BOTM 50 Final Spoiler - Game submitted or abandoned

Thanks Asterix & Ronnie, I wondered if anyone had gone for a domination except for me...

... I decided not to go for a medal (as I didn't think I had a chance) and go for a domination without capitulating anyone for the fun. It ended in 1345AD with a score of 246,000.

To carry on from my 1AD spoiler, I was elepulting Wang & hoping to get Philo off him for peace. I kept slow-teching philosophy hoping he would eventually give it to me. In the end he vassalled to the Ethiopians so I had to kill him. Really annoying as I had a GS ready to bulb it. This pushed my lib date (grabbing MT) to around 960AD (bulbed paper, double-bulbed edu and then double-bulbed PP as I had so many great scientists sitting around.... sigh)

So yeah, back to the war. After Wang, I went west to Alex, and then south to finish him off in the desert. Around about here Saladin offered to peace-vassal to me, which I accepted, as this had never happened before, and because my army was miles away from him. This meant the elepults continued in an anti-clockwise direction to Peter, who was really backwards (hence elepults were still good enough) and hated by everyone. The Ethiopians had joined in but didn't managed to get anything, the Arabians joined in and got 2 cities, however I didn't care as I was happy to let them finish them off as I went for the Ethiopians instead, as my cuirs were coming up now. They duly got splatted & I ignored their pleas for capitulation. When they had 2 cities left they peace-vassaled to the English (who also had the Americans as vassals). Well, that saved me the bother of declaring on them. The English had Knights and musketmen and not very many of them, the Americans had elephants and pikemen, so it wasn't much of a fight as I took some cities to take me over the land threshold, for my earliest ever win and highest ever score.

As far as the economy was concerned, A triple mauseloum-powered golden age helped my economy crawl to rifling for the final push (that was the only AD wonder I built - I didn't even bother with any universities), and 2 great merchants stopped my cash going negative after the golden age was over (total of 4500 gold!!). Basically the early pyramids & good land gave me the economic boost needed to get in front, and that's where I stayed.

Conquistador 63 said:

I suppose I could get way over 500k, but I didn't.

I probably ruined a good start, just because I was careless (or too bored), and tripped land domination threshold too early, in 1305AD...I could have easily avoided this by giving back small cities to their former owner Peter...

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Great job on beating me to gold with only some thousand points (or so it seems)! Funny how close I got without Bio or food corp.

I think 500k+ would have been easily possible with basic milking while balancing on the domination threshold. I guess I could have gotten way more points if I had kept research up until Bio with the expense of fast wars but it's easy to say it now.

srad said:

450k, well done!

I regret it not to score milk the game ... would have been an interesting goal! Maybe one of the next games.

How much food did you get from Cereal Mills?

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Now I am confused. Last time, someone (Lowthercastle?) said to me milking isn't that important and now it is.

EDIT: OK, I saw people are ranked via score as well as speed. I understand now.

Here's a score calculator you may find useful.

890AD cuir conquest with score something around 306k.

Something I can't really forgive myself is me winning music race and getting GA for golden age, and then changing civics BEFORE triggering golden age. And that's the way to waste 4 turns (3 from civics and one for religion switch).

Later I built Taj and then forgot to change into Police State and Theo.
And this is my first GOTM.

I really really HATED myself.


Looking back, HA rush, followed by knights would be much better approach, but I never expected AI would be so slow with tech. Didn't play Emp or Epic for at least a year, and never played an Oasis.

Congrats to all the participants!

shakabrade said:

Something I can't really forgive myself is me winning music race and getting GA for golden age, and then changing civics BEFORE triggering golden age. And that's the way to waste 4 turns (3 from civics and one for religion switch).

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I hate to tell you this, but it doesn't matter if you switch first and go into anarchy. If you had just triggered the GA, it would have canceled anarchy. I'm guessing you waited until anarchy was over to trigger it. Ouch.

WastinTime said:

I hate to tell you this, but it doesn't matter if you switch first and go into anarchy. If you had just triggered the GA, it would have canceled anarchy. I guessing you waited until anarchy was over to trigger it. Ouch.

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...You know...for a moment...I got over that...

Thanks for the info...info is good...I guess...

WastinTime, good to know that!

shakabrade, you are not alone ... I did the same thing a while ago in a GOTM

srad said:

WastinTime, good to know that!

shakabrade, you are not alone ... I did the same thing a while ago in a GOTM

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Maybe we should form some kind of a club.


