GOTM 10 - First Spoiler

GOTM 10 - First Spoiler

Reading Requirements:

1. Have reached at least 0AD.
2. Have full view of the starting continent (or no the locations of the cultural boundaries of any or all rivals on the starting continent).

Posting Restrictions:

1. No discussion of events past circa 500 AD.
2. No posting screenshots of anything off the starting continent.

So..... How do you like Immortal?

Ooh I get to go first.

My goal with this GOTM is to go for a spaceship victory. It's my most comfortable victory condition on higher difficulties since I'm not very good at warmongering. To do this I need to stake out a good portion of land, though. Most likely I won't be able to get enough land from settling and will need to go to war at least once. But at the same time tech trading and relations with AI's is extremely important. My more immediate goal is to be the first civ to alphabet and research techs that the AI doesn't go for so I have good trade value. And my even more immediate goals are to box off a good chunk of land via settling and to get the land improved, so worker techs and fishing before alphabet. Another major goal is to get a better unit than warriors to fight off the barbarians with.

My first move was to send the warrior to the hill, of course. This unveiled the corn tile along the river. Settling in place would have been more food than I know what to do with (except to make a GP farm, but I don't like making my capital a GP farm since I normally make heavy use of bureaucracy). So I decided to send my settler SE to the hill on the river. Once I got there I discovered the ivory tile and a plains hill in workable range, while still having one fish, the cow and the corn. I settled on this hill. It was still very good food, much better production and I could hook up the ivory more quickly for the happy boost. So I was happy with my decision to move.

I researched Fishing first while building a warrior. Once Fishing came in I switched to a work boat while researching Bronze Working. After learning bronze working I whipped the work boat and went back to my warrior only to find that I had 0 hammers invested. If I had known the hammers would all decay I would have finished the warrior before starting the work boat. So, anyway, I decided to go with a worker next and skip the warrior.

It wasn't long before I had Beijing up to size 5 (~1600BC), generating 8fpt and 10hpt towards settler production, or a settler in 8.4 turns. So Beijing would produce every single settler for me here on out. I only used the whip twice, once for Beijing's original workboat and once for Shanghai's obelisk and I honestly didn't feel like I was lacking production capability in any of my cities. I did use the HoF mod so I'm glad I didn't whip a lot.

The one downside to moving my settler is discovering the copper 1 tile out of Beijing's workable radius. I figured it would take too long to get that 2nd expansion before the barbarian archers/axemen started attacking so I ended up researching archery on my own. This turned out to be a very good thing as in 1000BC not one, but two barbarian axemen appeared 2 tiles away from two different cities of mine. Each city had a city garrison 1 archer inside. I lucked out and both archers won. If I had not researched archery it probably would have been a disastrous situation. And of course once I researched Iron Working (910BC) I found the iron in Beijing's workable radius, which made up for the copper problem.

I managed to flesh out 7 cities before running out of expansion room, which was the equal of all other AI's that I had contacted other than Genghis Khan who had 8. I was also able to stay nearly caught up in techs. I cottaged fairly heavily and I didn't have trouble working them with all the nice food and happy resources available. I even cottaged over one of my bananas and one of my sugars since I had multiples of each and I knew with all the resources around I wouldn't be lacking in tradable goods to the AI's.

I got involved in one early war. In 880BC Genghis asked me to join in the war against Asoka. At this point I didn't have Alphabet yet. I noticed that while Asoka used to be on top in score he had fallen to the bottom (besides me) and Genghis was on top. Because of this I thought Asoka was losing the war so I agreed, wanting to maintain relations with Genghis. I should have known better than this, because by the time I learned Alphabet I found Genghis way behind in tech and falling behind in score as well, which is usually the case with warmongering civs, while Asoka was anything but behind. I ended up having to give Alphabet to Asoka for peace since it was the only tech I was up on him and he wouldn't make peace straight up even though no shots had been fired on either side.

