Matrix: Warning! Do NOT read this thread until you know (almost) the entire map! In this thread people are allowed to post revealing information regarding the map, so reading it before you know the map could be considered cheating.

Well, ouch.

I've never played Deity before (GOTM#13 was my first full Monarch, even) and now I have confirmation as to why. I sorta gave up on this one, but I did manage to meet my goal: survive to 10AD. Anyhow, here's the gory details:

BC 4000 -- Start out, begin by building a warrior for defense and one for exploration and then a settler.

BC 3000 -- Expand to Ur, 4 tiles straight SW amongst the dyes.

BC 2630 -- First exploring warrior finally finds a hut way far to the east. Got pottery. Another exploring warrior ticks some people off just NW of Babylon. Somehow he survives the attack and becomes elite.

BC 2510 -- Find another hut with gold. Make the mistake of checking Demographics; I'm dead last in just about everything.

BC 2350 -- Meet Persia. Super. My first deity game and I've got Xerxes on my border.

BC 2150 -- Science Guy cheerily informs me that "We are backwards people; we cannot allow this to continue."

BC 1910 -- Japan builds the Oracle. Yeesh. Next turn China chimes in with the Pyramids.

BC 1380 -- India builds the Colossus. Persia comes to visit to demand 34 gold. I meekly comply.

BC 1000 -- Settle my 8th city and doubt I'll get any more. Persia has at least twice that and appears to be the only other guy on the continent. At least I managed to grab an instance of all 3 luxuries.

BC 950 -- India's got the great lighthouse up; I don't think my people even have an alphabet...

BC 775 -- Trade my newly discovered Alphabet to Persia for Mysticism. Xerxes starts up the Hanging Gardens next turn...

BC 710 -- Japan finishes off the Great Library. Obviously the Asians are the cultural/technological leaders of this game. I meet the zulu when they run a boat by my shores and trade them contact with Persia for writing. Xerxes seems to be massing troops by my far Eastern cities. Did I mention that I don't have any iron?

BC 690 -- Here they come. I get a golden age out of it as the bowmen survive the intial archer/horse assault. Won't be long until the immortals come, though.

BC 550 -- I now know why I'm doing so poorly; my people are morons. The proof: Persia razes one city and captures another and the very next turn my people think that's so great that they start up a palace...

BC 510 -- Persia is willing to offer peace if I give them one of my remaining cities. Well, screw them. It is at this point in the game that I officially give up cause I'm obviously not good enough for deity. I tell Xerxes to come and take my cities if he wants 'em

BC 430 -- Give zulu a whole bunch to declare war on Persia; it doesn't much matter but I'm not gonna do anything with that money.

BC 370 -- Persia now offers peace as I'm down to Babylon. They captured Nineveh and Uruk, I disbanded two other cities to pool all my troops in the capitol and gave Ur to the Zulu for the hell of it. I accept peace, breaking the Zulu alliance, so that I can live to see AD.

BC 10 -- Well, I made it. Persia is beating on whatever the Zulu drop by. The Zulu are still polite with me and ask for a new alliance vs Persia. I take it and sit back with my dozen bowmen and wait for the end to come.

AD 50 -- The last man falls, I have suffered a humiliating defeat. Hammurabi the Pathetic amasses 360 points. Persia's over 11k. Persia is kicking butt, the Zulu probably would only survive because they're on another continent. I never did meet the Asians, but the final replay shows them all pretty much equal and there's at least some war going on as an Indian city got destroyed.

Looks like it's back to the lower difficulties for me. At least I made it to AD.

lost by 300 or so AD, 30-50 Persian Rifle men Beat my 4 Spearman defence.... No funny business there.....

i had no money per turn, no research, no lux, no f****ng nothing

deity is just stupid....... :mad:

Diety. I've played a few, got crushed in most of them and survived near the end in two of them (One lost by spaceship, other some civ got domination).

Starting spot was ok. River, luxuries not too far off. Horses pretty close. No iron. :( .

Built a few cities, Persia had a huge lead over me. Built some more, they had twice as many. Got 8 cities built some bowmen and destroyed one Persian city and made peace before they massacred me. Now I've rebuilt my forces and am going to try to take Persepolis, since I' really close to it and hopefully 2-3 more cities. If I can keep up this hit and peace method for a while I'll slowly take away their cities directly north of me. Don't care about the ones in the NE. Haven't seen any Immortals so I'm fighting now. They have 3-4 horsemen and 8 or 9 archers, atleast that's what I've seen in near my lands.

They have twice has many points as me. I'm 6th in all the important demographics except Approval, which I and my citizens happily lead. :)

Wow. I got smoked as well, in 440 AD. The Persians just built too huge a lead by gobbling up the continent like some kind of bacteria colony. By the time I had 8 cities I was surrounded by green.

Was able to secure the Dyes, Gems, and Incense early on (founded a city off to the east to get the iron and incense). I was the first to meet the Zulu and introduce them to the Persians for lots of tech. Also was the first to meet the Asians and get more techs by introducing the Zulu and Persians to them. I had tech parity with the world up to the end.

Then disasters started. As I was building cathedrals and such, I lost 2 cities in the North to culture flipping. Then the Persians sneak-attacked me. I held my own and captured Jinjan, a city to the east. And then I almost took Gordium, a size 12 city on the floodplains with all the wheat, but 12 Swordsmen were not enough...I guess needed 13. There was one elite spearman left with one hitpoint, but I had no one left to kill him. Next turn he was regenerated and the city was reinforced. If I had taken it the game would still be going now. But the game turned bad on that one hp. :cry:

Then the Immortals came and opened a full 12-pack on me. I lost Ellipi, and with it my only source for iron and incense. I paid Xerxes some cash and Dyes for peace, but it was just a matter of time at that point before I became assimilated. I had about 15 turns of peace and was sneak-attacked again. This time he came with Knights (about 400 ad) and sliced through me like butter.

Ugh. I thought I had a good start too. If I had taken Gordium it might be a different story, but that's the way the empire crumbles.

GL to the rest of you...
-Apolex

Edit: fixed typos

Summary -

I wonder how many will survive this game. This map is fundamentally screwed for a deity game. The single worse situation in deity is sharing a continent with one other civ. Having it be aggressive Persia is 10 times worse. To survive you need to have the AI civs fighting each other, not you. That is what gives you a chance to quietly build up, instead I have wasted more of the BC period building military like crazy. I am still going, but for how long, I don't know.

This is not working, so I am going to start over. I hope starting over from the CFC's downloaded saved file is not cheating since I have seen this island and I know where the Persians and 3 huts are.

I thought there might be a QSC this month so I wrote everything down:
4000BC moved settler to forest, moved forman to cattle
3950BC built Babylon & building warrior, researching Masonry,
6.2.2, mining cattle then will build road,
governors will manage citizen moods & emphasize production
3700BC Babylon building warrior, warrior moves north
3600BC 1.9.0
3550BC Babylon building warrior, warrior moves east along coast
3500BC worker moves to shield/river square & will build mine/road
3450BC northward warrior finds 3 Harappan warriors from Huts
3400BC Harappans kill warrior
3350BC Babylon building warrior, warrior moves north
3150BC Babylon building warrior, warrior moves west along coast
3100BC northward warrior meets Persians,
worker moves to wheat/river square & will build mine/road
2950BC Babylon building settler, warrior fortifies, 0.10.0
2670BC Babylon building Colossus, 1.9.0,
settler moves nw 1 then west 2,
eastward warrior finds warrior in Huts who will explore
2550BC built Ur & building warrior, 3.7.0,
worker moved sw & will build mine/road
2430BC set research tree to Map Making, 0.10.0
2350BC Ur building warrior, warrior goes to Babylon
2190BC eastward warrior finds 3 Hurrians from Huts
2150BC Ur building settler, warrior fortifies,
worker moved sw & will build mine/road,
westward warrior goes to Ur
1750BC Ur building Palace, settler goes ne 5 then e 1,
worker moved w & will build mine/road, 1.9.0
1725BC northward warrior working it's way back to our borders
exploring warrior working it's way back to our borders
1700BC eastward warrior working it's way back to our borders
1650BC build Nineveh, building settler, 3.7.0
1625BC 0.10.0
1525BC Babylon allocates it's citizens to not produce shields
1500BC exploring warrior fortifies at Nineveh,
worker moves to dye square & will build road
1450BC quitting

I got wiped well before 1AD. And cant claim bad luck.
To any of you that actualy manage to survive this game until 1000AD. GREAT WORK!

Originally posted by RedTopJay
This is not working, so I am going to start over. I hope starting over from the CFC's downloaded saved file is not cheating since I have seen this island and I know where the Persians and 3 huts are.

I thought there might be a QSC this month so I wrote everything down:



This is considered CHEATING - period.
A reload is only allows to fix things such as mis-clicked order - read the GOTM rules.

could somebody post a map for this, please?

I've never played a GOTM, nor have I ever played deity. I intend to have a go at this one, although I won't be submitting. Seeing the map would certainly be a big help!

The only reason I'm giving this a go is cos it's Babylon (my favourite civ, and I've won on emperor with them on a huge map) and that it's a standard map (I normally play huge maps, so that might be to my advantage). Wish me luck though!!!

Well I was going to post my progress but with 8 posts and 200 views, I think I'll skip writing this month till after the close.

I managed to get to 10AD so far.
I just got peace, giving all my gold and 7gpt.
4 cities left, one cut off. Swarms of immortals just itching to cross the border. Waaay behind in science.
Going to see how long i can survive now, depends on Xerxes patience :)

GOTD (game of the day) for me and many others, good timing though since this is a busy month. :)

Originally posted by LKendter



This is considered CHEATING - period.
A reload is only allows to fix things such as mis-clicked order - read the GOTM rules.

Have you read the GOTM rules? There is nothing in the rules about quitting and starting over. Reload is cheating, I said nothing about reloading. Are you saying that I can not play this game several times a month WITHOUT RELOADING and submit the best score at the end of the month? I do NOT believe that you or anyone loads CivGOTMxx.sav only once a month.

this is shame and good challenge. culturally linked postions, to make sure weakest civ in civ3 ( babylon) is next to strongest ( persia).

Originally posted by RedTopJay


Have you read the GOTM rules? There is nothing in the rules about quitting and starting over. Reload is cheating, I said nothing about reloading. Are you saying that I can not play this game several times a month WITHOUT RELOADING and submit the best score at the end of the month? I do NOT believe that you or anyone loads CivGOTMxx.sav only once a month.

Well you reload to the first actual save you have.... so that's reloading. You'd play the game with pre-game knowledge you should not have.

RELOADING IS NOT A SKILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've seen severla postings commenting about the high view rate for this thread. It could be a sign of cheating, but it is also a sign of high interest.

This is the most interesting thread in the entire site, in my opinion. There are several good writers posting their exloits. It is like playing by proxy, and maybe learning something as well.

I might have passed on peeking and taken a stab at the game if it had been more at my level. Generally the level of place is pretty high, though. Not much fun to participate if you can't come close to the high scores.

RedTopJay - Restarting is a reload in my book. If you know more than a first-time player then that's too much.

Hmmm, so restarting is cheating. Downloading the CivGOTMxx.sav and loading it more than once is cheating. So, anyone reading a spoiler thread b4 playing is cheating! Then posting the map here is cheating! If all of this is true then CFC is cheating by allowing spoiler threads b4 the deadline! Why not just wait until the end of the month, read all the spoiler threads, play the game and WIN, lol.

Originally posted by RedTopJay
Hmmm, so restarting is cheating. Downloading the CivGOTMxx.sav and loading it more than once is cheating. So, anyone reading a spoiler thread b4 playing is cheating! Then posting the map here is cheating! If all of this is true then CFC is cheating by allowing spoiler threads b4 the deadline! Why not just wait until the end of the month, read all the spoiler threads, play the game and WIN, lol.

You would not have enough time to implement all that you learned. :D

Got utterly trounced by 230 AD. First time I play deity and it was a lot tougher than I had thought. I managed to win on emperor a while ago, but this was crazy. I think the starting position was terrible though. Immortals around your borders early on is never good for your health.

After reading all the current spoiler threads here, CFC needs to change the rules, adding:
Downloading CivGOTMxx.save more than once is cheating.
Loading CivGOTMxx.sav more than once is cheating.
Reading any spoiler threads before submitting the game is cheating.

It would appear that what people are posting here is not what the rules state. I only ask this over and over again because I want to be clear what the unwritten rules are. I am a gamer and fly all over the US playing at game conventions and would NEVER cheat. If you have to cheat why play!

alamo & cruise have read this spoiler thread, therefore they can not play this month's GOTM or they are cheating because they have before-hand knowledge, lol.

What if we already were playing? I am well underway killing off the persians with a standard deity tactic. Please keep the sarcastic attitude at the door when entering. :nono:

The deal with GOTM is you simply play the same game everyone else is playing, starting with the same knowledge everyone has (which only consists of the game details) and in the end you can check how you've done compared to the others.

Originally posted by Cruise
Please keep the sarcastic attitude at the door when entering.

"lol" means laughing out loud. In other words, a joke. I've noticed that some people respond to postings without read the entire posting.

Reading spoilers helps players learn. Until CFC changes the rules or stops spoilers before the deadline, appling what we learn via the spoilers in the current game is OK. Am I wrong?

yes

It's not in the spirit of the competition to read the spoiler to learn tactics for the current GOTM.

I will post my "probable losing tactic" later in the month to expose one way to do it or not to do it, however it turns out. At this point I think the "Matador Lemming Sidestep" is in order. Bait all the Immortals to attack and then at the last minute side step them and watch them drive into the ocean. :) [yes, it's a poor joke.]

I came, i saw, Persia conquered........ nuff said

Well I was barely surviving by 540AD... I had 20 horseman and Persia had Knights. I've only beat emporer once and it was tight. I'll be interested to find out how people actually get past the ancient era ahead.

I played up to 1000 BC.

I beelined to pottery to get a granary and turn Babylon into a settler factory. I have iron working and warrior code too, but I'm building my treasury instead of researching. Up to 600 gold.

Thanks to my settler factory I have 11 cities to Persia's 15. In another ten turns I will attempt to capture The Oracle in Persepolis with 20 swordmen.

I'm at 750AD, just entered the Industrial Age (first!) occupying the former Persian and Zulu lands. I'll post more about how I did it later in the month. All I have to say for now is "I HATE IMPI!" (when they aren't mine), and pray for the souls of close to 40 Knights and the sailors on 8 Galleys...

I have not yet played his map but I win just over half of the Deity games I play and would like to share of the tactics that work for me. Get lots of settlers quick! The computer usually will have twice as many cities as you because they starty with two settlers and built wonders, units, and improvements at a rate of 60 shields per 100 it would take you. In other words a settler that takes 30 shields to build only takes them 18 shields to build. The attack and go for peace strategy only works about 3 times before other civilizations will begin to fear you and attack and before the civ you are already attacking refuses. ALWAYS re-negotiate deals. AND go straight for Monarchy and Polytheism. If you are first to Polytheism they will trade you the world for it. Lol. Well they won`t trade cities but they will give you lots of technologies and I mean lots! Like about 6 or 7!

I managed to get 6 cities built fairly quickly, though I fell way behind in tech. The problem was that I failed to secure the iron source so I decided to go for a quick war to grab it. Well, I managed to destroy the Persian city that was next to it, and then one more Persian city fell and I sued for peace right away. But just before I managed to get a settler to the right spot Persian showed up with it and plopped another city down there. And now they have tonnes of immortals, horsemen and archers buzzing about my borders so I'm pretty much screwed. I'll keep plugging away but I get a feeling I won't be alive to see Jesus.

4000 BC - Lots of nice tiles around here... that and a river! :) I decide to use the worker to move to the cattle to see what else might be available and to determine if we have a sea or a lake by the cows. I see the whale and decide to make a go of it on the forest, picking up the whale with our first culture expansion.

3950 BC - Babylon founded... a wheat bonus as well, eh? Not too shabby! :) I see we have the Zulus, Persians, Indians, Chineese and Japanese to deal with in this game. Hmm... I thought culturaly linked starts was off. Guess not, either that or some wierd luck.

Here's where I have to decide if I'm game for the deity one city challenge! :) Our traits are scientific and religious. That would help with cultural improvements and with tech advances. Hmm. Well, since I'm not very good I think an OCC might be more manageable. Lets see if I can get this done! :)

I set our rate to 8.2.0 yield 3gpt and will knock down alphabet in 40. I decide on alphabet because it'll be a gateway to the great library and possibly a golden age. :)

3750 BC - Warrior pops, I set Babylon to work on a Temple.

3600 BC - Unrest in Babylon? Didn't realize you had to watch the pop growth as closely in this game, dang. :( I set an entertainer and move on. I may change once we get a road done and some increased commerce.

3550 BC - Seems like a highly defensible position... it looks like we got the corner office on a pangea map. There are going to be some high scores on this one I think (hopefully I'll get a win out of it!)

3500 BC - I could do a perfect whip here... what the hell, I need to get moving, right? I break out the whip. I don't think I'm going to do well in this one after all, I realize just now that I've been researching pottery and not the alphabet for nine turns! :( C'est la vie. Don't want to change things now.

3450 BC - I decide that I should do a warrior, then a worker then start on the Collosus. See where that takes me. :)

3350 BC - Pop a deserted Cuman village.

3250 BC - Warrior pops, set Babs to Worker.

3200 BC - Our second warrior, scouting the southern coast, finds gems. Hmm, two luxes relatively close to the city, eh? Not a bad gig at all!

3150 BC - We disturb some angry Partian warriors at the next hut... some luck I'm having there, eh?

3100 BC - The first barb doesn't quite get the job done against my warrior but the second one gets him. The worker pops in Babylon, I delay the Colossus again so that I can get a defender in town before the barbs arrive. I'm stuck on trying to decide what to do with my worker. I decide to have him sit tight in town until the barb situation is resolved.

2900 BC - Our warrior finishes up and the Partians are no where in sight. I wonder if there's another civ nearby they went to bother... ? I send the workers out to mine the wheat tile.

2670 BC - We meet the Persians. Xeres is annoyed and has wheel, warrior code and construction, along with our techs. We have 93gp to his 10gp. He has gems too. He doesn't feel like trading so I let him go at that.

2630 BC - I realize I'm an idiot and should have irrigated the wheat tile. I undo my mines and start irrigating. Doh!

2510 BC - Persians found Tarsus near the flood plain wheat tiles.

2350 BC - Our cultural influence expands

2150 BC - The Persians have started building the Pyramids and the Colossus. I think I'm getting one or the other.

2110 BC - We discover Pottery, start Alphabet.

1725 BC - We trade 225gp for Warrior Code... I need to find some other civs!!!

1550 BC - We complete road to dyes and complete the Colossus. Babylon starts a bowman. I set our entertainer to work a tile and dial up our luxuries so we're operating at 9.0.1 with a scientist in Babylon.

1500 BC - We hear the Zulus have completed the Oracle in Zimbabwe.

1475 BC - We hear the Japanese have completed the Pyramids in Kyoto. Babylon finishes its bowman and starts a granary.

1275 BC - Babylon completes Granary, begins Bowman

1250 BC - Here come the damn Persians. Good thing I started to gear up for some defense.

1200 BC - The Persians, showing the good sense I knew they had, attack my bowman with three warriors, losing all three, promoting my unit to elite status and kicking off my golden age! What dorks. My bowman in production pops and I leave production set to that.

1175 BC - Please someone explain to me how a fortified elite Bowman can lose to a regular horseman attacking a size 6 town from across a river?!?!?!

1150 BC - The Persians hand me a humiliating defeat. The Persians had 13 cities by the time I finished the Colossus. Any pointers for where I severely messed up? :)

BoB

Hey guys, I'll repeat what I said before when this topic came up (high view count for the spoiler thread). I would check this thread EVERY DAY before I even owned Civ 3 because I enjoyed seeing how different people dealt with similar situations. I am sure that there are some cheaters or naieve people reading the thread, but it's possible that many are simply observers as I once was. After my game I kind of wish I was an observer in this one. :)

BoB

Here's the final score tally from my game that ended with my defeat in 1150 BC:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/BtB_GOTM14score.jpg

Here's my save if anyone wants to examine it for mediocrity:

BoBtheBUILDER's GOTM 14 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/BoBtheBUILDER_Civ3GOTM14_1175BC.zip)

BoB

To RedTop - Reading the spoiler is allowed only when you know the map. The difference here is that being on a landmass with Persia only and seing the Zulu border south of me I took a quick look at the game. That will do for now and after I see the whole map I'll come back here again.

About the spoiler thing: People here are just losing. So not strategic advice yet. Still you can see the map but I am counting on everyone's honesty.

My progress: I'm in 850 BC. I spent a lot of time planning what to do but now the expansion phase is over. I have 13 [Edit: 12 actually] cities vs 16 for Persia. That's pretty good for now. there are two sources of iron. One is mine (it was a close fight), the other is in a strange position so that Persia will take it if one of the nearby cities grows to 1000 [Edit: 100 unfortunately] culture. They won't build another city as they would be to packed. I parked my only Spearmen there just to be sure. I spotted the Zulu across the strait but I don't have mapmaking. Persia does and they have the contact which they would sell for 12gpt and 230 gold. In their dreams!
I'll come back when I'm more advanced (Or when I'll lose).

well i survived to the whole of 500 ad before a persia that had just hit a golden age decided i looked like a good target... it was over in 100 years.... i just pitty the poor bastard who doesn't manage to secure that one source of iron before persia does :(

Tough map...so many mountains.

Did no one else discover a second source of iron near the middle of the south coast of the island? If not for that second iron, I'd clearly be toast. By securing both and trading it to the Persians, I find myself in 1010AD without any aggression so far. Of course, the culture flipping is beginning but considering this is my first deity game, I'm feeling pretty good about how long I've lasted.

Can't refrain from posting more. Just read again some of the posts which I skipped initially as I was afraid they would contain spoilers for me.
My territory is a little bit larger than Dave's in the map posted but similarly shaped.
I have to hit Persia hard before their territory expands to get the second Iron. I'll use a combo of Swords, Bowmen and Horsemen (don't have horseriding yet).
I admit being on an extremely lucky streak with a settler from the western hut. I have the save just after taking the settler so that the GOTM police could check it for reloads.
I also suggest we make it a rule to require people to keep a save just after popping settlers to be able to check for reloads.
I missed the 2000 BC save as I was too focused on playing but I got a 2550BC one and a 1650BC one (anyway it was a one session game till 850BC so there isn't much to check).
I'm trying to improve my game all the time and this game I explored with more warriors so when Persians discovered Mapmaking they gave me for my world map theirs + 5gp.
I'm so behind in tech but won't buy anything from Persia before I meet at least the Zulu.
I have built my cities horribly but I'm trying to minimise chance of flip and get the resources and lux-es in the same time.
I have to consider carefully the exact attack spot on the Persians.
I can either hit them hard in the South (core) part of their empire and take Persepolis (with Pyramids) or hit them in the North where they would hopefully have less defenders and then attack the south in a second war.

