G-Minor LXXXVII

[vadalaz]

The patch notes thread is here -> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=537043

 

[Bleidraner]

I have not yet played the patch enough so please read this taking into account some things will have changed. The most important one is that Reformation is quicker to get after the patch. Anyway, as promised...

SS stands for Sacred Sites, a Reformation belief that you can access once you unlock the Reformation policy in the Piety tree. To win an early cultural victory, you can exploit the fact that Sacred Sites allows you to get 2 tourism per faith bought building (Cathedrals, Pagodas, Monasteries, Mosques).

The classic SS strategy is based on city spamming, beelining Reformation, and then faith buying as many faith buildings as possible as soon as possible. The fact that you will have tourism very early on will (in most cases) allow you to win an early culture victory between turns 100-200, even earlier in small maps. Not all maps lend themselves to this, as it relies on discovering all AIs in the map early, although in the hands of a power player it works most of the time. The strategy is like a snowball, the more faith buildings you have, the more faith (and happiness for new cities) you will produce, the quicker you will be able to buy the next faith building, and so on.

In the context of this gauntlet, things are slightly different. As you are playing Enrico, you cannot spam cities, but you can definitely conquer and puppet them. Enrico can faith buy buildings in puppeted cities.

Quick turn win depends on how much culture (to get to Reformation as fast as possible) and faith (to get a religion early, to be able to choose the faith buildings as part of your beliefs, and faith buy as many buildings as you can as soon as possible).

Ideal map is one with as many cultural CSs (first priority) and faith CSs (second priority) as possible. A good map is one with 2 cultural CSs relatively near, a great map is one with 3. Popping a culture ruin in the first 20 turns helps enormously.

The other key for an early win on this gauntlet is to keep the AIs from getting culture and puppet their cities so you can get more faith buildings. To achieve this, you have to conquer everybody as fast as you can, leaving just the smallest culture civ alive (so you don't win by domination). As soon as you are influential with that last civ you will win a CV. Obviously discovering the AIs and the CSs quickly is essential, so good scouting is needed. The conquest is relatively easy in this gantlet (Tiny and Prince).

BO: scout (sometimes a second scout) - shrine - worker (rare to steal a worker early enough in prince, but second worker must be a steal) - (granary situational, rare) - archerx4 (or 5, it is better with CAs, but if no horses you can do the rush with just archers and 1 spearman) - Stonehenge - - - Caravan as soon as you have tourism, rest is more or less irrelevant, focus on faith and culture. Faith buy religious buildings as soon as you can.
Policies: Beeline Reformation.
Techs: just what you need to build all the above as fast as possible and keep happy. Usually luxes, Calendar, Archery, The Wheel (CAs) and of course Optics to get the free GMoV, for money and influence with cult CSs. If the game drags on past t125 or so, Drama & Poetry as building Parthenon helps with 2 tourism and some great works of writing from Writers Guild do not hurt either.
EDIT: Religion: start in the desert, pantheon is Desert Folklore, get a religion as fast as you can, for this gauntlet choose Initiation rites (money for CSs and units), Monasteries (cheapest faith building), Mosques (strong faith) and Holy Order (to cheaply convert conquered cities and be able to faith buy in them asap).

Tips:
- Choose your opponents carefully, in general I like to go for those that are likely to go Piety as they will usually have less culture early on. Gandhi is a good example.
- CAs MUCH better than Archers for the war, but it really depends on how early you get horses.
- I usually also pick Rome, as they expand early, I conquer their cap and keep them to the one expo for the rest of the game to stunt their culture growth, and gift it back just before conquering the last cap from the other AIs. I am not particularly recommending this, as there are some downsides to this, but it is what I usually do.
- Remember you have to completely wipe out all cities from an AI to get them out of the game, not just the cap.
- War ASAP. At Prince, the AIs will even gift you cities in peace deals without a shot being fired, and that is useful sometimes.
- Ally cult CSs as soon as possible. I cannot stress this enough, it is the single most important thing for quick turn win. I don't use Enrico's GMoV to puppet, I use it to get money and influence. After cult CSs, next priority is religious CSs.
- Harassing AIs really early also stunt their growth.
- A great start, with desert and with salt, helps, as always.
- Puppet cities as you conquer them, you will need them of the faith buildings.
- t120 wins with 10-16 tourism per turn if you have a properly culturally crippled last AI, say between 200-300 culture.
- Remember the tourism boosters: shared religion and caravan trade with your victim, as soon as you have tourism. Open borders would be nice, but with your warmongering that is often impossible.
- Policies after Reformation (if needed). I like to close Piety for the GP. after that I would open Aesthetics if the game is dragging on as accelerating your GWs will help.
EDIT: the best faith buildings to choose for this particular gauntlet are Monasteries (the cheapest) and Mosques (bigger faith) as you are unlikely to run into happiness problems.
- There are other tips, as in this beautiful gauntlet you have to do many things at once. Of course Vadalaz's BRILLIANT liberty strategy (see above in this same thread) is the most powerful way to go (well I have not tried after the patch, but I suspect it still is the best strategy for early turn win).

