Adv54 - Timmy

[timmy827]

Scoring summary:

Victory - Domination, er, sometime after 1500AD. I actually didn't play this out; at 1500AD I was 8% short land and had huge leads in population, tech, and military. I didn't get to 1500AD until the last Sunday, and decided its a better use of my time to write up the report rather than doing the gruntwork of popping borders and mopup on the surviving AI. So I guess sponsor's discretion on giving the 20 points for a win.

Note on dates - some of these can go a turn either way. For example, I post 150BC for Hanging Gardens by this screenshot:


However, the F9 wonder list and the game log record it as 175BC since in the game engine, it was built at the end of the 175BC turn. So I'll list both dates, encourage others to do the same; T-hawk can pick a consistent standard to score by if any are close enough that it makes a difference.

This also applies to my other wonder date, and to Replaceable Parts (discovered by 'normal' research), but NOT to machinery in my case because it was discovered by lightbulbing.

Machinery - 400BC
Replaceable Parts - 1070/1080AD
Size 15 city - 200AD
Wonder besides Stonehenge/Oracle - 150BC (Hanging Gardens)
550+ hammer wonder - 600AD/620AD (Sankore)
1AD population - 34
1500AD population - 582
88 beakers/turn - 400BC

[timmy827]

Pregame thoughts:

I considered asking about the map. My assumption was it was an ordinary custom continents, followed by changing all land tiles to hills (so you'd still see the normal resources, and the sugar in the screenshot seems to indicate so. Think sheep is normally not on hills also). However I decided not to post, T-hawk is pretty thorough. I did wonder about having Sheep and Sugar close together, normally that doesn't happen...sheep isn't a tundra resource but it is usually close to the poles...

I spent a little time reminding myself the improvement rules with some WB assistance on another map:
Grass hills can always be cottages, plains hills cannot. (somehow I thought plans could be cottaged if riverside).
Farms only on corn/rice/wheat.
Cities will not spread irrigation (with no farms save grain this is largely moot).
Does this mean no cottage game? Maybe for a Bureau cap. Probably not anywhere else. I think the Domination tech path does not go much through the cottage civics. To be honest, maybe not Civil Service that much either and the scoring goals indicate population. Assuming option to build Research, cottage evens out with a mine at turn 40 (10 of -1, 20 even, 10 of +1...) which is pretty long. And of course mines allow you way more flexibility. And forges before markets surely as Industrious.

With low food and growing population goals, probably little slavery, caste, drafting....
Even with NTT, early Alpha or Currency likely needed to keep research going.

Scoring goals: A pretty nice selection with tradeoffs between expansion and research. Decided not to beeline any in particular. General thoughts:

- Fastest to research Machinery
--I got wrapped up in the no-fishing Great Scientist bulb path (where you can bulb metal casting and machinery if you avoid fishing, and research Math, Aesthetics, Alpha, and IW or something like that) and rather embarrasingly forgot about the Oracle->MC->Forge->run engineer and bulb until playing. I did do the latter plan but probably not particularly quickly.

- Fastest to research Replaceable Parts
-interesting, mostly about raw research power, the only really convenient GS bulb (not counting Machinery) is Printing Press.

- Fastest to own a size 15 city
--not sure how much worth going for. The problem is to really focus on this, you are taking off the table your highest-food sites for the traditional uses (GP farm, drafting haven, cottage bureau capital, etc). I could see if two sites basically tied for best food.

- Fastest to build any world wonder other than Stonehenge/Oracle
--have to think about whether worth it. Great Wall is obvious other early, cheap one. with NTT early spybomb might actually be quite useful. Still seeing how many neighbors...Assume even if I ditch the no-fishing bulb it will be unlikely to get GLH, someone with a coastal capital (which by map definition has excellent production) will in all likelihood grab it early.

- Fastest to build any world wonder of at least 550 hammers (such as Sankore, Sistine Chapel, Notre Dame, Taj Mahal)
--if I go dom, not culture will have to mull. Sankore possibly more valuable than normal on high hammer/low commerce map? obviously availability of a doubler is main question.

