Let's begin. The map looks like the Pangee. The fast conquest is very probably. But I don't go this way. I'm trying to build more cities first. I'm around 2000BC only but I'm first in this thread and don't see other players map. I'm leading in histograph and science and think the game will be easy. On this map the deity level looks better. ;)

I go away about 2 weeks. Happy civing!

Well, I finally traded my territory map with France. There are a few gaps between Civs, but I have seen most of the l-o-n-g contenent.

Two things I have yet to discover:
1. Does the land mass connect between France and China?
2. Is there anything out there beyond this great wide contenent?

We shall see.

huh, this was one huuuuuge continent :)

Finaly a Gotm I think I can beat!
I'm already around the early AD and Ive seen all the land masses ( I think).
Ive been refining my tactics over the last few weeks and I think ive made some break throughs- like for instance what to do with game forests (in my opinion the best terrain in the game, good for all governments- a city with a few game filled forests can build any of the early wonders) and if the game is on a plains forest, late industrial mining can give you a highly productive food boost.

Ive already got my first great leader, after I refused to give monarchy to japan for nothing they declared war on my, I then gave every one else monarchy as an incentive to declare war on the japanese and their persian allies. The japanese managed to swing the weak chinese over to their side of the war (which I intentionaly dragged out to provide the opertinity to get my elite troops in to war) I quickly banished the chinese from the first island and rush built the forbiden palace on my north east border.

Now my fedgling empire has little or no corruption, Ive got the hanging gardens, the collossus (in the city to the south of my capital) and Ive just captured the pyramids from the chinese in Bejing.
Ive got loads of horsemen to upgrade to knights and legions of Impi to upgrade to pikemen (better try to build leonardos workshop, the use of horseman--->knight--->cavalry upgrade path will be essential to my consolidation of the first continent). As always you can never be certain of the existance of oil, coal or rubber on the first island so its important to get control of as much territory as possible before I have to rely on oil to fuel my war machine. Going to also start to be nice to the people on the second island (avoiding the possibilty of losing by diplomatic loss).

here is my current situation;

And now My plan of action! I cant see the date on lemmings screen, but I guess I'm way behind.

I don't much like attacking my imediate neighbours, Keep you friends close, but your enemies even closer! The indians have been most acomadating so far, no hostilities at all, I think they will be the easist to manipulate in to attacking my enimies. The babylonians however have a high culture and must be stopped before they can blossom! The japanese will be the second to fall, with luck I can get more great leaders and move my palace into japanes territory in order to develop that land and exert better control over the second island.

finishing off the Indians will be very sweet, facing a war on all fronts, even an advanced strong india will be easy prey to my cavalry hordes and with little jungle of forest in thier territory the indians will be least likely to have any rubber, if war on the first continent is dragged out that far, they will be denied Infantry to defend thier cities. (also the A.I. has an aversion to developing jungle, so the sooner I can apply my workers to the task of gardening japan and babylon the better!

Well, I finally got a good start! :) A hut near the Chinese gave me my first settler in the game and I was able to kill the Chinese very quickly.

Then the Indians were almost completely wiped out (with a little help of the Babylonians), then the Babylonians were wiped out by me and Japan.

And then the trouble came: Japan declared war with me, but they were much stronger! :eek: And of course we were just in de era were Japan could use it's Samurai. Luckily I was able to get France and Persia involved in the battle, on my side. :) Now the Japanese are not doing well. Only, I did have my science rate at 0% for a while to be able to build cavalry (which I just discovered before the Japanese attacked), so now I'm a little behind in tech. :undecide:

But this is a fun game! :yeah:

Even I started this one.Not sure if I'll finish,but I started.Must be bored :D

I left the Chinese alone to build cities for me for awhile and was even hoping for a wonder but no such luck.I originally started fighting the other direction and now am on the Babs doorstep.Culture flipping could become a pain as I have almost no culture.Hope not.

Impi's suck.They really do.Who in the heck would give the Zulus a 2 move defensive unit? :rolleyes:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/Smashciv3gotm.gif

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/smashciv3gotm2.gif

I've played twice now, and couldn't complete the Great Library either time - it's harder than I thought to get Leaders...

This is a funny game...
I decided to build another 2 scouts and probably popped 90% of the huts on the map, which gave me:
2 settlers
6 techs
1 map
2 nothin
3 warriors

I'm leading the histograph in the ancient era without fighting... haven't had this situation before.

Chinese are weak with only 3 cities in the jungle, india has 4 but no tech as well, so I'll take them out soon and see what happens

On further examination I realised that the two islands are actualy joined together! that will increase the utility of all continetal wonders (pyramids and art of war).

Well phase one of my great plan is going the way I hoped, the baylonians are history, I managed to get the indians to take the brunt of the babylonians attacks, while those idiots in india declared war on Japan :lol:

The japanese and indians have wasted thier golden ages attacking each other agross the babylonian wasteland with thier UUs, samuri and war elephants tearing great chunks out of each other with little result (the indians managed to capture a single babylonian city). Everyone has expanded thier culture to fill all the gaps and my early building program has paid off with a huge culture base with which to secure my new territories.
Unfortunately I have yet to get a second great leader (perhaps I should have made an army with my first GL, it would have boosted the chance of getting another GL through the Heroic epic, thats how I'm going to do it from now on- the forbiden palace idea was just a experiment.

The japanese used thier golden age to build leonardos workshop in a city close to my new northern border, once I get cavalry it will be a good attack point and I can upgrade all my knights.
The other civs are edging ahead in techs, I'm going to have to switch to a better government to catch up, the persians and french have spent all this time in republic while the japanses and indians have been enjoying a golden age.

Next step, build temples in all the babylonian cities and use republic to gain cavalry. then recruit the indians in an attack on the japanese;

This is my first GOTM. Just got through my first almost complete round of the game.
Are we allowed to replay the same GOTM more than once and still submit... didn't see anything in the rules about this, but it's deffinatley an advantage...

You can replay as often as you want but you can only submit your FIRST attempt. :)

By 1000 BC, how many cities do you all have? Right now I have 4...unfortunately, India went right past the two cities I constructed as my border - oh well. China did too, but not as much. Both will probably be easy to destroy when the time comes, but for now it's a pain.

Has the barbarian uprising caused anyone else to lose the production on the settler? It happened to me, and I even had an Impi garrisoned in Zimbabwe.

I start this game at 0500 hrs tommoro, Judging by what you all just said I beleve I will go for Conquenst. This is my first GOTM so wish me luck.

Any tips would be helpful in anyof these forms:-
Here:
PM:
E-Mail

Considering that I'm still fairly new to Regent (trying to finish off first win by conquest, 7 civs), I think I'm doing pretty good in this game. I'm around 1100s, just finished off the Chinese after leaving them alone for so long. Babs are practically dead, Indians killed off a while back too. Ominous Japan is probably my next target, but I'm guessing with all those Samurai, killing them will be a pain...

Incidentally I got this message just as I quit today. Obviously Babylon isn't the capitol anymore (razed it a while back), but still kinda funny if ask me. :D:D:D

Originally posted by King_Lewis
I start this game at 0500 hrs tommoro, Judging by what you all just said I beleve I will go for Conquenst. This is my first GOTM so wish me luck.

Any tips would be helpful in anyof these forms:-
Here:
PM:
E-Mail

King_Lewis, reading the spoiler thread before playing the game long enough to get the world map is considered cheating.

Play it out once, then ask for tips, and replay it.

Cheers,
Shawn

I finished this GOTM on the 1st and already submitted it. :)

This was another unlucky GOTM for me. I popped like 6 goody huts in the beginning and all of them gave me useless things like maps and puny warriors... I didn't get even one tech!

I killed off the Chinese and Indians relatively early using veteran archers and swordsmans. Three Babylonians cities, Babylon included, were also captured soon after. Then I stopped warmongering completely and started to focus on building the empire -- the deadliest mistake I made in this GOTM. The Persians managed to build the United Nation and they won diplomatically in 1808 AD, when I was about to start warmongering again with those 60+ tanks I built. :mad:

Well I decided to try something different for a change. So after I researched Bronze Working for the UU, and then straight for Monarchy. It took 5 turns of anarchy to make the switch to Monarchy but now things are starting to take shape. I started a war with the Chinese, which started my golden age and will let them survive in the jungle as a pet civ. I have about a 1000 gold and will start upgrading warriors to swordsmen and turn on the Indians when our current treaty runs out. I want to keep each of the civ's through to the end unless they are eliminated by one of the other civ's. I will keep them each under control every now and again and hopefully generate a few Great Leaders on the way. I don't want to build any wonders, I want to rush them with Great Leaders or gain them by conquest only. Then hopefully win by diplomacy at the end.

Sorry everyone this is my first GOTM so I wont readem' next time, I'll check the rules again.

Doh!

TF, you're fast!! :eek: But good to know you're 'back'. ;)

Finally did it! Domination @ 1275 AD @ the time of Infantries. I would have gone the whole nine yards to conquest but France was powerfully defended by Infantries and we all know cavalries suck at beating them. (I even lost two 3-Veteran-Cavalry Armies to fortified infantries in cities. Ouch!) I destroyed all the other civs though and that's enough for me.

Good start! I love expansionist civs! By the time I got my last tech from goody huts I was 3 techs ahead of the 2nd most advanced civ and 5 techs ahead of the least advanced. Two scouts at the start and I was steamrolling.

I only built the GL wonder and let the other civs waste time on building the other wonders - focused instead on building up my military from impis, horsemen and a few swordsmen. I had very bad luck with my swordsmen - 4 died on 2 attacks against Delhi and I still did not conquer the city. :cry: I almost gave up. But when Delhi finally fell it also gave me a great leader (first or second) and I felt really good after that. :king:

I reloaded only thrice:

1. When I accidentally clicked 'Go to Revolution while I was in a Golden Age'. I was in Despotism and I knew that given the current status(only 1 lux), my anarchy would take forever. I was also in the middle of a huge war (Me versus Japan, Babylon, China & India) so anarchy is a no no!!

2. When I pressed the wrong cursor key and caused an elite swordsman to move parallel to a target enemy city rather than towards it. I use the cursor keys when I get bored of using the mouse but at that moment I got confused with the orientation of the map. (I thought the up key will move my unit Northeast. Some previous games I played were configured that way.)

3. The connecting pin inside the mouse was loose so the mouse went haywire. Caused me to restart the pc (and Civ3) a number of times until I found what was wrong and fixed it.

Happy gaming you all. I know I did. :D Wonder if anyone went the OCC path? I was planning to but I had to try something new.

ps. A tip from myself to others who do it: don''t write a timelog too often - the game gets boring when you do that. I did not write one during the game and that decision stopped me from getting distracted. :)

My scouts have covered almost the whole continent (just met france and am selling communications with them for big bucks) and its big, I mean really BIG.

I think I found almost al the goody huts on the continent :lol: (I just love having those scouts) and now 3-4 techs ahead. I'am the only one who has horseback riding so i'm now builing an army of horseman to traverse and conquer as this map is HUGE.

As non of the civs have iron working (yet) my horsies will have a field day with those spearman. I'm going to really enjoy this one.

Good gaming all, MPF

I had the good fortune at the beginning to expand toward the east. Apparently I got lucky with the barbarian villages because I took about 5 in a row and got civ advances in each one. As a result I was ahead in tech.

First I went after India and took a couple of their cities then made peace. I find that is a great tactic as you don't get involved in trying to destroy them, which takes a long time, and the couple of cities they lose sets them back for centuries.

The big problem I had in this game was when the Babylonians declared war on me around 500 AD. I quickly traded with Japan and Persia for military alliances because they had borders with Babylon. The war went well with all of the allies contributing equally to the Babylonian's destruction. At this time I had knights and the Babylonians didn't. I was the closest to their capital and so after taking 3 nearby cities I took aim at Babylon and took it without too much trouble. I got 2 wonders for my trouble so kept the city.

The problem was that in expanding my cities as quickly as possible, (I had 16 when the war started and France, the next largest, had 14) my culture had suffered. The only wonder I had was the Great Library. The Babylonians had a much greater culture than mine and so a few turns after I took Babylon it flipped back to them. I had not really anticipated this because at the time their civilization was about whopped. It only had one city left and I was advancing on it. I got careless and left 10 knights in Babylon because it had a lot or resisters. Needless to say I lost all of those knights and didn't have any other units in the immediate area to take the capital back. On the next turn Ninevah flipped back to them. This was the last straw. Now came the big decision - do I reload, or stuggle on? I hated to give up so much so I took the chickens way out and reloaded. I know I can't submit my game now, but I wanted to post this because the culture flips when the civ only had one city left really took me by surprise. Apparently the "memory" the computer keeps of the civs culture is still very strong even when the civ only has one city left and is about to lose that.

zagnut:

it's a coin toss really: "Do I leave hordes of units inside his capital and wish for the number to prevent the flip or do I leave my units outside ready to retake it when it flips?" I did a little of both and crossed my fingers evertime I did the former.

My game is winding down. It is 960 A. D. and I am finally changing out of Despotism. My game resembles an always war game. I refuse a demand from Japan around 700 B. C. and they get every single civ to declare war on me!

Fortunately, I am loaded for bear. I take out the Chinese first, then attack India. Granaries in cities on rivers help a lot. Thanks for that tip on some other thread. I make peace when it is militarily expedient, but I am at war with at least one civ practically the entire game.

At this point, China, India, Babylon, Japan are all vanquished. Leaving Persia and France. Persia doesn't even have iron, so they look ripe. France is strong, but when I get calvary nothing will stand before them. I may achieve Domination before even attacking France.
- Bill

What I have been doing for resistance/culture flips is the normal station them outside the city while I move up impi or warriors built in cities intentionally left unconnected.Then get the upgrade to a sword or musket.At least flips aren't so costly and can be recaptured straight away.

Phaze two is now also proceeding acording to plan... With just a few set backs;

#1 No second leader yet, no chance yet to build an army, so no heroic epic and little chance of more leaders.
#2 The persians have just declared war on me, at the moment they are pouring out of the choke point between the two sub-continents; If I can rush my defencive forces to "cork the bottle" quickly I can easily defend my babylonian conquests, but if the persian cavalry takes the city opposite the choke point, the difficulties in moving through enemy territories will make the war very costly for me.

Lucky for me Ive got a Very good reputation with the remaining civs and just the promise of 20 turns of a luxury was enough to drag the french in to a war with the persians, a war which even the victor will emerge from greatly weakened.
The japanese faced no real difficulties even with my good culture rating Ive had trouble with culture flipping all the way through (my capital is so very far away every war has to result in total extermination) so I move all my forces to a nearby defensive point rather than place them in the city.

One other point Ive not razed even one city so far, better to suffer a culture flip (retaking the city means an additional chance for promotion and great leader and also reduces the population by an additional point) than suffer the bad reputation, usualy I have a bad rep but during this game, I think I could probably win a United nations victory. (not losing that way again!)

Heres my status now, notice how by denying the indians a right of passage during our crusade I managed to limit their help to border cities, which would then be surrounded by my cultural borders; in the even they only took one city, their elephants being no match in the city grab rush with my cavalry;

Well:

Looks like most took the Chinese early. I found the Indians first, thought they were too close so built barracks then archers and took the indians early. They had an awful starting position, and only had two cities when I attacked. I got a settler near the chinese, and built a city there but it was pretty useless and didn't give me much advantage.

After taking the indians, the chinese had too many cities (they seemed to be churning settlers at an alarming rate :eek: ). I got a GL in the war, and used it for a forbidden palace in the middle of the continent. So I built a few more cities, and changed production to build a horseman army. I then attacked the chinese and took them out pretty painlessly.

At this point, I had expanded to cover most of the land up to the babylonians. I realised that they didn't have any iron. I upgraded a few horsemen to knights, and used a combined horsemen/knight force to take out babylonia as well.

