COTM 5 quick game - spoiler thread

Theoden

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This is the spoiler thread for the COTM 5 quick game. To qualify for this spoiler you must have played and submitted your game.

Which units did you build? Was there any wars? Did you build any barracks?
 
I figured that vet.Warrior is the most effective unit for our game as 10 shields give you (1+1)*4 = 8 points.
The next in effectiveness is Swordsman, 20 points for 30 shields.

I also figured that 40-shield barracks are worth it if the town is going to build 12 warriors or more (24 points for 40 shields if we chose to build 4 reg. warriors). So my first 5-6 towns built barracks and warriors, other towns just built warriors.

I made capital a combo factory with granary and barracks, and built 2 workers there. The rest of the workers I traded.

I used Scouts I started with to explore as far and fast as I could, to get money in trades and upgrade warriors to Swords.
But I forgot to use Scouts to start GA. :( I had it in mind but got carried away by the game.

I traded for most, I researched writing, philosophy->construction just for their cash value, and then stopped. That was enough to keep fleecing eveyone till the end of the game.

I didn't start wars, but Greeks dowed on me, and Romans dowed few turns till the end. I tried to keep my swords out of harm, I got 2 Elite swords in the end and tooks couple of Greek cities.

The last turn I rushed spearmen in some towns where I could, instead of warriors.

I got 104 (33 reg, other vet.) warriors, 21 swords (2 elites, other vet), 9 (3 vet, 6 reg.) spears and 1 vet scout in the end.

I.e. score is: 33*6 + (104-33)*8 + 8 + 12*3 + 9*6 + 2*25 + 19*20 = 198 + 568 + 8 + 36 + 54 + 50 + 380 = 1294.
 
I didn't think I did very well at the time I submitted. And now, thanks to Nata, I know i didn't :blush:

The capital built some warriors, a settler, granary, barracks, more settlers, and vet archers. I reached eight towns. The last couple were mainly to help with unit costs.

I went for warriors and archers. Vets only from the capital, as the shield cost for a barracks didn't look cost effective in the other towns. Warriors looked like best value for shields, although they were expensive on upkeep. I'm congenitally incapable of building a spear, hence the archers for the same points per shield. I did build one curragh in an attempt to reach past Japan to where I seem to recall Carthage was in the original game, but I never made it.

No one declared war, maybe because of my offensive posture I guess, and I didn't fight anyone except barbs. I did cave in to a demand from Greece for Polytheism, which I had popped from a hut. I think I only lost one scoring unit to a barb (archer to a horse), though I redlined a few. My starter scout died midway through, helping with unit costs and costing no points.

I didn't hook up the iron to build swords, because I was concerned that I'd end up with slow production rates in most towns. I joined my workers and pop rushed a few units during the last few turns. It was an interesting balance, maintaining cash flow in the face of increasing whip unhappiness and reducing income from a smaller population.

I explored to meet all the other civs except Cathage, and tech brokered in order to build a cash reserve to cope with unit costs towards the end. Barters included two slaves, so I only built five workers, as far as I recall. I tried for one trade too many at the end which cost me half my treasury, but I just survived financially, with a slightly positive treasury and a vey nervous Domestic Adviser as the 550 BC bell tolled.

My units were scattered about a bit at the end, but I *think* I ended up with:

32 rA = 32 * 3 * 3 = 288
61 rW = 61 * 2 * 3 = 366
14 vA = 14 * 3 * 4 = 168
5 vW = 5 * 2 * 4 = 40
2 rCS = 2 * 2 * 3 = 12
1 eCS = 1 * 2 * 5 = 10
1 cW = 1 * 2 * 2 = 4
1 curragh = 1 * 2 * 3 = 6

Total = 117 units for 894 points.
 
