GOTM 05 - Final Spoiler

Contender Diplomatic Victory 1856AD 17K
I didnt play any practice games and started the game tired & late at night and played entire game. Not a good idea.
I took out the Americans, with help from Monty not that I needed it, and the English.
By the time I had done that I knew that a Domination or Conquest Victory wasn't worth it.
Decided to go for Diplomatic with Space Program up my sleeve.
Diplomatic will be nowhere near the best, but its a GOTM victory .

Election Vs Napoleon.
Napoleon had pleased with all 3 Mao, Monty and Saladin. A Defensive Pact with Saladin.
I had pleased relations with Mao & Monty and was Friendly with Saladin who I also had
a Defensive Pact with. I gifted Hit Movies, Hit Musicals and Hit Records to all of them.
I think in the end Saladin & Mao voted for me and Monty abstained.

This is my 1st GOTM play and submission. With this one, I have 8 completed Civ4 games, and this is my 1st domination win, I usually get space race victories (latest ones on Prince level).

Yes, I am most of time the peaceful builder, so this game was fun for a change of pace. Being unexperienced with the map and this victory condition, I was kinda shocked with the harsh 64% land requirement, which forced me to keep 46 cities on the endgame! By that time I also had 79% of world pop. It was a tough hit on the economy, in the late game I couldn't have more than 50% research, which stopped at MilTrad for cossacks.

Btw, they came late and were not really necessary, most of warfare was done with knights and cats, except for initial killings: Roosevelt was out 60BC, Vic out 750AD, and Monte killed Saladin 770AD. I was at war with Monte from 780AD to 970AD, when I granted him a cease fire in exchange for a city. Just to speed up things I kicked out Mao in 960AD.

The AI only wonder made throughout whole game was Hindu shrine, I made most of the available ones until I decided no more were necessary.

Now out to upgrade to 1.61! Cheers!

After playing a test game I decided to go for a quick domination victory. I settled on the plain hill and things started well because I got a settler from my first hut. Later on I got another one and lots of gold and a warrior. No techs, but I was happy with my two settlers and the gold. I build another city, so I had 4 cities when I attacked Roosevelt with one horse archer in 2350 BC. After killing the Americans, it was England’s turn to die and France followed soon.

The strategy was to kill Saladin next so I moved my elite horse archers to his land, but I made a mistake with the alt-button. I pushed on Montezuma instead of Saladin (they are both green, damn it! ). I changed the strategy, and my elite forces moved to the other green lands. The new troops would take care of the Arabians. But this was even a bigger mistake, because my economic situation was terrible (I kept all the conquered cities in this game) and I needed the money from Mecca for finishing code of laws for the courthouses. I had to set research on 0%, and code of laws got at least 6 turn delayed. In my despair I declared war on China too only for the money and captured their capital. I left him with one useless city. I could have finished the game around 900 BC, but I decided to stick with the original plan.

Now the wars were over I chopped courthouses in all my cities except two production cities. These two build Stonehenge, oracle (for mathematics), pyramids and the hanging gardens in the last turn. After building courthouses nearly all cities started to produce settlers. In almost all cities I left one horse archer, the rest of my army cleared as much fog of war as possible. So I could send my settlers on a safe adventure. Nevertheless I lost three, due inattention and one was just a wrong guess. In 160 AD I decided that it was time to settle. Five turns later (220 AD) I got a domination victory with a final score of 142921. (btw my score in the Hall of Fame is 142922, one point can be crucial )

PS. Don’t know for sure if the BC dates are right, because patch 1.61 changed 220 AD in 220 BC in my replay. Maybe the other dates are also wrong.

Finished the game in 2035. A Contender Space Race Victory with 4835 points (a clear 2500 points ahead of my nearest rival ). My very first completed Game of the Month!

So, the story continues...

