G-Major 2

[WastinTime]

@The-Hawk: Anyone have any ideas on how late in the game it is worthwhile to build the extra cathedrals?

I'm afraid you have to do the maths for your own situation. In my case, when the nineth city flipped, it was 30 turns before the end. I did the maths anyway and I was surprised to find that it was worth building one cathedral. I would lose a few turns in every city, lowering the culture bar. I would lose an artist specialist who had to go to the mines in the cathedral's city. But I would win a lot for 20 turns of +50% culture in that city... so a GA could be assigned to the second best city. In all, it saved 4 turns (out of 30) in normal speed. But that was just my case.

I think *building* a late cathedral is a good idea. It's easier to calculate if it is worth it. However, I'm against turning on cash mode again and buying that cathedral. If you turn culture off for only 5 turns late in the game, your 3 cities will lose about 5,000 culture total. It will take 50-70 turns for one new cathedral to make up that amount.

 

[Moonsinger]

Great game Moonsinger. And you took out all the opposition too. Can you tell us more about that? How did you make that kind of military investment and still finish so fast?

Thanks! I didn't have much choice in military investment. Basically, from 4000BC to 600 BC, I couldn't build anything else but military units and settlers. IIRC, I didn't have the techology to build culture buildings until after 400 BC. I made up for lost time by spamming all 7 religions.

 

[The-Hawk]

Well, I'm digressing . Just submitted a 1580 AD culture win. Wasn't a great map, had some bad luck on low probability GP's, and I did a couple of stupid things along the way. I'm thinking there is time for one more run at this.

 

[The-Hawk]

Sometimes this game sucks! Had an excellent game going... nine cities up, 5 cathedrals in each culture city, almost all cottages to towns, etc. Estimated finish time around 1522 AD, give or take a few turns. Ghandi wins by Diplo in 1444 AD .

Screenshot of the bad news...

 

[godotnut]

I'm heading off for a wedding in Canada, and I likely won't be able to try again. So it looks like 1545 is the best I'll be able to do. Good luck to everyone.

 

[Moonsinger]

Sometimes this game sucks! Had an excellent game going... nine cities up, 5 cathedrals in each culture city, almost all cottages to towns, etc. Estimated finish time around 1522 AD, give or take a few turns. Ghandi wins by Diplo in 1444 AD .

Yes, something like that happens to me all the time. Over the weekend, I started another run on a deity huge map. I took up on you guys advice and played my culture game peacefully. Got 14 cities up running on cottage spam and 6 cathedrals in each culture city. Trading was very good and I was making over 200 gpt while running on 100% culture. Estimated finish time no later than 1500 AD. On 1487 AD, my best friend Isabella rolled her tanks over and razed one of my culture city. My stack of spearmans didn't stand a chance. This happened exactly on 1487 AD, just 5 turns before all three of my culture cities reach legendary. Oh well, another win for the AI.

 

[redemption438]

Congrats to all of the impressive dates being posted!

My best was only 1690 with Mansa Musa... Quick speed!
It's not up there in the ethereal heights of the 1400s or 1500s, but it is my first deity victory.

Pangaea map, standard, with these AIs:
Cyrus
Washington
Frederick
Mao Zedong
Peter
Tokugawa

I started the quick speed game to see how the game plan would generally work, but when I realized I wouldn't have time for another game I went ahead and finished it.

Didn't build pyramids mainly because stone didn't appear on the map. Main goal was early religions so I could take advantage of building temples rather than purchasing them later on. It partially worked - I founded Hinduism and Taoism, and got 2 other religions from the AIs.

I went all the way to democracy but only had to spend a short time buying up buildings after that. After enough time in emancipation, I switched back to caste system to push great artists, but with only marginal success.

Mistakes/bad luck:
I missed Judaism by 2 turns because I was trying to finesse it so that it would land in a new city.
Missed getting Music first by 1 turn... and generally I had poor luck with great artists. In the end I only used 4 of them. More frustrating, my last two great artists were unused! They popped out on the last two turns, and by that time my cities didn't need them. Poor planning indeed.

