GOTM-02 Final spoiler:

This spoiler is for those of you that have completed and submitted the game.

To help the new players, please remember to post the why for your tactics. For players who are still learning and feel that the game didn't go as well as you would have liked, please post what you did and what you thought you could have done better - I'm sure people will be more than happy to offer constructive advice.

Mid-Game

At this stage of the game I had 6 cities, blocked to the south by the Spanish, East by Arabians and Malinese, and West by the Americans. I founded 3 religions and became dominant on tech and military power, and about 300 ahead on the scores. Unexpectedly, the Spanish declared war. They sent a stack at my south west city (by the gold) but I hold out and kill the stack. I then sent my own stack consisting of catapults and macemen to capture their cities, and take Madrid (complete with academy), and a host of other cities, eventually beating them right down to the tundra in the south. All they had left at this stage was a tiny city in the ice and Cordoba, which was just below the city they attacked earlier. I made peace to give my beleagured army a chance to heal.

War time!

Now the Spanish are more or less ruined I turn my attentions to the Americans on my western border. They are in second place on score and are catching up on tech. I got Grenadiers before they did and used this tech advantage (always the best time to attack is when your offensive tech has taken a leap and their defense has not yet caught up.) I upgraded my city attack macemen to grenadiers and took the closest 2 cities before making peace. The next attack takes 2 more cities including washington, but is halted when they bring out cavalry; before they were using riflemen only (no problem for grenadiers thanks to +50%) My army counters the cavalry with infantry and soon the Americans are out of the picture, quickly followed by the Aztecs as myself and Persia gang up on them. I now owned a fair chuck of the land, but had to push against the Persians if I wanted domination.

Tank you very much

With industrialism researched I started cranking out tanks en masse, which was nicely ahead of the Persians tech, allowing me to take their biggest cities pretty quickly. They had large stacks of cavalry which destroyed a few tanks and infantry, but not enough. During the war I got access to bombers and built a group of 12, which was enough to destroy the city's defences and injure all the attackers to half health (no anti-air). This is a good tactics as it allows your tanks to use their Blitz capability to take 2 units out per turn, leading to a lot of experience. By the time I'd conquered the Persians, these tanks were now modern armor. I used these and the bombers against Saladin, hoping he'd give me enough land, as by now the Malinese were just as advanced as me and I'd have to break mech inf. to take them out. Fortunately, the last city of the Arabians gives me exactly the amount of land I need, and with over the required population I win by Domination in 1905 AD, 27100 points.

Domination in 1650AD, game score 4728, score 82677.

Contiued (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3542986&postcount=74)

Skirmish with Monsa

Actually in the game, I didn't stopped at around 500AD thinking hard for what's next at all. I just kept playing to 740AD. On that turn, after long preparation, my attacking force entered Mauryan once again. And what surprised me was I found Monsa had 2 amries about 9 soldiers including 5 horse anchers coming to counter attack. I guess I might have a chance holding off him. But I didn't have any spearman in the team. So I offered peace with Monsa right away. And hoping Monty could distract him away. I also took the break, switched to Bureaucracy and Hereditary on 760AD.

Yes, Monty again! He joined fight to help me on 670AD. What was unknown to me in the game was Monty had a very good success in his war against Washington. I offered peace to Washington on 560AD to move my forces from west to east. But Monty kept his war on terror until 660AD at the time I was visiting almost every turn begging him to help me. And the next turn, he agreed to fight Monsa for me! What a friend! However, Monsa was on his peak time. Just 3 turns after I signed peace treaty with Monsa, Monty agreed peace as well. But hold on tight. Monty, I need you right away.

BTW: After war against Americans, Washington was significantly weakened, down to 2nd last place next to Isabella. He didn't recover until it was too late.

By this time, I have a 7 Swordsmen, 3 Axemen mobile force. Most of them are on the east front. There are 9 Archers guarding 9 cities.

The Turning Point

Even after offer peace with Monsa, I didn't withdraw my forces from the east front. I was waiting for Monsa's army to be distracted my Monty attack, and I was busy building spearmen in my heart land. However, Isabella came back and tried to either ask me to pay tribute or stop trading with Monty, I don't remember. But neither option was possible for me to do. So I didn't give a ****. And what happened next was she first stopped the open border; then, on 770AD, she attacked me the 2nd time!

I think I was lucky to stop my war with Monsa on 740AD. That was huge, simply because I had a chance to save all those swordmen and axemen, even though I never really withdrew all of them from east frontier until I waged another war to Monsa later. I also sent 2 spearmen stationing in the forest just east of Maury to prevent him from thinking of attacking me from that side. But I did get some swordmen back from there to forming my attacking team against Isabella.

Regardless that decision, I was still in a very bad shape. I only have about 2 archers defending Barcelona. And because it's a captured city, it doesn't have a full circle of culture. The spanish border was next to the city on the southwest side. Isabella could attack me right after DOW. But for some AI reason I don't understand. She picked on my worker first instead of focusing on city attacking the first turn. This was the crucial turn. It was simply priceless for my win of the game.

Slavery!

I was desperate, looking for any possible reenforce unit and/or city that could help me generating unit quickly. But none of them could help in time. Just out of blue, when I was switch some city's building sequence, I found the rush button was enabled. Ah!!! I was in slavery!!! I could rush build! The next thing you know is I was rushing all kind of military units out of the country. And Barcelona was saved! More units were coming from inland.

I have never used slavery before and always chose serfdom for quicker worker actions. I even researched Feudalism planning to switch serfdom right around 700s. But it was only because of Isabella's stupid attack that I could found the power of the slavery. After that, I began to enjoy the rush method wherever the food is abounden, say, the lake city Canterbury and the jungle city (later grassland city) Hasting. It made these city building crucial improvements quickly and also solved the health/war awareness problem. And the setback was minor, just 1 unhappiness for 15 turns.

Isabella Finished

So, I put the things back on track by inviting Aztec back to fighting against Spanish once again on 800AD. And this time he helped a lot. The already last place Isabella was no match for the 2 highest place opponents. I razed the Spanish city south east to Barcelona on 840AD where Isabella had rebuilt quickly after the 1st Spanish-British war, then took Madrid on 900AD. Then I took 2 other major cities closer to me and offered peace (for tech?) on 980AD. Monty took or razed the rest of the spanish cities and killed Isabella on 1015AD.

Something yet to Learn

It only got my first GP Chuang-Tzu on 810AD and used him to build The Kong Miao in Nottingham. I didn't know the GP creating strategy at all. :(

Science, the Military Pathway

At this time, 980AD, I got all the tech for the first 4 columns on the tech screen, and Alphabet, Mathematics, Monarchy, Literature (traded), Calendar (traded), Construction, Currency, Code of Law, Feudalism, Civil Service, and Theology (trade). I’m researching Machinery (16 turns) for maceman and then planned to get Guilds next for Knights. After that I went for Gunpowder and looked for Military Tradition path way next. I also got a Great Merchant to discover Banking for free.

As for my combat force, 10 Swordsmen, 3 Axemen, and 5 Catapults made up the attacking force. 3 Spearmen (mostly guarding east), 9 Archers, and 1 Longbow werevon the defense side.

Road to Domination

The warring machine was started and can’t be turned off. I was a little stronger than before, but not overwhelmingly strong. So I have to pick the next victim carefully. I got 4 neighbours, Monty was my friend with War Elephant, nope. Washington's only Confusianism hill city had a Archer with level 3 Garrison, nope. Monsa had a lot of Horse Archers by the end of his war against Monty, nope.

Hence, the guy I chose was Saladin! The reason was he was relatively weak on military techs, no Feudalism. He had the longest border except Monty with me which was not good for my defense.

So, after some preparation, i.e. I got maceman available, I initiated a first full scale annihilation war ALONE against Arab on 1065AD starting from north to south. This war was bloody. So bloody that after capturing the 3rd city Damascus on 1125AD, I had to raze it because my attacking force was crippled in the siege and I didn’t think I could hold off Saladin’s counterattack which was coming. I rebuilt a city, Coventry, there. However, after Saladin sent his counterattack army into open out of Mecca’s protection. I destroy that force using maceman/swordsman/spearman force with easy and captured Mecca on 1145AD. I offered peace with Saladin the next turn to ease the pain of the war awareness. Also Guilds was about to be discovered (1 turn). I need a little time to build some Knights.

After peace treaty expired, I restarted the war on 1210AD. This time Monty was invited at once. Four cities fell quickly with the knights now available. But Saladin managed to build a jungle city inside my empire. I have no interest in razing that pop 1 city. So I offered peace on 1265AD. For a while, Monty seemed not knowing where Saladin fled. So, all his assisting forces stationed right at the last fell Arab city now under my control. However, Monty found him before my peace treaty was expired. He killed Saladin at 1310AD and burned down his last city.

Monsa’s Fate

Now it’s Monsa’s turn. He was no match against my knights, promoted macemen, pikemen, and musketeer’s forces. The first war was from 1295AD to 1415AD. Monsa was down to 5 cites and gave me perhaps some tech for peace. Monty was on my side as soon as he had finished Saladin. The first war lasted so long because I wanted both Music (for Military Tradition) from Monsa which he held until about that time. At the end, he had to give me more than that to get peace for just 10 turns.

My knights began to upgrade to Calvary due to quick tech research in a golden age triggered by The Taj Mahal completed on 1465AD. War resumed right after the peace treaty ended. Mali was history by 1515AD. Now I've got too many cities and my management began to suck.

At this time I was still researching for Chemistry. It turned out to be a waste. Cannons came out way too late only in the campaign against Cyrus, when my Calvary force might already outnumber the entire Persian army.

Approaching Victory Conditions

The rest was routine. Washington was the next target. The used to be strong hold that stopped my first war against America was now a joke after catapults bombing down the defense and Calvarias doing the rest. Cites were fallen one by one. Monty got his first visible city capturing under my eyes. He took the last standing city, Washington on 1595AD, maybe because this time he was asked to fight instead of gifted to fight. :)

I started checking how near I was close to domination. I seemed I was pretty close. So I decided to wipe out the last rival Cyrus which could also free up some of the bordering tiles. I need some time to let the American cities to calm down any way. So, Persian campaign was from 1605 to 1645AD and Cyrus was thrown out of the game. The next turn, I got domination victory with still one settler on its way to the target.

Had I razed all American cities and popping out a great deal of settlers, I might have the domination victory a little earlier. The positive side of not razing is the population was added to the score. And you can also use the extra ones to rush (oh, dear slavery) culture buildings like theatre and more just in 1 turn.

Summary

I was lucky compared to others because I don’t remember any hard-to-deal barbarian outbreaks. It could be I was researching for Alphabet first and ignoring the Bronze Working. And maybe only after player gets Bronze Working can barbarian then builds Axeman hence Iron Working for Swordsman.

I exploited the monopoly of Alphabet for quite some time so that I was the sole trader and hence I could exchange techs from each other which made me the biggest winner. I only focused on Military techs after Alphabet except a little commercial techs, currency and banking. Later on, I got other techs mainly from peace treaties. So, even I was poor in generating GP and failed in getting any early wonders, I was still military advanced ever after I researched Iron Working myself and every other key military tech.

I was lucky again not once but twice when Isabella attacked me. The first time, only 1 yellow health barred Warrior left in the city after her initial attack. And the second time, she offered me one turn to have time find out the value of Slavery. And I kept Slavery the rest of the game pop rushing whenever necessary and it has no upkeep.

Well, things to learn.

GP producing and wonder racing are the weakest point.

I also made a lot of mistakes in the war. I shouldn’t have my first warrior venture into Monsa’s open territory without full health. I didn’t need to rush that. The Woodman II promotion was no match in the forest. At least I could run away. If I kept that warrior alive, I could further weaken Monsa a lot. Then he wouldn’t be able to attack me in 500s.

