G-Minor LXVI

[Peets]

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.

(*) Please read the >> HOF rules << BEFORE playing!​

Settings:

• Expansion: Brave New World
• Victory Condition: Science (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Chieftain
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Arborea
• Speed: Standard
• Leader: Assyria (Ashurbanipal)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 1st to 16th December 2013

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

 

[dinanipedro]

got a decent map, with high sea level and 5 year old earth (less forests and more grassland hopefully)
opponents were just improving my spy levels, so much failed stealing from the ai I must have forgave them about a hundred times

lot's of deer spawned in the vicinity so food from camps pantheon was the plan (turned out really good on this map) also had rivers and mountains close so settled 3 cities, captured 1 cap intended for annexing and 2 cities as puppets. didn't conquer after initial conquest. SP,er tradition. i took a dive into aesthetics for the left one before ratio and order

attempt 1 ending with space flight in 1730 anno domini t256..

 

[joshua43214]

a bit harder than I expected to get a good finish time.
Went with 3 billion years old, low sea level, arid, hot, Pangaea to get a larger landmass with more mountains and deserts.

4 core cities, all with mountains, all three expos in the desert, ran food to cap from all three expos. Settled a 4th expo right as biology finished to get coal and aluminum and rush bought pretty much everything - it took less than 15 turns for the city to be decent.

Finished T254

 

[Moriarte]

Tried this one too. Had 5 cities, none of them with observatory. (33, 25, 22, 21, 21) Finished @ t.241. Went for strange mix of liberty and tradition, never finished tradition though, as rationalism came too quick. With observatories this can be way faster. Sub t.210, probably. I might have another go. I think the perfect run will involve tradition opener --> free settler --> full tradition --> rationalism. Cheap policies are nice. Was forced to pick free worker and that screwed my policy path somewhat big.

 

[joshua43214]

Tried this one too. Had 5 cities, none of them with observatory. (33, 25, 22, 21, 21) Finished @ t.241. Went for strange mix of liberty and tradition, never finished tradition though, as rationalism came too quick. With observatories this can be way faster. Sub t.210, probably. I might have another go. I think the perfect run will involve tradition opener --> free settler --> full tradition --> rationalism. Cheap policies are nice. Was forced to pick free worker and that screwed my policy path somewhat big.

Ya, It's like playing in a vacuum - stealing more than 1 worker is hard, no RA's, no TR beakers. It is possible this will change my opening strategies, but will need to try it on higher difficulty. I opened with scout, worker, shrine/scout/granary, and teched Mining, Pottery, Writing. The early worker makes for very rapid growth, and you can just chop everything in site to reduce tile purchasing costs and speed production.

 

[Tabarnak]

This gauntlet seems fun

I prefer full trad first and keep Oracle for Rationalism. 6 cities should be optimal for science games. I'm not a big fan of mixing Trad and Liberty at all(yep, even with Poland).

 

[Peets]

This gauntlet seems fun

I'm glad

 

[Moriarte]

This gauntlet seems fun

I prefer full trad first and keep Oracle for Rationalism. 6 cities should be optimal for science games. I'm not a big fan of mixing Trad and Liberty at all(yep, even with Poland).

I take it youd didn't attempt chieftain for quite some time?

Policies are penny cheap on that level.

 

[casualplayer]

My 1st Chieftain win! Achievement unlocked.

Turn 260. Used my Scientists up too soon, when my BPT was ~1450/Turn instead of waiting til it reached 1600. Then International Space Station came too late, after building it almost entirely on my own, to be optimal.

I ended with 5 cities, including Madrid, and 3 puppets, Rio, Sao Paulo and Addis Ababa. I probably should have annexed all three but they were doing a pretty good job of building and staffing the science buildings soon after I researched them. Ashur had 41 pop at the end, largely because of Hanging Gardens and Petra. I played real Assyrian and got Pottery, Writing, Calendar and Animal Handling from pillaging other civs while I spent my efforts beelining Currency.

I had to tank two Diplo V votes to get to this point. Should have done 15-20 turns better. Next time.

 

[Airny]

I tried an OCC-like style building up my cap building early wonders.
Later on, I settled two more cities in medieval age.
My Cap was very strong and honestly I thought the victory was fast.
Turn 277 is not as it seems.
So perhaps I should build more cities, most of you had around 5 cities?
Another possibility I can think of is not using scientists until around modern age to rush through the rest of the tech tree. Anyone did that?

 

[Dracandross]

Uuh finished T302, how you shave that 50T outta it. Maybe more obs coulda help and maybe earlier conquest. Captured 2 workers but they were pretty far thus had to walk alot before they got to use.

