G-Minor CI

Launched my spaceship T200. My land just wasn't good enough to keep pace with Vadalaz ' game. I hit Radio on the same turn as his game but then I hit plastics 3-4 turns behind and finished 4 turns behind. Too many subpar tiles which started getting worked soon after Radio. Didn't make any major screwups in the end; just limited by science. Topped out at 52 population and 919 science. Had to wait on a necessary Great Scientist a bit late before popping Hubble but I had been good about getting GP help up asap all game so it couldn't be helped. Faithbought 4 GSes which seems about the limit you can reach.

Planted 4 academies. May have gained or lost turns at crucial policy juncture soon acter adopting freedom. I had 2 academies planted and one coming soon. I had a few CS allies but nowhere near the full 16 I had at endgame. After getting the 2 free early adopter policies in Freedom, (Avant Garde +25% gp generation and Civil Society specialists use less food) I had a tough choice for the next SP. The usual Freedom 2nd tier awesomeness of specialists yielding less unhappiness nd longer golden ages or Freedom 2nd tier New Deal which boosts academy science bulbs or Scholasticism. Happiness was not an issue at all but my Great Artists were lined up to start making the perpetual Golden Age until game end soon after hitting the next natural GAge. I only had 3-4 CS allies at the time and was not set up to get others real soon. I had 2 academies at the time. I opted for longer golden ages, then beelined to get New Deal then got Scholasticism. If I had played it differently it may have affected things but I'm not sure how actually. The earlier academy boost may have bought me a couple turns but I would have lost Golden Age turns along the line.

Main trouble area beside running out of great tiles was the map. Stringy continents with only 3 other AIs on my continent (and me in the middle of it) meant much fewer ruins than I had hoped for and a relatively late World Congress as I researched PPress 5-10 turns before finding last civ. A roundish pangaea or a funky map where I had a big sheltered area of ruins to mine would have been much better.

Oh, and there really is a first time for everything-- this game was the first in which I intentionally built a caravansary! My landlocked cap had only 1 CS initially in caravan range, so I had to build if to get any trade routes going! My puppeted cities love to build useless caravansaries most games, but in this game one was actually vital!

I think Vadalaz' benchmarks are spot on as to what you should ideally shoot for. The better your land, the faster and smoother your endgame will be. Vadalaz had 53 pop at game end and I had 52, so I think you really have to be around 50 at least to break the T200 barrier.

OCC really is different, so heed Vadalaz' advice and start faithbuying GS really early as you can't buy spaceship parts on the same turn you faithbuy. I almost started a turn or two too late, but my science was a turn or two slow as well so it worked out. If you are buying all your spaceship parts you need at least 6 turns to do it too.

Do not sweat culture or happiness, they were minor or negligible considerations all game. Getting the key social policies in Tradition/Rationalism asap is still important, but there is no need to stress about getting all the commerce/freedom/order policies you need. At Chieftain, they come easily in the mid-late game with any effort at all at cultural CS or wonders. Happiness was not an issue at all unless I was planning out Golden Ages.

I will try the Major I think before coming back to this one. I think being patient or lucky about getting great starting terrain is the key.

Almost forgot. Can someone who uilt World's fair or one of the other world congress projects in this gauntlet tell me about how many turns it took? If feasible, I have a far out idea to beeline PPress instead of astronomy after education to found World Congress early, then beeline to Satellites to try to get International Space Station voted 8n early enougb to actually build and help. An extra GS and +33% to bulbing techs sounds pretty sweet on this science starved gauntlet. I was building research much of the endgame after the specialist buildings and science wonders were done; I think building Space Station would be worth it if it could be done in time.
 
ISS is 6800 hammers on Standard speed, according to the wikia. I suppose that's 4533 on Quick, so with 180 hammers per turn it'll take 25 turns to build.

Assuming T135 Plastics, I suppose you can bulb your way to Satellites and get it on T145. Then it'll take another 15 turns to propose and pass ISS, and 25 turns to build it. So it'll only be active on T185... and that's if you timed the Congress perfectly. And then it'll take another ~10 turns to wrap up the game. I don't think it's worth it, you'll be giving up a lot of your bulbing power to get to Satellites early and you'll be building the project instead of "Research" for a really long time too. On crazy land you can probably win in the low 180s anyway, if you play the endgame perfectly.
 