I'd have changed Cuzco's settler to granary and sent the worker to irrigate wheat or chop a forrest frist but it would have been tough to time a chop as support. So I stayed with the settler first and let the worker finish his mining. But then I irrigated wheat and chopped a forest to set up a 4-turn-settler-factory.
I figured I'd like to have 10 towns for unit support and production. All should build barracks first. Quality over quantity. :old:

I started research at max on Iron Working, later Writing, Philosophy (Mapmaking for free), and literature. Also got Code of Laws and Horseback Riding from huts and traded for Maths and Construction to be tech broker and cash in all money and workers available. I also wanted some wars to promote some units, maybe get a leader (I planned to astonish the community with a question how they would score :blush: ).

My chasqui scout spotted unprotected greek town Sparta and immediately stepped in (after trading techs of course). For peace I later got a tech (?) and money. But before, the counter attack started my Golden Age :eek: with two towns in despotism... :wallbash: (just slightly better than completely forgetting to start it:rolleyes: )

Cuzco spit out settlers and all other towns barracks and warriors till Iron was connected. I had like 30 warriors to upgrade and had calculated I could get the needed 1800g to upgrade them.

From turn 80 I also started whipping more units. I ended up with 13 towns, 10 of them size 1 :whipped: :blush:
In wars against Aztecs I lost four vet swords :cry:

Bottom line: 84 swords(13 reg, 66 vet, 5 elite), 7 spears (all reg) and 1 vet warrior should be enough to finally grab athens with horses. :crazyeye:
Somebody check the combat computer about our chances against two reg hoplites :D

swords (A:3, D:2) 5 points
regular: 13 ==> 13 x 3 x 5 = 195
veteran: 66 ==> 66 x 4 x 5 = 1320
elite : 5 ==> 5 x 5 x 5 = 125

spears (A:1, D:2) 3 points
regular: 7 ==> 7 x 3 x 3 = 63

warrior (A:1, D:1) 2 points
veteran: 1 ==> 1 x 4 x 2 = 8

alltogether 1711 combat points.

This game was real fun!!:goodjob:

@Nata: What You seemed to ignore are the upkeep costs which imo prefers the trained swordman by far!
 

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Looks like I scored rather high, here is my military in 550bc:



All units are veterans except 2 Swordsmen, the 12 Warriors and 1 Chasqui Scout, which are all regular. This should sum up to 1956 points, if I´m not mistaken.

In order to get a good expansion, I made Cuzco a 4 turn settler factory by switching to Granary even before the first settler. It then produced 8 Settlers until 1500bc, building a Barracks and units afterwards.

The Scout and Chasquis went exploring of course, and just like Paul, I found the newly founded Sparta 2 tiles from a CS and razed it to slow down Greece. Luckily I could make peace before fighting any more battles and thus avoid an early GA. Huts gave HBR (2430bc), a village (2310bc - the one in the middle of the map, it stayed at 1 spt all the time, so it was no big help), 25 gold (2150bc), Maths (2030), Currency (1700bc), Maps (1650bc) and Construction (1575bc). I contacted all civs including Carthage after pushing a Chasqui through Japan. Then the Chasquis would patrol the mountainous area to purge camps for the money. [EDIT: according to my notes, I won one promotion and 10 times 25 gold from the barbs, while losing the Scout, a regular Chasqui and 37 gold through plundering.]

Techwise, I targeted Monarchy (and traded for the equally important BW and IW). So research was set to Polytheism first, followed by Philo for Monarchy, which was discovered in 1425bc. In 1350bc after 3 short turns of Anarchy, Monarchy was established. I chose to do this primarily to get rid of the despotism penalty during the GA, which I started in the very same turn. In hindsight, it might have been even better to delay it until 1000bc so it would end in 550bc.

Concerning units and Barracks, I agree with Nata that veteran Warriors give the best points-per-shield ratio. But like Paul said, building Warriors only would have ruined my economy very early on. The best way to go seemed to me to follow a mixed strategy: Barracks and vet Warriors (that are later to be upgraded to Swords) in the productive core and Catapults in the more remote towns. Cats give the best points-per-shield ratio where barracks are not available.
During my GA I also built Archers (Cuzco pumped one per turn!) to keep the number of units at a more acceptable level. The reg Warriors I kept in remote towns battling the threat of barbarians and unhappiness alike.
I don´t think I built more than 2 or 3 workers, I´ve never had this few!

