GOTM 08 Second Spoiler

GOTM 08 Second Spoiler

Reading Requirements:

1. Requires full world map (met all civilizations, know location of all capitals).
2. Requires that you have reached (at least) 1500 AD (or completed the game).

Posting Restrictions:

1. No discussion of events post 1800 AD.
2. No maps showing industrial-age (or later) resources (coal, aluminium etc)

Well, by this time, the "American Problem" had been resolved. I did need granadiers to boot them off my landmass. I had so many left over that I started filling ships for other lands.

First spoiler: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4250091&postcount=24

150 AD - after building the Great Library, I am doing okay. Nothing special, though.

450 AD - found Dortmund on the island to the South

At some point I have a look at the island to the Southwest... wow! Stone, incense, horses, lots of gold. But there's two barbarian cities that will pump out axeman/maces at any attempt to settle. I postpone any settling until later. In the end, I never settled this location.

660 AD - found Stuttgart on the weird flag-shaped peninsular in the middle of the starting island. There's very little room left on the starting island.

~1000 AD - The one place left to settle is fairly close to Washington, in between dyes and gems and surrounded by jungle. I send out a settling party, complete with a great artist to give an immediate culture boost.

Washington beats me to the location by one turn! That's got to be a valid cassus belli, right?

1240AD - war at last (I kept adding units to my stack). Washington had only managed to build one maceman and a few pikemen with his iron. Almost immediately, that iron is no longer under his control. I advanced my stack up his continent, facing relatively light resistance (well, macemen against longbows can be rather painful at first until you get lots of city raider promotions)

1350 AD - I'm first to liberalism and grab nationalism (industrious + marble = Taj Mahal in about 10 turns)
Seems rather late for a monarch-level game, but then I'm used to Epic speed.

1550 AD - I take the last of Washington's cities on the mainland. It's the Taoist holy city, which is nice. I'd moved a great prophet up in case the shrine wasn't there but it was captured intact. Washington has four cities left on two islands, one of which is quite far away. I sue for peace and claim all his gold.

At this point I'm well in the lead on points. I overtook Washington in techs during the war, and I'm closing in on Victoria who has been up to all sorts beyond my line of sight. She seems to have started next to stone and has many of the early wonders and a lot of techs.

I settle down to a period of peace, harmony and rapid teching. Even with Washington's lands, it takes me ages to overtake Victoria and claim the tech lead. Meanwhile, I'm becoming good friends with Cyrus and Victoria. Isabella is also being quite nice, which is unusual. It probably helps that I went into Free Religion the first chance I had.

As I've not really expanded much beyond the mainland, I can't see myself winning by domination. My target at the moment is diplomacy. Catherine is currently second in population to me and isn't liked by Cyrus or Victoria. If I can build the UN and face off against her I should win.

I’ve finished the game now, but that comes in the third spoiler. What is below is what I wrote back when I’d qualified for this spoiler, before I played any further.

Heh – I’m still alive, and have a viable economy, and I’m not even very far behind in techs any more. I might not win this game, but I’m sure learning a lot and I’m pleased with my recovery here. In my post in the first spoiler, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=176698 (post #3, page 1) I related how I got started, expanding fairly quickly, and grabbing quite a bit of land, but got ahead of my economy’s ability to support the expansion. Research was way down, and I was very vulnerable. On the positive side, I was Hindu along with Tokugawa, Cyrus and Washington, and they were all fairly pleased with me. I had spotted three barbarian cities on the islands to the south of my island and was lining them up for acquisition to the German empire. (Thought I didn’t say where they were in that post of course)

Well, I’d just captured one of those southern barbarian cities when I wrote the first spoiler and I was in the early AD centuries. I then went for the second barbarian city to the south east of my island not far from Tokugawa’s home island. I capture that OK too. The third one was out of the question though – that was to the south west of my island, but the problem was my economy – I couldn’t build more army the way it was, and that third city had quite a bunch of archers and axmen, and was on a hill – I figured I wasn’t going to be able to pay the soldiers I built to go get that one, so I settled for two barbarian cities.

