WOTM 06 - Final Spoiler

Reading Restrictions:

You must have completed and submitted your game.


Posting Restrictions

Please do not post pictures of any modern resources (eg. uranium, aluminium, coal).

This turned out to be a pretty straightforward space race attempt for me. Most of the interesting stuff was either toward the very beginning of the very end of the game so that's what I've focused on.

Establishing Hinduism

Going in to the game, I wanted to research Polytheism as soon as possible. My hope was to establish Hinduism, and I also wanted to position myself to build the Temple of Artemis and, ideally, the Great Lighthouse after that. I figured the extra commerce would help no matter what victory condition I pursued.

I settled in place, started building a Work Boat, and worked the highest commerce tiles available (Fish, and then Lake, I think) while researching Mysticism and Poly. Going with those high commerce tiles worked: I founded Hinduism in Nidaros in 3310 BC. On the downside, my production was so pathetic that I didn’t finish that first Work Boat until 3190 BC. By this point my Scout had been eaten by a ferocious Lion. So I devoted my next two builds to Warriors. In hindsight maybe I should have built a Worker before those guys.

Founding Uppsala

By 2350 BC I’d researched Mining and Bronze Working, had a Worker, and was finally just starting my first Settler. I had also explored our starting continent and realized that it wasn’t all that great. Lots of jungle, not many resources that I could see. The one really good spot for a city was, to my eyes, on top of that goody hut between the two mountains. “That’d be a great location for a Great Person Pump,” I thought.

So I did something pretty unorthodox. When I finished Sailing in 1930 BC, with my Settler still under construction, I switched builds and chopped out a Galley. Two turns later it set off with my Settler to found Uppsala. I used the Settler to pop the hut and was rewarded with a free tech: The Wheel. Nidaros built another Work Boat to aid with exploring, and then, finally, started on the Temple of Artemis in 1600 BC.

Slow Expansion

Between my Work Boat and my Galley I met the four closest civs over the next 30 turns or so. Hinduism spread well, I think all four converted for at least a little while during the BC period, making for excellent relations. Thanks to my slow expansion everyone I met was ahead on score. I used a Worker to pop the goody hut on the one tile island and produced “strong hostiles” who thankfully had nowhere to actually manifest themselves.

I researched Animal Hubandry, Pottery, Writing, and finally Alphabet (415 BC). This opened up a lot of trades and in a relatively short time I acquired: Agriculture, Mediation, Priesthood, Archery, Monotheism, Iron Working, Mathematics, and Calendar. I researched Code of Laws in 40 BC and started on Civil Service.

While all this was going on, I managed to build the Temple of Artemis in 535 BC. But by that point I’d seen how fast the wonders were popping out and wasn’t surprised when the Great Lighthouse was finished a few turns later. Oh well. It was around this time that I looked at the available land and decided to try for a Space Race win.

I started producing more Settler and Workers to get the rest of the main island under my control and build lots and lots of cottages. I settled Haithabu with access to Horses, Gems, and two lakes. Birka went directly on top of the eastern Silk, to get the other Silk and a Fish. Bjorgvin went on the Horse island, in 245 AD, and that was it for awhile. Once I found the two Iron near Uppsala I decided to have it be a Great Person/Production city. Haithabu’s forests would be preserved so it could be a Production site as well. Bjorgvin was intended as a military production site. Birka and Nidaros were heavily cottaged.

The only other event of note before 500 AD was my first Great Person, the wise prophet St. Peter, born in Nidaros in 100 AD. St. Peter established the Kashi Vishwanath that very year. Thanks to the continued spread of Hinduism (and income from my tech trading) I was able to run 100% science for a long, long time. This and some Science specialists in my food-rich cities let me stay competitive in the tech race despite my (initially) relatively small empire.

Astronomy, Liberalism, and Democracy

The next thousand years or so is kind of dull to describe. I focused heavily on research, and traded extensively. I set Astronomy as one of my first goals, hoping to find more good islands out there somewhere. By the time I discovered it (second) in 1116 AD my Caravels had already determined there wasn’t much worth the trip. I had managed to snag a small island with Wine, south of Russia, in 800 AD. And in 905 AD I established another cottage city, Roskilde, on the main island northeast of Nidaros (a rare no-resource city). After deciding not to settle any far flung islands for now I plonked down a couple more cities on the small islands with seafood near our start, for a little added commerce.

I fought a phony war with Spain in an attempt to please the Americans, who I met in 1154 AD. Roosevelt ended up disliking me pretty strongly anyway.

After Astronomy I targeted Liberalism, and was kind of surprised that I made it there first in 1310 AD. I was starting to get a lead in the tech race. That being the case, I figured my biggest concern in the years ahead would be hammers to build parts with more so than beakers. I decided to take Nationalism as my free tech and research towards Democracy so I’d be able to run Universal Suffrage. This is a tech I usually ignore when doing a space race, but this time I think it really paid off, as I rush bought a lot of stuff in the later stages of the game, and had several cities getting most of their hammers from Towns thanks to US. The Towns came about in part because I ran Emancipation as well.

Rambunctious Romans

In 1550 AD, Augustus declared war on me. Not good. My cities were mainly defended by Longbowmen and my navy was weak. Whereas he had Frigates , Cavalry, and Grenadiers. I was able to trade with someone for Chemistry almost immediately, however, and went 100% commerce so I could upgrade troops. I revolted to Nationalism and popped out a bunch of Musketmen. And I had a couple Cavalry already. So all he really managed was to pillage my sea resources. Still, it was annoying, and I made sure to bulk up my military in subsequent years. When he declared again in 1649 AD, and Roosevelt joined in a turn later, I was much better prepared and sank everything that approached. That was my last war.

I settled a couple of otherwise uninteresting islands late in the game to get access to Uranium and Aluminum. I also put a city on the island south of Nidaros for Coal. I never had any Oil.

The Space "Race"

I have a gap where my autolog was off so I’m going to be even less detailed from here on out. After acquiring Democracy I targeted Computers. I developed that in 1736 AD, and built Laboratories in many of my cities. I had a monopoly on Computers for a long time. Next I picked up Fission (so I’d have a power source for modern naval units) and worked my way up to Plastics, building Factories all around as I went.

I wanted the Three Gorges Dam. All of my major cities were unhealthy already and I didn’t want to make matters worse with Coal Plants. I wasn’t the first to Plastics, but I was able to get the Dam built in Nidaros through a combination of a Great Engineer and rush buying.

After Plastics I developed Rocketry, Satellites, and then Robotics. I started work on the Apollo Program in Uppsala, home to my Ironworks (and National Epic), and by the time that was done I was ready to start building the Space Elevator there. I once again used a Great Engineer to hurry construction, in this case just to speed things up since no one else had the necessary techs to build it yet.

Meanwhile I’d started construction of space ship parts. Haithabu was my only “normal” production city, with lots of mines and lumbermills. All the rest of my cities depended to some extent on hammers from Towns and/or Engineers. But it worked out pretty well. My carefully horded Great People were used in two Golden Ages, which helped a lot. Production doubled in my pure-cottage cities while those were underway.

My Inevitable Victory

All the AIs were way behind me in tech by this point and there was really no question of my victory. Suffice it to say that I launched in 1912 AD, the same turn I developed Future Tech 1. I achieved a score of 3,215/12,016. Not an especially impressive time for a Space Race, really. And yet I was way ahead of the AIs. I don’t know why. It was a commerce-friendly map and there was quite a lot of tech trading going on. I’ll be curious to see what other space race times are like.

I think my best move this game might have been establishing Hinduism. It spread really well, allowing me to be friends with lots of people and generate big income from my shrine. I think it was up in the mid 30s by the middle of the game. I kind of wish I hadn't bothered with the Temple of Artemis, though. After the early stages of the game I feel like I followed a pretty conventional path to my launch, with the possible exception of deliberately planning to use Universal Suffrage the way I did.

Very Briefly, More Later

In my game, there was no war, ever. Not one AI declared on any other AI. Very weird.

I built the UN around 1680AD, in 1 TURN! GE and 3600 gold and boom! I immediately went for diplomatic victory, and was denied twice. I had +10 with 4 civs, but two civs didn't vote for me. Adopting the right civic for one and removing a DP that bothered the other was enough for the win at 1700 AD

I think my adjusted score was 24K. Can't Remember

Continued from my 500AD spoiler. I had played a peaceful game and founded 6 cities so far. I was last in score but keeping up well in tech. I owned the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus.

My plan was now to go for a peaceful diplomacy victory as I did not feel confident about warring with anyone seeing as my production capacity was pretty bad.

The game was now rather uneventful for a long time. Everyone was being nice to eachother.

I circumnavigated for the bonus in 1142 AD which seems to be really late compared to everyone else. Roosevelt kept nabbing most of the wonders.

I got mainly Merchants and Engineers in my GP farm of Nidaros. Yet another WOTM with a distinct lack of Scientists. I used a Great Engineer for The Spiral Minaret as I thought it gave me 2 gold for every Hindu building in the world. Mistake. It only gives you money for the buildings you own yourself and did thus not boost my economy much at all.:crazyeye:

I founded 2 more cities on 1-tile islands to get a little science boost for the future.

In 1589AD things got a bit more rowdy as Huayna declared on Asoka. It is clear that the AI is totally useless at fighting wars on this type of map as Asoka had a city on an island close to Huaynas empire which he was completely unable to take. In 1688 Roosevelt declared on Huayna and in 1721 Cathy decced Asoka. At this point it was looking like me versus Caesar for the diplo win provided I got the UN so I declared on Asoka as well to get Cathy and Huayna on my side.

However, I was dismayed to find that Catherine had managed to grow past Caesar by the time I was about to research Mass Media. The plan was now to go Buddhist to get Izzy and Roosevelt on my side as well as adopting a few civics to please the rest. I was never going to get Asoka on my side and Huayna really loved Cathy so he was probably out too. Diplo win didn't look completely impossible but definately tricky.

Silly me forgot that changing to Representation to please Caesar meant I could not rush the U.N., so I had to change back...

I hurried/gold-rushed the UN in 1818AD. The vote for Secretary was clearly in my favor, but it would not be enough. I needed 40 more votes. When the vote for Diplo Win came in it turned out that Roosevelt abstained and that meant I wasn't even close.:cry:

So I had to go for Space race instead. I was now well behind the AI on that tech tree, my production was bad, I lacked happiness and health-resources, and I found that I also lacked Aluminium.

So I just played the game out expecting to lose the Space Race to Roosevelt. Luckily I was able to found a city on an aluminium island to the northeast. I pumped out factories, forges and laboratories, but by the time I started building spaceship parts Roosevelt had 5 parts finished already.
My only hope was to get the Space Elevator. More luck as I got another engineer and sold some techs for large sums. The Space Elevator was built in Haithabu in 1894AD. By this time I had 1 finished part to Roosevelts 8.
I now started building Workshops all over the cities that would finish their parts last. I felt I had a small chance now. With ten turns left for my final builds. Roosevelt got his 2nd last piece built. This was going all the way to the finish line!

By now I was pressing enter and praying.

But I got the victory!!! It must have been really tight. Especially since Augustus declared on me in my victory turn!

Spaceship Victory for Ragnar.
1951AD.
2985/8272 pts.

This could have been maybe 30 turns faster had I not gone for the UN. But I'm not complaining.

or – How the Vikings forgot their unruly past and became world statesmen (kinda)

Where We left Ragnar
In 500AD, the Viking empire was exultant at having wiped out their near neighbours, the Russians.
See early years post here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5123039&postcount=10)
However, this had left us rather behind on tech, and slightly pressed financially. This required a rethink, which at the time I considered to be a temporary phase, though it became my entire strategy.

