G-Minor CI

Success. Chose a jungle start for this one, with a couple of Bananas and 3 Citruses, 3 desert tiles, 2 of them hills for Petra, unfortunately 2 coast tiles 5 tiles with mountains, all 7 useless, and 7 jungle tiles, so not bad, but my Petra start was better. By the way Smirk, you are absolutely right, my Petra start was phenomenal, I just misplayed it, I mean I wish I had a mining luxury instead of incense, but it was great. Sometimes you do not appreciate what you have until you play another game.

Jungle is superior though, if you have 4-5 high food tiles and at least a 4-5 hills.

Managed to grow to 50. Got a good Edu, 63 or something like that, and Plastics 132, so that's good. I struggled with hammers and money until t120.

I played very well, but made a few small mistakes:
- I had a coal tile, and decided not to improve it as I had a jungle trading post on it, 3 beakers. I thought either a CS or one of the AIs would hit industrialization or that I would gift an improvement, but Lhasa never expanded to the coal tile and Genoa already had a mine on the coal. So no coal, no factory, no specialists, no accelerated production, that hurt a little. Should have improved the tile. That cost me a couple of turns.
- One of my citruses was on forest and not jungle, but I only realized that as I was writing this. Should have improved that tile for the money and the chopping hammers, in the early game when I really needed them.
- Only signed 2 RAs, as I thought I would not have enough money in the end game. I had PLENTY of money, should have borrowed from the AIs and signed as many RAs as I could, 7-8 in 2 rounds. Each RA is approximately 1 turn, Korea a little more, science laggards less.

All in all I could have saved 10 turns I think and I think I could go sub 180. Tempted to try.:)

@Zenmaster. I used Oxford for Plastics and Rati finisher for Satellites. I agree with your comments about the negative effect of an early use of Rati finisher. Nanotech is too late, if you are bulbing optimally, you will not have enough time to buy the faith GSs and the SS parts, with OCC you need 10 turns to do that and you will finish the tree much faster than that.

Congrats on a great game! Well played-- jungle starts are not the easiest to manage early.

It is very hard to gauge that money, I agree. The trade route gold yields are so pitiful for so long that money is tight if you are buying the key stuff and the late game spaceship part buying seems touch and go for a long time. Better safe than sorry :). But the RA's are so cheap that fitting more in would be good if the AIs let you (by agreeing to be friends). Passing an early Science Funding and/or Cultural Heritage Sites does not win you many friends unfortunately. Did you have an easy time making friends?
 
Congrats on a great game! Well played-- jungle starts are not the easiest to manage early.

It is very hard to gauge that money, I agree. The trade route gold yields are so pitiful for so long that money is tight if you are buying the key stuff and the late game spaceship part buying seems touch and go for a long time. Better safe than sorry :). But the RA's are so cheap that fitting more in would be good if the AIs let you (by agreeing to be friends). Passing an early Science Funding and/or Cultural Heritage Sites does not win you many friends unfortunately. Did you have an easy time making friends?

You are almost guaranteed 5 friends if you choose your opponents right. I picked William for the early workers, Sejong and Babylon (for the science), Maria (for the early money if she hits a NW), and Morocco and Harun for the money and trade routes. I also pick Sweden for the Great Person bonus. I pass Sciences funding as my first proposal and Cultural Heritage as my second and in spite of that I am able to continue being friends with at least 3 AIs early and later 5-7. The trade routes, peaceful demeanor and forgiveness of tech steals help a lot. I have not been aggressive enough with the RAs, I believe the optimal play is to get them at the right time, in an ideal world 2 rounds signed around t110 and t140. Each RA produces between 1000 and 2000 beakers, depnding on how they are doing with science. Sejong is the best.
 
By the way Smirk, you are absolutely right, my Petra start was phenomenal, I just misplayed it, I mean I wish I had a mining luxury instead of incense, but it was great. Sometimes you do not appreciate what you have until you play another game.

After reading this comment, I went back and took a close look at your Petra screenshot - I wouldn't feel too bad about that game if I were you. So many incense, a few useless mountain tiles, and not quite so many Petra-worthy tiles. It did have the nice growth/production mix you probably could have leveraged a bit better, but no jungles, and I think T194 is pretty darned good as it was, not knowing the other specifics of that game.
 
After reading this comment, I went back and took a close look at your Petra screenshot - I wouldn't feel too bad about that game if I were you. So many incense, a few useless mountain tiles, and not quite so many Petra-worthy tiles. It did have the nice growth/production mix you probably could have leveraged a bit better, but no jungles, and I think T194 is pretty darned good as it was, not knowing the other specifics of that game.

I could have done better. My Edu was very late, like 69, with no excuse, I had 4 wheats, which properly played can deliver a 62 Edu and get the growth rolling really early. But I focused on hammers to get the pathfinders out early, not a good strategy for the first 30 turns..

By the way, I have rolled a phenomenal start, jungle, first roll after finishing the last game. I played it through to t30 or so before I ran out of battery, but I will play it through tonight after the kids go to bed or tomorrow morning, and I have a really good feeling about it.
 
