[PTW] GOTM172 Japan Deity - Spoiler

[Più Freddo]

This is the thread where you tell us the whole story of your game and how in the end you did -- win, lose or retire.

Only read or post in this thread when your game is ended and successfully submitted.

 

[templar_x]

i managed to finish this before leaving for some winter holidays with my little one.

conquest in 580ad, felt not so difficult for a Deity game. just warming up for the Sid COTM game...

i settled in place, settler first had no alternative, as Pottery was not ready and there was no prebuild anyway. filling up our own Island and sending out ships for a while. causing diplomatic havoc between everyone else soon after i could. full steam towards cavs, starting the GA as soon as i could with a Samurai, which came late enough.

had enormous luck with leaders, as i never experienced it before in my whole civ career.

will post more details and some pics later.

t_x

 

[templar_x]

my original core, picture taken in the last turn:

and the 2nd core:

maybe i had the workers concentrate too much on my original core and should have sent all of them to the FP area in the south of the starting Island/continent. but i decided to optimize my original core instead.

t_x

 

[templar_x]

log:


BC

630 research of Republic

610 enter Republic

590 enter MA

AD

90 1st MGL allows me to rush a FP

270 my first GA chance, and it works out


Before the GA, i had one very rare 1-turn worker factory running on the western spot with the three cows. Sweet. I had chosen that very spot for this reason.

During the GA, a town north of the capital could maintain a 1-turn worker factory.


350 MT in, research stopped

360 Babs gone, Ragnar next

470 GA ends

500 Aztecs gone

510 Germans gone. The ships I had prepared to take the islands arrived just in time.

540 Zulus gone

570 England gone, one last ship i saw when searching all seas carried no settler obviously

580 conquest victory


Elite victories and MGLs:

III 1st MGL in 10ad, lucky me (i spared an e chariot for that, and it paid off!)

III 2nd MGL in 320ad

IIII 3rd MGL in 350ad

IIIII IIIII I 4th MGL in 410ad

IIIII 5th MGL in 440ad

IIIII III 6h MGL in 490ad

IIIII IIIII IIIII


Makes a total of a whopping 6 MGLs with only 48 elite victories, the first 3 MGLs spawning within only 10 e vics! Lucky me, this time!


t_x

 

[Più Freddo]

leaving for some winter holidays with my little one

Will you manage to create GOTM173 until 1/1?

 

[templar_x]

i sent everything to you before logging in now. you have got mail...

Edit: actually I sent everything to AlanH and he is so friendly to set everything up. hope you all will like the game and you Piu can for once participate.
t_x

 

[Captain_Jack]

After Action Report
GOTM 172
Japan, Deity



4,000 B.C. Kyoto is founded in place. A worker is built and Alphabet researched.

1125 B.C. My warriors pop pottery and I settle lands haphazardly.

900 B.C. German settlers appear in my backyard! I attack them, capture two workers, and put my slaves to works.

Trading with the Zulu I push the wrong button and give them Code of Laws as a gift! (They subsequently declared war on me two separate times despite my generosity.)

690 B.C. Peace with Germany

370 B.C. We become the Japanese Republic

10 A.D. England and Zulu make demands that I reject. War is declared, but no decisive outcome is reached and peace ensues.

530 A.D. Zulu makes demand for spice. I reject. They do not declare war.

650 A.D. I have NO iron. Zulu declares war on me again and I capture his border town and get Iron. Now I can make Samurai. We settle on peace for minimal gold.

1290 A.D. England declares war for no reason at all other than my vulnerability. I generate a leader and make an army of Cavalry. This army is shockingly ineffective and eventually dies at the hand of English cavalry. My cities fall one by one to the English. The other nations join in the fun and declare war.

1300 A.D. I suffer a conquest loss. I am declared Tokugawa the Fair.



Lessons learned: Have a potent defense. Who knows when the enemy will come?

I built my cities too far apart. Circle the wagons for defense!