A very useful meeting
Almost at once, while trying to map out the lands to the east, we found the Spanish coastline. But Isabella was not the useful meeting. No. Roosevelt was busy attacking her, and meeting him turned out to be just one of the things that fell very nicely into place in this game.
He immediately struck me as a tech trading partner, as he was slightly less advanced than the ones I’d already met, and lacked some of my tech, but possessed various others I didn’t have. We started off in a small way by trading him HorseRiding for 3 tech, but we came back later …

Tech Chasing in the middle years
Having sorted our economy a bit with the introduction of courthouses, we spent much of the middle game researching like crazy – setting up some Gt People factories once we got libraries in – lots of micro-management to get research and Gt People rates high as possible – always chasing the leading pack.
But each time we got a new tech (and I was careful to pick advanced techs rather than filling in more ancient ones) I was able to trade it to Roosevelt, me old chum, in exchange for several of his tech.
We did this with HorseRiding (as I said), then Civil Service and Paper.
When I got Education I found that several weren’t there yet, and I traded it to Asoka too. Only Caesar held out. He was a tech leader throughout, and I often wondered if I would ever catch him.

Virtue of a Necessity
During this middle stage I decided that there was no purpose to be gained in Vikingly pursuits, like conquest and pillage. We’d had our brash early years. Now we should try to make our impact on the world in some other way. I decided on a diplomatic route, somewhere in these years. It is, I think, the earliest I had decided to go for a diplomatic victory and certainly the only time I have achieved one having been working towards it for so long.

Great People
This is something else new in my games. Of course, I’ve had great people before, but this time I was really pushing for them and managed to get a total of 9 – 2 prophets, 2 artists and 5 scientists. Not world-beating, I know, but a definite improvement. These all helped with light-bulbing tech.

Friends and Enemies
Since I knew I was heading for a diplomatic victory, I kept a close eye on my dealings with my friends – who were Roosevelt, Asoka and Caesar. I made sure not to upset them too much by trading with the others, and I adjusted civics from time to time to impress them (though not at the expense of affecting my research). I also kept a careful eye on the gruesome twosome – Isabella and Huayna Capac. Though I never went to war with them, I often expected them to declare on me. My military was never big enough, and so I kept producing a steady stream in the hope it would deter anyone who fancied their chances.
I also accepted a defensive pact with Roosevelt, which hopefully kept others off our backs – though it did, of course, dent our relationships with Asoka and Caesar.

The push for the UN
From about 1700 onwards I was closing in on Mass Media, desperate to get there before Caesar, who had always got every tech I was researching about 4 turns before me.
I went Physics, Electricity, Radio, Mass Media. Each time I traded them off in exchange for tech or wads of cash. Not Mass Media, of course. That I wanted for myself.
I started thinking ahead to the UN elections. I decided Huayna would be my rival, assuming I built it, as he had the largest population. This was generally good news, as he wasn’t well liked, except by Isabella.
Roosevelt threw a small spanner in the works by scrapping our defensive pact and declaring on Isabella. My main concern was not the loss of the pact, but that he might increase his population enough to become my UN rival. He was popular, unlike Huayna, and could cause me massive problems.
By the way, he also invited me into his war, which caused me some mental anguish over my decision. I wanted to keep everyone close friends, so refusing his offer wasn’t good news, but on balance I felt that an angry Isabella might actually damage me more permanently if I declared on her.

As the time grew close, there was another semi-shock. Someone beat us to Mass Media, and it wasn’t Caesar! It was Huayna! I was hot on his heels though.

Building the UN
We got Mass Media in 1843. I wish I’d thought of it earlier, but a Gt Engineer would have been very handy at this point. By the time I did think of it, there was no hope of getting one in time.
Nidaros was my biggest builder, but the UN would have taken over 100 turns. Not good!
Some quick and risky trading. I sold my beloved Mass Media to Asoka for Assembly Line. Then I switched to Uni Suff and bought a forge in Nidaros.
Turning research off to swell the gold vaults, we bought a factory in Nidaros, and started the UN.
It was still going to take 60 turns, but our gold was growing at over 500 per turn.
I watched each turn as the gold increased and the amount needed to buy the UN decreased as we built more of it. Would they meet in the middle before Huayna completed?
In 1873 we realised that it had worked!! We bought the UN !!

Final Years
Well, we’d got the UN. Now we needed to use it wisely. No, really! This was important. Caesar had just completed his Apollo Program and if we didn’t get our diplomacy right, we’d see him heading off on a vapour trail …
With some small relief, we saw that Huayna was our competitor for the secretariat.
We won this vote easily, with 560 out of 863 votes and 345 needed. The votes went exactly where expected – with Asoka, Roosevelt and Caesar behind me, and only Isabella behind Huayna.

How to get the win? Well, if they all voted like they did there, we’d get it, as the target is 535 to win.
However, they might not be as willing this time. I checked around. Asoka (who we’d signed a defensive pact with recently) was +11, Caesar was +7 and Roosevelt +6.

I decided that cancelling our pact with Asoka should improve our standing with the others, while taking a –1 hit on Asoka’s +11 wouldn’t hurt too much. I was also going to switch civics to Mercantilism to impress Roosevelt, but couldn’t do this before the first vote came up as we had only just set our civics and had to wait.

The Vote
I decided I had to see how the vote went rather than choosing one of the lesser resolutions. That would have no point. It looked good, as Asoka was still +11 despite the cancellation of our def pact. Roosevelt had gone up to +8 and Caesar on +9. They all liked Huayna much less.

Well, we won it – and on the first vote too !!
We got 568 out of 876 with 543 required.
The votes went:
Huayna votes for Huayna (205)
We vote for ourselves (108)
Roosevelt votes for us. ( 185)
Asoka votes for us. ( 104)
Caesar votes for us. ( 171)
Isabella abstained. (104)

So all my supporters came up trumps, while Huayna’s sole one deserted him. Satisfying.

Afternote
The Viking nature was so changed in this game. The early violence was carried out with swordsmen. On checking back after the end, I realised that I only built 2 Berserkers – and didn’t use either of them in combat !

All the AIs were way behind me in tech by this point and there was really no question of my victory. Suffice it to say that I launched in 1912 AD, the same turn I developed Future Tech 1. I achieved a score of 3,215/12,016. Not an especially impressive time for a Space Race, really. And yet I was way ahead of the AIs. I don’t know why. It was a commerce-friendly map and there was quite a lot of tech trading going on. I’ll be curious to see what other space race times are like.

I'm not convinced it was commerce-friendly. Sure, at the beginning it was because of all the coastal tiles, but in the end game, towns give far more commerce than coast, and there were very few locations on the map where you could build a good city that could largely work towns without having to work a significant amount of coast too (and in my game, in only one of those locations, by the dyes in Russia, did anyone actually build a city). Add to that that Issy, Asoka, and Caesar had very little decent land outside their capital radii...

EDIT: Sea-based tends to delay the AIs finding each other and starting to trade techs amongst themselves. Depending how aggressively the human player beelines for alphabet and trades, I'm guessing that may slow things down a bit too.

I gotta say I really feel for anyone who tried to go domination. At the end of my conquesting, Viking culture covered just about everywhere of significance (the only main exception being Spain, where most cities were still in revolt), yet I still apparently had only 57% landmass.

http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/1830/conquestmu4.th.jpg (http://img110.imageshack.us/my.php?image=conquestmu4.jpg)

500AD saw me about to invade Russia. I did that and took over Cathy’s continent, which meant I had twice as many cities and still next to no production. I really wanted to invade Caesar since he had the Great Lighthouse and the Oracle, but the only realistic route was via India, so I invaded India instead, capturing Delhi and razing almost everything else. Then my troops headed westwards.

Weird Happenings

My most exciting turn was when astronomy apparently invented itself. Yes, really! This dialog suddenly appeared totally out of the blue, when I was 1 turn away from liberalism.

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/9540/astronomyqf4.th.jpg (http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=astronomyqf4.jpg)

After talking to Gyathaar I/we figured expanding cultural borders must’ve popped a goody hut somewhere (I now suspect the one on the island South of Nidaros). At any rate it provided some compensation for the very next message which informed me Caesar had just beaten me to liberalism by one turn. :mad:

Well with my new 6-movement galleons invading Caesar was easy. But something else weird happened:

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/2057/cumaevw9.th.jpg (http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cumaevw9.jpg)

In this screenshot you can see two cities I’d razed (as arrows), but for some reason Cumae’s borders refused to collapse. As I recall, they persisted until I captured Rome.

Then later on some of my units suddenly appeared on an island in the middle of nowhere. (The only explanation I can think of is perhaps I misclicked some turns earlier and sent a galleon loaded with units there or something. But in that case where’s the galleon?)

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/319/unitshq0.th.jpg (http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=unitshq0.jpg)

Conquest

At this point I had still been thinking in terms of capturing key wonders, then heading for space, but I was now starting to realize my game was turning into a conquest game by default so I just went with that flow and sent my beserkers over to say ‘hi’ to Huayna. For some reason he didn’t seem to appreciate their visit, but my beserkers sure enjoyed munching all those bananas. I guess it’s possible they might have got a bit drunk and accidentally captured a few cities, you know what Vikings can be like…

The great thing about conquesting so late is that your economy is strong enough that you can keep most cities you take, thus helping your final score. Conquest is also less monotonous on a sea-based map because you have the nice logistical issue of making sure all your boats are in the right place to ferry your troops, plus since you can reach most cities by boat, you’re not trudging your troops 1-tile at a time through enemy territory, at the pace of your slowest siege unit.

There wasn’t much strategy beyond that, other than that after liberalism I beelined to democracy as fast as I could, just so I could get some extra production from my towns. The lack of production on the map really showed all round, with many AI cities only defended by 2 units as late as 1600. I also heavily delayed researching rifling, so that for quite a while, instead of building grenadiers, I could build beserkers, give them CR1, then upgrade them. I only abandoned that strategy when Roosevelt started throwing cavalry at my grenadiers and cannon, causing enough damage that I had to make peace with Washington still uncaptured.

I erased Issy from the map in 1784, at which point the only thing lying between me and victory was 5 Incan island-cities spread out across the world. At that point I was really glad for the promoted beserkers (now infantry), since 3 of those cities were on 1-tile islands that would have to be attacked from the sea. There was then a rush to see if I could finish Huayna off before the psychologically important turn of the century. I just did it – captured his last city in 1798, only to find of course that the game doesn’t award you the victory until the next turn! :mad: :cry:

When I saw how far away from the domination limit I was at the end, I was briefly tempted to leave Huayna with one last city and instead build my empire to try and go for the cow award. With hindsight I’m slightly sorry I didn’t do that now, I’m pretty sure it would’ve been a very easy cow (albeit a rather boring 244 additional turns).

One final point: My game seems to be giving me some additional save files with names starting Rag_Mon_Sta_... , as well as the saves I’m taking manually:

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/1089/filesbs1.th.gif (http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=filesbs1.gif)

Anyone know what that’s about?

Originally Posted by DynamicSpirit
One final point: My game seems to be giving me some additional save files with names starting Rag_Mon_Sta_... , as well as the saves I’m taking manually:

Anyone know what that’s about?

Hi
I think they're the result of ticking the boxes on HOF tab 3 of the Options, called something like "Create starting save" and "Create save on exit".
The name is the combination of Ragnar, Monarch, Start etc.

