COTM 02 First Spoiler: End Of Ancient age

klarius said:

But the better option is really to plan your wars well. Either make short operations w/o alliances, or 20 turn campaigns, but make sure that you can go through the 20 turns being always on the winner side.

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this is where i went wrong, i completely underestimated them, amatuer (sp) as that soudns. i forgot they had SoZ, so when my smallish invasion force on their homeland left my colonial town i a) got battered and then lost my city to about 25 ancient cavalry.... never again

t3h_m013 said:

this is where i went wrong, i completely underestimated them, amatuer (sp) as that soudns. i forgot they had SoZ, so when my smallish invasion force on their homeland left my colonial town i a) got battered and then lost my city to about 25 ancient cavalry.... never again

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The solution for this situation is:
First don't forget it
Make war with one of the neighbors. Then take an alliance with the SoZ civ against them. Let them burn the AC.
20 turns later you will have a much easier task. Then you can just switch sides and the rest of the AC will still be tied up against the neighbor.
If possible you don't even act in the first war at all. A war without any hostilities will not generate war weariness on your side. If they should sent their lonely galleys after you try to sink them even before they reach you.

COTM 2 Predator


As I've submitted my last three games as SS victories, I think I'm going to be playing this one out for a Diplo victory.

Like many others, I settled Amsterdam on the BG to get the whales. I don't regret this, as it worked out well and I later got my palace to a more central location anyway.


Exploration

This was the type of map that shows the power of a seafaring civ. I managed to quickly make contact with all of the nearby civs and then some. Made for excellent trading opportunities.

Science and Trading

I started off with a max run at writing. This worked out nicely, as I got 6 techs in total for it once I finally traded it around. My next research project was CoL, of course, and then Philo. I learned Philo in 1250BC and got The Republic, and immediately revolted, drawing 3 turns of Anarchy. Once the Dutch Republic was formed in 1175, I started researching currency at max whiel I picked up Polytheism and Construction from France and England, respectively. I finally picked up currency in 690 BC and went Medieval.

Other Notes

There are none really. My ancient age was fairly boring, excpet for a few barbs that slaughtered one of my settlers. I did end up at war with England at one point over a refused demand, but that led to nothing.

why only i had a 8-turn anarchy while everyone else seems to enjoy <6 turns anarchy?

davidcrazy said:

why only i had a 8-turn anarchy while everyone else seems to enjoy <6 turns anarchy?

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The length of the anarchy period is partly random and partly dependent on the size of your Civ. My anarchy period from Despotism to The Republic was just 3 turns, but I only had 7 towns at the time!

Open Class

Start
Moved onto BG to get both whales. Overcoming my aversion to building a city on the BG was the first challenge I saw in the game. Of course, I did not read the pre-game posts, so I totally missed that others had been discussing it. It worked well for me in the beginning as I pumped out settlers at size 4 as soon as I had a granary and managed to build settlers every few turns and osculate Amsterdam between 2-4 pop until I had 10 cities or so.

Growth
I was totally flummoxed by the beautiful green fields and cool waters across the mountains. I brought my settlers north and built as best I could using mostly coastal sites and endured the corruption of having my palace way out on the isthmus.

I considered the free palace move or an FP in the center of the continent and a future palace move off the starting continent, but then I did some research on free palace move and the FP corruption errors and decided the most honest approach was a simple palace build. 30+ turns during the MA with my best city. Ouch!

Tech, Trading and Exploration
I did not even know about the Republic slingshot with Philosophy until I started reading this thread. I went straight from Despotism to Monarchy. I’ve usually stayed away from The Republic and then moved on to Democracy, but I’m experimenting with Fascism since I got Conquests.

My curragh did a good job of discovering the southern isles and other civs, so I’ve stayed up to speed on tech but seemed to lag on cities and units.

Middle ages stared somewhere around 10AD.

Conclusion
If I was playing a solo game on Emperor, I would have considered abandoning the game. I did feel better once I read the other posts, as others struggled with the poor palace placement as well.

I’ve only played for 2 sessions and I’m at 1000AD, which feels like the fastest I’ve ever played CIV. I’m enjoying COTM and looking forward to future spoilers and the rest of the game.

StanNP

Does any1 know when The MA spoiler will be open?

Dianthus said:

The length of the anarchy period is partly random and partly dependent on the size of your Civ. My anarchy period from Despotism to The Republic was just 3 turns, but I only had 7 towns at the time!

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yeah, i know this and i only had around 10 towns at that time.. but i now find it isn't completely random. if you statistically analyze all the anarchy number for every gotm, for every game there's a certain distribution but the average always changes (not as a function of the # of city in each game)

MjM said:

Does any1 know when The MA spoiler will be open?

