This thread's purpose is to find out whether people are interested in playing a reprise of GOTM19 starting from where I was in GOTM19 at 30BC.

Suggestions on how this should be structured are welcome. If there's enough interest in this then I'll consolidate suggestions and start a new thread detailing the final structure and launching the game.

My initial thoughts are:

General Structure

This will be an informal competition to see who can get the highest Jason score for a spaceship victory from the given starting point. We'll award kudos to the highest scores at the end but there won't be any formal awards, this is just for fun and to discover what is possible.

It is necessary to have PTW 1.21 to play this game because that's what was used to reach the starting position.

The regular GOTM rules of play apply.

This won't be a quick game to play. The Ottoman empire has a fair bit to do from 30BC to launch a spaceship. And more to do it with a maximum score (largest and happiest empire.)

If someone wants to play along but shoot for another victory condition, or just go for the fastest possible space victory without regard for score, that's fine. Although it isn't the primary goal here, playing for other goals from the start position could be a fun comparison. Writeups of such games will be welcomed but they won't be included in the competition for highest scoring space victory.

Reporting

When you've finished your game please join the results thread and post your story and results, treating it the same way as we post regular GOTM spoilers.

I'm not sure if we should have save games posted along with results or where they should be posted. Perhaps they could simply be uploaded to the CFC server and a link to each save be included in the final report.

Cutoff date

I'm not sure what a good finish date would be for a competition like this. June 29? July 6?

The Situation

It is the end of the year 30BC.

Our glorious Ottoman empire has become the strongest and most advanced Civilization in the world. By a small margin we are the largest and most powerful Civilization in the world. Our culture lagged behind other Civilizations in the past but we've made great strides in this area and we're now nearly on par with the world leaders in this area.

Our productivity is second to none. We are a Republic with a well established northern region centered on a Forbidden Palace at Aydin, and a developing region near the middle of the continent around our relocated Palace at Bursa.

We expect to learn the secrets of Military Tradition in 10BC. We are well ahead of all other Civilizations in science - none of them has yet learned Invention. We do not understand Monotheism nor does anyone else.

Our military consists of 40 Horsemen which can soon be upgraded to Sipahi if only we had the funds. But we have just 697g in our treasury. Most of the Horsemen are fortified in towns near our southern border.

We have not had a Golden Age yet.

The other Civilizations in the world are Carthage, Rome, Celts, Spain, India, Egypt, and China.

Carthage, Rome, and Celts are local to us. They know each other but do not have contact with the other four Civs.

Carthage shares our continent and also has a couple of towns on an island east of Rome. We have good relations with Carthage.

Rome is on a separate continent near ours. We have good relations with her too.

We have recently taken over all Celt holdings on our continent and reduced them to three towns on the Roman continent. We are still at war with the Celts.

Spain, India, Egypt, and China share another continent.
We are currently at war with India and Egypt. Spain and China are both paying us for alliances against India and Egypt. These alliances are expected to last for another 11 turns.
We have not actively participated in these wars. We don't even have a way to safely reach that continent - the trip required involves great risk to our ships.

Carthage has two Great Wonders we covet: The Pyramids and The Great Lighthouse.

Our Civilization has kept its word in all matters in the past, our reputation is clean. We have only three black marks affecting other Civs' attitude toward us, the three declarations of war we've made on other Civs. We could easily regain good relations with everyone except the Celts - we've warred too much with them to be forgiven.

Our scientists are confident that the coming YzeroK bug will be a non-issue. We're ready to face greater challenges! How should we proceed?

Additional info

If I'd been shooting for space all along in this game I might have donated a bit of tech to the remote Civs some turns back, in order to get Monotheism from one of them. As things stand you should not count on any other Civ learning Monotheism before 10 to 15 turns from now.

Note that with the Great Lighthouse, Carthage has the capability of meeting the remote Civs although she has not done so yet.

Remember that we're a Republic at this point. If going to war in Republic, remember to use the 3 tile reach of the Sipahi to reduce the effect on war weariness. (Units inside enemy territory at end of turn count toward war weariness - Sipahi can often attack from outside the enemy territory to reduce this problem.)

Sir Pleb,
As stated in the thread that launched this idea, I would be interested in participating -IF- I can manage to wrap up GOTM 20 sometime soon.

Me too. I would like you to avoid setting a closing date too soon. Some of us haven't the skill to win this diety game in the middle ages as Sir Pleb and Moonsinger have probably done.

It looks like there isn't enough interest in this to make it a competition so I guess we won't be doing that.

