G-Major XLII

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: Domination (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Deity
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Highlands
• Speed: Standard
• Leader: Zulu (Shaka)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 1st November to 1st December 2013

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

Deity to start....it will be interesting to see how many entries are made.

Note to self: Do not make Assyria an early target. Siege Towers hurt.

Siege towers are helpless in the field. Clear out Assyria's units before capturing a city, and blockade his siege towers. He's actually really bad at defense because he builds so many towers.

He is extremely expansive from what i saw. That's the main problem when dealing with him.

EDIT:

My victim list: (work in progress)

Venice
Byzanthium
Maya
India
Morocco
Denmark the Huns
Egypt Ethiopia

What's yours?

Mine is whatever the RNG throws at me. I have never been a fan of domination games, nor of early warfare, so have had a couple of interesting attempts so far.

Moriarte said:

He is extremely expansive from what i saw. That's the main problem when dealing with him.

EDIT:

My victim list: (work in progress)

Venice
Byzanthium
Maya
India
Morocco
Denmark
Egypt

What's yours?

Click to expand...

Victim list? So you can specify your opponents?

If you want to, yeah. The only restriction is the same civ can't appear twice in the same game.

Peets said:

• Opponents: Any

Click to expand...

You always have to look at this.
If it states any then you can choice as Sanabas said.
But it is possible that we give you some mandatory opponents.

Peets said:

You always have to look at this.
If it states any then you can choice as Sanabas said.
But it is possible that we give you some mandatory opponents.

Click to expand...

Right. I thought it meant all DLC opponents were allowed. Makes more sense this way.

Well, I don't know who's going to be in the map yet, but I know who's NOT... The Inca.

Had an interesting attempt finished at t.230. Made a bad call of inviting Nebuchadnezzar in my game. The guy usually goes tall, so i figured: hey, whatever, dealing with three cities is simpler than dealing with 9. Never mind the walls.

How wrong was I. The man immediately went super wide, securing the science lead and harassing Theo from time to time. By the time i got to his side of the world (t.170) his cities were 80+ in defence and riddled with mountains. So, there i stood shooting with ranged crossbows and later artilleries for 50 turns just to get two of his cities.

Meanwhile, he threw god knows how many units at me from all angles and the spam never stopped. If not for naturally rough terrain, i would throw in the towel. He killed 4 of my super promoted gatlings, which were fortified behind a river, inside a citadel by sending in infinite hordes of lancers and rifles. When Nebby got to g.w. bombers i settled for peace. There was one last easy cap to take (Theo) and it was blocked by Babylonian lands. 10 turns i waited, bribing him to kill everyone in the world and immediately denouncing his victims in the hope he warms up towards me. Which he did, selling his open borders for mere 60 gpt, eventually.

Apart from this minor setback i liked the overall strat, will surely try again: getting below t.200 appears to be doable. It is somewhat tricky to "fight all the way" with warmongering hate, but the trick here (imo) is decent homeland defence and diverting attention by bribing at the right time.

Pyramids, then 3 more cities, full liberty, full commerce. GE for NC. Basic techs --> Construction --> Currency --> Philosophy --> Machinery --> Civil Service, etc. Meet closest neighbour, DoW and never stop fighting.

Moriarte said:

Pyramids, then 3 more cities, full liberty, full commerce. GE for NC. Basic techs --> Construction --> Currency --> Philosophy --> Machinery --> Civil Service, etc. Meet closest neighbour, DoW and never stop fighting.

Click to expand...

3 straight attempts, and I've failed at the very first bit, as an AI has built Pyramids on turn 40. I was even on track for a religion in the last one. 2nd game, and 6 pantheons had been founded by turn 40. 3rd game, and there were only 2, one of them mine thanks to meeting a CS and doing a quest for them. That game just started off strange. Move settler on top of the mining lux, and the first ring only has a solitary food on a furs tile, the others are hills/mountains/desert. But 2nd ring has 3 wheat. Turn 2, found city, warrior pops goodie hut, and I get a +1 pop. Turn 3, my city starves back down to size 1.

