G-Minor 80

^ Yeah, under-expansion was my biggest problem in this one.

I've decided to just finish my crappy Ramesses attempt, as I won't have time for another one. I still have 20t to play, but it's basically done. Looks like 1530 AD, maybe down to 1510 AD if I can micro a few things better. No marble (or copper) really hurt me. Also, only 3 religions. I had plenty of time to get another cathedral set up. I built ToA early, which was just idiotic - it cost me an extra late GA, and it slowed my expansion quite a bit. My other big mistake was delaying Philosophy forever with the intent to bulb (when I really didn't need to), and popping a GP with 95%+ GS odds. I lost Tao by a turn as a result. With marble and an extra religion I'd probably shave a 5-10t? That would be a pretty awesome date for me, and I didn't even know what I was doing in this game. So... I can say that Ramesses on this map type is great. I wonder if normal speed would be even better. It would save a lot of chopping turns.

I went with 6 cities; 2 wonder/cath spam, 1 GA farm as LC's; 11 GA, 2 GP (one golden age, one will be unused), 2 GS (acad and education). Thebes: Oracle, ToA, Pyramids, HG, some other wonder that escapes me now, 3 Cathedrals, 2 gems, 3 grass river, very low on food (stuck at size 10 all game); Memphis: +14fpt, NE, Parth; Heliopolis: Sistine, MoM, Taj, Herm, 3 Cathedrals, 4-5 plains cottages.

Hm, after several further tries I get the impression that the key to this gauntlet is a lot of luck.

The winner needs
1. stone
2. marble
3. to trade for copper and/or gold
4. your first 3 cities legendary, which means
4a. a couple of gems
4b. two cities with 6+ towns or gems
4c. one citiy with 8+ artists
5. Mids & Oracle while spamming settlers & workers. Can be tricky vs monarch AI.
6. 4+ religions. Both founding and spreading needs some luck.
7. and of course luck with the general RNG annoyances like huts, dows & GPs.

I'm especially pissed of by 1. and 2...
My best try so far was 1420 with Gandhi, where I missed all of the 3 early religions but got spread hinduism & judaism. No marble, no copper, but a total of 5 gems in my first two cities, and a nice GP farm (8-9 artists max). Consequently I didn't spam wonders but concentrated on multipliers. Did get very late Mausoleum + Taj Mahal though. 10 GA 3 GP 2 GS. Things you can control are enough workers, aggressive trading for money, and not forgetting to switch to democracy to buy buildings when maxing the culture slider. Oh, and building any cottages AD is definitely too late.

Completed my game for 1520 AD. I completely screwed up the endgame in terms of GP management, as I played 25t in about 15 minutes this morning, but somehow still finished 1t ahead of estimate. Amazing how that works. Everything the same as I described above, except only 10 GA, and +1 GM (unused).

@karmina,

Isn't that the case with more or less every gauntlet? This map type is kinda frustrating, though. You discover about 50 deer in the first 20t, but other resources tend to be spread out. It takes a while to evaluate a start. I've tried a few, but I keep having to send one of my first settlers really far just to get a total crap resource city. I think this would work much better on normal speed. I'll probably try one, if I find the time next week.

Final try for me: 1280 AD with Gandhi.
Hope this gets accepted, recorded submission date is 25th, 10:50 AM....

- 11 workers, 10 towns, 6 cities
- 9 Great Artists, all for great works
- 6 Great Prohets (2 shrines, 2 golden ages, bulbed theo + CS)
- 1 GE (golden age)
- 1 GS, built an academy in 1200 AD
- 4 religions, plus one very late Islamic cathedral to squeeze out one turn

GPfarm capital had 6 food 1 gem.
2nd city was far away, not legendary, but stone, 2 gems and lots of hills.
4th city (legendary) food poor, but marble and 2 gems. Got a lot of Great Artists.
6th city very late (AD) for copper, chopped the 4 temples within 4 turns.

Although I tried hard to get my cottages BC, 2 of them never made it to towns, and most were only towns for less than 10 turns. So still too few workers, as you have very few BC turns left after trading for pottery...unfortunately building workers really conflicts with all the other stuff like settlers, missionaries, wonders and of course SE

I think beelining to Alphabet->Mathematics->Currency before heading for Music and CS was quite important on this map.

Results:

G-Minor 80 - Cultural, Monarch, Standard, Quick on Boreal
1^st karmina 1280 AD
2^nd kovacsflo 1320 AD
3^rd WastinTime 1380 AD

Congratulations!

well done!

karmina said:

Final try for me: 1280 AD with Gandhi.
Hope this gets accepted, recorded submission date is 25th, 10:50 AM....

Click to expand...

Congrat Karmina! You could successfully beat my 1320 date, but I'm still satisfied with my result, since my minor gained 53,6 gauntlet Qscore thanks to raging barbs.

Flóri

Congrats. Nice to see the 12xx. I never got a chance to play a 2nd game.

Thanks@all!
It was fun, and I think I learned a lot. Actually there was still room to improve as none of my cities had optimum terrain, but 3 finished and 2 quit games already took more than enough time.

And now to something completely different: GMajor60, an always war OCC on emperor!
Should be a true challenge

Denniz said:

Results:

G-Minor 80 - Cultural, Monarch, Standard, Quick on Boreal
1^st karmina 1280 AD
2^nd kovacsflo 1320 AD
3^rd WastinTime 1380 AD

Congratulations!

Click to expand...

Congrats everyone... that was fun and an educational experience all in one!

Finished my second try... I bit late, I know.


Start: 4 food tiles, 3gems. Ghandi.
Research: Medi-worker techs-CS sling-Music-Liber.
Production: Warrior-Warrior-Worker-Setter-...
Priorities: Pyramids for research, CoL for slingshot.

Cities built: 8, wanted 6 but there were 2 4-food-resource sites, which provided 1GA each.
Religions: 4, 1 infected.
Cathedrals: 7 (3 plus Parthenon, 2, 1)
GPs: 18, all of them GA, bombed 18 (3, 7, 8)

Oracle: 685BC
Pyramids: 580BC
NE: 230AD
Sistine's: ??
TajMaj: 980AD



Mistakes:
-failing to get the sling by 1 turn, then reloading and whipping to get it (I won't submit)
-researching sailing myself 1 turn before they researched Alpa and would have traded it to me (I was in a hurry to connect Stone for Pyramids).
-forgetting to include Musa
-playing with a zero green tiles capital.
-getting Pyramids 3 turns after CS, so had to wait on Bureaucracy 3t not to delay Representation 2t.
- Insuficient number of workers (17)

Pluses:
- zero cottages, research at 0% after sling, Liberalism got 840AD anyway.
- mercantilism 1040AD just in time to make the small city spit its GA before the GPFarm.
- more workers than ever in my life, I would normally have played with half of them.

Result: 1180AD


It was no doubt a very special map and a very special challenge, it's been very fun.