BOTM 84 First Spoiler

BOTM 84 First Spoiler - 1AD

This is the thread to discuss how your game went up to 1AD (not later).

Where did you settle? Where you tempted by the walk to the marble or did you decide that staying riverside was best? Is Africa starting to look powerful yet? And are you keeping on good terms with your neighbours?

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 84 then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry, OR
• You have abandoned your game and will not submit.

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not discuss anything that happened after 1AD.
• Please do not discuss modern era resource locations (Copper and Iron are OK).
• Please do not divulge your final result if that happened after 1AD.
• Please do not divulge the names and locations of any AIs not accessible by galley
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

I think this game has made a fantastic contrast with the previous BOTM, demonstrating that effective difficulty can be very different from the "official" difficulty level. I think this game is at least one and more likely two difficulty levels easier than the previous BOTM, despite being Prince to last game's Noble.

I considered a river location, but walked to the marble and have been pretty happy with my capital. I don't know if "Africa" is getting powerful, but I certainly am. As of 1 AD I am out to 11 cities, with a settler on the move plus two more being built. (I have 6 more dots on my map that I should be able to get without fighting, controlling all of the eastern portion of the home continent.) So far my relations with my neighbors have been OK, not positive but not negative either.

Shaka and Hannibal have expanded pretty well (8 and 7 cities) but Ramesses just founded his 3rd. Crazy Egyptian went wonder first (Great Wall), then founded his own religion with Judaism, and has spent a ton of hammers since pumping out missionaries to convert everyone's cities.

The AIs are pathetically behind in tech -- Shaka does not even have Writing yet! Not sure what he has been doing with his time.... I am about to finish CS. I did build the Oracle very late (600 BC) and took MC, more as an afterthought when I realized it still had not been built and I could finish it in 5 turns. Otherwise I have ignored wonders and focused on cities and enough military to keep Shaka and Hannibal honest. (Ramesses is an afterthought.) I have just gotten my first caravel in the water, probably should have pushed that earlier but had many techs I wanted first.

After the previous BOTM it has been really fun just expanding and grabbing good land. I have not even started thinking of victory conditions yet. Plenty of time for that once I find the other AIs (Americans?).

I settled on the marble and then founded my second city west at the bronze and then 2 due north at the flood plains area. At 1AD I'm not on a particular good footing with my neighbours; Shaka and Ramses are both dead and just captured the first of 5 Carthaginian cities. In my game poor Ramses hadn't settled any city yet when I attacked him in 700BC. That was during a brief break in the Zulu campaign which ended in 300BC.

At 1AD I'm at 15 cities and looking to gobble up Carthage and some barb cities (easy pickings when defended by warriors). Planning to settle the whole continent, organized is the perfect trait for this map. While it looks Africa is significantly bigger than America, it seems on its own it falls just short for domination, hence heading towards astro, though that'll take a while still.

Enjoyable game so far, happy to be doing something else than culture for a change.

For once didnt go the war route, but instead whent for wonders and science. Currently have 6 wonders (pyramids, oracle, ToA, MoM, hanging gardens, the great library), took CS as free tech for oracle around 900BC. Shaka whent WHEOOH fairly early (ofcause!), but I was able to bribe hanibal against him, which probably avoided him attacking me (pretty sure I was his target). Techwise Im doing fairly well, even tho I have to selftech 90% of the techs and are currently 1 turn away from nationalism.

1AD
11 cities
about 200 beakers pr. turn
6 wonders

Probably going for the good old currsiers domination pathway. Think I have too few cities at this point in the game to get a good space date anyway.

8 cities only

Pretty well on tech, close to paper. Oracled CS, also built Mids around 50BC. Academy is in capitol.

SIP for fantastic beauro cap, 2nd city directly on copper.

