G-Major 132

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:

• Victory Condition: Conquest (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Monarch
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Large
• Speed: Quick
• Map Type: Oasis
• Must Be Checked: No Tribal Villages
• Civ: Japan (Tokugawa)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: 3.19.003 or 3.19.003s
• Date: 25th September to 25th October 2014

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

Conquest on Quick is painful enough, but large map with a pretty bad Leader!?! Ouch.

Oasis is different, does this mean all the Civs huddle around a fertile patch of land in the middle of the map surrounded by desert? Could make conquest a little easier.

I may give this a go as no one else seems to want to, but i'm not looking forward to it.
Haven't watched Seven Samurai in a while, might put that on in the background and go to town.

I've been considering this as well. But it seems quite tedious. To make it even worse, you can't start with horses. Conquest on Quick large map with 1-movers would be very painful indeed. Probably make a quick axe-rush to the north for horses. Then HAs, then I have no idea how much more would be needed. Around what date can I expect monarch AI to tech feud?

I love Toku actually, although he's best for certain starts. Insta-pottery can be quite useful and his Rifles are like a second UU. Sams can kick butt on this level, although yeah, they are slow. I'd likely focus on research early and go stomp. Maybe rush want of the neighbors though and buff up some swords/axes for SAms later.

Some strong AIs can sometimes get decent Feud dates on Monarch, but I'd say circa 200AD to 500AD is the norm, although it's been a while. Tech trading and Oracle can obviously factor into it.

Oasis is probably one of THE nastiest maps in the game. Quick large makes it brutal. It can really cause some logjams during war.

If you think these settings are tedious, think about no vassals and no city razing!

lymond said:

Oasis is probably one of THE nastiest maps in the game. Quick large makes it brutal. It can really cause some logjams during war.

Click to expand...

Well this just gets better and better


My initial thoughts were HA rush, into Samurai, into rifles if needed
Could you elaborate on the no horses thing elitetroops? Does Oasis not spawn horses? or only at the edges of the map? I don't understand.

Also, I cant remember having a Conquest Victory after say 2000BC. Is the trick just to raze most cites to stay under the domination cap? What about vassals?

Sgtpeppers said:

Well this just gets better and better


My initial thoughts were HA rush, into Samurai, into rifles if needed
Could you elaborate on the no horses thing elitetroops? Does Oasis not spawn horses? or only at the edges of the map? I don't understand.

Also, I cant remember having a Conquest Victory after say 2000BC. Is the trick just to raze most cites to stay under the domination cap? What about vassals?

Click to expand...

Oasis map the player always starts in the south and all the horses are in the north.

cas

Okay, bring out the holy water. Whoever came up with the idea to this challenge must be the Antichrist!

Oasis is brutal! Most starts are entirely without food. Copper is very rare, most games I started I quit immediately when I found there was none. All of them I would have quit anyway, because there has never been any other civ within range for an early rush. Usually no other civs met by T30. I'm considering adding more opponents to speed up my own start, but more opponents in a conquest game is usually not the best idea...

The terrible map of course also affects the AI. I ran a few games by hitting end turn until someone got feud. First 2 games with 8 AI, feud was reached 1200AD and 1240AD. With 14 AI, the first one to feud got there in 820AD. If somehow horses can be aquired, HAs should be able to take out a large part of the map.

You can roll decent starts on Oasis, but yeah, like other non-standard scripts like Great Plains and Rain forest, it's bizarrely not designed to guarantee certain things in the BFC. I've flat out rolled starts with no resources at all in the BFC.

elitetroops said:

Okay, bring out the holy water. Whoever came up with the idea to this challenge must be the Antichrist!

Click to expand...

Agree!

It's safe to say this gauntlet has me beat. Not much chance i'll be submitting a game here. I tried a few times, but i'm dubious if a successfil early rush is even possible on this map and grinding out a win on a large map is not my cup of tea.

-Large map
-Quick mode
-Severe lack of strategic resources
-Lack of food
-AI spam archers because they tech so slow and have nothing else to build

I had a few decent cracks at this, usually by around 1AD I had one civ beaten or almost dead and still with copper as the only strategic resource. I felt it was way too slow, so i just gave up everytime.
I used 8 AI, and like eiltetroops said, adding more may make a rush more successful.
Moving the first settler next to the AI and hoping for copper might work too.


One game I did try sending my 2nd settler straight to the top of the map. There are rivers which span the whole map north to south. If this settler could find horses in the north, situated next to the river which connects to the capital, a HA rush might just be possible. Alas in my attempt, no horse. The settler did find phants about half way up the map in the desert.