I then spent the next 1000 years to 1500AD rebuilding my economy and science - I had created quite a disaster. I was now careful with my micromanagement to get as much gold as possible while keeping cities growing at least a tiny bit, sacrificing hammers where I had to to achieve this. I got mathematics then went for calendar. Calendar was a bonus for me because it allowed plantations which released the dye and spices I had sitting around. I then bee-lined for CoL which I still didn’t have and started building courthouses everywhere. That made a nice difference. CS enabled Bureacracy and that helped again.

All this time I was slowly rowing around the world in galleys, meeting various people. I think I’d met them all by 1000AD. This is the first game I’ve been in where Tokugawa is my best friend. What a laugh – the guy usually is sending his army my way, not his smiles, techs and resources. Cyrus is also Friendly, and Washington is also very happy with me. I tried researching in an order these guys weren’t so I’d have something to trade and that worked nicely and kept me in the hunt despite the initially crippling slow science rate. Actually a big bonus was a great scientist offering Philosophy that I though might give me a trading chip and I got a heap of techs for that – I traded it to all three – Tokugawa, Cyrus and Washington and picked up different techs from each and about then thanks to that stack of techs, I was back in the tech race. Catherine is still out in front with Victoria close behind – I’d find it really convenient if those two broads got involved in a very bloody battle to the death sometime soon. I might have a chance of winning the game if they did that – not likely though.

After getting printing press, I traded it to Washington for tech, money and a world map – that got me basically the entire map – Washington had been everywhere. Best map trade I ever did.

I’m still rather nervous about Catherine and Isabella. Isabella is down the bottom of the score list, but is not the bottom of the power list, and she hates me. If she attacks me I’ll be hard pressed to make the end of the game, though hopefully, since Tokugawa also hates her, I might be able to enlist some help in that case. Washington is not too fond of her either. Catherine is another matter. She’s advanced in tech, top of the score list and top of the power graph. I need to work on that relationship a bit, and maybe she’ll leave me alone.

At the time of writing I’m up to 1580AD, and the main thing between me and a victory will be Washington, Catherine or Victoria building a space ship first. I have the biggest empire (just) and an economy to support it, so as long as I don’t get into a war, I can probably keep in the hunt with careful trading and management. If I do that I’ll be fairly happy with my effort since this is only my second Monarch game, and to me yet, Monarch is hard!

It’s now time to reassess how I might win this game, having retrieved my economy from the brink of disaster to a position of reasonable strength over a period of a 1000 years, and getting me back somewhere in the tech race instead of way out of it.

Two options are left to me: diplomatic and space race, both doubtful. Conquest and domination are both totally out of the question. Time is only a remote possibility since at Monarch, financial AI civs are basically guaranteed to build a spaceship before 2050 unless severely mauled by a military opponent, and time is not my preferred winning method anyhow! Diplomatic at this point is looking good given my various relations, and if I could build the UN with Catherine as my opponent, I’d be right in there since she is rather unpopular. However, Catherine, Victoria and Washington are all rather close in score and any one of the three might finish up as my opponent, and I wouldn’t have a chance against either Victoria or Washington. I figured I should probably angle for space race as something to aim for, and if diplomatic looked good later on, reconsider it.

I have some major problems in this. Cyrus, Washington, Victoria and Catherine are all ahead of me in tech, and three of these are financial civs. Ouch. So, now after 1000 years of watching money, money, money, I need to set about thinking about beakers and science – not a lot different than money really. I should start placing scientist specialists where I can, watching GP producing cities to see if I can get myself some great scientists rather than something else, and work on getting the science slider up – I don’t have any of the science boosting wonders, so it will be tough. The science slider had been down at 20% at 500AD briefly and over a 1000 years I’d worked it back up to 70%.

First Spoiler: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4248331&postcount=11

I left off in 560AD, with myself in a comfortable lead over Washington and Tokugawa technologically and in score. I was also in first, or near the top in every demographic except military size.

