WOTM 07 Final Spoiler

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How did you fare in this game? The difficulty was relatively high, but the map was designed so that a well thought-out strategy shoudl allow you to compete, if not win.

For the first time in a long while I won't be submitting my game. It started crashing repeatedly in the 1300s, so much so I was afraid I'd be suspected of cheating.

That's only part of the reason I'm not submitting. There's also the fact that all of these crashes were taking place as first Shaka and then Alex and his vassal Caesar invaded my territory. I was going to lose. And while I've submitted losses before I decided this time I'd rather just throw in the towel, and start in on GOTM17. :)

For what it's worth, my game went OK up until the dogpile at the end. I scouted north of the start and settled in place. I had considered moving my settler SW onto the plains hill, and certainly rued my decision not to do so. But really, the start spot wasn't half bad, especially as a GPP city, which is what I ultimately used it for.

Like most folks I concentrated on getting Immortals out in force as quickly as possible. I didn't do an especially impressive job there. My second city, built before I discovered AH, turned out to have Horses (to go with Gold, Gold, Fish, and shared Wheat). I probably shouldn't have bothered with building a third city, which I sited near the Copper east of the start.

My first war went merely OK. I chose Caesar as my target. He'd expanded across the mountains and was my closest neighbor. I was hoping to cripple him before he had Iron and then turn my army against someone else. I was able to take his closest city easily, but Rome was always just a little too tough for me to crack. After one failed attempt, I fanned out and did a lot of pillaging, and razed what would have been Caesar's Iron city. Then I regrouped for another strike on Rome when Caesar foolishly moved a stack of Archers away. It came agonizingly close. In the end he had one Archer with maybe .5 health, and I had a handful of even more damaged Immortals (two retreated at "0.0"). Next turn he was back to three Archers in the city and I called off the war.

The Roman war did brought me one really nice city, and it put Caesar securely into last place for the rest of the game. But it didn't bring in nearly enough in territory and pillage to justify the cost. By the time it was over I was in no position to attack anyone else. I was going to have to play peaceful. But I did send my few remaining Immortals to raze a barbarian city north of Persepolis. Those barbs had kept Hannibal out of that area and I was able to build three more cities up there.

My plan was now to play for a Diplomatic victory. The situation was not unfavorable, in that all of the biggest civs had good relations with each other and with me. Shaka and his friend Caesar were the odd men out. So in theory all I had to do was avoid trading with those two, and I could be friendly with all the biggest, most powerful, and highest voting civs.

So that's exactly what I did, while beelining to techs I could trade. I lightbulbed Philosophy first, and made some good trades for that. After that it became harder, because Hannibal consistently beat me to everything. And because Alex and then Ramses soon started to fear I was becoming too advanced. Which is very frustrating to hear when they have 6-8 techs you lack, to the one that you have to trade them. By the end of my game Saladin was the only civ trading with me. But I had a Great Engineer in the bank, and I was on track to get Mass Media at or before the time anyone else did. So that aspect of the plan was working.

The big problem was my pathetic military. Beelining to Mass Media, having a hard time tech trading, and lacking Iron meant that I was fielding Mustketmen and Catapults as my best units when everyone else had Rifles and Cavalry. Still, when Shaka declared on me in the early 1300s I thought I might hold out. He wasn't much bigger than me, and his Cavalry couldn't take out my City Defender Musketmen. But then Alexander, declared on me as well (several times, actually, since it kept crashing my game). He was Pleased with me, but I'd probably set myself up for this when he'd been at war with Rome not long before. He razed a city and left some land open, where I promptly built. Then I used a Great Artist to expand my borders, impinging on the territory of Greek-held Rome. Then again, maybe he would have attacked anyway. I'd done everything I could to make him happy, but that's no guarantee of safety with Alexander.

Alexander was the world's military and population leader, and he was well ahead in military technology. His invasion stack was roughly the size of my entire army. So I'm quite sure he'd have had his way with me had I cared to continue the game. :)

At 700 AD, I realised that it was not possible for a cultural victory, so I switched to Diplomatic. During the race, I captured a city from Shaka and Hannibal each. I got the votes from Ramesses and the Romans at first vote.

Thanks to the admins for a fun map :goodjob:

Recap

From the first spoiler. I settled in place and was happy to have survived to 500 AD with 5 cities.

The Pride

I was actually doing a bit more than surviving on my first ever Immortal game. I managed to settle into a nice pattern of researching unpopular techs and selling them for loads of cash. My small empire meant minimal maintenance costs. :king:

The Masterstroke

The only problem was how to defend myself against all those powerful civilisations around me. The pinnacle of my genius came when I aligned myself with the three big Hindu empires of Augustus, Alexander, and Saladin. I sealed my security by signing a defensive pact with Augustus, the then top dog. :deal: This meant I was safe from all but Ramesses and Hannibal and I had the backup of the others if anything went wrong. This tactic is otherwise known as the “New Zealand Gambit” as it is identical to the non existent military strategy of my home country. :cool:

The Fall

La la la, I am so clever. I might even be able to push for a diplomatic victory. Especially after settling a nice little sixth city. So, what went wrong? A blunder, of course. Dazzled by my own brilliance, I failed to notice two things. First, Augustus inexplicably converted to Confusicianism, thus severing his spiritual ties with Alexander and Saladin. Second, Saladin was a vassal of Alexander. If I had noticed this, I could have changed my tactics accordingly. But I didn’t. So when Alexander declared war on Augustus in about 1616AD, the house of cards came crashing down. The defensive pact kicked in, and suddenly I was at war with Alexander AND Saladin. It was infantry vs immortals and it was all over by about 1700AD. :cry:

Conclusion

I enjoyed this challenge a lot, even though I was not really up to it. The biggest lessons I learnt were:
1) Don’t always settle in place on human designed maps
2) Pay closer attention to diplomacy, especially if that is the keystone of your defensive strategy.

