Yes, I suppose I worded it somewhat carelessly. What you're saying is correct, a fast finish will require a friendly map, some luck, a good plan and its careful execution. This is true for every gauntlet though.
As for the Aztec game, I think a ~t105 time is realistic there but sub-100 sounds very hard to achieve, could be possible with Uluru and another NW maybe... It depends on how much culture the AIs can generate though. That's something I don't like about competing on Deity and to a certain extent Immortal - the AIs aren't "irrelevant" like on lower difficulties, which in my opinion makes the game random and unpredictable much more so than ruins, CSs or barbs do. Just as an example, Hanging Gardens can go on t45 and t90
on the same map in different playthroughs. At least HOF allows for several attempts which sort of evens things out for everyone, because in theory everyone can roll a map where things go their way.
Actually, I take it back. Sub100 is easy. Just did a test game, and won t104, with really big mistakes and a map that was not that friendly. I am talking really big mistakes. Start was good, 1 salt 1 wheat, 1 calendar lux, but got the tech order wrong, and believe it or not forgot to build NC before planting my third city (I went liberty), slowed my science pretty bad. Also did not get the triremes out exploring until like t60, opened honor by missclicking (instead of closing liberty!!!!) which made my Compass even later. I suppose it is possible to roll a map without a connecting route, but mine had a one tile connection in 2 different places, and multiple routes to explore before finding the right one, plus last civ was very far away. Anyway. Gonna try a second time.
As for Deity, my reasons for disliking it are different. I don't mind the randomness of the AIs, and if you play a lot of Deity (I used to play it exclusively before I started with the gauntlets, I guess we all go through that phase, when you think that Deity is the highest difficulty, not realizing that the infinite difficulty is to get a record time at ANY level), so as I was saying if you play a lot of deity you get a feel for when the wonders go. In fact HG and Petra are the only ones that move a lot, and ToA is the only one that is a pretty safe bet with some chopping and opening archery, the rest of ancient wonders forget it. It is true that the AIs cheat at Deity and they can see what you are building, so they will let you build to last turn for maximum damage (I have tested this) and that's why the wonders go at different times. It is also quite obvious they know what each other is building. But once you take all that into account, it is just one more feature to overcome.
What bothers me about Deity is that the AIs are so powerful (have so many advantages I mean) that it really reduces the amount of strategies you can try down to 1 or 2 that have been discovered and tried and tested a long time ago, if you are going for a record turn time. So it is just execution, not creativity, or just tactical creativity, not strategical (again for record time, if you just want to win then it can be done in multiple ways, but that does not motivate me, been there, done that). The other issue, and this is specific for me, is how long the games are, and how heavy they are for my computer. Once I get past t200, everything slows down to a crawl, and domination games just take forever.
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.
Yes, fun I think. And quick games, I like that too.
