It seems that G-major 144 is still being considered... I really hope that you will confirm at least the huge deity rainforest part of it. Rainforest is a very special map as well as Boreal. Rainforest offers endless amount of food but just a few hammers. Happiness and especially health is crucial, though you can just laugh at your cities having 5-6 food minus as they will still grow quickly - but be careful with cities built on the flood plains part of the map. It is very easy to just spam cottages on flood plains, but unhealthiness might be a pain in the ass.
I played on this map with Pacal and his expansive trait helped a lot to keep flood plains cities healthy. Rice is everywhere on this map, but corn and wheat are rarities. At least 2 of the 3 granary based resources are essential, and cross your fingers for cow and deer as well. This is a very big map and even in deity you will have enough cities for a peaceful spacerace.
With Pacal communism works well, but with Darius free market and
Mining inc seems to be a better option (because of the organized trait of course). You will really need those extra hammers. Maybe even Standard Ethanol could be an option, but you only can do it later on the game. It is easier to head up for Railroad and it also gives you several technologies which will boost up your production, like replecable parts and steam engine.
The Persian special building, the aphotecary offers a nice bonus (+2 health points) which sounds good at first, but... There is no wine appears on the map and you must be lucky to get both spice and sugar (there are tons of banana though), so you must be glad to have +4 health all together for the apothecary.
Most (though not all) of the aluminium will appear on the flood lands region, so does gold, incense and stone (what you can trade for other goods), which would suggest you need to start IN a flood plains area for a good result, but... I would say the edge of a flood plains area is better. Get rice, pig and 1-2 more health resources before entering the flood plains heaven, and then start to build many small cities mainly in the flood plains area till you can. If you do it well and you start on a good (part of the) map, then you can have a good finish date.
I found this post very helpful, but want to comment on the SP / Corporations part and the Darius or whichever leader and peaceful approach or not part:
WastinTime thinks differently, but after the last BOTM I'm almost certain, that State Property is the superior approach. I had a bad feeling against Corporations from the start when I started to play with them just because many people say that they're stronger. What makes me so certain is (don't feel offended by this
flo ) that I 1. go a rough imagination of how expensive Corporations really are in BOTM-100 and
Pollina writing that she think she gained 2 or 3T during a certain, very limited phase of the game for me wasn't better than my expectations, but in CIV, 2-3T through anything are so enormously much like it's hard to imagine. I won GM-137 by 2T against
Kaitzilla, I played 300h on that game and 2T divided me from him! The 3rd place was
bcool and he landed 3T behind
Kaitzilla and
bcool played his game in so much less time that I'm sure
Kaitzilla and him would have beaten me, if they would have gone through what I went through (300h spending on 1 game in 2 months is harder than working as a fresh doctor in the clinic) . This is also my main argument 2. and that are
flo's Large / Huge / peaceful Deity games. Those were played in so little time and their dates are so competetive that I'm certain, that his approach with Cottage-spamming and State Property must be better, because I'd need to spend 10 times the time on a Corporations-game and I'm not sure, if it would really come out as #1, because
flo plays
peaceful REX! Peaceful REX is so unbelievably much inferior against a good, successful REX by war, because all of the stolen Workers and the larger cities are so incredibly many
. I calculated those approaches several times already and I assume that a good, successful REX by war is about 2-3 times as
efficient as a peaceful REX and that includes all of the factors that benefit a peaceful REX, like i. e. the non-need to build any military units for a long time etc. . If one conquers a size 4 city and it has a Granary and one steals 1 Worker that was improving it (i. e. easily the case when conquering an AIs capital) , then that are 100
(the Settler) + 90
(3 additional population) + 60
(the Worker) + 60
(the Granary) = 310
. That's the cost of 9 Axemen (but Axes are really weak units, especially on Deity, but they're still good because one gets the cities so early) or better the cost of 50% of the Elepult army needed to conquer a whole empire. If
flo's games with peaceful REX and State Property can only remotely compare towards the other games, than the approach must be better.
Darius is probably the best choice again by far for this Gauntlet and crowding the map + BFC Horses are the way to go imo. . Forget getting 12 cities 'til 1 AD, get 12 cities 'til 1500 or 1000 BC by Immortals, I'd not be surprised if 25 or 30 cities are possible 'til 1 AD. The amount of cities and how early one gets them unfortunately is the most important factor in whole CIV, I just saw that in my last 3 Space Races again. In my 1500 AD Peter Space Race I found BW in a hut and conquered my neighbour with 20 Axes, I had ridiculous losses against the first city because it was on a hill, but the game was still a lot better than a game I recently played with the better leader Frederick and in which I had more luck but attacked later (with Elepult) .
I'm very much looking forward to the Rainforest map, because it's so different and it's imo. ideal for the Cottage-spam + State Property approach that I want to try out. I hope
Pollina will compete so that I have a chance to pay her back and I hope
WastinTime,
Kaitzilla,
Pangaea and maybe even some GOTM players will compete in this Gauntlet aswell. My motivation for another hardcore battle is really low atm. after GM-137, my 1500 AD Deity Peter Space Race, and 2 heavily competetive BOTM's in which I also went for Space (no Spoiler because I announced that in the announcement thread alaready) , but I tell you that I won't make it easy for you, should I compete, which is very likely, because CFC and the HoF are my home and I still got semester break until the 15th of april
.
I hope I have luck with the map generation, so that I don't need to wait 2 weeks again to get a decent BFC-Horses start and may the RNG be with me
.
Good luck to all competitors (you'll need it
) .
.
.