I had not met anyone else, nor explored off my island yet.

Here's the state of affairs since:

I founded Stuttgart in 560AD...and then I began exploring off my island, but it was still nearly 600 years later, 1140AD, that I founded my 8th city, Dusseldorf, off island. I founded it on the largely tundra island south of the marble. At that point though, I had what I felt was a decent sized military, and a strong economy so I began what might be one of the largest late game expansions I've done without crippling myself.

1140AD Dusseldorf
1190AD Bremen(Western tip of starting island)
1260AD Hanover(southeastern tip of largely barbarian island)
1260AD-1400AD Conquered Magyar, Goth, Olmec from barbarians.
1550AD-1675AD Conquered Kagoshima, Edo, Tokyo, Kyoto
1710AD Duisburg(for the incense and gold in the northern desert of Barbarian Coast)

At this point I have 18 cities, and may add some more.

Magyar and Olmec are in great production positions. Goth is thus far not doing much for me other than giving me a health resource and some population for my upcoming diplo victory(hopefully)

At 1500AD, I still had not fought in any major wars, had been the first to circumnavigate the globe, was the first to research liberalism(and I actually postponed liberalism until someone else had researched Printing Press), and was good friends with 4 of the 6 AI. I have no begun considering going for a diplo victory, as nothing else is even feasible except for a Space Race victory.
I have also, though, lost the overall tech lead to Washington(darn his financial trait!)

Around the middle of the 16th century, Washington declared war on Tokugawa, which surprised me as Washington, Toku, and I were the Taoist block. However, Toku had fallen to last in score, power, and size, and I guess good old George decided to liberate the Japanese lands to pass me in score. The war went basically nowhere for quite a few turns as Washington had ships, but was apparently concerned about me backstabbing him(which crossed my mind a few times until he got chemistry and rifling before I did), until George asked me to war Toku also. I had previously checked the foreign advisor to see how people thought about Toku, since I kinda wanted his land also, and since everyone disliked him, I said sure. I originally had no intention to actually get involved in the war, but I had a large standing army with some good promotions, so once I built up a decent amount of catapults I tried my hand at some conquest. I landed on Toku's northern island and in a matter of a dozen turns or so took over all three cities on his northern island.

I then transferred my troops to his main island, conquered Kyoto, and made peace with him because of increasing war weariness back home.

I can't recall my tech path, but I was the first to research Electricity, and am working on Radio right now. I am about 16 turns away from finishing Mass Media, then I'll go for Industrialism and Rocketry as a backup plan for a diplo victory.

I think the only obstable to me getting a diplo victory is George. Even if I somehow missed the UN(not likely as only George and I are anywhere near that tech level) I've got the territory and population edge(my pop is almost 2x what everyone else's is) and everyone except Catherine, Tokugawa, and Izzy are Pleased or higher with me. I don't know if diplo opponents are chosen by population or territory. If by population, George would be my opponent, which would pose issues for me since 2 AIs like him in addition to them liking me, but if by territory, Catherine would be my opponent and I'd be virtually assured of winning since no one likes her.

I'll attach some pics and then finish my spoilers when I finish the game...looks like after this GOTM I'll be doing contender on anything below Emperor.

If anyone could tell me what the rules are for the people in the running for a diplo victory, let me know please, I've never had different rivals winning in territory and pop before, so its never come up.

The UN election is between the UN-Builder, and the highest (or 2nd highest if the builder is highest) POPULATION civ. Score is irrelevant.

To win a domination victory, you need to garner 62% of the votes.

thanks, I quickly figured that out, much to my misfortune

Thrallia, if I may be so bold have you thought of Isabella's lands?

