GOTM 37 First Spoiler

GOTM 37 First Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 37, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You must have reached at least 500 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not discuss anything post 500 AD.
• Please do not discuss any events in locations or reveal any of the map not reachable before caravels.
• Please do not name any civs that are not contactable before caravels.

A funny idea, to put such a loser immortal-AI on our continent. Usually we humans get the bad starting locations, now it was the other way round. He didn't handle it very well, settling in place Maybe he should have read the pregame-thread for AI..

jesusin said:

BOTM 12

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Typo

I am guessing that Jesusin wanted to entice as many people to go for culture victory as possible. The map/civ was probably perfect for that. I recognized early that it would be so, but decided that since its Immortal I'd better go with my strengths (and Culture I am pretty lame at).

My aim was to quickly expand, get a military edge, and clear my landmass if the opportunity arises, aim for space or perhaps diplo victory as back-up.

I was slow to explore, though, looking for good settling sites rather than AI contacts. When I did make contact with Bismark, by seeing his cultural border across the ice-filled waters, I mistakenly assumed we were alone already. I didn't realize he was on our continent until his settlements started encroaching on my defogged area! Too late for an early kill, I resigned to make him a nice trading partner (I made another wrong assumption that his part of the continent was small compared to mine). Anyhow, I guess I don't know enough about AI personalities... after early alphabet and no other contacts, Bismark is convinced he has monopoly techs and refuses to part with any at any price

Well crap, this is Immortal and I've already made more misjudgements than I'll probably get away with, and its only the BC era. My strategy after Aplha was to beeline Optics (then on to Astronomy). Hopefully I can gain some contacts which will get me some tech trades I desperately need.

In the meantime, I conquer a barb city on a hill defended by oodles of archers... and lost about 3-4 Swords/axes in the process. Bismarck still is defending with archers too, so my frustration with his unwillingness to trade ("We don't want to start trading this technology just yet") has one possible outlet. Before 500AD, I am able to capture one German city, raze another, and get peace when longbows show up one turn before I could capture another.

Status: Keeping up (more or less) with Bismark, but doubting that all the AI started in the snow and fearing how badly I am probably trailing the off-shore pack.

I had never won on immortal before, so I decided to try for a cultural victory, which seemed possible based on my practice game. My strategy was to obtain two early religions by first researching hinduism, AH, mining, archery, bronzeworking, priesthood, writing, go for priesthood build the oracle and get COL.

To achieve this I settled in place, built fishing boat, worker, warrior, archer, settler, oracle. Second city was put on hills directly to west. Third city was on peninsula to south. I rushed the oracle at the end (2 pop lost) as I had one red face since I had not researched roads yet. Discovered Bismark and after COL researched alphabet to trade, but he wasn't interested. Instead Bismark DOW with two measly archers in the area (he had settled near the bronze down south). Took me a while to build up army to respond (had to hook up horses and latter iron, and took his city and made peace. However, this delayed my efforts and was to have profound consequences later on.

I haven't enjoyed a game of civ like this for some time. I just hope I finish this on time, I missed the deadline for the last GOTM game...

My plan for this game was not to play for Culture, whatever happens. I sensed that beeling for Alpha might not be a good idea, but GL is on that path so it can't be that bad. I decided to play peacefully in the beginning, grab enough land for 5 cities and start expanding later on. Bulbing Machinery with GS to get closer to Optics was a priority mission. I'm not sure where I was at 500 AD, but I remember that everything was going quite nicely.

Kcd_swede, no AI (except MM) will trade if alone unless it's Friendly.

Hah the AI will "trade" when your axe is near it's throat.

Anyway. I most of the time i don't have problems with Immortal. So I expand quickly take the copper side down S of the capitol, i've take also gold+Ivory city, corn city(this big laked give +3 food with LH you know), Another city down S of the corn on the peninsula. Then i reached Bismark build up some axes,cats and phant and took one good barb city up in the north near another corn. Then i attacked Bismark - the poor guy was patethic. The only thing which save him was that his main cities were away while my economy was way under the zero(-25 gold or something with some 100 gold reserves). SO the only "close" point was The discover of Currency which with what of water tiles worked got me out of the hole. Then the nice Bismark build GLH for me - very generous indeed. Meanwhile the only wondar i building was GL - i need to reach those caravels somehow. SO Around 500AD i don't remember now I was somewhere around the second and the last war with Bismark which gave me Great Lighthouse. But i must stop here.