Looking forward to the (free – hooray!) GOTM 17 which now seems like a complete Monarch cakewalk compared to this Immortal nightmare.

My first write-up here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5232545&postcount=6)told the story of how we reached 500AD staring into the abyss.
Now for the story of our fall. :(

Saladin had just mounted an attack through the pass in the gold mountains beside Pasagardae. His advance force consisted of horse-archers and chariots, while behind them a contingent of crossbows, catapults, pikes and swords streamed north.

As we raced every available defender over to Pasagardae, Zulu swordsmen took advantage of our absence and jumped on our copper mine.

I managed to get peace with Shaka by paying him good amounts of gold, plus Literature. Saladin, however, was not going to be put off.

590AD, and Pasagardae fell.

Since this was effectively game over anyway, I decided to give Saladin our other remaining city – Susa – for peace.

We now sat there in a kind of living death. Only our capital remained. It all fell quiet.

Taking pity, Caesar (always a friend) gifted us horse-riding. :pat:

I could see that Hannibal might attack soon. He got annoyed at us and cancelled OB.
However, nothing really happened for year after year.
We got a Gt Scientist (Faraday) who taught us mathematics. Whoo.

In this manner we crept through to 1100AD!
At that point, however, it all collapsed.

Shaka decided he hated us and would like to wipe us from the map.
Since I knew this would be the end, I didn’t mind answering Hannibal’s call to join him in a war against Egypt. It meant nothing.

For several turns we defended Persepolis as best we could – whipping units until we could whip no more. We defended wave after wave of attacks from 1100 until 1166.

At that point I could stand no more, and in an attempt to put and end to it, all of my forces leapt out at their attackers! Strangely, it went quite well and we won more than we lost! However, we had virtually no units left now. The end was inevitable.

In 1172, Persia suffered a conquest defeat at the hands of the Zulu. How ironic, that it was the only civ I had gone out of my way to attack (seeing that they were the weakest of our rivals at that time) that finally grew up to be the ones that put and end to us.

I did ok after my initial rush but I rushed the wrong opponents :( I rushed Saladin then Alex, later conquered Alex who fell to a dogpile (I bribed Ramses in, and Augustus just dogpiled), then took on Shaka after Augustus declared war on him and finished Shaka off. Hannibal was left to his own devices for much of the game and he never warred with anybody = he had a massive endgame stack of cavalry and cannons that nobody could touch. He also had -4 "you declared war on our friend" so I only got him up to pleased till he adopted free religion. He was cautious after that so I got worried whenever he had his hands too full.

I was originally thinking that I could pull off a late domination victory but I later realized that Augustus had a much larger army than I suspected, and my production was terrible. So I started researching furiously towards MM and luckily popped a GE before I finished researching it. I finished the UN in my iron works city in a few turns, and then checked the first vote. Augustus abstained, Hannibal voted for himself, and Ramses (my favorite buddy at +20ish) voted for me. I basically needed to grow myself and eliminate Augustus to win diplo so I continued to war with Augustus in increments, bribing Ramses in each time. Hannibal jumped in for a dogpile once or twice but I bribed him off each time after he took one city (to absorb Augustus' stacks but to prevent him from taking more cities).

Eventually, Ramses and I conquered the last of Augustus' cities, who vassalized to Ramses on the turn that I won diplo. Looking at my finishing graph, I had actually managed to catch up to Hannibal's production by the end - I suspect I may have been able to pull off a very late spaceship victory if I had kept on playing without the diplo shot. But it wasn't pretty as Hannibal had jet fighters flying around towards the end of the game, while I didn't even have flight! :lol:

In 500 Persians are researching for space victory. Saladin and Alexander defeated by Cyrus. Augustus and Ramesses are friends and Hannibal and Shaka are not friendly.

Shaka is weak and hostile. He has 2 towns in jungle east of our capitol, then comes Roman lands and then Zulu core towns along east coast. I decide attack Shaka in 665 and capture first town: kwaDukuza. In 785 capture uMgungundlovu. Now I have Zulu jungle towns and make peace with Shaka in 815.

Roman culture very strong and annoying. I build synagogues, stupas, academys and hermitage in border towns. Also 2 great artists for culture bombs. Still uMgungundlovu joines Augustus in 1148 :( . But Carthagian Avar joines Cyrus in 1244 :)

In 1214 Hannibal hates Ramesses so much he declares war. They fight 3 centuries and Ramesses is losing. In 1526 they make peace and Ramesses becomes vassal to Augustus. Hannibal and Augustus now very strong.

All the time I seek great scientists, but small other gpp make other great people. I get 2 artists (culture bombs), 2 scientists (academy Athens and lightbulb), 2 prophets (2 shrines) and 3 engineers (1 from fusion, 2 become specialists and 1 help with liberty statue).

In 1700 Augustus tired of Shaka and Shaka dead in 1709. Now only 4 nations left. Augustus and Hannibal strong and research fast. They also built most wonders. Persians can build statue of liberty (1484) and space elevator (1766). In 1715 Persians make Apollo program and in 1821 Cyrus in rocket:king:

Much thanks to civfanatics people for the very pleasant game :goodjob:

I left off at 500AD in a stronger position than I thought I would have, but still precarious.