Hope this helps.

 

[zenmaster]

The patch notes thread is here -> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=537043

Regarding the patch's effect on this gauntlet, it will have none whatsoever on Vadaluz's novel approach, as that involves choosing only the Liberty tree, which has not changed after the patch. The change to Piety theoretically allows for a faster Sacred Sites win because Reformation can be achieved earlier in the Piety tree. The caveat is that you need enough faith to buy faith buildings early enough to take advantage of the earlier establishment of Sacred Sites. With a huge faith snowball, it should shave turns off a best case pre-patch finish.

 

[zenmaster]

SS stands for Sacred Sites, a Reformation belief that you can access once you unlock the Reformation policy in the Piety tree. To win an early cultural victory, you can exploit the fact that Sacred Sites allows you to get 2 tourism per faith bought building (Cathedrals, Pagodas, Monasteries, Mosques).

The classic SS strategy is based on city spamming, beelining Reformation, and then faith buying as many faith buildings as possible as soon as possible. The fact that you will have tourism very early on will (in most cases) allow you to win an early culture victory between turns 100-200, even earlier in small maps. Not all maps lend themselves to this, as it relies on discovering all AIs in the map early, although in the hands of a power player it works most of the time. The strategy is like a snowball, the more faith buildings you have, the more faith (and happiness for new cities) you will produce, the quicker you will be able to buy the next faith building, and so on.

In the context of this gauntlet, things are slightly different. As you are playing Enrico, you cannot spam cities, but you can definitely conquer and puppet them. Enrico can faith buy buildings in puppeted cities.

Quick turn win depends on how much culture (to get to Reformation as fast as possible) and faith (to get a religion early, to be able to choose the faith buildings as part of your beliefs, and faith buy as many buildings as you can as soon as possible).

Ideal map is one with as many cultural CSs (first priority) and faith CSs (second priority) as possible. A good map is one with 2 cultural CSs relatively near, a great map is one with 3. Popping a culture ruin in the first 20 turns helps enormously.

The other key for an early win on this gauntlet is to keep the AIs from getting culture and puppet their cities so you can get more faith buildings. To achieve this, you have to conquer everybody as fast as you can, leaving just the smallest culture civ alive (so you don't win by domination). As soon as you are influential with that last civ you will win a CV. Obviously discovering the AIs and the CSs quickly is essential, so good scouting is needed. The conquest is relatively easy in this gantlet (Tiny and Prince).

BO: scout (sometimes a second scout) - shrine - worker (rare to steal a worker early enough in prince, but second worker must be a steal) - (granary situational, rare) - archerx4 (or 5, it is better with CAs, but if no horses you can do the rush with just archers and 1 spearman) - Stonehenge - - - Caravan as soon as you have tourism, rest is more or less irrelevant, focus on faith and culture. Faith buy religious buildings as soon as you can.
Policies: Beeline Reformation.
Techs: just what you need to build all the above as fast as possible and keep happy. Usually luxes, Calendar, Archery, The Wheel (CAs) and of course Optics to get the free GMoV, for money and influence with cult CSs. If the game drags on past t125 or so, Drama & Poetry as building Parthenon helps with 2 tourism and some great works of writing from Writers Guild do not hurt either.
EDIT: Religion: start in the desert, pantheon is Desert Folklore, get a religion as fast as you can, for this gauntlet choose Initiation rites (money for CSs and units), Monasteries (cheapest faith building), Mosques (strong faith) and Holy Order (to cheaply convert conquered cities and be able to faith buy in them asap).

