GOTm 43: First Spoiler (Entering middle ages)

[Capt Buttkick]

I've been sneaked a lot on deity and I can only say that, to me, it works better to keep the AI's assessment of your strength high in other ways than building lots and lots of military. Of course, you need to keep up with a certain amount of military builds. More important is to do a few gpt deals with your closest neighbours (pay them), give in to all demands, also from other continents (they will ally with your neighbours) and last but imhso most important:
Keep up with city count b/c it helps a lot in the long run (of course), but even more important early on, it adds to your strength as viewed by the AI.

 

[WarDance]

Thanks so much for the tips, guys!

I've been replaying the start to see what I can do better. Settled in the exact same place, set out research on the same path, built cities in the same spots... The only things I've done differently are: built a half dozen spears first before starting on the offensive units, built walls in my first 4 or 5 towns, and gifted 1 gpt as soon as I met Korea and the Mongols. I don't know how much of the result is based on the changes to my play and how much is based on the random number generator, but this time around at 1000BC I have 9 towns and no one has declared on me yet.

 

[Chamnix]

Open class, going for 100K.

I have no fog-gazing ability and wasn’t sure how reliable the wheat predictions were, so I just settled in place. Initial builds were 3 warriors. I wanted to build a granary next ( I popped Pottery from a hut), but a barbarian wandered near my undefended city with 20+ shields invested so I switched to a settler rather than lose the shields or the pop. The settler founded my second city 3SE of the capital near the wheat to churn out workers, including 1 devoted to mining the mountain goats. Kyoto was a 6-turn settler + warrior factory for a little while, then finally became a 4-turn settler factory in around 1950 BC. Cities were built tight – RCP 3&6.

Research started as Mysticism at maximum followed by Polytheism at minimum. I met the Mongols in 3300 BC, the Koreans in 2950 BC, the Ottomans in 2510 BC, the Chinese in 2270 BC, and the Persians in 2110 BC. With a stroke of luck, I was the first to discover Polytheism in 1325 BC, the same year as the Russians built a city on my shoreline establishing contact with me. I leveraged my monopoly tech plus my local monopoly on contact with the Russians to trade for all contacts, a complete world map, all the known techs (Mathematics, Literature, Philosophy, Map Making, Code of Laws, Horseback Riding, and Construction), and all the gold in the world (about 800 more in addition to the 200 I had going in).

I still had tradable goods on some civs, so I decided it was a good time to start a little trouble. I used my pile of gold to build several embassies, then I declared on China and signed an alliance with the Mongols against them. I declared on the Ottomans and signed an alliance with Korea against them. I also started a couple wars on the other continent. My troops saw no action whatsoever during these wars (which is fortunate because I basically had no troops).

QSC stats:

10 towns
26 citizens
3 settlers
13 workers
2 slaves
3 warriors
4 horsemen

I discovered Monarchy in 775 BC and revolted immediately. I traded Monarchy for Currency and some loose change to enter the Middle Ages in 750BC.

 

[Paul#42]

Gotm 43 Open
domination
(as usual after retiring my only 20k attempt in Cotm11)

I made Kyoto a 4-turn-settler-factory asap. expansion++. Had good luck with research, keeping pace without TGL. Only researched Polytheism to the bitter end which payed out big time. Keeping peace with everyone was great, too. I just had some cultural war with the Mongols at the southern border without any flips resulting.
Now I need to do some diplomacy to bring everybody to war.

Surrounded by tough opponents. This won't be a walkthrough. I guess I will come to tanks for the first time in a Gotm / Cotm (playing since Cotm9).

Persia is already a culture monster - I wonder how I will stop them. How would a 100k-loss near domination limit score in Jason?

playing the German version, I had trouble installing the mod. After reinstalling whole Civ + C3C I played the game with "limited vision" - at the beginning I looked at Mapstats maps ("Rings") to see those nice sheep, later I relied on the governor to find the right tiles to work on... Don't think that hurt my game too much


research
3600 Pottery (trade)
2630 Alphabet, Warrior Code, Mysticism, Bronze Working (trade)
2110 Writing, Horseback Riding (trade)
2070 Iron Working (trade)
1500 Literature, Philosophy, Masonry (trade)
1175 Mathmatics (trade)
1050 Polytheism (researched!), Construction, Currency, Map Making, Code of Laws (traded)
==> Middle Ages in 1050


building & founding

4000 Kyoto: granary(2850), temple (2270)
2510 Osaka
2030 Tokyo
1725 Edo
1550 Satsuma
1475 Kagoshima
1325 Nagoya
1250 Izumo
1100 Nagasaki

