G-Minor CVII

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: Prince
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Any
• Speed: Standard
• Leader: Any
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 17th September to 1st October 2015 1st November 2015

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

Question and request:

1) With "any map", I am assuming that means any of the 20 or so maps that qualify for the VVV? Or is literally any map OK?

2) Please extend this gauntlet to Major length. If that is impossible, PLEASE reserve "any-XXXXX" gauntlets to Majors in the future. The whole point of enjoying the any-civ type gauntlets is experimenting and discussing the options. 2 weeks is inadequate.

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zenmaster said:

1) With "any map", I am assuming that means any of the 20 or so maps that qualify for the VVV? Or is literally any map OK?

Click to expand...

Only the maps that used for VVV. Gauntlets are HOF submissions so all the same rules apply.

zenmaster said:

2) Please extend this gauntlet to Major length. If that is impossible, PLEASE reserve "any-XXXXX" gauntlets to Majors in the future. The whole point of enjoying the any-civ type gauntlets is experimenting and discussing the options. 2 weeks is inadequate.

Click to expand...

I am fine with running it for a month. Anyone object?

I agree with zenmaster, there are so many different combinations to try here. Please extend the gauntlet.

Can we get six weeks?

Okay. I have extended this gauntlet through Nov 1st.

We may have accidentally discovered a new way to have fun with the gauntlets by have multiple "Any" options. Something to think about for future gauntlet suggestions.

Great, now there's plenty of time to experiment. Thanks Denniz!

First try: T211 as Babylon on Great Plains Plus.

The idea I had for this game was to try Order for a change. Babylon gets a lot of Great Scientists, so I thought that I would be able to spend all the endgame faith on Great Engineers instead. Great Plains has good terrain for Order as well with a lot of riverside tiles, hills in the west, pastures. A ton of production.

Had a rather slow 4-city Tradition start, T90ish NC and T102 Edu. I figured I'd expand some more by conquest and quickly took 2 AI capitals and an expo for a total of 7 cities. This might have been great if the cities actually had anything in them... I feel like I just lost a lot of time and gold dealing with those new cities for little gain in the endgame.

Anyway, I kept playing eventhough I knew I'd made a ton of mistakes by then. I bulbed Industrialization as soon as I could and built 3 factories for a T153 Order. Took the -33% buildings cost tenet and built Big Ben. This certainly sped things up, but my new cities were still lagging behind. I had to keep spending gold on City-States for happiness as well.

Things finally started clicking around T170 when I had universities and factories up in all of my new cities. Was still pretty far from Plastics though, so I bulbed 2 scientists to get there on turn 178. I felt that I'd still have enough scientists to get all the techs quickly enough, even without faith purchasing. Turned out I was right and I won in 33 turns from Plastics which I think is good. The conquered cities were finally useful, as eventually I rush-bought labs in all of them (just 540 gold for a lab with Big Ben, Order and Mercantilism!) and hit ~1800bpt with pretty low population. The final bulbs were worth 12700 beakers or so.

It's ridiculous how powerful Babylon is - I used 5 scientists on the way to Plastics (2 academies, bulb for Indu, 2x bulb for Plastics), didn't faith-buy any, and still had enough to finish the required techs a couple of turns earlier than I needed to. 7 cities seemed overkill, but perhaps it would've worked better if I settled them myself. With better faith I could've gotten one more GS too.

I think I'll try this same approach again, Industrialization first, early factories and Big Ben, Order. It should work better with just 4-5 self-founded cities and a better start.

Well, this seems interesting enough to bring me out of retirement. I do think that Babylon with a Great Plains style map seems like the safest starting point, but I spent a bunch of time on that a couple months ago while searching for a Deity sub-200* and am ready for something different.

I think I'll try to submit an Egypt Liberty game for this one. I have an ok-ish Highlands game going right now. I'm at a decision point where I need to choose between Oracle-ing a GE to get a 5-city NC around t75, or hard-building the NC and saving the Liberty finisher for a Petra city. Five cities isn't really enough on this map, but I figure I can spam out 2-3 more after the NC is done. I'll have Burial Tombs at that point, so the happiness should be manageable -- post-NC expansion feels fairly natural for Egypt. I'm pretty rusty and am making some sketchy plays (started on Oracle without even considering that I can probably save it for Rationalism on Prince), so I don't know if this'll be the one to finish.

With regards to Babylon + Great Plains, my testing gave me the impression that 4-5 cities are probably enough. I also really like Workshops before Universities, even with Tradition. Babylon's early science is so fast that you tend to get to Education before your cities are ready anyway, so the detour to Metal Casting isn't a big deal. The extra hammers are pretty handy.