A little frustrated because I could not beat Vadalaz, but happy with the game.

Had to move my settler like 4 turns but it paid off, founded on t3 and my start was fantastic. 14 jungle tiles, including 4 bananas and 1 wheat:eek:. And I was the first to find El Dorado, a first for me. The 367 gold was very useful to rush buy a pathfinder and very soon after rush buy the granary. Of course I wish my luxury was not Sugar on marsh, and that somebody, anybody had coal, but it was not to be. Even the CSs did not have it in their rings and not even touching the third ring. I was also very unlucky with WLTKD, I could only launch 2 of them, between 80 and 120, after that the city wanted whales, and it turns out there was only one in the whole world, outside the the third ring of any of the cities. The worst of course was only 2 religious CSs, one of them in an archipelago far from the Pangea. With 3 religious CS I would have beaten Vadalaz, with 4, I would have been pushing 170.

I hit Edu t61, got my religion on t65, Scientific Theory on t98, 30 pop on t 105, Radio t106, Plastics I think t124 with Oxford. That it took me 65 turns to finish the game after that is almost unacceptable. I was slowed down in science and production by not being able to build a factory. My pantheon was Sun God and there were only 2 religious CSs, so I struggled with faith the whole game. If had realized sooner, I would not have rush bought the SoL GE, I was 2 turns short for my 4th faith GS. Lesson learned, if you really want to go for absolute record time, you have to not just micro every turn, but also calculate EVERYTHING.

I could have beaten Vadalaz if I had not slightly miscalculated my bulbs. As it was, I was 302 faith short of the last GS and so had one GS less than expected and bulbed too early, I did not even look at it, so used to getting 4 faith GS and even sometimes 5. If I had calculated better I would have bulbed the last 6 GSs in the turn before the last one instead of staggering them, or even used the Rati finisher for Nano instead of Satellites. Or both.

Anyway, I played almost flawlessly (well there was the odd caravan pillaged or a quest barb camp taken away just before I did, but minor stuff), so very interesting to compare my pace with Vadalaz's, jungle vs. Petra. Our starts were equally fast, he with his Salts and me with my Bananas. Edu 61. I then accelerated past him as you would expect in the mid game with my jungle science and then he started to catch up with his better growth and production in the late game. My pop was 51 by the end game (those jungle tiles), and his was 59. I was really close to planting a 6th academy on t106, planted my 5th on t105. I still don't know what I should have done, too tired to do the math, I think it is more or less even. Let's see, is the beakers per academy 50ish after modifiers? Does it accumulate or is it all modifier multiplied by base science? Let's call it 50. Anyway, 50*70 turns, 3500 beakers, + 50*8, 400 beakers, total 3900 my last bulbs were 4500 beakers aprox, but early science > late science so yeah kind of break even.

EDIT: forgot to multiply by the number of GSs, 10, 50*8*10, 4000 beakers extra power in the bulbs+ 3500 extra science during the game, so yeah, I should have planted the academy. I think vadalaz had a more accurate post about this, but I cannot find it right now.

I don't think I have time for another game, and playing over the weekend is difficult for me, so I think this is it. Fun.

EDIT: Screenshot now.
Spoiler :
Screen Shot 2015-05-29 at 10.26.58 PM.jpg
 
Well done, Bleidraner. I agree this is a fun one, nice and quick... once you've rolled a good start.

Zenmaster had the numbers for faith-bought GSs somewhere - I think it's ~6000 faith for 4 GSs and ~10000 for five. Not sure 4 reli CSs would be enough to get 10000 in time without a good faith pantheon. Maybe if you go for +2 faith for every city following instead of a gold generating founder belief... That hurts though.

I think SoL is overkill on Chieftain by the way, unless you're short on culture. It does add like 18 production, which is 4.5 extra beakers a turn when you build Research. Even if you're doing that for 60 turns, that's 270 extra beakers, plus 24 per bulb, so like 500 total. Half a turn.

If the math in my earlier post about academies is correct, the 6th academy is worth it if you can work it for ~60 turns. So yes, you should've planted, but it's not a huge loss, approximately (181-106-60)*43.4 = 651 beakers, like 2/3rds of a turn. I should've planted a 6th academy in my game as well, especially since no jungle makes them more valuable - it'd have been worth it in ~50 turns for me. But again, not a huge loss, one turn at most. Having too few RAs and no Sejong hurt my finish time much more.

Somebody has already beaten T179, by the way. ;) I think ~T165 is doable if everything goes your way... good RAs, good faith, good start, good everything. Jungle probably beats desert if played optimally.
 
I meant to post this a couple days ago but it took me a bit to get the screenshot rigamarole figured out. I was ready to post last night, but Bleidraner was on a roll in midgame, and I didn't want to steal any of his thunder!