Well IMO too bad that Bismark haven't got better capitol. He is Wonder crazy AI and would gives us a way more wonder if it was on better land. But yea thats how the game is playable for more people.

jesusin - excellent map!

My idea to run a specialist economy turned out to be very dangerous (slow tech pace in early phase of game) but also fit this map well. My tech pace the first 4000 years where abysmal.

After a quick test, I found that starting with a worker was better than starting with a work boat, since early worker turns are very valuable. I decided not to tech archery and only use warriors. It's worked but the unit upkeep was a bit expensive. An evil promoted barb warrior delayed my settler five turns to found my second city westward (gold, copper and corn) - Barcelona founded 1760 BC

Great Library built 25 AD. I was very afraid to miss it. Academy 250 AD.

Tech path: Mining, Hunting, AH, Wheel, BW, Pottery, Mysticism (challenger), Writing, Alpha, Agriculture, Polytheism, Literature, Mathematics, Sailing, Calendar, Iron working (400 AD).

I can't remember a slower progress on Immortal. I hope I can climb out of this hole

Poor Bismark had some of the worst land I've ever seen.

I decided to go for the cow which is something I had never tried before and my basic plan was to head towards domination with my eye on settling spots where I would have lots of food.

I settled the capital on the spot.

Built Worker > workboat > warrior > Settler > Oracle > Settler > Worker

Researched
Mining > Ag > AH > Med (founded Bud which was a surprise) > Priest > Writing > CoL (founded Conf)> CS from Oracle

Switched to Caste and Bur. Hired 3 scientists in the capital and along with the Oracle it quickly popped a scientist which made an academy then fired them all.

Founded 2nd city to the West in between gold/corn/copper. It built about 6 warriors for defense/fog busting against barbs then a couple of workboats for the next city before a barracks and then lots of units.

3rd city went onto the Rice SE of capital and worked the 2 fish and hired as many scientists as possible.

Built a 4th city up N near the fish/clam/deer and it hired scientists also.

Next couple of Great Scientists were planned to use on Philosophy and Education to speed the way to Liberalism which I hoped to get Astronomy with.

Built a big stack of mostly cats with some axes, spears, and chariots and went after Bismark. Razed 1 and kept a couple others, then gave him peace for a tech or 2.

Declared again when I could with the intent of wiping him out. I think this was around 500 AD so I'll stop here. Taking out Bismark was easy enough because of his horrible land but the other AIs most likely wouldn't be in the same condition.

OMG. I feel like I was both totally expecting this map and at the same time completely surprised and baffled by it. It's like you know the straight-pitch directly over the plate is coming, but instead of the fastball you get some kind of crazy split-fingered Jack Morris slow-motion forkball instead. When I finally got to 500 AD I felt like I'd already swung at the d*mn thing twice and it still hadn't made it two-thirds of the way to the plate yet.

Erkon said:

I can't remember a slower progress on Immortal.

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No kidding. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

kcd_swede said:

I am guessing that Jesusin wanted to entice as many people to go for culture victory as possible. The map/civ was probably perfect for that.

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Well... yes (maybe), and no. (JMHO -- For my approach though, the emphasis was definately on the "no.")

kcd_swede said:

Well crap, this is Immortal and I've already made more misjudgements than I'll probably get away with, and its only the BC era.

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You are not alone. By 750 BC I was already convinced I'd taken the wrong road, and maybe a hopeless one...

Yamps said:

My plan for this game was not to play for Culture, whatever happens. I sensed that beeling for Alpha might not be a good idea

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I probably should have sensed that about Alpha too, but I didn't... and I was dead-set on trying to go for culture, considering the map-designer and all.

Yamps said:

I haven't enjoyed a game of civ like this for some time.

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"Enjoyed"... Yeah, me too, I guess, but it's been really hard on my fingernails...

