GOTM-09 Final Spoiler

1811ad Kublai declares on me. Assessing the situation. Two cavalry and a genadier coming up from Julius' territory. Nothing else from Kublai visible. Need to be careful. Ships may be over the horizon. Or, Kublai is still preparing. Or, its another AI bonehead move. Kublai mounted a good offensive against Gandhi in the last centuries. OK. Kublai's units are taken care of. I dropped research down a few clicks to get some cash to hurry the battleships under construction. I only have a few wooden ships and they are acting as sentries.

1816ad Five destroyers are pilaging along the coast, easily taking the wooden ships. I've rushed three battleships and have taken out two of the destroyers. I see the real invasion force now. Two transports escorted by two destroyers with four cavalry, 3 artillary and one SAM. My three battleships are fortunatly quite close to them. They probably won't make landfall. I need to rush the next battleship on the other coast. No signs of deep war weariness yet, but the coastal cities are starving as their work ships are pillaged. No one from the other continent wants to join me in war. Gandhi might, but I don't know if he'll help much. I haven't seen steel ships from him yet.

1817ad They landed up north. Bad choice. They'll easily be boxed in.

1819ad Ack. Random numbers haven't been good. My city was well defended and was overrun and razed. All the enemy units left are at very low hit points, but they had enough to do the job.

1824ad Refusing to talk. Couple more turns I guess. Both Peter and Louis are vying to settle my old city site. I can't get a settler there in time. Bad planning, that.

1837ad Kublai is not willing to settle. Now, Julius has declared. Turn up the war machine.

1839ad Rotten game. The screen is just so damn crowded you can't see where all the enemy units are. You think that someone might have thought about putting red circles around them or something. Now I'm pissed.

1841ad Kublai will make peace for 241 gold per turn. Nothing less.

1842ad Now its 251 gold per turn.

1859ad Settle with Julius after stomping around in the Roman empire for a while. Kublai is not interested in settling the war.

1867ad Kublai just landed another eight unit invasion force. Modern armor and gunships. Rotten game never tells you when the enemy is near until its too late. I can see the ships, but my sentry ships can't? That's a bad way to make a game. I thought that this game reduced micromanagement. Not really. You still need to make a visual scan. Well, I can buy Kublai for about 250 gold per turn. Its not forever. I can't turn back this force without lots of extra work. I think I'll settle.

1882ad Space Elevator is complete. I hope its not too late. I should have settled with Kublai long ago.

1895ad Kublai wins a Space Race.

Adventurer
Cultural Win in 1905

JC attacked me in 10AD... A poor move on his part.

All in all I was happy with a win on Emporor.

This spoiler continues from the previous thread that described the The Domination Years of the Incan Empire up to 1766 AD (defeat of the Romans, attack on the Indians)

The Gandhi war (1756 AD – 1837 AD)

The First French War (1837 AD – 1847 AD)

The Shatterer of Worlds (1837 AD – 1880 AD)

The Second French War (1881 AD – 1903 AD)

Summary & Conclusions

I think I could have won if I had destroyed the German coastal cities, skipped the civics changes, and perhaps nuked Kublai before he got the SDI. Well, I’ve learned a lot about the final stages of the game, and the need to focus on the victory conditions. I have never appreciated the End Game phase before, but this was one of my most rewarding sessions ever (and I’ve played more than 1000 hours since the Amiga version). A giant thanks goes to the GOTM team, and congratulations to those who managed to win.

(ainwood, I played Monarch before, but I'm playing Emperor from now on due to what I learned from this GOTM)

Erkon said:

and I’ve played more than 1000 hours since the Amiga

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Oh my, I remember playing Civ I on an Amiga 500, took forever to generate a map, so much that I thought the game was stuck at first.

