G-Minor CIII

[Peets]

[img=right]http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/170/hofgauntlet.jpg[/img]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: Boreal
• Speed: Standard
• Leader: Spain (Isabella)
• Required: Raging Barbarians
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 17th June to 1st July 2015

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

 

[Mesix]

A Spain game to reroll for El Dorado or GBR (preferably both) to get the best results.

 

[vadalaz]

It seems Boreal is unlikely to have any good wonders, see here http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/1jae5j/information_on_the_occurrence_of_natural_wonders/. I'd rather reroll for a high production start to speed up the early game and the settler spam later.

 

[chuckh89]

It seems Boreal is unlikely to have any good wonders, see here http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/1jae5j/information_on_the_occurrence_of_natural_wonders/. I'd rather reroll for a high production start to speed up the early game and the settler spam later.

That is a great reference,...

Your definitely NOT getting El Dorado because it requires a Jungle tile,...

Also, the Wonders that have the option for Desert (None), and Grassland (1 or 2) will appear less likely,...

The main thing I always hate about Boreal is that the CS quest for Petra still exists,...I usually try to save my CS DoW for that situation, so that it resets the quests, and I can eventually make some use of that CS's bonus.


Vadalaz,..."Greek Liberation Strategy" seem like the most likely route to Victory,...??

OR

"Sacred Sites"....Early Gold and "Settler" purchasing makes it much quicker than normal,...??


_

 

[vadalaz]

From what I remember about Boreal, it's a pretty large map with some annoying terrain features and a ton of barb camps. Poland/Immortal/Domination game on this map took 120 turns to finish with Heathen Conversion, so I think complete domination on Emperor with Liberty and raging barbs can take as long as 140-150 turns. I'd go with Sacred Sites and aim for a turn 120-130 finish instead, 110 if lucky and all AIs have low culture.

 

[Bleidraner]

A Spain SS in a map where you are unlikely to get good wonders? I don't feel very motivated by this. Oh well.

 

[chuckh89]

For "Greek Liberation" does your victim need to be under 100 culture for the eventually GM bomb to work effectively,...??
- I've taken down the first Capital Turn 30ish twice now,...Culture at 125ish,...That's not good enough,...Right?

If I visualize his culture right before taking his capital,...That's the number he is going to be Liberated with,...Right?



_

 

[zenmaster]

For "Greek Liberation" does your victim need to be under 100 culture for the eventually GM bomb to work effectively,...??

On Standard Speed, yes, assuming you have zero tourism when giving the GM concert tour.

On Marathon, a zero tourism GM bomb is worth 300 culture. Not sure if anyone tested Epic speed.

- I've taken down the first Capital Turn 30ish twice now,...Culture at 125ish,...That's not good enough,...Right?

Right. It is tough on Emperor level to get that done. At least you only need to play the first 30 turns or so to find out .

If I visualize his culture right before taking his capital,...That's the number he is going to be Liberated with,...Right?

In my experience, yes. A couple people before reported the AI seeming to have a bit more than expected, but I think they weren't sure if they checked right before conquest. They probably checked the previous turn and didn't anticipate AI finding a culture ruin or something.

 

[zenmaster]

G Minor CIII Pregame Walkthrough

This one is a wild and wooly affair with Raging Barbarians in rough Boreal terrain.

If you are a bit foggy on any of the ways to achieve cultural victory, here is a response I did to a question like that in a previous thread:
This post describes the general approaches to cultural victory including the Liberation strategy in some detail

Pregame settings:
If you are going to be conquering, 5 Billion Years Arid to reduce rough terrain and vegetation will help. If you are going Sacred Sites, 3 or 4 billion years is probably a bit better to give more hills so that more expansion city sites have decent production.

Opponents:
Totally depends on what you are trying to do. Build wonders? Shake down AI? Conquer? Spam your religion with Initiation Rites? Picking Civs with Low Culture bias is obviously not a bad idea when going for culture victory...

With Spain, hopefully you will find nearby Natural Wonders for cash and possible bonuses settling near them.

Good luck to all!

 

[RaidandTrade]

Playing this map/difficulty at the moment without raging barbs and there are loads of them. AND, at this level, the AI is not good at clearing them.

Current game is Germany so I have a large army (over unit cap).

The other problem with this map is that unique luxes are few and far between. That could also be due to arid setting.

This map killed me in the Poland/Immortal/Domination gauntlet (hence my step down to emperor!).

Will finish out my Germany game and give this a go (if the map doesn't drive me nuts!).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[chuckh89]

Right. It is tough on Emperor level to get that done. At least you only need to play the first 30 turns or so to find out .