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i remember ainwood mentioned that since we're seafaring he would open it sooner than normal. i remember he said it would be 7th... but apparently he didn't. i guess i was too eager for it to open and so misread the date.

davidcrazy said:

yeah, i know this and i only had around 10 towns at that time.. but i now find it isn't completely random. if you statistically analyze all the anarchy number for every gotm, for every game there's a certain distribution but the average always changes (not as a function of the # of city in each game)

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I expect the forumula is probably something to do with the optimal city count for the map.

open

I moved the settler over the hills and mountains towards the better terrain. my thought was that I didn't want to establish a palace city only to abandon it later, losing anything that had been invested in it. I also didn't want to deal with an early empire with heavy corruption due to an off-balanced capitol placement.

I ended up founding Amsterdam in 3700BC and was suprised to find the cow! set up the 4T settler factory and got it running in 2710BC. 1st town was Rotterdam which produced a curragh but switched to Colossus during the 2nd curragh build thanks to the rapidly founding coastal cities.

By 1000BC, I had 11 cities, 2 settlers (1 on the horse island, ready to settle), 3 warriors, 2 archers, 1 spear, 1 galley, and 1 dingy. without any rivals on the immediate island, i was able to forgo military and let Rotterdam finish the Colossus in 1050BC 1st time in a long time that i've gotten a wonder so early in the AA. i also had 2 barracks and a granery.

Tech trading was relatively slow. I did a min research run on Writing and then traded it right away, allowing someone to beat me to Philosophy, which also allowed the AI to beat me to Math and MM. I did win the race to CoL, which I then used to buy all of the above. However, I had to research Republic, which I got in 730BC. I revolted and drew a 7T anarchy. Currency was the last tech of the AA and I self researched it in 490BC.

I've had bad luck with barbs so far, with them killing a settler and my 1st suicide curragh before it could meet anyone. Another suicide curragh sank just outside the coast. I was finally successful 690BC but i only met stupid people.

I actually missed the iron island south of our main island, instead pinching 1 on another continent needless to say, this did make things quite fun in the beginning of the MA.

Dianthus said:

The length of the anarchy period is partly random and partly dependent on the size of your Civ. My anarchy period from Despotism to The Republic was just 3 turns, but I only had 7 towns at the time!

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So what. I had 3 towns and got 5-turn anarchy.... Life/civ is so unfair!

Darkness said:

So what. I had 3 towns and got 5-turn anarchy.... Life/civ is so unfair!

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did you research really fast ?
or did your cities grow really slowly?

COTM 02, Open

Inital settlement:
I started by moving the worker W, revealing mountains. Since the location SE would only give 3 tiles with 2 food before harbor, I decided to do something i very rarely do: move far before settling first city. It would take atleast 4 moves before settling this way. Upon reaching the mountainrange, I found a river, and decided to settle along that. The only coast opening in the mountains was not on the river though, which meant settling inland. I saw a hill not too gar away, and decided to head to that, and settle on it if no better spot presentet itself. Voila, we saw a cow! The 1 extra turn wasted on moving next to the cow is completely negated by the 10 turns with extra food, so we move yet another square. Amsterdam was finally founded in 3650 BC.


Inital builds:
I decided to build 2 warriors for scouting and defence, since this was after all raging barbs. I quickly discovered that I wasn't in danger of any barb camps in my homelands, since there wasn't much room for them to spawn in, so both warriors scouted. After the second warrior, I built a granary and began pumping out settlers. 2 settlers, followed by a worker, then 3 more settlers. The core was pretty tight, and after founding all 5 ring1 cities, I pumped some workers before settling further.
2460 BC:


Purple dots are main cities, while blue are fillers.

The 2 eastern cities pumped out 6 curraghs that went to explore, and more about that later

Strategy
My main goal from here was to develop the core cities, research Map Making to get those resource cities, and get the Great Lighthouse. I intend to get the Great Library as well.

I currently have 11 cities on the continent and 2 on the resource islands, as well as 4 on other islands/continents. I have plans to build another 7 cities on my island, mainly tundra fishing villages.

Core in 270BC:


Military
Due to lack of resources, or atleast tricky to connect, and an almost complete absence of barbs, my military is mainly spearmen, but I am building horsemen to go take ivory by force.

Wonders
I have handbuilt colossus and 2 turns left on great lighthouse in my second city, producing 13 spt at size 8.
Pyramids was the first AI wonder, built in 750 BC and causing a major cascade, taking out the oracle and MoM. ToA is not yet built, but probably have some major prebuilds. SoZ is not complete, but 2 civs are working on it, but both recently started.

Research
I decided to 50 turn writing and try philosophy gambit, despite losing a few turns in the start. This is Monarch after all, and it worked. Took MM as free tech, then started researching CoL, followed by republic. Traded to me all other techs apart from construction and currency. Monarchy is known, but not literature.

