COTM 58 Final Spoiler; Game Submitted


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Final thoughts on this game. Was the Small map easier to play or just different?

I actually waited around for a small map to show up so I could try my hand at a new victory condition. The lower research costs certainly helped.

Greece could have been the runaway AI, but somehow they started building a spaceship part in a size 6 city with only 2 or 3 shields (I wasted a couple of thousand gold trying to find out which one). If Alex hadn't been such an idiot, he could have won handily. A nuclear war between Greece and Netherlands/Korea also worked in my favor.

It was pretty tough to keep up with research in the modern age, but I got a good boost from getting GA from building the Internet.

This game turned out to be a really close call - one more turn and I would've ended up with 20k culture. I wasn't paying close attention, otherwise I might have mobilized to avoid this situation.

Entry class: Predator
Game status: Spaceship Victory for Japan
Game date: 1880 AD
Firaxis score: 913
Jason score: 2219
Time played: 02:51:14

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/2379/cotm58.th.png (http://img22.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cotm58.png)

OCC Space without a river and raging barbarians certainly doesn't make for a picnic. What tourist attractions did you manage Sima_Qian? How did the medieval change-over barbie rush go for you?

Entry class: Open
Game status: Conquest Victory for Japan
Game date: 210 AD
Firaxis score: 8107
Jason score: 11394
Time played: 04:13:14

Continued from 1st spoiler...

Well the land turned out to be terrible and I really wanted to try something "new", as my last 5 games have all been fast dominations. So I set out to win on conquest, which is a first for me hehe. I captured Rome in 650BC with archers and swords, then proceeded to take another 2 of his cities quickly after. He didn't have any size 2 cities left, so I attacked Greece in 490BC and captured Sparta. At this point I had Samurais, so I was not fighthing the army of hoplites without some advantage. Rome had only built 1 lego before I took his cap, so defeating him was rather easy. I will admit I forgot I was going for conquest at this point and that meant I waited for cities to grow, so I could capture them, which in retrospect might not have been the ideal move.
In 230BC I landed the Dutch, who had built the great lighthouse (btw that barb island was pure evil!). He fell quickly as he only had spears vs my samurais. Persia had built the great wall so i signed RoP with him and moved some samurais towards his cap to capture the great wall (damn unroaded mountains!) I captured his capital in 10AD, but at this point I had already attacked Russia and Korea and taken quite a few cities from them, so now it was just a race to get rid of Persia quick enough and in 190AD I took the last Persian and Russian city and won in 210AD.

I do think it is easier to get domination in this scenario, rush temples and get ToA on one of the continents, I ended up with 59 cities, which I think is somewhat overkill for a conquest win hehe ;). I had 41% of land without building a single temple or overseas settler.

OCC Space without a river and raging barbarians certainly doesn't make for a picnic. What tourist attractions did you manage Sima_Qian? How did the medieval change-over barbie rush go for you?

I didn't mind not having a river; there was a lake so I could still grow to size 12 quickly, just without as much gold. The AI researched map making unusually fast, so by the time the barbs were rampaging around the island, they had a few easier targets to go after :)

For the curious, here's my culture builds, with tourism income in parentheses:
3950 BC Palace
2030 BC Colossus (14gpt)
1830 BC Temple
875 BC Oracle (14gpt)
470 BC Mausoleum (12gpt)
30 AD Great Library (6gpt)
320 AD Hanging Gardens (4gpt)
520 AD Copernicus (2gpt)
560 AD Library
770 AD Magellan's
870 AD University
1110 AD Newton's
1150 AD Cathedral
1170 AD Colosseum
1340 AD Universal Suffrage
1390 AD Intelligence Agency
1440 AD Theory of Evolution
1625 AD Research Lab
1695 AD SETI
1762 AD UN
1796 AD Internet
1810 AD Apollo

Even though I wasn't aiming for a cultural victory, I ended up building all of the happiness improvements anyway since the lux trade wasn't very good and I needed to keep my science rate at a maximum (a bigger deficit doesn't matter while there's still 10k+ gold in the treasury). Selling IA techs to Greece, Korea, and Netherlands at exorbitant prices made that possible.

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/636/cotm58city.th.png (http://img13.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cotm58city.png)

Entry class: Open
Game status: Diplomatic Victory for Japan
Game date: 1690 AD
Firaxis score: 2975
Jason score: 6168
Time played: 18:44:07

After eliminating Persia, Greece declared war on me and I brought in everyone against them, OCC Rome, Korea, and the Dutch (who actually managed to take two towns before Greece razed or recaptured to kick them off the continent). Went the full 20 turn MA against them and eventually took 3 towns for peace. First vote was inconclusive as Korea voted for me (Rome had been eliminated by the Greece) while Greece abstained. William voted for himself both times. Greece asked for a MPP just before the second vote which I granted and gifted them Refining after selling them Steel, moving them to Polite. Another 100 gp to Korea and the next vote was mine.

