GOTM-03 Second Spoiler

The purpose of this spoiler is to discuss the latter part of your game - how you leveraged the position that you set-up for yourself in the early part into a winning position; or conversely; what went wrong that allowed your empire to be over-run or you to be beaten to victory.

To participate in this spoiler, you must have met all the conditions for the first spoiler, [bu]and[/u] either completed and submitted your game, or have reached approximately the 1800's or later (again, we will have a small amount of leeway on this!)

Please refrain from posting pictures or details that may spoil the end-game for any other players.

Ok, I'll go first I suppose. I didn't post in the first spoiler cause I didn't see the need for two post filled with incoherent hardly remembered facts. I really wish I had written things down since it was my first fully completed game. I know I tried my best to get the upper hand on Monty in the early BC's, and succeeded only to halt my advance too early. I let him live, and in the end he didn't let me live. He conquered me about 1615 AD and not a sole would help in a time of crisis, although I helped two others out in time of need. I must say I am really embarassed about my loss with only 290 points to show for it.

In summary, Barbarians got the best of me for A LONG TIME. My technological advances were few and far behind, and the biggest one for me was that I ran out of money about 1300 AD and could never catch up. I would have about 3 units disbanded every turn just about from that point on. This isn't too differrent than Civ3 so I thought I would be good......thought being the key word. I only had 10 cities too.

Next time I'll try to write everything down so you guys can help fix me :crazyeye:
EDIT: Forgot to mention I was on Adventurer.....now I'm really embarassed :(

Picking up from my first spoiler:

Had the war begund one or two hundred years earlier, I would have been in much bigger trouble. However, in the early 400s, both me and Saladin had converted to Hattie's founded religion of Buddhism. Being Friendly with both of those two meant that I did not have to worry about being dogpiled from the south. I repelled Monty's initial assault without much trouble, and took a city by the hills north of Kyoto in 550 with an axeman expeditionary force. Following this, though, the war degenerated into a pillaging bloodbath held on my side of the frontier. I lost all my three workers to an unseen chariot, and while my shock-promoted axemen did not have much trouble killing jaguars, Monty had double my cities, and came close to overwhelming me in the 600s. Especially troublesome was the pillaging of my cows and wheat, which lead to crippling health problems for a few hundred years in Kyoto and Tokyo. Tokyo was nearly lost on several occasions, but I managed to hold out, and my quality began to tell, especially as I began to get double- and triple-promoted axemen. I did not have catapults, and could not threaten his other cities, but I did camp out in the forest next to the closest one to me and absorb his oncoming forces while gradually swelling my ranks, as between my cities, I was building axemen at about 1 per 2-3 turns. I finally got machinery around the late 700s, and managed to trade it around to come within a few techs of general parity. I had access to samurai now, but wanted to prepare before I used them. I had adopted Vassalage in 750, and in 800, the First Aztec War ended.

It was only meant as a respite, though. I needed Monty's core cities if I was to have a hope of winning. I spent the next 320 years building up a large force of shock/cover promoted samurai, along with two accuracy promoted cats to go with them. In 1055 I went to theocracy. A shock/cover samurai two xps from starting up city raider is a very powerful unit, as I soon discovered. The Second Aztec War began in 1120. Monty had no chance. My samurai moved through his lands sowing death and destruction, capturing a city every 20-25 years as regular as clockwork. The few losses I sustained were soon replaced by the constant production that continued in my homeland, and soon by the former Aztec cities as they came out of revolt. By the Peace of 1275, it was all over. I had taken every single one of his core cities, only prevented from taking his last city by the fact that it was on a peninsula a good distance away, and I didn't feel like taking the 7-8 turns it would have taken to get there just to wipe him out. By this time, I had figured that the other countries would be upgrading to muskets and soon rifles, and my age of samurai domination would be over.

However, an exploratory probe sent into Inca territory revealed a wonderful surprise. Not only were they still using longbowmen, but they had no copper, and their one iron resource was right next to what would be the first city to fall in the event of war. As if this were not enough, the Incas had been the tech leaders for most of the game, and taking them down would greatly increase my chances for success. As my workers feverishly improved the newly taken Aztec lands, the Inca war began in 1320. I figured it could not be long until they had riflemen, and wanted to make the most of the time I had. Their iron/FP city fell in 1340, followed by five more in the next 150 years. The war finally ended after I spent 4 samurai smashing through their first rifleman to take Cuzco. This was critical to my later success, as it contained the pyramids. Following the peace, they were left with only four or five cities, and were never a major factor in the late game.

This was for the most part the end of my warmongering days. I was too far behind in tech to have a chance for domination, so I began to feverishly build cottages, libraries, universities, and markets in my newly conquered territories, while using the pyramids to switch to representation well ahead of its time. Soon I was researching along at 80%, and coming along nicely. Late in the 1500s, I decided to use some leftover samurai and cats to remove an old enemy. The Third Aztec War lasted only a few turns while I marched through his territory, and then Monty was no more.

Now, with domination, cultural, and conquest out of the picture, I had to choose between diplomatic and space race. I decided to pin my hopes on diplomatic. Hattie was certainly going to be my rival. Saladin and Victoria were my good friends, and both were fairly powerful. I was by no means sure that I could do it, but I figured that if it proved unattainable, I could try for space race. I started heading straight for Mass Media and began to pray

During the 1600s, several events gave a huge boost to my plans. Not only did I get two great merchants for a net 3500 gold from trade missions, but I beat the world to some important tech (I can't remember what it was). From Hattie, I managed to get two cheap techs and her entire treasury of a whopping ~5000 gold for it, while I picked up several more techs from Saladin and Victoria. This left me with a treasury of over 9000 gold, allowing me to kick science to 90%. The second key event was Victoria going to war with Asoka. While Victoria's vote was a possibility, Asoka's was definately out, so I grinned with delight as Victoria slowly ate away Asoka's core over the next hundred years.

Finally, I reached Mass Media around 1750, and rush-built the UN soon after in 1766. A few years earlier, I got a big confidence booster when Hattie went to free religion. This left me and Saladin as the only Buddhists, and guaranteed me his vote. In addition, it allowed me to drop my defensive pact with him, which had been ticking Victoria off. Victoria had gone from Confucianism to Free Religion since the 1500s, so my Buddhism was not a problem. I had no trouble being elected Secretary-General, and the first vote followed in a few turns. The results were as follows:

For Tokugawa: Tokugawa, Saladin
For Hattie: Hattie, Asoka
Abstains: Victoria, Huayna

Curses! If I had Victoria, I would win, but I wasn't sure how. A few turns later, I suddenly realized how. During the destruction of the Aztecs, Asoka had founded a city among the ruins, and it had been a thorn in my side for a long time. I had thought about taking it out earlier, but it contained a few infantry and a cav, while I did not even have riflemen.

Now, however, the time had come. I moved my old forces into position, called up Victoria, and declared mutual war on Asoka. The next turn, I pillaged a few squares. That turn, the next vote came up, so I voted for myself, ended turn, and prayed. Sure enough, on the next turn, I got the longed-for message:

You Have Won A Diplomatic Victory!!!!

Vicky came through in the pinch, and I squeaked over the threshold by about 15 votes. I won in 1790 with a game score of 26,327, and a base score of 3,062. It was a great finish to a game I had expected to lose for much of the time I was playing, and easily my best score ever. Sadly, I started and finished it on the first, so now I have to wait all month for the next, but oh well. Thanks to all the GOTM staff who make this a great experience!

contender, domination

this's my third finished civ4 game (except for the handful test game which are always abandoned in ~30 minutes). the nobel-prince-monarch gotm4 are pretty nice a learning experience. it seems we'll take on emporor next time.

as many players outlined in the pregame, by getting bronzeworking and then the upper arm of tech tree, i was able to trade with AI with all the skipped techs fairly early on. and it's really surprising how AI shied away from alphebat. they didn't research it until very very late. i really regretted trading away alphebat in my two previous games so early...

the conquering of the world began as i invaded Egypt. then i switched gear and started a clockwise battle route. first with Samuri and then with knights and finally with cavalries. i never had an overwhelming army and had to sue for peace many times to avoid war weariness...
finally dominated the world at 1676AD. there is really nothing special about my game. :p
one thing i didn't well at all is to maintain some strategic relationship with AIs. Aztec is the only AI that was willing to ally with me once in the early game. after that, i fought all the war alone because no one wanted to ally with me. i need to choose my religion more wisely... (i was the only one believing Confucian since it was disocovered by me).
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/ggotm.JPG

However, an exploratory probe sent into Inca territory revealed a wonderful surprise. Not only were they still using longbowmen, but they had no copper, and their one iron resource was right next to what would be the first city to fall in the event of war. As if this were not enough, the Incas had been the tech leaders for most of the game, and taking them down would greatly increase my chances for success. As my workers feverishly improved the newly taken Aztec lands, the Inca war began in 1320. I figured it could not be long until they had riflemen, and wanted to make the most of the time I had. Their iron/FP city fell in 1340, followed by five more in the next 150 years. The war finally ended after I spent 4 samurai smashing through their first rifleman to take Cuzco. This was critical to my later success, as it contained the pyramids. Following the peace, they were left with only four or five cities, and were never a major factor in the late game.


I had an identical experience to Nakhimov. Monty was killed quickly, except for that one city on the peninsula to the east that was protected from my troops by the intervening Incas (in my game it was Xochocicla [sic - something which sounded like "Chocolate").

I too decided not to develop galleys to wipe out the last Aztec city, even though I think it would have the advantage of reducing "We long to rejoin the Motherland" unhappiness in the former Aztec cities. Instead, I declared peace to reduce war weariness and declared on the Incas immediately. I too conquered Cuzco for the Pyramids, although I think it must have been a bit earlier because musketmen were just being developed by Saladin at the time. Eventually came back to finish off Monty.

Nakhimov, what were the chances of destroying Asoka in your game? In mine he was a tech leader but way at the bottom of the score and power rankings, so it was relatively easy to go on to attack the Indians. Was Asoka a military wimp in most games?

Domination; Challenger; 1350ad and ~135k

My game was very straightforward so the result surprised me. Couldn't wrap my head around playing with what felt like an edge so was Challenger for me. Too many years of competitive gaming. I moved to the river square for my capital and from that move on everything felt like I was stuffing up. Bad huts even.

I had researched Mining first and thought screw it, offense all the way and I just went straight for iron working with resignation to pour out swordsman and do or die. Seriously, I didnt build any wonders all game except only one - the library. I did deliberatly cash in on every wonder though, building them for a while here and there when I could afford some turns, as investment cash for the all-game war. Paid off better than I expected as despite a ridiculously big army, I never had to drop my research below 70% at the tightest few times, maintaining it at 90 or 100 for most of the game.

Built my second city in that deceptively good looking but crappy spot northwest next to the copper. Didn't matter as if I recall got iron in capital anyway. Basically, chopped and concenrtated on nothing but swordsmen, and sent them scattered down through egypt. I took and kept every town to the capital. Then turned back and sent everything at Monty and kept pushing clockwise wiping out Monty, the Incans, and India down to England. Looked pretty good on the percentile so I thought domination will do as I just researched Cavalry now closing in on 58% or something - this was about 1200ad. I put every single town on making cavlary, had hordes of cash from pillaging which I used to upgrade my knights to cavalry, and set every town to grow as fast as possible.

Took me longer than it should have and I only took about 3 english towns and 4 arabian towns but domination buzzer sounded 1350 ad. Shoulda been 1250 if I wasnt so all over the place. Score weighed in at just over 135000 which surprised me a lot. I am guessing this means there will be 100 scores of 140k to 350k this time or soemthing.