I did think of it, unfortunately, Vicky and Catherine both like Izzy(girls club, go figure) so if I were to war Izzy(who still doesn't have gunpowder!) I'd risk losing Vicky's vote to George.

not many post, it looks like most are done or dead by 1500.

continuing from my previous post

i settled on the island to the south to grab the incense and stone. i fortified an experienced archer and axeman, but a little later it was razed by two axeman barbs, what bad luck. anyways i resettled it and put an archer, axeman, spearman, and maceman in it. now i am actually building the first fort i have ever built on the desert hills, mainly cause my worker ran out of things todo, and that should distract them a little.

i missed the HG by a couple of turns, oh well. i did get Notre dame though, just in time to clear up an unhappiness in berlin. i thought it would be a good idea to build the national epic in my GS producing city since i had 2 scientist + 2 from the great library, i need those academies! well it was a bad idea. i have got 2 f.ing artist from that national epic. useless! i am saving one for a maybe golden age and the other i joined with my town bordering washington. (yeah he is still around, no wars so far).

so now that i have met everyone i am playing the difficult balancing act of keeping as many people happy all the time. no go on the japan SNAFU relations. and what the hell are the russians doing in a world cup themed game. i hope that is not a substitute for the ukrainians and plus cathy is being a “see you next Tuesday”. to keep people happy i had to drop my religion. this put me on a fast path to liberalism. i was the first one there so i picked up nationalism, cause it was the most for free and i had a GE waiting to do the taj mahal.

the golden age produced most of my universities and built my defense to macemen. i was hesitant to get astronomy because of losing the colosuss, which it turned out really didnt hurt me at all. ocean trading really offset that! i found an island with iron, pretty far away but i am settleling it anyways. just incase. i have scientific method now, so no more great library, i guess that means now i will get my scientist at least i will get one from physics in a couple of turns.

hopefully i can keep up the balancing act for my first solo monarch win.

First Spoiler-- http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=176698&page=5 post #100

Well since I've recently been struggling with noble I'm amazed that my first Monarch game and GOTM is going so well (admitedly on adventurer). O.K, so resources were generous, but I'm amazed I'm still alive, amazed I'm not last and amazed I'm leading in score and tech.

After a very happy start with good expansion and my planned wonders (no CS slingshot), I was worried that I would throw away my advantage in the mid-game where I often feel I'm indescisive and throw a game away. I thus descided to follow a reasonably direct strategy of cottege spamming with focus on research and getting Uni Suff and Emanc, whilst keeping the military up to ward off Washington.

This has worked fantastic. My tech is well ahead and SHould stay so thanks to a new policy (for me at least) of beelining to certain techs and sticking to it. These beelines included:

CS--Paper--Education--Lib
Phil(traded)--Nation(using Lib free tech)--Const--Demo
Gunpowder--Chem--Sci Meth--Phys

(other techs eg Bank,Econom,PP were traded/quickly researched/got by GPs)

I perhaps made a mistake in going to Phys via Gunpowder and Chem instead of Astronomy because Observatories would've helped science further but I quickly traded Cyrus for Optics and then Astrom (he needed things like Monotheism and CS, was happy with deal)

The only other wonder I got was SoL to stop anyone else getting it, with the free specialists mostly scientists.

I've had to build one city on the island south to get stone and incense, and I also captured one of the barb cities but havnt bothered with the time and troops to capture the other one. Also founded one city on a small desert island west to get iron.

With civics at free everything (proper Demo state) ie Uni Suff, Free Speech, Emanc, Free Market, Free Religion which ensures a strong cottage economy devoted to research, I'm now researching tech to improve my production.

Space Race is looking the only possible way with Diplo as an outsider, otherwise it's score where I'll have to beef up the military to be able to survive untill 2050.

Up to 1500 I basically spent up to 1000ad building more cities (from 2 cities in 1 ad to 8 by 1000ad); built national epic in capital with GLib and was lucky enough to pump out 3 GS which I attached to capital as superscience city (with academy, bureaucracy, gold, cottages, (Oxford by 1500)). Got a prophet for Kong Miao in my cash city (destined for Wall Street). 1000 ad to 1500ad was basically kicking americans off the continent. By 1500 ad I had 13 cities all on the one island and leading on all indicators, Vicky being my nearest rival. Might try for diplomacy, everyone likes me except Tokugawa who's annoyed with everyone else.
Edit: Atthe time of posting I've actually got up to 1630 and GW is no more.

trippstowe said:

not many post, it looks like most are done or dead by 1500.
.