I had already knocked off Saladin and Alex early on, and fought against Caesar, razing 4 cities and depleting him, then sued for peace.

By now I was way behind tech-wise and had a poor but functional economy. I hunkered down to build and catch up. I was worried that Shaka (who was annoyed with me for warring with Caesar) would DOW me, so I also started to rebuild my military, too.

A small surprise came when Shaka actually DOW'd Caesar. Then Shaka asked me to convert to Hinduism, which I elected to do. I already had Hinduism in all cities and had the holy city. Both Shaka and Caesar were hindu, Hanibal and Rameses were not, but I figured they were mild mannered enough not to mind. So I converted to placate Shaka.

A few turns later, Shaka asked me to join in on Caesar. I still didn't have Cats but I could see that Shaka did, so I decided to join in (I really wanted Rome for the Pyramids). I figured I'd let Shaka bombard the cities, then I'd sneak in and take them. Well, I waited around Rome for ages waiting for Shaka to bombard, but he never did. Caesar has Praetorians (with Generals) and Longbowmen in Rome and I only had swords and axes and immortals, so I dared not attack. I was building military for a good while. When I had a sizeable force I wandered East a little and destroyed one of Caesar's less defended cities, leaving him with only one other beside Rome. Then the faithless Shaka (I hate that guy) made peace with Rome after having done nothing but pillage terrain. I decided to do the same, but marched my troops back towards Rome to my home territory first to avoid getting them trapped on the wrong side. As I was passing Rome, I noticed that Caesar had moved almost all of his troops out of Rome to fortify his secondary city, so I threw my all at him and finally took it. Then I sued for peace.

By around 1400 I was at the peak of my empire. I had my original 2 cities, 3 captured capitals and sundry other cities that I'd captured or settled later.
Unfortunately I was really far behind all the other players Techwise and had a very poor economy.

My heyday didn't last too long. Sooner than I would have liked, mild mannered Rameses attacked me and took one of my two religious capitals. He could have wiped me from the planet - he had Cavalry and Grenadiers to my pikemen. Luckily he didn't really dislike me, so I managed to buy peace from him by giving him another city. So he got two cities - It actually left me better off economically, and Ramese became my friend after that.

I ploughed on, spreading my religion and doing what I could. I tried for the UN but Hannibal built it way before me. It was way too late for cultural, so I had no way to win - only survive.

But peace was not to be - Faithless Shaka, who had one been my best friend declared war on me. I managed to bring Ramases in to protect me, but by the time he managed be effective Shaka had raised or captured all of my cities except 2 (including my Hindu holy city and he razed my former cap city, Persepolis). After all that Rameses a mere one city from Shaka and Shaka became his Vassal. I've never seen a civ with as many cities as Shaka had become a vassal to anyone before, but he did. So peace came at last.

I spawned a few settlers to build some new cities on the ruins of my old ones and hung on to see how the game would end. The diplo votes were between Rameses and Hannibal. Rameses would have won a diplo victory for sure, but the nutbar never called for one. Instead, he wasted time calling for votes on Free Religion (he was the only powerful civ who still had a religion, which he was then forced to change. Idiot). He squandered an oportunity for sure, because with me voting for him and Shaka as his vassal he would surely have won.

Evenutally Shaka broke free of Rameses and probably would have attacked me, but in the 1876 Hannibal finally got his space victory. Thank Vishnu!

Lesson's learned - Well, to be honest I think I'd have to play this one through again. My biggest mistake was probably over expanding and killing my economy, but also maybe I should have been quicker off the mark in my attacks on people. Would be interesting to try for an Obermot style victory, but I think I still have a long way to go.

Thalaba

Fascinating stuff. Well done to those people who actually managed to win something in this one!

I wrote my entire spoiler in the first one...went a couple hundred years past the cutoff date, but it only took 2 sentences to sum up those years.

I made some stupid mistakes that I hope to correct next time, I was surprised to see that if not for my numerous tactical and strategic errors, I could have had a good shot at winning this game.

I was also surprised at what I managed to achieve in this game, purely because I paid much closer attention to what I was doing than I normally do. But for my horrible blunder with the Augustus defensive pact, who knows where I might have ended up?

Well, I suppose I could easily answer that by replaying it now, but alas, Alexander awaits impatiently in the next GOTM.

I'm bummed because I'm going away for a week and I'm not going to be able to finish this game. One thing that was really interesting during the game was having people become vassal states right as you are killing them off so that you now are at war with someone new (and likely the most powerful AI).

It happened twice to me and really made the game tough, but I still think I could have pulled out something with more time. Or maybe not because I'm fairly behind in techs.

That aspect of Vassal stinks! But this was a fun map! Interesting twists.

84k domination victory in 1770

Unlike almost everyone else who were doing very well or had won by 500 AD (judging by the first spoiler thread), I actually settled 1E of the starting spot to give me me access to 4 or 5 grassland/hill squares, for a classic production capital.

I built worker, warrior, warrior, settler and settled on the obvious double gold/clam/horse square second and my third city was on the coast to the northwest, a purely cottage spam city with virtually no production.

Like almost everyone I started pumping out the immortals asap, with the only building built at the start being barracks in all 3 cities. Unlike almost everyone else, I headed north and attacked Carthage as he was a) the biggest civ at the time b) he had Hinduism and c) he seemed to have only archers.

