COTM 113 Greece - Final Spoiler - Game Over

This is the thread where you tell us how you did - win, lose or retire.

Only read or post in this thread when your game is ended and successfully submitted.

Presuming you mean Greece rather than Aztecs...

I decided early on to have a stab at a Domination win (the 'sort of...Pangea' hint tempted me). Perhaps luckily, I peacefully blocked ingress by everyone else into what turned out to be a huge lush peninsula, which became my happy hunting ground for the rest of the game. I was held up initially by the distance to the nearest iron resource, and only by keeping cities, colonies, settlers and workers well protected with legions of Hoplites (perfect for the job) was I able to expand safely amongst floods of barbarians. (Later on, I suppressed them with a swathe of widely spaced, Library-filled, non-productive towns.) The delay securing my land from barbarians and linking (and relinking after barbarians damaged roads) to iron, meant I was only ready to attempt domination by the time I had also researched knights. After this, I pretty much switched off research, buying and oppressing my way to further advances except for a rush near the end for cavalry to finish the last civs a long way off with (and to help with the increasing number of defensive musketeers being encountered). I barely needed more than galleys at sea either.

I may not be anywhere near the fastest and this is only a Monarch level game, but I am well pleased to have achieved domination in the 1400s, and without even finishing the middle ages. Loads still to learn about strategy and tactics, but it's coming... slowly...

Thanks for the game.

Ditch said:

Presuming you mean Greece rather than Aztecs...

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Of course, sorry about that! I'm glad to see that the game played out exactly as I had intended it to. It's not easy to find a good use of Hoplites.

Did you identify Thermopylae, the small moutain pass between Greece and Persia with high mountains behind it? I put some flatland killing grounds on both sides of it.

Did the Persians come over the sea when they found Thermopylae held against them? I put lots of resources in the Greek hinterland to pull AI settlers.

My recall was that I wasn't troubled by the Persians at all (they seemed satisfied to sit in a bloc on the mountain pass and just watch me), nor did they try to settle on my north coast by boat, although I did do so myself fairly quickly.

I won the game in 1250AD. A very nice game I think. Perhaps it was a bit too good on Piu Freddo's part to give us such a huge piece of land (and good land too) all for ourselves. My victory could've come earlier had I not made the many mistakes - slow naval exploration, late colonization of the land on our huge Island, losing a few early workers to barbs and finally not having enough military.
As far as Persia is concerned, they did declare war on me a couple of times and caught me off guard. The first time they ceded peace easily while the second was the last time they'd declare war on anyone (I ceded peace prepared stacks of cavalry and crushed them pretty easily)
Thanks for the great game. Perhaps I'll be participating in more xOTMs now on (at least upto Emperor or demigod)

Atishay Jain said:

Perhaps I'll be participating in more xOTMs

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Thanks for playing!

We are now creating the games in a community effort, and all players are invited to volunteer to create games. Perhaps this is a more robust solution resulting in more interesting games and a more reliable creation process. We had two designated game creators just vanish into thin air.

You are of course very welcome to just play the games and participate in the spoilers and discussions!

Pi¨´ Freddo;13816927 said:

Thanks for playing!

We are now creating the games in a community effort, and all players are invited to volunteer to create games. Perhaps this is a more robust solution resulting in more interesting games and a more reliable creation process. We had two designated game creators just vanish into thin air.

You are of course very welcome to just play the games and participate in the spoilers and discussions

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Thanks for the offer but I'll have to graciously deny. I've hardly ever opened the editor or even custom scenarios for that matter so creating games really won't be something that suits me.
I really feel bad about being so late to adopt Civ3, especially due to the declining number of players. Nevertheless, I'll still try being regular in playing games however little a contribution this might be.

This was a fun game. I was cruising along toward 20k with my, as usual, horribly inadequate defenses, when I accidentally refused Persia's demand for saltpeter, leading to a war I was not ready for. I had a few tense turns before getting the situation under control. This did lead to building the Heroic Epic, though, and it was probably good for me. After that, various AI stupidly declared on me and got themselves wiped out, enough so that I had to worry about hitting the domination limit before the end (and I gave back a few cities to avoid it).

Athens was a lovely town for 20K, with 177 shields and 511 beakers at the end. I hit 20K in 1834, which was pretty good for no rushing of wonders.