Click to expand...

I'm still playing! But I'm getting close to completed, so I'll probably just post my game in the final spoiler. Let's just say I'm going for an unusual win...

M

I think I'll put my game's entire history so far in this topic, instead of splitting it between the first spoiler topic and this one. Or is that very undesirable? I'm playing contender class, and I'm in 1910 now, but I'll leave the most modern developments out.

So, I settled one space west from my settlers start, built a scout,work boat, warrior/worker, then settler I believe. Anyway with two scouts I met Washington pretty soon, and I noticed the importance of the eastern bottleneck of the continent. If I put a city there, my part of the continent would be safe from American settlers. Colonization of the spot got delayed a couple of times because of barbarian activity, but all in all this went well and I was able to found Munich and Essen on the eastern part of the continent. Meanwhile I had built both Stonehenge and the Oracle, acquiring CoL and Confucianism along the way. Things were going pretty well on the domestic side around 1 AD. However, Washington got Hinduism and Judaism, and unlike me he made quite a few religious friends. He got over-confident.

Georgie didn't have any Iron or Copper, so around 700AD he sent an army of horsemen to Essen, my town on the southeast with both my Horses and my Iron. I took it back with Spearman, he got reinforcements, etc. All in all I think Essen switched hands 6 times.

The war lasted for many centuries and crippled my research. Catapults were still far away and American Horse Archers frequently managed to pillage my Iron mine. Because of Hereditary Rule and many luxuries, war weariness fortunately wasn't much of a problem. Eventually I managed to burn his port town Philadelphia on the continent's central bay to the ground and even to capture Boston when I finally got 'pults. This ended the war around 1300AD, leaving me with 9 cities on the home continent.

Because I had completely focused on the war, exploration and research was way behind schedule. I met the Japanese and the Persians, that was all. My workboat had just started exploring when Washington circumnavigated. I worked on my economy and started to put some colonies on the surrounding islands and eventually met all my opponents. I discovered Victoria and Catherine were somewhat ahead of me in points and way ahead in tech and power. This has stayed the same in the centuries that followed, with me taking one of the middle spots, Washington and Cyrus close around me, and Tokugawa and Isabella way behind.

Also, because I was the only Confucianist, diplomacy was pretty difficult and I occasionally gave a world map or gold to Catherine and Vicky for friendship (I hoped). I also joined Cyrus and Cathy in a war against the Spanish, which left the latter near extinct and got me a few nice towns.

The barb towns were a challenge too. Some towns were pretty developed and I needed grenadiers to take them. The world hit the renaissance and because of free religion my relations with other civs improved significantly. I even got defensive pacts with Cathy and Cyrus! We're nearing 1800 now so I'll cut it off.

Initially I wanted to go for a space ship or culture. Culture definitely isn't going to work. Space ship will be hard. I have the highest production in the world, but my research is still lagging behind the financial civs. Oh, I have two Great Engineers waiting in Berlin and I've got no use for them. I hope hope hope a nice wonder opportunity will still come by.

{...}
Regards all

P.S. : Dumb me ... post on the wrong spoiler ... fortunately I posted no maps yet.

How about I do something different and just post my notes for the period?
Basically my story is that the Russians built the Oracle very very early. I can't feel robbed in this game though since it was such a mess tactically and logistically. Internally we were great, the Hagia Sofia and Serfdom together were the star of the show. Okay, here goes:

partial tech line: Currency 475. Construction 640. Machinery 840. Engineering 920. Feudalism 1080. Guilds 1280. Gunpowder 1320. Banking(t) 1470.

timeline:
375 Great Library in Berlin
450 Imhotep the Engineer born in Berlin
540 Dusseldorf up north. That's 8 cities.
560 First trade. Corn and cow to Vicky for Ivory and 3gpt.
580 Vicky dow Tokugawa.
660 Meet Persia. Trade 'em calendar for HBR.
840 My favorite quote: 'A god from the machine.' So old. Anyway, we're preparing for war, it'll start real soon. Now that we have Machinery, Imhotep is finally ready to study Engineering. +1088 beakers to be exact. Cyrus is friends with Isabella, our best friend, so it's ok to trade him Machinery for Compass and a little gold.