While I'm here - congratulations on your uber-Viking performance in wiping out the world! :goodjob: :viking: I couldn't help but be amused at the contrast with my own effort, successful though it was, in which my 2 solitary Berserks stayed home and quaffed the local ale rather than seeing off the enemy.
The different approach shows in the score! :lol:

@DynamicSpirit:
I much prefer land-based domination attempts. I just can't be bothered with sea-based invasions (load up the boats, unload the boats, load them up again!) and so whenever confronted with island maps I try to go with what takes as little effort as possible.

In this case, I did conquer Catherine but then ran out of mental energy, couldn't face another space race and, given that most of the world didn't actually mind me too much, I set myself the challenge of a rare diplomatic victory.

To speed up this process, I actually cash-rushed the UN (for about 11,000), definitely a first for me and something I think I picked up from the Realms Beyond site.

But then, although the world liked me (well, most of them), and they voted me in as Sec Gen, they didn't like me quite enough. Which kinda buggered up my plan. Still, I didn't give up. There was a bit of warring that had started, with a couple declaring on the Incans (I think), so for the mutual war bonus I joined in (without lifting a finger, except to fend of Incan destroyers).

The Indians and Romans gradually got on board, but still the Americans wouldn't play ball, favouring the Spanish over me. So I switched to their favourite civic and encouraged them to do the same (I didn't think this latter bit was needed but it helped). I had also gifted them techs and resources until I had little left spare. And still Roosevelt didn't like me enough.

For a short while he wouldn't declare on anyone (perhaps a peace treaty, I don't know), but finally I could bribe him to attack the Incans, and the mutual struggle bonus got me the required votes, a fair while after I got the UN but not *that* long.

I think with the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus, this wasn't a bad commerce generator, and after a slow start I surged into a tech lead. The frustrating thing was production.

My genius moment was getting Astronomy with Liberalism (for the Galleons) but not realising that the Colossus would be obsoleted (I even checked!). Sheer class.

As described in the first spoiler by 500 AD I had accumulated a substantial tech lead and was the only civ with CS and Machinery. That situation held for quite a while … I don’t know what the AI was teching but being the only civ with Bureaucracy and macemen felt like a good thing.

The next stage was prepping for the first conquest, Haya as he had the Great Lighthouse and then Roosevelt for the Pyramids. Russia was the more obvious first conquest but I wanted good military production sites and Haya had some beautiful grasslands ripe for workshop spamming. I would have Chemistry and State Property around this time and converting 2-3 of his cities to military should carry me through. Having the GL sealed his fate. I had great relations with Russia and Augustus so I wasn’t worried about getting stabbed in the back.

As with overbuilding my initial cities, I probably overbuild for the first war. The plan is to build 10-15 maces and about 10 cats with the associated galleys. It takes from 500 AD to 1352 AD when I’m locked and loaded outside the Hayas’s gates and that’s about 80 turns. By this time I’ve teched Liberalism and taken Chemistry as the free tech so now I’m going to my first war with some macemen, but mostly grenadiers and cats. Oh, and by that time I’ve got astronomy so I upgrade the galleys to galleons. Definitely too long getting started so that’s going to really hurt the score. I should have rushed Russia with swords and cats early on and started warring 100 turns earlier.

Anyway I won’t bore you with all the details so here’s an overview of the warring:
1352-1436 Haya is eliminated. We’re facing Longbows so it’s an easy war. We enjoy his resources and convert his cities into military producers. Great general is born and used to boost production 50% back at home.

1514-1556 Roosevelt is vassaled after booting him completely off the island (more Longbows). With Pyramids we switch to Police State for the WW and production and can now also switch to State Property. Another GG is used to boost production in one of Haya’s cities. Emancipation is adopted by someone so that pain begins.

1571-1601 Isabella is another easy Longbow target and is vassaled with 2 cities left … none on the main island. Biology is discovered and we start farming and blowing up the population except for the military production cities. Emancipation is becoming more painful but I’m through teching so it’s not a problem to turn up the cultural slider a little. Still with WW it’s starting to be a problem.

1622-1640 Cathrine is next and has a few musketmen but they’re seem easier that Longbows (she and Issi are now my vassals, hmmmm). I have cannons now and the steamroller is rolling.

1649-1652 Asoka now has some riflemen but not many. Still with cannons and grenadiers they are not a problem and he fairly quickly vassals. I need to wrap this up before infantry appears.

1664-1706 Augustus has all riflemen and puts up a decent fight. He won’t vassal and we have to chase down every last island city and take them amphibiously.
So it felt slow and I know I should have done better. It took about 200 turns to get the main island through the initial phase, then 80 turns to build up for the first fight then only 91 turns to conquer the world. Finished in 1706 with ~115k but I’m sure the top players will post over 200k. I don’t feel like playing the game over again and trying some different approaches … it’s funny because after losing in the deity game I had no problem playing over and over (and losing over and over trying to win culturally until I finally tried diplomatic for the first time ever and won).

Well I managed a conquest victory in 1694 AD for a final score of 76216. At the end here, the game looked a lot more like a domination game than a conquest game.

Shortly after 1AD I attacked HC thinking that I could go through him to get to America and the pyramids. Stupidly, I of course could not get there going that direction so I should have attacked Catherine first. When I finally did conquer the pyramids I decided to take US instead of police state. I was so hammer poor & had so many towns that this was actually better from a production standpoint! I guess I should have used the whip more.

In any case I capitulated everyone which was nice on a water map since you didn't necessarily have to go chasing all the little cities on tiny islands and could just take out the main landmass. Takes some of the tedium out of the end-game I think.

I delayed astronomy for a looooong time since I was able to capture the colossus from the Romans. When Russian galleons showed up I had to get it fast, but not before losing 4 or 6 of my galleys trying to pick that galleon off. Really, really stupid on my part. This bone-head move alone probably cost me 25 turns.

Anyway I enjoyed this game. It was great upgrading berserkers to grenadiers and seeing the amphibious promotion stick - somehow I thought it would go away. I teched to rifling & artillery (about 1 turn before the game ended) but I didn't need either. My grenadiers would have been enough. In the end I had a great thing going where I would land a massive force of cats and totally destroy a city's defenses then take the city with a massive amphibious assault of grenadiers.

Great game! Like WOTM5, I really enjoyed this one. Thanks Gyathaar!

In any case I capitulated everyone which was nice on a water map since you didn't necessarily have to go chasing all the little cities on tiny islands and could just take out the main landmass. Takes some of the tedium out of the end-game I think.


Ooooh I'm jealous! I kept trying to capitulate people to speed my game up but for some reason noone was willing to do so. I'd have a civ reduced to one or two useless tundra-bound cities and they'd still insist they were doing fine on their own.

I'm not convinced it was commerce-friendly. Sure, at the beginning it was because of all the coastal tiles, but in the end game, towns give far more commerce than coast, and there were very few locations on the map where you could build a good city that could largely work towns without having to work a significant amount of coast too (and in my game, in only one of those locations, by the dyes in Russia, did anyone actually build a city). Add to that that Issy, Asoka, and Caesar had very little decent land outside their capital radii...


I suppose you're right. The map isn't as good for commerce as I was giving it credit for. Especially with the kind of land some of the civs were restricted to.

Ooooh I'm jealous! I kept trying to capitulate people to speed my game up but for some reason noone was willing to do so. I'd have a civ reduced to one or two useless tundra-bound cities and they'd still insist they were doing fine on their own.

I could only get them to capitulate when they only had 2 or 3 really poor cities left. Caesar had incredibly negative modifiers with me since I razed almost all of his cities and he still capitulated. Wonder why they wouldn't give in on your game?

This was a very strange game for me. Limited warfare (taking out H.C. with berserkers) and gifting tech to speed up the global tech progress is not my typical way of playing Civ :D

I built the Great Lighthouse and sent out workboats to explore. I focused on research and was first to Liberalism. There was no real competition, and I could not trade tech with anyone any longer. So I gifted four techs to each civ, but that didn't help very much. I sold techs for about 50 gold each, occasionally trading for AI tech. Built workshops in the end to create production cities. Got the final three space ship parts within three turns. Bye bye Gaia.

I could only get them to capitulate when they only had 2 or 3 really poor cities left. Caesar had incredibly negative modifiers with me since I razed almost all of his cities and he still capitulated. Wonder why they wouldn't give in on your game?

Is there a thread that discusses the mechanics of capitulation? Does it depend on your +/- relationship with them, the civs charactoristics, your population or power ratio compared to them, how many cities you've conquered, is there are minimum number of turns involved, etc.

Most of the time civs capitulate as expected but sometimes you're surprised with an early offer and other times you have to chase down every last city.

Conquest in 1532. 112k score

In 500AD, I had eliminated Cathy and was starting to build Berserkers. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5122845&postcount=6

Techs and civics

530 Theocracy, Drama (trade)
575 Horseback Riding (trade)
635 Optics - I circumnavigate the globe in the same year
710 Feudalism (trade)
920 Paper
1040 Astronomy
1055 Engineering (trade)
1112 Education
1184 Printing Press
1190 Gunpowder (trade)
1220 Guilds (trade)
1244 Chemistry
1262 Banking (Roosevelt capitulates)

I grab a few more techs in trade and by capitulation but they don't influence the game

Civics
815AD Theocracy
1250AD Police State and Vassalage


I paused for a bit too long before declaring war on Roosevelt in 920AD. It was hard producing enough Berserkers and boats to start the invasion. Roosevelt capitulated in 1262AD after I had captured most of his cities including the wonder filled Washington. In 1244, I had finished researching Chemistry and revolted to Police State and Vassalage while finishing the war with Roosevelt. I then shut off research to upgrade berserkers to amphibious grenadiers, galleys to galleons, and triremes and caravels to frigates. A second great general in 1220 built a military academy in Birka so I can produce a berserker every 2 turns and upgrade to a city raider, amphibious grenadier.

Initially, I was planning to take over the world with amphibious berserkers but it just didn't work well. I had to land troops at every city in America to bombard the cultural defences so the amphibious promotion didn't help. I think a couple of reinforcement berserkers attacked from a boat but most troops were on land to protect my siege equipment.

The upgrades to grenadiers were really required to attack amphibiously. A mix of grenadiers and berserkers would have been fine if the frigates had performed as I expected but I ended with a pure grenadier force. (I also overbuilt my economy. After shutting down research, I have so much money that I can upgrade everything, not just select units. I kept almost all cities and still had surplus cash.) I built a lot of triremes and caravels to make a stack of 10 frigates. I thought I could pull up to a city, shell the defences, and attack with grenadiers and berserkers. Unfortunately, frigates do limited bombardment against cities with walls and were almost totally useless against Spanish citadels. I don't understand why walls and castle bombardment bonuses apply to ships which use gunpowder.

I had focussed my initial upgrades on boats and didn't have enough grenadiers to attack by sea so I was still landing stacks to strip cultural defences for my berserkers against Asoka. Grenadiers are such heavy favorites against longbows that 20 or 40% cultural defences just don't matter.

War with Asoka: 1286-1334 (Capitulation) I take all Asoka's coastal cities and have enough grenadiers to now just strip half the cultural defences with the frigates and attack from boats.

Augustus 1340-1424 (capitulation). My military is now rolling and another great general (1376) is settled in Birka so I can produce a CR3, amphibious grenadier every 2 turns. My other cities produce CR2, amphibious grenadiers, boats, and garrison units. Augustus refused to capitulate until I took a couple of inland cities which delayed me a few turns.

