Classic GOTM 35 first spoiler: End Of Ancient Age.

This will be the first spoiler for GOTM 35: Ottomans.

To qualify, you must:
Be researching a middle-age tech.
Have contacts with all civilizations on the starting continent.
Have a full map of the main part of the starting continent.


It is possible that you have contact with more civs than those on the stargin continent. Feel free to post about them, but please don't post screenshots of where they came from - ie => restrict screenshots to the starting continent ONLY.

So how did you proceed? Were you Scientific or Militaristic? Or crashing randomly when meeting a particular civ ;)

The ancient age was very peaceful (if you exclude barbs). I did not feel like taking on the UU of Carthage and Zulu early on, and decided to go for Military Tradition before waging war. Also, that will allow me to test out the Sipahi...

Note that in 800BC, while still researching Literature, I begged the great-god-of-the-games ainwood to make me Scientific instead of Militaristic. This he did, instantly btw. Many thanks to him.

Barbarians were numerous, but only a minor nuisance. For a moment there I was glad I went for open class, I think the extra barb attack bonus did not make me loose a single unit to barbs and did not slow me down. They pillaged empty cities a couple of times and they made me invest more in early warriors than I normally would. Actually these early warriors were more or less the only defenders I ever built. Never upgraded.

My research plans included Pottery and then directly for Republic. In the GOTM/COTMs I have played so far I have been very protective about my new technologies, but this was about to change. Since I was going for Military Tradition ASAP, I traded or granted all my techs instantly to avoid double research. I had a certain luck with this approach, not so much for them actually researching much on their own, but giving them Republic early on made them at least richer and so they had more money to go give me GPT deals and hence boost my own research.


Situation in 1000BC:
13 cities (34 citizens)
4 settlers
10 workers
25 warriors
4 granaries
300 gold

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/minime_cotm35_1000BC.JPG

Missing Republic (10 turns), Mathematics, Construction, Currency, Literature, Polytheism, Monarchy

Going into Middle Ages around 370BC. Guess that could have been earlier. I probably have some thinking to do in order to optimize early management of the science/lux sliders. Free tech is Engineering (yippie). I grant the ****** (another scientific civ) access to the Middle Ages, but unfortunately they get Engineering as well. I could have saved my 8 turns for Feudalism if I had been lucky there.

Strategy for Middle Ages is to research Military Tradition as soon as possible. Until then build libraries / marketplaces / barracks + horsemen to wait for upgrade.

I wasn't able to expand as fast as I would have liked in this, my first Monarch game, so I ended up with a handful of little colonies in my coast. In time, I was able to either flip or conquer these without too much trouble, so they didn't slow me down too much in the great scheme of things.

Things being pretty peaceful in the early going, I built a medium military, built libraries, and headed for the Military Tradition. Got some flips from the Carthaginians as the culture from the libraries kicked in, which was a nice bonus.

I was almost ready to start pumping out Sipahi to rule the world when -- HEY!! WHERE ARE THE HORSIES?!? As it turned out, they were deviously located just on the other side of the Carthaginian border. Well, I was able to nestle up a city right next to the pasture, rush-build every cultural building available, and finally get the horse square into my territory the turn after reaching Military Tradition.

After that, the Carthaginians had a rough time.

good game, which u best of lucks

Open

Goal – Domination with mass Sipahi. May change.

4000BC – Move Settler E.
3950BC – Settle Sogut and discover we have two wheats to use. Plan settler pump. Start researching The Wheel at minimum.
3700BC – Send Warrior 1 SW into mountains.
3500BC – Send Warrior 2 East.
3350BC – Send Warrior 3 South.
3000BC – Pliny compiles a list of the most advanced civs, and we are at the bottom. Woohoo!
2800BC – Meet Carthage.
2750BC – Found Iznik on Silks.
2550BC – Meet Zulus. Trade Mas and 64G for Pottery, CB and WC.
2350BC – Found Uskudar between wheat and ivory to the east.
2110BC – Give Hannibal CB, Pottery and 32g for Alphabet and The Wheel. Give Shaka Alphabet and 87g for IW. Start Research on Writing at Max.

For the next few turns, the barbs are a nuisance. They kill two of my workers and countless warriors, severely hampering my expansion. I’m just glad they didn’t kill any of my settlers.

1675BC – Izmit Found.
1600BC – Link up ivory.
1575BC – Learn Writing.
1525BC – Aydin Found near the Iron and Gold to the south.
1475BC – Antalya Found.
1375BC – Bursa Found.
1250BC – Learn CoL. Trade it to Shaka for HBR, his World Map and 24g. Edine Found.
1200BC – Apparently, the English have built a Colossus. Istanbul Found.
1075BC – Learn Philosophy. See Red Borders close to mine but cannot make contact. :hmm:
1000BC – Found Adana.

QSC Stats – 11 cities, 27 pop, 4 workers, 11 warriors, 3 archers, 8 spears.

At this point, the Ottomans experience a change in national identity, and where the Ottomans were once Militaristic, they are now Scientific. ;)

975BC – The Zulus build the Pyramids.
800BC – Sinop Found.
775BC – Link Horses.
730BC – The Greeks build the Oracle.
690BC – Give Hannibal CoL for Mysticism, MapMaking and 70g.
650BC – A swordsman bearing the flag of Arabia comes into view. We say howdy. :wavey:
630BC – The English complete Great Lighthouse. Davidople Found.
590BC – Alexmanika Found. Emanopidu Found.
430BC – Link Iron.
390BC – Meet Liz. We give her Arab contact for contact with the French, Maths and 10g. Meet Joan, we give her Arab contact +42g in exchange for Polytheism. Meet Radnar and give Arab Contact for his Map. Give the Arabs contact with Shaka for his World Map and 6g.

Nobody knows about the Carthaginians, so they’re as good a bunch as any to start with. :evil:

Otto-Carthaginian War (part 1)

370BC – Declare war on Carthage. Meet the Greeks.
290BC – Raze Utica.
230BC – Raze Cirta.
190BC – Raze Oea. Learn Republic.
170BC – Give Arabs The Republic for Construction and their Map.
150BC – Give French the Republic for Monarchy. Give Zulus The Republic for Lit.
130BC – Found Ankara. Raze Cadiz.
110BC - Raze Leptis Minor.
70BC – Capture Theveste.
30BC – Found Salonika. Zulus build the Great Wall.
10AD – Learn Currency and enter the Middle Ages. Get Engineering as a freebie.

The war has progressed well and as I enter the Middle Ages, I have a stack of roughly 8 swords, 5 horses, and 5 catapults moving towards Carthage. It should be over soon. My long-term plan is to get chivalry and hopefully wipe away the Zulu with little bother, then beeline for MilTrad and then probably make an assault on the other civs with Sipahi. I start mass producing horses ready for upgrade to knights. :smug:

Modified Minimap at 10AD to hide the modesty of overseas civs.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gifhttp://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/ptw.jpg1.27

Opening Decisions
Domination will be my most likely goal for this game, as I just did a space and 20k, and I don’t feel like going through all the achingly long modern-age turns again.

I started off by taking a screenshot of the start location and blowing it up to see what might be hiding under the fog (I can never see anything in the start pic that is posted in the game thread, but I usually can when I am in the game). Just as the fog-gazers had predicted, I could see dyes on the forest tile S,S,SW, wheat on the plain SE,SE,S, and possibly another grassland wheat E, SE, SE.

I decided to do something unusual (for me) and settle on the SE Bonus Grass. I did this because I wanted my first city to have access to at least 5 surplus food, but I also didn’t want to mine a grassland wheat. In this location, I could also use all three wheats when needed, and this would come in handy prior to building a granary. Having learned the value of sharing bonus tiles between cities in a prior GOTM, my top priority was to get one or two settlers built before a granary, to maximize use of the irrigated wheats. I decided on a settler for my first build: my exploration (and early trade opportunities) would certainly suffer, but I felt compelled to put all the extra food to use as soon as possible.

My worker’s first action would be to mine a BG, because with all the bonus food, shields were the limiting factor in getting out a settler early. After that he would irrigate and road all the wheat. F10 revealed lots of AIs who knew pottery and alphabet, so I began with research on TW at max.

Expansion
After the first settler, I built a warrior, who discovered ivory and ANOTHER grassland wheat to the east, so my capitol built another settler after the one warrior. I decided on RCP3 due to the terrain and my likely goal being domination. My worker finished the necessary roads just as my first settler was built so it only took one turn to reach his final destination. Iznik was founded in 3300bc. I had to micromanage my two cities very carefully in order to share the wheats efficiently.

I had four cities (and only two warriors!) in 2190 bc, when Sogut finished its granary. After that it built a barracks, because this city would be producing lots of military as well as settlers. Then it built another settler. In 1870 bc, Sogut began its first complete round as a 4-turn warrior/settler factory. This was the first time I ever made a factory that worked quite like this one, so I thought I would post how it worked. It required micromanagement three out of four turns.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/BF_GOTM35_SFturn1.JPG
The pic above shows the beginning of the cycle. The city is at size 5 and has no shields or food stored. The tiles are worked to maximize shields. The city will make 3 food and 10 shields, building a warrior in one turn. Other cities get to use the grassland wheat tiles on this turn.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/BF_GOTM35_SFturn2.JPG
This pic shows the second turn in the cycle. The city has completed the warrior and is way behind on food. But since there are three wheats that can be used, this is no problem. The citizens are assigned to work all the wheat tiles. It will make 7 food, the exact amount needed to grow this turn. The build box says the settler will be done in 5 turns and shows the city will get 6 shields, but that isn’t even close to correct. The city will grow this turn, and the new citizen will be placed on the mined hill tile, giving the city two extra shields.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/BF_GOTM35_SFturn3.JPG
The population is now at 6 and 8 shields are stored. The build box says the settler will be done in 3 turns, but that is still misleading. The citizens are arranged to gain 10 more shields and 5 food.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/BF_GOTM35_SFturn4.JPG
This is the last turn in the cycle, and the only one that did not require micromanagement. The city will grow this turn, to size 7, and the new citizen will again be placed on the mined hill. That means the city will not make 10 shields, but 12, the exact amount needed to produce the settler. The population drops down to 5 with the production of the settler. Although a granary will empty when a city reaches size seven, this does not happen if the city produces a settler or worker on the same turn that it grows.

All told, Sogut produced 11 settlers and 12 veteran warriors before 1000 bc.

Research, Contact and barbs
My research path was: Wheel, turned research off for about 10 turns, Pottery (because I didn’t meet the Zulu until late, but I traded with them two turns before I finished it), Writing, CoL, Philosophy, The Republic. I made contact with Carthage in 2800 bc, the Zulu in 2310, and the arabs and greeks in 900bc. The trades were nothing special so I won’t go into detail. My path would be to get into the MA as soon as possible and then get to Military Tradition.

The barbs were a bit of a hassle. They only managed to pillage one tile, but they forced me to focus more on military than I would have preferred. I had quite a few regular warriors running about guarding workers and settlers. I dispersed 8 or so camps.

End of QSQ
39 population
15 cities
4 barracks
3 granaries
1 settler
9 workers
22 warriors
2 archers
3 spearmen
401 gold, -7gpt
Republic due in 3
All 1st tier techs, all second tier except math; Phil, COL, MM.
Spices, dyes and ivory hooked up.
Firaxis score: 271 (zulu 250)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/BF_GOTM35_EndQSQ.JPG

That poor chap circled in blue squatted on that coast tile for nearly two millennia, hoping one of the mysterious “red” people would poke out their head. No luck. A galley finally did the job for him.

I entered the middle ages in 590bc, about 10 turns away from building my Forbidden Palace and with a stack of around 20 swords (horses would not be hooked up until a few turns later). The first victim would likely be an off-continent opponent that managed to complete the Pyramids in 650bc. Carthage was only around 8 turns from building them. It is a shame that they didn’t get them, as it would have made a huge impact in my game. Because of where the Pyramids ended up, I floundered a bit on where to jump my palace later, and therefore jumped it too late I think.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gifhttp://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/ptw.jpg1.27

MiniMe: It looks like we are playing similar games!

Opening Moves

As planned I moved the settler east one step. The worker took two steps to reach the wheat in 3950BC and saw that the great seer Dynamic had spoken truly - as he prophesized there were two more wheatfields.

With +9 food/turn available to be shared between the first two towns I wasn't sure whether to produce a settler first or a granary first. After producing two warriors and sending them out to explore I decided to start with a granary. My build sequence ended up being warrior, warrior, granary, settler, with the settler being produced in 2670BC. From then on Sogut ran as a four turn settler factory for a very long time. Initially it ran from size 4.5 to 6.5, beginning at size 4.5 in 2670BC. Some time later my workers improved enough of the surrounding land for it to run a 4.0 to 6.0 cycle which saved a bit of luxury spending.

Micromanagement

With the approach I took there was a lot of micromanagement to be done in this game! I irrigated all three of the home region wheats. Sogut with its granary had priority access to the two grassland wheats. It used both of them for one of every two turn growth cycle and one of them in the other turn. Three of my next four towns, Iznik, Uskudar, and Aydin, were located so that they could share access to the three wheat tiles. They were arranged like this (arial photo taken in 2030BC immediately after founding Aydin; Izmit was founded before Aydin to claim the eastern wheat and ivory):

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sirpleb35-1a.jpg

I shuffled citizen assignments among those three towns and Sogut to benefit from all three wheat tiles every turn and to avoid wasting food in overruns. I didn't build granaries in any of them but those three towns did grow fairly quickly with the extra food. They built workers and an occasional extra settler between their other tasks (mainly warriors and a few archers in the early stage.)

This wasn't as neat as bradleyfeanor's warrior+settler pump.

Exploration and Growth

I built quite a few warriors in this game. As I explored I kept encountering more and more barbarians. The barbarians were quite a nuisance. Often I found my units dancing with them a bit to gain the advantage of strong defensive ground. I didn't lose much though the loss of one worker was painful. I sent out a few archers to deal with barbarian camps where they had defensive bonuses. Eventually (1250BC) I'd dealt with them all and had about a dozen warriors at lookout points keeping the entire home region clear of new camps. I think the barbarians were stronger and more troublesome than I'm used to because there weren't many nearby AIs sending units through our home area to help deal with them. And the two nearby AIs weren't strong so they didn't have many units to send.

I met Carthage in 3300BC. A Zulu scout met me in 2430BC. In 1725BC one of my warriors found the north end of the land bridge and followed it. He didn't encounter anyone on the bridge, crossed it, and in 1350BC he found the Zulu on the other side. I finally realized that they'd started there. Their scout I'd met in the north sure got there quickly!

I decided to go for a ring 4 and ring 8 build. Cities in the inner ring would build libraries as soon as possible, to speed progress toward Military Tradition. The outer ring would build barracks and horsemen. Although the outer ring would be significantly corrupt (nearly 50% as it turned out) I didn't build any courthouses. I was planning a quick conquest and wasn't sure courthouses would pay back their construction cost before the end of the game.

One priority build outside the core region was to claim horses. I sent a settler to the north end of the land bridge as soon as I saw the horses there and had no problem claiming them before a rival.

I'd hoped to do a Palace jump this game but as Ancient Times evolved pretty much abandoned the thought. I didn't find a good location for a second region except the areas already occupied by my neighbors, and I didn't want to try taking those with an early war. I decided to build a Forbidden Palace in my ring four town directly west of the Palace. This will reduce corruption a bit throughout the empire and will expand the productive region to be an oval with a few western coastal cities becoming ring 4. At the end of Ancient Times the Forbidden Palace is not yet complete.

In 1910BC I noticed a red Civ border off our west coast. I sent a warrior to stand on the furthest west point of land. He patiently waited there hoping to hail another Civ across the water but no one ever appeared. See bradleyfeanor's spoiler for a picture of this in an alternate universe :lol: Eventually I got Map Making and of course sent a galley to make contact.