Game Recap

Outcome: Turn 173 Victory

To compare with vadalaz' game, a T100 screenshot
Spoiler :
ShoshoneOCCT100.jpg


My city at game end
Spoiler :
ShoshobeOCCT173.jpg


Benchmarks:
Edu T64, Radio T104, Plastics T123

Took 50 turns from Plastics to launch, which is similar to vadalaz' 48 needed. I was only 250 bulbs away from my last spaceship tech needed, so mine could have at least been 1 turn earlier easily.
Used Oxford University for free Radio and Rationalism finisher for free Satellites. 2 We Like the King Days before my citizens wanted something I couldn't get. 4 academies. 5th one was touch and go whether it would have helped me at that point (in the 120s I think)

The Good
------------------------------------------
  • 12 jungle tiles; not as many as Manpanzee's 14, but 4 of mine were bananas and 2 were citrus
  • Mt. Kilimanjaro adjacent; it took a few turns at game start to get there, but it helped me get Consulates before going into Rationalism and gave all my units a nice little movement bonus
  • Sun God was a great pantheon for my city, though not without cost
  • Sweden became buddies early giving me +10% GP generation and one 400 bulb Research Agreement late, while the most successful AI civ Assyria became friends after I proposed International Games, giving me a solid Research Agreement of 1000 or so bulbs.
  • Going Consulates early before going Scholasticism branch of Patronage was fantastic -- I don't think I spent more than 250-500 gold total all game on CS influence and still had them all in hand in good time

The Bad
------------------------------------------
  • Faith was an issue all game, starting from not getting the Sun God pantheon from a hut until relatively very late
  • Lack of faith from my pantheon, late pantheon, and only 3 religious CSes in the game meant I needed to prioritize Stonehenge (which I ideally would not have built), Borobrodur and Hagia Sophia earlier then I would have liked to build them. Scuttled any ideas I had about early Leaning Tower among other things.
  • Though I did have some mines and forests, jungles meant production wasn't totally rocking and thus building things seemed a little slow in general; bought all the important stuff like science buildings and hospital/medlab which left money a bit tight all game to do anything extra while still saving for spaceship parts. AIs were slow to get their groove on, so my trade routes yielded weak cash until late game

The Ugly
------------------------------------------
  • One bonehead move of the game was clicking next turn before buying my university on the turn I discovered Education. I am pretty good about being patient in the late game without missing clicks, but I tend to rush a bit early in the game sometimes
  • My Grand Plan that went awry didn't cost me too bad, but still didn't work-- I intentionally left my merchant specialist slots unfilled for a long while, attempting to squeeze one more Great Scientist out of my Great person generation. I went Leaning tower as early as possible but waited on Porcelain Tower, and built all the GS-point wonders like Red Fort- ultimately, the earliest i could have possibly gotten that extra GS (by starving merchant and engineer specialists and delaying PorcTower/Hubble) was T171 or 172 I think. Quick calculations showed I was going to win by about then anyway, so I canned the experiment and filled all my specialist slots at some point. An earlier Leaning Tower might have got the extra GS possibly, but then I don't know if I would have gotten my 2nd GE for Hubble in time or even enough faith for my 4th faith-bought GS in time...
  • As mentioned earlier I was 250 bulbs short in my penultimate research turn. An early RA with Sweden squeezed in, filled merchant slots for longer, buying university one turn earlier like I should have.... many ways I could have won 1 turn earlier at the very least.

Epilogue: Very happy with this game obviously. Land was great for these purposes, but the game still needed to be steered home correctly, and I think things went OK on that front. When I typed the "Goals" section of my midgame update post, those are what I had in mind as I played through the game, knowing what faith, cash, and bulbs I would need at game end. Will do a "Final Thoughts" post with a focus on a specific gameplay point or two looking at build order decisions before month end.
 
A little frustrated because I could not beat Vadalaz, but happy with the game.

Had to move my settler like 4 turns but it paid off, founded on t3 and my start was fantastic. 14 jungle tiles, including 4 bananas and 1 wheat:eek:. And I was the first to find El Dorado, a first for me. The 367 gold was very useful to rush buy a pathfinder and very soon after rush buy the granary. Of course I wish my luxury was not Sugar on marsh, and that somebody, anybody had coal, but it was not to be. Even the CSs did not have it in their rings and not even touching the third ring. I was also very unlucky with WLTKD, I could only launch 2 of them, between 80 and 120, after that the city wanted whales, and it turns out there was only one in the whole world, outside the the third ring of any of the cities. The worst of course was only 2 religious CSs, one of them in an archipelago far from the Pangea. With 3 religious CS I would have beaten Vadalaz, with 4, I would have been pushing 170.

I hit Edu t61, got my religion on t65, Scientific Theory on t98, 30 pop on t 105, Radio t106, Plastics I think t124 with Oxford. That it took me 65 turns to finish the game after that is almost unacceptable. I was slowed down in science and production by not being able to build a factory. My pantheon was Sun God and there were only 2 religious CSs, so I struggled with faith the whole game. If had realized sooner, I would not have rush bought the SoL GE, I was 2 turns short for my 4th faith GS. Lesson learned, if you really want to go for absolute record time, you have to not just micro every turn, but also calculate EVERYTHING.

I could have beaten Vadalaz if I had not slightly miscalculated my bulbs. As it was, I was 302 faith short of the last GS and so had one GS less than expected and bulbed too early, I did not even look at it, so used to getting 4 faith GS and even sometimes 5. If I had calculated better I would have bulbed the last 6 GSs in the turn before the last one instead of staggering them, or even used the Rati finisher for Nano instead of Satellites. Or both.