- Most population by 1 AD (the scoreboard mouseover for population points, not the demographics population)
--even with early machinery probably too early for a windmill spam to really make itself felt, so likely just let this one fall where it lies.

- Most population by 1500 AD
--a lot of micro. And I think the fast-ish domination is NOT growing your cities to 1500 AD but trading for mines, etc. before.

- Fastest to produce 88 beakers per turn. To qualify for this, you must actually produce 88 or more beakers - any scientists or Research builds must actually run for one turn. What counts is your beaker production shown on-screen, so before multipliers for devaluation and prerequisites. Take a screenshot and then end turn without making any further changes. Deficit research is okay as long as you have the cash to pay the deficit.
--more expansion good, though it may mean a good # turns cash hoarding to max deficit.


Victory condition:
Domination most likely. Obviously this favors 1 mover, siege warwafr elepult, treb, cannon etc war over 2-mover war since you.
Don't want to go all the way to space, especially with all self research. I think culture might actually be pretty interesting on this map but it doesn't line up well with a lot of the scoring goals (in particular machinery, replaceable parts, highest 1AD/1500AD pops, although it is pretty good with the fastest size 15 cities and wonders.)

I don't want this to drag out too long but there are no points for fast victory. So I think the goal techs for domination likely Steel, Astronomy. (RP for scoring, so while Rifling hardly essential if cannons are going to do the heavy lifting, rifling is close enough at that point to be worth chasing. )

Hmm, why leader/civ? Khmer I get, in a high prod, low food map the Baray is certainly more useful than normal, although still probably not a huge deal. FDR is a little odd though (besides the Back to the Future theme). Normally I'd take Exp/Cre over Ind/Org, although perhaps Org is a little more useful than normal Monarch since this is likely a low commerce map.

Also lesson from Don Quixote game - mills ain't that great early. They are more of the population goal scoring than immediate power need.

[timmy827]

Game Start:
Settled in place, worker and Animal Husbandry first (hey, they line up exactly). Early improvements went pig-sheep-ivory-sugar (mined). Ordinarily 2/3/1 is no brainer over 1/3/2, but here I think early commerce might be even MORE handicapped than food so went ivory first. The capital hut popped this map:

More welcome than usual as I expect scouting to be slow (can't ever 2-move, barring a hut pop for Wood II or Guerrila II). Pretty nice spot with a metal-happy and lake tiles. (Oh, that reminds me from Arise Ethiopia that Custom Continents produces a lot of choices for lighthouse lake cities which could be higher than normal value on a low food map. So there is another point for Organized. )

Because of terrain, spent more time building warriors for scouting than usual, including working the 3H hill right after the first worker until the pigs the done. (Took me a while to remember that Custom Continents produces more land than other map scripts as well, some unintented benefit). Some decent hut results too, getting Agriculture and this key map at turn 40:

Very useful to see the stone and marble, and noting the borders indicating I might have competition for the former. Met Pacal to the east soon after.

First expansion was westward though. Here was initial plan:

However, the red border eventually made me scrap the "National Epic" site. Because Catherine is Creative, I assumed she would quite likely settle and steal either or both of the western pig and corn, and thought it would be counterproductive to either invest heavily in a culture Wonder to counter or an axe/sword/etc. rush. So I did this adjustment:

Basically ceded one pig, and safeguarded the food from Creative-stealing by putting the corn in the first row. Hari will be the size 15 city with all the lighthouse lakes; it's food surplus is not that stellar at sizes 2-4 but stacks up well at sizes 6+, and that is what it really takes to push to size 15 quickly. There was some conflict with goals here - you can see the capital finishing Oracle for Metal Casting. Hari needed to get the forge and run the engineer which of course slowed down its eventual "size 15" growth. Maybe I should have used Angkor Thom for the engineer instead, if I grow as fast as possible on the pig and ditch the granary for the forge as 1st build, it would have worked...few turns later Machinery for maybe some eariler turns on size 15. On the other hand, even with the slowed growth I had some issues with Hari outrunning happy and health caps on the way to 15...oh well.

