[BTS] G-Minor 230 - Celts, Conquest - Deadline May 24th

[Noble Zarkon]

​

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.

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Conquest (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Immortal
• Starting Era: Any
• Map Size: Small
• Speed: Any
• Map Type: Great Plains
• Civ: Celt
• Opponents: Must include America (Lincoln), Egypt (Ramesses II), Ethiopia (Zara Yaqob), Persia (Cyrus)
• Version: 3.19.003 or 3.19.004b
• Date: 25th April to 24th May 2018

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

 

[enKage]

​

• Starting Era: Any

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

Number of turns is calculated? Otherwise everyone will play ancent, also dont see any reason not to play on marathon speed


Anyway
Just finished, I built 1 worker, Lincoln was so kind to give me endlless supply

Fun quick game, after few yers of civ detox I have just been reminded how charismatic is an overpowered trait

 

[lymond]

Hmm...this looks like an interesting game. Small GP maps can make for some fast games. I'm thinking chariots could run the map if played right with target on middle/upper West quadrant for cow/horse/gems bonanza. Flexible speed option ensure fastest dates on Mara, of course, so really no comparison. I abhor Mara so will play Normal if I play this one.

I tend to like Brennus better (for Spiritual, but Boudi makes for better short game since Spiritual does little but save maybe 1 anarchy switch early. Fast barrack probably key here although otherwise Agg doesn't do much unless one goes Axes or GWs. GWs are alot of fun though so may try them out, although chariots should be much faster or HAs even.

 

[Anysense]

I just had a bit of fun with gallic warriors on Quick. HA rush might be a very good choice here, parcticularly beacuse of the map script making it easy to roll commerce+lots of food.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Number of turns is calculated? Otherwise everyone will play ancent, also dont see any reason not to play on marathon speed

Most people will play Ancient as it goes by victory date however sometimes I like to leave these things open for those chasing EQM etc, people have wider objectives sometimes than just competing in a Gauntlet.

 

[Lazybones]

I agree with Noble, in this case I just wanted to have a bit more fun though so I did a future start . Great Plains is not my favourite mapscript and modern warfare you don't get to play all of the time. Maybe I'll play an ancient start if I have time.

 

[SittinDown]

...I've really been enjoying this one. kind of new to great plains maps. ...this really over-turns a lot of the typical practices for good play on maps like big & small or continents, or even pangaea.

I have to agree on the mid-North start as the best of the bunch. I had a city with 2 plains cows, a horse, and a wheat, and I was pumping out 2 chariots every 3 turns without bronze or chopping. It's easy to take out the mid-South neighbor with chariots because you can deploy so fast and make roads easily. ...I found I had to skip BW in favor of pottery and writing to prop up the economy, because I keep rolling maps where the gems aren't there, so I need capital river cottages. BW really doesn't help with a chariot rush when you don't have any forests. But mining is essential.

Doing the chariot rush right is also a bigger challenge than I expected. I like when Ramses is the southern neighbor, because I always seem to capture a shrine. I haven't tried a 2-city rush yet, they've been 3-city rushes. I think a 2-city rush might be worth attempting.

 

[lymond]

Yeah...GP maps can be a lot of fun. GP is not one of the standardized map scripts so you can roll some bizarre - even resourceless starts, but you can also roll really powerful starts, and the resource distribution on GP is quite predictable otherwise. (just the start algorithms are not standardized like say Pangaea)

Been a while since I've done the early GP conquest thing on high level. There have been a few various HOG guantlets/challenges on GP with early finish expectations. IMM can be trickier for that, but I tend to focus on getting out a chariot for each AI to harass them while I build up a larger army. Stop them expanding and improving strats. Like you don't want Ram and Cyrus with horses and no one with metal. BW and even IW can be worth teching though just for visibility...otherwise teching in general is not needed and you can go full tax the rest of the game.

Capture gold and pillaging can help stay afloat. And with chariots you really never need to build a settler. HAs or GW you probably want 1 or 2 more cities.

 

[enKage]

I would say northeast start is also powerful:
1) deer + furs and we start wth hunting, so it is possible to go straight BW and skip both agriculture and/or AH
2) lots of forest to chop

Or keep rolling maps for floodplain cows/riverside floodplain corn with silver/gems in BFC

 

[SittinDown]

FYI - I'm playing on normal speed, and have no insight on marathon.

Or keep rolling maps for floodplain cows/riverside floodplain corn with silver/gems in BFC

• I tried that last night. I had a FP corn, 7 tile with a stone, and 3 desert silver . but I was in the SW corner, and had no horses . I teched IW fast, built the mids, and took construction by T100. ...and it took a while to mobilize that army and the Southern and Western opponent has lots of hills, so city-attack pre-catapults is really tough with the units available. ...I should probably have REX'ed the southwest instead of doing Mids, but I was curios to see how mids would play out.

northeast start is also powerful:

• I liked that one too, and played a bunch there before realizing I liked middle-North a little better, at least with this leader. The deer & furs are nice for quick commerce and good food, but I was having trouble grabbing metals and horses up there, so I wasn't able to start an offensive fast enough even though I had a strong economy.

