[BTS] G-Minor 231 - Ramesses, Religious - Deadline June 9th

[Noble Zarkon]

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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: Religious (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Monarch
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Tiny
• Speed: Normal
• Map Type: Pangaea
• Civ: Egypt (Ramesses II)
• Opponents: Must include Egypt (Hatshepsut), Ethiopia (Zara Yaqob)
• Version: 3.19.003 or 3.19.004b
• Date: 25th May to 9th June 2018

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

 

[Noble Zarkon]

This is a short deadline as we expect to launch Buffy 005 on June 10th so we've gone for a game you can play quickly.

The current record is 1360 BC, not easy to beat but definitely doable with all the higher levels on these settings having earlier dates. Ramesses is Industrial which helps building the AP and Stonehenge, you may not need the latter as the Obelisk allows you to run 2 Priest specialists for an early Prophet to bulb Theology.

 

[Chaosquo]

Is going for the oracle to get Theology not the preferred strategy or is bulbing faster?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Maybe that's what I did wrong in my very slow attempt!!

 

[Anysense]

Two good guys, both creative. May be use Cathy as a partner? Free +1 and with "tribute", "help", shared civic and wars its should be easy to get her to friendly. Need to make sure that she's not eligible though.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Two good guys, both creative. May be use Cathy as a partner?

Both Zara and Hatty are easy to get to friendly, share a religion and a favourite civic - Theocracy for Zara, OR for Hatty, build the AP in a different religion and spread enough to them to leave you with 74% of the votes

 

[Chaosquo]

Im so confused, built AP in christianity, in hinduism right now to get extra buddy points with zara, i select the religious victory resolution, and next turn the election gets cancelled, no matter if i switch to christianity or stay in hinduism. Nothing else happens, no AI changes religions. This is in 004b, I have attached the autosave on the turn i can select the election.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

For some reason Hatty loses a vote in between turns putting you over the 75% threshold and thus cancelling the vote.

Spoiler Screenshots :

 

[Chaosquo]

Thanks, guess she wipped the city that has christianity?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Thanks, guess she wipped the city that has christianity?

Ah that would probably do it, unlucky!

 

[Chaosquo]

Also I misunderstood the mechanics a bit, if you switch to the AP religion on the vote turn, you still need to stay under 75 % votes, I guess this is to prevent winning by yourself.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

you still need to stay under 75 % votes, I guess this is to prevent winning by yourself

Exactly.

 

[Swordnboard]

I've been playing around with using Ragnar as an additional opponent, because he will both open borders at annoyed and really hates Hatty (bascially permanent worst enemies), so you can DOW each of them once for worker steals and still be able to open borders later on. I guess you might even be able to DOW them twice and mend the relationships with tech gifts after alpha, and there's no limit if spreading religion via city gift. Is there another leader that would work better? I was thinking about someone who likes religions, since it is a bit tougher to get to friendly with Zara if he founds a religion and doesn't spread it to me, but couldn't find a suitable leader.

 

[Chaosquo]

Ragnar sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if worker stealing is even worth it, since you have nothing else to build in your city anyway. I guess it allows you to grow your city earlier. I've had decent success with beelining poly, hoping for Hatty to get meditation and spreading hinduism to Zara.

 

[Swordnboard]

The worker stealing is for chopping the AP. I'm trying to build it within ~3 turns of oracling theology by unleashing about 10 pre-chopped forests, but getting there needs a lot of workers. Usually able to pick up ~2 workers per enemy (non-zara) AI, which is pretty nice. Everything is really bang-bang to beat the T66 record, and even researching writing + mono to be able to oracle theology on time seems a bit tough without double-commerce starts.

Also, the "enemy" AI are super keen on converting to the AP religion for double votes, even if they already have one established in their empire. Anyone have a good solution to that? I guess maybe I could wait until the turn before the vote to deny them the opportunity?

EDIT: Zara Yaqob has "Favorite Religion: Christianity" which happens to be the AP religion I choose most of the time, so he seems more likely to switch. Maybe Jewish AP is a better choice.

Finally, Re: Higher Difficulties having better HOF dates. Some (not all) of those were achieved with the now-banned technique of wartime city liberation. So still nice to shoot for, but definitely we are at a disadvantage compared to some of those games.

 

[Chaosquo]

I've just been building 2 workers and getting BW early to prechop everything and even building roads, got a 1240 game with a 1 gold start. Ive never had the issue of switching to AP religion, do you spread the AP religion to a small or big city?

 

[Swordnboard]

For the enemy AI, I try to spread to smallest city. For my friend, usually the largest one and sometimes all of them if I need the votes and/or don't think he'll convert. I guess it's probably less of a problem without ragnar, since he sometimes even ends up with no religion at all which is troublesome.

Also: 1240 seems quite good, especially for this early on. Nice work!

 

[Chaosquo]

From my understanding, AI will always switch to the religion with the most believers in their whole empire.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I guess maybe I could wait until the turn before the vote to deny them the opportunity?

That's the "traditional" way to play it!

 

[SittinDown]

my first try at winning AP - 300 AD. i built the AP in 925 BC - I didn't really understand how to manipulate the votes, so it took me a while. just rolled a pretty random start, double corn, no commerce.

i decided to go Myst -> Poly -> Mining -> BW -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Masonry -> Monotheism -> Writing -> Theo. I had good food in the capital, so I used the obelisk to pop a GP. ...I built the oracle, but idiotically, I forgot that Theo required writing, so I oracled writing, and used the GP to do Theo. ....worse, that gave Hatty time to found Judiasm which she promptly converted to.

I had 3 cities. I got Hatty to vote for me by converting to her religion.


.........played a 2nd attempt and won at 150 AD. got the AP slower (750 BC), but did better at manipulating the votes.