The persians also had no iron, so tried to attack them too. Damn Frenchies traded them iron, and they got gunpowder. So I'm holding off for cavalry - about 15 turns away :D

My first leader went for an army.Heroic Epic followed and I just got my 8th leader of the game..so far :D

I am such a lame player, it's not even funny:

Only 3 cities at 840BC, Indians have got 7 more techs than me, and I haven't got a decent enough military to take out the chinese. No idea what I'm doing wrong :confused:

Phage:

It's really impossible to explain the cause of your small civ without more information. However, what I have learned from the good players is to expand as fast as possible. I used to try to build my cities with temples and granaries, but always found myself way behind by the your time period. Finally I decided to build as many settlers as possible, along with military units. This keeps the population of your cities below 6 for a long time, but it provides the settlers that you need to get out there and build as many cities as possible. You would be surprised how many techs you can trade for or, if you are lucky as I was in this game, you may get a lot of techs from raiding barb villages.

I note that this is your first post. This site can make you a better player just by reading the advice in the War Academy and the strategy forum. Good Luck.

Well I finally got around to playing another GOTM. I liked the idea of playing the Zulu.

Got conquest at a pretty good date, not sure if it is the best, though. I did ICS, but I didn't go for the full settler flood. I did ICS at the beginning and then just mass produced military units.

I got 2 great leaders (Great library and Sun Tzu's). After I got the Great Library and set science to 0%. Then at the beginning of the middle ages I cranked science back up to go for chivalry. But when I did this I saw it would take forever (30+ turns) to research techs. I then looked at my military advisor and saw I was spending 70+ more gold for units that my monarchy couldn't support :eek:.

So I set every city to build a settler (more free units + more gold). Then when I got chivalry I could only upgrade 1 or 2 of my 70+ horseman per turn, so I set all high-corrupt cities to build WEALTH! I already had way too many workers and everything was well roaded, so I didn't need any more workers when I was already over the free unit support limit. By setting all cities to wealth I was making +240 gold/turn so I could upgrade 3 horseman to knights every turn. Other than 1 temple and 1 harbor (which wasn't needed by the time I got it built) I didn't build any infrastructure except for barracks.

I went for 100% science towards the wheel (I NEEDED horses ASAP), then horseback riding, then towards Monarchy. Traded for a few techs, but most I got in peace negotiations. I changed to monarchy right after my golden age. I like to not have my golden age while in despot, but considering the terrain, I think it worked out pretty good.

I don't play with barbarians normally, but they weren't too much of a problem as I placed warriors and Impi on mountains, etc to stop the camps from forming. I found out that a barb camp can form right in front of a worker or scout! I guess you must have a MILITARY (unit that has an attack or defense value) unit uncovering tiles from the fog of war to prevent the camps from forming.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/Gotm_final_map.jpg

Originally posted by zagnut
Phage:

It's really impossible to explain the cause of your small civ without more information. However, what I have learned from the good players is to expand as fast as possible. I used to try to build my cities with temples and granaries, but always found myself way behind by the your time period. Finally I decided to build as many settlers as possible, along with military units. This keeps the population of your cities below 6 for a long time, but it provides the settlers that you need to get out there and build as many cities as possible. You would be surprised how many techs you can trade for or, if you are lucky as I was in this game, you may get a lot of techs from raiding barb villages.

I note that this is your first post. This site can make you a better player just by reading the advice in the War Academy and the strategy forum. Good Luck.

Thanks for the reply

I restarted the game (I'm not planning to submit it) and managed to expand a little quicker.

Someone told me I shouldn't make a city build a settler until it's size 5, because if I build one at size 3 it takes longer to regain the population, is this right?

Phage,

It really depends on the lands surrounding your city. If you have a couple of "specials", then the extra population to size five may not give you much incremental production benefit over three. And you need to weigh-up getting extra cities built vs the production from the first.

I tend to build settlers at size 3 in the start of the game, (hopefully having built a granary first - that's more important than letting your cities get to size 5!). When I get a few more cities going and a bit of the terrain around my city developed, I then revert to building at size 4/5/6 - basically settler/defensive unit pairs. :)

This sux. Should have expected an early attack after war was declared. There's the v. short chronology of our insignificant civ:

3550BC Meet (and make war) with Indians
3400BC Indian warrior ambushes our scout! :(

We have built 3 scouts and no military. Then an undefended Zimbabwe falls to Indian warrior & archer. We escape with a settler a short way to the south to attempt to recapture the capital, but then more Indian reinforcements arrive and all is lost. :(

The shortest game I've ever played. :wallbash:

I would say if you are waiting for size 5 before building a settler,you are waiting way too long.My first settler was timed exactly with size 3.

I actually finished!!!
Mercifully,a domination victory was acheived in 1340AD.


Some comments:

The game has improved a fair bit with 1.29 patch but its still very tedious and frustrating.
Culture flipping is not as bad as before but still very annoying and terribly unfair.Nuff said.
MP is not going to work.Turns are gonna take forever except very early.If anyone even comes close to anything other than early KOs.I'll be shocked.

All in all,its a better game,but not anywhere near a great game IMO.Not yet....

Got an excellent late game challenge going on here...
I'll be brief.

SETTING:
China- Knocked off early - can't have any militaristic Civs behind me
Babylon - started a war with me right after my China war except they had no iron so my Knights ripped them up.
Japan - wars with Persia and India the entire game - lots of land, not a player
Persia - whoops, they attacked me at the end of my Babylon war - I was way behind and couldn't defend so I got India, France and Japan involved and they got wiped - shouldn't have called in France, now they're top dog.
India - number 2 to France in tech - hit a city of theirs really early for a resource and now no ROP, but got MPP with them - good thing too, check the map - could wipe 'em but I think I need them as friends
France - Top tech, top land mass and moving in on my score. Just took ALL of Persia.

http://www.beatbyte.com/games/gotm12late.jpg

THE SITCH:
France has been building the UN for a while - haven't investigated, but they're close. Zimbabwe is 16 turns from UN completion. I had a couple failed spy attempts make my place in the world a little precarious. Now India is getting their Oil from France so they're sold. Japan furious with me for some unknown reason - never warred with them.

I must tip the scales back in my favor or I lose this game. I'm considering goading France into a war - maybe starting it then backing off until they attack on my territory so I can get India involved with my MPP. Can't get an MPP with Japan so may get one with Babylon just so I've got 2-1 allies. Problem is that I don't have Computers yet and am feeling a bit vulnerable despite 3 Infantry and an Artillery in every city. France has a LOT of production capacity and I know Japan is going to fall in behind them. India has few cities but good tech and lots of units from previous wars.

Not reading the spoilers until the end so will post back on what happened. (Home sick from work Friday - got lots of play in :crazyeye: ).

Well, this is my first game of the month, and I have to admit, it was very exciting! I think that the Zulu are one of the hardest civs to play, because expansionist is only good (to me, anyway) in the early years, and if you are not at war, then militaristic is worthless, too. The Impi's are only good at rushing to defend cities from barbarians, but that's about it.

I was doing well and not fighting anyone untl I discovered Persia and France, the two lucky civs with all the territory! I decided I needed more teritory to be competitive. So, gather your Knights and rush China! I made the mistake of getting a ROP with China and then attacking all of their cities at once, three of five falling to me within a couple of turns. Needless to say, no one else signed a ROP with me for the rest of the game.

I would have continued fighting China but the Indians got anxious and attacked me in the south, where I was weak. I lost a few cities, but got Persia, Japan, and Babylon to attack India to take the pressure off of me. I re-caputred my lost cities and gained the rest of India's territory, except for a couple small island cities, where they remianed for the rest of the game.

I only fought Japan a couple times and merely defened, and finsihed China off in one turn late in the game, and eventually won via Space Race, which France could have won if Persia had not traded with me.

This game was harder than I thought it would be, but very fun and makes me want GOTM XIII now!

it's a coin toss really: "Do I leave hordes of units inside his capital and wish for the number to prevent the flip or do I leave my units outside ready to retake it when it flips?" I did a little of both and crossed my fingers evertime I did the former.

I didn't have too much of a problem with culture flips, despite building ony 1 temple (which wasn't until late in the game). I guess maybe because I attacked before they were able to produce too much culture. I just stationed any injured troops in the city (to quell resistors and heal) and had the healthy ones move onto the next city. I had a continuous stream of units coming, so if a city did flip, I had plenty of units on the way to retake it. I lost a city or two to Persia (but only lost 1-3 units in them). What is really annoying is when you get a civ down to 1 city, then they are able to flip a city back to them that is 15 tiles away! :mad:

But then I fought France.. I lost a city that had 3 healthy knights (had just been upgraded) and 2 other knights that were healing up. After that I razed all French cities and that is why in my screenshot there isn't many ex- french cities. I only kept the city that had the Hanging Gardens.

What was really funny about my game is after I signed peace with Babylon (and getting the rest of their cities through the peace treaty), they only had just their capital left and they go off and start building a wonder :rolleyes: .

This is the first time I play Game of the month.
I´m not so much of a warmonger, until somewhat around 1000AD I was not at war with anyone. (no great leader up to now)
I build a lot of wonders and improvements and traded away my resources.
Around 1000AD the Japanese decided to attack the Chinese (also destroyed the Babylonians) while I was still building my military to take away the few cities the Chinese had. I managed to get those cities before the Japanese and integrated them nicely into my culture. Then the Indians were attacked by Japan and Persia. The result was a lof of free space to found new cities which is what I did.
Now I´m slightly ahead in the tech race and have the highest culture rating. The core area of my country is already build up and producing wealth. (got my golden age through a wonder)

I´m not sure what to do now. On the one hand, tanks are only a few turns away and I could easily build more infantry(get rubber from Persia) to conquer the Japanese (they don´t have Infantry yet - Persia and France do). On the other hand, I could also go for a diplomatic victory (only attacked once) but I´m not sure if they would vote for me or France (they were nice throughout the whole game).

http://www.kinline.de/models/civ3/gotmxii.jpg

Balou, are all other Civs polite toward you? If it is, then maybe you should head for a diplomatic victory.

Those Persian cities and Japanese cities south of you probably can be assimilated by your superior culture... :)

Hello all,

This is my first GOTM, I just finished the game and posted my .sav file and just wanted to share a little bit of my experience and maybe get some (much needed) advice from the guys here who really know their Civ. (trying to bone up for multiplayer ;) )

My problem when playing Civ is I have a hard time coming up with clear cut goals for myself (like picking 1 particular victory condition and totally focusing on it) and I end up trying to do everything at once.

I'll use this GOTM to illustrate.

I started off the game by just focusing on pumping settlers and expanding (this is how I find myself starting every game no matter the circumstance). Also, since the Zulu are Expansionistic I made maybe 5 or 6 Scouts and went around grabbing all the goody huts I could. This helped take care of early tech and I kept science at 10% all through the early game and tried to pick techs to research that I didn't think the AI would research for trade purposes.

I met the Chinese first and then the Indians shortly thereafter. The Chinese had horrible jungle infested lands and that pretty much sealed their fate. After I had settled what I had in my mind as "my" territory and had a veteran Impi or 2 in each town (I normally pick a town or 2 and make barracks in them to supply defenders for my entire early empire and make culture improvements, settlers, and workers in all other towns), I started focusing on creating my army for attacking. I got Iron Working pretty quickly so that army mainly consisted of swordsman. I also made a few horseman with an eye towards upgrading to Knights when the time came so I wouldn't be caught flat footed militarily. Using a force of maybe 10-12 units I took out the Chinese before the Ancient Era ended. Luckily I managed to wipe them out entirely without triggering my Golden Age. The one thing I did differently in the Ancient Era than I normally do is that I didn't even try to build any early wonders. I'm not sure why, as I normally always go for the Pyramids, but I never seemed to have a town free in time to start it and after a certain point I figured there was no reason to start it because I knew the AI would have too much of a lead.

Next came the Middle Ages and lots more war. The Indians had grown fairly strong through the Ancient Era and had quite a bit of culture (as they always do), and they had a few cities that I felt would look nice in my cultural mass (you know how it is, you don't like seeing other colors in your blob on the mini map hehe). So I enlisted the help of the Japanese and Babylonians and together we took out the Indians. The war was fought entirely with Knights, Swordsman and Impis, and I ended up with all but a city or 2 of their holdings on the mainland and they were banished to the 3 city island to the SE of the main continent. I had triggered my Golden Age during this war and this allowed me to complete my first 2 wonders, Michelangelo's and J.S. Bach's. I was able to turn the luxuries that had made my Republic possible down to 0 and start to compete with the tech leader at the time (France) for getting new techs first.

After 20 turns or so of peace with the Indians the AI started declaring war on each other. The Japanese and Persians signed a military alliance against the Babylonians. The Babylonian lands bordered my newly conquered Indian territory, so I decided I had better get in on the action. I declared war on Babylon and took the majority of their western cities. Japan took a few Babylonian cities near it's border and Persia got their 3 or 4 easternmost cities and was the civ to wipe them out. India had also allied with the Babylonians during this lost cause and I took over their little 3 city island and they were vanquished. This war was still being fought with my old Knights and Swordsman.

After that there was a fairly long period of peace and territory consolidation that lasted up until the Industrial Age. After discovering Steam Power I realized that I had a city eligible to build Iron Works (only the 2nd game I've ever had that). I started Iron Works immediately and finished it just around the time I had researched the tech for Theory of Evolution (can't remember the name atm). I rush built a factory in the town and snagged Theory of Evolution there easily which I used to research up to Electronics and then popped Hoover Dam in a city I had been pre-building a palace in. When I discovered Steam Power I also went through and switched virtually every city to making a factory so when Hoover Dam completed it was almost like a 2nd Golden Age. Just as all this was happening Persia gets a wild hair up its ass and decides it wants to brawl. They were fairly strong, 3rd on the score list at the time and despite upgrading all of my Riflemen (which had been Musketmen, which had been Impis) to Infrantry as I had just recently discovered Replacement Parts my only offensive force was 5 Cavalry that had been Knights (that had been Horsemen) left over from my early wars. This didn't prove to be too much of a problem however as I enlisted the help of the Japanese and the French and set about making more Cavalry in my newly mega producing cities. The war with Persia ended up lasting all the way through to the beginning of the Modern Era but they were eventually vanquished, their last city being taken by the French. Again I ended up with the majority of their land and by this time the French had the East end of the continent and the Japanese had maybe 8 or 9 cities around their starting spot as the Persians had apparantly sent most of their offense in that direction during the war. By the time the war ended I had maybe 30 Tanks and a handful of Infrantry not assigned to defending cities as my fighting force (I normally just put 2 defenders in a city early on in the game and just upgrade them as I go and that's it for defense other than hotly contested border regions). I was also really starting to pull away in tech around this time as I had spent the entire war in Democracy and never mobilized. I also used (this is another thing I do in every game) the strategy of trying to get any tech that the AI doesn't have first and then selling it to them for mass gold per turn so as to hurt their own research pace and help mine.

After that we had more peace for a bit. I won the race to the UN using a pre-build but decided not to have a vote as that Victory method seems, for lack of a better word, gay.

I ended up winning by Domination in 1790AD. I had just finished killing off the Japanese the turn before (a 2 turn war that they declared when I got caught trying to plant a spy), and France and I were the only 2 civs left. They, obviously by virtue of the fact that I won by domination, didn't have much territory. I was 1 space ship part away from winning the Space Race. And I could have probably won by Diplomatic Victory since I first built the UN. If I used the tool that shows you how close you are to Domination I'm sure I could have won by Conquest too by razing enemy cities. The only Victory Condition that would have been difficult to attain outside the next 15 turns or so was Cultural. Although I had the strongest culture for the entire game according to the histograph I didn't have the Pyramids or Great Library, one of which almost seems to be a pre-requisite for a Cultural Victory.

If you read this far, I thank you. If you're not cursing me out for being a long-winded jackass, I thank you even more. The point of this little diatribe is that I need advice on how to play better. You see, despite my win my score was only 3478. A score in 3-4k range is about average for me on Monarch. (I normally play Monarch or Emperor). What can I do to raise my score? I feel like I'm in a rut where I play the game the same way everytime. I base all my decisions in game based on what I feel like is most advantageous at the time, but it always ends up coming out pretty much the same.