It was a little nerve wracking with the early settlers. Usually humans have a few turns "settler speed advantage" over AI - instead of moving with a (slow) escort, we often have fogbusters in place so settler can go 2 squares per turn even without roads; here I was shorthanded for road building so that speed advantage is gone in the all-hill terrain. Would have been very painful to get beaten to a spot with an early settler, fortunately that didn't happen

Also around this time I realized I was quite silly for not building Great Wall. It's not a terrible play in and of itself - with the slow transit and road building times, barb defense could well be harder, and potential for a spy bomb might be quite useful with no tech trading and low commerce. Assume that people gunning for 'fastest wonder' points would likely do it before 1st settler, so I sort of dropped it at this assuming I wouldn't score much for it - as well as it being far from sure I would beat AIs to it from a slower start. As it turns out the AI's left it until 1120BC, in retrospect a late play for it might have helped me. However it would have needed to go in my 3rd city to not mess up the Machinery bulb (in Oracle-holding capital, the +2 GPP could make it overtake Hari for the first Great Person, and in the engineer-running Hari would have added a dice roll) and just didn't seen practical.

More expansion:


The northwest location wasn't great - only that marble + deer - but it did its job of sealing off Cathy. She eventually planted two northern iceballs but didn't move through me to settle the various spaces in my interior.
Artemis going was a little annoying - was planning on using the Marble + Industrious for failgold. Eventually hit pay dirt with that tactic on several later wonders.

As far as research, after the basic worker techs and Sailing for lighthouses, went for Code of Laws (nabbing the religion in 700BC), then Monotheism (taking a double revolt to Caste + OR. For quite a while Caste was only used for Artist border pops, but was pretty sure I wasn't going to Slave anything), then Math for Barays and Hanging Gardens.

Some scoring proof - the Engineer came in and bulbed Machinery:


Oh yeah, the other reason for Caste was the 88 beakers scoring goal, also 400BC:

Painful squeeze - had to not work the 5 food 2 coin Crab to get that last beaker! Heavy double checking the next turn to make sure all the tile assignements back to normal.

Hanging Gardens: (This is my scoring wonder, I will frankly be surprised if I get any points


1AD population (Forgot to do the mouseover, but the F1 screen gives the equivalent count I believe


Despite my early fears, research without either the Alpha/Currency 'build tech' options wasn't too bad - early cheap courthouses, Caste specialists kept things moving. I also knew I could augment my lake cities with Colossus (built in Hari, but not until 175AD; the copper was in the silver cities 3rd ring and that took a while). So next on the agenda was Monarchy (HR needed for Hari's push to size 15), Iron Working (clearing the jungle at Hari), then Alpha, Currency, and the Aesthetics/Literature duo. Another lightbulb in the midst of this - Pacal had spread Buddhism to my capital, so I built two Temples and ran Priests to augment the Oracle, the 200-GPP Prophet bulbed Theology around the calendar change.

Wonder about the Theo bulb over shrine. It was nice to get it first, knowing I'd be able to build the two wonders whenever (with the religion gone, it would go way down on AI research priority; I wanted both wonders but they weren't immediate priorities). And it helped give a more immediate route to Paper (Sankore for the 550-hammer wonder scoring goal, which of course synergizes with Apostolic Palace), although I wound up diverting through the Aesthetics line before Paper. (someone else finally did Literature, Pacal I think, so had to rush to safeguard Great Library; was able to come back to claim the Music artist for golden age after Paper. However, I never got around to building the Confucian shrine the whole game - I got one prophet much later but needed him for the 3-man golden age. Definitely felt like a waste as I was spreading it quite diligently for the OR boost and AP/Sankore powered Monasteries/Temples.

Anyways, here’s the Sankore shot (missed the ‘you have completed’ photo):


Of course I was expanding during this time as well. I got lucky in the east - in one of the more boneheaded gameplans I’ve seen, Pacal seemed to build nothing but missionaries and was stuck at 3 cities for a very long time, allowing me to grab more than my fair share. (He didn’t get a prophet for his Buddhist Shrine until far later; I really don’t know what he was thinking.) However there was some competition from Germany landing settlers as you can see here:

Rajavihara was crucial not just for the shipyard (the chopped galley was quick enough to claim Stone Island, I planted right on the stone) but the wheat for the ‘size 15 quest’. Hari got there in 200AD:



I hadn't decided initially, but put Hari pulled double duty as the size-15 city and the Great Person farm - I just didn't run specialists between the Machinery engineer and growing to size 15! With the slow tech pace I didn't get Literature until 375AD - well after the size goal - so got the specialists going late. Of course, a size 15 city with 3rd-ring forests to chop could knock out Great Library + Nat'l Epic really quick. I had also put in the Moai Statues in Hari; as usual I preferred a mixed land/sea city that can build it quickly to a mostly-water city, even if the former doesn’t get quite as much out of it.

