*Spoiler* Game 5-6 France - Full Map + Industrial - CLOSED

[Wolp]

Mac 1.29f B2 OPEN

This was the first game in quite a while that I kept a log of events. I definitely enjoyed this new victory condition as well. It made me think out my moves prior to making them, almost like chess. Usually I play by the seat of my pants and get bogged down in the Industrial age without a clearcut plan of victory. This time I tried very hard to focus on the objective, Comercial Domination.

PRE-GAME THOUGHTS:
After reading the pre-game posts I figured that I would need to have at least 1 Settler factory and probably a worker one as well. We need lots of cities! I would "play nice" so I could trade and gobble up luxuries and resources like nobodies business. I would try for the Great Library , which I always do, to keep up in science and build markets, banks, courts and aquaducts. Our Comercial and industrial skills mean use roads and rivers!

TIMELINE:
4000 BC: Moved settler SW after W to cow.
3950: Paris founded, build que is war, war, set, war. Research Writing 40 turns.
3750: First warrior explores N-N-N
3600: war2 E-E-S
3550: West coast found
3400: German border spotted to NE!, w2 sees S coastline.
3250: Contact with Germans, trade alpha and mason for war code and bronze +10 gp
3000: Orleans founded, buildin Pyramids.
2900: French warrior sees grapes...WINE!!!!!!!!!
2750: Land off West coast spotted.
2710: N coast found, starting to look like we are on an island... with Germany... alone...That is not good.
2630: Leipzig founded.
2390: Lyons founded on SE shore, great place for Colossus!
2110: Writing. Berlin has only 1 spear defending. Rheims founded.

At this point I needed to switch plans. I could not coexist with Germany on this small an island and win. That also completly screwed up my thinking on how to win. If I eliminate Germany that left only 3 trading partners, not enough to get the gpt I wanted.

2070 BC: Tours founded, dyes hooked up. Researching Phil at max, sending warriors and archers to Germany.

1830: Trade writing for Cerm B. and wheel; follow GR setler heading into my territory.
1750: Ger founds Konigsburg --WAR! lose archer, but warrior destroys city.
1725: Philosophy
1650?: Peace of Iron working. No IRON!!!
slight pause to regroup and build archers. All cities building units except 1.

1475: War declared, take Leipzig from mountain perch.
1400: Marsailes founed
1325: Chartes founded

At this point my notes get even worse as I was really enjoying pumping out settlers and tring to kill the Germans. My military performed very poorly without getting any leaders and actually only one elite warrior was formed.

~800BC: Aztecs built Pyramids, I had switched off it so as not to get an early Golden Age. Germany was destroyed around 700BC.

Without a leader I had to build all wonders and FP from scratch and this slowed me down considerably. After the Germans were defeated I pumped out settlers and workers and no more units. I placed the ones from the war in coastal cities and used the slider to keep my people happy, researching at max all the time.

590BC: Republic!

I finally got a galley and settler to the "Iron Island" at 150BC and my spearman got Polytheism from a hut! I can't remember when I built the Great Library and Colossus, but the Library was a waste. I was researching at max from early on straight to Ecconomics and so got Education shortly after building the library. I should have switched but didn't want all that production to go to waste...

Middle Ages hit at 50AD. Sent out Suicide galleys and 2nd one saw purple after 3 turns at sea in 480AD. 2 Galleys drown but the one that saw the coast makes contact with Iroquios in 490.

Trade Lit for all contacts and maps. Land a spear on Barb Island to pop hut but only get 50gp. Suicide mission and galley doesn't even wait at spearman gets overrun.

Built Smiths in 780AD, all cities are building mkts, aqd, banks, courts with some libraries and universities in the early cities. I am not concerend with other civs as they are very far behind and broke. I start to build up my treasury but keep buying imrovements so that by 1000AD I can see getting 1500 gpt with a golden age, but my treasury is only at 3K. At this point I stop researching Magnetism and set the slider to 0 and build up money. Traded for lux and all the gold I could get, not much and sent a galley with 2 musketeers aboard to other continent. I had 10 turns to build Leo's but decided to trigger GA with muskets to get there quicker. Landed off Zulu coast at 1050 AD.