Another extremely interesting thing in my game is the AI's did not learn Writing until 970BC! They usually have it earlier than that on Prince, let alone Immortal. I guess they all went down the war/religious paths instead.

As for the nice little island to the west I put my sixth city there and planned to make it a GP farm. I settled on the 5 food grass tile west of the river, thinking that the excess food would stay on the city tile, but I had forgotten that settling removes the flood plain aspect from the tile so it ended up only 2 food. All in all there really wasn't a better place to settle since I wanted it to have the iron tile and all 3 sea resources in range. I got my first Great Person out of my GP farm city in 305AD and built an academy in Beijing in 350AD. I didn't get another great person until after this spoiler is done.

I was the first civ to Civil Service and I got incredible trade value out of that tech (Music, Monarchy, Construction, Currency) and then I was able to turn around and trade those techs to get Philosophy and Compass. This got me completely caught up in the tech race in no time.

Now I'll just post the technical information from my game. I use the spoiler tags just to make this post more concise, but they do not contain any spoilers outside the scope of this thread.

Cities:


Technologies:

Beijing's Early Build Order:

Contacts:

Civics:

Wonders:

Religions:

5AD Stats:

500AD Stats:

Tired of looking at text? Ok, here are a couple pictures:

Northern Empire in 500AD:


Southern Empire in 500AD:


Domestic Advisor in 500AD:


Demographics in 500AD:

I've never tried to play on Immortal before. I can barely win on Monarch. But I thought that I would give it a try, since I am fascinated by the GotM.

However, it is now my considered opinion that Immortal is bullcrap. I had a level 3 Axeman defending a settler, on the opposite side of a river while on a forested hill, from a level 1 Barbarian Axeman.

The AI attacked me and WON. Level 3 versus level 1. While crossing a river, even. Look, I dig that Immortal is supposed to be "hard." That's fine. I simply object to Immortal being stupidly inane.


I'm presently playing the Adventurer file, since I've never gotten around to submitting a GotM and I suppose this one is a good one to start with. But I find it hard to maintain my interest in playing, when the AI has been given such an obscene advantage.

I don't mean to criticize the Ai programmers or the hosts of the GotM, but... Immortal is stupid. It's not too hard, sure, I could double up the defenses at all my critical points, but... why? Why not just let all the Barbarians start with Modern Armor and be done with it?

Have fun, guys.

jafd said:

...I had a level 3 Axeman defending a settler, on the opposite side of a river while on a forested hill, from a level 1 Barbarian Axeman.

The AI attacked me and WON. Level 3 versus level 1. While crossing a river, even...

Click to expand...

If you look at the battle statistics you will find the exact odds together with bonus/penalties. You have a slight bonus against barbarians (5% I think). That is the only variable that I can think of that is affected by game difficulty. I did not notice that any of my battles where more difficult compared to easier difficulties. I think you were very, very unlucky.

/Erkon

Personally I'm not a fan of having barbarian axemen in the BC ages period. I think it adds entirely too much randomness to the game, but like Erkon said that's a problem with all difficulty levels, not just immortal, although they are more likely to show up earlier in the game on immortal. But I'd rather they left the barb axemen only on raging barbs setting and leave it out of the normal game until much later. I could have been writing that my game was a complete disaster if those 2 axemen that attacked me had won and taken over 2 of my cities in 900ish BC. Luck saved my game, while it hurt yours.

I am completely new to this; have only been playing Civ4 for a few months and still mostly playing on Warlord, but thought I would try GOTM as a learning experience (playing Adventurer).

I am very interested to hear how others have done; so far I am trailing in the score, but have made it past 0AD and have founded 6 cities. I have avoided war with AI (who are all far more powerful than me) and have had almost no problems with Barbs.

Have I been extremely lucky? I have seen almost no barbs, and from the pre-discussion thought I would be wiped out well before AD. I realise there is no chance of my winning, but feel I could have been doing better had I been more focused and had better expectations of how long I'd last!

