BOTM 07 First Spoiler

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 07 First Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 07, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You must have reached at least 500 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not discuss anything post 500 AD.
• Please do not discuss any events in locations or reveal of the map not reachable before caravels.
• Please do not name any civs that are not contactable before caravels.

 

[whb]

Contender

Happily, although I have Steam version of BTS, I blitzed through this game quickly enough that it didn't update until after I'd submitted. Pure coincidence -- I had no idea a patch was coming, but phew anyway. But that does mean remembering it is a bit trickier! (So forgive me if I mix up this and any other games I played recently!)

I found myself sucked into not settling for a few turns. My warrior went NW, and saw the sea -- while it wasn't a useful bit of sea immediately, it persuaded me to send the settler a bit NW too. And every step for a turn or two, I thought "ooh, actually that bit a little further over looks nice". I think I ended up settling on a hill by the river at the coast.

I noticed that in games against the AI, Portugal expands very rapidly indeed, so I thought I'd give that a go. It seemed to work pretty well. Especially after I found out who I was sharing the continent with. I didn't want to go to war (actually I very rarely have an early war, but especially not this time) -- Mansa being the only leader I know of who will trade techs even if he thinks he's the only one who's got it. So rapid expansion towards Mansa became very important, as I wouldn't want to take land any other way until Astronomy. We had a nice friendly co-operative teching party for the first part of the game.

 

[Cabledawg]

WHB, I agree with you. When I saw Mansa on the island, I knew that all I had to do was block him off, settle peacefully and me and Mansa could tech trade past the other AI's. Mansa ended up with 3 good cities and a crappy 4th one. I blocked him pretty well. I seriously doubt those who went to war with Mansa early teched as well as I did.

Since I was able to see what he was teching, I would research something else...it was like he was my friendly vassal.

 

[Nioco]

I did the same as you both. I settled one east from starting position and blocked mansa expansion as much as I could.
I managed a CS / oracle slingshot in like 1100 BC after looking each turn at mansa marble in fat cross capital with fear. Managed the circumnavigation around 500 AD and I am far ahead in tech with all other civ so far. Using monarchy/pacifism.

Planning a rifle invasion conquest victory supported by the very powerful dike as...my production is really crappy at the moment.

 

[JerichoHill]

WHB, I agree with you. When I saw Mansa on the island, I knew that all I had to do was block him off, settle peacefully and me and Mansa could tech trade past the other AI's. Mansa ended up with 3 good cities and a crappy 4th one. I blocked him pretty well. I seriously doubt those who went to war with Mansa early teched as well as I did.

Since I was able to see what he was teching, I would research something else...it was like he was my friendly vassal.

Great minds think alike. I did the same thing, except Mansa only had 3 cities in my game.

 

[kcd_swede]

Contender save, settle in place.
Wanted to try something new, so I went for cottage spam strategy. Also blocked off Mansa, held him to 4 (pretty good) cities. Stuff went very slowly up to 500AD, making me think I should have just played my normal style. But economy is pretty impressive, so I'll wait judgment until I find everyone else and see how far behind I am. Maybe with Mansa's help, I won't be so far behind. But I did divert my economy strategy early with a war against Mansa, that got me one city, and a quick peace, and lots of trading repaired relations fairly quickly... so I don't know if this cost me, but I think it probably shows my inexperience with this strategy.

Lesson learned: don't try a whole new game style without first doing some test games.

 

[AgedOne]

Before the World Began
We are a creative and financial people. We imagine that we can use these attributes to become the most intellectual and advanced of any peoples that we meet. We are also a trusting people. We can send out our settler parties unescorted, without fear of attack by heathens.

The age of early settlements
We had wandered along the banks of the rivers, but felt that the constant flooding would be something to avoid, so our first home - Amsterdam - was founded just towards the higher ground, amid a good mix of forests, hills, and grassland. The bananas would come in useful to support our people.

We learned how to mine the hills and chop the trees, and sent our working parties to farm around the bananas. One we had the secret of bronze working, we understood the significance of the copper deposits that we found nearby, and our workers could dig a constructive mine to obtain it. We also learned how to build roads to connect up these useful resources to our home.

Our people had explored the nearby area, and had met the Malian peoples, led by Mansa Musa. We kept our eyes on them with a little suspicion - especially those skirmishers of theirs.

Completing our exploration, we realised that useful settlements could be built towards where the sun sets, where there are cattle - and out to sea, clams to be had. Another potential site lay in the jungles, where mighty tusked beasts lived.