Spaceship loss to India 1837AD!
Game begun pretty nicely, founded Hinduism, and explored widely with my single Scout. But then.. Once again my concentration on military was not enough.
I managed to build one city, Tiwanaku to the NW peninsula next to copper and close to marble resources(later also iron was found in the vicinity). Barbarian axemen shortly after founding of Tiwanaku conquered my capital, and here we are! My only city is size 1 and my civilizations army included 2 archers. Plus single worker of course.
So, with the help of the copper resource i managed to build few axemen, in hope of little "reconquista", but it was no good, India conquered my ex-capital from barbarians, before i could! As it would have been waste of time to start war against Gandhi with available resources, there was not much to do for the rest of the game. I had totally 3 cities, on the NW peninsula, Julius and Ganhi quickly settled ex-incan lands.. One of my cities was nearly-useless tundra/ice city.
So, there was not much to do but to wonder Indian success, i did so terribly that AI gave me free tech for three times, this has never happened to me before! While i was building longbowmen to quell unrest in my cities, Indian oil rigs towered on the other side of bay..
Best (worst?) apect in my game was that it was not too long, only few hours of working time was spent to it.
Better luck next time. D'oh!

Spaceship loss in 1889 to India.

Essentially I built a great early game lead thanks to the adventurer bonus and CS slingshot, but then I blew it by not expanding fast enough. By 300AD, I knew from looking at the religion advisor that the other continent was solidly Buddhist, in fact, that was the only religion founded over there...I founded Hinduism, Confuscianism, and Christianity while Gandhi founded Judaism, Taoism and Islam.

(CAUTION: ALL DATES ARE ESTIMATES) From 500AD to 1500AD, I expanded peacefully, encountered the other continent, grew in tech and pop...I began thinking of going for a diplomatic victory since no one was really upset with me and I had 5 AI pleased or friendly. I began beelining toward Mass Media, reaching it in the late 1600s. I quickly began building the UN in Cuzco, still under bureaucracy for the hammer bonus. I was also close to getting a Great Person from Cuzco, with a 35% chance of it being an engineer. Unfortunately, it was a Scientist, so I had to build the UN the slow way...by gold rushing it .

Wars:
1780s- India, Inca vs Rome: Gandhi had declared on Rome and taken two cities fairly quickly and I decided it was time to move in my force of Grenadiers or be left behind and lose my best ally in diplo votes. In just about 25 years Gandhi took Western Rome and I took Eastern Rome...that divides up to Gandhi taking 4 cities from JC and me taking 7.(Arpinum, the first to fall, eventually reached 26 pop, a staggering NYC level of pop at over 8.5 million people)

1560s & 1840s- France vs Germany: Louis declared both times on bribes by me to break up the buddhist bloc. Louis managed to take two cities from Frederick, but nothing more in the two wars.

1860s-1889- Mongols, France, Russia, Inca vs Germany, India: This was a desperate, last ditch effort orchestrated by myself to attempt to gain a Space Race victory. I estimated I had 32 turns left of production before my last part would be complete, but Gandhi was already down to his engine, and he was the first to research Fusion. I had read somewhere that the AI does not build wonders or spaceship parts when at war...so I crazily shut down research upon getting Genetics, upgraded all my Grenadiers and Riflemen to Mech Inf. and began building tanks in most of my higher production, non-spaceship cities. I then declared war on Gandhi...not realizing that he had a DP with Frederick.

I had never been in a full-fledged modern war before and my inexperience most definitely shown through. I didn't know that composites was required to build modern tanks, I didn't have any gunships, defensive fighters, or SAM infantry. Needless to say, I was basically cooked from the moment I hit ALT and clicked Gandhi's name. Luckily, I was able to talk to Louis and Khan into war with both Frederick and Gandhi for Genetics. Peter was harder to convince, he refused to war with Gandhi at all, but was willing to war Frederick for Genetics. Anyway, I stoked up for defense and immediately Gandhi bombs both of my aluminum mines...I thought the AI wasn't capable of good strategic bombing decisions? I luckily have dozens of workers who've connected every tile with railroad and then stationed themselves throughout my empire, so every tile gets rebuilt almost immediately, but it definitely is one of those fearful moments to have bombing runs going on over your entire empire. I held on until Gandhi was willing to talk(I was fearful he would soon overrun my outer defenses and I had virtually no defenses behind my front line). He took two cities from me, and was willing to accept peace for a third...he asked for Tiwanaku...the Confuscian and Hindu holy city and my #2 commerce and science city, but he was willing to take Antium instead lol.
However, he and the rest of the world never made peace, nor did Frederick ever make peace with anyone...He had just begun to fall apart to when Gandhi launched.