Luck is funny thing too. GotM 2 I got a seriously crapola score, like 28k or something for a conquest that was as fast as I could manage. It shoulda been much faster but I kid you not, I lost 90%+ of all fights where the odds were in my favour. This gotm, I expected the worst, expected to outfight lose to the comp really, and attacked without considering implications and dumb luck seemed that I was actually winning maybe 75% of the fights where the odds were in my favour. Maybe as many as 10 to maybe even 20% where the odds weren't. Has to be a civ4 record.

I'm just hanging for the next gotm. War is a bad way to go. Means your gotm finishes that much sooner. Shoulda gone for space race to get double the fun hours out of it. Just so hard to go for something you know guarantees a low spot in the competition. THis Gotm took me seriously like 2 maybe 3 hours tops. It says more but I have a wfie and kid who demand me away from the comp a lot and I leave it running. I want an all month game like some have listed that takes 50 hours so I can sneak 2 a night or some such and really get into it.

Sorry for crappy writeup, if I don't finish before spoiler thread one gotm I will make a proper one. Memory too crap for this. Looking forward to reading all yours though.

My game was pretty successful - 1505 Domination, 122K score. I'd like to focus on the sort of things that make a difference for getting a really high score; I expect to not be anywhere close to the top of the pile.

As mentioned in the other thread, I opened with building 2 warriors while waiting for mining and BW. My three warriors did a sweep and played sentry on hills. The initial setup is interesting - my complements to the GoTM staff for a clever configuration. I beelined SW SW and planted my capital there; no resources, but some floodplains and hills, so it was a solid if unspectacular city. There were 2 very good sites nearby; city 2 (gold mine W) founded 2280 BC. City 3 (port SE) founded 1750, razed by barbs, refounded 820 BC. City 4 (excellent site S of capital - ivory, food, hills; my big production city) 1350 BC. Cities 5 and 6 (north and in the corner) founded 480BC, 160BC.
I got Stonehenge in 1350 BC and Saladin (barely) beat me to the Oracle in 900 BC. No other wonders to speak of, nor any needed if you have hordes of Samurais and Knights...

To get a feeling for the timing of wars, they looked like this:

War 1 - 40 AD with Egypt, right after I got Code of Laws. Axe/melee, spear/heal, sword/city raider approach. Ended 430 AD, because I got careless and split my stack of doom, losing some swords to axes; this was followed by a series of snakeyes rolls on attacking the second capital, losing most of my vets. I extorted Monarchy from Egypt and got 5 excellent cities out of this. I got religion from Egypt (Christian), which Saladin also had, and I was on good terms on my southern flank for the rest of the game. I then swung my forces to the other front and pushed in that direction for the rest of the game.

War 2 570 AD Aztecs - Monty was troublesome; he had horses and copper. I knew he had them going in, so my spears took care of most of his horses, but I had trouble with garrisons on captured cities being lost to raiders. I extorted cash and Horseback Riding from him after taking his capital in 920 AD. Catapults and Elephants developed during the course of this war.

War 3 1015 AD Aztecs again - with Samurais this time; flattened Monty by 1060 AD.

War 4 1095 AD Inca - At this point I had a veteran cadre of city raider III Samurais, and I was running downhill from here. Some knights as well. I took the Incas down to one sad city and extorted Divine Right from them in 1230 AD.

War 5 1265 AD India - I rolled India, driving him down to 1 small city (notice a pattern?) and extorting tech/cash in 1355 AD; I wiped the Incas as well in this period. Unfortunately, England dropped a culture bomb in an isolated backfield city between India and Inca, which left me just shy of a much earlier win. And England had an actual army (knights, maces, etc.) Fortunately, I had nothing better to do than churn out gobs of units; I gave up tech after Cavalry/Rifles and pushed my culture slider up to fill empty spaces.

War 6 1400 AD England - I massed my forces, with pikemen everywhere and mobile cavalry to deal with raiders. Some samurais upgraded to rifles. England was eliminated in 1500, and I went over the domination limit in 1505.

No info on advanced resources, as I never saw them, and very little in the way of boats either.

Nakhimov, what were the chances of destroying Asoka in your game? In mine he was a tech leader but way at the bottom of the score and power rankings, so it was relatively easy to go on to attack the Indians. Was Asoka a military wimp in most games?

He was one of the tech leaders, but was still 3 or 4 on the score list. He evidently wasn't that strong, though, judging from the way Victoria rolled him up. The key was that he had riflemen and I didn't. If I had gone for rifles and military tradition, I probably could have taken him fairly easily, but I was beelining for Mass Media via mostly peaceful techs. The most powerful units I ever ended up fielding were a few cavs just before the win.

After setting up my military factory as described in spoiler 1, I had enough axes to strike Hatsepsut, she was biggest in score, but I didn't think her military would be ready for Axes... I was a few turns away from samurai, so I figured I could take 1 or 2 cities, upgrade some axes to samurai and send more reinforcements later.

I didn't need the reinforcements... as about 10 axes(which were later partly upgraded) with city raider 2 could easily take out her archers.

Once I thought I had all her cities, she was still alive... ok, so she has a city somewhere else, made peace and started a nice little war on 2 fronts. On 1 receiving end there was Monty... Who didn't like the samurai that much... On the other end was Saladin, who gave a little more trouble with his longbows and high culture.

I dedicated 1 city to build nothing but Cats to help fight longbows and once I had the army running I didn't look back...

Made a few mistakes later on, cos I hadn't promoted samurai too anti-horses and I didn't bother building elephants...... so that delayed victory by abou 10 turns or something like that... my research halted because of civic upkeep... I traded for Guilds and started to build Knights and anti-horse samurai.
I also didn't milk the game, so I feel my score can be beaten easily and the date can be beaten as well...

Ended up winning by domination in 1300 AD, with a score of about 131K...

Challenger Class -

Well, I will say that starting with zero techs really sucks. Really changed my plans, as I doubted I'd be able to accomplish all that I needed, and get Oracle + Stonehenge in the same city now for a Civil Service slingshot that I'd toyed with. To top it off...

I moved the settler two SW to the forested hill, and wasn't happy. But, with no real better options in sight, I stayed there. Not any bonus resources, not many trees. Yeah, not happy at all, but oh well.

There was only one real great city site that I liked, to the south, which is where my 2nd city went, 3rd went to the copper. I didn't have any issues with barbs, having sent warriors to all city sites well before the settlers were built for them. That means that hardly any barbs spawned. I did see one barb axe in the N while my best units were still warriors, but I led him over to Monty with a spare warrior.


Research Path:
Agriculture
Mining
Bronze Working (nearby bronze allowed me to ignore archery)
Animal Husbandry
Writing
Wheel (Put this off too long, and almost got burned by it. Bronze doesn't help when you can't hook it up.)
Mysticism (Chopped Stonehenge)
Meditation
Priesthood (Oracle completed the turn before I even learned this)
Hunting
Alphabet

Now I normally never trade Alpha, but surprisingly, it was the only tech I had to trade. So I did.

Alpha + Meditation to Inca for Fishing + Archery + Mathematics
Alpha to Asoka for Poly + Pottery + Masonry (Yeah, no cottages yet)
Next turn, Alpha + Pottery to Saladin for Iron Working + Sailing

310AD learned Construction first. Traded it around and I got Code of Laws, Calendar, Monotheism, and a bunch of gold for it. I could have improved my tech pace by spamming cottages early, but I wanted to kill things, not research techs.

I stopped keeping track of techs at this point. In the end, Cavs/Rifles/Grenadiers were my most advanced units available. I did learn Biology, but only on the winning turn, so it made no difference...not like I was going to milk anyway, too boring for me.


Cities:
3960BC - Kyoto
1925BC - Osaka
1100BC - Tokyo
720BC - Edo
280BC - Satsuma
120AD - Kagoshima

All other cities were captured. I auto-razed two cities though.


Civics:
Once I got the option to use these, I never changed from them...

Hereditary Rule + Org Religion + Caste System + Vassalage + Free Market

OrgRel seems odd at first glance for a warring civ, but it helped me get newly captured cities up to speed, and I felt it was more valuable than turning 6xp into 8xp with Theocracy. Quick Courthouses would be more important to me. I'm usually a big fan of Bureacracy, but the capital sucked, and I didn't feel like moving the palace.


Religion:
I adopted Buddhism after Monty/Hatty/Sal/Vicky did. I kept it the whole time, even though Sal and Vicky eventually converted to other religions. I didn't found any religions, but I captured 3 shrines.


Wonders:
I built Stonehenge in 1525BC, but the Oracle was built by Hatty in 925BC before I even had the tech for it. I was hoping to get both of those...Oracle for CoL, and Prophet for Civil Service, but that just wasn't going to happen. I pretty much ignored most wonders after this. The only others I built were the Taj Mahal, Hanging Gardens, and Versailles.


Great People:
Well...I didn't take any notes on GP's. I turned Thebes into a GP factory. I know I used five GP's for two GA's, two Scientists for Academies, one Merchant for a trade mission. The other handful of GP's researched techs for me.


Wars:
580AD - 840AD I declared on Hatty first. I wasn't worried about Monty declaring on me, he and I were pretty decent friends at this point, and I was sure he'd go for the Incas first. Hatty had the Buddhist Holy City though, which is what I wanted, as she was spamming missionaries. I captured five cities, auto-razed one, then sued for peace, getting Drama + all her gold. I captured Parthenon and the Buddhist Holy City (with Shrine worth 22gpt).

1105AD - 1150AD Declared on Hatty again. Captured last two cities. She'd founded Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. She'd even made a Christian Shrine for me. I also captured the Great Library in her last city, Memphis, which also had almost 10 workers in it as a bonus. Hatty pretty much built my civ for me. :lol:

1185AD - 1220AD Monty had started a war with the Inca like I'd predicted, and the Inca asked me for help. I wasn't exactly ready yet, but I wanted one good friend, and this was my chance. Unfortunately, most of my army was in the S, and intended to stay there for a visit to Sal. I did capture two cities from Monty with some crafty moves, and declared war on Saladin during this time as well. Monty had way more troops than I did in the N, so I sued for peace and took what little gold he had.

1195AD - 1325AD As I said, I declared on Saladin while warring Monty. I captured five Arab cities, including his capital. I took Music + Gold for peace because Victoria declared on me.

1325AD - 1425AD Victoria sent a total of one Knight at me. Scary stuff. I couldn't get to her at all (because I'd made peace with Sal), unless I shipped an army by boat. So I just let her rot for a bit, and finally got peace by starving her coastal cities with a couple galleys. She gave me her gold to go away. I was busy up N anyway.

1370AD - 1445AD Declared on Monty again. I'd started a GA by building Taj Mahal just before this, and extended it to 20 turns with GP's. Captured seven cities, left him with that peninsula city that I didn't want to bother with at the time. All his gold for peace.

1445AD - 1500AD Declared on Sal again. Captured his last three cities, Sal is dead.

1500AD - 1580AD Declared on Monty and Victoria to kick this off the same turn I killed off Sal. Finished off Monty in one turn. Declared on Asoka a few turns later when my troops crossed Incan lands and reached his borders. I also started a third and final GA in 1505AD. I captured all but two of Asoka's cities, and left Victoria with three. Got everything they had for peace. All I needed was a couple of cities to come out of resistance now, and expand borders once or twice.


Final Comments:
The Incas were the only civ I never warred with. I usually try to make one good friend in every game, and he was the lucky one here. Somewhere around +15 or so.

I really wasn't impressed with the starting land, especially for the capital. I did enjoy the map overall, I'd not played a full Inland Seas map game before.