Anyway, I played almost flawlessly (well there was the odd caravan pillaged or a quest barb camp taken away just before I did, but minor stuff), so very interesting to compare my pace with Vadalaz's, jungle vs. Petra. Our starts were equally fast, he with his Salts and me with my Bananas. Edu 61. I then accelerated past him as you would expect in the mid game with my jungle science and then he started to catch up with his better growth and production in the late game. My pop was 51 by the end game (those jungle tiles), and his was 59. I was really close to planting a 6th academy on t106, planted my 5th on t105. I still don't know what I should have done, too tired to do the math, I think it is more or less even. Let's see, is the beakers per academy 50ish after modifiers? Does it accumulate or is it all modifier multiplied by base science? Let's call it 50. Anyway, 50*70 turns, 3500 beakers, + 50*8, 400 beakers, total 3900 my last bulbs were 4500 beakers aprox, but early science > late science so yeah kind of break even.

EDIT: forgot to multiply by the number of GSs, 10, 50*8*10, 4000 beakers extra power in the bulbs+ 3500 extra science during the game, so yeah, I should have planted the academy. I think vadalaz had a more accurate post about this, but I cannot find it right now.

I don't think I have time for another game, and playing over the weekend is difficult for me, so I think this is it. Fun.

Nice game! Way to beat your goal of T190. A lot of things conspired against you to keep you from being any faster-- faith CSes, lack of coal, etc. Very well played with the obstacles you had!
 
Well done, Bleidraner. I agree this is a fun one, nice and quick... once you've rolled a good start.

Zenmaster had the numbers for faith-bought GSs somewhere - I think it's ~6000 faith for 4 GSs and ~10000 for five. Not sure 4 reli CSs would be enough to get 10000 in time without a good faith pantheon. Maybe if you go for +2 faith for every city following instead of a gold generating founder belief... That hurts though.

I think SoL is overkill on Chieftain by the way, unless you're short on culture. It does add like 18 production, which is 4.5 extra beakers a turn when you build Research. Even if you're doing that for 60 turns, that's 270 extra beakers, plus 24 per bulb, so like 500 total. Half a turn.

If the math in my earlier post about academies is correct, the 6th academy is worth it if you can work it for ~60 turns. So yes, you should've planted, but it's not a huge loss, approximately (181-106-60)*43.4 = 651 beakers, like 2/3rds of a turn. I should've planted a 6th academy in my game as well, especially since no jungle makes them more valuable - it'd have been worth it in ~50 turns for me. But again, not a huge loss, one turn at most. Having too few RAs and no Sejong hurt my finish time much more.

Somebody has already beaten T179, by the way. ;) I think ~T165 is doable if everything goes your way... good RAs, good faith, good start, good everything. Jungle probably beats desert if played optimally.

Ah 43.3. Somehow I am getting 53, got New Deal 1 turn after Freedom, t108. Why are you using minus 60? Don't understand the math. Also what about the extra bulb power due to the extra academy? Should that not be 43.5 times number of GSs bulbed?

You are right on SoL. I did not have coal (no factory) and there was no way of getting it, so thought I needed the extra production, but I really did not build anything after Plastics, everything was rush bought. I did detour to Fertilizer before getting Plastics, not sure if that was good, the reality is that I only had like 2-3 farms with no fresh water, so I don't think it is worth delaying Plastics, should have probably beelined it and get it 7 turns earlier.

Yes I only hit the 10K faith in one game, with desert folklore. Doing the calculations, with 2 more religious CSs I would still have been short by like 1000 faith of 10K by t168 which is when I would have needed the 5th GS for 170 finish, so yes, 5 faith GSs is unrealistic.

Not sure if 165 is possible though, maybe with a better map CS wise and better dirt, I struggled with early Gold and Production big time. But it would be tough, at least 5 less pop, probably 1 less natural GS and bulbs 500 beakers less strong.

Yes I saw I was third, guessing Zenmaster or Smirk went for another game.

Today after reviewing my game being less tired, I can see I did not play this optimally after t100. I should have been able to generate the 4th faith CS at least 8 turns earlier, saved the faith of the GE, beelined Plastics. And if I take the whole game I can see other early mistakes, like no trade routes early on. Overall I think 10-15 turns.

And oops I forgot to attach the screenshot. I'll edit the post above.
 
You are right on Statue of Liberty...

Not sure if 165 is possible though, maybe with a better map CS wise and better dirt

Well, I don't know about others but I am always generating a natural GEngineer right around Statue of Liberty time and I get another one before game end naturally for Hubble. I know Bleidraner lacked a factory last game so it was a tougher call for him. If you have a GE to burn anyway, Statue gives you a useful SP faster, and not only helps your Research yield a bit but helps you build Apollo 1 turn faster which is helpful in that late game crunch. I tried to avoid a GMerchant but let the GE points roll, since starving too many specialist slots hurts a bit with Secularism and Freedom.