I shouldn’t attack Americans that early just for one city. Yes, I was too close to London. But Washington turned out to be peaceful man. All he had done in his spare time was Barbarian hunting. I made an enemy for lifetime for just one city, and pushed him away from my religion. I should simply finish off Spanish empire instead.

Both Isabella and Monty were blood thirsty. I just happened to be able to get friend with Monty and he’s good fight partner. And I ought to know that if Isabella could wage a war on me once, she’d do it again.

Poor war management: I only focused on the major battle field and kept forgetting the backyards. Barbarian came from north later caused me some trouble so that I have to keep 2 archers and 1 swordsman there and replaced the losses once a while. The scouting Spanish archers came from unexpected places and pillage my gem site at York because I forgot the alerts. My sole horse resource near Barcelona was pillaged by Saladin. Well, I didn’t have any mounted unit built yet because I hadn’t discovered Guilds yet. But it was alarming.

Misc

With a lot of battles, you do see the odds happen. I have suicidal foot units winning 20% or lower battles. And I also had 80% plus battles lost to specially level 2 city defending archery units where they kept full health…. To prevent this from resulting total failure in attacking, I had to get my attacking team 2 to 3 times more than depending units and attack in 1 turn before I got absolute overkill (i.e. with level 3 strength promotion Calvarias) against pikemen, musketeer, knights, and weeker.

A stack of Catapults guarantee to sack a city. First bomb the city down to 0% defense bonus. Then use 1-3 suicidal Catapults to weaken almost everybody in the city, attack with your best attacker afterwards. Since Catapults have retreating ability, not all of the suicide units would die. Plus, they are CHEAP. The only downside is they are slow. Move to there, bomb, only after that can you really attack…

In the game I never really had war. Or at least, no problems with war. I took one or two cities when someone declared on me, then suid for peace, gold and maybe techs (i was ahead techwise). This non-aggressive strategy could be continued due to high amounts of agressive units in all my cities :)

Anyway, I builded wonder after wonder in my 3 main cities (or so I thought they were my main cities) and other buildings to get culture going. Somewhere just before industrialism I stopped researching, and poured all my commerce in culture to go for a cultural victory. It was only then that I discoverd two of my "to be legendary" cities were not producing fast enough. "Only" about 500 culture per turn. That was with all the wonders etc, while my unholy jungle cities produces more than 300 with only villages.... anyway, I made another mistake. I started researching again :( to get industrialism. Don't know why, I had no reason for it. If I hadn't done that, I would have won cultural around 1920 or so. Now I lost 3 turns before I had 3 legendary cities to Mansa :cry: :cry: , who completed his spaceschip in 1966

lesson learned :rolleyes:

The early spoilers, we all won by domination. I didn't achieve domination nearly so fast, about 1900 something.

I had met the population criteria in like 1700 but land area I was lacking. I probably should have attacked Montezuma instead of using him as my war buddy, because he got very big and I instead fought piecemeal wars against the smaller civs.

I was struggling with my research rate, which hovered around 50-60% for the entire game, but yet only Mansa Musa (who I crushed in my first real war) was beating me in the tech race (and wasn't in the end).

This was the first time ever I played on Prince, so to win on my first try I was pretty happy with. The best thing I did was to attack Mansa when he was in the lead, and just decimate his empire with superior numbers but inferior technology. Siege works wonders.

My city placement was very similar to the picture above, except since I won by domination, I had a ton more cities. Income problems were hurting the whole game, so some advice on that would be appreciated, ill attach a save file soon

At the end of the first spoiler post, I had my little core empire, plus three distant conquered Aztec cities the other side of Spain, plus the entire newly conquered Mali empire (except Philadelphia, which Mansa had taken from Washington and I let him keep). I took a pause to consolidate, wanting railroads to get troops to the front line faster, factories to pump them out faster, and preferably tanks just to make things easy.

Domination happened in good order, so I'll just post some of the quirkynesses I found:

Stupid automated workers.
I mentioned that I had my empire, and three Aztec cities the other side of Spain? Well I had thought Spain was very backward until I noticed railroad connecting lots of Spanish cities. Checked the foreign adviser and nope, Spain wasn't anywhere near Railroad. Then I noticed it was my stupid automated workers building lots of railroad deep in Spanish territory!!! (Eventually it actually turned out quite useful - my next war was against Spain, and the Spanish having railroad meant I could get my slower troops into captured Spanish cities much faster)

Foreign advisor glitch?
The Spanish were the next civ to fall, and then I had to choose who next. This is where it looked for a moment worryingly as though Cyrus and Saladin had caught up on tech - the F4 foreign advisor showed no techs I had that they didn't. Yikes!!! Turns out this was a glitch - they didn't have Electricity, amongst others, but for a while it wasn't showing up. (As soon as it did, the wars continued).

63.77% territory
Saladin fell in very short order, leaving me thinking "great - just turn the culture slider up for the end of resistance in his cities and it's game over". But no - I hit 63.something% territory. Invade Philadelphia (from Mansa Musa), thinking that's got to be it, but of course America's culture swamps in around his. Eventually I had to take four American cities to get the last 0.3%ish of land area to trigger domination. Must have wasted 15 or so turns on that.

Domination in 1850 for 37,591 points
And I got my first ever look at the flag and globe-rush movie, in my first ever game on Prince. :king:

I should have gone to war much earlier and much more often - I had a tech lead around the time of crossbowmen and macemen, but waited for Redcoats "just to be sure". Similarly, waiting for tanks for the second war was just a matter of pride (not losing too many troops) and laziness (not needing to take as much time reducing city defenses), while my Infantry still could have kicked my opponent's Riflemen across the screen.

Game status: Domination Victory for England
Game date: 1867 AD
Base score: 5997
Final score: 32906

This is my second GOTM.
I never played on epic before, so I was in trouble with timing.
Great map, very exciting to play with. Congrats to the maker, those barbarians drived me crazy for one millennium, forcing me to research archery instead of priesthood (I often skip it) and miss Oracle...

For the first time I settled London not in the starting spot, but near the stone, for Pyramids strategy. I had the benefit of good production, but my capital stopped to grow at 9 (!!!!) till biology.

I managed to balance my growth, science and military for the first part of the game, spamming cottage without chopping too much, I've never been attacked by anyone.


After Kremlin the game was really over, and I decided to go for domination.
My opponents lost all in the last 50 turns


Some info:


Research Path and key wonders: I had linked strategies for early, middle and last age. I focused on Pyramids and Stonhenge, Oracle was quite impossible to build. Pottery for cottage spam, Typography, Liberalism,Thai Mahal, Kremlin, steel, artillery. I did it in this way


3120BC: bronze
2640BC: Agrri
2080BC: Masonry --> PYRAMIDS in 840 BC
1800BC/860BC: Wheel, Hunting, Archery, Mysticism, Navigation
760BC: Stonehenge!
700BC/140 BC: Pottery, Politheism, Animal husbandry, Priesthood, Writing
60BC: Parthenon!
120/480AD: Iron, Alphabet, Laws
610AD: Hanging Gardens
630AD/930 AD: Monotheism, Philosophy (via GP), Value, Civil Service, Monarchy

1005AD: Feudalism (I was military behind Cirus)

So I went straight for Typo

1035AD: paper
1055AD: metal casting
1085AD: mechanic
1105AD: Dai Miao
1150AD: Typo

Next step: economy, scientific and production superiority.
Liberalism --> golden age ----> thai mahal----> second golden age to rush kremlin
1220AD: Education
1230AD: Angkor Wat!
1265AD: Liberalism!
1270AD: Nationalism!
1295AD: Associations
1310AD: Banking
1345AD: Economy (military upgrade all axemen to macemen)
1375AD: 1st golden age
1400AD: Astronomy
1420AD: Scientific method
1465AD: THAI MAHAL, 2nd golden age
1470AD: Communism ( KREMILN in 1615AD )


Next step: Military goals.
Read coats and cavalry vs longbows..., free scientist, statue of freedom, Happyness wonders

1525AD:Michael Faraday and phisic

1555AD: Componentistic
1565AD: gunpowder
1625AD: Rigatura delle canne (translation? don't remember :D )!
1650AD: Military tradition
1664AD: Democracy
1684AD: Freedom statue
1690AD: Electricity! (Broadway in 1706)
1702AD: Steel
1722AD: Biology
1736AD: Artillery
1748AD: Energia a vapore!
1760AD: railroad
1774AD: chain (pentagon in 1788)
1786AD: missilistic
1794AD: Comb
1800AD: Fascismo! (for rushmore...)
1814AD: Radiocomunications only for eiffel (1846) and rock&roll (1850), didn't need aviation, nuff artillery :)
1836AD: Industrialism! ( I was scared of Mansa)
Then useless flight, I stopped researching plastig pointing to 3 gorgeus dam


Wars and cities
always as attacker.
I started with spain, then arabians, persians, atzechs, usa, mali.

450AD: spain (salamanca and Barcellona)
920AD: spain (Murcia and cordoba)
1195AD: spain (madrid, santiago, toledo)
1662AD: Arabs (Anjar, medina, baghdad, mecca)
1716AD: Arabs (saladin taken out, bassora damasco kufah fustat)
1766AD Damasco revolted to persians??? with a great artist?? and 6000 culture points??? this means war...
1770AD: persia (all the land except last one pop city: damasco tarso pasargade sidona persepoli)
1804AD: Knock out of spain, saragozza and valencia
1814AD: Atzechs, even if my pop is mad for war. I switch on theocracy and policy state (14 turns for defeat monty, 8 cities, end in 1842AD)
1854AD: 50% of land. Last crucial step, go to war against washington with same techs, but way behind military. I was quite bastard, with golden aged mansa on my side (usa in the middle). I realized two goals weakening both the countries. I took all usa cities except three for mansa that destroyed the americans with artillery, so I destroyed all the mansa forces :)
from usa: Houston,San Francisco, New York,Portland,Shangiana, ended in 1862 with Washington dc.
from Mansa, 1864AD: Boston,Tlatelolco,Siviglia,Walata.

Mistake?
I was too slow and not aggressive, I didn't analyze my opponents with spies, I researched flight and plastic instead of buying some troop. I didn't used angkor wat and maybe I didn't use slavery micromanaging when possible. BTW I well knew Elizabeth, so there are no excuses :)

The second part of the game finds the English empire with 8 cities, a relatively weak military and fighting to get research back up to a decent level. Running at 50% due to the size of the empire. Currency is discovered which helps get things rolling finally financially, and tech research starts climbing steadily. The English finally start catching up to Mansa Musa and Washington in the tech race, but it will take a while before we are actually caught up.

Just after 1000AD Montezuma decides it is time to march across the world and attack me again. This time he is a little more determined and sends a number of waves against my Southwest most city of Khoisan. The city and forest that surround it help my troops to smash his attack. I start to march my troops towards his land, when I realize that this would leave me extremely weak at home. Not to mention at this point I still did not know exactly where his lands were. I therefore give up the idea of trying to find him and attack him and turn the troops back home. It is about this time that I finally realize that I have two cities not growing because I turned off growth a couple of thousand years ago. <grrrr> I definitely need to keep a closer eye on that in the future.

At this time Isabella decides that she will go on a crusade against the infidels in England and declares war on me. She also attacks the city of Khoisan. I am able to get Monty to sign a peace treaty at this point and turn my full attention to Isabella.

After breaking waves of troops on my city and forests, I begin to counterattack. I march on her Northernmost city of Santiago, which is on the shores of a larger lake to the Southwest of Khoisan.

Just as I get to the city Mansa Musa decides that he will join in the fun and declares war on me as well. He has a city to the Southeast of Khoisan and inhabits all of my Eastern border.

I take Santiago, raze it and turn my attention to Mansa Musa. Isabella signs a peace treaty and I am able to concentrate exclusively on Mansa Musa. Mansa sends a couple of units from the East, and a couple from Scythian(the city to the Southeast of Khoisan, which I am able to destroy. I take Scythian and Mansa Musa signs a peace treaty.

