GOTM 05 - Final Spoiler

560 AD Conquest Victory for 105k
Goal was military win of some sort, it's not something I normally do so I didn't have much of a strategy, I just played it as I went along. The only thing I had really planned was that I wanted to do the CS slingshot, because I had never done so before.


Brief outline of my game:
Settled Moscow on plains hill
Lots of gold, scout, masonry from huts
St. Petersburg on gold to the west, Novgorod with 3 cows up north
Used axemen to start conquest, and after macemen became available in 440 BC I started using them instead.
Destroyed in this order: Mao - Roosevelt - Saladin - Viccy, then the French and Aztecs one turn from eachother.
Built Hanging Gardens with GE one turn before I thought I was going to win 530 AD, but I had missed one city. Won in 560 AD with 105k score, by far the best I ever scored
Reason for high score was probably that I didn't raze a single city(except for some crap barbarian ones ). Stopped research after machinery and went all gold, and towards the end I had to make a few cities produce Wealth to make it go around, but it worked.

As hoped and by virtue of the lower difficulty level I achieved my first GOTM win at the 4th attempt with a Domination Victory in 1395 AD.

In brief I expanded west from Moscow and founded St Petersburg amongst all the gold, then expanded north and south, came across Mao in the north and when I got Swordsmen, quickly dispensed with him.

Captured Barbarian cities in the south which left me with territory from the very north edge of the map to the very south edge, as I didn't open my borders all the territory to the west was available to me to expand into at my leisure. In the meantime I was building lots of wonders particularly in Moscow and producing most of my units from a barracks in St Petersburg, once I got Macemen I thought it was about time to move against the civilizations to the east.

I started with Monty, took one city, but the rest of his lands were in the far east so I sued for peace with him and went for Roosevelt instead, after destroying him it was Vicky's turn and finally Napoleon. Just after capturing Paris the domination limit was triggered and victory was mine with a final score of 71K (a personal best for me!).

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Diplomatic Victory for Russia
Game date: 1300 AD
Base score: 3188
Final score: 53506

This was my first game at Warlord and my first Diplomatic Victory.

After eliminating Napoleon to capture the Pyramids at Paris and 5 other cities, I razed one city, gave one to the Americans but kept 4 good ones. Three of these gave me access to the forest the other Marble. I then beelined for Mass Media, selling techs for any decent amount of gold while spreading Confucianism.

The plan was to build the UN in Paris, build a forge to make good use of the mass forests that Napoleon had failed to chop. I also moved the Palace there so as to use the Bureucracy +50% bonus. To keep up the tech pace I built the FP in my old core.

When the vote came the other candidate was Monte (Buddhism), this was no surprise due to his start position. Monte got no votes from anyone else as I had eliminated fellow Buddhist Napoleon. I was friendly with Victoria and Roosovelt and had way over the required number of votes. Saladin (Jewish) abstained. Mao was his usual pain and abstained despite being the same religion as me.

Between learning Mass Media and the emd I researched Guilds/Banking/Liberalism and took Communism as my free tech so I could switch to State Property to boost my population score. Workers then spammed watermills, windmills and farms. When they ran out of unimproved tiles they started removing underdeveloped cottages.

After Communism, I started researching all the cheaper techs like Engineering that I missed out on earlier.

I made 2 major errors in messing up rushing the UN. The plan was to pre-build another wonder in Paris that had stone or marble bonus using normal building and then top up on the last turn by chopping at 101 hammers per forest. Then gold rush the UN once I had enough in the treasury (hopefully the second turn).

I tried to do this by building Ankor Wat and chopping on the last turn to get to 1300 hammers with 675 carrying over but in the end I only got 450 hammers as Mass Media came in one turn earlier than I had predicted and the worker chops got messed up.

Then I made another error when switching civics, I thought I had chosen Universal Suffrage and even wrote it in the log then I discovered that I only changed to Serfdom and State Property for the score bonuses.

Taken together these cost me between 8 and 10 turns. Maybe next time I will try building a Grear Engineer to help in rushing the UN.

The free GS I got with Physics was used to good effect for research on the path to Mass Media.

Later on I got another 2GS from GPs and used one for a third academy the other joined Moscow.

The free GM I got with Economics went on a trade mission to England for 1650g which would have been used to rush the UN but due to my mistake I already had the required gold from commerce.

Overall this was a very enjoyable game despite no real challenge from the AI

Contender, goal was early Conquest, victory in 210 AD.

Seemed like a great opp for a quick Conquest. Having never tried it, I thought it would be fun (and quick!) The past couple GotMs
took me a long time to finish (actually didn't finish Gotm4) so I was looking forward to a quick one this time around.