My win should have been T172 and another religious CS would have equated to another GS/5th early academy because of an earlier Leaning Tower so that's worth a few turns at least. An increase in RA bulbs from 1500 to 6000 or so and I can see mid160s being the ultimate bottom end if your land is not just good but spectacular, religious CS abound, and you don't screw up at all. Getting that all on Fractal especially may be too much to hope for though. Basically, if you can get under T200 or close to it, pat yourself on the back for a great game and be happy!
 
I meant to post this a couple days ago but it took me a bit to get the screenshot rigamarole figured out. I was ready to post last night, but Bleidraner was on a roll in midgame, and I didn't want to steal any of his thunder!

Game Recap

Outcome: Turn 173 Victory

To compare with vadalaz' game, a T100 screenshot


My city at game end


Benchmarks:
Edu T64, Radio T104, Plastics T123

Took 50 turns from Plastics to launch, which is similar to vadalaz' 48 needed. I was only 250 bulbs away from my last spaceship tech needed, so mine could have at least been 1 turn earlier easily.
Used Oxford University for free Radio and Rationalism finisher for free Satellites. 2 We Like the King Days before my citizens wanted something I couldn't get. 4 academies. 5th one was touch and go whether it would have helped me at that point (in the 120s I think)

The Good
------------------------------------------
  • 12 jungle tiles; not as many as Manpanzee's 14, but 4 of mine were bananas and 2 were citrus
  • Mt. Kilimanjaro adjacent; it took a few turns at game start to get there, but it helped me get Consulates before going into Rationalism and gave all my units a nice little movement bonus
  • Sun God was a great pantheon for my city, though not without cost
  • Sweden became buddies early giving me +10% GP generation and one 400 bulb Research Agreement late, while the most successful AI civ Assyria became friends after I proposed International Games, giving me a solid Research Agreement of 1000 or so bulbs.
  • Going Consulates early before going Scholasticism branch of Patronage was fantastic -- I don't think I spent more than 250-500 gold total all game on CS influence and still had them all in hand in good time

The Bad
------------------------------------------
  • Faith was an issue all game, starting from not getting the Sun God pantheon from a hut until relatively very late
  • Lack of faith from my pantheon, late pantheon, and only 3 religious CSes in the game meant I needed to prioritize Stonehenge (which I ideally would not have built), Borobrodur and Hagia Sophia earlier then I would have liked to build them. Scuttled any ideas I had about early Leaning Tower among other things.
  • Though I did have some mines and forests, jungles meant production wasn't totally rocking and thus building things seemed a little slow in general; bought all the important stuff like science buildings and hospital/medlab which left money a bit tight all game to do anything extra while still saving for spaceship parts. AIs were slow to get their groove on, so my trade routes yielded weak cash until late game

The Ugly
------------------------------------------
  • One bonehead move of the game was clicking next turn before buying my university on the turn I discovered Education. I am pretty good about being patient in the late game without missing clicks, but I tend to rush a bit early in the game sometimes
  • My Grand Plan that went awry didn't cost me too bad, but still didn't work-- I intentionally left my merchant specialist slots unfilled for a long while, attempting to squeeze one more Great Scientist out of my Great person generation. I went Leaning tower as early as possible but waited on Porcelain Tower, and built all the GS-point wonders like Red Fort- ultimately, the earliest i could have possibly gotten that extra GS (by starving merchant and engineer specialists and delaying PorcTower/Hubble) was T171 or 172 I think. Quick calculations showed I was going to win by about then anyway, so I canned the experiment and filled all my specialist slots at some point. An earlier Leaning Tower might have got the extra GS possibly, but then I don't know if I would have gotten my 2nd GE for Hubble in time or even enough faith for my 4th faith-bought GS in time...
  • As mentioned earlier I was 250 bulbs short in my penultimate research turn. An early RA with Sweden squeezed in, filled merchant slots for longer, buying university one turn earlier like I should have.... many ways I could have won 1 turn earlier at the very least.

Epilogue: Very happy with this game obviously. Land was great for these purposes, but the game still needed to be steered home correctly, and I think things went OK on that front. When I typed the "Goals" section of my midgame update post, those are what I had in mind as I played through the game, knowing what faith, cash, and bulbs I would need at game end. Will do a "Final Thoughts" post with a focus on a specific gameplay point or two looking at build order decisions before month end.

Fantastic game Zenmaster!!!! You should be happy. I think this is almost as good as it gets. And great write up.

Here is my t100 for comparison purposes.

Spoiler :
Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 9.29.56 AM.jpg


I obviously misplayed the last part of the game. Yes my growth will never be as good as Zenmaster's or Vadalaz, no Petra and no Citrus/river tiles respectively, and my bpt is 20 beakers less more or less, but that is about to change in the following turns, the 2 extra jungle tiles can make up for much and I have a better GS generation rate, so I feel I had a really good chance if I was a better player. I may replay the end game from t100 to learn from my mistakes.
 