It looked hard, but it turned out 2 b a piece of cake(just kiddin). I made 2 mistakes so far, everything else seems perfect. First was moving my settler & not build from starting position & second was when I went for writing & not polytheism.
Huts were 50:50(2 empty & 2 barbarians)
I rushed all my barracks & start producing bowmen.
Persia did OK; by the time I declared war they build Pyramids for me & had 12 cities. They ignored iron which they discovered in cca. 2600 BC. This was a gift.
They fought like mad. Even though they didn't have fanatics, they were killing me. If there weren't for 2 leaders, I mean 2 armies ...
Anyway Zulus came by & said hello. They missed contact with Persians for 2 squares LOL.
It's still BC, 7 Persian cities left, Zulus haven't met anyone but me & have 12 cities & I'm hoping to eat the Persia in couple of turns.
It will be a conquest. Zulu Galley is racing me & needs 5 turns 2 reach Persia. I hope they will turned around again, hehe.

I was just telling my wife how great this game is at 4 o'clock in the morning.

Baso

Re: the number of views

I'm new around here so don't know whether or not people are reading ahead to get an advantage or people who are already dead or don't want to try it are reading. Personally, I read the #13 spoiler thread before playing that game because that thread is how I found out about GOTM in the first place =]

Any further GOTMs I try will not have the spoiler read first as it did give me a small advantage in convincing me to go after an AI civ early that I might have waited on. As for this GOTM, I obviously didn't read ahead since my story of amazing ineptitude started this thread ;]

--
Quoting BoBtheBUILDER:
"Here's where I have to decide if I'm game for the deity one city challenge!"

Interesting idea. Is this an actual published strategy or something you made up on the spot? I assume the goal is to get a 20k culture city since any other victory condition would be right out.

And later:
"Any pointers for where I severely messed up?"

Based on preliminary results, it looks like the first mistake is we aren't expanding fast enough. Both Dave and Yndy grabbed significantly more and better territory than me. Hopefully some other good players will chime in with advice as we go. Personally, I'm going back to Monarch/Regent and getting some revenge on Xerxes ;]

BTW Bob, I hope you submitted that save game. I don't wanna come in last ;]

--

Quoting Yndy:
"I also suggest we make it a rule to require people to keep a save just after popping settlers to be able to check for reloads."

Perhaps I'm just dense, but I have no idea what you just said. By "popping" do you mean building or getting from a goody hut? And what do you mean by "check for reloads?"

--

Finally, good job for those of you who are actually surviving or even thriving in this one. Make sure you give Xerxes a couple smacks upside the head to avenge his treatment of those of us who aren't so good at this. =]

Originally posted by pdescobar
Re: the number of views

Perhaps I'm just dense, but I have no idea what you just said. By "popping" do you mean building or getting from a goody hut? And what do you mean by "check for reloads?"

--

Popping is quite commonly used around here for opening a goody-hut.

I'm assuming you have read older discussion threads. It appears you haven't. Shortly,
1. You are not allowed to reload (It's in the game rules)
2. There are people checking submitted games for reloads (commonly referred as GOTM Police).

570 AD and I now have world map. Never lasted this long in a Deity game before. The only reason I am still alive is securing both Iron sources. Had to build a city on the Iron source to North when their borders covered it. Immortals would have surely killed me by now. It's starting to look like I could take over Persia someday. Just got chivalry, my knights should do good against their spearmen. Got lucky with the zula and India contacting me before other civs so I could trade contacts and maps.

Not long after that last post and the persians had a bunch of riflemen in their cities. Guess thats what makes it Diety. Oh well, I will put off losing till tomarrow.

Well, I played the first installment of the game last night and got around 800 BC without any problem. So far, I researched the Wheel and Iron Working. Didn't trade nothing with Persia. In fact, I had to give them 43 golds to keep the peace. Just met the Zulus and brought horseback riding from them. Since Persia is my biggest problem, I decided to trade the Zulu communication for their world map and some techs. Now, I have the location of the only two source of irons on my home island. Also my embassy just told me that the Persian haven't yet hooked up iron. Therefore, tonight, I will attack Persia with a dozen veteran horsemans and 4 bowmans. My first objective would be to take iron away from Persia during my initial attack and use the bowman to trigger the Golden Age. With the help of the Golden Age and no Immortal, I have no fear of Persia.

Originally posted by pdescobar
BC 950 -- India's got the great lighthouse up; I don't think my people even have an alphabet...

Your civ is way a head of me there. My people didn't even have potery.:( I think I got potery from the Zulus for 50 golds around 800 BC.

There is really a gap between Emperor and Diety.
After a Hard-working of "Civing", I got killed at 780 AD.
During my game, lots of my cities deposed to Persia period by period. I play the role as "Peace lover" through my whole game. At 760 AD, Persian declare war on me, and send their cavalry to kill me in 2 turns.

Worst game ever. All over by the 860 AD. I thought Xerx and me where doing fine. He was happy. I was happy. I had adjusted to life as lapdog, caving in to every demand and such. Apparently that was not enough for then came the cavalry. We had been at war once before. That time I gave away one of the cities he was about to take to the Zulus (hoping this would drag them into the war to). He captured UR after many many turns. I was sort of hoping for a flip but that was way to much hoping since his culture was superior to mine even thou Ur was only three squares away from my capital.

He was building railroads, infantry could not have been far off. I was still foolin' around in the previous age. I had nothing to offer him but my land and my dyes. The bastard even burnt down all the cities instead of taking them.

Think the world leader was still China. They managed to build almost every wonder. They knew everything and judging from when they started building wonders I say they where tech vise a few turns ahead of the pack.

Perhaps if I try it OCC Jerxes won't pay much attention to me (fat chanse of that happening).

Nah just time to realise that Deity is just way out of my league. I think it could have been somewhat different if I had swapped places with the Zulus. Then things might have gone better but being next to another in a confined space, already three cities behind before I could crank out my first settler. That is a wee bit much to handle.

First gotm, first game at deity. Hope this gotm wasn't typical!

Lasted until 360 AD, eeked out my existence by taking JinJan, only for Xerxes to demand it back immediately for peace. My downfall seemed to be taking an iron source - he got upset and that city was bludgeoned pretty quickly thereafter.

Does anyone actually beat these deity gotms?

Originally posted by Yndy

Popping is quite commonly used around here for opening a goody-hut.

I'm assuming you have read older discussion threads. It appears you haven't.

As I have stated (and my post count/register date would imply) I am new here. Just found the website about 2 weeks ago. I've spent maybe two hours looking through some of the older stuff, mostly the strategy section. Thank you for clarifying your use of "popping."

Shortly,
1. You are not allowed to reload (It's in the game rules)
2. There are people checking submitted games for reloads (commonly referred as GOTM Police).
I understand the no reload rule unless you ended the turn mistakenly/crashed/etc. What I do not understand is how having a saved game when you get a settler from a hut says anything at all about whether you have reloaded, particularly given that the GOTM games (at least the 2 I have been here for and I would assume all) are made with "preserve random seed" checked.

Originally posted by Moonsinger


Your civ is way a head of me there. My people didn't even have potery.:( I think I got potery from the Zulus for 50 golds around 800 BC.

Heh. Heckuva a lotta good my pottery did for me; i doubt I ever had more than one granary, maybe not even one as Babylon was desperately pumping out troops for quite a while. I think throwing clay pots at the Immortals would have been about as effective as my Bowmen were ;] Your ability to control the iron I'm sure will be far more important. Good luck.

Originally posted by danchamp
First gotm, first game at deity. Hope this gotm wasn't typical!

Lasted until 360 AD, eeked out my existence by taking JinJan, only for Xerxes to demand it back immediately for peace. My downfall seemed to be taking an iron source - he got upset and that city was bludgeoned pretty quickly thereafter.

Does anyone actually beat these deity gotms?

Don't be too dismayed, the last Deity GOTM there was even someone who was defeated that made it into the top 10.

Played this GOTM for 4 hours and I lost all my cities by 1075BC, didn’t even have a chance to change government. This GOTM is too hard with Persian as the neighbour only 20 or so tiles away (P.S. I didn’t even have the chance to find the Persian capital before they killed me).
My big mistake was not to sue for peace after they took my first city, after that I had no chance.

Good luck to everyone with this GOTM, you’ll need it.

Here is my reply to the quick game challenge, I must admit its not very good.

3950BC: founded Babylon on the coast to build ships. start building a warrior to scout and alphabet at minimum science level (20%).
3700BC: finished the first warrior and use it to scout up the river to the north. start building a settler to expand.
3500BC: found a nice spot to build my next city, just below the games tile and next to the river.
3350BC: wow! found 4 wheat on the flood plains just a few tiles away. this is a great starting position.
3250BC: finished first settler and start to move it to the next city site. then build a warrior for more exploring.
3150BC: found the first rival civ, and it's the Persian. (note to self, don’t let them get iron) a change of tactic, move the settler towards the Persians to build a city near the games and the wheat tiles before they do.
3050BC: found the first hut with the settler (unescorted). no barbarians please.
3000BC: curse the Persians to take that hut first
2900BC: found another hut a few tiles from Babylon, got 2 Kassita warrior. founded Ur 4 tiles away from the Persians.
2850BC: the Persians are way ahead in everything, got 4 more techs, lots of units and a score of 189 as to my 89.
2800BC: just found a Persian city (Arbela) to the east of me, now I am surrounded on all sides.
2670BC: got pottery from a hut, sham I cant trade it with the Persians cos they already got it.
2590BC: build another settler in Babylon, thinking about founding it on that sweet spot I found earlier.
2510BC: founded Nineveh in the sweet spot and the Persians are miles ahead with 4 extra techs and 5 cities. better starting to build up the military.
2110BC: finished researching the alphabet at last, now a bit of trading. the Persians have iron works, the wheels, masonry and warrior code compare to my 244 gold and alphabet. in the end I got warrior code (for the bowman) and masonry (for the wall defence) in exchange for alphabet and 220gp.
1870BC: rush build a barrack in Ur, just in case they attack.
1790BC: the evil Persians sneak attacked Ur, good thing I got a warrior on duty behind the walled city, they lost 2 warriors and my become an elite.
1700BC: lost Ur to an army of 3 warrior and a horseman against my lone warrior, too late for the reinforcement of 2 bowman just two turns away.
1650BC: killed one archer and one horseman in a counterattack for Ur and got a timely golden age. now I can train a bowman in 2 turns in Babylon and 3 turns in Nineveh.
1550BC: about 5 of Persian warriors are now in my border and I have 6 bowmen so no problem.
1500BC: how the heck can the Persians it build the pyramid and send all these troops against me. (the ~~%^£”% cheating AI)
1450BC: i am losing the war but i cant get peace with them without giving up my city (Nineveh), and there is no way I’ll surrender.
1350BC: the Zulu (somewhere) just completed the colossus. the Persians have a score of 524 and I a mere 249. I dont think I can last another 20 turns, but still no surrender.
1225BC: just lost Nineveh to the Persians, and so the last stand is in Babylon. Here I can see the Persians have 5 horseman and 4 archers in sight against my 3 bowman. And the evil Persian will not talk to me, and I cant surrender.
1175BC: 4 horseman and 1 archer will attack my last remaining city in the next turn against my 3 bowman in garrison.
1150BC: the Persians attack was foiled, it only manage to take 2 hit points from my bowman. my counter attack kill 3 horseman (1HP each) and an archer, but 4 more horseman just come into sight. (~#%£$^ the cheating AI)
1125BC: my golden age just ended. Summing up the situation the Persians have 8 horseman (3HP) about to attack in the next turn and I have only 3 bowman to defend (4,3,1HP)
1075BC: I am still alive, but down to 1 Bowman (2hp) and there are still more horseman to come.
1075BC-1turn: I am dead, final score 239 and the Persians 16238. I never had a chance.

RedTopJay - for the record, I am not playing this one, nor have I ever played a GOTM.

One of these days I might give it a try, but there is no guarantee that I'll finish it - takes more time and effort than JAG and those annoying family members won't leave me alone for days at a time.

BoBtheBUILDER - did you ever figure out that 16k persian score? Seems pretty high for such an early finish.

Salutations to everyone who attempted Matrix' revenge.

This map is turning as brutal as I expected. I have played to 430BC and survived one war without losing any cities DESPITE missing both iron sources. What I can't believe is the fact that making it that far already puts me ahead of some people.

Sedentary Barbs is probably the only thing that made me willing to give this deity game a try.

1200 B.C. - I am tied with Persia with 12 cities, but I have 3 more settlers in transit. Persia has a 100 point lead on me, but I have 3 luxuries, he has 1, and he hasn't got his Iron hooked up, so I better strike fast (how I do that, I'm not sure, but I have a plan...). I have no idea how far ahead he is technologically. I don't have writing, but he has mapmaking already. I doubt I'll beat him to mathematics, but I'm hoping I do (he beat me to Alphabet by 4 turns!). And he completed the Pyramids, so that will be nice if I can capture Persopolis. I have a culture lead on him, so far.

Reading articles on granaries and reading the RBE succession game-Beyond Deity, really prepared me for this game. But I have no idea what victory condition to go for (if I don't get killed by Xerxes) , as I've never really played deity much at all.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/1200_BC.jpg

BoBtheBuilder- The AI who is in the lead in points (I think), gets the early win bonus added to his score, as if he won already. It is 540-Turn of victory * difficulty level (which is 6 for deity). But according to my calculations he should have got like 18000+ pts, so I'm probably wrong somewhere.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Culture assimilate this :ninja:, Babylon!

Good luck! ;) :cool:

Well, I've managed to survive a bit longer. I got map making a sent a galley on a suicide mission across the sea. I manged to get two turns in the open sea with it and I made sight of another civs border but my galley sank before I could make contact and profit from it. Next turn the Zulus did a sneak attack on my weakest city where all the dyes are. I had it defended lighter than the others because it was far from the Persians. Damn Zulus! Hopefully Persia won't ally with the Zulu or else I'm really toast. Its 90 AD now and I'm somewhat proud of myself for getting this far, even though I'm so, so far behind.

The early win bonus is by date rather than turn. So it's (2050 - Date) * Difficulty.

BobTheBuilder (and others): the best place to learn Deity game stategies is in the Succession Games thread, under Stories and Tales forum. (Just as Bamspeedy said). The RBE (Realms Beyond Emperor) threads are a good place to start. These threads are much more detailed than any entries here.

In Deity the AI builds and researches much faster than you, and every city they found comes with free Ancient Age unit(s), and they're also much more snarly. I'd say more, but its all hearsay, as this is my first stab at Deity also!

950 BC: I spot the first Persian Immortal. The Persians have discovered a new iron source that they know how to connect! (see picture).

650 BC: I declare war anyway. My main stack is 20 swordmen and 7 spearmen, with another 5 swordmen patrolling the eastern border. The Persian GA starts immediately.

610 BC: Capture Susa.

530 BC: Capture Persepolis.

370 BC: Capture Hamadan. I am taking heavy casualties from the immortal hordes but I haven't lost a city yet.

350 BC: Great Leader! This is what I was waiting for, I immediately sue for peace and rush the FP in Susa. My army is down to 11 swordmen and 0 spearmen despite all cities producing military nonstop.

By spending everything I have, I extort/buy all techs except construction and polytheism. I am saving my GA for the middle ages.

DaveMcW-
Wow, we captured Persopolis at almost the same time, I'm just a little later (430 BC). I got a great leader also. I almost thought caputuring Persopolis was going to be a pain. A horseman defending with just 1 hp left killed 3 of my swordsmen! I was so desperate to kill that horseman that turn, that I desperately used 3 spearman to attack (attack 1 vs. defend 1), and they all died too! :mad: I had about 5 or 6 swordsmen left that I used the next turn to finally get their capital (and the pyramids). Persia was making a good attack against me in the east, almost thought I'd lose more cities there. After getting the great leader, I immediately signed peace and rushed the forbidden palace.

Next turn, Persia gets Monarchy and starts hanging gardens :( I could have got a wonder. But I think the forbidden palace is more powerful. Now I have to regroup, get some more workers to improve my terrain (I have so fewer workers, than I usually do because of all the warring). I'm just short code of laws and mapmaking. No one has mathematics, which I had been researching with a lone scientist, but got careless and forgot about the scientist (the scientist kept dying from the diseased floodplains).

The iron must have disappeared on the persians in one of our games, because that is not where the iron was in my game. I never saw any immortals. They could still get iron, but I'm gonna try and get a settler there first and rush some culture, ASAP.

Another bone-head play by me: Persia lands a lone spearman by my capital, didn't notice it (I never expect naval landings since I always play pangea maps). Spearman captures Babylon! Luckily I had a swordsman right by it and recaptured it the next turn. Now my palace is in Ellipi (slightly better centered for corruption, but not much).

If I had been more focused, I could have had a super game, but I wasn't expecting to do any good at deity. Still haven't had my golden age, either (Xerxes wanted too much for warrior code until I pounded on his head a few times).

:mad: :mad:

After keeping a good rep (I made Persia re-declare war before, because he had troops in my land), I think I'll have to ruin it. I sign a ROP with Persia, so my settler can make it to the iron. When I'm almost there, to the dismay of my settler, I see this:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/persia_colony.jpg

I'm not going to give him 15 turns or so to build up Immortals.....

Darn you, Xerxes! You don't even give me time to build any libraries and harbors! I'm really thinking of changing my signature, now.

I was able to play a little bit tonight. I picked up where I left off from yesterday (750BC) and immediately invaded Persia 2 turns later. I sent 6 horsemans to take their iron-town (north of Babylon); no problem there (also captured 5 workers trying to hook up iron from that nearby mountain).:)

I sent rest of my units to defend my western border. I figured if they are going to counter attack, it will be coming from the west because it's near their capital and their core cities. I immediately pop-rushed a citywall and a barrack in a town at my western front and it held up real well against wave after wave of attack. My brave defenders must have killed at least a dozen of horsemans and countless archers so far (yet no sight of a Great Leader:(). I think the Persian is running out of units to attack.:)

In the meantime, my civ is half way through the Golden Age. It's now 590BC and I'm going to sleep soon (have to go to work early tomorrow). Xerxes just calls me up and begs for peace. He is willing to give me the world map and mathematic in exchange for peace. Of course, I haven't yet decided.

PS: I'm currently building a lot of veteran warriors. After I get about two dozen warriors, will hook up iron and unlease hell on Persia. That's the plan for tomorrow.:)

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Another bone-head play by me: Persia lands a lone spearman by my capital, didn't notice it (I never expect naval landings since I always play pangea maps). Spearman captures Babylon! Luckily I had a swordsman right by it and recaptured it the next turn. Now my palace is in Ellipi (slightly better centered for corruption, but not much).

That's really a good idea.:goodjob: If I happen to see them sneak up to Babylon, I won't stop them. They will save me the trouble of relocating my own palace.:D

Never seen so many immortals before.....wow.....needless to say, it was quick, and far from painless.....my six or seven cities were smashed within a space of around 10 turns.....managed to kiss ass until 370 BC, when the end arrived....good luck to you all still alive, kick some Persian ass for us that aren't

I met the Zulu around 700 BC. Traded them Dyes for Mysticism + WM through a Persian Port. The Persians declared war shortly afterwards while I was positioning my troops for my own invasion. I thought the Zulu deal was broken but strangely it wasn’t. So I brought the Zulu in the war against Persia hoping that the trade would still not be canceled. But it did and I found out that I have lost my reputation.
My 18 swordsmen and 4 bowmen managed to get one Southern Persian city with heavy losses. It took 5 turns to heal and repel the furious Persian attacks. Meanwhile I have lost my Iron city as the Persian attack focused on it (the city was auto-razed and was already disconnected from Iron). I sent my 10+ swords north to handle the Persian invasion and hopefully take another town. The first part was achieved while the second failed and cost me all the swords. I made peace as Persian Spears were in position to cut my road network and incense thus breaking the Alliance with the Zulu and got 2 techs. In the same turn I rebuild the Iron city.
I rebuilt my troops to 20 Swords and 10 Horses and I am ready to start the second Persian war. I had no GL and I feel I have fallen behind the first platoon of players (Moonsinger, Bamspeedy, Dave and others that don’t post their progress – CB, Aeson). The good part is that I can still win.

The Persians didn’t hook their iron yet but are building a road towards it and my GA just ended. I’m in 10 AD.

Originally posted by pdescobar

I understand the no reload rule unless you ended the turn mistakenly/crashed/etc. What I do not understand is how having a saved game when you get a settler from a hut says anything at all about whether you have reloaded, particularly given that the GOTM games (at least the 2 I have been here for and I would assume all) are made with "preserve random seed" checked.

There are ways to fool the "preserve random seed" and there are ways to detect this. As GOTM police stated in an older discussion thread a saved game could tell a lot of things about the game you played. I don't know the details nor I want to. I want to keep the GOTM clean of cheaters.

It was super when I see that in 1000BC my territory was the second bigger. I had 17 cities and the Persians, well, I destroyed the Persians in 1475BC.
Now I'am in 650BC and in the next turn I will start researching Republic. I think before 10AD I will have control of all my island.
Didn't find others civs yet.

Originally posted by Bremp
It was super when I see that in 1000BC my territory was the second bigger. I had 17 cities and the Persians, well, I destroyed the Persians in 1475BC.

That's very good!:goodjob: Up until 1000BC, I was still begging for mercy and learned to keep a low profile. I figured...as long as I don't talk to Xerxes and stay out of his way, he won't notice me. But I was wrong, he got good eyes. If I didn't hand over 43 golds, I could have been history.

A savegame won't prove that you got your huts honestly. Since huts are always the same in the same year, you could save/reload every turn to get a complete data sheet then replay from the start and always open the best huts.

hehe just played this again, and lost earlyer than before! lol... Deity sucks....... By the time i meet the other side they out number me 10-1 MIN.....

Well I used a military type opening because the AI can't play very well. Also because barbs are set very low, I used luxury tax to allow my warriors to get out searching right away. Of course since the city is placed in a classic settler factory location, I researched pottery right away with as much juice as I could from the get go. I also wanted to get my Golden Age fairly early so that I was not too far behind, the Golden Age evens out the production imbalance and I'd rather keep pace early rather than try and catch up later. I decided that the production of the granary and any barracks would coincide with when ever I would get the Golden Age.

When playing a strong opponent you can frequently win a newly formed border city and then play cat and mouse until they are willing to negotiate. Even if they are very strong, you won a city from them and they will most likely give in to demands for city/cities or techs. Rinse and repeat, if you are really lucky and they have formed attack parties that must cross your territory to go home after the peace you can likely get them to declare war again and finesse them some more without damaging your rep.

