Disable parallel dependency resolution

I have a monolithic repository, and when I try to do a full build of the repository I get


FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
> Could not download ehcache-core.jar (net.sf.ehcache:ehcache-core:2.5.1)
   > Could not get resource 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/net/sf/ehcache/ehcache-core/2.5.1/ehcache-core-2.5.1.jar'.
      > Could not HEAD 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/net/sf/ehcache/ehcache-core/2.5.1/ehcache-core-2.5.1.jar'.
         > Connection reset
> Could not download redisson.jar (org.redisson:redisson:2.9.4)
   > Could not get resource 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/redisson/redisson/2.9.4/redisson-2.9.4.jar'.
      > Could not HEAD 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/redisson/redisson/2.9.4/redisson-2.9.4.jar'.
         > Connection reset
> Could not download jodd-bean.jar (org.jodd:jodd-bean:3.7.1)
   > Could not get resource 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/jodd/jodd-bean/3.7.1/jodd-bean-3.7.1.jar'.
      > Could not HEAD 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/jodd/jodd-bean/3.7.1/jodd-bean-3.7.1.jar'.
         > Connection reset
> Could not download jodd-core.jar (org.jodd:jodd-core:3.7.1)
   > Could not get resource 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/jodd/jodd-core/3.7.1/jodd-core-3.7.1.jar'.
      > Could not HEAD 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/jodd/jodd-core/3.7.1/jodd-core-3.7.1.jar'.
         > Connection reset

* Try:
Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output. Run with --scan to get full insights.

The jar should be able to be downloaded manually (by clicking the link), but during the full build, gradle just can’t access it.
Modifying external maven repositories (adding urls, changing order) doesn’t help.
This doesn’t happen if we switch to internal artifactory that mirrors these external repositories, and also in partial builds
I suspect we’re being rate-limited from the server side because of the parallel artifacts downloads introduced by Gradle 4.0
can we disable this parallel behaviour?