G-Minor CI

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: Chieftain
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Fractal
• Speed: Quick
• Leader: Shoshone (Pocatello)
• Required: One City Challenge
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 17th May to 1st June 2015

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

Wow, the One-City-Challenge thing really puts a damper on that whole "extra expansion on city founding" ability. Looks like this one is partly about how many ruins you can find and how well you use them.

Played this to T100 on a jungle start. I want to continue playing and I most likely will, but it's probably better to just reroll for the best Petra city you can get. My production has been pretty low, and it's continents so World Congress still hasn't been founded, WLTKD lux took forever to get, not too many CSs are allied. The good part is that I have 9 jungle tiles that are bringing me 9 culture and 18 science (better than 2 academies) though, so the culture and science have been pretty good, and I'll get the trading post science policy next turn.

Oh, and I'm about to get demolished by the barbarians. There are 3 traderoutes which will all likely get pillaged and become barb swordsmen. AI really doesn't do anything about the barbs, I shouldn't have deleted 4 workers but parked them on hills to have sight everywhere so that new camps wouldn't spawn.

Edit: Played a bit more, the barbs didn't actually do anything. Maybe they're not as aggressive on Chieftain? Anyway, I like how my game looks better on T120 than I did on T100. Will build Brandenburg after PT for the scientist points and then beeline Plastics. In Congress I proposed Science Funding and an AI proposed World's Fair. Hopefully both get passed, though WF is optional since that much culture is overkill on Chieftain, and I'll have to build it all myself anyway.

Second edit: Finished on T196. Miscalculated and waited for the lsat natural scientist before finishing Hubble, but I didn't need it because I faith-bought a 4th GS a bit earlier. Buying parts lost me another 2 turns because I didn't do it optimally. Should've been a ~T189, but at least I finished under 200.

Never built World's Fair and had enough culture to finish Commerce and get Scholasticism anyway. Planted 3 GS and one GE, and bulbed 11 or 12 GS in the end.

vadalaz said:

Played this to T100 on a jungle start. I want to continue playing and I most likely will, but it's probably better to just reroll for the best Petra city you can get. My production has been pretty low, and it's continents so World Congress still hasn't been founded, WLTKD lux took forever to get, not too many CSs are allied. The good part is that I have 9 jungle tiles that are bringing me 9 culture and 18 science (better than 2 academies) though, so the culture and science have been pretty good, and I'll get the trading post science policy next turn.

Oh, and I'm about to get demolished by the barbarians. There are 3 traderoutes which will all likely get pillaged and become barb swordsmen. AI really doesn't do anything about the barbs, I shouldn't have deleted 4 workers but parked them on hills to have sight everywhere so that new camps wouldn't spawn.

Edit: Played a bit more, the barbs didn't actually do anything. Maybe they're not as aggressive on Chieftain? Anyway, I like how my game looks better on T120 than I did on T100. Will build Brandenburg after PT for the scientist points and then beeline Plastics. In Congress I proposed Science Funding and an AI proposed World's Fair. Hopefully both get passed, though WF is optional since that much culture is overkill on Chieftain, and I'll have to build it all myself anyway.

Second edit: Finished on T196. Miscalculated and waited for the lsat natural scientist before finishing Hubble, but I didn't need it because I faith-bought a 4th GS a bit earlier. Buying parts lost me another 2 turns because I didn't do it optimally. Should've been a ~T189, but at least I finished under 200.

Never built World's Fair and had enough culture to finish Commerce and get Scholasticism anyway. Planted 3 GS and one GE, and bulbed 11 or 12 GS in the end.

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Great game! Way to exploit the potential of the jungles.

Barbarian behavior is pretty passive on Chieftain, but I think there is a small random element as well. It is most noticeable when seeing if a barbarian in camp will capture an unprotected settler or not. Said settler has escaped sometimes all the way up to King Level. Sometimes it will get popped as low as Chieftain or Settler Level though. Not sure of the algorithms on capturing/pillaging at all.

Well, in my game barbs took 4 or 5 settlers from Nebby and Harald. I took the first couple of them as workers and returned the others so they'd actually settle the area and prevent camps from spawning. Maybe they're programmed to target AIs and CSs more than the human player on lower difficulties? Or it could have something to do with the military strength in demographics, or the bonus vs barbarians, or Shoshone's bonus in home territory...