I feel like I'm only doing OK, but here's what I've been doing....

Middle-north, I can get a chariot rush started before turn 50. AI's are all close, and the land is open for full use of 2-move. Worker-stealing is easy. There are always lots of horses, cows, and wheat. Usually enough hammers with food that pumping out units is easy without chopping or whipping. There's enough river in the middle that I haven't missed a commerce tile much (but you have to cottage or your econ crashes fast, so gems would be a boost). I've been doing Ag -> AH -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Mining -> Writing -> BW. Chariots lose steam quick , but they can wipe out a flat-land opponent, and get HA's as they run out of power. I've been doing better with a 2-city, 1-worker settle than when I tried a 3-city 2-worker settle. .....with an IMP leader in this land, you could really pump out settlers fast.

• ...when I was skipping the Chariot rush, I usually had 1 or 2 more cities, but my HA date wasn't any better, and the AI's usually switch from expand to unit mode by then. Maintenance costs are really high on this map. Worker stealing keeps them in expand mode. Lincoln will case fire easily after a worker steal, and I think you need to take advantage of that to have a good finish date.

 

[Lazybones]

I ended up giving ancient start a go but had to build a second city to get horses. I was luckily able to take out Cyrus, Lincoln and Ramesses before any of them connected copper or horses. Zara had copper though so I had to choke until I was able to overwhelm. I didn't raze Thebes because I thought it had gems in the BFC but it didn't . I also never reached pottery so was very reliant on capture and pillage gold.

 

[SittinDown]

I was luckily able to take out Cyrus, Lincoln and Ramesses before any of them connected copper or horses.

Nice! what speed did you play on?

 

[Lazybones]

Marathon, for relatively cheaper troop costs and movement. I guess a downside is the longer time to play out a start to see if you get horses/copper.

 

[elitetroops]

Meh, I missed that the deadline is so close. No way I can play this in the next couple of days.

If someone is still having a go, my recipe for a game like this would be:

-Play Boudica, marathon speed
-Start by moving settler towards center of map a few turns, to get closer to the AI and only leave empty room behind you that doesn't need to be cleared.
-Find a hammer strong spot and settle.
-Spam warriors, steal some workers.
-Warrior rush the first one or two (or three?) AI:

• Wait until they move out first settler. (Use espionage screen to find out who is building settler.)
  
• If you declare and move in diagonally next to city same turn settler moves out, settler escort will not return to city (settler will)
  
• 10-12 warriors is usually good for non-hill city with 2 archers and 20% cultural
• Sometimes they move out 2 archers with first settler, then 5-6 warriors is enough

-Once you have first city captured, you can start using city gifting shenanigans to have them move their defenders out. (ctrl+click scoreboard to open trade screen if diplo screen doesn't allow any trading option yet.)
-Eventually connect some strategic to kill the last guys.

Shouldn't be any need to tech further than AH and/or BW. Workers improve a couple of resources, then mainly build roads towards AI.

Taking out one AI with warriors is actually quite easy. You only need to build them, then walk in at the right time. Taking out two AI is doable, but requires some luck.

 

[Swordnboard]

Just finished tonight, quite a fun one!

Boudica, Marathon, Ancient Start, No Barbarians, Aggressive AI.
Strong production start in the SW corner with horse in the BFC, heavy worker stealing and chariot rushes, a little city gifting at the end to lure Ramses's 5 archers out of a hill city. Got lucky with relatively few hill cities, AI went for workers/settlers/Stonehenge rather than archer spam, and no AI able to connect a strategic resource even though I flubbed up scouting Ramses (NE corner) for a good while. Could have done a bit better by gifting more aggressively I think, also I chose worker-first which may have been dubious (Elitetroops's warrior-rush idea might be really strong).
Finished up T151 (1990 BC).

Spoiler Capital and Finish :

 

[enKage]

Use espionage screen to find out who is building settler.

How to read it from esp screen?

 

[Swordnboard]

How to read it from esp screen?

When looking at an enemy city on the espionage screen, it's possible to ascertain the hammers an has AI invested in a build by looking at the cost of the sabotage production mission relative to other missions. I think there are actually multiple techniques for this, but one that works is (Sabotage Production Cost / Support City Revolt Cost) * 108.33. Settlers are much larger than any other ancient-era build (except henge I guess), so you can usually tell. You can also look at the AI's worked tiles (look for little huts on the tiles) and see if food is being used as hammers (i.e. they are building a worker or settler) by comparing the number of hammers invested turn-over-turn.

 

[elitetroops]

I prefer:
Hammers invested = Sabotage production / poison water * 20

Nice round number, easy to calculate rough estimate at a glance.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Congratulations to swordnboard for winning G-Minor 230 with a stunning date, good levels of participation this time as well which is good to see.

Rank | Player | Date | Score
1| @Swordnboard |1990 BC|86,088
2| @Chaosquo |1500 BC|83,534
3| @Lazybones|1380 BC|99,423

 

[Chaosquo]

grats to swordnboard, i had an amazing gold/gem double cow start, got free wheel, but I went for HA and overproduced units at the end, could have easily shaved off 10 to 20 turns off my date with better play.