GOTM 72 - first spoiler, the Ancient Age


Reading Requirements:


Must be able to research a Middle Ages Technology.


Posting restrictions


hmm ... how about no map images!
No discussion of middle-ages (or later).
AS ALWAYS, do not post Spoiler information for ANY other 'X'OTM contest.



So, has this Pangaea map thrown you any surprises? :) How has this affected your plans? And how is your general game going? Any issues you have to deal with?

My game is going badly; I think mine was the last civilisation to reach the middle ages, in about 460AD. I hope that the easy difficultly level will be enough to compensate for a very bad start, but I'm not confident.

Predator Galley Challenge

In 1275 BC, we discovered Map Making, built a Galley and a Settler in our two cities and discovered a small deserted desert island, upon which we landed a Spearman to scout.

2 towns
4 citizens
no improvements
1 settler
2 warriors
6 spearmen
1 galley
no contacts
31 gold
49 game points
10 beakers per turn, Philosophy in 15 turns


Quick Start Challenge

3 towns
4 citizens
no improvements
2 workers
3 spearmen
2 galleys
no contacts
9 beakers per turn, Philosophy in 5 turns


Reaching the Middle Ages

In 350 BC, we bought the rest of Currency, entered the Middle Ages and discovered Engineering.

4 towns
9 citizens
1 harbor
1 granary
3 workers
1 warrior
2 spearmen
2 galleys
all contacts
Literature

The Palace has been moved to Wonsan on a somewhat larger island. As Seoul was abandoned, Pusan was founded on the Bonus Grassland tile 1S. Two minor tribes inhabiting our new homeland have given us a skilled warrior and, on the same turn as it was discovered by the AI tribes on the main continent, the appreciation for a Code of Laws.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gif

Predator Galley Challenge

I wasted a worker move to NE to backup the decision to settle on the hill. :mad:
Build a warrior and The Colossus (1950 BC), then a settler.
The worker had joined Seoul after improving BG, plains and forest.
1700 BC we settled P'yongyang to the far north.

1150 BC we researched MM, built a galley and discovered an even less promising new world. :wallbash:

hmm ... how about no map images!
I guess this map does not tell too much:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/52381/Gotm72_PGC_1150BC.JPG

Entry class: Predator
Game status: Incomplete Retired
Game date: 1125 BC
Firaxis score: 45
Jason score: 90
Time played: 00:24:20 (I took some breaks... :coffee: )

Disappointing to lose the Challenge that badly even though I had concentrated on nothing else... :blush:

Maybe The Colossus was not the winner after all... :crazyeye: :lol:

Disappointing to lose the Challenge that badly

Oh, come, it's just a couple of turns. And I also tried my very best, since such an effort is quite in line with the continued game. No compromise needed. As you said, a Golden Age was out of the question. Remains The Colossus option:

Maybe The Colossus was not the winner after all

Probably not. And for those of us who play on, it will be destroyed when the palace is jumped. Would it still count towards starting a Golden Age?

My game played out almost exactly like Paul's. Built the Colossus in 1950 BC, and reached MM in 1150 BC. I won't finish the game either, I really don't like Gilligan games.

well i also lost to Piu researching Map Making in 1200BC

My galley was built on the 1250>1225 interturn. I used a granary in the capital before building my first settler. Apparently it was not optimal eh? But I couldn't be bothered to set up a second spreadsheet to count the beakers from the second town. :undecide:

QSC Stats...
3 towns with 4 citizens and 51 tiles.
7 food in the bin, 29 shields in the box, 3g in the treasury.
1 granary, 1 worker, 3 reg spears, 2 reg galleys.
Bronzework, Pots, Alphabet, Writing, Mapping, 100 beakers of Philosophy.

