GOTM69 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[civ_steve]

GOTM 69 Final Spoiler

Reading Requirements:
You may only read this thread if:

1. You have completed and submitted your game.

Posting Restrictions:

1. None! (for THIS contest) As long as its related to the GOTM, and within the forum rules!

[*]Absolutely NO Discussion of any other active 'X'OTM contest!

So, how long did it take for your Russians to win this one? (Or did they?) Did you need the modern era to finish it, or was this game done earlier?

 

[Schalke 04]

This was my second gotm (my first was cotm38). I have some experience with emperor so I choosed the open-class.

The start was not very good. I built a lot of granaries, because I could not spot out a proper settler factory. To the west my expansion was limited by a ring of mountains and the arabs. To the southeast it was difficult to expand, too. My farest city to the east was near to the silks. I didn’t want to expand farther to the east, cause I hate to settle in jungles and these cities would have been max corrupt. Moreover i had no idea how to protect these cities against the germans, so i left the free tiles unsettled.

After this early expansion phase i had no idea which strategy I should choose. I was very far behind in tech and my swordsman army would have been no match for the other civs, they all have been in the middle ages, and I was a lot of techs away from it. So i run on cash earning and did a lot of trades. After that I wanted to free the world from the germans, with a knight army. By claiming the german territory with knight, which I was producing right now, I should be able to protect my empire easily, due to the big lake in the east of the pangea map. While i was developing my plan, the arabs declared war on me and i choosed to change my strategy. I captured the arab cities to my west and the very weak japanese too, because of the sources of gems in their territory. Luckily I got a MGL which was used to build the FP left to the big lake.
After that i traded me to military tradition to get rid of the germans. It was a good strategy, because after accomplishing that I would have only to defend to the west (arabs, ottomans and egyptians). Then the stupid Egyptians declared war on me. I was very annoyed because it crossed my plans, but than I realised that I had a 18-turn ongoing 60gpt-agreement with them. How stupid the AI can be? I used the extra money to bring the strong ottomans in the game with a military alliance vs the Egyptians. Have fun with the Sipahi… lol. To the west I was defending against the Egypt, whose attack was very weak, due to the attacking ottomans. To the south I was fighting the germans with my Cossacks (they didn’t have horses and were very weak because of their war against the Egyptians). A golden ages came along, after I switched from monarchy to republic, which was my government for the entire game. I took the german cities and the Egyptian cities too in the german territory. It was a very bloody and dangerous war for me, but at the end i accomplished my goal. Now the whole eastern and middle pangea was mine. The german territory was dedicated for ics-cities, producing first workers and then wealth and giving me larger unit support. There was no other need for them because all had max corruption.

My fear was that the other civs were in the industrial age right now, but fortunately they weren’t. I traded some techs and was giving a lot of money to research, so I could be one of the first in the industrial age and profit from my extra tech. The ottomans and their sipahies destroyed the Egyptians, who have been the most powerful civ at once. Now the only remaining civs were me and the ottomans, and the two-city-arabs of course.

After entering the industrial age i RR the west-east axis first and later my whole territory. I developed my whole empire with my large stack of workers (there has been a lot of jungles in the near of my FP), who were built in the former ics german territoriy. This took me a long time, but it deserved well. I could built ToE and US, and I was able to get soon to motorized transportation. The ottomans were far behind in tech now, thanks to ToE. I made a strong defense line to my western border, by building civil defense and radio towers in the border cities and fortresses on the near mountains. At this point I had 61 Infantry, 28 Artillery, 35 Tanks and 21 Cossacks. The Military Advisor said, that my Army was weak compared to the ottomans. Then I declared war on them. They came with two Sipahi-Armies (I've never seen AI-Armies before), 30 Sipahi and 30 Infantry (estimated). After two/three turns I destroyed all of them, and didn’t lost even one single unit!!! Now the military advisor told me, that they were weak against me… lol.

The rest of the game was easy and gave me a conquest victory in 1788.
Civ-Score is 3979. I forgot the Jasons-score, but it was more than the Civ-Score.

I hope my english wasn't too offending for you.

 

[tao]

Conquest in 870AD. I did it all with knights, as the AIs were weak for emperor IMHO. Thus no Golden Age (nearly).

Destructions: Arabs, Japan, Ottomans and (Egypt, Germany same turn).