It is about this time that the financial juggernaut really gets rolling. I am able to steadily increase my tech percentage until I am running 90% tech and 10% culture and still making some cash. I build up my defenses to ensure that I am not attacked again and start researching for Democracy and Communism. Democracy allowed me to get Universal Suffrage and the ability to hurry production with gold, and Communism got me State property and lowered my upkeep costs. Plus when I got Communism I immediately started the Kremlin. I finished the Kremlin, and after that I did not miss many of the late game wonders. I would simply go to all gold for a couple of turns and then hurry the production after a couple of turns. This netted me the Statue of Liberty, the Pentagon, Broadway, the Eiffel Tower, Hollywood and the United Nations.

When I got to the modern age and aluminum appeared, I saw I did not have any. I therefore made the decision for the first time to attack one of my neighbors. I looked around and decided that Isabella was my best target. She had just gone to war with Monty and I had Tanks, which gave me a big edge technologically over her. I decided to make it a war of extermination, since I did not want to fight the culture fight with her, nor worry about when she would attack me again. Plus in the middle of the war, I see that Washington has completed the Apollo program! I gifted a few of her cities away, since they were not in a good position for me to protect, either militarily or culturally.

11 years after I destroyed Isabella, Montezuma decides he wants to fight again. This time I just take him out as well. While fighting him I swing everything in the empire to the Space race.

Washington jumps out to a big lead, completing all five casings and a thruster before I even manage to complete the Apollo program. I rush the space elevator and put 7 cities into producing Spaceship parts, and manage to beat him by two parts. My ship launches in 1929.


590AD discovered Currency!
620AD captured and razed barbarian city of Phrygian
630AD discovered Monotheism!
720AD discovered Literature!
770AD completed Chichen Itza!
830AD discovered Metal Casting!
880AD discovered Monarchy!
910AD captured Zapotec!!!
960AD discovered Construction!
1010AD Montezuma has declared war on you!
1040AD discovered Machinery!
1045AD completed The Great Library!
1080AD Coventry has been founded.
1085AD discovered Feudalism!
1115AD Isabella has declared war on you!
1135AD discovered Civil Service!
1165AD discovered Compass!
1185AD Mansa Musa has declared war on you!
1195AD captured and razed Santiago!!!
1240AD discovered Philosophy!
1250AD captured Scythian!!!
1310AD discovered Nationalism!
1375AD discovered Military Tradition!
1415AD discovered Gunpowder!
1425AD completed The Sistine Chapel!
1435AD discovered Banking!
1475AD discovered Printing Press!
1520AD discovered Replaceable Parts!
1560AD completed The Spiral Minaret!
1570AD discovered Rifling!
1600AD discovered Economics!
1630AD discovered Chemistry!
1658AD discovered Democracy!
1678AD discovered Steam Power!
1690AD discovered Steel!
1704AD discovered Communism!
1706AD The revolution has begun!!!
Elizabeth adopts Universal Suffrage
Elizabeth adopts State Property
1722AD discovered Biology!
1734AD completed The Kremlin!
1744AD completed The Statue of Liberty!
1748AD discovered Assembly Line!
1764AD discovered Railroad!
1772AD completed The Pentagon!
1774AD discovered Combustion!
1788AD discovered Electricity!
1802AD completed Broadway!
1806AD discovered Medicine!
1822AD discovered Industrialism!
1830AD discovered Flight!
1840AD discovered Refrigeration!
1846AD declared war on Isabella!
captured Zaragoza!!!
1850AD captured Barcelona!!!
1852AD captured Valencia!!!
discovered Radio!
Zaragoza has been captured by the Spanish Empire!!!
1853AD captured Zaragoza!!!
1854AD captured Cordoba!!!
1855AD completed The Eiffel Tower!
1856AD captured Madrid!!!
discovered Mass Media!
1857AD Calixtlahuaca has been captured by the Spanish Empire!!!
1859AD Washington has completed Apollo Program!
1860AD captured Salamanca!!!
1862AD captured Murcia!!!
1863AD completed Hollywood!
Washington has completed Rock N Roll!
1864AD captured Toledo!!!
captured Seville!!!
1865AD Valencia has revolted and joined the American Empire!
1866AD discovered Computers!
1867AD captured and razed Gao!!!
1868AD captured Tenochtitlan!!!
The Spanish Civilization has been destroyed!!!
1870AD discovered Rocketry!
completed The United Nations!
1875AD Washington has completed SS Casing!(#5!)
1876AD discovered Plastics!
1879AD Montezuma has declared war on you!
1880AD discovered Satellites!
1881AD captured Xochicalco!!!
captured Tlaxcala!!!
1882AD captured Tenochtitlan!!!
captured Teotihuacan!!!
1884AD captured Tlatelolco!!!
captured Texcoco!!!
1886AD captured Tarsus!!!
The Aztec Civilization has been destroyed!!!
discovered Composites!
1887AD Washington has completed SS Thrusters!
1888AD completed Apollo Program!
1892AD discovered Robotics!
1893AD Washington has completed SS Thrusters!
1894AD completed SS Casing!
completed The Space Elevator!
1895AD completed SS Casing!
Washington has completed SS Thrusters!
1896AD completed SS Casing!
1897AD completed SS Casing!
1898AD discovered Ecology!
1899AD completed The Three Gorges Dam!
1901AD completed SS Thrusters!
completed SS Casing!
1902AD completed SS Thrusters!
Kufah has revolted and joined the English Empire!
1903AD discovered Genetics!
1904AD completed SS Thrusters!
1907AD completed SS Docking Bay!
1908AD discovered Fiber Optics!
1909AD completed SS Life Support!
1913AD discovered Fusion!
1916AD completed SS Cockpit!
1917AD Washington has completed SS Docking Bay!
1918AD completed SS Stasis Chamber!
Washington has completed SS Cockpit!
1928AD completed SS Engine!

I just finished my first GOTM, but I'd like my file to be disqualified. I had two pretty significant reloads, but I didn't want to just finish the game without submitting it.

I figured it wouldn't matter, but I wound up with a final of 31k, and I didn't think the average score would be that low.


Remind me to never use GP on epic again. As a matter of fact, remind me to never play on epic again. That was painfully slow.

UN victory in 1916 for just over 20k points.

I could have been more aggressive early on in the game, but I was worried about my economy crashing.

The thing that is true about basically all civ games is that if you get a strong position then you will win so easily it is boring. I had no doubt that I would win the game after I crushed Isabella (taking 5 of 9 cities) before 1000 AD. I was just way too slow about getting the domination. At that point I was the highest population, largest land area, and most scientifically advanced civ with 11 total cities. I was also pulling in like 40 gold per turn and on 70% science. My great people were 3 artists, 1 prophet, 3 merchants, 5 scientists, and 3 engineers.

I built the vast majority of wonders in the game.

My score isn't comparable to you guys either. I probably need to spend my money earlier rather than waiting to spend it on factories and upgrades to infantry/machine guns. If I would have pumped up massive amounts of earlier units with money rush I likely win 2-300 years earlier. /shrug

After a failed start, I managed to keep my three culture cities (and a fourth city providing marble and some research) alive as redcoats became obsolete and I ended my last war with Isabella. At this point I jacked my culture tax close to or at 100% for the rest of the game and adjusted my citizens to as many artists I could get away with to maximize the number of GA's I could collect. I was really depending on GAs to get Vandal and York to 75k because I really overdid culture in London- it had over 182k culture by the time the other two cities caught up!:crazyeye: not a very efficient use of wonders...

As far as technology and military, I researched slowly to Infantry towards the end so I could upgrade my redcoats and hopefully withstand any agression from my neighbors as my last culture came in. I built dozens of missionaries in London and sent them out to spread my state religion wherever I could to try and improve relations abroad and avoid any game-killing wars in my technology-deficient lands.

Things came down to the wire in the 20th century, as I began to see mech infantry in Spain's territory to the south, spaceship parts were being built by Saladin, Izzy, and Washington, and Washington was killing my civics with resolutions from the UN- first I lost caste system, which killed my ability to guarentee GAs from my GP factories and max culture from specialists, then I lost pacificism, which halved my GP rate... and those were just the worst- I had to change two other culture-optimal civics within a few more years.:sad:

However, with two SS parts remaining, and three failed Secretery General elections at the UN, Elizabeth managed a culture victory in 1950 AD, albeit with an abyssmal score of ~5100. Even though we only had 4 cities, we had the largest territory in the world until the last few decades when Cyrus started razing Monty's empire! Several cities on our borders flipped during the game, which took me ~27 hours (my civ3 gotms were usually 100+ hours, so this was a great improvement LOL).

Really enjoying Civ4, although I have a lot to learn! I hope I can make it through the next GOTM and actually submit my game! thanks Ainwood for a great game.:goodjob:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/culture.jpg

The Writeup: I Hate Epic

The Opening
I mentioned in the other thread that I thought leading with a lighthouse was the right call, but in retrospect it clearly wasn't on epic speed. I did happen to use it to moderately good effect, but it simply wasn't as good as a traditional opening with workers and chops, especially with Liz starting with mining. With the slowdown in epic, hammers become even more important than before, and while workerturns *are* slowed down, the 1 turn it costs to get a worker into a forest counts for much less on epic than on blazing. While my opening was perfectly acceptable, with all the forests in the northern areas of the map, a chop-start would've been exceptional.


The Expansion
Early scouting was handy with my warriors, as I decided to make an early enemy and pick up a free worker with saladin and raze a pasture. With him gimped, I looked to the east. I scouted around for other workers, but to no avail; fortunately, the game had placed cyrus, washington, and isabella between montezuma and me, so I felt good about expansion. Southeast of London were some good forest chops, a river, hills, and a gems that could make my lighthouse gambit payoff for london, so I decided to open there and push east with my second settler.

I was hoping to beeline to mathmatics to cripple maybe 2 other civs before going into the midgame, so I essentially ignored religion, and curiously, monty picked up buddhism. Unfortunately, libraries cost more than I remember them doing, so my 2nd and 3rd cities had pretty slow expansion, and isabella beat by 2 turns my to my prime 3rd spot in the south west (just east of the gold hills with access to copper; this agressive start wouldn't pay off without metal). With 4-2 numbers of warrior vs warrior, I decided to pull the trigger, but lost the flip and made peace; seville would stand another couple of hundred years.

That settler would go across the bay to pick up the fish and crabs (scare commodities on this map) and the copper. A numer of north-pole barbarians would hinder my expansion, but I figure you get unlucky once in a while, and it just furthered my conviction that I need to get copper and axemen quickly to jockey for mid game position. Serriously, though, where the hell are they coming from? Gifts from Santa?

Turns out an iron was right next to London, but oh well, copper's good too; the double food resources would make this a handy GP factory. Mansa Musa was hemmed in by a lake, so I decided to expand even farther east to support my harbor city, since my western cities had a nice natural barrier of mountains going for them. This would cost me in upkeep, but not too dearly, as I wasn't far from currency (or so I thought; stupid epic). My last natural city would be my western border w/ washington, as I went after an 8-hills/grassland spot after approaching civil service to farm/mine the hell out of the city- a prime location for a military factory.


Early War
I took seville decisively with cats, and began to take up the task of wiping Isabella off the map, razing down her other cities. Partly because of my vindictive nature, but also because this would give monty room for maybe 5 more cities and make him a beast to rip up washington, cyrus, and saladin while leaving me with a 1 city border with him thanks to saladin's desperate catch-up expansion (he had the cities, but not the tech to pay for them). But what's that they say about the best laid plans of mice and men?

So I had saladin at -11 relations, the americans at -3 and monty at +8... and monty declares on me. I figured seville was safe since monty was nowhere near math, construction, or cats, but I suppose 8-1 odds aren't so great when your 2 archers are facing down 14 units. I had to build desperate amounts of military and pull back my spanish-razing expedition with just 1 city to go, but if I had to slay this monster I had created, I suppose it made most sense to leave isabella alive.