My treasury was 9141 with 996 gpt (24 units, 22 to Zulu, 79 maintenence)

Declared war on Zulu and attacked an archer. Lost the first battle, but won the second. GA triggered but I didn't have enough gold yet!!! Had to wait 3 more turns to fill the coffers and in 1110AD Comercial Domination was achieved with 15, 933 gp and a per turn income of 1,585. My Score was a pitiful 1144 and I was 1 turn away from building Leo's. I don't know if waiting one turn and building that would have improved my score as Cracker said time was more important than any other factor.

All-in-all, my best performance I think. Due mainly to the fact that I acually thought out each move to see if it was working towards the objective. Lets hope this victory condition continues in some form in later games. I would go with 20/2 if a comercial civ is used, 15/1.5 if a non-comercial.

 

[Txurce]

Great game, Wolp. Finish date is the only factor, the way I understand it, except in the case of ties.

 

[Melifluous]

Why is everyone so obsessed with score here?

IIRC then it is FINISH DATE and not score that counts here...

Its a medal game, surely score would only be used if you had the same date as someone

Fast games are good

Good game Wolp

Melifluous

EDIT: Great minds Txurce

 

[Wolp]

Originally posted by Melifluous
Why is everyone so obsessed with score here?

Score is what traditionally you look at to see how well you did. With no bonus for victory in the game it just looks bad that's all.

I am used to seeing a higher score.

IIRC then it is FINISH DATE and not score that counts here...

Ah, what the heck does IIRC mean anyway. I know most of the abervs., but not this one...

 

[Melifluous]

Sorry ...

IIRC = If I Remember correctly.

IIRC

melifluous

PS. Very very good time though

 

[Wolp]

Originally posted by Melifluous
Sorry ...

IIRC = If I Remember correctly.

IIRC

melifluous

PS. Very very good time though

Melifluous THANK YOU! Damn that was bugging me.

 

[rabies]

1.27

A change of pace for me. The game flew by fairly fast...mainly because i took no notes during play..so I will have to summarize from memory - and the replay.

Victory. 15k +1500gpt achieved by the French in 1250 AD.
Did not make it to the industrial age.

The game was divided into two distinct sections:
A. Building settlers/cities while being sneak attacked by an agressive Germany in 1750 BC and the 2500 year war that followed.

B. Pressing the space bar a lot as banks/improvements/wonders built and constantly monitoring my F1 screen for the elusive 1500 gpt. It was kinda like watching my grass grow...

My overall strategy in this one was to self build both the pyramids and smiths to trigger a GA and hopefully meet the criteria. I felt the pyramids were critical given that getting my cities big fast would certainly be the main factor in getting to 1500 gpt fast...and Smith's was a no-brainer here. I also wanted to squeeze in Bach's and/or Hanging Gardens for Happiness. I had no plans to build cathedrals or even libraries/universities. I was going to stick with the bare minimum...harbors, aquducts, marketplaces, courthouses and banks. Many temples were also built, then subsequently sold when happiness was no longer an issue (well into the middle ages).

It all started with Paris being settled in 4000 BC. I build 2 warriors then a settler. I believe Pyramids may have started soon after that. By the time I had about 4 cities, an agressive Germany captured the undefended city of Rheims in 1750 BC with a spearman. He followed up with nearly a half dozen or more archers as I scrambled to get units built to defend. I nearly lost Paris twice....and I thought the game would be over quickly.

This is one game where i am sure the predator players had a MUCH harder time. Germany with all those free units so early was very, very difficult for me to defend against. I almost threw in the towel a couple times. I did eventually get several barracks built and got a city up to 10spt...which did nothing but produce archers for a looong time. When I finally got horsemen, I took the attack to Germany and removed him off our island in about 10BC. For my troubles, I got exactly 1 GL who was used for a FP in former German lands. I would not bother to eliminate Germany (who had managed to sneak a city on the small island to the west) until about 500 AD.

I then settled into 'builder mode' as I had nearly a half dozen suicide galleys never make contact. I would never build any more military units..so my strongest units ever were my 20 or so Horsemen and 5 archers (left). No other units were built.