My tech pace was rather slow, as I only had two commerce cities out of my first six, both on the West side where nobody could pillage over borders. I could have easily improved tech rate by spamming cottages, I just find that strategy to be too simplistic. I was still able to gain a sizable tech lead through good trading, cash from capturing cities, and a few key GP. I think I only had 4 commerce cities, one GP city, and the rest just cranked out units.

The only navy I built was a few galleys to keep a lookout, leaving almost every city but border cities guarded by a single troop, a warrior in many cases. This allowed me to build a large army and attack in the N and S, instead of just one way.

The two obvious things I could have done to improve the results would have been cottage spam and milking. I don't like either though. :)

The End:
Domination in 1600AD
5017/108,378

Some pictures as well...

The six cities I built.
115458

Messing with Monty.
115459

End of Sal, and declaring on Vicky. I was going to wait a turn to consolidate troops, but the borders of her city would expand the next turn. By declaring on this turn, I was able to move the cats next to the city without trudging across expanded borders.
115460

End of the Wars, 4 turns before win. I was at around 60% here, just needed two cities to come out of resistance and get a couple borders expanded.
115461

Some final numbers.
115462

contender, domination 1560AD, 133732 score.

I really didn't expect to get that much score because in test games I was barely able to catch up with the AIs. The smart thing that I did was giving up building pyramid. This decision saved me a lot of shields to build my army. The only wonders I've built were oracle and GL ( I wanted stonehedge too, but was beaten to it by Hatty ). I was focused on army from early on and decided to take o Monty first because I just hate him SO much.

330AD - 850AD Aztec war. Wasn't the hard one, allthough Monty had managed to recapture Tenochtitlan once.

1005AD - 1180AD Incan war. I've got Samurai just after Monty's defeat so Incas were slaughtered fast and with almost no losses. And this could be even faster because I had to bring some cats to take the capitol.

1270AD - 1390AD Egyptian war. I've decided to turn back and conquer Hatty and Saladin because my empire became big and it was taking more than 10 turns before newly built units arrived in the battlefield, which was unacceptible to me.

1435AD - 1515AD Arabian war. Saladin was weak so no problem here.

1525AD - 1560AD I was very close to the domination limit by then and wanted to capture some big fat tasty looking English cities to add population and score. A serious mistake. As I conquered two border cities an English stack of doom containing ~15 grenadiers, some musketeer and few cavalries and knights appeared out of the darkness. The majority of my cavalries was wiped out next turn ( they were damaged, most <10 strength ) and Hastings was lost. I've recaptured it 2 times before I set the culture slider to 100% and finished the game.

I think could add another 5-10K to the score if I micromanaged workers and cities. But it is very boring so I just automated workers and set cities to emphasise growth. And I should have beelined for biology right after military tradition to allow cities to grow even bigger. I expect to see some >170K scores here.

So at this point I have an uneasy stalemate with Monty to the East, and fairly good relations with Hatty to the south. I have converted to christianity (Hatty's religion, which she so happily spread in my territory with missionaries). The +4 for same religion far outweighs the -3 for you attacked me.

Monty and I keep building up our forces. The border of the city that I attaced is right next to the city becuase Mony has a large culture monster nearby, so he is able to have his stack right next to my city.

By the time I was able to get Samurais, most everyone else had knights or other powerful units, so my hopes of conquest were a little dashed.

Monty's stack had at least 20 knights and who knows how many other units in the mega stack of doom outside my city. (is there any way to find out how many total units are in a tile, or is all you have to go with the "..." at the bottom of the 20 or so units it will display?)

I have maybe 10 elephants, 8 or so Samurai, 5 cats, and have started to build musket men and grenadiers, and finally riflemen.

At 1700 AD I decide that it is now or never. Either I take out Monty's stack (and hopefully break his back), or I will lose pittifully.

I attack.

By now he had 3 or 4 riflemen in his stack as well. After attacking with my cats in an attempt to get as much collateral damage as possible, I go in with my grenadiers and elepants. Not going to happen. He has too many units. So I decide to stay in my city and let him attack me (heck - let me get all the culture and defensive bonuses - hopefully he will not prevail!)

Wrong. He must have had 80+ units in that stack. It took at least 10 minutes just for him to attack my city with units in that stack. He had at least 20 cats, more than 20 knights, riflemen, elephants, you name it.

Suffice to say, I lost. He was able to capture/destroy 4 of my cities and almost all of my improvements over the next 100 years or so. I just kept producing riflemen to attempt to stem the tide. When I only had 4 cities left (and by now knew I was going to lose), his drive finally petered out.

At this point I wanted to get it over with, and would rather that Hatty or some other civ would get my cities instead of Monty, that I declared suicide war on everyone else.

It was not much longer than that that I was eliminated. Final score around 820. Year was early 1800s.

So now I have a noob question on submission files. I may have screwed up here and prevented myself from submitting my game:

See, I didn't save the game in my last turn (dumb mistake - didn't even think about how to submit the game). Since I lost by conquest, there was no option to play one more turn and save. I might have my replay file that I could submit, but here is the other idiot thing I did - I started a new game the next day, so I probably don't even have the autosave files from this game. Is there any way to submit this game? If not, I guess I'll just have to wait until next month...

lessee...

was beset by barbarians early and often.

they kept me down, and I couldn't produce enough to defend 3 cities, so I fell back.

Just as I had regained sufficient strength to hold off the barbarians and start turning back towards production, the guy in yellow decided he wanted my little kingdom and stomped me.

Game over, about 250AD.

p.s. playing single player I can only beat noble about 20% of the time.

Contender class (that's the middle one right?), Domination victory 1640, 125k

Nothing special about this win.

Declared war on Montezuma in 430 AD with swordsmen or Samurai, I can't remember, the Aztec Empire was sacked by 640 AD.
In 770 AD, this time with catapults, Huyana Capac was next on the list, the Incans were gone by 1040.
Meanwhile Hatseput got axed in 1130 AD, after war started in 800 AD.

Good old Asoka, with his nine thousand shrines, followed suit. In a war that lasted from 1055AD to 1310 the Indian empire ceased to exist

Next on the list was tech and point leader Saladin, in 1060 AD war was declared and the little bugger held out to 1355 AD

The only one left was Victoria. By 1380 she knew what was coming but could do nothing about it. My first batch of Axemen were by that time Grenadiers with 3 city raider promotions, the anti-archery promotion and the anti-gunpowder promotion, so even the handful of musketeers that she had invented couldn't turn the tide. In 1455 AD my two big army (clockwise and anti-clockwise) groups merged in London after capturing it. Victoria was down to one last city in 1455 and I decided to give that whole milking concept a try.

Now as I understood correctly the key to milking is to not produce any culture in the bulk of your cities, and research Biology asap. So I didn't and did. However, to my horror I saw that even state religion produces culture, so I quickly converted to Free Religion as you then do not have a state religion. The cost was 3 or 4 turns of anarchy, but it was worth it I guess. Unfortunately with Free Religion, instead of only your state religion producing culture, ALL religions produce culture. So I changed back to Paganism (3 turns of anarchy) and then switched to Judaism (3 turns of anarchy) as I only had one city with that religion.

By that time I was basically fed up with the game, but decided to ride it out. I researched biology and waited for my population to boom. However another factor I was not taking into account was culture provided by specialists. As cities harvested all their fields (or rather all fields with food on them) the remaining citizens became specialists. Long before my optimal points I hit the 64% land area threshold and consequently a domination victory. Not that I would have had a particularly high score otherwise, but I am still wondering what my highest score would have been.

Lessons learned:
1) Inland sea + monarch dificulty = relatively easy domination victory
2) Milking is something I can probably learn how to do well, but won't want to. If anything fancy I'll go for earliest domination win in the future.
3) When suing for peace civilizations are unwilling to give you more than their lowest technology, when you previously razed 6 or so of their cities.

Contender class

This was my first Monarch game and my first GOTM submission. I lost to the Inca on space race in 1915. I think I had a fairly sound strategy I just made some major timing errors and did not pursue some wonders that could have helped.

My basic strategy was to establish 3 or 4 citys then hit Monty and take his territory and advance to the east. I hoped to gain enough territory and land to jump ahead in economy.

I attacked Monty before I had a large enough army to complete the objective. I was only able to take out 2 of his cities and had to sue for piece. I started shoring up my boarders and started to focus on the economy again. I established 2 or 3 cities in land that I had blocked out up in the upper west. I was a bit behind in tech and was tying to figure out how to improve.

The Icans asked my help to take Monty out a bit later. Although, I did not have strong military, I accepted, because I need more land sooner or later. Monty hit me hard the next turn and took over three of my cities. I went to full war mode and took them back and took out about 4 of cities to include his capital. Monty was gone. During the war I fell further behind in tech. I had to turn off science to upgrade my units to survive.

With Monty gone I evaluated my changes to go after the inca or Hatty I felt I was too weak. I was behind in tech and with new citys I had a lot of unhappy people. I just stayed in build mode the rest of the game. I did not have the land to get a good enough economy to win.

I think If I had tried for the orical and

or the GL I might have done better. I also need to make a bigger army before I head to war.

Adventurer class, died in 270AD to Montezuma.

I went for mysticism and polytheism and founded Hinduism in 3000 BC. Found Osaka south near the ivory and dyes in 1975 BC. Research towards animal husbandry, then archery, mining and bronze working. Found Tokyo east of Kyoto in 900 BC, in hopes of hooking the copper up. Monty then converts to Hinduism, my religion. I found my fourth city, Edo, on the coast east of Osaka in 180BC, then Montezuma declares war on me in 60 BC. This is from being pleased and sharing a religion, and also before I can utilise my newly connected copper to build axemen. My copper gets pillaged and my archers get run over by infinite chariots and axemen. Final score of 229.

What did I do wrong? Maybe I should have not gone for hinduism and instead gone for bronze working to see where the copper was, and founded my 2nd city near it instead of my 3rd. But then I didn't know I was next door to a psycopath like Monty! If I'd have gone to the long game, my Hinduism would have been excellent because Hatty converted to it by the end too. Any tips would be appreciated.

I played contender class.

Basically I did the standard opening, moving my settler to the plains/forest for my first city. I founded five cities by 40BC and developed infrastructure and explored until 120AD when I attacked the Egyptians. They had the highest score at the time. I took five cities by 640AD and then declared peace.

At this point I decided not to go for a conquest victory as I did not have horses. Instead I thought I would go for a space race victory. My only problem was a series of wars with Montezuma, but as I had a tech lead I was able to fend him off without too many problems. My biggest competition was with Saladin, but I was able to launch my spaceship in 1902 for a final score of around 18,000.


Not a great game by some standards, but for me a Monarch level win is pretty satisfying.

Contender, Domination - my first Monarch game!

As noted in Spoiler 1, I played conservatively with a giant net of warriors to keep back the fog of war [first attached picture below]. I also learned the Alt-S shortcut for placing labels on the map, which made it much easier to plan where to put cities, and what improvements still needed to be made.

Strategically, I was friends with by fellow Buddhists Hatty and Saladin throughout the entire game. I swept the Jewish infidels going clockwise from Aztecs, Incas, India, and England. It was all really easy because I didn't have to worry about Egypt and the Arabs.

One big question I have is about bringing allies into war. Even though I was constantly at war, I never brought Hatty or Saladin in with me. For one, I figured it would take too long for their armies to get to the front, even if they decided to send any. Second, I didn't want my allies capturing any territory that I wanted for myself. Finally, I didn't want them to develop too large a military in case they decided to turn on me.

Was this a good idea? Maybe I could have slowed down Hatty and Saladin's economic growth if they were busy fighting some wars with me - as it was, they were a solid #2 and #3 for the whole game.