It's hard to tell what a really good finish time for this is. I had Plastics on T136 and the game still took a whopping 60 turns to end. Something tells me this is far from optimal. I'm not sure that a Petra city will outperform a jungle one though - I guess a mix of the two is the perfect start.

{Been meaning to start doing this at some point; this seems like a great low level gauntlet, so now is as good a time as any}

G-Minor CI Pregame Walk-through

This post is intended mainly to ease gameplay for newer or less experienced players, but can also engender conversation among more experienced players in areas where there can be debate as to the best choices.

The decisionmaking when playing Civ 5 does not begin after you hit "Start Game." It starts during game setup. This post will walk through the choices and considerations on game setup options. The decisions need to be made in the Advanced Setup menu available on the "Set Up Game" page.

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REQUIRED SETTINGS:

Most gauntlets don't have any required settings, but this gauntlet has one that will impact the game hugely.

One City Challenge: This setting must be checked for this gauntlet. This means you can never control any cities besides your original capital. You cannot build settlers. If you conquer a city, it disappears into the dustbin of history immediately, and you cannot puppet it, annex it, or sell it off. Obviously, this impacts gameplay choices enormously.

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OPTIONAL SETTINGS:

Note, many optional settings on the advanced setup page are NOT allowed to be used in a Hall of Fame or gauntlet game. Please see this page for details

Allow Promotion Saving: This setting should always be turned ON. When your units get enough experience to earn a promotion (or an Instaheal of 50%), you do not have to do the promotion immediately with this setting. Since it is allowed by Hall of Fame rules, you should use this setting. The main advantage? You may need the 50% instaheal to keep the unit alive at some point(s) during conquest, and this setting allows you to save those instaheals up.

Disable Start Bias: You probably want this turned ON for this gauntlet. This setting allows your civ (and all the AI civ opponents) to be placed in random starting locations, as opposed to biased starting locations based on the civilizations' historical reality (e,g,. normally Morocco will start in or near many desert tiles, Carthage will start on a coast, etc.) The main advantage? It allows your own civ to be placed on gameplay-advantageous terrain it might not normally otherwise be started on. Also, on higher levels especially, keeping AI opponent civs from having initial starting location advantages is usually good.

Raging Barbarians: You probably want this optional setting to remain OFF for this gauntlet. This increases the unit spawn rate of the barbarian camps randomly strewn across the map. While there is a group of players who likes this always on to hurt the AI opponents, many players see no real advantages to it unless you specifically intend to open the Honor social policy track and garner extra culture from killing as many barbarians as possible. The disadvantage of this setting? Barbarians can pop up in the wrong place at the wrong time more often to block your trade or movement paths or threaten your territory/trade routes with pillaging.

Quick Combat and Quick Movement: These are totally up to your preference, serving as UI settings rather than affecting gameplay. I personally always choose Quick Combat as the combat animations slow the game down too much for me. I also never choose Quick Movement because it seems to abrupt for me and makes it easier for me to make movement mistakes. Totally my own feelings though, and everyone has their own preferences.

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MAP SETTINGS:

Fractal is one of the very few map types that gives you no choices as to tweaking the map conditions slightly. There are no decisions to make this time. You play whatever Fractal map the map gods deign to give you.

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AI OPPONENTS

Rather than letting the game select "Random Leaders" for you to face, it is best to control your game parameters as much as possible by choosing your AI opponents based on their biases. You can find a conveniently sortable list of the AI civ biases here. This section addresses optimal opponent selection for this gauntlet. This section leads to the most variation in opinion usually, so I will walk through general advice and then my own thought process for this gauntlet

The three main considerations when selecting opponents for this gauntlet--

1) It is Chieftain Level --> Generally this means the AI opponents are ineffective and do not serve as roadblocks in the way to accomplishing your goals. They are easy to conquer if you wish, though in this Science one city challenge, that is pretty pointless. They will not quickly settle in spots that impact your territory, especially in a One City Challenge. Thus, this probably means there are no special opponent considerations based on level. That being said, some players choosing foes at lower levels like to include civilizations with high propensities to accumulate gold like Venice, Incas, Arabia, England, Portugal, Songhai, Spain, since normally gold is hard to get from low level AI civs from trade or through peace deals after warring. You can consider including some/all of these gold-biased civs but I personally have found Chieftain foes to be universally poor and I think other considerations trump that thought this time.