Erkon said:

jesusin - excellent map!

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Yes, agreed. This has been an exceptional map. Kudos to the designer (as expected -- sort of... )

Quick Summary:
I set out to go for culture using the "safest" tested strategy I knew. With a small map and high sea levels I thought everything would work out all right even with only a few AI opponents. I decided not to pursue any of the early religions for all the usual reasons. By 1040 BC it was obvious that something was very wrong. With no religion anywhere I could see and almost no trade connections with other empires, I seriously considered abandoning culture. Finally decided to change-up my approach and make one last play for it. Was floored when I got Code of Laws in 750 BC (turn 85) and still ended up founding Confucianism. After a detour to Monarchy, Civil Service followed in 1AD (turn 115). Someone else got Christianity only two turns later, but when getting Philosophy successfully resulted in Spain founding Taoism too, I decided to stick it out with culture. Victory would still be possible with only two religions, I thought, even if it would come abysmally late, and I still had a chance to try to found Islam later. On the downside, at 500 AD I still had only two cities and had not yet made even one technology trade with anyone. Technology trading is normally one of the stronger parts of my game, and being deprived of it like that for so long was extremely disconcerting. (That's how I lost my fingernails...)

I'll add some details for anyone who might be interested. I know I did a million things wrong, but, as always, all advice/commentary/criticism is welcome (encouraged and invited)!

RESEARCH PATH & DATES:

IMPORTANT MILESTONES (CITIES, GREAT PERSONS, ETC.):

FOUNDING DATES OF RELIGIONS (to 500 AD):

EARLY WONDERS (DATES - all BIFL):

BUILD ORDER:

Harok said:

Researched
Mining > Ag > AH > Med (founded Bud which was a surprise) > Priest > Writing > CoL (founded Conf)> CS from Oracle

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A CS Sling on immortal? I'm aghast.

Yamps said:

Kcd_swede, no AI (except MM) will trade if alone unless it's Friendly.

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That sounds familiar... I think I knew that once but must have forgotten.
It's amazing what you can learn playing in GOTM's and following the threads...

I wonder how many more times I'll have to learn this before I remember it.

I like it - my 500AD empire is just small enough to fit in a screenshot!



Intending to go for the cow in this one, using early astronomy plus conquistadors to pillage all AI into the stone age as soon as I can get to them, so I can conquer them in the 2040s, but with a 'Plan B' to divert and go for space if the AI are too advanced to conquer once I get to astronomy.

Initial strategy was to beeline for literature to build the great library, with the intention then of beelining for optics. I didn't seriously expect alphabet on the way to give me any trading opportunities so wasn't at all surprised when it didn't.

Great Library worked very well - thanks to heading for pottery/writing very early, I completed that in 350 BC, one of the fastest I think I've ever managed it. Even better - it meant Madrid had an academy in 150BC! (Am I allowed to send a to myself on civfanatics?)

I didn't do much exploring at first, beyond what was needed to fogbust, which I put a lot of resources into. On this level, I'm sure any AIs that are reachable will discover me soon enough.

My 2nd city went SE by the horses and fish. 3rd one, Seville, S by the pig and sugar and in one of those clicking-too-quickly scenarios went in the wrong place , intended to go 1 tile W to pick up the hill and auto-clear an extra jungle. At time I didn't know the iron was on the hill, when much later iron working rolled in, I realized that misclick screwed up a lot more than I'd bargained for, badly messing up all my dotmapping of city sites around the area.

I hesitated with the copper/dye/gold location because, although I'd dotmapped several possible city layouts, the best long-terms ones put the gold/copper city further from the capital than I felt comfortable with, given that at this point great library was my priority and I was throwing everything possible into science. Unfortunately that meant that some time before I finished the great library (in Madrid), Bismarck took the copper/gold (and the iron, though at that stage I didn't know it) for himself.

Since I couldn't leave myself hemmed in with Bismarck in control of such a powerful site, that meant I couldn't beeline straight for optics after literature, I'd have to go for construction next and attack Bismarck with catapults. (I could've gone for iron working, which I'd have needed anyway for jungle clearance, but that was risky: If there was no iron then I'd need construction anyway, and the war with Bismarck would then be later and he'd be a lot more powerful).