I went medieval in 190>210ad, with the research of Republic and its subsequent sale to the AI. And I haven't yet chosen a VC. :nono:

I play Open, but as there didn't happen anything else in my game during the ancient age, I thought I publish my date here too: reached Map Making in 1050BC and finished the galley in the interturn. (As a matter of fact, I had neatly timed prebuilds in both my cities to finish even two galleys in the interturn, but the computer tricked me: when the F6 screen came up after the discovery of MM, I went to F1 and then into my first city, switched the prebuild to Galley and then pressed Esc, assuming this would bring me back to F1, from where I would be able to switch the second town to galley as well. But Esc ended the Interturn... I guess I should have used the "Next" button in the city screen.)

No map screenshot from me, because Paul#42 already published "my" map... ;)

One of the strangest games, I've ever played:

I started the game on the Nov 1st holiday, and in one single session of 6 hours I played from 4000BC to 1040AD!!!
Basically in most of the turns there wasn't anything to do except for pressing the Return button :sleep:
After I finally discovered them, playing these Warlord Civs didn't feel much different from playing last GOTM's Deity Civs... This game really makes me feel like blundering beginner again. :banana:
Even in ~1800 my Fireaxis score is still at ~350...
I'll probably turn this game in simply because it'll take so little time to finish (a nice change to the previous GOTM...), not because it'll give me any Jason points...
We should make another Challange out of this: "Who is able to obtain a victory with the smallest Fireaxis score"!


civ_steve: the "desert island" to the east is one of the worst tricks you ever played on us! :thumbsdown: We could see it after our cultural borders had expanded, and naturally we had to think, "that must be Alpha". I had already prepared two settlers, two workers and two spears, before I got the Galleys, so I would be able to make a good start in the new world... But first this decoy cost me valuable time to go back to the west, and then all my galleys (and settlers) sunk in the attempt to reach Gamma! None of them survived that one single turn that had to be spent in unsafe waters!
In the end I gave up on suicide galleys and spent another ~20 turns to finish the Great Lighthouse, before I was finally able set foot on the new continent in 50BC! (Even though I had discovered it almost 1000 years before and was only five tiles away!)

I aggree with what has been said in the pre-game discussion: this is more a matter of RNG luck and gambling, not of strategy :mad:

Basically in most of the turns there wasn't anything to do except for pressing the Return button

Maybe that was you mistake? I was MM-ing every turn, especially in the beginning. I had four parallel spread-sheet pages at the time for my first Palace jump: three for the tree cities and one for the Palace jump formula.

After I finally discovered them, playing these Warlord Civs didn't feel much different from playing last GOTM's Deity Civs

Well, you found them very late, so that makes sense. High production times short time is the same as low production times long time. I found them a bit earlier, and they were more like Monarch AI:s.

I think that was the idea with this set-up, to delay the human player a bit. Of course it made the game surprisingly difficult.

the "desert island" to the east is one of the worst tricks you ever played on us!

It seems to me the presence of the somewhat larger island to the south-southeast hurt you much more. In my game I never found it, and neither did anyone else. What had you lost there anyway, that you had to go look for? The desert island was harmless, no Galleys lost and the same for all.

all my galleys (and settlers) sunk in the attempt to reach Gamma!

Now this was indeed an element of hazard. There's always an element of luck in a civ game.

this is more a matter of RNG luck and gambling, not of strategy

I disagree. There's a lot of luck in conquering a pangaea using brute force also, and limited amounts of strategy needed. E.g. are the results of an Archer rush fairly random.

I jumped my Palace twice, always in the direction of my target: conquering the other tribes. If that's not strategy I've misunderstood the meaning of the word.

I agree with Lanzelot that the desert island was a pretty sneaky trick. If we are fooled into believing it is Alpha, or an archipelago leading to Alpha (and I was fooled too) then we discount prebuilding the Lighthouse in the second town. As it turns out, the Lighthouse would have been powerful on this map, allowing a safe crossing to Gamma, and opening the sea lane southeast.
OTOH, whether or not you get the Lighthouse early, it is true that the correct solution to this game's problems is to move the palace as soon as possible.

