G-Minor CIV

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.


Settings:

• Expansion: Brave New World
• Victory Condition: Science (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: King
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Great Plains
• Speed: Standard
• Leader: Austria (Maria Theresa)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 2nd July to 2nd August 2015

The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

Little lower difficult so it isn't redundant with the deity challenge.

Woops. Guess I'll wait for the gauntlets to appear next time. By the way, shouldn't the deadline be 16th or 17th July since this is a G-Minor?

He a Maria Theresa-fest this month, considering that I have never played her I can see myself becoming an expert on the next month or so. Great Plains is one of the best maps for a science victory, but does not allow itself to be played very wide due to the lack of mountains. We'll see.

vadalaz said:

Woops. Guess I'll wait for the gauntlets to appear next time. By the way, shouldn't the deadline be 16th or 17th July since this is a G-Minor?

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No worries this way non-deity level folks can take a stab at it too.

The date was a mistake, but let's see how a longer minor works out. We can always start another on the 16th like normal.

G Minor CIV Pregame Walkthrough

This one will not need much input from me. There have been two recent gauntlets which share a lot with this one.

Here is a link to G-Minor XCVIII which was a Warlord level (3) Standard time Science victory game on a small Great Plains map. There was a lot learned in this one as 3 players put in subT200 winning times, and I think several others put up their own personal fastest times for science victories. Reading through the thread will give A LOT of pointers on dealing with the map and planning expansion.


Here is a link to last month's G-Major LXI which also featured a King Level Standard time Standard size Science Victory condition. The Frontier map was much harder than a Great Plains map, so the lessons learned in this one (from Manpanzee's awesome ideas largely) should help even more on this easier map, though Austria doesn't have the built-in advantages many of the civs tried in this G-Major did.


The interesting point in this gauntlet is how best to use Austria's unique attributes. Their Diplomatic Marriage ability gives a real option at King Level to expand your empire without the warmonger penalties, time, and unit requirements of conquest. The coffeehouse is a very cool building which should definitely get built, unlike its replaced building the Windmill which is very situational, and should yield an extra Great person or two of your choosing.

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I will throw out a question to get a discussion started:

In the Warlord level G-Minor Great Plains gauntlet above, planting 4 cities and conquering 2 proved extremely strong. To the veterans of that gauntlet, does the change in level to King and Austria's ability change that gameplan? Plant ?, Conquer ?, and Marry into ? ...

I am not sure how I am going to play it at first. I guess it will depend on how good the CS candidates for annexation are, to some extent.

I played a quick test run up to T100 on Deity and the main problem appears to be happiness. The map has less unique luxuries than a Pangaea. That gives you less happiness to work with, and it also makes trading harder, as AIs are likely to have the same luxuries.

I married a CS around T60 on Deity and it already had a Market, so I worked the specialist slot for a T93ish GMerchant. That would've gotten me another CS right then, but I just didn't have the happiness to support it. Maybe it's better to wait for ideology happiness to kick in on Deity. The AI-controlled CSs seem to be doing quite well in Medieval-Renaissance so the cities you marry shouldn't take too long be to catch up to the ones you've founded.

I'm not sure how well CSs develop on King, but I'd imagine they slow down as much as the AI civs do post-Classical era. Good news is that you can get a dominant religion very easily on King, as well as build both Notre and Chichen - that helps tremendously with the early happiness issues. Religion can also help with the gold required to marry CSs, especially the 100g belief.

I'm looking forward to trying this one out after seeing what happened to me on TSG113. I want to see how wide I can get for maximum beaker/gold/hammer creation, and maybe see one of those sub turn 220 science wins that I'd love to snag. She bought every city state on the map in my last match with her, which allowed me to win since she only had 9 votes for world leader after that and I had 12 lol. Happiness is my concern though too, but if I can get pagodas and super high faith maybe it won't be that bad?

Had a go at this Gauntlet and hammered the UA. "Too much, too young," you could say - I was struggling with happiness for a while and getting hemmed in by Portugal. I stupidly hung onto a gifted city from Attila thinking I'd be through it soon but was outgrowing my happiness.

Played it out regardless for a sloooow time (turn 347) and dropped what is becoming a trademark "good-bye cruel world" nuke whilst flipping a trademark bird from the shuttle window.

Happiness, bad bulb timing, slow rationalism completion and a distracting war with Carthage and Portugal at the same time.

Next time:
- self found a city or two early to not out-grow happiness
- UA for mid game expansion and more selective (I.e., don't marry the cultural CS!)
- better bulbing

Off to some samurai katana-point diplomacy now. I may come back for another coffee if there's time.