Some other tidbits:
OCC => liberating a city state does not work.

OCC => If you take freedom, remember that it will take 6 turns to buy all the parts,
and you can't buy scientists at the same time.

Red Fort (1pt?) and Brandenberg Gate (2pts?) give scientist points.

Great points! Sorry I didn't see your post before sending my latest in

If you are far ahead in strength, you can pillage your way to spaceship parts. You can get not-quite infantry (80 gold and they are infantry) as the second 2nd tier policy in Freedom (there's nothing really good, as opposed to your 1st 2nd tier). Send them into 1 or more countries and pillage/walk every turn. The damage done by opposing forces is minor. 6infantry * ~25$/turn = 1 spaceship part every ~8
turns. Of course, on this difficulty, $ is probably not a major problem.

Ideally you should not have to resort to this, but it is great advice if someone is in a bind for cash at game end. If you build your finance buildings and are able to run trade routes and go into Commerce like is optimal, you should be swimming in enough cash to buy all you need throughout the game. I think this is gpod damage control advice for late game messes though. If you just need a little cash to get that last gold for the last spaceship part, you can jist disband those Foreign Legions for cash too. That is what I usually do in general.

The other reason I think this is not something you should plan for is that in this OCC, New Deal is probably the best tier 2 freedom policy. The happiness/golden age policy normally rules, but happiness is pretty much a nonissue in this one. Getting bulbs in any way from a non-rationalism policy is rare. Since it is probably best to plant multiple academies in this one, New Deal is pretty strong.

One thing I disagree with - some of the AIs will settle well w/i your future expansion range (Askia settled about 5 tiles away). You'll eventually reach out about 6 tiles, and though you cannot work them for food/production, you will get the lux/non-lux on them. Think aluminum...

I see your point, but I don't think it is a big deal. Aluminum can be had from a CS ally or by using your Brandenburg Gate general to take rhe tile if need be. I actually liked it when the AIs came to settle near me as it meant no barb camps and gave me trade route destinations!


I found myself taking out some of the AIs just to stop them spamming their religion, as I had Tithe. Hm.. religious wars for monetary reason. Nothing cynical there.

I love it when people beat on the AI on general principle! Unfortunately, I chose to play nice all game after a worker steal because I wanted maximum safe trade routes all game and wanted to be able to trade for any We Love the King Day luxes I needed. I will take it out on the AI in the donination gauntlet.

You probably don't want Venice or Austria - they may buy up the Maritime city states.

Excellent point Should have mentioned it in the walkthrough.

Great points, all!
 
ISS is 6800 hammers on Standard speed, according to the wikia. I suppose that's 4533 on Quick, so with 180 hammers per turn it'll take 25 turns to build.

Assuming T135 Plastics, I suppose you can bulb your way to Satellites and get it on T145. Then it'll take another 15 turns to propose and pass ISS, and 25 turns to build it. So it'll only be active on T185... and that's if you timed the Congress perfectly. And then it'll take another ~10 turns to wrap up the game. I don't think it's worth it, you'll be giving up a lot of your bulbing power to get to Satellites early and you'll be building the project instead of "Research" for a really long time too. On crazy land you can probably win in the low 180s anyway, if you play the endgame perfectly.
Sigh. After seeing the numbers, I concur. Thanks for the quick analysis.

After playing through a full game, I'm even mpre impressed by your jungle game. I think you worked your land really really well.
 
After playing through a full game, I'm even mpre impressed by your jungle game. I think you worked your land really really well.
Thanks. 8 jungle tiles with trading posts and one banana tile were giving me 26 raw beakers a turn, which is what you'd get from 13 extra population! After modifiers it's 80.6 bpt, a really nice boost.

I tried rerolling a bit more, but nothing good so far. One start had crazy food, 6 flood plains wheat, and those are potentially 7-food tiles, but there was no mountain unfortunately.