Other tidbits about my play style:

1. I'm a complete perfectionist. I try and space out my cities (I think people are calling it OCS?) to have no more than 1-2 tiles of overlap if any at all.

2. I enjoy going to war but I almost always end up waiting until Infrantry and Tanks to do my major warring because before that there's too many city improvements to build and I find myself only making the bare essential military.

3. My typical build order in a city is
-Temple
-Courthouse
-Library
-Marketplace
-Cathedral
-Aqueduct
-Colosseum
-University
-Bank
-Hospital
etc.....

That's the basics of it. Of course some towns get early barracks, harbors, etc and not every town gets Aqueducts. Also before Cathedrals I do Colosseums early and normally try to get them in my core cities before going to Republic.

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Very Nice. I think one of my favorite parts of the whole GOTM is seeing how things went in other worlds.

Looks like I got really lucky. My early scout poped 1 settler and then a few techs. Like in other worlds, I found the Chinese early and decided to remove them from the field of play.

I then worked my way through India till Babylon got obnoxious. I made peace with India and took all of Babylon's wonderful city sites there in the middle of the map. By this point India didn't have any really good cities, so I concentrated on Babylon.

Then Japan got their Samurais and imediately declared war. Fortunately for me, my knights were enough to fight the Samurais. (Mostly because Japan was quite foolish) Persia then declared war on me as I was finishing Japan.

All in all, I think I had about 10 turns of peace between 1000 BC and 1400 AD. The good news in this is that I got more Leaders than I have ever before. I wasn't counting, but I built 6 wonders with leaders and built at least 2 armies with them. Guess I'll have to play militaristic more often.

I could have decided to go the conquest route, but really wanted to build the Space Ship, so I fought with Persia and France (at this point the only remaining civs) untill I razed enough of their cities that they could no longer trouble me. At that point I went straight for the ship. Finishing it in 1818. Definately the earliest I've ever finished a ship.

Hope everyone else enjoyed this as much as I did.

bst1- Don't worry too much about score. The scoring system is screwy. You don't get any points at all for building infrastructure. (although they do help indirectly if they provide happy faces).
You did do alot of things right, and I'll just mention some things for you to think about, that might help you finish sooner. I used to play like you. And I still do sometimes.

You build too much infrastructure is one problem. Building every improvement will definitely win you games, but not really early. OCP (optimal city placement) is a good idea in theory, but not the most powerful for an early advantage. With OCP, every city has about 8 tiles that is not being used until hospitals. OCP will sure give you those powerhouse cities to run over the AI when you get railroads and hospitals, but before then you have alot of your terrain around your palace that is not being used.

Let's pretend that we have a perfect situation of every tile is mined grassland. If you take 20 tiles and place 1 city there, you have 12 tiles used for 24 shields, 24 gold. If you put a marketplace and bank in that city you would get 48 gold (if 100% tax, and then you need to subtract maintanence costs). If I squeeze 3 cities in those 20 tiles I would have 40 shields and 40 gold. The 3 cities are producing many more shields while that big size 12 city is producing less. The big city however, is producing more gold, but they needed to spend shields building the marketplace and library (plus any happiness improvements they needed to keep all those people happy and spend money on maintenence costs for those buildings).

Now, I'm not telling you to go the complete opposite and ICS, like I did in this game, where each city only uses about 4-7 tiles and not build any infrastructure, but some players like to limit each city to about 12-15 tiles. That way, the cities are not too small, but not too big. With 12 tiles, if you have a proper food supply, then every tile is used before railroads. 15 tiles, you would have most tiles used, and still offer some extra tiles for when you get hospitals.

Building a little denser, you can have half your cities building culture improvements, while the other half is pumping out military units. Then you can switch these cities around later and have the ones that don't have much else to build, go to military units, while the cities that had been building military units switch to culture, or keep on building units, if you want to go full military.

Did you put every improvement in every city? High corrupt cities would have no use for a library or bank as the maintence cost would cost you more than the benefit they offer. (unless you are building the culture improvements to help your culture and/or going for culture victory. I set all forever 1 shield cities to build workers or settlers. Colleseums some players don't find all that useful since they are awfully expensive to build. Cracker uses colleseums as a pre-build for universities and hospitals. Marketplaces, though are probably a good build in every city if and when you get access to more than 2 luxuries.
Barracks I put in nearly every city, since the Zulu are militaristic and get the cheap barracks.

You don't need the early wonders to get the 100,000 culture victory. It sounds like you put a ton of culture in your cities, so culture victory shouldn't be too much of a problem, especially if you play on a larger map where you have more cities. Culture victory 'normally' is not until late in the game, so you may or may not score higher (this depends on map size).

2 defenders in every city isn't always needed, especially when you are in a Republic or Democracy where you don't get military police. I rarely leave any defenders in any city, except border cities (this won't work against human opponents, but it does against the AI). Especially on a map like this one where you don't have to worry too much about the AI landing on your shore somewhere. I pretty much just worked my way from the west to east, so I only needed defenders on the eastern front.

Build lots of horseman (or even chariots). The
chariot-->horsemen-->Knight-->Cavalry chain is a powerful one. Swordsmen are great, but can never upgrade, they are slower and can't retreat. I rarely use chariots to actually attack, but they are cheap units, so you could squeeze in 1 or 2 of them in between settler production and upgrade them later. VETERAN Horsemen are surprisingly successful against spearman. Especially against regular spearman and when bringing along a large enough stack of horsemen and making sure you are not attacking across a river, and if you leave them with 1 movement point left so they have the possiblity of retreating. I'm glad Greece wasn't in this game. Horseman vs. Hoplites would be very difficult.

And did you automate your workers? Don't automate them until at least you get out of despot and get most of your productive region developed. Some insist you should never automate them, but that depends on your patience level. I used shift-A (automate without messing up previous terrain improvements) and control-R (build road to) at around 70 A.D. and I had about 40-50 workers.

I just won with a space victory, my first victory of the GOTM, score of 3000 or so.

Key moments.

Built an extra scout to explore all the huts, get tech for impi, then go straight to monarch.

Expanded towards the indians to limit there growth space.

Pushed up against the chinese with cities.

Grovel to every other civilisation (gave them anything they asked for) to avoid being the one who everyone ganged up on.

Everyone else slowly ganged up on Japan whilst i prepared to assult china with horsemen.

China declared war on me and the beatiful Impi gave me my golden age just after i ran out of places to put in new cities.
During the golden age i concentrated in building infrastructure in my at that stage bare cities.

Took out china and then continue to build infrastructure, im happily doign this while otehr civs are wasting their resources at war.

Change to Republic around here somewhere

Realise i dont have access to saltpeper and have to declare war on Indians.

Babylonians declare war on me, everyone asuslting Japan early gave the Babylonians extra expansion space, so they are pretty big.

Took 3 or 4 of the indian cities whilst my Impi continue to defend, manage to upgrade all my Impi to Musketmen and feel i can safely absorb any attacks. Make pease with India.

Continue consolidation.

India dont like me so they declare war again, i wipe them out on the mainland, giving me plenty of terretory, and enough resources.

Persian is stuck between and at was with two strong nations, france and babylon, i ensure they have a continuos supply of saltpepper and iron so they can build good defences and soak up there enemies resources.

Cahgne to democracy and concentrate on growth for ages, climbing from 4th on the scoreboard to number 1. France is close at second, followed by babylon at 3.

I decide to take out France as they have started building the UN, lukily my lengthy growth phase has left me with high resource cities, and i will overtake them and build UN before them anyway.

Prepare for the assult by building a good navy to control protect my transports, my assult force is made up of 6 armies of 4 x armoured tanks, and other armoured tanks.

Switch to communism to enable the french cities i capture capable of building ports and airports, to make further conquest easier.

Take my first city, manage to defend it till i get all my troops and air support over.

Nothing can defend against my Mighty armies, they gradually sweep through the French civilisation.

Build UN but nobody will vote for me or the babylonians

Babylon has been quiet, they start building the spaceship before me.

Manage to catchup and beat them at the space race rather than trying to conquor them

An easy space race for me too after taking out the Indians, Chinese, and half of Babylon. I was pretty passive after that. 1832AD with a pretty average 3088. I must say Militaristic and Expansionist ain't all that great..

Anyway, I was able to expand to only five cities early on. After that, just kept pumping out Impi's and horsemen. The Chinese had a terrible starting location (jungle). Started kicking their @$$ around 600bc. They were nice enough to finish the Collossus in Shanghai for me, however. My first GL was spent on the Great Library. The Indians went down quick with a little help from the Persians who were first in power-graph terms at the time.

Fast forward>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The French beat me to the UN, but never held elections! Probably because St. ***** d'France new I would win. I was the only non-"Liar&Cheat" left. Anyway, After the UN was completed , I signed MPP/ROP's with everyone to buy friends expecting her to hold elections. Then the Japanese decided to take out the remaining half of the Babs causing me and everyone else to gang up on Japan. 18 turns left until those treaties expired. I razed some key Japanese cities then just took a defensive position. I researched only those techs required to build the ss. I met my MPP obligations before I made peace with Japan. My people did not like having to endure that long war. France, Persia, and Babylon fell behind in tech to me by continuing to pound Japan.

See you at Alpha Centauri.

Go boil YOUR head Tokugawa!

Hmm… perhaps it wasn’t the best idea for my first game of Civ III in 6 months to be the GOTM. I finally gave up trying to play on my old laptop last april or so – I think that it’s a good indication you need a new computer when it won’t play TBS smoothly :D - but I just got a brand spanking new desktop, and so I’m back to my beloved Civ. All this is an aside though. What has happened in my game?

I built a granary ASAP, and then settlers as quick as I could. Went with settler expansion for as long as possible, which meant that I had only one scout and a very small army. I still managed to contact all the other civs and act as a communications broker. Somehow I managed to build the Great Library w/out a great leader. I missed the colossus by 3 turns, and every following wonder by about the same amount.

The upside of all this was that I had a decent core empire OCP style fairly quickly. The downside was that when the Japanese demanded tech and I told them to shove it, my empire consisted of 9 or 10 nice fat juicy targets er.. cities, each with exactly one impi garrisoned in it. Did I mention that I haven’t been playing civ in a while? :wallbash:

Luckily, it was a long trek from the japanese end of the continent, so I switched over to unit production, and built myself a large force of swordsmen and knights PDQ. Which was good, because in the following turns persia and babylon signed alliances with the japanese and attacked me too. As you might imagine, this delighted me to no end :ack: I didn’t want to go to war with any of these folks, because unlike them I had no desire to wage a war in distant lands. So I allied with the french against the persians, which really knocked the wind out of their sails. After a period of pointless knight-on-samurai battles I got the japanese to agree to a peace treaty, which freed up my army to deal with the indians who had declared war on me only a couple of turns previously. Oh yeah, somewhere back there I attacked the chinese in a fit of pique. An odd thing to do, perhaps, but it proved fruitful when I got a great leader after attacking one of their cities :cool:

Well, fortunately, it seems my alliance with the French reminded the AIs that they were free to backstab each other, and they proceeded to do so with gusto. One by one I made peace with the distant civilizations (persia, babylon) as they swung their greedy eyes upon their nearer neighbours, and one by one I took the cities of the closer civs (china, india).

I was most happy to discover that my impis had a penchant for hunting indian elephants, and the ridiculous number of impi-on-elephant victories made up for all the knights I’d lost to archers. I took the Indian city that had been infringing on my personal space, and then they sued for peace. I’ll be back in 20 turns. First I will absorb the chinese. Two of the chinese cities fell from culture, and another three fell to my mighty armies. At present (1080AD) I am mopping up the last of the chinese, and I am the third most powerful civilization. The french and Japanese are ahead of me, the babs and indians behind, and the persians almost destroyed. I have been buying my techs from france, though I plan on shooting ahead after I conquer India. I can tell already that my end score is going to suck, but so far this has been a really fun game.

Thanks alot for the input Bamspeedy. I think I'll try some games with limiting the workable tiles of my cities (especially those right around the palace and forbidden palace) to around 12-15 like you suggested and see how the game goes.

And yes, generally speaking I find myself building just about every improvement in every city. The really far flung cities that don't hit 2 shields after building a courthouse I don't though.

I must admit though, and it seems really stupid when I think about it, that if I build a courthouse and the production goes from 1 to 2 shields the next improvement I start is a Factory. :crazyeye:

I probably need to do a little studying on what the different maintenance costs for the different buildings are so that I can make more intelligent decisions on what I build and where/when I build it.

As far as automating workers, in my normal games I typically put workers on shift-A after I have all my cities connected via rail. However, in this game I managed all my workers for the entire game.

I always mine the grassland squares that get a shield by default and irrigate everything else unless it has a resource that gives shields (i.e. coal, uranium, oil, etc). Those get mines too.

I think I'll also try shifting more of my military from defense to offense in the early game as you suggested.

Thanks alot for the tips!!

I'll try and report back with my experience using them :)

Well this was my first GOTM... And I had previously mostly been playing on the two easiest levels, so this was a nice challenge for me. (all the other games at harder levels I've always put Barbarians on "raging" and all of a sudden I have no cities left...)

Well this went better than it usually does. I usually don't go to war, ever, except if they declare war on me.

Which is why I left the Chinese be and expanded east-wards in the beginning (until those other nations came in the way). Eventually I got communications to everyone and in the beginning Persia declared war on me. Although they were so far away that when their first unit reached my lands I insisted on a peace treaty and got it (and giving a city that was in the middle of China-territory.. which eventually caused a war with China and their Indian allies. which further into the future probably was the reason that India fell... ...).
Then everyone else started waging war against each other. The Babylonians got into war with the India-China-alliance (and I gave ROP to both of them so that they would destroy Babylon quicker and so that I could build cities where there had been Babylonians before). India was later destroyed by the French and China and Persia declared war on India. And some time later India too was destroyed.
During this time I had been peacefully building cities all around and some cities deflected to me. I am hopelessly after in technology but in the histograph I'm still on second place... Well it's some 1300AD now and I'm trying to make the Japanese and Persians fight each other rather than me...

During the whole game I haven't killed a single unit. There were some barbarians in the beginning but I only ran away from them with my scout... ... ...

I mightn't be so effective points-wise. But atleast it's fun 8^)

This is my first GOTM and my first visit to this forum. I am amazed how you guys can remember the game so well and write complete reports about it. Do you write things down during gameplay?

I do not know how I doing. I'm in 1675 and winning. Score about 1600 now. Wiped out Indian, Chinese, Japanese almost, :D tolerate weak babylon because of their mutual protection pact with both persia and france, which are not as strong as i am, but i do not think i can handle both of them and do not think either i can put them up against eachother. I think i want to go for diplomatic victory now. Wonder how i'm doing compared to the rest of you. :confused:

I played the game 24/24 until april and re-installed it just 2 weeks ago. Luckely i found this great site. I've learned a lot of things about the game i did not know uptill now!

1100 AD - Destroyed Chinese, Indians and Babalonians. Kept all of their cities. None flipped either way.

Judiciously planning my attacks, I've gotten 9 Great Leaders so far. Used them for two knight armies, Forbidden Palace in Delhi, and 6 wonders. Got no settlers from huts, but lots of tech.

Currently at peace, but about to declare war on Japan.

Persia is the military powerhouse. France the cultural Genius. Japan the crabby neighboor.

Greg

PS, I restarted again after missing the Great Library by a couple turns, so I won't be submitting this game. Wish there was another catagory for people like me, ie., less than honorable, but not a cheat.

This was my first GOTM and my first time playing on Monarch diff. it was fun to say the least and surprisingly easy, in spite of the terrible militaristic&expansionist special ability.

This is roughly how it went.