Amsterdam grew, and grew again. We needed to begin new settlements, and grab the best locations before the Malians got there (although we were not enemies of theirs). Something in our nature made us want to seek out the coasts

Our second fledgling colony - Utrecht - was founded by the cattle-lands and grapevines. With access to the sea, we began building small boats.

An age of Achievements
Probably the most significant event of our civilisation's early existence was when we discovered silver in hills that we had already mined! This proved a huge boost to our commerce income.

We had just begun work on a gigantic pyramid structure outside Amsterdam, and this unexpected discovery helped lift the spirits of our people still further.

Having got used to the idea that the Malians and ourselves were alone on this land, it came as a surprise when we met some strange inhabitants of a small village to the west. They told us of their adventures out to sea They were evidently fearless seafarers and had travelled far out of sight of the coast, but still found no sign of another land. Shortly after telling us this, they vanished. Maybe they sailed away...

Throughout this time, we looked down on the Malians, always feeling that our own achievements were better than theirs. Despite this, we got along well. At first, though, we were cautious and would not allow their people to travel freely through our lands. We did not want them claiming all of the best spots before we were ready to expand into them.

Once we were able to trade knowledge, we taught Mansa's people to write, and in turn they introduced us to the keeping of animals. Perhaps those horses that were found on the grasslands between ours and the Malian homelands could be put to use?
A little later, we taught them our alphabet, and in return they explained the secrets of ironworking, plus some of their mysticism.

We found the iron that they were speaking of on the western peninsula. We now had 4 or 5 city locations earmarked for the future, and would have to start filling them soon.

The glorious day arrived. We completed our mighty Pyramids. To celebrate, our rulers instituted a new and enlightened form of government - Representation.

We built libraries, keeping to our original dream of intellectual progress.

Our empire expands
Mansa Musa's religion - Judaism - spread to our people, and generously, we were allowed to adopt it as a national belief system.

We began to spread to the surrounding lands. The Hague was founded one the western peninsula, by the iron. Then Rotterdam on the south coast by the elephants and dyes.

We continued acquiring knowledge, and with the introduction of literature, we felt that we needed a great central library to hold the sum of all our learnings. A Great Library was started in Amsterdam.

Almost at once, a wonderful engineer (named in peculiarly non-Dutch style 'Bi Sheng') appeared and sped the construction through to a glorious completion!! Our whole civilisation celebrated the Great Library.

Planning for the Future
We needed to cement our position as the world's science supremos. Our empire is not large enough, and we need to spread to at least 2 new locations. South of Utrecht, by the fruit, dyes and rice, is one. The area by the horses is another (though they are already within our borders).

We directed our research towards Code of Laws, Meditation and Civil Service. Adopted a Caste System and Organised Religion.

We have been ensuring that every city has a library - a small reflection of the mighty one in Amsterdam. Now we are looking at monasteries and courthouses.

Great scientists have begun to appear, with our first academy founded in Utrecht. I'm sure it won't be the last.

It has been a strangely quiet and smooth progression for our civilisation up to this point. Our greatest fear is that we will make contact with other civilisations from far away lands, and will find them to be fabulously powerful - or, worse - stupendously advanced compared to ourselves. We shall see.

 

[MarkM]

I pretty much did same as everybody else, went east with first settler to try to block off Mansa expansion. He had 6 cities ... at his peak ... but I don't know how many he had at 500ad. In any case he only got one city site west of Timbuktu, immediately to SW (Djenne, at the top of that inlet bay), I moved quickly and got the north coast site opposite it, giving me a home base for striking at Timbuktu first when the right moment came. I find it hard to imagine limiting only to cities total; in my game he ultimately founded four cities EAST of Timbuktu, plus Timbuktu itself, and finally Djenne. Did those who kept him to 3-4 cities settle some cities east of Timbuktu too ?!?

Anyway I boxed him in as best as I thought possible & watched him focus on religions (Hinduism & Judaism both in Timbuktu; I immediately put a "Wall Street" note on that city ) & then when I got open borders with him, watched him send missionaries my way. Figured I'd just site back and let him do that, and trade tech with him for as long as he could keep up with me. All-in-all I found this game had a fairly obvious strategy: settle in place, explore with warrior to discover island setting, block off MM expansion & trade with him, go for key wonders like Oracle, AP, Pyramids (missed that one to some off-island civ), and GL (MM beat me to that, with his marble). Seems like all no-brainers (but I wait to read what the really clever strategy was that I didn't think of).

