G-Major LIV

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: Culture (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: King
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Great Plains
• Speed: Standard
• Leader: Arabia (Harun al-Rashid)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 2nd November to 1st December 2014

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

If the patch just updated some bugs,...No big deal, BUT the 1.0.3.276 patch changed the Tradition/Piety tree pretty dramatically...Therefore it should be mandatory!

Please make it a requirement, OR show me how I can reload the OLD version again. Thanks

chuckh89 said:

If the patch just updated some bugs,...No big deal, BUT the 1.0.3.276 patch changed the Tradition/Piety tree pretty dramatically...Therefore it should be mandatory!

Please make it a requirement, OR show me how I can reload the OLD version again. Thanks

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Yes. Rules should update with the new patch.

Agree. Patch should be mandatory. Although for this gauntlet, patch is probably a significant advantage.

Bleidraner said:

Agree. Patch should be mandatory. Although for this gauntlet, patch is probably a significant advantage.

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Agree 100% with these sentiments.

Great Plains should provide very favourable terrain for the liberating strat.

vadalaz said:

Great Plains should provide very favourable terrain for the liberating strat.

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Absolutely, I was thinking that too. Camel Archers are also ideal. This is going to be a fun gauntlet

Okay, so a quick first try and I won by T224.

Went tradition, then a couple of policies in aesthetic before unlock rati, getting +3 from specialists and +1 from trade posts/+% from unis.

Focused on science and just building lots of wonders. Desert folklore + pilgrimage + Swords into... + 2 faith from wonders and faster spread (stacks with caravan pressure) for religion. I missed a couple of wonders, but I feel like I picked the right civs to make it easy.

Since this is King I think it is possible to end even faster, but ICS and SS delays science too much IMHO, and +4 tourism per city means you need like 10 or so cities pretty fast if you want to abuse it, which can be kind of tricky. The problem is you don't want to spread faith into other civs and make them get extra culture from your religious buildings.


For early game I skipped GL and focused on early population growth + a second city before going ToA, HG, NC, Petra, WG. I beelined Education -> Acoustics to use my first spy to steal everything for PP while I focused the upper part of the tech tree for early hermitage.

I am considering going for faster WC and forbidden palace in a later game to try and get very early world religion. Gonna let you know how it works out.

Bleidraner said:

Agree. Patch should be mandatory. Although for this gauntlet, patch is probably a significant advantage.

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I am not sure, the difficulty is low enough that you can grab all the wonders you want pretty much, which makes for a tradition game. I am still unsure if SS CV will actually be faster than regular CV

n0m0n said:

I am not sure, the difficulty is low enough that you can grab all the wonders you want pretty much, which makes for a tradition game. I am still unsure if SS CV will actually be faster than regular CV

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We'll find out as I am going SS

winning time should be liberating strategy again, with only some extra civ to take out

with good warfare this should play out at the same amount of turns as last time

so let's set the goal at t75

TyfoonTurk said:

winning time should be liberating strategy again, with only some extra civ to take out

with good warfare this should play out at the same amount of turns as last time

so let's set the goal at t75

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No way it can possibly be this fast on this gauntlet -- 7 civs to conquer is over twice as many as 3 and the map is not tiny. Also, this is King level: the good news is that the AI goes after barbarians more; the bad news is that there are more AI units to wade through AND more cities because the later civs you conquer get more time to expand. Happiness and money issues raise their ugly heads more often as well. Can't just buy an army quite as readily.

While the Great Plains Map seems advantageous with open spaces, the 2-3 AI civs that spawn in the eastern forests or western hills are pains to take out early.

I think Greek liberation will be definitely competitive with Sacred Sites and standard Culture wonders, but T75 is a pipe dream. Unless of course you can come anywhere close to that and then I will bow down before you as the Civ V deity.[emoji6]

I think twice that at T150 might be a worthy target to aim under for all methods. How far under I'm not sure.

zenmaster said:

No way it can possibly be this fast on this gauntlet -- 7 civs to conquer is over twice as many as 3 and the map is not tiny. Also, this is King level: the good news is that the AI goes after barbarians more; the bad news is that there are more AI units to wade through AND more cities because the later civs you conquer get more time to expand. Happiness and money issues raise their ugly heads more often as well. Can't just buy an army quite as readily.