Met the Chinese first and attempted to "Settle them in" and succeeded quite fairly they only got 4 cities in their own blob on the mini map and a few others scattered along the coast all the way to Japan.
I was going to play nice with India but his expansion was quick and I had to react by building cities quickly without military support, and close to his borders. He decided to act on it and took 1 city :lol: luckily for me I´d been preparing for war with China and 1 city was all he got. I quickly advanced to Delhi and he had no answer to the fast moving Horsemen and their supporting Impi along with the occasional swordsman.
At this point Japan decided to intervene along with Babylon, I made my peace with India right away and attempted to advance on Babylon but was overwhelmed and finally had to negotiate peace with them as well.

At this time got Monarcy and switch. But terribly behind in tech.

A few turns pass and it was time to expand west.
China was easy and many cities fell to Impi hordes and the occasional knigt (I decided to build pikemen to releave the defendin´ Impi instead of upgrading)

I left china with 2 cities; the capital (inside Jap terr) and one city south of my larger cities.

Building time.

India again, this time with knights and Impi, the Impi were not so useful this time but the knights did their job well and India did not put up much of a resistance.

More Building time.

At this time I was far behind in tech (discovering Metallurgy with Persia and France building Newton´s University) but had the highest score with Japan close behind. No one wanted to trade or sell me tchgy so....
ME: ACCEPT THIS DEAL OR FACE THE CONSEQUENSES.
JAP: CONSEQUENSES SMONSEQUENSES.
ME: THIS MEANS WAR!

Got Persia with me and Persia got Babylon with him and later on France didn´t want to be left behind.

I got the majority of their cities and when one city remained and the last one was surrounded by French and Persian troops, I offered a peace treaty they couln´t refuse; All their tech and I give just less than 100 gold PER TURN and all the resources I could spare. On the next turn France destroyed their last city.
:rotfl:
Persia offers a MPP, I accept.
Persia decided that France was not a team player and declared war two turns later. And I picked up a few of the cities France got from Japan.

Building time and this time I´m not so far behind France and Persia but Babylon laggin´ behind.

When I get replaceable parts I see that Babylon has two Rubber but not the tech, so I violate a few treaties to maintain the upper hand. His first three and best cities are all taken on the same turn and slowly but surely the remaining fall to slowly but surely advancing Infantry and their supporting CANNONS :eek:

I hadn´t taken the time to upgrade my cannons and at this time Persia and France had been at peace for some time. Suddenly when I´m loading troops to take the island and setting my troops up for the final offensive down the peninsula, the Persian army makes its move and I lose three of my newly captured Bab. cities.

But manage to set up a defence of Infantry and CANNONS :wallbash: in the bottleneck into Persia. Make peace with Babylon and bribe France into a MPP :cool:

Slowly but surely I pick up the Persian cities on my half of the continent and reinforce the bottleneck with Artillery :goodjob:

Sweep up the remaining Babylon and then headbang my way into Persia with Artilleryfire and Infantry destroying some 3 or 4 wonders. End the game in 1830/32 by building the city "Domination" where one of Persia´s finest cities once stood. :king:

I have taken out most of China, got the great library, switched to Republic, getting ready to fight india. Its like 800 ad or something.

A problem I have is that I never militaristic civs, also I have gotten quite used to the accelerated production. Seeing 60 turn temples makes me ill. I can see that the strategy for this board is mobile unit land attack, conquest or domination the way to a win.

I have tried GOTM before but this is the first one where I havent given up in horror. We'll see.

Originally posted by qslack
By 1000 BC, how many cities do you all have? Right now I have 4...

In 1000BC I had 14 own cities (no war). In 10AD - 56 cities (30 own).;)

Oh my, this is disturbing. I keep readin over and over again how y'all are getting 6-8+ great leaders a game. How in the #$%@?

I manage about 2 per game and this is with heavy warring. I use them immediately so as to not prevent the chance of another one showing up. I figured that with a Militaristic civ I should have a better chance.

Can anyone point me to a thread or article illustrating how this is done?

Do most of you with the high numbers of leaders build an army with yout first so you can build the Epic to increase chances? I hate armies, but I guess this is a reason to blow a leader on one.

Zoiks.

This is my first GOTM here's how it went

THE EARLY YEARS

I build a road with my worker on the game forest square right by capital and use worker to add to city. This gives me my second city by 3300 BC. I also build granary in capital ASAP then alternate settler and impi production. I set to 90% gold as all techs soon take 40 turns to research. Therefore I have a lot of money to rush build temples and barracks and buy
tech. I will never give gold/turn for a tech I will just wait till I have researched it closer then buy it for lump sum after it has cheapened. I use the scout to go east and follow the coast and I discover India Babylon Persia and France early. Also I find many goody huts that give tech (at least 3) Get communication with Japan in a trade. China discovers me and I send a warrior to investigate. I discover they are weak and jungle infested. However soon they start ****ting settlers like nobody's business. I build my initial ring of cities however India has butted in on my inner ring and is hogging the iron. Also they have "stolen" the furs to the south. For this they will pay. I always build temple first in all cities to secure the territory and get a culture boost. Then a spearman (impi) and then barracks then ready to **** war units. I secure the southern coast but India and china are now blocking me. I trade tech aggressively and share the top spot with Japan by 1000 BC researching monarchy.

THE FIRST INDIAN WAR 825 BC - 400 BC

I realize China must go but I attack India first because they are hogging the iron and furs. Also I need to knock them on their ass a bit as they are looking kind of tough. I set a worker to build a road to their closest city and send in the archers (7). I take this city quickly and make moves toward the fur-bearing city and the capital. I also found a new city right on their border beside Delphi before they can claim the territory. My military is not that strong, however, and they are killing my archers and are starting to swarm warriors. I also fear other civs entering the war and I have gotten my iron. They will negotiate so I sue for peace. I am surprised that they have monarchy already and I get this in the deal.

THE CONQUEST OF CHINA 210 BC - 110 AD

With my inner ring completed and barrack-ized, I start an unprovoked war of aggression with china as soon as I can build swordsman and shift my military focus northward. I invade with 14 swordsman ... 7 to each of the closest cities. They fall quickly and I set my production cities to build impis for garrison. I will always keep a city if I can because it keeps me from building a settler and I don't have to worry about flipping much with my early temples. China has expanded to the point where they have cities northeast of me toward Japan and cities east of India. I quickly secure the northern coast and send about half my army east to conquer the eastern reaches of China's empire. Also their eastern cites are sending archers west to harass me. I repel their meager counterattack and take the 2 cities on my northwestern border. Concurrently I invade China's inner ring and take the capital. I have 2 swordsman left in the area and an impi on the way so I take a chance and attack the only remaining Chinese city on the northern coast. Luckily the city falls and I now own the entire western continent. I make peace with them now and they give me their only remaining city way to the east on the coast between India and Babylon. Their lone capital is south of this.

THE FIRST PERSIAN WAR 510 AD

The Persians take my eastern Chinese city - what a bunch of pricks. However I want none of them so I make peace before they can attack my civilization proper.

THE SECOND INDIAN WAR 660 AD - 730 AD

I am happy with this amount of territory for now, as I am now the biggest. I also have many cities with libraries, marketplaces, aqueducts, and cathedrals. Soon I have a lot of knights (20) with nothing to do and I know I will eventually conquer India if I am to win. I attack their size 7 city north of the capital and it falls easily. Next come the southern coastal cities, which bear the fur luxury. After this I siege the capital and take it after 3 turns. India is left with 5 cities in the southern middle of the continent and is now nothing to fear. Japan is alarmingly large but is behind on the tech. Persia is beginning to rock and feudalism (hence pikeman) has proliferated. France is also up there. Soon I discover that Persia is getting techs at an alarming rate. I am 5 techs behind and they have chemistry by 1000 AD. It seems France, Japan, and Persia are feeding each other techs and collaborating. Something must be done.

THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 1050 AD - 1130 AD

I use knights to conquer India and banish them to the southern island in the middle. I also finish off China and begin my forbidden palace in the middle of the southern landmass. These vanquished, I endeavour to restructure my military, as I am spread extremely thin. I strive to garrison all cities with 2 troops, upgrading to musketman, and disbanding swordsman where temples and courthouses must be built.

THE FIRST BABYLONIAN WAR 1300 AD - 1340 AD

Babylon is at war with Persia and I have moved a majority of my knights to the north. Also Babylon has dyes and tech that I
would like. So I decide to attack as far as I can, knowing Babylon is next on my list anyway. The Babylonian empire is a string of cities between myself and Japan that stretches around the peninsula to the Persian chokepoint. I take the 3 cities that make a bulb at the end of this string and siege the city of Babylon itself. I would like the capital because it contains 2 wonders, but it is defended well and my knights cannot take it. I sue for peace and get some tech in the deal.

THE SECOND PERSIAN WAR 1415

I now have a border with the city the Persians took from me in 510. I notice some horseman and knights swarming in the area
around the city, but I think nothing of it, as the city is isolated from the rest of Persia. To my surprise they attack with no less than 5 cavalry from this city out of the blue, and I don't even have chemistry yet! Panicked, I get Japan and Babylon to ally with me for a high price, as they are ahead of me in tech as well. It is well worth it though to get the giants to fight each other. This allows me to catch up and they end up fighting each other the rest of the game. To defend I muster some knights to take out the cavalry and I use the opportunity to retake my city. To my dismay, the city flips and takes 4 knights with it. I check out the culture and Persia is beating me due to all the wonders they have built. I retake the city and rush build settlers out of it 3 times to ensure I keep it this time. I have to pay Persia a tribute to get peace which I do ASAP. My forbidden palace finally builds after rush building cathedrals and marketplaces and nursing the city to keep it in "I love the King Day". The building of this nearly doubles my commerce due to reduced corruption in one turn.

THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON 1725-1762

For 500 years I have been building improvements in my cities and upgrading my military. By 1600 I have my first city with all improvements including factory and hospital. Soon I am cooking infantry like hotcakes. I continue to incite war with Persia to hamper their tech. They are continually at war with Japan, Babylon and France. India is funny as they make mutual protection pacts and keep the war going and bringing others into the war with Persia even though they are now inconsequential. By 1700 I pass up everyone in the tech and it is soon time to begin warmongering again. I get 4 infantry in all border cities, ready to garrison. I research motorized transportation and get a few rounds of tanks out. I also have about 15 cavalry. I decide it is time for Babylon to die. Babylon and Japan are at war with Persia still and France is laughing at them all. I am now the top dog but Persia is right up there. Babylon goes down quick I take 2 cities at least every turn. I wonder if they are embarrassed as I expose their last unit defending each city and it is a spearman. It is funny because Japan and Persia continue to fight right through Babylon and eventually through me as it becomes my territory. It was quite annoying though because the Babylonians apparently had something against roads, and the Japanese or Persians would always end their turn on the only road through the empire. Once I destroy Babylon and finish India, it is time to
evict Japan.

THE CONQUEST OF JAPAN 1792-1816

Japan has a massive force in my territory and is going back and forth with Persia but I have many tanks (40ish) by this time and I open the offensive by destroying a large part of their force in the open the first turn. Japan seems very formidable as they were sending large numbers of infantries Persia's way and I could see the whole thing, but in the end they went down hard. France declares war on Persia and this stops Persia from trampling on my territory so this was a bonus. That very turn they had sent in their first tanks and I could see them turn ass around and head for the French border. I gain modern armor, upgrade, and attack Japan from 2 directions. I try to use bombers but my advance is often too fast to use them. My western empire is now completely developed with mass transit and research labs so I use a leader to move my palace to the northern landmass to reduce corruption in the newly conquered territory, and to show the Japanese I am here to stay. This reduces my ability to build units somewhat but not much and I continue to produce 6 mech infantry a turn.

THE END

Now the only ones that stand before me are Persia and France. France is weak and Persia is hurting them bad, I commence my attack on Persia mainly to hurt them and keep them from conquering France. I realize I am dangerously close to a domination victory but I would like Persia's wonders and each city has at least one wonder. Persia turns out to be weak because they do not have the resources to build modern units. The toughest unit I had to kill was infantry, and they put up almost no fight. I take the first 3 Persian cites past the choke point. Then I decide that I can take no more without winning the game, so I decide to pillage all their improvements and bomb all their cities to dust. I take their central city that is surrounded by water to use as an air base. Unfortunately the next turn I win by domination, before I have a chance to build up the former Japanese territory to pad the score. I think it was taking this last city and also mass culture border expansion from temples in the newly conquered cities that put me over the top.

COMMENTS

This was a tough game it had me constantly scared and scrabbling to keep up. Early on India and China were menacing and boxing me in faster than I would like. It took all my diplomatic powers to keep me in the tech game in the middle ages. Persia was really running away with it for a while, fortunately I got the other civs to war with them. I wish I would have been able to prevent the domination and win by space race, but oh well I am just glad I won this.

Bamspeedy - thanks for that tutorial, you should really post it in the War Academy, gave me lots to think about. For instance, I do push harbors, markets, libraries into my crappy corrupted cities when as you point out there ain't much point, or at least I did up till reading your advice. Workers workers workers, that is the ticket (but I still add a temple immediately for border growth).

bst1 - you will have to find a better word to describe UN victory than the one you chose.

My current status: building knights, researching chemistry, getting ready to fight elephants in India after reducing China to one distant city on an island. Raced for JSBach, something I never do but wanted to avoid the need for Cathedrals before embarking on the next war. Got scooped by Persia with 8 turns to go. That is probably the last wonder I will try to build in this one. It is going to be won by fighting.

I built Impi and expanded as fast as I could. Goodie huts were ok for a few techs, warriors, and maps but no settlers. Oh well.

The first Chinese settler built a city with no defender. So I took it out with my lead Impi. After that Beijing was surrounded by Impi and China fell at my leisure.

I found horsemen a nice combo with Impi. I pushed the Indians back onto the tundra and let them live in exchange for catching up with all the techs.

I let Japan pick on Babylon as I expanded into the holes they created. Babylon never made it to industrial. During this stage I played as a builder and was neck and neck for the techs.

In Late industiral I signed an MPP with France and Persia attacked soon after. Getting the Japanese into the war was easy.
Indias remenant foolishly joined as Persia's only ally. I wiped up India and proceded to push the Persia back to the choke point.

At this point I earned my second Great leader. I noticed it was the world and I vs. Persia so I built the UN in one turn with the GL and won a diplomatic victory.

I rarely enjoy late game warfare.

I had not tried for a Diplomatic victory before. It seemed very easy.

Notes
Wonders: Hoover Dam & UN
Forbidden Palace in Dehli

Question: Does anyone have advice on how to avoid the tedium of moving dozens of units together? This is a neccessity for military reasons but I really get sick of the clickfest.

Select one unit in stack and press 'J' key. After that move this unit on the target location. All unfortified units of the same type moves together. Some anomalies with this action are happened sometimes.

It's been a while since I played a game of Civ 3, GOTM10 was my last. Just had to play the Zulu GOTM though!

I started off with a few Scouts, and decided to go for a cultural victory. Partly because it should be an easy medal (who plays for culture with the Zulu's?) and partly because ... we'll it's something I've never done before.

The huts were about average, a couple techs, a warrior, and lots of maps and gold. Still was able to take the tech lead through trading, while saving up a lot of gold to rush temples and libraries with eventually. I traded away my tech lead for spare change near the end of the Ancient Era, and then started building up a large Horseman force.

I hit India and China at the same time, declaring war on just about everyone else as well (the Babs had declared war on me)... the others were so far away that there wasn't much to worry about. Neither China or India put up much of a fight. India had no Iron, and China only had 5 cities. Peace negotiations with those I hadn't been fighting netted me a couple of Middle Ages techs, and I researched Chivalry on my own.

Everyone hates me of course, but my Culture is 4x anyone else's. I'm not sure if I timed the building of cultural improvements very well or not, but the overall culture rating is doing very well. The Babs still don't have any Iron hooked up, and after the upgrade to Knights I shouldn't have much problem conquering out to the domination limit. Will be interesting to see how early I can get to 100k.

I had not tried for a Diplomatic victory before. It seemed very easy.


That's pretty much what I meant. Diplomatic Victory always seems to be hollow and not very fullfilling. I guess I probably wouldn't feel that way if i played on Deity though.

