The Great DoC 1.9 UHV Challenge

[Barbuesque]

Khmers

Finish date: 1410
Score: 4756


Tech path was Sailing - Aesthetics - philosophy - drama. Aesthetics is to build Borobudur. Without Borobudur you have to pollute your GP pool and cannot guarantee 2 great artists before the time limit, which is the minimum to fulfill the culture UHV

Settled the capital 1W as Bangkok, and sent the setller to Hanoi. 2 War elephants went to raze Pagan (one died)

Whipped the forge in bangkok as soon as was possible, to get a engineer assigned. That was done in 800 and the great engineer spawned around 1100. I started on Borobudur in bangkok when the forge was finished.

Dowed indonesia as soon as the 10 turns delay expired, Conquered Borneo (no losses), Sumatra (1 jumbo lost). I then lost my galley so I had 2 whip 2 elephants in hanoi to finish (and raze) their last city at the singapore spot. I now have my 4 cities and I also captured 3 workers.

Philosophy is done in 1160, I use the GE to rush the construction of the wonder and complete the first UHV. The next turn I switch to scholasticism, assign 4 artists (3 from the wonder and 1 from a temple) in Bangkok. 2 artists have also been assigned in Hanoi from 2 temples, then 2 more once the theatre is finish.

I also start trading Philosophy around, and I grab over time Calendar, Feudalism, Currency, Guilds, Alphabet, Compass, Paper, probably boosted the score but apart from calendar had zero impact on the finish date.

The first great artist is generated a few turns later, at 60% odds. there's some luck involved there, but since the 2nd was generated in 1400, there was still plenty of time to spare to try to generate a 3rd one. Given that Bangkok can run as many artists as it can sustain with it's food production, I can reasonably assume that a 3rd one would have been generated if the first didn't come up.

So all that was left to do was emphasize food, and set the culture slider as high as possible.

I even think that domination could be achieved from the current situation. I might try

 

[Ororo]

Well, there is just one thing you have to do to win as Tamils – conquer India. Needless to say, it’s pretty tough. Not sure if this is the way Leoreth intended them to be played, but in my experience India will declare war at some point, which will force you into defensive stalemate. So it’s probably better to attack them preemptively and try to cause as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. So here is the strategy that worked for me:

Switch to dynasticism and pantheon in the very beginning. My reasoning behind pantheon is diplo relations, pagan temple happiness and a shot at the classical wonders (in the end I didn’t build any). The most important part is diplo relations since you’re going to do a lot of trading. I settled my capital in place – don’t be fooled by the lack of food, a source of Fish will spawn next turn. The other city should obviously be founded on Iron. Send your galley (with an archer onboard) to meet Persia, Ethiopia, Egypt (if alive), Phoenicia, Greece and Romans. Send your War elephant to West India to meet the China. You should now have a good picture of the tech screen so start making the big trades. Alphabet should be easy to get from Greece, Maths from Persia, Mono from Ethiopia. India too should have something nice (Calendar/CoL/Construction) so check them out as well. Phoenicia is usually hopeless, especially under Hannibal who doesn’t know the meaning of “even remotely fair deal”. The big tech is Currency, so if it becomes available sell your arm and leg to get it. It shouldn’t though (which was my case), so start researching it yourself.

So by the time you make the tech trade with India, you should be prepared for an attack. Move your 2 swords near Mumbai (or other city in that area) since Asoka likes to keep it defenseless. With some luck you can also steal some workers using the War elephant. Just move him out of Indian territory and strike at the eastern border. There should be plenty of workers around improving the calendar resources and elephants can fortunately enter jungle. I managed to steal 3-4 workers this way. Now, it’s hard for me to give a generic advice as far warring goes since what worked for me, may not work for you. But there are certain tricks that should be applicable for any game:

