G-Major LXIII

[Denniz]

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: Culture (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Emperor
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Inland Sea
• Speed: Epic
• Leader: Any
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 16th August to 16th September 2015

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

 

[vadalaz]

So... Aztecs, Poland or Spain?

I'm gonna go with Aztecs and Raging barbs GM-bomb first, seems like a powerful and fun approach here.

Edit: Okay, Aztec culture is pretty crazy... seems like I'll finish Liberty around T85 with just one Cultural CS friend and normal barbs. Shouldn't have bothered with an early monument, my conquest is much slower than my social policy progression... Will probably finish the game anyway.

 

[zenmaster]

So... Aztecs, Poland or Spain?

I'm gonna go with Aztecs and Raging barbs GM-bomb first, seems like a powerful and fun approach here.

Edit: Okay, Aztec culture is pretty crazy... seems like I'll finish Liberty around T85 with just one Cultural CS friend and normal barbs. Shouldn't have bothered with an early monument, my conquest is much slower than my social policy progression... Will probably finish the game anyway.

Good to see you giving this a go. Hope your summer has been well.

On epic speed, the 0 tourism GM bomb is 200 tourism, right? I am assuming on Emperor you are going for a Greece Liberation type thing...
or can the conquest possibly get done before some AI hits 200 like in that Chieftain Marathon Egypt challenge? I wouldn't think so, but I haven't tried this one yet.

After that recent Spain Emperor culture gauntlet, I am looking for Isabella's explorers to hit a faith wonder and the Great Barrier Reef (if that is possible on Inland Sea) though I will settle for Mt. Kilimanjaro or another faith wonder in place of the GBR [emoji4] The GBR is just so incredibly good for Spain. It's 2 wonders for the price of one!

My other effort will be the Celts. Some forests, a faith wonder and some active Celtic Warriors should be competitive as well.

After doing a few Brazil culture games lately, I am trying to think of a good way to get them 2 well-timed golden ages as well as all the faith policies and buildings for SSites in good time here. Those Epic Golden Ages are long...

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[vadalaz]

Thanks. The summer's had its ups and downs but that's life, right? Overall it's been fine though, hope you've been doing well too.

I haven't tested it yet, I think it should be 150 tourism though? I believe Epic is 1.5x slower than Standard, and Marathon is 2x slower than Epic. I scrapped my Aztec game after I discovered Portugal who had 4 cities and a 23 defence capital by t90, not going to get a good finish time like that.

Going for Greek liberation, yes. The bottleneck of this challenge appears to be the conquest rate, while the culture goal seems to be fairly easy to achieve as long as you have a couple of Cultural CSs around and/or a helpful UA. I think I'll give the Huns a go, a battering ram upgrade would really speed things up... Perhaps Songhai could be very good here as well, I remember that barb camp gold was crucial in the Egypt Marathon gauntlet, both for unit purchases and CS gifts.

Brazilian Sacred Sites is a good call. Could be tricky to get a natural Golden Age with the city spam though. I think 2 GAs might be overkill anyway.

 

[Memoryjar]

Egypt sacred sites ?

 

[zenmaster]

Egypt sacred sites ?

Are you thinking happiness help from the burial tombs, quicker Stonehenge/Oracle, and maybe war chariot action? Not a bad idea. A faith NW to speed faith generation would make that very competitive.

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[zenmaster]

Egypt sacred sites ?

Are you thinking happiness help from the burial tombs, quicker Stonehenge/Oracle, and maybe war chariot action? Not a bad idea. A faith NW to speed faith generation would make that very competitive.

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[vadalaz]

I think I'll go with Songhai here for my liberation attempts, they get 112 gold from barb camps (an archer is 270), tripled gold from city capture is great as well. Come to think of it, they might be decent for warry Sacred Sites as well.

 

[vadalaz]

Won on T139 as Songhai. It was really close, again: I killed Harun early but I only took note of his total culture, I didn't check what policies he chose, and in the endgame Greece settles two trash cities as I gift him Mecca... And it turned out that Arabia went Tradition, had 117 culture generated and 4 culture per turn, so I had 8 turns to capture 3 cities. Fortunately I had a pretty significant force there and managed to get the city I needed on the last turn... one turn and one culture point away from disaster.