My master plan did not exactly work out...due to my own stupidity in triggering my GA. I built the following Wonders pretty much in this order:
Pyramids (Paris) - 1200BC
Great Library (Paris) - 30 BC - No techs gained from it
Great Wall (Paris) - 290 AD
Smith's (Paris) - 500 AD
Sun Tzu's (another city) - 890 AD
JS. Bach's (Paris) - 980 AD
Copernicus - 1220 AD
Magellan's - 1240 AD

Things were going well..and I probably would have won much, much sooner..but the great wall accidentally triggered my GA prematurely. it was meant to be a pre-build for the hanging gardens...but the Iroquois beat me to it...and I had nothing to switch to. I didn't think anything of it, but I had forgotten that Germany had built the Great Lighthouse and I had captured that city. The building of the Great Wall then triggered my GA in 290 AD...well before I was ready..my 2nd core was barely in place at this time. The result was that I came pretty close to the 1500 gpt mark by the end of my GA (about 1050gpt if I remember)..but no dice.

The rest of the game involved tweaking everything I could think of to get 1500 gpt asap. Buildings were rushed, all cities on the mainland had banks, marketplaces, etc. They were all grown to 12 as fast as possible, by grooming lands..and using my old settler factory as a worker factorty to speed them up. Nothing. I stagnated at around 1390gpt for hundreds of years. I was worried that I would not be able to get it beyond that until the industrial age - and corporation. I even switched to Democracy (which helped a bit), and shot the lux slider up to 40% to get all my cities in WLTKD. Incidentally, this did not seem to do squat for my corruption.

In the end, I made contact with the other civs shortly after navigation. They had no gold to offer for a long time, but I started gifting them techs for luxuries. They were WAY behind when I met them....which surprised me on this level. I was already in Democracy and only two of them had just reached the middle ages. Aztecs never made it.

Finally, in about 1200AD, Hiawatha and Shaka both had a surplus cash flow. I sold them some techs for about 120 gpt and reached the elusive 1500gpt in 1250 AD. I had the 15k long before.

About techs, I pretty much was on full research all game. Towards the end, I slowed it down to net about 300-500gpt to get my 15k, but I was still researching (without libraries) at about a 7turn pace. I bee-lined for both republic, then Econ. Once I had those two, I get Democracy asap, then Music theory, then I started filling in the rest. I had all techs for the middle except Metallurgy (2 turns left) and ToG by my victory.

In hindsight, and looking over other reports, Had I not bothered to try to build the hanging gardens and simply waited on smiths to trigger my GA, I firmly believe I could have achieved the goal somewhere around 600-700 AD...which is about the point where i got 'stuck' at the 1200-1300 gpt level. My GA was easily giving me about 300-400 gpt even back in 290AD.

Ah well. Given the rough start, I am fairly proud of the game. I was certainly odd not having hundreds of units to control.


...and finally, a pic of the initial core on victory day:

 

[rabies]

Originally posted by akots



So, some little tricks were used to squeze that 300gpt from the rivals. This was done by loaning the gold for 0% exactly like the GMC/Ford. You trade to AI lets say 300 g for 15 gpt. Or whatever free gpt they have. Next turn, they can have some more, lets say 10gpt, and this is bound by trading 200 g. In the end, I had to make several negative rate deals with Aztec and Zulu by trading 290 g for 14 gpt and similar to increase the gpt income.

Arrgghh! If I had thought of this, I could have finished many, many turns earlier! Brilliant thinking!

@Greebly: Your game sounds very, very similar to mine...and our dates were pretty close. I notice you had a much better handle on corruption than I did...even in republic. Can I ask you where your FP was? In hindsight, I should have built another city NE of Berlin like you did to use more of those coast squares.

 

[Yurian]

Predator 1.21

Plan 5-6:
Tech: Writing-Philosophy-Code of Low-Republic
Build: Forbidden Palace
Tresure: GOLD-GOLD-GOLD
Golden Age: Smith's Trading
------------------------------------
1350 BC: German declare war.
My forces: 5 Warr., 4 Arch., 5 Hrsmn.