Was still in skeleton military mode; with plenty of land to grab decided against any early wars. So was not happy to see Cathy planning war at 450AD, although she shared my Confuciaism and was Pleased I was the only logical target. Her stack wasn’t exactly scary:


Was able to get away without really having to deal with this. A Pleased beg gave me 10 turns and she eventually dropped out of war mode, also she never got catapults so in the case of the worst I could have likely hid behind Walls and ran out the clock until an Apostolic Palace vote to end the war. Another diplo coup was finding that Wang Kon would sell his map at Cautious (he was different religion, but likes Caste System so could balance out) which filled out my knowledge of the southern continent, though meeting Ramsses took a while. Turns out Sury launched an eternal, knock-down, drag-out war against Egypt.

As we approached 1000AD, technology found some other ways to advance, like a map pop:

(Poor performance by Cathy - I shouldn’t have gotten this hut - I would have missed this island, had she not mapped the coast and sold me her map!)
Nice, I was planning on stealing HBR from Cathy using the holy-city discount, and was able to put those EP to work on Construction and Feudalism. The last one was really key - not just on the way to Replaceable Parts, but for Serfdom. The one-turn roads (with Hagia Sophia) were a huge sanity saver, was having a heck of a time dealing with every worker stopping dead moving onto or off of an unroaded hill. Used a golden age (Music artist) to adopt that along with Vasslage - wasn’t building military yet, but that was my only legal civic the whole game - I did decide to skip cottages at capital and the population scoring goal makes drafting unattractive.

Here’s a companion shot showing the limits of peaceful eastern expansion:

Again Pacal really dropped the ball here, this should have been his land, not divided between me, Germany, and Korea

Tech was also going along with a lot of failure gold. I was trying to always put ‘overflow’ turns of production into wonders, having the best setup with Industrious and Stone and Marble. Got a lot out of Chichen Itza (eventually finished by Wang) as well as wonders I was building but not in a big hurry to finish. That was the main thing keeping me going, seemed like most cities needed to keep building either the wonders I really wanted, or more workers, settlers, and missionaries for filling up the land. I never built any markets,grocers,banks, or unis, and only 4 libraries the whole game. Part of that is that the commerce multipliers seemed underwhelming with no cottages, and later on (when converted most to windmills) I was in war buildup mode so units came ahead of econ buildings.


And....there’s more, but I had issues on Sunday night so the conclusion of the report won’t be up for another day. (Monitor died, couldn’t write Sunday...at least it’s not the kind of problem that wiped out the existing pictures and saves)

[timmy827]

So, at this point the remaining score goals were Replaceable Parts and 1500AD population. Of course they somewhat go together - evaluating windmills vs. mines, the former are your ticket to the pop goal so the RP boost is most welcome. And, the other component of the pop goal is near-world conquest so it was time to think war as the peaceful expansion wrapped up.

Replaceable Parts was helped along by that first golden age and two great scientists...not sure the latter were the best move. (Had to finish researching Education after a bulb to put the 2nd bulb on Printing Press, so for a direct beeline to RP that only saved about 850 beakers over normal teching. Education was useful in the future for the Liberalism sling, and Economics but not for universities/Oxford. Scientists were the ‘safe’ plan with Great Library, could get 85%+ odds for scientists, maybe I should have rolled the dice on prophet for shrine and merchant, whose gold can be applied to RP directly. ) That plan culminated here:

Maybe about 20 turns before, I switched workers to do windmills instead of mines at new cities, and converted some of my old city mines to mills (though seemed I was always short of workers to do this fully, and some cities were still largely doing settlers/workers so wasn’t useful to give them more food. )