Kemal said:

Now, for a few general remarks about the game itself, please correct me if i'm wrong, but has the Great Lighthouse been disabled for the AI?

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I think a major factor in this is that very few of the AIs had coastal capitals. Only 2 cities tried to build it in my game, both of them tiny with no real hope. Most of the better cities were busy building other, earlier wonders

Dianthus said:

The length of the anarchy period is partly random and partly dependent on the size of your Civ. My anarchy period from Despotism to The Republic was just 3 turns, but I only had 7 towns at the time!

Click to expand...

I've had 4 changes so far this COTM (Des -> Mon -> Rep -> Dem) each with very different size empires and had 6 turns anarchy each time. It may be random, but at least for me its not a very wide distribution.

Open

Firstly, I apologise to anyone whose posts are on pages 4-11 of this thread - I haven't read them, there are way too many! I actually finished my game last night (got bored, won a Diplo at the 2nd attempt, freakin' abstensions, I mean, why was <censored> suddenly Annoyed with me anyway?)

But my Ancient Ages...

As always, my log of early events is a lot more detailed than later times when Empire size and general apathy stops me logging.

BC 4000 The first big decision of the game comes right now! The forum is split 50/50 as to whether or not to move the settler SE right away to take advantage of the whales later on… or to move onto the hills with the worker to see what's over there first. Or a combination of the two? Are those two missed worker turns going to end up being crucial, or will they lead to a promised land full of plentiful bounty? It's a roll of the dice. In the end? I moved the Settler SE and started a road on the Grassland.
3950 Founded Amsterdam, start research on Writing at 20%, which nets me +3 gpt. Initial build is a Curragh.
3850 Road completed, I jack science up to 90% now to take advantage of the extra gold. Writing in 43. Worker starts to mine.
3550 Mine completed. Move worker to W hill. Looks like we're on a peninsula sticking out onto a much large landmass - but are trapped by mountains. After the Curragh, a Warrior will have to be popped to go looking for potential city spots - and an eventual permanent capital.
3450 Amsterdam expands, and both Whales are now in play. Tech rate to 100%, Writing in 22. Moving the worker back to join Amsterdam - definitely nothing worthwhile doing for the time being. Writing now in 19 with the extra gold from the roaded Grassland that the worker's pop point brings. Curragh next turn.
3400 …and Amsterdam goes into disorder. Stupid, stupid mistake. Adjust tech down to 90% and lux up to 10%. Writing back to 21. I should've spotted that, and waited 'til I had a warrior for MP.
3350 Curragh completed, start on a warrior. Move Curragh to the pokey-out coast tile - and find, as hoped for, and island. The first settler will still go up over the mountains, but the second may get put in a Galley.
3300 Promising 3-tile island to the SE - two BGs and a Grassland. Will settle later.
3200 Amsterdam builds its first Warrior. Set to MP, Sci back to 100%, Writing in 15. Another warrior being built, this time for Exploration.
3100 Warrior completed for exploration. Third warrior started, will be used initially for MP then as Settler escort.
2950 Warrior climbs the mountains to reveal a row of Silks and a river! Looks like prime site for Settler #1
2630 Settler #1 completed, sent to previously scouted location with a warrior. Immediate work on another settler as Amsterdam isn't going to be a major city.
2470 Writing completed. Go for CoL to try and snare the Philosophy slingshot with a choice, probably to MM as it looks like I'm stuck on a bit of an island.
2430 Founded Rotterdam. Immediately start on a worker.
2270 Settler #2 completed, sent to a location with a cow nearby.
2110 My curragh spots some borders, but no units pop by to say hello.
2070 Contact with <Civ1>. Trade Writing for CB+BW+10g. I'll keep Pottery for now as they won't trade techs for it.
1990 Contact with <Civ2>. Trade CB+W for Masonry+10g so I can initiate a Palace Jump once Amsterdam completes its current Settler. Sell Masonry on to <Civ1> for WC+25g - I'm now Pottery ahead of both, <Civ1> has Wheel (yeah, useful on this map…).
1910 Founded The Hague.
1830 Contact with <Civ3>. They are ahead by Mysticism. I probably have a Philosophy rival.
1750 Contact with <Civ4>. Trade WC for Wheel+10g - fantastic
1625 Settler #3 finished in Amsterdam, Palace jumped to Rotterdam. In a turn of much activity, my roving warrior finds a Barb camp and a couple of Barbs with it.
1600 Lose my Warrior to the Barb camp :-(
1550 CoL finished. I'll hold on to it for now to get a head start on Philosophy - then try and use it to get Mysticism from Inca.
1525 Rotterdam finished its Granary 1 turn ahead of growth - I don't usually manage to time these things so well! Same time, the worker connects up the Silks.
1375 Get IW from <Civ4> for CB+Writing+25g. Sell to <Civ2> for 13g. Sell to <Civ3> for 10g. <Civ3> has MM - good news, I'll go for Republic from Philosophy then.
1275 Rotterdam produces a Settler. The Hague goes into disorder :-( Should've tweaked the Temple build.
1225 <Civ3> have beaten me to Philo?! Rats! Now I have no bargaining chips to get MM! Founded Groningen.
1000 QSC position:

