*Spoiler 3* Gotm18-Celts - End Game Submitted

Congrats on an amazing victory, Zwingli
Your score just shows that pts isn't everything imo. I wish the game would give you points on techincal merit, though, for the most stylish game I've ever seen

This was my 2nd GOTM, and my main aim was to improve on last month, though maybe that was aiming a little low as I came 2nd from last! My main problems last month were that I expanded much too slowly at the start and I wasn't aggressive enough, only going to war once and leaving Egypt completely to herself. I resolved to try and address these issues this month.

I didn't keep a log (I mentioned this is only my 2nd attempt, right?), so here goes from memory with a little help from a couple of mini-maps.

4000BC to 800AD : I expanded fairly well. I managed to concentrate mainly on Settlers/Workers and Warriors rather than falling into my usual trap of producing 1 Settler then Temples/Libraries/Granerys etc. Its amazing how much easier it is to keep people happy when all of your cities are size 1 to 3! I managed to expand far enough south to steal the 2nd iron and a couple of the wines right at the border of Greece, Iroquois and Rome and east to get to the horses before Rome. My warriors really struggled against the new super volcanoes to the north, so I didn't bother trying and instead concentrated on filling in the territory I surrounded.

800AD to 600AD : Carthage declared war on me! I wasn't really prepared for war at this point as I was only just at the end of my expansion phase and hadn't produced much military. Maybe that's why they declared war. Lets attack the Celts for some easy pickings! I got France and the Aztecs to help me out and upgraded a bunch of warriors to Celtish Swordsmen. By the time the alliance had finished with Carthage they only had a couple of cities in the northern Tundra.

~1200AD : I had some wars with Rome around this time. I had a bunch of Knights that I really wanted to upgrade to Cavalry but couldn't due to a lack of Saltpeter. I managed to take Rome for dyes and Antium for Saltpeter, though the Romans managed to sneak a couple of Cavalry round and raze a couple of my lesser cities. I soon made peace with them as I was finding my borders too large to defend and didn't have enough units to complete the offensive.

~1650AD : I realised I wasn't being nearly aggressive enough. The Aztecs had the highest score, and the land they took from the Carthaginians nearby looked ripe for the taking. By this point I had finally caught up with the AI's tech rate through trading. I managed to trade some better techs for lesser techs and a mutual protection pact with France and Japan. I stuck a unit near one of the Aztecs cities, they threatened war if I didn't leave. I didn't leave and war started. I successfully took the Aztec cities to the east of the central waterway and let France and Japan deal with the main Aztec threat. Sued for peace for some more techs and carried on with my own research. From this point I managed to stay ahead of the AIs by keeping them at war with each other. I kept trading techs to them for GPT, so leaving them little resources to keep up in their own research, while being careful not to accept GPT from anyone I might want to attack next.

~1700 : Decided to start on the Greeks. I'm still having trouble with this warring stuff. I guess I'm just too nice . I managed to overcome my natural tendencies towards peace for a while and took out Greece pretty much by myself. Just a little help from my French ally. Greece made a couple of attempts to attack back into my territory but France sorted them out for me while I continued attacking the Greek cities. I'm not quite sure what France got out of that, but I enjoyed watching them lose units to each other without me having to do anything!

Greece was down to one city and I decided to be lenient. War weariness had been quite a problem. I keep changing from Democracy to Republic when going to war, but that, 7 luxeries with Market Place and even some Lux tax just didn't seem to be enough. After making peace everyone was happy again. For some reason though Greece decided to attack France, despite France being the 2nd biggest (I'm actually 1st ). The mutual protection act brought me back to war again so I wiped them out.

~1730 : Time for Rome to go. I got a little help from the Iroquois and took the rest of Romes mainland Cities. This included a city that I had been trying to take with culture right from the start. It was surrounded with cities containing all of the cultural buildings I could find, and even a couple of leader rushed wonders. It sized down to it's city tile and one other, so it probably wasn't much use, but it just hadn't felt right having a Roman city in the middle of my territory. Oh well, thats that sorted out! The Iroquois continued on and took the Roman cities in the northern Tundra.