Tips:
- Choose your opponents carefully, in general I like to go for those that are likely to go Piety as they will usually have less culture early on. Gandhi is a good example.
- CAs MUCH better than Archers for the war, but it really depends on how early you get horses.
- I usually also pick Rome, as they expand early, I conquer their cap and keep them to the one expo for the rest of the game to stunt their culture growth, and gift it back just before conquering the last cap from the other AIs. I am not particularly recommending this, as there are some downsides to this, but it is what I usually do.
- Remember you have to completely wipe out all cities from an AI to get them out of the game, not just the cap.
- War ASAP. At Prince, the AIs will even gift you cities in peace deals without a shot being fired, and that is useful sometimes.
- Ally cult CSs as soon as possible. I cannot stress this enough, it is the single most important thing for quick turn win. I don't use Enrico's GMoV to puppet, I use it to get money and influence. After cult CSs, next priority is religious CSs.
- Harassing AIs really early also stunt their growth.
- A great start, with desert and with salt, helps, as always.
- Puppet cities as you conquer them, you will need them of the faith buildings.
- t120 wins with 10-16 tourism per turn if you have a properly culturally crippled last AI, say between 200-300 culture.
- Remember the tourism boosters: shared religion and caravan trade with your victim, as soon as you have tourism. Open borders would be nice, but with your warmongering that is often impossible.
- Policies after Reformation (if needed). I like to close Piety for the GP. after that I would open Aesthetics if the game is dragging on as accelerating your GWs will help.
EDIT: the best faith buildings to choose for this particular gauntlet are Monasteries (the cheapest) and Mosques (bigger faith) as you are unlikely to run into happiness problems.

As always, an outstanding post by Bleidraner. I've been away from gauntlet and HOF activity for several months, and have come back to find the community of players participating and contributing seems to be growing! Perhaps because the game is now "complete" ? Regardless of the reason, I am very happy to see this!

Having tried a bunch of gauntlets and having experimented with Sacred Sites in a bunch of different settings, I will add a few variations or added tips to the above:

Sacred Sites bottlenecks to deal with in general--

When going for a fast as possible Sacred Sites Cultural Victory, keep in mind that three things can trip you up.

1) Faith generation -- Nio matter what the map size or settings, this bottleneck is a given. If you don't make enough faith to get your religion going ASAP and buy faith buildings ASAP, your time will suffer greatly. Generally, you need 1 or more of the following for sure:
A) Good Desert Folklore Start (Passive faith accrual from relatively productive tiles in Flood Plains is a win/win)

B) A Faith-yielding Natural Wonder (Uluru probably being the best as it gives food and high faith so you can grow city and faith)

C) Contrary to popular belief, Desert Folklore is not a must have-- another good faith pantheon can get you through just as fast a Sacred Sites cultural victory; "One With Nature" (plus 4 faith from Natural Wonders) in combination with B above is powerful. The Tundra faith belief can work just as well as desert, if you can get good enough tundra-based tiles in your capital and first expo or so to get rolling; Unfortunately, that's rarely the case. I've had relative success with the Copper/Salt/Iron pantheon, Gems/Pearls pantheon, and Gold/Silver pantheons as well. The Gold/Silver one is nice because you get cash and culture along with the faith boost, which can make up for the lesser initial faith. The Quarry faith pantheon usually takes too long to kick in, but if you pop a hut for early Mining or Masonry with a lot of Marble and Stone nearby, it can work at the higher difficulties where the SS win will take longer to get.

D) Allying with Religious CSes - highly varaiable and taking awhile to kick in, this is a great auxiliary boost after your initial A/B/C faith generation

E) Obviously, once you start buying faith buildings, bunches of faith are going to come from them. High difficulty games and lower difficulty city-spamming-only games will need Pagodas for the extra happiness. Mosques give the best faith generation for the snowball effect, while Monasteries are the cheapest if speed is of the essence and happiness is not an issue.