Great Leaders (few) built Sun Tzu's, Leonardo's, army (for Heroic Epic), and Copernicus to trigger my Golden Age after I captured The Great Library. But that was only 4 turns before the end.

 

[Vegasgustan]

Well, the start was quite frustrating. I tried getting some granaries going and moving out to better land, but something just did not feel right. My scouts made it all the way around the whole place and met all our "friends" and once their trading back and forth got into full swing and left me behind I got upset and just quit. I KNOW, I SUCK. Oh well.

However, I wonder if I am not the only one. There was only one reply to the 1st Spoiler Thread, zero for the 2nd Spoiler and so far only two real replies to the final one. What is up with this GOTM? Anybody have any thoughts on this and if so should another thread be started? I hope this is not the beginning of the end for GOTMs for CIV 3 because I need them and the COTMs...I NEED THEM. Seriously, I have a 3 month old and they are my only escape.

CHEERS!

 

[Più Freddo]

There was only one reply to the 1st Spoiler Thread, zero for the 2nd Spoiler and so far only two real replies to the final one. What is up with this GOTM?

These are the submissions so far:

AndySir 28 Jul, 07
archphoenix 17 Jul, 07
Chamnix 22 Jul, 07
donsig 18 Jul, 07
osi 23 Jul, 07
Più Freddo 18 Jul, 07
Schalke 04 26 Jul, 07
silversheep 28 Jul, 07
tao 30 Jul, 07
UB40 21 Jul, 07​

It's summer, I guess. But where are the spoilers?

And where is COTM39?

 

[osi]

I have a 9 month old girl, so I barely have time to play the GOTM's. Escpesially those higher level ones take sometimes too much time... (have to skip them).

 

[Vegasgustan]

Yeah, where is COTM 39?

 

[Twonky]

Domination Victory in 650 AD edit: open class

Seeing this is worth 10.000+ Jasons I should say the result is pretty good by my standards. But there is a lot of room for improvement, as I made terrible strategic decisions.

In retrospect I should have done it all with horsemen and without researching at all. Instead, I chose to research republic and go for cossacks. That plan was doomed to fail of course, since I piled up horseman while researching at snails speed. Just to avoid boredom and ridiculous unit upkeep I started conquering with horses and was – like tao - surprised how weak the AIs response was. So the Arabs fell in 110 bc, Japan in 50 ad, and even Germany in 310 ad. By the end of that last campaign I had even aquired my first and only GL, who constructed the FP in Baghdad in 330 ad. That helped a lot in increasing the science.
Having the Ottomans build Leo´s in 500 ad, a few turns before I would have, was a bit of a setback (I planned to upgrade some 70 horses to cossacks!), but I could trade for Astronomy and build Cope´s instead, which triggered my GA and hence made for a nice compensation. So when Military Tradition came in, I only upgraded a few units that took Leo´s and upgraded the rest afterwards. The Ottomans lasted only for 5 or 6 turns of war. With their destruction in 640 ad, domination was achieved.

I must say I liked the map, it was fun to play and an enjoyable comeback for me.

 

[Più Freddo]

I chose to research republic and go for cossacks.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

 

[megistatos]

A good performance I think. I settled cities at rcp 4, built the fp in one, and built a few more around this. All cities built barracks then horses continually. Destroyed Japan and Arabia. Entered GA by capturing colossus and building GL. Researched chivalry. With knights I destroyed Ottomons then Egyptians and finally left Germany with one city, surpassing the domination limit by almost 100 tiles.
Firaxis score 7690, Jason 9900.

Something interesting: I reloaded the game after submitting and tried destroying the final enemy and going over the domination limit in the same turn. Only the domination victory was acknowledged(perhaps the higher scoring victory condition for 890AD of the two).

 

[civ_steve]

I believe there is an order that the game checks to see if a particular victory condition is met. Domination would appear to be ahead of Conquest, in that case.

In earlier GOTM's some players, for fun, would set up a game such that they could win by multiple victory conditions on the same turn, and choose the victory they eventually got. Usually not the best result, but still fun to do.

 

[neilmeister]

Conquered Arabia, Japan, GErmany, Ottomans and had to take 2 cities off the Egyptians.

The arabs never left the game despite having no ciites. I traded world maps with them several times but it never revealed a city.