1175 BC: There was a miracle - the leader was born.
(Build Pyram. in 0008 - may be flipped Munich);

975 BC: Revolution;
775 BC: Republic;

610 BC: Palace Jump;

10 AD:
Strange, but nobody builds the Colossus.

70 AD: Hang.Gard. in 0002;
150 AD: Colossus in 0012;
170 AD: Golden Age 4465 Gold; Economics 7t;



350 AD: Commercial Domination Victory.

End game.

Very short, but very interesting game.
Thanks Cracker!

 

[Txurce]

Yurian, once again, an amazing game. Did you expand beyond the starting continent?

 

[King Of America]

Conquest class; PTW 1.21

Fun game; my first win in the GOTM/Tourney.

I won in 1816, which was a little slow...

The Germans attacked me fairly early and after three rounds, I had to decide if I was better off with or without them. I let them live, with three cities and kept traiding with them. In retrospect, I should have thrashed them.

Barb island was a good training ground for my troops and got me a few cities.

My suicide galleys got within 1 space of Iroquois territory 2-3 times before dying. I was surprised that they did not contact me. Contact made after Navigation. By then the Aztecs were dead.

I was surprised how little infrastructure the I's had. I founded 2 cities, built a harbor and ala Moonsinger, roaded my way into their meager trade network. That was the first harbor on their huge continent.

My GA was too early (ancient era) which may have slowed down the win.

And, yes, Cracker that certainly was a nice touch, asking us to gain economic domination with only the most aggressive civilizations...

On to Korea, bless our "Seouls"....

 

[DaLightHorseman]

just finished one hell of a month. called over a friend to check out the power supply, he replaces motherboard,cpu but assures me the power is good. of course while he is here everythings great. as soon as he leaves.......seems everytime the smallest power fluctuation, automatic shutdown. very annoying.(try explainig to wife that wet hair is a good look, no,no don't use the dryer)
cannot remember too much, spent too much time cursing the computer, here goes- set up a 4 turn settler/warrior early, decided to cream biz and handbuild FP in for a second core, triggered GA way too early for any sort of plan,did not bother sending galleys against the squids, only really expanded off my island to get the iron.slowed research for a while, i cannot remember why, seems pretty stupid as i needed stock exchanges to tip me over 15/15. did not use other civs for much trade, they were too busy fighting.
did not use loans as they seem unrealistic, then again my 4/4.5 and 8rcp can be challenged as well i guess.
this was a good fun game cracker, thanks for your efforts
played open,1225ad 15/15, have no idea of score
korea will see me with a new power supply or a bald wife

 

[deadloss]

1.21f, Open

Congrats to you King Of America!

I too had my first GOTM win on this one - although it's titled 'Game 5-6,' so maybe I can't class it as a GOTM win. I dunno. Anyhow, a win's, a win, is a win. And it's nice to have one under my belt after three previous fails.

For me though it was 1983 I think when I won through. Which is even later, and I regret not thinking earlier about the tinkering I could have done to have completed the game in circa 1966 if not earlier. Things like taking all the entertainers out of each city's population and putting them to work on the tiles just to get the extra gp needed to take me over the two thresholds.

At the end of my last posting, I had sent over several galleys to the eastern continent to thrash the living daylights out of the Zulus but in the end took only three cities - one of which flipped back - and settled for peace whilst stockpiling my troops over there. I had approx. 30 tanks at the ready when the victory conditions suddenly stared me in the face.

It's true what they say though, that you know at a certain stage of the game that you're gonna win. It was certainly the case for me...

...although in this case, the nature of the victory wasn't so obvious.

 

[civ_steve]

v1.21f

After finishing GOTM23 on the 30th, I gave my French citizens 10 days to complete a commercial victory for 5-6; I'm happy to report they only needed 9! Commercial Domination reached in 740 AD, with a Firaxis score of about 1300.