2) It is a Science Victory Gauntlet --> Generally, this means on lower-mid levels you don't want to choose civs with high science or wonder building biases as they might build science-aiding wonders before you can. On higher levels, especially Deity, you sometimes want to choose those types of civs so you can earn more science bulbs through trade routes and possibly capture key science-aiding wonders early in the game instead of building them yourself. This being Chieftain level, the threat of AIs beating you to the Great Library or other key wonders is low but nonzero. Being a One-City challenge, the chances are even lower because you have little reason to delay wonder building. However, civs like Egypt, Mayans, Korea, and Babylon should probably be excluded on general principle.

3) You are playing as the Shoshone --> The Shoshone have 1 special ability and 2 unique units. The special ability is The Great Expanse. You get extra territory when initially founding cities and your units fight better in your own territory. For this gauntlet? Very blah. You are only founding one city, your capital, and you are not going to get invaded on Chieftain level, so this ability helps very little this game. One unique unit is the Comanche, which replaces the Cavalry unit. This unit comes so late and is so unnecessary on Chieftain level, that it is moot.

The other unique unit is a game-changer though! The Pathfinder is a super Scout that can choose what benefit it gets from finding ancient ruins! This is huge in this game. Finding as many ancient ruins as possible, and making wise choices in the benefits will help your game and affect your finish time, as it allows you to acquire techs, cash, faith for pantheons, population, and other key early game elements that start your civ snowballing toward bigger and better things. It also can upgrade to a composite bowman, which is a killer unit so early in the game.

Thus having Pathfinders probably impacts your opponent selection in that you want to find as many ancient ruins as you can before your AI opponents.

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My Opponent selection thought process:

Step 1, go to the Interactive AI Bias Chart. Sort the row "Recon" from low to High.

Step 2. Choose seven AI opponents from among the ten listed with the lowest ratings of 3 or 4. My rationale? If I can get 1 or 2 extra ruins from choosing civs with less scouting ability, that is another tech and/or 100 gold and/or population point for my one city in the early game, which is huge. At Chieftain level, other considerations are muted greatly.

My choices? Rome, Korea, Byzantium, and Morocco are all 3's for recon. Rome and Morocco are automatics. Korea has been known to pop a science wonder crazy early even on low levels occasionally so I will not chance it and Byzantium might steal a religious belief you want with its heavy religion focus and bonus belief earned. I hate religious competition, as I want to get the exact beliefs I want on Chieftain, and i want it to spread as fast and as far as possible. Even on low levels, Byzantium can sometimes get that religion train rolling early. Moreso than Morocco for me. Carthage, Sweden, Assyria, China, Siam, and India are all 4's for recon. Carthage and Assyria are automatics for me. Sweden is an automatic because despite the fact it likes to get City State allies a lot, it gives you a 10% Great Person generation bonus if it befriends you. China and India have always been problematic for me, forward-settling on my territory, quick on denouncing, etc. Gandhi, though high on friendship willingness, is worst at forgiving and hates warmongers, so my worker stealing and possible AI warring to get peace deals might turn him off as trade partner permanently anyway. China has low religion and diplomacy bias, and is pretty neutered on Chieftain anyway. Siam is high on getting CS allies, but has no special advantages at doing so and at Chieftain won't have too much cash anyway, so I am looking:

Rome, Morocco, Carthage, Assyria, Sweden, Siam, China.

Throwing any of the others in is probably not an issue at Chieftain level but these are how I would roll. If I find some civs' scouts wandering far and wide to steal my ruins in my first try or two, I might replace them. Other players have different preferences and past experiences, so likely their lists will look very different from mine.

