COTM 10: Final Spoiler:

This is the final spoiler for COTM 10.

To qualify to post in this thread, you must have reached the modern age, or completed and submitted your game.

Use this thread to gloat about how efficiently you dismembered all the other civs in growing your empire to the greatest that the world has ever seen!

(but don't post screenshots of modern-age resources ;))

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif (predator)

Going for 20K culture.

Link to Ancient Age spoiler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2640252&postcount=87)
Link to Middle Ages spoiler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2640774&postcount=45)

Science

When I entered the Industrial Age in 960AD I decided not to bring Russia and Korea forward. I was at war with Korea and wasn't willing to make peace yet. Gifting Russia forward would only give me a 1/3 chance of getting Steam Power, at the high cost of giving my rivals a chance to build some of the wonders I wanted. Better to keep them back in the Middle Ages.

Steam Power was a priority so that I could build railroads and increase production in my 20K city. I learned it in 1010AD.

The next priority was Industrialization so that I could rush a factory and coal plant in my 20K city. I learned Industrialization in 1060AD and in 1160AD had my factory and coal plant. Ta-tu was now up to 84 shields/turn:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/sirplebc10-3a.jpg

I continued research at the fastest pace I could to get through the Industrial Age quickly. It doesn't enable many wonders, I'd need to reach Modern Times to make more of them available to Ta-tu.

I was nearly able to maintain four turn research and entered Modern Times in 1395AD.

I was a bit slower in Modern Times, not able to maintain a four turn pace. But it wasn't necessary, I was able to stay ahead of Ta-tu's ability to build wonders. At 1640AD I turned off research. I'd learned eight Modern techs by then - six to enable all wonders except Strategic Missile Defense, one to enable Mass Transit, and one to enable Modern Armor.

Warfare

I was still at war with Korea when I entered the Industrial Age. That war continued until 1050AD. By then I'd booted Korea off the mainland and I gave her peace for two island towns.

In the meantime I attacked Russia again as soon as my peace with her expired in 970AD. I also gave Russia peace in 1050AD, for one town.

My world map at that date:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/sirplebc10-3d.jpg

I controlled the home continent up to China's wall. I also had holdings on five islands. Russia and Korea were down to one town each, both on the same island which they shared with one of my towns.

I didn't need to fight anyone after this. My 20K date would probably be about the same whether I continued expansion or not. I already had all the resources I needed and had six local luxuries.

But I couldn't resist expanding more. I used spare production capacity to build Keshiks and waited for someone to learn Military Tradition. When that happened in 1410AD I traded for it, upgraded my 33 Keshiks to Cavalry, and began an invasion of China. As this war began I shifted production to tanks and they soon became my main force. I allied Japan in this war and we destroyed China (Japan eliminated a last settler somewhere) in 1480AD.

In 1500AD Japan declared on me and took a few towns. My retaliation was swift of course and when I gave her peace in 1535 she was down to one Island town.

Along the way I eliminated Korea and Russia when peace with them expired.

Next I attacked Vikings and reduced them to two towns by 1605AD, taking silks along the way. This war was fought with tanks, many of them air lifted to the other continent.

I was at 57% of the world's land at that point and didn't intend further war, planned to just expand borders to claim more land. But Portugal foolishly attacked me in 1655AD. At this point I had a large number of Modern Armor. I took some of Portugal's cities, including taking dyes as my eighth luxury, then razed the rest and eliminated Portugal in 1690AD. At the same date Celts eliminated Japan and I ended the game with them and the Vikings as my only remaining rivals:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/sirplebc10-3b.jpg

20K Culture Progress

1130AD JS Bach's
1230AD Smith's
1330AD Theory Of Evolution
1380AD Hoover Dam
1400AD Wall Street
1460AD SETI
1465AD Research Lab
1470AD Military Academy
1535AD United Nations
1540AD Apollo Program
1605AD Cure For Cancer
1665AD Longevity
1715AD Manhattan Project
1720AD Intelligence Agency

And in 1774 Ta-tu was past 20K culture and I got a culture victory.

My Jason score isn't much in this game. I focused on building up Ta-tu at the start and was way too late building up my core and invading neighbors to get a high score. I also delayed later on, waiting for AIs to learn Chivalry and then later on to learn Military Tradition before I started wars. Here's hoping my focus on the 20K city has paid off :)

Open

Times Ancient (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2604773&postcount=4)
Times Medieval (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2622698&postcount=24)

Entering the Industial Age embroiled in a war with Portugal - a very one-sided war, at that - I decided that my forces could be easily re-directed to other uses as well. The Celts and the Vikings had the two remaining luxuries, Silks and Dyes, readily available with a first strike. All I'd have to do was move in, take them, and clear sufficient firebreaks around the captured cities to reduce flip risks.

Thus I filled a handful of Galleons with troops and sent them to Oslo to claim the Silks. As a bonus, Ragnar completed Magellan's in Alesund, just across the peninsula from Oslo, so I took that as well to speed up my naval movement. I generated a further three leaders in these conflicts, bringing my total of Armies to 6. I got no more leaders for the rest of the game.

Meanwhile, the former Portugese, and now firmly Celtic, city of Oporto fell and I cleared space around it.

On both fronts, I filled as much space as I could with Settlers. I was still comfortably below the domination limit.

As War Weariness was beginning to hurt, and my two builds to help alleviate it - JS Bach's and Universal Suffrage - were still a way off completion - I signed peace with both nations and took a breather.

I re-declared on the Vikings after 20 turns, and reduced them to a single town in the far southern tundra. I razed most of their cities, including Trondheim with its Wonders (all useless to me), keeping only those with resources.

The Celtic peace finished a few turns later, and rather foolishly, I hadn't planned for a Celtic sneak attack as soon as the deal expired. They did attack, and walked into and razed a number of small cities. My War Weariness rocketed to 50% almost immediately, and I was still not quite ready with the preventative measures.

I rallied my troops, mopped up the still numerous Celtic Cavalrymen who were attacking mainly towards ex-Portugal, and moved in on two fronts.

Every Celtic city was razed. WW must've been really hurting them; almost all were starving.

I finally reached the gates of Entremont, defended by 7 Riflemen. I'd come prepared, and had parked a stack of Artillery and Infantry on a nearby mountain. It took me two turns to enter the city, and would've razed it were it not for Adam Smith's. Nothing else in there - the Pyramids included - was of any interest to me. (I'd razed Leo's along the way too - no point keeping it, I wasn't upgrading units any longer!)

I razed the final Celtic cities in their productive mainland, and signed peace, not wanting to prolong the war and pursue them into their junk cities on the tundra and desert to the south.

Back at home, I'd been busy with Workers, railing and generally micro-managing cities to get the best out of them. It was, I guess, a half-hearted milking attempt. I don't have the patience, or the time, for a full-on run, though, so whilst it was all set up to do so, I popped a bunch of Settlers and triggered a domination win in 1580.

@ SirPleb:can you tell your Jason score?
I triggered 20K culture victory in 1832.My firaxis score was around 5500 and jason 6100.
In IA i conquered my home continent and portugal,built all IA and Modern time wonders as fast as i could,maximised my territory and population and had around 100turns at 65%land area

How can you guys know your Jason score? They haven't put the calculator for it up yet.

How can you guys know your Jason score? They haven't put the calculator for it up yet.

When you submit your final save game, you get told the score.

:blush: I never noticed...

PTW Open 20K

I entered the industrial ages at war with Russia. I took their saltpeter and started my golden age and then take a few more cities. I get a great leader, build an army, and let it win so I can build heroic epic. Then I kill it off. :( Nevertheless, I wade through Russia and eliminate them in 1425. During this time the Celts declare war. They have a MPP with Korea, and so I get one, too, in hopes that they will attack each other. No such luck, but the Celts don't do anything to me, either.

I learn steam power and trade it to get iron, but my iron deal dies shortly thereafter when a Chinese city momentarily steals my furs. I trade electricity for it, and then think to look for available iron. I find some on a small island, outside of China's cultural borders, and send a settler there, but they have rushed their library and I'm too late. I leave the settler there anyway. I think about declaring on Japan. If I do that, I can settle in Japanese territory and steal Korea's iron. They declare on Korea before I'm ready, though, and the Japanese city isn't Japanese by the time my settler can settle. I get iron from a farther away Japanese city, though. Throughout the rest of the game I work my way through Japan and Korea, slowly.

TaTu did okay here, building universal sufferage, heroic epic, theory of evolution, hoover, intelligence agency, wall street, battlefield medicine (rushed with a leader), the pentagon, SETI, a research lab, the Internet, the UN, Cure for cancer, and Apollo (rushed). I lost out on longevity by 1 turn, but at 5 turns before the end, it didn't matter anyway. Apollo didn't matter either, but I had the leader. I had a small gap between the pentagon and SETI, but I did a much better job here of getting through the industrial ages while I still had culture to build. I hit 20K in 1908, with a Jason score of just over 3000.

This is my first game of the month, and after reading about others games I realize I have a long way to go. I'm used to playing at the chieftain or warlord difficulty, and when I started this I figured I would be wiped out mid game, but somehow I pulled out a win.

I started out the game with a disasterous ancient age, falling well behind in science, due to very poor positioning of my capital (I built it where I started). A quick settler was able to grab the iron out fom under the russians, although this meant they got my horses. Thanks to the swordsman (and later medieval infantry), from the iron, I was able to destroy the russians by mid medieval ages.

Unfortunatley, since I was still well behind in tech, and apparently had nothing useful to trade except luxuries (for other luxuries), wars against china, and korea, throughout the game, had little success, and usually found me suing for peace, before they overran my entire army. Because of these failures, I decided to concentrate my efforts on cathing up on science, and was finally able to get ahead by the late industrial age. I also managed to build my first wonder around then. (Though I had captured a couple from the russians, including temple of artemis, which gave me a real boost).

At this point I decided my best bet for a victory was spaceship, so I concentrated all my efforts on researching toward this goal from then on. Finally in 1981 I launched my spaceship and claimed a victory. I was only 3 spaceship parts ahead of the chinese, and the celts had about 10 turns till they won a 100k culture victory. Also I had had to build the united nations earlier, when I realized the chinese were building it just to stop elections form taking place since I was pretty sure I wouldn't win the vote.

I never met the japanese or the vikings, since both had been destroyed by the time I met anyone past the chinese and koreans. The celts had conquered their entire continent, and the portugese (I assume in fleeing from the celts) had taken over the japanese. At the end I owned about one third of my continent.

My game was interesting, and I won it with a conquest in 1966. Ouch. Basically, got out to a bad start, bad capital location, and made many miscalculations along the line (was afraid of China's Riders, but they had no horses, and I didn't realize it).