Major Events:

Early game:
Got a free Settler early, but the rest of the huts mostly popped gold. I may have gotten a tech or a map, but no notes, so I don't think so.
3960BC: Moscow founded on Plains Hill.
Hut pops a Settler.
3840BC: St. Petersburg founded, on the sheep, near all the gold. (with free Settler. In retrospect, i wonder why this took so long).
2360BC: Novgorod founded, 5E 1S of capital.

War with America:
I marched some axes over to FDR in the hopes of eliminating him quickly. Looks like not enough troops in retrospect.
1700BC: You have declared war on Roosevelt!
Rostov founded.
1275BC: You have captured Washington!!!
The American Civilization has been destroyed!!!
Yaroslavl' has been founded.

War with England:
By this time, swords had joined the fray and things went much better against England.
1050BC: You have declared war on Victoria!
980BC: You have captured London!!!
You have destroyed the city of London!!!
820BC: You have captured York!!!
The English Civilization has been destroyed!!!

680BC: Yekaterinburg founded.

War with France:
Finally started to get some Horse Archers in the mix here. Should have built a city on the horses much sooner, it would have sped
things up considerably.
560BC: You have declared war on Napoleon!
520BC: You have destroyed the city of Orleans!!!
420BC: You have destroyed the city of Lyons!!!
400BC: You have destroyed the city of Paris!!!
360BC:You have captured Rheims!!!
The French Civilization has been destroyed!!!

320BC: Oracle

All out war:
At this point, the Russian horse farms are breeding out of control and the troops are widely dispersed. Some of the cities
were pretty tough to take. It was almost like the AI knew I was coming and kept putting cities on hills.
240 BC: Declared war on Saladin.
80BC: Declared war on Mao Zedong
40 BC: Declared war on Monty
20 AD: Saladin gone
160 AD: Mao gone
200 AD: Monty gone


Science:
3520BC: Animal Husbandry
3120BC: Archery
3080BC: Bronze Working
2720BC: Writing
2560BC: Agriculture
2200BC: Iron Working
2080BC: Pottery
1750BC: Mathematics
1650BC: Masonry
1250BC: Construction
1025BC: Horseback Riding
980 BC: Mysticism
900 BC: Polytheism
820 BC: Monotheism
700BC: Priesthood
600BC: Monarchy
360 BC: Metal Casting
300 BC: Feudalism
80 BC: Machinery
Almost had Guilds.

Game status: Conquest Victory for Russia
Game date: 210 AD
Base score: 850
Final score: 49815
Time played: 4 hours 23 mins 57 secs

This was fun. Could have done a lot better by hooking up horses earlier and cracking the whip to crank out an army sooner. I definitely
enjoyed the Great Plains map, not having played it before. Looking forward to the next GotM as always.

Perugia said:

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Diplomatic Victory for Russia
Game date: 1300 AD
Base score: 3188
Final score: 53506

This was my first game at Warlord and my first Diplomatic Victory.

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Impressive!

Perugia said:

Between learning Mass Media and the emd I researched Guilds/Banking/Liberalism and took Communism as my free tech so I could switch to State Property to boost my population score. Workers then spammed watermills, windmills and farms. When they ran out of unimproved tiles they started removing underdeveloped cottages.

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I am interested to know how you accomplished to research all the way to Mass Media so fast... For instance, did you actually research Education to boost the research speed with universities? To my understanding Education it is not a necessity in order to reach Mass Media. It seems you "beelined" straight to Mass Media but I find that fascinating as in my games research speed seems quite slow without universities. Did you use the Oracle slingshot?

Regards,
amitabh

Not much in the way of a write-up as this game was not particularly memorable. I basically could never get “into” the game, both because the plains map does not appeal to me (too predictable), and because at warlord, there was never a question if I would win, only when and how. In fact, I found this scenario particularly easy, to the point that I am at a lost as to how one would go about loosing it. I played a horrible game, and still won around 500 AD (scoring circa 100K)…

I made no plan, and did nothing special… Built no wonders and even automated workers because I was too lazy to think about them (did not even bother to chop beyond the first settler)… Basically built a couple of scouts (popped a bunch of huts. Mostly gold, no tech, one scout and one settler). Then produced a few settlers and founded 4 or 5 cities, but up barracks in one or two of them, and started producing axeman… As they came out, I sent them at the Americans, and whipped them out first. Then onto Vicky, and thirdly Mao… At this point, I had the tech to produce Horse archers, and started producing those instead, and shipping them towards the east edge. I should have shut of research now, but without thinking, left it on until Calendar, at which point I shut it off to pay for my rapidly expanding infrastructure… I never raised any cities, just taking on more costs (and more population, thus a higher score), and by the time I swept everyone off the map, I was loosing about 100 g/turn (research at 0%, but culture at ~30-40% to prevent unhappiness). Was at ~55% land, and 98% population on last but one turn.