1) Don’t rely just on numbers. The enemy can and WILL outspam you with its many cities. Try to preserve your troops, especially the more experienced ones. Use catapults a lot, they deal the most damage out of all units.
2) Use galleys. This way you can bypass a stack and strike a weakly defended city in enemy’s core.
3) Fork the enemy. The AI is absolutely terrible at defending two cities at once.
4) Prioritize roads. While normally I wouldn’t recommend this and would instead focus on tile improvements, in this game you need fast reinforcement lines from both sea AND land. Iirc a good road network was the reason why I took down Indian capital with minimal casualties (troops shipped over by galleys simply wouldn’t have been sufficient).
5) Make sure you have good vision of enemy’s cities to know where his stacks are. Spies seem like an obvious choice here, but you don’t really want to build spies instead of swords/axes/catas. So I used my starting missionary and workers. They have 2 moves and can hide in a jungle where only elephants can hit them!
6) Luck. You will definitely need some. I too had to restart a couple of times before I got a favorable situation in India.

You should also start running double merchants in one of your cities to get a head start on UHV #3. Once India is conquered, research Drama for Theatres and the option to run culture slider. Getting 2000 culture and 3000 gold shouldn’t be a problem with all that juicy land. (+ I pillaged a couple of cottages, sold some old techs and negotiated some GPT deals). The Great Merchant can give you about 1000 gold as well.

Once you get your UHV #1, beeline Guilds for even more merchant slots. Build a large enough fleet (though in my case it was a complete overkill) to deal with Khmer and Indonesia. I was really lucky since they started at war with each other so soon Khmer came to me with a peace vassal offer. Obviously I accepted and destroyed Indonesia in 2 turns. Then I got my second Great Merchant, made a couple of gold deals and voilá – Historical victory in 1000 AD, which I think is the earliest you can get it. The score I got was 14091.

Spoiler :

Unfortunately, my graphics card has just malfunctioned so I don’t think I will be making any more guides in the near future.

 

[Barbuesque]

Virtual in 1748, Final score in 1802 is 6501

This just might be too easy. I finished radio in 1739, with 18 cities, which means, as far as I understand it, something like paying 80% more for techs (tech penalty for having over 10 cities). I ran almost the whole game with 100% techs on. There's several unused GP sitting in london because I didn't even bother at one point. And that's while making several major mistakes:

1) trying to make the aztecs collapse because I wanted the tuitan spot and that's not where they built it. Totally silly, I lost 2 knights, 1 catapult and my musketman among my conquerors, I didn't succeed, lost some permanent stability to heavy casualties and razing penalties, which made me dip into shaky (-1!!!) when combined with a civic switch right after getting the indian cities from the trading company. India immediately respawned and I lost Mumbai, which forced me to divert considerable resources in a late game war to grab the asian cities.

1a) slowing down my expansion in north america because I lost the cream of the NA conquerors in that futile attempt

2) 4 non-general GP sitting in london

3) losing 4 galleons in a brazen attempt to raid triremes and galleys off the spanish coast, after they dowed me, a few turns away from military science. Totally unnecessary as I easily fullfilled that requirement.

4) totally and constantly forgetting to manage my south african city, from one of my initial settlers. This could have been a springboard for my far east expansion, instead it played only a marginal role.

Stability was rock solid (20+) even with 23 cities at one point, during the expansion phase. Not sure if this is actually good or bad, as this probably makes emperor doable from that perspective, on the other hand as you can see I totally ignored the stability maps and settled according to economic considerations only. Is this working as intended?

Research rate looks silly fast to me.. I'm researching steam power in 3 turns atm, in 1748. I know i am in a golden age, but I do have 18 cities.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

@ Barbuesque

1) You'll loose 10~20 Stability when you drop out of GA. Part of that will be permanent. Which is why GAs are to be avoided at all costs, especially on Emperor. One trick is achieving your 2nd and 3rd UHV goals simultaneously - that way you can avoid the Triumphal Arch GA.

2) How's your Cities Stability? It should be horrible due to foreign Culture in your Indian cities.

3) Did you liberate Australia? I don't see any Oceania cities. That may have helped your Stability substantially. I personally never liberate Australia because I like historical realism (and Domination).

4) There are no permanent Stability hits from loosing units IIRC. They are all temporary, as they get halved every turn.