QSC status (1000BC):
19 towns, 34 citizens
1 settler
10 native workers, 1 foreign worker
14 warriors, 5 archers, 1 galley
1 granary, 1 barracks

I kept a QSC timeline, click here (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SirPlebGOTM35QSC.zip) if you want to see it. Spoiler warning - if you don't know and have the maps of four Civs then don't read my QSC timeline.

My map at the end of Ancient Times in 690BC:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sirpleb35-1b.jpg

Research

I researched Pottery first to build a granary quickly.

After that I focused on research speed. I'm planning a conquest using Sipahi so I want to get to Military Tradition as soon as possible. To help with that I gave away, or traded for the little I could get, a fair bit of ancient tech to my neighbors.

Research summary:
3350 Learn Pottery
3300 Trade for Alphabet
1990 Learn Writing
1990 Trade for Iron Working, The Wheel, Warrior Code
1725 Learn Philosophy
1725 Trade for Ceremonial Burial
1500 Learn Code Of Laws
1250 Trade for Map Making, Horseback Riding
1150 Trade for Mysticism, Mathematics
1025 Learn Republic and revolt, got a four turn revolution
875 Learn Literature
775 Learn Currency
690 Learn Polytheism
690 Trade for Construction and enter the Middle Ages

Warfare

I didn't want to be directly involved in any warfare before reaching Military Tradition. But I'd be happy to see others fighting - that would keep them out of mischief and keep them weaker.

So after discovering the land bridge and crossing it I decided to deliberately not block it. I was hoping that Zululand and Carthage would come into conflict. I thought they'd probably attack each other before attacking me since I was the strongest.

No such luck. My plan perhaps even backfired, things might have stayed quiet if I'd blocked the bridge. As it was the Zulu sent some units across the bridge and attacked me in 975BC. It was just a nuisance though. I was able to easily defend my town on the hills north of the horses with just warriors.

In 800BC Carthage allied with Zululand against me. Still no problem. Neither of them sent many units and I didn't lose any ground. I didn't counter-attack, just defended my holdings with my existing small forces.

In 775BC I paid Zululand a bit for peace and in 650BC I actually got a town from Carthage in exchange for peace. So these wars didn't come out badly. Still, I wish I could have gotten them to fight each other instead :lol:

PtW, Open.
Quick: MA in 630BC, uneventful. Horses and Iron secured, but not connected. Contact with 4 Civs, maps & embassies of all.

@bradleyfeanor: I knew there was a 4-turn warrior/settler factory in there, I just couldn't spot the darned thing! However I still have Sogut on Settler duty....

Neil. :cool:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/swordsman_smaller001.gifPREDATOR [civ3mac] Panther 1.29

Recently I did a number of warmongering games and thus I decided to do a mostly peaceful builder game this time (industrious, scientific). If the starting land-mass is decently sized, I wanted to build The Pyramids (should be possible on monarch). Target victory condition is diplomatic. When learning the map of our continent, peaceful was re-defined to peaceful once Carthaginians and Zulus are assimilated and we are exclusive owners of the 2 connected continents.

I settled 1 tile east of the starting position and Sogut mostly built settlers and workers. In 2350BC Uskudar was founded on the dyes and I decided to build The Pyramids. Carthage started them 1950BC, but when I established an embassy in 1830BC, I learned that they would finish in 49 turns, whereas I still needed 91. Thus I aggressively joined workers to Uskudar to speed the build and succeeded 825BC (i.e. 39 turns after 1830bc).

Research was pottery, iron, writing (beaten by 2 turns, traded), literature (speed tech), col, philosophy, republic (775BC, 4 turns anarchy), currency, construction (beaten by 1 turn, traded). Trading gave us the other techs, and we enter Middle Ages 550BC. The Forbidden Palace is under construction west of Sogut, and the plan is to move the Palace to Zulu country, once we conquer them.

The initial progress was significantly slowed down, because a lot of effort was spend towards The Pyramids in Uskudar. Thus 1000BC I only had 8 cities, 1 settler, 4 workers. It will be interesting to see whether The Pyramids bring the envisioned push as the game progresses.

Well I played as a militaristic Ottoman but just thought it was another modification like Cracker made way back when. It actually did me a favour, I believe, as I usuallly get a bit lazy with research playing as a scientific civ. This time I was forced to look at commerce in each city before deciding whether a library would be useful or not.

I noticed the red civ quite early on and was fortunate to make contact across the canal quite early (before lit). I didn't trade contacts and was able to keep up with the tech pace more or less through the whole ancient age. I also was contacted by a Zulu scout waaay before I found their land bridge.
I had a peaceful AA and watched Carthage and the Zulu waste shields on trying to attack each other. A couple of cities changed hands a few times during a 50 turn or so war.

I tried a few tricks to keep up with tech but most of them missed by a turn or two. The AI learned Maths and construction one turn before I did, but I was first to Republic while they all went for Monarchy etc.

I'm aiming for a space victory so have been trading like mad to speed up the pace. The change of era hit me hard thanks to the barbarian hordes but luckily I remembered reading a spoiler post ages ago where the player spent a load of cash on embassies and upgrades to minimise losses to barbs. This worked quite nicely but the losses were still a bit painful.

I'll edit when I get home with some dates and a pic or two.

That was a great game!

My situation looked pretty much like those above, except for SirPleb's gonzo expansion.

I skipped the granary and tried the blocking strategy while doing some barb farming.

Putting the sole UU resource next to the landbridge was tricky, and I wound up at war with Hani and Shaka, too. Fortunately a third civ put a town right on the bridge and kept Shaka's armies at bay. :lol:

Deleted your game result summary as it's way past the AA time span for this spoiler :rolleyes:

I'd hoped to do a Palace jump this game ...
I'm a little curious about this - you didn't like the mountains to the NW taking a prime spot?

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif[ptw] 1.27
I played this game as industrious and militaristic. That meant expensive libraries and universities, no free tech, but cheap barracks and an increased chance of leaders. Yet it wasn´t until the middle ages that I got my first leader.

It was hard to miss the wheat tiles under the fog on my LCD monitor. So I moved east and set up a settler factory. I managed about a dozen towns by 1000 BC, set up at RCP5 and RCP 8. The only downside seemed to be that only RCP8 towns could be placed by the sea. These towns were rather corrupt and poor so they built nothing but workers and, once Map Making came along, galleys. It is not often that two perfect RCP rings can be set up, so this could be a game where Forbidden Palace won’t be necessary. I still built FP by hand close to the capital which increased the output of galleys.

Dates worthy of note (well, to me at least):

4000 – Settler east, worker south.

3950 and onwards – Sogut founded. Worker east to wheat. Sogut worked the bonus grassland for 2 turns until irrigation was finished for a slightly earlier warrior and growth in 6 turns.

Research set to 100% on alphabet.

Build order: warrior, warrior, worker, settler, settler, granary. Why the two settlers? I wanted to hook up the ivory and dyes early on so that luxury could be kept lower for the fairly long period while the granary was being built. Perhaps, as I started a deity game recently, I was also afraid someone would nick the ivory. :crazyeye: The second settler was actually switched from granary when a warrior saw the ivory.

3000 – Contact with Carthage. Hannibal was ahead of me by at least 4 turns since he knew the alphabet and my other techs too.

2800 – Learned the alphabet. Iznik, first town, founded at RCP5 by dyes within reach of the wheat plain. It is the weakest wheat tile in terms of growth, but none of the others were available at RCP5, so I set things up quite differently from SirPleb’s RCP4. Leaving both grassland wheats for Sogut resulted in a rather “sloppy” 4-turn settler factory. On the other hand, ivory became available earlier and I gained a bit more territory.

2630 and onwards – A warrior embarked on his long walk across the landbridge. At the end, he met a barb camp. That was critical, but he was not attacked. Rather, the surplus barb warrior stepped away.

2510 – Pottery discovered and traded to Carthage for gold.

2070 – Zulu scout found at the end of the land strip. He had been unable to approach the strip due to the barb camp at its southern base. Iron working and Cer. burial traded. I then acquired warrior code from Carthage. The wheel and mysticism had to wait until I had writing to trade.

1990 – Learned writing. Traded the wheel and mysticism.

1150 – Map making traded from Carthage. But I only had two fresh coastal cities around this time and too little forest to cut down around them.

950 – Discovered the republic. Revolted twice (first from the big picture screen and then again from the advisor’s question) and lo and behold: it saved me one turn. I’ve questioned if this works before, but now it even worked for me. 4 turn anarchy instead of 5.

875 – Became a republic. 2 warriors disbanded in Sogut.

800 - First galley completed.

690 – Learned literature. By now I had 12 swordsmen and started building libraries.

650 – Traded polytheism from Carthage for Republic. I wanted Carthage to have republic so that they would not be able to pop-rush towns down to size 1. Traded Construction this turn also.

590 – War on Carthage. This war could have been started earlier, but my swordsmen were hunting barbs for a while. Unlike SirPleb I was slow in wiping out barbs. It was probably a necessity for SirPleb to get rid of the barbs as he was going for a much faster expansion phase. Forbidden Palace finished in Iznik.

570 – 2 towns taken.

550 – 1 town taken. 8 swordsmen and 1 elite spearman were now marching towards the capital, 3 tiles away. Currency researched, end of ancient age.

This is an interesting map – thanks! The difference between militaristic victories and more peaceful ones may become smaller this month, given the lush starting area. However, I am going for militaristic this time. “Zulus in space” last month was a pretty megalomaniacal idea, but now I’m back to my villainous greed for tiles.

@bradleyfeanor: Neat warrior/settler factory! Looking forward to hearing your evaluation of how it helped you in the end.

I’ll leave you with my most exciting moment to date, the meeting with Zulu. I was “this” close to attacking the barb in the middle and might have lost the warrior before meeting Zulu:

This wasn't as neat as bradleyfeanor's warrior+settler pump.

Neat warrior/settler factory! Looking forward to hearing your evaluation of how it helped you in the end.

Thanks! Unfortunately, it looks like the pump did not made a tremendous difference by the end of the QSC period, because Sir Pleb pulled quite a bit ahead in number of cities. Although this was certainly due to his superior skill in making decisions, it was also my fault. The pump itself was tremendously efficient--never wasting a single shield or food. But that is not the case for the two cities that shared the wheats. On many turns that the wheats were “free”, the other two cities needed only one or two food for growth. Considering the care I took with the settler factory, I should have given the same attention to bringing the other two cities into “sync” with it. :( I’m still learning the finer details of micromanagement.

There were also a few things that occurred in the middle ages that devalued/altered my pump, but I will save those for the next spoiler.

I have a formula I use as a very quick means of gauging “raw QSC expansion,” and by my formula, Sir Pleb and MiniMe both had a stronger start than mine. I would be curious to know what others think of the formula, and/or if they would modify it. It may be of value, it may be complete crap. I’m not sure. The formula does not take into account military, research or anything like that—just the raw expansion that the civ accomplished pre 1000bc. Therefore, it can’t be used to measure the success of any game plan (for instance, I could not use it to compare my initial game to tao’s in this thread, because he had a very different plan).

Here is the formula:
2.5 points for every city
1 point for each additional citizen (additional citizens = total population – number of cities)
2 points for each granary
2 points for each settler
1 point for every worker
.5 for every slave

By my formula, I had 73.5 points, Sir Pleb had 75 points, and MiniMe had 79.5. Maybe cities should be worth 3 rather than 2.5. Has some other civfanatic come up with a formula for measuring expansion?

@Megalou: I hope you get a few leaders, to balance out being militaristic instead of scientific! :king:

MiniMe: It looks like we are playing similar games!


I wish, yes :crazyeye:
Only difference is you will finish centuries before me :sad:

I'm a little curious about this - you didn't like the mountains to the NW taking a prime spot?
I'm not sure which mountains you mean but for any mountains in our home region my answer would be no. What I'd have liked for a Palace jump would have been to see a good second region during early exploration which looked large enough to support the Palace and at least four or five towns at ring 3 or ring 4. From anything smaller I'd gain unreasonably from the Palace rank bug. I didn't see a good enough location in early exploration. In hindsight perhaps starting with a quick push to settle eastward, build an FP near the ivory, and jump the Palace directly west would be a good opening. But I didn't see that before too far into the game. So just building FP in my westward ring 4 town to expand my productive region seemed the best thing to do. (For any close location building the FP and not jumping seems better than jumping - might as well retain the investment made in the initially chosen ring structure.)

I would be curious to know what others think of the formula, and/or if they would modify it.
I would suggest modifying the formula to be:
1 point per city (instead of 1.5, but see notes about this)
1 point per citizen
2 point per settler
1 point per worker
.5 per slave

My reasoning:
1) If the formula is to measure "raw QSC expansion" then granaries should not count. Whatever good they've done during the QSC period is already counted in the other factors. Counting them for more is counting future potential, not expansion so far. And counting future potential requires a much more complicated formula with lots of factors, e.g. the GOTM QSC scoring.
2) Cities and citizens count the same because the city works one tile as does each citizen.
3) Native workers count the same as citizens because they can be converted to/from citizens one to one. Foreign workers are worth less because they produce less and can't be safely joined to become citizens.
4) Settlers count for two points because a) two points worth of citizens can be converted to a settler and b) a settler creates a 1-citizen town which is also worth two points.

Amusingly I think that this formula results in 65 for each of us (MiniMe, bradleyfeanor, SirPleb) if we ignore my one slave worker.

The part which seems fuzziest is counting each city for 1 point (in addition to its citizen count.) Your formula counted each city for 1.5 (after allowing for subtracting city count from citizens) and you mentioned thinking about increasing that value. In terms of raw empire production it seems right to me to count each city for just one, representing the working of the city center tile. But in the general concept of "raw QSC expansion" there's value in the territory represented by each city. The territory represents score gained, progress toward domination, and land denied to rivals. I don't know what value that should be given in this formula.

PtW Open, Long Version

Summary: A quiet MA, which ended with me dominant enough but not having connected up the necessary resources to go to war with Hannibal and his Mercenaries. Barbs were a problem, I lost one Settler (to a Horse from the fog) and two Workers (simply due to not spotting the Barbs could gobble them!), so a lot of tiles that could've been worked/connected aren't. In fact I'm very short on Workers entering the MA, and ought to pop a few from Sogut.

Contacts: Zulu (my first Warrior went south found the land bridge and followed it; my second went west and followed the coast north and east - so it was a while before I met Carthage), plus Civs A and B just across the narrow water. I have everyone's maps. The Zulu in particular were great research partners, completing a couple of techs on the exact same turn that I finished another one.

Future: I'm on top of the Barb situation now I have enough Archers running round to hit them as they pop up. First priority is to actually connect up the Iron and Horses, and chain a few towns down to Istanbul so it's not isolated. Research - not sure. I'm pretty sure that Zulu will be researching Monarchy, so I might go for Republic before starting Engineering. Militartily, Carthage is the obvious target. They'll always be weak, being stuck on awful terrain and trapped in a corner. Put them out of their misery. Then cross the water. Leave Zulu to later, and use the long isthmus to keep them at bay.