Huanya 1430-1478 (Capitulation). My fleet of death is now unstoppable. I have about 15 frigates to strip defences and a huge stack of raider grenadiers. Huanya still has longbows and is destroyed before he can start to mount a defence. He is left with 2 small island cities.

Isabella 1484-1532 (Eliminated): The citadels are frustrating but I still get 70% odds with CR3, cover grenadiers against longbows and can afford losses. Isabella won't capitulate and I waste 4 turns tracking down her last few island cities.

The city raider, amphibious grenadiers were unstoppable. The grenadiers don't suffer much damage against longbows and wounded units can just sit in boats healing while the stack moves from city to city. I should have skipped Education and Printing Press and researched Chemistry earlier. I had so much money from capturing cities that I didn't need the extra commerce for upgrades and I lost the Liberalism race so Education was only useful for the Military Academy.

Is there a thread that discusses the mechanics of capitulation? Does it depend on your +/- relationship with them, the civs charactoristics, your population or power ratio compared to them, how many cities you've conquered, is there are minimum number of turns involved, etc.

Most of the time civs capitulate as expected but sometimes you're surprised with an early offer and other times you have to chase down every last city.

it's power ratio, and it's personality dependant.
I capitulated russia when I had razed 2 (well 3 if you count the one I razed twice) and captured 3 cities from Cathy.
She still had a good deal of quite correct cities. No production but good commerce.

Then, I went after Isabella (than no one liked), took her capital and 2 more cities + razed a few more, but whe wasn't willing to capitulate yet, probably because she had her citadells and conquistadores in the remaining cities.
Then I sent my galleon to unload my rifles on a hill without thinking that in the FoW there could be a frigate.
And indeed there was a frigate. My army met the titanic, and I quit.
I was going nowhere anyway, and I had geiven my self a huge deal of unhappiness to draft those rifles. I wasn't willing to sue for peace and start again.

Back door diplomacy for me... circa 50K points, around 1860 or so... I was going for domination, but I guess alot of the land must be tied up in the icecaps because I was at about 48%, and had bassically all useful land accept for Washington and Osaka.

I was bassically tied for the tech lead with Osaka, and 2 or 3 techs ahead of Washington. All of us had Maching guns, Artiliray, tanks, destroyers, and infantry. I was number 1 in power, maybe 5% ahead of Washington. Each had about 12% land, so I would have needed to take out both. To make matters worse, they had a defensive pack with each other.... So... I wimped out... Built the US, and voted myself the :king: .

Continuing on from my first spoiler -

With Stonehenge putting out prophet points, I was a little concerned about what to do with them; the sudden thought I had was to get Theology. I did, and founded Christianity. The reason wasn't just for the money (and being able to build temples) but also because the AI tends to be very happy to trade for this tech but not very happy to offer it.

I didn't adopt a religion. All the other civs merrily adopted different religions leaving me as the liked person in the middle merrily trading away, and roughly keeping up in tech most of the way through the game. Huyuana beat me to Liberalism though. Asoka offered a Defensive Pact, and I signed not quite trusting Julius, what with his Power graph shooting upwards. Russia started falling behind on tech and I was contemplating building a bunch of rifles to go and invade, thinking I'd need the extra cities for tech pace later, but a bit worried about losing the DP...

...when Cathy declared war on me :lol: In typical AI madness she landed two trebuchets and a maceman (who were promptly shot) and that was it. I dropped two rifles and a cavalry off to go pillaging Russia, and left Cathy and Asoka to fight while I built a proper invasion force. By the time Cathy and Asoka agreed peace, my troops were ready, and Russian cities started falling.

Meanwhile, I'd bee-lined to the UN, and my opponent was Roosevelt. But while I was a shoe-in for Secretary General, two rotten abstainers denied me the victory. Even after Russia's cities had fallen to me, it wasn't going to be enough.

And Huyuana had completed Apollo...:eek:

This is where if it had been a human opponent, I would have lost miserably, but the AI is pants at the end-game. I researched Computers first, made sure I had plenty of labs and Factories, and timed Apollo for a point where I could set just about every city building a part at once. Judging by the slow pace it turned parts out, the AI must have had it's heart set on the same couple of cities building each part in turn. Oh, and I spent a couple of engineers getting the Space Elevator. The AI's tech pace also seemed to slow miserably as they went settling every rock in the ocean and built enormous armies (their power was much much higher than mine).

Result: Space-Beserkers in 1956. Only 10340 points, but my first win on Monarch :king:

I played the worst game I've played since I got done with the tutorial. Ended up quitting in disgust after one too many stupid mistakes which is disapointing because I really planned to keep submitting all WOTMs. I'll play through again to learn from it but no submit from me on this one. :(

I played the worst game I've played since I got done with the tutorial. Ended up quitting in disgust after one too many stupid mistakes which is disapointing because I really planned to keep submitting all WOTMs. I'll play through again to learn from it but no submit from me on this one. :(

I share your grief.
Too many :smoke: moves, and quitting in disgust for me too.
I'll do better the next time hopefully.

Conquest in 1532. 112k score


That's likely a great result. I had a really hard time in this game because of the lack of production resources. Probably made a mistake taking down Cath first rather than going down to attack higher production (and lots of wonders) Romans. Oh well.

I think mine was 1780s, 91K.

Probably made a mistake taking down Cath first rather than going down to attack higher production (and lots of wonders) Romans. Oh well.


That's a very interesting comment. How do you choose your next victim?
(Assuming you're choosing violence. I took out Catty Cathy and then changed my mind and went for diplomacy.)

Do you hit the one who's the biggest threat, or do you take out the nearest? Do you go for one who has plenty of wonders? Maybe a little more subtly, do you weigh up the units that each AI is going to face you with - either what they have now, or what they might have if you leave them until later!

What did I get from wiping out Russia? A little extra living space, and Stonehenge (Whoo Hoo!)

conquest victory, 1800, 56k

Start:
Saw the limited area for a second city, like most, figured the place on the lake + coast near the gems would make a good site for second city. I went for sailing after bronze working/animal husbandry. Built only one worker, got my settler pretty quickly with two mines + pig and fish. Got sailing the turn i settled second site, build a warrior in my city in that same turn, and slaveried my trading post fast. I had also prechopped a bit, so I got great lighthouse real quick, got it around 1700 or 1600 bc. Built a ship after that with slavery again, made contact with russia and founded writing the exact turn. was nicely timed. Got 3 trade routes in both my city each 2. At same time I got iron working next, got the gems. Saw the iron site, built a city on the other side of the lake so i got both iron and the clam. Built a fourth city to get both horses and share the pig with the other city.

Invading Russia 200 BC - 500 ad
Started building up a pretty decent force of roughly 9 axemen, 3 swordsmen, 3 catapults and 3 galleys to invade russia (wanted the sugar and dye which looked to be everywhere). Invasion took up until around 500 or 600 ad. Was fairly well executed and I was left with 5 or so level 4 or above units. Once the war was over, my economy was just booming. Only problem was, russians had somehow managed to escape across the ocean and had some city where i couldnt find it.

Building up economy 600 ad - 1200 ad
Built up a booming economy with some crazy trade, got harbors in almost every city with 4 trade routes of 4 - 6. Built two industrial cities, used my duel iron city was my gp. Was probably somewhat of a mistake, as I really only ever got up to 20 gp as I wanted to use the pigs for my other industrial city. Rushed up to chemistry to get grenadiers and get my workshops as good as mines. With the city with pigs + 2 horses I built a workshops everywhere, did the same with the city with fish + clams on the coast. Had some made production, and just pumped out beserkers with five xp with vassalage and upgraded them to grenadiers. Got astronomy and upgraded to galleons and frigates.

Invading India + Rome 1200 ad - 1500 ad
With roughly ten frigates and 20 double city raider grenadiers with amphibious, I just rolled through Indias longbows, took three of his coastal cities and he was ready to surrender within like eight turns. Took this as a good sign, decided to move on to Rome. Took Rome literally 4 turns after India surrendered. Took out the coastal cities rapidly, unfortunately he simply wouldnt surrender and forced me to go all the way inland to take all of his cities, even when he had one four pop city, he wouldnt surrender. Was annoying as hell.

Rebuilding economy somewhat 1500 ad - 1650 ad.
switched to mercantilism/representation because everyone else was doin it. Was up to around 700 research at this point, with three very decent military industrial sites. Was pumping out my marine grenadier city raiders pretty quickly. I got a bunch of great merchants which was pretty lucky.

Attacked spain 1650 - 1750 ad. and America
Dont really know why I hit spain, he was second in height, I guess I wanted to kill him before he got riflemen, that didnt work out. He surrendered pretty quickly. I hesitated a few turns to regroup a few turns and hit america. America had a ton of cities, but he really only had longbowmen. At this point I had upgraded my some 20 level 5 city raider grenadiers to infantry. These monsters rolled through the longbowmen. Still, was a large area to conquer so it took some 15 turns.

Finishing off incans.
Attacked incans 4 turns after america surrendered. They actually put up somewhat of a fight with a sizeable force of riflemen, but still didnt stand a chance against my force of elite infantry marines. level 3 city raiders, level 1 combat, and level 1 anti gunpowder. Rolled through them with a few artillery added to the mix. At the end of the war they got a few machine guns... so much for them being a stalemate, artillery simply rolled through them. They fell in exactly 1800 ad and I got my victory.

Overall
I was happy with my play, think I balanced everything out well. I probably should have gone straight out production once I got communism and had my grenadier marines, instead of building up more of an economy. Towards the end of the game for example my economy was 1.3 k research a turn. Probably shouldnt of bothered getting ironworks and mount rushmore and other little wonders and gone for a quicker victory. Everything went well this game, doubt I could pull it off again much less do any better.

Vikings were just made for this sort of map. Was awesome, unstoppable marine grenadiers rolling around with city raider... so much fun.

Diplo Victory in 1840AD ~27k points

I left off my spoiler in 500AD with the Incans having just declared war on me.

I destroyed their invasion forces, then sent a couple galleys with cats and Berserkers in them over to his continent, protected by a trireme. I found to my unhappiness that I cannot bombard from a boat :mad:, so I landed my troops, bombarded down the defenses, and took Cori...something in around 1000AD. Since we had very little production, I heavily poprushed my troops as fast as I could. I built 5 galleys and ferried over troops whenever I needed to. Huayna was not a very amphibious war simply because I was unused to both warring and not needing to worry about amphibious assaults.

Vilcas was razed amphibiously, Macchu Picchu was conquered, Huamanga taken and lost again, Ollantaytambo taken, lost, then razed, Tiwanaku taken, and Huayna refused to surrender...so I took Cuzco. It was a risk because I used the last of my troops, and if I lost, or he counter attacked, I would lose effectively my entire army on his continent. Luckily, I won, took Cuzco, and he was immediately willing to Surrender and become my vassal.

Thus, I moved all my transports back home, used the two Great Generals I had produced to build a Military academy and an Instructor in Birka, my horse city.

At this point I was getting greatly outpaced in tech by pretty much everyone, and somehow was pleased or friendly with everyone. Despite being Buddhist with Izzy, religion didn't seem to affect the relations I had with everyone. I decided then to head for a diplo victory, hoping I could get Caesar to be my opponent, since no one liked him except Asoka.