And of course I traded techs around for money all the time, as we obviously couldn´t get enough coins at all. [EDIT: my notes say I could harvest a total of 824 gold from the AI.] On the other hand, I avoided Poprushing alltogether. I needed all the pop I could get in my slowly growing towns during the GA.

This game was indeed very entertaining. I am really surprised how many units could be gathered. As my GA expired, my economy was severely burdened with the upkeep. I really enjoyed the game and I am already looking forward to the next QG! :D
 
Aaargh! I forgot to connect the Iron and upgrade my Warriors! Ended the game with a lot of cash.

IMHO building anything but Warriors and Catapults is a waste of shields. Why have you built Archers etc.?

Game similar to most. Switch to Granary, four-turn combo (veteran Warrior and Settler) Factory. I built Settlers in the capital and in other cities where shield production would not be lowered by the population shrinkage until I figured that a new city would not produce four regular Warriors (if the mother city had a Barracks) until 550 BC. That corresponds to the three veteran Warriors that the city itself could have built with the thirty shields. I then used the capital as a two turn Warrior-Worker combo factory until I figured a new Worker would not contribute back the ten shields to a city with Barracks or thirteen shields to a city without. Cuzco then produced troops and ended up churning out one-turn Catapults during the Golden Age.

I think I should have build a few more Workers just at the beginning. The imrovements they could have done would have payed back for a long time.

Built a few too many Barracks because I overrated the production in these cities and also the fact that Catapults sometimes were the better production chioce (spt 7). I reached 8 or 10 instead of 12 veteran Warriors in these cities. Not such a big loss.

I lowered research slightly and discovered Warrior Code in 2630 BC. Then did a min run for Mathematics, which I figured was the only Technology I'd need -- for the Catapults. I did trade for Iron Working (2270 BC) since I didn't
want to place a city on Iron by mistake. Then no more science. No problem whatsoever with upkeep. Ended up with fourteen cities.

Most of my Worker force consisted of bought Slaves. I used CivAssist II and bought on every occasion.

Declared on India in 1000 BC and sent in the three Chasqui Scouts. Two died and the third killed the lone Warrior defender and started the Golden Age. In hindsight, I should have started it earlier, viz. when I founded my last city.

A veteran Warrior was promoted to elite in a Barbarian attack, so I smelled strength points and sent in more. Of course no more promotions happened, but I lost two veterans! Stupid.

On the last turn I rushed Catapults in most cities.

Result: 4 Workers, 156 Warriors of mixed experience, 36 Catapults and one veteran Chasqui Scout. I got it to 1634 points, but I didn't actually check again how many regular, veteran an elite there were.
 
Aaargh! I forgot to connect the Iron and upgrade my Warriors! Ended the game with a lot of cash.
:eek: Wow, you lost 12 points per 60 gold you had in the treasury! Do you remember how much money you had?

IMHO building anything but Warriors and Catapults is a waste of shields. Why have you built Archers etc.?
Well, during the GA, Cuzco was at 20 spt and had barracks, so it just did not matter. Another town with barracks alternated between 9 and 11 shields (10 was not available), so it was the same there, too.

Declared on India in 1000 BC and sent in the three Chasqui Scouts. Two died and the third killed the lone Warrior defender and started the Golden Age. In hindsight, I should have started it earlier, viz. when I founded my last city.
Why this? I started my GA earlier, but I thought that timing it for the last 20 turns would have been better. After all, your cities are at their peak in the last turns.
Oh wait, you played in Despotism, right? So you could have used some non-GA turns in the end for pop-rushing. Was that your reasoning?
 
This is my first ever submitted GOTM/QG. I don't feel too bad about my 811 points.