Anyway, sorry if my word choice was offensive. I didn't mean anything by it.

I don't think the Diplo victory is so easy. Even if you build UN you could defeat.:(

I was going for the highest score defeat this game. Spent ages milking the game. I was hoping for a UN election in the last year or two so I could vote for my puppet and lose. Naturally since this was my plan I didnt get the chance ! :(

Had no choice but to win - had all four wins available on last turn which was fun to set up. Careful culture manipulation needed.

Cant even lose when I want to......

Finally finished this GOTM. Won by Domination in 1590 with 3808pts. I won't be submitting this game, however, as I restarted, as mentioned earlier, after being beaten to the Great Library by a couple turns.

Oddible, I'm sorry your having trouble with Leaders. I ended up getting 11 Great Leaders. Do you know that great leaders only come from Elite Units? I keep my elites in 100% health, and only use them for attack when the odds favour their survival. I often soften up a target with veteran troops first, and then finish them off with the elites. Else, I don't know how to advise you.

Matrix, thanks for the game. Now on to the tournament where I sure as h*** won't be restarting, as I am anxious to move up to the next catagory.

Greg

Originally posted by col

Cant even lose when I want to......

LOL, you can't imagine how hilarious that sounds... Ah well, at least you won the game. I'm having enough trouble winning, let alone manipulating my game to win in a special way.

And Greg, you can get GLs off veteran units, but I don't know if the probability is higher on elite units...

As I'm known only elite units can produce the GL.
11 GL!!! I have only 3 in 130AD though I killed China, India, Babilon and Persia. And 2 of 3 GL I got in defence!?:confused:

I get lots of GL when I dont need them and none when I do.

Late in the game when I get my steamroller moving I have had so many I couldnt build any more armies without building more cities (I think you need 4 cities for each army).

Early in the game I cant get a GL for my FP when I need one.



I've tried pretending I dont really really want one - but it doesnt work. It knows! ;)

Originally posted by col
I get lots of GL when I dont need them and none when I do.

Late in the game when I get my steamroller moving I have had so many I couldnt build any more armies without building more cities (I think you need 4 cities for each army).

Early in the game I cant get a GL for my FP when I need one.


I've tried pretending I dont really really want one - but it doesnt work. It knows! ;)

Absolutely agree!!!

Space Race victory. 'applause'

Only just though. 2046 was calling it a bit fine I thought and I wasn't sure I would make it but a couple of tech trades near the end got me the bit of kit I needed.

Went agressivly for the Chinese early on. Wiped them out BC.

Skirmish war with indians got me a few more cities.

Then the Babylonians attacked but I allied with the Japanese and chased them off the mainland.

This gets me a long thin nation with Japs above and Indians below but now the Persians and French attack. Since I had reached the isthmus where the continents joined I was able to hold them off on a narrow front.

Made a reasonable peace when they got tired of losing big stacks to my fortified defenders and the Indians stabbed me in the back. Fortunately for me they carried out this backstab with a total of about 3 cavalry units so I just picked up everything that had been facing the Persians and wiped them out.

Babalonians down to a couple of cilties on the wee island suddenly build the UN (how? - I get to build b***** all wonders with a big civ - they get to build wonders with 1 city!) so (I hate losing to Diplo - big time) straight on for invasion and the evil Babylonians are no more. UN in my hands. However every time I have tried to win with vote - I lose so I just say no.

Sit back and ponder tech trading, how am I going to win? Persians, French and Jap are all big and scary Not enough time to conquer them all one at a time and I might lose if I take on all.

Check space race! Genius. Bit of a scramble to get techs for last components so win with crappy score. Still a win's a win. Two in a row - I'll be scooting up the rankings!

Originally posted by Serg
As I'm known only elite units can produce the GL.


hmm ok, I guess my vet ones are actually elite (they get promoted first and then produce GL)...

I am on my way to victory - highest score and ahead in tech and weapons on the remaining Japanese, Persians, and French (the last two of whom had built almost all the wonders, except for my Great Library, and now ToE and Hoover dam). I am excited to be getting my first victory on Monarch level and first time with the Zulu.

I wont be posting my game as I had two major restarts. Early on I was in one of those "non-war-wars" with Persia and he suddenly bought everyone to be his allies and I was toast... so I loaded up my tachyon time machine and went back in time and bought everyone against him, which did good for my development.

Later I had to reload after the WORST CULTURE FLIP EVER (I will probably have to post it as such seperately). I had vanquished the Indians to that small island where they only had two small cities. Centuries past and I put the Forbidden Palace in Delhi. When I moved out my defenders for one turn to upgrade them nearby, the city, now in the heart of my empire which had grown to envelope Babylon as well, Flipped! I flipped too, and again the tachyon time machine was employed to keep a defender back in the city so as not to lose my forbidden palace...

First GOTM and first game played above Regent level. I general am in solid control on Regent, but enjoy a building game so I wasn't interested in playing more tooth & nail game.

I developed scouts but had poor luck; I had a few killed early on and didn't explore much past Babylon. In retrospect I should have built some more scouts (since no other expansionist civs) but I didn't think it worthwhile.

China was crowding me, but fenced off so I let them sit while I prepared (I'm into infrastructure and don't like early wars). India nabbed the furs which annoyed me, but not enough for war yet.

I got the GL, and set tech to 0% and went along for the ride (at this point I knew everyone).

Japan: They declared war on me, I bought Babylon in and sat back (distant war). Later I saw that Babylon was getting reamed, so I took a stack of swordsmen north and razed two big Japanese settlements.

Persia was easily the powerhouse, but I was able to get India and France to hound them off and on. They are still easily the strongest, but that's kept them honest. France has been mostly useless, except a counter to Persia ambition.

Way behind in tech for the middle ages and China is still sitting on my flank. I get to chivalry ASAP (via the GL) and build knights. I wipe China out (getting the Pyramids as part of the bargain). China has built a lot of little cities up the coast to Japan, and they come over to look at the northmost city, which is precarious. I trade it to Babylon (they are down to 2 cities at that point and can use the help).

Japan comes down with an army of samurai and longswords (one samurai army, and a bunch of extras). I am able to get most of them out in the open, although I lost some units. It took some effort to kill the samurai army but got it before it could take my city (it took one weak city that I didn't want/need).

I don't have saltpeter (India has several sources) so I start looking that direction. Can't get anything better then knights so it's touch and go. Then Persia attacks me with Calvary, ouch! I saw their units but didn't do anything about it. India sneak attacks Persia that turn and the heat is off me (lost the one city -- no chance to defend regardless).

At this point everyone is at war with everyone, except me and India. I get nationalism and go to mobilization, and crank out riflemen/cats (still don't have mil trad :-) ready to upgrade and take India. Get ToE and use it for Repl Parts and Electricity (on my way to Hoovers). I had a city building Suffrage but just missed it, so I didn't need to use my leader for ToE. Saved it and built Hoover's in a turn :-)

Rubber is in India's territory as well, no question about the attack. Set my science to 0% for a few turns to upgrade my cats. India was trading me for coal, but I didn't renew the agreement. They attacked me a few turns later. I used the arty and moved my stack of rifles into Delhi and took it easily. Moved a fair amount south to take Bombay, and Delhi (with Shakespeare) switched back! I lose several riflemen (vet/elite) against Bombay's 1HP rifle, figure it must be city size. Bomb it to rubble (size 1) still lose. Argh I don't have the units to handle this. Paris culture flips back on me and I know that I need to take Bombay, Delhi, and one other so the capitol will move far. India is on its heels at this time also at war against Persia. I move 12 artillery and 10 rifle onto a mountain next to Delhi, and 12 artillery and 10 rifle next to the other city (with the furs!!). A turn later and both cities are mine. Well placed railroads let me move most of the force and take Delhi quickly. Rushed temple and I am or should be in the clear.

It's ~1600AD and I am barely in the lead or just behind, but have a tech lead and am ready for the home stretch. I haven't decided whether to use infantry to take India or wait for tanks, but I think I'll wait and give my citizens some peace. Thank god that riflemen don't need saltpeter, or I'd have been screwed. I got spices, fur, rubber, and saltpeter from the indian cities that I took!

I built my second city down next to the three furs, and it has been the production powerhouse that I expected. I have done very well with wonders, although I lost copernicus with 3 turns left :-( :-( :-(

I got Pyramids from China and Shakespeare from India. I built the GL, Sistine, JS Bach, Newtons, and Hoovers myself. Only two GL even after the epic, but I've done ok anyway.

I actually thought about quitting the game at 0AD or so, because "I could win it, but don't know if it's worth the effort". I'm glad that I stayed in, though, because it made things interesting. I was never in big trouble, but there were a few forays into my territory where I needed to scramble. Oh and the time that India snuck back and took Peking (I had left it undefended, and forgot to move units into it after the landing :-( ).

My game strategy: contain them early and milk the game
Second objective: don't wipe anybody, contain them all.

History:
Locked China on the Western tip of the world were so isolated that only very late they got the contact with the rest of the world. The strategy unfortunately cost me both iron resources, one to china, one to india.

Knocked china with horsemen, they escaped my blockade in the end and set two cities between india and babylon.

Knocked india with horsemen ( it must have been a surprise attack for them, they never got to build more than 2 defenders per city). Left them with two (later one) cities in the southern tundras.

Knocked babylon with knights. I had to gather some armies to get babylon but afterwards they crashed (my japanese allies got about a quarter of the babylonian lands). Bablyon left with a city on the southern island.

Attacked Persia with knights and got about one quarter of their lands (including the precious gem) but had to stop as they had musketmen. It took 10 turns to get cavalry in position and knocked the persians shortly after. They kept a city in the northern plains/tundra surrounded by the japanese.

Positioned my forces to attack the japanese and started the attack and got their iron and some lux they had in one turn. Later the got one of my cities from flip and one by conquest. I drove north and took the western part of their empire but then had to stop in front of kyoto as I lost 6 cavs in the initial attack and only destroyed one defender. During the 5 turns that followed the japanese attacked me in the west while the french (my allies) took the former babylonian lands and some cities on the eastern tip. Also two important persian towns flipped to them. I got kyoto and their last major city (tokyo ?) but kyoto flipped and I lost some units. I got mad and razed the japanese from the face of the earth (so much for my second objective). I had to raze cities as I was getting close to domination.

Used cavs to raze persia in one turn and i had to make a break in the war effort as steam power and industrialisation gave other priorities for my cities.

Attacked france furiously with cavalry and razed them in the early 12th century.

Only babylonians live now (as the chinese and the indians were destroyed by the japanese while I was battling persia) and they built a fishing village in the south tundras.

It's my first milking attempt and have to admit it is VERY TEDIOUS. I have 100+ workers on manual and only railroaded one third of my empire in two and a half centuries. Lots of jungle still has to be cleared, lots of critical improvements to be built.

I strongly believe this is my only milking attempt ever but will struggle to end it and get a top 10 (OK, top 20) ( well top 50 for sure) score.

the only thing funny is playing with the domination limit. I'm 75 tiles away and I'm currently buying workers from 5 towns which will be abandoned due to poor locations.

I think one should start a thread on milking as I have several questions but as I am strongly decided not to attempt milking in the future I won't bother you with tmy questions.

I'm in 1425AD and I destroyed The Chinises, The Indians, The Babylionians and the Persians.
Only, French remains and they have around 15 cities.

What is best now ?

Destroying the French completely
or Destroy the French a little and them milk the game by building all the right improvement in each cities will everybody happy and so on !


Thanks for your advices !
LeSPhinx

As a standard map with a lot of grassland you could milk the game but it all depends on how much do you want to milk.

I'd normally finish it but this time only I'll try my best at milking.

Hi LeSphinx!
In 1425AD and later you don't get enough points from the conquest or domination victory. But milking is too boring and spent much time. If you want get more fun - destroy the French end win, If you want get more points - destroy the French but before capturing the last city present them your worst city in the tundra. Further you can milk your game with control the domination and culture limit.;)

Thanks Serg.
I will see if I have time to spend to milk...

LeSphinx

Have completed game with domination in 960AD in the era of gunpowder. Settle down at 1st turn and begin searching out for goody huts. Only got 2 advances and many warriors (bah!!!) from my effort, not even a settler! Based a few cities 3-4 squares around my capital to reduce corruption and some on luxury items further away to reduce unhappiness problem. Later realise that this may not be necessary as this is Monarch level, my first time!! Has always been playing Emperor and Deity level where unhappy face is a main problem!
Anyway I have the Chinese hemming me in irritatingly from north and Indians from east. Since Chinese is intruding my teritory more blatantly, I attacked 'em first with swordmen when their cities >1 to prevent autorazing. Beijing fell by 270BC. Then turn to Indians, got a city from cultural flip and begin commencing advance. Delhi fell by 90AD with Great Library. :) Superb, now I can set science to 10% while piling up my treasury for later upgrade cost. When Indians are pretty much mopped up, turn to Babylonians. Crippled them with the fall of Babylon in 520AD with assistance of knights from Chilvary that I hard-researched.

Now then, I have to face mighty Japan who has extort gold out of me in the past. Their culture is high with cities of size 12, I wouldn't have a chance holding what I captured. Crossing the mountain range bordering their cities, I unleash my knights and swordmen. Kyoto fell in 610 AD with Pyramids captured. Other cities are razed if there are no wonders in it. Got Lighthouse wonder from Satsuma and also finally a leader! Their Samurai did made some counterattack but not for long as I have cut off their source of iron. Build my forbidden palace in Delhi and begin terrain improvement on that region to have a secondary production base as my capital is getting too far off my frontlines.

As Japan is falling I begin marshalling troops for final attack on Persia. Got two more leaders from Persian front which I used to rush-build JS Bach and Sun Tze. Persepolis fell in 900AD with Sistine Chapel captured. Hit Domination limit soon after that at 960AD. I would like to hear from others who got there faster. I begun attacking after the continent are already filled with AI cities so I was really bogged down.

Cheers!
General Maximus

Lost to Space Race! Sucks!

Started off by doing the Chinese and Indians. In hind-sight I would of forgotten the Impi and the early GA they caused. Impi's are worthless. I used this game to play with Cannon/Artillery, which I had not done much of before. Mistakes were made on that learning curve. I plowed through Babylon first using way too little cannon and ended up at the end with too much Artillery. I knew I was behind in tech. Japan, France and Persia were all small but powerful civilizations. It looked like they all had the same tech. Just as I was going to launch an assault on Japan I lost. Space race and I don't know whom. I should have a better spy game I guess. I remember that you could play an entire Spy centered game in Civ2 and it was amusing. Is anyone spying successfully? It seems to me that the costs are too great both in money and reputation. I'll have to be content with competing for the highest scoring loss. On to the Aztecs.

Phaedrus

I won't be able to post my game officially, as I have said above, I restarted twice (early when they all ganged up on me when I didn't realize all I had to do was pay them to fight each other, that would probably have been a loss, then later when Delhi culture flipped centuries after I had isolated India to that small southern isle and I had already built the forbidden palace there!).

This was my first monarch game played thru to anything other than defeat, it is also my first full game with the Zulu or any militaristic civ. I found out the big differences in the Monarch game - you can't mess around building wonders or even most improvements till you are BIG. I never built cathedrals (did do unis and markets), I concentrated on first a massive knight rush which took out China then a massive cavalry rush that took out India and Babylon and finally tanks took Japan and French Persia and I shot settlers into the gaps to claim a domination win. I did get ahead in tech by shooting for the TOE and hoover dam. I did finally get a few great leaders at the tail end of the game, used one to build an elite tank army (more fun than I remember from the early days of the game) and the other to pop a palace out in new babyljapan.

Thanks for the fun set up. Give me a regent game and I promise not to reload!!!

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
This was my first monarch game played thru to anything other than defeat, it is also my first full game with the Zulu or any militaristic civ. I found out the big differences in the Monarch game - you can't mess around building wonders or even most improvements till you are BIG.