So, now time to think about war. One thing that hadn’t happened yet was a Heroic Epic. Because of the hill defense bonus I hadn’t yet bothered with any barb cities, and that allowed me a plan once I got to Guilds along with that HBR hut pop. The capital used Stables + Barracks + Vassalage to get a 7 XP knight out. Used several sacrificial catapults on barb archers to give the knight guaranteed wins:

Resulting HE went in the capital. Can’t resist 1-turn wonder screenshots:


For tools of war, the plan was now to research the following after RP:
Engineering
Gunpowder
Chemistry
Philosophy
Liberalism -> Steel

Engineering came first, ability to build trebs and upgrade them later would be great. I didn’t have tech goal after Steel, so would run 100% cash and upgrade as best way to use commerce on the war effort. For the accompanying units, I used a motley assortment of longbows, elephants and maces; maces and phants would hit units that were down to around ~1/2 life if there weren’t enough cannons. The longbows would mostly get Guerilla2 for cheap defense (although in practice, cannons often defended in front of them unfortunately; really wish there was an interface option to allow you to designate a defender order) and the movement bonus (very handy for leaving a few in a captured city for a few turns, then having them catch up with the attack once all nearby enemies cleared and safe to not defend the city anymore), and of course worked as well as anything else for finishing off units that had been redlined by Cannons.

However the rest of the tech plan got reshuffled. One was a good reason: AI tech cooperation. Bismarck teched Philosophy and Civil Service so I could steal them cheap (he had cities near me, and OB so I could spread my religion for super cheap steal), then spun off a colony (Augustus of England, consisting of the cities on my continent), with an interesting effect:

Yep, the EP I had been stockpiling on Bismarck “cloned” when the colony. Thus I was able to have my cake and eat it, stealing CS and Philo from Augustus and saving the EP on Bismarck for revolts. Another interesting thing was Augustus’s free units, some cities got two maces and some got two warriors...guess there is weirdness with trade routes the turn he was created. You can bet I made good use of that bug/oddity later

I wanted either Great Scientist (bulb Chemistry) or Merchant for trade mission, but got 2 consecutive low-odds Engineers which really had me bummed. With industrious and the wonder resources, I don’t really need to engineer-rush anything, and with 2 of the same I couldn’t launch another golden age. After a lot of thought, the plan was to do Economics next, use the Merchant + one engineer for a golden age and go for a chain of them; I felt quite addicted. This involved also teching Nationalism (no drafting, just Taj, basically a way to convert commerce into hammers...and also some trees back into gold:

This was the ‘fake Bluebell’; the wonder was built for real a few turns later using some of the forests visible to the north and cashed in.

Also involved were some times in Caste and Pacifism to squeeze out the great people for the 3rd golden age. Very odd to have my Heroic Epic capital using Pacifism to cash out great people points that had been building from wonders - but made sense, with the golden age hammer bonus it was hitting the limit on carried overflow from cranking units and could spare some mines for scientists. There was some bouncing around out of Mercantilsm (holdover from 1st golden age, mostly spies for EP stealing) to Free Market (good research boost at peace) back to Mercantilism (was at war with much of the world by the time golden ages ended), and of course spent some time in Theocracy once I had the GP I needed

The whole sequence really felt like balancing on a knife’s edge - as long as was in golden ages I could afford to divert to things like Nationalsim and Caste to enable more golden ages and still hit Steel in time for a 1500AD scoring push, but felt I would be severely hobbled without the bonus yields and free civic switches. (Really wish I had grabbed the Mausoleum with all these golden ages. Because I was lucky enough to not really need the Calendar happy, that was teched late and Sury built it. ) Nationalism was the last tech detour, then finished up Gunpowder, Chem, Lib and Steel by 1260AD.

Caste System spurts also allowed this:

Paid Cathy and Pacal to switch as well; Wang already was (his fave civic) and so was Augustus. Sury’s research had stalled to the point where he didn’t have code of laws in the 1200 AD’s although he probably wouldn’t have liked me enough anyways. Obviously this is a double bonus in this scenario - not only does the AI being unable to whip units make for less you have to kill, but you capture cities at higher pop for that scoring goal.