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PREGAME STRATEGY CONSIDERATIONS:

Capital placement: Considering the fact that that it is a one city challenge, initial capital placement is crucial. For these settings, most important considerations:

Good tiles: The more productive tiles you have the better obviously. Salt is the best, but any that can give you 3+ food/hammers/gold like gems, cattle/deer, bananas, wheat, etc., the more the better. Having rivers/lakes so you can irrigate tiles for more food/growth is a big deal too. [Vadalaz made great use of normally annoying jungle tiles as seen in a previous post. One of the beauties of this game is that there are usually various ways of accomplishing your goals....]

Mountain: Want to be adjacent to a mountain so you can build an observatory in your 1 city, giving you a huge science bonus.

Luxuries: The more luxuries you have in your city radius for trade and your own happiness the better obviously.

Terrain: The type of land tiles affect your movement, growth, production, and faith pantheon. You want a good mix of food and hammer tiles, and for faith generation, you need either A) desert (or tundra) to let you get the best faith-producing pantheon, B) a resource that lets you get another faith generating pantheon, or C) a faith-producing Natural Wonder. Being near desert is a dual edged sword. Often desert tiles are not very productive but they do let you use the powerful Desert Folklore pantheon and they allow you to build and use Petra, one of the most powerful wonders in the game. You will often see gauntlet posts where players refer to looking for a Petra start. A desert start that also includes a mountain and a good number of productive tiles is one of the best possible starting locations.

Coast: This is not as key a consideration in a One City Challenge. Normally you want all coastal cities ideally so you can run internal trade route cargo ships between your cities to boost their food and growth significantly. In a One City challenge, the advantages of a coastal city are that your cargo ship external trade routes will earn more gold than caravans would, and Fractal maps sometimes have multiple continents, so a coastal capital will let you build ships to explore, rather than having to swim land units around. Nice, but not necessarily game-changing.

Basically, to put in a good winning time, you need as many of the above as possible. To put forth the fastest possible winning time, you need all of the above except for Coast possibly. Play out your map accordingly. If the terrain and tiles around your settler initially do not look that good after a turn or five of movement, exiting and starting another game with a new map is probably the way to go.

General initial gameplan As mentioned previously, building pathfinders and getting them exploring the map as soon as possible is a key to optimal gameplay on this gauntlet. I will be building 3 or 4 before even thinking about building anything else. What else would you build that early? Can't build a settler. You will not need a superearly shrine, as at some point you can pop an ancient ruin and choose faith to get a pantheon. Pathfinders are far superior to warriors with their ruins ability and their ability to upgrade to a Composite Bowman. As it is Chieftain level, you may need to build a worker at some point, because they won't be able to be stolen from elsewhere until somewhat late. Especially if you have salt and no other recourse, an early worker build might be needed. Ideally though, you can steal/claim workers elsewhere, or even buy one with the cash you get from ruins/CS discovery. You will want a granary for growth pretty early, so that would probably be your first build after you are done with your pathfinders. Plans beyond that are beyond the scope of this post. All of the above observations assume Pottery will be your first tech researched. For a Science victory, what would you choose otherwise? Even if you have salt/mining luxuries, you won't get worker that early, and Pottery ASAP means increased chances of getting Writing from ancient ruins for earlier start on Great Library. Again, tech choices past the initial choice of Pottery are beyond the scope of this post.

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OK, hopefully this walk-through will be helpful to some players in some way. Either to get thinking started or to enter the gauntlet on more confident footing. Please feel free to criticize, analyze, or present alternatives to anything I said above. Much of it is meant as general good advice and sometimes does not take into account extreme strategies that some players might try to use. Above all, have fun playing this one!

Well, this won't win any prizes but critique and advice will help me. I wrapped up on t285. I prefer more of a random challenge, so I generally do not select opponents or finagle maps, although I do always disable start bias. Opponents were Assyria, Morocco, Byzantium, Poland, Venice, China & Arabia. They were pretty spread out and I pretty much ignored them. Likewise, barbs not an issue.

Start was a decent inland capital with lots of river tiles, farm animals, cotton, ivory, iron, coal, a few hills. Seemed like I got off to a good start; at t100, I was at 147K, 22 pop with 2 academies; shortly after, at t120, 268K, 25 pop, 3 acads with NC and Sci Theory, 1 turn from PT.

