Beta Gauntlet VI

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.


Whichever game has the earliest finish date will be declared the victor. The winner (and settings for the next Gauntlet) will be announced with the next Hall of Fame update.

While each map can only be played once, players are more than welcome to generate new maps and submit multiple games. Also, as everyone is playing their own distinct maps, there is no need for spoiler limitation within the forum. In fact, we encourage detailed posting of strategy and gameplay, although all conversation about this Guantlet should stay within this thread.

Any games not finished before the submission cutoff may still be submitted to the Hall of Fame as general entries.

New players:
Please note that we need two files for Hall of Fame submissions. A save from your initial 4000bc turn, and the turn after you win. For the last file, when you win the game, you'll be displayed your sequence of victory screens and then be prompted if you wish to exit or play "just a few more turns". Select just a few more turns, and then save the game immediately without playing further.

The settings for this Gauntlet are a slight departure from usual. Please review them carefully:

• Difficulty: Warlord
• Mapsize: Tiny
• Victory: Space Race (though ALL victory conditions must be enabled!)
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Speed: Normal
• Submitted on or before: March 9th.
• Opponents: Kublai Khan and Genghis Khan must be two of your opponents. If you choose to have more, they are optional.
• Setting: OCC must be checked.

I'm definitely participating in this one. Wasn't expecting the difficulty level to drop so low, and an OCC!

Now this... this looks interesting.

- Bill

superslug said:

[*]Opponents: Kublai Khan and Genghis Khan must be two of your three opponents.

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So, for this gauntlet we have to have at least three opponents?

Methos said:

So, for this gauntlet we have to have at least three opponents?

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No, two will do. I made a last minute decision to switch from Small to Tiny.

Thanks for pointing that out.

This gauntlet looks like fun. Will be my first OCC attempt.

Never tried an OCC. Any tips?

godotnut said:

Never tried an OCC. Any tips?

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That's sad to hear - my first OCC game was the most enlightening game so far Play it, see how to make a city build modern armor in 1 turn.

Tips? I'm usually playing on noble, but:

- Note that you can build any national wonder with only one of the prerequisite buildings (need only one theatre of globe theatre), except cathedrals.
- Globe theatre. Never mind happiness resources, trade or gift them away. The limiting factor is health.
- Prepare for an attack. You have low population and look weak to the AI.
- You will be attacked.
- Perimeter defense. Defend your borders, do not hide behind the city walls. Don't let them come to pillage your improvements.
- You probably want to have iron at the starting location. Can't build a lot of things without it.
- Some civics boost your empires production by 50%, or your empires GP rate by 100%, don't let them pass
- Did I mention to prepare for an attack?

Gotta play now Will be interesting to see how you elite players beat me by hundreds of turns ...

Regards.

I finished one in 1966. I only had the 2 Khans but I think we'll need some more people. The tech place was pretty slow. I was Peter (Phi/Exp). I smashed the tech pace - I was always many many techs ahead, but I had to pretty much self-research everything.

One thing I tried this time (it's my 2nd game) was to take all the religions. Even without a spiritual civ, I took all but Buddhism. I used this mostly for the Monasteries. I also got pretty much all the wonders.

I'm sure this time can be beat, but I think we'll need another power or three.

Had no problems with wars. Gave into all demands and ran free religion

Deleted because I found the answers to my question at this thread. It's worth a look if this is your first OCC.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=146231&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

is another good thread on Apolyton, though I'm finding a lot of the advice there not applicable to "only" playing on Warlord

OK just tried this ... and lost in 2050 to Ghengis, time victory, 33 turns missing for building space ship parts.

I played as good as I could and was relatively lucky with resources, I had iron, coal and oil. I had no hills though, and only the iron in the city radius, my production came from this and 4 forests. One very stupid mistake I made was I did not build the coal power plant for tens of turns. I'm still such a newb.

One very helpful thing was that I was on friendly terms with the Khans. I had them attacking civs who would attack me (Isabella, Catherine), thus making the war efforts very easy. Wars did not hamper the effort at all. I also believe in having many, many competitors. Border tensions will spark wars among them.

I missed aluminum. I think I can't pull this off without any of iron, coal and aluminum at all.

I'm very much looking forward to your games!

Regards, and good night.