Diplomacy:

I had realized around 1600 that my population was ridiculously small. I was 6th in population, ahead of only Peter, who only had 5 cities anyway. As soon as I got Mass Media I got Biology and began mass building farms wherever I could. At that point my population was about 6 million, but #1 in the world was almost 20 million according to my demographics page. I'm not entirely sure my demographics page was entirely accurate because in the victory page, I had 8% of the world's population and Louis XIV had 17%.

Regardless, I was sorely behind in population and at least partially because of that, was 5th or lower in every single demographic. On the other hand, I was 2nd in score(not sure why, I didn't even have tech parity with everyone).

Over the course of the next 125 years, I am elected as Sec-Gen 4 times, Khan is elected once, Gandhi is elected once, and no one is elected 3 times.

I had Buddhism spread to me sometime in the 1700s, and I quit free religion for theocracy and converted shortly after to Buddhism. I had hoped it would help me in my diplo with the other continent. It did, but not for very many years.

The UN was around for so long, and so many people were Sec-Gen that everything was voted on and passed except for Free Religion...it was never proposed, not even by me. Gandhi was a virtual lock for my opponent after we gobbled up JC, and he was the only non-buddhist in the world(he was jewish). Thus, I saw no reason to put an end to the one thing keeping me above Gandhi in polls. The closest I came to winning by diplo was just 3 turns before Gandhi launched his ship...Thanks to the shared religion, I had +6 from that with Khan, Louis, and Peter, and with the shared wars on Gandhi and Frederick I had another +2-+4 with them also. I ended up losing the vote by 50 votes because Peter abstained, with Louis and Khan voting for me, Frederick and Gandhi voting for Gandhi.

Finally, Gandhi launched in 1889AD, while still at war with 2 Civs on the other continent. My adjusted score was something like 5k.

Strange Stuff:
Either my demographics or victory screen were broken...At the end of the game, I had 40 million population(after losing 3 cities with a combined 2.4 million pop), and according to the victory screen had 23.6% of the world's pop, #1 by 3% over Gandhi. But according to the demographics, I was 3rd in pop and #1 had 51 million.

No one ever declared on me despite my having the smallest military until the mid-1700s.

Peter had only 5 cities, yet he was the world's tech leader from the time of Education till Industrialism.

I founded 3 religions, but Hinduism spread to 3 cities, Confuscianism spread to 4 and Christianity spread to 2 through the entire game.

Because of my monster population growth, I went from 6th in score to 1st in score between 1700 and 1850. I then wasted that gain by warring Gandhi and finished #2 behind him.

The biggest thing I learned is that modern warfare is an animal all its own...completely different than warfare in any other period. Perhaps if I had known that I would have built Scotland Yard and used a spy to disrupt Gandhi's spaceship, or I would have been better prepared and won.

Oh...I also learned that even the best openings can amount to nothing if you fail to follow it up with good gameplay.

Thrallia said:

Strange Stuff:
Either my demographics or victory screen were broken...At the end of the game, I had 40 million population(after losing 3 cities with a combined 2.4 million pop), and according to the victory screen had 23.6% of the world's pop, #1 by 3% over Gandhi. But according to the demographics, I was 3rd in pop and #1 had 51 million.