Questions unanswered: Was my balance of food vs shield production askew?

Was my trading good or bad? I think I did ok with it.

No screen shots as I don't know how to do that. Also I downloaded a save, but don't know what to do with it.
Thanks to Piu for making the game. It was very enjoyable.

 

[Più Freddo]

Captain Jack: Consider good city placement, study the laws of corruption and waste. In PtW, use ring city placement and build a Forbidden Palace to create a second low-corruption core. There are some tricks here with Palace Jumps. (In C3C, build the Forbidden Palace in the single core; it doesn't create a new one.)

Also, attack is the best defence. Defensive units are useful only occasionally and mostly at very high difficulty levels.

 

[Cotta]

Well, just finished...

I took the long way when I realised that there was not enough territory for another victory condition like 20k or something else. First 150 turns I wasn't clear if this could be successful so it was typically "Cottaesk" what I was playing...

Result:
Game status: Domination Victory for Japan
Game date: 1270 AD
Firaxis score: 8831
Jason score: 9259

 

[CKS]

20k (actually 20028) in 1846
I settled in place and then put Osaka (where I did 20k) 1 SW of where templar x put Tokyo, so as to have 4 cows. It ended up with 110 uncorrupted shields after a coal plant (which I forgot to sell after building Hoover Dam). I put one city at distance 3 (where templar x put Osaka), but the ring at distance 4 to cut down on Osaka's corruption.
I got most of the starting island settled, plus the island to the east, most of the little tundra island east of that, and a few random other spots.

Trading kept me up in techs until the beginning of the Industrial age, when the AI fell behind while researching Nationalism et al. They didn't catch back up until the very end - I got some useful modern techs via trade. This seemed unusual for a deity game. I wasn't researching so fast, but they were slow.

I got lots of allies when I was attacked, so no wars threatened my core. I did get 2 MGLs in the industrial age, one for an army, and one that eventually rushed the UN. Osaka built two other armies so it could build the pentagon, but I never filled them. One was disbanded to rush the research lab.

Osaka built:
Temple 2430 BC
Forbidden Palace 630 BC
Library 530 BC
Great Library 110 BC
Sistene Chapel 340 AD
Cathedral 350 AD
Colosseum 360 AD
Bach's Cathedral 540
University 560 AD
Copernicus' Observatory 680
Shakespeare's Theater 830
Newton's University 990
Universal Suffrage 1260
Theory of Evolution 1365
Intelligence Agency 1395
Hoover Dam 1445
Battlefield Medicine 1470
Heroic Epic 1495
Military Academy 1515
Wall Street 1530
Pentagon 1590
SETI 1772Research Lab 1774
Internet 1796
United Nations 1798
Cure for Cancer 1818
Longevity 1838
I was one turn from learning Space Flight (and building Apollo) when I hit 20k.

 

[CKS]

I generate a leader and make an army of Cavalry. This army is shockingly ineffective and eventually dies at the hand of English cavalry.

PTW armies stink, unlike Conquests armies. Conquest armies get extra attack and defense power, extra movement, and heal quickly. PTW armies don't get attack and defense bonuses, they don't get extra movement, and they heal incredibly slowly. They can attack more than once if they have enough movement, but they never are healthy enough to do so, in my experience.

There are a lot of differences between PTW and Conquests. When the first Conquest of the month was played, SirPleb wrote up a nice cheat-sheet of differences between them - I think it is in the pre-game discussion for Conquest 01. I find it a helpful reminder for going back to PTW, even though his intent was to help people going from PTW to Conqests. (It is also interesting to read early thoughts about Conquests.)

Also I downloaded a save, but don't know what to do with it.

