G-Major LXII

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: Diplomacy (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Chieftain
• Map Size: Large
• Map Type: Small Continents
• Speed: Quick
• Leader: Japan (Oda Nobunaga)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 2nd July to 1st August 2015

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

Chieftain diplomacy. Warry diplo, on a water map. Long time, no see. Not a very useful UU though, come a little bit late.

A bit late?

It is a Diplomacy game, so you need to reach the Atomic Era to get the UN vote. Longsword UU is not particularly late, especially if you are teching quickly and make an effort to get Steel before rushing Into the Renaissance (tm).

There was a Chieftain small continents game awhile back that was interesting, because small continents is not necessarily an exclusively water map. You can get things that are pangaea-like with a minimal amount of swimming sometimes, so you are not necessarily dependent on galleasses..

An upgrade into Samurais during a ground unit rush is very possible, especially on Quick, where tech goes faster and conquest relatively more slowly than on Standard (by limitations of movement). One of the reasons I thought a Large map would also lend itself time to get Samurais going possibly.

I think you would need to go Deity Domination if you wanted to see Japan build any zeroes though .

After a very frustrating defeat when going for a Time VC, I will give this one a shot. I need both Oda and Small Continents for VVV, and brushing up on the Diplomacy mechanics might help me to prevent a wasted attempt at a Time VC in the future.

I want to put up a pregame walkthrough for this - but I know vadalaz, Bleidraner, and Cromagnus are the kings at this style of play. Can any of you point me to a good previous warry Diplomacy gauntlet thread where these masters offered some pointers I can link to?

The pregame walkthrough for the minor will be easy- just link to last month's King Science major thread and the Warlord Great Plains Science minor a few months back! Maybe review the ins and outs of Austria's unique building and ability as well.

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Talk about your almost making it on the first try. I've managed to pass World Religion, World Ideology, build the Forbidden Palace, and ally all of the CS. I have the votes, unfortunately, the second meeting of the WC occurred 1 turn before finishing Telecommunication! 1 turn too late to get a 2 cycle Diplomatic VC. Now I am waiting 13 turns for the current vote to finish before I will get a World leader vote on the next cycle.
What kind of times are other people getting on their first run through?

It has been awhile since I have played as Japan (probably G&K a couple of years ago). When did they add the bonus culture for fishing boats and the Samurai building fishing boats abilities?

Mesix said:

Talk about your almost making it on the first try. I've managed to pass World Religion, World Ideology, build the Forbidden Palace, and ally all of the CS. I have the votes, unfortunately, the second meeting of the WC occurred 1 turn before finishing Telecommunication! 1 turn too late to get a 2 cycle Diplomatic VC. Now I am waiting 13 turns for the current vote to finish before I will get a World leader vote on the next cycle.

Spoiler :

What kind of times are other people getting on their first run through?

It has been awhile since I have played as Japan (probably G&K a couple of years ago). When did they add the bonus culture for fishing boats and the Samurai building fishing boats abilities?

Click to expand...

Nice game! I have not given this one a go yet. I will recap my game after I have tried once.

As for Japan, I think in one patch they were given those couple random extra abilities because universally people were complaining how weak they were. Aside from the Samurai Spirit which only helps if you are warring, the zero is extremely rare to use and the samurai is not a type of unit that gets heavy use either. The new abilities don't exactly buff Japan though unfortunately.

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zenmaster said:

Nice game! I have not given this one a go yet. I will recap my game after I have tried once.

As for Japan, I think in one patch they were given those couple random extra abilities because universally people were complaining how weak they were. Aside from the Samurai Spirit which only helps if you are warring, the zero is extremely rare to use and the samurai is not a type of unit that gets heavy use either. The new abilities don't exactly buff Japan though unfortunately.

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Click to expand...

It would feel like a nice game if I was ending 13 turns earlier ! I have saved the game on turn 150 and will try to finish up in a couple of days time.

In regards to the updated Japanese UA, I quite like the bonus culture from fishing boats and atolls. The only gripe that I have is that synergy between the new Samurai ability to improve fishing resources and the culture received from fighting boats is somewhat lost because once I research Steel, I have already improved most if not all of my fishing resources. I suppose it is nice for recovering from pillaged fishing resources if barbarians or AI naval units destroy them, but Japan would be much cooler if the Samurai was a Swordsman replacement available at Iron Working which carried special promotions forward when upgraded. This would make the new ability shine and give different priorities to research for Japan.

So I managed to finish my game after work tonight. There were actually a couple of CS who I had not met adding icing to the cake. It was really overkill in the end. I'm not really clear why people bother to conquer everyone on the map for a first round vote to victory. It seems pretty straight forward to win using all of the other tools to increase vote count.

