Classic 33: Spoiler 1 - end of ancient age.

This is the first spoiler for GOTM 33: Greece.

Given that this month's map is a pangea, you should have been able to make contact with all civs and also have a fairly-comprehensive map by the end of the ancient age. There may be some isolated black areas remaining, but the requirements for this first spoiler are:

Contact with all civs (or their remains) 'World Map': At minimum showing the locations of all other cities. The map should also show the outline of the lobe of the map that you started on.

We will allow some leniency regarding how much 'black' area there is, but please don't read these spoilers if you haven't uncovered most of the map.

Screenshots are fine, but please avoid any that show the locations of middle-age or later resources.


The initial starting position gave you the option of settling near the jungle, or looking for something better. What did you do? Would you have settled somewhere else in hindsight?

The extra civs than normal on a standard map shouldn't have crowded you too much, as you still had a bit of room to move. But were you neighbours uncomfortably close? Did you manage to beat them to secure key strategic resources and luxuries?

OPEN PTW 1.27

I sent my Worker NE and then the Settler N. The Settler moved one more square N and then founded Athens. I still think that was the best move. Of course, with all the land to the S and SE I might have moved differently if I had known at the time, but who did.

The Worker mined and then roaded the BG. Then connected the Wines and went to the Deer forest and started chopping.

I built 2 Warriors and sent them exploring. Then started a Granary prebuild. My Warriors didn’t meet anyone until 2750 when India showed up. In 2670 I met China. Started trading with each of them and managed to do pretty well.

Built my first Settler in 2190 and founded Sparta to the NE of Athens. Here is a picture at that time: Well, no image because the server is down.

I didn’t meet any other civ until 1725 when all of a sudden Korea showed up on the diplomacy screen. That started a round of trading that gave me contact with Korea, Rome, Arabs and Egypt. In 2 more turns I had contact with everyone and also had tech parity. At that point tech parity was Horseback Riding, Mysticism, Writing and Iron Working. I was researching Philosophy at 40 turns.

1425 was another trading turn. In that year I got Philosophy and Math. Only the Arabs were ahead of me with Code of Laws.

At this point it became clear that I was going to have to expand to the S and SE. However, my production was very slow. I had little cash as I had traded most of it away for techs. Before I could build up any reserves another trading turn materialized in 1325. This was a good one because Map Making was available. The tech pace was fast and the other civs were trading techs with abandon. I first traded World Maps with as many civs as possible. At first all I could get was their Territory Map, but soon they were giving me their WM and gold. By the end of the turn I had all the gold except for Spain who was able to keep 3. I had also traded for Map Making and Code of Laws and had tech parity again.

In 1200 the first war started, between Rome and the Arabs. Korea joined in for a while, but soon tired of it. This war sapped the strength of both Rome and the Arabs, who had been big powers before it started. Soon they were 3 techs behind everyone else.

By 1000 BC I was in last place with only 6 cities. I spread out toward the south to capture Horses and to try to get the Iron on the south coast. As a result, I could not generate enough Settlers to build in the SE and the Chinese started to settle there. They got the Furs just before me. Unfortunately, a lot of my trading was for gpt and that has left me poor.

In 875 I entered the Middle Ages after trading for Polytheism with the French. I got Feudalism as my free tech. Traded Poly to Korea for a pittance. They got Mono but would not trade. Otto appeared to go into the MA but got no free tech??

Also in 875 China and India enter the MA and trigger massive barb uprisings all along my south coast. This causes me no end of grief for a long time after. I still had not secured the Iron to the south and the barb uprising was preventing me from getting there. Meanwhile a Chinese Galley is heading south along the east coast. Are they headed for the Iron and Ivory???

Here is a picture of the current world.

The opening move was worker NE, then settler NW. This of course revealed the river and the wines. I moved the settler NE then N to settle by the river. The worker mined and roaded the bonus grass then iriigated and roaded the two wines. I meanwhile produced three warriors, then a hoplite, then a settler, then a granary. The hoplite was for MP and to leave some protection at home.

The warriors headed off east, north and west in that order, so contacts came thick and fast. I met China, India and Korea quickly, and the rest came via contacts trading. By trading for contacts first, and then techs, I was able to broker to rapidly catch up. This led to a fast tech pace.

The second city built a barracks while the first completed the granary. This meant I could build a hoplite to protect each settler from Athens. However, the best I could do was a six turn settler pump.

I claimed the furs fairly quickly. My eastern explorer turned south when he hit ocean, however, some angry barbs shortened his days rather prematurely, so I was unaware of the goodies to the south for some time.

At 1000BC, I had
7 cities (due to slow pump)
1 warrior
1 worker
1 archer
8 hoplite
1 granary
2 barracks
All AA required techs except Construction, plus lit, no gov techs yet.

I earlier refused an Ottoman demand that sent us to war, and although it was a phony war, I am thinking that this was a mistake, because as one of the two scientific civs (other than us), I wanted their bonus MA tech. I was also hoping to get into a better government prior to entering the MA. However, in 925BC there is a massive barbarian uprising, signalling that another civ has entered the MA, so I immediately brought construction to enter the MA myself.

I picked up Engineering. The Koreans got Monothesim, and I was unable to trade for mono.

Whilst this is a fast entry to the MA, I lacked a government tech, and so was still despot, I lacked either iron or horses and didn't have that many cities. Also the barbs were to be quite a menace for many centuries thereafter!

[civ3mac] 1.29 open

Playing in the SGOTM has taught me both how to keep good notes and even more importantly, the value of keeping them. A side benefit of doing this is I now have enough info on my game to post my first GOTM spoiler.

Initially I sent my worker NE. The air must have been thin on that mountaintop though because my worker saw absolutely nothing. The settler moved NW. That was more like it. Two vinos and my settler could soak his feet after that long walk. The settler continued N and spied the game. I finally settled Athens in 3850 bc after moving three tiles. The most I've ever moved.

The worker mined/roaded the BG and chopped the forest prior to connecting the wines. I built 2 warriors and sent them exploring W and E. Then started a granary pre-build.

The city of Athens got fat and happy on wine and game, so fat that they didn't send the first settler out until 2070 bc when Sparta was built at RCP 4, N of Athens.

In 3350 bc I contacted India and in 3050 bc, China. After researching pottery at max I shut off research temporarily. Began a round of trading and picked up WC, masonry, CB, IW.

I foolishly sent the W warrior NW, spotted Egypt's borders and realized I should have went SW. Because of this I didn't meet all civs until 1400 bc and found that I was considerably behind in tech. I decided to gamble and go for construction and turned my research back on. In 1350 bc during a very productive trading round I picked up wheel, mysticism, HBR, MM, code of laws and philosophy and WMs. In the end, I only ended up paying -4 gpt and about 25 gold. I was now at parity with all civs except China who was up poly.

At this point it was clear that I would have to build S to gain horses and iron.

In 1325 bc I created embassies in India and Rome. I had planned to make India civ 1 on my hit list and this sealed the deal. Pyramids due in 22. Rome's location blocking the channel between the two halves of the landmass made them an obvious ally in the wars to come until I needed access to the other side. Until then I would command their troops, through MAs, to throw themselves on my enemies swords. I had been nurturing a relationship with Mao as a trading partner and he started the first war with India around 1400 bc.

At 1000 bc my world looked like this:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/GOTM33_1000_bc_world_overview:detail.jpg


1000 bc stats:
7 cities
1 settler
7 workers
8 warriors
4 hoplites
19 pop
4 barracks
1 temple
1 granary

At this point I was 8th in land area, 5th in productivity but first in pop.

In 900 bc I traded poly, code of laws and lit for construction and bought currency. Upon entering the MA I learned monotheism but still lacked a government and sparked a massive barb uprising to the south.

open ptw

I had MAJOR problems with barbarians in the beginning. Like almost everybody I moved north to settle by the river. First I built a bunch of warriors to scout. All of them were killed by barbs which then started to invade my territory and pillage most improvements -while my defending warriors lost most battles to them. This threw my production so far back I never really recovered....

Anybody have problems with barbs in the beginning?

Plenty of barbs in the jungles. I avoided them until I could escort settlers with 2 Hoplites each.
All other civs that tried getting in there were quickly destroyed by the massive build-up of barbs (huge stacks of Horsemen).
My Hoplites handled them easily - becomming Elite.

I stayed peacful the entire Ancient Age. I got Writing first allowing for major trading and catch-up with Tech (I was astounded at the tech pace).
I then got Literature first, and this was a HUGE trade - ALL contacts and once again Tech Parity and ahead of a couple civs in Tech.

The cheap Libraries were built immediately to keep within arms reach of the madly trading rivals.

I entered the Middle Age in Despotism with no Horse, no Iron, and about 4 Techs behind. The outlook was bleak.

However, I did have a good stack of Catapults, Archers, and Hoplites. I also had Furs, Wines, and Ivory and a good chunk of change. These were all brought to bear on the unsuspecting Ghandi, much to his chagrin.

Thats right, the barbs make big problems, but also the free lands S of my territory want to be settled by several AI's. After a war against India ( I won this) starts China a war against me. This GOTM seems to be a endless war game.

Predator PTW

First time taking notes - and I'm no good at it. No screenshots sorry (forgot). I moved N with the settler & NE with the worker, continuing N again with the settler and finally stopping when I sight the deer. Almost, but not quite - I only end up with one of the deer for growth (which bites me big time down the track).
I went straight out for pottery, figuring a granary was needed - another blunder. First build was a warrior, which I sent N, straight into China (3400)but so are they. Moved up the coast - but too slowly. (Should have sent W or NW sigh - see why later)
I was constantly one jump behind the AI for the entirre MA (and sometimes more). China refused to trade, so I left them alone only to find that they traded everything with India a turn before I contact India :( (2950)
Barbarians are snotting my warriors (horsemen turning up quickly) - lost every one, bar one, which was finally killed just about the time I scored writing. I never explored much to the south for a long time as a result.
Made contacts thick and fast - someone gets writing by 2430, and they are contacting me. When I finally research it, turns later, I'm out of luck, most of the others have already left me in the dust. I'm carefully trying to check happiness etc, adjust sliders and diplomacy as often as poss - . . . . . meaning I miss the forest for the trees
2310: "You cannot support your granary . . ." (Yes - the only one I have). add "Check GP total" to end of turn actions, and choke back the tears. Fortunately my children were already asleep - the language!
2070 Have trade for evrything (using writing/maps etc) and achieved tech parity - but can't hold it, and try for GL, probably too late. This proves to be the case.
1600 Sparta founded. Second city. I'm in big trouble.
1325 barbarians have been picking at me for ages and they finally grab a worker (sigh)
1050 Huge barbarian uprisings in the south. Someone has entered middle ages already. No-one wants anything from me and I can't earn enough to buy any tech. These uprisings cripple me even more for a long time. No interference from the AI's for me - and I am unable to protect my capital effectively. (the first barbarian horseman bashes my Hoplite defender without loss). Continual attacks stopped only when the AI settles the south, which finally allows me to continue building. Did I really post I liked the challenge of Predator? - I am out of my depth here. Barbarian attacks continue eventually ceasing @ 400 BC, by which time I have only 7 cities. In answer to Moose - yes, I too had barbarians set to "Mayhem"
1000 5 cities
350 Researched Republic, which I can trade (finally) for what I need to enter MA

I am last on any measure you can think of. Tech pace was lethal. The AI has grabbed most of the luxuries, and I've already lost a city to China from culture flip I was trying to grab the spices from him. GL built on the other continent. I have been at war since God knows when (didn't note) as I refused a demand trying to build a gold stash to buy tech. No actual battles - but I can't buy them off without losing too much and no real effect so far, due to them being unable to get to me. I identify India as my target (gotta admire my optimism, eh!), my cultural boundary is about to expand and grab their iron, if I take that city, it has Great Wall, which will let me withstand any counter instantly. I decide to roll the dice again, and stay in despotism just a little longer to build a few more units and attack . . .