*My best attempt looked to be something truly legendary. I had a 4-city NC done around t60 with a fifth city settled immediately. Managed to get ~t90 Education WITH Metal Casting and Workshops in most cities. Looked like an easy sub-200. Then I got greedy, went to war, and was subsequently SEXTUPLE dow'ed by the other AIs. I fought it out for a while, but after 30+ turns none of them were willing to make peace, and I was burning so many hammers on units that I decided to call it. Quite demoralizing. Deity peace-deal abuse is apparently a bit riskier than I'd thought.

I find that it is often quicker to open ideologies by saving Oxford for Radio (you could also bulb Radio with a GS I suppose). Getting coal can be a craps shoot and even if it appears near your city, the time to improve the tile and build three factories can delay your ideology. After getting Scientific Method (and Industrialization), it only takes a few turns to research Electricity and then you can bulb Radio to usher in the Modern Era.

I have to work on my late game timing. 33 turns from Plastics to launch is phenomenal! Nice job, Vadalaz! Turn 211 should be competitive, but with 6 weeks to experiment I'm sure someone will crack a sub 200 finish.

The way I see it, going Industrialization first with Order in mind has several benefits:

- potentially earliest possible ideology. Best case scenario is either having a coal tile already improved, or having a CS ally with a coal tile without a mine improvement, so that you can gift 200 gold to get the resource instantly
- factories boost production significantly. It's a good time to get a production boost, as you want to grab wonders, set up for the World's Fair, get all the specialist buildings like schools and banks etc.
- you enter Industrial era earlier for better CS culture and faith bonuses
- you can build Big Ben early which has good synergy with Order. I really like cheap public schools and hydro plants

So I think that a 2 GS bulb into Industrialization can be worth it as Babylon. You get so many scientists that you can afford doing something like that as long as you have gardens in your cities. I think I'll replay my game from turn 80 or so, but won't take any AI cities or plant the second academy, as I want to test the double bulb.

--
So I did that... I went Metal Casting before Education this time to see how that works, got Education 10 turns later than in the actual run, but caught up fairly quickly: Education T112, Order T149 with a double bulb, Plastics T169 with another double bulb. But I couldn't beat my finish time (finished T212), despite having superior faith output (+1GS) and faster Plastics with 4 instantly rush-bought labs. Seems the extra cities are *much* more valuable than I thought!

So my plan now is to go with 5 or 6 cities now and aim for a ~T100 Education and ~T135-140 Order.

Nice gauntlet, I had just installed Civ 5 back
And those are some very solid benchmarks vadalaz!

Just tried my first try with Spain on Pangaea. After several rerolls I got a nice salty start location with a nearby Mt. Killimanjaro for 500g. Didn't get any other wonder as first, but got decent ruins and settling my quick 2nd city next to Mt. Killimanjaro + getting "One with nature" belief fast made that tile uber good - 6 food, 4 culture, 8 faith.

Long story short, early game went pretty well, so here is a couple of screenshots from my playthrough:

T100: Decided to go for 6 self-founded cities and completely peacefull game (after early worker steal from Morroco). Went for the Metal Casting detour before Edu, got Edu T-103. Also managed to get completely all the early-game wonders. Especially Stonehenge was quite surprising, but since it was only 4 turns, I gave it a try and it worked. One slight mistake was only having 4 workers. 2 more early workers could have helped the midgame quite a bit.


T150:

I decided to quit messing around and just play on Great Plains. It might not be universally the strongest map type, but it's definitely the most consistently powerful -- doesn't take much re-rolling to find a great map. My current run is looking incredibly promising. I pulled super hard on the happiness lever this game, taking both Temple Happiness and Pagodas from religion. I have "only" 12 happiness at the moment, but with incoming sources I actually have 40+ banked. I should have nearly unfettered growth without having to bother building a bunch of Coliseums. The question now is, can I grow fast enough to use all this happiness?

Some interesting things I've done here:

• I started building Settlers well before Collective Rule this time. With my previous Trad/Liberty games, I started expanding fairly late and was really reliant on finding extra culture to get the Settler train rolling at a reasonable pace. This time, I ignored being "inefficient" and just started on Settlers as soon as I was ready. The first Settler actually popped a turn or two before Collective Rule. With fast Settler output, I was able to quickly get Monuments and Libraries up and GE a 7-city National College at turn 81.
• It seems that Workshops before Universities is considered "standard" for Liberty games these days. However, this map has amazing pasture lands. With tons of hammers coming from Stables, I felt that I was plenty developed and could charge straight to Education. However, I still have gone back for Workshops before pushing to Observatories.
• I think I'm going to completely ignore World's Fair this game. It takes FOR-EVER to build the Fair on low difficulties, and my tech pathing will probably have me founding the World Congress a bit late. If I want to try for a ~t205 win, completing World's Fair on t200 really won't help me much. Instead, I'm going to go for Cultural Heritage Sites on the first proposal. I can only hope that that'll be enough culture to get everything done.