A couple of interesting things happened, though, to report:

(1) The Celts engaged in a two front war against the Portuguese and Vikings, wiping them off the Celtic continent almost simultaneously. Impressive.

(2) Entremont would have been the first AI 20k I've seen... of course, I razed it.

(3) More MGL than I've ever had this game - probably 20 or so. The problem was with what to DO with them. Wound up moving my capital 3 times to combat corruption. The 2nd time was a disaster and needed to move it back fast.

(4) The Celts attacked (and killed) more than one of my armies! I thought the AI doesn't attack armies. Au contraire. I had two Tank armies wiped out by the Celtic AI near Entremont - delaying my destruction of the Celts by a loonnng time.

(5) This game's main weakness was the fact that the Celts had access to only one source of Oil on their continent. I was able to camp out on the Celtic oil with two cavalry armies that got attacked 5-6 times, but held. I never had to face a unit better than cavalry until late when the Celts threw some TOW Infantry at me.

Here's my combined screenies of my minimaps:

@ SirPleb:can you tell your Jason score?
Sure: Firaxis score 5445, Jason score 6808.

This being the first single-player game I've played in a long time, I decided to take a very lazy, peaceful route - I participated in no wars all throughout the game (I only captured one city, Kazan', via culture flip), and managed a Spaceship victory while maintaining jumping from a backwards civ to the late medieval period to the tech leader by the middle Industrial age. I could have easily taken Oil from Khabarovsk, Aluminum from Shimoneski, Saltpeter from Yatusk, Iron from Valisvostok, and Coal from Rostov. Instead (like I said - I was feeling lazy - see attached screenshot), I imported all of those, and simply went without railroads Nothing impressive at all about this game, I think. I ended with a Firaxis score of 2282, and a Jason score of 3375.

Post-Victory Screenshot: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/COTM10Final.jpg (caution - 1Mb)

Spaceship victory for me (open class).

By the Industrial era, I had polished of Russia and Korea (leaving them with 1 city each so I could boost them up an age and get their free tech, which I did in all 3 ages with Russia and in the last 2 ages with Korea). China was on the ropes. In the early Industrial Age, I polished off China. I was going to leave well enough alone, but toward the end of the age, Japan declared on Russia. I was afraid they would wipe out my research monkey, so I told them to get out of my territory or declare war. They declared war, so I took over their territory (also leaving them with one city in a remote corner of the continent). When all was said and done, I had the entire home continent save for half a dozen or so cities in unappealing corners of the continent.

From there, it was a simple matter of cruising to a space race victory. Once I built the internet, I was able to do 4-turn research for all techs, and my victory was never really in question -- in fact, I almost reached my goal of launching a spaceship before any other civs (except Korea and Russia) made it into the Modern Age. Scandinavia made it to the Modern Age with about 6 turns to spare, and the Celts followed 4 or 5 turns later.

Surprisingly, all civs made it to the end of the game.

The Celts were my biggest rival, but calling them a rival is giving them too much credit.

The biggest hiccup in my end game was when the Celts conquered the Scandinavian dyes, but couldn't trade them because all trade routes went through Scandinavian waters. So I had to crank up my lux rate for the last half dozen turns to compensate for my missing eighth luxury. Oh well.

Final stats: 1818 victory; 3920 Firaxis; 5007 Jason. I could have done better had I micromanaged my workers and specialists more in the end game, and probably could have done a lot better had I let the other civs help me with my research, but what can I say -- I felt like coasting to the finish line.

My Jason score isn't much in this game. I focused on building up Ta-tu at the start and was way too late building up my core and invading neighbors to get a high score. I also delayed later on, waiting for AIs to learn Chivalry and then later on to learn Military Tradition before I started wars. Here's hoping my focus on the 20K city has paid off :)

wonderful game! :goodjob: :king: SirPleb, this time you build everything in your wonder city brick by brick, right? I still remember in your GOTM 22 viking, you got 9 leaders and finished your 20K in 16** AD. of course that's with PTW. which one is easier to achieve the earliest 20K goal, PTW or C3C?

well a welcome return to COTM - I now have a Laptop, a job in London with an Hour and a half commute, which means I have enough time for COTM again!

I took it a little easy this month, not really pushing the boundaries, but just having fun with the Kercheks. Got more MGL's than I remember having in any other game (4 - I'm such a pacifist!). Once it got to 500 AD and I realised no one had the ToA, I decided to build that and go for a fast-ish 100k, rather than taking out the celts who were the only remaining significant force.

A moderate sucess for me- 1510 win, fireaxis 6506, Jason 8834. probably enough for a good showing and a reasonable chance at the fast 100k, now I know Sir P wasn't going for it.

Middle Ages (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2630498&postcount=39)

I had essentially caught up in the Middle Ages, and it didn't take long for me to power into the lead. I was the first to Steam Power and I didn't look back. The Industrial Age was rather uninteresting. I built up former Korea as best I could (I managed to get 4 very productive cities and a few others that contributed some) and watched as Japan and China fought each other off and on throughout the age. China had begun to overrun Japan when I won Diplomatically, 4-1-1 (China had 27% land, Celts had 27% population, or perhaps vice versa), in 1796 AD, with a Jason score of 3920.

SirPleb, this time you build everything in your wonder city brick by brick, right?Mostly...

I built my Temple, all of the Great Wonders, and the Forbidden Palace brick by brick. I cash-rushed library, colosseum, university, cathedral, and research lab. I used military leaders to rush Small Wonders other than Forbidden Palace. And I also cash rushed some non-culture improvements which improved production of Great Wonders - factory and coal plant.

Which one is easier to achieve the earliest 20K goal, PTW or C3C?Definitely PTW! In PTW you can "farm" military great leaders with slow wars and use them to rush Great Wonders. In C3C you can't do this There's little in C3C which helps for 20K vs. PTW. The main thing is that Shakespeare's allows your 20K city to grow over size 12 without a hospital. But that's too late in the game to have nearly as much effect as the early wonders which can be rushed with leaders in PTW.

(4) The Celts attacked (and killed) more than one of my armies! I thought the AI doesn't attack armies. Au contraire. I had two Tank armies wiped out by the Celtic AI near Entremont - delaying my destruction of the Celts by a loonnng time.


The AI usually doesn't attack full life armies, but I've seen my cavs armies attacked (and defeated) a few times by the AI when I left them in red.

The AIs will also attack an Army if it's the only target available to them. When I landed in Portugal, it was with a single stack covered by a full-hp Cav Army. To my surprise, a brave/stupid/drunk Portugese Longbowman had a pop at it, taking away 1hp before being easily despatched.

I had a similar experience with Tank armies defending a beachhead city on another continent. The AI threw everything it had at my armies. I think I lost a couple that way. I think it being in a city will bring the AI to attack your armies. In another, game I had a Cav army sheltering a settler and a bunch of wounded units. Nothing for 5-10 turns, but as soon as I built a city under them the AI swarmed it under with Cavs in one turn.

@Denniz - That is correct. SirPleb showed in his "Going for Sid" that they will attack an army inside a city, it was a beachhead city also. That is the game he also created his FOD in.

Playing this COTM as Always-War, No-diplo, no-GL, I've yet to finish it, let alone write a report. But have found this to be a great set-up for the variant.

Playing this COTM as Always-War, No-diplo, no-GL, I've yet to finish it, let alone write a report. But have found this to be a great set-up for the variant.

No offense intended, Bezhukov, but if you haven't finished the game yet, you shouldn't be viewing (and posting in) this spoiler.... That's a violation of the spoiler rules IMHO :(

If you are worried about violations of spoiler rules, please contact a moderator or report the post before posting.

The spoiler rule for this thread is: To qualify to post in this thread, you must have reached the modern age, or completed and submitted your game. Bezhukov may well have met the first requirement.

He could be in the modern age.

He could be in the modern age.

Oops... :blush:

You're right. I though the rules for entering the final spoiler were having finished the game (IIRC it was like that in the past).

Sorry!

Link to Middle Ages (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2619652&postcount=23)

:sad:

I set up a fully fledged milking situation, reaching 2000 citizens in 1834 AD. I had finished hospitals and mass transits in every town that could use them. I had carefully abandoned most tundra towns or given them little brothers. I had even built granaries in all cities/metropoles that had a growth of +1 or +3 food in order to get the maximum gain from Longevity.

Then game weariness set in. I was going to sell most temples and cathedrals since I had put the luxury rate at 100%. But I couldn't resist to just leisurely press the spacebar for a while. Then a temple that must have culture doubled caused a city to expand and I went over the domination limit in 1862.

Oh well, I may have a shot at the cow. Maybe no one else chose to milk this land-rich map. The Jason score won't be competitive though.

Always war, no-diplo means all self-research without a trade bonus (and no GL cheating), so game pace has been quite, shall we say, leisurely. So, no, I am not, quite, in the Modern Age yet, though I may shoot for space just to be different.

Having been at war with the entire civilized world for upwards of 1,000 years, I cannot imagine what information I could glean from this forum that is not readily apparent via the game itself, nor, given the unlikelihood of the game being completed by the submission deadline, why this should be of concern to anyone in the first place.

Given that it evidently is to someone, my apologies. Nonetheless, the game does set up for a nice challenge for this variant.

@bezhukov 2 things: I agree that the first spoilers are the most revealing. End game spoilers just show how someone finished the job.

2nd. Why play a G/CotM with a special variant that makes the game harder?

I set up a fully fledged milking situation, reaching 2000 citizens in 1834 AD. I had finished hospitals and mass transits in every town that could use them. I had carefully abandoned most tundra towns or given them little brothers. I had even built granaries in all cities/metropoles that had a growth of +1 or +3 food in order to get the maximum gain from Longevity.

Then game weariness set in. I was going to sell most temples and cathedrals since I had put the luxury rate at 100%. But I couldn't resist to just leisurely press the spacebar for a while. Then a temple that must have culture doubled caused a city to expand and I went over the domination limit in 1862.

Oh well, I may have a shot at the cow. Maybe no one else chose to milk this land-rich map. The Jason score won't be competitive though.

You have very good number of citizens! :goodjob:
I have 1300(max) without railroads.
What is your Firaxis score?

Having been at war with the entire civilized world for upwards of 1,000 years, I cannot imagine what information I could glean from this forum that is not readily apparent via the game itself, nor, given the unlikelihood of the game being completed by the submission deadline, why this should be of concern to anyone in the first place.

Given that it evidently is to someone, my apologies. Nonetheless, the game does set up for a nice challenge for this variant.

The logic goes as follows:

Until the deadline has expired there is no reason to assume you will not submit your game. Until then, if play the game you are playing in the competition. The competition is played to rules, and if you disagree with the rules you should discuss them and persuade us to change them, but you should not break them.

