G-Minor LXXXII

[img=right]http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/170/hofgauntlet.jpg[/img]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: Settler
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Shuffle
• Speed: Epic
• Leader: Ethiopia (Haile Selassie)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 1st to 16th August 2014

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

Finished on turn 188, very easily beatable for you guys.
This is my first attempt at a Gauntlet, and my first cultural victory. Before today I had no real idea about tourism at all.

The guides seem geared towards games that are more difficult and longer than this, so I tried following some of the strats from the previous G-Major.
Built a lot of stuff I didn't really need, didn't focus on religion enough, and didn't build enough cities early enough.
As you can see from the screenshot, I could have chosen a better starting position 1 or 2 tiles to the left, but I wanted the floodplains to help me grow...

To be honest, it was a great learning experience, but not a lot of fun. I may try again, but I submitted my game just in case I don't get around to it.
I'm expecting one of you vets to hit something like 120, or possibly even sub 100, I have no idea.

Either way, Culture, Ethiopia, Epic, Standard and Shuffle all ticked off my VVV list.

Xaviien said:

This is my first attempt at a Gauntlet, and my first cultural victory. Before today I had no real idea about tourism at all.

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Pretty much the exact same for me

Managed to hit turn 163 after a musician pop for exactsies.

Feels like faith generation is the main bottleneck, and settlerproduction/space/defence/happiness are all non issues. If I went for another try, I would probably grab the cheaper non happiness faith building (blanking on name) instead of pagodas.

Biggest annoyance is the random map script... just asking for rerolls until you get a pangea.

Indeed, T199 on continents.
SS and Astro is not a good combo.

Forget it if you need Astro for a fast finish. I'd also skip archipelago maps since it slows down your start a lot (no ruin, few CS).

My best so far is 134 turns on continents (reachable with optics) after 2 quick tries. Pretty sure best time can be 120ish with good pangea map.

T125 CV (probably won't try for lower)

Alright, was able to cut it down in the 120 area like I suspected. So since no map is ever perfect my guess is that the best is in the 115-120range since I see only little that could be improved in my game and everything that delays the win is just randomness (no natural wonders, no settler ruin, 2nd highest culture is the furthest away etc).

Acken said:

T125 CV (probably won't try for lower)

Alright, was able to cut it down in the 120 area like I suspected. So since no map is ever perfect my guess is that the best is in the 115-120range since I see only little that could be improved in my game and everything that delays the win is just randomness (no natural wonders, no settler ruin, 2nd highest culture is the furthest away etc).

Spoiler :

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There may not be a "perfect map", but if you rolled the map I used, with the addition of Uluru, I believe you could have cut a fair few turns out there.
I had the top 2 cultured civs right next door, and believe there may have been a Settler ruin in amongst everything else.

If you share your map I can see what a replay can achieve.

I'm assuming you wanted the initial save?

It took me a little over 5 hours, but like I said earlier, this was my first attempt at almost every condition.
I might need to have another crack at it myself.

I attached the final save as well, in case you'd like to plan ahead for full optimisation.
Any chance of getting a look at your final save? I'd love to know which beliefs, techs and social policies you chose.

I see you ended up with the same TPT as me, just 60 turns earlier, but you also had 65 more FPT than me.
I clearly have no chance of competing without some coaching.

Well I think advises would be better than just looking at the final save, I assume you are aware of sacred sites strategy:
-You want to get Mosques and Monasteries for pantheon. Mosques are the best faith per cost ratio and monasteries are best tourism per cost. You will prioritize mosques up to Reformation at which point you'll switch to monasteries. Avoid wasting faith in non-building stuff as much as possible. For founding take Initiation rites (150gold per city on Epic) and enhance with itinerant preachers or religious texts.
-Only steles, shrines and temples are really useful. Prefer to make settlers rather than other useless buildings.
-Since this is settler, expanding cost almost no happiness. So just expand like crazy and rush buy steles if you can. This will help you get enough faith.
-Kill highest culture civs, 3-4 archers + spearman are enough.
-Only Oracle can be useful. Avoid every other wonders they are not worth it on this level (stonehenge, great library)
-Get Pangea map with good faith start: desert, natural wonder, salts, gems, gold.
-Try to convert the highest culture civ (that you don't kill) and make a trade route to them.