Bottleneck #2 - Culture; How fast you could get to Reformation often dictated how soon you could start racking up tourism if your faith was rocking. With the new patch, this may not be so much of a bottleneck anymore. Previously, going Piety only left culture generation pretty weak, thus sometimes meaning you had faith buildings up before you could get Sacred Sites. What's worse, on higher difficulties, AI civs could actually beat you to Sacred Sites. The new patch doesn't prevent this from happening, so be aware that if somehow you have a religion-crazy AI in the mix (Celts, Morocco, etc.) you might be in for a disappointment no matter how good your faith is. If you can choose the AI's in a higher level Sacred Sites attempt, DON'T choose any who like to go Piety.

Bottleneck #3 - Finding all the AI civs quickly; On larger maps, especially with rough terrain or lots of ocean, the main bottleneck to a cultural win is finding all the other civs fast enough to let your tourism affect them from an early point. Rocking a ton of tourism does you no good if even 1 civ is undiscovered for too long. In one Cultural victory gauntlet or challenge on a continents map, the winner(s) all went with the Maya to get a "Great Admiral" before Astronomy was possible to find the civs on the other continents with the Great Admiral as early as possible. If you have a continent/archipelago map and are not playing the Mayas, get Optics/Astronomy ASAP to scout, and on any other map send out scouts/horseman relentlessly until you've contacted everyone. It is often a good idea on huge map/tough terrain games to choose civs that like to scout and will find you (Warlike Civs usually), saving you some scouting effort. This works best when you're selectively conquering or not conquering at all.

AI Civs:

Aside from keeping the bottlenecks in mind, choosing which AI civs to confront (if you have a choice) is important. On this current gauntlet, the one point I would disagree with most is choosing an expansive civ like Rome as an AI foe. In a scenario like this where you are definitely trying to wipe out all the other civs but one, every extra city you have to take out can cost more turns than you think. One or more of your foes puts his second city on a hill hex? Dealing with that can hurt your finish time a lot.

In general, if you're going to conquer all but one civ, pick civs that don't stress culture and don't expand too much, if possible. If you're just aiming to out-tourism everyone, choose civs whuich don't stress culture, won't beat you to Sacred Sites/faith buildings, and which will explore on their own ideally.

Social Policy order:

While beelining Reformation is obvious, I will almost always take the tradition opener before starting Piety. Those 3 culture/turn will just about pay for themselves exactly enough as not to delay Reformation even pre-patch. Now it's a no-brainer. If you have a faith pantheon, you need as many faith tiles asap in your city radius. Also, if you wait to steal/buy/build late worker like I often do, more productive unimproved tiles to choose from is key. A culture hut lets you get out Tradition pretty early most games, so everything culturewise is jumpstarted. Going piety first means slow grow culture early on.

Build order:

I generally concur with Bleidraner's build order except I'd never build a worker so early unless I had horses available for chariot archers and no way to steal/buy a worker. Building workers is time-consuming; you can spit out 1.5-2 archers in the time it takes to spit out 1 worker. Workers are also maybe the most cost-efficient thing to purchase ($ vs hammer cost) so I like to buy if I can't steal and can wait (and if I don't need the cash to get the 4th archer out quicker) If you are playing cultural victory through conquest style or need to get units out exploring ASAP, that early worker build can cost turns you'd like to have back to get military units out there quicker to not get blocked by barbarans, to steal settlers, find civs/CSes, conquer before AI unit builds, etc..

Tech order:

If you are going for a Sacred Sites victory and are planning on doing any conquering, you need to do Pottery first for the shrine and then Archery for the backbone of your conquering force. (Civs with early Unique Units may differ after pottery) Unless you've got salt to mine possibly, animal husbandry pretty much has to be 3rd to see if you have horses available. If yes, build buy or steal a worker if you haven't already and research wheel for the chariot archer rush. If no horses, do whatever your civ/tiles need you to do otherwise. Eye the AI civs and try to kill the one(s) with horses in their city tiles first! Late chariot archers are better than no chariot archers

Misc. Tip:

Cash can buy workers or military units to help conquer and/or scout, which speeds things immensely. Don't forget to pillage when possible and demand tribute from non-vital CSes when possible.