I'm thinking it's a good idea to leave your spy outside your capital and let AIs steal as much as they can, and also send all the traderoutes to AI neighbours to improve their science. RAs might actually be worth something then... I didn't bother doing this in my game, but next time I will. There's too much money anyway, might as well sign some RAs.
 
Or alternatively, have CSs conquer all but 1 AI capital to maximize Scholasticism yields. :crazyeye:
 
I'm thinking it's a good idea to leave your spy outside your capital and let AIs steal as much as they can, and also send all the traderoutes to AI neighbours to improve their science. RAs might actually be worth something then... I didn't bother doing this in my game, but next time I will. There's too much money anyway, might as well sign some RAs.

I actually did that in my game. Not with the intent of signing RAs but because I don't care what the AI spies do on Chieftain and every spy that can rig CS elections is useful to me. I am a serial forgiver too after the AIs contritely fess up to stealing techs, so I can earn the small forgiveness diplo bonus. It may have actually helped as I got a very late friendship with Sweden who had been neutral and rebuffed my advances all game. I think most civs stole Education at some point so there must have been some universities floating around.

Still, everyone was eras behind and getting 10-15 bulbs per turn from me in trade routes so I'm not sure if RAs would have even bumped me a turn or two in a discovery. I only was offered one and it was near enough to game end it may not have triggered. I didn't seek them out with my 2-3 "friends".
 
Speaking of making AI "friends", it is probably worth mentioning a couple other related points from my game that refer to previous posts.

Despite playing peacefully 98% of the game, I only had 1 friend most of the game (a weak Carthage) and got 2 late. The reasons varied.

Wu Zetian was a total ice queen to me yet again. I am definitely going back to edit the walkthrough and nix China as my choice. First, she instantly expanded such that her territory blocked exploration of our snaky continent. My pathfinders were on a mission from God so I had to declare war simply to pass through. Settled a peace deal sooon thereafter. Most civs could get over that quickly. Not China. Guarded attitude all game despite multiple trade routes and my religion spreading there. She also built all the leftover wonders I might have considered building in the late game. In previous games, China has always forward settled on me, stolen key wonders, etc. Memo to self: Never put China on an AI opponent list again.

At some point, a CS gave a quest to denounce faroff Assyria. Rome had denounced Assyria too, so I did it. Soon all the cool civs were doing it, giving me good diplo bonuses which helped get me the other 2 friendships.

Zlither mentioned sending troops to take out religion spammers. To avoid warmonger penalties and lessen unit cost and upkeep, I tend to deal with them preemptively with a Great Prophet. In this game I had a Great Prophet spread my Taoism to the Moroccan Holy City before his Islam had even spread to his expos. That's why I especially focus on fast religion often. Thus, rather than enhancing fast and spamming missionaries, the Sultan spent his faith getting Islam back in working order, so it didn't interfere with my tithes until late game when it didn't matter. A screen of Great People camped outside your one city is all you need to avoid getting converted late game as well. Needless to say though, normally friendly Morocco took a long time to cool off after my conversion of its capital.

Rome is not a usual add in my games and I saw why. Despite me denouncing his enemy and me being far away so unable to cheese him off in any way, I got a late game denunciation for no apparent reason. It seemed like one of those "You are doing too well, so I'm denouncing you" kind of thing.

AI relations are always interesting, and a juggling of playing nice enough to get safe trade routes/WLTKD lux trades and beating on the AI to stunt their progress and get workers, tributes, and influence bonuses with CSes and other AIs.
 
Pretty good game, despite some clearly suboptimal play. I got a nice start with basically zero freshwater but 4 Bananas and lots of Jungle in general. I peaked at 14 Jungle tiles, which is quite a lot of science. Didn't chop, no matter what -- I left my Spices unimproved all game and never excavated my Coal or Aluminum. Got Coal from a CS eventually and bought a Recycling Center for Aluminum. The Jungle meant I had amazing midgame science, but growth could have been better -- not a ton of 3+ food tiles, and I only had one WLTKD all game long. There were three Maritime CS on the map, which I think is about average, but I didn't meet one of them until near the end. Tons of Militaristic and Mercantile CS around, which are pretty useless for these purposes.