 

[Più Freddo]

The arabs never left the game despite having no ciites. I traded world maps with them several times but it never revealed a city.

They had a Settler somewhere, most likely on a Galley.

 

[neilmeister]

They had a Settler somewhere, most likely on a Galley.

That makes sense. I was starting to think something was corrupted because I had other weird things happening.
I captured Sun Tzus giving me barracks everywhere, and late in the game a group of barbs menaced one of my towns. It had no buildings (other than barracks) so I didnt care if they pillaged. The barracks was reported destroyed by the barbs, but it was still in the city view, and about every 2nd time the barbs attacked after that, the game crashed. My reload count wont look pretty!

 

[megistatos]

and about every 2nd time the barbs attacked after that, the game crashed.

I got that problem, but it seems like it only happened when the barbs were warriors. It was a bit of a wind up- I played one turn 3 times but eventually defended the city.

 

[neilmeister]

I got that problem, but it seems like it only happened when the barbs were warriors. It was a bit of a wind up- I played one turn 3 times but eventually defended the city.

Indeed they were warriors.
It took me a while before I killed them as it was 'all hands on deck' against the germans & ottomans. Eventually I got sick of reloading the autosave, rushed a knight and finished them off.

 

[Megalou]

I played a half-milked space race game but tripped over the domination limit in 1300, while discovering Satellites. I'm submitting to increase the fading number of entries. But the score was around 9.8k, base score in the 7ks, so maybe there is a chance of a cow. The trouble started when I raised a corrupt gems town (after Internet). I rebuilt it and lost track of which towns would grow.

Another only slightly less severe mistake was letting Egypt squander ToE on Printing Press and Refining (which I had). This was caused by the idiotic decision to build Hoover Dam even though I never build factories. The Egyptians cascaded on to ToE and I never got any use of the damn Dam. Somehow I was still living with the bug from one of the earliest CivIII versions where you benefitted from hydro plants even though you didn't have a factory. I am after all a long since retired civizen.

I agree that the emperor AI was incredibly weak. Eg there was no declaration of war except for the alliances I bought. Even wonders were hardly protected at all. Maybe the terrain was too poor so that they never left their expansion phase.

 

[Drazek]

My scout noticed a Japanese Chariot escorting a Settler in jungle early in the game. Japan has been weird for ages in GOTMs (like not building spears), but never noticed this before.

I tried to do a research game but gave up as I couldn't get any good research pace.

 

[Lanzelot]

So here's how I fared after the middle ages. (For the beginning see the first and second spoiler.) As I said the successful war against Japan allowed me to catch up with most of the AIs in terms of tech as well as power. Only Egypt was a bit ahead of everybody else. Luckily I managed to get an alliance with Egypt, which I wanted to use to take out the other rivals one by one, hoping to catch up with Egypt on the way and then be able to attack them successfully, too.

However at first this plan didn't work out well: Egypt started the first war very soon, before I was ready, and worst of all, that war was against Germany, with whom I did not have a common border! So before I was able to bring a sufficiently large army into German territory, the Egyptians had already finished them off! And they were very clever here: they began with taking the northern German cities, that way driving the border even further away from me. In the end I didn't get a single German town, while Egypt turned into a super-power . At this time I judged my chances of still winning that game as very dim, considering that I was still on Cossacks and Muskets, while Egypt began showing the first Mech Infantries...

However, the next campaign was very successful again: the Osmans attacked Arabia, I joined forces with them and Egypt followed suite because of the alliance. The very first Cossack attack gave me a well-timed Golden Age, and I was able to conquer the main part of Arabia (including 3 Wonders), while Osmania and Egypt got like one or two towns each.

By this time I was back in the game. I had two very productive cores (the location I had chosen for my FP was great), had changed to Democracy and was turning out a new tech every four rounds. The only drawbacks: Egypt was apparently researching at the same speed, so I wasn't able to close the gap, and I didn't have any coal anywhere within my borders, so I had to pay 50 gpt for coal to Egypt .

Just a few rounds after the Arabian war I decided to keep going and take on Osmania as well: they had coal and incense, which would be very handy to me. Unfortunately this time the Egyptians were better prepared (probably the troups, which had arrived too late on the Arabian scene, were now ready to go). So this time they got a large portion of the booty as well. I think it ended up like 10 Osmanian towns for me, 6 for them. That wasn't too important, as those cities were too far away to be productive for both of us. It was only a bit unlucky that they got the incense!