 

[Barbuesque]

@ Barbuesque

1) You'll loose 10~20 Stability when you drop out of GA. Part of that will be permanent. Which is why GAs are to be avoided at all costs, especially on Emperor. One trick is achieving your 2nd and 3rd UHV goals simultaneously - that way you can avoid the Triumphal Arch GA.

2) How's your Cities Stability? It should be horrible due to foreign Culture in your Indian cities.

3) Did you liberate Australia? I don't see any Oceania cities. That may have helped your Stability substantially. I personally never liberate Australia because I like historical realism (and Domination).

4) There are no permanent Stability hits from loosing units IIRC. They are all temporary, as they get halved every turn.

Yeah I was +22 on the last turn before the GA, then I ceded the 6 worst cities (2 in india, 3 in australia, 1 in africa) and stability stayed +20-25 during the GA, and dropped between -12 and -20 until communism then it started to creep back up slowly with the introduction of security bureaus. It was monarch btw, not emperor, I mentioned the emperor thing because you can count on stability being at least 10 points lower if you play emperor.

City stability was around 0, it was foreign/civics/expansion that were in the -25/-30 with a huge + economy to make up for it.

On the topic of golden ages, I've noticed like you, that most of the time, they really should be avoided as they are extremely destabilizing once they are over. I wonder what could be done to make them more attractive because as you said, depending on stability, it can be important to achieve the 3rd UHV within the time frame of the 2/3 golden age.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

Isn't there a permanent stab penalty for each turn spent in anarchy? Maybe a similar mechanic could be used for Golden Ages. But I guess I'm a bit off topic here.

 

[AdrienIer]

IIRC there is a permanent stability raise with GA, it's just much smaller than the stability penalty from the economic drop at the end of it.

 

[Leoreth]

Ideally the ecomic bonuses of a GA shouldn't influence your economic stability either way. The fixed stability boost of GAs is already enough.

Maybe I should change so that the previous GDP / production isn't updated while you're in a GA so your economy will be compared to its previous state after the GA is over.

 

[Swarbs]

@ Barbuesque

1) You'll loose 10~20 Stability when you drop out of GA. Part of that will be permanent. Which is why GAs are to be avoided at all costs, especially on Emperor. One trick is achieving your 2nd and 3rd UHV goals simultaneously - that way you can avoid the Triumphal Arch GA.

For me the GA is all about timing. In one Italy Emperor game I'd just conquered Egypt when the Reformation started and all the Catholic civs DWed me. My stability dropped to around -34, but by triggering a GA I was able to ride it out, using the extra hammers to get Courthouses and units to fight off France until I could make peace with a few of the others. Net result, I dropped out of GA at stability of around -15 IIRC - not great, but good enough considering I had around 80% of the Med by then.

Only 400 years to wait to get the victory

 

[Swarbs]

And here's my Mayan Emperor SVN victory to throw into the mix.

1270AD, 3200 points

Quite similar to Ororo's except I settled Huaxyacac on the plains to be near the corn, and Oxwitik on the silver as it's SVN. Huaxyacac goes straight for a library, whilst Oxtwik does a Pagan Temple then workboat. One warrior went goody hunting, and popped a scout (doh) and some gold. Switched to Pantheon on turn one whilst settlers were moving.

When the workers arrived they hooked up both corns then the stone moving as efficiently as possible so no wasted space. That meant that Huaxy reached size four pretty quick and I could whip the library. Then let Huaxy reach size three again and put two scientists to work. Cottages on the grass and plains for Oxwi and harbours in both cities helped the research along. When the GS popped he made an Academy in Huaxy, which gave me just enough science to get Calendar at exactly 600AD, with about 10 research to spare I think that Maya is only possible in SVN, as without the silver bonus it would have been impossible.

Once that was done, I did Archery next, only took two turns, then Code of Laws for the Temple. Archery was so I could put some archers on the dye west of Huaxy to block off any barbs. The Temple was easy with the stone, and whilst it was building Oxwi built a settler. Sent the settler off with four archers to found Uxmal on Norfolk, in order to get the iron and tobacco. Researched bronze and iron working in time to hook the iron up with archers in Uxmal and on the hill to the NW which I left forested with guerilla promoted archers on it to soak up all the barbs.