I had a slow start. The Persians settled the mountain pass first. They wouldn't trade techs with me & demanded math, so I built a stack of catapults with a few archers & fought them for the next 3000 years, with a short intermezzo for the great barbarian incursion. My hoplites guarded my cities & workers, and fought the barbs.

The Persians made 2 errors:
1) Their galley repeatedly shuttled units to the hills northwest of Athens, where I could pick them off, instead of settling and reinforcing the north coast (& grabbing the horse). I was able to slowly expand eastward towards the horse & iron, without much fighting except for barbs.
2) They sent a stack of 7 units to Sparta with another stack of 8 or 9 units following one square behind the first stack. I was just in time to red-line the first stack, retreat my catapults to Sparta, bombard the second stack, and march reinforcements (archers & my first horseman) into the city. The next turn their only healthy immortal started my golden age before I could switch to republic. So their big error was not waiting one turn to merge their forces into one big stack of doom.

After the barb uprising, I reconnected my roads to horses & iron, upgraded some warriors to swords & marched over the pass into the Persian homeland, conquering the great wall & pyramids. Note their great wall didn't help them against catapults.

I was aiming for a diplomatic victory supported by my good friends Theodora, Brennus, Ghengis, Wilhelm, Henry & whatshisname, but no good plan survives contact with ...greed.

First, my ally Brennus decided to violate an ROP & take over 4(!) of my cities, which I foolishly left unguarded. It took me a long time to recapture my cities & repair the damage, but eventually I came, saw & conquered Gaul and added some wonders to my collection.

Then it was my own greed. Sun Tzu's barracks was just across my border with the Mongols...

I was happily trading saltpeter with Henry, until i noticed he was using it to good effect against my next victim (i.e. Wilhelm). Henry demanded saltpeter when I cut him off, and declared war --probably against the advice of his own military advisor. By this time I had two armies (knights & cavalry) and I built a railroad through German territory with an ROP, captured some cities. 20 turns later it was time for peace with Portugal, cancel the ROP with Germany, and blitzkrieg the following turn.

The rest of the game was spent micromanaging 130+ mostly corrupt cities trying to research a new tech every 4 turns at 70% or 80% tax rate, and employing my 200 workers. I wasn't going to win the UN vote with so many furious civs against me, unless I could go around to their various small islands & finish them off. However, the Persians had a protection pact or two, so it was off to the race for space (in 1864), although I could have gone for domination earlier.

I'm currently on vacation with internet access only once a day and missed the deadline by a few hours again... Can you still accept the following submission, UN victory in 960 AD?

As it was only a couple of hours late, I've submitted it. I really am going soft in my old age ….

Looks like I had lost track of the days on the island...

So when can we expect the results to be declared? Any estimates ?

Soon

At any rate better than "real soon"...

Published.

AlanH said:

Published.

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Thanks [emoji106] [emoji106]

I had a request to make to @Lanzelot. So you have any saves for this game from 4000BC to somewhere about 500BC lying around. If yes, then could you please upload them here. I think I could learn a few things.
Thanks.

I just viewed two replays of the game, first kuningas vs. supersova_SU, then Lanzelot vs. Atishay Jain. It seems the game didn't play out quite as I had hoped: The northern AI tribes didn't seem to come invading in masses across the Thermopylae as it soon started getting pretty cuddly up there. kuningas seemed to have had the good luck of having the Mongols pop a city in the Persian heartland, thus keeping Persia back in its early development.

All games very well played! Congratulations to the winners and to all who improved their own play or just enjoyed the competition!

Atishay Jain said:

I had a request to make to @Lanzelot. So you have any saves for this game from 4000BC to somewhere about 500BC lying around. If yes, then could you please upload them here. I think I could learn a few things.

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How about you write a spoiler here explaining some of your strategies and decisions? We can then comment and make suggestions.

And perhaps Lanzelot, fresh back from his holiday, could also be persuaded to make some pedagogic comments to his game?

Basically, a diplomatic game is a science game. The turn you discover Fission and change your 1000-shield pre-build to the United Nations must be as early as possible. The second requirement of having foreign tribes vote for you is just one limiting factor among many. You need to be less brusque than when going into space, but still keep four-turn research through the Middle and Industrial Ages.