In the end Saladin switched to Free Religion, and since I had nothing better to do, I used this excuse to bribe Hatty into attacking him, just to keep those two busy. I have no idea if this was a good idea, or even if it actually did anything. :confused:

Final result, domination by 1600 with ~80,000 points [second attached picture below]. That Egyptian blob in the southeast is the result of them conquering a barbarian city and then capturing one or two cities from the Arabs in that last, pointless war. I haven't yet learned how to expand fast enough to dominate the world by 1300 - how do people get Code of Laws so early?!

first spoiler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3676606&postcount=17)

So, did the "worker wars" (-hendrikszoon) pay off?

Yup, but I screwed up.

Al AI's were crippled as it seemed, just by crippling three of them by stealing a worker each. They were backward, I could finish the orracle in 560BC, and they never got the chance to go to war with me. On the downside, I have never, ever even seen a cautious face throughout the game (well... the first encounter was coutious). Mainly due to me being Confu, and because monty asked me to stop trading with the civs that I didn't steal a worker from, so there was a -1 from them too (I did what monty said to get him to like me enough so I could start the war, and not him).

As for barbs, I've never seen them throughout the game (well, in the later game I had some open because of razed cities where the occasional longbow would spawn, but nothing serious) The trick really is to just bust that FoW. Find those hills, and bust the FoW to the boundaries of the map or the boundaries of you're neighbours, and you're fine. Really, nothting to it.

So, as for the game after spoiler one.

From 300BC on I started massing samurai. I built 3 stacks, each with one medic+march, one or two potential "captured city defenders" (City garisson I+II longbows), and for the rest cover and city raider I promoted samurai. Also from 630AD on, the stacks got upgraded with two or three colateral I and accuracy promoted cats. Oh, and of course two workers per stack to chop courthouse and longbows in captured cities.

First off, I had to have Jute, a barb city on the best spot on the map (plains hill smack in the middle of the ivory and all the other goodies). I captured it in 540AD.

Then finally in 780AD, it was real war time. I declaired on both hatti and monty in the same turn, both having nothing but archers. I destroyed Giza that turn.

In 900 AD Thebes fell, and I took a breather to replenish the stacks and build defenders. The same held after capturing Teotihuacan.

In 970AD I had guilds, and horsies from the aztects, so mass production of saumarai switched to knights.

In 1010AD it was war time again for hatti and in 1180AD she was down to 0.
In 1055AD it was war time for monty at which time he had longbows, but he was gone in 1125AD. She never saw a longbow of her own.

In the turn I killed hatti, I declared on HC capturing 2 cities in 5 turns. (Corihuayrachina in 1200AD). One turn later I discoverd chemistry, and slowly started upgrading my cover+shock+combat II, cityraider III samu's to grenadiers.

By that time my economy was a mess, and with science on 0% I only did 60 to 70 gpt.

1265 AD: War with saladin. Up against war elephants and longbows and I was a bit weakened from war with hatti. He recaptured one of his cities, costing me an aditional couple of units to get it back. I sued for peace and techs, and the next turn he had a golden age...

Around this time things started going baddish. Not as bad as it could be, but I got slow, war weariness was a big issue, my economy was a mess (no discoveries for centuries at the time). I lost a lot of time waiting for the 10 turns of peace to get over and getting enough city garisson over to the new cities so the city raider grenadiers could join the front again instead of polishing there granades...

It was only in 1510 AD that HC and Saladin were finaly destroyed (just seeing their first muskets).

Meanwhile back in 1385 I declared on Asoka, while waiting to be able to go to war with HC again. I never destroyed Asoka, but did get his holy holy city (Christianity and Islam).

Saladins territory was mostly taken by the English, who were quite powerfull by this time. They had grenadiers and knights as well, and because my economy was so bad, I would never be able to get them. In time, so I stopped research forever (after having biology for a little bit of population growth in 1550 AD.

The last couple of turns nothing much happened. I wanted the game to be over so constructed lots of theatres and finally:

Turn 352, 1610 AD:
Tokugawa has completed The Hanging Gardens!
You have constructed The Hanging Gardens in Alexandria. Work has now begun on a Theatre.
The borders of Khurasan have expanded!

Turn 353, 1615AD:
The borders of Byblos have expanded!
The borders of Alexandria have expanded!
The borders of Vitcos have expanded!
The borders of Ollantaytambo have expanded!
The borders of Huamanga have expanded!
The borders of Vilcas have expanded!

Turn 354, 1620AD:
The borders of Kushans have expanded!
The borders of Kolhapur have expanded!
The borders of Teoihuacan have expanded!
The borders of Bombay have expanded!

Turn 355, 1625AD:
The borders of Memphis have expanded!
The borders of Mecca have expanded!

Domination with <90000 points. Hmm.. not too much, but hey, it's my first domination ever :crazyeye:

Some nice screenies to finish off with:
1: lonly settler... wtf??
2: The aura of the sungod?
3: Mountain temple.. nice!
4: I win :king:

My initial plans were to go for the domination victory. THings got off to a slow start though and some great land for expansion to the south was taken up by Egypt. I got the Great Lib and was able to keep a slight tech advantage until I went to war with the Aztec.

They attacked me several times which slowed my growth and without any horses I had to chase down their pillaging chariots and horse archers with spearmen. Once I finally got my offensive underway it was around 500AD and I had to bring Catapults along with my samuri. It was a slow going war which devastaed my economy and set me very far behind in tech. I previously converted to Christianity and changed civis to theocracy and while the vetrancy was a bonus it might have done too much damage to my economy.

By the time I had the Aztecs to two cities I had to make peace due to crippling war wearyness. As I built a new bunch of cataputs to take their capitol Egypt decarled war on the aztecs and set a huge army of rifemen and knights through my lands. I joined in and was able to take the capitol while egypt raised the 2 cities it captured.

Although I had planned to attack egypt next, and I really wanted the Christian holy city just south of my borders, I realized that Egypt had an army that was both larger than mine and more advanced.

It looked like my best option now was diplomacy. I had excelent realtions with Egypt due to open borders and shared faith as well as good realations with the Arabs. Since the Incas had recently surpased Egypt for having the most points I figured I could benefit form my good realtions and win against the inca's with the UN

With some shrewd use of Great people I was able to trade for some technonogy and by swiching around my civics I was able to get my science rate from 60% up to 90%.

I was also able to further strenthen my realtions with Egypt and Arabia by signing defensive pacts. By wooing England I hoped to get her votes as well and after bribing her to convert to christianity I was able to get a defensive pact with her as well.

In the mid 1800s I rushed the UN with GP engineers and took enough votes for a 19,000 point win.

By the end of the game my miliatary was a joke of a few dozen samuri while SAM inf were all over the place. Also I was losing a cultural war with egypt as their holy city to the south was really pushing back some of my borders, even 2 great artists seemed to have no effect.

A shoddy win but I will take it. I need to get better at

Adventurer class

well first post for me and first GTOM and first monarch game...
Since I didn't take notes, I write a brief summary.

I lost the space race to capac in 1919, being myself only 15 votes from a diplo victory... That makes me wish I hadn't declared war on Vicky to please one of my friends (don't remember which) in the earlier stages of the game:lol:

My error is that I have not been aggressive enough, since i only fought Monty twice (apart from Vicky) and although i managed to destroy him, it took me almost 200 years.
After the ashes fell down on his former empire in 1700 I was far behind in techs but friendly whith everyone, except Vicky of course, so I decided to cruise to a diplo win. Alas, i let hatty establish a city on the former aztec territory, a city whose votes i could have used for sure:blush:. i did farm and windmill my entire land but in the end i missed vicky's vote...

Never mind my game was quite exciting and i learned much i guess...

Thanks to the gtom team for such an interesting game (plus it is much more interesting to read the spoilers and comparing to what the other players did).

base score 4354
final 5179.9 (the minus 15% argh)

Waiting for GTOM 5

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Domination Victory for Japan
Game date: 1859 AD
Base score: 6837
Final score: 45870

First, this was my first real GOTM. I found out about it last month, and played the GOTM, and totally cheated because I never read the rules. Then I saw a thread on cheating and I realized that I had somehow missed the whole spirit of the thing.

Second, I thought I had done pretty well based on the previous GOTM scores, but it turns out I'm still a total noob. But it was fun to play knowing that the stupid archer who killed two warrirors in your city was really screwing you over. :)

Rather than rehashing everything I did, I wanted to ask a few questions based on differences I'm seeing in how people have played...

1. Fog & Barbs

To avoid having too much problem with Barbs, I generally put a few warriors out on hills so that there are no squares without visibility. I did it this game as usual, but related questions:

1A. Does your cultural border see? If so, how far does your cultural border extend in terms of being able to see? Is it always one square or can it be two if its a hill?

1B. Does it work exactly the same in terms of Barbs spawning with the AIs. I lost one city to a Barb archer when I stupidly moved my Warrior back into the city. I swear that the Barb spawned in a square adjacent to the AI. Part of the reason I moved them back in was that I thought that between my border and Egypt's border we could see the squares. BTW - the archer killed my warrior and a second warrior in two straight turns. Luckily it was a brand new city.

1C. Is there any way to determine if a square is currently being seen? I can sorta tell based on the graphics, but I'd like to be 100% sure to not be surprised like that in the future.

2. How many Axemen?

My great plan was to get to swords pretty quuickly in case I didn't get copper, but also so that I could find out where the iron was early. I also hate losing Axemen to archers which is what always seems to happen when I use them to attack.

But several people seemed to just hook up the copper and get Axemen and go out and conquer someone. That surprises me.

So, let's say you are going against a city with 3 archers, not on a hill and no city 20% defense or anything, one archer has city defense upgrade, rest are vanilla. How many Axemen with what upgrades do you bring to the party? How many are you going to lose in taking the city? Is it worth it to lose that many?

3. Go for Swords?

By the time I finally got Swordsmen going in my game,

My first bit of research:
3440BC: You have discovered Pottery!
3040BC: You have discovered Mining!
2360BC: You have discovered Bronze Working!
1700BC: You have discovered Iron Working!
1475BC: You have discovered Writing!
900BC: You have discovered Alphabet!

Monty was running around with a few Axemen and everyone in the game liked Egypt, so I ended up not pulling the trigger. Instead I built a small force of Axes and Swords (maybe 8) and Monty attacked me in 410.

I had already switched gears to go after Samuri, so it wasn't like I was sitting there doing nothing, but still I felt it was a waste to get Iron early. I am wondering if that isn't almost always going to be the case in Monarch.

What do you think, on Monarch+ is it worth going for Iron to get swords for an attack?


4. Wait between Battles?

In the war with Monty in 410, I basically killed a bunch of his guys and took one city, but couldn't go any farther without heavy losses, so I just waited until 870 when I had samuri and began to smack him around. I captured all of his cities but one by 1055. Made peace.

Now, I had a decent force and I could have gone right to war with Hyua or Egypt. But from my days with previous Civs, I am trained to wait for War Weariness to wear off before starting up again. I know the same thing holds here, but I didn't bother to see how long.

I've been surprised to see how many people just go straight into the next war.

Should you wait between wars? If so, how long? If not, then how do you keep weariness from dragging you down?


5. Adopt Religion

Somewhere I read someone who had done really well in a GOTM and they didn't adopt a religion cause they didn't want to make enemies. I did the same thing, but found that while my attitude numbers were generally green, I couldn't get people to make war on each other and couldn't trade techs after a while.

I noticed that a lot of the previous posts had adopted religion fairly early and I assume you had the usual split then of Friendly / Annoyed AIs.

5A. Doesn't that hurt your ability to keep up in techs? Or are you able to trade enough with your friends to keep up?