You have very good number of citizens! :goodjob:
I have 1300(max) without railroads.
What is your Firaxis score?
Thanks, Dynamic. Let me congratulate you on your superb 100K date as well.

I had just over 10000 firaxis points. Because I didn't reach 2050 AD (%¤#%¤!!!), the base score should be lower, maybe 9100-9200. The jason score was better than I expected, around 9100.

PS. 1300 citizens is very good at that date. I probably had a bigger share of specialists than you and they score only 1/2 as much as happy citizens. It took me 5-10 minutes to switch all specialists between tax and science.

>2nd. Why play a G/CotM with a special variant that makes the game harder?

Um... fun? :lol:

Given the variant, AlanH's post was a non-sequitur, as I'm (obviously?) not participating in the competition and would be no threat to anyone were I participating, given the restrictiveness of the variant, though one of the purposes of my post was to suggest the viability of future CotM's taking advantage of various entertaining variants to add some challenge to the game.

One way to add challenge to monarch level is to see how high one can score in the various victory conditions; another is playing variants.

Given the variant, AlanH's post was a non-sequitur, as I'm (obviously?) not participating in the competition and would be no threat to anyone were I participating
Sorry, I don't follow your reasoning. Until the closing date, anyone playing this game is potentially in the competition, and I'm not in a position to guess whether or not you will finally submit an entry. The fact that you are playing your own variant is interesting, but the rules apply to all players, regardless of whether they are likely to contend for awards or not.

"I'm not in a position to guess whether or not you will finally submit an entry."

Indeed you are not, which is why I relieved you of the obligation by providing this information to you! :rolleyes:

I'm not in the competition, as I previously stated, so am puzzled by your concern.

"I'm not in the competition, as I previously stated"

Check your posts. You didn't state that you were not a competitor before, you only implied you *might* not be. In indicating that you would not be a threat if you entered, you left open the possibility that you could still submit. Now that you have, we can move on.

"... so am puzzled by your concern"

I was simply concerned to clarify that the rules apply to all competitors.

Point taken - should have just finished the game before I posted, but as one can imagine, the variant has turned out to be quite time-consuming, so I despaired of ever finding the time to get her finished, though the result is a foregone conclusion...

Medieval Age spoiler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2640106&postcount=44)
DBear's CotM10O Industrial Age highlights 1270-:

Towns founded:
1300 Bayanhongor
1325 Har-Ayrag
1355 Nalayh, Tes
1400 Hutag
1405 Arvayheer
1495 Ondorhaan, Saynshand
1570 Tumentsogt
1705 Hohhot
1756 Baotou
1766 Trondheim (built on ruins of old Trondheim)
1852 Chatgal

Technologies:
1340 Nationalism (learn)
1410 Steam (learn)
1485 Industry (learn)
1520? Printing Press (trade)
1555 Meds (learn)
1585 Sci Meth (learn)
1615 Corporate (learn)
1625 Replaceables (trade)
1635 Atomics, Electronics (Darwin)
1650 Espionage (trade)
1680 Refining (learn)
1720 Steel (learn)
1754 Demo (trade)
1756 Combust (learn)
1776 Flight (learn)
1778 Sanitation (trade)
1790 Mass Pro (learn)
1804 Motors (learn)
1812 Ironclads (trade)
1832 Fission (learn)
1848 Fascism, Free Art (trade)
1852 Rockets (learn)

Wars:
1140-1300 Korea. Waited until I had cav. Got leader in 1200. Formed Cav army in 1210, won in 1215. Koreans destroyed.
1325-1530? Japan. China signed MPP with us. I wanted to let Japan and China fight. Japan destroyed. China is friendly and I intend to keep it that way.
1635-1680? Vikings. World War. China started it and dragged everyone in with MPPs.
1788-1826 Celts. Idiot Portugese declare, Celts fight back, everyone else gets dragged in. This could work out, though. Celts are my expected UN rival anyway, so if everyone has fought them, they won't get the votes--and I will;) In 1810 we plant a spy there. Celts had beaten Portugal down to 2 cities and I had RoP w/Portugal. Celts kept trying to invade, so I would just put a screen of tanks around the Portugese city.
1852- Celts. This was purely to get China's support for the UN. The Celt invasion stack I talked about above I killed off with a horde of airlifted tanks and bombers.


Wonders:
1275 Beaten to Magellan and Bach by 3 turns. Switch to Smith and Newton. [pissed]:gripe::aargh: Kyoto beats us to Smith by ONE turn! Someone else beats us to Newton. Got my revenge by taking Kyoto for myself later. Had to switch to Academy and Epic.
1635 Karakorum builds Darwin.
1740 Tabriz builds CIA.
1760 Karakorum builds Hoover.
1780 Karakorum builds Wall St.
1790 Pyongyang builds Ironworks (lot o' good that does...)
1848 Karakorum builds Red Cross.
1854 Tabriz builds UN, calls vote. Mao and Henry vote for me, Ragnar abstains. Brennus votes for himself.

Scores:
3331 Firaxis, 4138 Jason

1495--1525 Switched to Republic. Just couldn't do research on Monarchy, and couldn't get Commie in a trade. Figured with 6 exotics, WW could be handled.

In 1595 China sent about 15 cav and several infantry near then-unprotected Pusan. I smelled trouble, turned out they wanted the Vikings who had a town near the south volcano.

In the 1760s Vikings were down to Vadso, so I gifted them the island city of Fukushima to try to keep them alive so I could have their vote in the UN. Learned my lesson from GotM40!

In 1804 I switched Tabriz, who already had a build for cav going, to a palace prebuild for the UN.

I was hoping that WW wouldn't be damaging, but in 1818 about half my cities went down and Celts weren't talking. Nothing for it but clown duty and a delay in getting Fission.

Time was a factor in this game. I didn't think I could run a war quick enough, so the UN became my win of choice.

This is my first COTM and my second completed GOTM (I didn't finish another). I enjoyed this one immensely. :)

I set out to be like the mongols. Everything was to be based around the Keshiks. I fought no serious battles until I could produce them and never researched any further technologies.

Only a few hiccoughs.
Russia declared war on me early, resulting in a weakened northern border being sacked by hordes of barbarians who exhausted my tech purchase treasury and then forced me to make an expensive peace agreement with Russia to stop it happening again.
For some reason other civilisations wouldn't sell me important techs. So I ended up having to research monarch and chivalry. For the rest of the game my science budget was zero. A few techs were purchased or traded but most were extorted as part of peace settlements.
My frontline ran into the Celts as we were both overrunning Portugal. Only they had cavalry and shortly afterwards Rifleman.

That left me in a quandary. I had 70% pop but only 62% of land. I felt sure I could take the nearest three celtic cities by shear weight of numbers. But I could not fight any drawn out battles against cavalry and rifleman with Keshiks and Musketeers and would those three cities be enough?

The Celts were also rampaging through the vikings at the other end of their empire. So I wimped out and threw a few settlers at the empty space they left, paid for temples, libraries and cathedrals to impose the Mongol way of life over as large an area as possible.

I crawled over the line about 100 years later. My only regret, should I have made a dash for glory Keshiks against Cavalry & Rifleman!!! Now I'll never know.

A good fun game. The nastiest I have ever been. I had no qualms about breaking peace agreements. Sometimes even the turn after I had extorted whatever I could from my victims. Though mostly it was to take back culture swapping cities. Virtually nothing spent on science. Apart from a few cities late in the game no city ever built any cultural improvement besides a temple (and a very few colliseums).

:D

Open, Barbs are fixed.

I kill the stray Korean city on an island, and Korea is dead as of 1440 AD.

The people's republic of Mongol eliminates Russia as of 1490AD. Chasing down the stray cities was a pain, but flip risk was permanently gone at this point.

1520 AD sees the first China war when they try to hit my furs city. Of course they attack when 2 worker stacks where right at their borders. My theory that the AI feels the must attack you when you are in the factory building stage continues to hold true. This is the first war I bother with an ally, and get Japan to join the party. During this war my leaderless streak finally ends for the COTM. This war ends in 1570 AD after the Japanese bailed out on me.

1570 AD sees the first Japan war as I switch sides to beat up on. I want to keep Japan and China beating each other to a pulp as I claim more of the starting landmass. I now ally with China against Japan. This war ends 1675 AD.

1620 AD sees the first Celtic war start when I refused to give them coal. I see this as a phony war since the Celts have no cities on my landmass. The phony war ends 1675 AD.

1675 AD sees the second China war. I want there rubber city gone ASAP. I once again ally with Japan against them. This war ends in 1760 AD with them conceding me 2 cities in the peace treaty.

1760 AD sees the second Japan war. This time I don't think China is even worth it as a ally.

1762 AD sees the second Celtic war when I refuse to give them Sanitation.

1778 AD sees the third China war when I trip their MPP with the Celts. The last remnants of China have been clear from by land mass. It is time to hit the other continent.

I official hit domination in 1830 AD with a horrid Jason score of 4,753. I have a bad feeling I will be at the bottom of the list. :(

Domination win in 1796 AD with 5596 Jason points.

Aftergame thoughts:
I should have done a Swordsmen rush in the AA after grabbing iron from Russia.
I waited for Keshiks to start my invasion.

After that I first eliminated Russia, then Kore, then Japan from our continent.
But to destroy Japan, I signed MA with China which brought them a former Japanese horse town...
China attacked me and I had to struggle a bit to win this war.
After that I got MT from them and destroyed Portugal.
Celts have conquered Viking land and a part of Portugal, so I had to build up a lot of Cavs and do a ROP rape to win.
I researched almost none and by the end (1796) no one had Infantry or tanks.
So, if I ahd destroyed Russia 50 turns earlier, I would surely have won 50 turns earlier...

Cotm 10 Mongols Open Game.

Middle Ages spoiler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2666187&postcount=57)

Let's finish this game in a hurry, I'm already late on Gotm41 which seems to be more fun then milking a 100k-win out of this... I will play fast domination.

1430 Declare on Portugese.

1455 researched Steam Power. Traded to Vikings for Economics.

1480 researched Industrialization.

1490 make peace with Portugal for two island towns. They have three towns left.
1550 declare on Celts, capture 4 cities. Sign in Vikings for Medicine.

1590 after taking several cities, Entremont included, we make peace for a city (2) and reach domination limit (66/82).

1595 it's over...

Firaxis score: 4852
Jason score: 6938

I had trouble with my expansion. It seemed to be too slow - maybe it was not possible to get out of the box faster. I struggle with starts in hostile surroundings.
My wars against Korea, China and Japan went well. Keshniks did not have a big impact. They just started my GA.
Maybe I should have decided to move my core to Korean area earlier. But I still refuse to abandon my capital to move palace.
I'm also still reluctant to use RoP-rape to make faster progress in warfare.

