G-Major LIII

Well, there is no need to buy parts that's for sure

Cultural Heritage Sites is better than WF, but harder to pass. And you risk the AI proposing something awful like Arts Funding with no way of voting it down.

fils said:

I don't know about the Atomic strat. I don't think it's possible. Fractal makes it even crazier to attempt.

I do think two cycles is possible with a bit of luck but it won't be easy. I would aim for a T230 or so finish, so that means founding congress around 160? I think the only way for this strat to work is to bulb your GS in waves, maximizing their science output for the era that you are in. I would do something like this:

After Education research Astronomy first and then go all the way to Architecture and build PT before Printing Press. At least an early PT could translate into an extra spawned GS so it is not that bad of an idea. At this point with one city and only settling one GS I think you will naturally hit PP around T160 which is perfect.

Now the race is on. You probably want to bulb at least 1 GS immediately then Oxford into Scientific Theory with enough money to rush buy a school. That way it won't be delayed by much at all even though you hit a late PP. 8 turns from then you can bulb another GS to get into Modern era.

At this point you are looking towards Statue of Liberty and Research Labs (assuming you chose Freedom, which I think is the best). It might even be worth trying to complete Rationalism to use the free tech for Plastics... it depends how many GS you have saved, and whether or not an early lab will spawn an extra GS for you.

After that it's pretty simple- do whatever you need to hit info era by T220 to initiate vote and then you have 10 turns to complete Globalization which is the easy part. You will need to faith buy at least 2 GS for this to work, maybe 3. It's roughly 50k beakers to go from Plastics > Telecommunications. With a combination of GS and RAs it's possible.

You will also need to propose and pass something useful on first vote, either Sciences Funding or Cultural Heritage Sites. Then on the second vote you can propose World Ideology with no diplo penalty. The real danger of delaying PP is not delaying schools, but that you risk missing out on LToP, which is an essential wonder here IMO.

Click to expand...

You can safely get banking, acoustics and architecture before PP, and the ingenious thing about this is you'll get a bunch of free techs from spying on the AI. Since you'd have ignored the bottom part of the tech tree you'll get about one free tech every 3-5 turns after hitting rationalism. I have always been thinking the early observatory has been a must have, and slow building the university + oxford will usually take as much time as getting sailing optics and compass.

While you get as many techs you need towards scientific theory, your spy will be level 3 and have grabbed you most of what you need to get PP around turn 160-163 as long as you had a good starting location with lots of food. Desert hills are great, but after a few tries, I find the real key is having high yielding food tiles so that you can actually work as many tiles as possible by the time you've got your UIs up - and always fill your specialist slots (except merchants, of course - you don't want to pop a great merchant and delay a GS, depending on your production, popping one or two GE can be worth while, but it is situational).

Finishing rationalism for plastics has never been a problem for me. Since there are not a lot to build between the observatory and public schools other than the forbidden palace and, depending on your RA timing, the PT (and obviously the LToP) and you won't be in a rush racing the AI for either PT or LToP, picking up all the guilds, the amphitheater and an opera house unlocks a very early hermitage, and it being an OCC it should only take a couple of turns to build, and you won't have to worry about culture much after that.

I totally agree with the GS beaker timings. Where I feel the most unsure about all this is if oxford should be used for astronomy (I think so in most games, you will most likely need it to find the last few AIs and a bunch of CSes) or saved for ST. The biggest leaps in science production throughout the game seams to be:

( 0) Faith pantheon - probably desert folklore - this for faith buying GS end game)
1) (Great) Library
2) Rapid population growth early game
3) NC
4) first (and only) academy improvement
5) Education (universities + specialists)
6) Astronomy (observatories)
7) Rationalism (first Secularism, then I'd go with the right track before left to spawn that extra GS down the line - 1 GS will pretty much always be way better than an RA, even with PT and SR)
8) Public schools
9) Great Scientists generation (wonders (LToP, PT,) Avant Garde tenet etc. - maybe even a wonder that gives flat bonus to GS if you have extra production cyscles and nothing better to spend them on)
10) fast population growth from Civil Society
11) Research Labs
12) More population growth
( 13) Production improvement e.g. Statue of Liberty - after this point you really need to decide if any additional improvements are going to help you or if you should just convert production into beakers)

I wrote them in the order they come naturally in most games. At some point either just before rationalism or after finishing it, you will probably want Scholasticism - situational read; if you have lots of high pop CS allies; it could even be a priority above finishing Rationalism early (but make sure you will still get rati finisher before too late). Whenever using a GS will make a new science improvement (public schools, research labs) available in the next turn, or you are about to finish rationalism and using that GS would make your free tech a higher tier one - that is when I'd use my GS (and of course use them to secure Information era and Globalization late game).

My main issue is still how low the AI science yield gets on Emperor and how it really destroys the value of RAs. I am thinking that counter espionage should only be used if you are desperate to level your spies - you will want the AI to catch up on the tech for the RA value. Since you will be bee-lining tech for most of the game you should be able to steal some low value techs with your spies instead to level them. I need to experiment with the GS beaker value a bit more - if you only need one to get from PP to ST in one turn, I guess that would be optimal.