Personally, I built two galleys. One followed the sea lane, and ultimately survived to find land. The other stayed in the Korean Isles, first ferrying a settler to the desert island, and then trying to make the crossing to Gamma. He sank. So while my second town worked on Lighthouse, the capital built suicide galleys. Again, I have to back Lanze about the gambling. Sure the game has always been built on luck, but this scenario was different to the kind of gambling we normally do, because of the restricted production capacity that we start with. This makes each of those sink-or-survive rolls far more significant than an RNG event of similar odds in a pangaea archer rush.

This makes each of those sink-or-survive rolls far more significant than an RNG event of similar odds in a pangaea archer rush.

What if you compare it to a farmer's gambit where it turns out that Germany is the nearest neighbour?

A farmer's gambit is a chosen strategy, you know there's a risk involved when you go for it. With this kind of map there simply is no way you could save yourself from the whims of the RNG, except building the Torch which first is a big investment, and second you will still lose to those whose RNG allowed them to make the crossing without making the investment. FWIW my first three galleys all made the crossing, and I could settle near the cow quite early. That doesn't make me like the map and its quirks any more. Sorry civ_steve.

Yes, the correct strategy is to jump the palace. But how early you can make the palace jump is still dependent on the RNG.

I was actually surprised to see that a turn at Sea was needed to reach other landmasses. But I was lucky to have my first two Galleys survive. Later two (unimportant) Galleys sunk. In another game I was unlucky to have the Germans attack my undefended cities. I still don't regret not building defensive troops.

But you don't have to gamble your Settler. You can send an empty Galley to Sea and Ship-Chain the Settler (and e.g. a Worker) using a second Galley if the first one survives.

Exactly as Piu Freddo said! Ship chaining is a very powerful and useful technique, and would prevent the loss of other units in this situation.

I had neatly timed prebuilds in both my cities to finish even two galleys in the interturn, but the computer tricked me: when the F6 screen came up after the discovery of MM, I went to F1 and then into my first city, switched the prebuild to Galley and then pressed Esc, assuming this would bring me back to F1, from where I would be able to switch the second town to galley as well. But Esc ended the Interturn... I guess I should have used the "Next" button in the city screen.)Nice use of the inbetween turn sequence, but yes, once you enter the City screen from F1 you can not go back to F1 or any of the F# keys, so do any planned activities with the F# keys first, and the Next-Previous arrows at the top of the city screen to scroll through your cities last.

Niklas - I understand what you are saying, but I feel I have to provide a range of experiences for GOTM. Archipelagos will (usually) require ship crossings over wide expanses of sea. Continents maps as well. And playing at this difficulty requires isolation from the AI or it would be just a competition to turn in the fastest conquest with most games taking 2 hours or less to play (although some would shoot for other VC's anyway.) For December's COTM I'm planning to have an extreme Archipelago map with greatly reduced randomness in the exploring and contacting phases of the game. ;)

This was a quirky map and I experienced some glee seeing it come together! :D The desert island to the NE ... the small continent to the south ... ahhhh, good times!

Maybe that was you mistake?
Well, my date of 1050BC wasn't that bad, was it...? ;) I needed 9 turns longer than you, 8 turns longer than PaperBeetle and only 4 turns longer than Paul#42 and Niklas. (And I had already 2 Galleys, 2 Settlers and 2 Workers ready for the great voyage, while everyone else only had one Galley and one Settler. This could be roughly the advantage I had because of playing Open instead of Predator?!)

When I said there was nothing else to do except hitting Return, I was of course exaggerating a bit... :rolleyes: I only tried to emphasize the fact that this game was much much different from the "normal" games we usually play. Of course I also did my fair share of MM, chopping wood and pre-build timing.