I replayed my end game, milking until 2050 AD and I must say the anti-milk effect of jason scoring works beautifully. I could only squeeze out about 200 more jason points, although the firaxis score went up by another 2K. So I'm happy again, as long as I get the cow :satan:

I replayed my end game, milking until 2050 AD and I must say the anti-milk effect of jason scoring works beautifully. I could only squeeze out about 200 more jason points, although the firaxis score went up by another 2K. So I'm happy again, as long as I get the cow :satan:

+200 point is good IMHO. IIRC the Jason score can decrease during the milking. I never play full milk games and may be think wrong.
About your potental award: only Bradleyfeanor (20K) can beat you (if will not beat SirPleb on fastest 20K) :lol:

I replayed my end game, milking until 2050 AD and I must say the anti-milk effect of jason scoring works beautifully. I could only squeeze out about 200 more jason points, although the firaxis score went up by another 2K. So I'm happy again, as long as I get the cow :satan:

Sorry, but I had a higher base score (10,382). You certainly deserve an award more than I do – I milked all the way to 2050 and didn’t get a much higher base than you. I guess my milking skills are pathetic.

Hopefully nobody else milked - if I don’t get the cow, I think I’ll be sick. Milking really takes all the enjoyment out of the game, and I never want to do that again. Thanks so much to the creators of Jason scoring!!

Hopefully nobody else milked - if I don’t get the cow, I think I’ll be sick. Milking really takes all the enjoyment out of the game, and I never want to do that again. Thanks so much to the creators of Jason scoring!!

That was IMO the best thing done to GOTM. I never wanted to play to 2050AD to get the best score.

Of course, during my long GOTM absence the competition got harder. :(

Sorry, but I had a higher base score (10,382). You certainly deserve an award more than I doNot at all. If, out of greed, you stray too close to the domination limit, there is a price to pay. I find it pretty interesting to contemplate why mistakes are made. But mistakes remain part of the game.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif

Just rushed through the IA over the last two days. Entered in 580 AD, and gifted Russia and Korea into it. They got Steam Power and Medicine, respectively. My GA had already been used, so I was down to my raw research strength, still I learned Nationalism in 7 turns, and traded for both Steam Power and Medicine. Next was Industrialism, and with pre-builds in place I was quickly bringing Factories and Coal Plants on-line.

After that came Electricity. I was down to 6 turns for it. At this point I made sure I gifted Korea and China up to Electricity. China had been my best research partner so far, and I had hopes that one of them would learn Replaceable Parts, and maybe even Scientific Method for me!

After that I 4-turned Sanitation (I figure I'd need the larger cities to increase my research, and I'd probably save 2-3 turns overall) and my core cities built Hospitals to grow. Then it was up the Corporate ladder. As my cities grew, the research time came down, but I was never at a consistent 4-turn rate during the IA. The other continent was very far behind, and I didn't bother bringing them up. I just used older Techs to keep me at 8 luxuries.

About this time Japan sent a lone Caravel over. We had deals, so what was he up to? I shifted Keshiks in place (MilTradition had NOT been researched at this point! :lol: ) He lands 2 Samurai, and eventually declares war after a couple rounds of me telling him to remove his units. Trading a few Techs around I quickly get a 7 on 1 pile-up going. Forming alliances is a good way to cement potential votes when going for a diplomatic victory, which it looked like I would have to do.

I never saw any significant combat in this war; I just whacked whatever Japan sent over. Just after I learned Combustion, there was China with a newly learned Replaceable parts. I trade for it and now I can continue on the upper track to Motorized Transport. And, just as I learn Motorized Transport, Mao shows up knowing Scientific Method. Awesome! After the trade I have just Atomic Theory, Electronics and Flight to go. AT and Flight take 5 turns each, so I set up Karakorum to build ToE in 10 turns, and Hovd (my FP site) to build Palace in 10 turns, getting a Free Electronics and Fission from the ToE, and switch Hovd to UN using "Show Me The Big Picture" when I learn Fission. I still need 2 more turns, complete the UN in 1210 AD, get a 5-2-1 vote and the Diplo Victory! The vote was between me and Brennus; Brennus and Catherine voted for Brennus (I'd beat up on Russia a bit in the MidAges) and Japan abstained since he was at war with both of us.

RL has been very busy recently, so it was a little tough finding the time (just short of 14 hours) to finish this game. It was fun, and a bit of a challenge to make a decent research capability from this map. I really didn't get my fishing villages all developed - not a single Commercial Dock, for instance, but my core cities carried most of the burden and I got up to around 1200 beakers per turn. The AI was really far behind in research in this game, and was never much of a threat - in fact, Printing Press, JS Bachs, Democracy and Free Artistry were NEVER researched; space would have been easy, except for the time required.

RL really, really got in my way on this game. I must have submitted mere seconds before the deadline, and that only by hitting <enter> for god knows how many turns. I would hit shift-d about 50 times to take care of pollution, then hit enter, turn after turn, only breaking the pattern when a wonder completed in my 20k city.

Oh, stress!:aargh:! That sucked very bad.

But it is over now. :) I didn't do as well as I hoped in score--less than 10k jason for the first time in quite a while. But the date may be ok I hope.

20k in 1758ad.

I'll post my spoiler tomorrow...ummm...I mean later today, because it is tomorrow. Sleeeeeep. Must now sleeeeeep.

20k in 1758ad.

Bradley I'm in awe :goodjob: :goodjob: :goodjob:

We have for our 20K date the same distance from the year 1800 :crazyeye:

Congrats Bradleyfeanor! :goodjob:
I afraided for you did't submit before deadline (I checked list at the end of 1 april). I see your state and begin afraid for myself for my future 20K game. :rolleyes:

P.S. Sorry you haven't enough time for reaching great score but it's better to get good score then get nothing. And of course your victory date is very good (I never play 20K yet but can compare it with SirPleb's game). I also stop culture rushing in my game 20 turns before end because hadn't time for playing. Although I reached 11K. :p

Congrats Bradleyfeanor! :goodjob:
I afraided for you did't submit before deadline (I checked list at the end of 1 april). I see your state and begin afraid for myself for my future 20K game. :rolleyes:

P.S. Sorry you haven't enough time for reaching great score but it's better to get good score then get nothing. And of course your victory date is very good (I never play 20K yet but can compare it with SirPleb's game). I also stop culture rushing in my game 20 turns before end because hadn't time for playing. Although I reached 11K. :p

Thanks Redbad and Dynamic. Those final hours were indeed miserable. I still haven't finished writing my post: its a long one and I am tired of staring at a computer screen. But it wasn't really lack of time that led to my low score. There were two key moments in my game that caused it, and I look forward to seeing if you can succeed where I failed when you go for a high score 20k.

Feudalism was a really, really cool way to win 100k early. I guess I will be following your example in a game very soon. Lets see...you currently have a gold medal Diplomatic, a gold Conquest, a bronze Space, and of course several gold Dominations. And this game looks like a very likely gold 100k. :goodjob: I think the staff may want to have an uber-eptathlon award (in the spirit of Solen's Golden Cow idea) prepared for someone who goes gold in every victory condition! :cool:

Although, with all Sir Plebs gold medal games and awards, he may have already achieved this feat. Does anyone know if he has recieved gold in every victory condition?

Sorry, but I had a higher base score (10,382). You certainly deserve an award more than I do – I milked all the way to 2050 and didn’t get a much higher base than you. I guess my milking skills are pathetic.

Hopefully nobody else milked - if I don’t get the cow, I think I’ll be sick. Milking really takes all the enjoyment out of the game, and I never want to do that again. Thanks so much to the creators of Jason scoring!!

I discovered in this game that my milking skills are pretty bad too--probably the weakest part of my game. I am going to have to figure out why that is before I go for the cow. I couldn't agree more on the Jason score: I don't think I would be participating in GoTM if we didn't have it. And I am glad I will not be held responsible for making you "sick." Hopefully no one else will either. Poor Megalou though...ouch.

... I would hit shift-d about 50 times to take care of pollution, then hit enter, turn after turn, only breaking the pattern when a wonder completed in my 20k city. ...
bradleyfeanor: I'm not up on all the key inputs, but my notes say shift-d opens the Diplomacy screen, so I'm a bit confused. :confused: Usually I auto my workers to clean up pollution; however, this doesn't put a citizen back on the cleaned up square unless the Governor is on, which usually doesn't work well, so I look around for stacks of workers to reassign the citizen.

BTW - congratulations on a good 20K submittal! When I have to hurry like that, I'm usually nowhere close to getting an award! ;)

Poor Megalou though...ouch. I've sort of recovered from the punch though. My game was nothing special, really - reached the domination limit very late after clumsy warring, didn't realize that this map was not nearly as suited for milking as GOTM 40 was (or rather, I did realize that but didn't realize how much hard work there was to do for what I consider to be the least interesting award - sorry Chamnix.)

Are you sure it's a skill you're lacking, bf, or just interest? Or maybe you're just sane :lol:

I (sort of) like to put up some small challenges in the midst of all the routine clicking that goes into milking. One of those challenges is having only happy citizens and specialists. Sometimes this can be a rather challenging thing because you really can't build temples, cathedrals and colloseums everywhere for obvious reasons. Instead, you find a way to either restructure all your corrupt cities (razing them or selling all their cultural improvements), like SirChamp has taught me. This gives two advantages:

1. You can choose more luscious terrain. Even desert is OK, just not tundra.
2. If a city/metropolis works 9 tiles instead of 21, a marketplace with 8 luxuries is enough to sustain happiness.

Because I didn't choose milking until very late (around 1000 AD) I had a lot of harmful culture that threatened me to go over the limit. Although I was on my way to get around this problem, I'm sure it's what caused my failure. I just got worn down by my "culture anxiety."

Two examples:
* Towards the end of the wars, I had hurried pentagon in a corrupt, ex-Celtic city. When the wars were over, I did not raze this city but concentrated on giving it the usual improvements. So, before it hit 100 cp, I would have to do some restructuring. That's culture anxiety.

* There were a few corrupt cities/metropoles where I realized early on that I could not keep the temples I had hurried to gain extra territory - it would simply give too much culture anxiety and slow the game down too much. But most of those towns had already grown to a 21 tile radius. I should have razed them and planted new towns, but instead I let them become huge metropoles. That meant building courthouses, and in two cases even commercial docks, to help happiness. Although this was just a kind of indirect culture anxiety, it slowed the game down immensely.