After a long, protracted and desperate war (2 actually), I managed to raze 2 of monty's cities while barely holding the line at seville. This is the location of my first disqualifying reload, as I, like an idiot, left seville defended by 1 defender AGAIN and monty razed it just as I was coming up to macemen. I put up 4 defenders in my reload, and monty flipped the coin at maybe 20% chance to overrun and lost leaving me with 2 badly wounded defenders and him with several wounded attackers likely to go pilliaging. I razed the second city that war would take from monty and sued for peace. Washington filled in the space I razed between him and me, and isabella would make re-expansion a nightmare for monty, giving him cities on either side of her 4-5 city challenge.

Slowed down thus, monty was doomed, and I had to turn my attentions to cyrus, who was quickly peacefully running away with the game with his volume of population. Washington (with pyramids) would soon become a tech threat as well, and when he beat monty in the long game, it could be trouble for me. Mansa Musa was less of a threat, I had ridiculous +13 relations with him, and I've never seen him start a war, so I was probably going to make him my ally. My complete lack of horses and his willingness to trade them was also a factor.


Teching Up
I was disapointed with my mediocre performance thus far, and decided I should try to leverage my advantages in the mid-game with cheap universities and banks. Some light filling in the south, a couple of acadamies, and several towns made peaceful expansion (upward, rather than outward) the rule of the day. I made a silly gambit founding islam much earlier than I should have, but I was beat to Taoism and I didn't want to find myself completely religion-less in the late game, and the AIs just weren't spreading them to me (though they wouldn't hesitate to demand that I convert).

I get a nice little golden-age series from GPs and Taj Mahal as I got education to slingshot me out from the middle of the score chart... only to find that golden ages on epic were only 10 turns. Given that they cost 50% more to generate... wtf?

I made the best of it and hit free religion. Forseeing this, I had built 2 monestaries for different religions to spread them around; in retrospect, I wish I had built 3. When a civic gives you +6 happiness in all your cities (counting temples), it's worth considering. The extra science snowballed into a moderately slow democracy/emancipation gambit as washington began savaging monty. I've occasionally seen it obliterate civs 4-5 techs away from democracy, but this game I had to settle for 2. It was still pretty effective, particularly on epic, where it's opposite land; cats chase dogs, dry rain falls up, and tvs watch you. :rolleyes: Had I known, I'd have pressed the gambit harder and skipped knights/grocers for a stretch.


Land Grab: Arabia
Seeing as how Saladin wouldn't declare on me no matter how negative our relations were, I think I let him live too long. His large empire was significantly backwards, so I decided to start taking his empire, as my economy had stabalized nicely after getting universities down. Lacking horses and unable to cut off sally's 3, taking him out was a touch tricky and I lost more than a couple of automated workers, but macemen > axemen. It took 2 or 3 wars at 2 or 3 cities each, but I eventually got him while the americans finished monty off and began backfilling a touch in the one or two iceballs where I razed sally. I used an engineer to rush versilles in Mecca, and I now had an empire of comperable size to cyrus with a much better infrastrcture and the financial trait.

When I achived 2 tech monopoly on Military tradition, the game was essentially won in around 1760. I just had to develop enough of a lead to wipe out cyrus in one fell swoop before turning my attentions to washington's techy but split empire. A number of cavs with cannon backup is a pretty solid plan vs the longbows cyrus was pushing around.


Opening the Lead
What was that they say about surviving first contact with the enemy? Just as I was getting a number of cannons comfortable enough to sweep through cyrus' massive territory, he gets a defense pact with Washington. When I get enough defenders to confidantly fight a 2 front war, he gets grenadiers and his first cavs, and two of my captured arabian cities flip to cyrus. This is irksome. So, I decided to achieve an insurmoutnable lead to decisively end the game: bombers. But first, infrastructure.

Assembly line for factories, infantry, tanks. Electricity for broadway, plastics for 3 gorges + 2 great engineers (my second reload, got an artist from a city with 85% engineers), radio for eiffel tower + bombers eventually, then flight. Theatres and colleseums and religion everywhere to keep me in sufferage as long as possible for any emergency rushes that come up. Like an idiot, I thought pentagon only worked for the city it was in, so my units city was doing nothing for 18 turns. However, when it finished my units city was up to 150 shields producing units, giving me 2 tanks every 3 turns at 10 xp each. Flight came in, and I built bombers like mad. When I had 16 total and a 3 tech lead on flight, I pulled the trigger on two fronts in 1850 or so. The next 20 turns would be savagely bloody, with tanks killing multitudes of cavs (I think over 100) and bombing the snot out of huge stacks of units. I would end the game with 40+ bombers. :hammer:
I go a good 12 turns of war with the culture bar assisting before I drop into police state.


Domination: Oops
I keep most of the gains to milk the score, and set my empire to building infantry to backfill my gains with minimal defenders to free the tanks to sweep through mansa musa's lands. He had achived the 2nd tech lead and was up to sam infantry, but he had no oil the entire game (another reason I tolerated his antics; among them a savage culture-bomb), so he wasn't a threat. Half-health infantry are no match for quad city raider first striking tanks.

And the turn before I pull the trigger... four cities come out of resistance, game over. In extra turns, I found I could have taken 6/12 cities in the 6 turns after I pull the trigger, but c'est la vie. I was glad for it to have been over, as epic was painfully, frustratingly slow. The earlier finish helps with the multiplier as well to turn 6000 something points into 30065.

Still, had I known, I probably would've accepted his tech trade the turn I won for an extra hundred points or so.

In any case, DQed for the two reloads. Old habits die hard. Just check out the nubmer of times I've edited this post.



I'm convinced that with better play oriented at leveraging the mid game and a closer appreciation of the nuances (unbalances) in epic, domination would've been attainable between 1675 and 1725.

And whatever happened to those low-res victory movies we were promised? I haven't gotten to see a single one through all 3 versions of the game. :(

To recap quickly what I wrote in spoiler 1:

- Small core of cities close to each other to keep cost down.
- Use London as Sci/GP city, chopped Stone Henge and Great Lib.
- Beeline to AXE men

In retrospect, I probably should paid more attention to finances. Eventhough I kept my research rate at 50-60%+, I was still trailing because my empire was small.

Diplomatic Landscape:
Because I didn't sprawl my empire, I was really only in direct contact with Saladin and Izzy. I adopted Spain religion, and they become my instant friend (so simple). I took Washington's city that he captured from barbarian earlier. Surprising, he wasn't that mad after we made peace. Perhaps because he was far away. Monte was fighting with everyone. But he was so weak by middle ages and far away that I don't even care.

Manu was winning the tech race. I tried to catch up via trading and such, but he was at least 1 to 2 tech ahead at all time. Saladdin sneak attacked me in the ancient time. I started my revenge with Axemen and Catapults.

War:
I was playing it safe and only fought Saladin before 1600. I paid tributes to keep others happy. My plan was to wait for Red Coats before going to war with the world. By then I discover Free Religion and switch to it. Low and behold, Isabella immediately declare war on me for dropping her faith. That make my war decision easy.

I wiped out Izzy and Saladin first and Monte only have a couple of tundra cities left. I had to decide whom to kill next: Washington, Manu, or Persia. Persia was the weekest, and it has enough land to give me domination victory. Manu was the tech leader, and I have my concerns about potential advance units (since I didn't research cavalry). I ended up attacking Washington first because I don't want to wait for him to get Navy Seals.

At the end, I wiped out America just as Washington finished his first Navy Seals. The downside is that Manu culture completely surrounded the western most American cities that I captured. This means that I have to declare war on someone else before I can win domination victory.

Because Manu and Persia were friendly. I waited until I have Mech Infrantry to shore up my border with Manu before marching into Persia. Surprising, Manu stay on the sideline, busy building his little space ship. I clean Persia's clock with bomber+tank+mech inf and win in 1911, with a low score of 22k.

What I could've done better
- Grow a little more agressively at the beginning. Probably should have chop for Pyramid in the west city that is surrounded by forest.
- No sure if the palace relocation to the South did any good. I any event, I could have done it later.
- I can see there are several point in time that I could have start fighting earlier (instead of waiting for red coat for guaranteed victory).
- Probably should have attack Manu early on to weaken him.
- It really bites to get stuck at 63.8% land mass for 10+ turns.

Part 1 of my spoiler. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3539476&postcount=27)

Ok I ended the first spoiler in 800AD, having just learned Guilds. Of course my early goal of researching to Military Tradition before going to war wasn't going to work out because we had no horses. But that wasn't a major problem. Isabella was fairly backwards and she had some horses just inside her borders. So I built up a force of macemen and catapults to take her out. I declared war on her in 820AD with a small stack of 4 macemen, 1 swordsman, 1 axeman and 2 catapults. She only had spearmen and archers to defend with. I learned Theology in 840AD and revolted to theocracy.

Something very odd happened at this point in the game. Isabella sent a lone horse archer into my territory up north. I attacked it with an axeman and lost, but dropped the it down to 1.1 strength. Then I moved another axeman into range to finish it off the following turn. But then after I hit end turn she moved her horse archer up onto a hill still inside my territory and somehow, despite moving, being in enemy territory and not having a medic promotion, the horse archer healed up to 3.9 strength. This made it so my axeman could no longer kill her horse archer (if it lost I'd lose a city and it only had 50% odds). Is that a bug or AI cheating?

I didn't take many notes after I started warring. Spain was destroyed rather easily in 1020AD. She only had 1 longbow in the last city I captured, the rest were archers, spearmen and horse archers. I kept 4 of her cities and razed 5 of them. I basically wanted to keep any cities that had really good terrain around them and raze any that didn't. I also knew I had to raze at least 50% of cities if I wanted to keep my economy intact. Madrid had an academy in it by the way.

My new cities:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_spanish.JPG

In 1025AD I got another Scientist in London. I saved him for a golden age also (I planned to do two of them later on).

I learned Nationalism in 1030AD.

1045AD - Started my first golden age to get my courthouses built more quickly and to get military tradition sooner.

Since the Spanish war went so well I was ready for my next war in 1050AD and Monetezuma was my next target. He was very weak as Cyrus had captured a couple of his cities early on. I figured I could handle him without cavalry. In 1085AD I discovered a source of iron in the hill next to London, talk about lucky. So now the city had 2 iron tiles it could work. Monte was a complete pushover and I had him down to 1 city in 1100AD so I made peace with him. His last city was crushed between Cyrus, Mansa Musa and Washington and rather far away. Besides, I have to keep one civ alive in the end to milk. I razed 3 of his cities and kept 2 of them. Tenochtitlan also had an academy in it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_aztec.JPG

In 1100AD I also learned Military Tradition. I then turned research off so I could upgrade all my knights, but even at 0% science I was only generating 40gpt and it cost 139 to upgrade a knight. In 1110AD I got another Great Scientist in London. I was trying not to get a scientist as that's all I've gotten except 1 engineer. I had the scientist chance down to 30% by hiring other specialists, but it wasn't to be. That scientist got merged in London.

Well I had only upgraded a couple knights but I was ready for my next war. Cyrus was weak on the military chart compared to the other civs and if I took him out I could take Saladin from both sides. Also, Cyrus had the Parthenon to increase my GP rate even more in London. So in 1115AD I declared war on Cyrus.

In 1150AD I completed the Forbidden Palace in Madrid, which gave a substantial boost to my economy. By 1170AD I had finished upgrading all my knights and had resumed researching. I learned Engineering and completed the Hanging Gardens in 1170AD. Generally I like to finish the Hanging Gardens near the end of the game like Hendrikszoon did in GOTM1 but I knew if I hadn't built it then the AI's would have. I wasn't going to kill them all off in time.