5B. Are other people not adopting? Or am I just lame? Wait don't answer the second part. :)


6. All Out War

After I attacked Monty, I kinda stalled out. I was a bit behind on technology and didn't feel like I would be able to go after Huay or Eygpt. Also, they were friendly enough with other guys that I was worried that I'd have a couple people attack me at the same time. And, I didn't want to go down in flames on my very first GOTM.

From reading what other people did, it sounded like they just merryily go onto the next battle. No concern about attitude of others. Those who could would bring in someone to fight with them. But, mostly it sounds like once you start attacking you just keep it going.

6A. I wonder how many people get other folks declaring on you. It happened to me in several practice games.

6B. And, how do you stay up on tech and still keep producing enough units. Do you just not build new tech buildings and other stuff like that and just pump units?


7. English Attacked India

I saw someone else mention this. Just as I was getting worried because since I had stalled after taking Monty, I was sitting there losing the tech race. Luckily England attacked India and I quickly joined. Wow, India had some nice cities with Shrines. Pretty much sealed the deal for me.

I felt pretty stupid because I had NO CLUE that the English would attack them and I was thinking, gosh, I should have got them to do it before. Other than the obvious of paying attention to attitudes, is there anything else you can do to have a sense of it. How reliable is that as an indicator?

----

By the way, does anyone else find it hard to read all the different postings and tell what's the same or different about their strategies? Other than comparing initial tech research and the first few moves, I have a hard time.

I felt it was a waste to get Iron early. I am wondering if that isn't almost always going to be the case in Monarch.

IW may be needed for a number of things:
chopping jungle (for health or resources)
showing iron to help choose new city sites
making swords or UU


As with everything else in CIV there's no 'always', just depends on your plans and position. Can't remember whether I researched IW before or after Alpha in this game, but I don't think it would have been a waste.

AI often holds back on trading IW so you may have to research it yourself, even if you get Alpha first.


What do you think, on Monarch+ is it worth going for Iron to get swords for an attack?

Again, depends on your P+P. I don't always rate Swords that high, particularly if you have some axes with decent promotions.


Should you wait between wars? If so, how long? If not, then how do you keep weariness from dragging you down?

I believe I have read in the forum that war weariness is specific to each civ you're at war with. If you end a war with one, then all the WW attached to that war ends. If you immediately declare on a different civ then you start from scratch. Even if you have simultaneous wars and end your longest, your WW will go down. If I have misunderstood this then I'm sure I'll be corrected :)

I noticed that a lot of the previous posts had adopted religion fairly early and I assume you had the usual split then of Friendly / Annoyed AIs.

5A. Doesn't that hurt your ability to keep up in techs? Or are you able to trade enough with your friends to keep up?

Trading is far easier if you have friends, but again it depends what your plans are. Others have mentioned extorting techs during ceasefire negotiations, though I've found that often an AI will accept elimination rather than part with a tech, even an old one. Your friends will usually give you enough opportunity to trade if that's what you want and if you're developing your own techs to offer them.

5B. Are other people not adopting? Or am I just lame? Wait don't answer the second part. :)

Again, religion is used in a number of ways. Many people have mentioned adopting Hat's religion to keep her sweet so that your back is protected as you sweep round the rest of the map.

6A. I wonder how many people get other folks declaring on you. It happened to me in several practice games.

Don't imagine many people had Monty not declare on them. Depends as much on how weak they perceive you to be as how friendly they are to you. Several folks have reported how their best mate Monty suddenly turned on them.

6B. And, how do you stay up on tech and still keep producing enough units. Do you just not build new tech buildings and other stuff like that and just pump units?

I'm looking forward to some interesting answers here!

Other than the obvious of paying attention to attitudes, is there anything else you can do to have a sense of it. How reliable is that as an indicator?

Like you, I've been caught out by some of the declarations, so I can't offer much other than to watch religion, border pressure, key resources etc.

By the way, does anyone else find it hard to read all the different postings and tell what's the same or different about their strategies? Other than comparing initial tech research and the first few moves, I have a hard time.

This has a lot to do with the fact that there has been a lot of similarity in the games for IVOTM 3. Sort of set up by the map, civ and neighbours. Only of a few of us oddballs done something different like founding religion, so you'll see a hugh proportion of domination victories.

1A. Does your cultural border see? If so, how far does your cultural border extend in terms of being able to see? Is it always one square or can it be two if its a hill?

Yes, it does "see". You can tell by the tiles that are no longer under the Fog of War. If it's lit up, you see it. All the tiles touching your borders will be lit up. In some cases, it will see further (over water, or if the next tile is a hill/mt).

1B. Does it work exactly the same in terms of Barbs spawning with the AIs. I lost one city to a Barb archer when I stupidly moved my Warrior back into the city. I swear that the Barb spawned in a square adjacent to the AI. Part of the reason I moved them back in was that I thought that between my border and Egypt's border we could see the squares.

I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure it works the same way. One possibility is that the barb didn't spawn then, but that it was already wandering around. I don't believe that barbs spawn adjacent to any AI civ's units/borders.

1C. Is there any way to determine if a square is currently being seen? I can sorta tell based on the graphics, but I'd like to be 100% sure to not be surprised like that in the future.

Well, the squares you can see are lit up. But no, you can't tell exactly what squares the AI can see. It will have units someplace you can't see, so you wouldn't know. Same for borders...they might have expanded or something, and you wouldn't know.

2. How many Axemen?

So, let's say you are going against a city with 3 archers, not on a hill and no city 20% defense or anything, one archer has city defense upgrade, rest are vanilla. How many Axemen with what upgrades do you bring to the party? How many are you going to lose in taking the city? Is it worth it to lose that many?

Well, it depends. Is the city your only goal? Will the AI have enough troops nearby for a counterattack? Will you possibly get attacked on your way there? In the case you mention, the first archer is 5.1, the others are 4.5. Every axe (with aggressive civs) would start at 5.5. The odds are in your favor, but not by much. I'd probably bring six to be safe, giving you better than 2:1 odds of taking it. But then your military campaign is most likely over without reinforcements.

3. Go for Swords?

Monty was running around with a few Axemen and everyone in the game liked Egypt, so I ended up not pulling the trigger. Instead I built a small force of Axes and Swords (maybe 8) and Monty attacked me in 410.

I had already switched gears to go after Samuri, so it wasn't like I was sitting there doing nothing, but still I felt it was a waste to get Iron early. I am wondering if that isn't almost always going to be the case in Monarch.

What do you think, on Monarch+ is it worth going for Iron to get swords for an attack?

I don't wait for Iron. But when I get it, I start adding swords into my stacks. You don't need to wait around for the perfect army, and in most cases, you can't afford to. But sometimes, I'll wait for swords, it just depends on what's going on in the game.


4. Wait between Battles?

But from my days with previous Civs, I am trained to wait for War Weariness to wear off before starting up again. I know the same thing holds here, but I didn't bother to see how long.

I've been surprised to see how many people just go straight into the next war.

Should you wait between wars? If so, how long? If not, then how do you keep weariness from dragging you down?

If War Weariness isn't a problem and you have enough troops ready, there's no real reason to wait. In fact, sometimes, it can be beneficial to push ahead. In one of my spoiler screenshots, I showed why I finished off one civ and started on another on the same turn...because the way the borders would expand the next turn.

Remember that a lot of War Weariness is civ specific. I'm not completely sure how every detail of it works. But some is based on how many troops you've lost to that specific civ, as well as if they're the same religion, etc... When you kill off a civ, the WW will not go away until the next turn...but much/all of it does go away then. That allows you to switch targets and not miss a beat.


5. Adopt Religion

Somewhere I read someone who had done really well in a GOTM and they didn't adopt a religion cause they didn't want to make enemies. I did the same thing, but found that while my attitude numbers were generally green, I couldn't get people to make war on each other and couldn't trade techs after a while.

5A. Doesn't that hurt your ability to keep up in techs? Or are you able to trade enough with your friends to keep up?

Religion has both good and bad things. You have to make a choice as to which would be more valuable. Not every situation is the same. In this specific game, it's easier to declare a religion, because you only have two neighbors really. So you could possibly pick one to be friends with, and war the other.

5B. Are other people not adopting? Or am I just lame? Wait don't answer the second part. :)

I don't always adopt a religion. I did in this game. Mainly because four of the civs (including both neighbors) were all the same religion, so I could get a lot of benefit out of it. It actually wasn't the brightest idea though, because I got a lot of "we refuse to fight our brothers of the faith" WW, which I wasn't used to.

I think most people generally adopt some religion at some point. But there are times when it might be better not to. You just need to take all the other factors into account...that's what makes good players good...reading the situation and adapting to it.


6. All Out War

From reading what other people did, it sounded like they just merryily go onto the next battle. No concern about attitude of others. Those who could would bring in someone to fight with them. But, mostly it sounds like once you start attacking you just keep it going.

Remember that some of us normally play at higher levels. We aren't worried about getting dogpiled once we get our civ up and running, because we know the game well enough to handle it. If you played a level or two below what you are comfortable on, you'd be likely to think that the AI's are pushovers as well, and it doesn't matter what they do, you're still going to win.

6A. I wonder how many people get other folks declaring on you. It happened to me in several practice games.

Vicky declared on me. I think Asoka was going to after he cancelled OB and all trades with me, so I beat him to the punch. Both were from beating up Hatty/Sal, their friends. I just didn't care, for the reason mentioned above.

The other thing is just being prepared for it. Expect it. I kept units in Inca lands, just watching Asoka's borders. I knew Incas wouldn't attack me, so I left my northern cities vulnerable. Incas could have taken a few cities had they wanted, but they aren't core cities, and could easily be taken back. My army was in the South, so attacking those cities would be stupid.

I also had like three caravels watching the seas, so that no ship could pass without me seeing it. This map is just made for this type of thing, it doesn't work as well on other types.


6B. And, how do you stay up on tech and still keep producing enough units. Do you just not build new tech buildings and other stuff like that and just pump units?

Only my core cities ever get tech buildings. And I either spread their builds out so some are always producing units, or build them all at once and then all back to units. Maybe even a GA to build infra quickly. Newly captured cities get enough to get by, then a barracks, then units. Unless the city is just made to be turned into a science city or something. You also get a lot of gold from capturing cities, which powers defecit research. Just don't try to build everything in every city, you don't need it. Courthouse/Granary/Forge/some form of border expansion (theatre, specialist, culture slider) covers most cities, maybe a lighthouse. Then a barracks and pump units.

7. English Attacked India

I felt pretty stupid because I had NO CLUE that the English would attack them and I was thinking, gosh, I should have got them to do it before. Other than the obvious of paying attention to attitudes, is there anything else you can do to have a sense of it. How reliable is that as an indicator?

Watching diplomacy, overlapping borders, if they have open borders, if they're trading resources, if the option to stop trading/declare is available, different religions. All sorts of ways to guess, but you can never really know for sure. I thought Monty would attack the Incas instead of me based on a number of things, and I was right...but that doesn't mean I couldn't have been wrong.

----

By the way, does anyone else find it hard to read all the different postings and tell what's the same or different about their strategies? Other than comparing initial tech research and the first few moves, I have a hard time.

This really comes down to the poster providing a good writeup. I try to give reasons for why I do things, but some things may seem obvious to me, but not to others. Part of the reason this month is that so many people probably went with the same basic strategy...build units and kill everything.

I hope that kinda answers everything for you. That's a lot of questions. Still more entertaining than sitting through commercials though. :lol:

My great plan was to get to swords pretty quuickly in case I didn't get copper, but also so that I could find out where the iron was early. I also hate losing Axemen to archers which is what always seems to happen when I use them to attack.

But several people seemed to just hook up the copper and get Axemen and go out and conquer someone. That surprises me.