So my catapults knocked Bismark out of the copper. I then quickly stopped the war because my focus on science meant I didn't have the capacity to pursue it much, and Bismarck didn't have any other cities I particularly wanted. I did though capture the Barbarian city of Sarmatian up North, and filled in another city to make sure that I kept all the ivory. That should mean Bismarck would be unable to build anything except archers and horses, so I could contain him at my leisure . Unfortunately that rapid expansion tanked my economy, and as the screenshot shows, in 500AD I'm only just breaking even on 0% science. Which isn't exactly making best use of that academy… The problem is the city happiness cap, so with metal casting in, my immediate priority is forges and calendar to let my cities grow. Luckily those are on the way to optics anyway, just hope I can still get there in time…

Balthalion said:

A CS Sling on immortal? I'm aghast.

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Normally I would agree with you but with this being vanilla so no need for Math, only 4 AIs, 1 of which was in purgatory, and a powerful early capital with gems, clam, and cow I didn't think it was a shock. Even if it failed I hoped to pick up an early religion (Conf), caste system for popping an early scientist, plus cash from whatever I had finished of the Oracle. My one fear was someone getting it and using it on CoL.

When I founded Buddhism which I had not expected or tried for I felt like it was almost a sure thing. If you wanted to be almost positive to pull it off insert Hunting instead of Ag and then waiting to found the 2nd city would have gotten it several turns earlier.

DynamicSpirit said:

Intending to go for the cow in this one, using early astronomy plus conquistadors to pillage all AI into the stone age as soon as I can get to them, so I can conquer them in the 2040s, but with a 'Plan B' to divert and go for space if the AI are too advanced to conquer once I get to astronomy. …

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DS we appear to have the same ideas about an early academy and early astronomy to make use of Conquistadors but went about it very differently. You went the Great Library route (using GSs to lightbulb Astronomy?) while I planned for Oracle/CS/Caste then use GSs to learn techs on the way to Astronomy but use Liberalism to get it.

Our capitals look almost identical but the rest of the land is worked pretty differently. I didn't build any cottages other than the capital and instead went for specialists or production in the other cities. I think this got me ahead of you early on but I like your outlook for science later much better. If only Bismark would have been more useful and built the pyramids like I had hoped he did.

I also founded Buddism(not expected), Conf(expected), and Taoism(expected) and built a monastery for each in the capital to add research. Plus the extra happy faces from having a state religion and temples when needed helped.

Our city settlement choices are close but in a different order. I chose to go west first for a couple of reasons, the gold in the west and the SE land looked secluded so it wouldn't be contested. I didn't know how close Bismark was at the time and I wanted to secure that spot. Like you I didn't do as much early exploration as normal but instead went safe and used all my warriors to fog bust what I did know. Which worked as I had no barb issues at all.

I settled on the SE rice instead of 1N of it so I could get the 2nd fish and extra city tile food. Our western cities are in the exact same location. I hadn't settled near the pig by 500 AD but planned to and I think I should have done so earlier than I did. We both captured that barb city except I took it from Bismark who had captured it before I could. And instead of putting a city where you have Toledo I went way up N but I'm not sure which is better. The extra happy face from the fur I got did help but that city doesn't have as much long term promise and flexibility as yours.

One thing to think about for a crashing economy is the cash that can be "razed" from Bismark's other cities and land.

Having never gone for the cow before I planned on making lots of end game mistakes (plus I'm not very good with the later parts of the game no matter what victory condition) so I doubt I can maintain what I see as a slight early lead for me in the race for the beef and milk.

Harok said:

DS we appear to have the same ideas about an early academy and early astronomy to make use of Conquistadors but went about it very differently. You went the Great Library route (using GSs to lightbulb Astronomy?) while I planned for Oracle/CS/Caste then use GSs to learn techs on the way to Astronomy but use Liberalism to get it.