In 1180AD the war with Cyrus came to a conclusion. I had thought I took his last city only to find him listed with a score still. I scoured the map and found out he had a snow city south of Saladin's lands so I decided to make peace for now. I got drama in exchange. I kept 4 of his cities and razed 4. Persepolis had the Parthenon in it and Arbela had the Great Lighthouse. London was now up over 100 GPP per turn.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_persian.JPG

With a little regrouping I was ready for the next war. At this point I had 18 cavalry and 6 catapults only, not counting all the units that were just doing city garrison duty. But since I was still only fighting longbows, my win rate was extremely high so I didn't need a lot of units. I also made sure to have medics nearby always so my units could heal up and get back into action quickly.

In 1190AD I declared war on Saladin and started attacking him from both sides. In 1195AD I learned Banking and started chemistry (working towards Biology for +1 food to farms). In 1200AD I finally got a non-scientist in London...a merchant. I saved him for the next golden age (still need 1 more great person other than scientist or merchant).

The Saladin war was very rough. He was building longbows at a rapid pace, which I would find out why later on when I saw the message that his golden age had ended. Because of this I also got very large war weariness during this war. And it was all compounded by an insane amount of barbarians that were popping out of the fog. Every single turn there were 2-4 barbarians that I had to deal with (and this would be the case for the rest of the game).

Regardless, I destroyed Saladin in 1240AD. I breathe a sigh of relief as the war weariness goes away. I kept 6 of Saladin's cities and only razed 2. Saladin and Mecca both had academies. My economy was in dire straits at this point. I needed a brief period of peaceful building. I started building markets in most of my cities (for simultaneous happiness boost and gold boost). But another problem is my ex-Persian and ex-Aztec cities are very unhappy since I didn't kill them off. Since Cyrus's city was right near my troops I made the most of it and finished his lone city off in 1250AD. So all that is left now is Mansa Musa, Washington, and Monte's 1 city. I'm sure Mansa and Washington will put up a good fight.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_arab.JPG

I saved Damascus, despite the desert, for the incense. It not only gave a happiness boost but they were nice commerce tiles it could work as well.

In 1270AD I learned Chemistry. Unfortunately there were two things I didn't realize before researching Chemistry. First, it obsoleted the Parthenon. And second, I didn't know that I needed Printing Press for Scientific Method or I would have researched Printing Press first. In 1285AD I get yet more bad luck with great people. I had a 70% chance to generate a non-merchant non-scientist, but of course I got a merchant. It didn't turn out too badly, though, as I got 2250 gold for doing a trade route in Washington in 1305AD which would pretty much end my economic struggles. At this point in the game the barbs got even worse as they started sending longbowmen and macemen at me.

My next target was Mansa Musa. He had the marble by his capital that I wanted to construct the Taj Majal. Unfortunately he was the same religion as Washington and they were buddy buddy so Washington declared on me in 1320AD. I really didn't want to fight both at once. Fortunately Washington didn't do much of anything while I swept through Mansa's cities. Mansa was destroyed in 1360AD, once again removing some very bad war weariness. I kept 6 of his cities and razed 7. He had the Confucian and Hindu shrines along with an academy in Timbuktu. I never did get my own shrine built (Taoism) but oh well.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_mali.JPG

I figured I might as well go straight to war with Washington. It took a little while for my troops to get over there. Of course in 1365AD Washington learned Chemistry when he didn't even have Paper or Nationalism yet. If there's one thing I've noticed about Washington in all my games against him is that he always takes a very different research path than the rest of the AI's do. This was bad news for me as he ended up upgrading several of his longbows to grenadiers, which combined with his 40-60% culture bonus was quite a match for my cavalry. But at this point in the game I had 39 cavalry and 4 catapults. Just with sheer numbers and a few gunpowder promotions I was able to overpower him. I destroyed him in 1410AD. I kept 5 of his cities and razed 8 of them. He had 2 academies and the Sistine Chapel. I didn't even notice he had the Sistine Chapel until much later in the game, more on that later.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_american.JPG

This left just Montezuma with his 2 tiny cities as my only opponent. If I had conquered him now my game score would be 103,332. But I want to milk the game. I learned Scientific Method in 1390AD, followed by Liberalism in 1405AD, in which I took Biology as my free tech. Good timing, huh? I have 41 workers at this point in the game, mostly captured from the AI's. I set up some of my cavalry in the snow to the north and south, but even with that barbs were still a menace. Barbarian horse archers would swoop in (using roads that the AI's had built in the snow) to destroy my workers. I probably should have pillaged the roads but there were so many of them and I was busy killing the 3-4 barbs that would show up every single turn (literally). Meanwhile all my cities were building granaries/markets/grocers (in that order) if they didn't have them already. I had a few cities with high food surplus building settlers and workers. My workers were changing all improvements to farms or windmills and every city was set to maximum growth.

In 1420AD I got an engineer great person from London. I saved him for the golden age after my anarchy. In 1425AD I got a great merchant for discovering economics. I then revolted to serfdom, free market and free religion drawing a viscious 4 turn anarchy. After that was done I kicked off my Golden Age. Meanwhile London was building the Taj Majal and would finish it in 1485AD extending my golden age another 10 turns.

1465AD - Replaceable Parts
1495AD - Steam Power (+50% worker speed)
1510AD - Constitution.
1525AD - Corporation
1540AD - Divine Right
1560AD - Astronomy
1585AD - Rifling
1605AD - Communism

Score if I win this turn datapoints:

1410AD - 103,332
1510AD - 114,083
1530AD - 120,000
1545AD - 126,000
1560AD - 130,000
1595AD - 138,841

In 1595AD I reached 62.59% of territory due to expansions. It was then that I realized I had the sistine chapel and all the specialists were causing expansions in my cities. I had basically three choices. Either I ride it out until I trigger domination, I destroy Monte now for conquest, or I could gift my sistine chapel city to monte then raze it. The last option would probably give me the best score, but I was pretty tired of milking at this point and wanted to end the game. Since my original goal was conquest I decided it was time to kill off Monte. I did just that in 1605AD, achieving Conquest in 1610AD with a final score of 141,661.

My final minimap (looks like a lot more than 68% of the land doesn't it? The snowy regions made it so you needed almost all the middle area.):

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_minimap.JPG

Killed statistics and most built buildings:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_killed.JPG

Lost statistics:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_GOTM2_lost.JPG

Something very odd happened at this point in the game. Isabella sent a lone horse archer into my territory up north. I attacked it with an axeman and lost, but dropped the it down to 1.1 strength. Then I moved another axeman into range to finish it off the following turn. But then after I hit end turn she moved her horse archer up onto a hill still inside my territory and somehow, despite moving, being in enemy territory and not having a medic promotion, the horse archer healed up to 3.9 strength. This made it so my axeman could no longer kill her horse archer (if it lost I'd lose a city and it only had 50% odds). Is that a bug or AI cheating?

Sounds like he used the win against your first maceman to promote his unit. Promotions generally raise the health of a unit.

Sounds like he used the win against your first maceman to promote his unit. Promotions generally raise the health of a unit.

Aha, the simplest solution is usually the right one. I don't know why I didn't think of that. Now I feel stupid. :blush:

how did you get the 'score if I win this turn' ?

Background:
While I had played GOTM1, I had never played an epic game nor the Prince skill level. As such, I was treated to a far different playing experience than I am used to. All my previous games end in domination or conquest - i have never resorted to diplomacy, space, or culture. I was in for a shock.

Stage One: Expansion
I actually expanded very well. I settled London at the starting location and expand around the NW lake, around the W desert, as far as the E Mountain, and halfway through the S jungle. Unfortunately, I was unprepared the killer maintenance of this large empire, as my civics and technology could not support it. At one point I had 0 coin and owed 41 gpt with tech at 0%!

Stage Two: Catch Up
At this point I began trading techs in a bid to catch up. Saladin, Mansa, Cyrus, and Washington were all well ahead of me. Isabella was ahead of me by a smaller margin while Montezuma was just a bit ahead. Of course, my empire was bigger than all of theirs, but I was way behind in techs. I had founded Hinduism, however I was forced to change religions by my nearest neighbors (Isabella and Saladin) who both threatened me with destruction. Eventually, though, I turned the corner somewhere near currency. I made use of my resource supply to gain me a bit of income and strategically traded techs to begin my ascent. Montezuma and Isabella had been engaging in border wars, which is why they lagged behind the other 3 leaders. Eventually, though, they made peace, forcing Monty into war with the U.S. and eventually me. I sent the British Expeditionary Force (consisting of 10 axemen, 3 archers, and a catapult) to his closest city (which had founded Judaism). Reeling from the American forces, Monty's troops were unable to defend and I secured the city! Eventually Persia joined the war, and managed to steal one of Monty's cities from under my nose. Soon enough, the Aztecs were no more, and I was firmly in control of last place.

Stage 3: Victory
While I was slowly gaining in techs I realized I would not be able to catch the Americans. By the time I built my first bomber Washington has built about 10 spaceship parts. I decided to go for a diplomatic victory (since I had declared war on nobody and had good relations with all.) My tech trading had given me a 6000 surplus, however I was growing tired of the recent warmongering from Saladin and Isabella. I upgraded my entire army and tech-raced to the U.N. Saladin increased his demands and I called his bluff. Thankfully, my fighters scared him off and the United Nations was built in peace. When the time came for a vote I was pleasantly surprised. Though Isabella and Saladin voted against me, Washington, Mansa Musa and Cyrus all voted for me giving me 524 votes. I won!

Conclusion:
I made a couple of mistakes this game, namely expanding too large, too quickly. I was still thinking Civ3 strategy. I also learned the value of Great People, who I had underestimated before this game. Finally, I learned the value of the "walk-away" strategy. (After losing my third wonder race I was tempted to quit and/or reload - however I picked the game up several days later whenever my anger had subsided.)

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable game.

Great tactic Shillen :) and congrats for the impressive score.

I'll try in my next game (right now.... I feel like a child that want to learn everything in just one second)

Yes, great game, Shillen. :) Your tech built up put you far ahead of other civs later on so that your conquest was much easier comparing to mine. From your tech progress, you could also devert your tech pathway some time in 15th century to beeline for UN and get diplomatic victory at around the same time with similiar score. 140K+ diplomatic victory...

how did you get the 'score if I win this turn' ?

Hover over your civ's name in the bottom right of the screen where it shows all the civs scores.

From your tech progress, you could also devert your tech pathway to beeline for UN and get diplomatic victory at around the same time with similiar score. 140K+ diplomatic victory...

I think it would have taken a bit longer due to having to actually build the UN also. Although I guess I could have saved that last great engineer to help that along. But I did diplomatic last month and I'm not really a big fan of winning diplomatically via warmongering. I think firaxis had the completely wrong idea basing the voting on population instead of giving each civ 1 vote. If I had won a true diplo victory this month I don't think I'd be pleased to find someone beat me by voting themselves in. It cheapens the victory condition, IMO, as getting civs to like you enough to vote for you is not easy at all.

To quickly recap my previous write up.

Expansion went well expect I had two cities razed at population 5 which slowed down my growth. Since I was going for a Cultural victory I tried to stay at peace with everyone. Unfortunately Monte attacked me early and razed a city but I took one of his and he was never a threat again.

Once my expansion started going my three cutlure cities were London, York near the Gems, and Canterbury founded in the middle of the Jungle SW of York 3 spaces to the left of the bananas. Canterbury eventually became my cultural power house with all the cottages and food bonuses.

As I was trying to build up my culture, Saladin decides to attack. He manages to take my City SE of York, a worker, and pillage a little. I quickly convert the economy to all money and upgrade all my axeman to maceman and crank out some catapults. I manage to take back my city and his near the incense as well as do some pillaging. I then get him to give me some money for peace. I also got my best buddy Mansa Musa to declare war on him and Isabella declared on her own.

I figure I am safe now so I get to democracy and convert to mostly culture. Saladin once again declares war on me and takes back his original city but not without losing a bunch of units to my Cat horde. I turn off my culture and quickly finish Rifling and upgrade all units to Redcoats and crank out a number of them. He tries to raid into my territory but his Camel Archers are no match for my Red Coats. I ask my buddy Mansa Musa to decalare and he starts to complete wreck Saladin. I switch back to culture and have a couple of non essential cities crank out a number of red coats that I station on my border. I make Isabella happy by making a lopsided trade.

