G-Minor 195

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:

• Victory Condition: Cultural (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Noble
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Small
• Speed: Normal
• Map Type: Pangaea
• Required: No Vassal States, No Tribal Villages
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians
• Civ: Any
• Opponents: Any
• Version: 3.19.003 or 3.19.003s
• Date: 11th January to 10th February 2015

Must not play as Inca.

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

I want to try this but can't decide who to play. Does cultural automatically mean creative or what other things do you think about to decide?

I tend to like spiritual but there isn't a creative leader which starts with mysticism (the only cre/spi is Hatty but no mysticism sorta ruins it).

Then looked for Industrious with mysticism and found Huayna Capac but Inca is against the rules.

Too many decisions!

If Culture through Espionage is allowed, Lizzy will be the best leader. If it's traditional Culture, Gandhi will probably be the best, because with PHI, you crank out more GAs then you get additional with Mansa Musa.

I just played about 40 turns and found out on Noble I could get Hinduism and Judaism even without starting with mysticism. I basically played random opponents so thinking if I start one where I play against no one who tends to go for religions they can be mine.

I'm not even sure I understand "culture through espionage" and I'm a builder at heart anyway so I'll go the traditional route and try Gandhi. Thanks for the tip!

Creative really doesn't help in a Cultural win, it's just too small an input to make a difference.

Spitirual (cheap temples) and Philosophical (quicker great people) are the best traits so yes Gandhi is a great choice. Ramesses is a popular choice at this level as well, the UB helps makes up for the lack of Philosophical (although you really want Artists not Prophets) and Industrious helps with the relevant Wonders.

Culture by espionage is not allowed for this gauntlet.

@Shulec - I've been away from Civ for awhile so I checked the rule pages. I don't see a ban on espionage culture listed and it's not on the gauntlet page as is the Inca ban. Is there a thread discussing the ban? I've noticed Kaitzilla's culture victory in the HOF tables, so I'm curious as to why no espionage culture allowed?

Is this ban applying to all the HOF games or just this gauntlet?

erikthecelt said:

@Shulec - I've been away from Civ for awhile so I checked the rule pages. I don't see a ban on espionage culture listed and it's not on the gauntlet page as is the Inca ban. Is there a thread discussing the ban? I've noticed Kaitzilla's culture victory in the HOF tables, so I'm curious as to why no espionage culture allowed?

Is this ban applying to all the HOF games or just this gauntlet?

Click to expand...

My mistake for poor wording. It is not allowed for this gauntlet! It is allowed for HoF.

Finished one with Ramesses and was all set to submit when I realized I forgot to save the start file. The auto one I had was somehow the wrong one so... oh well.

Even my best most of you can beat with your eyes closed but still was pretty excited to be able to finish one of these.

Will try again. I like culture and there was a lot I'd forgotten so I know I can improve my time (1874) quite a bit.

In case any other newbies want to try this since it is low level:

Biggest Thing I missed for way too long:
* Once you have the techs you need, don't forget to use the culture slider!

Thing I learned having never played small map before:
* You only need two temples per Cathedral (+50% culture) instead of the 3 it takes on normal so you don't need as many cities.

@Jenarie: Have a read through Jesusin's guide in the Academy, http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/culture_victory.php
It should give you lots of help in improving that date.

@Shulec - Thanks. Should that prohibition be posted on the gauntlet page so it can't be missed?

Submitted a 1440 game. Was strange playing noble... Had problems adjusting to the AI, it's been a while since I played a game on this level. First I didn't even consider selfteching monarchy, so used to trading for it, and had a very low happy cap for too long. Then about 500BC Mansa took me completely off guard when he founded Tao 2 turns before I was about to get it! I could have teched it way earlier if I had kept my eyes on him a bit closer. Overall I didn't have any idea when to expect the AI to reach some key techs or building wonders. Also, found it hard to keep up my tech rate when the AI never had any gold to trade for.

Played Saladin, because I haven't played any Arab game for HoF. Captured Delhi on t6 and started backfilling cities. HA "rushed" Vicky 400BC, which probably was stupid. She had the worst land I've ever seen, a peninsula with room for 5-6 cities (only 3 cities built) but only one food resource (plains cow). I took her out because I wanted stone, but then I realized I didn't really need stone... The worst one of her three cities I gifted to Mansa, who was at the other end of the continent, to give him some higher upkeep costs. (I was still mad at him for grabbing my Tao )

No foreign religion spread to me throughout the entire game, so I was left with only two religions, Confu which I founded, and Buddhism which I took from Vicky.

Otherwise quite standard. Oracle CS, lib Nat in 125BC then shut down research. 13 GAs, bombed 8-4-1. wish there had been some more food around for some better GP farms...

Early on I stole a worker from Darius and he stayed mad at me the entire game. At the worst possible time, while I was in my Taj golden age, he started plotting and gathered troops on my border. I had to sacrifice some GP production in my non-legendary cities to quickly get something else than warriors to answer to his attack. Eventually he did declare, though he was kind enough to do it on the same turn that the AP vote came up and didn't even defy when I called the vote to stop the war. His stack remained on my border until the end, but he never attacked me again.

This was kind of fun, so I decided to give it another shot just to see how much better I could do with Gandhi. Quite happy with it, managed to cut almost 200 years from my last game.