Pre-Planning: This victory condition really intrigued me. I was pretty confident that the requirements could be reached in the Industrial Age once Hospitals and Stock Exchanges were available, so I wanted to achieve it in the Middle Ages. Since there were only 4 other civs (and fairly snarly civs at that) I knew I couldn't depend on their development to provide much gold for me. Looking at a development of about 20 size 12 cities, all with marketplaces and banks, in Republic, and assuming that extra commerce due to Rivers, Coasts and bonuses was offset by Corruption, my civ would generate about 1000 gpt. If I kick in a Golden Age, it goes up to about 1500, which should do the trick. Timing of the GA is critical - it can't occur too early, and Navigation and Economics should be known. Since I consider the lower track of Middle Age Techs to be relatively unimportant for this game, I plan on building Wonders to start the GA. There are several Commercial Wonders that are desirable and timely, but only a few Industrial Wonders. My plan is to build Great Lighthouse ASAP to assist in any ship exploration (standard Naval movement is NOT as conducive for suicide galleys as differential Naval movement), and build the Hanging Gardens as late in the MA as possible. If this doesn't work, than Gunpowder and Musketeers will be necessary.

Early Turns: I moved the Settler off the BG to found Paris. Learned Pottery right away; build Warriors to scout, then a Settler, then set up the 4-turn Settler Factory. Found Germany pretty quick (just great). Pretty much had the local continent scouted and decided that I needed all of it to build my 20 cities, so Germany had to go! Had a gut check moment right around 2000 BC; I had a Warrior/Settler stack off to found a city on the river to the North, and there's a German Archer/Settler on the other side. And ... I have a bare settler on the coast to the NW with a German Spearman adjacent to it. I'd already been trading with Bismarck, and I decided to gift him 2 gpt; he stayed happy and I founded my 2 cities. BTW, I did buy an early worker off Bismarck, which really slowed him down.

Ancient Ages up to Republic, Contact with 2nd Continent - 130 BC: I researched fairly aggresively in this game: I didn't want to fall behind the 'other' civs. My growth was faster than Bismarck's, and I ended up with about 60% of the continent, including the river to the North. I also got to the Iron Island first, and had 4 cities on it to occupy it. In 610BC I finished the Great Lighthouse, and started the German War. My 12 high stack of Horsemen secured the continent for me over the next 400 years; the Germans survived, since they had 3 cities on the Big Barbarian Island, and taking it over was nowhere in my plans. A GL-assisted suicide Galley contacted the other civs in 470 BC; the Zulu were quite alive, the Aztecs and Iroquois were at war, and all were slightly behind in Tech. The German war ended in 250 BC, and I revolted to Republic (6 turns, ending in 130 BC). I gifted the Germans into the MA, hoping they'd get Monotheism as a freebie, but they got Engineering instead. Oh Well! (This did cause those hundreds of Barb Horsemen to come out and trample on the remnants of German society, which was kind of humorous.)

Middle Ages, pre GA, 130 BC to 590 AD: I maintained a good research clip during the MA; I'd built a handful of libraries, and was researching around 8-10 turns/tech. Mono, than Theo, Education. The other AI's now had Feudalism and Monarchy, so I traded/sold to them, and started on the Hanging Gardens. They had also started on HG, but with much smaller cities than mine, so I was confident I'd beat them to it. Banking was next, and all those partially built Cathedrals and Universities were quickly switched to Banks. At this point I actually tried to get Banking in everyone's hands; I wanted them to get as much commercial development as possible, so they'd have more money to give me. Paris had been converted to a 1 turn Worker factory, and was helping bring the other cities up to their maximum population. Astronomy was learned, and I set my research rate so that Navigation would be learned right after the HG were completed. In 590 AD I built HG, and started my GA.

Golden Age, 590 to 740 AD: I set the research rate to learn Navigation in 1 turn. Now I could trade for the Luxuries the other civs had, and reduce my luxury rate. This gave me about 1000+ useable gpt, so I can now definitely reach 15000 gold over the next 20 turns. Over the next 14 turns I continued to develop my cities; those with Banks already would build Explorers or Horsemen, which would be disbanded in other cities that were still building commerce improvements. I didn't want to use my treasury to rush anything at this point. I maintained a low research rate to learn Economics, and pre-built for Smith's. Anyway, I reached 1500+ gpt in 710 AD, and finally had 15000 gold in the treasury in 740 AD. Several cities hadn't built their banks yet, and I still had 3 turns to go for Smith's, so by the end of my GA, I could be getting about 1800 gpt!

