Ok here is my first gauntlet participation ever. Have to say good job on all the posters here. Reading your posts was really helpful.
First game I went with a 2 city approach and scored 1680 (sadly I didnt have very good research strategy and made lots of blunders)
Then trying with 1 city and more solid strategy I managed to score a
1620 victory at turn 234.
Even though my capital seemed very nice at first (3 river sugars, 2 river wheats, marble, coastal) I later realised that it wasnt that good at all because it lacked production, had no horses and many desert tiles. That also made me go aristocracy first and then patronage. I have to admit though that I was able to buy everything in my city pretty fast and make lots of deals with other AIs.
My map had 5 cultured CS if I'm not mistaken, 1 got conquered early by an AI in the other continent and I liberated near the end. I was generally very unlucky with CS and didn't get any logical quest (connect a road, connect a luxury) during the whole game. Only got 2 quests to kill barb camps if I 'm not mistaken.
I followed what seems to be the optimal research path (beeline Acoustics->Horses->beeline Astronomy->Biology) with the help of many great scientists which I had constantly produced. I stopped great scientist production when I produced my great scientist that would unlock Telegraph-Radio and I think that was a mistake because I never actually got to Solar Plant.
Also, I managed my golden ages as well as I could. Did everything possible to hit the first one after Chichen Itza (selling, even pillaging my luxuries), then after hitting the 2nd from happy faces, which came pretty fast, I was in a golden age the entire game.
I tried to avoid doing cheesy deals with the AIs like giving GPT for a big sum and then attacking, or the research agreement thingy for 2 reasons. Firstly I simply dont like that kind of deals and secondly I feared it would make the remaining AIs on the other continent, which held 3-4 luxuries I couldnt access otherwise, not willing to make deals with me.
What really seems to be the key in getting a <1600 victory is rolling a semi-big continent with close AI spawns that enables you to go puppet AIs at turns ~30-40 (a lucky scout->archer ruin seems like a huge boost in that direction). If you roll a huge continent like I did with AIs very far from you and each other and do the more feasible ~100 turn conquering with 3-4 horsemen you are pretty much playing behind the whole game. The reason is -apart from missing the research contribution- that the time you puppet the last AIs on your continent coincides with the time the lower research path unlocks on your way to Telegraph-Radio. From then on the puppets start building worthless buildings with a build order like monument->colloseum (rarely temple)->baracks->armory->military academy etc.
I feel like giving it another shot since I believe I can do a bit better but the thought of having to roll a map with so many little key things really puts me off. I think I ll go try the 2nd challenge instead
here are the saves