I beg to differ. These are the early wonders I built in my game:
- the Pyramids
- the Oracle
- the Great Library
- the Great Wall
- the Hanging Gardens
all in BC times.
You are not obliged to wage war just because you have the militaristic trait. :)

In my present deity game (tournament, unable to finish in time though), I still got both the Pyramids and the Great Library.

Are you kidding? Did you do this with GL? I can't picture the conditions necessary to get all of those, it was not the urge to make war but the extreme slowness of playing with non-accelerated production that kept my early wonders down. Did they all come in the same city that you had shielded in? What is your system???

Finally made it to a total controlling position in the mid-game, so I can look at the spoiler and contribute.

The Random Number generator is just part of the game, but I am getting a pay back for lots of favorable RNG strings in recent months because this game has been so streaky that I would have probably trashed it if it were not a GOTM. While everything is averaging out, the streaks have been totally a night mare disruption:

Examples:

Indian 3 hit spearman defending a pop 2 town on the open tundra defeats two veteran horsemen and one veteran swordsman without loosing a hit point an he gets promoted to elite. Next attack with four veteran horsemen, the first horseman defeats the 5-hit spearman without loosing a point and the second horseman defeats an unfortified 3-hit spearman without loosing a point.


Later in the game, 4 veteran knights attack a pop 1 Chinese city defended by a visible vet spearman. It is a core city so I am betting on two or three military units in town. Turns out there were four military units and all four knights won there battles with at most one hit point lost. All four knight promoted to elite, one right after the other. The captured city contained 2 settlers and 3 workers.

Next Chinese city, using the 4 elite knights from the previous battle healed to full strength plus three additional veteran knights. The town is pop 5 on grassland with no river but defended by a regular pikeman. First two elite knights die with only one hit point knocked off the pikeman and the pike promotes to vet at 3/4 strength. Third knight is a veteran and retreats at redline after no effect. Fourth knight is a veteran and retreats at redline after knocking off one point but promoting the pike to elite at 3/5 strength. Fifth knight is elite and redlines the pike but retreats after it is also redlined. A regular spearman rises to defend and is killed by the last veteran knight. The remaining elite knight attacks the 1/5 pike and and kills him after loosing two hits but gets no leader. A regular 3/3 chinese archer stands in the town and laughs at the pile of broken knights.

I made an early army with two horsemen and an impi (weird but all I had at that location and I was looking for a quick early victory). That army had 12 hit points and went to redline against a veteran spearman defender in a pop 2 town in flatland. First time I every saw an army totally retreat instead of die. Took about 4 or 5 turns to totally heal that army and try again for the cheesy victory to enable the Heroic Epic. Attacked a regular spearman in the open defending a settler with this 12 hit point army. Redlined the army and the spearman and retreated again. Sheeeeesh!! Healed the Army again and kileld an archer to get the victory but still lost 3 hits. This Army has the Impi showing on top so I don't know it this is some sleazy effect due to the UU factor, but I definitely will never put another Impi in an early army just in case that could be the cause.

I doubt my finsh will be fast enough for any kudos, but this one will go down in the record book as freaky AI crap from the get go.

Got bupkis from early goody huts but my scouts watched Chinese, and Indian warriors pop huts just as we got in sight on three ocasions.

The idiot Ghandi had to die because he stuck four settlements right up my beauttocks on the tundra while he ignored the grassland to his east toward the babs. Two of his tundra downs seemed to deliberately miss the fish and game bonuses so I will wait to see if some great resource mystically appears there.

China had Iron for a thousand years but built no swordsmen, what's up with that.

At one point in time, China had nine teams of a spearman+settler tromping through our territory and reversing very two or three turns. I did not give Mao a ROP because the intent was to isolate him. It looked like the freakin' Macarena goin' on. There was no real open territory for the settlers to go into anywhere on the map except a small appendage south of the Babylon isthmus so my only guess is the Chinese traded maps with the Babs and then a moving Bab unit would clear an open path to the tundra peninsula that seemed to have a gem on it and all the Chinese settlers would beeline for the gems. Then another unit would block the path and all the settlers and their speardude dance partners would turn back; cha cha cha. I had to kill the Chinese just to clear the roads.

I don't fight in GOTM12 before 750BC. It's not effectively because enemies have a litle number of cities and impossible to cupture it. Up to this time I found 14 cities, connect its with the roads and got 2 luxury resource and the horse. I hadn't iron but I don't like the swordsmens and most time don't build its at all. I prefer the horsemens and some Impies for attacking. The late BC years (late Ancient Times and erly Middle Eges) are optimal for mass attacking the enemies: they din't fill free territory yet and build almost only settlers with 1 spearmen per settler and not build horsemens and swordsmens at all. Only if 2 civs placed near with each other they begin war. In my GOTM12 other civ are very peaceful and only Persians declared war on me.

As soon as I change my government to Monarchy I began war. My first war was with India and second with China (it begun before the end of war with India). I signed ROP with them and don't met with opposition. I built FP in Delphi from my first GL. Further I built only horsemens and some settlers for founding cities between old India's and Babylon's territory.

I signed ROP with Babylon in exchange of Monarchy and move my force trough its territory in direction the Persia. When I reached Persia them declare war on me though had only 4 archers and 1 horsemen (My forces near Persia contained 34 horsemens and 6 Impies). They attacked me first and in first battle I got my second GL in defense.:D While I was capturing Persians cities I begin war with Babylon by my second echelon of horsemens. I killed Persia and Babylon almost simultaneously in first AD turns. I rushed Sun Tzu and Handing Gardens and harbor in Persians cities and have many happy faces in my cyties (7/8 luxuries connected) Zimbabwe has all 12 citizen happy.

I signed ROP with Japan and France in exchange of Feodalism and I'm almost ready to war. I mean go to conquest victory regardless of the fact that milking the game will give more points.

I totally missed my first milking game by mistakenly triggering domination in 1390.

Does Mapstat has an error margin ?

I checked mapstat in 1380: 75 tiles to domination.
Then in 1390 I had some cultural expansion of 4 or 5 cities but I should't have been more than 60 tiles.
I checked 1385 and still had 70 tiles to domination.
So there was either a 10 tile error or my nominal expansion triggered some "bridges" being built between close borders.

Anyway I wil probably have a top 100 score and no satisfaction on this GOTM. Well this being my third GOTM I will get to see my global ranking correctly.

Guys it's getting worst, I'm starting to lose my interest in the Game: I'm in a position that can win all (maybe most) of the games at difficulties below emperor but can very hard win on deity (managed to get good winning positions with Iroquis, Persia and Aztecs, but only finished one game). With other civs I abandon the games halfway through or worst lose without a chance of winning.

Now GOTM still interest me but please let's play on Emperor and beyond.

Originally posted by Yndy

Guys it's getting worst, I'm starting to lose my interest in the Game: I'm in a position that can win all (maybe most) of the games at difficulties below emperor but can very hard win on deity

I had this problem too. Winning easily on emperor and below, but getting your ass kicked on deity. Now i am able to beat deity more and more often. But still i can't say i like it really, because the AI starts with such huge advantages it doesn't feel right.
In 2 weeks PTW will be out, so let's see what that brings. I'd love to play multiplayer! :)

Just submitted. Military defeat in 1295 AD 748 points. Monarch is just beyond my ability at this time.
Scouts discovered most of the land early. Goody huts provided 1 settler, three or four tech, a couple warriors, and a couple maps.
Expansion was soon limited by China to the North and West, and by India to the East.
I built barricks in most cities early on and upgraded most of my warriors to swordsmen after I connected Iron. Then took them up to war against China. That didn't go as well as I had hoped, but I did get a couple cities. later two more Chinese cities culture flipped to me. Leaving China with only three cities on the far western tip on the continent.
Meantime, tech growth was s-l-o-w. :( Traded some luxuries for tech, but rarely had more than world map to trade. I tried to keep China as isolated as possible. They never even got horses. but did get Iron from someone. After gunpowder, India did trade saltpeter one time. That allowed me to upgrade a few musketmen. Never made it out of the middle ages.
I tried to attack China again now with knights, but they had stationed like a GAZILLION pikeman in their cities who were just to strong for them.
Then came the quick and decisive end. France rode in from the east with cavelry. Pulled up to my eastern-most city and declared WAR. This was totally unprovoked. I had always paid tribute to Joan, and everyone else. Soon India joined in, then Japan. I wasn't keeping track but I think they finished me off in less than five turns.
Appears that first France saw easy pickings. Joan had just finished off Persia to her west and turned her eyes on me. WHY? She had to ride all the way through Babelon and part of India to get to me. She also shipped a few troops to attack in the NW.

IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO AVOID SUCH A SUDDEN AND UTTER DEFEAT IN THE FUTURE?

Expand as fast as you can. When you cant expand any more, build an army and pick your first target carefully.

I looked at what I would gain by taking out China - poor quality land - no room to expand north and left them alone.

I took out India first. Rich land. ;)

Allowed me to expand all way to east. A FP in India will influence any cities that I might have further east. I captured then built several very strong cities in Indias lands.

Strategically controlling the eastern choke point allows you to defend easily while switching the point of your attack quickly.

I left China alone until later. It was a simple mop-up. They werent going to go any where....

Originally posted by Iver-P
IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO AVOID SUCH A SUDDEN AND UTTER DEFEAT IN THE FUTURE?

You must grow up as quick as possible and found several core cities (>=10) with low corruption and high resource. Then you will be able build strong force and CAPTURE nearest enemies. Further you may select different strategy but other civ will be affraid you. Enough number of cities give you money and science for tech leading. How many cities have you in 1000BC? If less then 10 then your growth was slow and you hadn't enough power to conquer other civs.

first gotm since.....gotm 1 I think :lol: back then I did pretty good, but I haven't actually been playing a lot since then, so my plan is survival, and I'm doing very well. Military conquest won't succeed, so it's all on the spaceship now, hopefully somewhere 18th century...

If the GOTM gets switched to only Emperor or Diety (cringe) that will kill much of the fun for many players, like me. Granted, after several games, most people should be able to handle emperor, but not everyone has been playing Civ3 for 6 months. Eventhough I played dozens of games and easily won at the highest levels on Civ2, that was 7 years ago. GOTM12 was the first full game I've played since then, and I got clobbered when persia rolled their tanks all over me.
New players should be welcomed. That is what I liked most about this site when I found it. (it got me to buy Civ3 and start playing again). If the games are all at top levels, newbies dont/can't play.

BlueWire,

I didn't mean to say it as threat, i'm only advocating my opinion, i don't have a say in how gotm is designed, but i hope that my comments would make the ones designing the games consider higher difficulty. If they do, i'll feel better, if they don't, i'll get a little bored playing and maybe not at all.
I strongly encourage you to play in the future and maybe higher difficulty levels too ( my first losses at emperor and many of my deity losses where fun for me).

Now which AI civ did you all found to be most threatening in this GOTM?

I've seen some saying Persia but in my case it was Indian and then France.

Should maybe have 2 levels of GOTM.

Definitely found Persia to be the real problem, but only at the end. I goofed by not attacking earlier. doh.
I strung defenders along the 5ish tile bottleneck at the west to keep china boxed in, and India was always friendly and peaceful. Earlier, Persia was busy fighting Japan and France, so they stayed on their side of the montains.
I just got tanks and thought I had time to build up. Defeated China, and started on India. Then, boom, Persia finishes fighting with Japan, and instead of turning all their attention on France, they made peace with France and sent a hundred tanks at me. They came through what had been india, and by ship through what had been china. from first battle to defeat was about 7 turns.

Originally posted by Iver-P

IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO AVOID SUCH A SUDDEN AND UTTER DEFEAT IN THE FUTURE? [/B]

I noticed you mention choosing the warrior to swordsmen route in your early warmaking. Better to put Impi in your cities where you can (and I learned in this game, don't even bother defending your interior cities later on) and use the defensive units (Impi is real nice because it can keep pace with riders and upgrades all the way) plus archers (IMO the best attack against spearmen) and/or riders. Pop rush temples, libraries, and, if possible, aquaducts, and for sure, military units. I like to prepare riders, mass them near an enemy but in one of my barracked cities, and then upgrade them all to knight and attack immediately while I have a tech edge, then do the same again when I get cavalry.

None of these Civs were particularly threatening, although France did, for the first time in any game I have ever played, seriously out culture me, and France and Persia grabbed almost all the early and middle wonders.

Originally posted by Yndy
BlueWire,

I didn't mean to say it as threat, i'm only advocating my opinion, i don't have a say in how gotm is designed, but i hope that my comments would make the ones designing the games consider higher difficulty. If they do, i'll feel better, if they don't, i'll get a little bored playing and maybe not at all.
I strongly encourage you to play in the future and maybe higher difficulty levels too ( my first losses at emperor and many of my deity losses where fun for me).

Now which AI civ did you all found to be most threatening in this GOTM?

I've seen some saying Persia but in my case it was Indian and then France.

Pardon me if I'm wrong but isn't this the point of the tournament, to allow the same game to be played at a range of difficulties.

Originally posted by BlueWire
Should maybe have 2 levels of GOTM.

There is tournament game on this forum. Several skill levels for players presents there.

Originally posted by Greg Loader
Oddible, I'm sorry your having trouble with Leaders. I ended up getting 11 Great Leaders.

And now having said this, I get no great leaders in the tournament game (3-2) which is a conquest war fest!!!

So let this be a lesson to others. Never 'brag' about how many leaders you have just gotten. It will surely jinx your next game.

Greg

Oddible, apparently things even out in the long run.

Two sided game for me.

Bright side: I did almost exactly what I planned.
Built many scouts and tipped many huts.
Fought the Indians first, in order to get closer to the center of the island and because of the poor quality of the terrain in China.
Fought the Japs next, before they managed to build samurais, then the Chinese before they managed to build Chinese riders, then the Babs in order to have full control of the Western part of the island before attacking the strong Persians.

Dark side: I did that much more slowly than expected.
This was mostly due to a very late GL#1 (590AD, after many many battles won by elite units).
Hard luck: this is the third game in a row where I get a late GL.
IMO the luck factor related to GLs is even stronger than the one related to huts (or strange combat results... hello cracker! :crazyeye: ). But this is a game, and I find it fun to have some luck implied, even if I hate it when luck isn't on my side.

Conquest in 1230AD (score 4908).

My first priority was the elimination of the Indians (since they attacked me first), which succeeded (althought the finald attack was made by the Chinese). The damn Chinese filled up a hole in my territory, but I got 2 of those cities by culture. The Persians are the strongest and they wanted a mutual protection pact (in addition to some techs) which dragged me in a war with the Bab's. The war gained me 2 or 3 Bab cities though, since I already had an army of knights preparing for an invasion of China. Then the same pact dragged me in a war with the French, I never killed a single French unit though...too far from my bed ;) Then I finally invaded the Chinese, and that war isn't over that long, they only have one city left distant from me. Then the Persians and I attacked the Japs, my ally only took ex-French cities from them though, the mainland is mine :p I don't think I'll end higher than the Persians though. They're about 300 points ahead of me, but I'm fine with that. I'm just 1 or 2 techs behind the Persians and gaining new territory to make money and science of. Maybe a space race is possible... on top of that, most modern wonders are mine :) so maybe diplo victory is possible as well.

My first war was also against India because they found Madras very close to my capitol and built temple. Like Smoking mirror's map.

Just submitted the game. Reached domination threshold around 1200AD. I have build nothing except the GL and some temples to expand my borders. Every big city was building horsemen/knights to get to the dom. limit as fast as possible, the small cities build impi's for support. Got about 7 leaders but then again I raged war from 2500BC to 1200AD so thats to be expected. In 1200AD only Persia (on a small island) and France left at that time. As this is a huge map I diceded to start and milk the game.

Except some temples i've nearly no city improvements in 1200AD and behind in tech so started a building and research frenzy to catch up with the French. Whiped them out when I got to modern tanks first and just left the Persians on their tiny island. Finished in 2050 with conquest and a stunning 7K score (the better players will probaly do better but I am very pleased).