It felt like I got bogged down at some point after that, as it seemed like I topped out around 550K and stayed there for a long time. Felt like forever after Apollo, even with burning GS's along the way. Tough for me to tell how I got bogged down, I was doing everything I could to push science as single-mindedly as I could.

So the numbers I gave above at t120, is that good or bad and where are the experts at a similar point, knowledge-wise, tech-wise, pop-wise, etc.? .................looking at vadalaz's shots, I can see I have a long way to go........

By the way, the walkthrough is an excellent help for patzers like me!

@Zenmaster. What a phenomenal post! I'll contribute, one of the (few) occasions you may want to choose raging barbarians is for a culture continents gauntlet, also for warry diplo. The Raging Barbarians usually slow the AIs culture down, that is not that important in a Pangea, as the player can mess with all the AIs, but on Continents you have to wait until Astronomy. On warry diplo, where you will kill everybody but 2, you have a few less cities to go through, important as you have to completely obliterate the civs you want out of the game.

Bleidraner said:

@Zenmaster. What a phenomenal post! I'll contribute, one of the (few) occasions you may want to choose raging barbarians is for a culture continents gauntlet, also for warry diplo. The Raging Barbarians usually slow the AIs culture down, that is not that important in a Pangea, as the player can mess with all the AIs, but on Continents you have to wait until Astronomy. On warry diplo, where you will kill everybody but 2, you have a few less cities to go through, important as you have to completely obliterate the civs you want out of the game.

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Thanks for the tip. My intention is to do this specific for each gauntlet, so I will be sure to include that advice in the next warry diplomacy gauntlet. There is this body of knowledge floating around in the gauntlet forum threads of the past, but it is not easily accessible to new players. I figure spelling it out in a pregame walkthrough will make it easier for newer players to jump in and still provide fodder for experienced players to discuss.

I also plan to make a post soon detailing key decision points in the first 100 turns of my first effort game and why I made the decisions I did. @finminer - I will track benchmarks in this game and let you know.
One city challenges are relatively rare so, like vadalaz, I don't have a good feel yet for what good benchmarks should be for this level and map.

I'm not crazy about dishing out very specific recipes because a large part of the fun of the game is exploring and figuring things out on your own. It is funny; after a lot of tral and error with science games, I eventually came up with my ideal general plan for Science victories. At some point scanning other forums, I saw Acken's Freedom Science guide and it is literally almost exactly what I arrived at by myself. I felt better for having figured things out on my own. Also, people will never innovate of they just follow recipes. Chuck has taught me more than a few things from his own personal strategies and experiences. Vadalaz and Cromagnus always have new ideas to test and ruminate on.

One question: I had crashing problems in the past taking screenshots sometimes. Any failsafe way to do it these days? It will make a decisionmaking post much clearer.

zenmaster said:

One question: I had crashing problems in the past taking screenshots sometimes. Any failsafe way to do it these days? It will make a decisionmaking post much clearer.

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Do you use the Steam interface for screenshots (F12)? This always works for me.

Very good and helpful post, zenmaster.

A couple more things about the game. World's fair seems pointless, Cultural Heritage Sites and a couple of cultural city-states is all you'll need for culture. It's also fine to burn 1-2 GWs to get key Rationalism or Freedom techs quicker.

The +2 faith from world wonders belief and +50 faith from using a Great Person enhancer was a very powerful combo in my game, as it allowed me to faith-buy 4 GSs. I also picked culture from jungles, tithe and swords into plowshares. Jungle culture is probably overkill, I'd take a food pantheon instead now. Faith ones aren't as powerful as they normally are in my opinion, as you can reliably get Hagia Sophia, Borobudur, Stonehenge and pretty much any other wonder you want. Sun God can give you 6 food on the right start and you just really need all the food you can get.

Late game, when you are mass bulbing scientists, get the SS Booster tech first. There are 3 of those parts, so you want to start buying them early. Make sure you've bought all your faith GSs beforehand, as you only have one city and you can only purchase one non-military unit per turn.

Get food techs as soon as you can, Fertilizer after ST, Biology and Penicilin after Plastics. Medical Labs can really speed up the growth - my capital started growing every 2 turns when I bought one, despite already being size 40+.

Early game, you want a lot of workers. You want your capital to be growing VERY quickly, so you should improve your tiles as early as possible.