Unfortunately, as happens with plans...they got mucked up by a couple things. First, Caesar began running away with the wonders and tech race. He and Asoka were the first two to Liberalism, and for some reason I began getting the WFYABTA block from everyone...I've never even had that before, yet everyone, even Izzy who was +18 with me, was giving that to me. So...I began scouting out various lands for a good target for my now semi-numerous and very upgraded Berserkers. I had Theocracy, Vassalage, a Barracks, and an Instructor in my main military city, allowing me to produce 9exp Berserkers once every 11 turns, 6 once I built the Heroic Epic there. Caesar's name came up short...he had good production it seemed, since he had built 8 or 9 of the wonders, he was universally disliked, and was close enough for me to conquer him. He also seemed inclined to build Praetorians rather than Maces.

Thus, I sent my galleys through his waters into India, then declared war on him in around 1400AD. On the first turn of war, I conquered Rome, on the second, Arretium was taken. I then moved back toward India and razed his two Eastern cities. Just before that happened though, he discovered chemistry and started building grenadiers...bad news for my Berserkers! I decided to give him no time to build up his gunpowder troops. My trebs and Zerks moved quickly along the coast aboard my ships, landed, bombarded, then conquered city after city. Ravenna was razed, Cumae conquered, Neapolis conquered, then I took an ice city...the Christian Holy City. I took it because without taking it, Rome would never work its entire fat cross...but I really didn't want it. It gave me 9gpt thanks to the shrine, but I planned to gift it to Asoka.

As soon as I took the christian holy city, Rome was willing to surrender. In all, I took 8 wonders from Caesar. It is interesting to note...at this point I still had not gotten a single Great Person...Rome gave me one 5 turns after it came out of revolt. A GE that I used to build Versailles in Macchu Picchu.

At this point I had 2 vassals, Izzy at +17 and Cathy at +10. Roosevelt was my likely opponent and was +7 with me, while Cathy was +8 with him. I decided for some reason I'm not sure of that perhaps I would attempt a conquest win...I only halfheartedly thought this, but while thinking it I realized Asoka had 2 LB and a pike in all 4 of his coastal cities, including Delhi.

Thus, I declared war on him with my highly upgraded Zerks and Trebs(I only had 8 Zerks and 6 Trebs, but nearly every single unit had CR3, and 3 of my Zerks were CR3, Combat2) I therefore, positioned 2 Galleons(I upgraded at some point) outside of Asoka's 3 noncapital coastal cities just before declaring. Upon declaring, I brought in my troops and landed them at 2 of the cities, conquering the other from the sea. India counter attacked, but didn't really do much good. I bombarded the other two cities and conquered them the next turn. Following this, I loaded up my ships and moved over to Delhi, where I bombarded the city...and found something disturbing...There was a Machine Gun sitting in the city. :eek: I worried about it for a moment, and decided to try my Trebs on it...perhaps they would hurt it a little bit. WHOOHOO!! I lose one treb, but my second one somehow WINS! I easily destroy the LBs and conquer Delhi, giving me another 4 Wonders...3 of which are already obsolete lol

However, cultural pressure and the lack of a willingness to surrender by Asoka, meant I had to go inland. I razed the Taoist holy city and just before I razed Lahore, an ice city, Cathy declared war on me! :eek: :cry: . Lahore was defended by a Machine Gun, 3 Rifles, and an LB...that caused me to lose 1/3 of my troops, following that, Asoka surrendered and I was able to pack up and send my troops back home.

I got my troops home to find that my easternmos gem city had been overrun by Cossacks, Rifles, and Trebs. I quickly began rushing troops in Birka, Uppsala, and Haithabu while transferring the Lbs defending each of them to my gem city. Unfortunately, it didn't help and Cathy razed it. I was able to rush a few muskets, give them gunpowder promotions, and destroy the remaining Russian troops, but I'd lost a size 14 city :mad: so I retaliated by sending my Indian vets to Russia. I went 0% science, upgraded 5 of my Zerks to Grenadiers, and razed Novgorod, a size 13 city. Cathy was immediately willing to give me 500 gold, 7 gpt, and her WM for peace.

I then found out I can tell my vassals what to research :D I had Huayna research Chemistry for me. By this point I had gone from 0 Great People in 1450AD, to gaining a GP for the Jewish Shrine, 2 GS, and 2 GE. I used one GE on Versailles, and was saving the other for the UN. I used 1 GS eventually on Biology and the other eventually on Computers.

From that point on, I teched up to Mass Media, built the UN in 3 turns thanks to a GE and 2k gold from Izzy and Roosevelt, and easily won the SecGen election. I only needed 476 votes to win the diplo victory, so I discovered Bio, gifted it to Izzy, Asoka, Caesar, and Huayna, since I was guaranteed all their votes, and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, I came up at 420 votes...40 short.

There was absolutely nothing else to be done...I had been continuing to build Zerks, promote them twice, and then upgrade them to Grens, so I loaded everything up and declared war on Cathy again, then bribed Roosevelt into warring with his only supporter for Mass Media :D Then...bad news. Cathy wasn't using Rifles anymore...she had upgraded to Infantry and I couldn't built them yet. Asoka and Caesar knew how, but refused to share :mad:

Thus, my amphibious grens and my trebs started to move toward Rostov...but then I saw the horrible horribleness that was a stack of 6 destroyers and 3 transports in Moscow. Unfortunately, it was defended by 2 Infantry and 5 Rifles as well. I used my frigs and Ironclad to bombard the city, then suicided every single treb I had. It didn't do squat to one of my Infantry, but hurt the rest of the stack. I then suicided half my grens before I had managed to kill off her Infantry. Luckily, Rifles are easy prey for Grens, so I managed to take Moscow. I then had a choice...do I keep it, as such a nice city as it was, or do I raze it? It was really no choice...I had no way of defending it and didn't have anywhere near the technology to conduct a fair land war. I razed Moscow, size 21, and was instantly much closer to a diplo victory. Cathy immediately resettled there, but obviously the damage was done to her. I finally managed to get Infantry from Caesar for Radio and Computers, and was no longer able to build Zerks :( Luckily, I had cannons now. To make a long story short...I conquered a size 12 1 tile island city using my amphibious grens, then upgraded them all to Infantry, went 0% science, buying 3 cannons every turn, and then razed Yekaterinburg, size 9, and Rostov, size 8. I originally kept Rostov at size 14, hoping ti would enable me to end the game, but Cathy came up with a tank :( and took out my 2 defending Infantry. So I then went back and razed Rostov. This happened the same turn as my last election. I won the game in 1840 with ~450 votes, with 443 needed. :king: This is my earliest diplo victory in a solo game :) It wasn't nearly as fast as it could have been if not for a few mistakes, but overall I am proud of it.

Biggest mistakes: Trading for Chemistry when I did...I had planned on using my 2 GS for Electricity, but lost the ability to when I got Chemistry...it made them prefer Bio. If I'd lightbulbed Electricity, it would have saved me over 25 turns.

Warring Asoka...it wasn't really necessary at the time, and actually led to Cathy attacking me, as he was her friend and I believe he bribed her into it with Rifling. If not for that, I could have had Cathy's support once she switched to Free Religion.

Not building any monasteries the entire game. If I'd built even 1 monastery I could have converted Cathy to Buddhism easily, giving me her votes instantly.

Peacing Cathy when I had a sudden army of 10 Amphibious Grens. I could ahve easily taken/razed at least 3 other cities, reducing the number of votes required enough for me to win on the first election.

Key features of my game.


Founded six cities: five on the starting island and one on the "iron island" to the south.
Had two relions spread to my civ, and founded Toaism for three in total.
Kept missing out on early wonders, though did get GL & HG in the end.
Avoided all wars to about 1800 AD, then had over 100 years of continual war first with HC, then with Catherine, then with HC, then with HC...
The wars were an utter disaster. Though I was able to keep my enemies off my island easily enough, I was completely unable to defend my sea based resources. Though the food itself wasn´t critical, I really lost out on the health bonuses.

What with only six (coastal) cities, three religions, and long drawn out debilitating wars, this cultural win turned into a tedious slog. Can´t say I enjoyed it overly much. Still, what day is it? Ah yes, first of the month! I can throw myself into the GOTM to consol myself.

Since the tech pace was Super Deity and the game was totally peaceful I decided to play for diplomatic win. Although I could only pick up a few very outdated techs via trade from the least advanced AI (Isabella), the AIs took pity and gave me several techs ranging from Monarchy to Physics (!)

I got liberalism and economics for the civics before the long haul to Mass Media. I had radio over a couple of AIs but was unable to get anything for it, and even giving it away in one case didn't even give me a point for fair trade relations. Using a saved engineer and a quick switch to Universal Suffrage though I was able to complete the UN in 1580. I did not have sufficient diplomatic relations to win at this time (several AIs at +3 to +5) but it was critical to make sure I did get the UN.

I still didn't have democracy at this point, so when I got voted secretary general I immediately passed emancipation, then gave away my happiness resources in order to start getting bonuses for supplying the AI with resources. I also needed to get the +4 fair trade bonus. After being unable to get any significant relations bonuses by giving away Radio and Mass Media, I simply went 100% cash and tried buying votes by giving the AIs 1000+ gold at a time which fortunately worked. To make things more irritating the AI population leader changed 3 or 4 times before eventually settling on HC. Catherine was voting for HC and I couldn't do much with her so I had to get the other four on board.

I was already in representation which kept Augustus happy, and had to bribe Roosevelt twice to switch to his own favourite civic (mercantilism) as well as give him thousands of gold to get the fair trade bonus up. Unfortunately Isabella and Asoka had different favoured religious civics. I was in free religion which kept Asoka at +12 and was able to get Isabella up to +8, but she wouldn't vote for me. I decided to try researching and switching over to Theocracy, which put Isabella at +9 and Asoka at +7, which I think was just sufficient to get both their votes and win the game. So it took me 40 turns of bribery (basically) after finishing the UN to get the win, but I'm glad it was actually possible.

Ok - I played this game over the first two days the save was available and didn't take good notes, so here goes as best I can remember:

I started off wanting to have a conquest or domination victory, but got a very late start due to the lack of resources. By the time I was ready to make my first invasion, I already had Bezerkers and was just about to get Astronomy.

First Target: Izzy. Why? She had been ticking me off all game, and no one but the Americans liked her. She also had two holy cities (with widly prolific religons), I had none, and wanted the money from the shrines. the plan was to go for her first, and then maybe America.

I started with Madrid and then her other cities, I didn't bring enough forces on the first wave to take her out completely, so it took a little while to get the second wave up and running. I ended up making her my vassal after either razing or capturing her entire continent. Only city left was a small one on an island south of America. I didn't want to schlep all of my forces to take this last city. This turned out to be a big mistake as I suffered diplo penalties with everyone else for the rest of the game.

Oh - and those shrines? She didn't even have one. :sad:

Next target: America. I was already in the neighborhood, he had a ton of wonders, and I belatedly realized that he had no metal. Grenadiers, Cavalry, and eventually Canon made quick work of his longbows. I didn't make the same mistake as I did with Izzy and eliminated him from the game.

I used an engineer to help build the Versailles in Washington and we were off.

At this point I determined that conquest was going to be impossible, and I had not really been playing the diplo field with any care - so I switched to Space as my primary victory option.

I still went for the UN though in the hopes that I could get a diplo win, but planned for space all along. Chicago built the UN (and later the Space Elevator) and I had no problem with the SecGen vote, but not enough for the win. I had no negative points with anyone (except Izzy), but Cathy, the other candidate, was also well liked. Izzy being my vassal probably prevented me from getting the final vote, and her votes for her one city were worthless.