The people of Russia rejoiced when the final stone of their Great Library was set in place-and all the greatest books, artworks and scrolls of Russia, England, America and Arabia were gathered together in one place.
For Catherine, it represented the very Zenith of her Empire, but little did she know that it had attracted the jealous notice of two of her neighbours.
The first sign of trouble was when a small Chinese raiding party crossed the border just north of Moscow. This force was beaten back, but proved to be just the first salvo in a long and bloody struggle.
Sniffing an opportunity, the French-who had already launched an unprovoked assault againt Russia's American allies-decided to declare war on Catherine and her subjects.
However, wheras the Chinese foe fought with honour upon the open field of battle, the French fought a dirty war which made no distinction between civilian and soldier. Farmsteads, hamlets and towns were razed to the ground-and the fearful populace fled to the relative safety of nearby cities.
It was a painful time for Catherine, as she wished to go to the succour of the people of New York and Saint Petersberg-but her forces were still tied up in pitch battle before the city of Changzou. The Mayors of both New York and St. Petersberg tried to put together expeditionary forces to end the French depridations, but they were easily beaten back.
Eventually, though, relief was in sight. Catherine declared a Holy Crusade against the Heathen French monsters 'raping, killing and pillaging' the lands and people of Holy Mother Russia! This call lead to hundreds, possibly thousands, of eager Russians-both Noble and Peasant, Serf and Freeman-to join in the war in the East. Meanwhile with the capture of Changzou-and the subsequent surrender of China-thousands of troops were freed up to fight in the East. In short order the tide of battle was turned, with Napolean's antique horse archers and swordsmen proving no match for Catherine's Steel-clad Knights and Men-at-Arms, all bolstered by thousands of ordinary Russians burning with religious hate and zealotry-determined to spill the blood of the French Devils.
Soon, the Russian soil was littered with French dead, and the rest of the French forces were in hasty retreat. Catherine's forces, however, were flushed with success, and pressed on with their attack. In time they ended up before the occupied city of Washington-which fell to a sustained bombardment from catapults, followed by a short but vicious assault. By the end of that day, the finest flower of French youth and nobility were either lying dead or were hightailing it back to Paris-and it was with great pride that Sir Ivan, commander of the Russian liberation forces, handed the symbols of power over to the previously deposed Governor of Washington.
With the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth, Napolean accepts a very humbling peace treaty-in which much money and resources are surrendered.
The people of Russia enjoyed long peace after this, going from strength to strength the whole time. Unfortunately, though, it was not to be the last war Catherine's people would face-as the French and Chinese, each possibly provoked by a hawkish leadership, once again sought to wage war on the Russian people. Fortunately, though, Russia was better prepared in each case. In the end, Catherine decided to deal with these lingering threats once and for all-first by capturing all of China's Westernmost cities-including Beijing-and bringing them under the Russian fold. Later, with American forces in toe, Russia launched a pre-emptive strike on French territory, razing the key cities of Orleans and Tours as a warning against further war. The Aztecs sought to intervene on Napolean's behalf, but they were beaten back by our superior forces-and one of their largest cities was razed in retribution.
Perhaps it was the Russian people's exposure to war which made them seek a means of preventing it in future. This was surely the motives behind the construction of the United Nations-the most unifying project attempted since the The Great Library. Yet, in spite of all attempts to gain a unified World Leadership, and in spite of several foreign cities seeking to join Mother Russia (both American and English), War, Poverty and Disease still plagued the lands.
It was the sight of the first Russian People setting foot on the Moon which gave the people of the world a hope of something better.
So it was that, after much effort and application, a Great Space Ark was constructed and launched for the nearest Star. When the first FTL Radio signal arrived declaring 'We, the people of the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance, have made planetfall this day on January 12th 2035, and name this new world Eden II,' Catherine realised that no matter what might happen to her-or her empire-here on Earth, a part of her would always remain out there amongst the stars.

Aussie_Lurker.

Domination in 820AD with 213422 points.

Well, that was a bit of a different game. I've never milked before, so had an interesting afternoon watching out for cultural increases while maximising score.

I expanded quickly, and my capital was producing settlers almost all game. Heavy farmer gambit with the CS slingshot. Oracle and HG were my only wonders. I only started warring when I ran out of good land to expand into, using horse archers mainly, with a few axemen. Headed East through America and France to the tree-covered grasslands first, to establish some tasty cities with chopped granary&courthouse and a pile of workers building irrigation.

