G-Major LXXXI

[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: Science (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Deity
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Terra
• Speed: Epic
• Leader: Denmark (Harald)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 17th February to 16th March 2017

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

 

[zenmaster]

Deity Epic Science. Nice gauntlet! Precious few of those type of games in the Hall of Fame.

Terra map will squeeze all 8 civs in a relatively small space. I think staking out your first 3 city building sites ASAP is the way to go, as the Deity AI civs will fill the map up FAST.

Building a big enough army to withstand the inevitable early/midgame wars with the AI is imperative, sacrificing faster growth/science if need be. Fast libraries do no good when your city falls, as I have found on Deity more than once.

I think choosing Venice is a must as an AI civ, because you can often get lucky to have it nearby, thus giving yourself more space to expand (as it can't)

Not sure if any of the awesome Deity Science players are into playing at Epic speed. Would be interesting to see how low they could go.

 

[zenmaster]

A bit offtopic, but as I was looking through Deity Science games to check how many Epic Speed games there were, I noticed a fascinating Standard Speed vadalaz subT200 win with the Huns. I looked at the log and saw crazy early capturing of AI cities.

vadalaz, if you see this post, any memories of that game? I am just curious if you were going for a Domination win and switched to Science at some point, or if you went in with a plan to win with Science through conquest. Dealing with the happiness issues of all that early conquest would seem to be the tough part of that approach to me.

 

[vadalaz]

Yeah, I went in the plan to win a conquest-assisted SV. I had a blast playing the Huns on Chieftain for a t180 SV so I thought I'd try it on Deity. To my surprise, it actually worked.

I have a couple of posts about that game in another thread:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fastest-science-victory.563022/page-10#post-14289425
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fastest-science-victory.563022/page-11#post-14292385

 

[zenmaster]

Yeah, I went in the plan to win a conquest-assisted SV. I had a blast playing the Huns on Chieftain for a t180 SV so I thought I'd try it on Deity. To my surprise, it actually worked.

I have a couple of posts about that game in another thread:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fastest-science-victory.563022/page-10#post-14289425
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fastest-science-victory.563022/page-11#post-14292385

Thanks a lot for the links. That thread is very interesting. Science victories still hold a lot of fascination as they play so differently at the various difficulty levels and have so many approaches that could work. So many different civs with different ways to leverage science as well.

Congrats on kicking butt with a conquest science strategy on Deity. That is incredibly fast!

Manpanzee had demonstrated that building up a massive army could pay dividends for Deity Science but never carried it to fruition like that. Did you try it seriously with any civs besides the Huns? Tough to get as good of an early snowball without those battering rams I would imagine.

 

[vadalaz]

Yeah, I've tried other civs as well. Now that I think about it, all three of my sub-200 Deity SVs in HoF were achieved through conquest, I've yet to submit a peaceful one. In the Poland T195 game I believe I went for 4-city tommynt-style Trad/Liberty mix, 4 self-founded cities plus 4 conquered with crossbows. The Spain T181 game was a bit ridiculous, I think it was 5 self-founded plus 3 captured with a CB->XB push? That map was so good it had potential for a sub-170 victory I think, someone in the fast SVs thread reported achieving turn 75 Education on it! I'm kind of curious how fast an optimal run would end on that map, but personally I find it excessively boring to replay maps for some reason.

 

[Denniz]

Gauntlet Results:
G-Major LXXXI - Science, Deity, Standard, Terra, Epic, Denmark (Harald)
1st vadalaz - 1510 AD T-322
2nd R.G.A.M. - Jan 1944 AD T-539

Congratulations!

 

[zenmaster]

A bit late, but congrats to vadalaz on a very fast Deity Epic science win at T322! Denmark's Unique abilities don't give much to help the Science game (though I would imagine vadalaz used the free pillaging to good effect), so that is excellent play to hit that time.

Congrats also to RGAM for braving Deity to get a solid game in. Deity games are always a challenge.