So now (~1750) the situation was as follows: the only contenders left were Egypt and me, with Egypt ocupying about two thirds of the land and me one third. My population must have been higher than 34%, otherwise they would already have reached domination. The alliance between Egypt and me was still active (!), and as long as they didn't call it off, I surely wasn't going to either! After all, 3 gpt was a low price to pay for the insurance of not suddenly being attacked by them! (The first Modern Armor already showed up among them, and me best defensive unit was still Infantry.)

At that point I thought I still had a chance of pulling that one of. I had won from similar positions already. So I formed the following plan: at the moment, attacking them would be suicide. Even a Cossack Army is no match for a Mech Inf, and their Modern Armors would make mincemeat of my Infantry. But the Tech Tree is about to reach its end soon, and after that they can't get any more advanced weapons... So I'll just research the 10 missing techs that I still need to get Modern Armor, too, then concentrate a while on building a large force (while they will probably put their resources into the modern wonders and spaceship parts...) and then show them that the human military strategy is still superior to theirs... I only hoped I would be quick enough before they finished the spaceship. It never occured to me that culture was critical, too, after all I had built those cheap libraries nearly everywhere.

This plan seemed to work out well at first. I researched the last remaining Industrial Age techs at a 4-turn rate, build more Universities and Banks to increase my tech output for the Modern Age and also piled up a decent amount of Armies that would hold my Modern Armors later on... I had already a good stack of Artillery and I also started building Rardar Towers and Civil Defenses along the border. After getting the necessary tech I also started building Mech Infs and a few Tanks for later upgrading. All the time I kept the alliance with them in order to prevent unpleasant surprises...

And then, when I was only one tech away from Modern Armor, they suddenly reached the 100k culture victory! Arrrgh

But I guess, at that point there was nothing I could do to prevent it, anyway. I simply commited too many serious mistakes early on. After thinking about this game (and after reading a few of the articles in the War Academy) I think I made the following strategic errors:

1. Expanding too fast so that the outer towns were undefended too long. Getting a town burned down by some wondering German archers really hurts
2. Didn't use any forestry operations. (Cracker's article on this was a revelation. Got to try this in my next game.)
3. I never use pop rushing. But I guess pop rushing for an early granary might pay off in the long run?
4. Spent too much time in the expansion phase. I guess on a small map instead of building all those granaries and settlers for a peaceful expansion I should rather have tried the "swordsman strategy" to convince one of the neighbors that I can take better care of his empire...
5. Spent too much time in Despotism! Should have gone faster for Monarchy and should have changed to it right after I got it. Going for a couple of Libraries and Marketplaces first doesn't pay off.

(Any comments are welcome! After all, I'm trying to learn something here...)

These errors then induced more follow-up errors like leaving Egypt's rise to power un-opposed and letting them run away.

The following also hampered my game: first there was no coal in my empire (even after I captured most of the Japanese, Arabian and Osman territory!) civ_steve: how can you give us such a map??
And next I put too high a value on Armies and on Artillery. In C3C they are really useful, and as I didn't play a Vanilla/PTW game for ages, I was too used to the way they work in C3C. But not having the extra movement point as well as the slow healing rate makes Armies not so important in PTW! And it appears to me that Artillery is much more effective in C3C as well, is this possible? It takes ages to reduce a simply Infantry in a town from 4/4 to 1/4. Most of the shots are misses, the others mainly reduce the population or destroy the precious improvements like marketplaces, graneries, aquaeducts... When I finally capture a town, there's nothing left in there! So I guess for the next GOTM I have to rethink my military strategy... (Unfortunately I will definitely not be able to finish COTM39 on time, so I will have to go for GOTM70 again.)

But playing my first GOTM was really fun! I finally got to playing and finishing a serious and long-drawn Civ3 game again (with a full-time job, a wife and a two year old daughter it's not easy to get an undisturbed afternoon once in a while... ) and the people on this forum are really nice!

Hope I'll get enough time to submit GOTM70 as well
and see you all again then!

 

[neilmeister]

I finally got to playing and finishing a serious and long-drawn Civ3 game again (with a full-time job, a wife and a two year old daughter it's not easy to get an undisturbed afternoon once in a while... )

this is spooky... are you me?