Lessons - look at the minimap carefully to decide where to send my starting warriors, going for pottery was a waste & let the others get away on me, should've built more Hoplites initially.
My new target - survive as long as possible, and use China as my shield. It's already too big for me to defend against, so maybe I can play it off against Rome, which is growing rapidly too. Maybe I can use pointy stick research to keep up, if I whack India well enough (although given that everything except my research of Republic has been an utter failure to date, I wouldn't bet on it). This game is a tiger and I'm just hanging in for the ride lol (actually that's more of a death rattle than anything . . .).

Just a quick post about the initial moves. I may post a decent write-up later.
After three GOTMs where I was burned by not moving enough. I was determined to find the very best place. So I started with settler N. That made clear that I would settle somewhere N so the worker NW.
Then I moved the settler another tile N. I was already determined for three moves to get closer to the forest and away from the mountains. Worker on BG.
Then I contemplated for several minutes, couldn't see anything in the fog. W or NW was the question.
My decision to move NW was then based only on the thought that if Ainwood has put some goodies somewhere, I'm more likely to catch them (W looked better for initial worker moves).
And sure that's the way to go, got two wines and two games. Settler factory material. :D
I still don't like these walking games BTW. :(

PTW 1.21f Open

I'm glad I'm not the only to find this GOTM brutal at best. This was a tough map.

I started by moving N over the mountains, settling 2 spaces N of the starting position. Began Pottey at max. Made 3 warriors, and then a granary (temple pre-build). Mysticism at min. I attempted RCP at 3 and 6.

The barbarians were troublesome at best. I lost 1 settler, 1 worker and many warriors to them. The settler was lost because of the early advent of horsemen. The massive uprising did not cause me many problems. I simply drained my treasury and let them pillage at will.

I had contact with all civs by 2050BC, and world maps all around followed shortly. The tech pace was blistering! I was able to keep tech parity up to the third tier ancient techs, then I started to lag. Badly.

At 1000BC I had 7 cities, and did not have horses OR iron. Nor were any supplies nearby attainable because they were claimed by China and India.

I did not start out making any Hopelites, but that changed around 500BC when China declared war! Luckily the did not sneak attack, and they did not attack for about 5 turns after they decalred. This gave me time to get a couple of Hopelites online. Needless to say, I entered my GA shortly thereafter (around 410BC I think). Of course, I was in depsotism. I could only make warriors, Hopelites and archers. China attacked with swordsmen and archers. I don't recall them having any horsemen, although they did have horses. I used the GA to build military. Lots and lots of archers, and a few hopelites. With this, I was able to actually take about 4 Chinese towns. At this point, I started to see some MA units from China, and I knew I would be quickly slaughtered, so I signed for peace. Luckily, I was able to snag the horses from China, but not iron.

At this point I had two options available for iron: Chinese iron to the NE on the coast, or Indian iron to the SW. I place a culture-squeeze city by each source (neither of which worked, by the way!). I entered the MA in 70BC, gaining Engineering as my free tech. I was able to trade for Monotheism, but all of the 2nd tier techs were already researched! I had a feeling I was in trouble!

My situation at 70BC:

I am in depotism. My GA has already been activated. I have no other options at government yet. I am severely behind in tech. I have a decent amount of workers, and a barracks in almost every town, but no other buildings. The land is decently improved. I have a pretty large army, but it is all archers and hopelites. I have horses, but no iron. I have 2 luxeries. I have not started a forbidden palace. Everyone else has MA units.

In my game, China is huge (imagine that!) :rolleyes:
I had no Iron or Horse and yet he had both, so I lived in constant fear of him all through the Ancient Age.

On the topic of Techs, I was very intimidated by the blistering pace. After being the first to discover Literature and doing a massive trade, I knew all civs and had a World Map. After viewing the map, the Tech pace was no longer quite a shock.

All in all, a very challenging (and rewarding) map, especially since it is Emporer level - way to go ainwood! :goodjob:

Barb uprisings are caused by civs entering the MA? I had no idea...

[Open]
I settled two tiles directly north of the start location, on the river, near the wines. Built two warriors first, sent north and west to explore. I found the dyes to the north pretty quickly, but China claimed them long before I had a chance to. This would be the story for the rest of the game.

Having found China nearly right on top of me, I made the rash decision to build a barracks after my first two warriors. After the barracks, I built my first Hoplite, then a granary.

Okay, hmmm, that's two warriors, barracks, a hoplite, granary, then my first settler. Not sure exactly what I was thinking...first settler in 1950BC. NOT. GOOD.

1870BC - The turn my second city, Sparta is founded (3 tiles NORTH of Athens, the lands to the south are still a complete black). This is also the turn I establish contact with everyone and tech parity through trades (my 40-turn min writing research was successful, but that would be the only time).

A RANDOM QUOTE FROM MY QSC TIMELINE: "1600BC - China's cruising for a bruising by founding cities next to every luxory near me." Of course, by the time I got my act together, China was untouchable...

ANOTHER RANDOM QUOTE: "1350BC - I Hate Barbarians. In the last few turns, they've ransacked one of my towns for 143g, disconnected my wines, and defeated my Hoplite. Next turn two of them are poised to ransack Athens." Yeah, loved those barbarians. I can't even begin to estimate how many roads they pillaged. My favorite was when they took out my road over the mountain (once I finally did start heading south), or the roads through the jungle.

QSC Stats:
4 towns
11 pop
283 gold
Army: 2 workers, 1 Warrior, 5 Hoplites
16/21 AA Techs.
Score: Last with 172, Egpyt is 2nd to last with 217, and India is first at 331.
Improvements: 3 barracks, 2 granaries.

I traded my way into the MA in 850BC. I still only have four cities, and no strategic resources. I have wines and ... that's it. Every turn is a nail-biting experience as the barbs keep running all over my lands. China and India are both right on top of me, and I can't research anything by myself.

So, no surprise (I don't think I'm spoiling anything by adding this), I surrendered by about 300AD (mostly thanks to Rome coming all the way over and making my life even more miserable then it was). I might have had 8 cities by this time, but no hope. Since this was a GOTM, I "surrendered" by using all my defending units to attack anything nearby, then watched the mad rush to claim my cities...ah well.

I did learn a few things...

My great empire at the end of the AA: :blush:

Qpdaj:
Wow. You let the Chinese beat you to those furs? Yikes!
That early Barracks build was probably not the wisest choice, although it was not far from my initial thoughts of trying to take on the Chinese early. I had a Barracks in Sparta and was pumping out Archers/Hoplites with the thought of blitzing China. Thank heavens that I came to my senses and decided to concentrate totally on Hoplite/Settler factories instead.
You definitely have an uphill climb ahead of you - oh well, what fun would it be if there was no challenge?

Things I learned:

* First, building both a granary and barracks before my first settler was BAD. Duh. Don't know what I was thinking.

* Definitely needed to do a lot more scouting. I wasn't aware there was a whole open area to the south until it was far too late.

* Built too many Hoplites too soon. Warriors would have been much more useful, especially once the barbs started pillaging. Even though Hoplites and Warriors have the same attack rating, it seemed like my Hoplites lost every time I tried any sort of offensive action (and since there was generally only one Hoplite per city, this was BAD).

* With this many other civs so close together, other than that first min research for Writing, any money spent on science was wasted.

* Defend key improvements, such as luxuries and connecting roads, either by fortifying a unit on them or attacking any barb that looks in a pillaging mood. (Again, a task made easier by having lots of Warriors rather than a few Hoplites.)

* Wines give an extra food bonus, so they're worth irrigating under Despotism (didn't know that).

* Worry less about placing cities close to my capital, and more about claiming luxuries and strategic resources.

I started this game over again, determined I could do better (for my own edification). I still settled in about the same place (actually, one tile to the SW), and I put myself on a sort of honor code: I wouldn't send a settler any place I hadn't explored first, and I wouldn't explore an area just because I remembered there was something there. So I sent my first two warriors north and west just like before, but also built two more to send East and South (in that order). I'm definitely doing better this time (though I didn't enter the MA until about 400BC), but it's still a tough tough tough map.

Definitely looking forward to see how everyone else does!!!

In my game, China is huge (imagine that!) I had no Iron or Horse and yet he had both, so I lived in constant fear of him all through the Ancient Age.
China is the leader in my game also. However, I sent a Warrior exploring to the south and saw Horses and Iron. I was able to capture the Horses before India, but have been unable to secure the Iron because of the many barbs in the area caused by the uprisings at the Middle Ages. Having those 2 important resources so far away caused me to go after them and not worry about ring city placement of my cities.

On the topic of Techs, I was very intimidated by the blistering pace. After being the first to discover Literature and doing a massive trade, I knew all civs and had a World Map. After viewing the map, the Tech pace was no longer quite a shock.
I liked that the tech pace was fast. It gave some great trading opportunities. Unfortunately, since I had little infrastructure and ended up trading mostly gold, I am now pretty poor. Now all I have to do is solve the barbarian problem in the S and SE and expand into those areas before China and India.

I ended up trading for Horses once with China, as part of a GPT/Lux/M.A. vs India deal. Needless to say, after that I no longer needed Iron or Horse as what was once India's is now mine. :king:

Probably my biggest mistake of the AA:
I was poised to attack India for some turns. I had totally spaced-out the fact that India had built the Great Library in Delhi. I could have turned my Science off for probably 10 or 12 turns (or more) and earned some huge cash if I had been on my toes. :sad:
As it was, capturing the GL (at the time a VERY pleasant surprise) was probably the biggest boon to my game.

Second slip-up:
I did not realize that Wines could be irrigated in Despotism for a bonus food. However, my capitol had Granary and the Warrior/Settler cycle was running perfect - growth to size 3 on same turn as Settler, so maybe this was okay. If irrigated, (instead if mined like it was), maybe this would not have been so?

Predator PTW 1.27

Yet another fabulous game setup from Mr. Ainwood. This game has been a blast thus far—and a tough challenge.

Initial Decisions
I had a long debate with myself on whether to first move the worker (NE) or the settler (N). I decided on the Settler, because I felt that was the strongest vantage point and the most likely direction for my first city. Also, moving the settler first could potentially save my worker one turn. I was rewarded, of course, by spotting the river and wines. My worker saved one turn by moving directly north with the settler. I knew at this point that my settler would move twice more, NW, NW. The one extra settler move would save my worker an additional four turns (without the move my worker would have had to needlessly irrigate a grassland to enable irrigation of wine). The worker began mining the nearest BG. On my final settler move, he spotted game. This led me to believe that I had made my first successful attempt at following an Ainwood breadcrumb trail. :)

Athens, founded in 3850 BC, would one day become a lovely 6-turn 5/7 warrior/settler factory. The nicest thing about this location was that it required very few worker turns to set up: two irrigated tiles and two mines. Very nice, and I would not have settled anywhere else in hindsight.

I began research on pottery at max because there were no expansionist opponents, and my initial build sequence was warrior x 3, granary (built in 2630 BC), warrior x 3 (to replace the first 3 that all died to barbs), and then a settler (built 2230 BC).