3950 palace
3000 temple
1725 colossus
825 Mausoleum
670 library
30bc glib
530 sistine
540 cathedral
690 kt
750 university
1030 bachs
1290 newton's
1804 research lab
1920 intelligence agency

20k OCC in 1932.

The Dutch beat me to Shake's by 1 turn, which hurt, as did tons of early barb problems. Korea and I think Greece were both serious space ship threats. I ended up building the Intelligence Agency so I could get spies to check on their launch status. When I got a spy in Korea in 1922 and noticed they had 8 pieces built, I started a war w/them and joined in everyone else to distract them. Good thing too - I went back and replayed without doing this, and they launched 2 turns before I hit 20k.

Quite a late library Sima... and no Shake's?

@Spoonwood: Late library was because I had some prebuilds going, and was simply waiting for the GLib to expire before doing any research myself. I did try for Shakespeare's but lost it to the Greeks. But since it could have pushed me over 20K culture, I certainly don't regret it either.

Did anyone else have trouble with the volcano? I don't recall if it ever erupted in my game, even though Japan is known for being devastated by natural disasters (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/earthquake_sets_japan_back_to_2147).

Game status: Domination Victory for Japan
Game date: 490 AD
Firaxis score: 7221
Jason score: 10850
Time played: 10:14:08

We entered MA at 670BC.
Gift Greece and Persia, they get Mono and Engineering, but won't trade for Rebuplic.

570BC - Greece and Persia traded their techs, and now Persia is willing to sell Mono for Republic.
I got 10 swordsmen, 5 of them Elite, and one un-upgraded warrior. Also - 2 galleys. First goal probably be Greece.

490BC- meet Korea. Gift it to MA, it doesn't get Feud.

470BC - Persian settler lands on my island. I want to kill him and accidentally dow Greece. Ouch. Dow Persia, kill the settler.
I decide to attack Dutch/Korea continent first.

230BC - Rome landed a settler on the SW, I dowed but didn't kill him on the first try. Rome made a town, which was destroyed by my Elite sword, producing a Leader! Made an Army with one MI, to ship overseas.

190BC - 7 swordsmen shipped over to Dutch, preparing for a ROP rape.
Meet useless Russia, as their galley passed by a Dutch town. I already have Feudalism, so let them be.

150BC - Take Amsterdam with GLH and another town.

110BC - FP in OSaka.

90BC - 2nd GL in Dutchland. Made MI Army. After couple of turns - peace with Dutch for 2 cities - they have 2 left.

10Ad - Chivalry learned. We are preparing attack on Romans, who are close to building ToA.

110AD - Korea builds ToA first! Ok, we'll just continue bashing them with left-over troops from Dutch campaign. We ship Samurai and the 1st Army across our isle, to move them on Korean front instead.
Rome will be attacked with Samurai build in GA.

After that it was pretty boring - just gobbling up towns and putting some settlers on Korea/Dutch/Russia continent to maximize ToA effect, and buidling temples on our land and on the long archipelago.

We also had to go and destroy Greece and Romans even after our island, the archipelago and the Dutch continent were completely covered with our culture.
We had 4 Armies by the end, 2 of them Samurai.

The end came in 490AD after taking the last batch of Greec cities.

In this game, I never learned Literature and never built a single library. Maybe it slowed us a down too much in getting Chivalry...

Did anyone notice the one tile mountain island with 1 billion barb units on it?

That would be nice to get lots of elite marines, otherwise it is a nuisance, it is a source of continuous barb galleys to harass shipping.

I'm going to try an ICBM just to see what happens. Maybe the village will still be there empty or maybe the missle will get the 25 gold and scream "Yeah!" like the warrior does.:lol:

Now there's an idea, I've never nuked a barb village before. Shouldn't it kill them all? I'll tell you what, whoever does it first should take a screenie of the event.

1580ad domination. I need some tips, Yilar your speed boggles my mind! Maybe I try to do too much of everything...but great job everyone, I hope to learn alot about the game.

I nuked the Barbarians. Here is the before picture:

About 60 Barbarians lived on Barbarian Island, happily bashing heads and hunting mountain goats.
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x235/ThoOverseer714/Civ3Screenshots/BarbarianIslandNuking.jpg

A cold-hearted modern tribe tests their first nuclear missile on them.
28 barbarians later:
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x235/ThoOverseer714/Civ3Screenshots/BarbarianIslandPost-Nuke.jpg

About half of the tough little buggers survive, hunting mutated mountain goats.