QSC-Data:
10 cities, pop 29. 1 settler, 8 workers.
all ancient age techs except Republic and Monarchy. Middle Ages reached.
175 gold in treasure.
contact to all 10 nations, 10 embassies.
6 warriors, 3 spearmen, 2 horsemen.
2 temples, 2 granaries, 3 barracks.

 

[Niklas]

Open, going for any kind of win.

So far this has been something of a disappointment to me. After my very good result in GOTM42 I finally felt ready for Deity, but now I'm not so sure anymore.

I met the Mongols early on and traded for Pottery. Kyoto was set up as a 6-, then 5-turn settler factory and expansion was pretty good. Second I met the Ottomans who had already walked through Korea, and met both China and Persia. As a consequence I missed out on the initial trading rounds, and I wasn't even first to Mysticism despite researching it at 100% from early on. I managed to acquire most first-tier techs by trading contacts, but that was it. The AIs were soaring ahead.

I figured the GLib would solve my problems. I set up Edo by the Cow to build it, mined all tiles around it, joined workers up to size 10. My trouble really payed off, since I was only beaten by 3 turns as opposed to the much higher numbers I've read earlier in this thread... I was left with a 400-shield FP, and still no tech.

At this point I realized I had to buy or take what tech I needed. At least I had my military, so I marched a host of swordsmen on Korea. I also signed tech-for-gpt deals with the Mongols to make them play nice along my undefended southern border. I bought most AA techs this way, they were cheap since 9 other civs already knew them. I had all contacts since the English had settled a town next to me. The only expensive techs (except the govs) were Construction and Currency, and I got those in a peace deal with Korea in 450 BC after taking a few of their towns.

I'm now at the beginning of the MA, I'm making 8gpt net at 0% research, I'm still in despotism, and most of my opponents have both Theology and Invention judging from the wonder builds. I'm also militarily weak against most opponents, despite 8 swordsmen and 11 horsemen. One of the few I can match in military is the Mongols, but I can't declare on them yet since I'm paying them gpt. I guess I'll have to amass my forces along their borders and hope they don't build too many pikes until then...

At least my QSC stats were ok:

10 cities
31 pop (17 happy, 9 unhappy)

1 granary
4 barracks

8 swordsmen (vets)
11 warriors
11 workers
1 settler

6gp, 8gpt at 50% sci, 20% lux
150 shields collected on Palace in Edo

all first tier techs + IW, Writing and Myst

 

[killercane]

Open, Domination or 100K

This game is a natural progression of what I've learned in the previous two GOTMs in that I've been able to put into use the "tricks" of the GOTM and PTW (a version I hardly ever play). From GOTM 42 I learned that Poly is about the last darn thing researched by the AI (not true in C3C) and from COTM 12 I learned to shrug off my first instinct to settle and think hard about moving the settler at the start. So that affected my strategy in moving two SE onto desert from the start in search of a more centralized capital (allowing an RCP 3 city by the coast in the west). And the soothsayers being right about the FP wheat was fantastic to find.

The first few warriors were sent North and then south, meeting Mongolia and then Korea. I also built a few additional warriors to block the mongols at the southern choke before running the settler factory.

Research was myst at max (traded for near the end of the research cycle), followed by poly at min. I acquired pottery from the Mongols, and Alphabet from Korea. Alphabet was useful to peddle around for Masonry and the other first tier techs from the others. When Poly came in I was able to trade for everything else, using Currency as the key tech as it was unknown by several others. I was helped by the other continent finding me and giving me some new trading partners to barter with. I entered the MA in 1025.

For the QSC, I barely missed having my 16th city built in 1000 BC, and it was founded in the jungle in 975. We are on war buildup, and will send swords south to the horseless Mongols and horses North to meet Wang Kon. Fighting a two front war isnt really ideal, but I just want to trim the Mongols and really start on Korea before they are defended exclusively by pikes. We'll see how it goes.