Been trying for "Greek Liberation",...But obviously a lot has to go right to execute that strategy.

It's great to start off thinking "Greek Liberation" is possible, and then if your set up is good....Just alter for "Sacred Sites", BUT one problem,.....

Then I have to deal with Greece for my entire "Sacred Sites" game,...He is annoying!
BUT, still not as annoying as "Raging Barbs" on Emperor/Boreal.

The AI always puts a "New" Camp 4 tiles away from my city,....Then it builds a Horseman,...then a "Horseman",....then a "Horseman",....Umm then............ANOTHER frickin Horseman.

I can defend the first 2, but after that....?? - Goodbye resources

IT REALLY might be a good strategy to find a Masonry setup, then start Policies "Liberty" ~(Citizenship) and Build "Pyramids"
- That way your up and running fast,...And only down one, or two turns after pillages.

Then go "Piety" to "Reformation"...Maybe?

The high production setup of Masonry/Stone (with "Stoneworks") should get "Settlers out quickly on it's own,...And, you can use your early Gold for Cultural CSs to make a Sub 150T "Sacred Sites" game still possible,...Maybe?


-

 

[zenmaster]

It's great to start off thinking "Greek Liberation" is possible, and then if your set up is good....Just alter for "Sacred Sites", BUT one problem,.....

Then I have to deal with Greece for my entire "Sacred Sites" game,...He is annoying!

Yes, Alexander is never fun to deal with! It is very tough to alter a game plan to go Sacred Sites later on Emperor. The AI civs culture up pretty fast and it takes a lot lot longer to catch them with Sacred Sites if you get a late start on it.

There are a lot of difficulties with a Liberation strategy on this one. Fielding troops to conquer fast and defend against barbs is a lot to build and maintain; conquering is much harder having to deal with raging barbs and Emperor AIs and difficult terrain; Happiness might be an issue; and of course taking out an AI by turn 30 or so is really hard . It is a tough road to take, so hats off to you if you can get it done!

IT REALLY might be a good strategy to find a Masonry setup, then start Policies "Liberty" ~(Citizenship) and Build "Pyramids"
- That way your up and running fast,...And only down one, or two turns after pillages.

Then go "Piety" to "Reformation"...Maybe?

The high production setup of Masonry/Stone (with "Stoneworks") should get "Settlers out quickly on it's own,...And, you can use your early Gold for Cultural CSs to make a Sub 150T "Sacred Sites" game still possible,...Maybe?
-

That citizenship policy doesn't get your Settlers built much faster though and delaying the good Piety policies that long hurts the SS time badly and on Emperor someone may run away from you with culture.. Going left side liberty is still viable, but I wouldn't advise dipping into that right side.


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[Manpanzee]

Basic plan: Honor opener, then full Piety. Build a ton of units to harvest/manage barbs, and use the resulting high army score to bully AIs into submission. Finish off by turning my barb-hunting forces on the culture leader and wiping that Civ from the earth.

The plan worked pretty well for the most part. I had a very nice start with a nearby Lake Victoria in a hilly region, which let me quickly get my hammers up. I also found a faith ruin to kickstart One With Nature before Shrines -- too busy building units early to rely on Shrines for a Pantheon. The culture leader was also very close to me, so my tourism bar wouldn't be too high... except for one problem.

I couldn't find the last AI! Bit of an issue, since you can't accumulate tourism with a Civ you haven't met. I finally, finally found Sejong on t85, but unfortunately he turned out to be the second-strongest culture AI, and exterminating him didn't look viable. I was able to conquer a CS near him and send a trade route to speed things along, but there was still a bit of waiting. I was influential with everyone but Korea at t102, so I think sub-100 is definitely possible with a bit of luck (faith wonder + central location, perhaps). But the Liberation strategy may be faster anyway.

 

[Bleidraner]

Basic plan: Honor opener, then full Piety. Build a ton of units to harvest/manage barbs, and use the resulting high army score to bully AIs into submission. Finish off by turning my barb-hunting forces on the culture leader and wiping that Civ from the earth.

The plan worked pretty well for the most part. I had a very nice start with a nearby Lake Victoria in a hilly region, which let me quickly get my hammers up. I also found a faith ruin to kickstart One With Nature before Shrines -- too busy building units early to rely on Shrines for a Pantheon. The culture leader was also very close to me, so my tourism bar wouldn't be too high... except for one problem.