Take your save from right before you were conquered and submit it here:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/gotm.php

 

[Lanzelot]

i settled in place, settler first had no alternative

I found an alternative: temple first... And then I went for another 20K in the capital. After that had worked so well on Demigod, I thought I should give it a try on Deity as well. As in the Demigod game, I got two ancient age wonders: Great Library and Hanging Gardens. In the middle ages I left Sun Tzu and Leonardo for the AI while going for the more juicy ones, Sistine, Bach and Shakespeare. Unfortunately I lost Copernicus in a cascade (when Leonardo got finished by Babylon), but the rest of the wonders were mine, resulting in 20K in 1705 AD.

Kyoto built:

Palace|4000 BC|640
Temple|3400 BC|1228
Great Library|730 BC|2568
Library|630 BC|1239
Colosseum|490 BC|786
Hanging Gardens|230 BC|1416
Cathedral|210 BC|1053
Sistine Chapel|210 AD|1728
University|280AD|1092
J.S.Bach's Cathedral|290 AD|1620
Heroic Epic|370 AD|984
Shakespeare's Theater|640 AD|1320
Newton's University|650 AD|972
Smith Trading Company|850 AD|393
Universal Suffrage|880 AD|512
Military Academy|930 AD|123
Theory of Evolution|990 AD|351
Hoover Dam|1010 AD|230
Pentagon|1060 AD|110
Wall Street|1100 AD|212
Battlefield Medicine|1150 AD|101
Intelligence Agency|1275 AD|86
United Nations|1355 AD|280
Manhattan Project|1395 AD|124
SETI Program|1400 AD|183
Research Lab|1405 AD|120
Internet|1425 AD|224
Cure for Cancer|1475 AD|138
Longevity|1480 AD|135
Apollo Program|1505 AD|80
Strategic Missile Defense|1610 AD|19
Total|1705 AD|20067

 

[Captain_Jack]

Outstanding Lanzelot. I am incredibly impressed.
Two questions: what do the numbers in the second column signify, and how many other cities did you build to serve the needs of your capital.

 

[CKS]

The numbers in the last column look like total culture from that building.

Great game, Lanzelot!

If I'd suspected that the AI would be so slow to research, I might have gone 20k in Kyoto, though I doubt I'd have finished sooner than 1800 AD anyway. I rarely used the palace as a prebuild until the modern age - I think there was one cascade where I would have gotten caught with nothing to switch a wonder build to. Then I had a MGL and an army prebuild for the modern age, so it wouldn't have mattered much. I surely didn't expect the AI in my game to be still in the industrial age at 1800 AD.

 

[Lanzelot]

Two questions: what do the numbers in the second column signify, and how many other cities did you build to serve the needs of your capital.

As CKS already suggested: the total number of culture earned by that building.
And I built quite a few cities: after the Temple, I used my capital as 4-turn settler factory. I knew that on Deity it is not worth trying to compete for the early Wonders. And I knew that I would need two strong cores in order to be able to compete with the AI research-wise. (A lesson well learned in the Warlord 20K game last summer... See GOTM 169. There I was stuck on my 1-city island, and even though I got most of the ancient Wonders, I lost all of the later Wonders since the AI already finished them, before I even had the prerequisite technologies...) So I founded the first ring and part of the second ring, while waiting for Literature. When it was time to concentrate on culture again, other towns were able to take over the job of expanding further. I quickly built two rings around the capital and one ring around the Forbidden Palace, which was rushed in 530 AD in the southern part of my continent, down by the 1-tile lake with the four wheats.
It was my third MGL: the first one was used to rush Bach's, as the AI was close on my heels at that time, the second one formed an Army for the Heroic Epic, and by the time I got the third one, Kyoto had already collected ~110 shields for Shakespeare and it would have taken another two turns to get the MGL to Kyoto, so I decided to use it for the FP instead. The gamble payed off: my second core finally got off the ground and provided the necessary research to get to Theory of Gravity in time. And also I was involved in heavy fighting at that time and the HE was already completed, so I got another MGL shortly after and then was able to rush Newton's right when Shakespeare's was finished.
(In total I rushed 6 Wonders with MGLs: Bach's, Newton's, Universal Suffrage, SETI, Internet and Longevity. One benefit of playing on Deity: the AI produces lots and lots of units, so there are plenty of opportunities for battles and leader fishing... And being militaristic helps with getting lots of elite promotions.)