The war was largely successful and by 1000 BC I had all but 2 of his cities. Because of war weariness I was forced to peace. 10 turns later, as I was trying to finish him off, I got an unbelievably bad run of luck where I lost almost my entire force of 12 veteran immortals taking his 40% defence town on a hill with 3 archers. He had founded 2 new cities by now and I had no hope of taking them with my severely depleted army. I had captured his great lighthouse and his Hinduism founding city anyway, so I was happy to raze a few outlying cities then peace him for some gold.

...Which is when Saladin declared war on me. He had axemen, so my depleted army of immortals was of little use. However his army was also pathetic so he couldn't take any of my cities either. Since Carthage had iron, I was able to slowly build some axemen and swordsmen to kick him off my lands, while I built the much-needed infrastructure of libraries and granaries in my main cities.

The war with Saladin would last another 1000 years or so. Since he did the declaring, I wasn't suffering war weariness from it for much of the war so I had no reason to peace him. During this time I shored up my economy, got to currency first (and reaped the benefits that brings), spread Hinduism to all my cities and built the shrine by using a priest specialist. Shaka and Rome were both Hindu during this period and by trading aggressively with them I was able to keep up with tech.

At around 500 AD I got up to macemen and upgraded a handful of my old units to macemen and took most of Saladin's lands with those and catapults. His lands were quite vast by this stage and it took until about 1000 AD and knights before I convinced him that he should bow down and be my vassal.

This put me up to second in score after Greece, who during this time was busy harassing Egypt with occasional wars. Shaka had fallen behind the pack so he was my next target. A quick war with macemen, knights and catapults wiped him out, putting me up to first in score.

Unfortunately, Rome had during this time decided that he'd like to be Christian instead. He had an army noticeably larger than mine and was also a few techs ahead and had stopped trading because of religious differences. Carthage had been sweetalked into becoming Greece's vassal. The weakest next opponent was then Egypt. I take a breather, trigger a golden age and build a lot more siege weapons.

At around 1200 AD, I take advantage of Greece declaring a fresh war on Egypt to do the same. Little did I know, things were about to turn dicey. After taking 2 of his medium-sized outlying cities, I was beaten by 1 turn by Greece to taking Egypt's capital. The turn after this, Egypt agrees to becoming Greece's vassal! This was when he still had about 8 cities of population 6-8 left and he still had one pretty decent stack of units left.

Now I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Greece's army was about 50% bigger than mine, and on top of that he had Carthage and Egypt as vassals, who together had about 3/4 of my army. Alternatively, I could spend 15 turns or so marching to the other side of the map to take on Rome, who had 15% bigger army than mine but were already a handful of techs ahead. It was too late to switch to cultural or diplomatic victory...

So I bit the bullet and decided to go for Greece. I upgraded all my knights to cavalry and macemen into grenadiers. Greece had around 20 units stacked in the former Egyptian capital, and the turn before the rebellion period ended, I declared war and took out this stack. I decided to not bother trying to hold the city after killing the stack, and retreated back to another city that had 40% culture defence.

For the next 30 turns or so, I was running 10% science and 40% culture while sitting back absorbing attacks from 3 fronts. At the end of it, I took a small Greek city and peaced. The net result was that Greece's army was now merely about 25% bigger than mine, but more importantly, his vassals now had much smaller armies.

10 turns later, in about 1500, I declared war again, and found that I had to run 60% culture just to keep my people happy. My 3 stacks of 20 units of cavalry/riflemen/grenadiers/catapults/trebs eventually took out both of Greece's vassals. I also took 2 of Greece's outlying cities, but he soon turned up with a dozen cannons and totally destroyed one of my stacks. I took the hint and peaced.

Putting science back to where it belongs, I trigger my second golden age and beeline for infantry. By the time the 10 turns are up, I've upgraded about 30 of my grenadiers and riflemen into infantry. Redeclaring puts me back into 70% culture mode, but oh well, the game was won by that point. Though Greece's army was still roughly my size, there was no way his riflemen and cavalry were going to compete against my infantry.

At the time of victory, Rome had twice my power on the power graph. Good thing the domination victory condition says nothing about a requisite military size eh? ;)

After spending like 2 weeks of playing this GOTM, going at it like 4 times, and then after loosing thinking what i schould do better, i had a very good try, killed alex and saladin, then slowly augustus. Against Shaka i was using knights and trebs, he had granediers. Still i got him down to one city. Hannibal was a strugle. Using cavalry and trebs, against infantry and cannons, still i got his capitol, and 2 other big cities. My land was 60% all i need was to wait for my population to grow and win. Ramses was a good friend. + for military strugge, + for religion, +reasuerses... he was my best friend all game, and only had a -2 for declared war on friend. He was already building spaceship parts, and i just resersched liberalism. Every turn the population would go up a few 0.1%. Ramses declared and rolled over my cavalry with tanks. Like Hitler in Poland. I realy thought i had this game. Ive spent like 20-25 hours with this gotm. Well immortal is just too hard for me. Built trebs 65. Bult cats 47. Best unit: cavalry. Built 64. Infantry killed: 35!

my first GOTM and I enjoy it alot!:goodjob:

before I played this game, I thought I would have no chance since this is 3 levels above where I can comfortable play. My only goal in the beginning was to survive, at least try to prolong the End. Well, the result ended up very unexpected.

I took the adventure class, and I gain the benefits the wheel and a worker (i think). I decide to settle on the spot righ away. My second city is on the tile next to 2 gold, 1 banana, 1 fish, and 1 horse to the south. My third city is next to the bronze to the west. In both cases, I am packing my cities together just for the horse and bronze. So far ok.