Ah 43.3. Somehow I am getting 53, got New Deal 1 turn after Freedom, t108. Why are you using minus 60? Don't understand the math. Also what about the extra bulb power due to the extra academy? Should that not be 43.5 times number of GSs bulbed?
My estimation is that ~60 turns of working the tile plus better bulbs is what it takes to break even. So if you planted on t106, you would've broken even by T166, you won on T181, so in the end all you lost was 15 turns of working the tile which is 650 beakers.

You can check it, 60 turns of 43.4 bpt is 2604 beakers, each bulb gets increased by 42*8/1.5=224 beakers, you said you had 10 bulbs so that's an extra 2240, for a total of 4844 beakers. Your actual bulbs were 4500 so my estimation that it'd take 60 turns to break even was pretty close. Seems you lost around 1000 beakers there though, not 650.

@zenmaster, I knew it was you. :) Great result! I think that your game shows pretty convincingly that jungle starts are the strongest under these settings... Still, looking at those T100 screenshots and benchmarks makes me pretty happy about how I played my game. Kept up in science pretty well up to ideologies, so I must've been doing something right.
 
Vadalaz, thank you for the explanation, I just found your post on this, apologies for getting you to repeat it again.

Replayed the map from t100, and as I suspected, playing it well is enough to beat Vadalaz but not quite enough to beat Zenmaster. Won t177.

What I did differently: went for Hospital instead of fertilizer before Plastics (I think beelining Plastics is better, I don't learn!). Did not rush SoL with a GE, but hard built it instead (I still agree it is a mistake in my game, but production was soooo slow, lost like 11 turns to build science, could have finished a turn earlier). That's pretty much it. Good learning exercise.

Spoiler :
Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 2.25.48 PM.jpg
 
G Minor CI Final Thoughts

A recap of lessons learned from experience after playing through this gauntlet, followed by a couple concrete gameplay tips

Game Start:

Opponents: Because Fractal maps really seem to limit how many huts your pathfinders can grab, making sure you have friendly money-conscious civs for good trade routes and Research agreements is more of an important factor than scouting prowess. All else being equal, though, having bad recon nations in your mix is still better than not because even 1 more hut yields a pretty good bonus for your civ.

Ideal Opponents (if you are choosing your own):
Sweden - possible 10% boost to Great Person production
Korea - Lousy at scouting, friendly, good enough at science to give you good bulbs from a research agreement. Anecdotal evidence has shown they can build a science wonder very early for the game level though, so don't blame me if it snipes one somehow even on Chieftain :).
Morocco - Bad at scouting, friendly, good for trade routes, won't forward settle you.
Any other civs that are high on friendship willingness and/or gold.

Capital placement:
Bountiful Jungle>Petra>anything else pretty much. Of course being adjacent to a mountain is most important.

Observations:

  • Happiness is not an issue. Don't even factor it into your calculations
  • Culture is not a huge issue if you do the normal things like build Writer's/Artist's Guild and get Cultural CS allies. No need to stress on it.
  • You can (and should) get all the City States as allies at some point. There is enough culture to get 1-4 Patronage policies, and quests are easy in general. Use spies to shore up alliances that don't have good quests
  • You should plan to accumulate a little over 6000 faith by endgame (after Great Prophets) so you can faithbuy 4 Great Scientists. If you have a faith-producing pantheon, that and religious CS alliances go a long way toward that. Any religious wonders you need to supplement your faith are easy to get. The belief Divine Inspiration (+2 faith/wonder) also may be a key to insure this. If you can get to 10000+ faith to faithbuy 5 GSes, more power to you, but it is a waste of resources to try for that 5th GS and fall short. 6000+ faith is easily doable.
  • Academies are powerful in this game. Planting 3 is a minimum, 4 is probably a no-brainer, 6 is a maximum. The 5th academy pays itself off if you win more than 50 turns after planting roughly. The 6th academy pays for itself after about 60 turns.
  • Policies that give you science bulbs directly are powerful in OCC. The key Rationalism policies, Scholasticism in Patronage, and New Deal in the Freedom ideology are good to get sooner rather than later if possible.
  • You will need to have a little over 8000 gold at endgame to buy spaceship parts (6*1380), assuming you go Freedom, build Big Ben for 15% discount, and get the Commerce policy with a 25% purchasing discount. No Big Ben or Commerce policy menas you will need 10000 gold or more. Going Order would mean no buying and lots of suboptimal hardbuilding in this OCC.
  • Cash may seem tight at times early, but if you get trade routes and gold buildings up early, they will pay dividends eventually. Ideally you have enough gold to buy all the science buildings, medical lab, and hospital, immediately when those buildings become available. Provided you are not wasteful and get your gold production in good shape, signing research agreements with AI friends whenever possible up to T150/160 or so is suggested. Every bulb helps!
  • After founding the World Congress, Science Funding should be your first proposal to boost Great Scientist generation a lot. An extra Great Scientist will shave about 4-5 turns off your finish time. Cultural Heritage Sites to cash in culture-wise on all your wonders is a good 2nd proposal but if you can get a good AI friendship by proposing World's Fair or International Games to make AI civs happy, it might be worth it as the 2nd proposal (it was for me-- saved me a turn with a good RA and didn't cost me any culture policies as my culture was good enough without Cultural Heritage Sites)
  • For Religious beliefs, a gold-producing Founder belief and Swords into Plowshares (+15% growth if peaceful) are pretty much mandatory if you want to speed growth and go for fastest finish. 2nd belief and enhancer are up for debate - the most faith come from Divine Inspiration and Reliquary. Others might suit your individual game better.