There was a LOT of my time spent mulling over war plans, deciding who to attack when to maximize gains by 1500AD. Another way to convert commerce to war gains after finishing tech was EP for revolts of course, which also imposed a significant planning burden of placing the spies in advance. The final result was to hit Germany and its colony first then radiate out. Worked because Bismarck/Augustus were soft targets - few units, only Berlin had a Castle and his other cities did not have Walls even. And geography meant that units used on Bismarck could continue onwards to Korea and Ethiopia; if I attacked Cathy or Pacal first after victory there would be a long march for the survivors to face any other AI which is nonoptimal.
Here’s the start, the southern army group with an unwelcome surprise:

I had run these guys south earlier and put them in Korea, since Germany was a long line the idea was to hit them from both directions at once. Wang declaring was real odd - he had been preparing for a long time but I assume I was too far away to be the target - but fortunately he delayed long enough to launch the attack on Germany from his land, and his strike force was not strong enough to cause me any real trouble. Invasion in the north:

Landed a lot of troops on turn I declared, took the first two cities, wait a bit to reinforce (wanted to make sure his navy was not close enough to risk any troops on galleys). Note that I used one spy on Berlin and the otherwise lack of castles meant I was ok to get the ball rolling before Cannons.

To spare you some detail, here’s a rough overview of the campaign phases:

So the first wave (red arrows) is the pincer on Germany I described along with gobbling up Augustus close to home. Then a bit of a pause of consolidating the pincer, including the Cannon upgrades, and moving in on Wang (green arrows). Note that I could also galley transport to Sury’s land from my southwest, a cunning plan to run troops through Ethiopia to Korea’s far-south cities was foiled when Wang vassalized to Sury in 1340. (Sury had just finished capitulating Ramsses after their eternal war). Then 3rd wave (orange) is the crazy part, declare on Russia and Maya, meaning I’m at war with everyone save Bismarck and Augustus (who I had reduced to one city and capped) and actively attacking all except Ramsses. In the final phase (green), those attacks culminate along with taking two of Sury’s nearby cities by water.

For the most part I got the force-allocation right - was able to divide stacks up for faster progress and usually avoided having too little force to capture a city right away, or overwhelming force such that stack marched for 6 turns and only needed 40% of its units to fight. (Having scouted and spied helped a lot. In fact I originally planned to not fight Pacal at all - his cities were mostly small and near my eastern side which were not my strongest unit pumpers - but eventually some scouting showed his military was weak enough I decided to kill him too as well). Between this and the cannon edge, most battles weren’t interesting. Here are some things that were:

First, starvation management - again because of the population scoring I paid a lot more attention to that usual.

Used a lot of tricks - have adjoining cities so a just-out-of-resistance city has more than 8 tiles, have workers on hand to insta-windmill ones, extra garrison units to keep it happy. Also, war weariness was predictably awful (in fairness to the devs, you usually don’t push offensives against everyone at once!), which was a big part of the decision to vassal Bismarck and Augustus. In both cases I was able to take their 2nd-to-last city in the peace deal, leaving them with size-1, foodless cities that wouldn’t contribute to my pop score much anyways, and ending their wars a few turns easier helped me grow more pop by easing happiness problems. That bought some relief, as did Drama and theatres, but unfortunately it became a big problem again as I pushed into Ethiopia (Sury had captured the Statue of Zeus from Ramsses, argh) before I could kill Wang Kon and also capitulate Pacal down to a size 2 city.

Here’s another reason I waited to attack Russia:

Needed about 20 cannons and 25 killing units to take that on! It sat in Moscow until war but then started jumping around - I was genuinely worried as I took cities that she would use friendly roads to go around my main force and hit my cities...foturnately it eventually settled down in St. Petersburg and was ground into dust over a couple of turns.
Lastly, grand finale on the Sury front:

Made out like a bandit on this turn. Captured 5 cities in one turn and made peace (again, war weariness, and seemed unlikely I would reach any more Sury cities in the last 4 turns). The overland going was tough here, Sury had a lot of counterattacking units and a broad front meant that I had to leave guards behind at several cities like Yeha. You can see that my stacks captured Gondar and Aksum with one attacker to spare each. And on just this turn, Sury’s real battle stack (he had by far the highest AI army) finally got to my front after returning from his beatdown of Egypt - and I could sign peace and dodge having to fight it.

