Hinduism Beeline
Nice game, definitely a gutsy move to go religion first though!
Go big or go home.
You have to be willing to try things a little bit differently from the mainstream approach, sometimes.
At the time, we were still contemplating between chasing after a Cultural Victory or a Religion-hording Diplo Victory game, so it made sense to chase after a Religion.
The resulting diplo map worked highly in our favour, both from the AIs being in a common Religion and from very few Worst Enemies existing, thus making it a lot easier to navigate the various AI Demands.
Still, skipping Hinduism but chasing after the other Religions would have been a better play, IF luck were on our side. Say, if Isabella founded one Religion and Saladin founded the other, we'd have had a very similar situation as to what we saw in our game, where Saladin founded Buddhism and Isabella ended up being Hindu from natural Religion-spreading anyway.
But if, say, Justinian and Saladin had each founded a Religion, our Religious-chasing strategy wouldn't have been all that useful to continue pursuing.
Not knowing the makeup of the AIs or the relative map layout also played a role--for quite some time, we assumed that Buddhism had been founded by an AI that wasn't reachable until after Astronomy--as it meant that it was difficult to predict the impact of letting both of the first two Religions go. So, ultimately, we decided to horde as many of the non-Buddhism Religions as made sense to do so.
On the other hand, if we were to have been beaten to Hinduism, we would have simply been able to get to Agriculture that much sooner, while still being on a good track to pick up Judaism, which was on our planned tech path. Thus, we felt that we would not be "wasting" any partially-invested Flasks on Polytheism by researching it first.
Cultural Game--Alternate Victory Conditions for different Victory Types Suggestion (for future games?)
I find it's a shame that cultural just can't compete with diplomatic, it would surely have paid off if the UN was further down the tech tree.
I'm sure that if your team had played for a Cultural Victory, it could have achieved an amazing result, just the same.
That said, the impact of having to save 4 Great People would have had a much larger impact on a Cultural game than on a Diplo game, so this game condition was inherrently unfair, further unbalancing the gap between a Diplo game and a Cultural game.
IN FACT, now that I think about it, the game designer could have said "Diplo Victories need 4 sacrificial Great People on the Fur (or 5 or 6, say), while Eldine loves Cultural Victories so she will understand the reasons for using up the Great People in pursuit of a Cultural game. Therefore, 0 Great People are required on the Fur if you win a Cultural Victory."
Honestly, just a little creative change in the game's conditions like that would, I think, have not only balanced Cultural vs Diplo but would have had a lot more teams chasing after a Cultural game.
Cultural games would have still had to have captured the Fur and sent Warriors there, so the conditions would still have been similar (a Cultural game couldn't have just ignored the outside world), but with the Victory Conditions being far more balanced.
I believe that if a game is going to be limited to two or three Victory Conditions, the game designer should be able to create "alternate" game conditions (like sending Great People to the Fur or limiting War Declarations) in order to better balance the victory dates across different Victory conditions. Thus, it could make it fun for teams to compete by playing for any number of Victory Conditions, instead of just going for the "almost certain to finish earlier" Victory condition.
What do you think of this idea?
Next SGOTM
I guess every team is done now that Maple Sporks finished as well... here's to hoping SGOTM12 starts in the not too distant future
We'll see how it goes. It would be nice to be able to draw the Russians back onto the scene.
It might even be great if some players went and unofficially advertised the competition elsewhere, such as on other Civ-based web sites (that I won't mention the name of, in case mentioning them is against the Forum's Rules--if it's not against the Forum Rules, go nuts in mentioning them yourself). If people have accounts on other Civ-based web sites, then they could use their "street credit" there to advertise the SGOTM over here. If that web site doesn't host a similar event, then it's not like it would be direct comptetion for that web site's offerings, and we might get an extra team or two to make up for possibly losing a team or two due to Civ 5.
Still, I think that most players of this SGOTM would actually be willing to play another Civ 4 SGOTM, as it'll be a long time before a Civ 5 SGOTM will be feasible, due to the great length of time required to properly set up a Mod like the HOF (aka BUFFY) Mod.
I thought that this task would have been beyond the capabilities of the average mortal and thus everyone on my team deserves congrats for having slogged through all of the pages upon pages of virtual ink! 
Not even close. The first page and last pages, mostly. But then when we finished SGOTM11 I started following the thread... but still didn't have the stamina to read everything, not even just the stuff from that point onward. 