Bleidraner once again walked through everything expertly and I concur with his ideas close to 100%; above are just a few variations and reframing of ideas.

Hope some fins this useful as well.

 

[TyfoonTurk]

FINALLY got a t81 victory with the liberating/GM-strategy

used greece as last civ for liberating
used gmov for allying cultural CS

bo: scout x2, archer x2, (buy archer), monument, library, granary, archer, oracle,
tech: archery -> writing -> philosophy -> lux
policy: liberty (free gmov first)

 

[Bleidraner]

I generally concur with Bleidraner's build order except I'd never build a worker so early unless I had horses available for chariot archers and no way to steal/buy a worker.

Yeah, the hard built worker. Among my many doubts while writing this post, that was the biggest one. I just find the worker steals on this particular gauntlet happen really late, and as I usually start with desert, I need to improve some tiles asap to grow and get production going and of course get horses if available. But getting early archers and start Stonehenge 8 turns earlier makes a hell of a difference, on CS quests, conquest and religion turn time, so I think that while the worker is viable for a t120 win (that's what I did in my game) it probably isn't for a t110 or earlier. Buying it is not a solution either as you might as well buy the 1.5 archers. I will try without the worker, as I am 90 percent convinced you are right.

The faith NW start takes too many rerolls (especially with Enrico, whose start bias does not help and if you turn it off as I do, it is still a huge reroll time to get it) and a minimum of 3-4 turns walking the settler, too time consuming, but agree, if you get it, is OP.

Other pantheons, yep, Tundra works well and to a lesser degree so does faith and culture pantheons, but really for longer games, this one is over really soon and capping your tile faith production to 3 is problematic. I have done extensive testing with all, DF with the right start is the most powerful for short games like this were you don't really have to build a lot of stuff, or very long games (for SS, say t180) where you can build Petra. Again the 4 per NW is great but with Enrico you won't get that NW in any predictable way, without waaay too many rerolls. It is different with the desert focused civs like Harun or Al-Mansur, there, still many rerolls and play for 3 turns, but it is not endless, see GMajor for examples.

I agree with most of the rest of your comments and you have done a great job of expanding the SS strategy beyond this particular gauntlet, while mine was more focused on this context.

Thank you, the post is very much appreciated and also thank you for your way too kind words.

 

[zenmaster]

Thanks for the kind words in return-- I have to be honest; once Vadalaz enlightened us on the Great Musician giving 100 Tourism concert tours even with 0 tourism/turn going, I gave up trying sacred sites on this gauntlet, so I had little gauntlet-specific info in my post . I was happy to try another approach for a cultural win Thanks Vadalaz!

I agree, in this one, Enrico needs desert folklore or lucky Natural Wonder start for fastest possible Sacred Sites on this Tiny Map and difficulty level. No slow development on this one. If you go High Sea Level, the map is usually mountain and hill filled, so I didn't bother to try chariot archers in either approach on this one; just too long a set-up that distracts from the other stuff you must do ASAP. Chariots don't help speed getting through terrain bottlenecks either . Archers have to hoof it, or swim if you get optics early for the GMoVenice.

In all, this was a fun gauntlet, and refreshing with a new approach to try.

----

As an aside, not sure how many have tried Civ:Beyond Earth yet, but it is VERY cool!
No tries by me on G Major because of it! Will still do gauntlets going forward with eyes on Veni Vidi Vici, but Civ:BE will be reducing my sleep time as well

 

[vadalaz]

No problem! I found out about this by accident in a recent game - had 0tpt, spawned a GM, no music slots but still wanted the quick 100 gold from Mausoleum, hehe. Didn't pay much attention to it back then but this gauntlet reminded me of it.

 

[Bleidraner]

No problem! I found out about this by accident in a recent game - had 0tpt, spawned a GM, no music slots but still wanted the quick 100 gold from Mausoleum, hehe. Didn't pay much attention to it back then but this gauntlet reminded me of it.

Vadalaz, you got your real name back! I have not been able to submit ANY of my games to the Gmajor and Gminor, as I don't want to do it with the impostor 01 name. Is there a notification somewhere or is there a process already published?