Then I took out saladin and monty and kept their best cities. I stopped expanding at around 58% land and let my culture fill out the rest. Any gaps within my borders I filled up. Then just kept checking the score while moving workers around, and organising a Hanging Gardens build.

Some problems with cashflow towards the end until I chopped the FP. I didn't research Paper.

Towards the end, I created about 5 settlers, in hindsight I should have done more. These all settled on my last turn, and I declared on Lizzie and took 3 cities. The same turn, I set Hanging Gardens for completion. I never touched Mao.

Not much to show really, this is the curve, with the HG spike at the end:

Nice one pnpdredd, very pretty graph

Shucks. It looks like I had too much real life this month, and I'm not going to have enough time to finish this one. I've submitted my game, retired as of 460 A.D., which means that I'll probably be one of the few submitting a loss for this one. Maybe I'll get the booby prize!

I figured this was the perfect opportunity to hone my warmongering skills, since I've never won through warfare before. I pursued a strategy that would allow me to achieve either a domination or a conquest victory, and that was probably my big mistake. The other civs simply do not expand very fast on Warlord, so I had to build a lot of settlers myself, instead of just conquering cities from the AI. If I had just gone for a straight conquest, I might have had enough time to finish.

Anyway, basic strategy was to conquer/colonize enough of the Rockies and the SW part of the map to be able to minimize the troops I needed for fog-busting and win enough territory/population to put me in good shape for domination. I eliminated Mao with 3 axemen and an archer in 660 BC. Probably should've kept him around a bit longer to serve as a barbarian sponge for all the baddies that spawned in the Rockies.

As it was, to handle the barbarians, I wound up founding 4 cities in or near the Rockies. I was able to slow the barbarian spawing to a trickle with some strateigically posted guerilla archers. I used horse archers on the plains to the north and southwest to fog-bust and mop up any barbarians en route to my empire. Of course, the wide-open spaces meant that somewhere upwards of 60% of my army was on barbarian duty at any given time, but my swordsmen and macemen (courtesy of CS slingshot) were doing a great job cutting up the civs to my east.

I took America down in 390 AD and immediately began to mop up the English as well. I was holding on to almost all of these cities (planning to claim pretty much all of the territory west of the Mississippi), but then I did the math and realized that I would never have enough time to actually claim the territory/pop. for a domination victory. And, as it turns out, it looks like the rest of my week has gotten away from me.

So Katie retired ~500 A.D. though she looked like a shoe-in for an eventual bloody victory.

I feel like I learned a bit about warfare, although I am equally sure that my military logistics would never fly on the higher difficulty levels. Here is something interesting that I learned: I am so guillible that even the Warlord AI was able to pull this trick on me. Twice. Just as I was scouting out an AI's territory to learn the current lay of the land for an imminent invasion, I would be contacted by another civ asking me to cancel my deals with the civ I was currently scouting. I would think, "Hmmm. Nothing to lose, since I'm going to be at war with this civ soon, anyway. Plus, I can't recall that I'm trading anything with them." So I would cancel my deals. And, of course, I would lose my Open Borders (duh!), which would kick my scout out, and now my invasion forces had to go in blind! I fell for that one twice!

At any rate, thanks to Ainwood and crew for this gotm! It was fun, but it's hard to compete with full-on springtime here in the southland. I hope I can manage my time a little better for next month's game!

--D

Obormot said:

I got a diplo win in 720AD. But there are players out there who can beat that for sure.

Click to expand...

Well, let's hope no one that can did. I also got a 720AD diplomatic victory. Still haven't got around to a write-up as we're shipping most of our household stuff next week, but will after the craziness is done and thought I should at least post the final results. I hit Mass Media after you (610AD), but did so to build up a reserve of cash to chop/buy the UN. All forests were 'pre-chopped' with all the workers just hanging around waiting. Just wish you could do a partial buy and then use slavery simultaneously to finish the build. I voted myself Secretary General, but received no other votes, probably due to my simultaneous warmongering.