Expansion
In 3350 BC, my northern warrior spotted a Chinese border, and my western warrior spotted an Indian border: both were far, far too close to home. This made me contemplate building a settler before my granary. In addition, my western warrior had located a city location, next to grassland wheat, that could generate 10 shields per turn. I certainly wanted that spot ASAP, but in the end I stuck with the granary. There were simply too many prime locations I needed to claim, and building the initial settler would have hurt me badly in the long run. This was primarily due to the fact that Athens needed so few worker turns to be developed. Dropping its population below four (working 2 irr. wine, 1 mined BG and 1 forest game) would have been VERY counterproductive. The enemy was far too close for comfort, but I believe the granary was the right choice.

A few Ancient Age turns from my QSC timeline, most pertaining to contact and trading:

3100 BC, turn 19 Get Pottery, start Writing at 10%. Ghandi must be researching Pottery, because Mao offers me a much better trade: I trade him Pottery, 1gpt and 8g for Warrior Code and CB. I am still down Masonry on the AIs. All I could get for Pottery from Ghandi was 18g. I decide to bring warrior 3 back home.

2710 BC, turn 27 My last warrior is slaughtered. (when my granary finished I built three replacements).

2390 BC, turn 35 Warrior > settler. Athens is now a 6-turn warrior/settler factory. Regular warriors unfortunately. A barb appears on my mountain range. Somebody knows writing, because I now know Rome, Spain and Korea. Rome, Spain and India are up 5 techs on me, but Korea and China still lack Mysticism. Trade Ghandi 2gpt and 35g for Mysticism. Trade China Mysticism and 1gpt for TW. Trade Korea TW and Myst and 2gpt for IW and 4g. I do not switch research from Writing, because I am pretty sure the AIs have everything covered that I could switch to. I am still down Masonry and writing on most of the AIs, and I am utterly broke.

2190 BC, turn 40 Found Sparta at RCP4 and start a barracks. This will be a powerful 10+ shield city one day.

2030 BC, turn 44 Someone gives me contact with the Egyptians, but it does me no good at present. I can’t afford anything.

1910 BC, turn 47 I trade Ghandi 1gpt and 11g for contact with the French. I trade Abu contact with the French and 2g for contact with the Ottomans. There I reach a dead end. I can’t quite afford HR, which a few of the civs lack.

1575 BC, turn 58 I get writing. IBT I trade Ghandi 9gpt, 19g and my WM for MM and his territory map. I trade Osman 22g for contact with the French. I then trade him MM and Territory Map for Philosophy, Ter. Map and 21g. I trade Joan WM, MM and Phil for Masonry World Map and 4g. I trade Korea WM and French contact for HR, WM and 9g. Trade maps with Osman for 7g. Trade WM to China for WM, TM and 3g. Trade Spain WM for WM and 3g. Trade Arabs my WM and 6g for their Map and COL. Trade China my WM for theirs and 35g. Trade WM to Ghandi for WM and 74g. Trade WM to Egypt for WM and 52g. Trade WM to Spain for WM and 29g. Trade WM to Caesar for WM and 40g.

So, I essentially netted 50g, 4 techs and everyone’s map. Everyone is broke except me and the Indians. Set research to Republic at Minimum.

1550 BC, turn 59 I declare war on the Arabs to hopefully slow down the tech pace. I establish several embassies and get the Ottomans, French and Koreans to declare war on them.

1450 BC, turn 63 The Indians get Literature. I trade them 84g and 3gpt for Math. Trade China Math for ROP, 38g and Maps. Trade Cleo Math for ROP, maps and 41g. Trade Caesar Math for ROP, WM and 35g. Trade maps to everyone for a few gold.

1300 BC, turn 69 Lose two more warriors trying to kill a barb horse. That one horse has now killed five warriors. {Sorry, my equivalent of a Rant. I was so cheesed off on that turn…}

1050 BC, turn 79 Trade Korea WM, 7gpt and 134g for currency. Trade Osman currency for Poly. Trade India currency for 117g and ROP. Cancel war alliance with Korea, France and Osman. Trade Egypt Poly for Lit. Trade Abu peace and poly for 65g and maps.

Sparta reaches size 6, and can now generate 10 shields per turn (2 turn hoplites or archers).

1025 BC, turn 80 Rome completes the Pyramids in Rome.

1000 BC, turn 81 India completes the Great Library in Delhi. They also get Construction, so the MA will begin very soon. And so will the barb explosion.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/BF_GOTM33_QSC1.jpg

End of QSC:

All techs except Monarchy, Republic and Construction.
Republic is due in 18.
270g, making +5 gpt.
8 cities
Pop 19
1 granary
2 barracks
1 settler
6 workers
2 slaves
13 warriors
3 archers
5 hoplites (for the coming barb explosion)
I have embassies with all except Spain and Arabia.
Score 233 (last place)

Analysis:
My attempts to slow the predator-level tech pace were not remarkably successful, but I think it may have been enough. Map trading has been remarkably profitable thus far. I have done ok on luxuries: wine is connected, fur is secured, and I will probably get spices. Ivory may be a long shot. Resources are not so good: I can get horses, but I must go through China to get Iron (the one to the south would take far too long to hook up, even via harbor).

Plans:
18 turns to Republic. Can’t get it any faster. China will have Pikemen then, making it near impossible for me to take them with Archers. They are undoubtedly my next target due to the resources they have and the great terrain. Therefore, I have to hurt them before Republic and try not to trip my GA. I will found my next city next to Beijing’s horses, “pilfering” them, and I will hit Shanghai (dyes) with eight archers and four warriors in 10 turns. One hoplite will try to sneak in their back door and pillage Tsingtao’s iron (without triggering my GA, I hope). Then I will try to take Beijing.


975 BC, turn 82 I get the barb uprising: four camps that I can see, maybe more. Four civs (China, India, Korea and Arabia) are in the Middle Ages.

925 BC, turn 84 I build an embassy with Spain and Arabia. I trade India 218g and 6gpt for construction and enter the Middle Ages. I basically spend all my cash, because the barbs are indeed raging. I empty out a city near them so that they can “poof” themselves destroying my hoplite build over and over and over…

Open PTW 1.27

Sabre's 5CC Conquest - Take 3

Well, so far 2 attempts at a 5CC Conquest win have gone down in flames (beaten by Greeks and Aztecs in gotm31, got down to just Spain in gotm32 - both late modern age) and stubborn old me is back to try again. An Emporer game will be a tough go, but I've read Charis' deity 5CC win and it's given me the willpower to stick it out. The pangaea planet will add another challenge in that I will not be protected from other civ's attacks. Let's also not forget the lovely starting spot. No way to get a nice tight 5 cities here!

Athens

I need each of my cities to be extremely productive, so it was obvious I was going to have to move my settler. As I'm sure so many others have done, my worker climbed the mountains to the north to see what was on the other side. Mmmmmm - grapes! Good enough for me. The site 2 tiles north of start was decent, but most of the shields were tied up in mountains. I decided 1 more move to get some of the forest and plains was worth it and ended up on the tile SE of the game. This would have me on the river, the wines available on 1st border expansion and plenty of shields available. Even better, a 2nd game was revealed on founding the city. Athens set out building 3 warriors for exploration, a hoplite for barb defense (they appeared pretty early) and then a settler.

Meeting the Neighbors
Warrior1 headed due west, Warrior2 headed north and Warrior3 headed east and then south. The Chinese and Indians were contacted almost immediately making the area around Athens a bit crowded. It's obvious that my 5 cities will be spread out a bit in this game, though further scouting will reveal that there are benefits to spreading out as there are multiple sites that make for great cities. Three available luxuries and a nice little cattle ranch past the jungle. Courthouses will be high on the todo list. Warrior1 finished off meeting the neighbors around 2350bc as they met Rome and Korea near to each other. The rest of the world was on the other side of Rome (nice chokepoint Ainwood!), but Writing was on the horizon.

Sparta
Sparta was founded in 2630bc south of the western wheat. With India close by I wanted to reach this site first. No fresh water, but there is good food and a ton of BGs. Sparta's build order was Hoplite, Worker, Hoplite, Archer, Temple.

Writing
In 2030bc I was the first to research Writing - 40t from the start. At that time I was way behind in tech as the other civs excluded me in their little trading games. But with Writing in my possession, suddenly they all wanted to be my buddy. I built embassies with all 4 civs to make them polite and then began to wheel and deal:

Trade Writing to Korea for Iron Working, the Wheel, Warrior Code
Trade Iron Working to China for Pottery, the Wheel, 12g
Trade Iron Working to India for Mysticism, 14g
Trade Writing, contact China to Rome for contact Egypt, 71g
Trade Writing, Iron Working, contact Korea to Egypt for Masonry, contact Ottoman, 58g
Trade contact Korea, Rome, 10g to Ottomans for contact France, Spain
Trade contact Korea to France for 26g
Trade contact Egypt, Korea to Spain for contact Arabia
Trade contact Egypt to Arabia for 32g

I was now tied with India as tech leader and had most of the world's gold. What gold was left I eventually collected by slowly trading contacts to any civ that gathered 25+ gold. I knew my tech lead would be temporary but it sure felt nice at the time.

Thermopylae
Founded in 1625bc on the river NW of the furs. China had plopped down a town just north of this, but since China would probably be my first target I wasn't too concerned. Thermopylae needed a Temple to reach the furs and this build was interrupted twice by barb attacks. I went with the more expensive Temples over Libraries. I'm going gold over research this game and I'd need all these happiness buildings once my conquest attempt began. The Libraries would provide little benefit besides culture until maybe much later in the game.

Corinth
Corinth's settler crossed the jungle and settled the cattle country in 1200bc. Half my worker force is hacking a road through the jungle escorted by a Hoplite. These will be nice city sites, but between the terrain, the distance from Athens and the barb problem I'm afraid getting these cities up to speed will take some time.

Trading my way to the Middle Ages
In 1175bc Egypt beat me to Philosophy and India reached Polytheism. With Greece being a scientific civ I wanted to be one of the first to the Middle Ages and hopefully use my free tech as further trade bait. My first move was to buy Mathematics from the Koreans for 82g. Math had been out for awhile and I wanted to see who had Construction for trade. Sure enough the Ottomans had a monopoly on it but had an unrealistic idea of it's value.

1125bc - Trade 86g to Egypt for Philosophy
Trade Philosophy, 98g to India for Polytheism
Trade Phiosophy, Polytheism to France for Literature, Code of Laws, Horseback Riding, 19g
Trade Polytheism, Philosophy to Ottos for Map Making, 37g
Trade Polytheism, Philosophy to Spain for world map, 22g
Science - the Republic 10% (40t)
1050bc - Trade 318g to Spain for Currency
Trade Currency to India for 112g
Trade Currency, 131g to Ottos for Construction
Enter Middle Ages
Monotheism researched
Trade Construction to Egypt for 109g

This round of trading wasn't quite as nice as the last one, but I did end up being one of the first to the Middle Ages. It ended up costing me 334g to make this jump, but I'm not sure I could have done this better. It wouldn't have been long before a few civs researched Currency and Construction and traded them to everyone but me. Waiting for Republic was an option, but no lock on reaching it first and by then my Monotheism would have been worth less.

Outlook
This is going to be a tough game and I have little doubt I'm going to be the underdog for much of it. My goals for the Middle Age are to settle my 5th city (settler delayed on it's journey due to the barbarian hordes), connecting the iron far to the south and building up an army of med infantry or possibly knights to kill off China and possibly India. If I can make friends with Rome and kill off Korea I can use Rome as a barrier and ally in eliminating much of the rest of the world, leaving a mid-level civ to help me when I turn on my Roman friends. That's the loose plan anyway - we'll have to see how it plays out.