That would be nice to get lots of elite marines, otherwise it is a nuisance, it is a source of continuous barb galleys to harass shipping.Yeah, I added it to provide safe galley access to all landmasses, then seeded it with the camp and some early barb galleys to harass the sea lanes.

1580ad domination. I need some tips, Yilar your speed boggles my mind! Maybe I try to do too much of everything...but great job everyone, I hope to learn alot about the game.

Here's the basics for a quick domination run:
1. Build a granary very early in cap.
2. Research pottery and then research alpabet-writing-code-phil in that order, so you can get republic.
3. Switch to republic
4. Build 7-10 settlers from capital, then switch over to barracks and build horses.
5. Trade alphabet-writing-code-phil for other techs, if you cannot get polytheism from enemy after you've entered republic research it yourself and gift it to all the enemies.
6. Build barracks and just start building a lot of horses.
7. After you get chivalry, you turn off research and build knights.
8. Gift republic to enemies right before you attack them (1-2 turns before).
9. Don't attack size1 towns.
10. Check F7 and see where Temple of Artemis is being built, don't attack or pillage these cities till it has been built, once it has been built you can capture it and the game will basically be over within 5 turns if you have played it right ;)

Rest is pretty straight forward; attack, capture and laugh at how weak the AI is ;). The earlier you can attack them with a decent stack (8+ horses) the weaker the AI is. Also don't forget to get a lot of workers, most new players forget to build them. Minimum 1 worker per city, and if possible at least 1,5 worker per city (at least untill you start capturing enemy cities). Don't build libaries, markets and temples in general useless its for culture expansion, but with Temple of Artemis you don't really need to worry about that.

The question becomes... what level does your domination strategy stop working Yilar?

Not entirely sure. Deity or Sid may be to much. Regent, monarch and emperor it should work basically every time. But land has a lot to say in wether the strategy will work or not. If it's an unfair island scenario anything is possible ;)

Thanks Yilar for the great pointers. Gifting republic 1-2 turns before is such a nasty tactic =0.
The 1 size towns, do you just leave them alone..or take them last? Also, do you engage in ROP rape often (I sometimes have honor issues with this one).
Your horseman tactic must use overwhelming numbers in a short number of turns, I think for longer wars and difficult terrain isn't mixed unit tactics best for minimizing losses?
Also, do you usually assign a town as the "worker town"? I have trouble assigning a single town because they are often the second or third best for military/culture development.
Sorry for all the questions, but I am new and finding out discussing strategy is almost as fun as the game itself lol. Also sorry for getting off topic in the thread.

I really enjoyed COTM 58, thank you..it has brought a new level of enjoyment to the game for me; eagerly awaiting the next one!

The main concept of the tactic is speed. I dont sit around waiting for cities to grow most of the time, unless it is very isolated. The idea is to keep moving forward and let the reinforcements do side cities. When you attack the AI early on, they will rarely have more than a handfull of spears, a few swords/archers, thus their ability to counterattack is severely limited. Not to mention the fact that their attack units are rarely placed in the same cities.

I generally only use RoP rapes against civs I don't want to be counterattacked by or if the terrain is very rough. It is still easier just to smash your way forward one city at the time, but it is very doable for sure.

Also demanding size1 cities or remote cities from enemies when they are about to die in exchange for a peace deal that will last shorter than 30 seconds is a neat trick to.

That would be nice to get lots of elite marines, otherwise it is a nuisance, it is a source of continuous barb galleys to harass shipping.

I let william take care of the galleys before I sent a boat for scouting. Never sent any other boats in that direction and didn't have any military interaction with the tribes on that continent.... Every time they built a galley, william would sink it...

I loved the military promotions that came as a result of the Militaristic trait. The galleys helped me get some elite crusiers.

Yilar - Thanks for all the tips! It's amazing to me how some of you guys have this down, kind of literally, to a science. One question: Why do you gift Polytheism to the AI if they don't have it? Is that so they go through a period of anarchy for Monarchy and then AGAIN when you gift them Republic?

Thanks, CivSteve, for another great game.