I just finished my game, went with a milked diplomatic victory. My "friends" the Chinese had been furious at me for about about the last 1000 years, which had me really nervous, but they still voted for me! They went to polite after signing an alliance against the Japanese with them. Both the Chinese and Japanese had been relegated to 1 city each, and boxed in by troops and ships.

Starting out I got very lucky with the huts. 2 Settlers out of the 4 I opened, and the other 2 huts were just empty. :crazyeye: I figured to go for a fast conquest (seeing as it was pangaea and I had the Settlers), which obviously didn't turn out to be possible. I wanted to capture all the cities instead of razing, so I really concentrated on Culture early on, and with the Babylonian traits it would be a waste not to. I had close to 2 times the culture of the Persians by the time I attacked. I researched Iron Working right off, but was beaten to it by 2 turns, then the same thing with Alphabet. I gave in to Persian demands (~30gold) once as well.

The Persians started building the Pyramids at 2800BC, and so I started gearing up to take Persepolis. I had about 20 Warriors ready for upgrading once my Iron road was complete, and once the Persians finished the Pyramids I started the attack. I made a mistake in not targetting their Horses first, and was losing too many Swordsmen to their Horsemen counterattacks, but kept taking city after city. I made peace a couple of times for techs, but kept breaking the treaties... a fine way to start a diplomatic victory. I still thought I was just going for a military victory.

Once I got mapmaking from the Persians I sent out several galleys, each one making a suicide run from likely spots. One stayed afloat just long enough to see the Chinese borders to the east, and another to the west, but both sank before I could make contact. My 8th galley finally made it across, but I only traded maps, not contacts. It looked like I would be able to take out the Persians and Zulu before Astronomy was available. Meanwhile I researched Literacy myself, and rushed the Great Library with a Leader I had gotten from the fighting. My first Leader had rushed the FP in the center of the island.

Halfway through the Persian conquest I switched to Horsemen, and built up a very large force of them in anticipation of Chivalry. I let the AI's do the research, and just saved up money for the upgrades. I took the tech lead with my free Monotheism, and bankrupt all the AI's by selling it to them. After that I had a tech lead pretty much for the rest of the game. I quickly researched Feudalism and Chivalry, and sent my Knights to go fight the Zulu.

I had built up quite a force, and kept reinforcements flooding their island, but progress was very slow. All their cities seemed to be built on hills, and not being able to retreat from their Impi made for very high casualty rates. I built about 60 Horsemen altogether (most surviving to be upgraded), and built at least 20 Knights, but by the time I had finished off the Zulu island I was down to around 20 surviving Knights.

The asian civs had got Astronomy by the time the Zulu were down to their last 2 cities. I had to sink the first 2 Chinese ships I saw, and signed alliances against them with both the Japanese and Indians. That really slowed down their tech rate, and kept them from sending out as many ships. If any of them had made contact with the Zulu there wouldn't have been any chance for a diplomatic victory.

After the Zulu bloodbath, I decided to build up infrastructure, and rely on Tanks for the final offensives oversease. I just didn't have enough Horses to upgrade to Cavalry to make any real gains with them. The rest of the game was rather boring. The only thing of note was signing an alliance with the Chinese against the Indians and Japanese, just to let them lose. Then I gifted a small city to them near my core, to keep them in the game. I'm not sure how they ever got to furious, as they were gracious at the time. I must have disbanded a city with too many of their citizens in it or something.

The conquest was really simple, as I had built up close to 300 Tanks. Japan had taken most of the large continent, and so I signed an alliance with the Indians against them, but it really wasn't necessary. All it did was delay my attack on the Indians, as the Japanese didn't last too long. I kept disbanding Tanks to build improvements in captured cities, because I had so many of them, and was building more all the time. I had 12 transports constantly ferrying Tanks over as fast as they could.

Once I hit the domination limit I spent a lot of time repositioning cities. There really wasn't a lot of good terrain to settle, so the score was a bit lower that I would have expected. I razed the Indian cities to avoid getting a domination win, so I had to take them out of the game completely. One of my cities ended up flipping to the Japanese, but I was saving a leader for the UN, and moved my palace right next to the city. It flipped back within 20 turns. :)

I timed the culture to just miss 100k, had a prebuild for the last spaceship part, and had borders that would have expanded for domination if I didn't sell off the temple. The Japanese and Chinese could have be conquered easily as well. It was my first time setting up an all way victory (didn't have a 20k option though)... but as diplomacy is the only award based off of score I finished that way.

I thought that I was doing quite well in the beginning. I was able to build 12 cities before the whole island was colonized. I also reached literature before the Persians and started building the Great Library in Babylon. I gave 5 gpt to Xerxes to keep him happy. Xerxes however didn't think that it was enough. The Persians attacked me and destroyed 2 of my cities. A defending bowman triggered my golden age and after a few turns I was able to buy peace from Xerxes for all my gold and a lot of gpt. I lost the Great Library race with 11 turns to the Zulus.

Then Persians declared war on me again. Defending went really well, but that was until the immortals appeared. Just before I lost my last coast city I got a Leader, managed to research mapmaking and build a galley. With that galley I shipped the great leader to my last city Babylon (surviving 2 galley attacks). I wanted to make an army, but somehow I could only hurry production :confused: . Then I built a settler. I put it in my galley just before babylon was captured. After that I made peace with Xerxes. This was 340 AD.

I think I could sit on my galley till the end of times, because the other civs didn't seem interested in destroying my galley. There wasn't any space left for me on the continents I saw. So I suicided the galley to find an little island. But no luck of course.

I'll read those succesion games thread first before I try another deity game again

Originally posted by Aeson
Starting out I got very lucky with the huts. 2 Settlers out of the 4 I opened, and the other 2 huts were just empty. :crazyeye:

How come no such luck ever happen to me!:cry: I opened two huts. The first hut was empty. The second one got three barbs. To make the matter worst, they slaughtered my warrior right on the spot. Then they headed straight for my nearest town. And they almost got away with my town too. My only warrior defending the town survived with 1 HP. I had only two towns and 3 warriors at this point; one warrior got killed by barb, so I was down to two; I gave up searching for any more huts after that.:(

Well, I'm scrapping my game. It's probably winnable, but it's been an ugly, ugly game. But I sure learned alot, and I think I'm going to play deity more often.

I did ruin my rep, by destroying their colony (thus breaking a peace treaty). I could have kept on beating on the AI for techs, but I don't think I was in position to kill off the Zulu before the other civs would find him, and ruining my rep for the rest of the game with the other civs. At 150 A.D., Persia was down to 6 cities, no iron, and I had pillaged their horse resources. But they just kept producing archer after archer after archer. I did see some Immortals, but they were wimps. And I was forced to try and attack (mostly defend) on multiple fronts with an increasingly spread out military force. Before going for the Iron city (that would eventually culturally acquire the Iron), I got greedy and went for their gem city first. Then the RNG went on a mean streak against me...I couldn't win any battles. Zulu declared war and sent my palace jumping *again*, but I got peace with them, and my city back. Because I had been at war with the Persians so often, it took forever for them to recognize my envoy, when I really needed to sign peace. I could stay at peace and let the Persians live on my continent for awhile and build up infrastructure, but I've made so many mistakes in this game that I would hate to keep playing this game.

The AI is just as incompetent in battle tactics on deity as it is on chieftain, you just have to deal with the number of units. Countless times (especially by my eastern iron city), just a few of my units would kill lots of AI units, simply by using the mountains to my advantage.

I did make it to the middle ages and tech parity, but would quickly fall behind since my luxuries were of little value, a bad rep, no infrastructure, too few workers and not using them too smartly, lots of swordsmen (that will be obsolete soon), and I was in monarchy, but needed so many units for the war effort, I didn't have hardly any MP.

Originally posted by Djurre
I shipped the great leader to my last city Babylon (surviving 2 galley attacks). I wanted to make an army, but somehow I could only hurry production :confused: .

You have to 5 (i think it's 5) cities for every army you have.

This was my second attempt at a GOTM, and quite frankly, I suck at it. This time, I was trounced easily by the Persians, ca. 500 B.C. Deity level seems unfair & impossible to me. I don't know how people win on this level. I guess if I had been playing Civ for ten years it might be different, since I have less than a year's experience! The starting location was a total joke, too. I hate the Babylonians as well. I shouldn't have even bothered!

Continue from yesterday, I met the Chinese around 400 BC*. I then introduced them to the rest of my little world (Zululand and Persia). By doing so, I managed to catch with all their latest tech and started my own research for Engineering. About 10 turns later, Chinese, Indian, and Japan discovered Chivary. India decided to sell me Chivary for 28 GPT.:) No problem! With eight knights, 2 dozen horsemans, and 25 swordmans, my dream of having my own island was starting to come true.:) In around 10 BC, Xerxes was able to hook up the other source of iron and started pumping out pikeman and Immortal, but it was too late for him. By 30 AD, my brave knights took control of his palace and the other source of iron. The following is a snapshot of my world in 30 AD. And it's time for bed; will have to say good bye to Xerxes tomorrow.:D

//edit note: *I met the Chinese between 400BC-300BC. Not sure about the exact date, but that was my biggest turning point. With my free tech jump, I was able to trade Monotheism plus my worldmap with Japan for Feudalism. I sold Currency to Persia for just only 60 golds and their worldmap; that was all the golds that Xerxes had. I also sold Monotheism to India too. It was a very happy moment for my civ.:)

The Indians discovered me in 50AD. I was afraid they would meet the Persians or the Zulu first but frankly looking at the map you can see that Babylon has most chances. The tech trading that took place then brought me in the Middle Ages. I bought 2 techs with gpt as the Indo-Sino-Japanese had not found out about my rep in the first turn. I got 5 more techs with those (including my free monotheism).

I saw the Persian road one tile from the iron and decided to ask Xerxes to leave (he declared war). I tried to get some allies but nobody would join me. My high ground on the mountains cost dozens of Persian units and then an Immortal appeared. He managed to defeat my fortified Bowman on a mountain and started the Persian golden Age. In the same turn I got a heavily defended Persian city with Incense, which I razed and replaced one tile Eastward. For 3 more turns I slaughtered Persian units with a casualty rate of 1 to 3. I saw that the Persians would make peace and give me a discount on tech and accept per turn payments. I also saw that the military advisor said: “We have an average army as compared to Xerxes”.

I tried to push further and get another town with the 13 swords and 15 horses. After one turn I had 5 swords and 7 horses having destroyed some 30 Persian attack and defense units. I had to make peace and got Republic and Feudalism for 32gpt. The year is 170AD and I went into anarchy and changed all the production towards marketplaces. I noticed that Persia also had Chivalry. I made peace at the right time.

Having entered the Middle Ages the Babylonians will focus on trade and commerce while preparing to defend from the evil Persians. The third Persian war will have to wait. It is time for infrastructure and maybe some late middle age wonder (Smith’s would be fine). The FP will be built in the newly acquired territories. I have 3 dyes, 3 incense and 1 gem. I’m last in territory population and everything. But looking at the map I’m comparable with everyone. My culture is low but not very low. With my existing units I could protect from culture flipping. Too bad I didn’t have a GL.

Originally posted by da_greatest


You have to 5 (i think it's 5) cities for every army you have.

Ah ok, that explains it. Thanks.

Originally posted by Moonsinger

How come no such luck ever happen to me!:cry: I opened two huts. The first hut was empty. The second one got three barbs. To make the matter worst, they slaughtered my warrior right on the spot. Then they headed straight for my nearest town. And they almost got away with my town too. My only warrior defending the town survived with 1 HP. I had only two towns and 3 warriors at this point; one warrior got killed by barb, so I was down to two; I gave up searching for any more huts after that.:(

In around 10 BC, Xerxes was able to hook up the other source of iron and started pumping out pikeman and Immortal, but it was too late for him. By 30 AD, my brave knights took control of his palace and the other source of iron.

It's good to see you were able to overcome the bad luck early on! Frankly anything I was able to do in my game is tainted by the two Settlers, no real satisfaction in it. If I already had a gold medal maybe I could have brought myself to disband the second one.* ;)

I remember my first post here, which was actually an email to Matrix because my account hadn't been activated yet, was dealing with how an early Settler from a hut threw everything out of balance. In GOTM01 I had gotten one, my email was dealing with how much that had meant to my finish date (and thus score). I've always thought that huts should be removed from these types of competitive/comparitive games.

*Not to say I have a gold medal game, I think the highest score will be from someone who [Just realized this would be too much of a spoiler (hoping no one figures it out) ;) ]. If I could do it again that's how I would have approached it.

Originally posted by Aeson
I remember my first post here, which was actually an email to Matrix because my account hadn't been activated yet, was dealing with how an early Settler from a hut threw everything out of balance. In GOTM01 I had gotten one, my email was dealing with how much that had meant to my finish date (and thus score). I've always thought that huts should be removed from these types of competitive/comparitive games.


Or their contents hard-coded into the map. Was it you who suggested that a while back as well? :)

I may have said something to the effect that Firaxis should have given us that option. I went back and searched through some of my old posts... didn't find such a suggestion on my part, but was good for some laughs!

Originally posted by Aeson
It's good to see you were able to overcome the bad luck early on! Frankly anything I was able to do in my game is tainted by the two Settlers, no real satisfaction in it. If I already had a gold medal maybe I could have brought myself to disband the second one.* ;)

Even though you haven't had a gold medal yet, I have always considered you as a gold medalist on my list because very few player could survive the "worst starting position" on that iceberg and won.:) I remember the time when you were alone on that iceberg and the barbs took all your golds, many people (including me) would have given up right there, but you still kept on going and going when there was very little hope. In a way, you have always inspired me to become better at this game. Thanks!:)

Well, I guess my game wasn't too bad after reading some other posts (not as good as some, but just as good as others). I guess I'm just not used to having to wait so long to start on infrastructure, and fighting such a slow-progressing war. I think I just needed to be at peace for awhile to regroup my units, so I had a sufficient attack force again. Towards the end Persia wasn't hardly sending any units at me, but my forces were so drained I couldn't muster up an offensive. I know I had forced Persia to go to Monarchy, because I saw he was in Anarchy after he had already been a republic.

I think being non-industrious is what is making this game so frustrating for me. 36 turns for a slave to build a mine on a mountain!?!? I say, next time we play Deity, give us an industrious civ!

At 230 A.D., I still only had met the Zulu (and obviously Persia). The Zulu and Persia had Fuedalism as the only tech that I didn't have. Sun Tzu's had already been built by someone else. I had a 'strong' military compared to the Zulu. I might actually play this game out just to see how it turns out. Go to republic, stay at peace with Persia until I can get some marketplaces and cathedrals built, re-group my military, then wipe them out.
Here's 230 A.D.:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/230_AD.jpg

Well, I got off work early and managed to get my civ all the way into AD.:) In 250 AD, Xerxes was depeated.:) My civ immediately went Republic after that (had been in Depotism the dawn of civilization).

In 300AD, I disbanded two catapults to rush the first galley. More galleys will be rushed next turn. The invasion of Zululand will soon begin, but that I have to wait until next week because I don't have any more time to play for the rest of this week. My current world ranking as of 300AD is as follows:

210 BC: My 5th suicide galley reaches the second continent. I use my world map and Monotheism to get tech parity.

110 BC: An Indian galley crosses the sea (they have the lighthouse). I sell all contacts.

50 AD: Cancel the peace treaty with Persia and trigger my golden age. Use my 160 gpt income to buy Invention, Gunpowder, and Chivalry from China. Then declare war on China to break the deal.

90 AD: Great Leader rushes Leonardo's Workshop.

130 AD: Peace with Persia to finish my golden age with no war weariness.

260 AD: Sell Chemistry for 120 gpt and tech parity.

330 AD: Sell Metallurgy for 70 gpt and tech parity.

400 AD: Sell Military Tradition for 80 gpt and tech parity (Physics).

I should be able to wipe out the Persians and Zulu before Nationalism.

Wow, fast tech pace Dave. I'm at 460 A.D. and nobody has chemistry.

I researched Theology myself and sold it to the Zulu for Fuedalism. Researched Education at the same time India and China sailed some ships by my shore. Through some tricky negotiating and 83 gold/turn (I'm still making 161 gold/turn at 0%science) I ended up getting:

Banking
Astronomy
Engineering
Chivalry
Invention
Gunpowder
Music Theory
Navigation
Access to all 8 luxuries
Everyone's world map

India was behind the others, so buying/trading for Banking and Astronomy from the others allowed me to get some other techs from India. Got invention from the zulu after trading the other techs. Didn't actually sell contacts until after the luxuries had been traded (so they wouldn't lose their value for 20 turns).

Made Persia lose their capital twice in one turn, and they will lose it again in the next turn. Persia is down to just their capital and 1 city in the tundra. With no iron and no horses anymore, they are easy. I'm in Republic (made the Persians break the peace treaty, so WW isn't too bad, only need 10% lux now that I have all 8 luxuries.

I think I'll build up my infrastructure some more and see what I can come up with. Researching myself will take too long, and at the moment there are only 3 choices to research, so I'll have to wait until I get more libraries and universities up before I try and do any research myself.

I have the lead in score over the Chinese by 200 pts and leading in many other categories, but I'm behind the Japanese and Zulu in culture (since when does the Zulu build culture?). Kyoto has 4 wonders already. Not sure if my next target should be the Zulu or Japan (to get his wonders/knock down his culture).

I wiped out Persia with a 5-turn cavalry blitz ending in 460 AD.

Although I have decided to go on infrastructure I noticed that my 60+ units were eating my income in Republic. So I decided for another quick war with the Persians. I took one city easily as they were still defending with spearmen. The bloodbath continued for some 7 turns with the Persians loosing 2 to 1 unit of mine while I was using swords, bowmen, horses and they used Knights, Immortals. I tried to make peace as my armies were halved but the Persians didn't want to see my ambassador. I remembered that more wars meant harder to get peace. I was still building marketplaces and WW rose. When I only had 20 units I knew I was toast. I lost a core city in 360 AD. I threw my last four horses to defeat the two knigts and failed. I had little things to do for the following turns. I watched the Persians take two more core towns and barely escaped with the capital. I took one city back and was relieved to make peace in 430AD. The Persians treated with me as they lost but in fact it was me who lost this war and a lot of points in my final score as from now on I don't think I can ever take Persia. I have a very small window of opportunity for one of my former cities to flip back and I'll try to take advantage of it. I took teology from Persia but the Zulu won't give me Engineering or even chivalry for it.

The third Persian war was my first major mistake in this game. I think that reading the progress of those better than me I took more chances to be able to get back in the race but failed completly.

A worthy GOTM to make a return, but time once again, especially this month is a problem. My start was not that good as others have written, huts were empty, had gold and one tech, IIRC. No additional settlers. And so no way to start an early war against Xerxes. But he started one, razing one city and capturing another, I got my Golden Age, walls in all and barracks in most of my cities, as well as a leader to make the FP. The advantage were the 3 luxuries I secured and the only Iron source. This enabled my to start the second war in AD. He couldn't build pikemen or immortals, nor later knights. My addititional luxuries got me back into the science race a little, so no I'm fighting with knights and am only 3 tiles away from Persepolis, with the Pyramids and Leo's in it. Still waiting for reinforcements to my 20+ knight troops for that run. :mischief:
The war started well, I quickly destroyed most of his outdated horsemen and archers, something like at a rate 6:1 or even better. But the stupid game relocated an iron source (not mine, phew) into his territory, so he started on pikemen and now even knights. :ack:
Biggest problem are those knights and the longbowmen. It still is a hard fight and probably started too late for a really high score, but I don't know how to have built up the fighting force sooner.
I might post some details later and I probably mixed a few details right now. My main problem right now is that I cannot really think of a way to finish this game with a win. Guess I will have to continue the military line.
:D

EDIT: Oh yeah, I know the whole world map already, of course. Somehow need to get the others fighting each other.

Originally posted by Yndy
I took teology from Persia but the Zulu won't give me Engineering or even chivalry for it.

In my game, they are all selling the Middle Age tech for around 700 golds each. If you have 700 golds, you could buy Chivalry, Education, Invention, .... without any problem. Since my Republic empire can generate a little bit more than 200 GPT now, that means I will be able to buy new tech in every 4 turns. This is a good example of why this exploit (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33320&pagenumber=1) would do more damage than good. I know what they were saying there, but in reality, it actually costs them more. Let's just think about it for moment. Why risk losing a market and a knight in every turn? It takes more than 200 golds with pre-build shields to rush a market and it also cost at least 200 golds to replace the knight. Therefore, it would cost about 400 golds each turn for that exploit to work. On the other hand, the legitimate way would cost less than 200 golds each turn. No offend to anyone, but me thinks they should learn basic Math first.

Moonsinger,

I totally agree with your comment and I might add that I am planning not to research anything at least until Steam Power. Building marketplaces and banks and not bothering with libraries and universities is easier.

But the maneuver you mention should be dissalowed as many others.

Off-topic. I just saw you had an impressive post-count at the moo3 website. Guess you are playing civ3 as a replacement also. For the past 4 months i said this would be the last gotm before moo3 but to get back on topic, this one was worth the wait.

More on you progress please...

Originally posted by Yndy
Off-topic. I just saw you had an impressive post-count at the moo3 website. Guess you are playing civ3 as a replacement also. For the past 4 months i said this would be the last gotm before moo3 but to get back on topic, this one was worth the wait.

MOO! MOO! MOO!:D Yes, I'm a MOOer too.:) Back on topic, especially at the Deity level, it's much better to let the AIs do research for us. In this GOTM14, since only China, Japan, and India would come up with new techs, we would have no problem in catching up with them. Anyway, my computer was fried last night; so I won't be able to play any more civ until the end of next week.:(

I was the first to enter the industrial age (thanks to the free tech). Since I had a monopoly on Nationalism, I sold it and bankrupted all the other civs. I made 129+gold/turn from Japan and all of his cash stockpile. With all the extra money I had coming in from selling Nationalism, I can set science to 100% and still make a few hundred gold/turn profit. Learning techs every 5-6 turns and beat all the AI to steam power. I'm going to try and hold a tech lead for a little bit, since no civ will offer any money for Steam Power except India (everyone else is bankrupt).

Even with my ruined reputation I had Gandhi Gracious with me for awhile, and now he is polite. I sold him my only source of saltpepper while he is at war with Japan and China. Everyone else is cautious towards me. Even though you can't sign ROP with a ruined rep, you can still get the AI to sign one if you attach a 'free' tech to the deal. So the ROP, combined with giving him saltpepper made him gracious. I'm * tempted* to try and pull off a diplomatic....

Another reason I'm not selling steam power yet, is I want the wonder cascade from Newtons to end, so the AI doesn't have the chance to switch to Universal Suffrage or TOE. The AI is taking over 6 turns to learn techs, so Newtons should be completed before the AI goes Steam Power-->Industrialization by themselves.