At this point I ballsed it up a bit. Should've just nixed my research and built catapults, axemen and swordsmen. Instead I pushed on for Machinery to get the crossbows so didn't have much gold for mercs. Didn't matter much - I was fortunate that I spawned at war with the Aztecs, so I parked a stack outside their capital and hit them repeatedly with catapults and picked off the odd unit to get the GP. Almost foiled when the damn Indians turned up around 1230 AD and gave me the plague, but made it in the end, cunningly timed so that I could wipe out the Aztecs on the same turn.

Only 3200 points, as all the wonders were gone by the time I spawned.

Map

Victory

Damn plague!

 

[Barbuesque]

Finish date 1805, score is 5111

It was my first time trying as France in DoC and it wasn't easy. The capital is monopolized until 1700 by the cultural uhv, and so is the research path for a while.

Tech path was Engineering - drama - guilds - music - patronage - philosophy in the first phase to speed up the GA spawn rate.

On top of it you need to expand through an overcrowded europe, and make a major settlement effort in NA. Fun times

Bordeaux and Marseilles focused first on research buildings, then units. Paris built library/happiness buildings/forge until engineering then focused on wonders for a long time. Notre dame, then sistine chapel, leaning tower and versailles. I took an unnecessary risk by fitting the sistine chapel in there because netherland often use a GE as it's first GP to rush Versailles, but it did pay off, the culture from the sistine chapel effect is so powerful.

I had time to spawn 7 GP before 1650, 4 GA, 1 GE, 1GS, and 1GM (from being first to economics). I had another timed for 1695 but with 91% chances of being a GA (I had to pollute the pool to make sure it arrived at that date), I had to turn up the culture slider to make sure I had 9000 culture by 1700. Since I entered the industrial era in 1675 (Physics), the 4 great artists were good for an additional 16000 culture, for a grand total of 25K and the UHV. Not that hard but Paris is monopolized until that date, and the GP production goes all toward that goal as well.

I didn't do anything with the 2nd settler until I colonized NA... anyone has a suggestion on where to use it? It's crowded enough in france with 3 cities, and everywhere around is flip territory.

All forests in paris BFC were switched to be worked by Paris, and were pre-chopped so that Notre Dame could be completed in 4 turns only.

I raised a small army and sent it to take Rome around when Italy spawned. I barely beat the italians to the finish. In fact they made an assault just before I did, lost a lot of units and I had a severely weakened garrison to mop up.

I then attacked Italy to clear up Rome's BFC. Unfortunately Spain intervened, it was kind of tough, they made a serious attack on Bordeaux but I managed to repulse it and raze Italy's cities.

Then HRE attacked me for refusing to give them my world map. I sent my veteran siege troops to take Francfort (not knowing it would flip to Prussia later) and they collapsed right after. Kind of anticlimactic (sp?). I took Vienna as an independant city, while Byzantium and the vikings captured the rest.

I was the first to get the conquerors, which is odd because Spain had optics quite a bit before me. Anyway I beat them up a bit, stole a worker, made peace then moved the troops around the future spot of New Orleans.

The North american colonies were made up of new orleans, Chicago, Denver and Regina spots. Since there's ususally no competition for the great plains until the american spawn, it was enough for 43% of NA and half the 2nd UHV. Easy enough and profitable too.

After HRE I went for Byzantium, which fell easily, already at war with the turks. Then Spain dowed me and the first of a series of disasters struck as they landed directly in a poorly defended Rome, which was pumping 1 rank 4 unit every 2 turns. I sent my siege stack to recapture it. Meanwhile, they had military science and were ravaging my fishing boats unchecked. Pushing in their territory was problematic because of conquerors, then grenadiers. Fortunately GB researched rifling for me and I stole it for them to even the odds.