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RaidandTrade said:

Had a go at this Gauntlet and hammered the UA. "Too much, too young," you could say - I was struggling with happiness for a while and getting hemmed in by Portugal. I stupidly hung onto a gifted city from Attila thinking I'd be through it soon but was outgrowing my happiness.

Played it out regardless for a sloooow time (turn 347) and dropped what is becoming a trademark "good-bye cruel world" nuke whilst flipping a trademark bird from the shuttle window.

Happiness, bad bulb timing, slow rationalism completion and a distracting war with Carthage and Portugal at the same time.

Next time:
- self found a city or two early to not out-grow happiness
- UA for mid game expansion and more selective (I.e., don't marry the cultural CS!)
- better bulbing

Off to some samurai katana-point diplomacy now. I may come back for another coffee if there's time.


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Thanks for sharing your game. Was your goodbye nuke aimed at Portugal or was it multiple targets [emoji6] ? From your post it sounds like you may not have self founded any cities at all - You had that many offspring to marry off? Good luck on any future tries at this one. The G-Major is at chieftain level so your bushido warriors will be able to deliver payback to the AI big time.

I have been playing a lot of deity and immortal lately and am finding the demographics screen to be my new best friend forever. If I am last in military, I will get declared war on 100% of the time, so I have been keeping my empires small enough so as not to have happiness crunches when I need to be building units. After a couple times.of multiple DoWs hitting when I need to be building happiness buildings to see yellow smilies instead of red, I have learned my lesson! Sitting last in military while unhappy is a recipe for disaster. I don't feel bad about missing out on any wonders as I know the alternative to building units is to have musketman at my doorstep to take away the wonders I raced to! Avoiding wars not of my own choosing is great at any level, but epecially on Deity.

As we saw in last month's major, you have the ability at King level to use an early army to extract gold, so it makes sense to get your forces up early to both deter future aggression and bully your way to some early game gold. I'm of a mind to plant 2, conquer 2, and marry 2 if possible. If I go Liberty I will never need to hardbuild a settler and can focus on units/wonders. The cities to conquer would be the least reliable to plan for though as they would need to be nearby in good spots. I would need to hardbuild settlers to make up for a lack of good conquest candidates.

Quick question on taking over mercantile CSes: Good or bad idea in general? In taking one over, you lose that "bonus" happiness you get just from befriending or allying it, but you do get its normal luxuries and the porcelain/jewelry under its capital tile, right? You don't get anything special from taking over other kinds of CSes if I recall...

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zenmaster said:

Quick question on taking over mercantile CSes: Good or bad idea in general? In taking one over, you lose that "bonus" happiness you get just from befriending or allying it, but you do get its normal luxuries and the porcelain/jewelry under its capital tile, right? You don't get anything special from taking over other kinds of CSes if I recall...

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The unique luxury gets deleted when you marry a Mercantile CS. Gotta be careful that you have another source around if you want to do that. I remember once having a game where I was trying to inspect the Austrian UA, figure out how much it cost to buy a CS... accidentally clicked "Marry", there was no "Are you sure?" popup, and I instantly lost like 20 happiness. Instant game-over.

Manpanzee said:

The unique luxury gets deleted when you marry a Mercantile CS. Gotta be careful that you have another source around if you want to do that. I remember once having a game where I was trying to inspect the Austrian UA, figure out how much it cost to buy a CS... accidentally clicked "Marry", there was no "Are you sure?" popup, and I instantly lost like 20 happiness. Instant game-over.

Click to expand...

Ouch! Thanks for the warning. Ok, I guess all else being equal, military CS are probably best to marry into... of course, things are never equal though!

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Goodbye nuke hit Carthage

I didn't self-found any cities but married the four surrounding CS and had the one puppet until Carthage took it.

Would definitely self-found more next time and use marriage more sparingly.

Katana of diplomacy has been wielded now but real life is intruding...


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I really underrated Austria's UA. For little more than the price of a Settler, you get to take over a fully fledged city complete with buildings, population, soldiers, and workers to support it!

I built 2 cities early on and developed them. Settler was hard built on about turn 40ish and GL was finished in Vienna on turn 60. Salzburg had a Library so I could go straight for the NC by about turn 70. On about turn 80-90 I used the Royal Marriage to acquire 2 nearby city states which were allied through quests. Each of them came with 3 troop, 1 worker, and several buildings. All four cities are next to a mountain (future Observatories).

Here is my budding empire on turn 100:
Note that I have just finished Education (although I do not have enough cash to rush universities .