I basically swept over everyone except Monty with little loss of troops… By the time I got to is last two cities, Monty had managed to fortify a couple pikeman against my horse archers, so I had a suicide a few before getting through… Still, with 20+ HA in the area, (along with a few remaining chariots, axe, and swords), it was only a matter of attrition. Nothing was ever in doubt.


I sure hope that the next game of the month is something that I can get more motivated to get into (which btw, is NOT a complaint about the difficulty level. I think it is quite possible to have an interesting game at lower levels... I just don’t think this was one of those games… The combination of map, leader, level, and layout was simply not to my liking, but of course you cant please everyone… I just hope that the next setup is more to my tastes).

4th GOTM I've played finally won! Cultural victory in 1909

Build up a wonder too early which obstructed my growth in the beginning, then went for a tech lead and some religians (confusianism, toaism and christianity).

I wanted a peacefull game, rather succesfull only two wars (actually 3, one asked by Montezuma against France but France was too far away I didn't see one French troop during the war...)
The other two were against Mao Zedong, first time he declared war, took some cities of him and made peace.
The second time was because Roosevelt started war on Mao Zedong, Roosevelt had a problem of growth... I won two cities of Roosevelt due to cultural stranglation . Roosevelt was quit strong so I didn't like the fact that he would overrun the Chinese, so I declared war on Mao to get some nice cities in which I succeeded.
Roosevelt also won two cities, but they were about to flip a few turns before my cultural victory

Not much trouble with Barbarians, didn't build much settlers in the beginning (early wonder), but captured 2 Barbarian cities instead. Their location was acceptable (to the south against the border of the map). Roosevelt settled two cities between my capital and those two. Didn't go to war against him because I knew sooner or later they were going to flip, which they did...

Saladin and Montezuma were not a problem, I even had rather good relations with Montezuma... I expected otherwise.
Victoria was small and I had a friendly relation with her during the complete game.

A cultural victory finally, I was playing for that since 2 months, never succeeded, but it's hard work too choose the right cities and to boost the cultural level.

Final score (around 8900) is a little disappointed, I don't understand how this works...

Amitabh said:

Impressive!
I am interested to know how you accomplished to research all the way to Mass Media so fast... For instance, did you actually research Education to boost the research speed with universities? To my understanding Education it is not a necessity in order to reach Mass Media. It seems you "beelined" straight to Mass Media but I find that fascinating as in my games research speed seems quite slow without universities. Did you use the Oracle slingshot?

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To take advantage of the financial trait I built a lot of riverside commerce. For instance the flood plains got cottages and later many of the riverside hills got windmills. Most cities had some farms to keep up growth but not too many until Civil Service when they could be built away from rivers.

My GP farm focussed on scientists and had about 6 most of the game allowing me to get Academies in my best 3 cities. St Petersburg was literally a 'gold mine' with 3 gold mines and a gold windmill plus a cottage.

I built Libraries, followed by Observatories then Universities so Education was not essential. AFAIR this gave the AI time to research Education for me and I traded for it from Vicky.

Once I captured Paris I switched immediately to Representation.

Once in sight I went all out for Astronomy, going into deficit food to shave off a few turns. This allowed my cities to build Observatories (the major cties still has a few forests around to speed this).

I had deals with all AI except Monty that brought in about 10g per turn that helped a little with costs.

I have some snapshots of base commerce per city for some turns and will add to my spoiler later.....

I'm not a great player, but on warlord it doesn't really matter. As the russians I expanded and explored and researched quickly toward horseback riding. Once I got that I warred with the Americans, then back tracked and took out Mao, went east again and took out Salidin, and then Napoleon. By the end I was waring with Cossacks mostly and a few grenediers. I was at peace with Victoria and Monty all the way. Built all the wonders I could. Won by domination in 1150AD with a score of 82,000.

It seem's that my score is higher then several reported conquest scores that occurred quite a bit earlier. I still do not fully understand how scores are calculated.

