[BTS] News: BOTM 183 - Results and no congratulations

[neilmeister]

Well, I wasn't expecting this....no winners! at least originally. I manually changed MarleysGh0st's game to a victory as I believe they were gipped by the fact there was a team (they both 'won' on the last turn, but the game assigned the win to the team... read the final spoiler, it is excellent)

No doubt the hardest Monarch game we have ever had for BOTM, sorry guys.

The stone was certainly favoured by most of you.

Summary of Medal Winners:

MarleysGh0st: 1935 AD Diplomatic Victory, 7,642 points.


Other Award Winners:

zbgayumn: 1470 AD Religious Loss, 1,936 points.

DynamicSpirit: 500 AD Religious Loss, 1,015 points.


>> See the full results here.
>> See the updated global rankings here.
>> See the latest Pantheon of Heroes here.
>> You can see and compare graphic replays of all the submissions here.
>> Award symbols are listed here.

Where everyone settled

 

[Kaitzilla]

Gawas!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

On the upside, everyone who actually completed the game won an icon of some sort

I will forever treasure my place - last in the scores, and with that wonderful red ambulance

 

[WastinTime]

I think you unintentionally made the game harder to win than the SGotM. Originally, you forced us to be in and stay in Hinduism. I presume that was to make sure everyone hates us and attacks us. However, by removing this restriction you set everyone up for a religious loss by letting them join the religious love-fest. The best thing to do was build the AP in any other religion. You then have time to win with any victory condition you want.
Owning the AP was a lot of fun too. (Holy wars, etc)

 

[MarleysGh0st]

I manually changed MarleysGh0st's game to a victory as I believe they were gipped by the fact there was a team (they both 'won' on the last turn, but the game assigned the win to the team... read the final spoiler, it is excellent)

Wow! Thanks, that was much more than the Golden Ambulance I asked for. But now I feel like there will always be an asterisk to those awards, so I feel obligated to argue against your generosity.

You said it was a "bug" that let the team win the tie-breaker, but this entire game was a fiendish set of obstacles to our victory that made this game so much more challenging than usual. Was it a "bug" that all the mountains, ice, etc. turned the map into a maze? Or that the English streets were literally paved with gold (and gems and silver)? That cloning all the "gawas" and giving them the same starting religion stacked the diplomatic situation against us? That there was no oil? That the team would win tie-breakers (an admittedly remote possibility in any game) was just one more obstacle, even if it was one you hadn't foreseen.

On the other hand, when I argued for a literal interpretation of the rules that said the gold goes to the "Highest Final Score", DynamicSpirit replied that "there is an implicit understanding that the medals go to the highest winning scores." I'd certainly agree with that, but I'd say that there's also an implicit understanding that somebody would win the game! If the moderators occasionally give us (unwittingly or not) a "Kobayashi Maru" scenario, then it's fair to hand out the medals to those who go down with ship with the most flair.

Anyway, thanks for a memorable game. I'm curious how nocho's game would have played out if he had more time to finish it, since he seemed to have retired in a much stronger position than I was at that date. And I'm totally in awe of all of the teams that managed to beat SGOTM 15, despite the additional handicaps they were given.

 

[nocho]

You deserved your win MarleysGh0st! No one else won obviously and that bug or whatever it was, was epically cruel... Basically you had it won. Also your write-up deserves a medal!

I'm curious how nocho's game would have played out if he had more time to finish it, since he seemed to have retired in a much stronger position than I was at that date.

Attached a screenshot from my military when I had to call it quits. I had my oil units then in tanks and bombers thanks to Standard Ethanol, so eventually I would have gassed them all out I'm quite sure, but what a slog it was even up till then! Note also my current 93 cavalry while having already lost over 100! Not including the 35 cuirs. From the minimap you can see I controlled the ring basically and started to have significant power over the English too with their gazillion infantry and artillery. Killing it all would have taken quite some more RL hours which unfortunately I didn't have available.

Thanks for the game neil, it certainly was a memorable one!

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Attached a screenshot from my military when I had to call it quits. I had my oil units then in tanks and bombers thanks to Standard Ethanol, so eventually I would have gassed them all out I'm quite sure, but what a slog it was even up till then!