MPF

Well I got the UN victory in 1916. I could have had it earlier, but I didn't really think about it as an option. This was my first Monarch game, and my first Monarch win :-)

A couple of other notes about the game. I didn't get my Golden Age until ~500AD (mostly intentionally, although I got lucky that my Impis weren't attacked earlier) which was really nice.

I left my last comment off at ~1500AD with a partial victory over India, and a new attack in the works. I got Tanks and rolled over India in three turns (could have been less but I miscounted some squares). I turned around quickly and took Babylon. I had my cities cranking out Infantry in order to prevent culture flips; I stationed the min necessary units in each city, but it meant having ~50 Infantry tied up with resistance duties until I wiped out the Babylonians.

I then rolled over Japan and also took a bottleneck city near the Persians. Japan took a lot of troops to prevent culture flips; I had to take defenders from my internal cities to manage it, but didn't do too bad. I didn't even need to use artillery, since my tanks ran over the Infantry.

The UN vote came up in early 1900, and for kicks I decided to hold the vote (at this point only france and persia left). France abstained and so it was a draw. I had been feeding France all sorts of goodies to have them keep Persia occupied, so I realized that I could pull off the diplo win fairly easily. I traded them some more resources, and started to build infrastructure. Persia got tanks a few turns before I won the victory, right about when I got modern armor. I researched synth fibers but didn't realize that I needed rocketry for the aluminum resource!

Fun game.

Happy day! :cool:

I got my best start ever to a GotM this time as I found a settler in the southeastern village. Maybe there's something positive about being exploratious after all. Ulundi was quickly founded near the game southeast of Zimbabwe but my luck ran out quickly as the granary I started in it after producing a warrior for defence was pillaged by a conscript barbarian warrior 1 turn before completion. :mad:

I originally planned for both the Chinese and Indian lands to be assimilated in Zulu territory but I had to revise my plans when a lone spearman in Delhi massacred 5 vet. swordsmen before giving way to the Zulu army. So I decided to go for Republic and let the Chinese stay put in their pitiful jungle lands, hoping that coal would appear in hills in my territory. No leader had appeared so FP had to constructed brick-by-brick.

Tech research went ok but the trading of luxuries was heavily delayed by the AI, Hammurabi continuously sending my workers out of his lands when trying to connect to Babylon, and the other 3 AI empires (Japan, France, Persia) connecting to eachother but failing to build a harbor until about 780 AD. Also missed out on most wonders, getting none from the Ancient age and only 2 from the medieval age, Cops' and Newton's.

Another dissapointment after the development of steam power was that I had somehow managed to build my cities in such a manner that I missed the coveted pop-up "Our people want to build the Iron Works. Maybe we should!". :(

Well, at least there was some coal in my territory, I guess.

Just entered the Modern age and will probably finish before the week ends with a not so very high score. :)

Earlier I wrote:
Then came the quick and decisive end. France rode in from the east with cavelry. Pulled up to my eastern-most city and declared WAR. This was totally unprovoked.

I realize that I need to learn to play a better game. I'm in the process now of replaying with a more compact core. seems to be going better...

But what I am really curious about is that the French attacked without warning. I had no idea they were coming. I never denied requests for tribute, or did anything else (that I know of) to provoke them.

Was it just that Joan saw a sitting duck? Is there any way I could have been warned?

I had my golden age after the first victory of an impi over an indian warrior...don't know the exact date, but it can be tracked with the recording thing of course, since it was like 3-4, maybe 5-6 turns before I took the first Indian city.

I finished up my game this morning. After upgrading to Knights, I started on the Babylonian conquest. It was doing well until the Persians and French decided to attack me, and I had to backtrack, leaving the Babs with a few cities, and not getting to hit the Japanese yet.

There were some very bloody Knight vs. Knight battles and then Cavalry vs. Cavalry for almost a 1000 years. The French, Japanese, and Persians each took their turns declaring war on me, I don't recall ever being the subject of so much attention from the AI in any other game. Must be the hatred barbarians have for culture. :D

I just kept building more and more cities, with Libraries and Temples, closing in on the culture goal. The fighting was actually quite fortunate, it kept the game from ever getting dull, and didn't really hamper my cultural efforts at all. All the units I was using were produced in cities which had already finished off all their cultural and financial improvements. About 1200AD I finally finished off the Japanese, and was able to make a lasting peace with the French and Persians. I like to think it was my 50 Cavalry at the bottleneck that finally made them see the light. Most of those Cavalry went back to build Temples and Libraries with their saddles... or something like that.

The rest of the game flew by, I was pulling in close to 600 gold per turn, rushing improvements with it. I think I did pretty well for trying for culture with a non-Religious, non-Scientific civ. Not close to the date the Babylonians, Egyptians, or Persians could hit for of course...

IverP: I saw that behaviour a couple of times before. The AI saw you as a sitting duck. Joan had nowhere to expand hence build her military and looked for a target. I believe that when she accumulated enough military she attacked the sitting duck.

A question to confirm my theory (that could of course be totally wrong): Where the French fighting anyone before the attack. My guess it's no they haven't fought a long war in the past 20 - 40 turns.

Spent a half hour typing a full report on my game ...
... error message appears: too many images .... report is gone ....:mad: :cry: :sad:


:sheep: :sheep: :sheep: :sheep:

Ouch, bad luck Ribannah. Hope you'll still type a new report for us to read later.

I just finished and submitted my game, got a spaceship victory on - IMHO- a reasonably early date.
I read that there's no competition to fear from Aeson this time for the spaceship medal so who knows, maybe there's something in it for me. :)

Ribannah, happened to me too which was why i saved in txt file later as I played out the games. Word document is probably better because it allows word wrap without the sentence scrolling off the screen. the things we civfanatics have to live with... :p

Just wanted to report that I started this weekend. It's my second game on monarch, but I'm on a roll. It's about 400 ad, I've annihilated the chinese, and I've got the Indians on their knees. I'm 3 techs behind though, but I've got a strong military with 20 swordsman, half of them elites (but then again, the babylonians just got knights), so I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of Great Leaders. I could use some of them, especially to get the workshop or the chapel...
I'm pretty confident that I'm gonna be the dominant civ once I switch to republic (once I've assimilated the indians), 'cause I've got over two times as much cities than the persians/babs/japs/french. So...

btw, I've got to admit that I reloaded once. About 600 bc, I didn't give in to persian demands. After a couple of turns, they allied with the whole world against me! Pretty dumb that I hadn't considered that... so I played again from about 1100 bc or something, and the whole thing didn't happen. As I'm playing this thing to learn from other players, and not for the ranking (damn near got 'fastest diplomatic victory in GOTM 10 though, must be pure luck) I don't feel guilty about it (especially since it's only my second monarch game) and I wasn't considering submission anyway, because of all this reload-tool crap.

Greetings!

Originally posted by Kemal
I read that there's no competition to fear from Aeson this time for the spaceship medal so who knows, maybe there's something in it for me. :)

I'm afraid that Aeson is competing with me this time. :)
I reached a cultural victory in 1768 AD for a score of 1387 points(that's OCC of course).
The most fun part was when I formed a line of workers to prevent China from being invaded. Shortly before, I had hooked up China with their second Coal so I could trade for it and build my railroads ...
Naturally I withdrew the human shield when I no longer needed Coal, and China was gone in 3 turns. :D

Shabbaman, a piece of advice,

When AI declares war to you because of you not giving in to demands, him not willing to leave your territory or things like that, you should make allies asap. You should take into account that everybody will join them as millitary alliance cost is not that high.

The situation was fairly similar in my game, only difference being that I declared war to persians. What I did is, got japanese and french on my side in the same turn (it was easy with the japanese as they missed one of my techs). I often do grant backward civs with techs in exchange for alliances in the middle ages.

@Yndy
Thanks. Usually I do that, but this time I think I just forgot to do it. Actually it didn't matter to me at first, 'cause I had build up my military for the chinese campaign. But they kept on coming...

I finished this weekend but I only started during the week. I normally go for space ship win or cultural because they are "peaceful" haha. Well this map and civ selection forced me to play differently and I was disappointed that I miscalculated the domination victory.

I reached victory quite late in 1710ad but I was really try to conquer everyone by about 1900. I had only 1.5 techs to learn to tanks and I thought I had time.

How can you tell if you are close to domination so it doesn't happen to me again?

This map was a good one for the agressive player. Most of the AI respect agression WHEN you have the forces to back them up.

Some things this map helped me to learn better:

Never fight on two fronts at once unless you are overwhelming one front or have rail.

Gain the strongest allies in order to destory the weaker civs. Then use the strong allies against each other - you end up with two strong civs left, hopefully you and another (for me the Persians were left - Chinese banished to the little island and worshiping me I think - haha). I was amazed at how easy it was to get the Babs to help destroy the Japanese, then the Persians to help me with the Babs, then the Persians to help with the French. World map is valuable when you have more than half the territory...

When at war with a strong civ, make any allies you canto distract the enemy. Hopefully he will be stretched across multiple fronts and this will make it easier.

Have a plan of conquest. No point attacking randomly. When invading a large civ, I go for ROP well in advance and position units on all their strategic resources and luxuries (2 per tile). For this you can use your oldest units as they will get destoryed pretty quickly if war erupts.

Bring your artillery to the city that will be most useful to you in the ensuing battle. When you are ready, declare war and use your shock troops (on the luxury/resource squares) to deny the enemy of these essential items. After a few round sof battle, they will not have any reinforcements available as all of their iron, coal, oil, rubber, horses, saltpeter etc are gone. Take the strategic city and then move on to the next.

Hmm that's all I can think of

Kuhal,

You can use MapStat to avoid domination victory. I'ts right here at civfanatics in the download section.

You have to be careful still, it has a little error margin (i think), and watch for the cultural expansion of borders.

'My empire expanded 70 tiles in one turn and i got an unwanted domination victory also.

Crap,

Couldn't you guys have told me before that impi's don't upgrade to pikemen? wtf am I supposed to do with all those wimpy hippies?
EDIT: Hmm, this doesn't look very constructive... But it's kinda frustrating. I've got the strongest military, but it consists of a large number of impi's and about fifteen swordsmen. I better keep those babylonians and japanese (who will get into their GA any time I guess) off my back...

Impi upgrade to Musketmen. Their stats are better than Pikemen's IMO. The extra movement allows for a more fluid defense, they are cheaper to produce, and units can't retreat from them.

Really? Well then, that's great! I'm happy that with PTW there's also an upgrade for swordsman. Thanks aeson!

Has anyone else noticed the Ironworks is available alot more often since 1.29. In this GOTM I had 3 cities that could have built it and there were another 2 locations were it was possible if the cities had been placed corectly(one if you don't count Beijing).
I had a large break from Civ3, I had to change continents, and I just upgraded from from 1.17. Before this I had never had the Ironworks. Must say I like it this way better.

Wish I had had Mapstat for this game also, got a surprise Domination win one turn before getting MA for the first time.
Other firsts this game: Elite tank losing to Vet Spearman:lol: , Vet Immortal killing Vet Mech Inf.
Other than that I think my military worked the best it ever has in this game. Unfortunately the law of averages is evening things out in my tournament game right now.

After a late start this month I have just caught up on this thread.

Firstly I have noticed a large amount of new players this month so welcome to you all.

Originally posted by jpowers
I've played twice now, and couldn't complete the Great Library either time - it's harder than I thought to get Leaders...
Originally posted by Greg Loader
PS, I restarted again after missing the Great Library by a couple of turns, so I won’t be submitting this game...

I understand the desire for the GL but why (unless these are OCC – One City Challenge games) would this would prevent you from playing on. I missed out on the GL which frustrated the hell out of me as I was intending on 0% science/build army strategy. Oh well there goes my fastest conquest medal :lol: I altered my plan filled in my empire with more cities (2-3 tile placement) and continued on. I also was the sole broker of contact with the Chinese which at the right time allowed me to trade for all the early techs I was missing.

As with the whole culture flipping issue, it is these thing which keep the game interesting. Give the builders a break - if you pursue a military only strategy then expect a culturally stronger civ to “steal “ your cities and take theirs back.

Originally posted by col
I was going for the highest score defeat this game...

And you didn’t invite me to the challenge ;)

I am holding off doing the Philibuster awards for GOTM 11 until those missing games have been included

Originally posted by Iver-P
IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO...

Keep participating in the GOTM and maybe join an easy division in the Tournament. My early non-CivFanatics games sucked big time (some would say that my current games….). Your in the right place.

One of best tips I got for a starting strategy was to get that Granary built in your early cities. The effect on your settler production cannot be overstated. It is a hard step to take as you always want to build one more spearman, scout, etc.

Oh man, finally finished it up after all the interruptions (have had a very busy month). This is my first monarch game, but I think I've been handling Regent pretty well by myself so I didn't think this would be too much of a jump. Anyways, my report isn't all that interesting. I first built four cities, two of which blocked off the Chinese. Then I proceded to build up a horseman army, and took out the Indians. Managed to get a leader from that escapade, so made an army consisting of two horseman and one impi. After a small period of time, I continued on with the Babylonians. Unfortunately my armies were too stretched out and I brokered peace after taking their capitol (think I got a tech, pretty good). Ironically, I don't think my army ever saw any defensive action. In fact my impis never had to defend ever, except against barbarians. Took out the chinese a little later once I got cavalry. Like everyone else, it was a quick mop up (like literally three turns). The Babylonians almost died out, two cities survived which I protected. The French got into a war with the Japanese, and at that time Persia had a MPP with Japan, so it was a 2v1 affair. Alas, the French got totally beat up, despite my efforts to save them (gave them Replacable Parts and my only rubber). By the time peace was made, they were pretty useless as a trading partner.

I dunno if my reasoning is totally flawed, but I noticed that since my impis never saw any action, and that I never built any wonders which would trigger a GA, I thought that maybe I would purposely trigger my GA right when I switched into the Modern Age. This was of course done by attacking the remaining two bab cities, which by then only had spearman. So I triggered my GA, got Computers for research lab, then tried to get the most expensive techs I could. In the end I decided for Computers, Ecology, Synthetic Fibers, Rocketry and Space Flight. All research labs were done by then, and so after my GA I still could get each tech within 4. Eventually got space victory, and way ahead of the rest. I didn't really pay attention to the other civs. Japan and Persia were in a war, and Japan were left with about 4 cities before peace was made. Persia obviously was the 2nd best civ, but I think they were still researching Mass Production by the time I launched.

Arrr, my ancient archers lacked true grit, and my first assault against India was thwarted. Dang. I'm thinking 5 archers is the minimum to guarantee a victory in an early war, but with such conservative play can one win the early conquest medal? I dunno.
I tried a different plan this time. My first worker just joined Zimbabwe right away, and I was building scouts at 1 per 2 turns. Maybe 4 was overkill, but I did snap up a lot of tech, and even a settler near Babylon. My 'attack everyone' strategy was also an anti-tech strategy- I was hoping to roll over everybody before they got pikemen. Only France got them, and they did stop my yellow tide for awhile. I really wanted to win before 700, but I wasn't really that close. However, I've been reading Cartrouche Bee's analyses, and I think I'll show some improvement by this time next month. I'm really curious to see the results in the conquest category-I never play that way, it'll be fun to see how I stack up!

Just an update so no one will think I might have personally died in this one.

In a simple word:

Mooo!

Still have 150 turns to go, Damn this is slow. Wonder how many modern armor I can build before the whole thing blows up.

Arrr, I saw some complaining about the Impi's, and I gotta share my fun with them. They were a big help knocking out the French in my endgame. I had a lot of cities in Persia, and set them all to Impi while my knights from the homeland caught up. No GL until the middle of the final war with the French by the way. Impis are cheap, and I just sent them into France on tile-burning missions. No civ likes a bunch of Impi running amok in their territory. They draw enemy fire, sometimes they take out a longbowman or even a knight, and enough of them ultimately deny the resources. If the bottom is falling out of a civ's production and offense while you're gathering your forces on the front, it softens them up and is tons of fun. Too bad about the Impi mortality rate though :)

Originally posted by cracker
Just an update so no one will think I might have personally died in this one.