Greece at Middle Age:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Greece_at_MA_copy.jpg

Open PTW

As I already mentioned in my quick note above, I found the best capital position after three moves.

I immediately built 2 warriors and a granary, before growth to size 3 (game chopped just in time). Then settler and (not so smart) barracks while building up population for the 5-7 settler factory.
My northern scout found the Chinese in 3200 BC. This was the beginning of a long peaceful trade relationship. I had just finished research of pottery and could trade masonry for pot+alpha+1gpt. By that I could start min on math.
The only other civ, I found by scouting was india soon after.
Tech pace was quite high so that by the time I had math to trade I knew already most of the civs due to communication trading around them.
From my first big deal with math I was at tech parity and never fell back again.
I applied moonsinger's banker strategy to always have enough money for research and ran high science slider on techs the AI's don't like to research. Still I was beaten to several techs, but could still gain by brokering them around.
In 1000BC I had:

8 cities
21 pop
1 granary
3 barracks
3 libraries
5 warriors
4 hoplites
4 workers + 4 slaves (I know, too few)

I had all required techs except polytheismus and was researching republic @ 90%.
I also had aquired all maps available.
I could have had more cities if I wouldn't have messed up the micromanagement of the capital several times :cry:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/klarius_gotm33_1.jpg

In 1000 BC I also started the first (phony) war. Arabia was getting quite big at that time, so I DoWed them and allied Spain and Rome. This was a very long war w/o any hostilities ever. Only much later in MA I made peace with them, because of some trading opportunities.
In the same year I also established my first trade route with china. I gave furs+wines for dyes and some gold. I always had some trades going on with china, until shortly before I exterminated them, but that comes only in the next spoiler.
No real war in AA. I traded for poly in 750BC to enter the middle ages. The same round I could also trade for republic and revolted for a 5 turn anarchy. I had no ressources hooked up by that time and the way I got them finally also belongs in the next spoiler. In the whole game I never built or upgraded a sword. The trading on every turn kept everybody friendly, though we were military by far the weakest civ.

Barbs were a real nuissance. I had to steer them several times to small undefended cities, so they didn't get any important cities, even before the massive uprise.

That's also a tip for all the people reporting problems with barbs pillaging. If you cannot kill them before they come to you, rather move all defenders out of a city. The gold they steal is much less of a problem than pillaging. Also if they move towards your capital where they could do real damage, try to lure them to other cities by getting workers into their sight.
And don't expect to kill them with attack 1 units. This will work frequently, but by far not always.

...That's also a tip for all the people reporting problems with barbs pillaging. If you cannot kill them before they come to you, rather move all defenders out of a city. The gold they steal is much less of a problem than pillaging. Also if they move towards your capital where they could do real damage, try to lure them to other cities by getting workers into their sight.
And don't expect to kill them with attack 1 units. This will work frequently, but by far not always.

Remember too that the higher the level, the tougher the odds against them get.

The barbarians were quite a nuisance for me too. For the most part my explorers ignored the barbs. Their main purpose was to map out the territory so I left it to the other civs to deal with them. Warriors and archers patrolled Greece and for the most part kept the barbs from pillaging. I think I had just one pillage of the road to Thermopylae. I lost a few warriors, but the 2 archers did just fine. I think the barbs are a big reason as to why India hasn't expanded to my south yet.

Barbarians do the 'craziest' things.......

I had a stack of like 4 or 5 barb horsemen come into my borders. They were between 2 cities that were defended by Hoplites. China, who had ROP with me, was coming through with a settler that had a REGULAR WARRIOR escort. Even though the barbs could reach any of these 3 targets, guess who the they attacked?
I just have to laugh at this sort of blatent 'stupidity'.

I have to agree with the programmers that barbs should attack the human player first, when given the choice. After all, we have the big advantage of not having to rely on 'artificial intelligence'.

I've seen this plenty of times before, but just thought that I would mention it here because the barbs were definitely rampant.

As far as choosing the human over an obviously easier AI target - I don't know - to me it just seems so transparent and false if you will. They could have destroyed that Chinese warrior and STILL had 3 or 4 horse to attack me. It's just dumb.

Thank goodness that ALL barbs from the WHOLE continent don't descend upon the human.

Other than a current SG and a game a long time ago, when I was regent level, this was my first try at emperor. I had a lot of the same problems, but I am actually doing okay compared to some of the other posters. I grabbed iron and ivory, though they aren't hooked up and won't be for a long time, and have furs and wine, though the barbs have pillaged the road to furs right now. I didn't notice that the barbarians were restless, and didn't know about the middle ages thing, so a few uprisings managed to capture me by surprise. Here are a few of the things I noted, though I stopped trying to keep a log since I was doing such a poor job.

3850 - Athens founded 1 N, 2 NW
1870 - Thermopylae founded near beavers. I wasted a few tiles, but I wanted furs without a border expansion. I will probably put another city in between, once I have claimed as much land as I can
590 - Entered middle ages, traded around, but for some reason Korea and Ottomans didn't have anything to trade, so I am even with most and up gov techs on a few others. I will revolt to republic soon. No wars that I know of yet, just tons of barbs pillaging my roads and killing my warriors. I have a couple settlers moving south, and thus far I have not settled the jungle at all.

(edited to add a final note)
This is going a tiny bit into the middle ages, but I just wanted to remark on my good luck. I just played a few turns, and my revolution lasted 2 turns. Two. Tootyaloo. I have never had a two turn revolution.

@al_thor: The redeeming factor is that the AI all will target the barbs and on a pangeae map and a high level they'll take care of the problem for you most of the time. They even show where they are, if you do want to collect the 25g yourself. :)

bed_head7:
You have BOTH gov techs (Monarchy and Republic)?
Am I correct in assuming that you are playing at Conquest level?
I'd love to see a screen shot of your territory.

I am in open class, not conquest. I am not sure I can even play conquest since I was better than exactly half of those playing, if I remember correctly, in COTM1.

I had six cities upon entering MA (now have 8 three turns later). And yes, when I got Feudalism, I was able to get Monarchy, the Republic (which I was halfway through researching) and most of the gold out there, as well as the world as it was known by the rest of the civs. I was lucky keeping up in techs there, able to overcome trading my world map by accident (when China popped up in the interturn with 'would you like to trade maps' I accidentally said yes, making getting techs and the complete map tough unless I wanted to pay). I don't know why I was able to keep up, since all I did was research writing, philosophy, part of code of laws, and then part of republic at the minimum to build a good treasury. I didn't get a single one first though.

I will look around for directions for posting an image, even though I really should be able to figure it out on my own.

Nice RNG on that "Tootyaloo" revolution Bedhead. :) It sounds like your game is going well.

Regarding the barbs, I think the AI did a poorer job than usual on eliminating them in this game, due to the very large, empty jungle area to our SE. It is my suspision that this was a small part of Ainwood's evil plan. :p

If you get the opportunity to spend your money, let those barbs into an undefended, one-population city building something cheap like a military unit. That way you will not have to put up with them pillaging your roads. I had to contend with over 60 barb horsies pouring from the SE in my game, but they only got two gold, and pillaged no improvements.

Edit: I just noticed that klarius already posted this advice. :blush: Oooops.

My problem wasnt quite as big, all i did was find all their camps and destroy them, using hoplites, because they will send stacks of units to attack a hoplite on a mountain fortified :lol:

[ptw] 1.27f - Open

When I saw the type of map and number of opponents, I thought "this is going to hurt". This will prove to be an accurate assessment. Very challenging map, Ainword :eek: .

I settled 2 moves north, along the river with game and wine in my capitol's radius. I built 3 warriors, settler, hoplite, grainery. Two of the warrior (1st and 3rd) when east and west. They each curved south once the hit the coasts.

By 1000BC, I had 5 cities, 4 workers, 1 settler, 1 warrior, 2 archers, 7 Hopilites. I had 2 Barracks and 1 Grainery. I lacked Currency, Construction, Monarchy, and Republic. I think my trading of contacts and tech, I mayfurther excelerated the fast research pace. I was angious to get my trades in before everyone had things so I could recoup my costs for buying tech.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/dsv_975bc_map.JPG

By 875BC, I had traded for Currency and Construction and got Fuedalism as my free tech. I was research monarchy with about 20 turns to go at the end of the ancient age. I had 6 cities, 5 workers, 1 settler, 1 archer, and 8 Hopilites. I had build one additional barracks.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/dsv_850bc_map.JPG

While I lost a few units, the only real effect of the barbs was to discourage me from pushing south sooner. Instead I attempted to fill in north of the mountains. I got the furs but had not gotten any stategic resources.

This is by far the earlest start of MA I have ever seen. I was keeping up tech-wise but china and india are both much larger and are streaming settlers towards the SE corner.

All this barb talk is interesting. I had no problems with barbs whatsoever prior to the MA birthing. That I took care of with a bait city in the south.

China was also very strong in my game. Thus my decision to make them a trading partner. They had lots to trade and I needed time to both strengthen my position militarily and to systematically weaken them through MAs prior to the bloodletting.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/swordsman_small.gifhttp://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/ptw.jpg1.27

This sure is a challenging map! Like everyone else I found the barbarians especially nasty and the tech pace blistering.

I suspect that the barbarian problem is because we start with a large empty area to our south. Most of the rest of the world turns out to have Civs packed fairly tightly. So most of the barbarian camps are likely to appear in the lands south of Greece.

A guess as to what causes the blistering tech pace in this game: perhaps there were a lot of goody huts somewhere in the world for the AIs to open?

Opening Moves

I moved the worker NE. He saw nothing worthwhile toward the east so my settler moved north and saw the wines. I decided the settler would take at least two more steps. Taking just one step NW would be on a river and would claim both wines but it would waste a BG, and BG tiles looked like they'd be in short supply. More production would be highly desirable. So the settler would take a second step NW - that position south of the forest would still claim both wines immediately and be on the river.

Moving the settler to that location revealed a nice game tile. There was nothing better in sight so the settler founded Athens there. The worker had moved to the southern wines in the meantime and began irrigating them.

My initial build sequence was warrior, warrior, warrior, settler.

Exploration

My first three warriors went exploring: west, south, and north in that order. This resulted in contacting India in 3250BC, China in 3000BC, and all of the other Civs in 2350BC. My minimap at that date shows the paths the exploring warriors followed:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sirpleb33-1a.jpg

As a result of tech trades made at the same date I'd learned by then that there were horses and iron to the south, as well as ivory.

The land neck northeast of Rome (water on both sides), combined with India and China knowing only each other and my meeting all other Civs via Rome, suggested that the land area south of Athens might be entirely unnoccupied and available for Greek expansion if done soon enough. The only other possibility I could think of was that the water east of Rome was an inland sea and that seemed unlikely - it would be very large if so.

So I continued exploring the area south of Athens to learn more about it. My other two exploring warriors returned home because there was an ongoing barbarian problem - they'd be more useful at home than exploring my rivals' lands.

Early Expansion

Two irrigated wines for Athens was nice for growth but not enough to make a four turn settler factory. Getting more food seemed like a high priority. By the time I finished producing three warriors I'd seen the wheat west of home. My first settler from Athens went there, building Sparta on the tile east of the wheat in 2710BC.

Next I produced a hoplite in Athens - by this time I'd seen a fair bit of barbarian activity and felt I'd need a bit of protection in the home area. After the hoplite Athens built a granary. This would increase its growth rate from every five turns (the current rate with two irrigated wines) to every three turns. I'd have an overrun of two unused food each time Athens grew. So I planned my third town, to be founded after producing the granary and then a settler, to be in the jungle S,S,SE of Athens. Just SW of the start position in 4000BC. A town there could use the southern irrigated wines in two out of every three turns - Athens would use it one out of three turns to maintain its three turn growth rate.