Exactly 19 turns before my last space ship part was to be built the Romans declared on me. No problem however as he never landed anything on my land, and only managed to take out a few fishing boats before I was able to gain air and sea superiority. When he declared I had just started future tech 1, so I stopped all research and started buying a huge army/navy.

Needless to say, it was too little too late for Rome and I launched in 1947 for the 1948 win.

I had every intention of walking over people with my Berserkers, but...

Early success was to somehow pop a GE in my capital city AND the Pyramids were still available when he popped! So I founded the Pyramids in my capital and, at this level, thought I was doing well.

Long story short...
I was near the bottom in score most of the game and slightly behind in the tech race. I fought several times with Catherine, eventually taking her land and cities. The Berserkers did come in handy (especially when updated to Grens ;) ). By the time I had blown her out, Ceasar looked to powerful to take on...Capac was getting very itchy, and the rest seemed peaceful and more militarily advanced, so I thought about a Diplo win?

Long story longer...
I recall researching Mass Media by about 1905, and luckily had another GE pop at roughly the same time, so I built the UN almost immediately. Then UNTIL THE GAME ENDED I tried almost everything to win by Diplo. Luckily I was up against Capac (who didn't like me..or pretty well anyone else at the point I built UN), so I thought I had a chance!
I gifted any resources I could muster. I gifted the odd unit. I gifted some cash. For several decades I had everyone Pleased or better with me, but could NEVER get Ceasar to clinch my win! Unfortunately I was never really UP on techs to gift techs to certainly him, but any others? Eventually he simply became more friendly with Capac and I didn't have enough votes (or power) to change things.

I've had a couple of games go like this for me. I guess it's too tough to win via Diplo when you are too far behind. A bit frustrating, but I was THRILLED to be competitive until the bitter end...losing to a Space Race.

Game made me realize how Ive been almost entirely ignoring trade routes. Never really made that huge of a deal about building cities on the coast, but it adds a pretty crazy amount of commerce.

That's a very interesting comment. How do you choose your next victim?
(Assuming you're choosing violence. I took out Catty Cathy and then changed my mind and went for diplomacy.)

Do you hit the one who's the biggest threat, or do you take out the nearest? Do you go for one who has plenty of wonders? Maybe a little more subtly, do you weigh up the units that each AI is going to face you with - either what they have now, or what they might have if you leave them until later!

What did I get from wiping out Russia? A little extra living space, and Stonehenge (Whoo Hoo!)


I generally go for what makes sense from a direction, threat, etc. I didn't even get StoneHenge for killing Russia - and it took a really long time for those cities to do much for me. Going after a tougher target - to get more wonders and production would have been a better decision in this case.

I generally go for what makes sense from a direction, threat, etc. I didn't even get StoneHenge for killing Russia - and it took a really long time for those cities to do much for me. Going after a tougher target - to get more wonders and production would have been a better decision in this case.

That definitely struck a chord with me after what happened in this game. I felt that I went for the easiest, nearest target, and was swayed by stupid, meaningless things (like the fact that Cathy didn't like me and would be likely to attack me sooner or later). Going for Rome would have been a smarter strategic move for me, too, in retrospect. Would have been tougher, though, as you said, and I would have had even more of the worry of keeping up on tech while engaged in a war. But, hey, Caesar was the runaway tech leader in my game. He wouldn't have been quite so inclined to tech at full speed if my Berserkers had been all over him. So maybe the whole flavour of the game would have changed with that decision.

Anyway, I'm resolved that in my next game - which will be GOTM16 this weekend - I'm at least going to give this aspect of the game more serious consideration.

That definitely struck a chord with me after what happened in this game. I felt that I went for the easiest, nearest target, and was swayed by stupid, meaningless things (like the fact that Cathy didn't like me and would be likely to attack me sooner or later). Going for Rome would have been a smarter strategic move for me, too, in retrospect. Would have been tougher, though, as you said, and I would have had even more of the worry of keeping up on tech while engaged in a war. But, hey, Caesar was the runaway tech leader in my game. He wouldn't have been quite so inclined to tech at full speed if my Berserkers had been all over him. So maybe the whole flavour of the game would have changed with that decision.

Anyway, I'm resolved that in my next game - which will be GOTM16 this weekend - I'm at least going to give this aspect of the game more serious consideration.

I disagree, in my game I went after cathy solely because of all that beautiful dye and recourses. I needed the happiness, it was quickest to get to, and three very good city sites.

To get to rome im pretty sure you had to cross the ocean, were you waiting until astronomy to make your first move?

I disagree, in my game I went after cathy solely because of all that beautiful dye and recourses. I needed the happiness, it was quickest to get to, and three very good city sites.

To get to rome im pretty sure you had to cross the ocean, were you waiting until astronomy to make your first move?

Hmm. I was probably being a bit harsh on my own play and reasonings when I made that remark before. Yes. There are good strategic reasons for taking the Russian island, as you pointed out. (In fact, later in the game I realised that it also had some other very useful aspects that the home island lacked. Mind you, I couldn't have know that at the time)
As it happened, Moscow was a very useful trade and science city for me, even in the type of game I ended up playing.

On the subject of attacking Rome. I could have got to him, but that was only because of the places he'd chosen to settle which might have been different in your game. There was a discussion in the first spoiler between DynamicSpirit, Myself, Jastrow, Thrallia (iirc) about whether we could reach Caesar or not. Some could. Some couldn't. I posted a screenshot that showed just the edge of the Roman borders in 500AD, that I could have crossed with galleys.

Continuing from first spoiler...

I still had no goal in mind, but probably would go for a Spaceship victory. First, however, I wanted to expand my territory.

In 305 AD Stockholm (my double Iron-city) finished the Colossus, greatly improving my income. Together with Great Lightouse I now had a good economy and was able to stay on top of the research race. In 455 AD I learned Civil Service (Machinery came in 245 AD) and started producing Berserkers.

I started my first war in 860 AD and the victim was Russia. I captured Moscow on the first turn of the war which crippled him badly. Cathy was very ill-prepared for a war it seems because I never suffered a counter-attack. She also didn't have anything to deal with my berserkes, so I captured city after city until I had alll of her start island under my control in 1130 AD. Cathy became my Vassal and was left with a lone Island-city. I also got a couple of Generals in this war.

In the 16th century I had a short war with America which gave me two cities.

In 1574, India declared war on me and I still had a good portion of my troops available and quickly sent them to the south. In 1628 I had taken his 2 biggest cities (the only ones that were not Tundra/Ice cities) and he became my vassal as well.

After the Indian War I focused on Infrastructure and Research and founded a couple of Island-cities to gain some missing resources. The rest of the game was peaceful, maybe because I always kept a big army and fleet, so noone dared to attack me.

I launched my Spaceship in 1910 AD

Continuing from 1st spoiler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5145067&postcount=44), I had just taken Cathy’s southwestern city on the copper, with a small stack of cats/elephants, since Augustus had settled on the iron island, denying my access to both sources of the metal. From then on, more cats and our first berserkers were produced, taking her island by 920AD. She was able to escape to a small island, and then I finally accepted her capitulation. She was willing to do so for a long time, and I was concerned she could vassal to someone else, but she didn’t had many friends and nobody had cities near her, so it never happened.

On that same year, two events made me choose my diplomatic victory path. While attacking her last city on the island, a berserker/great general with 98% odds of success died in combat. Meanwhile, a great engineer was born in Nidaros. Indeed, he was idle for some 600 years until he could help rush the UN in 1550AD (done in 4 turns with his help and 4 forest chops which I had saved for it in Haithabu).

From then on, I took the beaten path of beelining to Mass Media. I got Liberalism in 1178AD and took Astronomy. I learned Physics in 1400AD, and the free GS was coupled with another one a few turns later to lightbulb Electricity. I had no problem getting tech trades as I had friendly AI’s. I reached Mass Media in 1538AD. Despite having zero wonders in the whole game until the UN, and having only 3 GP’s (+ the free one from Physics), I was pleasantly surprised with my research rate. Being financial, the 3 commerce coast tiles weren’t that bad, at least until my end game date. I kept working them and cottage-spammed wherever I could, instead of running specialists.

In fact, the AI diplomatic environment was really inviting. Roosevelt had the pop lead and would be my rival. Izzy and him were Buddhist friends, but everyone else liked me better, as I never adopted a religion, even when all my 12~13 cities were hindu. What also helped is that I was running Hereditary Rule (Capac’s favorite civic) and Free Religion (Asoka’s favorite civic) since I could. But in a super-dumb move, after I was elected SG, I decided to revolt to Emancipation and since I was already there, to Universal Suffrage too!:smoke: Of course, Capac abstained in the 1st win vote, so after the 5 turns from revolution I went back to HR and was elected easily in the next vote.

Overall, I had fun playing this game. Many thanks to the staff. :goodjob: I think it will help me to get rid of my wonder-building addiction. :mischief: After getting them all in WOTM5, it was a nice change of pace. :)

Fairly weaksauce generic CultVic game. 3 religions spread, failed to build 'mids, barely managed to scrape out of 3 lategame wars where enemies plundered my sea resources, but was otherwise conflict-free.

I was doing pretty good for techs (alittle behind) I was gaurding most of my cities with muskets and all of a sudden Ceasar declared war on me. He took one city razed another and well I gave up. I major problem was that I didn't get any iron Asoka beat me to it! I would of went to war with him but my strougest unit was a horse archer and he had pikemen! I'm hoping the next WOTM is a lower dif I'm used to playing Prince. I think I would have done better if I had more experiance playing island maps.

To get to rome im pretty sure you had to cross the ocean, were you waiting until astronomy to make your first move?

That's a really good point that I hadn't realized. I think I could cross because of a cultural bridge. But, if I recall correctly, that doesn't work once you declare war. So, maybe I couldn't attack Romans until later in the game. So going after Cathy may have been right.

Was anyone able to go after Romans first?

That's a really good point that I hadn't realized. I think I could cross because of a cultural bridge. But, if I recall correctly, that doesn't work once you declare war. So, maybe I couldn't attack Romans until later in the game. So going after Cathy may have been right.

Was anyone able to go after Romans first?

I didn't have a cultural bridge so the Romans weren't an option. I probably would have attacked the Russians anyway. The Romans easily beat me to Iron Working and I didn't want to face praetorians without berserkers.

I had only lightly scouted Cathy's land so I saw some resources I wanted and was hoping for a good production city (with didn't exist) on the far side of her island.

I had built up an army to attack Rome, but Huayna declared war on me first...Otherwise, Rome would have been my first target.

India was touching Rome and accessible via coast IIRC, so if you had an OB with Asoka you could still reach Rome, it would just take a very long time...regardless, when I did declare war on Rome(still before Astro), I hid my ships in Indian waters so that when I declared war it wouldn't get kicked back out again.

That's a really good point that I hadn't realized. I think I could cross because of a cultural bridge. But, if I recall correctly, that doesn't work once you declare war. So, maybe I couldn't attack Romans until later in the game. So going after Cathy may have been right.

Was anyone able to go after Romans first?

I realised I've been discussing this with my brain in the off position. Went back and looked at my 500AD save. The border visible in the screenshot I posted was, of course, the expanded border of Pisae. Once war had been declared, Caesar would have been inaccessible due to the strip of ocean.
In this aspect, it was an identical situation to the one that caused such fun in the earlier GOTM (14 iirc) where we as Napoleon could reach India via the cultural bridge - up until the moment we collapsed it!