The most embarassing moment came when I was running 50% culture and Mao's cultural boundaries pushed in on my culture cities. I rapidly pushed back, but not before he converted one of my towns to a workshop. Out of spite, I'm sure.

In the end, there was no close threat of an AI victory. They spent a lot of time in war, and Mao only completed the Apollo Program on my victory turn.

All in all, it was an interesting game, especially challenging in getting the 6 cities up, holding borders, and managing all the trading. Being new to this level, I was impressed how much cash flow the AIs provide.

 

[Lexad]

Moonsinger, ain't it Standard-sized map?

Since I got no negative answer concerning my note on AI workers double speed for building improvements, I post my save. It was like 6th attempt that managed to pass 1AD, and the old recipe of putting morons in the tub worked swell. The bad part of one moron being constantly concerned with me was complemented by good part of peacemongers building armies instead of wonders and science. As a result, my opponents rolled out nothing beyond cavalry (which I had) and rifles (which I didn't have), with me having tech and score lead most of the world's history. Still much area for improvement - Holy Shrine would come in handy, as well as having no border with morons and not wasting precious mid-game hammers on units.

Thanx for the quechua-tips, guys, these killers really rock!

 

[superslug]

THE GAUNTLET IS CONCLUDED.

Congratulations to the victors:

Rank Player Date Score
1 Lexad 1476 AD 84209
2 godotnut 1545 AD 42421

G-Major 3 will be started at a future date.

 

[The-Hawk]

Lexad, outstanding game! Any chance we can get you to share your secrets? What worked well?

superslug, it seems as though Moonsinger's and my entries didn't count for the gauntlet. What was the issue, was there a version problem or did I submit incorrectly? Not a big deal (after all, Lexad smoked my times ), but I want to make sure I'm legal next gauntlet.

PS. My first time participating in a gauntlet, it is great fun. Thanks for pulling it all together.

 

[superslug]

Your submissions appear to have been mod version .006, while the Gauntlet itself was .004. One of the reasons the G-Major is on hold right now is partly due to this.

 

[Lexad]

Thanx for congrats, but this result can be improved. I didn't manage GPP properly - enough said I had my GPP city with GLibrary, which gave me 4 useless GScientists - nor slavery, so if anyone wants to improve - you're welcome!

The main points:
0. Marathon speed as it's dates in the relevant range of 15-17 centuries correspond to greater number of turns made.
1. Arid world with high sea level to leave computers minimum living space.
2. Pangea to meet soon everyone for trades, religions' expansion and efficient research.
3. Inca to destroy some of them soon and grab land to build 9 cities for 3 cathedrals of each faith. Also starting Mysticism gives good chances on founding either buddhism or Polytheism yourself.
4. Extra rivals (less land per civ - slower research).
5. 1-2 brain-dead aggressive rivals thrown in a tub of peace-monger wonderfully divert them from religion-founding and wonder-building. Ideally they should always be at war with peaceful. Unfortunatelly, Monty was my neighbour and lost me 2 wars, but slowed down my religious development.
6. Starting forested hill for Quechua churning, either gold for research and empire upkeep or stone for pyramids. I had first at Cuzco and both 1st and 2 nd at Delhi - the first city I captured.
7. Attack with 5 quechua as soon as you get them to the battlefield. If fails - rinse and repeat . Had to do it 4 times after year 1000 BC until got this victory.

I founded Buddhism and captured Indian cities with Hinduism and Judaism and worked tiles of gold, corn, and stone.

An important note - not all people seemed to know it, but at Deity level somputer workers improve land twice as fast as yours. Thus, if you're going to capture a city, you'd better not steal workers but allow them to quickly improve "your" land using techs you might not have.

