6otM 104 AAR

Planktonic · Feb 25, 2021

CV T196

Enjoyed playing game 105, so thought I'd try out game 104 as well.

Like others, couldn't resist the temptation to eliminate Japan and also Netherlands. In my case, though, it earned me an Emergency from both Aztecs and Maya. Since I hadn't met any other civs to that point, does that mean that for the length of the Emergency I wasn't exerting any tourism pressure at all? That was pretty early in the game and may have set me back a bit....

Well, eventually focused on science as well and got to Flight which finalized the win.

Mistakes (among others): not developing and sending trade routes early and late to research Cartography. But this is my first sub-200 turn win (thanks Monopolies), so still pretty happy overall.

Planktonic · Feb 28, 2021

So I did a small experiment with this game. I'll post about it here in case others are interested- apologies if this is out of place.

I knew I hadn't played the actual game all that well; I did not appreciate the power of Kublai's leader ability to both climb the tech/civic trees, and to potentiate tourism via trade route, among other things. I'm not a top player, but also felt that being on King difficulty meant that the game would be very tolerant of my inefficiencies (which it turns out it was). I have also looked over the past GOTMs and there are many that look interesting to try, but I've already played many of the civs on lower levels of difficulty and would like to try something further.

So I decided to see if I could replay this game but on Deity difficulty, both as a test for refreshing some of the older GOTMs and also as a test of myself to see if I could get a CV at that level with a civ (Mongolia) that isn't especially designed for it. Forum member Naamarauta had described (in the GOTM Master List thread) a way to do this, and I resolved to try it. I created a new single player game with the same settings and using the same game and map seeds as he had described.

It did not go exactly as planned. My first spawn (it soon became clear) was by the Eye of the Sahara, on the other continent. This was too far afield, so I re-rolled. My second spawn was across the Caspian Sea from the original start location by Torres. I explored the area a little and of course came across Paititi, but also came across the first neighboring civ- Kupe. I had not specified which opponent civs to use, thinking the game/map seed must contain that info, but apparently not? So I re-loaded again, this time specifying the opponent civs that were in actual GOTM 104. I still spawned across the Caspian Sea, but rather than keep rolling I decided to play through it. As it turns out, the opponent civs were in fact the same, but had been slightly displaced, in that Cleopatra was on my continent and Hojo was on the other continent. The locations of their capitals, and locations of all city states were also all scrambled from the original GOTM 104 locations; in a way this made the game better, since it significantly limited the utility of my foreknowledge of the map.

So how did the game turn out? It was actually really fun. I settled near Paititi, got a religion and chose Reliquaries. Got a fairly fast pantheon but Religious Settlements was already taken so opted for Earth Goddess. With a Natural Wonder start, I managed to get to a Golden Classical and faith purchased some settlers. I was able to settle/secure monopolies on four luxuries. Then at some point Egypt surprise DOWed me after severely forward settling me; the visibility enhanced horsemen were able to decimate her UU archers, and she still had unwalled cities. I took two, and two more succumbed to loyalty. I could have taken her capital but that would have surely eliminated her last city by loyalty as well, depriving me of tourists, so made peace. I then concentrated on cultural infrastructure, and especially got Mont St. Michel and St Basil's built in the capital (as well as ToA and Oracle; I've never been able to build that many Wonders in a single city before at Deity, not even with Babylon). The I started turning out suicide Apostles and watched the tourism climb, at the same time collecting Great Works through Theater Squares. One problem was that I never got a Voidsingers invite- I only managed to find two goodie huts (the other civs must have cleared the rest) and no invite. I finally managed to join at the end of the Medieval, after achieving Secret level visibility with Montezuma. With the Industrial I also started turning out Cultists, to essentially suicide them by expending their charges to generate more Relics.

Things were going well until Lady Six Skye surprise DOWed me. She had > 400 bpt in science (mine was in the 150s) and a much larger military. But all my cities were walled, including many with Medieval Walls, so held out. I made another major mistake: I wanted Gustav Eiffel to help build Cristo since the vast majority of my tourism was religion based, but a misplay on my part and the Maya war short circuited that plan. I also suffered a setback when my ally the Aztecs eliminated Egypt from the game, decreasing my tourist count.

It ended up not mattering. I was still at war with the Maya when the CV took hold at turn 218/219. The power of the monopoly multiplier overcomes all.

Two interesting observations: Apostle-generated Relics gave only 2x multipliers when placed in Old Gods Obelisks, but gave the expected 3x multipliers when placed in temples or Wonders. And I had a single trade route to the Netherlands which expired; rather than just renew it, I redirected it to a different Dutch city. This gave me another Eureka and Inspiration where I had not expected it.

Anyway, looking forward to the next GOTM.

GrandpaCat · Mar 1, 2021

Cultural Victory, turn 325.