Get all the wonders that give +scientist points. This includes Red Fort and Brandenburg Gate.

As for benchmarks, I had ~T65 Edu, T112 Radio and T136 Plastics. Rough equivalents of those on Standard would be T98 Edu, T168 Radio and T204 Plastics. So the further in the tech tree you are the slower it gets, but up to Industrial the pace seems close to what you'd normally expect from a science game.

Something I find odd is that the AI never sent me any trade routes. Guess 15 bpt isn't tempting enough.

zenmaster said:

Barbarian behavior is pretty passive on Chieftain, but I think there is a small random element as well.

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Yeah like say if you move your original settler up to a mountain which then discovers a barb camp, it may take it. Hah.

Quickest game ever.

vadalaz said:

Very good and helpful post, zenmaster.

The +2 faith from world wonders belief and +50 faith from using a Great Person enhancer was a very powerful combo in my game, as it allowed me to faith-buy 4 GSs. I also picked culture from jungles, tithe and swords into plowshares. Jungle culture is probably overkill, I'd take a food pantheon instead now. Faith ones aren't as powerful as they normally are in my opinion, as you can reliably get Hagia Sophia, Borobudur, Stonehenge and pretty much any other wonder you want. Sun God can give you 6 food on the right start and you just really need all the food you can get.

Late game, when you are mass bulbing scientists, get the SS Booster tech first. There are 3 of those parts, so you want to start buying them early. Make sure you've bought all your faith GSs beforehand, as you only have one city and you can only purchase one non-military unit per turn.

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Thanks for the rundown.

What sort of numbers are you bulbing for? My last game I abandoned around 204 with at least 2 dozen turns to even finish the needed techs. I bought around 4 GS with about 8000 faith (I had both the religion traits you mentioned above ~126fpt). I settled two(*three) GS, produced at least 4 naturally. I probably burned a dozen of them and still hard teching so much.
After Research Labs, and 8 turns of max science I bulbed for about 2.7k. No jungles, and probably not the greatest of food cities (although mountain, river and about a dozen desert hills). Ended up with around 38 pop. Bulbing pop was probably around 30.

Naturally generated a couple engineers, probably can prevent that, and just buy a couple at the end after scientists cost >4000 faith.

I did use one GS early to bulb Radio. Also, made a colossal mistake by accidentally building an academy outside my territory, hah.


@zenmaster, Thanks for the great post!

My bulbs were worth ~4100 beakers in the end. I also generated 2 natural GEs and one GM, which I think is fine, because it doesn't delay the final scientist that much when you have +49 scientist points. Would've been higher with Sweden but I forgot to include them.

I gave this one a quick dry run. I didn't feel like rerolling the start too much, so I accepted the first mountainside, hill, river start that came up.


Benchmarks: Edu ~70, Radio ~130, Plastics ~170.

I have no aluminum and had to use a GG to reach the nearest coal resource 7 tiles from my capital. Indonesia DOW two times, and the second time I razed his nearest city and his capital in retaliation. I played to about turn 220. I have finished researching all but one tech, but lack of aluminum prevents me from building SS components. I have about 5K saved up to rush buy SS components. Policies full tradition, aesthetics, rationalism, patronage, and 6 tenets in Freedom.

Thoughts...it is really important to reroll for a fantastic Petra city to be competitive. Desert folklore for with a Petra city will be ideal for the (or really any) OCC game. The from wonders is not enough to buy several specialists late in the game. The massive production of a well developed Petra city is also unbeatable. With the wonder spamming, it would also be nice to have marble. I agree with Zenmaster that scouting is very important to the early game. With Pathfinder UU, choosing the outcome of each ruin is a big benefit in the early game.

Smirk said:

Yeah like say if you move your original settler up to a mountain which then discovers a barb camp, it may take it. Hah.

Quickest game ever.

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This has to be the most awesome post I've ever seen.

Smirk said:

Thanks for the rundown.

