GOTM 41: First Spoiler

ONe other lucky thing about my game - I had ZERO disease problems. I settled Persipolis on the Plains-Fur square like everyone else. As mentioned, I build Warrior, Warrior, Worker, Granary. I then pumped Settlers out like mad, working 3 Irrigated Flood Plains, a Forest/Fur, and a Mined Hill.

Also in my game, I blockaded the choke-point to the peninsula, sending Settlers through to secure the Spices and the entire arm of the peninsula.

My game was a wreck from the beginning. I went to the NE mountain with worker, but finding nothing, settled the SE fur. I built a warrior that found the land bridge that dead ended in a long cape, then started a settler. A few turns before settler finished I got hit with disease twice in a row dropping pop to 2, meaning settler wouldn't complete. Switch to granary. Finish that and start settler. Realize that I'm going to lose most of a forest chop, so build worker first, then start settler. I miss the unhappiness at size 4 and have a riot. Next turn, riot is over and I get disease for 2 turns again. Finally pop my first settler at 2350BC and decide I've had enough. Sure I could probably play to a win but I'll be so far behind everyone else it's not worth it. My time is short during the week, and with family down for Easter, I think I'll just wait for COTM11.

Xevious:
Only one word for your misfortune: Yikes!

The disease thing is kinda like getting a City from a goody hut - unfair to those who do not get one. In my case (no disease whatsoever), I'm beginnning to feel was almost an unfair advantage to me.

Open Class - going for Conquest, Domination, or Diplomatic

I will post a more detailed spoiler later when I get home from work. I did a farmers gambit at the start and didn't build any military (not even warior-scouts) until the Romans started fishing around. I had 5 cities sharing all the wonderful flood plains to some degree although only city 001 had built a Granary first. Never had even a single bout of Disease.

Cesear eventually declared war on me shortly after I was a Republic. Rome had the Pyramids and The Great Wall at this point. I needed to gift one jungle city to Japan to avoid capture and I was able to capture 3 cities and got 2 more and some GPT in the peace deal. 8 Immortals attacked Rome and I failed to capture it on the first round of war. I need to see my notes and review some saves to see if the second war is in the range of this Spoiler.

My very first coastal cities both built galley's to try and find other lands. I think I lost 4 or 5 that all managed to spot borders in the distance before they sank. At least one of these sank with a Settler/warrior combo on board. One eventually managed to make it across with a Settler/warrior and I settled an inland location after being ejected from someone's territory (cash rushed a Library, Barracks, Spear, then Worker). Flip % is somewhere near 1%, but I'm hoping to get a settler out of it before it flips and agressively settle and expand my territory.) I will eventually dare to ship chain more Military across but need to take out Rome and Japan first.

I will do a second core as soon as I get a great Leader. I've had very few unit promotions so far and have just 2 Elite Immortals at this point.

Wow, now that I realize it...I was not hit once with disease in Persepolis. It just wasn't an issue while I was MM the settler factory there.

I also wish I had just used the lux slider and gotten the pop 5/6/7 4 turn settler factory in Persepolis. Looks like 2 extra cities by 1000 bc at least, not counting the jump start on the other cities for settler factories. Oh well.

I was really surprised to get such an early Golden Age. I'll post details later, but as I remember it, I had just connected up iron and was building Immortals in 4 of my 6 cites. Rome demanded Literature, and I refused. The declared war. I saw one lone Roman warrior coming from the north east jungle towards a city with no protection. I moved one available warrior to intercept and won with 1 red pip left. That one Roman warrior could have ruined everything. But, a turn later I had 2 more Immortals. When the might Roman army showed up several turns later, they were easily dispatched. 2 regular warriors and 1 regular archer. Mighty army indeed. I wasn't able to move much into Roman territory at this time. When my first Immortal attacked, I entered a Golden Age. Not wanting to waste it, I didn't build a large invasion force. Then the Japanese demanded Literature and I refused, and they declared. Not wanting to fight on two fronts while using a Golden Age to build libraries and temples, I settled with Rome and moved the Immortals to defend the Japanese invading hordes. After the easy defense of the Japanese invasion, I settled with them, and finished out the Golden Age. 2 turns after the GA, I finished research on Republic, and revolted. It was a short revolution, and I began building hordes of veteran Immortals. Rome obliged by demanding tribute again and declaring war. This time I made good inroads into the Roman empire. A third war set up up for a final Roman solution in the Middle ages, which I reached in 10BC. Tonight I will push the Romans off the continent. Lear fishing has been unsucessful to this point.