To conclude, I lived up to my name in this game. The short term gain of keeping questionable towns instead of replacing them, and not accepting any content or sad citizens once the milking phaze had started, became my downfall.

bradleyfeanor: I'm not up on all the key inputs, but my notes say shift-d opens the Diplomacy screen, so I'm a bit confused. :confused:

I did a little test in C3C: When a worker is selected shift-d lets the worker clean pollution. When there is not a worker selected shift-d will open the diplomacy screen.

Thanks, Redbad! I hadn't tested it (shortest way to an answer :lol: ). Latest HotKey list in the CFC Reference section shows no shift-d option for Workers and shift-p as the worker command to clean up pollution. Guess Firaxis decided to change it for C3C.

I did a little test in C3C: When a worker is selected shift-d lets the worker clean pollution. When there is not a worker selected shift-d will open the diplomacy screen.
I've used shift-d from time to time. I learned about it off the "advanced unit action buttons" tool tips.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/AdvUnitActButtons.JPG

The only problem I have with it is that pollution comes in waves. Workers on shift-d "shut off" and ask for orders when there is no pollution left. You have to automate them again for the next wave. I usually keep stacks of workers fortified on prominent landmarks, usually mountains, so I can find them quickly when I have pollution to deal with.

Are you sure it's a skill you're lacking, bf, or just interest? Or maybe you're just sane :lol:

I think the first two apply. I am absolutely sure the third does not. ;)

The only problem I have with it is that pollution comes in waves. Workers on shift-d "shut off" and ask for orders when there is no pollution left. You have to automate them again for the next wave. I usually keep stacks of workers fortified on prominent landmarks, usually mountains, so I can find them quickly when I have pollution to deal with.

I had about 10 minutes to get though about 50 turns...literally. The fastest way I could think of to get through the turns was to use Shift-D each turn. As soon as the diplomacy screen popped up then I knew I could end the turn (there was no time to reassign citizens. Each second was precious.) If anyone knows of a better way to automate workers to clear pollution so they don't stop then please let me know--although, god willing, I will never have a need to get through turns so quickly again.

"Shift - A" will automate them and leave previously improved tiles alone and I think they also respond to pollution, but the governor has a habit of only sending a few workers to the square instead of sending enough to clean the pollution in one turn.

Hopefully you turned off all animations as well at that point to help speed up all the worker moves.

I love late game automation when you have a ton of workers zooming around the screen at break neck speed :)

Predator, barbs fixed, going for a high-scoring, early 20k

My Ancient Age post is here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2632459&postcount=85)

The Middle Ages to 20k in 1758ad

State of the Empire
My Mongol Republic entered the Middle Ages in 450bc, having just jumped the palace to the more fertile lands to the south. The immediate goal was to build cities as quickly as possible, and develop them, because my GA would begin in 270bc with the completion of the Statue of Zeus. The GA would definitely be used to speed the construction of the Great Library in my 20k city.

There were two goals in my game, early 20k as well as a high score. I decided to focus on 20k in my summary, then describe how it synergized and conflicted with the quest for a high score (early conquest).

Overall 20k Strategy
My plan was to not only focus on getting wonders built in my 20k city, but to build the wonders with the lowest shield cost/culture per turn (CPT) ratio as early as possible in the game. I would then come back to build the less efficient wonders. This strategy of building culturally efficient wonders was particularly important given the relatively low shield output of my 20k city. A great example of a culturally efficient wonder is Shakespeare’s Theatre: at 56.25, its cost/cpt value blows away all the other wonders of the MAs. It also functions as a hospital. Therefore, I wanted it to be the first MA wonder I built.

Of course, the strategy of building wonders that come late in the tech tree before wonders that come early has a risk, in that the AIs have a better opportunity to build the earlier wonders. In order for the strategy to work, two sub-goals had to be achieved: 1) I needed to establish a good tech pace in order to make it possible to build the most efficient wonders early (quite the opposite of the usual 20k strategy of keeping the tech pace slow at the beginning), and 2) the AIs had to have no capability to build wonders at all, which meant I needed to hurt them militarily very early in the game, if possible.

Sub-Goal 1—Research
Around 90ad (the end of my GA, and when I realized the Hanging Gardens would likely be my next and last Ancient Age wonder) I made up two tables: one table of the turns on which I would be able to build structures in my 20k city, and one table of the turns on which I needed to research each tech. The tables looked like this (except much longer):

Builds in 20k City
Courthouse, 1 turn to build, 110ad, TaTu to 18spt (shields per turn)
Hanging Gardens, 17 turns (18 total turns), 350ad
University, 1 turn (19), 360ad
Marketplace, 1 turn (20), 370ad
Shakespeare’s Theatre, 25 turns (45), 620ad
Harbor, 1 turn (46), 630ad, TaTu population goes to 20, production to 26spt
Newton’s University, 16 turns (62), 830ad

The numbers above that are in parenthesis are the total turns from 90ad that would be required to build the item. I used those numbers to create the following tech research plan. There was a good deal of going back and forth and making modifications to the plan as I realized that researching to certain goals in time would not be possible.

Tech Research
Note: Don’t need Education (6 turns to research at most) for a university for 19 turns (360 ad), so I have a few turns to raise cash.
Theology, 13 turns, 300ad, raise cash
Education, 6 turns (19 total turns), 360ad
P. Press, 10 turns (29), raise cash
Banking, 4 turns (33)
Democracy, 5 turns (38)
Free Artistry, 4 turns (42), 590ad

The required date for Free Artistry is earlier than the date I needed it to build Shakespeare’s Theatre, because I wanted to ensure I had enough time to research to my next goal, Theory of Gravity for Newton’s University (next to Shakespeare, the best cost vs. culture wonder in the Middle Ages).

The tech/wonder tables went all the way from 90ad to the estimated end of the game, and I would have pasted them above, but I unfortunately made changes to them throughout the game. Now they are no more than lists of my actual build and research dates. The initial tables were surprisingly accurate. When I plugged the dates from the 90ad table into AlanH's 20k spreadsheet, the predicted win date was 1754 ad: off on my actual victory date by only two turns (and that was mostly due to something really, really stupid on my part). The tables were invaluable in keeping me on track throughout the game, and I would never have reached my technology/wonder build goals without them.

Jumping my palace to the southern region turned out to be fabulous for science. Although there were many periods in which I turned science down to 10% or 0% to raise cash, when I turned research up I was able to get every tech in the industrial and modern ages in 4 turns—many of them at 30-50% science. I believe the only exceptions to 4-turn research in the Middle Ages were Theology, Education and Democracy. I also kept the two scientific civs around until the modern age in order to get their free techs. I got pretty good ones too: Engineering, Monotheism, Medicine, Steam Power, Fission and Computers. I would actually have preferred Rocketry to Fission, but since they were free how could I complain? :)

Sub-Goal #2—Prevent AIs From Building Wonders (and hopefully get a high score while at it)
A big part of my 20k strategy was too hurt the AIs as quickly as possible, in the hope this would allow me to get a few additional ancient age wonders, nearly all the middle age wonders, and enable me to build wonders in the order of my choosing (best cost/cpt wonders first). My early military force also would allow me to trade techs at will with the civs on the home continent during the ancient age and early middle ages, because I would have the strength to disrupt any wonders they might try to build.

I was also hoping that this early military presence would translate to a high score. My game came really close to breaking into an excellent score range, but not quite. There were two major turning points (and one big mistake) that sunk me as far as reaching the domination limit quickly is concerned. I outlined my wars chronologically below, and the two horribly difficult choices are included.

I kept all the civs on both continents at war with someone throughout most of the game, but I won’t get into details on those hollow wars. I met the other continent in 230bc and put them at war immediately, and that certainly slowed their research and wonder building efforts.

Russian War, 430—310bc
I fought this war with 10 horsemen. I took a few cities (destroying their build of the Hanging Gardens) and razed one, then gave them peace for four cities, which left them with only Moscow. The city later started the Hanging Gardens. :rolleyes:

Korean War, 90ad—170ad
This war marked the first difficult choice in my game between 20k and a high score, and it involved money. Although my tech/money predictions were very good for the rest of the game, I failed miserable at this date. It was time to rush two buildings in my 20k city: a Cathedral and a Courthouse. I needed the latter because I had jumped my palace far away from the 20k city. Unfortunately, this was also the date on which I learned Chivalry for my Keshik upgrades. I had 22 horsemen which I built during my GA. I should have built less horsemen and more infrastructure buildings. In any case, I had about 1100g, but I needed 900 of it to rush the culture buildings. And I couldn’t raise any more cash because I had to raise money to rush the soon-to-arrive University. Simply put, I had to choose between conquest and culture, and I chose culture.

Since I was fighting with horsemen instead of keshiks, the war went much slower than it should have, plus I had more casualties. I pillaged their builds of the Hanging Gardens and another wonder that I forgot to record. On the last turn of the conflict I got my first leader, who formed an army to allow the heroic epic. I left the Koreans with one city so I could later get their free techs.

Japan War, 310ad—370ad (and another tiny Russian War)
There wasn’t much to the Russian War this time. I wanted to take their capitol, which was now quite far along in building the Hanging Gardens, and I wanted to confine them to a small, desert jail city for the rest of the game. I gave them peace after a few turns.

The second big choice between 20k and culture came just before the Japanese war started—in 280ad, 7 turns before I was to complete the Hanging Gardens. I had successfully prevented the Koreans and Russians from getting them, and I would have stopped the Chinese also, but the Japanese beat me to it by capturing Beijing and destroying the Chinese wonder build. Also, I knew Japan wouldn't get the Gardens because I was ready to begin sacking their cities.

At this date I thought I was assured to get the Gardens. I wasn’t worried about the other continent because they were technologically backward. But all of a sudden the Celts got Polytheism and Monarchy on the same turn! Accursed huts! :aargh: The Celts had been building the ToA for a long time, which I didn’t mind because I knew the Japanese would beat them to it, and they would cascade to the Great Lighthouse. But not anymore: now they would cascade to the Hanging Gardens and take them away from my 20k city (and ruin my carefully laid out tech research and wonder build plans).

I had to make an awful choice. There was only one way to stop them from getting the Gardens, and that was for me to gift them into the Middle Ages and give them Feudalism as well, so they would cascade to Sun Tzu instead. Again, it was a choice between my 20k date and getting a high score, and I had to choose 20k, even though I knew it would delay my conquest of the Celts by a long, long time. But, at least it worked, and TaTu was able to build the Hanging Gardens.

I was still fighting with mostly horsemen in the Japanese war. Reaching my tech goals for my 20k city prevented me from being able to upgrade, so I only had 5 keshiks, 5 ancient cavalry and about 14 horsemen. I took their capitol and their city building the Hanging Gardens on the first turn, but I stalled out after that because most of my troops were redlined in the assaults (they had lots and lots of spears and I had a terrible round with the RNG). About midway through the conflict I finally had the cash to start upgrading to Keshiks again, and the pace of the conquest picked up. At the end I gave them peace for two cities, which left them with 3 in the tundra.