With a good peaceful start, a huge tech lead could easily be gained and then just sweep over the map with tanks or something. This gauntlet is not for me though.

Actually, I'm not sure if an early rush is worth it even if you could do it. Normally you'd expect to gain another strong capital location with an early rush, here you can expect to get a city with one second ring fur and no other resources. You can probably settle better cities yourself.

In addition to no horses, you can't get quarry resources at your start either. All marble is in the north and there's like one or two stone somewhere in the middle of the desert. Good luck finding those. I'd love to have the mids for Rep and later PS...

Hmm i might use Oasis for one of my evil maps now, sounds interesting
Or would you say it's too boring?

Haven't played any map long enough to say if it turns out boring or not. Just found a start that seems at least a bit promising. Might end up an interesting game if I finish it. (Edit: it would have been an awesome start, if it had been quick speed... )

It's hard to tell how evil the map would be under normal circumstances (not quick/large/conquest). The AI is also greatly nerfed by the map, so in that regard it might even be easier than some other maps.

I've been playing this one.

War at quick speed is a pain. Being a large map makes it even worse as someone already said.
Given I don't have toku nor oasis in my QM tables, decided to go for it at the time it was announced.

but

My first try was a game where I went straight to curraisiers (CS sling and all that).
Got pwned by the AP forcing peace on me three times, and the AI I was currently stomping vassalizing to the strongest AI. Game over as I had three fronts at the same time against fully developed AI with 15 - 20 cities.

That's why I put Raging barbs the 2nd time to slow the AI expansion a little bit.

but

The game crashed 4 (FOUR) times . I already prepared the email for the HoF staff explaining what happened for the 1st 3 crashes (hoping it might get accepted), but at the point the 4th crash occured, I had so many units there was no way I could replay it. I finished the game anyway, and got a (lousy maybe) 1860 AD win (that's turn 200 ).

This is what I did.

Considering the quick speed makes it difficult to wage war, I thought it would be best to start it out with a little bit advanced units - the Samurai.

Started with settling 6 cities.
CS slingshot, went metal casting -> machinery after that for the Samurai.
Took some 10 cities from the AI, and what's most important, I took a 'northern vassal' who had horses.
Asoka was geting beaten by the barbs, never expanded over 2 cities, so peace vassaled him early.
Teched to curasiers, built *Currasier in a few cities, and vassaled the rest.
Did tech to cavalry in the end.

Will try to reinstall BtS and give it another shot.

cheers

EDIT:

ah, yes, in the 1st game I was buying horses for something like 23 - 24 gpt.
that's a lousy strat as you might tech all the way to curassiers and end up not being able to buy them from anyone.

Boy this is a tough one, Leader is not great for these settings, Oasis is weird and Large / Quick, ouch.

No games submitted yet? I had planned to play this, but have been extremely busy the past week. I don't think there is time for me anymore to finish a game.

My plan was also to go Raging Barbs. In my tests I found AI would have on average half as many cities by 1AD with raging barbs compared to no barbs (they had 7-8 cities with no barbs and 3-4 cities with raging barbs). Great Wall is a must, then probably mids. The AI would have very heavily promoted top defenders after the barb invasion, but with superior units this shouldn't be a problem. With barbs keeping them small for so long, they should vassal easily once the stomping begins.

Gauntlet Results:
G-Major 132 - Conquest, Monarch, Ancient, Large, Quick, Oasis, (check options)
1^st shulec 1785 AD

Congratulations!

Congrats shulec, what was your strategy?

NobleZarkon said:

Congrats shulec, what was your strategy?

Click to expand...

Sure... I went with max opponents to limit empire sizes on a really big map. Nobody protective or aggressive. No barbs cuz they suck! I rexed and played nice with nieghbors. My capitol was not strong. A cow, corn and 2 FPs if I remember correctly. I went for the middle of the map to give equal access to the four corners of the map.

Early on, there was access to horses via trade. I could have gone for late HA war, but I decided to go for Cuirassiers and then Cavalry. I planned on quick strike, high kill, low loss capitulations. I went for chain capitulations of the first 7 or so AI. There were some AI's vassalized to other AIs, so I went after them last. I eliminated only one AI, the second to last that had only 4 cities. He died in about 5 turns since he was unwilling to talk.

The last AI had Rifles and Artillery. I sent several massive stacks his way to overwhelm.

I actually had 51.4% of land, over the domination limit, but the fates gave me the conquest. I tried to give away cities, but nobody was a taker.

Well done - counter intuitive to go for max opponents for Conquest but you made it work!