[BTS] BOTM 125 - Final Spoiler (game finished or abandoned)

[neilmeister]

BOTM 125 - Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Did you manage to win?



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[MarleysGh0st]

I attacked Ragnar in 375 and captured Birka before signing a ceasefire. In 1140, I attacked another of his cities. I had reduced his city defenses and was debating whether my stack was large enough to successfully capture it, when I noticed that DeGaulle was at WHEOOHRN and was moving a large stack in my direction. I immediately signed a peace treaty with Ragnar and prepared for defense.

Sure enough, DeGaulle declared war on me on the next turn (1260). As he attacked BIrka from across Ragnar's border, I had a turn of frustration where I could not counterattack his stack, because I didn't have an open borders agreement with the Vikings! Ragnar agreed to open borders and I was able to wipe out the French invaders on the next turn. Meanwhile, Joao had been elected to lead the AP and Willem had become his peace vassal. Joao used an AP vote to lead all of the Buddhist powers to war with France in 1320.

I captured Tours from DeGaulle, made peace in 1420, and went to war with Ragnar again in 1540. Joao brought me back to war with France with another AP vote in 1560. That worried me for a while, since I couldn't spare any units to reinforce Tours, but Joao's stacks swiftly swept the French away. DeGaulle became Joao's vassal in 1610. I conquered the last of Ragnar's cities in 1730.

And that was the high point of my accomplishments. Joao attacked Wang Kon, vassalizing him while Willem reasserted his independence. I built up my economy and science and joined the space race--far too late, given the tech lead Joao, Willem and Gilgamesh had on me. With Joao's spaceship on the edge of completion, I cast my UN votes to give Joao a diplomatic victory in 1880. And to celebrate the occasion, he launched his spaceship on the very same turn.

Well, I rarely even try the game at immortal level and I never expected to win this one. Finishing second in score in this game was good enough.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Well @MarleysGh0st - nice to see I wasn't the only one:

1906 AD Diplo loss to the Netherlands. And it was so close! I was literally 1 turn away from the final spaceship part so I could launch. And the worst thing was - I could see it coming, but couldn't see anything I could do about it: Willem had basically vassaled just about everyone except me, and since narrowly losing a diplo victory vote some time previously, he'd added Wang Kon to his vassal list. It was obvious what was going to happen. It was just a question of, could I reach alpha centauri before he called another diplo victory vote. In the end, I couldn't.

Back to 1AD, I was at war with the Vikings. I spent much of the next thousand years continually swapping between Joao and Ragnar wars, taking a little bit more land with each war. Unfortunately Joao eventually put a stop to that by vassaling to the Netherlands - and the Netherlands were already just too big and powerful and advanced for me to even consider a war with them. Eventually Ragnar also vassaled - to France. France were less powerful, but I was still forced to abandon the war and tech to cannons before restarting it in 1300AD. There was then a slow process of gradually destroying the Vikings and taking a bit of French land before France vassaled to the Netherlands.

That war was awful for science. I ended up with about 18 war weariness per city, which meant I had to run 50% culture, 50% gold and I was still losing money! As soon as the war ended in about 1600AD, my science jumped very quickly to around 2000 bpt. Maybe I should've ended it earlier!

In the meantime Willem had also gone to war with - and vassaled - Sumaria and had a massive tech lead, so by then there was even less chance of a war with him. So I just pumped everything into science in the hope of beating him to space. I had a couple of lucky breaks, thanks to Willem not apparently being focused: He didn't beeline plastics, which meant I was easily able to build the Three Gorges Dam, despite his overall lead. And I managed to get the Internet, which basically immediately eliminated his lead. First time I've ever found the Internet useful! By 1900 AD I was well ahead, and would have easily reached Alpha Centauri first. But the voting power from all Willem's vassals was too much.

In one final twist, towards the end of the game Joao regained his freedom, and a couple of turns before the end, declared war on me, which caused some concern because my Three Gorges city was Lisbon! - right in the war zone. I think I would have prevailed, but I never got the chance to find out.

I suspect in the end my key mistake was keeping the war with France going too long. If, instead, I'd taken him as a vassal as soon as he was willing to capitulate, Willem probably wouldn't have been able to get the diplo win votes and I'd have been OK. And since both the cities I'd captured from France subsequently flipped back, I didn't get any extra land in the end. But hey, isn't hindsight wonderful!

 

[nocho]

I decided to go for culture and got there rather late in 1806AD. Persepolis and Lisbon were good cities for legendary, but I didn't really have a good 3rd candidate. I decided on Pasargadae, my second city that shared tiles with the capital, but in retrospect probably far-off Guimaraes might have been better, as it had more food. I captured the southern half of the Vikings with cuirs as I needed the stone for some of the multiplier buildings, ended with 18 cities in total. I somehow teched way too far for culture, although that was partly because the 3rd city went rather slow. Biology is still nice to have for culture, but if you end up with combustion, electricity and assembly line in a culture game, then it's clear it's been rather sub-optimal... Anyway, that's what you get with 700+ bpt at 0% science when things drag on too long. Still, fun game, thanks! Flipping Joao's new capital of Coimbra was rather satisfying.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Conquest 1802 via my typical grinding wars. I wiped out Ragnar and then vassalized DeGaulle (tougher than planned, as he had a LOT of units), Joao (more advanced than I, but I got to Steel first), Gilligan, Wang, and then Willem who, as usual, capped at the first sign of difficulty (losing two of 11 cities). If I can find the time I'd like to replay to 1 AD trying to follow Fburg's script of immortal spamming; I might manage half as many cities as he did.

Edit: Well, that was an epic fail. In my replay I founded two cities and then spammed immortals. I captured one Joao city but by then he'd hooked up metal--in heedless rage I fruitlessly threw my horsies against his spears with the expected result. Maybe if I'd attacked just a little sooner, or targeted his mines, or... maybe I just suck at rushes, and always have. Yep, that's it.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Barely managed to finish this one. Three hours before the deadline I threw all available cavalry against Summeria and managed to go past the 64% domination threshold. A little premature since I was trying to maximize score and it was still going up.

At 100 AD the Persian Empire reached 22 cities. The reign of the Immortal was over and a phase of rebuilding the economy started. The turn-around happened fairly fast by building cottages and cheap courthouses. I even got a GSpy from the captured GWall and managed to steal some techs from Willem. Another nice feature of infiltrating the dutch was that I got visibility to the wonder builds and could pour a lot of marble-multiplied hammers into wonders for almost instant fail-gold. Only wonder I built was the MoM. Around 850 AD Ragnar attacked again but with little luck and when MilTrad was discovered in 870 AD the reign of the cuirassier started. Cuirs are great because of their mobility and because they ignore walls and castles and other bothersome Medieval stuff that the AI loves to build for protection. Ragnar was reduced to one city and vassalized and the Mids were captured. Taj Mahal got built during the war 1020 AD. Around 1100 AD Biology was discovered and a few turns later also Communism. My goal was to maximize score by boosting pop using the extra food from farms (w. Bio) and from workshops (State Property). At the same time the war on deGaulle started. When the French were gone the Persians discovered Rifling and cavalry but only a few made it to the front lines before Korea was reduced to one city. The plan for the end game was to research to Refrigeration and start spreading Cereal Mills in order to get a second explosion in population but as mentioned in the beginning I ran out of time and I only had CM incorporated in 15 out of 49 cities when the final cavalry assault on Summeria finished the game in 1505 AD for a final score of 492.017 points.