Chinese War, 370—410ad
This war was a quicky because China had been beaten up by the Japanese. Plus, now I had lots of Keshiks, although I kept my elite horsemen to get chances for leaders. I got one on first turn of the war and he headed to TaTu to rush the Heroic Epic. I gave China peace for one city in 410, which left them with one. I took that one as soon as our peace deal expired.

I gifted Korea an isolated tundra city to serve as their jail during this time also. I took their capitol and gave them peace as soon as they would talk to me again.

Portuguese War, 460-610ad
Prior to this conflict I had been blocking contact between the two continents with three galleys (there were only three tiles that would allow a 1-move crossing). In 410 the Portuguese completed the Great Lighthouse, which would give them several new crossing possibilities. Their completion of the wonder didn’t come as a surprise, however, and my troops were positioned outside their capitol a few turns after they completed it. I attacked with an RoP rape and took the Lighthouse.

I got two leaders in this conflict, in 570 and 590, and both were used to make Keshik armies. I also redeclared on Japan and China during this time and destroyed them, so three civs were eliminated.

Celt War, 680ad—810ad
In 680ad my economy was humming and my military was quite strong: about 25 keshiks, 8 ancient cavalry and 2 keshik armies (my other army was stuck on the homeland because it wouldn’t fit on a boat). The Celts had pikemen and med. inf. all over the place. I took four cities on the first turn via an RoP rape (contained the Great Wall, Pyramids, Sun Tzu, and one was building Knights Templar), but nearly my entire force was redlined or destroyed. Those four cities had a total of 18 veteran pikemen inside them! My choice to give them Feudalism was really coming back to bite me, as I knew it would. Not one of their cities—even the smallest—had less than 3 vet pikemen in it, and since I took their iron on the first turn of the war, these were not new pikemen, they had been around for a long time. I sent several reinforcements to the war, and the Celts were finally eliminated in 810ad.

Vikings War, 540—1040ad
The Vikings demanded contact with Russia in 540 and I refused, so they declared war. I got a bit of war happiness which was most helpful. The actual conflict didn’t begin until 810ad, when I started taking their cities, which is why I listed this war after the Celt war. It was a slow conquest in which I was primarily fishing for leaders. In 880 I finally got one and he went to build the Pentagon in TaTu. I gave them peace in 1040ad because war weariness was starting to hit me.

I reached the dom limit around 910ad, and after that I began relocating cities in my empire from poor food to high food areas. I also tried to position them to claim as many sea tiles as I could, but I found that quite difficult on this map. This relocation is shown in the final two mini maps of the pic below.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/BF-COTM10_Empire-progress.jpg

The only other conflicts in the game involved tiny wars I declared with Russia and Korea in order to fish for leaders. I got one in 1100 (Wall Street) and another in 1190 (eventually rushed Apollo).

Culture Progression
Here are the dates of builds in the 20k city from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the end of the game:

290bc SoZ
270 Colosseum
210 (Join slave to TaTu)
70ad Great Library
90 Cathedral
110 (Courthouse)
350 Hanging Gardens
360 University
380 (Marketplace) *this and the next two unnecessary builds were slipped in because I was waiting for a great leader to make it to the city to rush the Heroic Epic
390 (Barracks)
400 (Harbor)
410 Heroic Epic (rushed with leader)
660 Shakespeare’s, population goes to 20, producing 26spt
820 Newton’s
900-920 Railroading brings spt up to 36.
970 Copernicus
980 Pentagon
990 (factory)
1000 (coal plant), shields now at 72.
1090 Bach
1180 Sistene
1190 Wall Street
1250 Magellan’s Voyage
1295 Smith’s Trading Co
1355 Universal Suffrage
1400 Leonardo
1445 ToE
1450 Research Lab
1455 Apollo Program
1460 Nuclear Plant (Brought TaTu to 90spt. I wouldn’t have bothered to build this, but I found by using Sir Pleb’s spreadsheet that getting the next few wonders a few turns earlier would enable me to reach 20k one turn sooner.)
1520 Seti
1580 United Nations
1640 Cure for Cancer
1700 Longevity
1745 Manhattan Project

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/BF-COTM10_Culture-Graph.jpg

My best culture buildings at the end of the game were the Great Library, 2010 culture; Statue of Zeus, 1556; the Colossus, 1518; Shakespeare, 1480; and library, 1455.

Missed wonders: Pyramids (Celts, 650bc), Oracle (Japanese, 570bc), Mausoleum of Mausollos (China, 510bc), Great Wall (Celts, 30ad), Temple of Artemis (Japanese, 280ad), Great Lighthouse (Portuguese, 410ad), and Sun Tzu (Celts, 510ad).

I didn’t build Hoover Dam on purpose. It has a pretty crappy cost/cpt value at 400. And thanks to the prediction tables, I knew TaTu would be able to build modern wonders with a better cost/cpt value anyway. I built Hoover in another city in 1255ad. This was also the turn on which, according to my handy-dandy prediction tables, TaTu would start building the Knights Templar.

20k Mistakes
Oooops! Somehow I never noticed that you lose the ability to build certain wonders when you already have the tech that makes them go obsolete. Knight’s Templar is made obsolete by Steam Power, which I had long since known at this time. Losing this wonder ruined the rest of my prediction tables and I had to redo them. It was actually quite difficult to re-time the techs appropriately given that I would now be getting all the remaining wonders about 5 turns earlier. Fortunately, in the end it only made my 20k date 1 turn later than I had predicted.

That wasn’t my only bad mistake regarding 20k. When I first predicted my build dates, of course I had to predict how many shields the city would be generating throughout the game. I thought TaTu would generate exactly 68spt once I had a factory and a coal plant, but it was actually producing 72 shields. I didn’t think about this very much, I was just happy that I had underestimated rather than overestimated. It didn’t change my build dates for anything…but it certainly should have!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/BF-COTM10_20k.jpg
There were three corrupt shields in the city which I could have eliminated with a police station. That would have given me over 75 shields, and nearly every wonder in the Middle Ages is divisible by 75. Unfortunately, this epiphany didn’t hit me until I was already in the modern age. When I recalculated taking into account researching to communism, building the police station, etc., it turned out that I could have won three turns sooner. That really bugged the crap out of me: I just knew someone was going to beat me by exactly two turns (and that still might happen).

When Sir Pleb and others posted their ancient age summaries I was worried. Their 20k cities could generate quite a few more shields than mine. Of course, mine was coastal, so it allowed the Colossus which helped some. But I don’t think that wonder made the few turns difference in our games. I think it was more likely that I got the Statue of Zeus and the Hanging Gardens in my game. Also, Sir Pleb made a very, very rare mistake, and ended up building the FP instead of a wonder, which definitely helped me. I kind of wish that had not happened, because it leaves me with doubts as to whether my strategy was good or bad. Redbad's game makes me think it might have been a good plan, but its too bad Bed_head didn't play 20k also, as that would have given me a better feel for whether the strategy was strong or not. However, I only "kind of" wish these things. I don't intend to do another milked 20k for quite a while if I can help it.

The Failed Quest for a High Score
If I could have reached the dom limit in the 500ad’s, then I think my score would have jumped up into the 11k range. There were three things that kept me from doing that. The first two things I mentioned already—being unable to upgrade my horsemen because I needed the cash to rush improvements in the 20k city, and gifting the Celts into the MAs and Feudalism so my 20k city could get the Hanging Gardens. The other reason I was slow in reaching the dom limit was due to sheer stupidity. I didn’t realize that this was a 60% water map, and even if I had I would not have realized how significant that fact is. I held back on claiming some of the poor territory (hill regions, desert regions and tundra) because I thought I wouldn’t need it. I didn't reach the dom limit until after I killed the Celts, so holding back my settling was a mistake. I should have claimed every tile I could as soon as I could, and then worried about disbanding cities in poor territory later. I still have a lot to learn about milking, and hopefully I will do that before it is time to go for the cow.

An excellent write-up BradleyFeanor. :goodjob:
I'm sorry I don't can return the favor on this game, but I feel my 20K date for the next COTM could be rather competitive and I will send in a post on that one.

I especially liked your ideas on synchronising research-pace with build capacity and ofcourse boldly go for best culture wonders first in the MA. :)
I'm sorry to say I can't use it to my advantage as I send in my COTM11 before you sended your COTM10 :mischief: But on a next occasion I will surely see how I can use that kind of tactics.

And once again: well done.

Open, playing a no military variant (units allowed to be built are workers, settlers, scouts, and ships(prefer transports or non-military types))

The IA was very smooth sailing for me, however, research was slow and I made a couple of boneheaded moves with respect to wonders.

Tech progression as follows:
940AD: Medicine (self research), Steam (Russia)
1020AD: Industrialization (self research)
1110AD: Electricity (self)
1170AD: Corporation (self)
1180AD: Democracy (trade)
1190AD: Mil Tradition (trade)
1250AD: Steel (self)
1290AD: Replaceable Parts (self)
1330AD: Refining (self)
1355AD: Sci Method (self)
1390AD: Free Artistry (trade)
1395AD: Combustion (self)
1430AD: Mass Production (self)
1450AD: Economics (trade)
1465AD: Sanitation (trade)
1475AD: AT (self)
1515AD: Electronics (self)
1540AD: MT (self), Flight (trade)
1595AD: Fission (self)
Finished research.

Iron was a major problem for me in this game as the starting territory did not have any. However, I did notice that the other continent had many sources and the Celts were rather feisty. Therefore, I gifted a lot of techs to the Celts, while keeping Portugal poor, hoping the Celts would become large enough to have excess resources to sell to me. I wasn’t able to get iron and coal till late (1455AD), however, I did have iron earlier and was able to build some factories.

For wonders, I built US in Karakorum in 1345AD, hoping to end any possible cascades for ToE. However, that strategy failed as I waited too long in building the ToE (trying to get fission for free) and lost it to the Celts in 1460AD. I had been gifting heavily to allow the AI’s to keep up in research and it payed off a bit as I was able to buy flight. However, since it cost me ToE and those 2 techs, it was not well executed. Instead, Ta-Tu built Smith’s (1475AD). Karakorum builds UN in 1610AD (using Hoover’s as a prebuild) and I win the UN vote:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/c10-jpg-1610AD-1.JPG

And my army at the end (most native workers had been joined by then)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/c10-jpg-1610AD-2.JPG

Predator, barbs fixed, going for a high-scoring, early 20k
Overall 20k Strategy
My plan was to not only focus on getting wonders built in my 20k city, but to build the wonders with the lowest shield cost/culture per turn (CPT) ratio as early as possible in the game. I would then come back to build the less efficient wonders. This strategy of building culturally efficient wonders was particularly important given the relatively low shield output of my 20k city. A great example of a culturally efficient wonder is Shakespeare’s Theatre: at 56.25, its cost/cpt value blows away all the other wonders of the MAs. It also functions as a hospital. Therefore, I wanted it to be the first MA wonder I built.

excellent analysis!!! :king: :goodjob: i wish i had read this before i finish my cotm11 today. it deifinitely would help.