4 Cities
183g
8 pop
2 settlers
3 workers
3 warriors
2 spears
1 curragh
BW,IW,Mas,Alpha,Wri,Phil,CoL,Pot,Whe,WC,CB
Contact with 4 Civs



975 Founded Eindhoven.
875 My Curragh sinks two Barb Galleys
850 Use Philosophy to get Mysticism from <Civ4>, CoL to get Riding from <Civ1>, plus a hatful of for some other trades. <Civ3> still a tech ahead (Poly). Founded Maastricht.
570 Founded Haarlem.
470 Founded Holwerd (Iron).
210 <Civ3> calls my bluff for Literature. He DoWs, I establish embassies with <Civ1>, <Civ2>, <Civ4> and give away tech (but get some gold in return) to pull them into the war.
AD 70 Entered MA, the first Civ to do so. Only one outstanding Barb camp on my island and <Civ2> just planted a new town right next door to it. Oops.

A fairly solid start, I felt. I'm the tech leader (and would remain so throughout the game), have Iron and Horses, and my rivals are building a few nice wonders for me (Civ1 in particular has built me SoZ, would later build KT for me, and also built the Oracle).

Neil.

hi!

i went wild on curraghs early on and met lots of civs before the spoiler criteria was met. this resulted in lots of good trades and with mapmaking early settlements on the tiny off shore islands. my capitol ended up in the square with the two whales.

i've decided to keep the others happy(embassies/gifts) and keep the ancient age defence/offence low, did hardly build any phalanxes! aim was to later build the barracks wonder and upgrade warriors. found that the mapmaking wasn't all that crucial for me, was yet busy with my island after getting philosohy and the curraghs were doing fine. picked literature instead and started some early libraries.

cheers,
john

I was one of the surprisingly many nomads in this game. I stated this was my intention in the pregame thread, however: My very brief gazings into the crystal ball

I decided to settle on the hill for another reason than SirPleb did. I suspect he's not as chicken as I am
My reasoning was that the trudge through the wilderness had slowed me down and this tends to make the AI more agressive. So I wanted the added protection of defending on the hill in case of barbs (I haven't had one barb attack me!) or AI civs attacking me.

QSC results:
13 cities
All AA techs except Currency (due in 9), Construction, Literature and Monarchy.
1 Settler, 8 Workers, 14 Warriors, 4 Archers, 3 Curraghs.

I entered the MA in around 800 B.C. after having to research Construction myself for the most (shaved a few turns off it by trading for it, but very late...).

Sorry, no screenshot, i dont have edditing programs to make it look decent with the complete empire. If i do it with MS paint you wont recognise a mountain from a lake

So:

I will go for conquest or domination victory, i will decide by the time i appreach 66% which of those 2.

I decided to move inland and settled on the hills next to the river. I started a 4 turn settler factory there as fast as possible by mining one BG and irrigating the cows. Those 2 were enough to get the factory started. granary-warrior-settlers. later on i made it more efficient and even got 2 or 3 warriors in between my settlers as i saw the option to build warrior + settler in 4, i quit doing that when i swiched to republic cuz i didnt want more upkeep. Instead, i gave some very productive fields to other cities and just made settlers in 4.

Every city i build after the capital started with either immeadiately a worker, or a warrior then worker if needed to wait for growth. After the worker, most of my cities started a granary. Some of the cities that had very little land squares (like the one on the penensule we started on) made a harbor after the worker.

Rotterdam started with a curagh for exploration, this guy did good work, finding 6 of the 7 opponents. The 7th is also found by a second curagh i send out much later.

Only fought 2 barbarian settlements, one on my mainland and 1 in the western tundras. lost 1 archer and 1 warrior.

tech: writing - code of laws - philosphy - *republic. did not trade any techs until i completed philosophy. Got to republic around 1500 BC.

I have been carefull trading techs to the AI. I want to do as much of my conquest as possible with knights and not having to wait for cavalry, so them being backwards is important for me.

My stats at 1000 BC:
-12 cities, exactly enough to fill my main land, no cities outside mainland yet.
-2 settlers
-12 workers
-5 warriors
-1 galley
-255 gold
-all tech except monarchy, literature, currency, construction
-contact with all
-4 granaries
-1 harbor
-1 barracks
- FP due in 27