The main question I've yet to resolve is how to spend my midgame money. Do I want to buy some Maritime CS, buy some Cultural CS, or hoard everything for rushing Public Schools? The above order is roughly how I'm prioritizing them at the moment, but we'll see how it goes.

Re: World's Fair, I think you should still go for it. It's 2800 hammers, you should be able to build that in 10 turns with 7 cities on Great Plains. So if it's a T130 proposal, it'll get passed around T165, and you'll finish the Fair before T180 and get all the bonus culture before T200.

I've started another game as Babylon, looks much better than the first one - T75 4-city NC, finished Tradition T70, going to plant 2 more cities. Used Great Library for Theology - Medieval CS bonuses so early are amazing. I think Great Plains Plus might be better than normal Great Plains - it actually spawns Salt and feels like it has more luxuries overall, as well as other resources.

Apparently AIs settling cities over your roads breaks your city connections. I saw Pedro's settler doing something stupid but didn't do anything about it since I had pretty much all the tiles I wanted there anyway... suddenly losing 15gpt sucked though. I'm also playing nicely with the AIs this time which seems like a mistake really. It's better to just keep DoWing them for WLTKD luxuries since they NEVER have more than one copy, which makes peaceful trading too expensive. Also lost HG to a neighbouring Austria by a couple of turns. That might make Vienna worth taking when I have the happiness for it.

Really interesting game, and I'm quite satisfied with the result. I made a couple of goofs in the midgame, but the endgame was very smooth and I don't see an obvious way to shave more than MAYBE a turn or two, and that would require being able to predict the timing and city of the last GS and rush something to hurry the spawn there.

Various turn timings: Education t111, Printing Press t142, Scientific Theory t149, Plastics t174. I used one bulb each for Schools and Labs, and saved the rest for the late game.

I stuck with my plan of ignoring World's Fair. My late PP time (which was a combination of a naturally slow Liberty start and me prioritizing Acoustics for Sistine Chapel) meant that the Fair would have started very late. As it was, I overshot by a full policy anyway. There were only two Cultural CS on the map, but between Pagodas, Religious Idols, and the early Sistine Chapel I had great culture output. Going for World's Fair might have let me get an extra purchasing discount in Commerce, but I really don't think I could have fit the hammers in.

I only rush-bought two Public Schools and three Research Labs. This meant that my cities had a ton of work to do. In addition, I spread three late wonders (Pisa, Globe Theater, Porcelain Tower) over three "minor" cities, starting all of these around the time Labs unlocked. And all of these cities hard-built their Labs too. So these three cities were locked into building Labs + Wonders for around ~20-25 turns each, starting at almost exactly the same time World's Fair would have passed. Meanwhile, my capital and strongest expo were busy building more hammer-intensive wonders and preparing for Apollo/Hubble. I don't think I've ever come closer to feeling like I had exactly enough hammers, with both nothing to spare and nothing more to do.

I may also try out a Poland game for this. Ducal Stables seem pretty ridiculous on Great Plains, and the extra policies have interesting synergy with Liberty/Freedom. I spam a lot of Trading Posts and often have spare faith (since I can't buy GEs), so finishing Commerce seems very interesting.

Well done. I've never really tried Cultural Heritage Sites, it's pretty cool to see that it actually worked better than WF would in your game, given the production queue being so full and the late Congress proposal.

I really like how my current game looks right now, good faith, culture science and gold, I'm not sure I can submit it though, because I crashed once and then at the end of another session forgot to make a manual save.

Anyway, if anyone ever runs into the roads being stolen problem, Open Borders fixes the city connections apparently. In other news I DoW'd Gustavus and didn't ask for anything in the peace deal. He was so happy about it he finally offered friendship. A cheesy way to do it, but I wanted that 10% Great People bonus.

I bulbed Industrialization but couldn't get Coal online quickly enough. At this point I think I'll go Freedom, because my cities don't really have the production needed for a good Order endgame, not enough hills. I don't regret bulbing Industrialization though, started Big Ben early and I'll get the juicy Rationalism policies quicker thanks to better culture from CSs.

Pretty sure this is sub-200 potential, hope I don't mess it up. The only problem in this game has been happiness - I had to avoid growth for quite a lot of turns. I should've probably taken Temple or Garden happiness. My religion is Sun God, food from shrines and temples, and +2 faith per world wonder. The specialist happiness policy should make things easier.

Went Freedom. Plastics T165, victory T196! Happy with the result, despite poor happiness management throughout the game.

Nice games guys, T-204 is fairly impressive Manpanzee.

I finished my Spain game on T-208 in the end, felt pretty good about it too. I am sure I could have shaved off up to maybe 6 turns, but dont see how this game could have been an under T-200 one.

Wow, T-196 is great! Kind of discouraging to be honest, I just though lets try again maybe I can get something like T-202, but T-196 is super good.