Oh well, a quick defeat. I couldn't really hope for better from my first serious attempt at deity. In fact, GOTM13 was my first victory at Monarch level, even. But you get nowhere without trying. Here's how it went:

I moved to the coast before founding Babylon, which seemed quite a good location.
My first warrior went exploring to the north as soon as he was free to travel. I didn't think of setting the lux rate high to keep the population in order, as described earlier in this thread. (Inexperience).
Met Xerxes in BC 3150 and he wasn't happy. I traded tech and, later, gave presents to keep him somewhere nearer Cautious rather than Furious.

In the early stages I was keeping the tech rate as high as I could to ensure I got Warrior Code. High rates don't really get you much at this level, though.

Everything was growing just too slowly for me, and too quickly in my neighbour's garden. By BC 2470 I felt like I was becoming trapped in a corner. I have only 2 cities, with a settler scurrying into position for the third, while Persia has 5 to my knowledge - the latest of which has just been dropped outside my front door.

Huts didn't get me very happy. I only managed to get into 3 before my sprawling neighbours bagged them all for themselves. These yielded (a)Pottery, (b) Nothing and (c) a map. I didn't feel significantly better off.

Things started to get exciting in about BC 1075. I had 6 cities by this time. Persia a few more than that (Ha!). A few Persian units wander into different parts of my territory. I thought this over for a few moments. If I ignored it I would probably be sneak attacked. If I asked them to leave, they'd declare on me. My real problem was in not being ready for conflict at this moment, I suppose.

So I asked them to leave and they declared on me. I ducked under the table and tried to shield myself from the blast.

Strangely, the attack was not as crushing as I'd feared. I lost one city and then survived several rounds of attacks - my bowmen holding out against horsemen very well. Xerxes agrees to peace and I breath a sigh of relief.

My next quandary. The city I lost had the horses within its borders. Also, during the war I'd hailed a passing Zulu boat and gained Iron Working from them. I could see where the iron was - and it wasn't in my land.
So how to get my hands on the resources?
I planned a culture-squeeze on Ellipi - the horse city - which was quite close to Babylon. Planted 2 small cities either side of it.

This was too much for Xerxes. In BC 610 he sneak attacked one of the new mini-cities. This time the invasion force was much mightier, and the game basically ended there for me. City after city fell, and I expected to be wiped out before 10 BC. Strangely, I wasn't. Xerxes decided to talk when I was down to just 2 cities. He'd make peace if I gave Nineveh, leaving just Babylon.

For the sole purpose of making it to AD alive, I accepted. So in BC 410 I was down to a capital only.

The remaining game was quite pathetic, really. I made a small, gentle build up with 3 new cities in my tiny cramped land area. In AD130 Persia decided that I had grown big enough and declared on me for no reason whatsoever. A tide of Immortals swept over my cities and this time there was no stopping at the gates of Babylon. All over in AD 230.

I have a lot to learn about playing against deity. (Also all the other levels)

I signed an ROP with the Zulu to get my cavalry onto the island as fast as possible. Then I bought Magnetism and Theory of Gravity to get Nationalism, signed MPPs with the second continent, and declared war on Zululand. I sold Nationalism a turn later to keep the Zulu from getting it, but they researched it themselves halfway through the invasion.

Ghandi was gracious to me, right up the the point where he landed an archer next to my rifleman in Swazi and did a sneak attack. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

I finished off the Zulu in 650 AD. Now I am shipping my cavalry to the second continent to join my ally China against India and Japan. No one will reach Replaceable Parts unless I decide to end the war. This is my first cav vs. rifleman conquest on diety; I don't know if my economy can build reinforcements fast enough to overcome the AI's production bonus and reach domination before 1000 AD.

It's almost AD and the Indians visited and I finally got to see the whole map. I am fairly even points and power wise but I am behind in tech. I can never keep up in tech on Deity, the AI's trading handicap to me is something I can't overcome. I am worried I will get behind too far and never be able to catch up. Persia might be getting Chivalry soon and if they do I am in deep trouble.

How do you stay in the tech race?

The building of marketplaces increased my revenues constantly to 100 gpt. The one man research on monarchy ended and i switched to Printing Press. On the other continent, the Japanese took some 4 Indian towns than made peace. The Chinese declared war at the crippled indians and begun taking one city after the other. The indians were being exterminated but they sold techs at the lowest price. I bought Education to see that China and Japan had banking (and everythingelse but I wanted banking). I bought it after 7 turns. My income rose to 200 gpt and then to 280 gpt and i could buy a tech every 4 turns from the indians. AS everyone discovered navigation i started to sell my luxuries to the other continent. The city i took from the Persians flipped back (grr). i had built another one close by which became a flipping candidate and i abandoned the idea of keeping it.

As the one man researched on printing hat 5 more turns i begun to hope. And YES, i was the first to research Printing press. I sold it around and did some other deals to get the needed 3 techs to Industrial age, communism (which i bought for a trading opportunity and steam power. For teh firs time, I'm on tech parity (i'm down chivalry, mil tradition, navigation and economics but that don't count). My armies are building up with a defensive strategy this time. The Persians declared war to the Zulu and I hope to get by the winner's side to get some more teritory. For now there's naval warfare between the said parties in my teritory and soon to be land warfare aswell as the zulu landed some cavalry. It was boring for the last 45 turns but it's getting interesting again. The year is 800+.

Sorry for your computer moonsinger.

Not many people on the forum today.

I continued to build and trade. I had to buy coal but my railnet is almost complete. I'm falling behind in tech as the Zulu don't get any science and buying @4th is much more expensive than @5th. A first ring city with 12 pop and everything built flipped to the persians. They had 3 tiles and i had some 5 units there. My revenue went down with some 30 gpt due to that loss. The forbidden palace was build near the iron in the north but the city is now in danger of flipping. I'm in deep sh*t. I hope I can win by any mean. Now I only have 10 cities of which 2 are underdeveloped. No rubber of course.

Uaaaahh!

I haven't seen the whole map yet, so I'm writing this without having read the previous posts. I do, however, have an idea what might be in them ;).

First, I remember now why I sometimes hate deity level so much.

Second, my game got the worst possible start as the village to the west of Babylon aroused an angry Marcomanni warrior, who without losses dispatched my warrior and set off to Babylon. :(
I managed to beat the barbarians near Babylon, losing one additional warrior in the process, but at least they didn't pillage my settler.

I founded my second city not far to the north, near the gems and wheat, and got another warrior on exploring duty. He set off to the northwest, and soon found another village. Barbarians again! :mad: I did win this time however, and was promoted to Elite. After continuing his way to the northwest, I soon found Persian borders. Cursing my (our) luck that the Persians had started so near to Babylon, I entered their territory, expecting to see Persepolis/Pasargadae or in the worst case Susa. Wrong! It appeared to be Gordium(!), and after starting talks with the Persians it became clear they were way, way ahead of me. They already had all my techs plus all techs I could research, and had way more cities than I had (1600 BC 11 Persian cities against my 5).

Further exploration revealed no more civs on the island, 1000 BC map clearly shows about 80% of the island in "the green" (Persia). By now I knew that if I wanted to have any chance of winning an attack was inevitable, even though it meant taking the Persian immortal. I started warrior production in my 3 core cities, hoping to upgrade once Polytheism was traded to Persia for Iron working. Had about 14 warriors and 800 gold standing ready when I traded with Persia.

Praying for a source of iron in my territory, an quick map inspection revealed the only source of iron that was possible to get to to be in Persian hands. :cry:
Plans were changed as I quickly produced some bowmen and had workers road to the Persian city (Arbela IIRC) to sack it and build an iron colony there. First battle of the Persian-Babylonian war was immediately of uttermost importance as my 3 vet. bowmen and 1 vet, 2 reg warriors tried to take out 2 persian spearmen plus one archer. Losing was game over, but I fortunately won, losing only one bowman and having the other two promoted to Elite. :yeah: My worker moved in and founded the iron colony and suddenly my army became a little bit more impressive, 14 swordsmen appearing all over Babylon in one giant upgrade swoop.

My army was still weak compared to the Persian army though. :hm:

I'm now in the middle of the BabPer-war, managed to destroy 2 and capture one city without losing ground myself. It looks like the Persians are not connected to the iron resource in the north, as they are sending vast amounts of archer to counter my swordsmen. Have to get the Persian empire crumbling before they do, so speed is of the essence. Got hopelessly behind in techs, but thanks to a lucky break when spotting a Zulu galley near my coast and being able to trade polytheism for full price (they hadn't contacted anybody else yet) I'm now only 3,4 techs behind.

Allmost all wonders so far have been built by India, no time to worry about that yet though, still not sure whether I'll live to see the Indian empire in (probably) all of its splendour.

Kemal

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/Diplomatic.jpg

In the 1700's. I could have won by spaceship back in the 1500's, but I wanted to wage some war. It's been so long since I had some good modern age warfare. When I got the tech lead, I never lost it. Built Universal Suffrage, TOE, and then hoover. AI never had a chance after that, even when they were all democracies and at peace. After trading luxuries with the AI for their luxuries/money/techs, etc. I eventually built up my infrastructure and bank account so I could buy whatever I wanted with money and not give them any of my luxuries. They really slowed down their tech pace when they could only get maybe 4 or 5 luxuries at the most.

China got wiped out by Japan and India. I had joined the alliance against China and had Japan, India, and the Zulu all Gracious with me. I built a city in razed China area grabbing some resources. Ended up building the Iron works there with a leader (my leader had nothing else to rush, and I didn't want to ship him all the way back to my continent.), so that city went from 1 shield to 2 ;). Just built every single improvement in every city, and when I ran out of stuff to build I built tanks and airlifted them to my new city on the other continent. Had over 50 tanks there when Japan demands tribute (dyes) from me. Of course I refuse, he declares war, and I get India and the Zulu against him by giving away a tech. Once all 3 of them were at war, it seemed to take the AI 40 turns to research modern age techs (they were researching at 30% science in communism). So with my 50 tanks I captured 7 Japanese cities in 1 turn. After that is was a slow progressing war. I wanted to play an 'iron-man' type war of tanks vs. Mech Infantry, instead of using artillery offensively, which is way over-powering against the AI.

Japan eventually got all their resources pillaged/bombed, so they were throwing nothing but longbowmen at me. They even built longbowmen armies :rolleyes: .
I get Japan down to 1 city, size 2 and what do you think India does? Nukes him. :rolleyes: Zulu declares war on India because of the nuke, I had a MPP with India, so now I'm at war with the Zulu. I had over 10 tanks beside the Zulu capital, and 10 tanks by another Zulu city in preparation for a sneak attack by me. The Zulu had 1 unit left in their capital when my units were all killed. So their 7 spaceship parts were saved. Their other city I had 1 tank left with 1 hp vs a 1 hp mech infantry of theirs....I won! Razed the city. Didn't have any nukes built up, so I started building some. Got another great leader by where China was (zulu had some cities there) and used it to rush an ICBM. Nuked the Zulu capital. I had 4 nukes that would be complete the same turn the UN election came up. In fact I think I'm going to load the save back up and not call an election, just to see how this war turns out.

I'm not worried about score, in fact I'm not submitting. I had any victory condition I wanted easily within reach, now I just need to work on doing it faster and more efficiently.

I highly recommend you submit. There isn't that much competition for any of the awards.

Also we need winning scores so the statistics aren't too depressing!

Well my 2nd GOTM and my first ever attempt at Deity. As I expected I got well and truly trounced. I knew it would happen when I saw who my neigbours were, especially after I failed to secure that iron:mad: . Never mind I will submit it any way so everyone can have a good laugh;)

My cavalry vs. rifleman tactic failed. Every single Japanese city was on a hill, and they never ran out of offensive units to counter my exposed cavalry. I lost a full-health cav army to a fortified samurai in a size 6 city.

I ended up with 5 Japanese cities while China and India got the other 7. It's now 830 AD, I'm going to research up to motorized transport like I should have done in the first place.

Originally posted by Kemal
Second, my game got the worst possible start as the village to the west of Babylon aroused an angry Marcomanni warrior, who without losses dispatched my warrior and set off to Babylon. :(

Welcome to the club!:lol: West of Babylon, you said? Yes, that was the one where my second warrior met three angry barbs. My warrior didn't stand a chance.:(

I had the same bad experience with the barbs west of Babylon. I had already built a road and mine to west. Then attacked barb village and exposed the 3 angry warriors. My warrior dispatched one barb. 2 others advanced on Babylon. On the next turn my warrior in Babylon killed one barb. But the other barb pillaged my road/mine to west - disaster! Then the last barb attacked Babylon. My veteran warrior was killed by the barb who then pillaged Babylon! It definitely wasn't a good way to start.

I can't wait an entire month for the next map so how about another shot at that map on a lower difficulty just for those who got smacked down/

I've saved my failed attempt and I might play it until the end or just retire now for a slightly less humiliating loss.

I didn't get the iron and the bad guys got two sources so I know I am dead because they just declared war...

I decided to see just how good you guys that managed to get a good start are and even when reloading multiple times to try and get a better start (i.e. get the iron) I cannot do it.

In fact, in my "best" line of play, I have 11 cities to 15 and I have the North-Eastern iron. I knew roughly where the other continental one was based on previous saves and yet as I play my trade which equalises my tech with the computer, gaining their world maps I note that the Zulu have no iron at all (yet had sworsdmen) and the Persians source is not developed - right where it sould be. YET they have bloody immortals running around!

So the Zulu must have used their iron to build a few units then somehow trade it with the Persians until it finally disappeared! WTF I mean even reloading multiple times I can't outwit the diety AI on this map (rofl)

I think this map would be a great one for the masters to teach some of us (next month of course) how they played the early years...turn by turn.

I did discover that the best I could do by 3000BC was to irrigate the cow and not to pop the hut. By 3000bc I had a second settlement north of babylon, one warrior, one worker, and babylon 2 turns away from population increase to 2. In every other scenario I didn't have the second city but I had an extra warrior.

I know it's too much of a spolier to tell us how you do it now, but spare a thought for us next month eh?


Cheers

I'm going down.... :(

What an incredible disappointment! I was actually doing very well in my war against the Persians, they lost several cities (Pasargadae, Susa, Gordium, and some other, smaller ones ) and my military advisor was actually stating my military was stronger!

Since this was my first ancient age war against an AI opponent on Deity, I didn't really know what I could expect. Usually when I get the stronger army, I try to force a quick end of the war by taking some more risks. That was not a good idea.

I sued for peace for several of their cities, planning a major strike on Persepolis when I had some swordsmen built, but when I stacked my swordsmen near a mountain west op Pasargadae, the dreaded pop-up appeared of a culture flip. Pasargadae switched side and suddenly my swordsmen were in the middle of Persian territory, and Xerxes immediately seized the opportunity to command me out.

This is where deity inexperience caught up with me. Figuring my army was stronger, I decided not to lose time by retreating my swordsmen and declared war. I recaptured Pasargadae and send a giant stack of 20 swordsmen (vet, about 20% elite) to Persepolis. Next 3 turns it was over. It appeared the Persians had swarms of archers/horsemen near Persepolis, they took out 4 swordsmen at once, and wounded 3 others. My next turn I was next to Persepolis and lost another 6 swordsmen.

Considering 7 swordsmen plus some wounded against size 11 Persepolis with a vet spearman (and probably at least 3 others) and 3 wounded archers in it wasn't going to work, I took out most of their wounded archers and horsemen on the grass and retreated back to Susa and Pasargadae, but I couldn't get there in time. Pasargadae flipped back, taking 3 swordsmen and 1 bowmen with it and Susa was captured by Persian horsemen.

My forces are wounded and scattered and it seems a loss is now inevitable, I'll keep playing to the bitter end but I'm so disappointed with the result, especially since I had the advantage but blew it by being too impatient. Guess I should see this game as a very unpleasant learning experience....

Kemal

Originally posted by Kuhal
I did discover that the best I could do by 3000BC was to irrigate the cow and not to pop the hut. By 3000bc I had a second settlement north of babylon, one warrior, one worker, and babylon 2 turns away from population increase to 2. In every other scenario I didn't have the second city but I had an extra warrior.

I know it's too much of a spolier to tell us how you do it now, but spare a thought for us next month eh?

If you build a second Worker (right after the Warrior), you can found Ur in 3050 BC and Nineveh in 2590 BC. Still doesn't guarantee getting any Iron, even if you give priority to settling among the mountains.

Kuhal and others.....

After the end of the month the QSC results will be posted and those that submitted theirs will provide a good overview of how many players played their early game to expand and wage war on the Persians sucessfully. Hopefully those that had strong starts did make a log file and will submit their log.

I didn't keep a log, but remember most of it pretty well and will make some comments and give tips after the deadline has passed. It would be too much of a spoiler for me to say exactly how I did it, because someone who hasn't played their game yet, could copy the moves exactly without having to reload once and be in much better shape than the other brave souls who took on this beast without any advantage. There has already been more than enough information posted already, but I don't want to aid them anymore. But after the deadline, I will give out all the information, so many players can gain that knowledge for future games.

The GOTM should be a learning experience, and people should post more tips/tactics on exactly how they succeed. But with the large number of suspect views into the spoiler thread (2000+ in the first few days) this causes many players who are very competitive and worried about how they will place not want to help anyone out. But after the deadline, players should post some of the 'tricks of the trade' to help out everyone. I guess some like to keep some of the 'tricks of the trade' to themselves so they can stay high in the global rankings month after month. It shouldn't be that way.

So I applaud Cracker for starting the QSC, posting his Strategy articles, and his Succession Games that go into detail everything that he thinks about when using his workers, picking city sites, researching and all other details about operating his civ that puts him into the most powerful position for his goal. There are many other great players out there that do reveal their tactics that also deserve respect.
There were some things about this game that would seem like common sense to an elite player, but there are lots of other players who don't know about it that could take advantage from any insight the elite players can provide. I'm talking mainly about worker tasks, build orders, and city placement.

Well like most others I went down on this one too. I got a start, got up to 13 cities against the persians 15 but couldnt get the iron. My horsies fought off the first persian immortal assault. I lasted until a few hundred AD but when the knights came I was done for.

I'm gonna replay this one a lot - and yes I will submit my first attempt!
;)

Still hanging in there..... :)

Things aren't looking so bleak any more as they did a few hours ago. Maybe it isn't such a good idea to write spoiler posts just after swallowing heavy losses, because I feel that while venting my frustrations I have put things down more grim than they actually are. I haven't lost yet, but my attack was just totally halted. My apologies to all those that actually did go down to the waves of Persian immortals/archers.

Continuing from my previous post:

After the disastrous campaign against Persepolis it became clear that my number one priority was to get peace with the Persians. As my number of swordsmen had vastly decreased, I feared that gaining peace would be a very difficult thing to achieve, so I mustered my final few swordsmen and launched an all out assault against Pasargadae and Susa, hoping that their fall might persuade the Persians to sign a treaty.

I razed Pasargadae and failed to conquer Susa, but the Persians nevertheless agreed to peace treaty, and surprisingly they were willing to put The Republic in too. The continent was now split roughly 50/50 between me and Persia.

I got lucky when the Persians then made a ridiculous move. I had noticed that a large fleet of Persian galleys had been moving in to the southern part of the continent, one of the reasons I thought the game to be lost. However, after the peace treaty was signed they apparently weren't heading for my lands at all, but instead went after the Zulu cities on the small islands south of the continent.

A very convenient Zulu-Persian war followed allowing me to concentrate on empire building for a while. Literature wasn't invented by both Zululand and Persia yet so I traded it for currency with Zululand and construction with Persia. Monotheism could then be traded with the Zulus for lots of gpt, allowing me to maintain a high science rate and steadily get back into the tech race.

I beelined for Navigation hoping to be the first to contact the other islands, and did get navigation first but when my caravel was getting ready to enter the oceans an Indian galley appeared right in front of my nose and landed next to a Zulu galley. So much for first contact. :(

I was able to trade Navigation so I'm at tech parity at the moment but the Zulu-Persian war has ended, forcing me to start building more military since the Persians are still furious with me, and have a much larger army.

A win might still be possible, even though the Chinese have a very large empire and I'm only leading in one thing in the demographics: pollution ;).

Kemal

It appeared the Persians had swarms of archers/horsemen near Persepolis, they took out 4 swordsmen at once, and wounded 3 others. My next turn I was next to Persepolis and lost another 6 swordsmen.

Remember that any time you demand cities from the AI for peace, all their units in those cities will be magically transported to their capitol. It can make taking a Capitol very difficult right after a peace treaty.

Originally posted by Kuhal
I decided to see just how good you guys that managed to get a good start are and even when reloading multiple times to try and get a better start (i.e. get the iron) I cannot do it.

I didn't get a good start at all. After three angry barbs killed my second warrior, I almost gave up right there.:(

I think this map would be a great one for the masters to teach some of us (next month of course) how they played the early years...turn by turn.

There wasn't much going in my game during the early years. Mostly, tried to stay alive by giving to "you know who" whatever he demanded. The main turning point in my game was that I attack Persia before they hooked up the iron (north of Babylon). Don't worry about the other source of iron on the West yet; if you keep them busy at war, they don't have time to hook up to iron in the west. I built only 3 babylonian bowmans to help trigger my Golden Age and used the Golden Age to pump out more warriors for upgrading to swordman later . I had only 2 spearmans and the rest of my troops were veteran horseman and warriors (built barracks for most of my core cities). I used horseman to take the iron in the North and set up fortification in the West of babylon. Since I just tried to survive, I rushed a citywall, digged a moat around it, and prayed. That was it! After the Persian running out of troop to attack me and I knew peace talk was possible. I sent the rest of my horsemans to take two of their cities (they were defending these towns with two spearmans) and sued for peace. I didn't ask them for much at the peace table, they gave me two size-1 towns (north of Babylon) and the peace treaty was sealed.:) I immediately sent my workers to hook up iron, upgraded all my veteran warrior to swordmans, wait 20 turns for the peace treaty to expire, then I unleased two dozens swordmans and a dozen horseman upon Persia (they still didn't have no iron; so they just had spearmans and archers which was no match for my swordmans). When peace-talk was possible again, I signed peace treaty and got some techs, then declared war again, just repeat this cycle a few times until Persia was no more. Just remember that Persia is no threat unless they have iron.

PS: Persia was so stupid. Of all my towns, they had to attack the one with the city wall. About two dozens Persian was killed trying to climb my ciywall.:) Did I mention the moat too?;) Just kidding about the moat, there was no moat in civ3.