880 Upgrade our first Maceman.
900 The first war. DoW America. The goal is simply to take these two lightly defended cities to the south. Also, capture Harrapan from the barbs, about 800 years too late... Well, with the captured gold can learn Engineering in 1 rather than 3. And that makes 10 towns.
920 Circumnavigate. Heavy causalties at the Battle for Atlanta, but we'll take it next turn.
940 Hanover.
960 Hagia Sophia in 10, monopoly on Engineering.
1010 Slaughter some American units.
1030 Get 900g from trade mission.
1040 Finally locate Washington.
1080 Hand-learn Feudalism, keep Engineering and Civil Service from the AI. Good!
Finish the Hagia Sophia in Berlin, nice. Switching to Serfdom will be +100% on worker actions, as if I'd doubled the workforce. So, we switch.
England has Engineering, so it'll probably get around. It's price has been dropping fast with the other AI, so we'll trade that, but never Civil Service. So, Drama from Catherine. Get Theology and Optics, gold, and an embargo vs Washington from Isabella for Engineering and Feudalism.
We go ahead of Catherine in score for the first time.
1100 Circumnavigate our home island. Capture Philadelphia after heavy casualties.
1120 Pop a hut, get angry warriors.
1160 Heroic Epic in Cologne.
1190 Pop a hut, unit gets experience. OK, pretty much what the last hut got us.
1210 Capture Chicago. Make peace to re-group and get ready to take over the world. Really! So, that was like 10 turns per town. Pretty slow...
1220 Divine Right. first, Yeah! Also, hit 5 million souls...
1240 Great Engineer born in Berlin. Cool, that can be our Versailles.
1260 Finally discover English lands. Just recently discovered Cyrus. Notice Catherine Finally has Civil Service.
1280 Now that we have Guilds, our Great Engineer can learn Gunpowder. 2/3 of it anyway. That almost seems better than Versailles...
1310 Catherine takes Liberalism. Well, go ahead. She takes Astronomy, obsoleting her Colossus, har har. Russia's GNP plummets... their science rate will stall completely, making this a good time to conquer them with Knights and Muskets.
Found Leipzig, claim Iron. We still don't have any!
1320 Ok, we're switching to Theocracy and Vassalage. DoW America.
1330 Get 290g out of Catherine for our World Map. Not bad.
1360 In an amazing run of luck, New York holds out, killing 4 of our units.
1390 Pup a hut. Get a map.
1420 Forbidden Palace in Philadelphia. A hut yields Music!!! Didn't know that could happen.
1430 Versailles. Our units are dying in America...
1440 New York is captured, some American units destroyed, make peace for some cash and to focus on Moscow.
1470 Blaise Pascal (Engineer) born in Munich. Isabella completes the spiral minaret.Might as well trade Divine Right to Catherine for Banking.
1520 FINALLY have troops in position, attack Catherine. Also, DoW Washington.
1540 Nationalism. Taj is ours with the Engineer. Revolt to Nationhood for the happiness... 1st time for that... Hmmm, engineer would learn Constitution.
1565 Capture Washington. Make peace, convert him to Buddhism.
1580 Get a great scientist. Whatever, in 2 turns we'll have Military Tradition, and will probably turn off science!
Hut=angry barbs.
1585 The golden age is over. It was a tremendous boost this time, especially looking at the stat graphs. And it is 1 turn to Military Tradition. If I had to do it all over again, I'd still save an engineer for the Taj Mahal.
1595 Catherine starts a golden age. Well, at least it will be sans 4 towns, an entire island, and counting.
1605 A source of Silver shows up. Thanks Hagia Sofia, we have everything mined...
1610 Land our first troops on Russia's home soil. We have an armada of galleys running from a Russian Galleon. AI learns Constitution.
1635 Our 2-pronged strategy means we just don't have enough cavs to take Moscow quickly. Better to reorganize 10 turns, take paper for free, then come back.
1650 Americans destroyed. DoW Japan.
1665 Making some use of the draft in this game...
1685 DoW Catherine. Sink one of her full Galleons with Caravels.
1690 Finally capture Moscow, 7 wonders in all. We draw a 4-turn anarchy, to Universal Suffrage, Bureaucracy, Caste System, Mercantilism, and back to Organized Religion.
1710 The anarchy is finally over. We're tanking fast, everybody is totally unhappy about the war. We'll have to finish with Japan real quick here.
1715 Capture St. Petersburg, Church of the Nativity.
1725 Ok, finally open that SE passage with border expansion. Can invade Russia 2 ways.
Destroy 5 of Catherine's boats in an ice-locked tundra town.
1740 Capture Novgorod. It can't get much tougher than that...
1755 A Great Merchant shows up. Good, use 2 GP's to start a golden age.
1765 Cathy down to 1 city. Make peace for Printing press, nice boost. Everyone's happy again, start Golden Age. Our gold freakin' skyrockets!
1790 GA war with Tokugawa!
1806 Japan destroyed.