Here's a picture of my main map:



This is my F3 screen. Palace, in Paris, has a red square; FP has a green square. The workers had very little to do at this point; I'd add them into cities as needed. I was maintaining about 4 spears and 4 horses in case the Germans decided to enact some revenge; the rest of the army is on it's way to a disbandment center. One thing to note is the concentration of cities on the coast: I wanted to take advantage of every coast/sea space available to me.



Here is my F1 screen. The AI is providing less than 100 gpt, so it's good I didn't depend on them! The gpt value is both my Net gain and my useable gain; with a Temple, Marketplace, 5 Luxuries and Hanging Gardens, my size 12 cities are balanced with 6 Happy and 6 Unhappy citizens, so I don't need any commerce dedicated to Luxury. In addition to Temples and Marketplaces, my main cities have Banks, most have Courthouses, and if appropriate, Harbors and/or Aquaducts. There isn't a Cathedral or University anywhere!



In my initial plan I underestimated the amount of River, coast and bonus commerce available. Corruption ran about 12%, and I'd say the bonus commerce ran about 20 to 25% so more commerce was available than I'd planned for. I had 15 fully developed cities, most at size 12, and another 4 that were within 3 turns of finishing their banks, so my civ development nearly matched my original plan. The other civs are contributing about 100 gpt, and building Wealth adds another 40 or so. Also, I believe that France normally gets +1 Shield/+1 Commerce for size 7 to size 12 cities; in this game France appears to be modded because I saw that these cities gained +0 Shields/+3 Commerce, which certainly helps and would contribute another 100 gpt or so over my original estimates.

I enjoyed this game as a specific challenge game. The isolation allowed unhindered development along a desired path; learning Navigation just in time permitted explosive commercial development during the GA. Some suggested a 20000/2000 gpt goal. I thought the 15000/1500 gpt was the right level: it allowed you to try for a MA win, while the higher level would almost necessitate going for a later IA win, or building more cities, or have lots more civs to siphon gold from. Thanks, Cracker! I'm off for some Korean BBQ; I hope to stay out of the coals!

 

[Ronald]

v1.21f

After quick expansion and building a FP North of Paris, I started to build up infrastructure. As soon as germany builded the pyramids in Berlin, I started a short war to destroy them and get the pyramids.

Next I performed a palace jump to Berlin and got a nice productive island.
I was hoping that it will be enough to build marketplaces and banks to reach the 1500gpt.

The strategy was pretty clear to me: Research as quickly as possible towards economics, build Smith trading for a golden age and hope that this will be enough to reach 1500 gpt (the 15000 cash is no problem at all.

In 660 AD I finally managed 1500gpt. I really liked this game. Firaxis score 1507.



This game was a perfect end for the first season of the medal play series, in the sprit of the games 5 of the old tournament. Thanks

Ronald

 

[karmina]

1.29f open - Commercial Domination Victory in 1355 AD

My first game to submit (I needed a vacation from Korea24 this weekend ). The game seemed really easy for monarch diff...and indeed I *could* have finished many turns or even centuries earlier if I were more stringent on choosing the necessary techs, AND if I had been sooner aware of some neat rules I not noticed until entering the Industrial Age:
1. Workers/settlers can be added to metropolis (>12)
2. Stock Exchanges are BACK!
3. Wall Street available after SEs, not banks.

Also, I spent far too much effort on building up military up to and including riflemen - just in case the 3 rivals (which I discovered fairly late but then were WAY behind me) might launch some attack on me - and, well, for the fun of cleaning up northern barb island .

The Germans were wiped out early, with horsemen only. They declared war first, but hadn't any forces to attack seriously, giving me enough time to assemble about 6-12 horsemen and a couple of archers (and spearmen of course). After taking Berlin and two northern towns, I got the rest (+construction) for a final 20-turn peace, during which we switched to Republic.

Most surprising to me was the fact that soon after finishing off the Germans, France never again spent a single coin on entertainment (admittedly, we got all GWs except Pyramids, Oracle, Lighthouse, GL and SunTzu's)

 

[Megalou]

Originally posted by Melifluous
Sorry ...

IIRC = If I Remember correctly.

IIRC

melifluous

Indeed, THANK YOU! I've been on the verge of losing sleep over this one. What is so appealing about all those abbreviations...argh, I am getting old...

I o u 1. How 'bout that one?