What did you play for: fastest conquest or best score, or just fun? Impressive city count btw.

I was stupid enough to return cities to my vassals.

shakabrade said:

Maybe we should form some kind of a club.

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One of top ten mistakes in my personal 'hall of nonsense actions' I still remember: I built the Statue of Liberty on an island with only one city ... (so it yielded one more specialist to the city - quite expensive...)

shakabrade said:

What did you play for: fastest conquest or best score, or just fun?

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Hm...äh I had fun

one city culture 1834AD.

Could have been 1700's if I realized earlier that moving culture slider makes the PA partner to do the same. First time I've tried a PA win, as far as I can remember. It's a little tricky on the diplo, but fun.

Vicky founded a lot of religions and spread Buddhism aggressive...and she built a couple of the early wonders. So she was the obvious PA partner. Ended up with a Buddhist bloc (Vicky, me, Lincoln, Saladin, Peter, Zara) with me helping spread Buddism. WK founded Hindu and was vassaled by Saladin fairly early. I spread Tao to Alex to make sure he drew worst enemy targets from as many AI as possible. Later I spread Tao/Confu to Peter so he would switch to Free Religion. That made Peter a late target and lowered Saladin's vote total for religious victory.

I beelined MT for the defensive pact as best possible and getting the PA was easy. PA was signed in the 1300's somewhere IIRC.

Settled 8(?) GArtists in Vicky's second culture city. London was her other culture city with some early wonders. I overshot my capital culture to 90K...too many of the early artist wonders.

Almost lost to Saladin on religious victory a couple of times. Hard to stop that when everyone is the same religion and he has a land + a vassal. Switching Peter to free religion probably saved me from losing in the 1600-1700 range.

Thanks for hosting.

cas

cas said:

Could have been 1700's if I realized earlier that moving culture slider makes the PA partner to do the same.

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Thanks for that tip.

cas said:

one city culture 1834AD.

Could have been 1700's if I realized earlier that moving culture slider makes the PA partner to do the same.

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(my bold)
Really, it doesn't. If it were that easy, the HoF would be littered with OCC-PA deity culture games.
They push the slider when they are in an advanced enough era, satisfy some "we're going for culture" criteria, and are researching a tech that they think doesn't help culture.

ZPV said:

(my bold)
Really, it doesn't. If it were that easy, the HoF would be littered with OCC-PA deity culture games.
They push the slider when they are in an advanced enough era, satisfy some "we're going for culture" criteria, and are researching a tech that they think doesn't help culture.

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ok. do you have any specifics or a link describing the parameters ?

in my game it would have made a difference because i obviously met the conditions to make the PA partner move their slider when i did.

cas

cas said:

ok. do you have any specifics or a link describing the parameters ?

in my game it would have made a difference because i obviously met the conditions to make the PA partner move their slider when i did.

cas

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I don't know if I've ever written it up fully - although I've put bits in various Gauntlet threads - G-Major 29 and G-Minor 74 would be good places to start.

From memory, the AI needs: either 3+ religions per city or 3 "good" culture cities.
(A city is good when it has 80% culture defence, or is making 100cpt.)

They need to be pursuing a cultural victory in the first place.

They need to reach an advanced age (Industrial or Modern. Which one is random, and map-dependant).

They need to be researching something that doesn't give any cultural stuff. This is the easiest for you to influence - you can ask them to research Fission and they'll stick on that for the next 329 turns.

It's funny because Vicky saw me running away with the land and tech lead so she decided to go culture. But it was the most poorly thought out culture win I've seen the AI try yet. She cranked up the slider to 90%, but none of her cities were even close to hitting Legendary. When I finally went into space, she had been trying to win culture for well over 200 years, but her 2nd and 3rd cities were still 100+ turns from becoming Legendary.

Well, I was quite happy with my results considering this was Emperor, until of course I read all of the above posts and was once again humbled....

Vicky and Zara were the dominant powers in my game. My strategy was to basically keep up in tech and do whatever Vicky wanted me to do. Switch to Buddhism, check. Go to war with Peter, check. Make sure afternoon tea is ready at 4:30, check....

At one point Saladin, WK, and Peter all decided to attack me in some sort of bizarre alliance. The AP religion was Buddhism, and those members were Victoria (founder), Zara, and Lincoln (for a while) along with myself. I held my own against the three, and this brought in a war alliance with Victoria and later Zara. I eventually took all but one last city of Saladin's who then Capitulated to Vicky and eventually Peter did as well.