Just played a game and won in 1898. Some final stats - Mecca was size 22, 206 hpt - 59 base, 792 bpt. I got 15 great people from GPP, plus all 4 free ones. I had the 2 Khans, Catherine, Mansa, and Victoria.

My game was really smoking for the first part. I had stone, so that helped with the Pyramids (which I think are key due to Representation) and then used the Oracle to take Civil Service. I ran the table on all 7 religions, though I'm not sure how helpful that was. I did build a few monasteries, but I was doing so well tech-wise that Scientific Method came by before too long.

Genghis declared on me once, but never made a landing. It woudln't have mattered since it would have been longbows vs. rifles. My galleon sunk his galley, tore up his fishing nets and then he paid me 50 gold for peace

Early game: Hunting from a hut, then the first 3 religions. After Masonry I started on the Pyramids, which completed in 1720 BC - swap to representation.
1040 - Code of Laws and the Oracle, which as I mentioned I used to take Civil Service, swap to Bureaucracy.
750 - Literature, rushed the Great Library (the only of my great people that wasn't joined as a super specialist)
225 - Hanging Gardens
75 - paper, 250 Education - then up through Optics to discover Liberalism and take Astronomy in 540 AD
1120 - Sci. Method
1390 - Computers
1550 - Rocketry, 1645 - Apollo

Then it was just a matter of building the parts. I couldn't tech fast enough. For most of the parts, I would discover the technology, build the part in 4 or 5 turns but have to wait 2-3 more before the next tech was discovered.

I also built the Globe Theater sometime in there, and obviously Oxford and the Ironworks and the National Epic. Had some health problems for most of the late game - traded all my happy resources for health.

One other problem was the lack of aluminum but as I mentioned production really wasn't the problem. I'm not sure how to speed the tech pace up. Even with 3 financial leaders I researched just about everything myself. I know in the OCC thread they talk about gifting techs to people in the hopes that they can research *something* but I'm not sure it's even worth it to build the Internet. I've been doing one island per person and no tiny islands, with the hopes of keeping people separated so as to not brew wars, and that has been working, but I wonder if a better plan would be early meeting for a faster tech pace. I'm not that familiar with Warlord so I don't know if this is common at this level

No war problems for me in this game either except for the one fake war with Khan.

This gauntlet will be fun. I don't like normal speed at all though. I am predicting a finish date around 1600. I can give a more accurate one after my first attempt.

I am pretty mad right now. I played a quick game with just the Khans and Ghengis declared war on me even though we were on good terms. I didn't have a defense so I lost, not a big deal, played another game. This time I decided to take out Ghengis in the beginning. I took him out pretty early, was doing really well. Would have finished around 1900 AD or a little before. In 1882 Kublai got a domination victory. LOL And I was the one that took out his competition

Big_Ben said:

I am pretty mad right now. I played a quick game with just the Khans and Ghengis declared war on me even though we were on good terms. I didn't have a defense so I lost, not a big deal, played another game. This time I decided to take out Ghengis in the beginning. I took him out pretty early, was doing really well. Would have finished around 1900 AD or a little before. In 1882 Kublai got a domination victory. LOL And I was the one that took out his competition

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I think you were supposed to say: Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannn!!!!

I had a few too many cottages there at the end. I actually was able to learn techs faster than I could build parts! Amazingly I didn't have a single war the entire game. In fact no one did.

Finished with a launch in 1876 AD. Ended up getting nineteen great people (three artist, four engineers, one merchant, one prophet, and ten scientists).

I’ve added an attachment of Berlin at the end of the game.

Edit: I guess I should mention the last 15-20 turns I converted a bunch of towns into watermills for the extra hammers.

the time limit hit before i could complete the spaceship engine
this was my first occ game and i made the really bad mistake of building the united nations
right after the first election window came up i realised i had to declare war on both of the khans asap or one of them would win a diplomatic victory: by the time of the first attempt by genghis i had managed to reduce his votes to 1 below the amount required for diplomatic victory

so... as my first gauntlet game it was a disaster but overall my first completed civ4 game

@Methos - nice work. My 1898 game was invalid becuase I didn't have No Cheating checked grrr.

I think there will be a balance between tech and production (duh) - I wonder though I think the best solution would be to get other civs to tech for you while you have a high production city. Not sure the best way to accomplish that though...