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Yeah that was roughly my post-library plan too: Beeline for optics to start trading, then beeline for liberalism to get astronomy. Then most likely go for guilds, which would give me conquistadors if I judged all the AIs weak enough to go to war with, or grocers if they were too strong and I'd have to fall back on space race.

Harok said:

Our capitals look almost identical but the rest of the land is worked pretty differently. I didn't build any cottages other than the capital and instead went for specialists or production in the other cities. I think this got me ahead of you early on but I like your outlook for science later much better.

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I guess you don't have a 500AD screenshot? That would be interesting to look at and compare. As I guess you saw, I basically cottaged everywhere (other than mining hills by the capital to build the great library quicker), even on tiles that I would normally have given farms or plantations.

Harok said:

I also founded Buddism(not expected), Conf(expected), and Taoism(expected) and built a monastery for each in the capital to add research. Plus the extra happy faces from having a state religion and temples when needed helped.

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You had the advantage of me there. Not having any religion at all in 500AD was a big problem for me.

Harok said:

Our city settlement choices are close but in a different order. I chose to go west first for a couple of reasons, the gold in the west and the SE land looked secluded so it wouldn't be contested. I didn't know how close Bismark was at the time and I wanted to secure that spot. Like you I didn't do as much early exploration as normal but instead went safe and used all my warriors to fog bust what I did know. Which worked as I had no barb issues at all.

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My reasoning for going SE rather than westwards was largely that it made my small empire easier to defend/fogbust against the anticipated army of barbs (since I'd figured there was a lot of empty land to the west). If I hadn't settled there I'd still have had to leave a unit there to fogbust and I didn't have any units to spare. I also threw in archery early on so IIRC only built one additional warrior and used mainly archers to fogbust. (I was obsessively concerned about barb threats at this stage).

Harok said:

I settled on the SE rice instead of 1N of it so I could get the 2nd fish and extra city tile food.

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That was better, especially as I think there was jungle on the rice that you'd have autorazed. For some reason doing that just didn't occur to me - I do remember much later in the game looking at that city and thinking 'Why I didn't I put it on top of the rice?'

Harok said:

And instead of putting a city where you have Toledo I went way up N but I'm not sure which is better. The extra happy face from the fur I got did help but that city doesn't have as much long term promise and flexibility as yours.

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That was roughly my thinking. I rejected the fur because I didn't feel at that point I could afford a city that was so unproductive (other than for giving me fur). Toledo was a city I was pleased with. When I settled it, I had my eye on it as my future main production city. I'd also btw dotmapped the grassland at the end of the sea inlet 2W 4S of (my) toledo as one of my main future science cities, but in 500AD hadn't yet been able to do anything about it.

Harok said:

One thing to think about for a crashing economy is the cash that can be "razed" from Bismark's other cities and land.

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Ha ha, great minds think alike. I thought that but I didn't have the military strength, and I needed forges too badly to be willing to divert production to more units. (Plus the more cities I raze, the less likely Bismarck would be to trade anything to me later in the game, if he was still around - and I wanted to keep him around because (a) my plan would work best for the cow if the non-Spanish land was spread between as many AIs as possible - then they each stay weaker, and (b) he occupied mostly useless land that I probably wouldn't want until just before my eventual victory)

My initial thoughts were to get a cultural win and that the fact that adventures got 2 Work boats would mean that all civs could be reached via the coastline. This proved a very bad assumption.

I skipped going for a early religion and made a beeline for alphabet. I got some great cities placed after a bit of delay after two of my warriors lost to the same barb. I also captured the Barb city near the marble.

While I had some great land – I soon realized I was in a bad way. No other civs were contacted and Bismarck would not trade techs with just me on the same continent. Also, there was no religion to be had on our continent. I don’t recall exactly where I was by 500 – but I was playing a pretty unfocused game by that point.

In retrospect – it would have been easy to found both Buddhism and Hinduism and to get CoL from the Oracle. Whoever pulled that off would be my bet as to who gets the cultural victory.

damnrunner said:

My initial thoughts were to get a cultural win and that the fact that adventures got 2 Work boats would mean that all civs could be reached via the coastline. This proved a very bad assumption.