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As far as I know, the population listed in the Demographics does not relate to either the number of votes, population %, allowed free units, score etc. Instead it's the sum of the sizes of all cities. If you have few, large cities, you will have a high population according to the demographics, but you won't have that many votes etc. This thread explains this in more detail, and is probably more correct than my ideas ;-)

The biggest thing I learned is that modern warfare is an animal all its own...completely different than warfare in any other period. Perhaps if I had known that I would have built Scotland Yard and used a spy to disrupt Gandhi's spaceship, or I would have been better prepared and won.

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I agree that modern warfare open up a new dimension in this game. The amount of specialised units and anti-units in modern warfare makes it very complex. This is actually an advantage for the player since the AI is (naturally) very weak when it comes to strategic planning and even tactics. I did not understand the mechanics well at all before this GOTM, and I didn't understand the relative weaknesses and strenghts. The lack of experience in combination with lack of knowledge made modern warfare more difficult for me than it should have been.

Nice writeup Erkon. Ashame you couldn't find a victory through nuclear war, it would have been unique I suspect.

I scored a cultural victory in 1855. It was my first emperor win and my first attempt at cultural victory. I was pleased with the game. I usually start my emperor games so far behind. I wonder if this game was typical of the level and I just got unfortunate starts in my other attempts on Emperor.

At the end I was running 700+ culture/turn in all three cities and had four cathedral level buildings. My mistakes were building banks everywhere in an attempt to build Wall Street over the Hindu Shrine when I had stopped researching before the prerequisite tech. I had thought banks were the only prerequisite. Also I struggle at specializing cities. I set up a military-producing city where the clams, iron and copper were, but several times I caught myself building things like groceries instead of knights and musketmen.

I only had one war and it was against Rome. After my culture had taken three of his cities, he attacked. I was already behind in tech, and was able to hold his riflemen, cannon and cavalry off with musketmen, pikemen, knights and catapults. Later with riflemen and catapults, I took a city defended by infantry. Catapults are way overpowered in modern times, as I'm sure everyone is aware. After the war I signed a defensive pact with Gandhi, who was quite powerful, and that was the end of that. Gandhi was 4 parts from launching a space craft when I won.

On the other continent, the Mongols started off very stong after wiping out the French in the early AD. Frederick finished strong taking out most of Russia I assume with Panzers. No one liked the Mongols the whole game. I eventually was forced to trade with him since he had the resources I needed.

I enjoyed this game and actually achieved my first rating as Augustus Caesar.

@Erkon:

Really enjoyed your writeups, thanks. We seem to have had very similar developments in our games, with the Incas owning the starting continent and Germany and France sharing the other. Similar issues with diplomacy as well.

Interesting choice to use nukes - haven't seen them used much so far - but a shame you didn't follow up with ground troops. You could have prolly pinched backdoor domination by just razing Germany (and France, if necessary).

Great write up, Erkon! Your game might not have been a winner, but it's been the most interesting to read about. Sounds like fun, too. Next time, I advise that you build more nukes. Cleanse the earth of your enemies with radioactive fire!

Erkon said:

As far as I know, the population listed in the Demographics does not relate to either the number of votes, population %, allowed free units, score etc. Instead it's the sum of the sizes of all cities. If you have few, large cities, you will have a high population according to the demographics, but you won't have that many votes etc. This thread explains this in more detail, and is probably more correct than my ideas ;-)

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well, I understand why I had less votes than Louis and Frederick throughout the game, but I don't understand why my victory screen(which lists % of world pop you have and your closest rival, for the purpose of domination wins) showed a much higher % of world population being mine than the demographics screen showed. Still...I've never had 39 million pop in a game of Civ 4, nor have I seen an AI get anywhere near that amount.

and I agree with everyone else, your writeup was very enjoyable to read I didn't even have a chance to BUILD nukes...Gandhi was the only one that had even researched Fission when Khan proposed the no-nuke ban.

Pity you loose, your post is very well written, presented and fun .

Perhaps some transport with Marines and Gunships could be the key for your victory, but i'm sure you'll achieve it next time.

Thrallia said:

The biggest thing I learned is that modern warfare is an animal all its own...completely different than warfare in any other period. Perhaps if I had known that I would have built Scotland Yard and used a spy to disrupt Gandhi's spaceship, or I would have been better prepared and won.