Turn log:
BC 4000 Worker SE, Settler E. There are definitely Dyes to the SW, in a forest.
3950 Worker SE to the Wheat - two more Wheat are revealed! Settler-factory-tastic! Not-so quick calculation, and I don't think I can turn it into a Warrior+Settler factory, as I only have 8 shields at Size 5 (if I settle SW on the BG). I settle in place, and found Istanbul. Er, no, Sogut?! Research: Pottery @ Max. (I stared at it for ages and ages, wondering if I should've settled on the BG instead... and didn't see what bradleyfeanor saw!)
3300 Pottery finished. Start Alphabet @ Min.
2630 First Settler produced.
2510 Iznik founded by Dyes. First two Warriors for Sogut, then a Worker.
2470 Contact with Zulu. Yes, a very interesting landform. I think, for now, my Warrior can sit on that long neck of land and stop anyone else from poking around. Trade Masonry for Warrior Code+10g.
2390 Uskudar founded. We also have Ivory within reach.
2230 Izmit founded. A barb warrior is close by, and will sack it before I can get a unit there.
2150 IBT: Barbs sack Izmit, take 40g :-(
2110 Contact with Carthage. Give Pottery+50g for Alphabet. Alphabet+30g to Zulu for The Wheel. The Wheel to Carthage for 60g. Decide to research CB on max, I might profit from it.
2070 IBT: Barbs hit Izmit again. I switched from Grass to Forest to get shields for the Warrior.
2030 Warrior disperses Barbs and I get my 25g back. Aydin founded.
1950 CB+40g to Carthage for IW.
1910 Antalya founded.
1830 Missed a trick… Sogut *can* be a 4-turn Warrior/Settler factory. Hmm. 5-7 though. (Except I was wrong of course... not that it didn't stop me trying....)
1725 Mysticism+55g to Zulu for HBR. Mysticism to Carthage for 40g. IBT: A Settler is killed by a Barb horse.
1525 Bursa founded. I messed up my Settler factory big-time - it was an optical illusion :-( I thought I saw 8 shields and +5 food at size 4.5, but it was only +4 food. Only 7 shields at +5 food. Not enough for a warrior on growth. Still, I bought the illusion, and ended up popping two warriors, then a Settler, to turn from a 4.5-6.5 into a 5-7 factory.
1500 IBT: Lose a worker to a Barb horse, careless - I didn't spot it…. These Barbs really are annoying me!
1475 IBT: Barbs hit another Worker, really, this isn't going well! They also destroy a road. And Sogut riots.
1400 Finger slip and I send a Settler the wrong way. This game is a disaster.
1250 Edirne founded.
1225 Contact CivA, just across the water. Give them Zulu for CivB+11g. Sell HBR to CivB for 34g. Istanbul founded.
1175 Konya founded.
1150 Trade Poly+Philo to Zulu for Territory+MM+25g. Trade WMs with everyone. CivB has 4 cities, CivA 4, Carthage 6, Zulu 9, Ottomans 10!
1050 Adana founded.
1025 IBT: Istanbul sacked by a Barb horse (Warrior defender killed).
1000 QSC: 11 Cities, Pop 27. Tech: All AA except Maths, Curr, Const, (Lit), CoL (1 turn), (Rep), (Mon). Contacts: Zulu, Carthage, CivA, CivB. Embassies with all. 2 settlers, 4 workers (lotsa Barb hits :-(), 10 Warriors, 3 Archers. 1 Granary, 2 Barracks, 1 Temple. 137g, +9gpt. 250 Firaxis points, 2 behind Zulu.
975 Sinop founded. CoL to Zulu for Maths+25g. IBT: Ottomans are most Powerful!
825 Kafa founded. Literature.
775 Davidiople founded.
630 Finish Currency. Trade WM,Curr,Lit,4g to Zulu for Construction, and we enter the Middle Ages. Monotheism is the free tech. Alexmanika founded.

World at 630BC:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/eldar_GOTM35_entering_MA.jpg

Neil. :cool:

The bright sun glistened on his stasis pod as Mursilis opened the hatch and surveyed the landscape with a river nearby and wheat to the southeast he smiled. A little voice in the back of his mind said “The fog gazers say there’s more wheat to the southeast”, and with nothing to lose he gathered up his belongings and ordered the settlers that direction. With the founding of Sogut, the fog gazers were proven to be right again and with the addition food available, Mursilis set his wise men to researching pottery, so that a granary could be built.

His early scouts reported that there were luxury items for the people in the nearby woods. Both ivory and dyes would be there as soon as he could get settlers to claim the territory. His initial scout, Thor made contact with the Carthaginian people and reported back a tribe of relatively equal strength to that of the Mursilis’ people.

The founding of the city of Iznik commemorated the end of the first thousand years. The next millennia passed with little commotion. A couple of new cities were founded, a couple of new technologies were researched or traded for and our warrior-scout, Conan met the Zulu peoples a proceeded to camp out on a choke point to keep the Zulu and Carthage as strangers. This communication block allowed Mursilis to serve as the trading hub and coupled with his own research allowed the Ottoman republic to reach the Middle Ages in 390 BC. During that time the thoughtful Zulu and Carthaginians were kind enough to build the Pyramids and Great Library.

The ancient age had been a quiet one and entering the Middle Ages with 19 cities, most of them with libraries and warrior garrisons. Soon Osman (as his people now called him would begin building troops for conquest.

Amusingly I think that this formula results in 65 for each of us (MiniMe, bradleyfeanor, SirPleb)

:lol:
I'll take it!

Your numbers do indeed make more sense. I shall convert.

I stared at it for ages and ages, wondering...)

Me too! It took me forever to make that first move, and I left the computer three or four times just to clear my head (and to get beer). I am still learning how to "spot" all the factory possibilities, and I finally had to resort to pencil and paper in order to map out each turn.

Here's my core at 1000 bc, ring 4 is complete and ring 7 on the way :


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Ottomans_1000bc.jpg


1000 bc Status :
21 cities.
51 citizens
5 granary
2 barracks
7 workers
9 warriors
3 archers

Republic in 8 turns, AA techs left : Math, Currency, Construction, Polytheism, Monarchy.
Score : Ottomans 327, Zulu 252, Carthage 208.

...and Carthage did build The Pyramids. :D

[civ3mac]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif

Yes, that's my first Predator insignia :eek:

I figured I wanted to play with the Sipahi, I wanted a fast game, and I *desperately* wanted to get to my first five-figure Jason score. So maybe, just maybe, Predator class AI development might speed the game ... one way or another ;) Did it work? Wait and see :mischief:

I had already decided to move the worker south, and in the absence of anything exciting to move east to settle. So Sogut founded in 3950 BC and built warrior, warrior, settler, granary and then settlers. Iznik was founded in 2900BC at radius 3.5 on the river. The granary completed in 2590 BC and Uskudar was built in 2310 BC two tiles west of Sogut.

I irrigated all three wheats and then worked *really* hard at micromanaging Sogut and its first two neighbours on every turn to try to use them efficiently. Not hard enough, obviously, as my 1000 BC count was 13 cities with 38 citizens and 120 tiles, and a lowly 72.5 on the bradleyfeanor scale of growth. I think my error was in not adding granaries to the other two cities, and I probably focused on early military builds to excess - I had 27 warriors and 8 archers at the end of the QSC.

My research decisions played out quite well. Apart from CoL I researched pretty well flat out, and all my projects finished with a monopoly position. Map and contact trading also played out well. I acquired Currency in 430 BC to become middle aged, by which time I knew everyone and had a full map. My completion dates were:

3400 BC Pottery. Sold to Carthage for cash
2670 BC Wheel. Traded to Carthage for Alphabet
2110 BC Iron Working. Traded to Carthage for Warrior Code
1700 BC Maths. Traded to Carthage for Writing and to Zulu for CB and HBR
1325 BC CoL (40 turn). Traded to Carthage for Map Making
1200 BC Literature. Sold to Carthage for cash
1150 BC Philosophy. Traded+CoL+Literature+contacts to Zulu for Construction
730 BC Republic. Traded for Poly somewhere along the line :hmm:
430 BC Bought Currency from Carthage for 9 gold+WM, which was fully comprehensive at that point.

Wonders? None. But as in other reported games, Carthage and Zulu obligingly built the Pyramids and the Great Library, very convenient for future acquisition, making a wonder-triggered golden age a real possibility at a time of my choosing.

Barbs were not a big deal - maybe a couple of units lost. As we were at Emperor-level barb attack bonus level I was careful not to attack them most times, and when the era change happened the only barb camp on the planet was on the Zulu isthmus between a Carthage city and a Zulu city, I lost just one warrior who was stranded there as an observer, as a horde of horses descended on a Zulu town.

Wars? None in the Ancient Age. My second research project showed me I was going to have to take horses from Carthage, and I didn't want to do that with archers or warriors against Spartan Hoplites. So after my initial expansion to meet Carthage near the Zulu choke point, I switched my focus and, rather rashly, built up a 47-strong vet warrior force for upgrade to swords. My warrior army was so substantial that I had to disband a few to avoid bankrupcy as I switched to Republic after a 6 turn anarchy in 530 BC. The upgrade happened in the dying years of the Ancient Age. The first few turns of the Medieval era would see a substantial shift in the geopolitical landscape as I sought to acquire horses and to build up a larger city count as the Ottoman empire reached for its destiny.

...a lowly 72.5 on the bradleyfeanor scale of growth
I no longer have a scale of growth. The weight of Zamint's inner ring blew out its springs. :) :eek:

Zamint, I would love to know how you developed in order reach that size at 1000bc!

This was my first GOTM, and I didn't think to take notes as I was playing, so this won't be very detailed. :)

I generally play a :love: peaceful :smoke: style , and this game was no exception. It doesn't get me the highest scores, but I find it more fun to try to work with the other civs and manage a modest sized empire to victory.

In the ancient ages I concentrated on expansion, and researching to republic. I turned my first two cities into settler factories (a 4-turn and a 6-turn factory). I quickly reached my goal of roughly 20 cities (I would gain a couple more later due to cullture flips, and build one more in the IA to claim a resource that was just past my borders). I then concentrated on building up my cities' infrastructure, prioritizing (1) research, (2) happiness, and (3) money. I also built some military units and negotiated ROP's to deter attacks from my enemies (I got some $$$ out of the ROP's, too, because I had more territory than anyone else).

I was first to writing, phil, COL, and Republic, and managed to trade them for $$$ and all the remaining AA techs except currency (which none of the 4 civs I had contact with knew). I researched currency, entered the MA, and got monotheism as my free tech.

I would suggest modifying the formula to be:
1 point per city (instead of 1.5, but see notes about this)
1 point per citizen
2 point per settler
1 point per worker
.5 per slave

.....

Amusingly I think that this formula results in 65 for each of us (MiniMe, bradleyfeanor, SirPleb) if we ignore my one slave worker.

:thumbsup: I like your formula! I get 66 on this scale :D

[civ3mac]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif

Yes, that's my first Predator insignia :eek:


I can already hear the sirens!! :D
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/redambulance.gif http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/redambulance.gif http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/redambulance.gif http://gotm.civfanatics.net/players/awards/redambulance.gif

[ptw] 1.27f - Open Class

I started militaristic but Ainwood fixed my save when I was at 1910BC.

[U]Ancient Age[U]

I moved the Worker to the wheat and the settler east. I researched pottery first. I also stationed a warrior on the western tip hoping to spot the red civ. I got contact in 1000BC. I sent a settler to the bottleneck to grab the horses and block the Zulu. Not that they ever tried to settle anywhere along it's length. They had sent a scout up the neck fairly early.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/dsv_g34_1000bc.JPG

My 1000BC stats: 12 cities, 27 pop, 1 Settler, 9 workers, 10 Warriors, 1 Archer, 4 Barracks, 1 Granary. short Math, Phil, code, Lit, const, curr, republic, monarchy. I mis-micromananged my factory quite a few times. I probably cost myself a couple settlers overall.

I got contacts and exchanged maps with Carthage and Zulu early on as well with two neighboring civs I met shortly after 1000BC. Since all my productive cities we inland, I was very late getting any galleys built. I had a lot of trouble with the barbs, losing a few warriors and getting plundered a few times.

I built up 10 Swordmen and 13 Horsemen and Dow on Carthage in 410BC. I traded Monarchy to them the turn before to put them in anarchy. I captured a couple of cities and then had difficulties taking the city of Carthage. I was also sitting on two size 1 cities along my border waiting for them to grow.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/dsv_g34_410bc.JPG

The last time up against Carthage in the AA (GOTM34?), I switched to Swordmen after losing too many Horsemen. I stuck with Horsemen this time but would of done better with swordmen.

I was still at war when I researched Currency and traded for Construction in 290BC. My free tech was Engineering. I traded the other scientific civ into the MA but they got Engineering too.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/dsv_g34_290bc.JPG

Open

Settler east to found Sogut in 3950BC - once more amazed at the accuracy of the fog gazers! I built warrior, worker, settler, granary, and thereafter got my 4-turn settler pump or thereabouts operating for quite a while.

This time I ran with max research on pottery, then alphabet, writing etc, instead of my usual min research. Getting pottery quickly was definitely worthwhile, with the other techs, I am unsure, as the AI got some of them before me, still in the end it seemed to work out ok.

QSC stats - 13 cities, 31 pop, 1 settler, 12 workers for 58 on the SirPleb revised scale of early expansion. Not bad for me, and definitely an improvement on my recent GOTMs, especially building the extra workers!

My military was 16 warriors and an archer at this time, partly in response to the barbs and the Carthaginians wandering around.

610BC we finished research on republic and revolted, drawing the dreaded 7 turn anarchy period - what is the trick for getting a double shot at the anarchy period, anyone?

I grew impatient with the anarchy period, so declared war on the Carthaginians in 510BC, with two turns remaining on the anarchy timetable. The Carthaginians had the Pyramids, and the Great Wall, but my mixed force of swords and horses has been sufficient to persuade them to relinquish these treasures.

In 190BC we finished research on currency to enter the MA with Carthage down to four tiny towns, getting mono as our free tech. Putting [another civ] into the MA sees them get mono as well! :crazyeye:

610BC we finished research on republic and revolted, drawing the dreaded 7 turn anarchy period - what is the trick for getting a double shot at the anarchy period, anyone?
Upon learning Republic and being asked what to research next choose "the big picture". From that screen use F1 and then revolt from there. After starting the revolution click the advisor on the top right of F1 till he tells you how many turns you rolled. Then escape to exit. Next the game goes through the regular end of turn stuff and then asks whether you'd like to revolt or you are content with anarchy. Beware that at this point you have already been in anarchy for one turn! You didn't get any production inter-turn. E.g. if you got a seven turn anarchy there are now just six turns of it left. If you decide to revolt again you get a fresh roll which starts now. So there's a chance of coming out worse. Still, with a seven turn first roll I'd throw the dice again.

Thanks for the quick response and detail on that re-roll, SirPleb.

The pump itself was tremendously efficient--never wasting a single shield or food.

Actually, that isnt correct.. you are wasting 1 shield in the last turn...
Reason I know that is because I built my capital in same spot and attempted to set up a 4 turn warrior/settler factory aswell. But I managed to mess up my timing and the facory got the final growth before the hill was mined... BUT.. it still worked (I left an unworked mined BG the first growth so govenor picked up that on the growth from size 5 to 6)

I was really puzzled because I could not see how I could get 12 shields the last turn when the hill still wasnt mined.. after awhile i realized the capital was buildt on a bonus grass tile, so at the turn of growth from 6 to 7, this lost shield was regained. The most effective micromanagement therefore turned out to let the capital work a normal mined grass til on the 4th turn instead of a mined bonus grass once the hill was mined.

Predator 1.27f
My original intention for this game was 100k. Once I had researched lit around 1380 BC I noticed the libraries I was building were pretty expensive. I had built one barracks but hadn't noticed that it was cheaper. I stopped playing and came on the board to have a moan at ainwood for switching off the scientific trait without telling us.

I subsequently realised that the scientific trait had been switched to militaristic. I continued to play on as a militaristic civ towards the end of the AA aiming for conquest/domination. I finished that session and came back on the board to find that ainwood had P.Med me offering to switch me to scientific. I thought "Sweet!" I have cheap rax and now I'm going to get lots of cheap libraries just as I need them to race to sipahi - 200 AD domination here I come.

As I was going to upload my end of age save for fixing I got the feeling that what I was contemplating doing was not quite in the spirit of the GOTM :mischief: I then considered playing on with the militaristic trait but scratched that idea as it would take me forever to get sipahi compared to people now playing with the scientific trait. I plumped on sending in my 1380 BC save for fixing and playing towards my original goal of 100k.

