BOTM 91 (Bilbo) - Final Spoiler

Deckhand

Procrastination at its finest
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BOTM 91 (Bilbo) - Final Spoiler



So how did your game after 1AD go?
Were you able to meet the requirement to destroy Sauron?
Anyone meet the challenge to keep the Free Peoples alive?
I gave the AIs some pretty nice land. Did you struggle against them?
Which civilizations behaved in character and out of character? How?

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Had a lot of fun with this game, so thanks! I'm however totally not into LOTR and fantasy in general, so sometimes I had a hard time figuring out against whom demands were made. ;)

However somehow thought it would be in theme to go for a religious win, so embarked on that and got there in 1270AD with Sauron dead. Had already founded christianity in the BCs and actively worked on spreading that to my empire. Built the AP in christ. More or less lucky with one random spread to Ironfoot (?! well, the far off sumerians) and the closer by, umm, Greeks. Spread to the rest and didn't have to worry about Sauron as he had to be killed anyway. Hogged some wonders like GLib, Parthenon and MoM, later Taj too. Total of 4 golden ages. Libbed MT to go for the kill of Sauron, but he proved quite weak. Actually the English Elves asked me to DoW him ("Help us with our crusade against the Orcs"... Orcs? Damn, hope that's Russia :p Red fists gave a clue though ;)). My previously constructed road to Sauron was duely pillaged by the Elves though. :gripe: Don't they get anything about supply lines? Anyway, with cuirs first and soon cavs too thanks to a swift tech pace (400+ beakers in the capital) the Orcs crumbled quickly. Quite an overkill, something like knights would have sufficed easily. The fun part was when Sauron vassaled to Hannibal who dragged de Gaulle into war against me too. Grabbed some of their cities, but obviously not the Christian ones. Meanwhile Sumeria was at friendly, quite early on actually thanks to favourite civic in HR. Sold up to liberalism to the English Elvemother to share FR with her as fav civic, beside some mutual war bonus.

At the third time the Religious Leader vote came up (Sauron also got a Christ spread at some point) I could finally go for it when Sauron was actually dead. With Elves and Ironfoot voting for me ended up with a 1270AD win.

Thanks again for the game. :)
 
Well, this was certainly an alternate history of LOTR.

I had a nice, peaceful start in the BC, getting the CS Sling in 650 BC. My decision to grab Buddhism as an early religion did me no good in the long run, though, since Denethor converted everyone else to Judaism but the Hindu Elves.

Denethor was upset that I didn't give him some tech, so he declared war on me in 300. I fight off his invasion stack and make peace with him--and he promptly volunteers to become Theoden's vassal!

Saruman goes to war against Galadriel in 660. I agree to help defend her, thinking a border city is an easy target, but before I can take that city, he decides to make my capital (the Grey Havens) the target of his invasion stack, led by the dread Ballista Oliphaunts. I eliminate his stacks and finally take that border city, but he still won't agree to peace.

Meanwhile, Denethor has been elected to head the AP, Dain has joined the war against Galadriel and Saruman has made peace with her. Denethor proposes to "stop the war against Saruman" and everyone but Galadriel (but including Saruman) vote in favor of it in 1130.

Although I'm a pitiful 4th in score, I try to resume a peaceful strategy, while Sauron, Theoden and Denethor all join the war against Galadriel. Only Dain makes peace with her.

And then, in 1230, Denethor (still Theoden's vassal) wins a Religious Victory. :dubious:

Maybe Faramir gave him the One Ring from my nephew Frodo...
 
Poor Nocho, beaten to fastest Religious Victory by Denethor by 30 years. :lol:
Well at least he got a victory which is better than MarleysGh0st managed. :sad:

Thanks for playing and for posting herein.
 
:rotfl:

Denethor is a very good player though, so no shame in that. Besides, doubt he killed Sauron so he should be disqualified! :lol:
 
Good point about the disqualification. I will check the saves when the game is completed. You are probably right and are still in the running for fastest.

:mischief: Judging from Final Spoiler Thread only: nocho has only victory and thus lowest score, fastest, gold and cow. I hope there are a few more entries. Good luck though.
 