So, let's say you are going against a city with 3 archers, not on a hill and no city 20% defense or anything, one archer has city defense upgrade, rest are vanilla. How many Axemen with what upgrades do you bring to the party? How many are you going to lose in taking the city? Is it worth it to lose that many?

Swords are countered by axes. Axes aren't countered by anything. They're just not really good against anything except swords, so they're sort of an all-around unit that can attack anything but not really well. The point of the axe rush is to get at the enemy when he has fewer archers, less culture, and fewer cities. Also, most people in this game went for Montezuma first. Monty is hampered by the Jaguar, a weaker swordsman UU that he tends to build in place of axes, spears, and archers, and which makes a nice juicy target for axes. That said, I didn't axe rush because I had plenty of land to expand into without fighting. Rushing someone would have left me worse off and let other civs encroach on my early expansion.


5. Adopt Religion

Somewhere I read someone who had done really well in a GOTM and they didn't adopt a religion cause they didn't want to make enemies. I did the same thing, but found that while my attitude numbers were generally green, I couldn't get people to make war on each other and couldn't trade techs after a while.

I noticed that a lot of the previous posts had adopted religion fairly early and I assume you had the usual split then of Friendly / Annoyed AIs.

5A. Doesn't that hurt your ability to keep up in techs? Or are you able to trade enough with your friends to keep up?

5B. Are other people not adopting? Or am I just lame? Wait don't answer the second part. :)

Not in this game. Staying neutral works great if you're interested in forging lifelong alliances and staying out of wars. This month was a very aggressive game in which you wanted to gobble up lots of territory. Alliances would have gotten in the way and been less valuable than the theocracy bonus.

I definitely avoided early religions; I think it's extremely helpful in the opening game. Once I got a religion from one of my neighbors, I adopted it and kept it for the game. This gave me the religion bonus (and a trading partner) without the early diplomatic penalties.

GOTM 3 part 2 - The Quest for the Lost City

Contender class, going for domination

When I left off around 250 AD I had just taken 2 cities from Montezuma in a preliminary war and forced him to abandon representation in favor of hereditary rule. I had declared the first time because Monty’s failure to adopt an early religion had left him at peace with all his neighbors, and not building any military. After being attacked, I figured he’d be prepared the next time, so I massed axes and swords and researched to civil service/machinery around 800. I also started the great library and got beaten to it by 2 turns, then spent the refund on upgrading somewhere around 10-15 units to samurai. Monty didn’t even stand a chance this time. What really shocked me was that after being attacked by me, and being furious with me for centuries, and after adopting Taoism out of the blue and becoming his usual angry antisocial self, he still had only ~3 units per city. After breaking through his territory I finally found where the troops were:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4/GOTM3/Cowardice.jpg

Yes, folks, that’s the whole Aztec army cowering in fear in a tiny barbarian city while my samurai storm their capital. Not that they would have been more than a speed bump anyway. Actually he had enough presence of mind to use horse archers against my samurai, not that he had enough to make any real difference. By the time he got there some of the samurai were combat III against his unpromoted horse archers. This war got me an easy 5 cities. More importantly, it got me the pyramids and the resulting police state civic.

During the war, Huyana Capac started cancelling deals to protest my attack on his friend. Eager to give my samurai a real challenge, I declared on him and proved that longbowmen aren’t any better against samurai than plain archers are. The difference between this war and the last was merely that this time I actually needed to bombard down the cultural defenses before attacking. I also noticed that the Incan cities around the northeast corner of the map all had names like Assyrian and Yue-Chi. I think that HC and Asoka didn’t properly patrol their fog of war and probably suffered lots of barbarian attacks as a result. The war ended in 1195 with my empire stretched to the limit with city upkeep.

While I would have loved to make Asoka feel my wrath next, taking more cities would have tanked my economy, so I took a break. I built the FP in Cuzco, put up courthouses everywhere, and struggled back up to the tech lead. This period of rebuilding lasted until 1400, at which pont I had upgraded my army to grenadiers(with city raider), my artillery to cannons, and my civics to State property, in preparation for the final push to domination.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c193/EricOlson1979/Civ4/GOTM3/Success.jpg

India was a small but fairly advanced civ. If my grenadiers hadn’t had legacy city raider promotions, I would have faced a real challenge. As it was, I ended up with the fabled Holy City of HinBudJewism in my hands. Actually, it wasn’t much of a prize, since the one shrine (Jewish) in the city produced only ~15 gpt and I already had scientific method so I couldn’t easily spread it without giving up theocracy. But no bother. With another civ out of the way it was time to attack Victoria. No wait, Victoria has redcoats. No way I’m going to attack redcoats. Time to attack Egypt instead. True to form, Hatty hadn’t made any trouble for anyone, and hadn’t built up her military either. She also fell victim to a surprise attack by my veterans from the Indian campaign, who snuck through Arabic territory to invade one of her rear cities. The invasion stalled under heavy cavalry attack, but in the process all the Egyptian cavalry were drawn away from the main front, allowing my grenadiers free rein to take out her capital. Ultimately she simply ran out of cavalry when I pillaged her only horses.

After Egypt, I attack Saladin and began rolling over his territory only to be interrupted by a domination victory a few turns into the war. My final stats were:

Game date: 1678 AD
Base score: 5218
Final score: 88164

I see other submissions in the 100k+ range. I think my lesser score is attributable to the fact that I won before all the captured Egyptian cities had a chance to count toward my score. That and the fact that I took so long to get domination. I think that the main mistakes I made were:

Waiting too long to build the FP. I wanted it in a good position in the NE corner of the map, but if I’d poprushed it in Tenochtitlan, I would’ve had much less of a postwar slump after swallowing the Inca, and would have been able to hit Asoka earlier.

Not beelinig enough to machinery. I went for econ/culture techs to get my ecomony up to speed, but I really need those samurai earlier.

Not taking the pyramids with axeman/swordsmen during the first war. It would have been ugly attacking a capital without catapults, but an early police state would have made it up.

Leaving my super-veteran grenadiers open to cavalry attack during the Egyptian war. This had the effect of drawing lots of cavalry away from the main front to attack them but it was still a pyrrhic victory. On the other hand, this really came too late in the game to hurt me.

Not attacking Egypt earlier. I could have taken her a century or so earlier, and finished at a more impressive date. Or I could have gone after Egypt second, before the Inca, and had less distance upkeep at a crucial part of the game, and then taken the Confucian holy city from Saladin (confucianism was ~50% in the religion screen). My decision to go clockwise was mainly because I thought it would be neat to capture the triple holy city of Delhi, and not from any real gameplay considerations.

Attached are a series of maps from various stages in my conquest.

More attached maps showing my last couple conquests

First GOTM entry, and first real Monarch game. I played Adventurer because I'm a huge pansy, and Monarch barbs hit me hard in some of my 5v5 team games. Space Race victory in 1874, aimed for domination but got gunshy when I was way behind in tech and grenadiers popped up, and I was nowhere close to having them. There were only 2 wars other than mine the whole game, and my friendly friends didn't hate the non-Buddhist civs enough to war. I was however able to get them to stop trading, which slowed down the tech leaders a bit. Diplomacy was definately hard here, cept for Monte, since he's a jerk.

From my perusal of SG's and Noble/Prince experience, I decided Monte wasn't a good friend, and attacked him after founding 3 cities. I had my capitol one north on the grass/hills next to the one squre fresh lake, Osaka 1N of the gold hills that had copper nearby, and next town was up near the Iron, overlapped the 3 lowest squares with Osaka. I like starting with cows (4/2 or 3/3 grass or plains) and hill for defense but didn't know about moving farther south and wanted to start researching. I built stonehenge once stone connected, which helped out on the culture bit since I only had mysticism at the time, and didn't want to waste trees on obelisks unless needed. Went for BW and Animal Husbandry, as well as pottery to start up my cottages so my economy didn't stall after hopefully taking monte's cities. First war off, I took his 2 first towns, plus another one that was SE of my capitol that he founded whilst my army marched towards him, but stopped there as I didn't see his other towns. He had 2 I think, going by the replay.

Second monte war started up once I had Construction, as he had +40 or +60 cultural defense. I took out another 3 or 4 of his towns but he had one small one hiding south of the Incans, which were my friends. By this time Hatty was the clear leader, with a great deal of wonders and founding Christianity and Buddhism, Buddhism being the state religion of me, Saladin, Hatty, and Huayna. I didn't know if Hatty would backstab me if I went after Inca, but Hatty was 5 techs ahead of me and I wasnt' gaining, even at 40-50% science. I was actually falling behind. I was also failing at the trading game, getting beaten to techs most of the time. Only one I got ahead on was machinery. I built up infrastructure and used my workers (half were monte's, hah) to improve my lands, which were sorely neglected by my wars. I had popped a GProphet from Stonehendge early, intending to use as a religion founder, but I never got the chance. Around this time my Iron city with the grass/pigs was my best food city, so I set on two scientists and stagnated growth. I followed the "farm plains, cottage grass" philosophy, and had built National Epic in that city anyways. It had been running a priest for some time, so I had maybe 40/40/20 scientist/prophet/artist, and an artist popped.

I had just finished Machinery and was beelining for Civil Service for Saumurai, and decided to use my artist and prophet as a GA. My production wasn't great except for a few cities, so I only built a bit more infrastructure than normal, but I did however get Civil Service to finish during that time. At this point, Hatty was way ahead in points, mostly land and pop, but I feared she would race away to space without much I could do. I then pumped Samurai, and Catapults, while researching Engineering for the road movement and pikeman, as my scout saw lots of Horse Archers in Hatty's land (soon to be knights, oops). 15-20 turns later, I had three nice stacks plus a smaller fourth, with more being produced or traveling, and I decided to pull the trigger, fully expecting that Monarch AI would surprise me and kick me to the curb. Hatty had built maybe 1/3 - 1/2 of wonders, popped alot of GP's She was clearly the leader at this point in the game, although was super friendly. But she looked at me funny, and needed to die.

The war with Egypt started off on a bad note. My southernmost city, with Rice and the 2 dyes, was losing the culture war and had bad vision. I moved my stacks into Hatty's territory, but a stack of Knights and Horsearchers with 1 longbow came out from the fog and attacked my city, taking it (only had sword, catapult, healing warrior, and I think an archer there) on the same turn that they came out of the fog on. Longbow couldn't move in, however. It was a good city and more importantly part of the wall protecting my heartland and income. I dropped a stack back and took it back in 2 turns, but I became way more cautious, even more than I needed to be apparently. I took their NE city on the 4 hills, but a counterattack by Knights and a xbowman hurt me bad, taking out my 2 guarding pikeman (one with medic, one with combat 2 and formation, on a hill no less) stalling that advance as well. I decided to use both of my stacks to take their central northen city, which had both Ivories and the corn, 1S off a mountain I think. Counterattacks and suppression of invading pillagers used up some of my initial Samurai, so I had to wait while some more were travelling to take that town. It's culture was also huge and kept the north as Hatty land, making travel even more obnoxious as Knights would appear every so often and attack, generally losing but it hurt enough. Finally the middle town fell, which I then used as a staging town. A couple turns later I moved out to take the NW Egyptian town, sending a second stack to help the one that was already there but lacked enough catapults to effectively suicide and guarantee that I would take the city without losing many troops. At some point Victoria asked for my help vs Monte, who had one city left, and I said "sure". He was (-) for every civ, and my NW edge had 8 or 9 units, so no worries. Eventually I declared peace with him, and took techs, money, map, etc, as war weariness had set it without him or me doing anything. Viccy's troops were moving through India, so i knew it would be some time and then he'd be dead.