Well, if you throw them out of the build, there is suddenly space for a shrine, couple extra archers and earlier settlements. Now all what's needed is a whole lot of happiness.

If I went without Pyramids, that could work. But when I've gone for Pyramids, and end up losing them with a couple of turns to go, things look bleaker. I'll get a game finished even if it means getting the nukes out, but I expect the date will be pretty ordinary. Still getting the hang of going to war early.

I'm thinking...

Morocco
Venice
Maya
Egypt
Korea
William
Polynesia

Korea could backfire on me, depends on whether he's close. ;-)

This list is really more about who's NOT on it.

I'm going to give Honor + raging barbarians a shot... Just to see if I can rush through Honor and get super-cheap Ikanda out fast. Although, all common sense tells me Honor can't post a best time. But hey with cooked settings and enough re-rolls you never know.

The war begins in 10 turns: (No CB rush this time)



Same path: liberty, commerce. Proposing world fair was incredibly helpful in both of my games so far. Faster protectionism.



Might try again next week, i need some rest from Shaka's war music.

The barbs are a nuisance on this map type, i can only imagine what raging barbs will feel like with no seas.

Moriarte said:

The war begins in 10 turns: (No CB rush this time)

Spoiler :

Same path: liberty, commerce. Proposing world fair was incredibly helpful in both of my games so far. Faster protectionism.

Spoiler :

Might try again next week, i need some rest from Shaka's war music.

The barbs are a nuisance on this map type, i can only imagine what raging barbs will feel like with no seas.

Click to expand...

Yeah.. the raging barbs were a double-edged sword. It depends on what flavor of highlands you get. I seem to get a lot of narrow mountain passes. There's an upside. The terrain and all the barbs definitely keep your opponent from expanding, which limits their growth, forces them to choose bad city spots, or even lose settlers. But, the narrow mountain passes blocked by barbs really hampers my own scouting, prevents me from getting TR beakers before I start the war, and it takes too long to get to the barb camps. I think I'm going to abandon that idea for now, despite how quickly I can finish Honor with that approach. Also, the timing on 1/2 price Ikanda is too random to reliably do spearmen/CB rush. Sometimes I'm still building Ikanda when I should be attacking. However, when it works out it's great. My best yet I had 4th policy on t50, finish Ikanda on t55, build 3 spearmen, on t60 upgrade CBs and get reduced melee cost and a general, build 3 more spearmen, attack on t65 with 6 spearmen and 4 CBs, start getting gold/kill on t70, upgrade spearmen to Impi on t85, upgrade XBs on t105. Rolling in gold when it works... You save something like 500g in upgrades by that point, and easily get that much from kills. But it's only really worked once so far.

So far, the highlands maps I keep getting suck.

HOF question: I noticed from Moriarte's photos that he had a much less mountainous map than my last few rolls, (Like, I had mostly single-tile mountain passes, often blocked by a lake. There was almost as much mountain as passable land)

I then discovered that if you select Highlands, it puts a few terrain options on Random. Is it allowed to set any of those options or must you just re-roll until you get favorable terrain?

I ask because obviously terrain has a huge impact on time-to-victory, especially with an early war civ like Shaka. Clearly less of a problem once you get to artillery. I assume this was the motivation for selecting highlands in the first place, but there are limits. Hills I can deal with. ;-)

Also, having not played with either of the settings that Highlands makes random, can anyone speak to what they do?

Yep, pick whichever of those settings you want. And same for sea level, landmass type, temperature, rainfall, world age, etc on maps that have those as options.

As for what they do, the mouseover text should explain it. It's clusters/ridgelines/scattered for the mountains, and small lakes/big lakes/oceans for the water. I think. Something like that, anyway.

Ok, that explains it. I was getting ridgelines I think... or something. Whatever the really rough terrain is.