As I start cruising towards the Culture victory, I build Missionaries and Temples like crazy to get York and London moving. Canterbury is going to max out on Culture far before them even though it started later. I also plop down a couple more cities within my borders to increase my score. Eventually I am running at 90% culture and for the last few turns I go to 100% culture. I set London to producing GAs and end up with 4 that I can use to culture bomb London and York.

The funniest thing is that Washington comes to me and offers a Defensive pact. I quickly accept. Not that long later Mansa Musa who is not happy with Washington also offers me a Defensive Pact.

In 1888 I win a culture victory after using the 2 GAs each in York in London a few turns earlier. Final score of 11,522.

Final thoughts:

I made a few key mistakes early on that would have allowed me to win sooner.

1. Stupid me forgot that Bronze Working opens up Axeman and I had access to copper. I actually researched Hunting/Archery. I could have researched other things and traded for Hunting/Archery.

2. I assumed Monte would not attack my 1 city with an Archer with his 2 Archers. I had an Axeman that I could have moved to prevent the city from being razed. Granted I did get a little unlucky losing with a fortified Archer but that is how the cookie crumbles.

3. I did not dedicate a city to building a defensive military. I had only one unit in each city and a few units on barabarian patrol. I really needed to keep one city cranking out Axeman for defense early on.

Other than these minor problems I am quite happy with the game. Looking at the scores people are getting for Domination/Conquest, I think the scoring system is heavilly weighted towards those victory conditions. I personally do not care about Score. I usually set out a goal for myself and see how fast I can complete the victory condition.

Hmm, I'll never go for a Space Ship win again if the scoring system isn't changed RADICALLY. I completed the Space Ship in 1754 and only got 28757 points. :mad:

If I had gone for Domination I'm pretty sure I would have gotten two or three times this score. Something isn't right with the scoring. Not sure if I'll bother doing a complete writeup. :(

-- Roland

This was my first GotM, so I was a bit overly cautious with my play, which actually helped me in the long run. I dinna keep any notes, wasn't sure I'd do well enough to warrant a write-up.

I settled in place for my first city, and then went on a chopping rampage, quickly turning London into a GP factory. From there, I quickly expanded to 6 cities, with the one south of London becoming a production powerhouse. The barbarians had a city just to the east of London, and began giving me fits. They severely crippled my economy, due to my poorly advanced military, and soon I found myself running 0% science, just to stay afloat. After finally managing to take over the Barb city, I slowly got my economy back in order, though it was several hundred years before I was able to run 100% science again. During this time I also flipped one of Mansa's cities, which became a good source of military units, and very important later in the game.

Was hoping to try for a Diplomatic win, and had been nice to everyone, but when I got notice that Mansa, then a couple of others, were building SS parts, decided to try to head them off, and joined the race. By the time I was ready to begin building parts, several AIs had finished the requisite casings and thrusters. A bit worried, I began cranking out parts in every city, slowly catching up. Still, for all my rushing, they were staying ahead, though Mansa was the closer to completion.

I was able to build Scotland Yard, in the city I'd flipped from Mansa, and sent in a spy, who quickly ran around the Malinese territory, checking builds. By this time, Mansa was lacking only one part, the engine, while I was still not close to finishing. My spy discovered Mansa had no ciies building parts at the moment, so I began to relax a bit. As no other civ was close to completion, I scattered spys throughout the Malinese lands, to monitor the situation.

Finally, I began the last part, the Stasis Chamber, but when I checked in on Mansa, he had also begun his last part, and was only 6 turns away! Checking my funds, I saw that I couldn't afford sabotage, so began trading anything I could for gold. Managed to get enough to blow up his engine, but was still going to be short by at least a dozen turns or so. Here's where I nearly lost the game. I decided war was the only way I'd be able to stop him, massed my best forces, and invaded.

Mansa kicked my butt. Not only did he destroy my army, but he then recaptured the flipped city, and then immediately took my second best production city. I saw the end was near, and sued for peace, desperately trying to find a way to stop his build. As I still had several spys left, I planted them all on his SS factory, and dropped my science to 0% again. Within 4 turns, I had enough to blow it up again, with him being a turn away from completion, and it worked. Not only did it work, but my spy survived!

It took 2 more sabotage attempts to hold him off, but thanks to the best spy I ever built, I managed to achieve a SS victory in 1976, just a turn or 2 ahead of Mansa.

This was probably one of the most exciting games of Civ4 I've played, and except for the very end, and barbarians, I never went to war once. I learned a lot about the game, and can't wait to try the next GotM.

Hi ppl,

first GotM for me since civII - and I must say, it all went pretty smoothly. Had a good start, quickly got a strong military with loads of axemen and then rushed Isabella and took Barcelona and Madrid. I founded only 3 cities myself in the whole game and didnt occupy any enemy town save those two.

The cities were all in great locations, so i quickly pulled ahead in the middle- ages, heading for a cultural victory. Everything was going along very calmly, until Montazuma attacked me with about 20-30 units. I nearly lost Madrid in the battle, but city walls and my newly aquired macemen, managed hold out against his mob of jaguar warriors. Later on he attacked me again, this time with hordes of elefants and catapults - but my redcoats came just in time to thwart this attack. I then decided that Montezuma was gonna continue being such a bastard, so I built an army of redcoats and razed all his cities. At that point Isabella was gone already aswell.

On my way to cultural victory everything had turned out nicely: Barcelona had founded 2 religions, York (which i built directly south of London) had loads of production and was getting much of its culture via wonders. London itself had good production and growth, so it didnt have much problems in keeping up. Had 4 religions spread in all my cities to compensate for the low number of cities.

Towards the end of the game I was really just cruising through - I had formed defense treaties with washington and musa who were the 2 strongest opponents, so nothing much happened in the end. took me about 15 mins for the last 50 or so turns.

anyway i finished in 1873 with 11544 points, coulda gotten quite a few more i reckon, but i decided to stay 6 cities only as im not a great fan of micro-managing dozens of cities.

pic of what my civ looked like in the end:

Ended up with an 1842 culture win. Score: 24571. Probably could have gotten in pre-1800ish, but too addicted to factories, railroads, and Statue of Liberty/Eiffel Tower:). Even ended up building UN to get the extra trade route passed.

Redcoats were really sufficient for all my military needs, and since I had coreligionists Isabella and Mansa as my personal attack dogs (having a ten tech lead meant they would attack whoever I chose), war was never much of a challenge, and coincidently keeping the rest of the world in a war economy preserved my tech lead.

Had I focused on culture, I could have stuck with my original nine cities (although three were shoehorned in to steal tiles). But I wanted Saladin's coal, and one thing led to another and I ended up with six new cities (including one of Cyrus's) to the southeast (Infantry vs. Longbow), with all the strain on resources new cities bring (16 maintenance per turn!). Then Isabella's cities on my west and Mansa's/Washington's on my east started flipping to me, so workers were busy to the end and focus was lost.

In the home stretch, I ran 100% culture and made up the difference with wealth and specialists. 1500 culture-turn in legendary cities by the end, fueled by max commerce improvements, 6 cathedrals, Eiffel, Rock and Roll, Hollywood, Broadway (all purchased via Kremlin and tech sales). Only used one Great Artist for culture (another one fueled one of three Golden Ages).

Images for above post:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/GOTM2-Legend2.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/GOTM2-Legend.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/GOTM2-SW.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/GOTM2-SE.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/GOTM2-NW.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/GOTM2-NE.jpg

Part 2

When I left off around 500 AD, I was suffering from miserable production. No city had managed to reach even 20 hammers. If Saladin or Isabella had decided to knock me out then they probably would have succeeded. Fortunately, the barbarians managed to keep the AI distracted and I even got the chance to move in and take over the barbarian-controlled land to the east, as shown below:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/east.jpg

Overall, the various nations had expanded into roughly equal areas, though England and Mali are definite leaders (map from 1100):

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/prewar.jpg

A “little” war

Given the production difficulties and my success in keeping on everyone’s good side except Montezuma, I was hoping to have another go at a diplomatic victory. Last month I tried for a diplomatic win but accidentally reached domination while eliminating a pesky opponent. With lots of polar ice, the domination limit wasn’t an issue this month.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/Arabia.jpg

Being diplomatic doesn’t mean being neutral. It means forging a strong coalition. Around 1200, Saladin canceled open borders and dropped to cautions, probably because borders were sparking tensions. He had founded a city right up against my border which was getting culture pressed. Totally 100% his fault, but it still made him mad. I waited to research rifling, upgraded a bunch of old units to redcoats (very useful when you don’t have a lot of hammers), and attacked. I also bought Isabella into the war in the hope of getting a mutual military struggle to secure her vote later on. This was both a good and bad decision. Out of 7 Arabic cities, Isabella captured 2 good cities and razed/resettled a third. This annoyed me as I’d been hoping to get some good production cities out of the war. While I was able to build enough culture to put pressure on these cities, none of them ever revolted to me. With the new cities, Isabella, my supposed ally, surpassed Mansa Musa in population and suddenly became my competitor for the UN vote. Even worse, Persian cultural pressure made my newly captured cities only marginally useful and sparked border tensions with Cyrus, paving the way for future conflict. Once broken, peace is a very difficult thing to repair.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/unsatisfied.jpg



The technology payoff

So far, I’d forgone production and military in favor of technology. I won against Saladin because he hadn’t even reached knights when I attacked. The payoff came around 1550 when I discovered Communism. I’d put off researching scientific method to keep the GL and monasteries in play, but once I was ready, I revolted to Suffrage + State property and prepared to start forging my voting bloc.

Isabella’s sudden rise to the #2 spot was actually a stroke of luck. Mansa had actually cultivated good relations with most other civs and would be a difficult competitor. Isabella, on the other hand, was a more controversial figure, especially since, having joined me against Saladin, she had the same “you attacked our friend” penalties as I did. While she’d spent the last thousand years calling everyone else infidels, I’d been trading with Mansa and Washington, ensuring at least two friends.

Taking stock of my situation, I realized that Cyrus had to go. I didn’t have a very good trading relationship with him, and our newfound border tension made it conceivable that he’d side with Isabella (with whom he had no borders). Also knocking out the obscene border overlap he had with some of my cities would be very satisfying. I attacked him in 1575 at the height of my military advantage. Redcoats were still the most powerful unit in the world, and my cities, with the help of the 1 hammer per town from suffrage and the +1 per mine from railroads, were finally becoming somewhat productive and letting me field a respectable army, supplemented by repeated rush-buying in cities near the front and use of railroads to get units from my core cities. Cyrus actually discovered rifling soon after the war began, but his riflemen just got chewed up by my redcoats anyway. I considered buying in Mansa to improve relations but feared what would happen if he actually took a Persian city or two and reclaimed the #2 population spot.

Unlike the previous war, this war gained me several good cities, including the Hindu holy city. Bizarrely, Cyrus hadn’t built the shrine despite the fact that Hinduism was the world’s biggest religion (I eventually did for 27 gpt). He’d also farmed everywhere, with hardly a cottage in sight:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/farmseverywhere.jpg

I sent in my workers to tear up the farms and build workshops and watermills to prepare the area for spaceship-building if my diplomatic plans failed. I then turned my sights to the final target, Montezuma. After sneak-attacking Isabella during the Arabic war, Monty had become little more than a punching bag, fighting nonstop wars first against Isabella, then Washington. I’d also been at war for a while just in order to build good relations. When Washington asked me to redeclare war, I jumped at the chance. Monty hadn’t gotten rifles yet, so my redcoats and infantry plowed through him despite being outnumbered. In one instance, 2 redcoats and 3 cannons managed to take Tenochtillan from a host of defenders while losing only one cannon. Monty did have one moment of brilliance when some macemen slipped past my forces and took back a city, forcing my main army to backtrack and leading to the aforementioned situation where the two intrepid riflemen had to face the capitol without reinforcements. In the end, he simply crumbled, with me taking his southern cities and Washington taking the northern ones.