Very nice! You certainly had this game wrapped up, and after only 16:44 playing time. My game clocked in at 36:59:35; although I had left the game running a little while I grabbed something to eat or did other chores, that was essentially all playing time.

One late game advantage I didn't talk about, when I didn't have Ethanol, was pumping out stacks of cruise missiles. They only took one turn to rebase to the front, and Liz's SAM infantry couldn't shoot them down. If you already had tanks and bombers, rocketry had to be just around the corner for you.

 

[Fippy]

I had this problem for a long time now, every game not on deity i lose motivation once i grab resis like gems and gold, or workers from AIs (first Toku in this case).
I stopped playing cos things felt too easy, and while i know it's wrong i feel unable to continue.
(sweet irony, with no winners in this one i would have finished on deity -.- )

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I had this problem for a long time now, every game not on deity i lose motivation once i grab resis like gems and gold, or workers from AIs (first Toku in this case).
I stopped playing cos things felt too easy, and while i know it's wrong i feel unable to continue.
(sweet irony, with no winners in this one i would have finished on deity -.- )

Haha, I have to admit that would have been fascinating to see if you could win this on deity. My suspicion, having played on monarch and read other people's write-ups, is that on deity it would be virtually unwinnable without a great deal of luck. But maybe I'm wrong

 

[damnrunner]

I saw the - "no congratulations" title and thought - this sounds interesting...someone always beats these games, how weird must this have been? So I gave it a try.

Spoiler I failed but ended up having a pretty different game from other folks so I wanted to post about it.

I think I had a more successful start than most. I was able to claim a good chunk of territory early on with one border defined by a gold/sheep/deer city by Japan to the east. The other was a city at the wheat where the narrow strip of land between the coast and mountains opened up near Babylon to the northwest. I founded Hinduism in my capital but didn't convert. I built Stonehenge and pyramids in my capital, Temple of Artemis in the city bordering Japan, and the Colossus in the city bordering Babylon. Fought several skirmishes with Japan and Babylon and got xbows fairly early which were crazy effective.

At this point memory is a bit fuzzy, but at some point larger stacks from I England (maybe also others?) showed up and I realized I was in a bind. I got peace with the UK by gifting a city on the inner ring of ocean near the cow (it flipped back pretty soon after).

I also realized I needed to switch my religion to Buddhism like everyone else to try and win some friends (somehow I didn't think of this earlier and I am pretty sure I had a Buddhist city fairly early on). This worked better than I expected. Again I forget the details but I developed pretty good relations with a few folks and was able to even do some tech trading. At some point I also used a GE to rush the Great Library in my capital.

Once I had built up a stack of catapults I took the two Japanese cities that were between my border city and Kyoto. I then worked on building larger stacks with trebs/maces/muskets to take Kyoto and figured I'd invade Babylon while I was at it since I had a significant tech advantage (and I wanted the horses I knew he had somewhere).

The 2 front invasion went well, at first. I took Kyoto, a nearby Japanese coastal city, and Babylon's border city quickly. Then I saw two HUGE stacks (UK and Zulu) moving through Babylonian territory. I took peace deals from both Japan and Babylon and prepped for defense. I suspected (hoped) that the Zulu were targeting Japan. They were and this worked out great as they took the last two Japanese cities and made a nice buffer with Egypt. The UK though were coming for me and they had grenadiers! I abandoned the Babylon city and retreated. Meanwhile I was trying to slave enough cat/muskets to do some real damage on defense. I also fell back from my old border city and decided to make a stand at a one tile choke point along that narrow strip of land running down the coast. My plan was to let them take some losses on a handful of woodsman units in a forest and then hit them on the next tile with my growing stack (and I was close to having cannons which could turn the tide). However, the UK took ages bombarding down the castle in my old border city which had a notional LB garrison...and then after taking the city stopped its advance. After building up a bit more, counterattacked with newly upgraded cannons and a few of my own grenadiers. Took back my old border city and got peace with the UK for the same crappy inner coastal city I gave them before (and it reflipped back to me again shortly). Then re-attacked Babylon and took all their cities (also the island were we each had one). Never got those horses though as they were on border with Zulu and culture never flipped the tile. During this period Egypt also attacked me which was touch and go for a bit I was able to get Zulu to close borders which kept troops out.