~1770 : I was thinking about taking out the Iroquois when China declared war on me. I got everyone else to gang up on them, even the Egyptians, while I tried to complete my research for whatever tech it is the allows Modern Armour. I had a whole bunch of Tanks just waiting to be upgraded and a nice stockpile of gold to do it with. Unfortunately the Egyptians managed to win the UN vote just before I got to this stage. I really wish I had tried harder to keep the other Civs happy. Japan and France were polite/gracious ever since our alliances against our mutual foes, and the Iroquois weren't far off.

Despite another loss I was quite pleased with how I did in this game. I was still not nearly aggressive enough, and it took me too long to catch up with the AIs by trading tech, but overall I think I improved quite a bit from last month. Most importantly though it was great fun. Thanks Cracker (+others) .

Zwingli,

I agree that you should get an award for a great game, and a great write-up.

I have a question about your attack on London. In post #83 you show a stack of tanks landing and taking Hastings. Then that stack of tanks moves on to London where you say:

"so I dug into the mountain and shelled London while holding out for reinforcements."

What do you mean when you say you shelled London. I don't think you had any artillery in that stack. It is one open square between the mountain and London so your tanks would be marooned on the plain if they moved to attack London. Is there a way to make the tanks bombard from a distance that I am not aware of??

Originally posted by zagnut
Zwingli,

I agree that you should get an award for a great game, and a great write-up.

Click to expand...

I concur! It would be nice if the GOTM has a special award for the best OCC, 2CC, 3CC, or 5CC players. Hopefully, Cracker and the GOTM staffs are cooking one. Just like the cow award from last game, I was totally surprise.

zagnut,

I included about 30 artillery (and 1 elite infantry) with that tank stack, so these were the things bombing London. At the time of the screenshot I had only 2 to 4 undamaged tanks left, so I ended up shelling the city for 10 consecutive turns. To take a metropolis capital city on a hill would have probably taken 10-25 undamaged tanks without the artillery support.

Dianthus, it looks like you easily played well enough to win. Next time, you may want to make sure that you build the UN (and so control voting) by prebuilding it.

Dianthus: I think that's one of the great things about Civ3: you got to be sure to control all the winning methods lest the AI gets another win than the one you had planned.
But, like Txurce said, you've prob played well enough to win this game. Seeing the improvement you've made from the last gotm, I'm sure you'll remember to get the UN for yourself and not hold any votes the next time you get in this situation

London was indeed a pisser to take, even at size 12 - the two infantry they had in there when I got to them retreated or killed all 10 of the tanks I took at them initially, and I had to wait a few turns to bring up reinforcements and my artillery stack. They were much easier pickings at size 6.

Renata

I agree that artillery is the key. You have to either weaken the defending units or get the population down below 12 so they don't get the metropolis bonus. I hate losing units.

Finally finished and submitted - I won 1848 spacerace but with a Civ score of 5302 and a huge number of mistakes.

1) I was aiming for 100K culture victory - but the Aztecs were too close, forcing me to go over 100K and build a spaceship instead.

2) Built only 2 warriors at the start of the game! Had to build all 30 Celtic Warriors at full cost.

3) Spent FAR too long in monarchy when should have been in Republic (60 turns?)

4) Got behind in the tech race at 1100AD - had to do a suicide run to Kyoto to capture the Great Library. 54 galleys, 9 armies (each with 1 preloaded cav) and 90 other cav - only 8 galleys made the return journey due to the Jap navy.

5) Having captured Kyoto in 1500AD, breaking ROP and screwing myself for a diplomatic win - I bottled out, gave it to the Aztecs and brought the boys home. Carthage was getting a bit too aggressive to do without the 40 cav and 4 armies that survived the expedition.

6) Build 2 Ports of Entry (vanilla Civ version of commercial docks) in same city. CHEAT! OK, I went back and replayed it before I submitted - good job Police Stations have the same cost.

But, went from researching Education to Electronics in 1 turn, built Hoover Dam and never looked back - crushed Cathage in 10 turns with MA and Alliance with Aztecs. I zapped Paris just before end (they attacked Aztecs so had to finish them).

Other casualties were also down to me; Rome, Iroquois, Greece (I razed Athens - had no choice, couldn't garrison it enough). England had to go; they had Adam Smith's (a MUST HAVE wonder for me). But China was the first victim, and I had nothing to do with it - a case of AI gang rape.

All in all, I'm amazed I won. Must do better. But it was my first GOTM.

