G-Minor CLXIV

[aafritz17]

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: Domination (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: King
• Map Size: Small
• Map Type: Boreal
• Speed: Quick
• Leader: Iroquois (Hiawatha)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 20 February to 31 March 2019

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

 

[zenmaster]

After a couple of played through test starts showed that

A) Civs are relatively far apart on Boreal and the terrain is annoying
B) Barbarians are nuts on Boreal even without Raging turned on.

I hearkened back to one of the funnest gauntlets ever: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/g-minor-xcii.541266/
and went with the Heathen Conversion Reformation belief!

Haha, it did solve any barbarian problem, but it didn't yield useful units for conquest outside of a couple horsemen and one crossbowman at the end. I forgot to turn on Raging Barbarians though, in hindsight.

Not a very competitive finish at all in the 130s or so but it was fun to break out heathen conversion once more. Not sure I will try this again. Horses are very rare on Boreal, so it was nearly impossible to get chariot archers going despite many starts; in addition, the combination of long distances, heavy barbaraian spawning. and annoying terrain (water/mountain blockages) make this a bit of a slog, even with a Small map.

 

[zenmaster]

Gave it another go as the first start i tried had some salt and 4 horses in its radius. Won just under t100 despite getting 3 chariot archers and a horseman asap. The terrain is so rough that chariots didn't speed up things all that much. I was in the lower left corner and there was a morass of city-states, mountains, hills, forest, and even sea hexes totally blocking the way to get from west to east to 4 of the other 5 civs. Slow going.

I did get a Danish city in a peace deal on the far side of the map but did not have enough money to buy an army there until late as money is tough to come by with these settings. Lots of units means high upkeep costs and the AI civs on Boreal King level don't seem to really rake in much cash even if they are finance focused. I did buy 3 crossbowmen there late to speed up my winning time a lot, so it is definitely worrh doing.

Went Honor opener then Liberty and the free worker there before totally finishing Honor by game end. Early culture huts and lots of barbarians helped that along. I preemptively built Terracotta Army and the Great Wall late to keep them from my foes and because my capital was rocking production. It was so far away from the fighting front, units would not have helped.

Some of my units got the Fountain of Youth healing bonus early but I really really needed Mt Kilimanjaro on the map somewhere (and it wasn't). A central location and/or access to Mt. Kilimanjaro could best this time easily.

Good luck if you're giving this a try!

 

[Suliz]

Turn 127 win. Don't expect to be competitive, but that's ok.

Standard settings, the only changes I made (other than the ones required) were to make the world 5 billion years old (in hopes of the reducing the amount of mountains), and hand picked my opponents (England, France, Spain, Portugal and Netherlands - which seemed historically accurate. Well, sort of.)

Went honor opener, tradition opener, finished Honor. The cash and culture from killing barbs kept me afloat for most of the game.

I had to keep units garrisoned just to avoid rebels by the end, and sold my workers at the very event.

I am almost tempted to give it another shot, but turn on raging barbs this time. Not because I think it would help me post a better time, but to see if any of the civilizations get wiped by barbs.