This process kept going, moving, generally having one largish stack moving, one in the process of attacking and one forming up, while a small stack would move to suport an attack that wasn't sufficient to take out and be able to defend the newly taken town from Knights. Eventually I take Thebes, the buddhist holy city, and get the +36 shrine. At this point Egypt had 4 towns left, and Grenadiers popped up. Despite my gut feeling that she was going to roll me over, I pressed on, and once the first of the 4 towns dropped I started building infrastructure (grocers, markets, banks), since I had none of these, and my research was 30%/lux 20%. I had enough units leftover to take the remaining cities I felt, and was right. I contemplated asking for techs, specifically Chemistry (I just got gunpowder), but my hatred of Egypt forced me to take the last city, and to end the unhappiness.

This is when the game deviated for me. I couldn't trade any techs, was behind at least by 5-8 from all, but I didn't pillage Egypt except for some strategically placed roads. At this point, I decided to try to get back into the tech race and went infrastructure fully. Samurai vs Rifleman/Cavalry was a no go, and maybe one more conquest before that became a reality. Gunpowder units popped up into all civs (buddhist cities were in every civ), and since nobody had gone to war they had tons of units. Slowly, my economy started moving and I started gaining on their leads. I sidetracked to democracy for the civics and to try for Taj Mahal and Statue of Liberty, but lost the race to them immensely due to my lack of a good production city. My best was producing ~35-40 hammers at this point. The gold though allowed me to go 90% or so, which helped a bit.

The rest of the game was a blur. I built infra and occassionally built some units for defense, until I was producing spaceparts and the rest of my cities started producing units for possibly last ditch defense. I tried to beeline to Internet (this was when I could research Chem), and a bit later suddenly here was Asoka finishing Apollo. I hadn't started Apollo yet, had just gotten the tech, and Asoka was still ahead tech wise. Apollo took forever, even with IW, so I was a bit startled and thought I was screwed, but started anyways. I really, really didn't improve any of my cities in a way that would help for massive projects or wonders. I had some GP around and some ready to pop, so I held out hoping a GA would help. My base research rate however was insane. I was at 90% making 50 gpt, with I thnk 1.3k+ beakers/turn (end was 2.2k) . I had really focused my improvements on Commerce/Food, and didn't spec any additional cities in production. I finished up Future Tech 1 a couple of turns before I won, and Internet I think 4-5 turns before I won as well (oops). During the GA I was well over 3k beakers I think, judging by GNP table. The last production spike was the three gorge dam being built, suddenly powering factories. I rushed it with the GE from Fusion and a whole buttload of cash (80% = ~+250), instead of spending the time building the 18+ factories, and used that time for infra + defense as my Egyptian towns still weren't up to par. I think the dam came in whilst I started building space parts too.

GNP/Production attached. Also, I built 38 Samurai. I only used these against Egypt, but had alot left.

Thanks Scuba, Shadow, Gato. Great stuff!

It's kinda funny to me that I felt like I was playing a pretty good game the whole way especially given all the pre-game discussion about how hard this was going to be. And yet, most of the Major Decisions in the game, I got a bunch wrong.

Religion - wrong
Aggression - not enough early, too worried about WW from war to war

At least my early IW was only partially wrong. I get partial credit right?

And why do I suddenly feel myself rooting for the barbs and AIs in other folks games?

One thing that Shadow said struck me - "I try to give reasons for why I do things, but some things may seem obvious to me, but not to others. Part of the reason this month is that so many people probably went with the same basic strategy...build units and kill everything."

I have a hard time believing it was as easy as that. Aren't there some pretty big decisions in this game even at your level? Maybe its just the "do I send out a couple Ws to hunt workers?" But, I've got to believe its more. And there are more differences than a noob like me can figure out. When you read each other's write-ups, I'm curious what you see as "hmmm that's interesting"?

One thing that Shadow said struck me - "I try to give reasons for why I do things, but some things may seem obvious to me, but not to others. Part of the reason this month is that so many people probably went with the same basic strategy...build units and kill everything."

I have a hard time believing it was as easy as that. Aren't there some pretty big decisions in this game even at your level? Maybe its just the "do I send out a couple Ws to hunt workers?" But, I've got to believe its more. And there are more differences than a noob like me can figure out. When you read each other's write-ups, I'm curious what you see as "hmmm that's interesting"?

There are not that many 'big decisions' in this game. I guess the big difference between people used to playing on a higher difficulty level, and people for which monarch is still a challenge, probably lies in the way they set up their empire in the early stages. They have learned to do this correctly (note 'correctly', not 'in the one and only perfect way' or 'in the best way possible'), or died trying on Emperor. If the setup is solid, the rest of the game is comparatively easy, especially as it involved 'build units and kill everything'. So for learning purposes the first spoiler thread is probably beter. Note: I don't consider myself an expert player or anything, I'm still struggling often on Emperor, but with the odds stacked in my favor (Samurai, neighbors closeby) this Monarch game wasn't a big challenge.

Thanks Scuba, Shadow, Gato. Great stuff!

It's kinda funny to me that I felt like I was playing a pretty good game the whole way especially given all the pre-game discussion about how hard this was going to be. And yet, most of the Major Decisions in the game, I got a bunch wrong.

Religion - wrong
Aggression - not enough early, too worried about WW from war to war

At least my early IW was only partially wrong. I get partial credit right?

And why do I suddenly feel myself rooting for the barbs and AIs in other folks games?

One thing that Shadow said struck me - "I try to give reasons for why I do things, but some things may seem obvious to me, but not to others. Part of the reason this month is that so many people probably went with the same basic strategy...build units and kill everything."

I have a hard time believing it was as easy as that. Aren't there some pretty big decisions in this game even at your level? Maybe its just the "do I send out a couple Ws to hunt workers?" But, I've got to believe its more. And there are more differences than a noob like me can figure out. When you read each other's write-ups, I'm curious what you see as "hmmm that's interesting"?

Don't think of your choices as wrong, they aren't. But they need to play into your strategy. Not declaring religion in order to keep everyone happy when you plan to kill them all doesn't fit well. Building swords for offense, and then waiting until you get attacked doesn't mesh well together, Swords are meant as City Raiders. Wars are more easily won when you control the circumstances (IE: you attack them, and dictate where the battles are fought).

Personally, and I'm sure others are the same...we see a lot of decisions that seem curious to us. Take just the decision of who to kill first, and why.

I went for Hatty. Our borders were close due to how I settled. She was focused on religion (like Izzy or something), so probably weak in military. Top in score and techs. I had the most to gain from her (Glib/Parth/Oracle/two shrines).

Others that went for Monty generally say it was because he was likely to attack them anyway. Yet, because of how I settled, and how I traded, I knew he'd go for the Incas first. On top of that, I made friends with the Inca through trading, so I felt more secure with less units in the North. I also didn't want to push that way, because I'd either have to attack the Inca, or go through them, a choice I eventually had to make anyway. Monty was most likely low in score and tech, and had less wonders...so less to gain.

Hatty was not only the easier target in my case, but I had more to gain, and posed more of an overall threat (not just military wise). I didn't worry about what anyone else thought, because I planned to kill most of them anyway.

Or barbs. I don't understand how people have issues with them. I build my "settler escorts", then send them out to the city site before the settler is built. They fortify there for the added bonus and wait. This cuts down on the possibility of barbs, and I need a unit there eventually anyway. Yet I see others mention getting a city razed by barbs, or even losing to them.

I think the thing that always makes me wonder though, is the cottage spam. I don't get it. I mean, I understand it, but I see it as uneccessary...especially when you never intend to get to UniSuff + Kremlin. If you read some of the other games, I can tell you without even looking that they spammed more cottages than I did. Even just looking at the fact that I traded for Pottery should tell you something. I just don't build many cottages.

Yet, I started with zero techs, and still finished around the same general time that others on Contender did. I was in the tech lead from Alphabet on. I only used one GMerch, for upgrades, something I don't normally do...yet others mention losing wonders, sometimes on purpose, for cash. So I'm still trying to figure out what the deal is, and why I don't fall behind. I should just play a game and spam cottages, to see what happens. :lol:

So for learning purposes the first spoiler thread is probably beter.

Unfortunately, I didn't want to spend the time trying to figure out which questions to ask where. And I was worried cause of the rule about how far you are in the game. Being a noob, I would no doubt screw that up.

I'll definitely go back and take a look again, but I truly have had a tough time figuring out what's different in different posts. Especially cutting through stories of glory.

Shadow's quick comment on "who do you attack first" probably seems so obvious to all of you - and in hindsight it now seems obvious to me, but I read the first few posts and noticed that people were saying they attacked Monty and I did as well (albeit in a lame way cause he declared on me), so then I didn't notice that Shadow went after Hatty. Now I'm curious how others managed those relationships and who they went after. Actually a pretty good insight from Shadow. And yeah, Sparts, I am THAT MUCH a noob.

I hope that kinda answers everything for you. That's a lot of questions. Still more entertaining than sitting through commercials though. :lol:

Tivo? ;)

Yet I see others mention getting a city razed by barbs, or even losing to them.

I'll confess to losing a city (2 warriors lost) to a single barb archer. I do the same thing in terms of having the warrior out there to keep every tile visible and then move the settler to it. But, I stupidly put the warrior into the city only to have a barb magically appear between my cultural border and Egypt. At least I learned from that.

I think the thing that always makes me wonder though, is the cottage spam. I don't get it. I mean, I understand it, but I see it as uneccessary...especially when you never intend to get to UniSuff + Kremlin. If you read some of the other games, I can tell you without even looking that they spammed more cottages than I did. Even just looking at the fact that I traded for Pottery should tell you something. I just don't build many cottages.

Very interesting. I always create a fair amount of cottages. I feel like I'm totally losing the tech race with it. I'll have to try a couple games creating less cotts. But, I remember doing a game where I went early Alpha skipping Pottery and never could keep my tech rate up. I probably wasn't aggressive enough.


Don't think of your choices as wrong, they aren't. But they need to play into your strategy.


Sounds like the kind of thing I would say back when I was teaching to try to make a really lame comment by a student sound okay. Nah, they were pretty much wrong. But, even more wrong was playing what I would term a "standard balanced" strategy. I kinda play most games the same way. It's just now dawning on me that I need to (a) actually have a strategy and (b) go for it. Wow, what a concept.

Adventurer, 1922 loss by conquest.

This was my first game at Monarch, and my first GoTM. Great fun :lol:

I planted my flag 2 spaces north of the starting point, when I uncovered the marble. Figured with the cows in the the intial grid I would have a good basis for production and growth. Then then the gremlins of ill-luck graced my game. 3 Villages popped - all hostile :cry: lost starting warrior, 2nd warrior and scout. I did get 2nd and 3rd cities built - barbs captured 2nd (Hatty later took it) and they pillaged the 3rd one, each lasted just long enough to grow to pop=2.

I figured I go into holding pattern, while I tired to get iron working. Problem was Hatty had the resources. So while I waited I was able to build the Parthanon. The culture and GP (4 Great Artists), I added National Epic later, kept me in the game until 1922AD!! I was able to culturally push Hatty off the NW iron in 1867AD to begin my first Samurai.

I felt a bit like the Swiss a little island nation in the middle of industrial giants. I didn't get into a war until Monty invaded in 1919. 3 short turns later game over. Vicky, Hattie and HC were all finished the SS and need Space Elevator to win. I watched tanks, artillery, and SAM Infantry skirt my borders like I was the plague.

It got to the point I just wanted to how long I could hang on. I that regard I was a winner:p

I'll definitely go back and take a look again, but I truly have had a tough time figuring out what's different in different posts. Especially cutting through stories of glory.

One of the huge benefits of the GOTM is being able to play the game through and comparing your outcomes with others of different skills and strategies. If you feel you've had a rough ride then just pick it up and run it through again (once you've submitted yout first game, of course:) ). Try a game without spamming cottages early on - build farms for growth instead. Play it going all-out for war and stealing workers. Pick up on a strategy that someone else has made work and see if you can get better results.