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I was thinking the same thing and fell down the same ruinous path (though I doubt my time would have been competitive in any case). Jesusin is supposed to be a good guy, right? He wouldn't actually plant misleading evidence on purpose, would he???

Maybe he's just been rubbing elbows with that shady bunch over at Murky Waters for too long.

Settled in place, went for workboat and Polytheism first up. Founded Hinduism then decided not to chase any other religions - thought in hindsight I think this was a mistake as the AIs weren't grabbing them quickly. Scout got beaten up by barbarian warrior early on. Sent first settler over towards copper/gold/corn site to cut off Bismarck, who I thought was much closer than he actually was. Some problems with barbarians, including a barbarian axeman attacking Barcelona with just one fortified archer (it survived -whew!). Built Seville one square north of rice on the peninsula - didn't know about the second fish or would have chosen differently. Sevaral waves of barbs went for capital and trashed pasture - but that was as far as they got. Sent another settler north to grab clams/fur site and established a fifth city to block Bismarcks incursion. Tried for Great Lighthouse but beaten by 3-4 turns. Like Erkon finding technology very slow - I rely on trades and there haven't been any this game! Currently on 40% research. Couple of questions (1) what's the optimum number of cities for a cultural victory? 3 minimum, 6 to build cathedrals etc, do you keep growing after that or is this just draining the treasury? (2) With forests within city radius, is it better strategy to chop them early for production boost or, as I do, keep then for lumbermills and railroads?

I first joined the GOTM forum over a year ago, and I played a couple of months non-stop. Real Life (RL) got in the way, and this was my first attempt to return. I have played “at” Civ for a long time, but am actually very inexperienced and consider myself the quintessential ‘noob.’

I actually returned to try GOTM 37 because of Jesusin’s article about cultural victories on higher levels had me convinced to try to make Isabella, ah, that’s try to “Culturize” Izzy on Immortal level… all this after having not played for over a year… Oh silly mortal! {do you know what it’s like not to whip your civ for over a year?}

I started off building a workboat, and researching Poly … and … well, from there it was all uphill as I recall. I can’t find my detail notes. Things do not seem to be going my way in the early AD. As two quick examples, like some others posted before, I rushed to Alphabet, but still couldn’t trade for quite awhile. And, sometime around 500 BC I found an undiscovered tribal villagers’ hut. It turned out to contain hostiles..!!

Sometime around 1,000 BC or later my science rate dropped off badly, because I had not managed my economy properly. I had hoped/planned for nine cities to have the opportunity to put temples/Cathederal type buildings for the culture multipliers—but I think I was moving too fast.

Whatever the root of the problems, it seems to be kicking me by early AD.

“Tsk … tsk… looks like rain …” Eeyore

Adama

Adama said:

Sometime around 1,000 BC or later my science rate dropped off badly, because I had not managed my economy properly. I had hoped/planned for nine cities to have the opportunity to put temples/Cathederal type buildings for the culture multipliers—but I think I was moving too fast.

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It sounds like you may have built too many cities too quickly. The temples to cathedrals ratio is scaled down on a small map, so you only need two temples to build a cathedral. Thus to max out your three main cities you'll only need a total of six cities on a small map. Some other aspects of play scale with map size too, including things like city maintenance costs, so building more than five or six cities too soon on a small map will quickly tank your economy, even though you might be used to getting away with six or seven before that happens on larger maps.

There is a great reference guide out and posted on CivFanatics somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and post a link for you here, just in case you haven't found it yet.

EDIT: Here is the link. You can find the world size guide on page 75.
BTS Reference Guide Link

EDIT #2:
While looking for the reference booklet I stumbled across a bunch of other stuff you might find interesting if you haven't discovered them yet. Some of these references can be extremely helpful -- especially the Great People Tech Preferences guide.
Link to Other Useful References

afker said:

... With forests within city radius, is it better strategy to chop them early for production boost or, as I do, keep then for lumbermills and railroads?

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I always chop capital forests, and replace them with either farms, cottages or workshops, depending on situation. Sometimes I spare a couple after mathematics to help building a wonder (such as Great Library).

Not many forest in my core empire survives until lumber mills