So that was basically it, wars ended with Bismarck, Augustus, Pacal all reduced to minivassals (one small, out of the way city each), Korea and Russia exterminated. Micro’d my cities for more growth and hit this for the final scoring category:

And decided to call it there. Spent 44 hours on this...not sure if thats a function of the scoring system and custom continents (I like a lot of things about the mapscript, but it also has about 40% more land than Pangaea, Fractal, Continents or Hemispheres), or just my brain feasting on civ after not having enough time to make honest attempts at the last two adventures. So while I enjoyed it much, I felt no need to play this situation out:

That one Sury stack could have wiped one my dispersed, weary small stacks - but it would be nothing but a speed bump after a peace treaty when I moved all my cannons from the victorious Mayan and Russian campaigns down there.

Thanks to T-hawk for a very fun game.

[T-hawk]

Glad you got to play, great writeup and analysis. I'll think about how to handle the scoring, although I'm wary of setting a precedent for awarding points that weren't actually completed.

For the dates, it's the earlier of the pair unless lightbulbed, 175 BC for your Hanging Gardens example. The wonder is built when you end turn, before the AIs play and before the game turn rolls. Only the popup messages come after the year increments.

My assumption was it was an ordinary custom continents, followed by changing all land tiles to hills (so you'd still see the normal resources, and the sugar in the screenshot seems to indicate so. Think sheep is normally not on hills also). However I decided not to post, T-hawk is pretty thorough. I did wonder about having Sheep and Sugar close together, normally that doesn't happen...sheep isn't a tundra resource but it is usually close to the poles...

That was the process, yes, plus some manual edits. I honestly don't remember what resources I placed at the capital, except that the ivory was natural. I did want to have one Calendar resource to illustrate how that would work, but don't remember if I placed the sugar or sheep or if it spawned naturally. As for the land area, I saw there was a lot, and wanted a lot to let the player manage a variety of cities on the special map. Didn't realize it was quite 40% more than some of the other map types though.

Nice fail-gold economy. I've never done that in a coordinated fashion, I'd always just rather have the wonder and have it sooner. There's nothing special about doing it with forests (chop hammers convert the same as any other hammers), except that chops let you pack more fail-gold-to-be per turn since each wonder can only be built in one place.

(Sankore for the 550-hammer wonder scoring goal, which of course synergizes with Apostolic Palace) ... I was spreading it quite diligently for the OR boost and AP/Sankore powered Monasteries/Temples.

Yes, that wonder goal was directed specifically towards Sankore, with also a thought towards Sistine Chapel if culture was the goal. I always like the AP/Sankore/Spiral Minaret religious economy, although it never seems to work quite as well as you'd want for a non-Spiritual civ. Maybe if monasteries didn't go obsolete.

I've seen AIs like your Pacal get stuck in useless missionary mode on occasion. Notably that happened to Mansa Musa in Hannibal's Muse for several players. I don't know how to save the AI from itself there, though. If anything, I'd expect this map to make the AI run into the 3-missionary limit and be forced to stop building them.

I didn't expect players to go for domination on the rough map, although I didn't think through that the 1500 AD pop goal would encourage towards that. I most expected space fueled by Wealth/Research builds (which nobody did), with diplomacy as a shortcut if available (only Lewwyn tried.) I've always (since Civ 1) thought of space as the most natural ending condition, but maybe that's just me and most players think of space as a boring extended variant akin to time victory. Sorry you didn't get to truly finish, but sounds fully worthwhile anyway.

[Lewwyn]

I really like the fail-gold approach here. Its more micromanage work than setting cities to wealth, but the pay off with IND and OR bonuses is much higher! Grats on well played.

[NobleHelium]

I've always (since Civ 1) thought of space as the most natural ending condition, but maybe that's just me and most players think of space as a boring extended variant akin to time victory.

Yes.