@markus5,
Instead of eliminating the Romans (and later the Japanese) you should consider locking them both up in an inland city (preferable in ICS jungle land). You can stay at war with them (one or the other or both) for nearly the entire game and get war-happiness from them.

I did this with 2 of the Civs that had declared war on me in GOTM38 and it is a nice way to be able to wage more war in Republic later as it takes a while for the WW from another war to eat into the war happiness points. Its like an extra Luxury!

al_thor said:

The disease thing is kinda like getting a City from a goody hut - unfair to those who do not get one. In my case (no disease whatsoever), I'm beginnning to feel was almost an unfair advantage to me.

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I can't tell you how many 4 letter words (actually I just substitute in #$#@$ as such) are in my log from the 6 turn the disease reduced the population in Persepolis. I estimated I lost ~18 settler building turns because of all the building back up I had to do after the disease. Still, during that time I usually built a warrior (for lack of anything else) and so I had a pretty decent military by the time Rome started rattling their sabres.

I know what you mean about feeling a little fortunate though. Things could easily have gone different in my Roman war. Fortunately for me, my Romans were very stupid. The same turn they declared on me, they declared on Japan. Now the only Roman city Japan actually took out was on the Jungle peninsula, but they always had a steady dribble of archers/swords flowing into Roman territory. While I was gathering Immortals to take Roman cities, Roman forces were busy running around killing off the Japanese. Also, although they had 2 sources of iron hooked up, the iron towns weren't hooked up to the rest of the empire. This meant they could only build a legion about every 4 turns or so by pop-rushing. Smarter Romans or a few unlucky breaks, and I may well have been begging them for peace instead of the other way around.

In my game, Rome made peace with Japan just a couple of turns after entering their GA. This allowed the Romans to build the Great Library. I wish it would have been Pyramids instead.
I knew that Rome would go into 'builder' mode, having just fought a fairly long war with Japan. I also did not want to fight him during a GA when he could really pump out the Legionary's. Thirdly, I myself did not want a Despotic GA. Rome did expand quickly, but there was precious little room left on the home continent, as I was expanding while he warred with Japan, and then I was playing blockade games with his settlers. When I hit him with the Immortals, it was over in like 5 or 6 turns, with his only remaining cities located out on an island, one of which he was kind enough to give to me for peace.

Yes, Rome will be banished to the island. My plan is to cut off Rome's iron and walk down with a stack o' Immortals to finish them off. They have two iron sources, but I can easily cut off one of them. I can't remember the territory details of the other iron, but I'd galley in enough to cut it off quickly. I think I could even found a city and pour in units without entering their territory.

I too am surprised at the Roman stupidity. I only wish I had taken advantage of it a little more.

What, generally speaking, causes such an early trigger of a Golden Age? Were things stacked so that would happen?

Nothing really to report, but this was my first time trying a GotM. I play as the Persians a lot, but usually on the next-highest difficulty (forget what it's called).

Since this was my first time, I didn't really take notes and, like an idiot, I didn't know to save at 1000BC and whatnot. I'm sure my score is nowhere near what some of you guys must have done. I found this to be a pretty good game with a very nice starting spot (like almost everyone else it seems, I went SE to found Persepolis and irrigated and roaded the flood plains E).

I'm actually reading this and the pre-start thread after having completed the game and I'm very impressed by the techniques and planning you guys use. Is there someplace I can find the excel spreadsheets, for example?

I'm more of a turn-by-turn player, not a micromanager. I come up with my general strategies and just have to remember everything. I can't even imagine how many points I lose on stupid little things like not lowering research the turn before I get an advance.

Going back and watching the recap, it seems I got off to a very slow start compared to most of what I'm seeing here. I built my 2nd city in 2510BC just mostly west and a little north of my capitol. The next was in 2350BC almost due east of my capitol. As I recall, that locked up the precious iron for me. In 1910BC I founded another city just west and south of the capitol on the shore near the river. The plan was to use that to start cranking out the culture, but I never really got going with that plan. I founded my next city almost due north of the capitol in 1675BC. All this time I was cranking settlers out of the capitol. Somewhere around this time I started focusing on culture in the city by the river and the city north of the capitol. The others cranked out barracks and warriors (and later, immortals). Up to this time, I was doing a nice business of skimming a little for myself as I brokered trades among myself, the Japanese and the Romans.