 

[ainwood]

Open class....

I decided to settle SE, to trust the fog-gazers, and save myself having to mine the goats early to get the 4-turn settler factory. Yes, there was wheat there, and I set-about getting a few warriors out exploring,and setting-up a settler factory.

Initial research was towards pottery, and with a few contacts I made the odd trade. Once I got my settler factory cranking-out settlers, I settled in RCP-4, and began barracks in the secondary cities.

My exploration had revealed that the mongols only had one source of horses that I could see, so I decided to try and steal them. I got to them before the mongols did, which was surprising, as it was actually a city behind their front-lines as they obviously decided that one of 'my' iron sources was more important (even though they had another iron - go figure!)

With the mongols denied horses, I set-about building-up a force of my own, and amassing-it on the Mongol border. However, disaster struck in 775 BC, when the city flipped! I only had 8 horses on the border, but I wanted to deny the Mongols the chance of building a force of Keshiks. The mongols were at war with the Chinese, so I decided to attack. Within 3 turns, I had captured two mongol cities, including securing the horses.

The mongol war actually went surprisingly smoothly - the mongols seemed far more concerned with fighting a stale-mate war with china on their far border than they were with me quietly mopping-up their cities. I was micromanaging a few cities to increase Shields/turn to 10, 8 and 6 from 9, 7 and 5, to reduce wastage and churn-out horsemen slightly faster. This worked very well, and my forces actually increased as the war progressed. I was also fortunate enough to get a great leader, which I saved to rush a FP in the middle of the conquered Mongol lands. The only other hitch came about when Karakorum flipped, although by that time I had pillaged the only Mongol iron. By 350 BC, they were down to about 4 cities, and basically only defending (although there was the odd archer to kill). In 250 BC, they were down to one city, and that was under sustained attack by china - I must have counted 10 or 15 horsemen that attacked it and died! I took the opportunity to make peace for all the techs that the mongols had - I was very concerned about culture flips, but figured that China would wipe-out the mongols and stop any happening. It was therefore a bit nerve-wracking watching so many chinese horses die at the hands of the mongol spears, but I did take heart that it would make my conquest of China easier!

Anyway - I entered the middle ages in 250 BC, a few turns away from finishing the republic; still in despotism. The tech pace was insane, and by the time I entered the middle-ages, the persians & germans were both building Copernicus'

I detect a difficult middle-ages coming up, but I think I have a reasonably solid foundation to revolt to republic, and kick-off the golden-age of the samuri.

 

[Shillen]

Anyway - I entered the middle ages in 250 BC, a few turns away from finishing the republic; still in despotism. The tech pace was insane, and by the time I entered the middle-ages, the persians & germans were both building Copernicus'

Wow. I'll be very interested to read how you handled being so far behind in tech.

 

[solenoozerec]

@Ainwood - nice picture, but I am not sure that I understand. Is it a growth of your knowledge of the map? If so does it mean that you did not know the map of the home continent at the end of AA?

 

[Shillen]

Yes it does mean that. But the spoiler only requires that you have reached full map knowledge in your game at some point. You don't have to have done it by the end of the AA.

 

[Markus5]

With the advise of TR (Tubby Rower) and others in the Hunting Tips forum, I was able to make it into the Middle Ages and significantly farther.

I stalled near the end of the AA. The tech pace was insane and I screwed up my GL prebuild. Still, the other Civs left me alone and they concentrated on fighting each other. I was in Monarchy and I had a nice build up of cities, but needed lots of infrastructure. That was the first bit of advice I took to heart. I built more workers and started seriously micromanaging things. I turned off research, and bought the techs I needed to advance. I bought a world map. I should have been exploring more, but stopped when I had most contacts. Gemany had the GL in Berlin. I built galleys and swords and embarked on a mission to take the GL from Germany. If I held it for one turn, I could catch up in tech.

