, in an area with lots of good resources. Bad stuff in Marathon.....

 

[pholtz]

I'm back to playing after a long break, and a space win is among my lowest scores, so I need to improve on it. But I was hoping to work on small maps and faster speeds to get some learning before I moved to the bigger maps.

Any idea how big you should get before you hunker down and just research? How many cities? Maybe an initial axe rush to get a couple of good starter cities, then one more expansion later when you have a tech lead? Any pointers would be helpful and might convince me to give it a try .

 

[AutomatedTeller]

with this one, you actually have to be careful about rushing too soon... cause the caps will autoraze.

Go with max land and min opponents and pop huts like mad. You (hopefully) should get at least 1 settler, maybe 2, and maybe a worker or two, plus a bunch of techs.

I'd kick out some more settlers at some point, and then, when you see opponents getting to size II, start taking over a bunch of cities.

Build pyramids or get into representation the old fashioned way. Get a bunch of specialists.