I had the idea of using Interfaith Dialogue, so I did some weird things, including picking religious AIs as opponents. I also opened Piety, thinking I could build the Great Mosque of Djenne and get ~250 beakers per Missionary, which would've been ok. I even took Messiah as my enhancer, dreaming of finishing Piety and planting a bunch of Holy Sites. None of these things happened, and my religion never spread outside my capital. I don't think it mattered too much, since none of the other founder beliefs would have made much difference, and I had all the faith I needed without Reliquary. Opening Piety did absolutely nothing, but only cost me maybe a bit of gold and 8 turns of CS science, which is NBD.

Benchmarks were T62 Edu, T98 Scientific Theory, T124 Plastics. I planted 4 Great Scientists, bulbed one for Penicillin, then bulbed periodically to hurry remaining relevant techs. Oxforded Radio (T103) and used Rationalism finisher for Satellites. I took Free Thought before Secularism, which I think was clearly right for my game -- first time I've done that in a good long time.

I enjoyed this game, nice quick and easy change of pace from Deity stuff.
 

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Zlither mentioned sending troops to take out religion spammers. To avoid warmonger penalties and lessen unit cost and upkeep, I tend to deal with them preemptively with a Great Prophet. In this game I had a Great Prophet spread my Taoism to the Moroccan Holy City before his Islam had even spread to his expos. That's why I especially focus on fast religion often. Thus, rather than enhancing fast and spamming missionaries, the Sultan spent his faith getting Islam back in working order, so it didn't interfere with my tithes until late game when it didn't matter. A screen of Great People camped outside your one city is all you need to avoid getting converted late game as well. Needless to say though, normally friendly Morocco took a long time to cool off after my conversion of its capital.

In the game I tried, because of free Calendar: SH -> GL -> ToA -> HG, so prophet went early to others w/ Pantheons. Still Morocco was sending out prophets so fast it hurt. It wasn't going to be a great turn-score game, so ... stomp.

Many people have made the comment (in other threads) that a GP on Inquisitor in a city will stop others from converting your city, but I've had it happen to me just recently (with my GP in the city). Another GP came by and it hurt.
 
Well, this was a slog of micro, even busting out Calc to figure the earliest I could do my final bulbing with dozens of GS.
I built 3 academies, a manufactory(?) and whatever you call the merchant one which I just used for the 50 faith as I didn't need the cash and didn't want to figure out who I could get the best cash award from.

Nothing special about the capital except Petra, and a bunch of silver (but thats interchangeable with any luxury). Chiefly this was about desert folklore, I spent an obscene amount of faith on GS going all the way up to the 4000 faith level.

But at the end with 50ish pop, many farms/mines converted to trading posts my science was like 850. The basic gameplay and a good city can get under 200, but (as Manpanzee just showed) to get the fastest time you need a good city with a load of jungles.

Those seem to be tough to roll, I've yet to see even a sort of playable one. Much easier when you can finagle with the settings for a map.
 

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Pretty good game, despite some clearly suboptimal play. I got a nice start with basically zero freshwater but 4 Bananas and lots of Jungle in general. I peaked at 14 Jungle tiles, which is quite a lot of science. Didn't chop, no matter what -- I left my Spices unimproved all game and never excavated my Coal or Aluminum. Got Coal from a CS eventually and bought a Recycling Center for Aluminum. The Jungle meant I had amazing midgame science, but growth could have been better -- not a ton of 3+ food tiles, and I only had one WLTKD all game long. There were three Maritime CS on the map, which I think is about average, but I didn't meet one of them until near the end. Tons of Militaristic and Mercantile CS around, which are pretty useless for these purposes.