Well, I figure I'll be headed for the lowest spaceship score, if anybody else has actually done spaceship. Nice comfortable game, one attack from Napoleon and one from Monty, each willing to beg for peace as soon as they were willing to talk. I lost one city to a ridculously sized, if rather technologically inferior, stack from Monty. I should probably have used a couple of wars to expand more, and I've no idea how to milk even if I wanted to, so final score was 7932. (Launched the ship in 1904).

warren peace said:

I'm not a great player, but on warlord it doesn't really matter. As the russians I expanded and explored and researched quickly toward horseback riding. Once I got that I warred with the Americans, then back tracked and took out Mao, went east again and took out Salidin, and then Napoleon. By the end I was waring with Cossacks mostly and a few grenediers. I was at peace with Victoria and Monty all the way. Built all the wonders I could. Won by domination in 1150AD with a score of 82,000.

It seem's that my score is higher then several reported conquest scores that occurred quite a bit earlier. I still do not fully understand how scores are calculated.

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There is a bonus for early finish, but it depends on your base score as well - you'll have had more land, population, and probably wonders and tech than them.

The-Hawk said:

Redbad, I'll be curious to hear how you made out with 4 GP farms.

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Well congratz, you beat me by 4 turns. This is how it went with the GPs:

0290 Thespis Moscow (music)
0670 imhotep St Petersburg (engineer)
1145 wang xishi in Yekaterinburg (7 spec. = 42 gpp)
1200 valmiki in Yekaterinburg
1215 kalidas in Yakutsk (6 spec. + NE = 57 gpp)
1280 li po in Yakutsk
1305 du fu in Yekaterinburg
1340 jalal al-din rumi in Hittite (5 spec. = 30 gpp)
1385 dante alighieri inYakutsk
1420 amir khusro in Vladivostok (5 spec. = 30 gpp)
1485 ibn muqlah in Yekaterinburg
1540 michaelangelo in Yakutsk
1570 St Petersburg legendary
1595 Moscow legendary
1610 Novgorod legendary

So thats's a total of:
1 engineer -> hermitage in St. Petersburg)
11 artists

The 2 5-specialists cities only contributed 1 great artist each. But with an additional 2 great artists I would have beaten you. So maybe loosing the Parthenon to Napoleon in around 160AD was my biggest mistake.

I played a very lazy game. Unfortunately, I missed out on settling the horses and that really slowed me down. I wound up conquering China with swords and axes, then heading east to get the Arabs with macemen and the Aztecs with knights, which I built with horses I got in trade with the English. Then I turned south and conquered France with Cossacks. I kept the tech pace slow throughout, snagged most of the wonders, and passed the domination limit in 1836 with a score of 21k and change.

Game starting notes:
1. Immediately built two extra Scouts, so I really cleaned-up on the Huts. The AI seems clueless about huts at this level.

2. Not even ONE settler from any huts.

3. Fair amount of cash, a Warrior, and another Scout from huts

General notes:
1. I never warred with Monty. We were actually buddies the whole game, taking out America and the English in a joint effort, and trading resources the whole game.

2. My dominating culture closed China off into his little corner and I even took a couple of his cities with culture.

3. Plenty of Gold around. I hooked up some Stone fairly early and even managed to get Marble in trade from someone.

4. Nappy declared on me a couple of times, but his units were soundly thrashed whenever they entered my borders.

End Game notes:
1. By end-game, I was running ONE HUNDRED PERCENT culture, and still raking in +25 gpt!!

2. Culture PER TURN at end-game:

• Moscow: 810
• St. Petersburgh: 730
• Novgorod: 800

Dominating. An easy game, almost to the point of boring, but I have NEVER gone for culture victory before, so that made it kind of interesting/new.

p.s. At end-game, Moscow was running Wealth, and Petersburgh/Novgorod were running Culture. I still have a hard time grasping 800 culture PER TURN. That was kinda cool.
My timing was pretty good: All three cities advanced to Legendary Culture within about 10 or 15 turns of each other (maybe even less, I can't recall exactly, but they were amazingly close.

Goal: Diplomatic victory before 1000AD

The first part of my spoiler, the part where everything important happened, is here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3912397&postcount=77

My post-500AD research path (with approximate dates) was as follows:

520 - Scientific Method
660 - Physics (longest research of the game - 14 turns)
690 - Philosophy
740 - Education
820 - Electricity (with the help of the Great Scientist from Physics)
850 - Liberalism
850 - Radio (from Liberalism)
860 - Drama
870 - Music (for the Artist)
920 - Mass Media (with the help of the Artist)

In 930 AD the United Nations was built in Moscow. Catherine was elected Supreme Ruler of the Great Plains in 1000AD.