If anyone would like to play forward from my GOTM19 pre-conquest anyway, I'll be happy to upload an appropriate save. I've got a few dates which could make good starting points, if you want to try it just let me know which you'd like:

30BC - just before Military Tradition and beginning conquest

290AD - Rome is gone, Egypt and Carthage are mostly gone

360AD - Spain down to one city, India down to eight, everyone else gone

I would like to play from the saved game of 30BC, im not sure if im skillfull enough but it will sure be a great fun and learning. my e-mail is D_eMo_N@hotmail.com, u can either e-mail it to me or post a reply here.
thx, Tal.

Originally posted by ltcoljt
What do you have here, a minimum of 124 turns of research from any of these points?
Yup, that's the minimum I come up with too, 124 turns if four turn research can be maintained all the way. That would get the final tech in 1310AD for a 1315AD launch.

There's a chance of shaving another four turns off and doing it in 120 turns if the RNG is kind. If Ottomans get Steam Power or Medicine as the free IA tech then I think it would be possible to convince another Civ to research Nationalism and Replaceable Parts. Both of those are high priority techs for the AI, so I doubt they could be convinced to research just Replaceable Parts, they'd do Nationalism first. It would be possible to give them a 56 turn window to learn these two techs, I think they'd be able to.

If Ottomans get Nationalism as the free IA tech then I think 124 is the minimum, the only required tech the AIs could be counted on to research would be Replaceable Parts.

Originally posted by rabies
I'm curious as to how you would have gone about it. I was thinking about fininshing off the Ottomans and maybe Rome, then just sit back and focus on research.
I think that's how I'd start, take out Carthage first then Rome. I'd take them at a bit less than maximum speed, researching and building up at the same time, and also working on building up the newly conquered territories. I'd build settlers and workers in the non productive conquered areas to fill in dense towns for maximum growth and happiness. Workers would irrigate the non-productive areas.

During these wars the existing alliances against Civs on the other continent would lapse and peace could be made. After Rome I think I'd go for one or two more Civs to get to the domination limit. I'd leave some, probably two, to help a bit with research (Nationalism, Replaceable Parts, and perhaps Music Theory) and to also help fund ongoing development. It would be worth trading or giving luxuries to those two to keep their ability to pay at a maximum. Also coal if they need it.

There are some tradeoffs in choosing which Civ(s) to take over and which to keep - their ability to pay as trade partners, the size and quality of their lands, the luxuries in their lands.

Build priorities in core areas: Courthouses in fringe productive towns. Libraries everywhere they'd be useful, and universities in the same towns when Education available. Marketplaces everywhere. (And Aqueducts where necessary of course.) Some harbors also, to enable trade and to improve income and growth in coastal towns.

It would be a priority to get luxuries by trading or taking them over.

I'd try to optimize the chances of leaders during ongoing attacks. Desirable wonders: Leonardo's, Copernicus', Newton's, Theory of Evolution, perhaps UN (to preclude others getting it if they get close), and JS Bach's if possible. JS Bach's presents an interesting choice - slow down another four turns for Music Theory to maximize score, or wait a bit and hope an AI can be encouraged to learn it?

And here it is!

Click here (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/SirPleb_GOTM19Reprise.ZIP) for the save file at 30BC.

The situation in the save file is as described in my first post on this thread.

Even though it won't be as a competition, it looks like a few of us are quite interested in the results, so if you play through from this save file please do feel free to post notes about your progress here!

[Edit: anyone reading this thread, if you see two messages after this one from ltcoljt and rabies which seem to be out of sequence, then they are - something seems odd on the server today, my last three messages all seem to be out of the proper sequence.]

Given the lack of research you do after military tradition I doubt that there much use in playing this after you have gobbled the civs too.

What do you have here, a minimum of 124 turns of research from any of these points?

SirPleb,
Sorry to see you take the time to write this all up..and then have no interest. I would not mind trying from your 30 BC file.

Since this will not happen, I'm curious as to how you would have gone about it. I was thinking about fininshing off the Ottomans and maybe Rome, then just sit back and focus on research.

However, in order to get a great space race victory score, I am now thinking maybe you need to 'conquest' all the way to the domination limit..and THEN research towards space?

In case anyone missed it due to the forum timestamp problem, please scan back up a few posts, there's a save game up there as well as couple of replies.

ooops...thanks for the last post letting us know you did in fact post the save and replied. I missed that the first couple times around.