Talking about spies - as long as you are not to worried about being best friends with Alexander & co. for the purpose of RAs, a semi-early NIA can save you a lot of gold from CS bribes (this is most likely obvious to you, but there might be more people reading the thread).

One think that I will need to experiment with is ignoring tithes as founder and grabbing Interfaith Dialogue + cheap missionaries. I hate seeing 1300 or so faith wasted on the 500 and 800 prophets (sometimes even a 1200 faith one if I get a lot of religious CS allies early) and there seem to be some very aggressive AIs in the religious game here. I'd simply buy as many missionaries I could pre-Renaissance and then maybe one or two when I am about to pop a prophet in Renaissance era. I should only have to piss off one AI this way, and it might be worth it. 3 GS seems to be about as many as you can expect to buy from faith either way, so as long as you make sure to be able to save up 4k faith by the end game (not hard at all if there are a few religious CSs left on the map and you've got a great desert with folklore), the missionaries would be the best way of turning excess faith into beakers.


As a side note: My understanding of the civ 5 mechanics and strategies has improved immensely by the last couple of gauntlet challenges. Playing at anything but Diety now seems far too trivial in a regular SP game.

I did try Interfaith Dialogue several times. I don't remember whether I took it in my best game, I'll check later, but it's not a bad choice. The problem is that the preset AI are not particularly pious and take a while to build large cities and spread religion. Your missionaries eat a considerable amount of gpt while you wait and you'll get a lot of +50 science per spread which isn't that great.

On the plus side the missionaries stop prophets from spawning so you should be buying them anyway at some point. Pilgrimage could be a pretty good choice too.

And agreed on the Gauntlets

Divine inspiration seems better than pilgrimage. In OCC, production is not a problem if you can ensure a good Petra city.
Swords into plowshare is a must have, so there's a spot for another follower belief. Divine inspiration + reliquary can fix pre-industrial era prophet spawning.
Be in permanent we love the king day, helps a lot too. 20% bonus for growth is worth 30gold per turn.

fils said:

Well, there is no need to buy parts that's for sure

Cultural Heritage Sites is better than WF, but harder to pass. And you risk the AI proposing something awful like Arts Funding with no way of voting it down.

Click to expand...

Too many threads, apologies of course it is a DV. Going crazy playing 3 victory conditions at once.

fils said:

Well, there is no need to buy parts that's for sure

Cultural Heritage Sites is better than WF, but harder to pass. And you risk the AI proposing something awful like Arts Funding with no way of voting it down.

Click to expand...

I'd argue that one free social policy (does not increase cost of future policies - remember this means that it is your very final useful policy that will be discounted, so this is likely worth thousands of culture points) for 350 production is better than Cultural Heritage sites in this game. Especially since there won't be all that many turns for the faith to be generated if you need to win 40-65 turns after it has been passed.

After you finish rationalism there reallly isn't all that many policies that are must have, and that would usually happen around the same time that you'd pass Cultural Heritage sites either way.

n0m0n said:

I'd argue that one free social policy (does not increase cost of future policies - remember this means that it is your very final useful policy that will be discounted, so this is likely worth thousands of culture points) for 350 production is better than Cultural Heritage sites in this game. Especially since there won't be all that many turns for the faith to be generated if you need to win 40-65 turns after it has been passed.

After you finish rationalism there reallly isn't all that many policies that are must have, and that would usually happen around the same time that you'd pass Cultural Heritage sites either way.

Click to expand...

You might be right. I'm always partial to CHS over World's Fair on lower levels because the AI doesn't contribute many hammers to WF and you can basically build 2 wonders instead of finishing it, but here unlike other victory types policies aren't that big of a deal.

Some extra points in Commerce and Patronage can't hurt either, though.

I currently trying Science funding on first vote. With a continent maps, and many safe CS, it can ensure you a win after second vote, in theory.
I try to have it in industrial era with forbidden palace, then hit modern the turn before WC to have access to word ideology. And I try to improve my religion to have my world religion propose by an AI.
If you lead in votes, AI with most vote makes this 2nd proposition. If they are tied first AI create in the party is picked (there are rank is this order in diplomacy screen).

Memoryjar said:

I currently trying Science funding on first vote. With a continent maps, and many safe CS, it can ensure you a win after second vote, in theory.
I try to have it in industrial era with forbidden palace, then hit modern the turn before WC to have access to word ideology. And I try to improve my religion to have my world religion propose by an AI.
If you lead in votes, AI with most vote makes this 2nd proposition. If they are tied first AI create in the party is picked (there are rank is this order in diplomacy screen).

Click to expand...

Good luck (you will need it)!

After a few tries I am am pretty much sure that it is better to go for early founding of WC than late. The simple reason is the public schools are too important to delay (also, getting the 25% GP from PT earlier can't be a bad thing)

I'd say PP around turn 135-140 and then three vote cycles would be optimal and should give you a win around T131-136 (96 turns after founding = 90 (30+25+20) + 3 for voting and 3 for electing host I think). Too much has to be perfect for 2 cycle win ealry enough for a good score.