At this point I had a super easy to defend empire and felt like I was winning. Enemy ships had no access (subs would later under ice near Zulu) and my two borders were easy to defend choke points. I kind of went into autopilot with building up border forces and advancing quickly with tech with a few golden ages. Fought a border war with Zulu and with Egypt which each attacked at some point but were easy to push out (I didn't go for more conquest as it would have made for harder defense). I built 3 Gorges Dam and Hollywood and Standard Ethanol for that much needed oil. I missed out on the UN (but didn't seem to have votes for support their either) and figured Space was the only path to win. I also built up a decent nuclear deterrent force and SDI as nukes had not been outlawed.

In 1916 I was about 1/2 done with my spaceship when the UK launched.

Before giving up I looked into if one could defeat a spaceship post launch. Turns out I could if could capture London in something like 10 turns. At 1st this seemed impossible, but in looking closer I realized the UK (and their defense pact buddies Mali/Inca) had zero uranium. A nuclear war would be one sided! And I was only person with oil units!

Most of the world was at war with Cyrus at this time so I bandwagoned to get open borders with Egypt (already had them with Mongols). I then bribed mongols with some tech to close UK borders which would bottle up UK forces and give me a staging area. I started upgrading a lot of infantry and artillery to mech inf and mobile artillery and moved units north. I also began buying naval units in the inner coastal city for an amphibian attack on the city the UK had on its access point to the inner sea. I also positioned air units and tactical nukes in Mongol territory.

I after 3 or 4 turns, I had troops in position and attacked. It went quite well. None of my 6 ICBMs got past SDI, but tactical nukes (lost a few to mech inf?) let me take the UK's mongol border city and inner sea city with few losses. From those cities my tactical nukes could hit a 2nd set of cities and the UK stack that tried to counter attack was also easy to wipe out as it moved through the fallout.

Ultimately though I didn't have enough time. The UK won with space race (I kept playing), the next turn Mali/Inca launched, the next turn I took London. At this point I was about 15-20 turns from being able to launch myself.

Anyhow, seems like the game could have been very winnable if I had noticed the uranium disparity earlier and ruined the econ/production of UK and Mali/Inca with ICBMs before they had SDI or ecology (for fallout cleaning). I am pretty sure there was a window of time where this would have been possible. Tech wise I could hold my own with the other civs.

Anyhow, was an awesome challenging game. Thanks!

 

[Kaitzilla]

In 1916 I was about 1/2 done with my spaceship when the UK launched.

Before giving up I looked into if one could defeat a spaceship post launch. Turns out I could if could capture London in something like 10 turns. At 1st this seemed impossible, but in looking closer I realized the UK (and their defense pact buddies Mali/Inca) had zero uranium. A nuclear war would be one sided! And I was only person with oil units!

Most of the world was at war with Cyrus at this time so I bandwagoned to get open borders with Egypt (already had them with Mongols). I then bribed mongols with some tech to close UK borders which would bottle up UK forces and give me a staging area. I started upgrading a lot of infantry and artillery to mech inf and mobile artillery and moved units north. I also began buying naval units in the inner coastal city for an amphibian attack on the city the UK had on its access point to the inner sea. I also positioned air units and tactical nukes in Mongol territory.

I after 3 or 4 turns, I had troops in position and attacked. It went quite well. None of my 6 ICBMs got past SDI, but tactical nukes (lost a few to mech inf?) let me take the UK's mongol border city and inner sea city with few losses. From those cities my tactical nukes could hit a 2nd set of cities and the UK stack that tried to counter attack was also easy to wipe out as it moved through the fallout.

Ultimately though I didn't have enough time. The UK won with space race (I kept playing), the next turn Mali/Inca launched, the next turn I took London. At this point I was about 15-20 turns from being able to launch myself.

Your game sounds like it was crazy at the end Damnrunner.

Modern warfare in this game is scary at the end.