Other civs are expanding too fast, especially Rome, highese score and twice my land area. Luckily he and his neighbor Arabia have different religions. I shared with Arabia and Greece the same religion buddhism, Carth and Egypt Hinduism, and Shaka and Rome Confucian.

My first war was with the Carth. Rome is too hard to tackle and Arabia is my "friend". Greece and Zulu have their tough uu by the time I have Immortals and I dont border Egypt. Taking the Carth was easy as stealing candy from a baby. I fought them twice and liberated the Pyramid from the Carth dictator.

When I about to go for the kill, Alex vassalize him and I got backstab from behind. My troops had to move a long way back and for a time I thought this is the End. War goes on, and I manage to sneak a force onto Sparta while he has to march a long path to get my eastern cities. (I put some longbows and pikes on the forest guarding btw the shortcut, you know what I mean) He would destroy me the next turn because he has a huge force next to my city. Luckily, he sued for peace.

Opportunity came and Alexander declares war on Egypt. Meanwhile, Rome became too advanced and I bribed Arabia to lead a crusade after him. About 6-7 turns Greece declared war and I figured his offensive force is in Egypt land. I backstab him and took Athens. For the next ten turns, it was a cavalry showdown. I manage to win. Meanwhile Arabia conquer 1/3 or rome. I began to worry.

Soon Greece was wiped off the map. Carth got vassalized again!!! This time he is own by Zulu. At this time, Arabia vassalize Rome and Arabia and Zulu declare war on Egypt. Thanks to me, I systematically vassalize Zulu, liberate the Carth ppl from their dictator and relief Egypt from twin assaults.

As time goes on, I built up my economy and manage to just 1-2 tech behind. I wait unit I have massive tanks. When I check the power graph and see who I should bully. Well, it took my breath away. Arabia has 4 times the army than me and 2-3 times the army of Egypt!!!:eek: I thought I would lose. My culture sucks, I am #3 on score, I am #3 in land area and quite behind on tech. I probably would have given up and retired.

Another opportunity arrived and I got Egypt to fight the vassal of my “friend” Arabia. I know this is a cheap shot since I don’t suffer a penalty of “you bring a war ally against me” on Arabia but this is my last hope. Meanwhile, I was struggling to whether to fight Egypt and later play suck up to Arabia or help Egypt and fight Arabia for balance of power. In the early stage, Arabia completely owns Egypt. Literally, Egypt just loss half of its army in the power graph while Arabia remain steady. I breathe. I declared war on my “friend” Arabia.

I had a great position in war. My troops was right immediately next to the Arabia city in Egypt’s land. I pull all the stop and use my city raider artillery to destroy the Arabia troops. By the end of the turn, when I check the demographic, Arabia lose about 800,000 soldiers while I lose 100,000. His army now reduce to three times my army size.

A long struggle continue with no ends. Egypt finishes off his remaining attackers and we fight and fight and fight. Meanwhile his warplanes destroy my economy while I just concentrating building tanks. His last chance was to nuke me. He did nuke me, well only once, right before I pass the nuclear nonproliferation act in UN.

Slowly, I took out his core cities and meanwhile liberate the roman ppl from Augustus. Egypt was friendly with me and he has no chance of lauching space. I finally won in 1952, a domination victory, after playing 17 hours.

Awesome game! :lol:

Nice write-up, Infantry #14! Sounds like a truly epic struggle.

Any speculation on what the modifications to the pangea map were that Ainwood mentioned in the pre-game discussion? My guess is they were the mountains that seemed to partially split most of the civs into their own areas.

(Haven't done a write-up yet. Will try and do that soon. Suffice to say that I suffered my first ever GOTM conquest defeat, at the hands of a certain Mr. 'Look at me I've got 3 vassals and it's not even 1700AD yet but I already have thousands of tanks too. I wonder what I should do with them...' I won't reveal his name but he lived almost directly North of Persia.)

:cry: :cry: :cry:

Definitely the mountains...I saw sheep, cows, and even a hut stranded atop those mountains...never seen that happen except when the mountains are added after creation.

Definitely the mountains...I saw sheep, cows, and even a hut stranded atop those mountains...never seen that happen except when the mountains are added after creation.


Yes! My scout snapped this:
http://lh3.google.co.uk/image/civ4.AgedOne/RgZHOf73weI/AAAAAAAAAAs/g4OPrZZH6SI/s288/Pig%20mountain%203820BC.JPG (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/civ4.AgedOne/WOTM07/photo?authkey=f08OsYyhT0s#5045798746931577314)

Yeah, Pig Mountain rocked.

I think not just the mountains, but the many lakes and seas that surrounded our starting position as well. And maybe the 3 Gold just to the south of our start...

contender, space in 1764

settled on the bananas, got the copper as well which became a great production city. Had some early confusion and was a little slow in the early war--took Alex around 350BC.

At this point all but Egypt are Hindu and that was next victim with cats/mace/el. Hannibal was tech leader and DOW'd Ramsess right before I did--I had to bribe him to make peace to avoid Ramsess cap to him or him getting cities.

My plan was to keep good relations for trading and to avoid any more wars, it worked pretty well. I had Sal friendly all game and Zulu mostly as well which got me a few extra tech trades.

Only speed bump I had was some major culture problems with Sal--he bombed me twice in my newly captured Egyptian lands which flipped a city and rendered another useless. I carelessly almost lost Pasargadae, the horse city to a culture flip as it was not garrisoned heavily. I don't think I've ever had a native city with >1000 culture and maybe 15/turn revolt in the fourth ring before.