I'll give this a go. I am almost done with GOTM20....I decided to go towards a spaceship launch in that one, and I clearly need some work on how to make an empire get to a 4 turn research rate....as will be evidenced by my soon-to-be awful launch date in gotm20. :(

I expect I'll have first posts on how it is going within a week or so.

That'll be great rabies, I'm quite curious how it will go. Good luck!

I don't think it will be possible to equal Shillen's launch date from that start point. I might play this twice, once for fastest and then for score. I only next an extra four hours a day.

I played through to a 1265AD Launch with 10202 firaxis score. Jason score came out to be 12229. I gave up on rushing Aquaducts and setting entertainers to keep everyone happy in the newer cities, it was just getting too annoying. I'm sure I could have boosted that by another 2-300 at the same date by doing the extra micromanagement tasks. Ended up with about 40 cities needing Aquaducts and 10k gold sitting around.

I left the Romans alone and kept them updated with techs at all times. They contributed Replaceable Parts and Mass Production. They also researched a few of the dead end techs, Communism (my free tech was Nationalism), Music Theory, and Amphibious Warfare.

In the Modern Era my free tech was Fission, and had to scrap about 15 Research Lab prebuilds because of it. Not really a big deal as the techs were taking 4 turns anyways, and by the time I researched Computers myself, I had all the prebuilds back in place. I saved ToE till the Modern Era, and got Fission and Superconductor from it.

Every tech was researchable at 4 turns, never having to run a deficit over the course of the 4 turns.

Didn't build any more Horses/Sipahi... just used what SirPleb had put together for a slow but sure conquest of the other continent. It was mostly Sipahi vs Spearmen, and so I didn't lose many battles. Only lost about half the 30 or so Sipahi during the course of the wars. 4 Leaders showed up during the fighting, used them for Sun Tzu's, Sistene (not sure why I did that), JS Bach's, and then saved the fourth for the Apollo Program.

Aeson_gotm19reprise.zip (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Aeson_gotm19reprise.zip)

Wow, very nice Aeson! Shaking my head :lol:

Nice move getting Rome to help the way you did. The Sipahi sure are nice if you get them early, sounds like you had fun maximizing their power :)

Egads! That was fast! I guess Sir Pleb had set everything up so nicely by 30 AD that any victory condition would have been possible with a great score?

I do plan to continue to try for myself, but I highly doubt I will be able to get as nice a score as Aeson.

great game! I'm wondering how a milked run would have scored from this start (not that I'd do that...never milked a game before)

Well, the setup is perfect for a high scoring victory of any type really. Looking at the score curve, I think you could finish anytime from about 300AD till as late as 1800AD and have a shot at around 12k (+/- 500). After 1800AD or so it would start dropping off a bit, probably with ~11k as a max milked score at 2050AD. Sipahi allow you to keep well ahead of the curve, and reach a max turn score sooner. Eventually the curve flattens though, and how far ahead you end up becomes more dependant on how well the max score prediction was set.

I think with some extra luck, and using ToE in the Industrial Era, another 4-12 turns could be cut off. Rome had a good shot at Banking if they wanted (they went for Navigation after I gave them Astronomy). Flight was available for them to research for 12 turns (they went for Amphibious Warfare) in my game, and set up right could be 16 or 20 turns if they don't go for Communism. Getting to the Modern Era faster, and then spending the extra 8 turns there, might allow Rome a shot at Fission or Rocketry, they'd have 20 turns.

just wanted to chime in and say i am knee deep in it. 800 AD or so and closing up on the industrial age. I will not beat Aeson's date or score...but hey..what did i expect.

Mainland civs are gone (spain, india, etc). india had managed to build 1 lone musketman before he was eliminated. All the rest had pike and spears. Rome is still around but not for long...I tried to take note from Aeson's game and keep them around, but they decided it was more pleasant to keep sneak attacking me. =( He lacks saltpeter, so he is not really much of a threat. Once they are out, I'll leave carthage alone on the island east of the Roman island.

One thing i struggled with was trying to get all of the horsemen upgraded to sipahi to dominate the world, while still funneling money towards tech. I can't count the number of times I wanted to turn off research for 2 or 3 turns to generate the cash needed to get them all upgraded. I ended taking carthage off the mainland with maybe 8-10 sipahi total.

One other thing I wanted to say to sir pleb was that taking over your game was unreal. I hope one day to be able to get my game to that state by 30 BC. How fast you got to mil tradition was scary.