Did a bunch of bad screw ups, the worst was probably forgetting to build NE before starting my golden ages. Or then the worst was to pick a bad city for my third cultural city. Turned out another city was producing more base culture once I started running artists (and it was also ahead by quite a bit), but the cathedrals were already built elsewhere... Also forgot to build a forge in capital, which I noticed after building 4 cathedrals and a couple of wonders. Delhi was still the first city to become legendary, without any culture bombs. The other cities couldn't quite keep up, despite the help from 13 great artists.

So yeah, 1270AD can definitely still be improved. With more careful calculations in the last few turns I think I should have been able to cut 2 turns of the finish date, and without all my earlier mistakes I guess a few more turns could have been shaved off. But still quite a bit to go to jesusin's no1 game...

erikthecelt said:

@Shulec - Thanks. Should that prohibition be posted on the gauntlet page so it can't be missed?

Click to expand...

I will pass it up the line.

I finished a second game but it was horrible so don't even want to submit it. Positive I can do better than 19whateveritwas. I was at war twice and spent too much time making units to survive instead of making culture stuff.

Jenarie said:

I was at war twice and spent too much time making units to survive instead of making culture stuff.

Click to expand...

Really read the guides...like Jesusin for culture..and spend some time in Strategy & Tips to improve your game. If your dealing with wars on stuff on this level then you need to start rethinking your entire game completely. That is if you want to improve ...I assume you do.

Also, I recommend downloading saves of some of the top HOF games and look at what that person is doing. Note dates in the log and how they setup their cities. Think about why they are attacking AIs in the early 3000BCs

I read the culture guide erikthecelt linked and the one linked within the guide. Very interesting and I used some of it - including the list of 'peace-loving' leaders - but just had a bad game. I do want to improve my game but there are the games I'm just relaxing and clicking through (I played the bad game in one sitting) and games I'm more serious about where I take my time making decisions and can do much better.

I can't really use the guide to it's fullest until I get better at specializing my cities so I guess I'll work on that for a while so I can decide what great person I get instead of crossing my fingers and hoping for the Artist instead of another darn priest.

All the cool wonders make priests....

Jenarie, are you founding one or more of the three early religions? I never do that, not even in culture games. Try going worker techs first, then writing and math, then Priesthood->CoL->Oracle Civil Service. Try finding a start with marble that don't require too many immediate worker techs.

Alternatively you could beeline alpha after the essential worker techs and trade for the rest of the worker and religious techs. On noble I often find that I don't really get any useful trades so I might skip alpha, but this depends on how fast you are teching, I suppose. You'll usually get some religion spread from one of your neighbors, then you get Confu and later you bulb Philo for tao. 3 religions is enough for cathedrals. Convert to the religion of your neighbors, that'll keep them from attacking you.

Regarding wonders, all the cool wonders make artists. In culture games I build oracle for CS, then only GA wonders. Parthenon, Mausolleum of Mausollos, Sistine Chapel and Taj Mahal are absolutely essential. I build Statue of Zeus for GA points if I have forests to spare. All of those also give +10 base culture, which doubles after 1000 years. The earlier you get them up, the better. This means heading down the aesthetics line after CS.

National epic and Hermitage are obligatory national wonders, then I might build Heroic Epic if I unlock it. All of these wonders need marble, so having that resource is a must. For example Great Library is a bad choice, because you won't be teching very deep and it really ruins your GPP pool.

Hi Jenarie.

I have 2 1310 finishes, one with Gandhi and one with Ramesses. For both of them, the starting position has lots of river tiles, 2 food and one of gold/gems. Ramesses starts with ag and wheel, so tech pottery first and build cottages. You need lots of cottages early. With Gandhi I start tech with BW, if you have copper in the city, a quick rush with axes can get 2 or 3 capitals. If not, you can still chop/whip warriors and grab another capital before 2000 BC. I use a crowded map. 7 AI and if Hattie is close by, she usually has one of the first 2 religions. I had one game where she all 3 of the religions and only one warrior defending. Try and put the Oracle in a city that won't go Legendary so you don't pollute the GP points in cities that will produce artists. After switching to Free Speech, your minor cities can all be farmed to produce more artists.

You can avoid most later wars by giving in to every demand the AI make. You can leave one minor city building archers if the power graph looks bad. Avoid any tech that's not on the path to Music and Lib. You don't need currency, construction or theology (unless you are desperate for a 4th religion ). Calendar is an exception because of the Mausoleum but you can sometimes trade for it later on, so only tech if you need to develop the resources. The AI will eventually trade Alpha but they are slow. You'll need to tech masonry and Poly yourself. The AI won't trade before the wonders are built.

For AI my list is Augustus, Cyrus, Fred, Hattie, Huyana, Victoria and Wash. No backstabbers, no protective because of the early rush. If you set no city razing and the AI is really close to where your warrior starts, the warrior can grab some cities before a defender appears.

Prioritize building the temples before Music and the cathedrals after.

Ask any questions you like.

Wow, you guys are awesome; thank you!

I was getting all religions except Buddhism which apparently is a mistake so will try ignoring that path.

I've never tried taking any capitals - I tend to build my 4-6 cities and try to avoid war all game. But I do see how getting the AI to build/tech it for you would definitely be faster.

Trying again for real this time with all the pointers. Thanks again!

erikthecelt said:

You don't need currency

Click to expand...

How do you keep your economy afloat without Currency?