Was able to build the GL with the help of a marble trade and also SL.

Overall I was pretty happy with my game.

1819 conquest defeat. Details of my defeat aren't that interesting, I was playing two levels above my 'comfort zone' and it showed.

However I ran into a major problem in that my 920ad save got corrupted :badcomp: and I thought it was game over so I'd like to thank AlanH, ainwood and Gyathaar :thanx: for fixing the save (even though I lost anyway :lol: ).

What an epic game! Conratulations to all those who managed a victory - this is the hardest game level I've tried and my first GOTM defeat.

I think I played a pretty good game - conquered Cathargians and Zulus, adopted Saladin's buddhism to keep him allied (which allowed a defensive pact twice, both times activated and allowing victorious wars). The Romans looked worrying but Saladin attacked them and I joined in - we each took several cities (turned out to be hard work to avoid cultural flips back to him) and he then became Saladin's vassal.

By this time it was a race between Egypt, Saladin and me. Saladin attacked Greece so I took the opportunity to conquer most of Egypt.

End game was me vs Saladin, with my empire being slightly larger and with slightly better manufacturing, but his army was about triple mine and he was ahead in tech. Hoped to catch up and/or get a diplo victory but he declared on me and never accepted peace.

Played a long hard defense that would have made the Spartans proud at Thermopylae, but it was always a losing battle vs superior numbers and tech. Used tanks and marines to hold off his artillery and tanks for ages, but his gunships and planes tipped the balance as I was some way off any air defense units. War weariness was crippling my economy, and although I managed heroic raids razing 2 large Roman cities, and lost/recaptured my gold city about a dozen times (couldn't attack him on the hill but could crush his units in the city), I was losing on all the graphs.

Ran out of time and decided to submit a retired game, but it looked likely the outcome would be a Saladin win either by space race or nukes.

An excellent game - thanks GOTM staff.

Just submitted - 1831 space race. I've played some GOTMs before, but never actually finished one, so I was able to play adventurer class. The game was a blast, but finishing the space race was really the least interesting part. :P

I started by settling on the grassland hill two tiles SW of the starting position after moving there with the intent of settling on the banana after checking out the surrounding terrain. The two golds changed my mind. I was delighted to see that I'd managed to get horses in my starting city radius also, so went ahead and made some early Immortals to rush my neighbors. I eventually took out Saladin in 130 BC and then all but one of Alexander's cities, but it took a while - Alex capitulated in 785 AD...three turns after I discovered Liberalism. :P Hannibal was insane with tech early and Augustus Caesar was crushing Shaka, so I started to go for Liberalism well before 1 AD. The real turning point, though, was 1085 AD, when I finished the Taj Mahal. Normally I use golden ages to build up an army and invade, but this time I decided to be more prudent and use it to prepare for a space race victory instead. There was no reasonable way to expect to win a war and have a positive GNP at the same time, I realized, so I just teched along from that point on, relying on sending out as many missionaries as possible, with the only real excitement in the rest of the game Hannibal declaring war on Ramesses. I had a mad scramble to promote all my Axemen, Spearmen and Warriors to Infantry after Hannibal switched to Police State, but either I managed to deter him from me or he wasn't planning to attack me anyway.

A fun and challenging game, with a very quirky map. I love Immortals as a field unit; they're wonderful at picking off loose Archers and pillaging. I have a newfound respect for the Free Speech civic, too - Bureaucracy is nice, but the starting location wasn't strong enough to compete with boosting over 100 towns. :D

Hmpf- Springtime in Denver and Civ don't always mix... I might not be able to keep up so much for awhile...
Anyway, I finished with a domination victory in the early 1300's. Having pillaged everyone but Egypt we were poised to go ahead and conquer everyone. Unfortunately I went wayyy overboard in dealing with the financial side of domination.
-I honestly did think the Temple of Artemis gave +100% trade route income everywhere. Sure, it helped us get GP's and start a GA, but chopping all those forests around Mecca for Immortals very early would have been more effective.
-Markets and courthouses everywhere... how many do you need? I had way too many. A forbidden palace and a couple specialized commerce towns would have pretty much done it. As it was I finished with over 1200g and turning a profit at 0% science. It was overkill.

So. All that commerce infrastructure meant Shaka destroyed a lot of our forces in our first war with him. It meant Rome had plenty of time to build Longbows, Maces and Praetorians while we re-built, and it took two wars to eliminate him. The shortage of forces slowed down the conquest of Greece, which eventually did become another vassal. Carthage was building muskets so I decided to leave them alone. The final battle vs. Egypt was decisive however. An amphibious assault across the lake from the capitol to take Alexandria, then march from the north and south with swarms of Trebuchets, longbows, maces, whatever we had. Those trebuchets really do the trick, it was a massacre, stacks of Egyptians units fell until we hit the limit. I was a little disappointed that my strategy turned out to be off-target, but this was a very fun game, thanks to the staff!!!
When people see my score- my highest yet by far- they might think I was milking it. Nope. I really was going for fast domination. Having a huge population is my way of boosting production and commerce. I'm not saying it's necessarily the best method, it's just what I do.

Seriously! You read AU_Armageddon’s first spoiler (NOT the final one) and he did exactly the same as me (or was it me doing exactly the same as him?) at first. Moved the settler the same way for the same reasons and spent the same half an hour staring at the gold before settling in exactly the same place as me (on the hill to get the two gold) for the same reasons.

After that something funny happened to the timeline. I think I must be living in the wrong universe of something judging by the way his game went up and up and up and mine went down and up and up and down to the final conquest defeat.