Persia attacked the Zulu in the late middle ages and brought china and Japan in the fight. After swapping towns on the little islands between the Persian-Bab continent and the Zulu one, the Persians made peace. The Zulu actually managed to get a Chinese town but then lost it. It was pretty much a naval war, mostly in my waters. Japan made peace too.
Due to the long war the Zulu’s weren’t researching anything and I had to buy @ 4th instead of 5th. I managed to do a 2 for 1 deal but I had to wait a long time for a second one. I tried to got Rep parts and tried to get some rubber on an island but the Japanese city expansion beat me to it.
Oh, I lost my 10 pop city with forbidden palace and 12 units to a flip to Persia (that hurt). I’m now at 9 cities with less territory than I had after the land-grab. Since I couldn’t buy tech from Zulu I declared war with the all against one strategy. I took Japan back in the War and managed to take a city on the small islands I just mentioned. Persia joined the war pretty soon as expected. I landed my 30+ force of infantry cavalry and arty in Zulu lands and since my 12 arty redlined 2 zulu infantry I attacked the size 9 city.
I think it was the worst assault I ever saw. I lost 12 of my 18 cavalries and the remaining 6 are redlined. I lost 5 out of 8 infantry and I didn’t get the town. It has one longbow though (I used 3 infantry against the last redlined zulu infantry) which I should get with the 4 units that landed this turn. Fortunately they can’t draft infantry and another round of arty should bring the city below 7. I saw many transport ships around and I hope that Chinese/Japanese/Persians invasions keep the zulu in the ropes and allow me to get some useful cities in his territory.

That is my situation right now in 1300+ but I won’t be able to play for some time due to RL things.

To Kemal: You got things work out better than I managed to (with my free settler) but I think you should have razed Persian cities instead of capturing them.
To Bamspeedy: I think that I am responsible for at least 20 of the 2000 views that you mention. And I don’t think that my posts or others that I read in this thread could help potential cheaters play better. But I agree that detailed maps should not be posted.

I decided to see just how good you guys that managed to get a good start are and even when reloading multiple times to try and get a better start (i.e. get the iron) I cannot do it.

You could try to send your settler to the north... exactly 10 turns, and build Babylon close to Persepolis. I did this and I destroyed the Persians in 1500BC!

Originally posted by Bremp
You could try to send your settler to the north... exactly 10 turns, and build Babylon close to Persepolis. I did this and I destroyed the Persians in 1500BC!

But at the beginning, we don't know where on earth Persepolis was or how many civs were on our continent. Unless we have advance knowledge of the map, it would be silly to move the settler 10 turns west in order to build Babylon close to Persepolis.:confused:

But at the beginning, we don't know where on earth Persepolis was or how many civs were on our continent. Unless we have advance knowledge of the map, it would be silly to move the settler 10 turns west in order to build Babylon close to Persepolis.

I played some Deity games before, and lost all... Before starting this one I open it with mapstats and see that this map had lots of water... then I create three other games with the same caracteristics and I tryed to find other civs in the beggining, and in this three games I did this in 10-15 turns. It doesn't matter if there are more than 1 civ in the continent. You only need to destroy one.

I start the game and see water in the south, then I send my worker to the west and see more water. I decided to send my settler to the north (number "8" in my keyboard).

I only tryed something different, and it works...

Using mapstat before you have the world map is cheating, in my opinion.

Originally posted by DaveMcW
Using mapstat before you have the world map is cheating, in my opinion.

There is currently no rule against it but it is only to be used for checking against domination (IIRC) and I doubt you can be close to domination without knowing the world map. Using mapstat to learn something about the lay of the land at the start of the game is not, well, advisable for normal GOTM play.

GOTM Admin - will be reviewing the wording on a number of rules to clarify issues, in the mean time we have to extend a wide berth to what might be considered infractions in the future.

I am almost hopelessly behind in 480 AD, but it looks like I have outdone many of the players.
I fell apart in this game the second I realized it was just Persia, and me, and my play suffered. I am amazed that I am still in the game.

It might be worth noting that the terrain counts in mapstat aren't much of a spoiler when the map settings are given. Water level is quite stable, and so are ratios of the different terrain types. Mapstat also doesn't give any idea as to the landform, or any information that isn't readily available in game (finding the opposing civs in the space race screen for instance). The exception would be when we use random map settings, as mapstat terrain counts should make at least the weather/age settings somewhat obvious.

Japan is trading the Persians saltpeter!!! why I do not know. I still thought I had a chance to take a few Persian cities (they are down to 8) with some stacks of Knights, but then what do I see? A rifleman. Wow am I behind in the tech race. And I can't research better than 40 turns. Still no leader in about 800AD so no Forbidden Palace.

China is almost dead. They would be too, but a remote city the Indians gifted me for a bloodless war flipped back to them when they were down to one city. Right now, I have two chances of winning, histograph and diplomatic, but I couldn't imagine either actually taking place. I don't play deity though so I am happy with my game.

Originally posted by Bremp


You could try to send your settler to the north... exactly 10 turns, and build Babylon close to Persepolis. I did this and I destroyed the Persians in 1500BC!

I don't know what mapstats is but form the sounds of it, I would not use it. In my real game, I made 2 warriors and sent them exploring. I saw the wheat on the plains and sent my first settler there.

I would never ever send my first settler 10 squares north on any map. Well if I knew what was there I might, but it's still risky IMO. It obviously worked for you but I suspect not because of just that move. It was probably because you also backed it up with other good strategies that I'm not using as yet.

10 moves for the first settler in a diety games is at least 5 moves too many IMO. Those 5 moves would be like at least 15 production units wasted... I play alot of chess and gambits are my favoured openings yet the 10 move north gambit seems extremely risky. Well done on making it work...

Originally posted by Ribannah


If you build a second Worker (right after the Warrior), you can found Ur in 3050 BC and Nineveh in 2590 BC. Still doesn't guarantee getting any Iron, even if you give priority to settling among the mountains.

I tried it out and you are right about the timing, but I do better than this with Ur going in at 3150BC and Babylon is 4 turns from producing it's second settler (2 turns till population goes to 3) at 3000BC. I used 3000BC as my comparison point for my 7 or 8 opening sequence comparisons.

So why the second worker? That just wastes shields I would have thought... unless its something about using it to join the city at the perfect time to somehow get some free wheat..hmmm lemme go see...

bbl

Kuhal and others

Mapstat is a little program that you can find on the utilities thread that gives you the tile count on types of land and the ownership of those tiles on a given map. I don't what is its original development purpose but it is used mostly to avoid domination victory (it calculates how many tiles you need to achieve domination). I also use it to compare my territory and population with the AI's but only late in the game. As CB stated the use of mapstat could reveal age, temperature and climate as well as land/water balance of a given map to someone who is experienced with it.

I'm reserved regarding Bremp's posts as it's the first time i see him post. Right now I'd say he is bluffing. I never heard of such strategy and don't imagine it would work on any level above regent.

I don't want to offend anyone so i'll shut up and check bremp's score in previous GOTM. I'd still add that his game is on my top priority for review...

Edit: This would be his first GOTM submission. :hm:
But i saw a lot of good players that aren't even registered (or submit under different nicks)

Originally posted by Bremp
You could try to send your settler to the north... exactly 10 turns, and build Babylon close to Persepolis. I did this and I destroyed the Persians in 1500BC!

Originally posted by Bremp
I played some Deity games before, and lost all... Before starting this one I open it with mapstats and see that this map had lots of water... then I create three other games with the same caracteristics and I tryed to find other civs in the beggining, and in this three games I did this in 10-15 turns. It doesn't matter if there are more than 1 civ in the continent. You only need to destroy one.

I start the game and see water in the south, then I send my worker to the west and see more water. I decided to send my settler to the north (number "8" in my keyboard).

I only tryed something different, and it works...
:hmm:

Re: Re: Re: to all

I've been playing Civ3 for 4 months only. This is my 4th GOTM and I didn't submit the others. The first, with the japanese was very easy... not for me, of course, and the AI killed me. The second with the zulu I won, but it wasn't so easy, and last month I won again, but now, reading Cracker's QSC, I can see how wrong I played, because I used archers to destroy the AI in my island. Very different to the other players.

When I start this one I think: I am not able to win a Deity game. My first idea in this game was try to find a city of the AI, any city, build my capital, build some warriors and then atack. I destroyed the Persians but I think I'm not able to win this game yet.

Maybe I should read some strategies articles and play like everyone.

Kuhal: I play chess too, and I love gambits

ainwood: i think your reply didn't add anything to the discussion

Sorry if I can't write better.

I survived this GOTM, avoiding being wiped from the face of the map, but lost at the end to a Persian spaceship launch.

Walls and luxuries are all that saved me from an early death. I'm stunned that I managed to survive until the AI spaceship victory (Persia), as the only other Deity game I've ever played, even on an earlier patch, resulted in death before 1000 BC. As it is, I survived until the late 1700s AD, with Xerxes only fighting me twice, and only one war taking significant losses. My early game timeline has already been submitted to the QSC, but most of the 'interesting' events of the game happened at 1000 BC or afterwards. Shaka's galley appeared offshore of my southernmost city near the end, and I managed to avoid complete early elimination based on tech by trading him everything for some gold and contact with Xerxes, since he'd probably find him in a few turns anyway.

After that, Xerxes decided to take exception to a city of mine that overlapped slightly with one of his, and invaded. Fortunately, I'd spent time building veteran spears to defend my frontier with, so I only lost the city he attacked first. I lost the only luxury of one kind that I had there, :( but elsewhere, the RNG was kind, and elite spears within pop-rushed city walls saved me from annihilation.

However, survival was about all that I achieved- India found Xerxes and Shaka first, and after the First Persian War, I never had an opportunity to build up enough quality military to attack Persia. The AI tech pace ended up leaving me a full age behind at the end of the game, and I had no Iron.

Without the military option, I played through trade and diplomacy, and if I'd been anywhere near the tech level to get the UN, I would have won an election easily. Except for trade deals broken by MPPs invoked, forcing me to go to 'war', I kept my word to the AI. Barring the initial Persian invasion, and a later attack on one other city that failed fairly soon, the AI was content to occasionally demand pittance from me rather than attack my cities. Honorable conduct allowed me to make deals with the other civs for reasonable prices, and avoided Xerxes from running over me with tanks, even when I had a ridiculously small military.

This is the first game of Civ where I've found MPPs to be useful, in this case, enlisting Shaka to discourage a visit by the 20+ Immortals/Infantry/Tanks on the other side of the border, or Xerxes to dissuade an irrationally angry Shaka.

This is my first GOTM. If I've posted spoiler-type information, let me know and I'll edit this to delete it. My QSC timeline probably won't be as interesting as most others, as I didn't win, but if you want to see conditions where the AI will attack you in a few turns, download it when the results are announced. :rolleyes:

I've learned a lot from the other participants and the mentors in the Succession Games forum, either by participating in or reading the threads, and I wouldn't have survived this Deity game without that. :)

Originally posted by Bremp
Re: Re: Re: to all
<snip>
ainwood: i think your reply didn't add anything to the discussion

Sorry if I can't write better.

Bremp;

Firstly, please don't apologise for your writing. Your english is very good, and better than some for which it is their first language :)

As for my post, I apologise for it not being clear in intent.

You may not be aware, but this competition has been somewhat plagued by people cheating. One common thing is replaying the game after having discovered a few key attributes from the map (eg. where the AI is, where the resources / luxuries are).

My :hmm: was meant to highlight that your actions look very suspicious.

I don't really want to get into this too much, as this thread is a "spoilers" thread about peoples' experiences playing the game. We don't really need another thread on cheating etc, and I shouldn't really have contributed to turning this into one.

Originally posted by Borealis
This is my first GOTM. If I've posted spoiler-type information, let me know and I'll edit this to delete it.

Well since this is the *spoiler* thread you could post spoilers. We try to avoid posting detailed map/resource information to avoid people that would take advantage of such info in their game. For example you could have said that the luxury that you only had one and lost was 'incense' or that you missed the iron in the North by a little and didn't know of the other iron deposit far in NW. For this particular GOTM I think that you could also tell that you lacked rubber, coal and oil but had access to one saltpeter as most of the players either never get to see those resources or capture enough land to get one of them anyway.;)

After not playing GOTM for a couple months, I decided to get back in. A very interesting map to start with, and I got lucky by popping a settler out of one of the huts (thanks to who posted the prior tip of not building settlers when you pop a hut, the odds of popping a settler go up). I discovered the Persians early, and even made friends, trading a tech, making pleasant conversation. I managed to get to the Northern iron source first (could not figure latter when viewing the end game replay, why the Persians founded two cities before I had a chance to pop a settler down in that area) as I had a settler waiting 'to go there' as soon as I discovered iron working.

Persians declared war on me before I had my iron hooked up, but they did not have access to iron either. We fought a short war, got an early golden age, and the Persians threw archers and horsemen at two of my cities that I had just finished putting walls around. I took one of their cities and sued for peace. Got some techs and we went back to an uneasy peace.

Made contact with the Zulus, and managed to finish building out the map, and guess who declares war again, the Persians. Well, I throw a lux at the Zulus and they join in with me. This time I have built up my military and I manage to take/destroy about half the Persian cities along with their horses. Right after talking Persolopisis (and the pyramids), I notice the first immortal so I sue for peace, get enough techs to bring me up to everyone else. Switch to Republic, get some gold and buy my way to chivalry and start upgrading my horsemen. As soon as I have enough knights I finish off the Persians.

Spent most of the rest of the game building up my infrastructure and launching my space ship.

Side note: Hobbes, according to Firaxis, one of the conditions for getting a settler from a hut is that you're not building one already- I believe Bamspeedy has posted the official list of goody hut odds in several places, including a 'goody hut manipulation/management' thread in GD. Also, good idea timing a settler build close to the discovery of iron working... I'll have to think about doing that the next time I find myself stuck competing for territory with Xerxes early in the game.


Originally posted by Yndy


Well since this is the *spoiler* thread you could post spoilers. We try to avoid posting detailed map/resource information to avoid people that would take advantage of such info in their game. For example you could have said that the luxury that you only had one and lost was 'incense' or that you missed the iron in the North by a little and didn't know of the other iron deposit far in NW. For this particular GOTM I think that you could also tell that you lacked rubber, coal and oil but had access to one saltpeter as most of the players either never get to see those resources or capture enough land to get one of them anyway.;)

True. I can't think of much to add, other than that I had saltpeter for a while (until it fell within Persian cultural boundaries), and after that, only my 1 gems and 3 dyes left to trade around. Xerxes never let me get near the iron sources, as he had cities there by the time I got iron working. Coal appeared within my borders awhile after I grabbed Steam Power, as an AI's supply evidently ran out, but it wasn't there from the beginning. Fortunately the other civs were more than willing to trade resources + gold/tech for luxuries, especially the dyes. With the massive world war that covered a large part of the mid-to-late game on a particular landmass, it was hard to tell who actually 'had' oil and the other resources beyond rubber, as cities kept changing hands until the warmongers not originally there divided it up amongst themselves. I was just happy to see all those stacks of ships+transports going somewhere else .

Borealis: How many other civs did survive until the end? Was Persia the most powerful one at the end? I'm thinking that you still have a very good chance to destroy Xerxes in about 40 turns after you grabbed Stream Power. If your civ can manage to produce 100 artilleries, 25 infantries and 50 cavalries, then taking Xerxes out of the game would be no problem at all.

This GOTM is terrible ...
i never played in Deity mode and now i know why : too hard for me :)
like many other, i failed to do anything ... even after 8 attempts, i was crushed by Persians.
So i used Bremp 's technics , build your town near Perseapolis. And just by doing this , you can easily destroy Persians and get all their techs.
Oh, ok it's perhaps a cheat as i knew the position of Persians's Capital but for many player (me inside) this game is *little* (lol) too hard for them. And for me this GOTM is only a way to try new tactics and perfects other.
I really asked myself if many differents tactics exist to win in Deity mode...

Originally posted by ilive
too hard for me :)

A positive role model like yourself is so rare these days. Many people would say "it's too hard for me.:(" (with the unhappy face), not too many people would take on a challenge with a smile.:)

Come to think about it, in the true spirit of Civ3, my foreign citizens often starve to dead, but one thing for sure is that they always die with the smile on their faces.:D I guess I'm learning a good lesson today. No matter what comes in life, always accept it with a smile.:)

Originally posted by Moonsinger
Borealis: How many other civs did survive until the end? Was Persia the most powerful one at the end? I'm thinking that you still have a very good chance to destroy Xerxes in about 40 turns after you grabbed Stream Power. If your civ can manage to produce 100 artilleries, 25 infantries and 50 cavalries, then taking Xerxes out of the game would be no problem at all.

At the end of the game, 3 AI civs were left, but Japan only possessed one city. Xerxes and Shaka had divided up the other large continent, and I was still stuck with my 5 cities on the starting landmass. I thought about sending settlers to claim some of the new landmass, but by the time I realized the world war was, for once, resulting in lands gained/lost in major ways, the AI flooded it with settlers.

Xerxes was indeed the most powerful one, with Shaka not far behind. I didn't research Military Tradition, as it didn't become available until after Persia and Zulu had wiped out civs on the other continent and claimed the land there. Even had I grabbed it immediately, I doubt I could have produced the amount of units you suggest in the time required, and still would have lost to Shaka's spaceship. Maybe a MPP with Shaka might have done it, but that would put him in danger of getting domination if he grabbed Xerxes' cities on the other continent.

Hmm.... I just might try an Emperor game if MOO3 is delayed yet again... if I survived this, maybe I can come from behind in an 'easier' game. :D

After playing GOTM7, I said I'd be back when GOTM returned once again to Deity. This one turned out to be an interesting situation, summed up pretty well by LKendter in his description of the dilemma posed here. I had fun playing, and I've just submitted my result.

In addition to observing the GOTM rules, I also played within the considerably more restrictive rule set observed by the Realms Beyond community, including the No Spoiler rule, with completing my game (not just "knowing most of the world map") before visiting this thread.

After reading through, I see that GOTM is evolving slowly in the direction of fewer spoilers, at least in the sense that fewer of the leading players are posting crucial information and those who still are seem to be posting less information. As for my results, I popped three huts and all three spewed forth hostile barbarians. Apparently, my goody hut misfortune from GOTM7 is still intact. :) On the other hand, like GOTM7, that means that whatever I may have managed to achieve will have come after climbing out of a deeper hole than others, so at least there's a silver lining. I intend to post a report on my site to start the new year. I'll come back then and post a link here.

Cracker: good luck with running the show. Organizing any group effort is a load of work. I hope folks don't give you too many headaches. :)


- Sirian

Welcome back Sirian and good luck on the ranking of your GOTM14.

Hopefully we will have some events that will hold your interest even if they do not all appear under the name of "diety".

Great and enjoyable challenges lay ahead of us in many ways and hopefully you will continue to play the games during the transition time to help provide us with perspective and reference play.

Your comments and counsel are always welcome.

Originally posted by Sirian
As for my results, I popped three huts and all three spewed forth hostile barbarians. Apparently, my goody hut misfortune from GOTM7 is still intact. :)
- Sirian

Don't laugh at me people..

ok laugh ... :crazyeye: ...now listen up...

I sometimes play on my wife's PC because it's upstairs and when the kids are watching Blue's Clues for the millionth time during my babysitting duty... I play a little civ3.

Without a word of a lie, I seldom win on her PC. Even on Monarch! Yet on mine, I've repeatedly won on every level apart from diety... I SWEAR it's harder on her PC. Goody huts are meaner, the AI is "smarter" ?? or just meaner I don't know... and I suck on her PC...

Is this my imagination? Is my concentration weakened due to my subconscious interest in watching kids videos? Or has anyone else experienced this?

I have never played the same map on both of course...I know the results will be identical... But perhaps her PC, when generating a map, is somehow more evil and vindictive? hmmmm?


Her PC is a P2-400Mhz, 256MB. Mine is a TBird 1Ghz, 512MB. Both run XP...

Now laugh again :D

I certainly don't do as well on the laptop we have as I do on the desktop. That has to do with the touchpad vs. mouse issue though!

Perhaps your wife did some 'modifications' to the game on her computer, to keep you from using it. Of course, she probably would have made the modifications on your computer given the specs... ;) (in other words, just be glad that the 'luck' is the way it is, and not reversed)

aaaaargh, it seems mine raid is gone! On it stands: GOTM13 and GOTM14 with a good start.
A good thing I've this baby now but it S..KS!
Starting again and only 14 days left for me! (after X-mas to Poland)
Her PC is a P2-400Mhz, 256MB. Mine is a TBird 1Ghz, 512MB. Both run XP
Intresting, next year I can do a comparison when the p4 1.6@2.4 is fixed and this one XP 1600+ Aroia-Y at 1825 real MHz! (XP 2200+)

I'm back to the game.[dance] After I rebuilt my computer, I took it out for a test run and civ3 was a good game to test it with.

After the Persian war, I was down to about 15 knights and a little bit more than a dozen horsemans (didn't have any money for upgrade) and two dozens swordmans. Continue from my previous plan, after I got 4 galleys in operation along the coast of Babylon, I immediately declare war on Shaka. He hadn't gotten Chivalry yet, but I'm sure he could get it from China, Japan, or India within a few turns; therefore, I had no choice but to attack him before he got knight.

Eliminating Shaka was fairly easy. My Heroes Epic was completed just one turn after the war started and it immediately generated a GL within the same turn. After my GL built me an army of knights, my stronghold on Shaka's island was secured. There was no way his horsemans, pikemans, and Impies could possibly match to my army of knights. His days were number; my little stronghold (thanks to the barrack and the citywall) consumed most of Shaka's counterattack. In the meantime, my galleys were running days and nights to ship all my swordmans over. I also got two more GLs after that, used one to build another army of knights and the other one to rushed Leo's Workshop.:) With two armies of knights, a dozen knights and swordmans. Shaka's Impies and archers didn't stand a chance. He did manage to acquire Chivalry and built a half dozen knights but it was too late for him. With the exception of the first city and the last city that I took, I razed the rest of his cities and rebuilt them with my own settlers. Shaka was history right around 800-900 AD.:)

After the Zulu war, my citizens decided to go with Democracy and they were producing about 500 GPT. Not only that, they improved my palace at least four times too.:) It was so nice to be appreciated.:) For the next few turns, I took the time to rebuild the Zululand and traded aggressively with the Japan, China, and Indian. Since India gained control 3 luxuries and my citizens demanded more luxuries, I had no other choice but to invade India. By buying Magnetism from India, I was able to upgrade all my ships and sent a taskforce to India.

My invasion force (3 armies of knights, 11 cavalries, 1 musketter, 4 settlers) reached the coast of India around 1040 AD. By this time, all trade treaties with India were expired. I immediately gave Japan furs and got them to sign a MPP with me. Of course, I offically declared war on India within nanosecond after the MPP deal with Japan was sealed. I landed my invasion force safely; the Indian was so afraid of my three armies of knights so they didn't dare to attack. However, the Indian navy sunk half of my fleet within the next turn. My invasion fleet were just galleons which were no match against the Indian Frigates and Ironclads.:( They were trying to run away but weren't fast enough.:( Oh well, now the rest of my task force will be on their own. The conquest of India rests entirely on the shoulders of 3 armies of knights, 11 cavalries, 1 musketter, and 4 settlers. Please fight well and die with honor. "No matter what you do, your names will be forever remembered in every babylonian households forever and I shall personally take you into battle in every turn".