I bribed Russia into the war, which is why you see Madrid as russian occupied in the screenshot. I also gifted economics to the dutch, because I thought that they could build the trading company and attack Indonesia, Spain's vassal. I was very much amused when they declared war RIGHT AWAY heh. I guess AIs don't need to build the trading company.

Spain was taking a real drubbing from Russia, Turkey (vassal) and myself, but the war took a turn for the worst when Prussia Dow'ed me, grabbed Amsterdam (assigned to me through the AP) and Vienna on the first turn, and marched a huge army toward Paris. I thought that the showdown battle at the gate of Paris was a lost cause, but the UU is surprisingly good, and combined with last minute reinforcements from the colonies (the "americans" to the rescue again lol), manage to smash Prussia's SOD. Then it was the slug to take back the cities and destroy Prussia. I got the land requirements on the turn before the time limit, close call.

Couple of really odd stuff:

England did not research Astronomy before 1700.. It researched rifling first.

The netherlands did not beeline for economics. I gave them the tech in the late 1600's

There was no reformation war. Not even Spain opposed it. I guess it didn't help that HRE was dead and France wasn't an AI?

 

[Leoreth]

Great, that's the first full report I've seen on the new French UHV. Seems to work out rather nicely.

 

[Barbuesque]

Italy, Virtual 1772 and I'm pretty sure it could have been done a lot earlier. No score yet. I MAY hit end turn 74 times and get one.

I didn't settle on spawn. I loaded the settler on a galley and sent it to Tunisia. Venice flipped and became the capitol.

It's important to start up an engineer right away, as you will probably research Philosophy or Banking very close to the cutoff date for wonders, 1500, and you will need an engineer. I didn't, and I was lucky to get one out with a dilluted GP pool

I attacked Rome off the bat, and so did the French. They had a MUCH larger army than I did, and took Rome before I could attack. but they were severely damaged and nicely stacked in Rome itself, so I hit them hard with collateral and whittled them down, losing only a single unit. I was able to make peace on good terms right after taking Rome, since the casualties were so lopsided.

A few turns after, Napoli went independent and I took it too.

Research path at first was Music-Patronage-Philosophy-Banking-Drama

I built all the wonders in Venice, so I only needed 2 great artists for the culture requirement, by building a cathedral in Venice as well. I barely pulled it off (2 great prophets from Rome...). By the way, not sure if it's a bug but the real cutoff date for the culture UHV is between turns 1590 and 1595. If you hit end turn at turn 1595 and your last city hits 5000 culture between turns, you will not get a fail message yet, but when you hit the year 1600 you will...

The byzantine were still alive so I conquered them in the middle of the years 1500.

I had a close call when I decided to bulb my great prophet for printing press, founded protestantism, decided to reform for the free shrine, and ended up at war with Portugal, great Britain, Spain and France, followed by Turkey that joined the fray a few turns later. I was badly outnumbered and spread all over the place and nearly lost the game there. So don't do it

To wrap up the land % I landed in Egypt (indeps) and took Alexandria.

I found it to be a nice set of UHV. I needed to reload twice, once to get the culture requirements (1 turn too late, the bug I mentionned above), and the second time when the british built the Banking wonder super early. The puzzle is nice, but I am not sure it's feasible on emperor.

The conquest UHV is trivial. The AI sucks at warfare and 1930 is a long.... loooong time to get there. I am pretty sure even 80% wouldn't be too hard.

 

[Leoreth]

By the way, not sure if it's a bug but the real cutoff date for the culture UHV is between turns 1590 and 1595. If you hit end turn at turn 1595 and your last city hits 5000 culture between turns, you will not get a fail message yet, but when you hit the year 1600 you will...

I'll find out what's going on there.

The conquest UHV is trivial. The AI sucks at warfare and 1930 is a long.... loooong time to get there. I am pretty sure even 80% wouldn't be too hard.

An increase to 75% won't hurt I guess.

 

[youtien]

This is the best 3000 BC start I've ever get - Romans founded Tarragona, flipped to me with 2 workers and 2 galleys. Roma has Notre Dame, Great Cothon, Great Lighthouse, Ishtar Gate, Theo-Wall... And collapsed 2 turns after I flip, left an army with 200% city defense. French and Germans sieged Roma, and I got the last hit in 1100s XD.