Anyway, so far I am enjoying Immortal as it's not been the immediate slaughter I expected!

I've only every played 1 Monarch game, no Emperor games, and this is my first Immortal game, so I was expecting to be handed my backside... but at 500AD I am still alive and have only lost one workboat.

I settled in place, just taking a guess that ainwood normally puts the bronze close by, and wanting lots of sea resources for quick early research & growth. (And every game I've played where I've moved at the start, I've regretted it later).

Barbarians turned out to be only a minor irritation - I had to fight a few warriors off while sending the settler out for the second city, but not long after that I had a nice row of 4 axemen fog-busting (and moving south as I settled each spot), keeping the area clear. I saw a few barbarian archers, who kindly promoted my axemen, but no barbarian axemen. It helped that Asoka, Ghengis and Hetty had scouts running around doing their own little bit of fog-busting too.

At 0AD, I had 5 cities on the main continent. Hetty had a galley with settlers heading up the coast towards the Island of Eden before I knew about those tiles. Fortunately I jealously guarded my expansion territory on principle and cancelled Open Borders before she could get there, cutting her off. By 500AD it's settled. I built the Colossus, and am working on the Great Library (though I expect to be beaten to it)

My big dilemma at the moment is Hetty. Ghengis declared war on her, and has taken 1 city. Ghengis is by far militarily the strongest in the game, and is leading in score - so Hetty is my buffer for now. But she's also about as weak as me and ripe for the plucking as cho-kos come on line in a little while - but I don't really want to be Ghengis's neighbour until I have a tech lead over him. Awkwardly, Hetty didn't get a religion - I'd have quite liked to inherit a holy city on our continent for later in the game.

Happiness has been odd in this game. Really tight early on, edging up a notch with gold, then sugar and gems. And after metal casting, and a few other techs suddenly the happiness limit is way up above 13 and I just can't grow my cities fast enough.

I only used the whip once - on a worker. Following build was another worker (so no trouble of growing into unhappiness until after the anger had worn off), and the first one could improve the land enough to make up for the lost production.

One work boat went fishing, the other went exploring - he recently fell to a barb galley (my one troop loss) but several thousand years at see ain't bad.

At 500AD, I'm still last in score, but just catching Hetty. And my score is more than half the highest score at the moment.

Supplementary -

I've been trying a couple of interesting diplomatic tactics.

First, I'm only keeping open borders with a very few people, and nobody who has a strong enemy. There's no diplomatic penalty for stopping trading yourself; only when asked - so the closed border people are still pleased with me, and it seems to have prevented a bunch of demands to cease trading from the stronger countries. When I get a little stronger, I'll pick up the trade again.

Second, I also left some of my civic switching until asked. For instance, one civ recently asked me to change to Hereditary Rule shortly after I got monarchy. So not only do I get my civic switch, I also get an extra +1 bonus with them. Same goes for my current religion (which is now the same as everyone else on my continent).

I moved to the plains/forest/hill to build my first city, 2nd city in the original location, 3rd on "Treasure Island". Didnt get to build any more (other than 1 near the crabs). Genghis and Hatty are huge, since Genghis decided he needed Buddism and Judaism from whoever India was. I have built quite a lot of wonders though

I'm playing the HOF mod game - up till no I have relied on Gyathaar's eventlog, so I had auto logging off. However eventlog won't read HOF saves, so I can't extract a log now.

I'm going for a cultural victory. Built the pyramids fairly early, and victory has been likely ever since. As of 500AD I have 4 very well developed cities - the capital, 2 cities on the river to the South, and the GP city, which is obviously on the island. It's already at size 10, and will complete National Epic in around 10 turns, and should be able to pump out a fair number of GAs. I’ve got 7 cities total, and spots for two more on the coast. The Colossus will turn these into useful cities for the 100% gold period while I buy buildings.


Here are my core 3 cities, and two satellites.