Spoiler :

Won't be retrying this, I didn't find the map particularly fun for domination. I'll attempt a Sacred Sites game later in the month and see how that compares to GM-bomb.

 

[Mesix]

Nicely done! I don't think I will have time to play this one during this update (perhaps in the 2nd half I might) and this will be a tough benchmark to match.

 

[vadalaz]

Thanks, I think it's a very beatable time though - I'd estimate I lost around 15 turns in the end because I had to chew through 3 Dutch cities, move my army back and then kill 3 more Greek cities, and there was rough terrain all along the way. I finished Liberty around T120 and that would have been a very good finish time, T139 can most likely be beaten by good Sacred Sites games.

Maybe it's best to cripple Alex as much as possible right away, take his capital and leave him with Sparta, it's unlikely he'll settle as aggressively or put up a good fight in the end then. I have never done it this way before, but now it seems to me like the correct way to do it if he spawns close.

 

[Coilean]

Been messing around with a Spain SS strat, best so far is t143, which involved Great Barrier Reef in Madrid (settled ~t10), and Sri Prada in Barcelona (~t30). I did a lot of small things wrong though, like not getting Oracle (to complete SS) or Civil Service (to get Open Borders) soon enough. I also had to deal with a Zulu and Mongol DoW for the last ~15 turns.

I think maybe sub t125 was possible with a more optimized play through on my map, especially since I am still kind of figuring out how to properly do an SS strat. In this case, I think GL to pick up Philo and then begin Oracle was far better than what I did (cash buy library, hard research Philo, then mistime finishing Oracle by ~12 turns for finishing Reformation ASAP). Still trying to figure out just how much research I can do while still maximizing Faith growth: so far haven't built an NC, so maybe I will try that in my next attempt before getting up city #3 (I wasted a lot of hammers getting beat to Stonehenge this time, NC would have been far better).

 

[zenmaster]

Been messing around with a Spain SS strat, best so far is t143, which involved Great Barrier Reef in Madrid (settled ~t10), and Sri Prada in Barcelona (~t30). I did a lot of small things wrong though, like not getting Oracle (to complete SS) or Civil Service (to get Open Borders) soon enough. I also had to deal with a Zulu and Mongol DoW for the last ~15 turns.

I think maybe sub t125 was possible with a more optimized play through on my map, especially since I am still kind of figuring out how to properly do an SS strat. In this case, I think GL to pick up Philo and then begin Oracle was far better than what I did (cash buy library, hard research Philo, then mistime finishing Oracle by ~12 turns for finishing Reformation ASAP). Still trying to figure out just how much research I can do while still maximizing Faith growth: so far haven't built an NC, so maybe I will try that in my next attempt before getting up city #3 (I wasted a lot of hammers getting beat to Stonehenge this time, NC would have been far better).

Interesting game! Another approach you can try is foregoing the focus on research. All research does is get you to Philosophy faster for Oracle/Temples and to Civil Service at some point. On Emperor, the lead culture civ will probably have enough tech to get Civil Service early enough to help you, so they can do the heavy lifting in research. If they are running away in culture too fast, you can build units to attack them if need be. On Epic speed, conquest should not be too onerous, even at Emperor level. If you consider the Oracle helping you to get to cheap religious buildings and finishing Piety earlier as opposed to focusing on it getting Reformation asap, you don't need that ultraearly Philosophy. That is usually how I roll, often not building any libraries at all, even in the capital. A research-focused SS approach can also work well too, especially if you can get to Civil Service in a reasonable time, but building all those Science buildings and wonders detracts from your city settling and faith production efforts somewhat.

Also, as an aside, I never put Zulus in my culture victory attempts anymore. Despite their bias supposedly being low for culture, they uncannily are often among the culture leaders when I include them in my games. They expand quickly, and seem to get monuments up, so they never have those really low Culture scores you sometimes see from other "low culture bias" civs. In addition, on higher levels, they will attack your expanding empire of sacred sites early and often! Even if they are fended off or pacified, they rarely give you open borders to help your peaceful tourism effort against them.