No Copper

I did the usual military thing and researched AH and BW while trying to spam immortals (though for some reason not having enough to feel secure declaring war until relatively late). And the first target was Shaka, due to his rudely placing uMgungwotsit in MY rightful territory, as shown in the screenshot.

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/3443/wotm07coppervg7.th.jpg (http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wotm07coppervg7.jpg)

Unfortunately the screenie shows my big problem. Caesar has nicked the copper NE of uMugungungugungagagOhSodIt, while Alexander has blocked off the one W of Persepolis. I can’t actually remember why I’d declared war on Alex (it was nearly a month ago) but I had done so for some reason.

That’s when things went downhill. The obvious solution would’ve been to found a city along the coast by the copper but I was totally fixated on the idea that I had to have Sparta coz it was such a great location. Trouble was, Sparta being on a hill and defended by a lot of archers, I wasn’t going to be able to take it any time soon. So I pillaged Greek lands. I captured Corinth on the far west coast, founded my great person farm north of Persepolis. And still I had no copper. Eventually I gave up and made peace with Alexander coz that war was going nowhere, at which point I suddenly got access to the copper. Oh. My longrunning war had become a war to secure a copper supply and all I’d needed was to make peace and I’d instantly have the copper anyway. :blush: I thought I’d need open borders to get it through Alex’s territory, which there was clearly no chance of securing with Alexander now. One day I’m going to understand the strange rules Civ has for trade routes, but clearly it wasn’t to be that day.

Shortly afterwards Alexander declared on me again. I have two axes but no copper again.

Then the year 160BC happened.

Anyone of a compassionate disposition – you don’t want to read the following
I somehow didn’t notice that Alex had four archers not two archers converging on Corinth, and so didn’t up its defences. Bye bye Corinth.

The same turn, my forces in the East failed to take Navajo from Shaka. Both axes lost, one of them not causing any damage at all to the defending archer, despite an 80% victory chance. Next turn there’s a sword in the city. I do not have and without copper cannot build anything that’ll touch that.

It’s nearly 0AD and I still have only three cities. And (now) next to no army either.

If this had been a private game, at this point I’d have given up on the game as a lost cause. But this a GOTM, so I carried on. I redoubled my efforts. I carefully eeked out every but of tactical advantage, superior military tactics, tech trading, etc. in order to pull off my spectacular comeback.

Oh. And lost the game.

But that’s getting ahead of the story.

Coming Through Again...

By 500AD, through careful play, constant warring, etc. I was slowly pulling through. In a succession of wars, I was wearing Alexander down to nothing, and had knocked the Zulus back to a far corner of the continent, and Saladin too was starting to feel the force of my catapults and swords. When I discovered Civil Service I managed to trade it to get myself rough tech parity with everyone. At some point I stopped being last, and slowly moved through the ranks into 3rd place.

The problem was Hannibal. He was roaring ahead of everyone else. He had Egypt as a vassal. I kept thinking I ought to declare on him to knock him down a bit, but there never seemed to be a right moment to do it (where ‘right moment’ = a moment when a war wouldn’t inevitably result in a swift conquest defeat. For me.) But I had a cunning plan. If I could slowly take out all the weaker civs, eventually I’d be Hannibal’s equal, and then I might pull off the game. I just had to make sure he never went to war with me in the meantime.

A Tale of War, Treachery, More War, and More War

Somwhere around 1500 I was just gearing up for another attack on Saladin when the war bugle blared out. Rome had declared war. Eeek! Rome could knock me out easily.

Phew! Rome had declared war on Saladin, not me. I redoubled my forces buildup, ready to add my own declaration. Just hope Rome doesn’t actually take any cities before I have a chance to nab them.

Oh no! The war bugle again. Hannibal declares war…..

Oh the suspense


…. on Rome

Phew!

My forces are ready. The time is ripe for me to move in on a weakened Saladin.

At this point I made probably the single best decision of the entire game:

I decided to check the diplomacy screen just before I declared war on Saladin, and discovered why Hannibal had declared on Rome: Saladin had vassaled to Hannibal.

That kinda buggers up my plan to declare on Saladin a teensy bit. Hannibal has rather a lot of infantry and cavalry marching past my archer-defended cities en route to Rome.

Well there’s only one thing for it. An opportunity like this can’t be missed.

I declare war … on Rome.

Thanks largely to Hannibal razing Roman cities I’m now in 2nd place in score. Whooopiee! (No, not Goldberg, just whooopiee!)

I had a couple of delicious turns, allowing Hannibal to weaken all the forces around Cumae before I came and took the city. Thanks mate! I’d have had no chance of taking it on my own.

Next turn Rome took it back.

Oooopsie!

Then suddenly peace breaks out all round coz Rome has capitulated to Hannibal.

Bigger ooooopsie!

OK. My plan now is to keep buttering up Hannibal in the hope that he never declares war. Maybe I’ll somehow get ahead by keeping high science, and taking out Saladin as soon as he unvassals himself.

I think my plan lasted about 3 turns before Hannibal declared war….

… on me.

No fair! What have I ever done to him? Can’t he declare war on Shaka instead? Get himself another vassal to add to the sixty-seven or something he's already got?

At this point the game is lost. I’ve survived pretty tight corners before, but Hannibal now has tanks. Thousands of them. And I have cannon and grenadiers. There’s really no point me even trying to resist. I do an experiment in which I discover it takes 3 cannon to kill a tank. At that rate I can probably inflict some very serious damage on about 0.0000001% of his army before I have no forces left. And with all his vassals Hannibal is near-simultaneously entering my borders on all sides.