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Gameplay Focus #1 - Build only what you need for the game you are currently playing!

This gauntlet really highlighted for me the idea that originally improved my game and expanded my enjoyment of Civ 5 immensely.

After playing Civ 5, G&K, and then BNW for awhile, I still didn't feel I was playing very well. I could do all right in a gauntlet occasionally, but often I was finishing far behind the leaders, with no idea of how to improve my play. Games in general were often frustrating, as I felt I was treading the same well-worn path each game and often getting stuck in the mud.

Eventually, I figured out my problem-- I was playing every game more or less the same. Same general build orders, wonders built, etc. regardless of civ, level, or victory condition. Games felt samey and often didn't go well. When the light turned on in my brain that I did NOT have to build Great Library or even a library at all in every game, and not always have 4 cities, etc., my gameplay improved a ton AND I began enjoying the game much, much more. Each game at a new setting was a new challenge, with different strategies to try and decisions to make. Yes, general approaches to some victory types are often similar, but how to get from game start to game end can take radically different paths even if your approach is consistent, depending on a variety of factors.

This gauntlet highlighted that idea. After my first finished game, I understood that I did not have to care about happiness one single bit at Chieftain Level with only one city. Happiness wonders and policies became almost worthless to me, so in my T173 win, no Chichen Itza or any other happiness wonder, no real need for Freedom of Thought (Freedom policy that gives specialists happiness bonus) that is often one of the most sought after policies. This opens up the build queue and policy trees for things more helpful to these specific settings.

Culture was similar. On Chieftain, less culture is needed to get policies and with one city there are no penalties. Thus, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Writer's Guild, Artist's Guild, Oracle, some Cultural CS allies--that was pretty much it to get all the policies I needed when I needed them. No need for Globe Theatre, Parthenon, or any of that. I did not even propose Cultural Heritage Sites until the 3rd Congress which may not even have met, because I wanted to make some AIs happy with International Games in the 2nd Congress for friendship and RAs.

Faith on the other hand was something I knew I needed. 6000 or so faith was needed after the Great Prophets by endgame to get 4 faith-bought Great Scientists to bulb techs. My faith generation started very late, so Stonehenge was a key this game. If I had taken a faith producing pantheon instead of Sun God, I would not have built Stonehenge. If I had had early or another religious CS ally I may not have built Stonehenge. I really didn't want to waste that early build time on Stonehenge but I had to because I needed a religion up ASAP and to get that faith generation rolling.

As for wonders, once I built the growth wonders (T. Artemis, H.Gardens) science wonders (GLibrary, NCollege, Oracle, Oxford U., Porcelain Tower late) faith wonders (Stonehenge, HSophia, Borobrodur, Grand Temple), GP wonders (N. Epic, Leaning Tower), and Big Ben to get a buying bonus for research lab abd spaceship parts, I built the Great Scientist point generation wonders (Brandenburg gate and Red Fort) last in an experiment to generate 1 more Great Scientist than I normally could. Didn't work, and if I played over again, I may not build either of them. With a jungle capital, I also built Ironworks, but am not convinced that was needed, so it may have been a waste.

Buildings were granary, shrine, then all the specialist slot buildings as soon as I could, rushbuying the science ones. Also rushbought hospital and medical lab for increased growth. Monument and Aqueduct came free with tradition and Temple came free with Hagia Sophia.

At that point, I had all the buildings and wonders that were essential. I built research until Apollo program, and then built research afterward.

I used a natural GEngineer to rushbuild Statue of Liberty (nonessential, but the best use of my GE). My 2nd natural GE to rushbuild the essential Hubble. Only built 4 units (pathfinders) all game early to explore and do quests; the rest fell from the sky from military CS allies.

The upshot? If you are playing this one again, and feel you are taking too long to get from Education to whatever next benchmark you want, try stripping your build order down to its essentials. The things that help you win this gauntlet are science (via growth, science buildings, generating GS, getting key policies, getting RAs, and faithbuying GSes) and enough gold to buy all the spaceship parts immediately via Freedom at the end. Any wonder or building that is not absolutely necessary to get you to that goal should not be built. Chichen Itza, Globe Theatre? Nice, but not needed in this gauntlet. Stonehenge? Might be needed if you lack a faith pantheon, but might not be needed.

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Gameplay Focus #2 - Science at low levels is all about growth.

With only 1 city and a Science Victory needed, this gauntlet is a good one to make you concentrate on pure, unfettered population growth. At higher levels, you have to balance growth with happiness, but with a Chieftain level OCC? Pure growth focus from the start!

I used to not focus on growth much... and thus was not putting in very competitive finish times in Science games. Eventually this light bulb lit up above my head at some point too.