In order to get a top score, do you need to get to the domination limit? I think i am getting close, and am getting wary. i build not culture expanding improvments in the conquested lands....just took all the cities, and built some new ones to fill in gaps where barbs kept popping. I guess i'll have to look into this whole 'mapstat' thing...

Thanks rabies! It sounds like you are doing well!

Re "In order to get a top score, do you need to get to the domination limit?" - yes it definitely helps score a lot to get close to domination. Score is improved by territory, number of happy people, and number of content/specialist people. So getting near domination as soon as possible is good, that handles the first part. And growing the cities in all that territory to increase happy/content/specialist people also helps.

Will be interesting to see how it turns out Rabies. :)

Aeson, SirPleb (or anyone else), still pursuing my obsession with a frequent 4-turn tech rate, but not having PTW, I have a few questions. What do you see as the essential elements to a max tech rate? The total factors seem to be population, libraries and universities, enough gold to afford the maxed slider, and minimal corruption, achieved mainly by palace jumps to keep that large population within range of a capital or FP. I have little problem with the buildings and the gold. My population has been going up recently, thanks to workers mining, irrigating and mining the same tiles, as needed - but a better approach would seem to be earlier expansion, so that sheer number of cities makes their individual populations not as crucial. Finally, I almost always find a rationalization for not moving my palace.

Any advice? My present intent is to enter GOTM21 with an aggressive palace-jumping approach, to see if that makes the difference.

i finally finished...and boy did i mess up!

I decided to go with a no pollution game..so no hospitals and factories (although i did learn that research centers and commercial docks produce pollution later).

Where my game went wrong:

a. I have never 'milked' a game before..so i was treading uncharteted waters. I guessed the goal here was to get to domination limit, then grow the cities to 12 as fast as possible and keep them happy. this is what i tried, but I was not very good at it. In hindsight, I should have abandoned poor city sites and created new ones in more fertile lands.

b. unlike aeson, i could not get a civ to help me research. Rome elected to keep sneak attacking me...so in the end, I eliminated them all except carthage on the isle east of rome. therefore, all techs from military tradition on were researched by the mighty ottoman empire.

c. I still do not understand how to get a 4 turn tech rate. I had a handful of techs that took me 5 turns or so..or 4 turns at a huge deficit spend (-200gpt or more). Most of these were modern age techs or later industrial age techs. How Aeson got 4 turns each easy is beyond me. My entire core had libraries, universities...i even prebuilt research labs and had about 16 of them done the turn I got computers! I don't get what I am doing wrong in this department! I built next to no units other than the units sir pleb built for us.

d. Finally, my biggest mistake, and I blame it on playing it late nights until 2 am or so...I completely, utterly forgot to start pre-building spaceship parts prior to finishing apollo. Imagine my surprise when I realized that my best shield producing 12-pt city would take 30 turns or so to finish the Engine when I only had 3 or 4 techs left to research! There were two parts total that were going to run over my research rate. I ended up going to war with carthage and fishing for great leaders in an effort to avoid the delay. the game was kind enough to only generate 1 for me. The net result is the spaceship finished some 10 or so turns after I researched the last needed tech (laser).

Even with these huge screwups, I got a great score!

Bottom line, firaxis score of 9032, jason score of 10798 - spaceship launch in 1405. This would have been good enough for a top 5 finish..and i stink compared to the top players!

i would appreciate an answer to Txurce's question too....as I don't understand why my research rate was not superb. is building too many banks/stock exchanges/courthouses detrimental? i even sold off all the barracks early!

ps. is there a reference on the web somewhere that tells you how many shields is needed for each spaceship component?

Rabies, can you post your save so I can look at it? I take it we had the same Palace and FP locations (where SirPleb had set them), so it would be interesting to see where the differences are showing up.

Did you build Smith's? I was running into some trouble (deficit for 3 turns, then making it back on the 4th) until I finished Smiths, then it was pretty easy. Rome researching Economics may have been a bigger factor than I thought. That they were feeding me decent sums of gpt for most the game was a big help too.

As for building the Spaceship parts, I guess you didn't build any Factories? Pollution isn't much fun to clean up, but Factories + Hoover makes a huge difference in overall production, and setting cities on wealth pays pretty well too. I think the Engines took me 8 turns to build, and all the other parts were 6 or less (mostly prebuilt as a Solar Plant).

ps. is there a reference on the web somewhere that tells you how many shields is needed for each spaceship component?

You can check out their costs in the editor. Just multiply the cost by 10 for the shields needed. There are two 64's, four 32's, and 4 16's.