I started out expanding to 4 towns, which seemed a little on the low side haf way the game :(, but I then decided is was too late to change that.

tricks I used:
- triggered a GA with chasqui's (Aztecs were the lucky ones).
- built barracks.
- built warriors to upgrade to swords.
- hunted down barbs for experience.
- went to war with greece for experience. (dubious decision tho)
- researched/traded until Iron Working, then set research to zero for cash.
- whipped my folks for the last few units.

What I'd do differently having played and read the spoiler thread:
- build more cities!
- consciously NOT hook up one or several towns to iron for making upgradeable warriors.
- keep researching to trade for cash, instead of just taxing.
- time GA later in the game.

I'm not really sure about the decision to go to war with Greece. This Alexander guy was really asking for it with his demand for a few loose coins. Plus my swords did gain a lot of experience. On the other hand, I did loose a few units as wel. I didn't bother to calculate every loss, win and production loss.
 
This was an interesting game.
I had a hard time staying away from culture buildings but I did for the most part.

Finshed the settler and started on a granary and use a chop for the granary. From this point on it was 4 turn factory untill I had 10 cities.

Went for the Monarchy sling and drew 5 turn anarchy. Became a tech trader.

Built barracks and warriors and swords. Final count was

r.war 11 2 3 66
v.war 19 2 4 152
v.sw 60 5 4 1200
e.sw 2 5 5 50
v.sph 2 3 4 24
v.cw 1 2 4 8
e.cw 1 2 5 10
Total 1510

I tried to triger GA at 1000BC but my UU died but next turn my elite UU won.
During GA my Capitol was building a sword each turn and two other cities were turning a swode each 2 turn. Did not connect 4 cities to the iron.

Wasted shields by building 2 temples. Hard habit to break;)

Thank you for doing this Q game. I am not a warmonger so this was very interesting. I think I know how to go that route now.
 
Twonky said:
Wow, you lost 12 points per 60 gold you had in the treasury! Do you remember how much money you had?

Over 600. Thats 120 points, which would have brought me to ~1750 points.


Twonky said:
Oh wait, you played in Despotism, right? So you could have used some non-GA turns in the end for pop-rushing.

Exactly.
 
With some unexpected time on my hands, I decided to give this one a go. Really fun game it was, though I realize in hindsight that I did plenty of mistakes. Still it seems my result was fairly competitive: 88 swords (68 vets) and some scrap for a total of 1794 points if I can count correctly.

I don't usually play Conquests, and two of my largest mistakes are due to this fact. The first was that I didn't pay attention to Inca being agricultural, so a few of my first towns could have been placed a lot better. Second I played thinking that the warrior->sword upgrade was 40 gp, so when I discovered my error midway I had to re-plan a bit.

The third stupid thing I did I only realized when I read this thread. I didn't start a GA! :wallbash:
For some reason it never occured to me that a Chasqui win would bring about a GA. :blush:

Another minor thing was that I didn't realize the cost-effectiveness of catapults until very late. I would have built more of those otherwise.

Oh well. It was a really fun game, and I hope I can get the time to play a few more of those in the future. :)

@Twonky: :goodjob: :goodjob:
 
Well, I messed up, I guess. No GA, no cats, no settler factory. I ended up with 46 swords, most vet, 2 warriors (both regular), 3 archers and 3 spears (why? I think that that time I was producing 7 SPT and didn't have iron, so it was more efficent to produce 2 archers every 6 turns than 3 warriors every 6 turns.

I see some remarkable totals - I would think that an army of 46 vet swords could easily take out any and all of these opponents - an army of 115 swords would just go nuts...
 
I focused on building some cities early, before triggering my GA. In the end i had three cities with barracks producing swords with the rest making cats. I only researched maths, the other techs i traded for. I was lucky in the end because i started pop rushing a bit too soon and nearly ran out of money. I decided to avoid war were possible when i started, but i feel that was a big mistake, as i could have had more cities to help with the unit maintenance. I finished with 36 vet swords and 43 cats for a total of 1236.
 
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