So although a bit complicated in the required micro-management to maximize everything, my first three towns would each have a food bonus, and Athens would also have a granary. Here's how the arrangement looked when I founded Thermopylae in 1725BC:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sirpleb33-1b.jpg

Research

I decided before starting that I'd go for space in this game. So I wanted the maximum research pace I could get. And after seeing the initial AI tech pace I'd have been tempted to go for space even if I hadn't already chosen it!

I started by researching Writing at the maximum rate I could afford.

When I met India in 3250BC she was already three techs ahead of me and I had nothing I could trade. When I met China in 3000BC she and India were both four techs ahead of me.

When I met Rome in 2350BC I was still four turns from learning Writing and discovered that Writing was already known by a number of other Civs.

I immediately traded for contact with all rivals, for Writing, Masonry, The Wheel, Warrior Code, Mysticism, and Iron Working, and for most of the gold in the world.

It was early enough in the game that I thought there could well be some goody huts left somewhere in the world. So I gifted all Civs up to the same tech level. If any of them popped a hut and got a tech I wanted it to be something new. I set my research to Code Of Laws at the maximum rate I could afford.

I was beaten to Code Of Laws and in 1650BC was able to take advantage of the widespread knowledge of Map Making. I leveraged my maps into a trade for Horseback Riding, Code Of Laws, Map Making, Mathematics, everyone's maps, and nearly all the gold in the world. I set my research to Philosophy at the maximum rate I could afford.

In 1525BC Arabia learned Philosophy, beating me to it. I paid her 164g for it and gave it to everyone except India and China. At this point I'd decided to slow down gifting things to India and China because as my immediate neighbors they would eventually be my first invasion targets.

I wanted Republic ASAP and my rivals would probably research everything else. After some quick calculations I decided to research Republic at the forty turn rate - it was unlikely I could learn it faster at the highest rate I could afford.

In 1075BC my rivals discovered the last required Ancient Times tech. I traded 374g for Construction, then traded around to get Currency and Polytheism, and got over half my gold back too.

I got Monotheism as my free tech. I then gifted Korea to the Middle Ages and she got Feudalism. I traded her Monotheism for Feudalism.

Next I gifted Ottomans to the Middle Ages (for the 1/3 chance they'd get Engineering) and to my surprise they got nothing! It seems the Ottomans have been modified to be non-scientific in this game.

As a final step I gifted Spain, Rome, France, and Ottomans all known tech. That made five strong Civs doing research for me - good odds that between them they'd be working on both Theology and Engineering while I continued my forty turn research of Republic.

Luxuries, Resources, Palace Jump

In 1700BC my second warrior saw the two cattle near the center of the southern region and I made up my mind to go for a Palace jump. Those cattle would make a strong central location for the new palace. And I would of course want the horses west of there, the iron to the east, and the ivory to the south.

My first two settlers had built at ring 4 from Athens. I decided to go for a ring 4 build from my future Palace, and ring 4 from my future Forbidden Palace. This approach would result in a nice build which included the horses, iron, and ivory in the south in the first ring, and which would ensure I would neither gain nor lose anything due to the Palace rank bug.

My fourth settler went south and founded Corinth on the river SW,SW from the mountain and beside both cattle in 1475BC. By founding there first I was taking a small gamble that I'd still be first to reach the horses and iron but it seemed worthwhile. Odds were good of still being first to both of them. Corinth is the planned future home of my Palace though it will be a long time before it and a Forbidden Palace in the original region are ready to make the jump.

My next settlers headed for the horses and iron, then I sent one to found a home for the Forbidden Palace N,N,NE of Athens (this location will be able to use three game tiles), and then one to claim the furs northeast of Athens.

By 1000BC I'd settled one more town to claim the spices near the eastern coast of the southern region. My world at 1000BC:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sirpleb33-1c.jpg

Barbarians

Barbarians were quite a nuisance. I found myself regularly dodging them and wishing I had more units to deal with them.

I prefer to deal with barbarians offensively. A defensive approach leaves the barbarians free to wander around pillaging and leaves their camps intact to keep spewing out new barbarians. I'd rather attack them.

On this map it wasn't possible to build strong units (horsemen or swordsmen) to attack the barbarians. The units available were warriors, super-spearmen (hoplites), and archers. Warriors are fine for handling barbarians when it is possible to build lots of them, e.g. via a four turn warrior+settler pump. But on this map that wasn't possible. Combining that with the high difficulty level (and thus a low bonus vs. barbarians) warriors seemed a bad way to go. Losses of warriors when attacking barbarians would be too high. Hoplites have no offensive advantage over warriors, using them offensively just means losing even more shields when one fails. To my mind archers are the way to go in this situation.

So after exploring I used my warriors primarily for defense from barbarians, taking advantage of defensive terrain. I built a few (3 by 1000BC) hoplites to handle situations where defense really mattered, e.g. escorting settlers. For the rest I built archers. The archers moved around taking maximum advantage of defensive bonus terrain and attacked barbarians and their camps.

A useful trick in a situation like this with lots of barbarians is to take advantage of the AIs psychic knowledge of barb camps. The AIs always know where all the camps are. Trading maps with the AIs makes the current camps visible to you.

I got ransacked once for 84g and lost a few units but that was it for losses to barbarians in Ancient Times.

I wasn't nearly ready to handle the barbarian uprising which occured in 1050BC after many Civs entered the Middle Ages. There were at least three camps in the jungle and the southern region which would spew out horsemen. Since I couldn't possibly fend off the barbarians I made other preparations for them:

1) I purchased embassies with all of my rivals. This used about 1/2 of my treasury. I then gave the rest of my gold (about 400g) away, dividing it among four rivals, and set my luxury rate to 80%. (Might as well use my income for something.) Now the barbarians can ransack towns without costing me any gold.

2) I moved defenders out of two size one towns in the southern region. Those towns have no improvements yet. The barbarians can ransack them without doing much damage.

By 1000BC one horde of barbarians has already spent itself ransacking Mycenae in the east. The other barbarians remain but shouldn't be a problem.

Miscellaneous

The other Civs seemed to be rather aggressive in this game so far. In 1830BC I saw a fight between China and India - they were at war that early. And in 1050BC I was informed that Arabia and Rome were at war. There might have been other wars before I had embassies, I don't know.

If you'd like a linear (and rather detailed, move by move) description of my game to 1000BC you can download my QSC timeline here (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SirPlebGOTM33QSC.ZIP).

QSC Status

At 1000 BC I had:
9 towns
1 settler
7 native workers, 2 foreign workers
3 warriors, 3 hoplites, 7 archers
1 granary

Glad to see that your game problems were very similar to mine - too many barbs, resources spread out and hard to get and managing the tech pace. You were fortunate to get the Iron and Horses before the Middle Ages. I got the Horses but have thus far failed to achieve the Iron because of the barb uprising.

I also see that the Chinese are settling on "your" land to the SE.

This is a rather challenging game in the expansion phase. Hopefully, the other civs will fight each other for awhile and leave us alone.

This GOTM and the last one have many similarities for me. For one, I have determination to produce a good (my terms) win. Another similarity is that I’ve been overconfident and my game has suffered. The exceptionally astute may notice that GOTM 32 was never completed: I had a second stalemated war when the Americans backstabbed me the turn I moved a 25-knight stack into Iroquois territory. Then I lost my auto-saves after a spain-related crash and I wasn’t eligible for a score anyway. So I’m pretty motivated this time around, playing a race I like, and it looks to be a crowded map (which is ideal for me). The only concern I have is the pangea world, but surely with the good start spot this won’t be a problem.

Well in the earlier game I have trouble because I’m too confident in Monarch, have early barbarian troubles, don’t tech enough, and random number generator problems plague me.

This game I started moving north with my worker, like many other players. I immediately saw good places to settle, and Athens was founded on the river with dyes and game in sight. I had an slow build of two warriors, a granary, and a settler. This was a little risky, given my worry about crowding, but I didn’t feel hurried - not having met anyone. Sparta was founded in the north on the river, Thermopylae to the west by the grain, and Corinth to the east in not that great a position. By the time I built Corinth, I’d already started to worry about resources, as the Chinese were creeping ever closer. When Iron Working was researched, I started to worry. I had no iron, only one sources was relatively close, and a turn after I sent out a setter, Tsingtsao was built next to the iron. Frankly, I’m surprised I haven’t read about anyone else doing this, but I pressed ahead and founded Delphi also right next to the Iron.

The screenshot below shows my world at 1000BC. It’s not pretty. I failed to irrigate the wines, so I had good production but a crappy food situation. My military consisted of:

5 hoplites
3 warriors
4 workers

Economically I had:

5 cities
13 population
472 gold +16 a turn

I’m 7th in population and 8th in GNP. Luckily I manage 4th in manufactured goods, and my growth potential isn’t bad. But I know I’m behind. Bad. I was too optomistic again. I’ve looked at past GOTMs and seen none that incorporate conditions I’m used to. I enjoy a minimal land game (usually continents), on an arid and cold world. This brings new meaning to ‘crowded’. A wide open map like this, especially on pangea, causes me more problems than a deity difficulty setting. I’m extremely worried about the tech pace, and how good my instincts are. This GOTM is forcing major changes in many of my strategies and challenging my ‘feel’ for the game, all based on geographic conditions. Then again, I’m not giving up. I’ve just won a couple of hard Deity games, and I can win this one. (Disclaimer: haven't played through Middle Ages yet.)

Knowing I was behind on tech, I decided against initiating a good trading round with Literature. Instead, I gambled on Great Library. This was decided slightly before 1000BC (you can see Pyramids building). About 5 turns after 1000BC I also pop-rushed my library in Delphi, and the Chinese had kindly roaded my iron already (see picture). I did build the Great Library (no Golden Age), and used the gifted techs and Literature to get everything I wanted to trade for. Monotheism and Feudalism were the only MA techs I got in the initial boom. It seems my bonus got merged in there somehow.

One good thing I was doing was keeping up in culture. In fact, at the end of the Ancient Age I was the world-wide leader in culture with multiple temples and libraries. I had also built one more city to the south, clearing a space of jungle and using the four grassland tiles south of me. I don’t really know how to do ring placement, but the four cities closest to Athens are all the same distance, so that’s a good start. The rest of the world is doing fairly well. Aside from a war between Rome and India (plus later India’s ally Egypt), peace reigns. Only one Indian city was destroyed during the war. On a side note, Rome has a kick-ass starting position (and built Colossus in my game) - her capitol alone is keeping Rome from her usual early crappiness.

My plan for the Middle Ages is a Medieval Infantry attack on China, who have numerous good cities near me decently placed, and the Pyramids (plus India built the Great Wall). Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for the next spoiler to hear how the Greek Republic fared.

Oh, one P.S. Many people have had trouble with Barbarians, but with the exception of losing my scouting warrior, I’ve had near no problems. Corinth got sacked once by a massive uprising, but I blew all my money on contacts, maps, and embassies just before then. P.P.S. Sir Pleb, thanks for letting me know about trading maps to find barb camps.

I have a question for the professional fog lurkers:
Was it possible to see the game early ?
I just marched in direction of the forest, hoping for the good within Ainwood.

A guess as to what causes the blistering tech pace in this game: perhaps there were a lot of goody huts somewhere in the world for the AIs to open?

One of my initial warriors might have stumbled upon a bit of evidence. He spotted a goody hut far to the WSW of our start, on the coast.