My religion is growth focused and once I finish building Borobudur in Vienna, it will be spread to all of my cities. I am currently building a Shrine and a Temple n my expansion CS to get the extra food and faith.
For social policies, I went for full Tradition and dipped into Commerce. I should finish the right side of Commerce before going for Rationalism in the Renaissance Era.
I might buy a couple more CS later on (between turn 120-150). I think 4 cities is a nice foundation for the start of this game.

I am targeting a sub 220 turn finish.

Thx Mesix for your post, I thought I wouldn't use diplo-marriage at all, but seeing your results made me use it and it was well worth it.

I just finished my first full playthrough.

Early game went super well, managed to ally quite a few CSs and married 2 of them by T-81. I went 2-city GL into NC, but didnt rush it - GL came after shrine + monument + granary and then 2 archers in-between. I think GL finished like T-45 and NC maybe T-58 or something. Planted 5th city after marriages sometimes around T-98 or so.

T-81 (after finishing diplo marriages)


T-97 (Education finished)


T-112 (Astronomy finished)


Midgame was allright, it was basically a constant struggle to keep happinness positive and to have as many allied CSs as possible. Unfortunately I didnt manage my cultural CSs very well and kept falling a bit behind on culture in the midgame.

T-154 (Scientific Theory finished)


T-201 (Plastics finished)


T-234 (Apollo launched - victory)


Late game was quite a big fail - poor culture and bad planning meant I didnt use Rationalism finisher at all, meaning 1 less free tech and 2 or 3 less GSs from faith.

I think given the early game, I should have been able to finish under T-220, but overall I am still quite happy with a T-234 win considering it was my 1st full playthrough (and only like 3rd full playthrough since coming back to civ 5 recently after a couple years).

Not sure if I am gonna try and improve it, I would preffer not to invest more time into this challenge, but when I see people posting better results, I probably wont be able to not at least try to beat them

Nice game JoeSham!

I think you opened a bit faster than I did. You reached Education 3 turns earlier and beelined Astronomy to get your Observatories up. I am often distracted after Education trying to backfill earlier techs to get some of the Medieval wonders. I think I must of reached Astronomy about turn 120. I have read some of the other HOF players like to research up to Metal Casting or Guilds before Education, but I prefer to get these after working on getting Universities up. I am often in a position to rush buy 1-2 Universities by about turn 100 in my games and can quickly build at least one more in my Petra city. Those scientist specialists can produce a lot of research in 10 turns.

Here is the next update on my game.

At turn 150, I still have the same 4 cities. I was spending a lot of gold on infrastructure for these cities trying to keep up with the latest techs and never had the spare gold to acquire another CS. I have all of my caravans transporting food (3x each) to Vienna and Salzburg. From the 11 turns remaining to the WC vote, I must have finished Printing Press on about turn 135. I am working to pass World's Fair to burn my GA for some policies. If timed right, it should allow me to use the Rationalism finisher for Plastics.

I built Oxford for Scientific Theory while researching Industrialism. It finished about 5-6 turns before Industrialism IIRC (about turn 144 perhaps). I researched Industrialism at turn 149 and discovered that I have no Coal. Luckily, Wittenberg has Coal under a Lumbermill so I pay 200 gold to improve the Coal and have what I need to build factories going forward.

As predicted, I got one more policy before the Renaissance Era and got the much needed discount for rushing buildings with gold from Commerce. I have now opened Rationalism and I am working my way down the right side first (which is about 3 turns away). Not pictured is the Ideology screen. I have chosen Freedom and I have 2 tenants for reduced food for specialists and +25% great people.

Here is the economic overview of my budding empire at turn 150. Vienna and Salzburg are (of course) pulling most of the weight, but my two expansion CS aren't doing too bad. Once Sydney finishes the Public School, research should be almost on par with Riga. All four cities have a science focus to keep the micromanagement under control. I might have to change this once I get the policy for +2 science per specialist if I don't want to run too many specialists (like merchants).

Overall, I'm pretty happy at this point. The middle game has gone pretty well, but I'm not sure if it might be even better with one or two more royal marriages under my belt.

Great games, guys!

Thanks for the writeup on a very nice game, Joe Sham. Sounds like it was a fun one. T234 is a great result for a game with a somewhat disappointing endgame. Your early and midgame were outstanding to get that finish time!

Looking forward to seeing how Mesix' game turns out. What a great start and early game as well!