Currently, I'm just cruising - hoping to grab another religion (3 have spread to me), and getting my population up while working cottages that I'm building where I remove the jungle. I’ve maybe focussed too heavily on infrastructure in my 3 culture cities, but hopefully it’ll pay off in the long run.

I’ve researched mainly along the top of the tech tree - as advised in numerous Immortal threads around the place, the AI is less likely to research these, so you can use them to trade. It’s now 4 techs to Liberalism, then I’ll have to decide whether to get both Nationalism and Printing Press before turning research off. I also have Philosophy, Calendar, Construction, Currency, Monarchy and Metal Casting. Civil Service I need also for proper farming in some satellite cities, for future Great Merchants.

I've got a number of wonders:
Beijing: pyramids, hanging gardens, almost done colossus
Gung zhao: great library, working on notre dame

I should be OK for a win, as long as I can keep out of major wars.

Hatty and Cathy are both Pleased. Genghis is a monster, and has taken out Asoka. Huyana has basically teamed up with Genghis. At one stage they were both beating up on Hatty so much that I gifted them a pile of techs to secure peace. Hatty is currently a thin buffer against Genghis's raging hordes. Eventually I'll have to switch to Genghis's religion, which will then make Cathy and Huyana hate me.

I love Gotm and civ4 and I really like this page, however I have a comment to this gotm. This immortal game is not really an immortal level game, it was way too easy. I mean I survived and althou eventually lost by the end, it was entirely my fault because I made a grave mistake by the end that doomed me to praise the russian nation as their spaceship has launched towards the Alpha Centauri...

All in all, point of my post is that if you guys make an immortal level game then make it really immortal, as a random game would be. Thats the real challenge!

kmark said:

All in all, point of my post is that if you guys make an immortal level game then make it really immortal, as a random game would be. Thats the real challenge!

Click to expand...

I agree it was easier than a normal immortal game (only because of all the resources provided) but I still believe it's harder than an emperor game, so it's still the most difficult GOTM we've played so far for Civ4. I don't think it was wrong to give the players a leg up on this difficulty level. Maybe the next immortal game he can go a little harder on us, but I think the difficulty was fine for the first immortal GOTM.

kmark said:

I love Gotm and civ4 and I really like this page, however I have a comment to this gotm. This immortal game is not really an immortal level game, it was way too easy. I mean I survived and althou eventually lost by the end, it was entirely my fault because I made a grave mistake by the end that doomed me to praise the russian nation as their spaceship has launched towards the Alpha Centauri...

All in all, point of my post is that if you guys make an immortal level game then make it really immortal, as a random game would be. Thats the real challenge!

Click to expand...

This game did seem pretty easy for an Immortal game. I found it easier than both of the Emperor GOTMs. This was probably due to all the resources around our starting position that made for big, happy, healthy, rich cities.

I started by moving my warrior just as everyone else did, SE. Seeing the corn, I decided to settle in place, as I figured the extra two health from corn would make the fresh water less important and with two fish, and 1 corn, I would have all the population growth I could handle. This turned out to be a good decision as copper showed right next to Beijing after researching fishing and BW. I started by getting out a warrior and two workboats, making copious use of the whip, and was lucky enough to find TWO Egyptian workers building a road in the south. I declared on Hatty in 2920BC, stole the workers, and safely escorted them back to pasturize my cows and irrigate my corn. Hatty accepted peace about 10 turns later.

With my worker problems solved, I pumped out two settlers with all my food in Beijing, and then hooked the copper so all three cities could produce axemen. I declared on Hatty with about 8 axemen and took all 5 of her cities by 580BC. I kept very few because they were mostly in crappy jungle locations. But I now had plenty of room to expand for the rest of the game, and the pillage money helped out research. Compared to GOTM4 (Ghandi) where we were hemmed in by Alexander from the beginning, I found it much easier in this game to free up space for settling.