Originally posted by rabies
ps. is there a reference on the web somewhere that tells you how many shields is needed for each spaceship component? SS Engine 640
SS Docking Bay 160
SS Cockpit 320
SS Stasis Chamber 320
SS Storage/Supply 160
SS Exterior Casing 640
SS Thrusters 320
SS Fuel Cells 160
SS Life Support System 320
SS Planetary Party Lounge 160
PS: is there an easy way to format data as table?

Thanks guys, it was those 2 640 shield components that killed me.

Here is the save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rabies_1405_AD.zip)

I did NOT build smiths. Nobody ever helped me researched, so i never bothered with optional techs. several times through the game I thought about taking a 4 turn detour for econ, but never bothered. This was probably a big difference.

I also should have built factories. I ended up having to clean pollution thanks to the research labs anyway.

I'm gonna open your save and take a look now.

Well, I compared the games. To my eye, it was the fact that Rome was supplying you with 246gpt that allowed you to research at max while still maintaining positive cash flow. After my golden age, i researched at max for several techs, but ultimately, I ran out of cash in the bank, so I was stuck with running 80% research...which yielded the 5 turns per tech.

At the end, my maint cost was 402 to your 340, so it seems smiths only saved you 60 gpt there. looks like you also did a better job making your citizens happy..thanks to the temples/cathedrals you made. I never bothered..couldn't afford them. =(

Nice going rabies! I think you did quite well for never having milked before.

Did you have Wall Street? That can help income of course.

Looks like having a friendly (emperor) AI can make a pretty big difference overall. Too bad that ends up being rather random. I wonder what exactly triggers an AI to sneak attack? I can't imagine we were at too much of a difference militarily or overall power wise.

Like you, I built few if any troops past Sir Pleb. Unlike your game, he attacked me not more than 4 turns after I took over Sir Pleb's game. I was about 1/3 the way through carthage at that point. Perhaps i should started making trades with him and giving him techs right away?

Sir pleb..yes..I built wall street. Even had a pre-build going for that. No way was I going to pass up 50gpt! ;)

Looking at the saves, there was 90 commerce and 99 corruption difference between the two games, which translates into 232 beakers per turn at 100%. If I subtract the income from Rome, I can still run 90% research rate, and still break about even with the 4th turn at as low as possible.

The main differences I see that would account for the base commerce discrepancy are that I built Commercial Docks just about everywhere I could, built a couple more cities in the FP area (basically amounts to using more coasts in low corruption areas), and that Rome had researched Communism so I could build Police stations.

Comparison of the two games:

Commerce: 4112 4022
Corruption: 1908 2009
Maintainence: 360 402
Unit Cost: 32 28
100% Res: 2228 1996

The Police Stations would account for most of the 99 corruption difference. The Commercial Docks, and extra coast tiles being used in the FP area, would account for most of the base commerce difference.

You did better than me as far as specialists, mainly due to using size 12 'corrupt' cities everywhere, instead of my many size 6 cities. The commercial bonuses meant you were getting 3 commerce from the size 12's, and I was only getting 1 from the size 6's, and the specialist to laborer ratio was higher in your game than mine. You were getting more commerce out of those corrupt areas, and I was getting more score. Some of that difference would have diminished if I had continued rushing Aquaducts/Marketplaces, but even then I think you had a better city placement in 'corrupt' areas from a commerce standpoint.

Smith's seems to have made more difference in the number of improvements I felt comfortable building. Since I wasn't paying for the Markets, Banks, and Stock Exchanges, I instead was able to afford to build Factories. So the difference in commerce wasn't huge, but the difference did show up in production quite a bit.

-------------------

Being attacked by Rome sounds like one of those random things that just happens from time to time. There couldn't have been much difference in our games by that point.

Thanks for the better analysis Aeson. I did not even realize you built police stations. I never knew they had that much of an impact on corruption.

You say you were getting more score out of the corrupt areas, and I was getting more commerce...is this because you packed in more 6 point cities for a greater population?

I learned a lot from this exercise. Now I just need to learn how to play the early game as well as Sir Pleb.

Until everything is maxed out, 2 size 6 cities will almost always score more than 1 size 12 city. The reason is that 2 cities will grow faster than 1 and that Luxuries are being used twice. The tradeoff is that more cities use up more tiles that end up not being worked by laborers.

Thanks for the tips and experience guys. I think I am going to apply all that I learned here for GOTM21...I understand completely now why my previous GOTM games did not score higher.