If nobody beats that result you'll propably get the award since it looks like i had less population (i assume it is decided by final score) because i had to rely on victoria's vote to get to 60%. My final score was 62653.

Obormot said:

If nobody beats that result you'll propably get the award since it looks like i had less population (i assume it is decided by final score) because i had to rely on victoria's vote to get to 60%. My final score was 62653.

Click to expand...

I hope that if no one beats you guys, you are both awarded the "fastest finish" award for diplo. The thing I love about fastest finishes is that score doesn't matter at all.

Both of you did superb! Nice work.

Ok, so this was gonna be my first GOTM submission... I've been playing the GOTMs for years (starting with early civ 3 games) but for one reason or another have never submitted any... either I don't complete them on time, I get bored with the end-game, or I give-in to the temptation to reload a turn (I am prone to ending turns too early.. forgetting to take care of one or two vital moves, leading to critical losses. I justify it by thinking: "If I were managing a REAL empire.. I wouldn't just FORGET to move a unit to defend a city, take out a barbarian, etc.).

Anyway, as I have only completed a handful of games in civ 4 so far, I thought the easy difficulty of this one (I'm comfortable playing on Monarch, although I lose about 1/2 of the time) would be a perfect opportunity to try out some of civ 4's features, and make my first submission.

I started out very passively.. settling new cities and building them up, maintaining a minimal army. Then around 500 BC the americans and chinese attack simultaneously. I was on my heels for a few turns but I had a huge tech lead so I whipped a few axemen and was soon on the offensive against both. Captured all their cities fairly easily and upgraded all my axemen to macemen. After the last american city fell, my macemen horde had little to do, so I let them loose on the English. The English only held out for a handful of turns, and I soon captured all their cities. By now my empire was quite large, and combined with upgrade costs for my large military I had to lower science quite a bit. Nonetheless, I went straight for Military Tradition to build Cossacks, and reached my goal a few turns before building the golden-age triggering wonder (I forget which one it is). I declared war against the 3 remaining civs immediately upon acquiring my first cossack for a little bit of a challenge. I was disapointed to discover that saladin had been reduced to 1 city (of size 3.. think he had like 3 workable tiles in his borders ). so I quickly put him out of his misery. I then focused most of my strength against Napoleon.. as he was closer and had just started building riflemen. I overestimated the abilities of my cossacks however, trying to attack 4 cities in 1 turn, and was forced to withdraw 3 out of the 4 attacks, losing over half my cossacks in the process. I built my invasion force back up, and was soon marching slowly across france, eliminating most of napoleon's brand new riflemen. At this point I figured it would be smooth sailing to a domination victory.. but the Aztecs had a surprise for me. They dumped a giant heap of garbage units across my northern border, which I attempted to counter by re-routing 10 or so cossacks and reinforcing the units defending the 2 nearby cities. Despite racking up tons of kills against the attackers.. my cossacks were wiped out defending a size 12 city.. and an aztec axeman razed it. Forunately, the backwards aztec army was nearly wiped out taking that one city, and they never put up much of a fight again. That pissed me off tho and convinced me to go for a conquest victory instead of domination.

So everything went smoothly from there... right up to 1700 AD. When I ended this turn, I had just captured the last French city, and had overwhelming numbers of cossacks just outside the last two Aztec cities. Yet every time I end the turn, I crash to desktop (The evil crash-to-desktop race launched countless attacks on me throughout this game, yet I overcame each one by reloading and making the same moves until I was caught up). I've tried reloading previous autosaves and replaying the same moves yet every time it crashes after I end my turn at 1700 AD. So I'm wondering what to do... have I been thwarted in my attempt to finally submit my first GOTM? Should I try reloading and playing different moves in the hopes of achieving a different, non-crash-to-desktop outcome? Should I just submit the save game from that turn (There is no doubt about my victory.. The only question is whether I have planned my conquest properly or if I will get a domination before I'm done with the aztecs. I have 2 turns left of anarchy, which I only declared to prevent Paris's borders from expanding and moving my landmass past the 64% mark.. and I have huge stacks of units lined up to attack the remaining aztec cities on my next turn.)? I'd hate to throw this game away at this point . Any ideas?

acg said:

I'd hate to throw this game away at this point . Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Ummm! I think you're supposed to have finished your game by the time you get to this point. I suggest you complete it the best way you know how and submit it. You have a day or so to do so ... without further assistance!