Not suggesting that you do the whole thing, but the first spoiler gives some great comparisons if you just play up to 1AD each time. Always going to be difficult to get accurate comparisons but your science rate, position on the table, military strength, tech rate etc should give you a feel of how well you're getting on.

For the real quick-start training runs just go to 2000BC or 1500BC - at Epic you still get a fair few turns and get to try out different strategies.

Once the Quick-Start GOTM gets up and running you'll be able to do this alongside everyone else and get some more detailed comparisons. Soon enough you'll be up there with the best. :king:

Hope this helps.:goodjob:

Just submitted my game. Played Contender.

Took DaveMcW's advice in the pre-game thread and decided not to try for my first Culture win with this GOTM setup. But, I still wanted to try something new, so I went for my first conquest win instead :groucho: ... I usually cross the domination limit without finishing off the AI's.

Got my conquest victory in 1590 AD. :banana:

I'm sure one of the better players will beat this by 200 years :lol: , but for me a pretty fast game. Base score was 3891. I'm a little confused about the final score. When the game ended, I wrote down 53726, but when I submitted to GOTM, the confirmation said 75215.

I haven't made an entry into the spoiler 1 thread yet, I had kind of gotten engrossed in the game and played it straight through. I'll make one in the next day or so, then come back here and finish the story.

Great fun, thanks to the GOTM staff as always. :goodjob:

I didn't like the feel of this right from the start. :(

I am a warmongerer but have never understood how to play with Tockagawa and find it dificult to play maps like inland sea. :(

Briefly: Slow start, 3 citys founded, Iron working and alpha, producing swordsmen, and that was the high point. :blush:

Decided to hit monte before he hit me took 4 citys including his capital to give me 7 citys (same as Egypt and Inca) but blew my economy into the stone age, 20% tech. Had no religion or happy resources anywhere so had lots of red citizens couldn't get a city over 4 without black smoke. :cry:

Decided to war with Hatty to see if I could get tech by peace treaty, took one of her citys but she wasn't going to give up tech for peace and Monty decided to hit me so I took peace with Hatty and went back to Monty took another 3 of his citys (raized 1) and managed to get CofL from him for peace, he's got 1 city left and he's still 3 techs up on me, everyone else is 2 ROWS of techs up on me. :eek: :eek: :eek:

Inca declared war and I decided it just wasn't worth the candle. :(

Didn't like the map, didn't like the civ, didn't like the neighbours, didn't get close.

Retired AD1070 Score 1046 10 citys 70% research but so far behind in tech that it just wasn't fun any more, and the house of cards was going to fall. Inca was starting to feed me my Butt, and Hatty was culture bombing me.

Barbs were a constant pain up to the point at which the AI had spammed settlers into all the minute nooks and crannies arround my spread out and disjointed empire. :mad: :mad: :mad:

Played contender because didn't see that the extras for adventurer were worth didly. :confused:

Well done to those that won, just wish for a scenario which is more my style next.

For those who read my first spoiler write-up, the plan changed.

After prepping to take out Monty, I managed to convince Hatty and Vicky to join in the fun, and quickly took 3 of his cities(not the capitol), while a couple of Egyptian troops ransacked the Aztec lands. I decided to keep all 3, and after checking the defensive bonuses on the closest 2 remaining cities, decided to make peace, and consolidate my gains while waiting for Cats and Samurai.

During this time, a couple of barb cities popped up on the western edge of the map, and I let them grow a bit before capturing them with a couple of swordsmen. Hatty filled in the gaps between our borders, and I built a couple of cities to even things out, one to the west of the ivory, and one in the northwest corner, giving me 4 cities along the western edge, my three original ones, and the three I've captured.

I've built quite the army of workers by now, mostly paired, and they stay busy. I don't automate. I followed a very basic plan of improvement, building cottages on all grassland, farms on plains, windmills on grassland hills, and mines on plains/desert hills, as well as improving any resources as their techs become available. Pretty much, I only deviated from this to spread irrigation.

Once I had a few Samurai, and a handful of catapults, I added them to my remaining swords and axes from the first war, and after talking everyone but Saladin into joining the fun, took out Monty, capturing 3 more cities, and totally ruining his day. It was a tougher fight than I'd planned on, leaving my forces in bad shape, maybe 12-15 units total. Asoka was a big help here, though Vicky sent about 30 troops, it was over before she got plugged in properly.

Asoka took advantage of the conflict to grab the eastern Aztec lands, nearly cutting me off from the Inca. I also built a couple of cities near the northern edge of the map, for that wee bit of added land and population. This would be the end of my expansion, leaving me with a total of 14 cities.

At this point, every one was at least pleased with me, and Vicky and Hatty were friendly. Asoka shortly joined them, after a trade or two. Saladin had a slight problem with me for hanging out with Vicky, some sort of religious disagreement, and Huayna always looked at me kind of funny, but they remained pleased the rest of the game.

So, I'm starting to think, maybe Lennon was right, and decide to give peace a chance.

I never did adopt a religion, instead switching to freestyle as soon as it was possible, so never got the heathen tag. Tech trading kept me right in line with the rest of the leaders, which alternated between Saladin and Hatty for quite a while, until the Incas took the lead, which I shortly took from them. I never turned down a request, but for one. Hatty asked me to convert, but with a +15 modifier, I felt safe in staying pagan.

Postwar, I concentrated on gearing up my cities, and set my research to Liberalism. After beating the AIs to the juicy free tech, I headed straight for Mass Media. Research level got as low as 50%, but with trading techs, I was never close to going lower, usually sitting on at least a grand or so in cash.

Really, it was all pretty smooth sailing from there on, mainly ordering workers around, and queuing up banks and whatnot. When I took or built a city, I usually chopped out a library, followed by a courthouse, then a barracks. After that it was either a science or cash building, depending on what was available. I did build a couple of national wonders, the Heroic Epic(paranoid about Hatty) and the Forbidden Palace. Popped a few great people, mostly scientists, and each built an academy, the one engineer I got came on the last turn. Built very little military after the early wars, and had maybe 25-30 troops scattered around at the end.

As you may have gathered by now, the one wonder I did build was the UN, in around 1700. I had 8 settlers in place upon learning Mass Media, stationed throughout the forests I'd left around the former Aztec capitol. Their chopping provided about half of the necessary shields, and in an amazingly serendipitous cap to a most shiny happy game, Hatty offered me 2700 gold for Mass Media. Coupled with my then current funds I had more than enough to goldrush my way to victory, and proceeded to do just that. The vote wasn't even close, with all my friends agreeing that I'd make a most excellent world leader, while Saladin and Huayna sulked in the corner.


Contender - Diplomatic Victory 1710

Score was around 32k.

This was my first win on Monarch, after several losses during test play, so I'm mostly happy with it, though realizing I got lucky with the early Metal Casting from the goody hut. But, I did overcome the loss of my 3rd city, which had been a point of no return in my test games.

Thanks to anyone reading this, and especially thanks again to the staff for an enjoyable game. Looking forward to next month!

I'll do a proper post later.

1335AD, Domination. The game said score of ~97K, however, the GOTM script says 136322. I'll take it...

Domination victory is a pain. You have so many cities and workers to control. I lacked any focus in organizing them. I'd tell workers to build watermills but let that particular city concentrate on population growth. Or I'd build many improvements in a city of size 4 when many other cities could use help. I just didn't care anymore.

Just keep building samurais and throw them at other civs and you win. They're almost as advantageous as Praetorians. I had like 70 at the end of the game. I never geared the game to maxmize score and stopped worrying about techs after engineering. So a few cities built Samurais (or other units to "protect" a city) and the rest didn't matter (except a GP farm, which was also my "science" city).

EDIT: played contender

Regular class (contender?), win in 1855 space, score in low 40ks?

First GOTM and only second win on Monarch also first inland sea game.

Basically:

- axemen rushed Monty early secured border to Incas
- obtained 3 barb cities to NW, W and SW of capital
- obtained judaism from monty and infected Incans to keep that front stable
- Built samural rush, made 10x demands on hatty and goaded her into attack (that with religous delta and my pulling back troops from southern city worked fairly well..dumbo AI).

Killed her SOD with mass cat/samurai rush. Pushed her back 3ish cities to South then made a bonehead mistake: I was messing around with diplomacy settings and accidently offered her peace WITH Civil service (oh the cusin' that occurred in my room was vile to behold). Basically I thought I had hit esape but game registered as "enter" (never mind why i was screwin aroud with it).

This cost me my samurai rush and unfortunately in 10 turns allowed Hatty a macemen counter. Took me many more turns to pound her down and this cost me enough initaive that Saladin and Vicky had picked up a great deal of steam in research. I had secured all the way to SW cormer of map but generally felt less than secure about a domination win at this point. Decidec settle in and take space win.

Also had built great library and was able to build about 4 academies over time.

Lessons learned:
- Never mess around when playing a "real" game
- an early dead Monty is a good Monty
- If you get Communism early pound out the Kremlin. I was in mid war and distrtacted and "assumed" I'd get it first. Wrong. Ol' Sally must of had an Engineer in reserve and he beat me by 1 turn. This killed any late domination ideas I had post my Hattyv error.

All in all a fun game and I am learning. Japanese are alot of fun to play and I am grateful for all the good info I have learned on this board over last coupel months, I can definately see my game improving.

Played contender, luckily got the oracle chopped before the AIs, in 600 BC which allowed me to get civil service. I think the first samurais showed up before 1AD.

Some cottage spam + Code of Law + Civil Service in 600 Bc meant a huge tech lead for the rest of the game.

Burned the egyptians to ashes, then monty, the incas and the indians. In the meantime i stealed two cities to saladin, thinking that my old samurais from the war against the egyptians were bored.

Domination in 1435, around 122 k... I am pretty happy.

BUT... That was my second attempt... In the first one, i got beaten to the Oracle (built around 950 Bc... how soon). That delayed awfully the samurais, and I got stuck in my wars against monty (those war elephants were a pain). When it was over. I realized that Saladin and Ashoka were 8 techs ahead of me. I decided to gave up. I have practiced a whole week-end to get a good score, not to beat them in the 1800s!!!

Of course, i won't submit any games.

Lessons learned:

- an early dead Monty is a good Monty


:lol: :lol:

At the end of my first spoiler, I had just made peace with Monty.

From 510-1010: building infrastructure, spreading Christianity to my cities, researching to Samurai, building my Sami army (and cats), getting them to the border with Hatty. I don't think there is much value in posting all of the gory details, so I'll focus on major events only.
From 1010-end of game: Pretty close to total war. Had a couple of short breaks to heal and reposition.

Turn 187 (570 AD)
Switch to Hereditary and Organized Religion
Turn 188 (580 AD)
Adopt Christianity as State Religion.
Turn 189 (590 AD)
Chuang-Tzu (Great Prophet) born in Tokyo
Turn 193 (630 AD)
Osaka finishes: The Church of the Nativity
Turn 199 (690 AD)
Razed Ainu (barb)
Turn 201 (710 AD)
Trade for: Feudalism,Horseback Riding
Switch to Vassalage and Serfdom
Turn 202 (720 AD)
Tech learned: Civil Service - Sami Time! turn down research so I can begin upgrading units to Samis.
Turn 212 (820 AD)
Razed Phrygian (barb)
Turn 216 (860 AD)
Tenochtitlan begins: Forbidden Palace
Turn 220 (900 AD)
Razed Avar (barb)
Nara founded - near site of Avar, filling space to to the north of my core.
Turn 225 (950 AD)
Tech learned: Guilds - and start building some knights, research