I decided to declare a couple of wars leading up to my victory. The purpose of this was two-fold. I needed to reduce (or eliminate) the populations of those civs who would be voting against me. I also wanted to strengthen the bond with my friends. To that end, Napoleon, Montezuma, Saladin, and I declared war on Roosevelt in 420 AD. My massive army of 5 macemen, which some of my commerce cities had produced while waiting on observatories to show up, easily wiped out every American city, conquering them by 700 AD (it took about that long to walk across their territory).

My second war, which I kicked off around 810 AD, was against Victoria. Once again, we all piled on. I razed a few of her cities, but didn't want to commit to having many troops abroad, as I didn't want to pay the supply cost, though my army had swelled to 9 macemen) . In 990, I razed London, leaving her with a single population 1 city near Saladin's border. When the vote came in next turn, she wasn't a factor.

After the two wars my diplomatic victory was a foregone conclusion. Napoleon, Montezuma, and Saladin had the 3 largest populations. To make matters better they didn't particularly care for each other, as Religions differed and borders colided. At the end, Montezuma was the other condidate. He voted for himself while Napoleon and Saladin voted for me. Controlling almost half the population myself, I didn't need much help, and those two were more than enough.

At the end of the game, I was producing over 700 beakers per turn at 80% research. For most of the game I managed to keep the research rate up at 90% by selling off techs every other turn. Those civs got some rediculous deals. Civil Service for 30 gold, Compass for 20 I think. The odd thing was how decentralied my research was. No city was producing over 100 beakers, yet 5 were producing 75 or more. Only two of my eleven cities were producing under 30 beakers (27 and 28). The most hammers had by any city was 13.

My score at the end of the day was 54987. We'll see if the date will stand up to the competition, though.

I got a diplo win in 720AD. But there are players out there who can beat that for sure. I got lucky with goody huts, but played a very unfocused game - those damn settlers and warlord were too relaxing. i resaerched the last tech in 580AD, but only build the UN a few 7 turns later because i had only 1 engineer and he was born a couple of turns after i learnt mass media and had to walk a few turns to get to Beijing, my UN city where i cut down something like 15 forest tiles. I should have just taken the risk and hired a couple of specialists in the last few turns in my HG/Pyramids/Forge city.

Went for "quick" )) cultural, however, made some serious blunders: the comps were sooo lame that I lost Hanging Gardens to Roosevelt by 2 turns. Also waited too long for Liberalsm and Free speech, getting money for cathedrals. No milking (dunno how ), no war (didn't wanna). So, more to improve comparing to the 55K, 1270AD here. Twas interesting, nevertheless.

al_thor said:

p.s. At end-game, Moscow was running Wealth, and Petersburgh/Novgorod were running Culture. I still have a hard time grasping 800 culture PER TURN. That was kinda cool.
My timing was pretty good: All three cities advanced to Legendary Culture within about 10 or 15 turns of each other (maybe even less, I can't recall exactly, but they were amazingly close.

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I recently decided that I wanted to play a game where I could see every wonder movie - and save the turn before they were built so that I could see them again later. I played Quin Shi on Continents at Noble, Large map size and Quick game speed. I confess to using the WB to give me a couple extra settlers and to drop in a few choice resources here and there to make sure I could build every Wonder. I also decided to turn a city into a culture factory. I built every culture producing/multiplying building there, including the special wonders for the two religions founded there. When I won the space race in 1908, the city was at 74,994 culture and producing 1,492 per turn. Yeah, I know I cheated a bit with a couple of extra food resources, but it was fun to experiement and cool to see how much culture one city could pump out. I could have squeezed out a bit more with additional artist specialists, but that would have put the city into starvation.

I had planned on playing the GOTM for this first time this month, but had to wait until after Easter (I'm a pastor - was a little busy). Then I got so excited about the patch that I installed it and then realized I could not play the GOTM. Oh well, I'll see what next month brings. I'm reading the spoilers here to see what I can learn.

I don't know what I was thinking really, I didn't really have much of a goal until about 1000ad. I ended up going for the space race and getting it in 1867 (IIRC), for a bit more than 14k points. Not so good, I think. IIRC, I wiped out three civs along the way. China, of course (need that aluminum), and I forget who else was nearby.

Since then I've been playing some HOF matches, and I think I'm gonna light up the space race tables on settler. Yeah, I know, it seems boring, but it's actually interesting to me to build as advanced a civ as I can, as fast as I can, with little resistance from the AI. Wars just sap too much production.

In my current HOF run, I'm going for a permanent HOF entry, and I think it may be my best effort yet (previous best was HOF beta 1336ad launch). We'll see. The extra civs required on the map don't seem to pose much of a problem. I had to take out Mansa but that's it.