Founded Sevilla, Santander and Casablanca(ivory in north Africa), Got Astronomy in 1200, Settled my first 3 colonies in Cuba(hill), South Africa and Durban(gold). Kept conquerer event after 1350. Sistine Chapel is very good for colony culture growth.

UHV #2: get 10 gold/silver by 1650: 1 at home, 3 near Vancouver, 2 in Mexico, 1 near Yux Mutal, 1 on Durban, 1 near Manilla, 1 near Melbourne (South Aus), 1 In Brazil... easy as there was no competetion.

I defeated/destroyed all protestant civs after printing press, overexpanded and was on the verge of collapse, then I decided to stop research and go for domination victory before UHV. Made it 25% land in 1670, and Catholicism over 40% too.

 

[Barbuesque]

I had a game started as Spain but it constantly crashes on turn 1490 (corrupted sav file I guess) and I don't think I will restart and complete another as it's just not that interesting.

I did a first attempt a few days ago and I failed short 6% of the requirements. I started way too late though, and I didn't have the naval transport infrastructure necessary to maximize missionnary use. But that's easily solved.

A couple of comments:

1) The gold/silver UHV may seem daunting, but it's not, as there's no competition for the resources Youtien listed above if you beeline for Astronomy. You can also add the Inca resources, and the gold near Denver. Resources acquired by your vassals do count, but only if they don't trade it to you. Weird.

2) The best way to solve the protestant/catholic thing is through peace. You just nod and smile when they switch, then you swamp them with missionnaries, and ask them to convert back a few turns after. In face, even worse, you better research printing press yourself to get the reformation done with as soon as possible, and give the AIs more time to run some persecutions.

Right now "convert or die" doesn't work with the mechanics in play. You'll achieve far better results if you stay at peace and just convert them back through missionaries.

 

[pippo84]

[Hoping it's the right place]

Finish 1000AD, 6000 points.

1st goal: I've built The Oracle to research Construction. I've created the 3 different buildings in more than 5 cities.
Aqueduct: Rome, Mediolanum, Carthago, Valentia, Burdigala
Amphitheatre: Rome, Mediolanum, Apollonia, Sparta, Athenae
Barracks: Rome, Medolanum, Lugdunum (Lyon), Carthago, Londinium (London)

2nd goal: First of all, I've started from send 1 Settler in Spain (Valentia-silver), and 1 in England (Londinium, historical territory). Scondly, I've conquered Carthago and the Indipendend cities in France. I've then conquered Greece Empire, send a new settler in Algery, and finally I've conquered 2 cities in Egyptian coast (I've liberate them after I've accomplished the goal, cause they are diffult to defend from Barbarian Camels).

3rd goal: to train a great number of soldiers: Pretorians and Horse Archers in Spain and West France; Pretorians and Spearmen in East France and Constantinople.

About wonders: The Oracle, The Colosseum, Theodosian walls,The Apostolic Palace and The Church of Saint Sepulchrum.

About researching, I don't remember the exact order, but it seems: Agricolture, Monarchy, HbR, Theology, Currency, Code of Law... I've also used some GP to research Meditation and Monotheism.

Sorry for my English, but I'm Italian...

 

[youtien]

Korea is a pesky nation, and is another civ suitable for city-states.

The horse archer went to west for contact and ALPHABET. Tech literature - civil service (finish in turn 181)- - music - machinary - paper - printing press.

Founded Daequ on dye(commerce), switch to pantheon for Great Lighthouse.. grow to 4, build settler to settle on iron, then galley and another settler to Manila, then Great Lighthouse. 2nd city build Great Library then a settler to settle Jianghu(Edo, Tokyo) in 535 AD right after Japanese spawn and flip, to catch silver and prepare to take out Japs later.

After civil service, switch to city states and OR. City states helped city growth, my capital grew to 17 before astronomy. I got feudalism from Chola(Tamils), great help.