Click to expand...

I have found that doing modern starts is a good way to learn more about modern warfare Mind you, if you want a decent amount of time to learn about modern warfar, and not simply to be involved in a tech sprint to a space ship, disable space race victory possibility when you set up the modern start!

I've reached the modern era most games I've played...but only a couple times have I been there and had the AI there as well, and never have I been in a war with then during that era...I generally have a commanding tech lead and then wipe the floor with their riflemen with tanks...doesn't require much skill or knowledge of the finer points of modern warfare to win those wars.

I miserably lose the game via a Space Win to Germany - despite the fact I built United Nation I wasn't able to join more then 1 AI to vote for me ...

That is ... maybe next month.

Regards all

Although I lost a space race to Frederick, I found that Emperor is winnable for me. There was a lot of room to expand into, and I think I expanded too fast hurting my research. I played really conservative, trying to avoid conflict with the technologically advanced AI. I piggy-backed a couple of wars to stay on the strong AI's good side, and even managed to take a couple of cities from Gandhi. I got beat to all the wonders until I built the United Nations. I won Secretary General vs. Frederick (who everybody hated). If I had only been able to get Kublai to vote for me (he kept abstaining), I would have won a diplomatic victory. Frederick built his spaceship before I ever completed the Apollo Project.

In my game I had galleons long before the AI. The ranking was :
1. Kublai Khan
2. Frederick
3. Louis
4/5 Peter, me
6. Ghandi (very weakened)
7. Julius (eliminated)
Kublai and Frederick liked me, Peter and Louis disliked me. Also Peter had been the first ever to get a caravel across, so he seemed to me the most likely to get galleons.

I attacked Peter and razed his cities. But he wouldn't ever give me any of his science for peace, even when he had only two cities left.
Then I made a cheap peace and went for Louis. Kublai was so strong; about this time he had discovered rifling and put 5 riflemen in each of his cities. I was able to built grenadiers not long after, and had a monopoly on them and on cannons for a while. But it took a long time to get enough of them across to make a serious threat to Kublai. Meanwhile I had crippled Louis a little, and again he wouldn't give any science for peace.

At that point Kublai could build any unit I could, and some more besides. I bribed Frederick to declare war on him, but it didn't have much impact: they were so far apart. When I finally landed at one of Kublai's juicy cities, I couldn't hold a beachhead, so it was take the city or die. My landing party died, and I gave up. At that point I was tied third, behind Kublai and Frederick.

If I could do it over again from the time when I had galleons and they didn't, I would try to take one city of each AI in turn, and then make peace as soon as possible. Starting with Kublai.

I never considered keeping the cities on the other continent, although I read someone here who did.

I did like this game, very challenging.

toller pretzl said:

I never considered keeping the cities on the other continent, although I read someone here who did.

I did like this game, very challenging.

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It was difficult to keep the cities, Instead of spreading myself. I picked one (fredrick) to pick on and got other to join me in attacking him to distract his forces. It two wars to do it. One to get a couple of cities and a second after a time of peace to get more troops over (he had destroyers and I did not) to finish him off.

BLubmuz said:

As usual (for me) I played some turn starting from different points in my saved games: well, despite my knowledge of lots of infos, I was beaten in almost anything in those non-official attempts, and my best (perhaps my luckiest?) game was the official one.

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Errm, is this legal??

I had a spaceship loss around 1890AD, was never in the running for a victory but managed to stay alive. The biggest mistake I made was making peace with JC when I probably should have wiped him out! He came back 20-30 turns later and took out 3 cities, one my FP. Lesson learnt!

johnpaulcain said:

Errm, is this legal??

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I'm pretty sure he means that he did that AFTER he finished his submitted game (since he says that his official game's result was his best, by luck). He went back later to the various saves he made along the way to try to improve on his original results, but couldn't, even with the advantage of prior knowledge of the map.