SirPleb:
Excellent write-up. I am continually amazed at your "radical" approach to the game - gifting all those techs, giving away money, jacking up the lux slider so that undefended towns can be freely raided by barbarians? These are things that I NEVER would think of doing, and now that I know about them, I would still NEVER be able to bring myself to do them.

Now, I have gifted a tech to a Scientific civ in order to get them into the next age so that I could get their free tech, but that's as far as I can go. I just can not bring myself to be that magnanimous with the other civs, even if it is a strategic manuver.

In fact, I did it this game with the Ottoman's and the Koreans, and I was just as confused as you when Ottoman's did not get any free tech. I still have not figured out what their traits are in this game.

ptw 1.27f open

goal - avoid conquest loss (after suffering one in COTM2 :( )

4000bc worker N --- nice view of wines, move settler N

3950bc worker nw, settler n

3900 found athens - doh missed a game n of the city :( . Start Pottery at max

3500 meet india - won't accept any trade for cb

2630bc found sparta by dyes to n (a long walk, but wanted to claim a second lux)

2590bc one of our scouts sees an Egyptian warrior across a body of water and they send message bottles back and forth. ( :hmm: I guess we know glassworking to be able to do this) we learn WC for 43g +1gpt

1910bc meet korea and trade Masonry +10g for wheel

1830 a lot of trades/contacts this turn - traded to tech parity with treasury of 192g +3gpt (have met all 9 ai's). We learned writing in a trade and it's a fairly new tech - will try 40 turn gamble on CoL

1575 I think I have my SF up - just produced settler, pop down to 4 with 5fpt, but only 4 shields per turn - might need to be larger than a 4/6 factory.

1500bc found 3rd town

1425bc - lose col race - buy col and phil for 184g

1375 bc traded to tech parity - every one equal - and have known map - looks like right now the jungle to our south is ours for a lot of work. Start research on republic - can't get in less than 40, but ai's usually won't trade it

1335bc give into 1st demand from egypt for territory map + 9g (but then trade screen stayed open and traded her our WM to her for her WM + 71g :crazyeye: )

1075bc traded to tech parity again - no one knows any better govs yet, but we still have a pile of cash and 2 barbs outside of a recently settled town (can just hurry 1 warrior there but can't attack) Build embassy with Rome and he goes from annoyed to polite; build embassy with spain and she goes from annoyed to polite; build embassy with Arabs and he goes from annoyed to cautious. Everyone but arabs is polite to us. we are down to 8g in treasury, earning 14gpt

1050bc our warrior defends our town and the people love us and build us an addition for our palace.

1025 ibt we hear of a massive barbarian uprising near delphi :eek: - someone's in MA

1000bc Trade egypt 41g and 13gpt for currency; ottomans lack currency but have construction and we don't have enough $$ at the moment - so hawk WM and then can make the trade construction for currency, 76g, WM, 1gpt and enter the MA (I have never been in MA this early :eek: - the minimum research and buying/trading tech technique seems to work well)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/rankendaa.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/rrauclassic33endaaempire.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/rrauclassic33endaaminimap.jpg

Sounds like you're doing fine, rrau! :thumbsup: Giving in to demands will keep that particular civ at bay for 20 turns and often turns them polite, thus lowering trading costs. A very normal thing to do on this level and map.

Better luck next time. Pangea is always tricky, and Emperor level is my nemesis right now. AI expands rapidly and tends to play agressively.

I sent the settler N for 2 moves like most. Those games were on plains anyway.

I thought I was doing ok - traded techs and maps like crazy, got some fur, iron and ivory and I even took a couple of Indian cities after Mao gave them a thrashing.

Unfortunately, I pushed a town a little too close to Mao and he sent his riders after me just when I was going to remove an embattled Ceasar from my expansion area. He was polite up to that point, and even traded me some horses.

I could have fought it out, but the chances of finishing sucessfully were not good. I was barely eeking out a basis for a histograph lead, and was very vulnerable to every other possible defeat.

@rrau:
Wow - how did you manage to get to the Dyes before China? :eek:
In my game, and in all other screens that I see, China jumps on those Dyes almost immediately with the city of Shanghai.
Did China then end up beating you to the Furs to the East?
I see that India beat your Knossos to a prime spot. I guess it's a matter of give and take.

I got Monotheism as my free tech. I then gifted Korea to the Middle Ages and she got Feudalism. I traded her Monotheism for Feudalism.

I got engineering, Korea got monotheism in my game, however, there was absolutely no trade that I could do with respect to these techs, and this started a tech slide. So I am interested to know the mechanics of this trade a bit more. Was your trade straight up, or did you have to kick in additional gold to make it happen? Do you have a rule of thumb as far as having tradeables on hand in order to pick up the other scientific civs techs at each age?

Next I gifted Ottomans to the Middle Ages (for the 1/3 chance they'd get Engineering) and to my surprise they got nothing! It seems the Ottomans have been modified to be non-scientific in this game.


Snap, and others here as well. One wonders if there is any point gifting them at the atrt of the other ages, now?

@rrau:
Wow - how did you manage to get to the Dyes before China? :eek:
In my game, and in all other screens that I see, China jumps on those Dyes almost immediately with the city of Shanghai.
Did China then end up beating you to the Furs to the East?
I see that India beat your Knossos to a prime spot. I guess it's a matter of give and take.


my first warrior went N and my first settler went that way, and just beat china, had wanted to settle on middle dyes, but I thought china would settle in that ibt, so took a less than optimal placement and founded off the dye - china then went to settle Nanking to the NE

I went ahead and settled Knossos that close to India hoping for a flip since it was that close to Athens (we had cheap libraries). For the result and the answer to the fur question, you'll have to tune into the next spoiler ;)

I don't have much to say for this.. I did a Warrior rush against China early on, but failed to take Beijing and destroy them. Nonetheless they were a lot weaker in my game than in most of the games I have seen. I settled in a tight RCP, using the 3.5/4 ring and the 6.5/7 ring to line up perfectly with the coastline. This is my map in 1000 BC

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/GOTM33_QSC_Map.png

4000 BC: Sent worker NW to stand on mountain. Found wine!
Sending settle 1 space N & 1 space NE to settle city.

3900 BC: Athens Founded. Building warrior. (Grow 10/Warrior 5).
Worker starts road.
Studying Pottery @ 90%. (15 turns)

3650 BC: Got first warrior, started second warrior.
Warrior will head W.

3500 BC: Warrior entered woods and found India warrior. Talked to leader.
Sold Bronze Working for 10 gold.
Score India 50, Greece 49.

3400 BC: Culture expand got wine, got second warrior.
Building settler. (10 turns).
2nd warrior will head SW.
Pottery in 3 turns.

3250 BC: Got Pottery, studying Iron Working. (30 turns).
Traded Pottery +3gp for Ceremonial Burial.
3200 BC: Set science to 100%. (Iron Working in 25 turns).

2900 BC: Got settler science went back to 27 turns. Set Science to 90 %.
Started granary.
Settler will go 4 to the west.
India has 2 cities.

2710 BC: Founded Sparta. Building Warrior.
Iron Working in 19 turns.

2590 BC: Finished road to Sparta, will build road NW on BG.

2470 BC: Sparta builds warrior, going to Athens to stand guard.
Building warrior (4 turns).

2270 BC: Sparta builds warrior, fortified. Building settler (15 turns).

2190 BC: Got Iron Working for 12gp.
Set science to 100%. Warrior Code in 10 turns.
Sparta changes to warrior.

2150 BC: Athens get granary, starts settler.
Korea contacts me.

2110 BC: Sell Iron Working to Koreans for 36gp and contact with China.
Got warrior code from China for 45gp.
Sold Iron Working to China for 45gp.
Sparta finishes warrior, sending to Madras. Building hoplite.

1790 BC: Got wheel for 25gp form china. Set science to 0%
Contact Arabs form Rome for 15gp and 3gpt.
Mysticism from Arabs for Iron Working.
China writing for 3gpt, contact w/Arabras, Mysticism.
India got some contact for all their gold (I fogot to note).
Korea Masonry & 17 gp for , contact w/Arabras, Wheel.
Arab contact w Spain for writing.
Rome gives contact with French for 3gpt &4gp.
China gives 25gp for contact with spain.
France gives Otto., Egypt, for contact with Spain & Korea +
Mysticism & Iron Working.
Otto, give 50gp for contact w/China.
Spain give 18gp for china.
Rome give 31gp for Otto.

This is where I stoped my notes, I keep science @ 0% untill mid MA. This work very good! I had lots of $$$$

I bought every tech for gp + gpt and sold for gp.

590 BC: India and China both got to MA 1 turn before me. Got Both Govs. for gpt sold to every one for all they had. trade feud. for mono.


The only war was Rome and Arabras (they both said pay or, I picked or), but I never fired a shot. Paid the world to go to war with me.


Barb were a little trouble, I've seen worse.

I tried to put a screen shot form 590BC but I don't know how to post it sorry.

I settled in a tight RCP, using the 3.5/4 ring and the 6.5/7 ring to line up perfectly with the coastline. This is my map in 1000 BC

Ooops! The RCP distances round down, not up. I.e. 4/4.5 are the same distance, not 3.5/4. See >>> this post <<< (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=1169521) in the "Do you think you understand corruption?" thread.

I don't have much to say for this.. I did a Warrior rush against China early on, but failed to take Beijing and destroy them. Nonetheless they were a lot weaker in my game than in most of the games I have seen. I settled in a tight RCP, using the 3.5/4 ring and the 6.5/7 ring to line up perfectly with the coastline. This is my map in 1000 BC

And to complement Dianthus' note you haven't any city closer than range 4.
Maybe you should look on the above post, check out Dianthus' great utility suite and load up your save in CRPRings.
You will see your cities are placed at distances 4-8.

Edit:
But no need to :cry: .
You have strong city locations, an important point that many people forget in their RCP madness.
You will have some more corruption on average, but your empire is still good for high productivity.

The Ottos got no free MA tech in my game either. Besides Korea, who are the other scientifics in this game? Korea and I are way out ahead with Mono and Feud, I'm wondering if there's anyone I can gift up to MA to hopefully get their Engineering.

I didn't move the settler N. Seemed to work ok because Sparta went pretty quickly into the wine/cow spot that others put their capital on. Still, I forgot that I could irrigate those wines under desoptism! Definately slowed me down. I'm just now beginning to expand to the south. This is a good game. I love how all roads lead to Rome :)

Actually, it doesn't really matter, since I doubt I'll be finishing this GOTM anyway. I'd have to finish it in the next two days since I'm going away.

I don't understand RCP and nothing anyone writes will ever fix that.

I am determined to finish this game TONIGHT. I'm leaving this weekend for 2 week vacation (no CIV for 2 weeks! :cry: ).
I lead by 3 Techs, and I am 4 turns away from Motorized Transport [TANKS :drool: ], so I will finally be able to take out my frustrations on the irritating Chinese. Goodbye Mao! :ar15:

CIII 1.29 Open

This is my third GOTM, and my first attempt to document the game. My last two games were Space Race and Conquest victories, I am going for a Domination win this time out.

Initial Builds

My initial move was worker N, spotting the wines and BG by the river. I am normally very reluctant to move my settler more than one square, but it seemed justified here. I proceeded with settler W, N, N to found Athens on the river with wines, BG and forest/game in range. The worker mined the BG, roaded, it, then irrigated and roaded both wines. This location allowed for 5 spt at size 2, yielding quick unit production early on. I felt this was important because after moving 3 turns at Emporer level I felt a little bit like that deer in The Far Side cartoon who was born with a big bulls-eye on his chest ('Bummer of a birthmark there, Hal').