The reasoning for this was that it wasn't going to give me an unfair advantage over players who were going for conquest/ domination without lots of cheap infrastructure. Neither was it going to put me at an unfair disadvantage of playing on as militaristic - I didn't know about ainwoods offer of amending militaristic ottoman jason scores at this point.

The advantages I did have from playing from the 1380 BC save was the I knew where the incense was and I had 1 cheap rax.

On the whole I feel that switched games should be excluded, including mine.
BTW This is coming from a player who ended up with an indifferent jason score :) . IMO The earlier a player realised ainwoods error the more they could work it to their advantage particularly with the subsequent misguided offer of switching traits. Also switched games aren't really comparable to the other games or even to other switched games.

I also think that the players who played through as militaristic only and those who played as scientific only should recieve seperate awards for fastest victories.

On the whole I feel that switched games should be excluded, including mine.
BTW This is coming from a player who ended up with an indifferent jason score :) . IMO The earlier a player realised ainwoods error the more they could work it to their advantage particularly with the subsequent misguided offer of switching traits. Also switched games aren't really comparable to the other games or even to other switched games.

I also think that the players who played through as militaristic only and those who played as scientific only should recieve seperate awards for fastest victories.
I see your point here but I don't agree. I don't think the difference is really all that big between the three kinds of games (militaristic, scientific, or switched.)

For the record, my game was scientific.

Regarding medals I trust that the Jason scoring system will handle the differences between scientific and militaristic.

Jason scoring won't handle awards for fastest finishes. We should see scientific or switched games take Culture 100K, Space, and Diplomatic. But if a player is going for one of those goals, has a chance of reaching it, and got the militaristic start I expect they'd have seen the trait problem and queried it. I expect they'd be relying on the Ottomans being scientific. And that they'd be on track (not behind and not ahead) if they queried it and got switched any time before the start of the Middle Ages.

Culture 20K might be a special case with a problem due to militaristic getting leaders more easily. A start with the militaristic trait might have an advantage here. Still we should perhaps wait and see - were there many people going for it? Did anyone go for it and use the militaristic start?

That leaves Conquest, Domination, and Histograph. I'm honestly not sure which trait helps more toward any of these. I'd be happy to consider them equal. I've submitted and feel I have a chance at the conquest medal, though kuningas (and perhaps others) may (or may not :) ) have earlier dates with militaristic. I'd be content to let it go whichever way it goes. Ainwood has already worked very hard to correct this glitch. If it were up to me I wouldn't ask more of him in terms of separating awards this time as a special case - I think he's handled it more than well enough. (I can only wish that Firaxis would handle glitches in the program itself as well as he's handled this. To ask more, i.e. a special case separating medals, seems unecessary to me.)

All of that being said it still leaves your case, militaristic and fast barracks followed by a switch to scientific, as a special case to be considered. Does it matter? I think not. If you play it both ways, you pay a penalty in paying maintenance on your early cheap barracks all the way to Military Tradition. As a scientific Civ with a focus on later military I didn't pay maintenance on most barracks until much later. I don't think a switched game would make much difference.

I no longer have a scale of growth. The weight of Zamint's inner ring blew out its springs. :) :eek:Zamint, I would love to know how you developed in order reach that size at 1000bc!

Last Gotm (Cotm4) I managed 21 cities but then we were agricultural. This time I tried something new (for me!) : Granaries

Build order in first 4 cities :
Sogut : Warrior, Granary, Settler and so on every 4 turns, first settler in 2710
Iznik : Warrior, Worker, Worker, Worker
Uskudar : Warrior, Granary, Settler, Settler
Izmit : Warrior, Granary, Settler, Settler

QSC-timeline (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/QSC_timeline_gotm35.zip)

btw : sorry to hear about your scale of growth. :D

Actually, that isnt correct.. you are wasting 1 shield in the last turn...after awhile i realized the capital was buildt on a bonus grass tile, so at the turn of growth from 6 to 7, this lost shield was regained.

I stand corrected! I completely forgot about regaining the BG city-tile shield when reaching size seven. Thank you, Gyathaar: I am sure remembering this will come in handy in the future.

@Zamint: Thanks for providing your growth details and a QSC link :)

ptw 1.27 open class

4000bc: study start. Maybe a wheat S of current wheat and a lux SE of southern most visible mountain. Move settler S, and worker SE

3950bc: worker to wheat and see 2 more. After some thinking, I move settler NE one to get all three wheats in the capital's radius (I ended up wasting a turn by going toward the possible lux :( )

3900 settle Sogut. Start Pottery at max

2750 contact carthage. no trades

2230 contact zulu. Trade masonry for WC, CB, 12g

sometime in here the zulu dow on us after we refused a demand.

1000bc stats courtesy of CivAssist :)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/rrauclassic351000bc.jpg


950bc peace with zulu at no cost (fake war-never saw a unit)

775bc claimed horses near the land bridge by settling Konya on top of them

750bc settled Adana and Sinop this turn; trade Zulu Col for philosophy, mysticism, 64g; trade carthage Phil & col for MM, 2g, WM. Start researching republic

650bc meet arabs. Trade contact with Carthage and Zulu for Math, Lit, 30g

610bc dow arabs for daring to land settler on our continent

450bc peace with arabs for 90g and contact with greeks; trade greeks math for WM, 16g

290bc learn republic. revolt with 4 turn anarchy. Trade carthage republic for polytheism, construction, WM, 19g. Trade Arabs republic &18g for currency and enter MA. Trade Zulu republic for 64g. Gift Greeks to MA and trade our free tech plus 71g for their free tech. Sell Greeks republic for 68g
Then sold both techs to Arabia for pittance as they had built GL and will get them in the ibt anyway. At the end of this turn, Greece had 6 gold, we have 899, and zulu and carthage are broke.

Edited minimap at end of AA

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/rrauclassic35endAAminimap.jpg

I can already hear the sirens!! :D

Ask not for whom the sirens call ... they call for thee :D

My first serious attempt at a GOTM. Up until now I have not tried a game more difficult than Chieften level.

I also played COTM4 and got annihilated, not a promising start :(

Anyway I found the land bridge early on and fortified the position to stop others coming across.

I played a zero research gambit, on the belief that it was the best way to go at this level, It seems that most people researched quite a lot, was I wrong to go for zero research?

Anyway I traded for all the techs and did OK. My note keeping leaves a lot to be desired so most of what happened is a bit vague!

I ended the AA with ~10 towns and a war with Carthage and Zulu for my troubles, I started the first and the Zulu jumped in soon after.

I raised 3 Carthage towns (they auto raised) and then I thought that things might be getting a bit heavy so signed a peace treaty with Carthage and a turn later with Zulu.

I am currently populating the free space gained in my little war, and plan on anther push on the Carthage soon.

The bottom line, I am learning quickly in here with you guys :)

What is the best way to get into a SG? I have lurked in the forum for a few weeks but nothing simple enough seems to be available.

PTW Open

My ancient ages went smoothly. I thought to check on rivals before deciding what to research, and ended up starting with the wheel. Then I had fun looking for horses. It only took me 900 years to find them. I did get a reasonable trade out of the wheel when I finally met Carthage.

I found the red border early on and had a warrior wait there for ages, but never saw anyone there. I sent a warrior down the land bridge early on and he was killed by barbs before making contact with anyone. I did not have much luck making early contacts.

I've just entered the middle ages at 130 BC and I'm revolting to republic (7 turns, what fun). I played the ancient ages without a clear goal in mind. I still don't have one, but I have a starting plan. As soon as I learn chivalry I'll try to take over my continent, starting with Carthage and getting the Zulu involved on my side at first. This should be pretty easy to do. Once I own the continent I'll decide what to do for sure, but I'm leaning toward a diplomatic victory. Last month I felt that having a well-defined victory condition goal was a big help in keeping me focussed and on track. That hasn't happened this game.

My first serious attempt at a GOTM. Up until now I have not tried a game more difficult than Chieften level.
Welcome :wavey: GOTM is a great way to venture into deep waters as you can see pretty quickly where you need to improve by comparisons in these spoilers.

I played a zero research gambit, on the belief that it was the best way to go at this level, It seems that most people researched quite a lot, was I wrong to go for zero research?
Not necessarily. It depends on your overall objectives. At Monarch level the AI research rate is not too bad, but slow enough that a couple of well chosen 40 turn gambits can keep you trading for techs. You really need to push to build your income though to ensure you can trade effectively. Get workers out and build roads and make sure you improve and work river tiles first. And of course you need to get to know people early to reduce the prices.

Anyway I traded for all the techs and did OK. My note keeping leaves a lot to be desired so most of what happened is a bit vague!

Well, it sounds like you did OK if you traded to parity, but it would be interesting to know the date you reached the Medieval.

In my game contacts didn't come too early and I wanted to get finished quickly, so I just kept the research pedal to the floor most of early game.

What is the best way to get into a SG? I have lurked in the forum for a few weeks but nothing simple enough seems to be available.
Check out the SGOTM. It's a multi-team competition, and the teams have formed up for the fourth game - Monarch level - and are ready to roll, but Mad-Bax, who runs it, may have spare slots or there may be people who can't continue for whatever reason. There are also training games to watch for. Now that you are moving up the levels you should be able to find something to join.

The starting point seems to be good, so I build there. I started max research on Ceremonial Burial, planning to go for alphabet-writing-literature, trying to build the Great Library (I consider this GW a “must”, perhaps due to civ2).

After the usual 3 warriors-settler-warrior I started a temple and the first warrior I sent north-east found Carthage, which refused alphabet, despite my 2 techs.

Strangely I sent the second warrior to south east, in a straight path that droves him to a never-seen-before (I mean, in other games) istmo. Few tiles south to the istmo he meet a Zulu scout, and decide to block the istmo, to gain something brokering.



In the meantime I was researching alphabet, but the meeting with Zulus was profitable: I get pottery and Iron working for masonry and CB, so I traded alphabet and warrior code with Hannibal, moving some money in this, few turns later I trade again for the wheel and, after writing I sell to Shaka contact with Hannibal for a reasonable (for me) price.



My temple was almost completed, when I decided to try to switch a granary in my capital, and (won’t remember … probably after a settler) in my second town, to increase the growth-rate: this is not my usual strategy, but this time seems to be a winning one.



My first warrior discovered ivory in a pretty near location, but near to Carthage too, so I decided to get this as first luxury, and wait for the comfortable dyes, so my third city was there.

Another decision was for the istmo: controlling this was (for me) a key for victory, so my fourth city (maybe fifth ??? – I forget to keep note) was there and, if this was not sufficient, later I saw the only “free” horse in the continent.



My usual strategy is to build only vet units, except warriors, and to build temples ASAP, not only for culture (invaluable for future), but also for the borders; in this game my second city has a temple very (for me) late, but was compensated by other cities.



The barbs were annoying, but not so terrible, and some money from the camps helps a lot.



When literature was “on route”, I decide that Sogut has to stop loose population, and I prebuild Pyramids for GL, using my speedy workers to improve all useful tiles near the capital.

I’ve noticed also some red borders south-west, and a scout too, but he doesn’t stop to take contact.

Going north, I’ve found incense and, despite the pitiful location, I build a city to grab the luxury.



Things proceeded peacefully and satisfying, when Shaka asked for literature: I thought there was only a city to defend, and I can do successfully, so I refused and he declared war.

I had to wait a lot of turns to see some Zulu unit, probably they had to deal with barbs.

In the meantime, one turn before GL completed, Arabs took contact, and consequently Greeks.

Of course, I traded only for maps, contacts and money … techs will soon arrive for free.



I planned other 2 cities for the west coast, and settlers were on route, when an Arab settler with archer landed, just in front of an horseman: only a second to evaluate, and I declared war, gained 2 workers and the free land.

The Zulu front wasn’t a problem for my swords and horsemen, and the only other “offensive” move from Arabs, after the foundation of my planned 2 cities, was to land a settler (?) and a sword, so I could gain 2 more workers, block the only buildable tile, and then make peace.

This done, and seeing no Zulu attacks, I move south in the istmo, with a worker building the road behind the (few) troops. Few but sufficient to answer to the few Zulu units, and when they arrived inside the borders of the Zulu’s city at the south-end of the istmo, I ask Shaka for peace, obtaining that city, all his money and WM!!!

In the meantime techs went to me from GL, so I put research to 0 and kept contact with other civs only offering my WM every few turns, but when I get monotheism, I started research for theology, considering Sistine a key GW. Of course I switched to Republic ASAP, waiting only 3 turns.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/90ADFIXED.jpg

Open PtW (Latest patch)
Goal:
1) Pre 1000 AD Domination Victory. 2) Win in the MA. 3) 10000+ score.

4000 BC: Sogut founded. Worker goes SE toward wheat. Studying Warrior Code @ 90%.
3300 BC: Warrior is at the boarder of the Carthaginians.
3250 BC: Warrior turns S and met a Carthaginian worker. No trade was made
3200 BC: Got “Warrior Code” set science to 100% and study “Pottery”. Start war with Carthaginian, captured their worker. Sending worker W.
3150 BC: Got first settler heads SE.
3100 BC: Warrior follows Carthaginian warrior and settler.
3050 BC: Attack warrior & settler, WIN! & now vet 2/4. Captured workers head W.
3000 BC: 2 Carthaginian warriors are after my warrior, time for cat and mouse.
2750 BC: Got “Pottery”, set science to 100%, study “The Wheel”.
2710 BC: Slaves connect both cities with roads.
2470 BC: Met Zulu scout, trade “Masonry” for “Ceremonial Burial”, “The Wheel”, & 10gp.
Uskudar founded this hooked up dye.
1750 BC: Peace w/Carthaginian for alphabet & 10gp.
1700 hook up ivory.
1150 BC: 2nd Carthaginian war.
1125 BC: great leader
1100 BC: Carthage captured. This was the only city they built!
1050 BC: Used GL for Pyramids in Carthage.
975 BC: ainwood fixed my game. (thanks)

This is where I stopped my detailed notes.

At some point I met Arabia and traded for contact with Greece.

I started a war with Zulus just before the MA. I got a second great leader, I used him for the Great Lib. in Denizli in 390 BC. This started my GA.

City list:
Sogut 4000, Iznik 2950, Uskudar 2470, Izmit 2150, Aydin 1750, Antalya 1600, Bursa 1575, Edirne 1525, Istanbul 1150, Konya 975, Adana 900 (built on horse by land bridge), Sinop 900, Kafa 875, Davidiople 825, Alexmanika 800, Emanopidu 800, Ankara 670, Salonika 650, Mugla 470, Denizli 430, Bolu 370, Urfa 350, Bingol 350.

Captured cities:
Carthage, Umfulozi in 330 BC the same turn I entered the MA. So I don’t know if it counts for the AA.

At this point I have only built 2 wonders (by GL’s), 2 libraries, settlers, workers, and offense units only (no defense).
I am building 3 temples & 9 libraries.

England built Oxford between Zulu and Ottoman around 350 BC so I meet the rest of the AI’s. I also have every ones maps.

I have 3 lux’s and both horses & iron.

Score:
Ottoman 515
Scandina 354
Zulu 350
Arbia 330
Greece 318
England 297
France 278
The Late Carthage 67

Enter MA on the turn after my screen shot.

Edit: about barbs. I saw a lot of barbs shortly after the start of my first war. This was not a problem I was still milt. so most of my warriors and swordsmen were elite by the time I sent them to carthage. I did take out a lot of villiages. The Zulu had some problems, I saw a barb get their scout.
By the MA the only open land was at the bottom of the land bride. When the 2nd civ got to the MA all the land was full so no mass uprising!

@bradleyfeanor, I would add maybe a factor for captured cities.

.5 for a captured city that could return back to org civ.
.5 for each citizen of the org civ in the captured city.
1 for a captured city of an AI that has been killed off.

I do have captured cities before 1000 BC, but not in this game.