I couldn't find the last AI! Bit of an issue, since you can't accumulate tourism with a Civ you haven't met. I finally, finally found Sejong on t85, but unfortunately he turned out to be the second-strongest culture AI, and exterminating him didn't look viable. I was able to conquer a CS near him and send a trade route to speed things along, but there was still a bit of waiting. I was influential with everyone but Korea at t102, so I think sub-100 is definitely possible with a bit of luck (faith wonder + central location, perhaps). But the Liberation strategy may be faster anyway.

Great game Manpanzee! Greek liberation would imply that somebody is able to clean up an Emperor level Boreal map, and I mean really clean up, as in conquer every single city in the map, not just the caps, in less than 114 turns, which I think is next to impossible, and with the added difficulty of first cap down before t30. SS is the way to go, and this is a great result, possibly gauntlet winner.

 

[Manpanzee]

Great game Manpanzee! Greek liberation would imply that somebody is able to clean up an Emperor level Boreal map, and I mean really clean up, as in conquer every single city in the map, not just the caps, in less than 114 turns, which I think is next to impossible, and with the added difficulty of first cap down before t30. SS is the way to go, and this is a great result, possibly gauntlet winner.

I dunno... this is Spain we're talking about here. Taking a capital early enough should be pretty easy, provided you're willing to reroll until you hit a NW by t15 or so. You don't HAVE to buy a Settler. Buying three Archers, plus whatever other units you've built, should be more than enough to do the trick.

Then you have to sweep the map. The AIs don't seem to expand much here -- they really struggle with the barbs and are prone to getting Settlers captured. Even if they DO expand, you can demand that faraway Civs give you their expos in peace deals. By whittling them down this way, you may not have to actually capture any cities beyond capitals. Barbs are definitely an issue for you, too, but it's not like you need to build anything other than units. You can manage barbs. It's just a question of how much they'll slow you down.

I really think that the Liberation strategy can get sub-100, easy. I think that SS can do it, too (if I scouted better and found Korea I would have been very close, and that's without a faith wonder), but I think Liberation is likely the optimal strategy here. I just hadn't done Sacred Sites in a while and wanted to see how it felt with Spain.

 

[Denniz]

Gauntlet Results:
G-Minor CIII - Culture, Emperor, Standard, Boreal, Standard, Spain (Isabella) (check options)

1st Bram - 275 BC T-104

2nd zenmaster - 150 BC T-109

3rd Manpanzee - 25 BC T-114

Congratulations!

 

[zenmaster]

Congrats to Bram on a great win! Was it a Sacred Sites wonderfest, or did you do a lot of conquering?

---

I got a good game of this in on like my first or second map roll before my computer woes hit. Didn't write it up, as I planned to try again to go subT100 better prepared after this one. Computers did not come back in time to make a better effort. In the T109 win, Spain had Mt. Kilimanjaro near, and Mt. Kailash a relatively late find not horribly far away. Did not manage barbs well despite a good number of units (lots of forest tiles hiding camps and barbs and such) and took a wrong turn with a key scouting unit so Mongolia was a later find than it should have been (Isn't Genghis supposed to be out scouting for me???) so was slower than it could have been.

My 1 other try of this had both tiles of Great Barrier Reef being worked. 1000 gold for first discovery and mad early science. The game proceeded to mess with my mind though as that was an expo city locked on 3 population and it had the One with Nature pantheon rocking from its founding. After my cap discovered religion, this city had 1 citizen Religious, 1 citizen following pantheon... and lost its One with Nature bonus! Hey, that's 2 out of 3 citizens! But the way the game calculates it, the pantheon somehow doesn't apply. The city then spent at least 10 turns in this state despite 18 pressure, before I ended up retiring to ponder my religious values .

I think a Great Barrier Reef (without 3 population ) and Mt. Kailash combo would be even better than The Kailash/Kilimanjaro combo above, if you wanted the most overpowered Spain wonders you can get on Boreal.

 

[Bleidraner]

Well done guys!

 

[Bram]

My game was Sacred Sites, I was the first to find two Natural Wonders: Mt. Kailash and Mt. Kilimanjaro. It took a long time to find the last civ, which was hidden in a corner with just 2 cities.

 

[mycivs]

it is quite late to join but better than never.
i did not submit this one 'cause alex did not liberate the city of mecca. may be he knew my gm was next to it. so, greek always liberation was not true anymore.

i have nothing much to share 'cause my strategy was your wall. anyway, i enjoy playing with you guys, though it stole lots of my times. however, thing is under control. no more consecutive 36 hours. (that was more than 10 years ago)