During this time, I was climbing the tech tree to mass media to build the UN. I had enough money saved to rush-buy it soon after learning the tech, after which I immediately called a diplomatic victory vote. I won the election by a landslide with both Mansa and Washington voting for me. Contrary to other reports about diplomatic victory being harder in Civ4, I found it quite easy to get enough neighbors lined up behind me. It also helped that I had almost enough votes to vote myself in, so I could have made it with just Washington. It felt just as cheesy as it did in Civ3, and I would have gone for the spaceship if I wasn’t going to be busy this weekend.


Victory date: 1726
Final score: somewhere around 4500
Adjusted: 45512

Score graph:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/scoregraph.jpg

Final Map:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/finalmap.jpg


Observations:
Diplomatic victory seems quite easy if you take a bit of effort to cultivate a solid block of support. Normally acceptable behavior like refusing demands, staying neutral in wars, and trading with unpopular pariahs should be avoided. And remember, nothing brings friends together like dogpiling Monty.

Monty pulled ahead to an early lead in score but began to fall behind around 1000AD as everyone passed him. Looking at his cities, it’s easy to see why. He farmed everything and ran a specialist economy, which eventually ran out of steam as everyone else’s cottages matured. I can see why they programmed him to do this – they wanted him to concentrate on early aggression, and getting an early lead through great people could help with this. But in this game he just sat there and didn’t attack until it was too late.

The ultimate industrial-age warfare civic combo would probably be Suffrage-Free Speech-Serfdom-State Property-Theocracy. And redcoats are perfect for a sudden bout of late-game aggression to tilt the UN vote or acquire lots of new cities to build spaceship parts. In reality I ran emancipation because I still had a few towns to mature and free religion because I didn’t want to tick Isabella off. But I wonder, how would such a civic combo look? Serfs get to vote? Free speech for heretics before they get burned?

Gotta love those workshops. 90% of useless AI-built farms should become workshops or watermills when captured in the industrial age.

My score was near the bottom until a sudden jump around 500AD, which coincides with the building of the great library. Was the Library really such a turning point in my game?

Once you conquer one enemy in the late game, you’ll face cultural pressure from another civ, who you’ll then be tempted to go after, and so on. Late-game wars are really quite addictive.

What is it the AI sees in those polar icecaps? Are furs and oil really worth it?

Venice’s answer to the “L”:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4-GOTM2/aquaduct.jpg

I probably managed to achieve one of the most miserable spaceship victories possible.
Early expansion and defence against barb attacks went quite well. I built several wonders in London (Lighthouse, Pyramids) and my econmy was slowly improving.
I converted to Isabellas religion and from thereone we were friends during the rest of the game (well, not exactly, but see below).
I kept peace with everyone, while the others ganged up on Montezuma and then on Cyrus.
As soon as I had redcoats I decided it was time to expand in order to have o better production base for the space race. I first attacked Washington in the west whose cities were really close to mine. After having razed to smaller cities on not too good locations and after having captured two other cities Mansa took the opportunity and attacked me from the east.
I quickly made peace with Washington and diverted my remaining forces to the east front. I could however not avoid the capturing of Hastings which on the south end of the big lake separating me from Mansa's territorium. But later on I managed to get his one city on the west side of the lake.
I made peace again and after rebuilding attacked washington again to get access to the aluminium tile in the north.
After having conquered the aluminium city and another one I made peace and focused on building spaceship parts. I had about 10 cities at this time.
So far so good.
I was slightly ahead in research and after having the last tech needed I started to build the last part in London (6 turns to complete), the second last was already in production in York still 8 turns to complete.
The other civs were also building spaceship parts but were slightly behind so spaceship victory seemed very close.
But then disaster started: Out of the blue, Isabella declared war and invaded with a 20+stack of panzers, helicopters, infs, etc..
I tried to fend her off as well as I could but she soon pillaged my tiles back to stone age and spaceship part production was dwindling.
Isa took 2 cities in the following turns and to make the catastrophy complete, Washington decided it was time for payback. He took his original cities soon after.
As soon as possible I made a peace treaty sacrificing the rest of my money. I only had 3 cities left, 2 of them building the last spaceship parts.
Now I built about 6 workers to reimprove my devastated territory and to accelerate spaceship building again. I managed to finish my spaceship a handful or terms before time would have ran out with a score of about 3000.

At least this was a realistic scenario for a spaceship victory. Surrounded by mighty enemies, most cities in enemy hand, the countryside devastated by war, the best opportunity for the English people was to leave earth and make another start on another planet. Too bad for those who had to stay behind.

This was my second GOTM and again I learned a lot.

Observations:
Diplomatic victory seems quite easy if you take a bit of effort to cultivate a solid block of support. Normally acceptable behavior like refusing demands, staying neutral in wars, and trading with unpopular pariahs should be avoided. And remember, nothing brings friends together like dogpiling Monty.

A couple notes about this:

1) The later you win the easier this is. If you win in 1410 AD like Yurian did last month it's quite a bit harder to get them to like you that quickly without having defensive pacts or things like that.

2) It's easier on a map where you have contact from the beginning of the game. Once again what made Yurian's last month so impressive is he probably didn't even meet the other AI's until 4-500AD, yet still got them to love him by 1410AD.

3) Different games all play out differently. Sometimes the AI's are all too busy hating each other you can only hope to impress one other civ.

4) It's only prince level.

Seems everyone's favourite this month. I got a Diplomatic victory in 1912 with about 22k points.

I was lucky to win this game. I started like alot of people exanding too fast and unestimating the barbs. Got attacked by axeman while i had only warrior units. Manged to only lose 2 cities to barbs, and save my game.

Due to my large empire and my lack of wanting to give up any city building oppurtunities I fell behind in tech quite badly. I manged to detroy Spain and Aztecs when they attacked me, but the rest were too advanced for me to win against. In the end I snuck in with a diplomactic victory before, about 3 other civs built spaceships :)

My saving grace in this game was that I fluked getting juddism without trying, and got an early wonder to get a Great prophet. By the end of the game EVERY city in the world was jewish hehe. Which solved my money problems.

After giving up on GOTM1 about half way through, I decided to make sure I finished this one. I've started a number of Civ IV games, but this was the first one I've finished. I have limited notes as it is very tough to switch between Civ IV and notepad on my system. I may have to actually go out and get a better system if I want to continue playing.

Anyway, I tried to read as much of the strategy forums as I could before starting this game, and so set up a GP city and a couple science cities, as well as a production city. I went for hunting first and built a few scouts to go out and explore. I popped three or four huts but no free techs. I founded London 2 S of the start to get on a river and give me room to build another city further north. The problem is, I never built that northern city until well into the ADs. I used chops to get libraries and other improvements rather than to rush out settlers. I made sure to keep up in military to fend off the barbs and ended up taking a couple barb cities. Eventually I got to 5 core cities (2 science, one GP/science, one prod and one mixed bag). I eventually realized that one production city is not really enough to go war mongering, so I played a relatively peaceful game. I used the great scientists from my GP city to build 3 academies and the rest were used as super specialists. I realized much later that I should have put these guys in the city where I would build Oxford. Instead I put them in the capital since I was running beurocracy(sp?) most of the game. I think I had six of them by the end of the game. I was behind in tech until I traded for Alphabet and then I traded around, gaining all (almost) the techs and gold available. Suddenly felt like a CivIII game. I still had no religion at that point. I managed to get Theology first, giving me Christianity, but I never spread it as much as I should have. I was using Buddhism at the time, which was by far the majority religion. I didn't want to change as it kept me in good graces with almost everyone. The only civ that I was really at odds with the whole game was Montezuma, but they were far away and hence not a bother. After getting the tech lead I kept it for the rest of the game, though Mansa Musa was a close second. I continually made trades with him for new techs and gold, and often sold older techs to other civs for their gold so I could keep my tech pace up. These continual trades kept my relations up, and eventually most were pleased or friendly. I was actually able to get horses for free a couple of times just by asking nicely. I used those time to rapidly punch out knights the first time and upgrade them to cavalry the second time. I also built a large number of redcoats once they were available. I never attacked another civ (though I did agree to join wars against Montezuma a couple times). As the game got further on I was getting tired of the slowdowns. My system just can't seem to handle this game well. I decided since everyone was so friendly I would try for a diplomatic win. I actually had to hunt around to figure out what tech allowed me to build the UN. :blush: I finally found it and headed for it. Once I got there I found it was going to take a good while to build the UN. I used by loafing workers to start switching tiles to be more productive in the capital, at the expense of food, aloowing the UN to finish a few turns sooner. I had decided at that point to stop researching and just bump all my other towns to culture. Once the UN was built I voted myself as ambassador, and got elected. When the vote came up again, I picked the diplo win, and just barely won with about 430 votes (needed 415), in 1710AD, for around 37k score. I was kinda surprised it was so close.

I really learned quite a lot in my first full game, and hopefully I'll be able to transfer much of it to the next game. By the end of the game I had 8 cities, and had just caused one of Americas to revolt. I think I will need to work on better expansion next game.

My first completed GOTM..(I hate Lakes but still tried it)

Lasted till 1674...it was over in 1505 when 3 civs declared war on me. Isabella attacked when Sladin and Montezuma decided they had enough of me. Then to top it off around 1670 Washington decides to join in and he takes my last city. :crazyeye:

I held on and gave a good fight but in the end their combined forces were too much for me. Nice game. I think I lost it early on when I expanded too quickly and had to drop to zero sci. I made a dash for the copper to my south and that is what caused my downfall. I was too dar behind in tech to mount much of a fight...Longbows vs muskets and conquisdors.

It wa fun..I will be in the bottom I am sure. bring on next month.

My first win of Civ 4 on Prince level. I always build a strong empire but I have problems with time at the end it just seems to slip by so I won in 1955 by Domination with a score of 15890 my highest score to date.
I had problems with cities flipping to other civs with each 2 or 3 I conquered 1 seemed to flip. I lost several cities by flipping to both the Americans and Spaniards. But Montezuma fell 1st to the sword. From then on continuous war 1 after another only Spain was spared the sword as she started her Spaceship last and to late.
I just wish I could figure a way to play a better early game and maybe compete with some of the 1600 area domination and conquest victories I have seen here.
Talk to you all next 4OTM. Cant wait to try my hand again.:king:

Hmm, I'll never go for a Space Ship win again if the scoring system isn't changed RADICALLY. I completed the Space Ship in 1754 and only got 28757 points. :mad:

If I had gone for Domination I'm pretty sure I would have gotten two or three times this score. Something isn't right with the scoring. Not sure if I'll bother doing a complete writeup. :(

-- Roland

That explains my score as well then.

Well, I hadn't played GOTM in a LONG time, so I gave this one a go. I did not post in the first spoiler thread, because I did not bother to look for people's borders. I never saw the borders of Cyrus or Monty until I traded for maps in 1090AD, missing the Spoiler#1 cutoff by a bit. :lol:

I kept an SG like turn-log, but even I don't really want to read it. So I doubt you do either. So here are some brief summaries of the major points.

The start:
I went BW first. worker/settler/worker/warrior was queued up. Original warrior explored W about 10 tiles, then S to a few tiles below the stone resource, then E where I found my second city site (copper), then waited there for the settler. My capital was undefended during this time, because there's no need to have it garrisoned this early. I had my second city down, and two workers out before I ever built a warrior to garrison the capital.

The first worker was timed to come out one turn before BW, by switching off the lake and corn. I chopped the settler/worker, overflow created warrior, and I was off and running. No huts found, no civ borders found. They all found me. I don't care about scouting, I just want to find my second/third city sites, and get them down ASAP. I get axeman before barbs start appearing, an easy way to take care of them. I completely ignore archery when there is copper close enough to hook up in a reasonable amount of time.