<rant>

My hard disk having died on me, I am now off of Civ until Friday morning. when the air mail containing my new one arrives. The company that made my HD was nice enough to immediately send me a replacement after the initial support person on the phone line However, this makes absolutely no difference to the GOTM, as my save that would have had me launch a spaceship by 1700 AD (based on tech estimates at the end of the Industrial Age, which I reached yesterday) is now lost. This is the second GOTM I've not been able to mail my final save into due to computer problems, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm cursed.

</rant>

There will be other posts in the respective spoiler threads detailing what I did to speed up the launch date (which is pretty good for me given that the Celts are not industrious), but my basic strategy was to alternate and , picking on the backwards AI nations such as Rome and (surprisingly) Carthage to grab territory while I kept the strongest AIs in Republic. I had amazing luck with leaders(five!), and built my FP in lower Rome, Sun Tzu's, and Sistine with the leaders from the war with Rome. Leo's and Bach's were hand-built due to timing the cascade carefully, and both Smith's and Universal Suffrage were built from the war with Carthage. I saved decades on my potential launch date, if not a century, with leaders building wonders, allowing me to concentrate on infrastructure and the ~125 workers floating around at the start of Industrial times. The massive 'worker army' ended up being worth all its maintenance when I was able to railroad everything quickly and kick my income into high gear.

Luck outside of the RNG also played a large role, as aside from the Iroquois and the Romans, whose little spat I put an end to by overrunning Rome, none of the AI fought. This meant an extremely fast tech pace, going to 4-5 turns/tech after ToE (which I built), as everyone was in Democracy and everyone had time to have their workers develop their lands well. I remained at tech parity, and was far ahead on building the UN when I went to sleep on the 29th, believing that an hour or two today (for it is apparently still the 30th in Colorado ) would finish the game off.

This game, especially the early years before I built knights and went to war, felt like an Emperor game in tech pace- except for England, which had to wait until almost the Middle Ages for me to allow it to contact the other civs, the AIs found each other extremely fast. The Middle Ages showed up earlier than in many of my solo Emperor games (I don't remember the exact date, and I've lost my log/screenshots on the old hd).

Aside from the hard drive frustration, this was an enjoyable game- the true pangea nature meant a fast tech pace, and the lack of industrious or scientific pace meant that the player had to think long and hard about research priorities. I don't usually play the Celts in sp, so this was an interesting experience for me.

Sorry about your hard drive Borealis. I'll try to send some good computer voodoo your way. Need you back in the SG, too.

Renata

Well. Weird month.

Finished the game in a mad rush last night after realising my culture attempt was never going to finish in time and hence breaking my MGC (Mutual Gaming Challenge) agreement with Col. Fortunately he still remain “polite” with me So Col by default you win the Highest Score Culture.

For a change I was very aggressive of the mark. I started building warriors and archers early for fear of aggressive barbs which then turned into a stick each for Carthage and Rome. The only thing which saved their capitals from capture was them being founded on hills. Sticking with a good old Celtic principle of harassing your enemies, the majority of my ancient techs came from negotiated peace with these two neighbours.

Due to them being severely hampered in growth I had lots of room to expand in the BC era. Early in the AD era I upgraded as many warriors as possible (80 gold a piece… ouch!) to finish off the job. My Celts were beginning to really enjoy their new found muscle.

By this stage I was in Monarchy in which I remained for the rest of the game. The aim was to build up to my outer limits and fill the gaps with towns with temples, libraries, etc. I always seemed to be in some dispute with the neighbours over cattle, crops, woman, you know what I mean, so eventually raids lead to all out war with the Iroquois followed by the Aztecs. By now I had brought in those wild beasts that many had found hard to ride and with great difficulty explained to my impetuous warriors the art of training, armour and swords. They quickly took to this new form of warfare and I soon had the Iroquois’s leader’s heads hanging from my palace. The Aztecs were beaten down to a mere puppet state. For very obvious reasons Sun Tzu was my next research goal.

A Phoney War had existed between this now great Celtic nation (whose lands now stretched from the far north eastern tundra part of the continent, to east of the large inland lake to around into the mountainous southern part). I believe this was a dishonourable state of affairs. How can you have an enemy who does not show their face on the battlefield?

In taking the battle to Egypt I discovered that with military strength (and culture as each conquered city gained a temple) comes respect and I found allies in my quest. I grinned in the slowing down of research that ensured as I was quietly moving up the more aggressive side of the medieval techs. Egypt melted under a wave of Knights.