It seems to me the presence of the somewhat larger island to the south-southeast hurt you much more. In my game I never found it, and neither did anyone else. What had you lost there anyway, that you had to go look for?
Maybe you are right. My train of thought was something like this: Alpha was already occupied by 7 equally strong AIs. (At that time there was no weakling I could single out for an initial attack on the continent.) Attacking one of them with only one half-developed core might work, but could just as easily back-fire...
The next factor was: now that I had that Lighthouse, I thought I could as well try and take advantage of it. CivAssistII had told me that "my" continent was called "Gamma", so there must still be another even bigger land-mass somewhere, which the AIs most probably haven't reached yet, but which I might be able to reach due to my Lighthouse. So I went out to look for it, and when I found it, it looked to me like the perfect location for a second core. (I hope this information is appropriate for this spoiler?! But in any case, I was still in the Ancient Age, when I discovered Beta, so I think I'm allowed to reveal it here. And I'm not posting a screenshot.)
And the final factor for my decision was my style of playing: at the beginning I play very peacefully and as long as there's still decent land to settle using peaceful means, I don't attack. (May not be the best strategy for reaching the highest possible scores, but that's the way I feel comfortable with.)
So my plan was clear: setup two productive cores on Beta and Gamma, these two will certainly allow me to catch up with and eventually overtake those handicaped Warlord AIs, and then I'll finally attack Alpha with superior forces.

So far it looks like this plan will guarantee me a safe and riskless victory despite my "very late arrival on the international scene". But I aggree that concentrating on just one core and then attacking Alpha might have been faster (and therefore might have resulted in a better score). And I also aggree that you guys are quite ahead of me in terms of strategy. It's just: I don't think I can apply your advanced stratagems as long as I don't feel comfortable with them yet. I think I would suffer horrible shipwreck, if I tried to use something which I did not yet quite understand....

To use an analogy from chess: suppose you've played a certain kind of chess opening for many years and are quite familiar with the intricacies of the type of positions that result from this opening. Then a grandmaster comes along and tells you: "that opening is no good, try this one, it'll be much better". Even though the grandmaster maybe 100% right: if you play that opening right in your next game against an opponent of your strength, you will be utterly beaten, because you didn't yet grasp the inner mechanics of that new opening. So for a certain transition period you will use that new opening in your practise games in order to gain the experience necessary for mastering that new weapon, but in your tournament games you will still use your old (slightly inferior) opening and have decent results with it.
But I appreciate every tip and comment of yours and will certainly try to learn from them for the future! :goodjob:

But you don't have to gamble your Settler. You can send an empty Galley to Sea and Ship-Chain the Settler (and e.g. a Worker) using a second Galley if the first one survives.
Oh yes, of course! Somehow this idea never occured to me... (Remember what I just said above about you guys being much better at strategy than me...? Someone who has used ship chaining before and has the necessary experience with it, will immediately think of this and try it here. But I didn't... :crazyeye: )
But anyway, even if I had used it and had been a bit faster than with my actual Lighthouse approach: if my first 5 Galleys had sunk (as they did in the game) I would still have been significantly slower than those of you, whose very first galley made it savely across. Because it takes an awfully long time to build galleys nos 3 - 6, if there's no more wood to chop...

Let's face it: if my first galley had succeeded, I would have build my first town on Gamma around 800BC. In the game I finally succeeded in 50BC. So someone with exactly the same skillset and the same level of experience as me could have gained an advantage of almost 800 years over me, just by better RNG luck. All other things being equal, this is an advantage that cannot be caught up!

Indeed you can ship chain your valuable units over, but that's sort of beside the point. I didn't say that building the Torch was the only way to not lose your settler, I said it was the only way to immunize yourself from the whims of the RNG. That still applies. First of all shipchaining requires you to have 2 galleys, and there's still nothing that prevents you from losing your first two galleys on turn at sea. No matter what you will be behind the guy who gets his first settler across on the first try. And getting that first town up fast enough is only one side of the deal, almost as important (or more?) is to make contact with the other AI while there's still time to trade up to parity.