By 500AD, I had researched all of the first two ages' techs except HB Riding, Drama, Construction, and Compass. I also had Machinery and Theology. Keeping a monopoly on Alphabet helped a lot. I was able to build the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus, and nearing the completion of the Great Library, all in Beijing. I had 6 cities at 500AD, 5 of which were coastal, and was easily tops in GDP.

Despite both being Judaists, Asoka and Ghengis spent most of their first 4500 years fighting each other, making it easy for me to sit back and tech. At this point, I figured I had no chance to achieve a military victory, so I settled in for a possible diplo or space victory.

I think stealing the 2 workers and completely crippling your neighbor in 2920BC is probably what made it easier than the emperor games for you. (My initial warrior died to a lion before reaching Hatty's borders.)

well I played adventurer last month and lost so I figured this month would be a wash as well but I'm always up for a challenge.

My main objective was survival and I must say, even though I did lose (the details of which will follow in later spoilers) I managed to do it without getting into a single war, which I understand is some feat at this level. the state of my empire at this spoiler is AD 170. I have 5 cities with the sixth about to be founded on the island to the west.



you can just see city #5 below the blue to the south and you can't see city #3 to north, right above the western peak. after reading the pre-discussion, I decided, like most, to have the warrior check the hill first and then I opted to settle 2 SE to take advantage of the corn, fish and ivory in the capital. at this point, it became obvious what a leg up having a worker from the word go would be, in addition to AH and AGRI. I will say, I wish I had noticed this earlier (yeah, I know there was a thread about it ):



city #6 is to be founded next turn and I've decided that it will be come #3 in my quest for an ultimately failed cultural victory due to it's having 2 clams and a fish in the radius in addition to the 2 uber-tiles remaining after I settle on top of one. Whip whip whip.

edit:
I should also mention that I decided to go cultural only after I realized that I had a decent enough military to keep barbs/first wave attackers at bay and budhism spread to me. I noticed that budhism seemed to be fairly popular so I switched and spread as fast as I could. after city #6 is founded, my aim will be getting 9 cites to leverage cathedrals.

finally, I will mention my good luck on the wonder front. after seeing the stone to the northwest of my capital, I made it a priority to hook it up while I began building the pyramids. lots of food in the capital allowed me to work 2 mines and get the pyramids done in fairly short order - something I doubt I would have been able to accomplish if I hadn't started with a worker (thanks adventurer!).

after beelining for alphabet, I traded for math and began an aquaduct in bejing since I saw that I had an engineer ready to pop in about 15 turns. however, given my production level and growth rate in the capital, compounded my being industrious AND having stone, I decided not to wait for the engineer and pop rushed the aquaduct and did a full build of the hanging gardens, finishing 1 turn after the engineer appeared. I meant to use him for the collosus, but I got beat to it so I lightbulbed him for metalcasting, allowing another round of strong tech trading. how did I mess up such a great start? stay tuned to future spoilers

Playing Adventurer (or whatever the weenie class is called- can't remember)...

I'm still trying to win my first game on Prince, so I figured starting up this game would be just a novelty. I actually thought I'd probably die before my Powerbook battery ran out. For this reason I didn't really take any notes... However, with the extra help in terms of the archers, worker, and techs, I actually held my own for a while (still alive in 1700AD but not likely to win). I settled in place. Had no real problems with barbs except for 1 really stupid move where I had an axeman escorting a settler who was intended for the river near the rice, and I somehow accidentally ungrouped the two and then when I was checking out two possible sites managed to send the settler right next to a barb archer. I'm not sure I saw a single barb axeman. I raised one barb city (and settled over its ruins) down along the west coast where the desert starts up again...

I actually got both Colossus and Great Library (both with some whip at the end).

Happiness was a problem, and partly due to delaying in getting ironworking. I had forgotten that you need that to clear the jungle, so had those gems sitting there for some time before I could get to them...

