GOTM 52 - final spoiler

Whilst this is ostensibly the industrial-age-and-beyond spoiler for GOTM 52, its in effect the free-for-all for all discussion about the game. The only qualification for this spoiler is that you must have completed and submitted it.

Conquest - Civ III

I may have the slowest domination in the event. I wound up hitting the domination limit in 1555 AD. Had a great time running over the Chinese and Babylonians with Sipahi.

If I'm ever going to be in the least bit competitive in XOTMs, I'm going to have to work on my :hammer: . I take too long preparing for war and too long to regroup and stabilize after wars.

Anyway, it was my first game of the month, and it felt good to at least get a victory in the game. I regret playing Conquest class. The ease of the map and the conquest bonus made it basically an emperor-level game for me, and not all that difficult of one at that.

Haha - no I'm even slower 1695AD. Same reason though, took too long with my wars

I did a cow attempt. Don't know if Niklas is still operational. But if he is, I thought he may do another moo as it is a small map. In that case I'll give him some competition. To keep the surprise I wont disclose any scores :p

I got a pathetic launch date after conquering most of the starting continent, leaving only the Babs alive and kicking. The rest were eliminated or banished to single city islands. The problem was I couldn't get my research up to the speed I was used to in C3C with ICSed lands. Obviously I did not expect it to be as good because of the difference in PTW/C3C scientists, but still... Anyhow, I'd appreciate any tips on it. I also posted about in the strategy forum.

You're rigth about C3C that ICS/science specialists is enough to get a decent research pace. Reason is the 3 beakers / scientist. Although I think what I will suggest below will also give an improvement in C3C.

But for PTW ICS/SS won't suffice. Of course in PTW also is ICS/SS fine for corrupt cities. But for low corruption cities near the palace and the forbidden palace a working citizen generate's far more science then a scientist, even without a library.

When you, let's say, build rings at 4x and 6x around the capitol and rings at 3x and 5x around the FP. Have the cities grow to (whenever possible) size 12 and build libraries and universities in them. This will give you 30 to 40 cities with an enormous science output. Ofcourse ICSing the same area will create about the same amount of working people, but their cities will be more corrupt.

Only thing you have to do then is timing the completion of the ToE with the beginning of the MT and have a prebuild ready for the Internet.

@ Redbad. Do the rings make all the difference? I did have two cores set up, but not with rings. My original core was built on the basis of whatever land I could grab, whereas my second was based in the formerly Greek lands.
I was able to trade for Sanitation, so I even irrigated + 'hospitalized' one of them (the 'Greek' one), as there was little to fear from Babylon. The rest of the lands were ICSed and I did own the Pyramids.

The rings help battle corruption. Corruption consists of two kinds: distance corruption and rank corruption. Distance is based on the distance of a city to the palace or FP (whichever is closest) and rank corruption is based on the number of cities that are closer then a given city to the palace (or FP).

When building your cities in rings all the cities in ring have the same rank corruption. So the cities in the first ring have the lowest possible rank corruption and the cities in the second ring have only the cities in the first ring closer to the palace.

Building more then 2 rings isn't very profitable, so you can ics beyond the second rings.
Having the first ring at greater distance from the palace enables more cities in the rings but also increases the distance corruption. I find distances 3 or 4 for the first and distances 5 or 6 for the second mostly the best.

I think there's a reason for having the rings around the FP thighter then around the palace, but I can't remember it. So maybe that's not really important.

O yeah, some important remarks concerning C3C. The rings solution to rank corruption doesn't work in C3C. For C3C the advantage is only that you have bigger cities with low corruption near the captital when compared to ics.

Also in C3C does the distance to the FP hardly matter. It only matters if you have a FP and the city with the FP has low corruption.

If you want to know more on subject of corruption: there's an article in the war academy http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/corruption_c3c.php

I think there's a reason for having the rings around the FP thighter then around the palace, but I can't remember it. So maybe that's not really important.

This is the mild (i.e. not banned) form of the palace rank bug, and it can be quite important in a long game. The towns whose distance to the FP is less than any town's distance to the palace will have the absolute minimum (rank) corruption, no matter howm any of them there are. Check the exploit rulings thread for details of how far you can take this startegy, but even done subtly, as with the ring distances you proposed, it is worth planning for. It works nicely when you hand-build your FP in your tightly spaced core, and then later jump your palace to an AI's old core, which is of course much more spread out.

Thanks, Redbad. I was aware of the PTW corruption model and RCP, but never experimented with it as most of my games are C3C... I started playing Civ3 when C3C came out actually. RCP seems to be very important for PTW space/diplo victories , I understand now. This game was not particularly suited for it though, with the crowded start.