A very few turns later it’s over. Conquest defeat in 1673AD, for a final score of 1583. Sparta was the last city to fall.

With hindsight I think I played a pretty decent game in the AD years, but the game was by that point already doomed by my failure to get a decent empire together during the BC years. On Immortal with Warlords-AI-intelligence, that’s just about impossible to recover from.

A shame it was a conquest defeat though...woulda been sweet if he'd gotten domination instead, it sounds as if he was pretty close :) (mimics PM)

Always a pleasure to read your spoilers, Mr DynamicSpirit, sir. Too bad you lost.

Your game seems pretty similar to my practice game for this WOTM where I was fighting little wars all over the place, eventually getting into a good position where victory was dependent on not getting declared on by Brennus who had vassalized half the world and had a ridiculous power rating. Eventually of course he struck and pulverised me in no time.

The actual WOTM7 turned into nothing for me and I'm not even submitting for the first time ever since I started playing.

My first submitted gotm

Very exiting game, think ive never had so much paranoia in a civ game before :)

I settled on spot, surely there had to be some iron or other goodies to compesate for the just two hills (iirc) but no... only settled one more town, and that was at the sweet spot :) with two gold, it stole few tiles from cap incl food res. and became my nr1 military city throughout the game

Anyway, it was obvious the immortals should be used, and fast for best effect, charged saladin first, he had founded largest relig and had also stonehenge, perfect, he fell pretty fast, and i didnt raze any citys, left him with just a tundra city.

So my first goal worked, after scouting a bit more i started drooling over Athens, damn it was nice :)

Rushed some more Immortals for it seeing he still had just archers, to my horror i saw he had copper, phalanx`s would ruin it for sure, he only made one unit with the copper and it was.... an axe, pheew :D

Took 4 cities from him i think, razed two others, that was all my economy could bare, that upped my citys to about 10-11, it was time for peace, and develop the new lands.

Bigges ais was especially Hannibal then Egypt, Rome wasent so big in area, but their power was huge also, while building city improvements my main goal was to be friendly with Rome, and that worked fine since he had my relig, i build missonaires to all citys in rome and egypt, could rarely get open borders with Hannibal, despite my efforts egypt wouldent convert tho, but the gold was still nice from relig wonder.

Zulu was smallest, but still he attacked me twice in game, first time it was bit dangerous, but a few warelephants repelled him, second time i took two citys from him iirc.

Next plan was to rush Rome, who had Saladin and Alexander as vassals too, with grenadiers, despite he was my ally, i figured he was only one possible to attack with succes, build up army of grenadiers+trebuches, but shortly before launch he had em too and 3x my power especially hes huge amount of collateral damage weapons scared me, plus hes vassals was there too :mad:

Plan canceled, next was surprise by Infantry+cannons, but again he got em before i was ready, same with tanks, hes citys was swarming with choppers :mad:

It was late 1700`s now and i was beginning to see i would lose game if something drastical didnt happen, since Hannibal was well on the way suddenly on hes spaceship, i teched like mad to get Mech inf`s first, and i did, 15 more turns and i would have modern armors too, yay, and finally i could use all those abosolete units for something, then zero teching for long time, and i graded my huge amounts of infantrys and tanks, cost around 30K gold iirc, that gave me huge power, and i now had largest as single civ.

So plan was changed, i would lose if i didnt deal with Hannibal first, urgh :(
I had to place around a third of my army in the south to safeguard against mainly Rome and hes vassals in the southern tundra, who now had free relig and was cautius.

While grading units Hannibal finished Manhatten project, :eek: , i rushed SDI asap, and 2-3 turns before i was ready i bribed Egypt to attack Hannibal, pulling hes forces to the northwest, while i came from south abit later, the round after many nukes rained down on egypt, leaving just 2-3 citys not harmed, Egypt fired too, but Hannibal had also SDI, and he was 3 components short of space victory.

around 1850 i attacked with two big stacks, and it went great in blitzkrieg style, first two citys i waited for artillery to get along with the two move armys, but, sacrificing 2-3 MAs with collateral dam promotions first seemed lot faster. and speed was important since warweariness quickly became mad, with +25 unhappiness or more in all towns.

Around 1870 Hannibal was destroyed :D

I pulled army back south to med up and prepare to attack rome, again i needed large amounts of units to fight back hes vassals from south, while attacking east towards rome, my army wasent that big anymore after the hard war vs Hannibal, but still bigger than Romes.

Rome was wiped of continent in around 1885, and became my vassal on a small tundra island :lol: hes vassals was destroyed, i was close to domination win, needed few % land still, i prepared to attack egypt, but before i was ready, i hit the needed % land, weee :king:

Fugl - nice, congratulations! Did you manage to stop the AI from pillaging improvements with their air units? If so, did you use interceptors or SAM/M.Inf? This is one of the few areas where the AI is better than humans regarding warfare (IMHO), and I typically loose alot of tile improvements since I don't manage to predict all possible attack vectors. I would appreciate any hints on how/if you managed to control the damage.

Thanks :)

Hannibal did quite alot of bombings in the north, destroying lux mostly, but he could only reach two citys with em, i did have some sam inf`s and mech infs out there but not quite enough, my big amount of workers repaired most the same round or one after tho, with a mechinf or two guarding them on top, it also helped alot i made egypt attack first to draw many of his forces away from me

Any idea when the results of this will come out? It seems like I played this one an age ago - I can barely remember what happened, other than that my immortals got wiped out by tanks. :eek: