GOTM 10 - First Spoiler

To me it felt at least as easy as a random emperor start. I definitely wanted early access to Copper and enough good land for a handful of cities (too much tundra or jungle make for a bad game). Perhaps the difference in difficulty between the classes should be expanded: Adventurer = significantly sweetened map + bonuses, Contender = minimally sweetened map, Challenger = unsweetened + bonus to the AIs. Though that makes it harder to compare notes and strategies in the forums. Anyways, just a thought.

At any rate, I enjoyed it tremendously, and finished. My computer says I spent 33 hours at it. I'll post the first spoiler installment tomorrow....

Good luck to those still playing!

peace,
lilnev

K Went into this gotm looking for fun, so glad i read the toggle display thing and noticed the goody isle.

Beijing founded in place (i think cant remember for sure) and then founded a second city west of it, taking in the stone/gold etc.

For awhile not much happened i built up my civ-egypt expanded rapidly.

barb cities sprang up and i waited for them to hit size 2 before wandering down with my axes and taking both of them, while this is killing my maintenance it means i have some forward to an attack-which did come in the form of Hattie-after i'd declared war on Asoka-weird huh....

Im in judaism but its not doing me much use yet.

have a settler on goody isle but waiting for my maintenance costs to go down before i settle it.

It's interesting the two styles of spoiler posts.

Shillen, godotnut and Redbad all state their victory goal within the first three sentences. Hardly anyone else has stated their goal.

Also interesting that all three are going for non-military victories. I guess it takes a while to play even to 500 AD if you are going all-out war at this level. Maybe we'll get some warriors come along to report soon. Domination looks possible in reasonable year on this map, unless there's another large island that I haven't found yet.

Going for a culture win as usual. In GOTM-9 I lost by 5 turns to Ghandi SS launch in the late 1970's. My goal for GOTM-10 was to improve my date by 100 turns. That's not good enough for any awards and may still lose on immortal. But if I can shave off 100 turns from one game to the next, bravo.

At 0AD I had 6 cities, enough land staked out for 9 cities, pyramids, a GEngineer waiting to build the GLibrary, cottage-spamming workers, and no early attack by the AI. I did not have a GP farm up, but the island off the west coast was perfect ground for one.

The insane amount of resources helped a lot and made this play about as easy as the GOTM-9 Emporer game. However, the Egypt buffer to Mongolia was even more important, IMO. Khan kept attacking Hatty and left me alone. If he had been next door...probably game-over. I used a combination cottage econ + libraries/scientist specialists/representation to catch up and keep up in tech for a long time.

It was quite a fun game. Still made some stupid mistakes, but my skills are improving. Soon I will be able to keep pace with Godotnut and the other culture masters (NOT! ).

edit: playing with the HOF Mod / Contender.

cas

I died in something like 20 turns. I was out exploring, and having a realyl good time of things. Then Barbs popped, I didn't defend my only city (at the time). THey took it. Dead

In your previous style , with HOF MOD used for the first time (great job)

Going for cultural. 500 AD status report:

Staked out enough land for nine cities?

Check.

Got Pyramids?

Check. (plus Stonhenge, sistine chapel, GL and GL , HG and Colossus)

Spamming cottages in the three cultural cities?

No, only in my second powerful city, also first in hammers.

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

No, Bejing is fine for me. I had a second GP farm in the island, my third cultural city.

Early sneak invasion that threatens to wipe me out?

No. Hatty seemed to be weak, and I was very careful in diplo strategy with all. In immortal diplo points seems to last for ages, a new thing for me.
Asoka was always pleased, and I gave all the tributes to Khan and Capac.

Took out early next door neighbour?

No, I have room for twelve cities even if my borders are on bananas

BTW is my first immortal game, thx Ainwood

In the same manner as all the others before me...

Going for cultural. 500 AD status report:

Staked out enough land for nine cities?

Check. 8 founded already (although the place I wanted for my 9th city was taken by Hatty, I've got room to found one elsewhere)

Got Pyramids?

Check. (plus Sistine Chapel, Great Library, National Epic)

Spamming cottages in the three cultural cities?

Check, in every city.

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

No Check, Huangzhou will be fine(Isle of Eden)

Early sneak invasion that threatens to wipe me out?

Nope, in fact there've been no wars at all so far.

Took out early next door neighbour?

Nope, no need to, as Hatty is the weakest militarily except me, but loves me for my sugar

Gotten 3 Religions?

Check, had Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Confuscianism all spread to me. Hinduism and Judaism are only in one city each right now, but the others are already in 8 cities.

I'll state my goal... it was to simply survive to the first spoiler cutoff!

And I did. In fact I'm a ways past the 500AD cutoff, but that for a future thread.

In fact, the above stated goal was probably my problem... playing 'not to get smoked' instead of 'playing to win'. The starting area was very good, and with a bit of luck it wasn't too much trouble to expand. Unfortunately, with such a dire expectation for Immortal, I regret not logging my game the way I should have.

A rough summary, though.

Even though I'm a Prince player, I avoided the temptation to use the Adventurer class, and stuck with the Contender class (with trepidation). Like many of us, I settled 2 SE on the hill, to take advantage of the Ivory, then after Fishing -> BW discovered the copper just out of range . I did like the fact that there was 2 copper sources, though, so Shanghai was discovered by the stone, and this would eventually grow to encompass the nearby copper. This city site was high production but a low growth city... never really got beyond size 6 for quite a while.

I met up with Hatty first, then Genghis Khan and Asoka. I then knew (obviously) that this was not some smallish island, but a pretty good sized continent.

For pretty much the whole time up to 0AD (no such thing actually... 1AD was the first AD year, but thats just semantics), I was solidly in last place, and way behind in techs. I soon realized that I needed far more cottage spam instead of farms to even have a dream of staying caught up in the tech department. I was growing like gangbusters, though, with all the farms, and was able to use the whip quite a bit to build buildings and units.

Wonders were also out of the question. By the time I researched what was needed, the wonder was long built.

I did take advantage of a couple of Barb cities between Hatty and I to help with the city growth, and eventually got enough of an army together (loved those War Elephants) to track down Hatty (my nearest rival in the standings). I took over most of the southern portion of her territory before suing for peace and getting a few techs and cash to boot. At that time Genghis Khan starting coming after me with some superior units. However, Asoka decided to come after Khan as well, so that helped him back down somewhat.

After a time, we worked out some peace and now i'm finally starting to move up the ladder a bit. At 500AD, I am in 4th place, but quite a ways behind the top 3 in score. It looks like I can at least survive until someone wins by non-combative means.

I did learn a lot about:
(a) cottage spam
(b) when to (not) use the whip
(c) being more selective in my research (i.e. research stuff I can trade instead of just playing catch-up)
(d) having a more positive goal next time around... it will likely help my gameplay.

My first civIV GOTM and I've only played one Emperor (without finishing) and I just tried a test Immortal upto about 500AD to get a sense for the pace. I felt I was gonna need adventurer and I'm kinda wishing I hadn't chosen it now, 'cause I think I'd be doing just fine without it. I didn't get to 9 cities, I had 7 in my initial expansion, but I'm gearing up for a little Hatty pummeling (more about that in spoiler 2). My goal is a spaceship, but with quite a bit of warring to slow down the AIs, grab some extra cottage land and resources for big cities and if I do well enough to push on for dom instead, I'll take it.

I settled 1 se and was very happy with the choice when I ended up with bronze in the fc 'cause that hill 2se was a tough decision initially. Barbs were no problem thanks to the adventurer bonus so I could start on bw right away and having it show up right there. My 2nd city went SE of capital with ivory gems and 4 sugars.After that I settled E of the second city so I could pop my borders and backfill afterwards. I couldn't get my 4th city to S of my 2nd city before Hatty, but that city might have been more trouble than it's worth at this point for upkeep and after all Hatty's only renting that space from me 'til I want it anyway (she was kind enough to found cities where I'd actually want them this time). I got the GL early in the ADs (between 100-200AD) and my first great scientist went to an academy in my second city. I didn't get any other wonders by the cut off date here, but in retrospect I wish I'd gone for the pyramids first 'cause I woulda been able to grab it as well, but I was worried about early war and didn't make masonry any kind of a priority and I was still afraid of the difficulty level enough to think I wouldn't be able to make it.

I've definitely made a worse mistakes than missing the pyramids as well. The parts of my game that really lack are the ones you can do without on easier levels. I suck at judging what the right diplomacy moves are. I stupidly adopted Asoka's religion per request w/o realizing I was pissing off someone else I was planning on trying to become buddies with (pretty sure I can't say who they are by the rules though). Also, I'm used to setting the research pace, so I often make decisions that don't account for their tradeability down the road and I've missed a couple opportunities and I didn't start beelining my research down one path until much later than I think I should've (meaning I researched a bunch of techs I could've gotten in trades if I'd focused sooner). I also delayed my early growth a bit when I went for pottery instead of mysticism early. If I'd chose myst I coulda had obelisks ready right when my first settler was getting ready to come out (took longer than it should've to pop borders and I don't think that was offset by being able to start on granaries a little earlier).

I'm right there techwise with the AI. Asoka is a little ahead but only got 6 cities by 500AD and totally hemmed in, so as soon as Hatty is done (by 500AD I was gearing up for 'phants and cats with some spears and axes mixed in to go smack her) I'm gonna grab some or all of India and be running the tech scene by then if not earlier. I got behind a bit, but after alphabet it didn't take much to get close to even and stay there. Of course I haven't ever played this level this far in so there may be suprises I'm not ready for and I could still get bonked, but I'm feeling pretty confident right now.

I'll only say one more thing, that I'm suprised how many people have said they didn't whip at all or more than a couple times. With so many food rich cities, even with all the resources the happiness cap doesn't allow for just rampant growth early on, I found whipping very useful in this game. I didn't use it as much as in my test game 'cause ivory and gold and gems are a lot of extra happy people early, but I still found it the only way to get a couple production poor cities up and running with granaries, lighthouses, forges, courthouses, and in many cases libraries.

I was planning on keeping a good log and everything, but once it started I got nervous and wrapped up in it and forgot to take notes or screenies so this is all from memory. Hopefully I'll get a nice victory and keep playing GOTM so I can post a better report next time (w/ pictures and more specific dates on things).

At the time of writing I’ve played to 500AD. I’ve been very pleased indeed with my start. This is the first time I’ve played past 0AD at immortal, and I’ve only ever won once at emperor. Then again, the starting position was made in heaven. It’s awesome. This doesn’t feel like immortal should feel like! What does feel like what immortal should feel like is the awesome tech pace of the AI’s. I have a financial leader, a fantastic stating area, I’ve missed absolutely no tech trading opportunities, and yet, I’m only just keeping the pace tech-wise.

Anyhow, to start with I moved the warrior 1SE to the hill to look over that before settling and saw the corn. With corn and cow, I figured there’s absolutely no way I need two fish, so I moved the settler 1SE to settle with the fresh water for extra health. Because I had corn and cows, I decided not to go with fishing first, instead to go straight to BW. I was worried about barb axes, and to really effectively combat them, you have to have axes yourself. I figured there’d have to be copper somewhere near and I was going to put a city down next to it first chance I got. As it happens there was copper within range of Beijing, so that proved very useful. Having seen that, I went for wheel next so I could hook it up, then after that went for fishing to take advantage of the sea tiles commerce. After that I went to AH, Writing, Pottery and alphabet. On getting alphabet, I went berserk on the tech trading, filling in the gaps.

For builds in Beijing, I started with a warrior working the corn tile until it expanded to size 2, then swapped to a worker. After that, I finished the warrior then started a settler (Beijing had just grown to size 3 at that point) working the corn tile and the cow tile. I swapped to an axe as soon as the copper was hooked up then went back to the settler once the axe was done, finishing the settler with one forest chop, and a whip. After that, another axe, a worker, a workboat, then I whipped another settler, whipped a library, and then grew another settler. The first worker hooked up the copper first, then farmed the corn, did some chopping for the settler, then put a pasture on the cows.

I learnt from my over-conservative start in GOTM9 and pushed the settlers out a bit quicker this time. I also planned the whip use in Beijing fairly carefully. I also later built a second work boat and went exploring with that, finding the absolutely awesome island just off the west coast. What a specially made GP farm!! (Also some interesting terrain descriptions. A flood plains hill? My son thought that was hilarious.)

Some major events:
3760BC: Met Hatty’s scout to the SE.
3400BC: Buddhism founded far away – turned out to be Asoka
3310BC: BW done, start on wheel, throw a party in honour of the copper!
3300BC: Met Khan near Egypt
2890BC: Met Asoka near Egypt
2620BC: Hinduism founded far away (Hatty converts, so it was her)
2140BC: Revolt to slavery as it will be useful soon
2110BC: Shanghai founded near sugar and gems to the south
1870BC: Judaism founded far away – turned out to the Ghengis Khan
1780BC: Guangzhou founded near gold and sheep on the north coast
1630BC: Writing discovered, open borders with Hatty, Asoka and Khan
1150BC: Meet HC across the water seen from Khan’s coast
1060BC: Nanjing founded on river SE on Beijing, E of Shanghai near rice and horses
985BC: Oracle built far away
730BC: I get alphabet and go berserk on the tech trading. Make good mileage out of a couple of techs, trading several time the same tech
715BC: Xian founded near copper and stone on the NE coast
640BC: Khan declares war on Hatty
580BC: Confucianism founded far away
475BC: Pyramids built far away
265BC: Parthenon built far away
265BC: Chengdu founded on the island of the west coast GP farm coming up!
190BC: Taoism founded far away
175BC: Christianity founded far away
200AD: Asoka builds the great library, beating me to it by just a few turns
425AD: Hangzhou founded on the little peninsula to the north of Beijing
500AD: I finally get a religion as Asoka spreads Buddhism in Beijing.

As I said, I’m quite happy, and am probably in a fair position to tech to space race though the loss of the Great Library to Asoka was a blow. There’s some chance I suppose of diplomatic victory. Hatty, Khan and HC all like me despite no religion, and only Asoka is merely cautious of me. Lots will change in the next 1000 years though. Cultural victory is out of the question, as the religion has come way too late to be of big time cultural use and I missed a couple of important wonders. I have seven cities, several of them in very good spots indeed. I’m not planning to build a big enough army to get conquest or domination, but I may invade at some stage at someone else’s invitation if I think I can benefit significantly from it. I don’t like much the religion foundings far away – it seems they are well advanced off wherever they are. Looks like I might have to try some diplomatic mayhem to have a chance of teching fast enough to win. I’ll probably need a good slice of luck on my own continent too.

I have a galley just heading around to Capac near Khan’s area and I’ll see who I meet there, and I’ve just about finished Optics, so I’ll pump out a caravel as quick as I can to meet up with everyone, and do any more tech trading I can. I started the game with the goal of simply surviving given my lack of experience at this level, but I’ll try giving space race a go, though I think it’s going to be very hard indeed. I’m running caste system for a pile of scientists in Beijing and Chengdu. If I had a state religion I’d be running Pacifism too, but there’s no point for now.

My first GOTM and first Immortal level game. I normally play at Monarch, but wanted a real sense of Immortal so I decided not to play with the training wheels. I'm not 100% sure where I was at 500AD - I played through, still new to this.

My goal was, survive as long as possible. My zenith was 5 cities (2 captured from the barbarians), but then Hatty and I fell out and that started some serious stagnation for me. I searched around quite a bit with my boats and found everyone but the 7th player - who must be a long way away.

Ghengis and Asoka liked me, but not enough to help me. And I knew I was in serious trouble when they started offering pity tech.

I'm new to GOTM and last month was my first shot at Emperor level. I started late and missed the submission date, but was ultimately beaten (in 4th place on points) when Mansa Musa launched in about 1880. Hey, I was happy to have survived until the end of the game! The immortal setting on this month's game put me off, but I learned so much from the threads at this site in the last round that I decided to give it a try on "contender" with the HOF mod start file. So far, I'm glad I did.

I have two "educational" posts to credit more than any others for the unexpectedly "alive and kicking" state of my empire at 500 AD. The first was the one (or several) that suggested using a fishing boat to explore on archipelago maps in order to meet trading partners. My notes are a little sketchy on the exact date my "explorer" workboat (the second) was produced, but it looks like about 1500 BC. Anyway, the little piker is still going at 500 AD and came practically within swimming distance of circumnavigating the globe before having to turn back. Having been away from port for two thousand years, I doubt their catch will be fresh. The cargo may stink, but the trading benefits back home couldn't have been better if it had been the Queen Mary doing the exploring. I'm almost at parity with the other civs on technology and everyone is either "pleased" with me or temporarily miffed that I recently gave something to their "worst enemy." I owe it all to that little 2000 year old garbage scow still out there somewhere on the other side of the world reeking of rotten fish! (I wonder if Mel Brooks is on board? )

The second post to credit for saving my empire from early and inglorious defeat deserves even higher praise than the first one. Having read Godotnut's "Guide to Totally Peaceful Deity Cultural Victory" I knew from the moment my first thugs with clubs uncovered the stone tile in the desert East of the capitol that I'd be going for a culture game. So far, it seems to have worked like a charm. At 500 AD I have eight cities, including three cottage-spamed culture monsters, a "Treasure Island" great artist farm of the future (I screwed this up a bit by settling on the hill and missing the clams, but the pickings are so good there that I doubt even I could mess it up beyond usefulness), a production city for the pyramids and some defense units (1S of the stone), and three respectable peripheral temple cities with tradable resources and their own cottage spamage (plus more than enough room to squeeze a last temple-holder in later for my 9 cities total). I built the Pyramids in 775 BC and used the great engineer they spawned to build the Great Library in my second culture city in 380 AD. I have kept open borders with everyone from the start and traded everything I could get my hands on in a more or less successful attempt to keep them all fat and happy. (I'm still glad Khan is on the other side of the continent though.) I have neither founded any religion nor declared any state religion; in fact, I have not yet done anything even to spread deliberately any religion -- yet Hinduism, Christianity, Confucianism, and most recently Taoism have all found their way to at least one of my cities. (Hatshepsut seems intent on spreading Confucianism for me! ) I have not yet suffered any attack from another civ, let alone an invasion. My closest call came from a barbarian axeman who must have materialized on that little finger of a peninsula North of the capitol. (I settled on the hill 2SW of the starting location.) He sneaked in behind my fogbusters and could have caused real trouble if he had gone for Beijing instead of the chariot I had parked on the (later revealed to be) iron hill 1NE of the city. He took out the chariot and a warrior, but I had whipped a second chariot when I saw him coming and finally took him out. Other than that, my warrior fogbusters worked like a charm taking up strategic positions in an expanding ring until well after my fourth core city was founded in 1090 BC. (The stone city was second, 1S of stone and 1NE of cows.) All things considered, at 500 AD I've pinched myself and found that not only is my empire not a corpse, but it looks astoundingly life-like. I keep waiting for the other axe to fall, and don't know if the next millennia will treat me so kindly, but so far, so good. I'm pleasantly flabbergasted... and I owe it all to Godotnut and that 2000 year old fishing boat!

I am including more game details under the spoiler buttons below. There is no information given past 500 AD, so no real "spoilers" here, but if any of you more experienced players care to point out missteps, suggest better alternatives, or provide guidance for the next phase, I'd be grateful. After such a nice start I'd hate to blow it by suggesting Khan go see a barber, or making some equally stupid move. (I finally tore my fingers off the keyboard in 695 AD.)

Technology Path (w/ year completed):



Early Builds and Major Events:



Screenshots:


A last note: One thing I didn't plan but in hindsight might have gone very "right" was that I decided early to use horses/chariots and not the copper/axemen to fight off the barbarians. Instead, as I didn't have any immediate use for the copper and thought I desperately needed something to trade with Hatshepsut to keep her happy, I decided just to gift her the copper. I've read in some other posts here about Khan attacking Egypt and I started wondering if gifting the copper to Hatshepsut could have helped Egypt fight off the Mongol hordes -- and keep them away from my doorstep. Is that possible or even likely?

This is a fun thread. I just know one of you fine Civfanatics is going to beat me to the cultural victory. If this is the first GOTM with more builder wins than warmonger wins, that would be awesome.

Irrelevant side note alert!

I recently heard someone who didn't know me pronounce my screen name. He said "go dot nut." But that's not it. It's a reference to my favorite play, "Waiting for Godot," by Samuel Beckett. "Godot" is pronounced "g'dough." So my screen name is a pun between "Godot nut" and "Go doughnut!"

Anyways...

Goodenuf: The location of Beijing for us and the location of the stone was probably the biggest disadvantage for moving the settler 2SE. There really wasn't any way to claim the stone without an extremely low food site like you noticed or extreme overlap with Beijing. This is why I didn't even bother trying hooking up the stone, myself. As you can see in my screenshots I was just hooking it up now in 500AD after I'd virtually finished the Hanging Gardens already. The copper being out of radius was a minor inconvenience at best. Researching archery took me only 4 turns even really early in the game and archers are cheaper to build than axemen anyway. But the major advantage of not using the copper in Beijing is that I was able to build a city NW of Beijing by the crabs that still had a lot of production (copper + 2 forests). Overall if I played the game over I would still move the initial settler 2SE and I wouldn't settle the stone right away.

Goodenuf said:

Wonders were also out of the question. By the time I researched what was needed, the wonder was long built.

Click to expand...

It seems in your game settling the stone first was not a good idea, either.

oopsy poopsy: Adopting religions is a tough decision on emperor+ I've found. If you have a strong military then sure go for whatever religion suits you best. If your military is weak, however, then you should only adopt a religion if all your nearest neighbors have the same religion and it won't screw up your tech trading, IMO.

As for whipping, all my cities except for my gem city had good production without whipping. The problem is my gem-city wasn't a high food site since it only had the sugars and I cottaged over one of the sugars and of course I didn't have calendar until I had already revolted to caste system. So whipping was kind of out of the question there.

Balthalion: First, thanks for going into so much detail about your game. Exploration is an area I didn't do well. I should have gotten a workboat out much sooner to go exploring. I ended up doing it with a galley, but at 500AD I still hadn't met one of the civs so I obviously could have used a second explorer or an earlier explorer.

Looking at your tech path I was originally wondering why you didn't do ironworking sooner and when you did get it. But then I noticed farther down that you settled right on top of the gems so you didn't need ironworking to connect them. Still, I'm curious what the situation was that required settling on the gems, as that really reduces the commerce potential of that city. I also wonder how you dealt with all the other jungles in the south without ironworking.