-D

 

[dinanipedro]

att#2 had everything lined up for a t248 finish with GE ready for last part, but not enough culture for lvl3 order tenet. finished t253 with 5 cities(all inland) trad/lib settler, ratio and order..
culture was slow, way too slow. also missed some wonders by leaving them a bit late - oracle, petra by a few turns.. doh.
world fair seems like a must as first proposal, left that a bit late too
caravans suck compared to cargo ships inland cities suffering growth a bit despite lots of farmed areas, played with low sea level map, prefering the high sea map though.

 

[Moriarte]

att#2 had everything lined up for a t248 finish with GE ready for last part, but not enough culture for lvl3 order tenet. finished t253 with 5 cities(all inland) trad/lib settler, ratio and order..
culture was slow, way too slow. also missed some wonders by leaving them a bit late - oracle, petra by a few turns.. doh.
world fair seems like a must as first proposal, left that a bit late too
caravans suck compared to cargo ships inland cities suffering growth a bit despite lots of farmed areas, played with low sea level map, prefering the high sea map though.

Speaking of which: I wasn't actually able to finish the fair. Even though it was active from about turn 150, by turn 240 it still shown, like 20% completed.. Anyone else had this? I wonder if it was a bug.

 

[dinanipedro]

might have been bug, finished world fair eventually, took a while though (2780)

 

[BWS]

It took me about 15 turns to finish the World Fair even with most of my cities working on it, because the AIs contributed practically nothing. None of them added more than a couple dozen hammers total.

I won t.283, which is a decent finish time for me but clearly not competitive. I could have focused on growth and science a lot better than I did. Not sure whether I will try again. This gauntlet was fun, but I also want to try the new HOF Deity challenge.

 

[Cromagnus]

I don't know that I'll have time to try this, but weird.... chieftain with Assyria basically means you won't actually be able to steal techs when you capture cities!

It seems to me that building cities isn't the best strategy for Assyria on chieftain. Maybe it would be better to not even build settlers... instead build siege towers and workers and capture 6 capitals to get the techs before you outpace everyone? If you go tradition, your first 3 puppets will get aqueducts when you finish. I guess it might be tough with all that distance in between, but you don't need the AI for RAs anyway.

Hanging gardens should be easy to achieve, and so should GL and Oracle.

Damn it, ok I might need to try this.

 

[Cromagnus]

Ok, haha I totally forgot to switch from Deity on my first try. I was like WTF, Chieftain is hard!

 

[BWS]

Ha! I played peacefully in my first try. I barely built any units at all, had a steady stream from CSes that I never even used. Not sure whether I want to try being more aggressive this game or just focus on science fundamentals.

 

[dinanipedro]

did my final attempt for this gauntlet, at least for me it seems to be optimal with my approach t248 finish.
tech wise: gl for philo, nc, education, astronomy(t121), printing press, sci theory, radio, plastics(oxford), satelites(ratio finisher), adv balistics(GS), nano(GS), particle physics had late GS spawn while researching and finished liberty for an extra GE to build last part.
sp wise: tradition opener, liberty for settler(s), tradition, opened ratio and securalism(oracle) on t121, oligarhy, rationalism, order to lvl3 (world fair), liberty finish
coastal capital with flood plains and cotton, 4 expos with mountains and hills (2nd expo Petra city with 2 oasis and king solomons mines ) but without direct river access costing water mills and hydro plants. got only 3 coal , but 2 8 alu tiles.
religion wise ghandi nabbed DF first so I took the growth pantheon and he also grabbed the HG, what a douche. temple of artemis was ok instead though combined with the 15% when not at war religion enchancer. then I was gifted two impi's from cs's. the irony.
going all warry in these types of science games seemed like a good strategy in GnK's, i haven't had success in BNW with the 5% science penalty just making capturing cities and/or wide science seem unplausable

 

[Cromagnus]

You can definitely win a fast SV by force. On Chieftain the AI techs so slow that you can rush to Mathematics first, then Philosophy, build 4 Siege Towers, and STILL have time to pick up Hanging Gardens, Temple of Artemis and Great Library. Use GL for Theology or Civil Service and you'll have Education by t90. You should probably still build 4 solid cities ASAP though.

Then, 2 Siege Towers and 2 Archers will take any city. Raze one or two civs down completely. Preferably the closest ones. If you're lucky you won't even have met everyone yet, so those who live won't care. You'll snap up probably 5 or 6 techs before you run out. Later on, capture all but one capital to snap up all the wonders. None of this will slow down your science victory except the complete lack of RAs. But, you can win a SV by t240 without RAs... And on Chieftain the RAs aren't worth a damn. When you win there will still be some civs who are just entering the Renaissance...

Oh, and don't attack until they build a settler. You'll need them as workers to chop ALL THAT FOREST. On the bright side, you can chop out like 4 wonders on a typical Arborea start.