The no-brainers here included the capital site, for me. Before starting I read the pregame thread quickly, and marveled at the talk of how the starting position was not very good. Then I went and started the game and settled in spot. Seriously, I never got what the fuss was there, sure there were not any immediate resources, and no sea, but MAN with all those flood plains and rivers, did that city turn into a kick-arse bureaucratic capital once I got Oxford & later Dikes in there. I mean how many tiles were river, something like all but 3-4??? Financial trait seemed to dictate yet another no-brainer, I cottaged every single non-resource square (getting 3 coins per cottage right away for most), except that I left the two plains on the SE edge of FC with forest, as a half negation of the yuck faces I was getting from flood plains everywhere else. This is a monster Oxford+capital site, I'm flummoxed why some kvetched about it. I did think a little about moving one square to settle on the banana and get one extra food right away, but in the end decided it wasn't worth losing those flood plains.

I don't remember exactly where I was at 500AD, but probably either at war with Mansa Musa by then, once he had outlived his usefulness as trading partner & finished my shrines for me in Timbuktu , to take the entire island for myself (and the mouth-watering Timbuktu especially), or preparing else for it. Not much else to say, except that I got Oracle (recall I got CS for it) and also got AP (always a priority in my BTS games). As a consequence of pushing for CS sling and AP I got both Confucianism and Christianity, plus MM got Islam, so there were 5 religions founded on our little island ... probably bad omen for diplomacy later!

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

so there were 5 religions founded on our little island ... probably bad omen for diplomacy later!

Lucky!

I went for Hindu and lost it, went for Confu and lost it, went for Taoism and lost it.

So for most of my game that was trying to be focussed on religion and culture I only had Judaism that spread from Mansa.

Although, I suppose I should be happy that he infected all of my cities without me having to build a single missionary.

 

[MarkM]

Lucky!

I went for Hindu and lost it, went for Confu and lost it, went for Taoism and lost it.

So for most of my game that was trying to be focussed on religion and culture I only had Judaism that spread from Mansa.

Although, I suppose I should be happy that he infected all of my cities without me having to build a single missionary.

Hmmm maybe this is one of those cases where you can try too hard, need to look at bigger picture strategy? Ironically I got all these religions by NOT focusing on them early. My big picture strategy was to get pottery ASAP (I think I even did that as my very first tech, before BW, which is very unusual for me) to get cottages, then -- once I saw MM was my neighbor and we were alone -- get writing to get libraries & working on GS for an academy in Amsterdam, and then get Alpha to see what MM had for trade. He obviously had lots of techs on the religion tree, having founded Hinduism & Judaism, so I got caught up there quickly.

So at the point I got alpha, I got all the mysticism-tree techs from him PLUS the writing tree ones I did myself, and I had some very established research infrastructure: cottages (first thing I did was build a worker & first thing he did was build a few cottages), and libraries to maximize them. So once I laser-beam focused on CoL (to do CS sling), and then Theocracy (for AP), I imagine I probably beat the other civs to them by a healthy margin? I'll have to check what years I got them when I get home. Anyway, the point is that ironically I was best served to be able to make the push for Confucianism and Christianity by NOT going after religions earlier.

In the end I even actually avoided going for Islam, I was already worried that the rest of the world would be monotheistic, but of course since I'm trading with MM, *he* goes and screws it up by getting it

 

[dalamb]

Adventurer save.

Contender save, settle in place.
Wanted to try something new, so I went for cottage spam strategy.

I'm glad someone else is trying this strategy; I read about using it for the Vanilla Catherine, who was Cre/Fin, so wondered if it would work with Willem. I didn't war against Mansa like you did, and haven't been particularly wise in research techs he isn't, like Cabledawg did.

I have a lot of cottages, and not much production in most cities. The "cottage spam" article suggests heading for Communism for State Property soon; since I'm not even a very good Noble-level player yet I will probably try to mostly stick with that article -- though I'm thinking of heading for caravels soon to do more exploring.

 

[Yamps]

Didn't you think that Mansa's head would look nice you know where?

I attacked him with swords, traded with him with a pointy stick in my hands and finished him off when he didn't have anything else to offer. Well, let's see what will happen next.

 

[kcd_swede]

Adventurer save.
I'm glad someone else is trying this strategy; I read about using it for the Vanilla Catherine, who was Cre/Fin, so wondered if it would work with Willem. I didn't war against Mansa like you did, and haven't been particularly wise in research techs he isn't, like Cabledawg did.

I have a lot of cottages, and not much production in most cities. The "cottage spam" article suggests heading for Communism for State Property soon; since I'm not even a very good Noble-level player yet I will probably try to mostly stick with that article -- though I'm thinking of heading for caravels soon to do more exploring.