 

[vadalaz]

Vadalaz, you got your real name back! I have not been able to submit ANY of my games to the Gmajor and Gminor, as I don't want to do it with the impostor 01 name. Is there a notification somewhere or is there a process already published?

The issue has been fixed, you should be able to log into your actual account now. Make sure to leave a post here to merge your accounts http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=537544

 

[Memoryjar]

Alex didn't liberate in my game.

 

[zenmaster]

Alex didn't liberate in my game.

Really? I have the same 100% experience that Vadalaz has pretty much had, though he did mention one game in which Alex did not liberate a civ Alex had been at war with.

Was there any special situation in your game? Was the unliberated civ supernear Alex? Previously at war with Alex? Just curious to hear.

 

[Memoryjar]

If I'm right, strategy is to conquer 2 civs then Alex after giving him another capital. Then bomb a GM in this capital.

So I played with Portugal, Byzantum and Alex. Got Lisbon and Constantinople, razed Porto. Then I gifted Lisbon. He puppeted it.

So this game was over, with 300 culture my 100 GM wasn't enough.

 

[Denniz]

Gauntlet Results:
G-Minor LXXXVII - Culture, Prince, Tiny, Pangaea, Standard, Venice (Enrico Dandolo)
1st zenmaster - 975 BC T-76
2nd TyfoonTurk - 850 BC T-81
3rd klaskeren - 600 AD T-140

Congratulations!

 

[zenmaster]

FINALLY got a t81 victory with the liberating/GM-strategy

used greece as last civ for liberating
used gmov for allying cultural CS

bo: scout x2, archer x2, (buy archer), monument, library, granary, archer, oracle,
tech: archery -> writing -> philosophy -> lux
policy: liberty (free gmov first)

Nice job! My game was similar but I did not go for the Oracle--

Used Greece as last civ for liberating also.

BO: Scout, Monument, Archer X4, Warrior to escort GMoV, Archer... until granary, library, a couple of chariot archers near the end.
Tech: Archery --> Straight to Optics --> To Wheel, Bronze Working, Calendar & other luxury techs
Policy: Liberty Tree, left side to free "Settler" (GMoV) first

Could have shaved three turns off the time if I had spared a military unit to keep the path clear for my Great Musician to go perform a concert tour in Marrakech ASAP. Barbarian Camps are annoying on this level as the AIs don't seem to help clear them at all. I was too worried conquering Greece would be time consuming so sent all free units through the mountain pass or over water there. Took Athens earlier than expected, so some of those were wasted.

This gauntlet's strategy seemed very specific to Venice, as Optics will usually not be a beeline on a non-oceanic map. It turned out to be a help to speed army and Great Person travel though, which was nice. Thanks again to Vadalaz for a new plan to implement! I enjoyed not trying to engineer Sacred Sites yet again .

 

[Bleidraner]

Finally was able to submit my game, t121 SS. too late for the gauntlet though.:-(

 

[TyfoonTurk]

congrats zenmaster

unfortunately we both did not get under the t70 that klaskeren predicted

 

[Zlither]

Using Vadalz (& Zenmaster)'s ideas was able to do - on Settler - a turn 64 victory. Nothing original on my part.

Took hours of map re-rolls (had the flu - wasn't capable of much more). Could have been done quicker if I didn't get [stupid] at the end or had waited for an even better map. On settler, the second GMoV isn't even needed.

Having Morocco buried in jungle tiles helped.

Posted to HOF.

Suspect on "Settler" ~ turn 55 is doable w/ 3*salt/wheat/deer, close cultural CS, close opponent and an early cultural ruin. Travel time was the limiting factor.

 

[Bleidraner]

Using Vadalz (& Zenmaster)'s ideas was able to do - on Settler - a turn 64 victory. Nothing original on my part.

Took hours of map re-rolls (had the flu - wasn't capable of much more). Could have been done quicker if I didn't get [stupid] at the end or had waited for an even better map. On settler, the second GMoV isn't even needed.

Having Morocco buried in jungle tiles helped.

Posted to HOF.

Suspect on "Settler" ~ turn 55 is doable w/ 3*salt/wheat/deer, close cultural CS, close opponent and an early cultural ruin. Travel time was the limiting factor.

Great result Zlither.