Then I saw I had no Marble or Bronze on the territory of 2 empires. I saw Marble captured by Egypt, they had excellent land once one gets IronWorking, so I pumped more quechua and got all their cities. Thus 8 cities were captured and none razed. During the whole game I built just 1 city - Cuzco.
After the conquest I had to crawl for pottery, as my upkeep was killing me (negative at zero science). Then, with cottages and financial trait the situation became to improve. Masonry and stone and much preliminary chopping gave me Stonehenge and Pyramids, I switched to Representation for extra 2 happy faces. Oracle allowed CoL-slingshot and Confuciaism, further research gave Philosophy and Taoism.

For border defence accumulated on most "tank-threatened" direction axes and allowed Monty to kill half his army on my defences, brought in war ally, each destroyed one of his cities.

Then I had good relations with all peacemongers - same religion with Fred and Cyrus, cautious Musa, made some trades and gifts, but not too much and avoided giving away happiness resources to limit rival growth. War-mongers were smashed and under control. I switched to OrgReligion and, once I happiness from Calendar, USuffrage. Once I reached Liberalism (took Printing Press) and Nationalism (Hermitage) with Gunpowder for safety, I started to accumulate money instead of spending them - my mistake. I built and purchased missionaries, temples, monasteries (at 3 cultural cities) and cathedrals. Timely Engineer allowed me to get Taj Mahal in Cuzco. Then as nearly all was done, I switched to 90-100% culture trying to get GA in 2 cities. Suicide attack by Aztec was thwarted and their cities captured. It might not be wise for cultural victory, but I tried to save Tenochtitlan with HG and spent 1 GA for culture bomb. 5GA in 2 cities blown cultural bombs - and that was it.

Due to constant fight between AI and unfovarable land I managed to build myself:
Stonehenge
Pyramids
Oracle
Parthenon (for GPP)
Sistine Chapel (for culture from specialists)
Colossus
Taj Mahal (by Engineer)

The technical lead when I started to accumulate money was sufficient to gain victory of any type - just research Military Traditions and get Cavalry when noone had Guilds or Paper.

All in all, that was a good game, but still has enough improvement opportunities.

 

[redemption438]

Lexad, that's amazing!! Thanks for the writeup. Very instructive.

I've been doing only peace games but I guess I'll have to try these Incas after all.

 

[The-Hawk]

I was thinking I would be done with Deity culture for a while... but Lexad's post raises so many new things to try...

Thanks!

 

[superslug]

The end of the two Gauntlets with this update has proven interesting. It was originally my intention to allow only 1.61.004 of the HOF mod, as it was feared it would have competitive advantages of .005 or .006 due to bug fixes. However, those bug fixes were nearly trivial, and I don't believe exploited at all by the .004 Gauntlet submitters.

Furthermore, we didn't make it very obvious that only .004 was allowed, and the players at large assumed .006 was legal. As such, I have decided to retroactively apply .006 submissions to the Gauntlets. This means the new victor lists are as follows:

G-Major 2:

Rank Player Date Score
1 Lexad 1476 AD 84209
2 Moonsinger 1542 AD 66962
3 godotnut 1545 AD 42421
4 The-Hawk 1556 AD 36120

 

[Moonsinger]

Furthermore, we didn't make it very obvious that only .004 was allowed, and the players at large assumed .006 was legal. As such, I have decided to retroactively apply .006 submissions to the Gauntlets. This means the new victor lists are as follows:

I can't believe you revised the list to include me and The-Hawk. Thanks! That's very thoughtful, but you don't have to.

 

[superslug]

I can't believe you revised the list to include me and The-Hawk. Thanks! That's very thoughtful, but you don't have to.

The lack of communication was my error, and the restriction for just .004 proved unneeded. Actually, I tend to think of this decision as the only possible right move...

My only regret is that it moves some folks down the list, as Gauntlet standings will factor into the Challenge (whenever it comes out). Then again, it's not out yet, and it will be best Gauntlet finishes, not average.

 

[The-Hawk]

I can't believe you revised the list to include me and The-Hawk. Thanks! That's very thoughtful, but you don't have to.

I agree 100% with Moonsinger. I had no problem with the original ruling on the mod, but I appreciate the thought!