I'm struggling with Map Finder at the moment for this map. Is there a lack of gems or gold on a Terra map as I have only had 1 map come up with 1 gold. Takes ages to get through the maps as well.
I think it's just the sluggishness of regenerating Huge maps means you don't get to look at many good starting spots. I gave up on using Mapfinder for this gauntlet and regenerated manually so I could move units around each time and get a better view.
I found a start with freshwater corn, freshwater wheat, cows, and gold that I was happy with. Settings were: 10 AI, low seas, Elizabeth.
From a few other practice games I noticed that the AI was very fast to Alphabet. There was little chance of getting there first without 3 gems or something in the FC. So I decided to beeline to Math and use it as trade-bait. So first techs were Agri-AH-Writing-Math. By the time I got to Math, 2-3 AI had Alpha, and several more had it soon after. But no one had Math, so I got some good trades in to backfill Wheel, Pottery, BW, Sailing, Myst, IW, etc. There was a good bit of open space around me, so I set down three more cities before building a library in my capital.
From there, I went for Aesthetics-Lit-Music. I got beaten to Music by Gandhi, even though I didn't trade him any techs. I guess he was going for Cultural as well. At this time, I expanded to 7 cities. Aesthetics-Lit-Music was good trade bait, and picking up Currency let me sell techs around and keep my resaerch at 100%. I build Parthenon in my capital and later Sistine in a city with a lot of forests.
I partially researched Philosophy before Wang (Korea) beat me to it. (Zero religions founded by me.) I was able to get to Friendly with Wang and trade for Philosophy. Some tech brokering got me Civil Service and Theology, so I started on the path to Paper-Education.
The world was split into Hindus and Islamists ("choose religions" option was on). I had both religions but decided to side with the larger, closer Hindu bloc. Unfortunately, these were the only two religions that ever spread to me. My only hope for a third was taking Divine Right with Liberalism.
I won the Liberalism race in 100AD but Divine Right was already researched, so I took Printing Press and traded it for Nationalism. With Hindu and Islamic temples completed in 8 cities, I whipped the cathedrals in my capital and other cottage city, and built the Hermitage in the capital. This took a while without marble. In 295AD, I switched over to Caste System, Pacifism, Free Speech and Mercantilism during a golden age, and set out for the long march toward three legendary cities.
The next 1000 years were spent building more farms for my 6 GA-producing cities, and a few more cottages for my cottage cities. I signed defensive pacts with 4 different AI to try to discourage the Islamists from attacking me. Charlemagne had already attacked 2 of my Hindu allies.
In the end, I didn't get DOWed, and finished in 1395AD. In all, I grew 2 Great Scientists (Academy and Education) and 17 Great Artists (1 Golden Age, 16 bombed). It was a very different type of game than the previous Deity Culture gauntlet. Having a minimum of 10 AI makes it hard to be the first to anything. But having so many trading partners has its own advantages.
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.
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