Hey kids, this was my first GOTM and I got royally kicked - barbarians in the first goody hut who killed my only warrior and ravaged my city...by the time I got the second one built Persia had 10 - oops.

Surely the point of GOTM is that everyone plays the same map with the same knowledge - ie none. If you play half-way through and then restart from the beginning, you know where all the other civs, resources etc are...that's gotta be cheating. No-one's going to know, but will you be able to live with the shame?

Ah well, now I've got to wait till January for another go...hope it's not Deity next time...

Originally posted by EvilBilly
Hey kids,...

... but I probably was out there conquering the world and the galaxy while you were still in diaper.;)

Evilbilly: what you describe is only cheating if you submit the second game as a first result. The problem is in the deception, not the playing. Actually playing the game again (playing a "shadow" game, meaning one that doesn't qualify for official scoring) might be a worthwhile practice/learning experience. If you lost quickly, what else are you going to do with the rest of the time you had slated for playing this month's GOTM? :)

- Sirian

I've played a few GOTMs now, and had never played diety before. I had read a few strategies on how to win diety, but chose to go with my normal Monarch-level approach. I lasted until about 1300AD thanks to a prolonged Zulu-Persian war in which I was ignored. Once they made peace, my sticks and twigs were no match for their infantry and cavalry. The one thing I learned about diety is that one wrong move can be fatal.

This is my first time reading the spoiler thread, and I have to say that I'm quite disappointed to see that there are people posting the current progress of their GOTMs. This means that they’ve probably read similar progress posted by other players. That seems like cheating to me.

I’m glad I’m not alone. Quoting Sirian’s 12/11 post, “In addition to observing the GOTM rules, I also played within the considerably more restrictive rule set observed by the Realms Beyond community, including the No Spoiler rule, with completing my game (not just "knowing most of the world map") before visiting this thread.”

I have been playing my GOTMs under the impression that everyone was like this. There’s a reason the map starts out completely black. It’s so you have to go discover things about the map on your own. If you’ve read the spoiler, you know that the Persians are to your north, the Zulu are across a sea to the south, there’s two iron sources on the continent, and at least dyes, incense, and gems. This is an advantage that not all players have.

I hope that cracker puts more strict rules in place for GOTM. I don’t have much experience administrating communities, but I bet it would be pretty easy to get a list of readers of a thread and the time that they read. This list, along with the submission times could be used to determine who has been reading spoilers prior to or while playing a game.

I’ll still play GOTMs, but I’ll be less worried that there are 265 (my global ranking is 266) better multiplayer players out there. There’re no spoiler threads to protect you.

Originally posted by betheballdanny
This is my first time reading the spoiler thread, and I have to say that I'm quite disappointed to see that there are people posting the current progress of their GOTMs. This means that they’ve probably read similar progress posted by other players. That seems like cheating to me.

Thank you for letting me know how you feel. I will stop posting/reading this thread immediately. To be perfectly honest (no offend to any other posters here), their posts are 100% useless to me. To the best of my knowledge, my posts are 100% useless to them too. Even if Aeson decide to post detail instruction on how to acquire the two early settlers from the huts, it wouldn't be in any way affect my game; however, it may help newbies who try to beat the Deity level for the first time.

Lastly, if anyone would like to leave a comment for me, please don't do it in this thread because I won't be reading this thread no more. If you like, you could PM me or start another thread with my name in it.:)

PS: note to self -> never to read or post in any future spoiler thread.:)

Moonsinger,

I can't tell if the last two statements are sarcasm, as my scientists have yet to discover emoticon technology. (-:


Anyway. Call me a purist, but if Firaxis intended us to know the map before playing the game, it wouldn't be completely black in the beginning. Or, they'd have a "peek" cheat like in some solitaire games.

Frankly, I'm a little dissappointed that Firaxis doesn't handle the world map like they do in SMAC. In that game, you have your world map, but you don't know where you are north and south until you discover one of the poles. This way, you don't know that you'll run into tundra if you head in one direction.

Though, I do like zachriel's take on how their scientists have been watching the sun (http://www.zachriel.com/gotm12/Exploration.htm) in some of his GOTM recaps.

I'd like to hear what Cracker thinks about pre-reading the spoiler. But, only after he finishes the GOTM. ;)

Sweet! :D On to PMs.

Originally posted by Kuhal
I tried it out and you are right about the timing, but I do better than this with Ur going in at 3150BC and Babylon is 4 turns from producing it's second settler (2 turns till population goes to 3) at 3000BC. I used 3000BC as my comparison point for my 7 or 8 opening sequence comparisons.

So why the second worker? That just wastes shields I would have thought... unless its something about using it to join the city at the perfect time to somehow get some free wheat..hmmm lemme go see...
bbl

The second Worker is helping with improving the land so:
- Babylon won't have to work unimproved tiles
- there is a road to the location of Ur (which is farther out than in your attempt? - my Ur is at the end of the river, the irrigated Wheat being the single overlapping tile)
- by the time Nineveh is founded (several locations are available), there is a road to it, too, AND some Ur tiles have been improved.

So while I start for real 8 turns behind, I will have basically caught up around 2550 BC, with more land improved and still having the extra Worker.

Or, with the two Workers mining around Babylon and irrigatinig for Ur, there is a second line of time investment starting with a Granary in Babylon before the Nineveh Settler is built. This is
riskier but it has the advantage that research goes faster.

Originally posted by Ribannah


The second Worker is helping with improving the land so:
- Babylon won't have to work unimproved tiles
- there is a road to the location of Ur (which is farther out than in your attempt? - my Ur is at the end of the river, the irrigated Wheat being the single overlapping tile)
- by the time Nineveh is founded (several locations are available), there is a road to it, too, AND some Ur tiles have been improved.


I'll take another look with those points in mind. Generally I'm in favour of extra workers to build roads fast, but in this one, with the cow, and wheat and grassland shield available, I set Babylon up solely as a settler factory. Perhaps if I'd let Babylon get to size 6 with a granary before pumping out the settlers, I'd have had a better production base.

I usually want to get settlers built ASAP in the other difficulty levels. Diety may be different since we already know we're way behind... It's just that I still find it hard to believe my settler strategy is the problem. I think my issues are knowing when to switch over to military...which probably comes down to my lack of useful recon...haha

Originally posted by Kuhal

...which probably comes down to my lack of useful recon...haha

Recon is huge. On standard continent maps I always build 3 explore units before getting my first settler out. Since this game was diety with full-strength barbarians my explorers didn't open any huts.

I remember how helpless I used to feel when I sacrificed exploration to build my settler or granary a few turns early. Roll back that blackness as soon as you can!

Originally posted by DaveMcW


Recon is huge. On standard continent maps I always build 3 explore units before getting my first settler out. Since this game was diety with full-strength barbarians my explorers didn't open any huts.

I remember how helpless I used to feel when I sacrificed exploration to build my settler or granary a few turns early. Roll back that blackness as soon as you can!

Yep, a full implentation of explorers can out weigh any advantage of building a settler or worker. Besides the time loss is minimal since your city just becomes more productive anyway, before you build something else.

Originally posted by cracker


Hopefully we will have some events that will hold your interest even if they do not all appear under the name of "diety".



;) No offense to anybody ;) who got the hint of cracker:

:) it's deity not diety ;) altough, playing a difficlut deity game could result in some weight loss :)

Originally posted by Kuhal


I'll take another look with those points in mind. Generally I'm in favour of extra workers to build roads fast, but in this one, with the cow, and wheat and grassland shield available, I set Babylon up solely as a settler factory. Perhaps if I'd let Babylon get to size 6 with a granary before pumping out the settlers, I'd have had a better production base.

I usually want to get settlers built ASAP in the other difficulty levels. Diety may be different since we already know we're way behind... It's just that I still find it hard to believe my settler strategy is the problem. I think my issues are knowing when to switch over to military...which probably comes down to my lack of useful recon...haha

Another factor to consider is how unhappy your first city gets at higher levels. With the inevitable luxury tax needed to keep it from revolting, it's even more vital to have each citizen work an improved square, to make it worth the lost research/gold. After observing the success cracker and meldor had with early improvements in QSC1 (see SG forum), I've started building one worker before, or immediately after, the granary, depending on food bonuses, on Monarch level and even there it helps enormously, especially with non-industrious civs. As it was, by the time I had built a second city to claim the territory around the dyes, my workers had it hooked up and ready to help pacify Babylon. With an industrious civ, I might put off building the worker longer, especially with no food bonus, but here the extra roads and luxuries helped. You can always add workers to your cities later.

Wow, I've played a few GOTM's but never read the spoiler thread until now. I had no doubt that I was a mediocre player, but I am amazed that there is a way to win this one.
First of all, I had bad luck with the huts(1 empty,1 barbarian). I actually kept on a good pace until 1000 B.C.(when I finished my QSC), then I lost all good judgement. After 500 years of building up some more, I lost my northernmost city to Persia when it flipped. It flipped right after I forgot to keep everybody happy for one turn and the city needed entertainment. I, stupidly, wanted my city back and felt it wouldn't have flipped had I payed better attention. Needless to say I was done by 90 AD after giving up 200 years earlier. Hammurrabi the pathetic's score 444. Deity is out of this player's league.

I haven't played a single Civ3 game since the end of August. Needless to say, I'm a bit rusty. What's a better way to get back into the action than with a Deity GOTM?

To me, Deity level G'sOTM are a "Who can conquer pilferman the fastest?" contest. I don't stand a chance...ever. Add to that fact that I haven't played for a good 3.5 months and you've got one quick game on its way.

Honestly, I didn't even look at the game stats (size, level, civ,etc.) when I downloaded the file. I just began playing, hoping for "the best". "The best" came around 200BC in the form of a rampaging hoard of Immortals. By 70BC it was all over. My points maxed out at 400 even, then fell to 394 by the bitter end. The game lasted about 1.25 hours.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am that good. I've already submitted my game, so you don't have to worry about me submitting another game where I'll survive as late as 150AD.

I have a saved game at 1000BC because I know the GOTM police will be hunting me down. Not only that, I'll probably be banned for submitting such a marvelously played game...something the best only dream of.

All right, that's enough. Good to be back playing. Hopefully the next GOTM will be Monarch or Regent. That's my territory.

Adios

I forgot to ask how anyone can survive the Persians? They had colonized the entire contenent by the time I had 5 cities. Maybe I'm just an idiot...

Well, this morning I finished my second attempt at success in this GOTM. The first time around I was conquered in 70 BC by the Persians with a final score of 394, with a max at 400. The second time I was conquered in 110BC by the Persians with a final score of 400, with a max at 407.

I've learned how to analyze many types of data in my probablity and statistics class, but none of that can beat plain common sense. Common sense reveals that I can't do well in this game on Deity (not Diety). On the plus side, at least I'm horribly consistent.

(By the way, I submitted my first game, not the second...or third...or fourth)

Maybe I should read up on how to win on this difficulty level.

Well, I really showed the Persians what's what. I caved so fast they didn't even have time to produce a single Immortal. Ha! In your face, Xerxes!

The details aren't illuminating enough to waste much bandwidth. Short form: a warrior on his way north boggled at the stack of 6 warriors and 5 spearman the Persians were sending south towards his capital. He began to wonder how his compatriot exploring the east was getting on, but didn't have much time to delve into that thought as the aforementioned Persian stack made short work of the single spearman in each of the two cities that comprised his homeland.

I quickly exited the game, slightly abashed, but I'm pretty sure my final score was in negative territory. :) I need a GOTM with training wheels.

Well I finally started to fall behind in techs around the year 1300AD at combustion, 2nd place in techs now. All the AI are still left except the Persians. I'm hoping that I won't have to settle for a diplomatic win this time around but the next 40 or so turns will dictate hoe the ending plays out. Some how this seemed easier than the last deity game but I think our start position was much better this time.

MODERATOR ACTION:
Redtopjay, your posts on this subject are confrontational, misleading and misinformed. Replaying and reloading is clearly stated as not being allowed in the rules and your comments indicate some contempt for this general concept. Your submission for this GOTM14 will be excluded from the scoring results and pending further conduct review your global ranking status will be withheld.

Consider this your one warning for conduct issues that conflict with expected behavior of all players as well as the spirit and intent of participating in this forum. - cracker

Originally posted by ainwood
You may not be aware, but this competition has been somewhat plagued by people cheating. One common thing is replaying the game after having discovered a few key attributes from the map (eg. where the AI is, where the resources / luxuries are).

Will somebody please read the rules!

It is not cheating to play the GOTM over and over and over again and again and then submit the best score at the end of the month.

The rules do not state "you can only load 'Civ3GOTMxx.sav' once per month" or that you can not "restart" the game once you started! The rules do state that you can not load a "saved" game. A saved game is one which you the player saved during a game.

There should be a section for the unwritten rules, which should include the unwritten rules about reading spoilers. Maybe you should band players who post maps & the locations of resources/luxuries. Are those players who post spoilers before the end of the month cheaters?

If you don't want gamers to play the GOTM more than once a month then you should change the rules. If you don't want gamers to read the spoilers before submitting a game then this web site should keep a list of all those who enter a spoiler forum and not allow their games to be submitted on/after the date they enter a spoiler forum, and change the rules.

Mabe there should be a paragraph in the rules describing the spirit of the GOTM. Or, maybe the losers should just get a life or play Age of Empires, LOL.

I got Replaceable Parts in 900 AD, before China or India discovered Electricity. After building enough infantry to hold my Japanese cities I declared war on China and got an MPP with India.

I spent the next 100 years building artillery while China and India dueled with cavalry. India did get 3 cities, but by 1250 AD I had all the rest of China's cities on the continent.

Then I switched alliances and began beating on India. They have infantry so I am losing lots of cavalry, but with factories + hoover in Monarchy I can afford it. When I came within 100 tiles of domination I began abandoning cities. I want to win by conquest, maybe if I have enough time I will milk it before I finish.

Originally posted by RedTopJay
Will somebody please read the rules!

It is not cheating to play the GOTM over and over and over again and again and then submit the best score at the end of the month.

The rules do not state "you can only load 'Civ3GOTMxx.sav' once per month" or that you can not "restart" the game once you started! The rules do state that you can not load a "saved" game. A saved game is one which you the player saved during a game.

There should be a section for the unwritten rules, which should include the unwritten rules about reading spoilers. Maybe you should band players who post maps & the locations of resources/luxuries. Are those players who post spoilers before the end of the month cheaters?

If you don't want gamers to play the GOTM more than once a month then you should change the rules. If you don't want gamers to read the spoilers before submitting a game then this web site should keep a list of all those who enter a spoiler forum and not allow their games to be submitted on/after the date they enter a spoiler forum, and change the rules.

I read the rules. It says, "Most importantly, it is not allowed to reload. Only when the game crashes or you accidentally press the wrong button you may continue from an autosave, but otherwise never."

To me this means you can't load a save that you have already played unless it crashes or you press the wrong button.

As for the part about the spoilers, it says the rule at the beginning of the first post. If you don't believe me on any of this stuff, before you post again, calm down and reread the rules.

Moderator Action:
Da greatest, you are exactly correct i your reading of the clear presentation of this main rule. I have addressed this conduct issue in a fairly distinct manner and it is up to the all off us to move on in the intended spirit of what this discussion forum should be. Further comments on the behavior that RedTopJay demonstrated on at least three separate occasion should be unnecessary. -- PM me if you have extra inputs on this conduct issue - cracker

People see what they want to see, regardless the clarity to everyone else. What a shame....


Anyway, I've played my third game (second GOTM restart) and I'm still pathetic. I won't give you the gory details, but rest assured that I can't make it into the year's of our Lord. I'm just that bad at Deity. I give up. Back to Monarch for me.

They are going down... :scan: :)

Continuing from my previous post:

As I mentioned in my last post, I had changed to Republic after a terrible ancient war against Persia, and needed to build more military when the Zulu-Persia war came to an unexpected early end and Xerxes still being furious with me.

I had been able to set up some lucrative deals with the other civs (especially the Zulu) so I quickly upgraded some horsemen to Knights to get an at least average army compared with Persia, when all of a sudden the Zulus decided that they could no longer stand the brief period of world peace and launched a sneak attack at... The Persians :cool:

This ended my fears of a possible attack by Persia on me and gave me the chance to grab a tech lead by building universities in all my major cities. It didn't really work out that way as the Asians (especially Gandhi) had other plans and kept up with me easily, this having the very bad situation that the AI wonder cascade ended with Newton's university (I had it on 3 turns :( ) and leaving me with no medieval or ancient wonder. To make matters worse, both the Observatory and Newton's University went to the same civ, Zululand.

At the brink of the Industrial age the Zulu/Persian war ended again with Shaka managing to capture a Persian polar city with 3 Impies and a swordsman, and I got nervous again, since my Knights were outdated now (no mililtary tradition yet) and I started having nightmares about SoD's of Persian Riflemen entering Babylonian territory. But the danger came from the other side as I noticed a sole Zulu swordsman making his way to the Babylonian city of Zariqum, an obvious omen of an upcoming war.

The swordsman attacked and lost to my drafted rifleman, but this new war and new enemy gave me a major headache as I had invested excactly 0 in my navy, and the Zulu obviously had been doing exactly the opposite so I had to spend all my accumulated gold (nearly 5000(!) gold )to buy Ironclads (traded coal with India) and protect my Dyes at the southern tip of the continent. Losing those would mean broken treaties with the other continents thus no more coal thus no more Ironclads.
I involved Persia and the Asians in the war in exchange for a luxury and after a tiresome war leaving me almost bankrupt peace was signed again, with me as the favoured third party as the Persian and Zulu crippled their navy at eachothers hands and me having conquered two very useful cities (the southern small island city, and the norhtern formerly Persian city the Zulus had captured. The capturing of this city meant an extremely useful strategic situation for me as this meant the Persian empire was now split in half by Babylonian cities.

The pinnacle of Babylonian warfare arrived with the advent of the mighty artillery, and production (hydro-powered after Hoover) was shifted to military units in most of the core cities to finally overthrow the Persian empire, the memory of dying swordsmen near Persepolis still fresh in my mind. Unfortunately the Persians managed to acquire Replaceable parts too (from that fool Gandhi :mad: ) and they had lots of rubber, so I had to deal with their infantries.
The first shot of many was fired when for the thousandst time they tried to walk through my territory with their infantry, and I immediately bought the whole world in against Persia, giving me a (for me) unique situation of one civ being furious at me and all others gracious. Warfare against Persia was slow but steady, and after I had destoyed their connections to rubber their cities rapidly fell against my cavalries and tanks, a newcomer to the war. Most enjoyable moment came when my tanks advanced through the cities of Persepolis, supported by rains of artillery shells from 50+ artilleries parked in a nearby mountain. :D

After Persia was destroyed the AI had gone in self-destruct modus by going into Communist government and warring among themselves. I focused totally on science now, a new Palace granted by Naboplasser helping a lot and waited untill the time arrived for the BSS (Babylonian spaceship) Kemal to take to the stars. Due to the communist governments AI economies were totally destroyed (and my gold resereves were almost empty). When the ship took off they had just managed to get to the Modern Age, mainly because of cheap deals I had to offer them because of me being low on funds.

Looking back at this game, the most critical point in the game was obviously Xerxes signing peace with me after the swordsen disaster near Persepolis, even though he had just destroyed most of my armies. Had he refused (like any human should have done), he would have conquered me with ease. I guess this is a pretty good example of the one thing the human still has an advantage in on deity, namely being able to strategically read situations, something which the AI obviously isn't very good at. :)

Kemal

Lost to Persia in 330 BC with 242 pts to their 13,212 pts. Persia had 11 cities when I built my 2nd!

Thanks

Greg

Well, that was certainly interesting. This was my first Deity game and first GOTM.

I think I did pretty good considering I had no idea they could mass troops like that!!! Here's what happened to me.

Started Babylon right were my guys started. Got a spearman ready to scout just at the same time the borders increase. So I send him up north to the goody hut. The friendlies there gave me a map of the area and that revealed another goody hut up to the northwest of where I was. The guys with the stone axes in the camp didn't like the looks of my pointy stick so they promptly beat the crap out of my guy.

I built Ur NE from Babylon directly south of the horses and two squares away from the gems. I was planning to settle a city up to the nw were the barbarians were because I saw a river up there but the same turn my settler was built I saw a nice green border pop up in the same spot. So I went east across the mountains and settled Ninevah at the spot touching one coast and between hills. Nothing special in the area but it looked pretty good anyways. Next city was made NE of that right next to gold and two squares away from the wheat. I was planning to build a temple and expand to get the wheat but those Persian guys built a city above the wheat just after that.

I thought "Man, this island must be small. We're probably racing to the east coast." Totally didn't know they had actually settled like 100 cities.

The next city I made was NW of Babylon to the left of the game. Although I usually try not to overlap cities with the capital, I didn't think I would last long enough for it to matter.
About this time I think I had researched Mysticism and was like halfway or so through Polytheism. Traded a bunch of money to the Persians for Warrior Code and something else I think. Then they sent a silly spearman over to the city next to the gold and said "Give me your map and all your gold." I thought about it. I SHOULD have just given it to them, but OHHHH no, not me! Their attitude was cautious I think and I didn't want to give them my map (Which is weird cause I didn't even have mapmaking) because I still had some territory to conquer that I wasn't sure they had been to.

So they declared war and a bunch of spearman and archers chased one of my workers for a couple of turns. He was too blocked off from the city and was out of the zone building a road to a new site I planned to settle and it was kinda funny but I had to disband him so they wouldn't catch him.

Then the odd thing. (Well, I thought it was odd) I had 2 spearman and 2 bowman in the gold city when their giant horde of horseman, archers and warriors started pounding at the gates.. er huts. And it went on for a like 3 or 4 turns and I was whipping out bowman and sending guards from other cities to try to hold and when they finally let my diplomat through to talk peace, the Persians agreed and gave me 80 gold!!! I thought that was really odd, since the next turn I was sure to lose that city. This was about 900 BC or so.

Then I met the Zulus and traded communications for three (I think it was 3) techs. Settled a city at the SW of Babylon at the very tip so I could claim all the dyes and settled another city to the far east next to the incense.

I had good roads and all my cities were becoming productive especially since I had 3 luxuries. I finished researching polytheism and monarchy and traded them for everything in the ancient times except for Mapmaking (which I was working on), The Republic and Construction.

I'm not sure of the time here but I sent a settler a bowman and a spearman up to the NE of the gold city where I saw some iron that the persians hadn't claimed. Of course they had cities on both sides and it would be a nasty squeeze but I decided I HAD to have the iron. They didn't seem to like that I did that and immediately attacked razing/taking all my cities except for Babylon, the city West of Babylon (Ellipi) next to the game and the city next to the dye. I had to give up Ellipi when I signed a peace treaty but I knew it was over anyway.

Not too long after that the Zulu and Persians had an extremely short war and the Persians started massing around my borders. I disbanded the dye city and decided to just make a stand in Babylon. The attacked and were repelled for a few turns and I managed to build the Heroic Epic! :rolleyes: due to a leader being born but unable to build an army. Was finally killed in 330 AD with a score of 368.