In a simple word:

Mooo!

Still have 150 turns to go, Damn this is slow. Wonder how many modern armor I can build before the whole thing blows up.


:lol: FYI, you don't score points for armor. :lol:

[tip] When things get really under control you can [Shift][Enter] to just end a turn. Saves cycling through units if you don't have to.

Wirth the Zulu, it seems like the obvious choice is to go for a conquest win, but I decided to be different and and won by single-city culture. I got a bit lucky in the beginning, the second hut I popped game me a settler. Zimbabwe never built a single settler (it was too busy on wonders), so that that settler-from-a hut was responsible for my whole civilization, except for Zimbabwe.

I went to war with horsemen and impis in order to get leaders to feed to my capitol. This got my golden age early, which allowed me to build the Oracle, Great Library, and Hanging Gardens. I would've like the Pyramids, too, but barring a very lucky, very early leader, that wasn't going to happen. I didn't get my first leader till after the Hanging Gardens were built, so I made him into a one horseman army (later, I put in two knights) to get a win and built the heroic epic.

From then on, I fought continuous wars against the Indian, Babylonians, Chinese, and Persians. I was more interested in fighting for leaders than acquiring territory, but I eventually covered the Indian and Babylonian territory. I was well rewarded, too: I got about 9 leaders which is way more than I have ever gotten before. Zimbabwe was just starting on the genetics wonders when it surpassed the 20,000 culture mark.

Originally posted by Cartouche Bee



:lol: FYI, you don't score points for armor. :lol:


Yup, I know cash, units, techs, and improvements don't increase score.

I'm just going to see if I can cover every square of land with an Abrams just to break up the monotony. I already built all the possible armies I could build and have them standing in a field like Boy Scouts.

I am running out of barb farming land so getting one or two MA promoted to elite each turn will come to an end soon; just because of over crowding. I think I have over 100 elite modern armor already.

My cash surplus is finally starting to trim back a bit just because my army is getting so huge.

I may run out of land and have to build some boats so I can write my name in the ocean.

Finally ended up my GOTM12. While I was attacking the last French city I lose 15 battles (horsemens against 1 pikemen and 2 spearmens).:( France even got the GL but hadn't time use it. As usually I win by conquest (300AD), though in this GOTM it isn't the best decision.

I didn't think I'd have time to play this GOTM as I've been busy with the Tournament. Decided to give it a go over the weekend and started on Saturday just at the same time it dawned on me that I was coming down with a cold (turns out to be Flu).

Because I needed to finish quickly and not have it drag out like GOTM11 did for me and that I had done a successful Horsemen/Knight conquest in the second Tournament game I decided to try the same here.

So for a few thousand years I was at war, first with Horsemen and then with Knights. I got bogged down a bit with the Babylonians and had a few culture flips, even losing the Workshop (or was it the Art of War?) I built in Babylon for a turn. The Japanese were a bit easier to finish off. After which I cranked up science to 80% to get Metallurgy and then Military Tradition, upgraded 60+ Knights in one turn at the choke point before I ran out of money! The Persians fell surprisingly quickly against Cavalry with Musketmen as defence. won my first monarch game and got my highest score every! I think I should play more often with the Flu! I didn't even think that there might have been another (large) island where I would need ships to win the game, again must have been the Flu disrupting my thought processes.

Sorry if this post is incomprehensible, it's the Flu (did I mention I have the Flu ? :) )

Vincent.

Sorry Yndy but Deity-level games really don't sit well with some GOTM players (including me). :( I really can't envision myself playing Deity at any point in the future.

So please, if you don't mind, don't be going giving Matrix & Co. any ideas about Deity GOTMs and all. I would really hate it if I can't participate in my favorite pasttime. ;)



Originally posted by Yndy
BlueWire,

I didn't mean to say it as threat, i'm only advocating my opinion, i don't have a say in how gotm is designed, but i hope that my comments would make the ones designing the games consider higher difficulty. If they do, i'll feel better, if they don't, i'll get a little bored playing and maybe not at all.
I strongly encourage you to play in the future and maybe higher difficulty levels too ( my first losses at emperor and many of my deity losses where fun for me).

Now which AI civ did you all found to be most threatening in this GOTM?

I've seen some saying Persia but in my case it was Indian and then France.

Drew,

I'll add my two cents on the Diety game issue because I think I am one of those players that needs to play diety level more.

I find Diety level to be just obnoxious because the single cost advantage factor is applied to every factor equally. The fact that this cost factor is applied to wonders is particularly disruptive of the game play mechanics because it means that the game is very one dimensional in the two early ages.

If you start in a position with grassland and a river you get to choose one great wonder that you can build if you use every trick in the book. If you get a free early settler you might get a shot at two great wonders. That's it.

The outcome of teh game is more dominated by the randomness of the start position and the results of the early random number generator than it is by the real skills of the player.

If the game controls set different cost factors for wonders, units, growth, tech, and improvements (note this is not a complex programming concept) then diety level would be far more enjoyable and still a challenge if the cost factors were adjusted to provide a balance gameplay experience.

As it is, the best and most enjoyable gameplay experiences can probably be found at Emperor with some specific objectives for the human player that go beyond just winning the game.

I already completed my game some time ago but I would just like to add something in this deity or not discussion. :)

Deity level indeed has a lot to do with luck, as it is perfectly logical to assume that when say 140 persons are playing a deity GotM, about 5-10% will probably have the bad luck that they'll be attacked in the very early stages of the games. Now a lot of things that can go wrong in a game can be repaired by applying the skills you've mastered in civ, there is just no defense against a stack of (for example) German archers and warriors that come and attack you before 2500 BC.

Even though this means that some players will have their game decided by the throw of a die (AI attacked or not attacked you early on), I still think that every once in a while there should be a Deity GotM, mostly because it puts players in a completely different position for a large part of the game (if not the whole), since you'll be lagging in power and science and you'll need to be on your best to survive, let alone win.
This is different for every other level, even emperor, where most people are able to take control of the game and submit a win (looking at the results of gotm9).

I originally loathed deity because it was so grossly unfair to the human player, but I gave it some tries to see how bad it was, considering that there might be a future GotM on deity level (I just missed gotm7). It is, of course, very bad but like Yndy said most of these games were lots of fun to play, even those lost (quite a few, especially early on) and you'll be surprised how much new tricks you pick up trying to survive when playing Deity, and how bad the AI plays, especially considering the advantages it gets,when in the later stages of the game.

So I say yes, let's have a gotm on deity, but keep long intervals between them as they might not be ideal for a competition like the Gotm, that's purely for testing one's skills on the game.

Arrr, mateys, I'd welcome another Deity GOTM.

Another GOTM ... Don't think I have ever managed to get so many great leaders ... I got more this time than in all my previous 11 GOTM:s ... The game went great to about the 1700 ad .. When I always fall into a slump for some odd reason.

I managed to prolong my golden age by simply not building any Impis ... Don't like to accidentally trigger early since that equals no money and crap tech everyone else gets in notime anyway.

I started sending out a few scouts, scoring a few techs and a settler, maps and crap ... only one warrior. Went for horseback riding first, then the great library. Unfortunalty the bastardly little yellow jappers managed to build it only a few turns before I would have completed it. So I had to drag myself up from a serious tech disadvantage. So I started to mass produce horsemen. China went down first so I only had to fight on one front. The a 1000 years of war followed (not all the time but most of the time). Managed to keep Babylon and Persia at war most of the time in one way or the other. Don't like to face neither of them. They usually grow to powerful. So I played them against eachother. India was next. Took some of babylon and some of the jap. Then I stopped to bring order to my land. Fat chanse of that since I had been a bastard playing the other civs of each other so peace was short. Horsemen had become knights had become cavalry. I held my position for an entire age until the tank when I once again started to seriously roll north. I had hoped for a conquest since all others appeard to be to distant options. Had not even thought about domination. I kept to many enemy cities so I accidentally triggered a domination victory. I only had about 8 more cities to take for complete conquest. Oops ...

I only had to build a few wonders. All the rest where hurried by all the great leaders I got. Only think I built two or three wonders, the rest where all hurried.

Well fun game, even thou I rarely play pangeea games.

With the tournament games taking up most of my free time, I didn't think I'd be playing this game (not really a Zulu fan, Impis not a very fun unit - give speed to a defensive unit is not an improvement). Then I caught a break...I got laid off last Friday and found lots of free time suddenly... my time is now split between job hunting, babysitting my 9 month old and Civ.

Enough about me, this game went somewhat similar to what I read about from everyone else, mostly built military. Swordsmen to take out the Chinese and Indians, then Knights for Babs. Persia got stomped by the French, leaving a 3-way dance to the finish. Managed to get to the saltpeter in the central hills before the Japanese, so they became the primary target. Had to get them to attack first or I'd be stuck in a two front war (not a good thing). It took a while, but my cavalry finally wiped out the last Japanese city, but they didn't die!!! A settler was wandering around on a boat somewhere and me with no navy!!

The settler finally landed and the Japanese went to visit the honorable ancestors, leaving me and Joan in the endgame. I piled up 60 cavalry and 40 cannons on the joining penisula and was about to attack when I finish the TOE with a GL and suddenly to my surprise, the game ended with a domination victory!! I guess I was had the land, but didn't have enough population until that turn finished.

So it's back to job hunting (anybody looking for a UniData programmer or a HP Unix Systems Admin) and on to tournament game 4 and wait for next months game (I'm hoping for a large flat continent for my Aztec Jags to run rampant on, not a bunch of little islands, either a monarch or emperor game would be fun, I'm not really ready for deity)

Japan, Babs, Persia, France, and India (1 city on island) are still with me. This should remain stable now we all have replaceable parts. I own China’s and India’s land and am gearing up for an assault on the UN for a diplo victory. Why – because I am running out of time to finish this month.

Vote will probably be between me, Japan, Babs and France and the usual trading and gifting has commenced. I love my neighbors :love:

Thank God and Matrix for the 2nd of the month submittal deadline. I did not finish dragging this beast out until after midnight last night.

Can't say if this game will be a winner, but you will have to download the game to appreciate the final ending position.

Well over 100 elite Modern Armor

25 Guidon Bearers

close to 1300 Modern armor guarding virtually every dry land square.

Battleships out the wazoo.

Joan still wouldn't give or trade me nationalism even though I had stumbled up to robots at the pace of 40 turns/tech.

I probably should have reloacted more cities to squeeze population even higher but I was flirting within 1 to 4 tiles of domination for over 200 turns.

Found out that the AI does not recognize the ability to clear forests for the bonus shields independent of any other changes in tile production value. The AI will never clear forests on tundra to try and improve its position.

There also seems to be some AI brain damage associated with exploring the map. Even though all the terrain squares in the world seem to be known, the AI will continue exploring the black ocean untill all the black squares are eliminated. Even if there is one tiny black square in the middle of the ocean with no visible coast around it, the AI will send and exploration boat over to the black square just to make sure.

I was a bit bored but confirmed more details of the Bug that makes bombardment look even worse than it is designed to be. It is impossible to score a hit on any naval vessel in a port city. Even when you blast away all the land defenders with 40 battle ships and them kill off the redline units with cruise missles, the city will be defended by galleons or other ships that cannot possibly be hit.

Note: I was bored and using this game to test things I do not normally have time for or even consider of value.

I bombarded a city defended by a galleon only for 4 successive turns and used a total of 120 battleship attacks (240 ROF salvos) plus 20 cruise missles (60 ROF salvos) without scoring a single hit on the galleon. Galleons would be a legitimate target for both battleships and cruis missiles. Obviously the bombardment targeting system allows you to target the palace and other understroyable buildings (wonders/small wonders, granary-pyramids, barracks-SunTzus, hydro-hoover) but then makes it impossible to score a hit on these structures. It may also be impossible to score a hit on hospitals and aqueducts since these sturctures cannot be sold or destroyed from a city once they have been built.

All these bombardment flaws add substantially to the observed miss rate such that a city with a lot of these bombardment immune structures would display a ridiculously high bombardment failed rate.

Just more credibile evidence that the bombardment system in Civ3 remains as one of the biggest oops in the overall game.

I only started this game very late. Anyone saying anything negative about Impis, don't know the game.

Unforunately I got tied down with work and will be unable to submit this game. I'm in late 1800AD's milking toward 8000points. Probably good enough for a medal, but I'm on holiday and got me priorities focussed on some other things.

Just on miking:

Found that really good milking requires lots of time. All cities needs to be manually governed. This takes lots of time. Ended up playing 3 turns per evening. Really time consuming.

http://www.zachriel.com/Images/Shaka-50.jpg
There is an old Bakusu proverb,
Man is like a palm on the beach; moving with the wind of life.

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm12/zulu/treebackground.jpg

SHAKA's FIST
http://www.zachriel.com/gotm12/

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm12/Animals/adopt_bubba_a75.jpg

Discussion Thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35590

In (for me) a long session, I managed to finish the game late Saturday night and submit a Domination Victory. It was my intention to use Moonsinger's Artillery blitz concept, and win by conquest (razing as I went) but the Nov 2nd deadline loomed, and I quickly settled the open territory to finish the game.

I had taken the Chinese and Indians out, already; the Persians were finished off by the Japanese, but me and the French took our share, also. And the Babylonians made the mistake of attacking me and were down to only 1 city. So, its me, France, Japan and tiny Babylon.

I'm already in the Industrial Era when Japan declares war. I quickly bring France in on my side. After consolidating my territory, I let France complete the conquest. This leaves the bulk of their Cavalry/Knight offensive units isolated in formerly Japanese territory. When I get Replaceable Parts, I upgrade all my Musketmen and Cannons, leaving me with about 50 Artillery, 30 free Infantry and 30 Cavalry. War is declared against France, and because Joan had just taken Japan's cities recently and had no halo expansions, I was able to take and raze 7 of the 8 formerly Japanese cities of Frances, destroying most of Joan's offensive capability in the process.

The only thing I'd add to the strategy is that all is not lost if the opponent doesn't have fully developed railroad systems. I kept a large stack of workers available and used them to upgrade roads to railroads as I went, to extend my artilleries' reach. And since workers' efficiencies are doubled once Replaceable Parts is researched, this tech rates as a triple-threat using this strategy.

This is probably late for detailed write up, but I think someone needs to sing some praises for the fantastic impis!:)

I never stopped producing them. (Kept salpeter disconnected) and used them for iron denial. Foritfied on iron hills and mountains they never bulged and I could easily clear most of my opponents with an army of horses/knight and swordsmen.

I milked this game. After some very time consuming early turns, the game speeded up and I could play the last 200 turn within a day. I earned quite a few new milking tricks in this game and I'm sure that I could have milked more out of this game, but am still happy with the end result.

Some tricks I learned:
1. Donate some poorly place cities to the enemy to cut your territory!
2. Sea and ocean don't count towards your domination limit, only coastal squares!
3. Disbands all poorly place cities even ones with wonders. Only keep the Pyramids and Smiths Trading centre if it comes down to it!
4. Fire all governor! Manually set all specialists to tax collectors once all your workers are happy.
5. Manually reset each city once you've cleaned pollution.
6. Don't build any thing part from:
a. Aquaduct
b. Marketplace
c. Hospital
d. Bank
e. Mass Transit
in your poor cities
7. The Longetivity wonder does help keeping your population artificially higher with one specialist!
8. Used privateer to keep AI where I wanted them!
9. Used late barbarian camps for steady income
10. Used only foreign workers in the late game!

That just some thoughts...

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't plan to submit. At first I was severely punished not giving in to Xerxes' demands (early in the game, and he was somewhere on the other end of the world...) but when I reloaded some 500 years earlier, everything went very good.

I took the chinese, the indians, the babs, the japanese (they didn't even connect to iron when I got knights...) and then some of the persian cities to get a domination victory (forgot the date) with a score over 4500! When I look at the results, that's pretty good. It was my first monarch victory btw...