Yes, strategy plays a big role, I'm not disputing it. Più Freddo's early galley is really impressive, and very good strategy. I'm not saying that the RNG makes all the difference, I'm saying it makes too much of a difference. This map would still have been very difficult and challenging even at the low difficulty level if the northwestern continent had been reachable safely via galley. All the same problems would still apply - crappy start, no contacts, needing a palace jump etc - but with the RNG playing much less of a roll. And Più Freddo's starting strategy would be just as impressive.

Then there's the different discussion of whether low difficulty maps should automatically have crappy starts. I don't mind playing a really easy game now and again, I'd still fret over every move trying to beat the other guys playing, and I'm sure those who are not quite as experienced would be grateful too. ;)

EDIT: civ_steve, don't take this as criticism of the work you put in, I agree 100% that you should provide a wide range of game experiences. I've very much enjoyed the other maps by you I've played, and I'm sure it will be a long time until there's another map I don't like. I only mean it as constructive commentary. :)

civ_steve: I can only repeat what Niklas just said: of course we appreciate all those great maps and unforgettable games you have given us, and the big effort you are putting into it! It's just: I would have to lie, if I pretended to enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed the other ones I have played so far... ;)

But that's not saying I don't enjoy this one! It's still fun and I'll certainly finish and submit it. (Even though this is going to go down in history as the lowest scoring victory ever...!)
(After all I will have to give the proof that my "two-island strategy" will still be able to pull off a victory even after such a lousy start as mine... :D )

Cheers, Lanzelot

O-ho, not so easy; to get the lowest-scoring victory ever, you will need to pull off a very late One City Challenge. Preferably a diplo, or conquest if possible.
Actually, that sounds like a goal worth aiming for. :hmm:

Lanzelot: Another thing you can do in the interturn (what I do) is just right click on the build in the F1 screen and select whatever build change you wish. When you have many to do in the case of early galleys or even things like libraries its much easier to do it this way.


Haven't played a gotm game in a long time but I played pretty typically here if a little rusty. I needed one more turn at 1000 BC to finish MM, but had two sets of settlers and workers quened up awaiting the prebuilds and also a bunch of spears. I sent one each direction (west and east), but quickly sent the eastern galley west once it was seen to be a dry island.

I got lucky with my first two galleys and then chained the rest of the supplies from the beginning island (not much really, the cow and shieldlands made the new spot much more productive). I jumped my palace after about 20 turns, two settler builds to abandon the old. I had already begun the LH in my first city which didn't seem optimal once I explored the map.

I originally thought of trying a 20k run, but those aren't very fun in this version since you can leader rush, so I am trying 100k instead. Not sure if I have time to complete it.

Well, my date of 1050BC wasn't that bad, was it...?

If this was golf, I could have given you an answer. In civ, you must decide that for yourself, for only you know how difficult it was for you.

But the Predator handicap was immense this time: we didn't know Alphabet. That's a whopping 120 beakers. It took me 17 turns to collect them. And all this time the AI was building and researching away, albeit at its Warlord pace. If you could reach the AI at once, it would have been Warlord. A bit later, Regent. Add seventeen turns, and its Monarch.

That the Galleys cost 40 shields instead of 30 hurt less. The first Galley was pre-built anyway. Also the two Pikemen per AI tribe were of less importance than the timing -- when you started beating the AI.

And, granted, here the randomness of the first crossing made the competition a bit unbalanced.

Galley in 1250 BC... :rolleyes:
The end result was nothing exceptional, a conquest in 1110 AD.
I agree that the predator bonus was quite tough this time, but the game was fun anyway. Just a thing i didn't like: the suicide path to the mainland. At that point of the game the random factor is just too unbalancing.

Galley in 1250 BC [...] conquest in 1110 AD

One turn slower than me in the Predator Galley Challenge, eight turns faster in the (implicit) Predator Conquest Challenge. I bow for the master.

Oh, thanks. But in game turns it's 226 vs 234, a tight margin IMO. So the master is not that far away :D