AlanH said:

Ummm! I think you're supposed to have finished your game by the time you get to this point. I suggest you complete it the best way you know how and submit it. You have a day or so to do so ... without further assistance!

Click to expand...

I get the impression you didn't read or understand the last paragraph of my post (I don't blame you, it is rather long )... I'm at most 3 turns away from a domination win and likely 1 turn away from conquest... but I crash to desktop every time I end my 1700 AD turn.

If you're referring to me posting in a thread that's meant for people who have finished the game... well for all practical reasons I have... I just can't get past a technical difficulty in my final turn(s). And I haven't read any other posts yet anyway.

Oh well.. I guess I can always try for next month's game.

Obormot said:

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.

Click to expand...

Engineers give more hammers if you have more population. Use him on your biggest city and you should be able to pop rush the rest with no forest chops.

Too bad i didn't know that. So building the UN in Beijing was not a very good idea. But it could have worked as well for me if i was a bit more carefull micromanaging the engineer city. It would be a pity to loose the award because of this scewup.

BTW, is there an article somewhere that explains the formula for shields/beakers from great people?

VerbalKint said:

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.

Click to expand...

I'm starting to get the shorthand, abbreviations, and alphabet soup around here, but every now and then I hit something I don't quite get. What is the "CS slingshot"? I think I've seen other references to "slingshot" and I'm wondering what this tactic is.

Thanks!

210AD: Emancipation, Universal Suffrage, Free Religion
430AD: Mercantilism
460AD: Corporation
740AD: Assembly Line
760AD: Statue of Liberty
790AD: Free Speech
1010AD: Computers
1025AD: Golden Age (2 GP)
1065AD: Golden Age (Taj Mahal)
1100AD: Apollo Program
1125AD: Fusion - hardest SS part
1130AD: Golden Age (3 GP)
1160AD: Robotics - 2nd hardest SS part
1170AD: Ecology - easiest SS part
1180AD: Space Elevator (cash rush)
1200AD: Spaceship Launch

Holy **** a 1200 ad spaceship launch. Wow thats amazing considering u only get to play once with gotm and u cant reload!!!! Congradualations DaveMcW!!

Whew, submitted just under the deadline!

I thought I'd go for something different than my standard expansion / domination play and try a cultural victory. Picked Challenger difficulty to make Warlord level a little more interesting.

Cultural Victory in 1808
Base score 3999 / final score 17230 (as reported by GOTM).

Couple of lessons:

I couldn't help myself - the enemies were so weak that I couldn't help seizing 50% of the landmass. Is this a waste?

I failed to properly develop a Great Artist factory and had to build all that culture myself. I think I only made 1-2 Great Artists the whole game.

I actually ended up building every cathedral from every religion in my 3 Legendary Cities. I'm sure this wasn't necessary and probably was suboptimal play. Also, it might have been better to focus on cottages and farms to generate commerce -> culture, rather than hammers to build culture-generating buildings?

acg said:

I get the impression you didn't read or understand the last paragraph of my post (I don't blame you, it is rather long )... I'm at most 3 turns away from a domination win and likely 1 turn away from conquest... but I crash to desktop every time I end my 1700 AD turn.

If you're referring to me posting in a thread that's meant for people who have finished the game... well for all practical reasons I have... I just can't get past a technical difficulty in my final turn(s). And I haven't read any other posts yet anyway.

Oh well.. I guess I can always try for next month's game.

Click to expand...

Sorry my post was a bit short. I'm catching up after a few days off line. These threads are not for tech support. As indicated in the game release information, you should PM or email the staff to get technical help with your game software. If you are unable to find a way to complete the game without crashing then send the save to gotm@civfanatics.net and we'll try to resolve the problem.