Yes, I read the article and thought it sounded impressive. I fihgured there would be some differences being BTS, esp with the Kremlin being reduced in power and such.

I also deviated a bit by converting to Judiasm. Mansa spread it to all my cities, and production was so crappy I thought the Org Rel would help a little at least. Since we haven't met anyone else yet, its no problem. I can always abandon the religion if diplomacy demands it later. But I can see that will be a painful decision if it comes to that.
GL was no problem, though. And academys abound. One thing I miss though is a proper GPFarm, the capitol is pulling double duty as GPFarm/Super Sci city. I should have practised this before trying to pull it off, but the article made it sound foolproof. (Alas, I fear I may prove a better fool).

 

[kcd_swede]

Didn't you think that Mansa's head would look nice you know where?

I attacked him with swords, traded with him with a pointy stick in my hands and finished him off when he didn't have anything else to offer. Well, let's see what will happen next.

If I were playing my normal game, there would be nothing left but ancient scripts in a forgotten language to tell of his existence by now. But I think I improve more as a player by trying some different strategies out and see what other aspects of the game I usually miss. I'm not exactly pushing to make the Pantheon of Heros or anything. (Yet)

 

[MarkM]

Jimmy_Thunder, I got Confucianism in 950BC and Christianity in 200AD (info I promised yesterday I would provide). I completed the Oracle and got CS in 900BC.

Also I see, as of 500AD, I had not yet been in any wars.

 

[Yamps]

Didn't you think that Mansa's head would look nice you know where?

I attacked him with swords, traded with him with a pointy stick in my hands and finished him off when he didn't have anything else to offer. Well, let's see what will happen next.

If I were playing my normal game, there would be nothing left but ancient scripts in a forgotten language to tell of his existence by now. But I think I improve more as a player by trying some different strategies out and see what other aspects of the game I usually miss. I'm not exactly pushing to make the Pantheon of Heros or anything. (Yet)

Of course, I also like to try things out. Btw, I've always wondered how do people get fast domination victories, it usually takes me a lot of time to accomplish that. Good city specialization surly helps, I'm constantly trying to improve on that. I'm considering a massive drafting Globe theater city for this game. I've read about it, but never actually set it up properly.

 

[LuckyAC]

I didn't really try to block Mansa off nor did I expand quickly. I only have space for 7 cities, of which I have built 6 and 7th is about to be built. Probably a mistake, but at least I figure Mansa will develop his cities well and I can capture them easily.

As of 500 AD, 6 cities, 292 GNP (1st), 45 MFG (1st), 102 crop yield (1st)
My capital is size 13, getting 147 science per turn at 80% (cottage-spammed with academy and bureaucracy).
My production city is getting 23 shields per turn.
My GP Farm is running 4 scientists.
The only wonder I have built is the Colossus, I should really learn to build Maoi faster, especially on this map.
Mansa and I are friendly Jews, but we haven't really done much useful trading, except for allowing myself to be gipped to backfill things that only cost 1 or 2 turns at that point.

I'll be done with liberalism soon, then my plan is to go to Steam Engine for Dikes, keeping my Colossus, trigger Golden Age, then gloat over my Maoi Statues city.

 

[MarkM]

If I were playing my normal game, there would be nothing left but ancient scripts in a forgotten language to tell of his existence by now. But I think I improve more as a player by trying some different strategies out and see what other aspects of the game I usually miss. I'm not exactly pushing to make the Pantheon of Heros or anything. (Yet)

That's why I like this month's game. What you say applies to me (somewhat) also, I almost always go for an axe rush and early war at Monarch or below, but IMO a thoughtful player should have realized by the 20-30th turn or so (having discovered we were alone on a continent with Mansa Musa) that this would not the optimal strategy. I think there were much better reasons to cage but preserve Mansa than "trying out different strategies," I believe wiping him out ASAP would have been a mistake from the tech progress POV. Furthermore, n my game, because he got those two early religions I was very motivated to let him live long enough to see if he would build the shrines for me too (he did). Unfortunately I let him live too long perhaps (was not even close to declaring war at 500AD).

But maybe I'm wrong, it will be interesting to compare results of those that wiped him out early (pre-alphabet/trading) to those that did not. Without a doubt anyone who wiped him out early is probably a competent civ player, so if they do worse in the long run on average, it will be telling.

 

[Htadus]

This game was full of missing wonders by one turn. I used my second city to build wonders since it was next to Mansa's Capital which founded Hinduism. After oracle it kept on missing wonders like crazy. The capital Built the HG, GLIb and Parthenon during the first phase. No plans as of now but will keep Mansa around as a trading partner.