My "Bradley Score" using the SirPleb formula:

11 cities 11 pts
18 citizen 18 pts
3 settlers 6 pts
2 workers 2 pts
5 slaves 2.5 pts

Total 39.5 pts

My "Bradley Score" using the SirPleb formula
:lol:

Your game is a perfect example of when measuring raw expansion pre 1000bc would not be a good guide for indicating the strength of the game. Nice, bold early attack! With Carthage captured, that civ all but subdued, and the Pyramids built, you are ready to spread over the map like a plague--and also making me very, very envious :cringe:. The size of your Civ at 1000bc is no indication of your true strength. I look forward to the QSC Gods finishing their work, so that we can have a scale for measuring a game like yours. (Hint, hint to those ambitious creators) :mischief:

I was wondering when someone would be able to use the military trait to their advantage before making the switch to scientific. Nice job! :goodjob:

Vanilla Civ, Open Class

First Game of the Month here, and only my fourth or fifth Civ III game, but since I can handle Civ II deity, I figured I'd go for open class. :)

I kept really bad notes, but I got a 4-turn settler factory set up (lost a number of turns to bad micro-management :blush: ), had about 12 cities in 1000 BC, and entered the Middle Ages about 400 BC. So I feel like I'm holding my own.

The Carthagians and Zulu both declared war on me at some point, but not much happened before we signed peace treaties. I got a city next to the horses as soon as I could after I found them. A certain other civ settled in Zululand, so I got contacts all around without any suicide galleys. At the end of the Ancient Age, most of my cities had libraries and my land was crawling with workers.

If I have time to play more (unfortunately, real life should be taking all my time in the near future), hopefully I'll take better notes and maybe some screen shots for the next spoiler.

Thanks to all the experts who share their wisdom on this forum! I doubt I would have spotted the settler factory, and certainly would know nothing of RCP without y'all. :)

To all those people who had Carthage build the Pyramids... you lucky, lucky people! One of the Civs 'across t'pond' built it in my game. I'm reminded of how COTM04 went for me - all I got was The Oracle and The Great Wall!!

Neil. :cool:

Well, I bought Civ3 in a bargain basement some 2 months ago, I have been hooked since, especially when I found this site. This is my first attempt at Gotm, although
I have also tried GOTM34 and replayed a couple of previous ones.

It also was my first play at Monarch level...

3950: Sogut founded (1 tile SE from start point)
Warrior. Pottery. Then Settler then Granary, Settler, Settler, Warrior, Settler
3350: Warrior Code
3250: Settler built
3150: Iznik founded (1 S of Dyes)
Prod. Warrior
3100: Road Sogut-Iznik
3000: Thucydides says Puny Ottomans are 5th/8
Iznik to produce Worker, then Barracks, Temple,
2850: Contact with Carthage, they would not trade Alphabet for Pottery
2630: First barbs attack
2390: Iznik pillaged by barbs, lose 6 rounds of work
2310: Both our Warriors get attacked, both become Vets
2150: Get Alphabet + 35 for Pottery + WCode
Uskudar founded 2N of Ivory
1950: Tacitus gives us 2nd place
1790: Meet Zulus, they’re 3 techs better than us; buy CB for 40 g
1750: Izmit built on the other sea coast (East)
1450: Aydin founded near the Iron on the S coast
1325: Antalya founded near the mountains/incense
1300: Bursa founded midway between Sogut and Uskudar
1200: English complete Colossus;
1050: Edirne founded (by mistake not at the coast); Zulus complete Oracle.
The last five or so cities were not very well judged as to timing, location etc.
I am afraid I could exploit a lot better the settler rush. In the meantime,
I have shifted production to Swordmen, as soon as I acquired Iron.
975: Carthage asks us for tribute; we call her bluff. Coincidentally, seeing that
both AIs were far more advanced in techs and that Carthage for some reason
did not have iron yet (as I saw when negotiating trades) I decided to strike
at the heart, take Carthage. So we direct our ready Swords there.
850: Approaching Carthage, we encounter one SpartanHoplite escorting one settler; we attack with 3 Sword; they are on mountains, so we lose one Sword. We are at
war!
730: Carthage completes Pyramids; we obtain an elite Sword after a barb attacks; Athens complete Library; we are 1st in population/ land.
650: Carthage talks peace, offers too little (one tech plus 20 g)
590: Istanbul founded
570: Zulu asks small tribute (5g + TerrMap), we give it because we have other fish to fry.
490: After a slugfest, my 6 Swords take Carthage; a couple of Elites are produced but no Leader; our forces being crippled, on the same turn we make peace with C. taking CodeOfLaws and 28G and a worker. It turns out Carthage city has horses -the city was built *on* the resource tile so I couldn't see them earlier!
470: Get a glimpse of a red city West of me, on the W coast of our continent.
410: We get a glimpse of a green city just S of the red one. (Shall I name names?)
We now have 10 cities, 28 units, 38 citizens. Score 324 (Carthage 270, Zulu 302 but both are more advanced !) Nearly all cities are now producing temples.
390: We sell contact with "Reds" to Zulu for Polyth.+34 and to Carthage for WM+25 only.
370: News of a massive barbarian uprising near Edirne; contact with
"Greens"; the contact was already sold by the "Reds" to the other AIs, just as I was afraid. Should I make the contact with the two new Civs simultaneously or trade it simultaneously? Frustrated, I attack the Red city by the W coast with a Sword!
350: X. was defended by two Warriors, so it is taken; 2 slave workers.
330: Konya founded very close to the "Green" coastal city
310: Masses of barbarians invade our incense colony which provokes civil unrest to three cities as this luxury is gone.
290: Barbarians attack Antalya; all three defenders (2 Sword and 1 Spear) become Elites but are crippled; three or four Barb Horsemen go elsewhere, the rest die at Antalya gates.
230: The last of the Barb horses overrun our Ivory. We get another Elite (Archer)
We propose peace to the "Reds": we get Liter+Currency giving just 15 gold!
At this point, we get free Monotheism so I guess we concluded AA.

At -210 we’re still researching Monarchy (and not having got Republic) which we intend to adopt. We have 12 cities, 46 citizens incl. 4 slave workers, 354 culture, 367 score (highest of the five civs that are known). Intending to attack Carthage to deprive her of a potential iron source at North and also to farm a GLeader.

But this will be (perhaps) the subject of another spoiler...

To all those people who had Carthage build the Pyramids... you lucky, lucky people! One of the Civs 'across t'pond' built it in my game. I'm reminded of how COTM04 went for me - all I got was The Oracle and The Great Wall!!

Neil. :cool:Why do you complain? Why didn't you build them yourself?;)

:lol:



I was wondering when someone would be able to use the military trait to their advantage before making the switch to scientific. Nice job! :goodjob:


I didn't even know I was military untill I read the post after I took Carthage. I just thought the RNG was extra kind to me.

GOTM 35 Open Class

Detailed timeline of Opening moves


4000 BC Settler E, Worker SE
3950 BC Sogut founded, built Warrior
Worker mine, road, go SE, irrigate, road
Research set to Pottery, Tax 0.10.0
3750 BC Sogut built Warrior, next Warrior
Warrior sent to explore E and then circle N
3600 BC Spotted another wheat and Ivory east
microm. shield overrun in Sogut
3550 BC Sogut built Warrior, next Settler
Warrior sent to explore E and then circle S
3450 BC Worker to 2nd Wheat to mine/road
3350 BC Researched Pottery, next Wheel
Spotted Dyes SW from capital
3250 BC Spotted Incense NE of Capital
Sogut grown to size 3, used lux. slider
Sogut build order chaged to Granary
3150 BC Worker moved to BG+ to mine, road
3050 BC Sogut grown to size 4, used lux. slider
Granary will be ready in 4 turns, therefore labor was moved from BG+ to F for 1 turn to postpone growth after granary completion
2850 BC Sogut built granary, next Settler
Worker move to mine/road next BG E of Sogut
2750 BC Met Carthaginian Warrior: Has 2 cities, Alphabet, lacks Pottery, Polite
2670 BC Sogut built Settler, next Settler


After establishin 4-turn settler factory I started produce settlers and create ring of cities around capital in distance 5. I decided to research horses before Iron, but sadly there were no horses in explored lands. Then I started research writing hoping to trade for contacts and other techs.

Carthage war
Military-wise, I have built mainly warriors and occasional spearman. My army strength was average compared to Carthage, when they declared war to me in 1725 BC, atacking with 2 Warriors city defended by 2 Warriors. Not surprisingly they lost. I have no intention nor means to attack teir cities defended by Numidians, thus concentrated on defense, building more spearmen. In 1500 BC, they become afraid of sheer force of my Warriors/Spearmen and gave me Hippo + 20 GP for peace.
Then I was free to make some trades:

1425 BC Traded Code of Laws for Mysticism, Iron Working + 41 GP to Zulus
Traded Code of Laws for Warrior Code + 5 GP to Carthage
Traded Mysticism + 20 GP for Horseback Riding to Carthage


Deciding Strategy
As I was completing first ring of cities, the time has come to form a more precise strategy other than grow big and strong fast. The central position of my capital gave me rather productive ring of cities that were all (except one) on river, so they had a good growth potential. Sadly I lacked productive coastal cities, so that any early sea exploration was beyond my means. Therefore I decided to go for Republic and prepare my military.

Here is my realm in 1000BC
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v188/horragoth/gotm35/1000BC.jpg

Forming Republic
In 900BC, I contacted Arabian Galley, get contacts to two other civs from them, made some tech trading, researched Republic and revolted. Quite a busy year. The Ottoman Republic was formed in 750 BC. Shortly after I researched Literature, started building cheep libraries and directed research to currency - last mandatory AA tech.

Start of Medieval Age
In 630 I researched Currency, raded it for Construction and Polytheism, got to MA and acquired Monotheism as a Free tech (quite disappointing).
Research program was then clear to me: Feudalism first and then straight for Military tradition without bothering with CHivalry.
In 530BC the last Settler was produced in Sogut and GL was started as a prebuild for Sun Tzu.

2nd Carthage War
I was planning to start war with Carthage around 400 BC. This effort was thwarted by 2 barbarian uprising waves of horsemen, one from S and one from SE. I have lost a worker, got pillaged 5 important tiles around core cities and had to maneuver with settler, so that Arabs got a foothold on my continent before I managed settle that spot.
Nevertheless, war was declared in 330BC

I had much stronger army than Carthage just upgrading Swordsmen/Warriors to MIs
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v188/horragoth/gotm35/330BC-mil.jpg

This is the situation before attack
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v188/horragoth/gotm35/330BC.jpg

Carthage capital has fallen in 190BC and in the end of 170BC, peace was concluded, getting another 3 cities from them

In 150BC they have only 2 cities with no growth potential
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v188/horragoth/gotm35/150BC.jpg
Note: The minimaps were edited to hide location of other continent

Further plans
Zulus are next on schedule. Just as the Carthage war continued I has assembled two teams of Worker+Slave that are capable of building road in one turn and started build a long road to Zulus. Just 2 Workers + 2 Slaves allowed me to proceed at a steady pace 1 tile of road / turn.

Good write up :thumbsup: However, it looks like it goes well into the Middle Ages. Please confine discussion in this spoiler to the Ancient Age

PTW 1.21f, Open (scientific from the start)

This month I am going for the Cow award. It is the category that I am most likely to win. :rolleyes:

In the Beginning

Despite the promises from sages of more wheat tiles to the south & south east, I decided to settle 1 tile to the E of the starting position, Even with only one wheat, it would be a strong position. As it turns out, the sages were correct, and my capital was to have two wheats! With micromanaging, I was able to get an efficient 5 turn settler pump. My initial build order was warrior, warrior, warrior, granary. My first settler arrived in 2550BC. I decided on a first ring of 3, but I did not really have a second ring. Some were 7, others were 8.

1000BC

At the QSC dealine, I have 12 cities, 1 settler, 8 workers, 25 warriors and 1 archer.

Research

I started my reasearch with Pottery, as always. I NEVER depend on trading for it, as I have been screwed too often. After pottery, I belined down the Monarchy path, researching full at all times. I was able to make nice trades for all other techs.

Other Tribes

I met Carthage pretty early at 3000BC. As others have stated, I saw the red border across the water, and parked my warrior there. I was rewared with contact to (the red tribe) in 2390BC. I did not meet the Zulus until 1750BC. I met the rest of the world's inhabitants through my frineds on my continent. (The orange tribe) settled down by the Zulus facilitating general world communication. I had no wars in the Ancient Age, although the Zulus did decalre war on me in 710BC after I refused a demand (contact with the red tribe). I signed on Carthage in the fight, and never saw a Zulu unit. I figured both countries would trigger their GA's, thus making conquest easier for me later.

Eng of Age Status

As stated above, I did not do any fighting (barbarians aside) in the AA. There was so much room to expand, wars were not needed. In 950BC I reasearched Monarchy, and immediately revolted. 6 turns of anarchy. I reached the MA in 370BC after trading for Construction. My free tech was Feudalism. At this point, I had my invasion force of swords (now to be upgraded to MI) ready on the border of Carthage. I was just waiting for my alliance against the Zulus to end. I was not paying attention, and I was not able to peacefully acquire horses, so I will need to take them by force. More on this in next spoiler.

Hi Fellas-

I enjoyed this GOTM up until I got to 1200 AD. I tried to play open class, which I think I will continue to do in the future (mostly so I can better measure my results against others, although I know the Jason is corrected). I am also continuing my policy of not reloading, which seems to be going reasonably well.
Still, I had problems with this particular game. I had taken the entire northern part of the continent from the Carthaginians, and started down the narrow island chain to engage the Zulu Nation. I sort of look like Randy's game (above) only about 1500 years behind him! However, my research had been equalled by the Zulus, and despite my Sipahis and subsequent Golden Age, the Zulu's cavalry has basically fought me to a stalemate.
At this point, the game has lost its shine for me. My question is, do people generally bite the bullet and continue on (even though its not fun anymore) just to complete the game and upload it, whatever the result? Or would you be interested in me uploading my game the turn after I give up? Or don't bother?
(... I am excited about the next COTM on Regent, though...)

P.S. Horragoth - what graphics mod-pack are you using?

G-A:

I think Horragoth is using Snoopy's (look's like it to me).

As for beating the Zulu, keep pumping out those Sipahis, you've got a production edge on him. Also get a couple of defenders (muskets/rifles/infantry) to protect your wounded Sipahis. They aren't great defenders (Def=3), so if you can retreat the red-lined ones to heal in a nearby barracks city, you'll get from having to build new ones. Also two other things, pre-attack bombardment & war weariness. If you can get 10-20 cannon/artillery to bombard the size 12 Zulu cities before you attack you'll have more success and less casualties in you campaign. As for War Weariness (his not yours), raze a couple of Zulu cities and if hopefully he'll switch to either Communism or Monarchy. The anarchy period will help you, as he won't be getting any reinforcements and if he went communism, then he'll probably be pop rushing defenders and that'll shrink those cities and hopefully take away some of his defensive bonus. One more thing, if you can get to his horses or saltpeter and pillage the site, you'll stop seeing new cavalry for a while (if you could manage to pillage his iron too, you'd only get spears & longbows unless he's reached Nationalism). Stick it out, you'll eventually reach the point where your killing faster than he can replace and then he'll start to crumble. Try to avoid taking on Zimbabwe initially. Take his coastal cities first, they'll have less defense and you'll end any external trade he might have.

Hang in there and finish it. You never now you might win.

You can't upload an unfinished game (unless you try to fool the system that you suffered a conquest defeat), but every score you register gets added to your Global Ranking total so it's worth submitting.

Please don't prolong this discussion on the Middle Ages. This is the Ancient Age spoiler. The MA spoiler will be up in a day or two and will be the appropriate place to discuss the life and times of your Sipahi :)

Thanks for the advice, Denyd. I will revisit the save and see if I can work up some battle-angst.
Sorry about the spoiler stuff.

Thanks for the advice, Denyd. I will revisit the save and see if I can work up some battle-angst.

All great advice. I would make sure you are concentrating your forces. Send a large stack against each city. If you aren't sure how much is enough, send at least 10 verterns attackers against size 6-11 city for a start. For bigger cities send more. For a capitol you should double whatever you would use to take a normal city of the same size. You have to have enough to take your lumps and and still kill all the defenders in one turn. Otherwise they just heal up and you have to start over with fewer units. If you don't have enough, wait until you do.

(One mistake I kept making was starting a war and getting my attackers mauled out in the open by all their extra units. Sometimes it is better to defend until the inital wave is over. Let him pound his head on strong defenses instead of you. :) )

Another thing is terrain. Ctrl-Shift-M is your friend. Make sure you aren't attacking across rivers. Also, use the defensive terrain as you approach his cities. Keep your units together don't scatter them around as individuals. He'll gang up on them first. With a stack you may take some hits but you are more likely to have wounded untils to heal for the next round. Don't attack his units that are on good defensive terrain unless you have to. Let him come to you on more favorable terms.

Denyd mentioned retreating your wounded units, but you also have to protect them until you can. Make sure you don't attack until all your units are wounded. If that happens, you didn't start with enough or you pushed it too far. Patience is the key.

Once you start winning your battles you will start enjoying your game again.

Good Luck.

PTW - OPEN - scientific

I moved the worker se and the settler east, where Sogut was founded. It built a warrior, a granary and then settlers till the switch to Republic. I met the Zulu down the choke trail first in 2270BC and the Catharges in 2190BC. I blocked the Zulu with a lone reg. warrior and outsettled the Catharge. I met the red and green civs in 730BC and traded contact with the orange from the Zulu some turns later. I got all contacts at 670BC by trading with orange for the rest.

Research was Pottery - Alphabet - Writing - CoL - Philosophy - Republic - Currency - Construction. I traded for the rest (mostly by trading around CoL and Republic). I entered the middle ages at 590BC and got Feudalism as free tech (is it fixed to the cheapest in PTW or only in vanilla Civ3?).

The revolt to republic was started in 925BC and I used the double revolt after drawing 6 turns first, getting 4 turns in the second try.

I had one short war after the Zulu demanded a contact, we both lost 1 warrior and I captured a settler.

Below is my map from 470BC (3 turns into the middle ages) with 26 cities.

EDIT: just in case you searched for my military - 3 warrior and a horse are all military land units and "most" is down the southern trail. :)

Success! I am back in the game now. The advice of pillaging the saltpeter turned out to be the turning point (I guess it hadn't occurred to me, even though its so annoying when the AI does it to you...) Anyway, I now have a Forbidden Palace in Old Zimbabwe and I am working on cleaning up the southern leg of the continent. Thanks all!

Oh- and I figured out that Horragoth is using Womock's terrain - I downloaded it and its great!

After trying myself in the last couple of GOTMs and seeing the mediocre score my "instinctive" playing style resulted in, I decided to throw everything I can find at this game. My goal is an early domination victory.

First I read the articles in the War Academy. I particularly liked


The Four Rules of Wonder Addiction by Ision (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_wonderaddiction.shtml),
Ring City Placement by DaviddesJ (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_ring_city.shtml),
Free Palace Jump by DaveMcW (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_palace_jump.shtml) (this should be extended with the effects of military units),
What Will the AI Research Next? by alexman (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_ai_research.shtml) along with
Ambiorix' spreadsheet (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=38676), and
Maximizing Your Score by SirPleb (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_maxscore.shtml).


Then I installed two tools, CivAssist by ainwood (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=98630) and CRpSuite by Dianthus (http://www.cfc-dianthus.com/CRpSuite/). I also created a scenario to simulate the conditions in the game and playtested many of my moves.

Then I put some effort into fog-gazing. I considered this witchcraft for a long time, until I found Dynamic's comment in the pre-game discussion that he was using an LCD display. I looked at the game (not ainwood's screenshot) on an LCD display and the dyes and the Southern wheat on plains were clearly visible. Encouraged by this, I slightly modified my resources.pcx file so from now on fog-gazing will be an exact science. :)

Timeline

4000BC I decided to settle South-East from the starting location in order to get immediate access to the wheat bonus and to be able to make a 4-turn settler factory using the plain/wheat visible under the fog. The plan is to build two warriors, a settler, then a granary. The worker will build a road on the bonus grassland and then move on to the wheat to irrigate and build road. I will research Pottery first so that there won't be any issues starting a granary when the time comes.

3700BC The first warrior starts scouting towards South-West, taking advantage of the road and the mountain. It will continue on the montain-range towards North-West.

3450BC The second warrior heads South towards the mountain next to the dyes.

3400BC Pottery is researched. Decided to research The Wheel next as I felt that this would give me the most trading benefit if I encountered another civilization during the early game.

The first warrior reaches the end of the mountain range and spots the shoreline. He will continue towards North/North-East.

3350BC The second warrior reaches the mountain and spots yet another wheat resource, two desert tiles and two other mountains. It appears that the Southern area is uninteresting in terms of early settling so he will continue towards East.

3300BC I increase Luxury spending to 10% to avoid a riot in the capital. I will probably place the second city next to the dyes and connect up the luxury to avoid having to spend money on happiness. With the dyes online and two military units in the cities, population can go up to 5. That will be ideal for the 4-turn settler factory in the capital.

3250BC The first warrior finds another large mountain range. This Northern territory again seems uninteresting in terms of early expansion. It appears that I will have to expand mostly along the NW-SE line. There does seem to be a luxury in the mountains though, so the warrior will continue to explore in that direction a bit more.

3150BC The worker finished improvements on two bonus grasslands and the wheat on the grassland. Chossing the next improvement is not trivial and partially depends on the location of the second city. I decide to build the second city between the dyes and the Southern mountain mainly because I am thinking to build the Forbidden Palace city two tiles to the East from the capital, and that way this second city will fit into the 5-tile distance 2nd ring around the FP city. It's a pity that this city will not be able to take advantage of the 4th wheat immediately, but I think it will need to build some units first anyway, so reaching 5 shield per turn (with presumably 3 population and zero food surplus) will be sufficient for a while. Later on I will either build a temple there or build a city on the other side of the wheat so that the wheat falls within my cultural border.

Accordingly, I move the worker to the plain/wheat tile near the capital in order to irrigate it. The second city will use this tile while the capital is building the granary, as in that period population growth in the capital is not critical.

The first warrior confirms the location and type of the luxury: it's two counts of incense in the North.

3100BC First settler built, heads towards the previously discussed spot. The second scouting warrior spots another luxury, probably Ivory (still under fog).

3050BC Ivory to the East confirmed, plus another wheat seems to be hiding under the fog in North-Eastern direction. Way too far to be of immediate interest though.

The capital is at pop 2 again. It's amazing what an irrigated grass-wheat tile can do. There is no way to finish the granary before population grows to 3 so I keep one of the two citizens on the wheat tile for now. Some luxury spending will be necessary again soon.

3000BC Dyes City is built. Starts producing a warrior, which will be used to suppress unrest in the capital.

2900BC Warriors spot game, a coast or lake, and most importantly a Carthaginian warrior. They have Alphabet but wouldn't trade. According to the power-graph, I am not far behind them, but they do lead the point race 80 to 71.

2800BC The blueness SE from the capital is sea. Looks like we are on an L shaped continent. Or maybe this is an inland sea and the continent is a donought-shaped one??? Well, fortunately it doesn't matter yet.

The Wheel will be ready in 5 turns, hopefully the Carthaginians are busy researching Warrior Code or some such and I will be able to trade.

The capital is at pop 3, I temporarily need to increase luxury spending and I move the citizen away from the wheat tile to the 3rd bonus grassland to make sure the granary finishes before the next pop growth.

2750BC 3rd warrior ready, moves to capital, luxury back to 0%. Given the relatively slow current population growth in the capital, connecting the dyes is not as important so the worker first irrigates a plain tile next to the river.

2670BC One of the warriors finds the NE shoreline and 3 games next to the Carthaginian border (but outside of it). There also seems to be some wheal in the sea. I guess the Carthaginians don't need to think much where to settle. The other warrior finds another source of dyes as it continues on the shoreline. The sea here seems to be real one, not inland.

2630BC The Wheel is researched. The nearest horses are like 15 tiles away from the capital. I will have to send a warrior to explore the Southern and SW-ern regions to look for more -- if I can't find any nearer, then an extremely fast expansion towards the East will be required.

Hannibal would give Alphabet for the Wheel + 10 gold, or Alphabet + 10 gold for the Wheel and Pottery. I opt for the latter, even though this is a sweeter deal for Hannibal. I don't want him to spend effort on researching something I have already. Along the same lines, I choose to research Mathematics next; according to the Holy Excel Sheet Oracle, that's the least likely to catch Hannibal's attention as a research target.

2590BC Carthage has Warrior Code (be the Holy Excel Sheet Oracle praised!) now, and also a worker for sale, but the price is ridiculous so I pass.
2550BC[/B] 4th warrior is built. Given that the dyes will not be online for another 3 turns, this warrior will be needed for happiness.

2510BC Granary in the capital is ready, settler factory starts.

2470BC One warrior reaches the Eastern shoreline, the other the SW shoreline. Barring narrow land bridges, the only direction this continent can continue is NE. The third warrior will be heading that way. The other two will walk the shoreline to make sure I didn't miss any land bridges.

2390BC New warrior is built, will explore the South looking for horses. Dyes are finally online.

2350BC The warrior in the NE found something that looks like a land bridge: a mountain range going into the sea.

2310BC Second settler ready, goes East to found Forbidden City.

It dawns on me that I need one more 2 shield tile for the settler factory in the capital to function properly. This is where a forrest would come handy, but I don't have any. I could mine one of the hills, but that will take a relatively long time. So for now the plan is to mine a BG. First of all though I need another worker as the existing one will be busy improving the tiles around the Forbidden City.

Dyes City reaches pop 3, produces 5 shields and thus is excellently suited to churn out military units.

2230BC Forbidden City founded, starts Palace as a prebuild for the Forbidden Palace. Warrior sees a purple border (probably Arabs) on the other continent but no units so no contact is made.

The capital builds a worker. I debate with myself whether to build a settler now or another worker. The settler factory won't be fully functional for at least another 5 turns. I have 6 warriors, 2 workers, and 3 cities. If I build a worker first, then it will be at least 8 turns before a a new city can be founded. If I want to avoid paying for unit support, then Dyes City has to slow down building those warriors. Well, it could build barracks.

I decide to go for yet another worker.

2190BC The Nothern mountain range was not a land bridge.

2110BC A warrior spots another coninent to the West. No land bridge though.

Dyes City changes production to barracks to avoid unit support issues.

2070BC The warrior spots purple border (arabs?) but no unit, so no contact is made.

1990BC Mathematics is researched. Cartahge has only Warrior Code to offer, which is a bit light so I decide to wait. I choose Currency next according to the guidance of the Holy Excel Sheet Oracle.

Third settler ready. It will build a worker factory on the other side of the Eastern river, 4 tiles away from the capital. The idea is to be able to use one of the grass-wheat tiles and to fit on the future 3-distance ring around Forbidden City. Incidentally the new city is also the same distance from the capital as the Dyes City, which is advantagous from the corruption's point of view.

1950BC Carthage now has Iron Working and Warrior code but they won't give both for Mathematics. Should I get Iron Working from them to be able to see the ore deposits? Or should I get both Iron Working and Warrior Code for Mathematics, 3gpt, and 30 gold? That would mean that I am financing their research at the expense of slowing down mine. I decide for this option as I want to take advantage of whatever they research, plus they are more likely to be friendly to me as long as I am paying a per-turn. Along these lines, I change the deal to 4gpt and 8 gold.

There are several iron sources on our continent, one pretty close to my territory. Acquiring it won't be a problem, it seems.
1910BC A city called Worker Factory is founded and starts a granary.Once the granary is ready, a 3 turn worker factory is feasible but will require heavy micro-management (reassigning tiles at least once every 3 turns). I will also need to mine a plain tile to get the crucial extra 2 shields out of the population growth.

1870BC It is now confirmed that I can't reach the Arabs over land. I will park a warrior on the nearest tile, maybe the put a unit where I can see it.

1830BC Another settler is ready. Where should it go? Candidate sites include the ivory source and the wheat NE (would be nice to get both at the same time but that would mess up the future rings around the FP), the horses, one of the iron sources, the NW or SW shoreline as a preparation for galleys, and the rich grasslands NW from the capital.

Bah, text too long... Where the settler went will be revealed shortly. :)

Encouraged by this, I slightly modified my resources.pcx file so from now on fog-gazing will be an exact scienceWait one! :eek:

That sounds suspiciously like the sort of exploit that caused Cracker to create a special set of resource files for GOTM. Modifying game files in such a way as to improve the visibility of resources under the fog is considered cheating, as it provides information that is not available in the out-of-the-box game for other players. If that is what you've done then I recommend you do not use this approach.

Wait one! :eek:

That sounds suspiciously like the sort of exploit that caused Cracker to create a special set of resource files for GOTM. Modifying game files in such a way as to improve the visibility of resources under the fog is considered cheating, as it provides information that is not available in the out-of-the-box game for other players. If that is what you've done then I recommend you do not use this approach.

That's what I did. If it's a banned exploit, it should be mentioned in the GOTM code of conduct (or whatever it is called). Is it?

I would have to say though that it would be silly to make this a banned exploit. As we can see from the pre-game discussion, players have very different abilities to look under the fog. Having access to an LCD display improves your visibility a lot, IMHO. A modified resource file can even the odds.

Also, as we can see from the spoiler threads, people are using a gazillion different graphic mods, many of them geared towards increasing visibility of resources, smiley faces (I mean the mod that makes it easier to distinguish citizen moods), borders, etc. Why exactly increasing visibility of stuff halfways under the fog would be illegal?

Wait one! :eek:

That sounds suspiciously like the sort of exploit that caused Cracker to create a special set of resource files for GOTM. Modifying game files in such a way as to improve the visibility of resources under the fog is considered cheating, as it provides information that is not available in the out-of-the-box game for other players. If that is what you've done then I recommend you do not use this approach.

I feel by heart that this is true, but there is a very thin line between using graphic programs to blow up the images, create a map with the resources you predict then compare these images and what he is doing. If there is even a pixel of the resource visible, it is very likely possible to determine this resource by the "create a look-alike map and blow up the images trick". So he actually just has an easier method of doing the same thing.

Not that I like it, but maybe think about if there is really a difference!?

Also, as we can see from the spoiler threads, people are using a gazillion different graphic mods, many of them geared towards increasing visibility of resources, smiley faces (I mean the mod that makes it easier to distinguish citizen moods), borders, etc. Why exactly increasing visibility of stuff halfways under the fog would be illegal? A very good point!

I feel by heart that this is true, but there is a very thin line between using graphic programs to blow up the images, create a map with the resources you predict then compare these images and what he is doing. If there is even a pixel of the resource visible, it is very likely possible to determine this resource by the "create a look-alike map and blow up the images trick". So he actually just has an easier method of doing the same thing.

Not that I like it, but maybe think about if there is really a difference!?Yes, there is a difference. The image you blow up and examine contains information that's available to everyone. Moving the fog, or moving the resources to make them more visible is equivalent to editing the game software. Do you propose to edit the images so that you can see the full map at 4000 BC? I hope not. So why do you think editing it to show one more tile ... or half a tile ... or one more pixel ... is any more ethical?

We had custom resources for a long time to ensure that everyone had the same level of visibility. That was unpopular with a lot of players who didn't like resource file swapping, so we reverted to the standard files in response, and trusted our player community to play to spirit of the "no game editing" rules. Are you implying that the players cannot be relied upon to play nice, and we'll have to return to using custom resource files?