Good luck on this if you try it again! I will definitely be giving Spain a try and will do a writeup after I get a win in.

 

[Manpanzee]

I've experimented a bit with using the Oracle in SS games, and I'm usually not a fan. It's good if you're going to use some policies in Liberty, but for pure Piety (which I think is better) it's typically unnecessary. Especially with Spain, you should have no reason to go into Liberty. I do like Great Library sometimes, but it isn't always needed. National College is definitely unnecessary.

One interesting thing I do is delaying expansion a bit. Sometimes I'll even leave a bunch of Settlers sitting on spots for long periods, waiting until I can actually start faith-buying stuff. This is important because extra cities really slow down policy acquisition, especially since you don't have natural per-city culture and you're incentivized to build Shrines before Monuments. In the past, I've seriously slowed down games by all-out city-spamming and then having to wait forever to get my Reformation.

Because I'm not too focused on spamming cities early, I can delay Settler output in favor of building an army. This is really nice for CS quests, as getting a Cultural Ally is the #1 best thing you can do for policy acquisition, and Mercantile allies are the best way to get the happiness for 15+ cities. Having an army also helps by enabling you to wipe out the highest culture AI, significantly reducing the tourism you need to win.

My favorite AI list for SS is: Babylon, India, Korea, Morocco, Portugal, Sweden, Venice. Since I plan on warring, I don't mind having some wonder builders in there, and I don't like having AIs that might be tough to kill. Low expansiveness is the top priority for me.

 

[RaidandTrade]

May have another go. It's a long game and missing SS when that's your gambit hurts 1.5x more than standard!!!


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[zenmaster]

I've experimented a bit with using the Oracle in SS games, and I'm usually not a fan. It's good if you're going to use some policies in Liberty, but for pure Piety (which I think is better) it's typically unnecessary. Especially with Spain, you should have no reason to go into Liberty. I do like Great Library sometimes, but it isn't always needed. National College is definitely unnecessary.

One interesting thing I do is delaying expansion a bit. Sometimes I'll even leave a bunch of Settlers sitting on spots for long periods, waiting until I can actually start faith-buying stuff. This is important because extra cities really slow down policy acquisition, especially since you don't have natural per-city culture and you're incentivized to build Shrines before Monuments. In the past, I've seriously slowed down games by all-out city-spamming and then having to wait forever to get my Reformation.

Because I'm not too focused on spamming cities early, I can delay Settler output in favor of building an army. This is really nice for CS quests, as getting a Cultural Ally is the #1 best thing you can do for policy acquisition, and Mercantile allies are the best way to get the happiness for 15+ cities. Having an army also helps by enabling you to wipe out the highest culture AI, significantly reducing the tourism you need to win.

My favorite AI list for SS is: Babylon, India, Korea, Morocco, Portugal, Sweden, Venice. Since I plan on warring, I don't mind having some wonder builders in there, and I don't like having AIs that might be tough to kill. Low expansiveness is the top priority for me.

I agree wholeheartedly on the questionable need for Oracle. I will generally only build it if I have a lot of production in my capital and good faith generation at the time or else if I am really really hurting in culture.

In my extensive non-Deity SS experience, you are more likely to be hamstrung by lack of cities than by getting to Sacred Sites too late. (Deity is a different ballgame altogether of course). Faith generation is everything, and city-spamming is the fastest way to get faith usually. It creates the virtual cycle of generating faith with Shrines and Temples that allows you to faithbuy buildings for culture/faith/happiness and generates gold when your cities get religion (through Initiation Rites) which allows you to buy more Settlers... (or bribes for Mercantile/Cultural CS etc.). You also need all those cities sooner rather than later to get the faith buildings up for Sacred Sites and spread your religion to CSes and other civs ASAP. As you faithbuy mosques and monasteries, your culture gets where it needs to be soon enough.