Rolled a pangaea with insane food (almost every single tile has access to fresh water) but no mountain and little production. Should be an interesting game. Gonna try the warlike approach, since the two militaristic city-states have CKN and Impi as their special units.

Edit: Bah. I messed up - couldn't kill Shoshone in time even with Foreign Legions, he had GW and his cities were a jungly mess... Needed like 5 more turns. :/ Made it to Atomic in time just as the 2nd vote ended and it would've been a t229 win, but oh well. Warlike is definitely the way to go, I think I'll try it again if I have time.

Couple days left on this Major,...I think I just screwed myself by updating to 1.0.3.276

Have to take Oligarchy before Legalism now on the Tradition tree, probably going to be hard to surpass my previous efforts, BUT it all depends on the game.....We'll see?!

-----

Hmm, so now that I have to take Oligarchy I switched to Warmongering.

My new starts incorporate Honor and Tradition

Changed Settings: Raging Barbarians

Open Tradition
Open Honor

Then Oligarchy, normally my city can't handle that many Barbarians running around messing with my workers. A simple scout defense, and the improved city strength can produce a lot of culture fast to enable advancement down the Tradition tree.

Works great!...Until horseman appear, then you better be ready with something else!

chuckh89 said:

Couple days left on this Major,...I think I just screwed myself by updating to 1.0.3.276

Have to take Oligarchy before Legalism now on the Tradition tree, probably going to be hard to surpass my previous efforts, BUT it all depends on the game.....We'll see?!

Click to expand...

I think I'll just give up on this one and wait for the next one where I hope patch will be required.

one last day to try the warlike approach

1) set up city
2) eliminate everyone with 4 chariot archers
3) hit pp on t160
4) win on t220

TyfoonTurk said:

one last day to try the warlike approach

1) set up city
2) eliminate everyone with 4 chariot archers
3) hit pp on t160
4) win on t220

Click to expand...

t210. (t208 actually)

The tricky part of OCC IMHO is going from Printing Press to Atomic in only 50 turns. With a standard 4 city build you can build Pisa, PT, Oxford, Globe, etc. and still have time to fit in public schools, observatories, etc., especially with rush-buying.

Also, it's hard to compare research-wise without food trade routes. I've pulled it off with 3 cities, but even then it was really hard. IMHO, the better OCC approach is to aim for early PP, like t130. That way, you still win on t210, but you have an extra 30 turns of research to hit the Atomic. Just a theory, though, I haven't tried this G-Major. But that gives you time to build all the key wonders and tech slingshot.

You're probably better off hoping for a good map where your continent has 6 civs. Eliminate every one of them fast, and avoid meeting the last two until you hit Scientific Theory. Or, tech as far up the Navigation path as you can before grabbing Printing Press, and delay PP until t170.

Gauntlet Results:
G-Major LIII - Diplomacy, Emperor, Standard, Fractal, Standard, Morocco (Ahmad al-Mansur) (check options)
1st fils - 1665 AD T-243
2nd TyfoonTurk - 1680 AD T-246
3rd n0m0n - 1725 AD T-255

Congratulations!

so nobody got the warlike approach to work

hmm... too bad

Denniz said:

Gauntlet Results:
G-Major LIII - Diplomacy, Emperor, Standard, Fractal, Standard, Morocco (Ahmad al-Mansur) (check options)
1st fils - 1665 AD T-243
2nd TyfoonTurk - 1680 AD T-246
3rd n0m0n - 1725 AD T-255

Congratulations!

Click to expand...

Congrats, gentlemen. I was too busy messing with CivBE to give this one a go, but even if I had I would not have approached these impressive times. Nicely done!

P.S. I concur with Tyfoon Turk that it's too bad no one was able to get warfare to work. Pretty rough to get to work on this one I think.

zenmaster said:

Congrats, gentlemen. I was too busy messing with CivBE to give this one a go, but even if I had I would not have approached these impressive times. Nicely done!

P.S. I concur with Tyfoon Turk that it's too bad no one was able to get warfare to work. Pretty rough to get to work on this one I think.

Click to expand...

If the bar is set at t240, warfare is a breeze even on these settings. You could easily win a 2nd vote or 3rd vote warlike diplo with these settings. Usually I resign if I miss the first vote window. (sub-t200 victory)

Sigh, now I need to find time to try this map.

Cromagnus said:

If the bar is set at t240, warfare is a breeze even on these settings. You could easily win a 2nd vote or 3rd vote warlike diplo with these settings. Usually I resign if I miss the first vote window. (sub-t200 victory)

Sigh, now I need to find time to try this map.

Click to expand...

Cro, as it says in the gauntlet instructions, "check options". This is OCC. Sub 200, not possible.

Bleidraner said:

Cro, as it says in the gauntlet instructions, "check options". This is OCC. Sub 200, not possible.

Click to expand...

I know. I'm just saying that OCC doesn't add 2 vote cycles. sub-t200 regular can easily be sub-t240 OCC. IMHO. I'll try to find time to play it.

Well, perhaps "easily" isn't the right word. It's doable. If you kill off Venice and Austria before they can puppet more than 2 CS.