Great write-up bradleyfeanor! Thanks for the insights into your approach. I'm not totally convinced that a high-score 20K will beat a good focused 20K game, but you've certainly turned in a great result!

I've only really tried milking once (Egypt, about a year ago); I use the shift-A approach for my workers; once most everything has been done, they just sit in cities until pollution occurs; then they automatically hop out and clean it up. This is great; bad part is the displaced citizen! I really, really wished the option existed to tell the governor 'leave the citizen in the tile'. When I turned the governor on, he would invariably mess up my Entertainer specialists and my cities would have 3 or 4 Unhappy people. Turning him off means a displaced citizen per pollution occurance, and eventual starvation. Assuming the pop is maxed out, you could leave the governor off, automate the Workers (shift-A for sure; a straight 'a' means those workers will start mining your irrigated tiles) and check for food loss every few turns or so.

With 10 minutes to go, you did what you had to do.

grahamiam: I don't think I'd have the nerves to play that type of game! Congratulations!

Great game Bradleyfeanor! And great post.
As you extracted some experience from my 100K post as I do the same from yours. ;) Thank you!

Open

The plan for the Industrial Ages is to keep learning techs at a 4 turn rate, whilst getting up to the domination limit as soon as possible. Celtic lands should complete me.

Celtic War: 1010AD - 1220AD

The Celts were definitely the most worthy foe I face in this game due to them having all resources, and the pyramids. So I ask the Vikings to help me. During the proceeds I get four more cavalry armies and also finish off the city states of China and Japan.

After learning Steam Power, I grant Korea access to the Industrial Ages. They learn Nationalism but refuse to trade it with me. So I destroy them. After capturing Entremont I know the Celts are finished. My 5 cavalry armies make short work of them.

Mopping up: 1220AD - 1655AD

After putting the Portuguese out of their misery, it was down to me and Ragnar. And I think he knows to play nice. Enter the Modern Ages in 1415AD with a bit of help from the Theory of Evolution.

Ragnar declares in 1475 because he wants iron. I swat away the incurring troops, but decide not to raze Scandinavia since they could still be useful with science.

Learning the first few modern age techs at the 4 turn rate was difficult, and I needed to employ a vast army of scientists and taxmen (to maintain my 100% science budget). However once I had the Internet, research was a formality. I needed to abandon some cities here and there to prevent a domination victory. I gift Raganar the entire Industrial age, as well as Rocketry and Space Flight, hoping he'll research one of the two SS part techs for me. He doesn't. I've had to research my entire way to victory since the beginning of the Middle Ages, the AI were utterly useless.

Eventualy launch my spaceship in 1655AD...

Firaxis - 7200
Jason - 8653

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/montage.JPG

Open, playing a no military variant (units allowed to be built are workers, settlers, scouts, and ships(prefer transports or non-military types))


How did you cope with the Barb Hordes and the aggressive Russians?!? Impressive!! :eek: :goodjob:

How did you cope with the Barb Hordes and the aggressive Russians?!? Impressive!! :eek: :goodjob:
i let them vaporize into towns. really hammered my capitol at the start of the MA (lost 4 citizens and ~400g). also, the chinese and russians did a good job clearing out the remaining barb camps.

russians never attacked, only the chinese (see spoiler #2). basically, i gifted techs and luxes to make sure i didn't get too far ahead. furs were always gifted to china, japan/korea, and russia while i had them. I also sold spices to Russia as well as saltpeter (gifted it when they couldn't offer a decent lump of gold). avoiding hefty gpt payments from other civs so they don't attack you when they go bankrupt was very important.

I'm not totally convinced that a high-score 20K will beat a good focused 20K game...

Me either.;) In fact, I don't mind saying that going for high score (65.9% of the land, etc.) definitely will not pay off. I think I misstated myself in the first spoiler thread and gave the wrong impression on my views.

What I do believe, is that there is occasionally a C3C game where an aggressive, early military approach will help the 20k city more than a passive, grow-the-city-to-12-early-at-all-costs approach, even if the 20k city sacrifices growth at the beginning and generates less shields than other players. There are several ways the aggressive 20k civ can get an edge on the passive civ with a higher production 20k city: 1) due to warfare, the aggressive civ gets an extra ancient age wonder, 2) they get a couple of extra MA wonders, and 3) they are able to build the better cost/culture wonders in the late MA before the marginal ones that are available early. In some games, a passive civ can’t take that inverse wonder-building approach without losing a wonder to an AI.

And since the aggressive civ would have an early military, it should be able to go on to get a good score and still win the 20k race. Or at least I think/hope that's the case! :) But it will take a better player than me to win the 20k race against heated competition and get the gold while doing it. I would love to see it happen though!

I think a map which favors an aggressive civ winning 20k yet still getting a high score would have the following characteristics.
1) AIs need to be relatively close to the player. If they are too far away then it would be very difficult to hurt their growth, research and wonder-building abilities.
2) Ability to build fast military units early (horse availability), for the same reason as above.
3) The AIs can't be too weak or too strong. If they are weak (like regent or below), then a player that focuses entirely on the 20k city at the beginning can still crush the AIs later, and thus get a better date than an aggressive player because they built the same wonders but a bit earlier. Also, if the AIs are too strong (Demigod and higher), then it seems to require too many sacrifices in the 20k city to go for a high score yet still get the earliest 20k against focused competition. I think that makes Monarch and Emperor the most appealing levels for a high-scoring, earliest-win 20k.
4) There have to be no shield-powerhouse locations for the 20k city in the starting area. If there is such a shield-rich location, then growing the city to population 12 early at all costs is probably going to be the best strategy. Also, a shield powerhouse takes away the benefit of the inverse wonder building strategy that an aggressive 20k civ can use in the middle ages (Research can’t get far enough ahead of the 20k city’s shield production to allow better wonders than the passive 20k city can build).

At least, those are my thoughts on the matter. I may be wrong on every point! :lol:

Edit: To everyone who gave me tips on worker automation for those last-second-submission time crunches, thanks! I'm still afraid to use them though, even in a pinch. The last time I tried, my entire workforce went running off to build mines in the remote mountains and tundra. :shakehead

Arrrr, 100k victory in...1766. I decided to experiment with Feudalism this time around. I saw all those floodplains and thought it just might work. So I took Construction as my free tech, entering the MA in 410. There were barb uprisings everywhere, and my workers, my units, my gold, it all got gobbled up by the war with the barbs. The RNG was hard on me... Anyway, I became Feudal Lord in 150 AD, and from there I might as well have been wearing cement shoes. Feudalism just didn't work for growth. I took the Russians to 1 city, used the great wall trick to get into China later. I underestimated how many riders they would have, and thought this was going to be a disaster and the end of my game. (They'd been allies against Russia and marched everything But riders through my land.) Instead I got very lucky. The war started in 670, by 720 I had 3 armies and was able to turn the tide and absorb China. From there it was basically turn the crank, the Koreans were taken next, then the Japanese. It all seemed way too late though, not being able to just purchase units, especially settlers, seemed a major handicap. Research was also slow, I didn't get communism until 1280, with an 8 turn anarchy! Communism was very powerful, however, after already being a Feudalist for so long, my population was badly whipped and unhappy. I did the best I could with it.
On the other continent the Celts were taking all the land, leaving only the Vikings alone. I just let them, delaying the war with them until my continent was filled up. I would have much rather taken them on sooner, but my military was wimpy as usual and I knew I was way behind in the culture race. I had a ROP, so I figured I'd just ship units over a few at a time with the ships I had. A strange occurrence that never happened to me before: a privateer appeared out of nowhere and sank a galleon, sending an army to Davey Jones! I've never seen a privateer make a difference in a game. Nice shot, AI.
It didn't stop there though. I knew that the AI wouldn't attack armies, and therefore used them as cover for my big attack stack outside their capitol. Well, I didn't realize that they'd fire cannons at armies, and if they succeed in taking it below a certain level, they'll attack. Surprise! The Celts were Fascist by now, had a tremendous number of cavalry, wiped out every unit I had on their continent, took back their capitol, and celebrated I suppose. Never would have happened if that Privateer hadn't sank an army. So. It became another one of those farcical wars where I draft like crazy, disband to build ships, and ship over as many conscripts as possible. Y'know, take the beachhead and claw through the land. My original stack was destroyed in 1420. It wasn't until 1555 that I re-took Entremont. Fortunately techs were frozen, replaceable parts didn't come out until 1620, so it was Cavalry vs. Riflemen forever. Did I mention I was building culure as fast as possible this whole time? Sheesh! What a game.
It was a lot of fun. I haven't posted all month, sorry, this game was so time-consuming I didn't have time. I even stayed up all night at the end to finish- normal civ-fanatic behavior I suppose. I plan to take a close look at all the threads later for lessons. And look at the results. My last 100k game, Klarius beat me by 60 years. This time, Dynamic bests me by 600 or so. That means Dynamic is a whole order of magnitude more competitive, right? :mischief: Congratulations!
If it isn't already obvious, the main lesson I learned was to save Feudalism for a religious Civ, and if used at all, only bounce in and out of it, don't dwell in it. Forced labor just doesn't work on a mass scale too early in the game, with too small an empire, not for 100k. I can't imagine it being good for other VCs either. I dunno. I'll look for some commentaries on this gov't, it doesn't seem particularly useful to me anymore.

Interesting thoughts, bradleyfeanor. You have a great feeling for the details. I'm sorry to have to add a rather sad point about the automated workers. If they clean up pollution for us, the city that was afflicted by the pollution will not automatically reassign a worker to the cleaned up tile, unless the city starves, in which case the workers might be reshuffled, as you surely know.

So the irony is that even though the tiles are cleaned by the automated workers, you might as well have left them dirty! This is of course unless you manually reassign the workers, but can you remember which cities were polluted after the workers have swished past them? That's almost as much trouble as manually moving the workers around in stacks. Sorry to be the bearer of ill tidings. Can anyone resolve this practical matter?

@Jove,
Oh my, your game and mine show some great similarities. We both put up with unbelievable drudgery, and we both suffered from misfortunes. Only maybe you suffered from a few slightly smaller ones while I made the big blunder stumbling over the domination limit.