Manila built a heavy swordsman and a hwacha, conquer Jayakarta (Indonesian so easy to pick on). At the same time, build army to take out Japs. Build missionaries and temple as well. I finished the 2 cathedral in 1150.

The rest - sink 20 enemy ships, it's somehow boring, just beeline astronomy and military science for privateer. In the end I started settle NA, and has 4 vassals including Italy.

China lived through my game, although unstable and lost Beijing to Mongols. I stole drama, gunpowder and patronage from them. 3-4 pikemen + castle +hill city can defend Mongol Keshik very well.

 

[Swarbs]

The conquest UHV is trivial. The AI sucks at warfare and 1930 is a long.... loooong time to get there. I am pretty sure even 80% wouldn't be too hard.

Agree with this. IIRC I had a virtual victory with Italy in 1600 AD. Just grabbed Athens when Byz collapsed, founded Ravenna in N. Africa (Hippo site), then invaded Egypt and they collapsed three or four turns later. The Sistine Chapel means you get massive borders from all cities, so I also culture flipped Ragusa from the HRE. IIRC at the time I got my three 5,000 culture cities (Genoa, Rome and Venice) I had around 75% of the Med. All I had to do was rush Courthouses everywhere during my GA to prevent collapse.

Re: Spain, you don't even need to beeline Astronomy if you're a bit lucky.

Silver at Valencia
Three from conquerors in Central America, if the Aztecs have spread out enough. If not just rush settlers from the Aztec cities once the corn is farmed and pop goes through the roof
Three from conquerors in S. America, including the silver in the Amazon - use jungle promoted Explorers to protect your workers, mine and road)
Gold at Durban
Silver NW of Quelimane (capture with Axemen, chop rush Monastery, Temple and Library for the second border pop)
Gold near Denver (build a settler from Ciudad de Mexico and escort him with the knights and crossbowmen left over from the conquerors)

You only need to get Astronomy in time for 1650 to make sure all the resources link to your capital. Leaves you free to rush Gunpowder ready to take down all those pesky Proddies With Gunpowder you can also easily go conquer Mali and Egypt and nick their gold if you don't fancy messing around with Denver or in the Amazon.

EDIT: Maybe the 3rd Italy UHV could be changed to X% of the Mediterranean and Africa? Similar to the 3rd France UHV? That would better reflect Mussolini's desire to get involved with the Scramble for Africa and make Italy a true colonial power.

 

[youtien]

English 1766AD vitrual UHV + domination
Score: 13678

Vikings settled a city south of Inverness(fur), that means one extra city for me. Settled Southampton(cow), Manchester, Dublin and Casablanca on North Aftica (that city can only grow to 8 but has ivory & wine, and is not too far away).

All cities whip pagan temple first, then use missionary to change it to catholic church. Tech meditation - guilds, then switch to city states and urbanization. Workshop every grassland and plain tile, city states can help our cities grow fast, and with fur, ivory , wine and whale(after optics), happiness is not too big a problem.

After guilds, go banking for UB and San Marco Basilica(I hurried by a GE), then optics - astronomy. Steal engineering, civil service and philosophy from French and Vikings later. Stockpile settlers and workers and galleys, then begin settle everywhere, especially South Africa (can automatically get trading company bonus). Do not buy divine rights too early, for we need pagan temple whipping.

I got both conqueror events, just defeated them but didn't capture cities, let them vassalized in peace later, and had them researched aesthetics for me. Then I teched paper, education, printing press (both partially bulbed by GS), economics, liberalism bulbed constitution, switched to republic - representation - free market - resettlement. Then chemistry line, then rifling for redcoats and India conquest (I peacefully bought 3 indy cities and transferred troops to finish Mughals.)

Sink 50 ships is not difficult for privateers. Nobody had frigate earlier than me.

So I finished every UHV conditions before railroads, with radio. I had 4 great merchants and All Saints Church in my capital, I can get +50-60 gold every turn with 100% slider. I decided to go for domination victory, so I opened a golden age and followed by 2/3 GA and Taj Mahal GA. English is really overpowered, why other western settlers only start with size 3 and without market, and English starts with 4?