I was planning on improving my play before getting a historograhic victory and becoming quartermaster, but since I also want to try all the gauntlets, my plans changed. I already have a submission for this gauntlet that should make me quartermaster on the next update.
I had one historographic victories in the past, but only to stop the ai's from winning on dg rather than milking for score. My submission for this scored 8309 points with the Iroquois and took just over 57 hours, although I kept the game running for some time while taking breaks.
I had read some threads about this type of victory in the past, but most were discussed from either higher difficulty levels, larger maps, or the vanilla version of civ. I ran mapfinder for a 60% pangaea warm, wet world with seven opponents and barbs on sedentary to hopefully speed the AA tech pace. It produced 6 maps in a short time and I chose one with a 1726 dom. limit, even though the start wasn't as exceptional as other maps. Since I had little experience with this type of game, I expected to need many starts and mapfinder runs to get a good start. Unfortunately, I didn't take notes or make any saves before 30AD, so this summary will be a little short on detail. Here's a screenshot of the start:
From general principles, I wanted an agricultural civ. to maximize pop with extra food. The commercial trait of the Iroquois was also appealing as well as their early UU. The plan was to push to the dom. limit quickly and connect luxuries for their happiness bonus. I also wanted the Pyramids for the pop boost and the ToA for its territoy boost. Since this was warlord, I foresaw little problem with the conquest phase, but also couldn't rely on the ai's to build these wonders as they would take too long. Early exploration revealed four more nearby cows, ivory and some wheat. I sent a settler to the nearest cow, early and worked on setting up some early settler factories with granaries and was soon off to a quick start. Nearby civs Germany, Ottomans, and Babylonians were in my expansion territory and as soon as I got HBR in trade, I started mixing MW's into my worker and settler builds without building any barracks. Wars would commence shortly after the Republic slingshot in 1025BC. I started on Germany first as they had three nearby luxuries that could be connected quickly. My early expansion had gone rather well for me, founding 25 cities and capturing one by 1000BC. I used the GA to build all the MW's I would need for conquest as well as switching two of my five settler-factories to the Pyramids and the ToA pre-build. The Pyramids were completed in 590BC and the ToA in 90BC. I got some tech in trade from the ai's to get out of the AA early and gifted some sci civs up to get the first-tier MA techs in trade while researching to MT. I didn't need cavs, but they helped to limit losses against the Persians who were the last civ to fall on the continent around 280AD.
Here's a screenshot of my empire in 30AD with 80 cities, 6 luxuries connected and a seventh to be connected soon, and the Germans, Ottos, Babs, and Egyptians already eliminated:
The Japanese were still unmet on an island to the SE. At this point I had 989 domination tiles, 80 cities, 387 citizens, 114 workers, 17 slaves, and 12 settlers. Score was 678 and I was gaining 19 ppt. I finished the conquest of the Chinese and Persians by 300AD and also reduced the Japanese to a OCC prison on their island. I delayed research on education until the ToA pushed me to the dom. limit and I needed to destroy a few cities that would have low-growth to get me back under the limit. Research was 4-turn per tech for the rest of the game and I ended the expansion phase with 150 cities, built up to 238 workers and 45 slaves while railroading and irrigating every tile in my territory. I settled on hills and avoided settling on grasslands when I could and was 6-tiles from the dom. limit with on one tile unworked in my empire by 1000AD.
Here's a screenshot of 1000AD just a few turns before I joined my workforce to add 232 pop.:
My score at this point was 3139 gaining 27ppt. The above map is the final form as I only added one more city to push to within 2-tiles of the dom. limit. None of my border cities were producing culture so my empire would keep this shape for the rest of the game. The luxury slider was always set to keep all citizens happy. Other useful wonder builds were JSBach's, Adam Smith's, and Cure for Cancer. The land on the Japanese island wasn't great, but it was my only source of incense, so I had to keep it. I preferred to join my workers for a one turn boost of 66 points rather than take worker turns to clear the remaining jungles for a small boost in pop. as my few cities near mountains were also working grasslands. There was some nice remaining grassland on the central island, but swithching cities there would have meant a short reduction in pop. while harbors were rushed for only a small gain in pop. Only a handful of my worked tiles were sea tiles. I built aqueducts, hospitals and mass-transit in all cities that needed them. Marketplaces, courthouses, police stations, banks, and stock exchanges were built in all cities to maximize the boost from the commercial trait. My ppt was capped at 32 as I got near max. pop around 1400AD. All builds were complete by 1750AD and every city put on wealth for the remaining turns. My pop hovered around 2660 citizens as some cities had an odd amount of food and would lose and gain pop at a slow rate. My 45 slaves were kept busy cleaning pollution every-turn at an average of ~2 tiles per-turn so the end of the game didn't take as long as the beginning. I used SirPleb's date calc three times and it estimated my final score as 8266. As I finished with 45 future techs and a score of 8309, perhaps the scoring for future tech is as simple as one point each.
I went for the metros both for the extra commerce in the city square and also to minimize the food lost by settling on grasslands with a tighter build. Of my 2660 pop. about 1053 were specialists, so neither money or science was as issue. I actually researched every tech in the modern age at 0% science, the luxury-slider at 90% and still making a surplus. I stopped culture builds at the point Salamanca would go 20K in 2073 and my civ in 2054. I also built the 9 space ship parts and the UN in 1951 to time for a vote in 2050AD, although I needed another civ alive to have that victory option. I did this just for practice as I'm interested in the timed simultaneous victories that Bartleby and others often go for. This was also a good level to learn some things about a historographic victory as survival is not in doubt at this level. Hopefully, in a few months, I'll be ready to do this on a higher level and huge map to improve my historograpic ranking, but I'm happy this will make me a quartermaster now. This will be my last entry for this gauntlet and I think I was fortunate to get so many luxuries early and find a map with a fairly high dom. limit. I'll be interested to see others approach to this gauntlet and as always best wishes to all.