As for playing time, I'm sure I "triumphed". To be sure of success here, I left the computer running while away on more than one occasion.

Good game, bradleyfeanor :goodjob:

It looks like everyone has been obsessed with Jason score recently, so there aren't many examples of really focused 20k games.

Here are a couple though:
bed_head7 1620AD in COTM5 (regent)
DaveMcW 1675AD in COTM3 (demigod)

It looks like everyone has been obsessed with Jason score recently, so there aren't many examples of really focused 20k games.

Here are a couple though:
bed_head7 1620AD in COTM5 (regent)
DaveMcW 1675AD in COTM3 (demigod)

Hi Dave :wavey:, it's good to see you back! There has indeed been an excessive amout of discussion about scoring as of late. However, in this case I am more interested in the challenge: I think scoring high yet beating all competition on 20k victory date would be quite an achievement. So, my question would be whether you think my points above are correct or incorrect?

I remember both the games you mentioned, but I went back for a refresher. Unfortunately, there was some info I wanted missing in the spoilers (like shields per turn in the 20k city, the entire culture build order, etc.). Some was there, like it showed you built both Shakespeare and Newton relatively early. As I recall from when I played those games (which was quite a while back), I didn't think an aggressive strategy (or an earlier aggressive strategy in the case of your game) could beat either of those focused 20k victories. However, yours was demigod level and Bed_head's was regent. Being aggressive certainly wouldn't have been useful in Bed_head's, and, as far as reaching the dom limit, it didn't seem it could happen early enough in yours while still managing the 20k city. So, do you think an aggressive strategy could pay off in a Monarch game with the characteristics I listed in my earlier post, or no?

As for playing time, I'm sure I "triumphed". To be sure of success here, I left the computer running while away on more than one occasion.

To Megalou: Are you positive on that? As I recall my game was over 70 hours, even though I rushed through the last few hundred years. :rolleyes:

If it isn't already obvious, the main lesson I learned was to save Feudalism for a religious Civ, and if used at all, only bounce in and out of it, don't dwell in it. Forced labor just doesn't work on a mass scale too early in the game, with too small an empire, not for 100k. I can't imagine it being good for other VCs either. I dunno. I'll look for some commentaries on this gov't, it doesn't seem particularly useful to me anymore.

Thanks for congrats, but it's too early, lets wait for results.
You switched to Feudalism too early. This government is not good for producing settlers for high amount of cities for 100K game because rushing settlers in high corrupt cities is very problematic. I switched to Feudalism only when have 210 cities on my home continent and last 10 settlers went to its places. And I had enough number of workers so when I switched to Feudalism I need only culture rushing. The same thing with the war. I reached Domination limit in the same time when started revolt.

To Bradleyfeanor:

Your thoughts are logical but I can't judge it because never play 20K.
I decided to play 20K (in the future) in war stile one day before you post your COTM10 letter and was very surprised when read the same strategy from you. ;)

To Megalou: Are you positive on that? As I recall my game was over 70 hours, even though I rushed through the last few hundred years. :rolleyes: Not bad, but I was over four score hours.

Not bad, but I was over four score hours.

224 hours for me. Frankly, I fall asleep at the computer while playing. The scary thing about this particular game, though, was that I will have actually been playing most of that time. Until about 1500ad, I micromanaged every tile in every city on every turn. I didn't do me much good, but MM is an addiction...

Amazing, PaperBeetle. Only a true fanatic would do that. I can boast about "reversed" micromanage in that I made sure I worked polluted tiles (red shields) after volcanic eruptions for the sake of happy citizens. But once production became less and less important, I quit MM unless some wonder was at hand.

Good game, bradleyfeanor :goodjob:

It looks like everyone has been obsessed with Jason score recently, so there aren't many examples of really focused 20k games.

Here are a couple though:
bed_head7 1620AD in COTM5 (regent)
DaveMcW 1675AD in COTM3 (demigod) And not to forget the fabulous 1772AD Cultural 20k Victory of grs in COTM4 :p

I did a quite unfocussed 20k OCC game. I won in 1916AD, being close to destruction around 1800AD, when my neighbours the Russians declared on me. Since the Chinese already reduced them to a few cities in an earlier war, I could hold out, sign up the Chinese against Russia again, who did me the favour on killing Russia very fast.

Karakorum at 1916AD:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/final.jpg

Wonders and Improvements:
Palace 3900BC
Temple 3050BC
The Oracle 1475BC
Mausoleum of Mausollos 950BC
Library 775BC
The Great Library 170BC
Colosseum 10BC
Cathedral 260AD
Sistine Chapel 560AD
University 670AD
JS Bach's Cathedral 980AD
Shakespeare's Theatre 1270AD
Intelligence Agengcy 1768AD

Tardy write up of my first COTM attempt
Going for conquest victory with hordes of keshicks
Decided to try Feudalist govt – never tried before.
Revolted 130 BC – 5 turn anarchy
Maintained for remainder of game – corruption seemed huge – made worse by palace shift to Pyongyang in 1030AD in central Korean area -> my original productive core became nearly worthless! Used whipping frequently -> happiness difficulties

650BC Entered MA at war with stronger Russians and Chinese, only 5 cities
600BC Hovd
430BC Darham (in place of Tabriz – razed by Chinese in about 670BC)
~300BC – peace (paid Russia gold, China paid me – surprising since they razed my city!)
130BC Feudalism -> revolution – 5 turn anarchy
230AD China redeclare war. This time bring Russia, Korea and Japan into alliance against them
300AD Monotheism
Take Chinese cities west of great wall
420AD Chivalry
510AD breached Great Wall with horse men
530AD Mongols are 2nd largest nation behind Celts
590AD Purchase Invention from Japs for 10gpt + 647
620Ad Complete Sun Tzu’s
630AD Take Xinjian, Japs take Beijing with its ivory 1 turn before my 7 keshiks arrive
650 AD Xinjian flipped!!
660AD retake Xinjian with keshiks triggering GA – also get 1st GML -> Keshik army
Take remainder Chinese cities exc lone tundra city north of Japan
760AD Contact with Portugal
Japan brings large force through great wall before I think to block it – they head for Kazan (has Sun Tzu’s, building heroic epic) with 4 samurai, 4LB,5MI v my 1 spear – I counter with my keshik army and 7 keshiks adjacent Japs 2 biggest cities and bring all avail defensive units to Kazan.
770AD Education (Japs had built GL)
790 Japs leave vicinity of Kazan
Contact Celts. Trade Jap Edu for iron – to upgrade spears, Celts Edu for Gunpowder+ 15gpt -> spears to muskets instead. Both saltpetre on continent in Mongol territory.
820AD Heroic Epic built in Kazan
Plan Russian invasion – 1 turn left on ROP
830AD DOW Russia – Ally Jap (gift them gunpowder – useless as they have no access to saltpetre) & Korea who req both Gunpowder and Theology
12 Russian cites captured, 1 destroyed by 940AD destroying Russians – Keshiks rock!
Peace with Chinese870AD for 38gpt+66g once alliance with Jap runs out
940AD Atlay (new city in old China area) flipped to Japs
950AD Astronomy researched (to allow transport to other continent)
Japan threatening again – retreat when I order them to leave
980AD Korea move into threatening pos (bad move) 1 turn before ROP expires
990AD Don’t renew ROP – Korea withdraw – a pity I’m ready
1000AD Contact Scandinavia 32gpt+23g for Astronomy
DOW Korea – ally Japs for 2 lux
1010AD capture 4 cities – get 2nd MGL – save to rush palace
1030 AD rush palace in Pyongyang – central Korea. I thought this a more central location but have since doubted the merits of a palace shift – corruption in my original core rendered them mostly useless even with courthouses which seemed to make little difference
1050 capture Korean capital Seoul with great wall – defended by 6 pikes -> heavy losses for first time.
1070AD 3rd GML - 2nd Keshik Army
1090AD 4th GML – 3rd Keshik army
1100AD Peace with Korea (only 1 city left on island to south) for 3gpt + other 3 cities
1170ADCelts demand Chemistry – refuse -> DOW I ally Scand (already at war) + Port (for Chem)
Jap DOW -> I lose 1 army
1180AD 5th MGL (militaristic works well if fight often) – save for cav
Many losses against Samurai, but steadily capture Jap cities with 2 flips
1210AD 6th MGL
1260AD Mil Trad
1275AD Last Jap iron pillaged – no more Samurai
1295AD Japan destroyed
1310AD Peace with Celts for WM, ROP + gold
Begin transporting units to other continent
1370AD DOW Celts – ally all remaining civs – strengthen weak Port on Celts southern flank with horses and saltpetre + Mil Trad
Pillage all iron and saltpetre as well as raze 4 cities first turn
1375 capture Richborough - decide to abandon following turn as Celts high in culture – risk of flip high
Lost 7 cav to 9 knights on counter attack
1420 capture Entremont with pyramids, ToA, Sistine - keep
7th GML
1430 capture Alesine – Leonardo’s – keep – all other Celtic cities razed until Bergen in 1445
1435 Magnetism
1460 8th MGL
Ships sent out with demolition cavalry teams for remaining isolated islands
1475 Bergen flipped
DOW Vikings (other nations had been no use weakening Celts – Vikings had been banished to a southern island)
1480 Peace with Celts for Printing Press and an island city
DOW Chinese
1485 Portugal – now wish I hadn’t given them Mil Trad, but no match for 6 cav armies – raze cities
1490 9th MGL
China destroyed
Vikings destroyed
DOW Celts
1495 DOW Korea
Celts destroyed
1500 Korea destroyed
1515AD Portugal destroyed – Conquest victory
Firaxis score 4151
Jason score 6666
I’ve no idea how this rates – after my AA debacles I’m pleased just to get a win – only completed chieftain games before. I can see lots of areas for improvement, but doubt I have the patience to be a high scorer. I’m curious about the merits or otherwise of feudalism as well as palace moving. I’ve never moved palace before and usually play in monarchy govt for war.

Not bad, but I was over four score hours.
224 hours for me. Frankly, I fall asleep at the computer while playing. The scary thing about this particular game, though, was that I will have actually been playing most of that time. Until about 1500ad, I micromanaged every tile in every city on every turn. I didn't do me much good, but MM is an addiction...
:wow:

Just when I was sure my fanaticism had elevated to a dangerous, isolating level. Your words both comfort and frighten me. :twitch:

224 hours for me. Frankly, I fall asleep at the computer while playing. The scary thing about this particular game, though, was that I will have actually been playing most of that time. Until about 1500ad, I micromanaged every tile in every city on every turn. I didn't do me much good, but MM is an addiction...
that's almost 10 days!!! that sounds scary... if you play both cotm and gotm, you'll have 10 days left for a month. :crazyeye: