1050 AD Traditional Culture Victory
Map Setup
Besides the required settings, I added choose religions and no city razing. I also added the maximum ai possible. I chose Lincoln, Elizabeth and Frederick. Although at this level it doesn't matter who was added. I wanted capital worthy cities and lots of them.
The start
Found a start with 2 gold, 2 food and settler on a plain hill. SIP and started warrior 1st. The initial scout's job was to locate AI capitals. Captured Asoka's capital on turn 11. 2nd warrior captured Brennus's capital on turn 18. 1st warrior captured Darius's capital on turn 22 just in time to found Buddhism for me. I now had 4 cities at turn 22. All cities started worker first after.
Early Game
My next goal was to grab the other 3 capitals. Gandhi founded Hinduism and Frederick founded Islam. They were on the hit list. I had to decide on Elizabeth vs Lincoln on the last to capture. Lincoln had iron in his inner ring and therefore was the last on the hit list. I had horse at this time and used chariots to kill those with the last falling on turn 106. I also built 2 more cities to relieve the culture cities from temple building.
Early wonders were Oracle (took civil service), pyramids and hanging gardens. Those wonders produced a great engineer which built the Sistine chapel.
Mid Game
Spent this time spreading religions. Picked up Code of Laws and Philosophy religions. Spreading 5 religions wasn't terribly hard. Built strictly great artist wonders at this time to maintain Great Person Points being as pure as possible. I ended up libbing Nationalism on turn 165 (125 B.C.). I was continually stealing Elizabeth's workers during this time.
The 3 culture cities
My original capital was my NE city. The Celtic capital was my cottage city. I ended up moving my capital there as well. The 3rd was Asoka's capital which was my hammer city and built great artists wonders and got the Hermitage.
End game
Turned off research and went for theology religion next. The 6th religion was hard to spread and quickly turned me off to a 7th religion. Although I did found it on the last turn of the game. I built the Taj Mahal and Hermitage in multiple cities chopping as many forests as possible. Culture cities built as many culture buildings as possible. Built the other cheap wonders at the end for culture boost. Got 12 great artists (culture bombs), 3 great engineers (Sistine, Taj, golden age 2 with great prophet), economics great merchant(golden age 1), and great prophet (golden age 2). Hammer city was generating 1700 culture per turn at the end.
I didn't think I would topple the number one spot but am happily surprised by the results.
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.
Number 1 spot even without all those bonus settlers and workers.