Policies are Liberty Collective Rule followed by Piety Reformation. You should hit reformation in the 100 area if you make sure to rush buy some steles in new cities and if you can ally a CS or two.

My game took 1hour and 20minutes But I tend to play fast anyway according to gotm results.

first run through with a SS win... slow for others, but learned a few things...

did not have a start with faith, so built Stonehenge...

Took me forever to find spain... hidden behind a city state on a peninsula...

only got one free settler...

Finished on turn 184, need to work on timing

First attempt, turn 155. Great start area with numerous salt and a few copper. Unfortunately, the map was some sort of island map, luckily with low sea level. Everything was accessible, but it took 154 turns to find the last AI. Gave the last AI a city with the liberty finsher GM sitting next to it, and popped the GM for 1054 tourism.

I finished on turn 183. My musician ran into barbarians And the Indonesian brutes, on the other side of the continent, didn't even know the concept of Culture (aka they didn't discover Writing for a long time and thus no Open Borders )

First,i think this map should be banned as it takes like billions of rerolls to get a right map.Any other type beside pangea here is not an option as it takes too long to either find all civs, last or more civs can be blocked by ocean.Had one perfect start,full desert with gold and uluru wonder,but last civ was blocked by ocean so there was no point to continue game.If there was no that blocked civ on that attempt,it would be done on turn 150.Anyway,after like zilllions of rerrols,i got a map with tons of tundra tiles,almost quit then but i figured out how i could go with pantheon +1 faith to tundra tiles without forest.And i finished that game on turn 150,quite funny how it matched with previous unfinished game.And also funny matched how in previous failed game non-discovered civ were huns,while on this one huns was last influenced civ.
Could of do it on same map for 10-15 turns better if i did better micro management,meaning paying attention when there is enough faith to buy faith building, then buying steele when it's enough gold,and i had tons of gold thanks to wonder cerro potosi,then pre-place settlers and finally send that extra gp which come with finished piety to civs with highest resistance.And uluru/sri pada wonder would come handy as well on this map.
And it was quite unusual how huns had like x2 more culture then all other civs,i guess i should remove them from next culture game.

Just finished my 3rd attempt

1st one, won on turn 302. Thought i had a pangea map, but it turned out to be large continents and there were 2 civs hiding
2nd one, pangea. won on turn 204. Didn't spam enough cities
3rd one, pangea. Won on turn 165. Can definitely do better.

All you should be building is stele, shrine, temple. and then settlers in cities that are not your capitol
I built the pyramids (free workers and worker speed. takes the city-states forever to generate a worker on settler, used to make more coin, buy stuff to speed things along), oracle, great library (which I could do without, but I used it to pop the oracle faster). Also used the liberty finisher to pop a great engineer and pop the parthenon. (extra +2 tourism, best I could think to do with it)
I chose to attack and weaken (did not eliminate) the highest culture civ, and took a city in the trade deal. Hindsight, I would pass over that military buildup to build more settlers
I think I also need to re-evaluate my policy order, taking too long to get to sacred sites, it feels like. Been doing liberty to the free settler before the reformation push

Also think that I could re-evaluate my religion choices, the two buildings but the other benefits don't seem to help much

Second attempt and I hit reformation just after turn 100. I think I might have expanded too far, plus I didn't realise I had rolled Fractal or some crap like that til it was too late.
I found a Natural Wonder with +6 FpT so I couldn't help myself and wasted almost 2 hours.

Does anyone have any hints as to how you can tell if you have Pangaea early on?

If you start on coast and see water from many directions I just instantly restart. Otherwise I just play a little. 2 quick scouts and 20 turns should give you a good idea.

I've question to crovicfanatic, acken and xaviien, how did you change your UI?

WarFox said:

I've question to crovicfanatic, acken and xaviien, how did you change your UI?

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http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263