I had the idea of using Interfaith Dialogue, so I did some weird things, including picking religious AIs as opponents. I also opened Piety, thinking I could build the Great Mosque of Djenne and get ~250 beakers per Missionary, which would've been ok. I even took Messiah as my enhancer, dreaming of finishing Piety and planting a bunch of Holy Sites. None of these things happened, and my religion never spread outside my capital. I don't think it mattered too much, since none of the other founder beliefs would have made much difference, and I had all the faith I needed without Reliquary. Opening Piety did absolutely nothing, but only cost me maybe a bit of gold and 8 turns of CS science, which is NBD.

Benchmarks were T62 Edu, T98 Scientific Theory, T124 Plastics. I planted 4 Great Scientists, bulbed one for Penicillin, then bulbed periodically to hurry remaining relevant techs. Oxforded Radio (T103) and used Rationalism finisher for Satellites. I took Free Thought before Secularism, which I think was clearly right for my game -- first time I've done that in a good long time.

I enjoyed this game, nice quick and easy change of pace from Deity stuff.

Very nice game! Way to work those jungles. Too bad you couldn't get the religious shenanigans to work out.
 
Well, this was a slog of micro, even busting out Calc to figure the earliest I could do my final bulbing with dozens of GS.
I built 3 academies, a manufactory(?) and whatever you call the merchant one which I just used for the 50 faith as I didn't need the cash and didn't want to figure out who I could get the best cash award from.

Nothing special about the capital except Petra, and a bunch of silver (but thats interchangeable with any luxury). Chiefly this was about desert folklore, I spent an obscene amount of faith on GS going all the way up to the 4000 faith level.

But at the end with 50ish pop, many farms/mines converted to trading posts my science was like 850. The basic gameplay and a good city can get under 200, but (as Manpanzee just showed) to get the fastest time you need a good city with a load of jungles.

Those seem to be tough to roll, I've yet to see even a sort of playable one. Much easier when you can finagle with the settings for a map.
Sorry to hear that Manpanzee's "nice quick and easy change of pace game" felt like a "slog" to you. Funny how perceptions differ!

I was surprised you managed to hit T196 with only an 850 top end in science bulbs, but the extra faithbought one (looks like you bought five, at 670 faith, 1000, 1670, 2670, and 4340?) and by planting 3 academies instead of 4, you had at least 2 more GSes to bulb than I did. Looks like the Calc helped you bulb perfectly! Very nice game!

Makes me wonder if 3 or 4 academies is ideal or if it's more a timing thing based on where you are on the tech tree. At one time the accepted wisdom was to plant academies before Scientific Theory and save any GS generated afterwards for bulbs. Not sure if that still holds up (or ever did). The OCC requirement also may change the equation... When I would toggle an academy tile near the endgame, it showed the academy tiles gave me about 50 science each.
 
Hey, my first post and my first gauntlet. Had a 237 turn game.

Just a note on Aluminium, I have found that it is really difficult to get from city-states, you are just to far ahead of them, tech-wise.

However with Recycling center you receive two, and each time you add your spaceship part it becomes available again.
 
Hey, my first post and my first gauntlet. Had a 237 turn game.

Just a note on Aluminium, I have found that it is really difficult to get from city-states, you are just to far ahead of them, tech-wise.

However with Recycling center you receive two, and each time you add your spaceship part it becomes available again.
Great game! Anything in the low 200' s is very solid for this one. Did it have any interesting aspects to share?

That is a great point on the aluminum. Hope to see more posts in the future!
 
Makes me wonder if 3 or 4 academies is ideal or if it's more a timing thing based on where you are on the tech tree. At one time the accepted wisdom was to plant academies before Scientific Theory and save any GS generated afterwards for bulbs. Not sure if that still holds up (or ever did). The OCC requirement also may change the equation... When I would toggle an academy tile near the endgame, it showed the academy tiles gave me about 50 science each.
Academy with New Deal is 14 raw beakers which becomes 43.4 bpt after modifiers. Each academy increases the bulb value by 14 * 300% [modifiers without Rationalism's 10%] * 8 turns / 1.5 [quick speed] = 224 beakers.