Here is a picture taken 1 turn before the end of the game when the WC was convened for the vote:

Mesix said:

So I managed to finish my game after work tonight. There were actually a couple of CS who I had not met adding icing to the cake. It was really overkill in the end. I'm not really clear why people bother to conquer everyone on the map for a first round vote to victory. It seems pretty straight forward to win using all of the other tools to increase vote count.

Here is a picture taken 1 turn before the end of the game when the WC was convened for the vote:

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

Glad you got a solid game in. Hope you showed good Samurai Spirit!

Yes, on large maps (and huge) you don't really need all the extra vote helps if you have all or most of the CSes allied-- On tiny and small maps however, the way the game calculates votes is off, meaning you need at least 2 vote helps to win a World Leader vote even with all CS allied, unless you can get an AI to vote for you somehow. The number of AI civs left in the game is irrelevant I am pretty sure. The one thing that will throw the above plans off is a civ conquering/puppeting/marrying into City States. That may increase the vote helps you need.

The reason you may want to destroy all but one or two civs before the 1st or 2nd World Congress is that you can get a World Leader vote faster that way. The world leader vote in your game came after the World Congress that happened after you hit the Information Era. You can get a World Leader vote as early as ten turns after an Atomic Era World Congress if you hit the Atomic Era with only 1 or 2 AI civs left on the map. If you can get to Info Era relatively peacefully faster than you can conquer all but 2 civs and hit the Atomic Era, you are better off going the peaceful route, but in many cases on the lower levels, all-out warring diplomacy will yield the fastest finish.

I will try to get in a quick game in tonight if possible to compare.

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I killed off 4 civs in my game. I had 3 founded cities and 3 conquered AI capitals in the early part of the game. A little later on I also conquered Attila. My biggest mistake might have been leaving Attila's Court as a puppet for a good bit of the game. I didn't have enough gold to rush science buildings and I was also trying to finish off some policies at the time, then I forgot to annex until very late in the game. Had I annexed and focused on science, I'm sure that would have made up at least 1 turn (although with Rationalism policies coming later, perhaps not).

I ended up having my armies parked outside of Alexander's territory, and then decided to stop my conquest. It would have been easy enough to take Greece plus 2 more civs for a total of 7 leaving only 2 unconquered. Would this have been enough to make an early World Leader vote?

Provided that yoiu wiped those 7 civs completely off the map yes. Then the first world leader vote would have taken place after the first World Congress held after the Atomic era had been reached.

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In my game, I think I only reached the Atomic Era a few turns before the Info Era (bulbed 3-4 GS about this time) so perhaps not much of a difference. Certainly enough to make it one vote cycle earlier (1 turn from Info Era as I pointed out before), but not 2 vote cycles earlier.

Gauntlet was extended until 16th.

Gauntlet Results:
G-Major LXII - Diplomacy, Chieftain, Large, Small Continents, Quick, Japan (Oda Nobunaga)
1st Mesix - 1520 AD 142
2nd zenmaster - 1650 AD T-155
3rd Bram - 1675 AD T-160

Congratulations!

Congrats to Mesix and Bram! Very solid results. I did a one and done on this gauntlet. Small continents is so variable- after playing through a decent game I figured I would just let that one roll. Play time has been limited this summer, and NiceOneEmlyn kept me a little busy with medalhunting in the window I did have some time to play.

Basic gameview: isolated start on large 6 civ continent; 3 civs on far continent and 1 on its own far island. Isolation and distance meant everything was late. My early army conquered my continent very slowly while frigates did heavy lifting in the naval conquest. Went 2 congresses and even needed to delay the 2nd congress 5 turns to insure conquest completed on time (intentionally did not get to Modern Era before 1st congress so 2nd congress waiting period had extra 5 turns). Remove those 5 turns from my finish and give me some worker steals and CS alliances early and I think a solid starting position can hit the low 140's like Mesix did.

Great game by Mesix! Warlike diplomacy is definitely the way to go when it is possible. I may give this one another go if a map looks promising. I think a Pangaeaesque Sm Continents map could get someone a win in the 130's if things went right.

Time has been tight. I will get out a brief writeup and the "tale" of my Japanese civilization in the next day or two.

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I played a peaceful game. I was on my own small continent with one CS in the south. I only found one AI player before Astronomy and didn't get the WC started until the Industrial Era. I played a four city Tradition game with maximum research all the way through. It wasn't enough to reach Information Era for one vote cycle, but easily done in two. I actually think that it might be possible to do in one vote cycle (with a little luck on the timing of discovering the last civ) which would make a finish around turn 130 possible (although getting enough votes might be difficult). Trade caravans (preferably by sea) and CS alliances are the keys to an early victory.