There was a point where I was .5 to Vicky's military power, and I had to come up with a plan. I thought maybe space. Then I saw that I could research Communism, and remembered that PA could be formed after researching that (lol). So, I was the first to hit Communism at 1495AD, and both Zara AND Vicky were willing to sign an Alliance. After careful consideration, I decided to sign on with Victoria at 1500AD. She was friendly with me the whole game; even when I frequently called her "Elizabeth" and "Beth" she didn't seem to mind.

At that point, I thought that a quick domination win was my best chance for a decent score (since all scores were combined and so forth, and Vicky's army was HUGE). Greece soon capitulated, and we then conquered Peter and finished with WK (we had calvary and cannons and riflemen, but no grenardiers). Never had a single issue with Zara (friendly, even at the end) and Lincoln (pleased throughout).

Triggered domination in 1738AD with a score of 125,412.

This was a fun game! Overall, I'm happy with my result (even if it will only score a little less than 30 due to one always seemingly bizarre high score lol -- too bad there isn't a different curve for scoring other than straight line -- logarithmic scales would perhaps be better). I am still working on being more aggressive in the early going, but as this was at Emperor level I was just happy to still be breathing at 1000AD.

After 1 AD:

- I was warring with Peter and conquest the last city (70 AD)
- DOWed on Wang Kon (475 AD) and he became my Vassal (670 AD)
- When I declared against Wang Kon, Alexander and Zara Yakob DOWed on me . Zara Yakob sent no troops and Alexander tried with small forces, but without success… We made peace (890 AD)
- I returned to score leader (1260 AD) and at that time, with no perspective of Domination , I changed the target to Diplomacy.
- Except Alexander, everyone was pleased towards me. To reduce costs, Seoul and Pyongyang were given back to my Vassal Wang Kong, and Alexander (again in war) retook Argos.
- Lincoln and I made the pact of Permanent Alliance (1445 AD) . So we became a team, with Wang Kong and Zara Yakob as ours Vassals. When the pact was signed, my score increased significantly and all the technologies were traded, as well as beakers were added .
- The way everything was going to win in a peaceful manner, I have not bothered with my army and even improved my defences or made an up grade in my units (later I discovered that was a huge mistake)…
- I discovered Mass Media (1675 AD) and initiated The United Nations!...

- All went well, according to the new plan, when suddenly everything turned upside down : with some changes of religion and government, another pact of Permanent Alliance, Vassals rebelling, the succeeded AP voting members: all in war against Alexander, in an instant was a world of relative peace , in another it changed to a scenario in which all empires were at war … The unpredictable and disastrous result was: WAR!!! Saladin declared against me!!! Lots of Cavalrys, Cuirs, Musks and Rifles suddenly attacked me without warning (at least I didn’t realize). Oh! My poor Archers, Axes, and so on !!! I was waiting for the total defeat when made peace (1812), leaving me only two cities: Moscow and Novgorod down south. A complete massacre!!!
- St Petersburg (1818 AD) and Yaroslavl’ (1843 AD) was liberated to my Empire. I started like Arabian and finished as Russian (4 Russian cities) !
- Saladin DOWed on me again (1847 AD) and made peace (1863 AD).
- After all, I had to change my mind again: wait somebody win the game or be conquered! So, cultural loss in 1942 AD in my first game with Permanent Alliance!

- Living and learning !...

Lazy 900AD HA->Phant->Knights plus trebs. Can't submit because I forgot to make a save and I only have an autosave several turns from the end Lost about 6 turns for not re-DOWing Peter early enough. Last two AIs vassalized without me taking their capitals, which I wasn't expecting. Apparently I'm a Conquest nub. No suprise there!

mabraham said:

Lazy 900AD HA->Phant->Knights plus trebs. Can't submit because I forgot to make a save and I only have an autosave several turns from the end Lost about 6 turns for not re-DOWing Peter early enough. Last two AIs vassalized without me taking their capitals, which I wasn't expecting. Apparently I'm a Conquest nub. No suprise there!

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In fact, it is a surprise to me.
I thought you were a pure number cruncher...nice to see you in some single player games.
Conquest is a hard victory to put into spreadsheet format, but with your micro capacity, I am sure in other kind of victories like culture, space or diplo, that would've been in perfect resonance.