While the Great Plains Map seems advantageous with open spaces, the 2-3 AI civs that spawn in the eastern forests or western hills are pains to take out early.

I think Greek liberation will be definitely competitive with Sacred Sites and standard Culture wonders, but T75 is a pipe dream. Unless of course you can come anywhere close to that and then I will bow down before you as the Civ V deity.[emoji6]

I think twice that at T150 might be a worthy target to aim under for all methods. How far under I'm not sure.

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Also, the small gauntlet was Venice (if that is what you are referring to with T75 win) who can faith buy in puppets.

n0m0n said:

Also, the small gauntlet was Venice (if that is what you are referring to with T75 win) who can faith buy in puppets.

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The T75 strategy he's talking about is based on spawning a Great Musician with 0 tourism per turn, as his concert tour will be worth 100 tourism then. So the idea is to

- conquer a neighbour before they generate 100 culture
- kill all other AIs except one
- use Liberty finisher for a Great Musician
- have your neighbour liberated by the remaining civ. This is a gamble, but Greece seems to have the highest chance to liberate.
- perform a concert tour in the liberated civ's land and eliminate Greece. Now you're influential with the only remaining AI.

vadalaz said:

The T75 strategy he's talking about is based on spawning a Great Musician with 0 tourism per turn, as his concert tour will be worth 100 tourism then. So the idea is to

- conquer a neighbour before they generate 100 culture
- kill all other AIs except one
- use Liberty finisher for a Great Musician
- have your neighbour liberated by the remaining civ. This is a gamble, but Greece seems to have the highest chance to liberate.
- perform a concert tour in the liberated civ's land and eliminate Greece. Now you're influential with the only remaining AI.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that does sound like a gamble on this one.

Yes, on second thought the liberty strat is gonna be tough. It's definitely doable but I'm not sure how much faster than T150 you'll be able to finish. Main problems are that you need to completely wipe out everyone, and camel tech comes too late, especially when your research rate is being slowed by early conquest.

I did a test run of T141 SS. It could've been T130 with a bit better play, but it actually turned out to be a decent game. Made a few major mistakes, notably getting war dec'd and losing a city for a while. I was influential with everyone except Portugal on T133, who had double the culture of second place. I conquered them to win the game.

GP is a pretty small map. I ran out of room to place cities, and there's a high chance of someone coveting your lands and war decing.

Let's give it a try First run probably I'll hit turn infinite.

So there isn't a way to get the culture fast enough in order to not have to kill everybody but 1 ?

RoFortaleza said:

Let's give it a try First run probably I'll hit turn infinite.

So there isn't a way to get the culture fast enough in order to not have to kill everybody but 1 ?

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You can probably do a peaceful or semipeaceful SS CV around 150, but take this with a pinch of salt as I will not be able to play until the weekend and I am unfamiliar with the Great Pains map. But I am fairly certain.

Bleidraner said:

You can probably do a peaceful or semipeaceful SS CV around 150, but take this with a pinch of salt as I will not be able to play until the weekend and I am unfamiliar with the Great Pains map. But I am fairly certain.

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I'll see how it comes out, I'm unfamiliar about when start to do settlers, 3 cities ? 4 cities total ? got a nice start but lost HG, my capital just won't grow but other two cities will and can put observatory on all of them.

How far the tech tree is usually needed to go for culture victory ?

RoFortaleza said:

Let's give it a try First run probably I'll hit turn infinite.

So there isn't a way to get the culture fast enough in order to not have to kill everybody but 1 ?

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Well, fils in the post above yours did a T141 S Sites only having to conquer 1 civ.