Regarding trades, your approach is interesting compared to mine. I will very rarely research a tech that the AI's already have if I can research something they don't have. I understand that you can research them faster if the AI's have them already, but researching yourself instead of trading leads to a slower research pace. I wanted a quick pace so I very often traded techs that were worth 3-4x the value of the tech I was getting in return. Therefore, the tech pace in my game should be really accelerated compared to yours. I'll be interested to see how far along in techs the AI's are in each of our games in spoiler thread #2.

Was Genghis at war with Hatty? If she was then the copper most definitely helped. Spearmen are perfect against Genghis' keshiks. She does have iron nearby but I don't know how early she researched iron working.

I've recently been arguing against heavy use of the slavery civic, more because most people are pro-slavery than because I think heavy use of slavery is a poor way to play. But I'm basically trying to find out why people think heavy slavery use is a huge advantage when I don't see it. I was hoping more people would post specific details about their game so I could get a better idea of how slavery affects things. If anyone has saves from 5AD or 500AD and you whipped a lot I'd really love to see some statistics such as how many cities you have, their total population, what buildings you've built, what your research rate is and things like that.

Overall I wish everyone would post more details such as when you learned certain techs, when and where your cities were built, etc. I'd also like to see more screenshots. Just a request as I believe it makes these threads much more informative and therefore enjoyable to read.

Something I do find really interesting is how different each of our games played out. In almost every game Genghis went to war early, but in some games he went after Hatty and in other games (like mine) he went after Asoka. The funny thing is it seems in most of your games Genghis was the victor in the wars. In my game Asoka was clearly victorious over Genghis and Genghis fell way behind. Number of cities in 500AD:

Genghis Khan: 8 cities
Hatshepsut: 7 cities
Asoka: 10 cities
Another AI: 10 cities
Another AI: 9 cities

So no civ was running away with the game in my game, but Asoka was easily the strongest on our continent.

My early game did not go well. I've had one win before at Immortal level, a cultural victory. I entered this game with the hope of doing so again.

I settled 1SE of start. Hatty and Asoka made contact with me fairly early on, so I knew I must be on a pretty sizable landmass, but I didn't anticipate one quite as sizable as what my workboat exploring uncovered. The workboat helped me make contact with Genghis and an off-island civ, who would be my known neighbors until shortly before the caravel era.

I researched (more or less in order): Fishing, BW, The Wheel, Pottery, Hunting, AH, Writing, Alphabet, followed by tech trading to fill in early techs I'd skipped. Then I believe I researched Metal Casting first, and traded that around as well.

Early building in Beijing concentrated on warriors and workboats. My second city went south of Beijing to get 4 Sugar, Gems, and Ivory. Number three was near the Stone, Copper, Cows. In hindsight these weren't the best choices for early cities, as neither could grow very quickly on account of jungle and/or desert.

My fourth city went on the east coast near bananas and gold. But I screwed up big time there by providing only a weak escort for the settler. The city was captured by a barbarian Axeman just a few turns after founding, and razed. Not long after, its ruins became the site of the barbarian city of Bantu.

So by 250 BC or so, I had one great city, two small cities, one dead city, The Hanging Gardens in Berlin, and no techs left to trade. Oh, and no religions either. I'd decided from the start not to try and establish my own religions, but let them spread in from neighbors instead. It worked great in my last cultural victory! It's a feast or famine strategy through, and in this case it worked badly for me. While Hatty established Judaism and Hinduism, and Asoka had Budhism, and we were all connected via Sailing, nothing would spread.

It was at this point (and after a good night's sleep) that I took stock and decided to ditch the idea of a cultural victory. It was time to get militaristic. My immediate goal was now to develop Machinery and use Cho-Ko-Nus to beat up on my competitors. I decided to do so via lightbulbing a GE. Beijing already had a The Hanging Gardens, and I put in a Forge and an Engineer specialist as soon as possible. Meanwhile I colonized Treasure Island and built additional cities on the north coast of the mainland, to secure Crabs, Sheep, and Gold.

While waiting for my GE, I researched towards Code of Laws, Construction, and Civil Service. By 425 AD I was well on my way to getting the GE, and had started building Catapults for my invasion force.

Well my game is done. I won't tell you (yet) how it came out, except that it's a good thing it was a long weekend. I played Contender, non-HoF, and yes I took full advantage of the whipping bug.

Seeing Corn, I moved 1 SE. I don't need that much food. Build Barracks (won't decay like a Warrior would) while researching Fishing; switch to Workboat and BW (working unimproved fish for the research); Slavery and whip the boat as soon as possible, with the overflow into a Worker. AH and Wheel, then I decided on Mysticism for Stonehenge. In practice games with the same settings, I often found it awkward to get that crucial first 10 culture in my other cities. In the meantime I built a Settler, then double-whipped the Barracks to get good overflow into Stonehenge, which I completed in 1750 BC.

2nd city brought in Sheep, Gold, and Fish. With Stonehenge, I didn't care about the Stone (I'll want to spend my Great Priest on CS, so avoid Masonry), and Gold is one of my favorite early-game resources. This spot doesn't have enough land to be a mid- or late-game powerhouse, but for now it's pretty sweet. It's also completely safe from Barbarians, while allowing me to move a fog-buster further south. I never did have many Barbarian problems. The map structure allowed 3 or 4 fog-busters to give pretty good coverage.

I decided to get greedy and go for the Oracle (for Metal Casting) as well. Double-whipping an Axeman got me a good start, and I chopped some wood. But I screwed up by forgetting I needed Pottery until three turns before it was complete. Pottery was going to take me 6 turns. I agonized, and finally decided to take the chance and delay the Oracle for three extra turns rather than settle for CoL or Alphabet. Gritting my teeth every time I hit End of Turn, but I got away with it. Oracle in 1060 BC, choosing Metal Casting.

My third city, thus delayed, was S of the Stone, with Cow and Copper. This became a production city, supplying early units and eventually getting the Heroic Epic. Hattie built Alexandria on the exact spot where I wanted my fourth city -- on the east coast, W of the Banana. How convenient. I finished Alphabet before the AI and traded a few lower-level techs, without having to give away Alphabet yet (I eventually did trade it, getting Math and Iron Working).

I launched the First Egyptian War in 760 BC, stealing a Worker and capturing Alexandria. Ceasefire a few turns later. In fairly quick succession I razed a Barbarian city near the Gems and built my own (E of Gems), then founded a sixth city SE of Horses. These three were all intended as commerce cities, so I dispatched several Workers to clear jungle and spam cottages. Beijing built the Colossus in 160 BC, mostly just because I could and it didn't take very long, but also because the northern city and planned cities on the island and near the crabs would be using a lot of water tiles.

I researched CoL (265 BC, not first), lightbulbed CS, then picked up Lit. Decision time: where to build the Great Library? Probably I should have put it on the island. The food resources would make it a crazy GP farm. But that city wasn't even founded yet, and I was worried about getting beaten to the GL. Asoka didn't have Lit, but he'd had the pre-reqs for a while, so I figured he was due. I also wasn't sure what was going on overseas, except that Confucianism and Taoism had been founded really early, and the Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, and Parthenon had all been built. So I put the GL in Beijing (140 AD), followed by National Epic. GP pollution be damned, I was bringing in 30 GPP/turn before picking up my first specialist. I wanted to stay in Slavery, so I was running the 'one Engineer, two Scientists, two Merchants' package off of basic buildings.

Asoka was Buddhist, Hattie and Ghengis Jewish. Both had spread to me, and I decided to adopt Buddhism. Asoka's a better trade partner, and my expansion was going to be into Hattie anyway. She'd reinstated Open Borders despite my earlier treachery, and she still was not defending herself adequately. Cue the Second Egyptian War, 65 AD. I razed a significant city by the lake (no cottages, far from home, a money-loser) and captured one on the west coast. She wouldn't give up tech for peace, so I marched south, razing a junk city and capturing Thebes before suing for peace. All without cats, as she seemed to think two Archers could hold off a half dozen Swordsmen. They can't.

I adopted Organized Religion for the building bonus and started spreading Buddhism. Paper in 320 AD, Education (lightbulbed) in 485 AD. As of 500 AD, I'm growing peacefully, clearing and spamming. 3 or 4 techs ahead of Asoka, 1st or 2nd in all meaningful categories, and feeling comfortable. Next goal is Liberalism for Nationalism, then either Democracy for growth, Machinery for combat units, or Monarchy-Feudalism-Guilds-Banking-Economics. Tune in next time, for the continuing story of a quack who's gone to the dogs.

peace,
lilnev

I went 2SE with the settler and moved the warior to the hill on the first turn. I had a sneaking suspicion that with the rise in difficulty there might be extra resources around so I was more interested in scouting than usual. My next warrior move exposed the gold, and I decided to settle on the plains hill 4E of the start with the corn, sheep and gold. Although there was a fair bit of overlap with my second city to be founded on the starting spot, I didn't want to get boxed in and that seemed like a great early site.

I had initially thought I would try and sneak through a cultural victory, as I have only won immortal with picked leaders and good starts, but this seemed as good as any so I basically decided I would just play it as an emperor game.