Around 1500 BC, Rome built a city just south of my capitol (which meant that it was basically surrounded by my cities). One turn later I sacked and autorazed it. I believe I got into the war by refusing Rome's extortion attempt. It was really a bad choice for Rome as I had about a dozen immortals ready to go. I pretty much steamrolled right through Rome, taking three cities on my way to Rome, which I captured in 925BC.

I took a break in the action here to regroup. I switched my capitol back to making settlers so I could fill in the land that was cleared of Romans as well as rebuilding my army. I made a stupid mistake here when I sued Rome for peace as I simply failed to make them hand over at least a couple of cities.

In 530BC, the Romans got tired of not being destroyed and, idiotically, picked another fight with me. I sacked and autorazed one of their cities and captured another in that turn. In 410 I captured another and destroyed another city, leaving them with just one city.

While I had been enjoying my romp through the southern half of the continent, the Japanese were slowly settling the north. I had placed a few spare immortals on my northern border to keep an eye on their activities. Sure enough, in 270BC, they did something to get us into a war, but I can't remember what, I just see that I destroyed the first of their cities that year.

In 230BC I captured the last of the Roman cities, wiping them out. This left me with a rather large army that I had to move up to the northern front for the new hostilities with the Japanese. At the time, I had 12 cities in my borders. I don't think I had created or captured any of the Great Wonders, as there seems to have been a flurry of activity on the other continent.

By 10BC I had captured 2 more Japanese cities and razed 3 or 4 more. Again, I set Persepolis to push out settlers while all but 2 of my other cities built up the army. This was probably overkill. I'm not sure where I'm supposed to stop posting my history, so I'll just stop there.

I'd like to learn more about city placement, I guess. I see people pay a lot of attention to the ring strategy (I've skimmed the article), but I'm still more of a resource-based placer. I also never was able to get a 4-turn settler factory, but I think I had 5 for most of the early turns. I've skimmed that article also but I'll have to go back and look.

Since my game is a washout, I decided to use my civ downtime to buff up my starting spreadsheet. In particular I wanted to automate the allocation of extra shields on growth, a constant problem in accurate planning. So I replayed a bit to try to understand it a bit more.

The position before first growth, 3fpt.



After growth the extra citizen is allocated to a forest so 2 extra shields accrue.



I played on a bit longer until the second growth, still at +3fpt (granary just built):



but now the extra citizen is allocated to a flood plain.



Why is a forest allocated the first time and a useless flood plain the next, when both times the town is getting +3fpt before growth?

If early on you banish a civ to an island, won't they tell the new civs you meet of your evil ways (rep hit)?

Good news - No disease... yet.

Bad news - Iron source used up after I had build only 4 immortals.
Kinda puts the kbosch on quick conquest of the continent.

MeteorPunch said:

If early on you banish a civ to an island, won't they tell the new civs you meet of your evil ways (rep hit)?

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If you haven't done anything really bad your rep won't be hit too hard. If you declare war before entering their territory and don't go crazy with the razings the other civs won't have too much of a problem with your violent past. You might drop from Polite to Cautious or Cautious to Annoyed but that can be reversed if you deal with them fairly for a bit.

Predator PtW

I settled were everybody settled. Build was warrior-warrior-granary. I did a short-poprush @20sh to speed the granary.
I settled @ ring 4 and 7. No disease early.
Warriors met Rome in 3300 and Japanese in 2850.
A galley met xxx in 690 and contact with the rest of the world was established.

cities

3950 Persepolis
2550 Pasargadae
2310 Susa
2110 Arbela
1790 Antioch
1725 Tarsus (already agressive in Roman land)
1625 Gordium
1525 Bactra
1400 Sidon
1275 Tyre
1150 Sardis
1075 Bactra
12 cities, 34 pop
2 granaries, 2 barracks, 1 temple
10 workers, 11 warriors, 1 archer
all AA techs except polytheism, monarchy, currenca and construction.



900 Hamadan
875 Ergili
800 Veii (captured)
710 Dariush Kabir
690 Ghulaman, Cumae(captured)
670 Zohak
630 Istakhr
610 Rome (captured)


science

3400 pottery (researched)
3250 alphabet (traded)
2800 TW, WC, CB (traded)
2230 writing (researched), IW (traded)
2190 mysticism (traded)
1920 philosophy (researched)
1650 HBR (traded)
1575 CoL (researched)
1300 MM (traded)
1125 republic (researched) 4-turn anarchy
1100 mathematics (traded)
925 literature (researched)
690 currency (researched)
610 polytheism (researched)
590 construction (traded)

war
Rome built pyramides early.
So war started at 800BC.
I had 8 immortals (+4 warriors to upgrade) at that time, but that would go up quickly.
Got Rome in 610 BC.
I met only 1 legion in the meantime. The only roman iron wasn't connected to the capital.
Rome will fold quickly in the next spoiler.