If you think your city could or should be growing faster, look through the following points to see if you are doing these:
  1. After your opening pathfinders, granary should be the first building built (in other games it is often shrine, but not in this one I think). If you are flooded with cash you can consider buying it, but remember you will need gold for rushbuying university and observatory relatively soon.
  2. Increasing population by 1 is a solid choice upon discovering a hut in this one.
  3. Prioritize working 3+ food hexes at all times. If you can make a 3+ food hex by irrigation/improvement, do it ASAP
  4. Use workers to irrigate tiles as soon as possible, unless they are jungle tiles. Always leave those as jungle for the science benefit after university is built.
  5. After Great Library and National College, Temple of Artemis and Hanging gardens should be top priority builds to help growth!
  6. Prioritize Maritime CSes for alliances at all times to get the food bonus!
  7. In Tradition, go down the main path to the increased capital growth policy ASAP.
  8. After Maritime CS allies, prioritize cultural CS allies and also choose culture from an early hut to jumpstart Tradition and finish it ASAP for the free aqueduct and growth bonus
  9. Get a religion ASAP and choose the Swords into Plowshares +15% to peaceful growth belief as your first belief
  10. When choosing religious Pantheon, Sun God needs to be your strongest candidate if you have 3 or more wheat/bananas/citrus. If you cannot go Sun God, Desert Folklore, or a different big-faith pantheon, consider the +10% growth pantheon as your best choice
  11. After researching Philosophy, beeline to Civil Service to get the irrigated tile food bonus
  12. After getting Plastics, go to Fertilizer for added irrigation bonus if you have applicable tiles, then to Biology and Penicillin, where you will rush buy Hospital and Medical Lab

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Ok, for those trying or retrying this gauntlet late, some accumulated wisdom on it with thanks to all who contributed in this thread. The gameplay tips are in response to those looking to improve their play a bit in certain areas to speed things up. Hopefully, they are a help to some.
 
@zenmaster, I knew it was you. :) Great result! I think that your game shows pretty convincingly that jungle starts are the strongest under these settings... Still, looking at those T100 screenshots and benchmarks makes me pretty happy about how I played my game. Kept up in science pretty well up to ideologies, so I must've been doing something right.

Thanks. Our T100 screenshots show how powerful those academies are. Your science was higher than mine at that point. But wow, all of the jungle games turned in exploded from there to a T123 or so Plastics. Jungle bonus really kicks in at some point, so I agree that a really good Jungle start is strongest for this one. Your game was incredible with no jungle science bonus at all. I think the early Oxford and early production focus were the right approaches for your game.
 
As for wonders, once I built the science wonders (GLibrary, NCollege, Oracle, Oxford U., Porcelain Tower late) faith wonders (Stonehenge, HSophia, Borobrodur, Grand Temple), GP wonders (N. Epic, Leaning Tower), I built the Great Scientist point generation wonders (Brandenburg gate and Red Fort) last in an experiment to generate 1 more Great Scientist than I normally could. Didn't work, and if I played over again, I may not build either of them. With a jungle capital, I also built Ironworks, but am not convinced that was needed, so it may have been a waste.
I don't see Temple of Artemis on the list. Did you forgo the +10% growth?
 
I don't see Temple of Artemis on the list. Did you forgo the +10% growth?

Oops, my bad. Will edit. Thanks for the catch! I had a bullet point with Temple of Artemis and Hanging gardens originally, but it got edited out somehow and they slipped my mind up above.
 
Just an addendum the faith numbers for leaders on quick are 670, 1000, 1670, 2680 and 4020. I didn't write down the 6th cost in the came I got the 5th. Thats probably even more crazy then the 5th though. I think the 5th is doable only on a hugely productive Petra city, but that probably limits growth so ultimately not optimal.

Also I think I realized why I can't seem to get a great map like you all are showing, I'm a sucker for other lesser maps. I just finished one with 7 workable gold, 4 of those desert hills. Really fun to play, gold out the essass, but not enough growth and thus ultimately science.

Great showing folks, I learned tons just playing this gauntlet. Fantastic posts zenmaster, keep it up. Great reading.
 
Excellent post, zenmaster. Very good idea to make a summary like this, since all the useful information is often scattered across multiple pages of the gauntlet threads. Looking forward to reading more of your guides!
As for wonders, once I built the growth wonders (T. Artemis, H.Gardens) science wonders (GLibrary, NCollege, Oracle, Oxford U., Porcelain Tower late) faith wonders (Stonehenge, HSophia, Borobrodur, Grand Temple), GP wonders (N. Epic, Leaning Tower), I built the Great Scientist point generation wonders (Brandenburg gate and Red Fort) last in an experiment to generate 1 more Great Scientist than I normally could. Didn't work, and if I played over again, I may not build either of them. With a jungle capital, I also built Ironworks, but am not convinced that was needed, so it may have been a waste.
Ironworks is a must-have in my opinion, it costs 103 hammers to build and provides 8 hammers per turn, so it pays for itself very quickly.

You may want to add some information about the gold needed to purchase the SS parts to your post. It was 1350 per part with Big Ben and Mercantilism right? Did you build Big Ben in your game at all?
 
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