I liked some aspects of the map. The protected harbor area to the east of the capital toward Mitla and the two identical lakes west of the capital were a nice touch. But I didn't like that I had the only waterway to circumnavigate because of ice.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
Earning gold. I went with the Owls of Minerva and used Gilded Vaults to pump out gold and culture at the same time.
I mostly stuck to policies about adjacency bonuses and trade routes. At the end, I had 21 trade routes from a number of Commercial Districts and Harbors.
- Did you bother with Religion?
Religion definitely helped my game. I founded Taoism first and spread across the whole continent early on and then cruised at a steady 100 or so faith per turn which was enough for me to pump out land units via the Government Plaza building and Rock Bands later. But I never even added the third and fourth beliefs because I used that faith to build units consistently against Japan.
- How did you pump your Culture?
This was the most Wonders I have ever built, or collected (outside of Domination). I built the Golden Gate Bridge, Taj Mahal, Great Lighthouse, Hermitage, Macchu Picchu, Chichen Itza, Temple of Artemis, Colossus, Huey Tocalaii, Alhambra, Masoleoum of Halicarnassus (2 turns away). Ten wonders, with most around the gulf to the south and east of the capital. I only had a couple handfuls of Rock Bands. Germany closed their borders to them right after mine got in the first time. They were the main adversary in that Victory objective.
- Were City-States helpful?
Yes. There was a city-state emergency with liberating Kabul from Maya so I was able to use to gain some west coast territory in addition to offsetting some diplo hits from occupying Japan. Otherwise I had suzerainty of most city-states.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Japan DoWed at maybe turn 100 out of nowhere. I ended up taking them out and in turn restoring Amsterdam to the Netherlands, since they had lost their capital to Japan.
- How important was the extra policy slot?
In quantitative terms, probably a great deal, but it didn't feel that way from maybe the mid-game on.
- Did you enjoy the game?
I did. Slowly but steadily wiping out Japan kept me occupied while building wonders and getting cash. This was my first Cultural Victory. I usually don't like this play style because it's harder to pull off at the higher difficulties levels to which I aspire; for example I struggle to build half this many Wonders. There were still many left on the board by the AI. Normally this would never be the case at higher difficulty levels.

Kudos to the GotM Team! Thank you.

Arnold_T · Mar 2, 2021

DanQuayle said:
CV T98
...

Hey Dan, good game! Looks like we finished on the same turn (425BC), but I believe under the tie-breaking rules for GOTM you get the Gold Medal. Congrats!

leif erikson · Mar 6, 2021

This game is closed for submissions as time has run out.

You may continue to post here and attach saves if you wish. Results will include games above this post.

Rutseg · Jun 24, 2022

Cultural Victory T143, Score 892, Time 16.5 h

Looking for a culture game to play I decided to give a try to this old GOTM game. The starting position and Civ made for an interesting start. I went with an unconventional settle out of fresh water over the cows. My hopes to build an aqueduct to the mountain resulted ruined by the spawning of the horses. Well, there was a lot of food and production and in the end I think it compensated to a certain point, but anyway my largest cities were 2nd (to the western floodplains) and 3rd (to the lake south of Torres).

Plan
I went with an early religion and reliquaries approach, but I was unlucky and found no relic and none of the civilizations produced enough missionaries to sacrifice my martyrs, this part of the plan was not successful at all (I traded a couple late relics from Cleopatra at T129). Fortunately the secondary plan constructing 11 theater squares and beelining Printing while fighting down Hojo and Willhelmina worked much better. In the end I had to declare war also on Lady Six who had been my only ally because she was doing just too much culture.

Early game
By T43 I had already an army and declared on Hojo and Willhelmina to steal a settler from Hojo and then take his second city. I let his capital remain alive after stealing from him a second settler. Then, I took Mitla, and followed taking 3 more cities from Willhelmina. I left Tokyo and Amsterdam alive for the tourism to pour on those civs.

By T100 I had 13 cities (5 conquered) and made peace.

Rest of the game
After the wars, I started to build as many Theater squares and wonders as I could while expanding reachable areas where there were luxuries to exploit the monopolies system. Being a Continents map I should have prioritized going after Cartography, because I failed to find a path to the other continent with my galleys and apostles, mainly due to a wall of barbarian galleys on the west.

Finally I found the other continent, entered in contact with all the other civs, traded some relics with Cleopatra and increasingly obtained more and more tourism from great works while starting to build some bateys and going for Flight. Ultimately I feared Lady Six growing culture will delay me and went into war with her, but I achieved victory 10 turns later anyway.

All in all an interesting setting and civ!

Spoiler Full log :

6otM 104 AAR

Planktonic

Warlord

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Planktonic

Warlord

GrandpaCat

Chieftain

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Arnold_T

Prince

leif erikson

Game of the Month Fanatic

Rutseg

Chieftain

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