Building a conquering army is an even money proposition at best, and usually the odds are not with you. You look like a genius when there is only one runaway culture civ and it is within reach of your army/navy. However, the following scenarios are more likely: There is not just one runaway culture civ, but several; The runaway culture civ(s) are too far away to be taken out in good time. Sacred Sites culture wins are a race, and conquest on a non-cramped map takes time. Building that army also takes your focus away from building Settlers and temples/caravans for faster peaceful SS victory, so it is somewhat of a gamble that you get nearby runaways and fortunate nearby CS quests to help your Sacred Sites cause. I usually don't play those odds. Building enough units to protect your Settlers and fulfill nearby barb camp quests is usually enough to smooth the wheels to a fast SS win, given faith generation is good. Sometimes building an army works great when the one runaway culture AI is near, but it is more of a gamble than a good rule of thumb. If you can build the army without taking away too much focus from city and faith generation, fine, but that is often not the case. Just my takeaways from many Sacred Sites games.

 

[vadalaz]

Something to keep in mind is that if you have a large enough army, you can take those faraway AIs' expos in peace deals without even attacking them. This can be very useful, as not only it slows them down by taking away one monument, but you can also send trade routes from there for a tourism boost, or even rush-buy/build an army and attack again later.

Alternatively, you can take all their cash and resources to buy settlers and keep the happiness up. The only problem here is that on Emperor you need quite a lot of units for the AI to acknowledge your military superiority. Particularly annoying with Greece in liberation games, as Hoplites have high combat strength.

 

[zenmaster]

Something to keep in mind is that if you have a large enough army, you can take those faraway AIs' expos in peace deals without even attacking them. This can be very useful, as not only it slows them down by taking away one monument, but you can also send trade routes from there for a tourism boost, or even rush-buy/build an army and attack again later.

Alternatively, you can take all their cash and resources to buy settlers and keep the happiness up. The only problem here is that on Emperor you need quite a lot of units for the AI to acknowledge your military superiority. Particularly annoying with Greece in liberation games, as Hoplites have high combat strength.

Yes, that is an excellent point. You can leverage an army to get direct benefits. Having that army yields more benefits the lower the difficulty level I think, though, as you alluded to.

At Emperor, I think it is harder to leverage. As an objective anecdote, you can look at the Sweden Emperor level Inland Sea Culture victory HoF entry that has a solid 15 entrants. Cromagnus had the top entry at T133 for a long time with a game where he conquered almost all the AIs (I think he had El Dorado too). Dignitas came along and trumped that with a T129 game where it looks like he took out the top 2 AI competitors. Svinopes came along and blew them away with a T111 pure peaceful game. I am not sure how your 4th place entry played out. Anyway, I think the tech/production diversions to build a conquering army in an Emperor SSites game aren't worth it. I think you can skate with not much more than archers and warriors if your faith is great unless you put Zulus or Huns into your game [emoji6] . You will face an invasion in that case if they are anywhere close.

Going for Liberation is another story, of course. Nice Songhai Liberation victory in this gauntlet! I hate Inland Sea maps for conquest. It seems it should be a nice conquest map, but it never is!

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[vadalaz]

At Emperor, I think it is harder to leverage. As an objective anecdote, you can look at the Sweden Emperor level Inland Sea Culture victory HoF entry that has a solid 15 entrants. Cromagnus had the top entry at T133 for a long time with a game where he conquered almost all the AIs (I think he had El Dorado too). Dignitas came along and trumped that with a T129 game where it looks like he took out the top 2 AI competitors. Svinopes came along and blew them away with a T111 pure peaceful game. I am not sure how your 4th place entry played out.

Most entries in that table are from the time when Reformation was the 4th policy in Piety, not third like it is now. Note that Svinopes's entry uses a different opponent list as well; the gauntlet had a specific opponent list, a culture-focused bunch. Personally I just played it to get Sweden out of the way for VVV.

I agree about Inland Sea - I'm making another liberation attempt right now as the Huns, and there's a really annoying mountain range with a lot of rough terrain. But... I also found a city-state with Fountain of Youth in its second ring and captured it around turn 20 with an upgraded warrior. I hope I can beat my Songhai time. That mountain range is really going to slow things down though.

 

[vadalaz]

Well, rough terrain can't stop you when you have Horse Archers... Won on turn 110. This time culture was slower than conquest, Hunnic UUs are the best. FoY on top of that is just overkill.

Spoiler :