Goal was still undecided at that time.
100k and high research would still have been viable options, but it will turn out in the next spoiler that it was more military like .

MeteorPunch said:

If early on you banish a civ to an island, won't they tell the new civs you meet of your evil ways (rep hit)?

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That is why I never banish them to an island. I always put them in a cage surrounded by 4 ICS style cities that each have more culture. This ends up that the AI gets a 1 Tile City Cage. If any AI ventures around then I block the city with units. Every once in a while they get a warrior or other military unit that will venture out and I can then squash with an Elite unit and get a chance at a Leader.

In GOTM38 I wasn't paying attention and one of my inmates got out with the warrior and captured one of my cities just a few turns before the end of the game.

Here is my trimmed down QSC timeline:
Decide on a heavy farmers gambit.
4000: Worker East, Settler SE. Worker will irrigate and road FP and then 2 FPs to the SE of 001.
3950: 001 is founded and starts on Settler. Research Pottery on Max.
3400: Pottery completes and start on IronWorking at Max.
3200: 002 Settled
2550: 001 completes Granary starts on settler.
IW completed just recently and started on TW.
2390: 001 finishes settler and keeps on settler.
2350: 003 settled and starts on settler.
2270: The Wheel completes and start on Alphabet at 20%. No Iron or horses to be seen.
2190: 001 completes settler4 who heads to the SW to RCP3.
IBT: see Roman warrior. It might be time to end this Farmers gambit.
2150: Tech Parity with Rome learning Alphabet and WC and start on Math at max.
2110: 004 founded and starts on Barracks (which will be helped by chop).
1870: 005 settled and starts on barracks.
1750: 001 makes settler and factory is now in sync except for the cop coming in.
004 finishes barracks and starts on our first warrior.
Math is done and we start on currency. I'm hoping to trade for writing.
1700: 003 builds a settler which heads east towards the Roman borders to RCP 6 and spots Iron.
006 is founded start on barracks.
1650: 004 builds our first warrior. Rome has CB.
007 is founded near the Iron.
1625: Rome has Writing and contact with the Japanese.
1600: 008 is founded near the NW cow at RCP3 and starts on Forbidden Palace.
1525: 009 built near Roman border at RCP6.
1425: Discover Currency and do trades. Get CB, HBR, Myst, and Writing in exchange for Math and Currency. I'm up slightly in techs but they will probably exchange in the IBT. Start on Philo at 4 turn max.
1400: Get Slave from Japan for Currency.
1375: 010 built near Rome.
1325: Learn Philo go for CoL. 002 builds worker9. Hit shift-b instead of shift-n and join back to the city.
1275: 011 founded in NW at RCP 6 near Japan.
1250: 012 founded in the SW on the coast.
1175: 013 founded in NE at RCP 6 near Japan
Get CoL and start on Republic.
1075: Trade for MM.
1050: 001>Settler, 014 founded near spices.

1000: QSC Stats:
14 cities, 41 population, 1 settler, 12 workers, 11 vet warriors
2 Granaries, 3 barracks
In progress: settler in 1, settler in 1 or 2, settler in 2, galley in 3, worker in 3, worker in 4, barracks in 4, worker in 5, barracks in 5, temple in 6, temple in 14, FP in 21
All AA techs except: Republic (in 8), Literature, Construction, Polytheism, Monarchy

Other Important Dates:
800BC - Romans finish the Pyramids. We learn Republic and get a 5 turn Anarchy on both RNG attempts.
450BC - My first suicide galley makes it across the seas with a settler and warrior on board.
410BC - Romans finish the Great Wall.
390BC - Enter Middle Ages and get Engineering for free.
Romans declare war when I boot them and lose Veii.
330BC - My first city on another land mass is founded!
270BC - Peace with Rome. I got a total of 6 cities from Rome and gifted 1 to Japan to avoid capture.

Xevious said:

... I got hit with disease twice in a row ...

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I often find that if disease hits once and you continue working flood plain / jungle then it hits again. Is that common?