<Note: I have screen prints, but cannot upload them due to exceeding 900K maximum size? I assume this is due to earlier posts that are counted against the 900K allowable -- can someone confirm this? If so, I would like to remove the earlier uploads to free up some space.>

Once a few cities were going I chopped the game forest by Athens and irrigated it, allowing for a 5 turn settler pump (growing 5-7). The inital build order was Wa=>Wa=>Wa=>Hop=>Gran=>settler. The plan for most of my other cities was rax, followed by a steady diet of hops and archers. I also have one city designated as a worker factory (granery => workers) and another to pump out cats. City spacing plan is RCP at 4/4.5 for the first ring, then 7/7.5 for the second. Initial research was Pottery at max. (15 turns), followed by Writing at min. (40 turns). However, the tech pace in this game is such that I have traded for all of my techs so far. (Not a problem, with this many opponents it was easy to find profitable trading opportunities and maintain parity.) I sent the first three Was exploring W, N and E (later SW), so I made lots of contacts early. The tech pace in this game is quite fast!

Current Situation

Entered the MA in 900bc. Right now I have 7 cities with total pop. of 18. I have 3 Was, 5 workers, 9 hops, 12 archers and 1 cat. I am the tech leader and have 632 gold and 7 gpt, but I am 7th in the histograph score. I got Mono. as my free tech., and will have sole possession of Lit. next turn. Korea has not yet entered the MA, but I plan on trading for whatever tech it gets. I am just finishing my first ring of cities yet I have already run up against the Chinese to the N, who control luxes, iron and horses that I need. The plan is to attack China with a combined-arms approach using hops/archers/cats to achieve local superiority versus three strategic cities (to get dyes, iron and horses). Smaller hop teams will be dispatched to pillage all iron and horse resources, and to cut all roads leading to/from Beijing. With the archer=>longbow upgrade on the combined-arms teams should be viable well into the MA. If necessary I will bring India into the fray as well.

Unfortunately I am still in Despotism. I would like to be in Republic prior to starting the Chinese war to avoid a despotic GA, but time is of the essense here -- I have to knock China back on its heels before they get to Chivalry and Riders. Worst case is if both India and China get to Chivalry before I secure horses and iron (for knights), then I will be in trouble with both Riders and Jumbos on my borders. If Korea gets Feudalism for its free tech I may have to defer attacking China until I can get to Invention and upgrade the archers to longbows, otherwise I am looking at a matchup of archers vs. pikes (that would take a LOT of cats to equalize).

Long-term strategy: absorb most of the Chinese lands, then build a second core of productive cities to the south by the cows on the river (hopefully I will get at least one GL, otherwise I will consider a Palace jump). This will entail knocking out the French, who resettled in the SE due to an early war they lost with the Ottomans. All depends now on the coming war with China. I currently have 9 hops and 12 archers available for the cause, with just one cat in support. I would like more like 20-30 archers for the inital assault, but I doubt that I have the time to produce that many. I also need to expand my road network northwards in preparation for the coming assault.
I will also consider fomenting wars amongst the other AIs, to slow down the tech pace.

Not an easy position at all, and not a guaranteed win, but I think I can pull it off. Here's hoping that the goddess of the RNG smiles upon me!

<Edited for typos>

Bigfoot:
Nice write-up. Your plan is very sound and is very similar to the one I had - I definitley wanted to reduce China before they got the Rider. However, way before I was ready, the Chinese and India went to war, AND they both had Chivalry. I let them beat each other up - China was definitely getting the upper hand - I saw my opportunity to attack India instead of China. I also was using Archer/Hoplite/Cat. I decided not to wait for Lonbows and signed an MA with China against India. The RNG Goddess was VERY kind to my Cats and I was able to take out his redlined Pikes with normal Archer (veteran, of course). and secure almost all of India. Still, it was a 'nail biter' of a war to be sure - very much fun.

Good luck with your warmongering. I have had to wait for Tanks before feeling comfortable attacking the Chinese. In the meantime, I have secured all of India and Rome and I am in the process of eliminating Korea. China is firmly in my sights.

Open, PTW 1.27

I sent my worker NE and my settler NW at the start. After seeing the wines I continued on, putting Athens on the river 2 NW, 1N of the start with access to the game and the wines. I built 3 warriors, sending them west, then north, and the third for an MP until I got the wines connected. For once I remembered to change my luxury rate before Athens got unhappy instead of after. I managed happiness relatively well the whole AA. Once the wine is connected I send the MP south.

My 4th build is a hoplite, and then at last a settler. I build Sparta 3 NW of Athens in 2630 and begin my extremely slow growth. Thermopylae is built down south, on the river by the cows in 1600 - I'm after the resources down there. I build another couple of cities somewhere before the end of the age, most of them up north, but I didn't bother to write them down, evidently.

In 3350 I see India's border. A few turns later I meet them, but I have nothing to trade with them. In 3100 I meet China, and again have nothing to trade. This continues, and I meet Korea in 2550 and Rome in 2430.

I started researching with Writing at max speed, which was slow, but I'd hoped to get faster. In 2190 I learned to write and I finally had something to trade- nobody else had it. I had a mad trading party, after which I had gotten contact with everyone, iron working, ceremonial burial, masonry, warrior code, pottery, the wheel, mysticism, and a bunch of gold. I build embassies with China, the Ottomans, and Arabia. I start in on Literature, which I'm promised in 30 turns.

In 1325 I learn literature and start on polytheism at 40 turns. Sparta and Athens switch to libraries. Barbarian horses appear. I trade for horseback riding, math, code of laws, a complete world map, and a bunch of gold, mostly in small chunks. I use the money to buy embassies with everybody but France and Korea. I buy an embassy with France in 1075.

In 925 I complete a road to China and I can start trading - wines for dyes and 12 g. At least they roaded their empire so I didn't have to go all the way to the capitol.

The next turn Arabia demands code of laws and I refuse. They declare war. We do nothing for ages. In retrospect, this was a bad idea. I should have gotten some allies near them and let them kill each other. I have to learn to manage wars better, whether or not I'm actually planning on fighting in them. I have not much in the way of military, but I have not much in the way of anything else either. My empire isn't as unbalanced as usual.

The AA end in 825 BC when the barbs rise up. I didn't have much trouble with barbs. One southern city had no defenders and no improvements and was ransacked a few times. I gave the barbs some nice military targets and let them try to kill them. I think China, India, and Korea got hit more, as they had all expanded into the southern region by this time.

I'm still working on poly, but I decide it is worth buying techs to get into the MA before my free tech becomes worthless. I look around, and I can manage a set of trades to civs who aren't trading with each other that gets me into the MA for a price I can afford. Maps and money to Spain for poly; poly, lit, code of laws to Korea for currency, maps and money; currency and money to India for construction. I get engineering. I sell poly to Rome and Egypt for money. China, Ottomans, Spain, and India are in middle ages, but none have any MA techs. I'm still at war with Arabia, so I don't know what their situation is. I give Korea construction, they get feudalism, and we trade straight across. I build an embassy with Korea and start in on monotheism with a scientist.

The ancient ages went about as expected - nothing exciting and poor to middling expansion. I've gotten good enough at trading that I'm not lagging by an age in tech. I'm pretty comfortable now playing at monarch level, so I went into the game hoping to be able to eke out a win. After seeing the map those hopes went down the tubes, but my head was still above water as we entered the MA.

I got engineering, Korea got monotheism in my game, however, there was absolutely no trade that I could do with respect to these techs, and this started a tech slide. So I am interested to know the mechanics of this trade a bit more. Was your trade straight up, or did you have to kick in additional gold to make it happen? Do you have a rule of thumb as far as having tradeables on hand in order to pick up the other scientific civs techs at each age?
My trade was straight up. That surprised me a bit. Monotheism is worth a bit more than Feudalism but at this difficulty level I expected I'd still have to sweeten the deal. When possible I try to enter new eras with a nice chunk of gold in the treasury, over 1000g would be good to have entering The Middle Ages. (More for later eras is desirable.) But going in with less can usually be made to work out. Do you know about putting your science and luxury sliders to zero before negotiating at a time like that? You can only negotiate with the gpt you have available after what's used by the sliders. Sometimes it is worth putting the sliders to zero while trading and putting them back afterward to run at a deficit for a while. In all cases when trading for beginning of era techs my intention is to get back any gold I pay for a tech as soon as possible in a subsequent deal with that Civ.

One wonders if there is any point gifting them at the start of the other ages, now?
I don't think so. Ottomans just aren't scientific it seems.

Besides Korea, who are the other scientifics in this game?I have not watched them all to make certain but I'd be surprised if there are any others. I'm guessing that Ottomans were modified to non-scientific to level the field between Civ3 and PTW, so changing any of the other normally not-scientific Civs to be scientific seems unlikely.

Ottomans are Mil / ind in this game. :)

Well, this is the second GOTM that I've played and the first I'm going to do a spoiler for. After reading the plays of others here I felt moved to write my own and see if I match up, being kind of new to Civilization 3. If it seems unprofessional just bear with me.

Difficulty Class - Conquest

Where to start? Well, I'll start by saying that it turns out that my route in the early game dirastically differs from most here. During my opening turns I bumped into a Chinese warrior and settler that were still quite close to their city. My warrior was just in sight of their boarder. I don't want to tell the whole story in my introduction, but to be brief I eliminated the Chinese threat entirely. I'm inclined to believe that they were a driving force behind the rapid technology advancments in this game. At the point in time I reached my middle ages, the most advanced civilization, the Ottomans, were 5 techs ahead of me, with only 4 of those being from the middle ages. It is 30 B.C. Most others here were entering the middle ages, no doubt slightly behind in the race, around 1000 B.C. This is a rather interesting find, as in your games the leader should have 2, 3, maybe even 4 more techs then that by this time. This knowledge makes me optimistic that I'll be able to pull ahead from an other wise slow start.

The Opening Game

Like most here, I moved two spaces north of our initial position. Athens was founded along the shores of what will be dubbed the Athens River in 3900 B.C. I sent one hoplite through the mountains in a westward direction to explore and fortified the other in Athens. A few turns later in 3650 B.C. I sent my first warrior exploring to the north along the Athens River. My exploring hoplite quickly came to the end of the mountain chain and continued west to see how far out the jungle went. In doing so he stumbled upon the Indian civilization whose city was located southwest of Athens. There was a quick exchange of knowledge before my hoplite headed north.

War With China

To the north my warrior had encountered a Chinese settler with a warrior escort. Contact was made and knowledge was exchanged. Then I got to thinking, "I decided at the beginning that I felt like getting a conquest victory. This would be as good a time as any to start." Indeed, it was a strategic decision. If my warrior could manage to kill that escort and capture the settler not only would it net me two free slaves but it would cause China to stop focusing on expansion and technology. The downside would be that they'd focus on taking over my cities. But I had an advantage. First, they had no clue where Athens was. Second, even if they did find Athens they'd still have to produce troops with a fledgling city and run them down there. Third, they'd have to get through the defenses, which were now two hoplites. If things went sour I could always just fend off their attacks with hoplites guarding workers and escorting settlers. If I played my cards right the war could work out for me whether I won or 'lost'. As it was, I won. I defeated the enemy warrior and directed my prize toward wines south of Athens (my starting workers were busy digging a path through the forests to the north to the site of what would be my second city). I directed my exploring hoplite to the north in the general direction of the chinese city which had come into view when my warrior moved into the position the settler had been in.