Approaching 1200ad the ancient soothsayers confirmed the meaning of my recent nightmares. With the passing of the Roman month of Aprilis (which is perhaps derived from aperire, Latin to open, as in opening buds and blossoms. See we were not complete barbarians and those libraries built now house those looted… ooops I mean rescued manuscripts), my noble goal of a great Celtic Cultural Empire was in conflict with the rising of Mars in the night sky. With some sense of relief I gave into the ancient Celtic urge of TOTAL DOMINATION

With ROP agreements with Japan and Aztecs I moved North with my southern forces while moving reinforcements to my Northern Cities. Totally forgoing any links with the past Celtic Warrior my now proud Knights enjoyed being handed muskets. Walking was for whimps!

Across their broad southern border France was vulnerable (too few Cav and still with Muskets) and fell quickly. Great Leaders fell like rain and armies waited to be filled. This was now a great time to be a Celt. Rushing Temples and without the fabled oracle Apollo to consult I wondered. Early culture was now paying off as cities left unattended remained loyal. Not one flip!

Looking around eagerly I saw that Aztecs still did not have Cav so with a reinforced south and my experienced northern armies, couple with a MPP with Japan (to eliminate a surprise from them), a pincer movement was done.

My troubled dreams stopped in 1330ad with an internal score of around 6400 and a Jason score around 7400, with my philosophers wondering what is contained in a Spoiler Thread named Magnetism and Gravity. They understood Magnetism but what is this thing called Gravity??

Well, I got out of the middle ages in 1260 AD, with only Japan, the Aztecs, China and Egypt remaining...
I immediately went to war with China and conquered them in about 8 turns. Egypt was next, which also took 8 turns or so. I always signed alliances against the other AI civs with Japan and the Aztecs, simply to prevent the AI from getting them into the war against me, 'cause both had borders on my weak (former France) flank.
I rushed a lot of culture in conquered China and Egypt, immediately after conquest, to get a domination win in 1365 AD with 6650 points, my highest ever! Which means 7326 Jason points... This is probably just average, but I'm actually pretty proud of this game....

Yeah for me. I manage to finish and submit again this month. Three in a row!

I started with a plan of conquest and ended with domination in 1470AD with a 7014 game score. (7032 Jason)

The wonders played an important role in my victim selection.

The highlights:
I kept up in tech by trading contacts and maps until the the end of the ancient age.
450BC War on Rome to trim them and take their iron away before legionarys. Peace for three more cities.
350BC Carthage build Pyramids. They become the next target.
70BC Take Carthage with GS and trigger GA. FP started building in Utica would finish by hand very late.
330AD Prebuilds of palace and market with MM grab Sun Tsu and Hanging Gardens on the the same turn. The Great Library built in London. A plan formulates to avoid education at all costs. I research the Military Tradition branch only and don't buy any other techs. This slows everyone research down a little but they pull way ahead anyway.
470AD War on Rome to eliminate them. I kill all their towns but they have a settler out. My troops move over and start on Iroquois to eliminate them.
600AD Rome plants its settler in the middle of Greece, declaring war. Greece was unprepared as this single town in the middle of there empire should have been razed the next turn. I end up taking it. This city, out by itself and relatively undefended must have looked tasty to China because the end up marching 2swords and 3 warriors there. Smelling a fish, I make a deal for three techs for ivory and 65gpt. They walk into my borders next turn. I say get out, they declare war canceling my payment! Thanks moonsinger for the advice.
590AD Leader generated. He builds Leonardo's so the upgrades to GS and Knights don't hurt so bad.
700AD Another leader can't be used for any wonders and smiths is a way off so I make an army and start building heroic epic.
1000AD Three or more civs start building smiths. I have a prebuild going but am at least 3 techs from it since I've been avoiding education. The iroquois war in nearly done except for the mop up. Since all my troops are in the south I plan to take the Great Library from England.

Meanwhile, I built a city on unclaimed territory along the great river. Rushed a galley and sent some knights to take the chinese citys along the other side. Taking the third and I'm surprised to find out I'm the new owner of the Lighthouse. This helps alot because now my galleys can park on the sea tiles outside the English border within striking range of the saltpeter that is just sticking out, undefended.

I culture rush in a town planted on the english channel and manage to get single tile on the English island. I move a settler there and plop a town which becomes the other side of the 2 tile ferry route. A stream of knights pours into england. War is declared and sea galleys dump a settler, three muskets and eight knights on the saltpeter. My knight from the ferry beeline for London which is capture two turns later.