I realised I've been discussing this with my brain in the off position. Went back and looked at my 500AD save. The border visible in the screenshot I posted was, of course, the expanded border of Pisae. Once war had been declared, Caesar would have been inaccessible due to the strip of ocean.
In this aspect, it was an identical situation to the one that caused such fun in the earlier GOTM (14 iirc) where we as Napoleon could reach India via the cultural bridge - up until the moment we collapsed it!

No, not identical. This is Warlords, not Vanilla Civ. In Warlords they changed the rules so you can still sail inside cultural borders if you're at war. The danger in this game is in capturing the city whose cultural borders you're using, as then you will get stuck!

Personally I prefered the old way - made for much more interesting strategy choices. Not sure why Firaxis changed it.

Personally I prefered the old way - made for much more interesting strategy choices. Not sure why Firaxis changed it.
I expect it was so that non coastal water resources would not be immune from pillage before astronomy, but i dont know for sure

No, not identical. This is Warlords, not Vanilla Civ. In Warlords they changed the rules so you can still sail inside cultural borders if you're at war.

*puts hands over head and rests forehead gently on keyboard*
I can't cope any more! I didn't realise that had changed. (but I am exceedingly ancient:old: )
You'll be telling me next the Throne Room has gone - and Civil War sweeping through a civ when you take an enemy capital ;)

I add this sentence, because the description of my game is so short. ^^

Retired in 1750 AD

My goal was a cultural victory, I hoped to get a shot at fastest culture.
-settled in place
-techpath: mining, bronzeworking, sailing, masonry, AH, writing, mathematics
-built a workboat, warrior, worker, trireme, pyramids
-improved the hills for production and pigs later, prechopped forests
-chopped forests to get pyramids in 430BC
-pumped out settlers to get 6 cities on my continent
After that I followed the usual path to liberalism (got beaten by it in 1286 by Augustus), which i researched 1364AD.
I then stopped research, Augustus gave me printing press and some other techs.
I had no military other than archer&warrior. Catherine decided to attack me in 1750AD putting 3 riflemen next to my warrior (no iron, no upgrade). I was surprised that she attacked, I had +1 attitude to her.
Catherine the spoiler:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/97408/Civ4ScreenShot0009.JPG
I had 5 artists and 2 cities with >10k culture at that moment:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/97408/Civ4ScreenShot0010.JPG
Do I need more units to get a higher "power" to avoid such things?
What can I do to avoid being attacked?
I had 0% research of course, so no techtrading possible.
Does gifting units improve relations?

Do I need more units to get a higher "power" to avoid such things?
What can I do to avoid being attacked?
I had 0% research of course, so no techtrading possible.
Does gifting units improve relations?

Oooh bad luck on the attack. (Did you check whether it'd be possible to buy iron from someone else so you could upgrade your units?) Going cultural does involve a risk because you get behind in tech in the late game. You probably need to make sure you have something more powerful than archers nevertheless. It's also a good idea to try and make sure you're ahead of the AI when you stop research, and then use tech trades carefully to make sure you still have things to trade for some time afterwards. Personally, unless I'm massively more powerful than everyone else, I'll tend to make sure I either have or am likely to be able to trade to get (preferably) grenadiers or (possibly) cavalry.

Your chances of being attacked go down if you have a bigger army (being in a defensive pact helps a lot too), or if you have better relations. I believe AIs will never attack you if they are friendly towards you, but some of the leaders might attack even if they are pleased and all of them might attack if they are cautious. I don't believe gifting units improves relations but I may be wrong.

Thanks DynamicSpirit, good to know that cautious is a bad for peace. ^^
Not having iron was for sure my own mistake. If this would be a gauntlet... but I learned it the hard way.

By the way, I was in a defensive pact with Asoka. That didn't seem to scare evil Cathy at all. Is a pact with a more powerful AI better?

The more powerful an AI that you are DPd with, the better.

When an AI decides to attack you, the only thing that will change its mind is it you get much more powerful than it....and it considers the combined power of you and anyone else you have a defensive pact with.

Also, yes...you definitely need to attempt to get great relations with every AI. I think if Cathy hadn't attacked you its likely that Huayna would have unless he was friendly to you because of how low your power rating was.

Lol, I think I've forgotten a lot due to the disappointment. Hyana declared war on me once indeed! But only visited me with his galley to pillage fish. He made peace for 60gold and was quiet after that.

Contender. 1870 space victory.
At 5ad I had 5 cities, no wonders, no religions. Got Taoism about 200ad, Colossus 650ad. Traded philosophy widely to catch up on techs and still got liberalism.
Invaded Russia about 1100 ad, captured three biggest cities quickly then made significant mistake of accepting capitulation. Culture pressure from remaining Russian cities really hampered growth. Fortunately by 1500ad Catherine was able to escape capitulation allowing me to declare and clear the island.
Then it was basically peace all the way. Seriously messed up space race by researching in wrong order (first part I completed was engine!).
I'm wondering if space was the way to go in this game as there were so few high production sites available for building parts.
Not a disaster of a game but really quite sub-optimal.

Started out quite focused, vasalled Cathy, the Huayna, then Rome.
Didnt touch the game for a week due to a ski vacation, and lost all interest in it. Eventually got around and finished it, but very unfocused. The late-game can be so tedious, especially as the AI kept building cities on 1-tile islands.

Goal was to vasallize everyone but didnt pay attention and crossed the domination limit just a few turns before Isabell capitulated. Should have razed a city or 2 but got annoyed with the AI putting crappy cities in whatever icy tile I left uncovered.

Is there anything special happening when you vasall ALL civs (didnt destroy anyone). Does it trigger a domination vic, or a Conquest, or does it actually make both impossible as you cannot conquer / gain more land ?

Could go back 10 turns and try to replay but really not in the mood...

if everyone is vassalized you win a conquest victory

I typed a longish report, but this stupid forum software ate it. I just popped up "You are not logged in, give me your password" time after time without doing anything.

I don't want to retype it, so here you go with the basics:

Game status: Spaceship Loss to Rome
Game date: 1968 AD
Base score: 4157
Final score: 5818

Glad to see that not everyone is superhuman and that some people actually do lose when playing!

Well, it looks like most people got wins of various descriptions in this game...I just want to buck the trend with a Spaceship loss. :( - This is becoming an annoying habit.

Shame as I was really looking forward to this game.

It started well enough, I actually moved the settler to the SE blue circle as I've been wondering about blue cirlce placement following other threads. - I thought it might be good. - I think I was wrong.

Settled the main island and outlying islands quickly then researched towards getting Berserkers.

I had a brief moment of glory when my Berserker fleet attacked Catherine, capturing her northern island city of Yakutsk and sacking the mainland Novosibirsk (?), until Cossacks arrived on my iron resource and the war was halted.

The plan was to go back to Russia with a new force, but just as this was assembling Rome declared on me. - My Frigates were no match for Rome's Destroyers (You can see how far behind in tech I was by this point) so the sea's became unsafe.

Unfortuantely no matter what I did I couldn't end the war with Rome and I ended up getting bombed back into the Stoneage by the Roman airforce.

In my game no AI managed to achieve military dominance. All home islands remained in the possession of their original settlers.

It was America who achieved the Spacerace victory first.

So my post match analysis. - What did I do wrong?

Well my city placement wasn't great,
My economy bombed due to lack of courthouses early on, which caused me to fall behind in tech, which caused me to lose the game.

Next game I've got to give a higher priority to COL research.

I'll be watching the results tables closely to see if I can improve on my current 388th place!!!

Another day, another try for a short summary of my lost game (see above).

I settled in place, just because I always do :)

I opted for 5 cities on my mainlaind, the last one was in the "inaccessible" spot between the two mountain peaks.

From reading here, It looks like nearly everybody attacked Cathrine at first. Well, she really liked me, so I went for Cupac (to the left) and took all but two cities there (being behind in tech, I had to stop when he got better units). Taking his land turned out to be a good thing, as it secured me most of the late-game resources which my mainland lacked.

Later Cathrine declared war on me (out of the blue. She was at >+10 IIRC). But I managed to sink most of her fleet relatively quickly (she only landed one army, luckily right next to my rally point :) - Then Isabella declared war, so I made peace with Cathy without retaliating, and went for Isabella instead. I managed to take two cities (and raze one -- two times as isabella immedeately resettled on the spot) when I had to make peace again because my units wer outdated :-/. This was a weedy move, as I now had two expensive cities which were in near constant revolt (and had only a few ocean tiles to themselves). The rest of the game was quite uneventful -- I went for the UN, but lacked quite some votes for the Diplo Win. As everyone else went for the spaceship at that point, I tried to play catch up.

I've never played for space race before (I think this is a cheap second-class victory) and it showed:
I was behind, so I thought I should go for the Space Elevator. -- Then I realized, I should've researched the Tech for the Apollo Project first %-) - This probably cost me the victory. In the end, I lost the Space race by 10 turns (I was lacking quite a few parts, but they were all due in max. 10 turns)

Ah well.

So my post match analysis. - What did I do wrong?
...
My economy bombed due to lack of courthouses early on, which caused me to fall behind in tech, which caused me to lose the game.

Next game I've got to give a higher priority to COL research.
...

How many cottages did you run? You can easily run five cities on the starting continent without courthouses at research rate around 60%. Did you send out boats to meet other civs so you could trade?

On my second atempt this happened I couldn't believe it but all of a sudden I saw roosevelt and he gave me gunpouder for free! then the next turn augustus contacts and gives me nationalism for free!

Since the tech pace was Super Deity and the game was totally peaceful I decided to play for diplomatic win.

Very good. I was going to play for cultural, which I am pretty sure was possible (and I think I already had three religions at the first spoiler?). But I wasn't suffiicently motivated and I didn't pursue it to the end.

I forgot to submit my retired (challenger) game. Count me in the too tough for me this month column.

Way to go uberfish!

I lost this game on Contender level to Rome which launched a spaceship in about 1940. However, it didn’t have to happen that way.

I was never in the game with regard to score, but did keep up in techs and even got the tech lead at the end. The fatal flaw in my game turned out to be not getting enough land to be able to out produce the big guys at the end. I was basically confined to the home continent. At one point the Incas did declare war on me and I promptly took two of their cities and made peace. They were Pleased with me when they started the war, and Pleased with me right after it. Go figure?

But those 2 cities didn’t give me enough land and I wasn’t in a position to be aggressive in the middle game. So I stayed with 7 cities throughout the game. By the late middle game I had bee-lined to Democracy and got the production boost from Emancipation that enabled me to almost win. I researched those techs that the leaders seemed to be ignoring and guessed right most of the time.

My initial plan was to go for a diplomatic victory. Most of the civs were Pleased or Friendly, except Isabella, and I tried to choose my civics wisely after I got the UN. However, the votes were continually inconclusive. I then had to try for a spaceship victory, but it appeared it would take me forever on epic speed and without a big production base. So I switched back a diplomatic try. I figured that if I turned off research I could build up my treasury and bribe the other civs with cash and techs I traded for. Well, that didn’t work either. And in the long run I probably could have achieved a space victory, if I had kept at it.

There had been no wars in the entire game except for Roosevelt and Isabella and the little Inca foray against me. However, toward the end the Romans got itchy and pretty soon there was a world war involving just about everyone but me. This slowed down the space race dramatically, but by then it was too late for me to crank up the space production I needed and so I lost.

Accolades to the staff for a good game, even if the Challenger folks gave you a hard time about it.