I am on vacation with my family currently and won't get any games in until next week. Since this minor is running all month, no worries on missing the deadline [emoji4]

I do have an Ok start at only T20 or so "sleeping" on my laptop until I get time to play again. An interesting decision point in this one is what pantheon/beliefs to go with. In the Warlord GPlains Minor, Sun God worked great for me, but as Vadalaz pointed out, happiness is more of an issue with this map and King level. You might not get good wheat anyway. Getting good culture out of "God of the Open Sky" seems pretty safe on this map, but it is tough to resist Desert Folklore if starting in that lower left corner of the map; there tends to be a lot of gold and silver down there as well A few of the other pantheons like +10% growth, increased border growth, the ancient wonder bonus, and the happiness ones are all worth considering as well, I think.

My start has lots of desert around, so I'll probably go with Desert Folklore and choose pagodas to help with happiness. My goal is 6 city wide Tradition like I managed in the Warlord gauntlet, as I have a decent number of unique luxes nearby.

That gauntlet was on a small map, so AI conquest targets weren't too far away. On this Standard map, it seems less easy to get good AI caps to incorporate easily into your empire. Perhaps plant 4, marry into 2 will be my goal for this start at least.

Good luck to all. Have fun with this one.


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Here is how my game ended up. I eventually decided to buy two more nearby CS rounding out my empire at 6 cities. Like before, they came with a generous amount of infrastructure and several units. Curiously, neither of them had a University which made me play catch up for several turns until they could contribute to my empire's science.

I reached Plastics before finishing Rationalism, so I saved the finisher for Satellites. Not sure whether this was such a great decision, because I cannot buy GS with faith until I finish Rationalism.


So after a quick start and a strong mid game, the wheels came off this one towards the finish line. Even with most of my cities building science I didn't finish until turn 221.

I realized late in the game that having finished Commerce with the World's Fair GA festival, I am able to buy GM. I generally don not finish Commerce, so I hadn't thought about this. Why is this important you might ask? I built 2 and purchased 4 SS components. The final piece was purchased three turns after the 2nd hard built piece was finished. This 3 turns was the amount of time that it took for my faith purchased GM to walk to the nearest CS. Had I planned this ahead of time, I could have finished 3 turns earlier. Here is what my final empire looked like on turn 221.

Overall a fun game...and this post has likely put a big target on my turn 221 finish for all of the HOF competitors since this Minor will go for a full month (due to a typo). Best of luck to all of you! I think Austria should be able to finish under turn 200 under the right conditions.

Great game, Mesix! You are atop the Hall of Fame update, so a big thumbs up to you. Thanks for the excellent writeups as well. You had some ridiculous endgame science going there! Tyfoon Turk put in a nice T223 finish as well; curious how he got there.

I have put in a few quick starts the last couple days. It is interesting- Manpanzee noted in the previous Great Plains gauntlet that if you keep your AIs the same, you will start in a similar place every time. That has been true. My lineup of AI civs has always had me starting in the western mountains which is great. This start really varies though in how far west you are placed- my first couple starts were far west and AI civs were relatively far away. Sometimes though you start on the eastern edge of the mountains and conquest becomes a very attractive option. The good start I had before, I conquered 2 capitals, but I overreached to get the 2nd and my empire was too spread out. I am in the middle of a game where I was more judicious- Conquered 2 nearby caps, planted 1 expo, and married into 1 CS to bridge the land gap between my 2 conquered cities. I would have planted a 2nd expo, but there were no good spots with luxes. As it is, I have been riding the edge of unhappiness all game (often dipping in temporarily as CS friendships change) so a 6th city was never in the cards this time. As Vadalaz noted, getting unique luxes is tougher on this map, so happiness can be a issue- One reason I have liked conquering 2 capitals is that they both have had 2 unique luxuries each time.

The downside of my current game is that only my capital is mountain-adjacent, but all cities are on rivers/lakes and growth is good. We'll see how it turns out. On the road so it's hard to put in screenshots- if I finish a game I will do a writeup when back home next weekend.

On the question I posed in my last post- As in my last Great Plains gauntlet, I have had much better luck with my current Sun God pantheon start than with Desert Folklore or other pantheons. Near the mountains and getting 4-5 cities up fast, my growth has been too sluggish with a faith/culture pantheon to get Education early enough to get the Science snowball rolling. Worshipping the Sun God with some wheat near your capital really helps get that science rocking early enough to hit Education before T100 or shortly thereafter depending on your city founding. I have been fortunate to have religious CSes nearby, so I haven't felt a pressing need for a big faith pantheon.

Good luck to everyone giving this a go-- the Great Plains map makes this one a smoother ride for a fun science game.

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I prefer faith generating pantheons. I can get growth from the follower beliefs. The extra faith allows me to found a religion sooner, and it can also snowball into +1-2 extra GS for the end game or perhaps even a GM to buy that last SS component.