Germany was across the ocean, and I lost many galleys, and it looked like Gernany was just too big. But, I finally had a enough to try something. I was beaten pretty soundly, but managed to keep some swords fortified on a mountain. I kept the galleys moving. Then I noticed something. Germany was loosing cities on the edge of its territory. I couldn't build an embassy in Germany, but I built others and found that a dogpile on Germany was beginning. So, I sat and watched as Carthage and Russian Knights and Cavs died against Berlin'd defenses. England didn't dogpile on Germany, but declared on Carthage. In the meantime, I bought my way into the MA. Some time during this melee I thought I'd see a chance. Finally, Berlin defenders were looking yellow and red, and I threw my stack again it. And I came up short! Arrrgh. After calming down, I watched Carthage take the city. 2 rifles and 3 cavs entered. Another two galleys arrived with two swords, a MI (I had bought Feudalism a few turns earlier and got one MI on a ship) and a settler. I saved the game here.

I threw my stack against Berlin, declaring on Carthage. Again I came up short. Well, I gave up on the GOTM rules, and reloaded. This time, I made a ROP deal with Carthage and sat with my 4 Swords and 1 MI right outside Berlin and watched traffic. My reenforcements were several turns away. A turn later, I saw Berlin's three Cavs leave and only one returned - redlined. I easily took Berlin and held it. Carthage could have taken it back but chose to attack the English instead.

A cascade of techs.

Well, I can't submit because of the reload. But, it was worth it. I'm smack in the middle of the Industrial Age.

 

[solenoozerec]

Yes it does mean that. But the spoiler only requires that you have reached full map knowledge in your game at some point. You don't have to have done it by the end of the AA.

No-no-no, I did not ask this question to cast doubts on eligibility of Ainwood's spoiler. I was just curious about the fact that he did not knew the whole map. I think in this game AIs have very transparent policies regarding maps (even world maps).

 

[ainwood]

@Ainwood - nice picture, but I am not sure that I understand. Is it a growth of your knowledge of the map? If so does it mean that you did not know the map of the home continent at the end of AA?

This is simply a conglomeration of my in-game mini-map from all the archived saves. It generated in CivAssistII, using the archive feature (load an archive, go to the world-map view then right-click on the minimap).

It was generated on the saves up to the point where I made peace with the Mongols, traded for all their techs and their world map. I excluded the subsequent saves because it would then show more of the world than is allowed in this spoiler. I gained full knowledge of the home continent and the required techs to finish the AA on the same turn.

My tech pace lagged, and I didn't want to pay extortionate prices for a map that I knew I'd get via conquest anyway. My tech pace lagged because I didn't really do any research (just enough to get the techs I wanted), and I only kept-up as much as I did because of buying a tech and trading it around a couple of times. I was happy to ensure that I had all pre-requisites for the final techs for the AA, so that a peace treaty would get me into the MA. Most of my gold was actually being diverted to luxuries as I favoured larger cities to build units faster (and only had one luxury). I think the slider was around 40% most of the time.

 

[donsig]

Nice long weekend to play the GOTM and it's Diety. It took me less than three hours to get wiped out. Started a war against the Mongols and managed to destroy one city. Then the bloody English settled in the north. The barbs ransacked the orange city so I declared war and took it. Next thing I know I'm at war with most of the known world. I'd have been counquered sooner if the Koreans and Mongols had joined the dogpile.

Did get one great leader and made an army but my little Japan could not fight on two fronts. Both the English and Persians were attacking in the north and south and I finally lost my iron connection. Xerxes made a terrific alliance goading the Mongols into attacking me even while they fought Elizabeth. The Mongols took Kyoto leaving my last city to fall to Persia giving Xerxes a score of over 11,000.

Do we ever play the easy levels any more?

 

[ionimplant]

ptw, open, goal: any kind of culture win

tech contact
4000 mysticism 20%
initial build: warrior, granary, settler, warrior, temple
3850 warrior goes N
3800 warrior revealed two wheat. What a generous map. He also spotted a goody hut but decided to leave it alone
3750
3700
3650 warrior N,N,N and NE, reveal a mountain with another goat. And lambs right beside it!!!
3600 trade wheel for 10g and pottery. Cannot trade for warrior without paying 3gpt. meet mongol warrior revealed the eastern coast line
3400 warrior travel to the southern tip, I was expecting Mongol to be there but all I saw is ocean..and a goat on a mountain!
3350 with a potential chock point to the south, I sent my lone warrior to it instead of exploring the upper part of my continent.
3300 it turned out I need 3 warrior to block and culture expansion will easily get rid of it… but I only get 1.
3250 and horse is spotted around the choke point
3000 wealthiest nation in the world: Me! of course with 10% research
2710 2nd warrior started to explore to the north, revealing the cow and horse immediately.
2470 Korea.
2430
2390 see the green border and according to crpmapstat it's persia instead of greece
2150 traded mysitism and 175gold to Korea for alphebat. Traded alphabet and 24gold and 4gpt to mongol for WC and BW
2070 ottomas and china met me.
1000BC