Mistakes came early and often-built up a force of swords to take out Hattie before she hooked up resources but then decided that was a mistake and changed gears to development. I let her beat me to the island--I hadn't checked it and didn't realize what a whopper it was until too late. By 500 AD had only built 6 cities but was at war with Hattie and looked like she would go down in about 15 turns or so. Only wonder I have is Colossus.

Asoka is isolated Buddhist, rest I have met are Hindu so planning on taking him out next and then evaluate how to proceed. Game looks pretty good --but my immortal experience is limited so can't say a sure thing yet.

lilnev said:

1st or 2nd in all meaningful categories

Click to expand...

In power as well? That's quite a feat if so.

I'm also curious what victory condition you were planning at 500AD or if you had one in mind at all. I understand you finished your game, but I'm more interested in what you were planning to do - not the actual outcome.

I also want to ask if you feel comfortable going for the Oracle on these difficulty levels? I'm asking because I see so many spoiler posts in GOTM threads where people get the Oracle at a later date than the AI builds it in other people's games (for instance Hatty built it in 1210BC in my game, while you built it in 1060BC in yours). It seems like an incredible risk to me to even go for it on immortal. With my luck if I go for it I always miss it so I stopped even trying.

Shillen said:

Overall I wish everyone would post more details such as when you learned certain techs, when and where your cities were built, etc. I'd also like to see more screenshots. Just a request as I believe it makes these threads much more informative and therefore enjoyable to read.

Click to expand...

Contender, going for culture (as usual), no HOF mod

I founded Beijing 3 tiles east to get the sheep in range and to have no seatiles. I planned on getting axes asap in order to have strong barb defense and to be able to harass my neighbours. So having no seatiles in the fat cross maxes my changes at having copper in range. Research first to bronze.

Bronze was researched in 3310BC and we have copper in range. After building some 4 axes, 2 of them stayed to protect against barbs and 2 went to tease Hatty. War with Hatty started in 1780BC. Of course the 2 axes were in no position to capture a city from Hatty, but likewise were Hatty's archers in no position to attack my axes. I limited myself to stealing a worker and pillage her camps, farms and mines which netted us a few coins but more importantly it would seriously hamper Hatty's development. This would mean that I could later come again and have little trouble with beating her up. Peace was declared in 1330BC

Indeed, when the second Egyptian war started in 415BC featering swordsmen, Hatty didn't put up a decent fight. We destroyed 1 and captured 3 cities and extorted 3 techs for peace. Peace was declared in 130BC.

Now Hatty had only Heliopolis left amoungst the dyes at the Indian border. I relieved her from that responsibility in 80AD and Hatty was no more. The Egyptian conquest netted me 2 native religions and 4 of my 7 cities were former Egyptian.

The situation towards 500AD
To east there was the Khan, very agressive by nature but my best buddy as we are both Hindu. To the north-east there was Asoka who didn't like me much (buddhist) but who isn't agressive. To the south east there's Carib, a barbarian town of size 6. It's in a good location and I plan on having it as my eight city. Militarely the situation is very good: my borders are short (only in the east) and my army is there and is experienced.
Economicly we're now building courts and we have quite a few cottages. Only thing missing is a decent GP-factory. For reason unknown I didn't recognise the western island as an excellent site for GP farming and let Capac have it.

Below some dates and pics

Cities:
3970BC Beijing
1510BC Shanghai
0895BC Guangzhou
0385BC Thebes
0280BC Elephantine
0160BC Memphis
0080AD Heliopolis

Techs
3310BC bronze working
2920BC wheel
2410BC animal husbandry
2170BC masonry
1990BC mysticism
1690BC polytheism
1540BC hunting
1270BC pottery
0865BC iron working
0445BC metal casting
0355BC fishing
0325BC writing
0145BC alphabeth
0130BC meditation, priesthood, monotheism, sailing & archery
0055BC literature
0040BC mathematics
0025BC calendar
0215AD music
0230AD code of law
0245AD currency
0290AD drama
0440AD philosophy
0455AD machinery

Religions
3670BC buddhism (India)
2980BC hinduism (Egypt)
1870BC judaism (Egypt)
0910BC confucianism (Russia)
0040BC christianity (India)
0440AD taoism (China)

Wars
1780BC - 1330BC war 1 against Egypt
0415BC - 0130BC war 2 against Egypt
0050AD - 0080AD war 3 against Egypt

Wonders
1090BC Pyramids (Beijing)
0155AD Great Library (Beijing)
0380AD Hanging Gardens (Beijing)

Great People
0040BC Imhotep (Beijing) -> save for later
0380AD Socrates (Beijing) -> academy in Beijing

My empire at 455AD


The three culture cities