Sir we've captured the great library!

Our Alchemists have learned:
Printing Press, Education making our Great Library obsolete, Music Theory, Banking, Astronomy, Chemistry, Democracy, Economics, Navigation and Metalurgy. If you had waited one more turn you could have gotton Free Artistry too. That got me caught up in tech! I finish researching Military tradition on my own. I ended up buy my way to the industrial age and reserached Nationalism at min. I wanted nationalism to help me recruit defenders in my unprotected empire. All my sheilds were going toward market/bank/cavalry.

After london, England was eliminated in about 6 turns. I guess I over prepared for them.

The iroquois were finished off as my troops made it back from england. I then set my plan of attack for the rest. I didn't want a lot of extra moving so I went Carthage, Greece, China, Egypt/Japan. Carthage took a little long since my thrust into Carthage left their cities all spread out. Greece went in about 8 turns. China was being hammered by my allies but the remaining 5 cities took a bit of time to mop up. This gave my new units two routes. The southern all-land route and the ferry I set up across the river into the ex chinese cities. Rights of Passage with France and Aztecs made it easy to do either. I declared on Egypt, Japan declared on me. I set up a three galleon ferry across the ocean and started sending cavs four at a time to the japanese area. Their samarai are a pain in the butt so my domination came mostly from the Egyptian lands.

Overall a great game although the industrial age went very slowly and the GS were not as dominant as I had originally thought. Good luck to all

Whew!! Ran a long session last night, and got a 100K culture victory right at 1620 ad while it was 'not yet midnight somewhere in the world.' After conducting Ancient to Medieval warfare against the Greeks and Romans, I settled the new territories with lots of cities (I had 5 settler factories going while in Monarchy/Republic) and built/rushed lots of cultural improvements. I conducted 3 large scale rushes where I would spend gold to rush to an intermediate build (such as Longbowmen or Granary), switch to the cultural improvement (typically Library or Cathedral), do a 1 turn revolution to Despotism, and pop-rush for the remainder of the build. In my 1000 AD mass-rush I constructed 14 Temples, 8 Libraries and 42 Cathdrals this way. I'm including my F8-Culture display, where I've highlighted these mass rushes; the rate of culture change is clear for the first two of these rushes.



I was very focused on getting the cultural improvements built, and had 100% on Taxes for a long time; my research was being done by 1 lonely scientist in a completely corrupt city. Therefore, I was waaaaay behind in Technology; I just learned Nationalism at the end of the game, while France was totally industrialized and had Infantry and Artillery. I was also trying to speed through the game, so I had everything fortified or automated, and set my preferences to not show any movements. My automated workers seem to really slow my turn down once they had done almost everything; I started locating them and fortifying them in place. Later on when England attacked me, I blocked the coast with them; not only did this prevent the English from landing, but I had workers in place to repair any bombardment damage from their ships.

I was concerned that the French might research far enough ahead to build the UN. I was also concerned that they, or one of the other advanced civs would clean my clock (mass stacks of Cavalry against lone pikemen - yikes). So I needed to get them occupied. I played the 'Rogue Nation' strategy continuously, and got everyone at war with one nation. First were the Chinese, who actually declared war on me around 800 AD. After a few rounds of Diplomacy, and considerable outlay of funds on my part, everyone was at war with China. When the deals were up for renewal, most civs would continue the alliance with no money required. China was eventually left with 1 city in the Barbarian lands. After that, I declared war against Japan, and duplicated the same effect. Japan was completely eliminated, but before that happend entirely, England attacked me! A new 'Rogue Nation' that must be dealt with, and the armies rolled on. England was the best one for this, because they were an island nation, and not easily eliminated. I could kept the war going for about 50 turns, enough to finish the game. Here's my F3 and F4 screens combined.



I'm glad to finish and submit, but the ending was really rushed. I've just gotten a new computer; hopefully, the increased speed will let me play to an enjoyable ending, not a rushed, stressed ending.

[Edit: oops, lets actually past the IMAGES in here]

(double oops ...)

Congratulations ControlFreak!!! I don't know if you really appreciate truly how much you game play skills have improved since you first submitted a QSC game because at that time you told me in an email that you "you could probably never complete a game because it just took so much time and focus."

A little retrospective review of you games over the past months really shows a great deal of evolution in you as a player.

Hope you're find it a lot more fun now. You are definately a lot more fun to watch and observe.

Thank you for the kind words Cracker. I owe most if not all of my improvements to you and the GOTM staff EDIT: and players like Moonsinger, Bamspeedy and others who post great advice. I guess that goes without saying since I've only played three games in the last three months and they have all been GOTM.

GOTM18 actually took me 89 hours. I am only finding the time to play because I installed in on a company laptop and I stay up late "working" in the dining room after the wife goes to bed. Please don't tell her.

I am very excited to hear that the next GOTM is a small map. I hope that I can finish without so many late night sessions. I also may avoid domination in the future since moving all those units takes so long. But on a small map, conquest may be too hard to resist.

EDIT: And yes, it is a lot of fun. A whole lot of fun! We'll see how I do on the coming emperor game but I no longer think it's impossible to complete the games.

In this game, I had intended to win via a victory condition that I had never won through before: domination. Well, as I got a late start on this GOTM, April 19th, and having had limited playtime opportunities, this probably was not the best option to aim for. As the month drew to a close, and still not having completed my game, I realized that victory via domination would not allow me to submit in time. (I was extremely close to triggering domination, but I just didn't have the time to wage one more war, especially in the time of tanks.) Looking for an alternative victory condition, I noticed that my culture was quickly (and quietly) approaching 100K, a side benefit of my building culture, not as a priority, but in order to preclude the occurence of culture flipping during my conquest of other nations. I decided that I would hold on to the land that I had, and wait until I achieved 100K cultural points. There was a problem, however, in that I wasn't quite doubling China (1 of the 4 civs still in the game around 1830). Cultural victories being my favorite type, I decided to rush any cultural improvements in my nearly 100 cities that did not already have them in order to double China as quickly as possible. Well, apparently they, too, were continuing to build culture, because it took eons to finally double them, as I had to amass 150,333 overall culture points before my cultural victory was triggered in 1934. If I had known it would have taken so long to double China's culture, I probably would have just attempted to win via domination...

(As an interesting sidenote, my cultural victory was further delayed thanks to France's razing my capital city around 1750 AD only one turn after signing an alliance with me. My beloved Entremont was my cultural leader, with many improvements that had double value. I had never had a nation turn on me like that, especially one turn after signing an alliance with me, for crying out loud, and vowed that the incident would be the beginning of the end of France. I am happy to report that it was. Another sidenote and , um, side question: I had some major stability issues in the game around 1826AD, at a time when I had around 8 armies, steam power, and 125 workers. I really didn't think I was going to be able to complete the game because of the constant crashing. Did anyone else have any major problems, especially during the time of railroads?)

I improved dramatically in this game, largely attributable to my finally taking time to analyze some of the QSC games to see how my opening moves were different (and deficient) in comparison to those who did well. Before, I had mainly been submitting just for the sake of comparison, but I certainly am glad that I took time to study some of those excellent QSC write-ups and save games. Bamspeedy, yours proved to be especially beneficial.
Yes, I am happy to report that I did better than in the past, however, I still have a permanent reservation in that largest room in the world: the Room for Improvement.

I continue to be in awe of the level of expertise that so many who participate in the GOTM demonstrate each month. To all of you top players I say, keep up the great work, and know that you are an inspiration to a newer and less adroit player such as myself. You are certainly in my "Pantheon of Heroes." Cracker, you are at the top of the list, of course, for not only are you a player with phenomenal skill, but you tirelessly and selflessly give of your time and energy here at GOTM to the degree that many would not even contribute to a full-time job. For this, you have mine and so many others' deepest gratitude.

Great job to all those who won this game. I'd never played the Celts before this GOTM, and I'll have to say they weren't exactly my favorite to play with. I lost a spaceship loss in a pretty pathetic manner, considering I'm used to playing on Monarch level. I think I was too excited about actually recording my moves for the QSC (which I never got around to submitting) and played the first 80 turns pretty terribly. I attacked my neighbors too early, and overestimated the power of my UU.

I'm playing GOTM 19 and being very meticulous about my QSC. What a difference it makes to pay attention to each move, and to actually plan moves well in advance each turn! I know, it's not really related to this message thread, but I was happy to see the difference in my pathetic Celtic loss to how I'm playing now, not just in my regular games, but in my future GOTM games as well.