Didn't found any religions, but Judaism spread to me. Both Egypt and Mongols had this- they hated each other but I felt pretty safe staying neutral in their wars since I was brothers of the faith with both of them...

I went with the adventurer bonus as I have never played Immortal before. I wish I hadnt of done that though as the game was kinda easy after that.

I had 6 cities before 0AD
Beijing 1W of Corn (Iron, Copper, Corn, Cow, Fish in cross)
2920BC Shanghai 1W of Horse(Horse, Dumbo, Cow, Sugar)
2560BC Guang 1NE of Gold ( Gold, Sheep, Fish)
1600BC Nanjing 1W of nannas (Gold, Wheat, 2X nannas)
1210BC Xian 1SE of Gems (Gems, 3X Sugars)
700BC Chengdu on "Treasure Island".is that what we are calling it now? Founded 2W of iron (Iron, Fish, Silk 2X Clams)

I never had a problem with barbs since I had that copper so close. I went along the upper tree after bronze and a few other worker techs. Got Alpha, then Lit....I built the Great Library in 205BC. I had alot of good trades with the AI. The trades allowed me to stay in first and second the entire game.
The biggest thing that helped me was opening borders up early and allowing a religion in....which came in in the form on Hinduism. Hatty and Asoka both had it. I adopted and the 3 of us were buddy buddy all game. Between the Trade routes, me building the Colusus and my cottages with the Financial trait, I did well. I was never involved in any wars up to this point.

Yeah, I found this start almost "disappointingly easy" too. At least I played with the HOF mod, so I had to suffer from the overflow problem with whipping!

Going for cultural. 500 AD status report:

Staked out enough land for nine cities?

Check.

Got Pyramids?

Check.

Spamming cottages in the three cultural cities?

Check.

Good great people farm site apart from my three cultural cultural cities?

Check.

Early sneak invasion that threatens to wipe me out?

Check. Luckily I was hooked up to copper and could whip a few axemen to beat back that ever-fierce aggressor .... Asorka! And he was pleased with me when he did it! Oh well, minimal harm done.

The only real question know is how much to streamline for maximum efficiency (thus neglecting military and putting myself at more risk). The early war was a little troubling.

In the style of Godotnut

I found this start surprisingly easy. I didn't play the HOF mod but I ignore the whipping issue (aamof I didn't whip a thing).

Going for cultural. 500 AD status report:

Staked out enough land for nine cities?

Check.

Got Pyramids?

Check.

Spamming cottages in the three cultural cities?

Check.

Good great people farm site apart from my three cultural cultural cities?

No Check.

Early sneak invasion that threatens to wipe me out?

No Check.

Took out early next door neighbour?

Check, and Hatty left me two founded religions (hindu and jew).

This time around I try to emphasize research over GPP farming. First GP is a engineer, second and third scientists. All seems to look good sofar, but of course I can only know this for sure when the finish dates of pnp_dredd, godotnut and others can be compared.
_

kmark said:

I love Gotm and civ4 and I really like this page, however I have a comment to this gotm. This immortal game is not really an immortal level game, it was way too easy. I mean I survived and althou eventually lost by the end, it was entirely my fault because I made a grave mistake by the end that doomed me to praise the russian nation as their spaceship has launched towards the Alpha Centauri...

All in all, point of my post is that if you guys make an immortal level game then make it really immortal, as a random game would be. Thats the real challenge!

Click to expand...

Yes - it is deliberately easier than a normal immortal game. As the difficulty level creeps up, there are people for whom the game gets more interesting, and there are those for which it becomes awful / discouraging.

The idea of making it easier than a normal immortal game is to give the warlord / monarch players a bit of a boost - an incentive to give the game a try, and perhaps they can gain some confidence as well. This is really an early-game leg-up, which means that people should be able to survive the early game. It is still immortal though, so the immortal+ players will hopefully still find it interesting.

The difficulty levels will cycle to cater for all - and in the next cycle to immortal (or higher ) it probably won't be as 'easy'.