This was my first GOTM and monarch game, and lately i hadn't been playing much, so i went with adventurer

When i found out i was not alone in the island i started building cities like mad to gain territory over Washington and i managed to beat him to the horse resource! though it didnt help me much.... i didnt see it coming but there it was: i was extremely poor not far into the game because of the city manteinance costs, i wasnt able to build courthouses or markets or anything to get more money so i thing as a beggar i would have had more money...

this caused me losing so much money that my research fund had to get as low as 40%!!! it seemed like i would never get out of that crisis with so little research to get to building courthouses or markets... i was starteing to get really pessimistic... but alas!! not everything was lost!! for i was lucky enough to have my (really) GREAT lighthouse in berlin to deliver me an (also really) GREAT merchant. i immediately signed an open borders with Wahsington and sent my merchant to washington... great merchant + washington = 900 gold = light at the end of the tunnel.... i spent them all keeping "up" my research fund at 70% eventually being able to buld courthouses and markets and get out of my crisis..... or so i tought .....

it didnt take me much time to realise that all those turns at 40% kept me technologically way behind my enemies, so if i had been kind of hostile before, now i was a peace lover So now i am at ~1850 AD and still not up to the technological advances of my enemies... i'm scoring fourth: washington is crushing us all while victoria and catherine ar some 100 pts ahead of me with cyrus like 150 pts behind me, then comes isabella and at the tail is tokugawa...

whilst at it, i did get something (almost) right at least; i vastly explored the seas and found out that i still could get my consolation prize: be the first to circumnavigate the world... and i would have gotten it if it weren't for my f#&"$%" galleys (that damn tech lag again) which couldnt cross two tiny stil black ocean squares that held me from going round the globe. i tried to look for an alternate route but it was all to late... that b!"#$ victoria managed to go round it with her caravels and galleons and i was left with nothing, just my crushed pride.....

at least, this game hasnt been all bad... i got another mr. merchant get me a shiny 2400 gold from Moscow, so at least i'm pretty wealthy now.... and, hey! at least i'm still alive in my firs monarch game!!

Should we bother with three spoilers? Or delay the third spoiler until the 15th?

ainwood said:

Should we bother with three spoilers? Or delay the third spoiler until the 15th?

Click to expand...

IMHO the first spoiler is the most interesting, the 2nd not much, since the most of players has alredy finish, so a 3rd seem to be not so useful (just take a look on GotM8 spoilers to see - visits and posts numbers - ).

What about a pool???

Finally the staff caught the rate, !!