Assuming the endgame 50-pop city has 10 jungle trading post tiles, 4 science specialists, 14 other specialists, 3 beakers from market/bank/SE, 3 beakers from NC, 3 beakers from Oxford, 3 beakers from public school, 4 beakers from research lab, 45 beakers from building Research, it'd be making

(50*2 + 10*3 + 4*5 + 14*2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 4) * 300% + 45 = 618 beakers per turn. A bulb would be worth 618 * 8 / 1.5 = 3296 beakers.

N = total number of GSs you have in the game, A = number of academies already planted. For an academy to yield more than an endgame bulb, you'd need to work it for [((3296 + 224*A) - 224*(N - 1 - A)) / 43.4] turns. Assuming 14 total scientists, the formula turns into [(448*A + 384)/43.4], or roughly (10*A + 9). So the first academy is worth it after 9 turns, second one after 19 turns, third one after 29 turns etc. There's also the snowballing effect for the first few academies, as you'll get to key science and growth techs quicker, so maybe (10*A + 5) would be more fair for pre-Research Lab academies.

So perhaps it's worth getting 5 academies, if you can plant them all by T130 or so. Which should be pretty easy actually.
 
Great game! Anything in the low 200' s is very solid for this one. Did it have any interesting aspects to share?

That is a great point on the aluminum. Hope to see more posts in the future!

Mountain Floodplains desert and a lake start. Though no Jungles in the city radius. Decided to roll with it. Fast growth equals fast science, and desert folklore is one of the fastest ways to get a religion.

Found myself isolated on a little peninsula (a lot like Crimea) with two city states, very peaceful game, only a short war with Byzantium due to worker theft.

Could not really use the pathfinders due to the isolation(only 4 huts).

Planted only 3 Academies and I may have bulbed my scientists to early. But I panicked a bit when I realised I had no Aluminium and the City states who had, did not have the Tech. Luckily Recycling centers helped.
 
Little tip about getting Coal/Aluminum from City-States: It is possible to get these when the City-States don't have the tech, using the "Gift a Tile Improvement" feature. But it's kind of tricky and doesn't seem like it works quite how it's intended. Basically, if the relevant tile already has a Mine on it, you CANNOT gift a tile improvement, and you're stuck waiting for the CS to get the tech. But if the tile DOESN'T have a Mine, then you can gift the improvement and get the resource immediately, regardless of the CS' tech level. For example, flat Tundra tiles can't be mined, so any resource on these should be accessible. You can also keep an eye out for any resources just outside the CS borders, and try to gift an improvement after the border expands but before they improve the tile themselves.
 
Academy with New Deal is 14 raw beakers which becomes 43.4 bpt after modifiers. Each academy increases the bulb value by 14 * 300% [modifiers without Rationalism's 10%] * 8 turns / 1.5 [quick speed] = 224 beakers.

Assuming the endgame 50-pop city has 10 jungle trading post tiles, 4 science specialists, 14 other specialists, 3 beakers from market/bank/SE, 3 beakers from NC, 3 beakers from Oxford, 3 beakers from public school, 4 beakers from research lab, 45 beakers from building Research, it'd be making

(50*2 + 10*3 + 4*5 + 14*2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 4) * 300% + 45 = 618 beakers per turn. A bulb would be worth 618 * 8 / 1.5 = 3296 beakers.

N = total number of GSs you have in the game, A = number of academies already planted. For an academy to yield more than an endgame bulb, you'd need to work it for [((3296 + 224*A) - 224*(N - 1 - A)) / 43.4] turns. Assuming 14 total scientists, the formula turns into [(448*A + 384)/43.4], or roughly (10*A + 9). So the first academy is worth it after 9 turns, second one after 19 turns, third one after 29 turns etc. There's also the snowballing effect for the first few academies, as you'll get to key science and growth techs quicker, so maybe (10*A + 5) would be more fair for pre-Research Lab academies.

So perhaps it's worth getting 5 academies, if you can plant them all by T130 or so. Which should be pretty easy actually.
Thanks for the thorough analysis! All the numbers look right to me, so it seems you should play it by ear with the 5th GS -- Depends on when you get him and when you think you'll finish, with maybe terrain or desire to bulb a tech midgame as factors too. I've seen you and Cromagnus go back and forth on the subject before in general.
 
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