I can't believe they can pump out units like that! It must only take them one turn in a city of 1 pop to build their best unit. That was rough.

da_greatest, I am glad you agree with me. You can not reload! I am not a moderator but that is how I read the rules, NO RELOADING.

Originally posted by DaveMcW
When I came within 100 tiles of domination I began abandoning cities. I want to win by conquest, maybe if I have enough time I will milk it before I finish.

Does the tool needed to tell when you are close to domination come with the game?

I have never been able to work it out other than reloading. usually if I win by domination it's a disappointment because I was going for a spaceship or something. I have never won by spaceship or conquest...lol

Originally posted by RedTopJay
da_greatest, I am glad you agree with me. You can not reload! I am not a moderator but that is how I read the rules, NO RELOADING.

It's would be easiest to take into account the spirit of the rule(s) rather than quibble about semantics.

It's simple really, and makes alot of sense... No prior knowledge when playing the game other than what is given to us in the GOTM details page.

Replaying the game from any point means one potentially has prior knowledge. So would reading a spoiler thread before your game is far enough through to make no difference....

When I have completed my game, I often go back to a previous save to see what could have happened, but my original timeline is the only one submitted. In this GOTM I retired as the writing was on the wall well and truly. Not sure if I can retire or if I have to wait until they finish me off...seems that I'll get more points by retiring so it's a valid tactical decision :)

Anyhow, just submit your first game however it ended up. Then you're in the same boat as 95% of the rest of us...dead in BC :)

Cheers

I use a program called Mapstat to analyze the saved game for domination stats. You can get it in the CFC downloads section, it's one of the few external tools allowed in the GOTM.

I was going to post Friday but out of the bloom the site didn't work for me. Since i lost the game last night i'm too dissapointed to post it so i'll tell you the short version.

I started an all against zulu war and took the southernmost half of their island. I joined the chinese and took the Persians alongside in an all against the Japanese war (Japan was top dog but third in tech). Unfortunately china made peace in 5 turns or so. I started an invasion of a Japanese 3 city island way north of the Zulu continent.

I was so behind in tech. My attack units were Infantry. His defense was also Infantry ... only, MECHANIZED. Don't ask me how I took the island but the 80 arty helped a lot.

I made Peace with Japan and got in the Modern age. I put a spy in China and they already had 9 parts of the ship. Persia had 6. I had trading opportunities with Persia and Japan if i could steal Chinese tech. It took me 5 turns to prepare for a last chance attack on Beijing. Postponed all espionage missions. City investigation revealed 12 MI so the 8 transport fleet got delayed 2 more turns. Next turn after I set sail for China, they launched ...

Loss in early 18th century. My score is crap but given the circumstances i think i'm top 50.

Edit: I was considering playing the game further after the finish but gave up. Instead I tryed to handle some spying and got 3 techs for the one i stole. Some more like that and i would have been in tech parity...

Well I can tell I won't be able to finish the game. I made it up to 820AD, but with the holidays coming up I would have the time to finish.

I did better then some for the fact that I am still alive, and survived a war with Persia losing no cities. However, I suspect if I play it out I will lose. I am deep in the whole, and only have 6 cities.

Arrrr, I made it into the top 10 with my defeat the last time we played a Deity game, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen this time. My babs are still alive, but it looks like I got attacked about 5 turns before I was ready... my knockout punch was on the production line, and whammo, persians everywhere taking my inadequately defended cities. I got nothing but barbarians from the huts, which didn't help. I made 2 mistakes which cost me the chance to win. 1st, I waited too long to palace jump out of Babylon- razing your own most productive city can slow you down I guess. And I failed to get my free scientific tech before the AI already had researched it, so I got no big benefit out of it. I will say I have at least fielded a couple knights, so it's not a total wash, but jiminy christmas, this was a tough one.

Originally posted by LKendter
Well I can tell I won't be able to finish the game. I made it up to 820AD, but with the holidays coming up I would have the time to finish.
Same here. :ack:
I am on the brink of wiping the Persians and starting to conquer the Zulus. I even was able to get back into the tech race, mainly by constantly trading my luxuries, bringing them into a war and then later after I made peace entering an alliance again. :yeah:

The AI was really helpful, until the point they decided to help Persia with money and more importantly saltpeter. This way I kept warring and so being only able to play like 100 years max per day. At this rate and with me wanting to conquer the world, there is no chance I can reach that goal in time. :cry:

I have not yet built any library. I´m still bying all the tech I want, but with the dawn of the industrial era, this is getting ever more expensive. So besides keeping up with colonizing the rest of my continent, taking out the last 2 Persian cities, starting the war against Zulus and building up my military even more, I would also have to start building the science and more or less all the other infrastructure, too. Except the military one. And this is impossible with Christmas, New Year and my birthday knocking on the doors. :mischief:

I surely thought I´d be able to manage it, I even started on the first week after release, almost the earliest start ever. Too bad, I´d really would´ve liked to finish this one.
:D

With Christmas coming up I decided to just finish the game.

I tried my skills with this GOTM 14 and I'm getting my ass kicked by Persians 110AD. I didn't manage to get any support from the Zulu and that´was ****ty. I can't even imagine how DaveMcW have beaten everyone :D good for ya man! Maybe I learn to play this after few months. (I have played only 1 month, never before any civs)

Dead! unbelievable.... Like a lot of folks here, my first game on deity ever, and I remember why i like monarch! Managed to last until 1720AD with 3 cities left, lost in the space race, although the Chinese had wiped out everyone but me and the persians before they built their dream machine. we were just stuck on our little island waiting for the inevitable.
turning point for me was those immortals. Thought i was doing good when i hooked up my iron. I had 10 cities, and took 15 swords/15 bowmen/10horse north towards persepolis. hadn't seen a single immortal before then, all of a sudden soon as I take my first city, up pops a stack of 30+ immortals next to my iron. sneaky punk took my iron and let me sit there and suffer for a thousand years. When i thought i was going to get it back on a culture flip, in one single turn, the persians, zulu and chinese all declare war on me, no alliances, they just all decide to stop me buzzing around in my little corner of the world. Thanks fellas! I never got anywhere after that and just sat around in my capital with the last 30 units I had waiting for the inevitable that never came. :mad:

hey cracker, how 'bout a game on chieftan to kick off the new year, make us rookies feel good??:goodjob:

Explain this someone please. Every computer player somehow made a settler before 3800 BC and had a 2nd city up by then.

I tested and tested ways to do this and found the soonest I could make a settler was 3200 BC, and by this time the computer players each had 3 cities.

Once I get 3 cities I can speed up production of settlers and start to catch up some what, but I am always behind in cities and I never out produce the computers magical ways. :rolleyes:

At the deity level, the AI starts off with more than one settler, two, I think.

The AI starts with 1 extra settler, 2 extra workers, and 12 military units. They also only need 12 food to grow (when you need 20), and 18 shields to build a settler (when you need 30), because they have a 40% reduction in food required and shield costs.

Ok, thanks for the clarification, Bamspeedy.

Given all their advantages, it is surprising how slow the AI operates. ;)

Well, an utterly amazing 594 pts in 270AD. Which given I fully expected to be toast long before that counts as a kind-of success :crazyeye:

Actually made it up to about 10 cities or so, all wedged in along the coast on the South of my/Persia's island. Even managed to CF a Persia city at one point, although the ensuing war had them take it back pretty fast.

Had I been determined to survive as long as possible I could probably have crawled into the 300s - but the babs decided on a glorious last stand in babylon instead. We'd just discovered Monarchy too, wonder if we had time for a coronation before we all got wiped?

It looked like the persians had cavalry by the time they wiped us - I don't know, we were still using sharp pointy sticks mostly, so it's hard for us backward Babs to tell really. But they sure had some fast horses.

At least after Feb (?Mar?) I won't be able to play GOTM, which will save any further embarrassment :)

Not much to tell... my first game on Deity and I just recently won my first Monarch game ever, so I wasnt expecting miracles. Up to three times the Persians declared war on me... the first time I whooped their asses out my borders, thought I could do worse at that time... Build up to 8 or 10 cities and they declared war again.... I lost a city and another one when I sued for peace... Few turns later the bastards declared war again... rediculous.... they had immortals and I had to watch falling my cities one by one till I had none. A terrible defeat somewhere in the 300's AD with only 440 points.

-Dimy

Wow, that was fun! My first deity game and I got completely annihilated in 210 AD, with a pathetic score of 346 points. :cry:

It's time to go back to Monarch... :cry:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/tf_gotm14a.jpg

How can anyone stop those immortals?

I agree, the immortals are tough customers. :) There are only two general pathways to success on Deity. One is the military route, to gather a Stack of Doom and use it wisely vs the largely inept but well supplied AI (artfully get in and out of wars as it suits your goals, pitting the AI's one vs the other -- VERY tough to do in this situation, with only one AI on the landmass). The other is the builder route: rapid expansion, effective building, and managing to stay OUT of wars at least long enough to catch up to the roaring AI bonus starts on Deity. There are some things you can do in the builder approach to make yourself a less appealing target, although in this situation with just one other AI on your landmass, you're not going to be able to avoid war all game. You need to be able to delay or hold off the AI, and inflict enough return hurt, to get them to talk to you and make peace within five or six turns. Of course, they need another target at that point or they may just reneg and come right back at you, so another option may be to make alliances and ride out twenty turns of war, then exit and let the AI's beat on each other.

One piece of advice for sure: if you're using city governors instead of managing your own cities, you're not likely to play with enough efficiency to catch up vs the AI. On Deity, they start with two settlers and a ton of free units, get a ton of free unit maintenance (units not costing them any support), and they get the synnergy of food and shield and research bonuses, combining to give them a sprawling empire very very quickly. What the AI can't do is manage corruption well, nor coordinate its attacks effectively. All it can do is run over you with superior numbers. You have to outplay the AI by a wide margin, however, to overcome all these disadvantages. And if you are using the city governor, or any other form of automation, then in each area of automation you are playing exactly like the AI, instead of better than the AI, since the automation is the same mechanism the AI is using. You've got to improve on that performance to compete reliably at Deity.


- Sirian

Sirian, You are volunteered to run the Deity Masterclasses :)

I started the game with a dense build strategy which became unravelled when around 900BC the iron situation revealed itself :( .

I then spent time on plan B which was expand East, Walls and Horses.

I have attached a small picture of my core cities at 250BC after I had almost caught up Persia in cities (about 13 of mine to their 16) and at the time Akkad flipped (I lost 5 cities this way during this game). This flip knocked the wind out of my sails and I never recovered. I was already too far behind tech wise and Persia would soon have Knights.

Persia put up with my presence on THEIR continent for a while as I attempted to trade with everyone and keep a low profile. The other civs never did come to my rescue and Persia streaked ahead tech wise.

I survived until 1400 when I was forcefuly evicted from the game in 4 turns [punch]

While in the process of being wiped out I did have a few moments to smile.

In the previous turn I saw my knights and bowmen make heroic stands. Several tanks were injured with two being red lined!! Did I mention I was several eras behind :cry:

In an attempt to quickly end my suffering the AI then used a redlined tank to attack a bowman and failed thus triggering a useless Golden Age.

I just have to provide a record of this unit just before he went to meet his maker.

A spearman defeating an elite modern armour, mabe not but good enough for me.

Just finished the game. Didn't get off on a good start. First hut barbs and the second empty (what else is new on a deity game) third finally a tech. Contacted the Persians very early and they had already a 3 tech lead. Seing the great starting locatian (extra food and two squares whith extra shields) I started off making my city a settler production house. If my calculations are correct you will be able to build a settle every 7 turnes. So researched pottery and after that iron working to find out where the iron was located (only way to stop the immortals is to grab all the iron tiles). Build warriors and pre-build barracks to change into granary later and started to turn out settlers after that.

I just beat Persia in 1275 BC to the (what I though) only iron on the continent in the east. Researched warrior code and then started to research for writing so I would be able to make pacts. So far so good. Was turning out settlers every 7 turns while all my other cities build barracks and bowmen. So focussed on getting a lot of bowmen (cheap and effective) that I totally forgot to make warriors to be upgraded to swordmen lol.

Persia and I had almost divided the continent when he declared war on me around 650 BC triggering my golden age. Bribed the Zulu to declare war on Persia (that should keep them busy) and attacked a few turnes later with 20 bowmen. Took his first city with only losing 4 bowmen. With the golden age now active I now produce about 4 bowmen every turn and took another 5 cities before I saw the first immortals (seems Persia hooked up to iron at last, why they didn't go for iron earlier really baffles me because the would have whiped me off the face off the earth) and sued for peace taking all his money and two techs. Its now around 10 AD and I am way behind in tech (about 7 or 8 techs, argh).

Started to build city improvements (libs and univ) and maxed my research to catch up in vital techs like gunpowder. Around 1100 AD the Zulu's declared war on me and I let persia declare war on the Zulu. Was a bit overextended as I had neglected to build a strong defence (al energy was focussed on building city improvements). Managed to get out unscaved as the AI attacks poorly in small numbers (which gave me enough headache anyway, large attack would have surely cost me a few cities). Sued for peace as early as possible and let the Zulu and Persians fight it out. That is ..... until I discovered that I had no coal (argh). The only source on the continent was within the border of Persia. Second closest was on an Zulu island just south west of me so declared war on the Zulu asked Japan to join in (heh heh) and captured the island and with the coal secured sued for peace.

The Zulu were way ahead in techs to everybody and started to build spaceship components around 1740 AD or so. To stop him I needed to distroy his space ship so started to build tanks in every city and researched for modern armor (was researching computers then). Upgraded al my 60+ tanks to mordern armor and started to fill my transports. Since Zulu where totaly commited to space race they didn't research ecology and synthetic fibers. A mistake the where going to pay for (heh heh). I landed witch 7 transports containing 20 mech inf and 46 modern armor. Asked India to declare war on him so the Zulu cities on the other continent (shared with India) would be busy fighting its own war. I could now take on the Zulu on his home ground. Since all of his cities had airports after caputing the first I could now fly in reinforcments. Flew in al the mech inf I could spare to prevent flips and all the produced modern armors. He didn't stand a chance. Took the whole continent in just a few turns. Flew all the armor back and then did the same to the remaining Persian cities. Its now around 1904 AD and the Indians have a big lead in the space race (5 components build and building 4 more). I was convinced I would lose the spece race but tried to take over India anyway.

Started to prebuild for space ship components (the Indians where about to build there 8th component when I started to researching the necessary remaining techs (palace and ICBM's are great pre-builds for this). The Indians, now fully pocessing the other continents did the same but it seems like the AI doesn't pre-build. Whenever I researched a tech could build the components in 2 or 3 turns after that. In 1955 he build 9 components but not researched the laser yet (which I would have in 2 turns). In 1958 I was one turn away from completing my spaceship (a city pre-building an ICBM was exchanged to the party lounge). When he found out he was going to lose the space race he declared war on me. To late; only 1 turn later my spaceship was off giving me a score just under 4K.

Talking about a close finish :)

Some tips for those who want to improve there Deity game:
- when in war always make a pact with other civs so that youre opponent is fight on more then one front. The more the merrier
- pre-build cheap units like warrriors to upgrade to swordmen (or in this case bowmen) to create an effective army fast). I forgot this time but it still is a good tactic)
- grab as many land as possible in the early stages of the game, dont build any city improvements except for granary (need only one or two) and maybe barracks in strong production cities
- make settler building cities and military building cities
- pre-build city improvements like barracks to switch into granary to keep in pace with tech to get a maximam start and effect
- dont focus too much on wonders in a deity game these are almost always earlier build by other civs as they can build it with 60% of the effort you have to put into it
-read all the articles on this site (always good advice ;) )

Happy civing and happy new-year, MPF

Originally posted by MPF
- make settler building cities and military building cities
This is so important! Give your cities a granary or barracks depending on their specialty and pump out units until your first war starts. This is probably the single biggest factor in victory/defeat on this map.

well, finally finished it! my first deity game that i have played thru to the end. i have tried a couple of times, and after realizing how far behind i was, would go back to easier difficulty.
when i started, sent out couple of warriors to explore and found nothing but barbs in the huts!:( ran into persia pretty quickly and their numerous cities. i decided to research warrior code and get bowman straight away. by the time i found out i was on an island with one other opponent, i had warrior code and then turned my luxury slider up. built a city directly to the west to get the luxury item there and then one to the nw to get the diamonds. i mined every square my citizens were working, and after the barracks were built, started pumping out bowman. around 1700bc, i sent out two separate stacks to attack. persia already had a city covering the wheat and floodplains for quite a while. i sent a stack of six against it and was unable to take it. the golden age started and i was getting 1 additional bowman almost every turn. the other bowman stack i sent along to western shore and they took 3 cities and the persian city on the floodplains eventually fell too. i sued for peace, so i could regroup and heal. they gave me only 1 stinking tech!! i shouldn't complain, i hadn't been researching at all, so anything was actually good. did this several times, forgetting to declare war beforehand, and eventually took out the persians around 500bc.
gained 8 cities, pyramids and a great leader from it all. checked around and found out everyone else was 1 or 2 techs away from the middle ages or was already there. i only had around a handful of techs. bought literature from the zulu and built the great library and started pumping out settlers to fill MY island. didn't quite get that done. india settled one city and zulu had 3. i was content with filling the rest of the island. the zulu later atacked me with 1 swordsman(guess they wanted to expand and were expecting me to give in). needless to say, i took their 3 cities and controlled the island, except for an india city sitting on the southern tip. later on in the middle ages i was attacked by the zulu again and later the chinese. funny thing is they both spent time sailing all the way around the island to the upper east side, where there is a lagoon surrounded by mountains, to attack:confused: . this was on two separate occasions. i figured it was because there was a resource there i didn't know about(think it end up being some rubber there). towards the end of the middle ages i got behing tech wise and then while researching steam power i saw destroyers and later battleships floating by. i got quite worried. started buying techs from the japanese. the japanese were under heavy attack by the chinese(who was the biggest nation on the world) and i figured they could use some cash to buy troops and it gave me a friend, because they became gracious with me. it went on very slowly, coming under atack, but never losing a city!! eventually the chinese, which controlled 90% of their island, built a spaceship and left me behind:( better luck next time. good job to all those people who won!:goodjob:

WTF!!! Lost culturally to the Indians in the 1810!! So unexpected. My invading armies of 70+ arties, 30+ mech inf, 20 tanks were just offshore of Indian continent to destroy Delhi as their spaceship progress is at 7(2)/10. All geared up for the big and final battle and this happens!! Accompanied by a pathetic score, my first defeat in GOTM :( Anyway there may... just may be a chance to be the highest scoring loser :)

After a long break, im back on my game. Previously I had decided to only wage a small war with my knights, and I managed to burn a couple persian cities. Waited for calvary to make my big offensive, all the while building catapults to upgrade to artillery. With a stack of 50 artillery (70 now) and alot of calvary, I was able to burn a persian city every couple of turns. I have never used artillery before, and they work really well if you have enough of them. The year is now 1758 and Persia is down to 6 cities now. It looks like my dream might yet come true of owning my own Island. Just hope china or zulu dont build a spaceship first. There is no way I can win this game, I am way to far behind in techs and china is just too big.

Long time civ and civ II player, and never had trouble whipping the top level of the "AI".

Now I seem to be stuck on Regent or Monarch levels. The Diety level for this GOTM beat up on me hard...

The persians out expanded and out built me. Instead of building up, based on starting position I tried to start building up some barracks so I could turn out vets. However about 15 turns before I would be ready he declared war and attacked me.

I had 9 cities going to his 8 when he attacked, but his horsemen overran my puny warriors. I had just bought Iron Working off him, and had 4 Swordsmen in production with all of my other cities finishing up barracks.

I was also hopelessly behind in the tech race. He had to be 7-8 techs ahead of me at least. Am I missing something, or does almost every tech take 40 turns regardless of where you set your science rate?

Not much else to say. I can only assume I'm missing some key early startup strategy.

Any suggestions?