Sparta was founded in 2750 B.C. and set about producing an archer. Giving me the Warrior Code would be China's undoing. Meanwhile, for better or worse, my hoplite to the west had attacked and defeated a Chinese warrior, triggering a Golden Age. A rather shocking amount of warriors, archers, and spearmen poured out of the fog and into sight of my warrior and slaves. I was starting to wonder whether I could possibly take on all those units. I probably wouldn't have been able to, but I had both the money to support a relativly large army and the production to churn it out due to fully improved tiles around Athens and the woodland game outside Sparta. One hoplite was already in Sparta and two were in Athens. They were soon joined by an archer produced by each city. The first died in his first fight, redlining a fortified warrior outside Sparta. The second took out that warrior as well as two spearmen and another warrior that had moved (but apparently not fortified, at least not the first spearman) within striking distance of Sparta. This archer, followed by another fresh from Athens, struck out north to take out two archers headed toward Sparta. With my two archers on a mountain and China's two on a grassland tile north of the mountain, they didn't have a chance. One of my archers attacked and killed flawlessly, and the second was taken down to yellow by the remaining archers following counterattack.

By this time my western hoplite had uncovered the tiles surrounding Beijing. It was apparently their only city, only size 1, and they apparently had no other units wandering around as they had no contacts other then me. This being the case, I sued for peace and got The Wheel and 58 gold out of it. I closed the diplomacy screen, re-opened it, and declaired war on them again. As far as I know this ruins your reputation (especially since I still had that hoplite in their territory). But if they don't have contact with anyone else, no one else has to know. So I decided to devote my resources to building two more archers and an attempt at taking Beijing. Meanwhile, my hoplite pillaged a mined cattle with road access, a mined wild game with road access, and I believe a shield grassland tile that was mined and had road access. A very nice starting position. A Chinese archer left the city to defeat a barbarian to the north, putting him in range of my hoplite. My hoplite attacked and scored another victory for Greece. This was fortunate as then there were only two spearment in the city as I would learn. With 4 archers at his doorstep, Mao made a bid for peace. He was rejected as he has nothing to offer and my archers attacked. Two died and the last one made it in, capturing Beijing for me in 1870 B.C. A turn before I had founded my third city, Thermopylae, making Beijing my fourth.

This did not eliminate China from the game though. I figured that they might just still have troops walking around. There would have been little I could do about that unless they came back. Howeve I initiated diplomacy with them a few turns later and found that there was a city under their 'Cities' heading: Canton. This was not good. This meant that they still had two cities somewhere. I demanded Canton in a peace agreement and they conceded. The city was south of the jungle to the south of us. Due to the corruption and the barbarian attacks that I realized would be regular, I soon abandoned the city.

With the Chinese basically defeated, or at least driven out of my potential land for expansion, I decided to bring my early campaigns to a close and focus on expansion peaceably.

The Era of Expansion

It was now 1675 B.C. I had found horses to the south of Beijing and was making preparations to send a settler there to claim it. My fifth city claimed the dyes between Sparta and Beijing. At about this time the Indians demand 21 gold from me. Not being ready to get in a fight with the swordsmen I suspect they now have, I decide it would be best to humor them. It was at this time that I also started planning out how I'd catch up in the technology race. I had fallen a bit behind due to my lack of expansion and apathy toward diligent tech trading earlier. I believe I was three or four techs behind the most advanced civ I knew of (probably tied for the most advanced, in retrospect, as they were constantly later when I had more contacts to compair them to) which was India. I had also completely abandon exploration during my campaign and now it seemed as though boarders had filled up all the open spaces, making exploration difficult and effective tech trading impossible as a result. I decided that building up my own economy and mass producing settlers would be wiser then taking any time to build units to explore.

Mass produce I did. I honed in on claiming and working land and as a result built 12 towns spread from the jungles in the south to the two silks on the peninsula to the north and from the eastern shores to the desert to the west. They're fairly well developed at this time, this time being 30 B.C. They have abnormally low populations for cities of this time and there's still a bit more forest then I'd like for this terrain, but about 70% of the tiles that are being worked are mined/irrigated and have road access. This percentage is climbing fairly rapidly. I've had a few set backs in building due to those damned barbarians, but I'm recovering well enough. All other factors of my civilization are a little below par, but they're improving steadily.

Resources

I have access to Iron, Horses, Dyes, Wines, Furs, and Silks. I have access to two or more of every luxury resource and can trade them for techs and military alliances in order to keep the other civs powers in check (at least I hope. I'm not sure with how I double crossed the Chinese) or I can give them away to placate other civilizations and get better prices on techs. It looks like I might be forced to pay gold up front, so I'll need those good prices. I think I have a large enough territory to have a reasonable chance of saltpeter appearing within my boarders. It looks as though it'll be near Beijing if it's anywhere. If it isn't, it'll be in Indias territory. That I am quite sure of. I'll have to take them down quick if that's the case. I'll have to get Gunpowder quick so I can actually check on that.

City Improvements

I'm lacking in this area. I'd like to get a temple, library, and marketplace in every city in a reasonable amount of time, but that's going to be a rather large undertaking. Especially since Athens just happens to be in a virtual corner! Half of my cities are simply a morass of corruption, although I'm still in despotism. I'll soon have monarchy though, so I hope that improves things a bit. If it doesn't improve things, add Courthouses to that list. I don't particularly feel like becoming a republic with the wars to come, even with the unit support it offers.

As far as gold per turn goes, that's coming along suprisingly well. With some marketplaces I hope to surpass 20gpt soon.

Military

I have about 12 hoplites and 10ish swordsmen right now. Soon to have more swordsmen and probably more hoplites. As soon as possible I plan on upgrading these to Persian Mercenaries. These are the units I intend to fight the upcoming wars with. I have to juggle this production with the production of civic buildings. This is going to be the toughest balance if I want to raise an army to take out my neighbors right now.

Technology

I'm five techs behind the Ottomans and probably the Indians right now and two to four techs behind everyone else. Certainly not a hopeless situation, but it does mean that I need to scramble to get Gunpowder. I'm considering alternate methods to getting ahead fast, as opposed to creeping ahead in research myself with a couple bought here and there.

Those Damned Barbarians

This map is rife with barbarians. I didn't have too much difficulty with them untill 800 B.C. There were TWO massive barbarian uprisings in the same turn. Within a couple turns both were heading not for the weak Chinese and Egyptian cities that were closer to them, but to my cities. It turned out that one uprising took place in the west and one in the southeast. Both were composed of 16 horsemen. I got very lucky in the southeast, where a hoplite killed 14 of them, but the west was not so lucky. All 16 hammered the single hoplite and archer in Beijing. After about 11 failed attempts, a horseman finally broke through my defenses and promptly destroyed the temple I'd just spent 30 turns making. It had been there ONE turn, and then it was destroyed. I sobbed quietly as the other horsemen walked off with my hard earned gold. Between these barbarians and the Indian, Ottoman, and Arab barbarians, I couldn't keep gold in my pockets to buy techs. All three countries demanded between 20 and 30 gold. The money taken by barbarians and other civs would have been enough to buy another tech. These were certainly a setback for me.

Did you know the forums only allow messages up to 15,000 characters in length? Here's my conclusion. Oh, there's three attachments. I couldn't figure out how to get them into the post so I'll just tell what they are. The 3200bc.jpg is a picture of my plans for invasion of China. Real30bc.jpg is named so because I had two different files for the same picture and I wanted to remember which one to post. This is a picture of my empire thus far. Histograph.jpg is, of course, my histograph and score thus far.


Reflections

Was it a good idea to sack China in the beginning, stunting my own growth but at the same time crippling them for the entire game? I can't say for sure, but I feel optimistic about it. Things are looking up for my civilization, and if I play my cards right I should be able to surpass my immediate neighbors at least. From the looks of it, I would have had a harder time dealing with a powerful China and India if I'd chosen to go with a small, extremely well developed empire as opposed to a larger mediocre empire with the potential to be a powerhouse. In the short term and the long term things look good. The access to iron and horses will be very helpful soon enough. The four luxuries have greatly helped in getting by with few happiness-inducing city improvements.

Was it a good idea to abstain from getting those contacts early on? I made contact with the French just one turn before I reached my middle ages. I might have been able to benefit from getting a galley out there sooner, but I think by the time I got Map Making the damage had already been done. You either get those contacts early and be the tech broker or you don't at all. I think I picked the don't at all, and I think I'll eventually pull out of it.

Future Plans

I need to get larger cities. I also need courthouses. A couple more workers then I have out there now would be nice. Some barracks would be a great help. Leonardo's Workshop would be fantastic for upgrading all of these swordsmen, but somehow I think they'll all be dead and replaced with Persian Mercenaries by the time I get that. I need to get Gunpowder badly. If I got it first, I'd be able to trade it for every single tech that I don't have. The best part is I wouldn't even need to trade to my immideate neighbors to get those techs. This means that I can give it to people who will already get it soon enough and still have an advantage over my current potential enemies. I just have to hope that those far away civs don't go trading it to my neighbors in exchange for an 'Everyone gang up on Greece' pact. I need to build a Forbidden Palace in Herakliea. I figure that if I'm to capture India that it would be the best place for it in order to make India slightly productive. I'm not at all clear on how corruption works though, so I'm just guessing. I need to build up my infrastructure. My road system is a winding mess. It takes my units one, maybe two more turns more then it has to in order to get to a destination. If I am to use Persian Mercenaries predominantly, this must be fixed. I need to switch to Monarchy fast. Corruption is killing half of my cities. Monarchy and courthouses will fix this, I hope. Maybe a palace jump to Corinth is in order. Last, I need to instigate wars between the civilizations to the west. I don't want the Ottomans or Arabs to get too powerful as they're currently becoming. One of them needs to become my ally and the other my enemy for the time being.

Scores Thus Far

1175 B.C. - Toynbee completed his Great History of the World.

Most Powerful Nations in the World
1.) Arabs
2.) Indians
3.) Romans
4.) Ottomans
5.) Greeks
6.)French
7.) Spanish
8.) Egyptians

170 B.C. - St. Augustine completed his Great HIstory of the World

Wealthiest Nations in the World
1.) Ottomans
2.) Arabs
3.) Greeks
4.) Koreans
5.) Romans
6.) Chinese
7.) Spanish
8.) Egyptians

Do you know about putting your science and luxury sliders to zero before negotiating at a time like that? You can only negotiate with the gpt you have available after what's used by the sliders. Sometimes it is worth putting the sliders to zero while trading and putting them back afterward to run at a deficit for a while.
Thanks for the response and the advice, Sir Pleb. Yes, I have used that trick in the past. In conquests I have even made a whole bunch of citizens into taxmen to enable a deal. Here I didn't actually do that, possibly because I was getting the 'you are a long way away from a deal' message. I might reload my save from that time just to see if it is possible.

It is interesting to note that the various civs do not charge the same amount for the same tech at any point in time (when you are trading or trying to catch up). Maybe there is some factor of the relative impressiveness of you relative to them. I only suggest this because the smaller, less technically advanced civs appear to offer the best tech bargains. Certainly, based on your starting moves, I think it would be a safe bet that your position at entry to the MA would have been stronger than mine. Perhaps this is reflected in your ability to do a straight up trade? If anyone knows of any articles on this point, I would be very interested in a link.

Did you know the forums only allow messages up to 15,000 characters in length? Wow! :goodjob: You have got to be the first person in 49000+ members to ever run into that problem in your first ever post! And I'm sure there's only ever been a few people that have run into that problem anyway!

Welcome to CFC, and thanks for a great write-up. :)