Kyoto reached its full potential (size 20, Factory, Coal Plant and fully railed) in 950 AD. Bringing the second core to size 12 took a bit longer: roughly until 1200 AD. Here is a picture of the home continent in 1240 AD:

Spoiler Map :

 

[CKS]

And I knew that I would need two strong cores in order to be able to compete with the AI research-wise.

Did the AI in your game research speedily? Mine couldn't even keep up with my slowpoky pace. I had some trading to do during the middle ages, but basically none during the industrial age. (I did decide not to gift Germany and Babylon into the industrial age, so as to have steam power to myself for a while. Poor Germany never made it into the industrial age at all, though they weren't eliminated until close to the end of the game.)

(In total I rushed 6 Wonders with MGLs: Bach's, Newton's, Universal Suffrage, SETI, Internet and Longevity.

This is why I can't compete in PTW 20k. I don't like warring, and I stink at it, so I avoid it. Consequently, I get few leaders - I rushed 1 wonder in this game. Since I'm not really willing to put in the effort to improve this part of my game, I will continue to lag 100s of turns behind.

 

[templar_x]

@ Lanze - that cow in between Satsuma and Osaka got no improvements??

t_x

 

[Lanzelot]

@ Lanze - that cow in between Satsuma and Osaka got no improvements??

Yes, indeed... I got a nice new 35" monitor with QHD this year, but nevertheless I missed that tile for centuries...
Not really sure what happened. My guess is: when I was in the process of forestry operations, I must have gotten side-tracked by something important, e.g. a pollution to clean up for Kyoto, and by the next turn I had forgotten and never returned to that tile to put the mine back on after the forest was harvested... Something of the kind. But it didn't matter much, as Osaka was already over the magic number for Infantry anyway. I remember I finally noticed it, when I got Motorized Transportation and checked which of my cities could be brought from 45s (Infantry) to 50s (Tanks).

 

[Lanzelot]

Did the AI in your game research speedily? Mine couldn't even keep up with my slowpoky pace.

Well, actually: no. At least not compared to what can usually be expected in a Deity game. But I didn't know that in the beginning... I still had the Warlord GOTM169 in the back of my mind...
But nevertheless I was glad to have a strong core: throughout the middle ages, the AI remained dangerous (as can be seen by the fact that they snatched Copernicus from under my nose...). And otherwise there would have been times, where I would have had to wait with no culture building to build for quite some time, if my research had not been fast enough. Especially the notorious "thirst period" in the second half of the Industrial Ages can drag on quite painfully in a 20 K game. You finally have a powerful city with 100spt -- and nothing to build after the Hoover Dam is finished! In this game, however, this period was short. I used it well by building the 4 small wonders (Pentagon, Wall Street, Battlefield Medicine, Intelligence Agency), and by the time the Intelligence Agency was finished, the Modern Age was only 3 techs away. (Germany and Babylon got Fission and Rocketry. They did not sell it for gold, so I waited for them to swap their freebees among each other (which dropped the price considerably), while doing Computers manually. With Computers being a monopoly, I was then able to trade for the other two. After that there were again 4 nice buildings available.)

 

[Lanzelot]

I had some trading to do during the middle ages, but basically none during the industrial age. (I did decide not to gift Germany and Babylon into the industrial age, so as to have steam power to myself for a while.

I tried to keep 2-3 AIs strong enough to do some useful research by gifting them non-critical techs, luxuries and towns I didn't need. It worked quite ok: they provided at least optional techs like Economics, Nationalism, Communism and Espionage. (I did not rely on them for Sanitation, as I wanted a Hospital in Kyoto really badly...)