I built 4 warriors total, 1 archer, 1 spear...and the rest of the ancient age military was all axes.

Tech path (early part anyway):
BW (for chopping, but really, to see bronze so I can skip archery)
Agri
Wheel
Myst (chopped Stonehenge)
AH
Pottery
Poly
Writing (to build Libraries)
Priesthood (chopped Oracle)
Metal Casting (from Oracle)
IW
Sailing (more food for capital with lighthouse)
Masonry
Alpha (my favorite tech. I held onto if for a long time and traded everything else. Reminds me of the old Civ3 Map Making trading round)
Currency
Music (for Great Artist)
Feud
From here, I went for military techs, I don't want to list them all in order. The last tech I researched was RR, then I pretty much shut down research. I didn't list techs I traded for, because I did a lot of that, and forgot to write it all down.

The key part of my game (in almost every game) is due to the fact that Alphabet > All else! Don't trade it away...ever (unless you need to in order to catch up). Let every civ research it, while you continue to broker techs and leap ahead. If you hold onto it, you can trade for techs from one civ, and the next turn, trade them to another, and round and round like that...because they cannot trade with each other. This is a KEY spot in the early game.

Early Cities:
London founded on the spot.
2440BC York founded 5 tiles due S of London for the early copper.
1400BC Nottingham founded 5 tiles due W of York.
*720BC Aryan captured from Barbs, 7 tiles due W of London, perfect spot.
*120BC Barcelona captured from Spain
250AD Hastings founded 5 tiles E of London, across the lake.
270AD Canterbury founded SW of York.
780AD Coventry founded N of London by the silver...I hate Ice cities.

That's basically it. All the rest of my cities were captured (and a couple flips) after 1265AD. I only built six cities.

Religions:
I didn't found any religions. I didn't open my borders until pretty late, starting with Mansa (my pawn through the later ages). So I had no religion for a long, long time. I ended up capturing a few Holy Cities, the main one being Judaism from Izzy, and I built the shrine there....she'd already done a great job of spreading it around, as always. I did not adopt Judaism until 1250AD...my first and only religion, never dropped/changed.

Wonders:
I normally play Emperor, so I went a bit nuts finally getting time to build wonders. I'm ashamed that I built so many, so I'm not going to list them. I never noticed this before, but capturing the Pyramids knocked Washington into Despotism. Good times. :p

Great People:
I got mostly Great Prophets (on purpose), the first in 340BC. I joined most of them to my Capital, except for one to create the Temple of Solomon in the Jewish Holy City captured from Spain, and a couple to start a Golden Age to get Factories/Coal Plants chugging, as well as a GScientist to create an Academy in London. Couple Artists for CBombs as well.

Below are pictures of my Great People factory and London. The GPFactory came online kind of late, because it was a captured city from Saladin...the bastard stole the spot I wanted. London, also pictured below, has most of my GPeople joined into it, mainly Priests. They give 5gpt and two hammers each, because I built Angkor Wat in anticipation of this. I also built Oxford and Wall Street there, add in Bureaucracy, and the city really powered my economy.

Wars:
800BC - Izzy declared on me, so I took Barcelona from her, then kept her at war until 250AD when I learned Alphabet. Then I made her give me Hunting, Meditation, and Monotheism (a monopoly tech) for peace. I wasn't really doing anything to her at this point, I was building infra after taking Barcelona.

1125AD - Monty declared war on me, and ran 25 assorted axes/jags into my souther border, with reinforcements behind that. Honestly, I've NEVER seen the AI declare and have a force like that ready. I got a picture of his SOD after my first shot at it posted below...mainly because I was so surpised to see it that I forgot to take a screenie at first. Luckily I had been preparing a "Kill Saladin" force in the city Monty went for, so his force died quickly. I bribed Mansa to declare on him, because Monty wouldn't give me peace, and I could not get open borders with anyone that would allow me through to go raze Monty's cities. Monty comes begging for peace about 10 turns later, as predicted.

1250AD - Declared on Saladin right after peace with Monty. I capture five of his cites (one later flips to Cyrus, after I debated razing it because I thought it might), using Maceman and Cats. I normally start an Axe, or Axe/Cats war, but I got wonder crazy in this game. I made peace with Sal in 1385AD. Not because I wanted to, but again, I could not get to his last city because of border issues. Actually, I could have gone through Spain, because...

1315AD - Izzy declares on me while I'm still at war with Sal. He had one city behind her main lines, which is why I made peace with him. I captured nine cities from Izzy, burnt two to the ground (one would have flipped to GW, one was Ice), and also killed off Sal along the way. Sal died in 1550AD. I was actually at peace with him here, but he had a settler going somewhere, and it was too juicy to pass up. Izzy died in 1595AD. Maces/Cats still being used.

1658AD - THE BRITISH ARE COMING! Promoted my maces with City Raider, and upgraded to Redcoats, bring a few cavs along with the trusty cats. Declare on Monty, and bribe Mansa to join the party. I capture five cities, Mansa captures two, and I raze the final city (Susa, which pissed off Cyrus, would have flipped to him), killing Monty in 1690AD. I also has a Persian city flip to me during this war.

1706AD - A lot of decisions leading up to this. I'm at about 42% land. After a lot of though, I bribe Mansa to declare on Cyrus. I, however, declare on George instead. Mansa is my puppet, and this keeps everyone else occupied while I run wild. Nine cities captured, one auto-razed. George dies a horrid death in 1744AD. Some Redcoats have been upgraded to Infantry now.

1758AD - 61.1% won't do. Bribe Mansa to declare on Cyrus again. ;) I declare in 1760AD. I capture three cities from Cyrus, one city auto-razes, and I win a few turns later. Redcoats are fun, as long as you're the one building them.

The End:
Domination in 1766AD
5,364/48,855 scores


And for the people who like pictures...

111613

111586

111588

111589

111590

Well I just finished the GOTM 2. I had finished 80k score on the first GOTM this time I did tad bit better toping that score and coming in at 89k Dunno if it'll be enough for the top 10 this time but I hope so! :) I haven't really had time to put my conquests in the spoilers since I've been playing tons of multilayer games in my spare time, since I finally got my computer to cooperate with CIV4. In the past few weeks I've been playing tons of games in multilayer and single player, and if you want a top shelf tip I would say work with combat a lot at first so you know how the units interact with each other. It doesn't matter if you play offense or defense your going to need to have a good feel how the units react on the battlefield to understand in more detail how your science should be developed.

Gday,

This was my 1st GOTM and first serious attempt at prince level. Did not set out with any Victory plan, probably why I lost but my aim was to mainly survive and see if victory was at all possible.

I had a "tremendous" start to the game lost my warrior in 3640BC and my worker in 2120BC to of all things bloody wolves. I also was changing Science investments with 1 turn to go to try and some extra cash and forgot to take it back to 100% for about 20 turns this confirmed to me that a victory was outta the question.
Monte went to war twice with Washington, on the second attack I joined in against the US, trying to pick some crumbs up. Tried to unsuccessfully take US Cardoba ex- barb city situated away from Washingtons main empire. Peace declared.
Decided to try and have a go at Isabella. Set up troops outside Santiago, waited for Monte to blow his horn and then sent my troops in while she was busy defending him. Captured Santiago and Barcelona and by that time Monte just about had her gone.
Was lost then, Mansu was way out in front in Tech and Monte had a bloody big army. Was behind in Culture and when Mansu built Apollo Program 38 turns before me, I just tried to better my score and keep Monte happy so he didnt wipe me. Was please to keep all originals citys, gaining two from Isabella.

This was my first prince game and until last night I had not won on Noble.
With the start I had I was just happy to be able to finish the game without being wiped and without coming last in game. Was a learning experience and I look forward to another attempt at GOTM2, with a better bloody start adn can't wait for GOTM3. H
Have to say thanks to Alanh and Ainwood (& others) for the work they do and for sending me the GOTM unprotected file.

By the way Mansu won by Space Race in 1961AD, I finished with a game score of 2999. Just a few more points would of made it look oh so much better.
Cheers.

That was fun. My first Prince game, first GOTM. 2005 space ship loss.

Lost my first settler to barbarians. I had an escort warrior ready, but they were killed by lions just before the settlers were ready to set off. Ended up with two cities, surrounded by 3 barbarian settlements. After being rescued from the barbarians by other powers, I captured 2 cities in a brief war with Spain and America. At my zenith, I controlled all of 8 cities. Was in last the entire game. Managed to keep up militarily through shameless technology trading, but then around 1700 Arabia invaded, taking my commerce city with the gem mines in the original offensive. 200 years of defensive war. On epic. LOTS of camels. Every city I owned was captured at least once; When Persia finally wiped Arabia out around 1900, I was holding on to 5 cities without a single developed tile. Never built a unit after Redcoats. When Mali finished their spaceship in 2005, I was a third world country, just adopting modern farming and democracy, and rebuilding after centuries of war.

So, escorts shouldn't wander around in the desert while waiting for the settler. And You should always assume there's a army of camels just over the horizon, and garrison accordingly.

Diplomatic Victory, 1686 AD, 66891 points, In-game score 5271.

My first spoiler (up to 1 AD) is here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3539171&postcount=17


I tried to play a 'balanced' game. By balanced, I mean I tried to do everything well and not take too many risks. Of course that means that I did nothing spectacular either. :lol:

I had 4 cities in Anno Domini 1. I had also constructed the Pyramids, and the Oracle (CoL -> Confucianism,) and I had fought a brief war with Spain. I founded a 5th city in the jungle, near the bananas, then a 6th on top of the marble across the lake from London. Around 500 AD, I captured 2 more barb cities on the east side of the lake. That ended my 'peaceful' phase. My early research was worker techs, then bronze for defense/chops, then writing->alphabet->literature with a few stops in between. Getting alphabet first allowed me to get to tech parity+ with the AI's in a hurry, and since I didn't trade alphabet and no AI's researched it for a very long time, I was able to grab the Great Library easily.

Religion: Isabella had founded Hinduism and Bhuddism, while Montezuma had founded Bhuddism and converted Cyrus, and I founded Confucianism. I waited a good long while to swap to confucianism. While I was waiting, I managed to convert Washington, Mansa Musa, and Saladin to Confucianism. The jungle start really helped out a lot with this, since it was a long time before the AI's had trade routes with each other, and thus Hinduism/Bhuddism didn't spread much. Once I was able to convert other civs to Confucianism, I switched in 390 AD. One aspect of my strategy was to found all the religions after Confucianism so that none of my friends founded their own religion and switched. Mansa surprised me by using a Great Scientist to found Islam, but luckily he didn't convert and it hardly spread at all.

Warmonger:I knew now that I was a heathen, Isabella was coming for me sooner or later, so I decided to go for her first. I attacked in 730 AD with swords/cats. I left her with 2 sorry excuses for cities in 920 AD, which Mansa finished off shortly after. My economy was pretty crippled with 5 new cities, but thanks to some courthouses and the Forbidden Palace in Madrid, it recovered in less than 10 turns. With Izzy gone, I now had Montezuma to my west. I bribed Mansa and he invaded Monty in 1090 AD. In 1120, after letting some of Monty's forces move West towards Mansa, I attacked. I razed 2 of his cities and captured the rest. Monty was destroyed in 1265 AD.

A bit more warmongering: Izzy and Monty were easy choices to go to war with - nobody liked them. After that, Cyrus was the only heathen left, but everyone generally liked him. Fortunately, greed got the better of them. In 1270 AD, I bribed both Mansa and Saladin to attack Cyrus. Not only did they distract him, they beat him up pretty good and even managed to grab a couple of cities each. I declared in 1290 AD, grabbed ~ 6 cities from Cyrus, including all of his core cities and he was destroyed in 1370 AD. Here are some minimaps of my empire:

730 AD, at the end of my expan