What sort of numbers are you bulbing for? My last game I abandoned around 204 with at least 2 dozen turns to even finish the needed techs. I bought around 4 GS with about 8000 faith (I had both the religion traits you mentioned above ~126fpt). I settled two(*three) GS, produced at least 4 naturally. I probably burned a dozen of them and still hard teching so much.
After Research Labs, and 8 turns of max science I bulbed for about 2.7k. No jungles, and probably not the greatest of food cities (although mountain, river and about a dozen desert hills). Ended up with around 38 pop. Bulbing pop was probably around 30.

Naturally generated a couple engineers, probably can prevent that, and just buy a couple at the end after scientists cost >4000 faith.

I did use one GS early to bulb Radio. Also, made a colossal mistake by accidentally building an academy outside my territory, hah.


@zenmaster, Thanks for the great post!

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I think you will need a population closer to 50 than to 40 to hit sub-200 like Vadalaz did. Petra, wheat, Sun God pantheon, and/or lots of irrigation will be helpful in that.

Did you get the Patronage policy Scholasticism? Those bulbs aren't overwhelming on Chieftain, but you need them. Any bulb helps. Planting academies is a necessity in an OCC game too. I rarely even plant 1 in other games, but OCC is clearcut and unforgiving-- aside from a little help from Scholasticism, what science is in your cap and its radius is all you get.

I'm in the middle of a game that is a mini Petra-jungle hybrid as vadalaz alluded to earlier. The Petra has no desert hills and there are only 4 jungle tiles but it is working OK with early benchmarks eerily similar to vadalaz' game. I'm unclear on when to stop planting academies. I only have 4 non-irrigated spots with any food, so I may go with 4.

I went with Desert Folklore with no regrets so far- I concur with Mesix' thoughts. I'm growing pretty well with Petra and some irrigation. The other beliefs are the Swords to Plowshares, +2 faith/wonder and Reliquary Vafalaz referred to.. The first 2 are go-to beliefs in low-level peaceful science games where you are spamming wonders, and my Fractal map is snaky so I went Tithe instead of Initiation Rites and thus Reliquary helping me get that last GS/GE is better than a slightly wider religion spread from other enhancer beliefs, I think.

I am hoping I generate a GE or two like Vafalaz did; The OCC build queue gets so crowded, I think I will need to rushbuild some wonders late.

Yeah that game I think was just production overkill. I was building wonders in short order ended up with 700 cpt during WF. I had so many extra policies, not much amount to much extra science in a OCC game tho. I think a more balanced Petra city is probably the way to go. One I am playing now only has about half a dozen desert spots most of those hills. Looks like probably getting Plastics at or before 165. Should be around pop 40 by then as well.
Didn't get all the wonders as I did in the last game, few got built by AI. On the plus side they are much more functional this game, been running a few RAs for the last 60 turns or so. All gold fed by me of course. Although sometimes they are able to give me gpt for the upfront cash.

As for Scholasticism, I've been working on getting that right after I finish Tradition, which with this civ is crazy early. I'm generally tributing my way to a few cultural/faith or maritime CSs. Still comparatively slow going without any sort of food caravans but that helps.

zenmaster said:

{Been meaning to start doing this at some point; this seems like a great low level gauntlet, so now is as good a time as any}

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Great post. Thanks!

Some other tidbits:
OCC => liberating a city state does not work.

OCC => If you take freedom, remember that it will take 6 turns to buy all the parts,
and you can't buy scientists at the same time.

Red Fort (1pt?) and Brandenberg Gate (2pts?) give scientist points.

If you are far ahead in strength, you can pillage your way to spaceship parts. You can get not-quite infantry (80 gold and they are infantry) as the second 2nd tier policy in Freedom (there's nothing really good, as opposed to your 1st 2nd tier). Send them into 1 or more countries and pillage/walk every turn. The damage done by opposing forces is minor. 6infantry * ~25$/turn = 1 spaceship part every ~8
turns. Of course, on this difficulty, $ is probably not a major problem.

One thing I disagree with - some of the AIs will settle well w/i your future expansion range (Askia settled about 5 tiles away). You'll eventually reach out about 6 tiles, and though you cannot work them for food/production, you will get the lux/non-lux on them. Think aluminum...

I found myself taking out some of the AIs just to stop them spamming their religion, as I had Tithe. Hm.. religious wars for monetary reason. Nothing cynical there.

You probably don't want Venice or Austria - they may buy up the Maritime city states.