To make sure the AI will build ToA as early as possible :)

In continuing with the theme of what to do when on cruise control during Histographic runs, I decided to test nukes on my surplus ships. Here is a picture of my results:

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x235/ThoOverseer714/Civ3Screenshots/BikiniAtollTake2Part1.jpg

As you can see, Civ 3 nukes are pretty rough on fleets:)

Edit: Oh by the way, I finally finished. I am surprised that my Jason score was actually higher than my firaxis score. I ended up launching a spaceship on the last turn, I'm not sure if it scored higher, lower, or the same as a Histographic win. I think my next game will involve no milking....
Here is my result:

Entry class: Open
Game status: Spaceship Victory for Japan
Game date: 2050 AD
Firaxis score: 3951
Jason score: 5367
Time played: 77:14:34

Ok, as I said in the first spoiler, the plan was to switch the palace to better lands quickly. The territory between Rome & Greece looked very good, so I persued that plan. Rome was taken in ~350BC with swords and horses, and three more towns were founded close by, to hook up the resources. (My military was too weak to conquer all of Rome, this was probably a big mistake.) It took until 10AD, before reinforments were ready to continue the attack and it took until 300AD, before Greece was gone as well to make room for two nice rings around the new capital.
Perhaps I should have jumped the palace right now, but I waited a bit longer until all towns had reasonable size and until Kyoto had finished its prebuild for the FP. Then I rushed the Palace in Neu Tokyo using a leader I had kept for that purpose, and next turn completed the FP in Kyoto. Man, was that a disappointment! Kyoto kept its strength, but all other cities of the original core went from powerhouse to completely corrupt... :cry: Someone really needs to fix the FP in Conquests...

Sometime when my plan to switch the core to Alpha was already pretty advanced, Amsterdam (size 6) beat beat Persepolis (12) and Alexandria (12) to the ToA!! :mad:
So I realized, I had switched my core to the "wrong" continent. (Stopping in my tracks and changing the plan would have delayed the setup of the new core even more than it already was.) So I stopped expansion on Alpha (Persia was still a very good friend of mine, fortunately) and prepared an attack on Beta.
Shipping the units all the way from the new core via Gamma to Beta was quite tedious, but nevertheless the Netherlands and Korea were conquered in the 600s and by that time I was approaching dom limit, so I had to disband a couple of useless towns on Alpha in order to take better advantage of the ToA on Beta. From now on until the end I was always between 23-17 tiles from dom limit... On Alpha I left Persia alone and on Beta I left Russia alone. Both were always quite friendly towards me, as I kept trading luxes and techs. But this setup was far from perfect, I would have liked it much better, if I had a continent to my own and the two "functional" AIs on a separate continent. (We'll see the reason later.)

After getting enough land from the Netherlands and Korea, I cash-rushed settlers until 800AD. When my land was completely ICSed, I switched to Feudalism (first time ever I used this government...!) and pop-rushed libs, cathedrals and colloseums like crazy. Around 1300-1400AD (don't remember exactly) my money ran out, so I had to switch back to Republic in order to maintain all those buildings... With Republic I was still making 250gpt, so was able to cash-rush a few more buildings (also kept building Samurais in the core cities and disbanding them in the towns that still needed cultural improvements), bringing the victory date a bit further down.

Then, 12 turns from victory, the Persians RoP-raped me and burned down 3 towns!! :mad: And next turn the Russians did the same on the other continent! The expected victory date went from 1475 to 1485! (The Russians even took the ToA for one turn, as I didn't pay attention that they had landed an archer next to it :king:)

Fortunately I still had my Samurai Armies and a couple of units to fend off the invasion and eventually even take the offensive, but I was not allowed to take any Russian or Persian city, because that would put me over the dom limit. (I needed their culture as a "block" to prevent my borders from expanding.) Therefore, after I had fended of the invasions, I moved my Armies into their backyards and burned down a city there as revenge :D. Then they were willing to make peace again, and I disbanded most of my military to replace the destroyed cultur improvements. The win date went back to 1475. Uff, this could have turned out bad!

A note for AlanH: I had already noticed in the late 1300s, that CivAssist2 calculates the win date incorrectly. Even if you open the last auto-save (1465), it still shows 1475 as expected win date, even though the culture is already over 80000?!?.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=209346&stc=1&d=1238753355

Any chance you can fix that bug?

My first ever 80/100K game, and I must say, it was fun, but a lot of work. I was pretty surprised by my date, because I had certainly commited a couple of strategic errors for this type of game early on and didn't expect a win in the 1400s!

Cheers, Lanzelot

Cool. Nice work, Lancelot. Going for the culture win for variety - I like that. I'm surprised 2 AI RoP raped you back to back. Good to know that an RoP doesn't mean I'm safe....

I'm surprised 2 AI RoP raped you back to back. Good to know that an RoP doesn't mean I'm safe....

Well, I had experienced it before, so I should have been prepared. Apparently when the AI realizes you are about to win, it tries a "desperate last shot"?!

Regards, Lanzelot

PS: I noticed we started playing Civ at the same time! (I just bought the "Civ Chronicles" last week so I can experience that sentimental Civ 1 feeling again... :old: My original Civ 1 floppies have long ago gone the way of all mortal things...)