PattonTwo

It is done. Somewhere in the 16th century AD, the Babylon spaceship was the first to leave the planet for Alpha Centauri. :)

I had to overcome many obstacles in this game.
My flood plain cities kept generating disease in the early game. On the very turn I attacked Persia and took their Iron, they gained contact with the rest of the world and traded for another source. And why couldn't they have built the Pyramids for me, instead of that useless Oracle? Also, I had no luck whatsoever with Great Leaders (I really wanted that Trading Company :scan: ).
The turn I invaded Zululand, from out of the blue they suddenly had a zillion of Infantry all over the place.
When they were finally destroyed in 1410 AD and I turned Democracy, hoping for a peaceful final stretch with only China and India left, the Chinese sneak-attacked so I had to take 4 of their cities, too. Oh well. The highlight of that war was when a regular Chinese Swordsman attacked my size-7-city-on-a-hill-garrisoned army of 4 Modern Armor and almost sliced it to pieces. :eek:

Timeline

1. Preparations

4000 BC Babylon founded on the starting tile. (Later I experimented some with founding on the forest at the ocean, which was optimal from a tile-usage point of view, but in the game I wanted my capital productive. Also, staying north of the river means less obstacles for outgoing Settlers.)
While Babylon produces a Warrior (3750 BC), a Worker (3600 BC -often a good investment! - and a Settler (3150 BC), we start on a 40-turn research program for Iron Working.
3050 BC Ur founded along the river (two overlapping tiles). With two Workers doing their thing, the path was already prepared, while Babylon's output is growing at the same time. So while Ur starts on a Warrior (2800 BC), our capital will soon make another Settler (2700 BC). The workers are hurrying to extend the road towards the flood plains.
2550 BC The second Settler founds Nineveh just across the Great Flooding River (GFR), claiming four wheats. Babylon is making a third Worker (2510 BC) in preparation for a growth spurt. Our treasury is filling nicely (over $200 in 2430 BC).
2470 BC We meet Persia. They have 6 cities and a lead of 4 techs, but not yet Iron Working. This is terrible news, since they are known to attack the moment they run out of free land. Our primary goal will now be to continue following the GFR and claiming as many mountains as we can, hoping to secure any Iron sources. Meanwhile, with Ur's Settler due in 2390 BC, Babylon will train some very necessary Spearmen (2230 BC and 2070 BC). Nineveh will do what it's there for (grow fast) and produce another Worker (2310 BC), then start on a Temple.
2230 BC Ur's Settler founds Ashur following the GFR to the NW, momentarily fixing our border with Persia and thereby preventing Persian expansion towards our core. Ur is now building a Temple to get the local Gems connected.
2150 BC Our scientists discover the secret of Iron Working. Of course by now Persia already has knowledge of this advanced tech along with everything else. At this point, Persia has a score of 300 points, Babylon is hanging on at 173. This is a key moment for strategic decisions. We decide on slowing down general research by simply researching cheap what Persia (and others?) already have, instead of selecting trade opportunities. With a good treasury and few expenses, research is set at maximum. The available luxuries are connected and garrisons built to allow our cities to grow some and maintain a good research pace.
1950 BC We discover Pottery.
1830 BC Ellipi is founded on a Dyes source by a Settler from Babylon, thereby securing one luxury. With Ur's borders about to expand and include the Gems, Babylon can now take the time to build a Granary while Ur and Nineveh lose weight by producing the next Settlers. We can't slow down the settler production or Persia will claim the rest of the GFR. Ashur (border town) will soon complete a Temple, Ellipi starts on Warriors.
1725 BC We know Warrior Code and guess what, our empire can now produce its unique unit: the Bowman! :) Has to wait a bit though because we want those guys to start out as veterans, they'll be needed fully trained 'n ready soon enough. Ashur has started on a Worker as we see an open spot left by Persia near the NW shore. The Worker will prepare a road.
1575 BC The Wheel is ours and a Horse source pops up within Babylon's borders. Things are looking up! If only we could get at that Iron we've spotted at the very end of the Great Flooding River.
1525 BC With Settlers from Ur and Nineveh on their way and the Granary finished in Babylon, we hear amazing news: some faraway civ called Japan has completed the Pyramids.
1500 BC We finally pop that hut as we intend to create a city nearby and guess what: Barbarians. Meanwhile, filth coming from the direction of Susa poisons the GFR and people get ill. Ashur loses 2 pop. :( Luckily they get many children and will recover soon. Akkad is founded further along the GFR. We are not falling further behind Persia, it seems that perhaps our research strategy is paying off: Persia 532, Babylon 307. Persia has 13 cities though, one of them hopelessly placed in the small western desert (skipping fertile ground along the river). They have only one luxury (Gems) and so far no Iron.
1450 BC While Babylon completes its first Settler after the Granary, to be followed by a Temple, we learn Masonry.
1400 BC Eridu is founded, claiming the one Iron source we found in the mountains along the GFR. Uruk is started on the shore west of Babylon. If this is the only Iron source in our part of the world, we are in business! Time for strategic decisions again. The plans are as follows: Babylon and Ur will produce Barracks and then first veteran Bowmen for defence. No good going to war if you can't survive the counter-punch. Some Horsemen will be needed to explore the world in search for possible additional Iron sources. And we will try to claim all the Incense that we've spotted in the east, to hamper Persian growth.
1350 BC Persepolis completes The Oracle. This makes the so uppety that they demand tribute next turn. We still have plenty of money so we pay the $34. But denying them luxuries becomes even more important. A tribe called China finishes the Great Wall, we have no idea what a wall is. :lol: Three turns later they also complete the Colossus. They must be doing real well, wherever they are.
1325 BC Mysticism is no longer a secret to Babylon.
While Nineveh is finishing another Settler, a Worker is roading the Horses in two turns.
1225 BC Samarra is founded far in the eastern desert, challenging the border with Persia and claiming another Incense. Eridu already has three within its borders, but we've seen more along the coast that we need to get to. Meanwhile, disease strikes hard along the GFR, costing heads in both Nineveh and Akkad.
1200 BC We find out about Horseback Riding. Barracks in Babylon and Ur have already been completed, the plan is in motion. Also, we have high expectations about the south. Persia has Map Making (the option to exchange maps shows - way too expensive), so we may know more in the nearby future.
1175 BC Lagash is founded NW at the river mouth. Hard to believe that Persia had left this prime location available and created a useless desert village instead. :)
1100 BC We only needed 4 turns for the Alphabet. Horsemen are being sent forth and check to see if there are more good spots left by the Persians and to check for more Iron. This continent has so many mountains! Incense is about to be connected. Babylon now produces a Bowman every two turns, the floodplain cities are concentrating on Workers but will start on Settlers as it's apparent that there is still room in the SE.
1000 BC QSC evaluation time (too late to submit though). The Babylon empire has: 10 towns, 36 citizens, 138 tiles, 1 contact (no embassy), 9 Workers, 8 Warriors, 4 Spearmen, 2 Horsemen, 3 Bowmen, 2 Barracks, 1 Granary, 6 Temples, 209 gold, 132 food reserve, 115 accumulated shields, all 7 base techs plus Iron Working, Mysticism, 70% of Writing, and Horseback Riding.
950 BC We discover Writing. Samarra (border town)rushes a Temple.
900 BC Kish is founded at the ocean. It's now a race for the patch of fertile grassland one of our Horsemen found south of the mountain range.
850 BC There is amazing news! :king: A Galley of a civilization called Zululand was seen along our coast and we made contact before Persia could! We exploited this one-time opportunity for profitable trade. Persia gave us Philosophy, their World Map and some change for contact with the Zulu, Incense (we took pity) and our own map. Then the Zulu map plus cash was ours for Philosphy and our map, and Persia gave more cash to get their map complete. Wow! The Zulu have a nice enough continent all to themselves (with one Iron source) and are also claiming some smaller islands. Persia appears to have another source of Iron within their borders. We are far from ready to go to war at this time so the plan now looks as follows: to postpone any fighting until we are a Monarchy, meanwhile building plenty of Swordsmen, and trying to trade for Map Making so we can reach and cut off their Iron that is located at the other side of the land mass. Since the Zulu have no extra Iron, that should do the trick.
750 BC We are the first to discover Literature! The decision is made not to trade it for a while at least so we can build Libraries before Persia can and gain a cultural edge. This will hopefully slow their research down long enough, too. Neither Persia nor Zululand have Literature as a priority. Scores: Persia 833, Zululand 784, Babylon 509. Not too bad at all. :)
730 BC Nippur is founded to claim the last of the Incense.
690 BC Persia must have a Harbor somewhere, because we can trade Zulu Furs for Incense and only a little cash ($26).
650 BC We have connected our Iron. Babylon and Ur are starting on Swordsmen. Shuruppak is founded among the hills.
630 BC Terrible news! Persia has hooked up their Iron, too. We must not do anything to provoke them now, as Immortals only cost them 18 shields apiece. :eek: Further, the Zulu complete the Great Lighthouse. No idea if that is helpful in any way, they have already entire fleets out that keep circling the Persia/Babylon continent.
590 BC We find out about Polytheism. This is a tech we don't mind trading and one the AI is willing to pay a lot for. Form the Zulu we get Code of Laws, Mathematics and cash, Persia then gives Map Making for Polytheism and change.
530 BC Zariqum is founded sharing the smaller oif the two islands with the Zulu (they already claimed the other one :(.) The Galley from Ellipi now turns north to get to that Persian Iron. Since we already finished our Libraries, we trade Literature for cash so Persia has something to build instead of Immortals and build Walls in border towns. We even pay tribute ($41) to Persia once more (sigh).
410 BC China builds the Hanging Gardens, they seem to be, er, slightly ahead of us. India (we had not heard about them yet) completes the Great Library. Meanwhile, the face of the Persian laeder has changed. They just discovered Currency and entered the Middle Ages. Zululand is soon to follow. We have to make haste or they will have Pikemen and Knights awaiting my small force of Swordsmen ... :scan:
350 BC Sippar is founded among the eastern mountains. And Babylon becomes a Monarchy!:band:
Of course at this time Persia and Zululand are already a Republic ... but: our Galley is almost at the Persian Iron and we haven't seen any Immortals yet, while they usually tend to parade with them along the borders. Our attack forces count 8 Swordsmen, 12 Bowmen and 3 Horsemen. Most of the Swordsmen are hiding in Lagash in the NW coast, a smaller force is eyeing two small Persian cities on the southern grassland. Our border cities are prepared for a counter-strike. Scores: Persia 1106, Zululand 949, Babylon 700.
310 BC Nineveh builds a Courthouse and is about to start on the Forbidden Palace, when we kindly ask a Persian unit to leave our territory ......

2. First Persian War

310 BC Persia declares war, the people of Babylon cheer! Finally we get a chance to set this neighbouring bully straight. :crazyeye:
A Swordsman and a Bowman disembark on the Persian Iron.
Our main Swordsman force take the ill-located Persian desert town of Gordium with only a single loss, killing 3 defending Spearmen. Elswehere a Bowman takes out an exploring Warrior, starting our Golden Age. Persia retaliates with some border forces. They manage to kill a regular Spearmen, but lose a whole bunch of units in the process. The first strike is ours! :D
290 BC Zululand is so kind to extend our Furs/Incense deal for only a little money. We had been so wise to build a Harbor in Ellipi just before the start of the war to keep the trade route open. :) On the grassland, our second platoon of Horsemen and Bowmen takes ill-defended Jinjan killing two Spearmen at no losses. The Swordsmen follow the coast north towards Sardis, more are on the way. Then Persia moves and they have a bunch of Immortals! :eek: We check things out and discover to our dismay that Zululand has picked the last turn to make contact with the rest of the world, which has plenty of Iron to trade with ...
270 BC Things are going well: Sardis is ours with again only a single Swordsman lost. With Immortals approaching, however, and time needed to recuperate, it is already clear that for now we cannot hope to attack the Persian core cities. In the south, Istakhr appears much better protected then Jinjan, and we cannot keep too many forces away from the main border. On the defence, we lose another Spearman.
250 BC We kill the first Immortals, and another dies on a mountain-fortified Swordsman. But it is obvious that Persia can build units faster than we can kill them. To do battle in the NW mountains seems to be to our advantage though. The AI tribes tend to bang their heads on mountain-fortified units.
230 BC Our landing force in the far north, together with a broken-through Horseman, take cape-town Sardis. A pleasant surprise. Although the town has no real value, it will keep them busy trying to take it back.
210 BC The Swordsmen make another step forward and now have their eye on Antioch. The Zulu suggest a trade: they want 320 gold for their world map. We say no, hoping for a better deal when Persia is ready to settle.
190 BC We fail to take Istakhr. Picking off Persian Archers where we can.
170 BC Gordium builds a Settler and is abandoned, it was in the wrong spot. Izibia is founded next to that location, still in the western desert, but on the shore. In a heavy battle we take Antioch in the NW. We lose two Swordsmen and a Horseman but may have enough troops left to consolidate that corner. Meanwhile, Persian forces are circling Samarra on the march towards Eridu where our Iron is.
150 BC While we are holding off Persia at all the borders, killing many of their units but never quite enough, we secretly start on a second Swordsmen stack that will be directed against Susa, a core city excellently located at the Great Flooding River. The war slows down.
90 BC We discover Currency.
70 BC Nineveh completes the Forbidden Palace. Decided that I could wait no longer for a Great Leader in the hopes of building it closer to the centre of the continent. Nineveh will simply have to do. The gains now outweigh the potentially suboptimal result later. On a sidenote, our second column takes Susa - wait a minute, that is a great achievement! [party]
30 BC We have connected another Dyes source and use it to trade with Zululand for contact with Japan and change. The Japanese, in turn, are pleased to provide us with Construction for some coins and our World Map. Babylon finally enters the Middle Ages! Discovers Monotheism, too.
Meanwhile our little force in NE Sidon hasn't seen an enemy in a while and sets out to see what else is there.
10 AD Whoops. Sidon flips. :mad: Not quite the intended effect. Fortunately we are still near and can retake it the same turn! But where did all these Horsemen and Immortals come from? The choices are: abandon Sidon, or ... alright then, it is time for a building frenzy and play catch-up with the rest of the world. Persia is far from defeated, but we are a player now. Continuing the war at this point might succeed, but could set us back too much. Besides, there is something in it for us. Persia gives us good tribute and the small town of Ergili for peace, then contact with India for Incense. A time of peace is before us.

3. Zulu unrest

30 AD After waiting nicely for their turn, the Zulu decide they want a piece of the action. Without pretext, they declare war, killing their lucrative trade deals! :rolleyes:
There comes their attack on my island city of Zariqum ... it's ... it's ... a Zulu Warrior! He drops dead at the feet of our Bowman. :D
50 AD Babylon knows Feudalism. We keep building infrastructure (Marketplaces and Cathedrals). Japan, who are way behind (something must have happened to them after building the Pyramids), give us contact with China and the World Map in exchange. Persia pays something for Dyes. Finally we have the complete picture. Scores at this point are: Persia 1250, China 1136, India 1135, Zululand 1099, Babylon 959, Japan 913. Look at me, mom!
Research is put on hold now since the tree is branching out and with a complete set of contacts, profitable deals are around the corner.
90 AD The end of our Golden Age.
130 AD There! Persia has discovered Engineering and we're in business, Sure, we pay them a bundle, but it gets us Chivalry from India and The Republic from China, while Japan gives us Theology in exchange for both Engineering and Chivalry. For the first time, we are even on tech with the other civs! It won't last though. So, Babylon starts producing Knights, the other cities are still adding Marketplaces and Cathedrals.
230 AD After many futile attempts (where are their Swordsmen? But also: again no Great Leaders from another dozen of elite victories ...) the Zulu finally give up. They pay over a hundred gold for peace. Some day they will pay the proper price for their aggression. Our Incense and Dyes plus change are good for Furs and the knowledge of Education.

4. More preparation

250 AD We gift Education to Japan, they were falling behind again. Actually, I accidently hit the wrong key, but they didn't have anything to pay for it anyway. Within a century, Universities are completed in Nineveh, Ur, Babylon, Ashur and Akkad, our core cities, and research is resumed.
290 AD Persepolis completes Sun Tzu. Let's see this as a future prize, and count how many Immortals, Pikemen and Knights they could have built instead but didn't ....
310 AD Nineveh builds a Barracks and starts producing Knights, too. Ur has resumed training Pikemen. Most of our coastal cities have Harbors by now.
350 AD Zululand gets Leonardo. It looks like we will miss out on all or most of the Middle Age wonders, too. On the bright side, we have almost caught up with Zululand in score: China 1409, Persia 1340, India 1273, Zululand 1237, Babylon 1235, Japan 925.
360 AD And the Sistine Chapel is Zulu, too! For some obscure reason the military Zulu go for culture in this game. India completes Copernicus. We are in danger of falling behind, the size of our empire is not yet big enough to really compete on this level. Our number of Knights is growing, but Persia has started to produce Longbowmen.
370 AD We discover Invention. Most of our Knights are taking positions near the southern enclave of Istakhr while a group of Swordsmen hides in central Samarra. In 2 turns time, our attack force will total 8 Knights and 13 Swordsmen, with lots of policing Bowmen as backup and all our borders well defended by Pikemen. If we can take one or two Persian core cities quickly, we should be able to go all the way this time.

In 1792 I finally defeated Persia! It took a long time but I finally did it. The zulu had captured a persian city on my island which I burned down in 1798. I finally owned the whole island. At that point I wasn't sure if I would live in peace until the zulu or china launched their spaceship, or if I should go down fighting. I decided to die fighting. At this point china already was working on their spaceship. I got a ROP agreement with both civs in 1820, and my plan was to put half of my army by zulu capital, and the other half by chineese capital. Zulu declared war as soon as my troops arrived on their land (AI is not too stupid). Decided not to land any troops on china yet. only had a small handfull of troops in zululand, but they didn't throw alot of firepower at me. Managed to get a settler down their and a couple of reinforcements down there and set up a town. Never was able to attack their capital, and my city fell around 1860, by the chineese. I was hoping they were there to take out zimbabwae, but they went for me instead. Right now it is 1868 and I have a town on the north shore of china, but they have alot of tanks and I dont know if I can hold it before reinforcements arrive (im close to getting flight, and that would help some). I probably wont be able to raze their capitols, but I can pester them one transport at a time!

China launched their ship in 1944, my cav, inf and artillery army didn't last long on their continent. Learned alot this game and I was suprised to make into the 20th century.

In my first deity level game, I made it to 960AD. In the early game, I had gone with a settler rush strategy, as well as a temple rush strategy (producing spearmen in highly productive cities and disbanding them in newly founded cities). Regarding goody huts: well, there were no goodies in them at all, unless you call a total of 12 warriors "goodies." That's right, I received warriors from every hut that I popped. By 1000BC, I had 7 cities in place with temples, when Xerxes came knocking on my door, um...came knocking down my door. Fueled by the 18 cities he had at his military machine's disposal, he summarily reduced me to one city before I could sue for peace in 360BC. (I had two or more spearmen in every city, walls, as well as some bowmen; they proved no match for the Persian horsemen and immortals. My bowman were outright pathetic, despite being bolstered by walls... The bowmen have my vote for being the worst unique unit, after having used them.) I kept that one city, attempting to research my way out of the ancient age, at least. I gave in to all demands that Xerxes made, and just before he conquered me in 960AD with his hordes of Cavalry, I had just traded with him, which had made him "polite" towards me. If destroying my last city is polite, I cringe at the thought of seeing what he would do if he were "furious" at that point... With friends like him, who needs enemies? Venting finished, I want to congratulate the master players who actually thrived in this game. After my "embarrasing defeat," I read the first few pages of the spoilers, and then the last page before making this post. While I'm sure that various others won, I noticed that Aeson did, as well as Ribannah. Congratulations guys! As for me, it's time to return to the level at which I belong: Monarch. After learning volumes more from experience and through reading, maybe one day I will be able to do half as well as Aeson, Cartouche Bee, thefrenchzulu, Cracker, and the other first-tier players.

Well what a game !

I did not win but managed to stay alive until 1794 or something,
and really proud about it as well !
Had to use all tricks in the book after my early war against Persia failed miserably (still took Persepolis with Pyramids inside though..):D
I was desperately late in techs, like one age and a half behind !:p

When finally I could not buy my way out of war the Persians wiped me in 3 turns with tanks and MI against my Bowmen and Spearmen :eek: :D :D
No iron the whole game except right at the end traded it from Indai for like 50gpt just to complete railroads...never had the leisure to use them though.

Curious to know how everybody else has fared...

My big disappointment is I was too late for QSC, sorry cracker will make it up with GTOM15.

The good news is that Sirian has submitted, this is a great surprise and I hope he wins against the milkers !

Originally posted by Skyfish

Curious to know how everybody else has fared...


Well, buddy, you have 204 posts for your reading pleasure. Happy reading!

I, Hammurabi
Lord of the Tigris and Euphrates

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Discussion Thread for I, Hammurabi
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40544

Originally posted by MPF

Some tips for those who want to improve there Deity game:

- pre-build city improvements like barracks to switch into granary to keep in pace with tech to get a maximam start and effect
[/B]

What does "switch into granary?" I don't understand, do you build the barracks then granary? If you are going to switch to granary, why not just start granary?:confused:

What does "switch into granary?" I don't understand, do you build the barracks then granary? If you are going to switch to granary, why not just start granary?

He means start building barracks before you discover Pottery... as soon as you have Pottery you can change the production from Barracks to Granary (assuming the barracks wasn't completed yet in the meantime of course). This concept is known as pre-building...Many people use this to pre-build wonders... they start building a Palace and as soon as they have discovered a certain technology they switch the Palace to the Wonder they want to have.

-Dimy

Defeated in 530 BC sumthing.
I started the game early in December and was optimistic about the whole thing, having the early Babylonian bowmen and looking at the starting pos.
But my dream turned to nightmare as soon as I realized who my neighbour was, and saw his rate of expansion. (my first Deity game). I pushed my feeble mind and fingers to the limit to match his growth-rate but all in vain, around 400-sumthin BC Persia declared war and attacked with all it´s might (well not all - I was too weak for him to even bother sending in the Immortals).
At this point I saved the game and deceided not to submit or even ever play GOTM again.
Well January 1. I took up the old axe and decided to go and finish the game and even submit.....
Short to say Xerxes took 4-5 turns to finish it off and in 530 BC my humiliating defeat was realized and I ended up with 383 points.

Happy new year.

Well, December is a bad month for me to do Civving. I think I was away from home about half of the month; holiday preparations and celebrations chewed up another quarter. So, no submittal. :(

I did turn in a QSC. My Operation Annihilate Xerxes became more like an Operation Annoy Xerxes A Bunch!! I did take two border Persian cities, and have been killing stacks of Immortals, Horsemen and now Knights, but its around 400 AD, Persia is several Techs and contacts ahead, and I've lost about as many Bowmen as he has lost units. We are nowhere near resolving this, and today's the last day, so I think it's time to Rush to Russia!

This has been educational; I'll have to review some of the other submittals and definitely work on my Deity game!!

Finished in 1470 AD with 100K culture victory. :)

Excellent, I was hoping someone would take advantage of the Babs' best weapon! :goodjob:

And a very nice date too. :)

Thanks, Dave. Culture can be very valuable at deity and a good science base helps out pretty well in the end game too. Although I was slipping on the science front towards the end to China, I had the game in the bag coming up to the modern age anyway. ;)

Wow CB, real fast date !
By what time did you have the Persians anihilated ?

CB, please tell the crowd here what you have done in the first say, 100 turns. I think you had the game won by turn 50 of the game. Congratulations.

Excellent Cartouche Bee, as usual.
I played the space race this time. Nonetheless, without doing anything special, my culture was fast approaching the 100,000 when I launched in 1515 AD, so expect more fast culture wins. ;)

Excellent work to both CB and Ribannah for these fast victories. :goodjob:

I hoped to get a hattrick for spaceship awards but failed miserably, launching almost a century later than you Ribannah.

Welll...

I know this is an old GOTM but I am an old gamer. I have been gaming for YEARS, like 30. 22 on a computer. I played civ 1. I played civ 2. I am playing civ 3 and cannot beat it on WARLORD.

So, when I started this deity game I was intrigued...

I gave up after 30 mins.

I had only 3 cities. I had taken a HUGE Persion one to the north and held it, until the gits in it culture flipped. What a waste of human effort.

This prog cheats like buggery. Wonders popping up after a MINIMUM amount of time.

What am I doing wrong?

Answers on a postage stamp....

A:mad:

Well, you picked the right game to start with. Check out the War Academy for an article call Diety Settlers. The author walks you through a step by step method to win the game. It's a great learning tool.

Good luck and welcome.

:beer:

Originally posted by amalgam40
... I am playing civ 3 and cannot beat it on WARLORD.

So, when I started this deity game I was intrigued...

...

This prog cheats like buggery. Wonders popping up after a MINIMUM amount of time.

What am I doing wrong?

First: Welcome amalgam40!!

2nd, you bet the program cheats :lol: ; this is a deity level game - the AI starts with more units than you, and gets additional units every time it founds a city. On top of this, it gets a bonus (30% I believe at Deity) for research and production: this means that 400 shield Pyramids only costs the AI 280 shields. Wonders will pop up at LESS than minimum time, and you're not likely to build any early wonders unless you get a leader. And it researches much faster, also. If you're not winning at Warlord level, well, Deity is a much, MUCH harder level.

The article Denyd mentions is a good one, based on this game. There are many more; reviewing them will improve your game options. You should also think about playing GOTM, and use the Conquest variant which gives you some starting bonuses to assist your early game. As the spoilers come out, I believe the discussions about a game that you're also playing will assist you.