That's what I did. If it's a banned exploit, it should be mentioned in the GOTM code of conduct (or whatever it is called). Is it?Editing the game is not allowed. If it's not stated in the rules it should be, but it should be obvious. Using utilities to see information that is not normally available is also banned.

I would have to say though that it would be silly to make this a banned exploit. As we can see from the pre-game discussion, players have very different abilities to look under the fog. Having access to an LCD display improves your visibility a lot, IMHO. A modified resource file can even the odds.See my previous comments in reply to grs.

Also, as we can see from the spoiler threads, people are using a gazillion different graphic mods, many of them geared towards increasing visibility of resources, smiley faces (I mean the mod that makes it easier to distinguish citizen moods), borders, etc. Why exactly increasing visibility of stuff halfways under the fog would be illegal? Smiley faces and borders are nothing to do with resource visibility. I was not aware that the mods are designed deliberately to expose resources under the fog. If they are then we have a problem, and Cracker's previous response to it was to create non-standard resource files. Do you want to drive us back down that path?

Ask not for whom the sirens call ... they call for thee :D

:lol: I missed this little bon mot by the X-man. Or perhaps bon motte is more appropriate as it calls to mind the "presents" the neighbours dog leaves on my lawn. :p

Editing the game is not allowed.
If editing the resources.pcx file counts as editing the game, then a lot of people are violating this rule.

If it's not stated in the rules it should be, but it should be obvious. Using utilities to see information that is not normally available is also banned.
I am not doing anything that reveals information that is not visible. I just turned the "barely visible" into "clearly visible".

Smiley faces and borders are nothing to do with resource visibility. I was not aware that the mods are designed deliberately to expose resources under the fog.
I was referring to the mods that put a big black-on-white H, I, S, etc. next to Horses, Iron, Saltpeter, etc. This is an age-old mod that I am sure you wouldn't want to ban. I think it's even on the PTW CD.

If they are then we have a problem, and Cracker's previous response to it was to create non-standard resource files. Do you want to drive us back down that path?
To be clear, the mod I am using doesn't expose anything, it emphesizes the resouces so that they are clear when they are halfways under the fog. If you don't like this, then I think you will have to ban LCD displays and better than 20/20 eyesight as well because some folks could see the tiles around the starting area from ainwood's low-resolution screenshot! I want to drive us to a resolution where you declare that stuff halfways under the fog should be clearly visible to everyone, not only to a select few.

The connection between borders, smiley faces, and emphesized resources is that all of these make those things clear that have been there before.

Your analogy to the utilities (if I understand correctly what you imply) is not a valid one because those show things that are simply not there otherwise.

Continued timeline from post #58

I made a detailed plan for city placement:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/delmar_gotm_35_1830BC_plan.jpg

The reddish squares mark city places in the 3 and 5 distance rings around the FP. The blueish and greenish squares mark two possible locations for the new capital (after palace jump) and the corresponding city locations in the rings. I chose these two locaitons for their distance from the rings around the FP, the amount of land around them, and the fact that they are next to river (a must for the palace jump, as I will have to beef up the city above pop 6 with workers). No other location meets these requirements.

The blue version has a 3 and a 5 distance ring, the green version has one 4.5 distance ring. The circles around the blue and green squares mark "reasonable" city placements. I used those circles to decide which capital location would be better. The blue version has clearly more city locations (given the two rings), but the number of "reasonable" city locations is about the same and the green version has the advantage of covering more area with less cities, so I decided to go with that. The arrows show two places where city locations on the ring are unacceptable due to being 1 tile away from the sea and being in the middle of the dessert respectively. The green city location in the middle of the dessert is "reasonable" because (due to the less crowded green solution) there are still enough tiles for that city to be useful.

The yellow squares mark special locations that need to be occupied even though they are outside of the high production rings. The horses, the incense, and the nearest points to the Arab island are such. The latter is a special location because I decided that building a city there with a library is the most economical way of contacting the Arabs -- it requires the research of Literature instead of Map Making and the building of a Library instead of a galley, a pure win on both counts. The same city will eventually build a galley (as a matter of fact probably many galleys) but it will help me accrue territory points while doing so.

Speaking of territory, the white squares mark city locations that are advantagous from the territory size point of view. These are low-priority compared to the other city locations, as a matter of fact I hope that the AI will settle on many of them and then I can capture the cities.

You will notice that the iron sources are not marked with yellow. That's because a.) the borders of the city next to the incense and of the dark red one next to the Northern wheat will engulf the Northern iron source, b.) I don't plan to use iron in the near future, and c.) if all else fails I can always grab the Southern source.

The yellow and the green lines show roads that will be necessary for connectivity (as opposed to commerce/income). I will try to build around future city sites to avoid wasting worker turns.

Finally, the numbers on the white background show the next six cities I will build (in the order shown by the numbers). The logic behind choosing the first city locaiton next to the wheat is that I need more food to succesfully expand on this vast continent. The next three cities will be placed so as to grab the horses, the next one will help me contact the arabs, and the last one will be the capital. Currently I have 1 settler, and can build another every 4 turns. The road from the current capital to the new capital takes 5 turns, so the 6th city will be built in about 25 turns. If everything goes well, by then (or shortly after) the FP will be ready and I can jump the palace.

1700BC I spot the first barbarian horseman. I will have to escort every worker near the borders from now on.

1400BC Currency is researched. I trade it to the Carthaginians for Writing and 109 gold, and start researching Literature. It will take 9 turns.

The settler reaches the horses and guess what, it looks like there is a landbridge there. Must explore further!!!

My military is very weak. I lost several regular warriors to barbarians and I barely fended off a barbarian attack against my cities. I have barracks in one city but it can't produce anything except warriors because it has to keep up with the barbarian attacks and the settler factory. Compared to that, I have a warrior having a vacation near the Arab border, hoping for a contact in vain. This cannot continue. I order the warrior back to the capital.

1200BC Literature is researched. Carthage has only Ceremonial Burrial to offer so I pass. I am going to research Philosophy next, following the guidance of the Holy Excel Sheet Oracle.

The cultural influence of the phantom Arab city grows just as I move the aforementioned settler in position to build the city, so they can definitely see me now. I hope they will contact me.

1175BC I have contact with the Arabs. They have Ceremonial Burrial, Horseback Riding, Map Making, contact with the Greeks, and 91 gold. First I get 45 gold and contact with the Greeks for Mathematics. The Greeks have the same techs but they don't want to give me anything reasonable for Mathematics. I don't want to give away Literature yet, as that's my only tech not known to any of my 3 contacts. Instead, I give the Arabs Currency for the Horseback Riding, Mapmaking, World Map, and 46 gold. The Greeks get Mathematics for Ceremonial Burial, 16 gold, and World Map. It turns out the Greeks and Arabs also have Mysticism, which I get from the Greeks for Currency. By the end of the turn I have every tech, 228 gold, and the world map, and I didn't give away my world map and Literature.

Even though now I have contact with the Arabs, I still found the city in the nearest spot. Contrary to the plans, it will build a galley first, not a library, for obvious reasons.

1100BC Forbidden Palace is ready. My military is still very thin: I have 10 warriors and 3 archers to cover 2 settlers, 7 workers, and 10 cities. Plus one of them is exploring the land bridge in the South. So all in all I have 12 military units covering 19 assets. This must be fixed ASAP.

1025BC The New Capital city is founded, slightly behind schedule mainly because the settler was delayed due to lack of road and lack of military escort. The Forbidden City is now the biggest at pop 6, and it has 8 other cities within 8 tiles. That's 8 and 2/3 "palace jump points". In order to make a jump to the correct city, it must have at least 9 points. That could be achieved by 5 pop and 12 units/cities, or 6 pop and 9 units/cities. I can probably do the latter easier as I am creating workers faster than units. As a matter of fact, nobody is building units at the moment because I am waiting for the horses to come online.

1000BC Summary:
Cities: 12
Citizens: 30
Settler: 1
Workers: 7
Military: 10 warriors, 3 archers
Buildings: 2 granaries, 2 barracks, 1 library, 1 FP

Picture:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/delmar_gotm_35_1000BC.jpg

950BC The Greeks beat me to Code of Laws by one turn. I would have rather had them researching Construction but I guess there is nothing I can do about this now. I give them Philosophy for Code of Laws and 17 gold and get cranking at Republic. 12 turns. I need to hook up the 3rd luxury before I can get there. Fortunately the road is almost there, just a settler is missing.

900BC I meet the Zulu. They don't have any techs. I give them Mathematics for World Map and 77 gold. They have wines and spices on an otherwise uninteresting piece of land. Would be useful to trade with them for the luxuries but I would need to build at least 20 tile worth of road to be able to do so. Or a harbor, if the Zulu are clever enough to do the same. That's a big if.

690BC The palace jump is being delayed due to the fact that the old capital's population is decreasing slowly.

Republic is researched. I don't revolt because I need production to decrease the old capital's population. It will take another 7 turns to reach 1, then I will jump and revolt in the same turn.

630BC Carthage finished the Pyramids.

590BC Polytheism is researched. 1 more turn to finish the last worker in the old capital and then I can proceed with the palace jump. Immediately after that I want to change government and I hope the AI will research Construction while I am in anarrchy so I decide to put science to 0% for now.

550BC Palace jump, trade Polytheism for Construction with Greeks, bonus tech is Engineering for me, Monotheism for the Greeks.

Moving into Middle Ages triggers the usual barbarian uprising. A spearman I accidentally built happens to stand right next to a barbarian camp; I count 18 horsemen there. I can also see another camp under the fog on the NW shoreline, there are probably another 18 barbarian horsemen there. I have a total of 8 horsemen, 10 warriors, 4 archers, and 1 spearman, but many of them far away in the East (making sure the palace jumped to the right place. The good news is that now I can cross rivers without penalty, so the horses will probably make it to the right place in time.

I have 580 gold and the only thing I could spend it on is embassies, so the usual tactic of letting all the barbarians sack a pop 1 city is not going to work. It seems I will have to fight this off and avoid being sacked somehow.

This would be a lousy moment to go to anarchy so I stay in despotism.

Summary:

Cities: 16
Citizens: 52
Settler: 0
Workers: 9
Military: 10 warriors, 4 archers, 1 spearman, 8 horsemen
Buildings: 1 granary, 4 barracks, 5 library, 1 marketplace, 1 FP

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/delmar_gotm_35_550BC.jpg

Yes, there is a difference. The image you blow up and examine contains information that's available to everyone. Moving the fog, or moving the resources to make them more visible is equivalent to editing the game software. Do you propose to edit the images so that you can see the full map at 4000 BC? I hope not. So why do you think editing it to show one more tile ... or half a tile ... or one more pixel ... is any more ethical? It would be nice if you return to a reasonable way to discuss this. Why are you exagerating what I said without any reason? I did not talk about revealing the map or asking people to cheat. Delmar raised a very valid point and explained it in detail below. As I agree with what he is implying - while I have a different opinion on modding the game - I don't need to explain it any more.

We had custom resources for a long time to ensure that everyone had the same level of visibility. That was unpopular with a lot of players who didn't like resource file swapping, so we reverted to the standard files in response, and trusted our player community to play to spirit of the "no game editing" rules. Are you implying that the players cannot be relied upon to play nice, and we'll have to return to using custom resource files? It was very unpopular in vanilla civ3 because you had to manually swap files and not everyone playing civ likes to do that - no matter how strange that may sound to anyone more professional with computers. Additionally it was also very unpopular for new players because you had a GOTM admin these times, who flamed everyone to death who did not want to read pages of instructions before playing a computer game, but this is a different matter.

You said yourself that GOTM involves trusting the players and I think we have a community here that can be trusted. Please do not kill the messenger "Delmar" who raised a valid point that may have layed quite for some time.

I myself have changed borders and smallheads (with smilies) files, so I altered the game files to make things that everyone can see better visible to me. Do I have to be excluded from the game? Does everyone have to be excluded who uses the "smily and power blips" version of resources? It was even in your older GOTM mods with altered resources.

Firstly, Alan is not trying to antagonize anyone here - he is simply trying to highlight that Delmar was, completely unbeknown to him, doing something that we consider to be outside the spirit of the competition. He is certainly not trying to shoot the messenger here!

We do not have an exhasutive set of rules that cover every possible exploit, because we don't need to. This is not the Olympics - its a friendly competition. When new exploits arise, we evaluate them and decide whether or not to allow them.

In terms of the actual resource.pcx issues, this is an example of what we don't really want to see:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/resourcetest2.jpg

From a software perspective, it would have been much easier if the fog of war actually overlapped onto the visible tiles, rather than receding to the hidden ones. It would be even better if the fog of war was not just a mask drawn over the real terrain...

The powerblip with smilies resources released with GOTM 21 (IIRC) were designed to give the players all the normal benefits of custom resources without taking the spoiler info to the extreme illustrated in the above pictures.

Part of the reason that we post a starting screenshot is to give the fog gazers the opportunity to have a bit of a gaze and to share their findings. I wll endeavor to provide a higher-quality screenshot. One other thing that we could perhaps do would be to maintain a list of approved modpacks.

All in all, there is little that we can do to stop people using modpacks that give the extreme sorts of advantages seen in the piccie I posted above. Even custom resource files are only a stop-gap, as its a 5-minute job to mod those as well (In short, it is a measure that doesn't really do anything to stop this issue if someone wants to exploit it, but it does annoy a lot of other people).

We can't crack-down on people using this kind of exploit, because its not really possible. However we can highlight that we think it is against the spirit of the game.

Ainwood, what's the logic behind encouraging fog gazing but declaring that knowing what's peaking out from under the fog is against the spirit of the game?

I hate to bring this up for the 100th time, but couldn't one argue that abandoning your capital for a palace jump (not referring to the corruption bug here!) and placing your cities 1 tile apart are also against the spirit of the game? I've seen several threads about this and I always agreed with the people who started them first, but the counter argument, ie. that it is clearly allowed by the rules programmed into the game therefore there is no point in forbidding it, is something I can't argue with.

Now, visibility of the tile at the border of the fog is also clearly programmed into the game, otherwise it would be pitch black. For the record, now that I know to use the LCD display and know what to look for, I can clearly see ivory on plains, wheat on plains, wines on any tile, cows on any tile, dyes on forrest, and several other resources without the mod if they are in the right direction. Lower right edge is the right direction for wheat, btw.

Personally, I feel that leaving people with worse eyesight and/or display (or simply not enough time to gaze at the display until their eyes pop out) at a disadvantage is against the spirit of fair competition. Overall, my opinion is that permitting modifications to the resources.pcx file and publicizing that this can be done is the most elegant solution here.

If, however you specifically want to disallow it, then please list this as a banned exploit in the Code of Conduct.

P.S. Horragoth - what graphics mod-pack are you using?

I am using Womok's pack as a base. It was never extended to C3C by its author and it seemed there were some bugs (or at least I have hard time to distinguish some forest/jungle squares). Thus I have modified some files, used original volcanoes. I cannot also exclude that there is some graphics left from Sn00py's pack which I used earlier, but I am not sure because I did a lot of changes.

Good point, breadleyfeanor!
I miss the combination 4-turn settler+warrior.

I started 3 warriors,settler,granary then 4t settler factory 5->7.
Research Wheel at 100% for trading, then Pottery, Writing, Literature then go to Republic.

No early wars, Republic in 900BC->800BC.
MA in 590BC.

1000BC stats:
15 cities + 3 settlers
33 citizens
1 granary, 4 library.

Republic in 4 turn, currency & construction left.
Horse, Iron & 3 lux fixed.

PREDITOR

QSC Status

At 1000BC I had:
10 towns with 22 citizens
1 settler
4 native workers, 1 foreign workers
16 warriors
1 temple, 2 granaries
8g in treasury (I'm rich!)

Pregame thoughts: More wheat is available, I'm hoping to be able to do 2 settler factories (possibly a third). Will go with a tight build pattern RCP 3/6/9. Greece is the only other civ with BW and only other scientific civ in the game.