Yup, count one more entry. :) nocho beat me to a Religious win by about 400 years! I was playing Challenger, though, and kept changing my mind about what type of victory to go for. Space originally, but several AI were at or beyond my tech level so I figured I had to venture out and knock 'em down, or better yet vassalize them and direct their research toward my own needs. Aragorn went first because I really wanted his iron to build cannon. I think I went after poor Galadriel next--all her neighbors were beating her up and I didn't want any of them to vassalize her. Theoden was an even bigger tech threat than Aragorn so I had to go after him. Now that I wasn't in danger of losing a Space race I attacked Sauron to fulfil DH's victory requirement. Saruman didn't like that and attacked ME after Sauron cap'd to him! That stretched me a bit thin but the mighty Hobbit military-industrial complex quickly built enough tanks and artillery to take four or five cities and vassalize Saruman. He was willing to cap earlier but I wasn't sure what would happen if I cap'd Sauron's master so I delayed until Sauron was dead. At that point it was a lot quicker to just go for Conquest than Space and I was one turn from DoWing Dain when the AP victory vote came up and I figured, heck, give it a shot. Plenty of votes to spare against the AP resident, Theoden. Not as satisfying as Conquest but real life was calling for a bigger share of my time. Thanks for the game, DH! I can't believe there hasn't been an LOTR challenge before now. High time! :D
 
Denethor is a very good player though, so no shame in that. Besides, doubt he killed Sauron so he should be disqualified! :lol:

No, Sauron was not killed, so Denethor gets no medals.

But Sauron was dead last in score for my whole game, so--in this reality, at least--I didn't see how he earned the "Evil Empire" label. Just negative campaign ads, I'm sure! :lol:
 
this game was really fun

unfortunately, I sucked super bad after a perfectly fine start (civil service right at 1 ad, or whatever the year is like 2 turns before) but had some AIs declare war on me and I handled it sloppily. Retired with dissatisfied progress.

Sauron was dead last in my game as well so would have been easy to conquer him, if I got through to him :/
 
This was really a fun game and must have been serious work for the mapmaker. Well-crafted map. I probably spent more time looking at the LOTR map to name cities correctly than planning my economy, and enjoyed the little forts, appropriate resources, and "hit movies" scattered around. Perhaps I got too caught up in the spirit of the game, because I ended up losing...

I tried to be true to the Hobbit spirit by not attacking anyone except Sauron and Sauromon. I was thinking an AP victory might be most appropriate for the map (don't really like the idea of hobbits in space or conquering the world). Unfortunately, I let the AP slip to Rohan. In the first part of the game I had a brief war with Sauromon to capture Ered Luan and then marched the veterans all the way over to conquer Mordor. My main fear was that Sauron would capitulate to the Dwarves who were attacking from the other side, so I bribed the Dwarves to make peace before finishing Sauron off in 1260AD.

From here on I played peacefully except for a few defensive or political skirmishes. I never was able to win the vote though I came as close as needing just 31 more out of 1200 votes. Once my ally Aragorn left me hanging by changing religion at the last minute and thus losing half their votes. I used a spy to switch him to the AP religion, but did not notice he was in Free Religion so it did not do anything. After being unable to catch up by growth and manipulating AI religions with spies (and running out of time to finish the game), I launched a war timed to capture/burn enough Rohan border cities to win the vote three turns later. Due to my poor planning, Sauromon jumped in and was able to capture one of my own cities right on the border, and I failed to take one of the Rohan cities. Due to emergency whipping and some Biology-fueled growth, Dain Ironfoot surpassed me in population between votes, and I was not even in the election. At 1745AD I retired. Maybe I should have voted for him in the spirit of the game.

Embarrassingly I think the AI actually outsmarted me because Dain refused to trade Biology for many turns even though I had it half researched and was offering a more expensive tech!
 
Main problem I faced was discovering that Sauron and Saruman voluntarily vassaled up to Denethor, just after he'd vassaled the elves. So I had the strange prospect of half of Middle Earth saying "If you want to pick on our poor little buddy Sauron, you'll have to come through us first". :crazyeye:

I ran out of days in the end though (work got busy) so didn't get to finish the game -- though I doubt it would have been successful anyway (victory, and vassaling Sauron, looked feasible, but probably not completely eliminating him)
 
After several years away from xOTM and with just a few days to play this map, I plunged straight into it without reading the pre-game discussion, therefore missing the map-maker's requirements. Doh!

It doesn´t matter much because I ended up with a 20th century space victory. But I wish I had seen the requirements before, as I´d have played a different way, trying to keep with the spirit of the LOTR books and with the intentions of the map-maker.

I hope I´ll get time to play a couple more games before the summer is out. Thanks a lot for keeping xOTM going. I was quite pleased the other day to see it still here!
 
Thanks for the posts.
Glad you had fun.

"If you want to pick on our poor little buddy Sauron, you'll have to come through us first". :crazyeye:
:lol:

You must have had the Second Age Sauron.
 
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