I stole a worker early from Shaka and his warrior apeared from nowhere razing my 3rd city, what delayed me some time. I took his 2nd city with an axe and made peace. Later in 2nd war I took his fantastic capitol, perfect for Nationals Park and Epic, now he doesnt want peeace even thugh he has 1 city left.

This set up screams for culture or space victories. securing whole continent and trading with the other should be enough for it.

Plans: Took northern barbs and Ramesess with Judaism shrine, then peacfully until Astro and destroy Carthage, then dicide if space or NationalPark powered culture

I am trying a new approach which I have already messed up a bit, but the overall results dont seem too bad...

I settled on Marble, and since this will never be reseach power-house capital, I decided to not focus on education, but rather take the research path towards constitution with the idea of heading towards corpertions.

The screw-up is that I forgot about construction, so at 1AD I am still three turns away from it. Nationalism will follow about 5 turns later, but I should already have had construction by now.

As it is, I have an attack force ready for Thebes, but without catapults, I cannot reasonably declare yet... I should be able to take Thebes (and its GLH) in about 10 turns, but that is 7 or so turns later than it should have been :-(

Overall tho, thinks look OK. At 1 AD I have 16 cities (13 settled, one from Shaka, a I joined in a war for mutual struggled, and 2 from the barbs.) They have a total population of 62. I would research at ~200 bpt at 100%, but can only sustain half of that given maintenance costs.

Botching the war with Egypt, but will conquer them soon. Zulu and Carthage like me, I have the largest empire, and a slow economy. A lot of axemen, but just finally got the iron hooked up. Sure, I am concerned about what surprises might be in America, but this seems pretty easy so far. Did the Adventurer save again, as last game was my first, and didn't finish it in time (though was doing pretty well against France by about 600ad, and was looking toward a diplo win). If I get this finished, I will need to choose a higher level. I know I have been sloppy in this game so far, but I am playing and posting in order to improve, not impress (yet).

I've been meaning to ask this question, and the presence of Oromo's in this game made me think of it again:

Do the displayed battle odds accurately account for first strikes? I've never been a big user of the Drill promotions, and I think that's because Drill-promoted units have poorer odds than combat-promoted units. But do they actually have poorer odds, or is that just a shortcoming of the calculation used in the display?

Settled 1E. Out of practice - 6 cities!!

I do have about 200bpt though. I have a decent beauro cap. Thought it would be fun to rush to Ormoros. I would be there now had I got a great scientist to bulb most of Edu, rather than a 5% chance prophet as it is I am 6 turns from Education.

Took CS with Oracle about 800BC. Realised Pyramids would be nice, so, after I settled by the stone & improved it I chopped it out around 200BC. Now have rep/caste.

Shaka is in WHEOOHRN and keeps deciding I am his worst enemy, or that no-one is. Anyway, no doom stack that I can see. I have a few axemen just in case, but will go Oromo crazy soon. Libbing astro is the plan.

I'm playing a relaxed game compared to the others. I settled on the marble. I have 5 cities. Carthage and
Zulu have 6 cities. Oracled civil service around 900 bc. Chopped out pyramids and hanging gardens in capital. Currently 3 turns from engineering. Will attack shaka 1st. Then Ramesses and all his wonders. Hopefully he builds great lighthouse. Finally carthage.

Next tech goal after engineering is astronomy and start capping the Americas. Not planning on going lib. Just a plain domination/conquest victory with trebs.

zbgayumn said:

I've been meaning to ask this question, and the presence of Oromo's in this game made me think of it again:

Do the displayed battle odds accurately account for first strikes? I've never been a big user of the Drill promotions, and I think that's because Drill-promoted units have poorer odds than combat-promoted units. But do they actually have poorer odds, or is that just a shortcoming of the calculation used in the display?

Click to expand...

I've heard it said elsewhere that the odds shown are lower than the true odds.

My experience in this game so far backs this up - I've won way more 50%-70% chance fights than I would expect to with my drill-promoted troops. This is only anecdotal evidence of course.