I move the settler East and found Sogut in 3950BC. I set science to Iron Working at 20%. Upon reflection I should have studied Pottery first, but with it known by 4 civs at the start I thought I’d be able to trade for it early. Initial build order was warrior, warrior, settler. I found my second city (second settler factory) in 3000BC. I spy the “red” border in 2550BC and like most everyone else did not gain contact until I sailed to them.

I met the Zulu’s in 2510BC and finally trade for Pottery after having already built 2 settlers. Contact with the Cart’s followed on the next turn. Switch both my builds to granaries and found my 3rd city in 2430BC. Once the granaries complete, I do a lot of mm and manage to turn my first 2 cities into 5-6 turn factories. The settler factories are not online until 2070BC.

The Zulu’s beat me to IW by 2 turns and the barbs were persistent which forced me to build more regular warriors than I would have liked. I do a good job picking the techs to study after IW. I select Math figuring one of the AI’s would already be working on Writing, which is what happened. Do the same thing when I select CoL versus going for MapM.

Rest of QSC time is pretty straightforward. Settler factories keep adding cities and I continue to fight off the barbs.

QSC SUMMARY

17 cities (versus ZUL 8 cities, CART 7 cities)
Pop is 34
149 tiles
Score 243

Builds: 2 granaries, 2 barracks

Military: 7 workers, 13 warriors & 1 sword

Ranks #1 in everything except Approval Rating & Military Service

14 techs - missing MYST, POLY, CONST & CURR - have 10 turns left on Republic

Have only met 2 neighbors, still no contact from the red civ.

Here’s a look at my 1000BC map (notice the barb activity)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/DJM_G35_01.jpg


I made a conscience effort to try to keep the tech pace high sometimes giving away techs for nearly nothing. My biggest problem was not meeting the 2nd continent quick enough; contact was established in 670BC. The mainland was already 2 higher cost techs ahead of the other civs. I drew a 6 turn anarchy period and became a republic in 630BC. I also managed to lose 3 workers to barbs and wasted 2 turns researching another tech before switching to study republic.

I end the AA in 490BC with
22 cities
Pop = 67
Tiles = 196
score 404

Military: 1 settler, 14 workers, 14 warriors, 3 swords, 1 cat, & 2 galleys

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/DJM_G35_02.jpg

If you notice I am already researching Chivalry, this is because I gifted the Greeks into the MA with me and we traded Monotheism & Feudalism.

PTW, Open class

Wheeeeeeeee! I'm back!

*sound of crickets chirping*

Ahem. Anyway, my first GOTM in over a year, thanks to me finally having enough money to spare to buy a new computer to replace the one that semi-crashed on me last summer. :D

A medium-length summary of the ancient age -- because I'm incapable of being brief:

Goal: Dual settler pump in Sogut (settled 1 tile east of starting point, at which point I changed plans from straight-to-granary to settler-first-then-granary) and Iznik (settled due south of the plains wheat). Modified farmer's gambit -- enough military to ward off barb attacks and keep towns happy, but no obsession with keeping every city occupied at all times. Meet as many civs as possible. Research fast early, until situation becomes more clear. Plan to go to war as early as is practical.

What actually happened:

The dual settler pump worked pretty well. I had some hiccups with Iznik, mostly to do with having to build more military there than I had desired (stupid barbs!), and I had some wasted shields. Still, though, I had a pair of granaries up and running fairly early on, and was able to get a settler every four turns out of Sogut and one every six turns out of Iznik, both running at size four and five. Carthage, who I met pretty early on, had four towns to my two at one point (they either started with two settlers or popped a hut to get Utica. I never saw a goody hut. Plenty of barbs, though), but I was up to seven before they settled their fifth. At 1000 BC I had 13 cities and three settlers (including two contributed by cities other than Iznik and Sogut), and I had 22 towns by the time I hit the middle ages. Sogut actually got taken off settler duty for six turns somewhere in there to build me a few workers -- at the QSC I only had four! Oops. It's all better now, though. :)

Exploration was a problem for me, mostly due to the barbs. I lost a warrior to the west just a couple of turns from where I later found out there was a visible city border -- once I finally de-fogged those tiles I parked a warrior there ASAP and got contact pre-galley, but it was after 1000 BC. Likewise, exploration to the south was held up due to barbarian depredations, and neither I nor Carthage met the Zulu until after 1000 BC. I think I lost four warriors total to barbs, and I was ransacked a bunch of times. I managed to keep my workers and settlers out of trouble, though, and the ransackings were pretty trivial considering I never had much cash in the bank -- maybe 25g and 2 or 3 shields lost in total.

One benefit of the rapid settling was that I was able to secure the three close-in lux quite early, and had two of them linked up soon enough that I only had to use a lux tax for a handful of turns the whole ancient age, despite sparing only one MP each for Sogut and Iznik most of the time. That allowed me to research fairly rapidly, despite only having one trading partner. Neither of us ever bothered to research CB until after the QSC, though -- at one point I wanted to expand a particular town's borders and was surprised to realize I couldn't! At the time I stopped playing, at 90 BC -- 20 turns into the middle ages for me -- Carthage still hadn't expanded borders in most of its towns. Poor, poor Carthage. I have such plans for you. You needn't pay any attention to those newly-upgraded medieval infantry mustering in Uskudar, really.

Ah, yes, which brings me to .. resources! I had three sources of iron locked up without any trouble at all, but it took me ages to find that one source of horses down on the isthmus that I could still get to. I was sort of planning on swords/MI (depending on research pace) all along for the Carthage war anyway -- horses against fortified Numids? Yeah, right -- so it wasn't a big deal. And I got feudalism for my free middle ages tech. Yay! Whether I take out my next target civ with knights or Sipahi will depend on how rapidly I can assimilate Carthage and on where exactly said civ is on the tech tree when I do. Considering said civ *still* hasn't bothered to set sail to go meet anybody but their nearest neighbors, they may wind up a bit backward by that time. I can't hold off contact too much longer, though -- too many boats of other civs showing up nearby, and I don't have enough of a navy to manage a blockade.

Speaking of navies ... I can't think of the last time I started so far from the edge of such a relatively small continent. I've been dead center in Pangaeas before, but not in a situation like this. By the time I got my first boat built, I had all the contacts anyway by other means. Very unusual!

Some summary info:

QSC (estimated until I get home and can look it up):
13 cities
25 pop? Seems low considering I had two towns at 4+ at all times, but that's what I remember. Could be wrong.
3 settlers.
4 workers. (Eeep! My biggest early deficiency after exploration. I'm in decent shape now, though. Thank heavens for industrious workers.)
About 15 warriors and three? archers.
A pair of granaries and I think one barracks, possibly 2.
Techs: all first level except CB. Second level: IW, HBR, writing, math. Third level: mapmaking, currency (in 1000 BC). Might be missing one, will have to check.
Luxes online: dyes, ivory.
Luxes claimed but not yet hooked up: 2 incense.
Resources claimed but not yet hooked up: 3 iron.
Contacts: only Carthage!

Between 1000 and about 500 BC I self-researched C of L and Philo, then went to Republic and drew a 6-turn anarchy. Somewhere in there I met all of the remaining civs: Zulus by exploration, the red-border civ by hanging out in that peninsula until they said hello, and the rest by contact trading. About 500 BC, four turns after becoming a republic, I reached the middle ages and got Feudalism. By that time I had 23 towns and had given up the settler business in favor of marketplaces, barracks and warriors. Since then it's just been saving cash and preparing for war. Should be fun!

I'll come back and post some pictures later, probably.

Renata -- glad to be back!

PTW, Open class

Wheeeeeeeee! I'm back!

*sound of crickets chirping*

Chirrup! Chirrup! Welcome back, Renata! :wavey:

Open, [ptw]1.29, scientific all the way

After the early explorarion revealed such near perfect 4-8 rings, I decided to try a Space victory. The Sipahi would make our GA come at a perfect time and would get us a good sized chunk of land to score well.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SpOdd_gotm35_1000BC.JPG

My 1000BC stats:
12 cities
29 citizens
1 Granary, 2 Barracks
6 workers
1 settler
32 Warrriors, most of them vets and 769g in the bank. :evil:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SpOdd_gotm35_Units.JPG

I entered the MA in 370BC, rather late, but I had captured Cathage, which had dutifully built the Pyramids. Feudalism was my free tech, so I could switch my pre-build city to SunTzu's.

BTW, Renata, good to see again! :)

PTW - Open - Scientific from the start.

Heya, Just another blast from the past. This is my first GOTM submission in about a year as well. I just powered through this one though :)

I decided to play for a 20K victory, with Sogut as my 20K city, and no palace move so I could put the FP there.

Initial Moves:
1. Worker moves east, sees wheat, but I don't move closer to it. The hills and visible BGs will help me get my 20K started.
2. build 1 warrior, then start barracks as prebuild for Granary. I think given my plan I would have been better off just building a settler, and not building a granary in the capitol since it would mostly be building wonders anyway.
3. After Granary first settler went to the river by the wheat (3se, 1 e of Sogut)

Exploration/Expansion:
1. Because of the first setup, expansion was very slow at first, not really getting rolling till late in the AA.
2. First warrior went due east, eventually skirting the north of carthage and then turning south. He beat the carthaginians onto the land bridge, meeting the Zulu about half way. Since I had the bridge stopped up, I followed the Zulu home and fortified at the entrance to prevent them from meeting.

Tech/Trading:
Given the easy level and the lack of contacts, I deliberately slowed down the race. In retrospect, a bit too much. Once into the MA, the slow pace was right, but here in the AA I had two big mistakes due to the slow race.
1. I missed the oracle by two turns and had to ditch into a marketplace.
2. I missed the Hanging Gardens by one turn and had to settle for the Great Wall.
In both cases I could and should have researched another option.

War
The Zulu declared on me after I had blockaded the land bridge.
The demanded contact with Carthage and I refused.
I just retreated back up it till I could get peace. Still keeping the contacts from occuring.

For dealing with Carthage I decided on a classic Warrior->Swordsman rush. Because I was keeping the tech pace slow, I had plent of $$$, so I built up about 25 Warriors and as the Middle ages started (Around 10 AD), I owned most of Carthage.

In order to keep the tech race slow, I left Carthage with 3 cities and gave them peace after I finally got a leader and an "army" victory.

Little did I know that I would keep building other higher priority wonders, and not build the epic till late. The Heroic Epic did serve as a nice prebuild in the absence of the classic palace prebuild.

One other major mistakes.
1. Golden Age: for whatever reason I forgot that the GL would trigger my golden age. Thus I wasted most of my GA in Despotism and even a bit in anarchy.


AA Culture Buildings
4000BC - Palace (duh)
2270BC - Temple
1275BC - Pyramids
450BC - Great Library
410BC - Library
230BC - Great Wall
30BC - Colleseum

<--- *waves at Space and Alan*

@Jeff: Weird playing again after so long, isn't it? Some things just come right back, but then other things .... My own bonehead move was completely forgetting to build a Forbidden Palace until you-don't-wanna-know when. I didn't get that burned on it, and may even have broke even in the long run -- will explain tonight in next spoiler.

Renata

@Jeff: Weird playing again after so long, isn't it? Some things just come right back, but then other things .... My own bonehead move was completely forgetting to build a Forbidden Palace until you-don't-wanna-know when. I didn't get that burned on it, and may even have broke even in the long run -- will explain tonight in next spoiler.


There was definately some serious rust going on.

I think the AA wonder mistakes I made were due to not having played much. I certainly miscalculated my management of the AA tech race.

As a note, I didn't finish my FP until late in the game (1300 or so IIRC). I know this is outside this spoiler, but I don't think any bad info is in this statement.
In my case, it was a concious decision. I wanted it down in the old zulu land, and due to my 20K goal I didn't want to waste a leader to build it.

...1000 bc Status :
21 cities.
51 citizens
...

Wow! This is very impressive. I have built only 3 granaries and got 19 towns by 1000BC with about 40+ citizens. Sure these 2 extra granaries you built are paying off. :)

The game was actually a very nice micromanagement excercise, switching all these wheats between 3 cities. This tedious task fortunately became more routine after I switched to Republic (revolted 1025BC and got 3-turn Anarchy). I then focused on infrastructure (Libraries and Markets) and am not planning on early wars before Sipahi. And Carthage built the Pyramids.

IMHO, while playing Predator going for Ancient Age military expansion is really risky while battling NM and impi with horsemen.

Scientific Predator

IMHO it's worth building swordsmen in AA. Even if the horsemen are more useful for upgrade, you will lose so many in an AA war that the ones you built first won't be around to upgrade anyway. More precisely I like the mix of swordsmen and horsemen: horsmen to soften up the defence, then swordsmen to finish it. Horsemen should always attack first.

In addition, horsemen travel to the front faster, which gives all the more reason to build swordsmen (usually upgraded warriors) first.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif [ptw] 1.27

Scientific from the start

I finished and submitted this game about 10 days ago, but RL prevented me from assembling my spoilers until today.

Also, I finally upgraded to Conquests before playing this GOTM, so my first-ever game of PTW was GOTM35. When I saw that Greece was also in the game, I immediately decided that I would be going for space.

I have a tendency to attack all of my immediate neighbors fairly early in my games, so I had to remind myself not to declare any wars during the Ancient Age or early Middle Ages. I decided from the start that I would be a peacenik until Sipahi were available.

Like most others, I settled one tile east of the start position. Either I was [pimp] at the beginning of the game, or simply am too used to having to conquer territory to gain strategic resources early in Ainwood’s games. At any rate, I started out researching Iron Working and The Wheel as my first 2 techs. I met Carthage in 2510 BC and Zululand in 1725 BC. I saw a red border on the western continent in 3050 BC and parked a warrior on the western tip of my land, but didn’t make contact with the red and green civs until I sent a galley across in 690 BC.

My science progression was:
2670 BC Learned Iron Working
2270 BC Learned The Wheel; traded for Alphabet and Warrior Code from Carthage
1725 BC Traded for Pottery and Horseback Riding from Zulu; traded for Writing from Carthage (I had already invested 14 turns of science on Writing, but wanted to start another tech); traded for Ceremonial Burial from Zulu
1250 BC Learned Code of Laws; traded for Map Making from Zulu
1075 BC Learned Philosophy
950 BC Traded for Mysticism from Carthage
650 BC Traded for Mathematics from green civ
590 BC Learned Republic; traded for Construction from Zulu
470 BC Traded for Currency from Carthage
450 BC Traded for Polytheism from Zulu; Enter Middle Ages.

Since I didn’t pick up Pottery until very late, my early growth was rather slow. In fact, I only constructed one granary the entire game (in Sogut). At 1000 BC, I had 13 towns, only 22 citizens, and 10 workers. I had already secured iron and horses, and was gradually filling out an RCP-4 build around the capital. I would eventually pack in 8 cities at RCP-4.

I revolted immediately upon learning Republic and drew a 6-turn anarchy. I revolted again during the next full turn and drew 6 turns again, so the second revolt actually cost me a turn of anarchy (as explained earlier in this thread).

Barbs were a rather significant annoyance. I foolishly lost an unescorted settler to a barb horseman, lost several warriors, and even had a city sacked on one occasion.

I entered the Middle Ages with 20 towns. My military consisted of a whopping 19 warriors, 1 archer, 3 horsemen and 2 galleys. I still had 3 turns of science left on Literature, and planned to swap all of those temple pre-builds you see over to libraries.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Shigella35a430bc.jpg

My immediate plans were to continue the peaceful path as long as Carthage and the Zulu were helping the tech pace. Carthage completed the Pyramids, so they obviously would be the first target. I have a solid core started around my capital, and haven’t even thought about building the Forbidden Palace yet. At this point, my plan is to leader-rush the FP in either Carthaginian or Zulu territory (so I’ll need some luck).