Challenger Disaster:
Fun game Gyathaar, I do enjoy an almost impossible game, keeps you on edge, and I think the contender on Monarch was just a bit too easy, but I am a bit disappointed that I chose challenger... I love islands maps... :-(
I don't think any of you read my posts about how the AI gets free extra settlers from huts on difficulties less than noble? This is a HUGE difference factor, IMO probably more significant than any other factor... I tested this extensively and commented on it in the pre-Game posts.
By carefully observing the land areas and population ratings during the first few turns, long before any increase in population or cultural borders more than the 2nd layer of tiles, I deduced that FOUR of my opponents had gotten free settlers, and one of them (I suspect Rome) Got TWO FREE SETTLERS!!! I had anticipated about 3 of teh civs receiving free settlers, but not that many...
Also, the reason buddhism and Hinduism were so often founded so early was because of free techs... both of these religions were founded around turns 7-8 in my game :-(

OK, so here was my progress to about 1200 ad or so when I retired:
--------------------------

I founded in place. Got a free silver mine!! Instead of making a city between the mountains I wanted to utilize more coastal tiles better so I made one on the horse island and one on the 2nd iron island, and one on the island S of my capital. Initially i just tried to land grab as fast as possible, as I had a good continent and wanted to keep the AI off of it... but I ended up over-expanding and this really hurt.
I did manage to get about 5 cheap techs from music or drama (forget...) but that was it for the tech race, lol

When Cathy settled on my iron i decided to invade her first. I made a quick rush with all my remaining archers to the city she had made (on the 2nd iron island), taking the city. I made a small army, and then invaded Cathy, took 3 cities, and was on the cusp of a decisive victory, when, failing to maintain good relations with Ceaser, he attacked me with an infantry, cavalry, and grenadier, and took my iron again!! lol. So 2nd time I lost the iron. So i rush my whole army/fleet of elephants, catapults, and a couple berserkers back home, expending my entire army to retake the city.
At this point I estimated I was about 15-20 techs behind the leaders, and expecting a destroyer from Ceaser any turn to elimante my naval superiority and finish my ocean resources. My people were disheartened and disillusioned with my shattered promises of glory and conquest, and I was assassinated by a couple of under-paid archers while fleeing a crowd of villagers who were demanding emancipation!!!

Bigben34

Contender. Domination 1946 for 23960 points.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game, ideal for Vikings, but once I finally decided to go for Domination it took a while to close out.

I started by securing a strong home island with Trading Posts, Barracks and Forges in all cities. I built 5 cities on the mainland and one on each of the 3 islands to the South (for extra horses, iron and eventually coal:- all had a seafood resource as I recall). I went for early Sailing and circumnavigation. I tend to be production-heavy and built lots of workshops (I was generating at least twice the hammers of my nearest rival throughout the game:- this slowed my Tech progress a bit, but I was never far from the Tech lead). Despite this high productivity, I didn’t build a single Wonder (not even Heroic Epic) until after 1600, when I got access to marble and stone after vassaling Russia. I lost out on the GLib but didn’t bother with any other early GW. I beelined for Chemistry and Astronomy, only sidelined by a half-hearted attempt to grab Liberalism. I didn’t rush to Civil Service and my Beserkers were almost immediately upgraded to grenadiers after receiving CA bonuses. The Colossus was never built in this game:- it became obsolete very early in the general rush to Astronomy.

My two big weaknesses in Civ games (stretching back to Civ 1 days) are a hatrid of losing military units and a strong desire to keep my subjects happy (this used to be a big score modifier as I remember and I can’t kick the habit). Hence I spent too much time building markets etc and only attacking when I had significant advantage in military hardware. I had a core force of only 4 Beserker units with City Attack 3 promotions (further upgraded at intervals) for much of the game. These, backed up by a Medic 3 GG and a large navy, did (eventually) conquer the world. I should have built more when available but it was great to see them progress to Grenadier – Infantry – Mech Infantry. I had naval superiority from any early stage and only twice used a seige unit in anger:- all those lovely coastal cities to bombard from the safety of a ship! I did use CA3 tanks as amphibious units in the endgame (rolling straight out from Heroic Epic – West Point – Military Instructor city). They were highly effective, especially when further promoted with collateral damage bonuses.

My first target was Russia (closest, good resources) at the Beserker stage, completed with frigates and grenadiers (1238 -1600). Rome (my next target) was tech leader with a fairly large standing navy of Frigates but, for the first time EVER in a Civ game, I found ironclads to be a key unit. With 4MP, they had no problem bridging to the Roman homeland, where they acted as excellent bombards and invasion force protectors. I took out Rome (1750 -1875) and India (1882 – 1895) in quick succession using a half-dozen ironclads to control the coastal waters and blast at the city defences. After upgrading to destroyers and infantry, we conquered America (1903 – 1919) and finally Spain (1924 – 1945) with battleships, Mech Inf and bombers. Almost all cities were captured directly by amphibious attack:- in several cases I spared a single enemy unit at the end of the first assault, keeping my forces at sea to heal, then blasting reinforcements with rinse and repeat. The navies of Russia, Rome and India were destroyed in port, all ignoring the basic rule of naval warfare- that ships belong at sea. America and Spain put up more resistance, but I found Bombers to be highly effective in degrading battleships at sea for a coup de grace by my fleet. I lost a few units in the final push on Spain, including a couple of battleships and one of my treasured CA3 Beserker upgrades (I guess this was probably the 100th attack at 99% win chance):- the other three retired to a small island off the Spanish coast for the last few turns as the culture bar was ramped up and I waited nervously for my influence to spread between the captured cities (I just squeezed over the finish line without having to start a fight with my good friend HC).

This was my second Warlords game and my first taking vassals. The happiness / cost aspects didn’t seem that significant (happiness possibly was in hindsight but didn’t notice it at the time), but taking singleton resources (notably marble here) was helpful. I had envisaged my throng of vassals each researching a different Tech under my direction for an early space victory:- good plan but I assumed they would then trade them with me! I made the mistake of demanding Military Tradition from Cathy (vassal number 1) in annoyance at her first refusal:- big negative vibes and no Techs from her ever! Vassal cities were useful as advanced airbases in the endgame:- I had air supremacy for a long time and Bombers were useful in preparing cities for amphibious assault.

HC and I shared tech and Christianity for almost the whole game. He moved out from Friendly to Pleased at the endgame and had a half-complete spaceship, but without copper he stood little chance. In usual belt-and-braces fashion, I built Apollo and even completed the Space Elevator at the very death, but never started a single SS part! If required, I’m sure I could have put a SS together before HC. The only other GWs I built were the Pentagon and the Eiffel Tower. Spain completed the UN while my attentions were elsewhere, but I was a shoe-in for DG in any case at that point. I decided to press for Domination rather than a back-door Diplo win; it probably delayed my victory by 30 turns or so, but was more satisfying and also produced a higher score. In hindsight, I should have launched my attacks far earlier. Looking at the stats, I had a kill ratio of 131 / 13 for naval units and 294 / 18 for other combat units (including my initial scout who was mauled by a lion very early in the proceedings):- unmistakable evidence of my typical overcautious approach. Nevertheless, a very enjoyable game:- many thanks to the GOTM team!

This was a fun map/game, but I think I did not take enough early advantage of Viking specialties & launch war early enough -- and then when I did fight, I fought Incas, I would have found it easier going to take on Cathy before she got cavalry (and also gotten more useful resources it turned out). In the end I think Cathy was the only civ I *didn't* fight at some point -- wanted to declare for a good stretch of the game, but always seemed to be having some other war thrust upon me. So there was a lot of work left to do still in late game, due to this failure of achieving at least one early knockout. Was playing for domination, was in 2nd place behind Rome still but gaining ground & lead in tech over most, was constantly fighting wars with just about everyone at some point and had gobbled up about half of HC's continent as well as many island cities. But it was a long slog & clear there was a still longer slog to go, because of all the wars I'd pretty much committed to military victory, and it became clear that domination would mean essentially total settlement/conquest of habitable land (due to all that land locked into the ice, etc), and total conquest would require lots of logistics of shipping armies around; it became clear I'd have to play marathon sessions to make deadline, and I could not focus on one opponent because every time I tried to do that the AI seemed to sense it and another civ would launch a surprise attack. So I was certainly not guaranteed of winning, not if I coasted anyway. Thus I kinda saw the writing on the wall about trying to finish this & pooped out early this month (somewhere around 18xx in game time?) and moved on to GOTM16.

As far as what was most noteworthy -- the most damaging surprise attack was by the Romans, who were friendly with me, and the SAME TURN he declared war a stack of 4 frigates and 5-6 transports loaded with knights cannons etc appeared on top of my iron producing city founded where the goody hut had been & took it by the 2nd-3rd turn of the war. That Roman surprise attack was a brilliant if treacherous move by the AI, simultaneously taking out my main production city & only source of iron at the time, while I was off fighting a war against Roosevelt or someone like that (who had each also declared war on me, though not with such devastating lightning effect). That probably could (should) have knocked me out of the running completely had he followed up or solidified his position (at the very least it destroyed my chance of pulling ahead of the pack befroe the end of the game) -- but for some reason he left the whole naval force sitting in the city, moved some of the cannon and knights out & didn't move in any good city defenders, and also didn't put any units in defensive position on the iron (like I had when he attacked me, and chewed up a lot of his units which were forced to make amphibious assault). When I finally gathered forces & launched my counterattack to retake the city I landed unopposed on the iron, and though I lost a lot of units, when I finally retook the city, I destroyed a navy of almost 12 ships (which gave me a HUGE breathing space). So the battle for that city arguably cost him as much or more as it did me in the end. The AI seems capable of brilliant initiative at times, but then just seems to fall asleep ...

This was a fun game, could have been funner (and possible for me to complete) if I'd gotten more aggressive early, and/or we had longer to play. The later resource placement (aluminum and oil) made it particularly interesting, it was very hard to guarantee my supplies of these given the early choices I'd made about conquest targets. For me at least, maps with lots of islands means a lot slower going in real world time ...

I don't think any of you read my posts about how the AI gets free extra settlers from huts on difficulties less than noble? This is a HUGE difference factor, IMO probably more significant than any other factor... I tested this extensively and commented on it in the pre-Game posts.

Free settlers was not the problem, the problem was the AI research pace. The AI research bonus also meant that the AI offered much less in trade than normal, which nerfed the usual high level strategy of beelining/lightbulbing until you have something tradable.

On immortal all the AI would get an extra worker and settler over monarch and that would have been MUCH easier than this.

For the second WOTM in a row, I did not get to submit a game. This time the Peuter cooperated but just ran out of time because I started real late. I wish we can submit just incomplete game without having to Retire.

Anyways, out of necessity to speed up the game, I chose a fast paced tech game toward the UN and kept most Civs happy or pleased with me hoping Izzie or Franklin being my opponent. But it turned out my buddy Catherine was my competition and Huayna was +13 with her Vs +12 with me. Tech pace was very fast with Ragnar leading it. Started the Un in 1670 AD, 14 turns later in 1712 Izzy declared, 40 turns later we built the UN in 1770 AD. With 20 minutes to go to submit deadline in 1816 AD, I called it quits for the moment.

Did Right :goodjob: :

Built the Pyramids.
Use 3 GP farms and was basically giving away techs.
100 percent Science for most of the Game.
5 Academies each giving about 30-75 additional beakers.


Did Wrong :nono: :

Only Build 6 Cities (Had room for about 5 more with two on the large island).
Did not grab land when available.
*Not attacking Izzi while we were so far ahead of her.
*Not Attacking Huayna with our swords when he was just defending with 2 archers.