590 BC, peace with Mongol. I razed one of his cities and conquered one. He offered Monarchy and nothing else. Traded to russia and ottomas (the two relatively slow civ) for currency, construction, MM and entered MA in despotism. Revolution coming this turn.
most civ ahead of me by the republic. Persia is the tech leader with feudalism and engineering
i know i played a poor game. the early temple was a waste of shield. mongol expanded very fast and ruined my city position plan...

20K is impossible after i realized that i forgot to build the library when literature became availble to me. and i think it is impossible anyway considering AI's wonder building speed in this game.

 

[denyd]

All was going pretty as I was even on tech entering the Middle Ages and had 10 cities and was friendly with everyone. I managed to settle another four cities when things went bad.

In about 850 BC, a Korean 10 unit SOD moved towards me. I managed to get 4 swords and 3 spears there in time to defend my most northern city. I traded ROP & Monarchy to the Mongols (the only one needing it) for an alliance against Korea. The next turn everyone had all the first level MA techs while I was still 30 turns from Engineering. About 7 turns after that the first 2 Keshiks were moving thru my land. I was still managing to hold off the neverending wave of Korean archers, spears & warriors with my swords & horses. I even got a Great Leader that was en route to my capital to build the Great Library. However, I had stripped my southern cities of defenders to stall the Koreans. Then things went from bad to gameover. The Mongols signed peace with Korea and declared on me. I lost seven of 14 cities and my exposed GL before I got my turn and just resigned in disgust as I had four of my remaining seven undefended and within reach of the Mongols. With neither opponent willing to talk peace, it was game over man, anyway.

 

[ionimplant]

@denyd, i can imagine your anger when Mongol broke its primise. sometimes the game just depends too much on AI's performance. on levels below deity, that normally can be handled... but not at the initial phase of a deity game.

 

[Ronald]

OPEN, going for victory (at deity I never know how the game turns out, if everything goes well: domination )

I believed our famous fog magicians and moved my settler SESE and established a four turn settler factory there. Build order was warrior, warrior, settler, granary and settler from then onwards. I was first thinking of only building one warrior to get the second city 2 turns earlier but decided that the possibility of earlier contacts are more worth.
With earlier contacts I was pretty sure that I can trade pottery, so my first research project was mysticism.
The early trading rounds with Korea, Mongolia and China gave me all of the starting techs, mysticism turned out great, I could trade for writing and IW.
Now I could research literature and was able to trade it for MM, HBR, and mathematics.
The next research project was polytheism. I was beaten to that by 3 turns, but still was able to do some nice trading (mostly thanks to a suicide galley).

I became republic in 1250 BC and entered the middle ages in 1050 BC.

To my big surprise and enjoyment, the persians built the great lighthouse. The one civ which has no ocean front. I love it.

My staticstics at 1000 BC (nothing special happened between 1050 and 1000, so I give the statistics at the end of the qsc period to make it easier to compare to others):

14 cities, 41 population
my mighty army consists of 11 workers and 1 galley
1 granary
8 temples
2 barracks
5 libraries

 

[Paul#42]

my mighty army consists of 11 workers and 1 galley

no military at all?!? Strange, some were backstabbed for leaving some towns unprotected, others get away without even MP.

 

[Shillen]

no military at all?!? Strange, some were backstabbed for leaving some towns unprotected, others get away without even MP.

I see a trend in how many cities people have to whether the AI attacks them or not. I think the AI is more impressed if you have 14 cities and no military than if you had 8 cities and 8 warriors. One thing I'm fairly certain of, the AI really doesn't care whether you have undefended cities or not when it comes to war declaration. Sure after they declare war then they'll pay attention to those empty cities, but not before in my experience.