BOTM 08 First Spoiler

[Simon_c]

Well, at 500 I'm doing quite well. I didn't log the score, but here are the hilights.

Paris settles on south east on the river. build worker, warrior explores.

It quickly becomes clear that it looks like we're on a small island, possibly an archipelago map. A small island means we don't need troops, so I try to rex a little. and try to build Stone Henge when city#2 is out. (StoneHenge 1750BC)

the pair of roving work boats quickly find that it looks like we're on an archipelago map. So I prioritise the Great Lighthouse for the trade route income. It's only later I find out we should have focused on the mainland a bit more.....
GLighthouse in 1125BC
The we go for oracle -> Theology slingshot.

775BC The Oracle & Monothesm on the same turn. so Theology gets discovered by the oracle in 750BC.

the first GProfit in 550 research Col in 320, and the trade or Monarchy in 245 allows the GProfit to pop Civil Servics in 245BC

Even though our power level is way down, I figure it's worth trying for the AP for maybe a quick relegious victory is possible (never got that before). We're on islands now, so even if people don't like us, for being Christian, we'll be OK. (little did I know) so we switch to organized religion and christianity and start on the AP (this was before we popped CS)

We get teh AP in 95BC. We pop a merchant powered Golden Age at 100 switching to no relegion, HR and bureaucracy.

More wonder spamming in Paris, we get the GLib in 355, and Mausalium in 475.
We're first to music in 370

At 500 the Pyramids aren't built, and a GPerson is due next round. I wonder........

Leasons learned.Once we had the GLighthouse, I should have settler spammed like mad. Every city would pay for itself with 3 trade routers. (4 once we got currency)

 

[strollen]

Well I just finished the game and upgraded to 3.17. So I can't really go back and check.

After much debated I settled in place, I really was tempted to go 1 SE to get the crab but decided that in place is never a real bad spot.

Built warrior and quickly determined I was on an island. so I build worker, settler and than went for stonehedge to get the bonus for Charisma since happiness looked like it will be an issue.

I am seldom able to pull of the oracle slingshot, since I typical wait too long to start researching meditation/priesthood, but managed to pull it off this time.

The Confucianism kept me folks (barely) happy until Paris completed the Pyramids by roughly 340 AD.

My second city on the river (by the gold) started working on the great lighthouse. With both stonehedge and oracle, I got my first prophet early so I elected to settle him and get the extra hammers, gold, plus science. I expected to get great lighthouse, but was shocked to also get the Temple of Artemis. Roughly by 500 AD, Tours had gold mine, Artemis, Great Lighthouse, Parathon, a shrine, and a great prophet and of course was making a great profit .

I built lots of cottages by Paris, started work on the Maori statutes on my city to the fair east established a 4th on the fair west coast, and was preparing my first colony on the main continent. Not sure of the exact timing but Paris has either built or will built the GL. I prioritize Metal casting to take advantage of the cheap forges and add extra happiness for gold, and silver. So I was a bit surprised to miss getting Colossus, but considering how many other wonders I got a very nice start.

 

[mabraham]

-Actually choose a state religion. I decided not to have one because the AIs were evenly split between buddhism and hinduism and I didn't have nearly the military to defend against any invasion. This decision worked out ok because I built the shwedagon paya and ran free religion starting in 310, but I can't always count on that in the future.

What are your opinions on this situation? If you're a builder with minimal defense stuck between 2 dominant world religions, do you convert or remain neutral?

I normally play Emperor, and I only have a state religion if it'll get me an in-card with a good crowd of AIs, and not annoy anyone I'm (potentially) afraid of. On Continents, adopt the dominant religion unless it looks wrong for some reason, but plan to be in Free Religion by the time you meet the other continent. On Pangaea, tread very carefully and tend not to adopt a religion. If you're Spiritual in this situation, you can accept the AI religion-demands fairly readily, and jump back out after however many turns.

Khan has serious problems. I mean, he makes a demand from me when I'm at the top of the score list and he's at the bottom (though my power rating sucks), I had no religion for him to get mad at, and we had traded peacefully with open borders all along When I refuse, he declares, and ends up losing a city. He declared on me 2 more times throughout the game when he was more powerful. He would send units through my territory, and I would think "I'm screwed, he's gonna pillage all those towns in my culture city", but he never pillaged a single tile. Is that normal?

That's what Aggressive AIs tend to do - choose war when it isn't really a good option. The trick with them is to get one of them as your pet early on, and bribe them with some techs to attack someone. You take a diplomatic penalty -2 against that target, but the Aggressive guy you bribed gets a permanent "-3 You declared war on us" and maybe some -1s against the target's friends... so usually there'll be some more DoWs later down the track that cement the mutual unhappiness. That way everyone's busily hacking at each other unprofitably, and you can get on with your game.

As far as pillaging goes, some leaders choose not to pillage improvements, some do it with gay abandon - even outside cities they're just about to capture

 

[mabraham]

Challenger save. Opened warrior, warrior, worker, settler, warrior, worker. Teched Agriculture, Mining, Hunting, AH, BW, Fishing, Sailing, Masonry, Mysticism

The plan was to get a second city on the coast up ASAP, and beeline Pyramids and Great Lighthouse. In retrospect I should have gotten Mysticism earlier, so that city number 2 can get access to its resources.

I settled in place (3 food resources is overkill, 2 is just fine) and put city 2 on the coast and river with gold/sheep/marble in the fat cross. I got my two wonders out leaving two forests in city 2, in the hope I'd also get the Colossus. If you're going to spam lots of coastal cities, you may as well have them earn more commerce on their sea squares! I set up a seafood settler-producer south of city 2, a Moai city down the SW corner, and eventually city 5 was on the W peninsula getting double fish and iron. Obviously I switched to Representation ASAP.

The dominant religion seemed to be Hinduism, and I switched to it. I made sure I got out some early galleys and Writing to make sure I got the gain cases for my trade routes. I then bee-lined Metal Casting for both the Colossus and something to tech-whore around (both very successful, used my last two forests for the Colossus). Genghis was already in a war with Frederick, a Confucian hold-out, so I didn't have to bribe a war, but I am still looking to do so. Then I bee-lined Literature for the Great Library with my Pyramids Engineer (combines nicely with Representation), but I missed it by a turn. Then I went for Compass for my harbours, and got more great tech-trading from that.

At 500 AD I've got 5 cities on the starting island, a fish-silver resource camp on the island west, and I've captured one barbarian city on the mainland, with swordsmen on the way to another on the western coastline of the mainland. Courthouses are going around now, and the next job will be to spam the archipelago NW of the mainland, and make sure I get a suitable chunk of mainland. I'll start building the Shwedagon Paya soon. I toyed with the idea of running a specialist economy for a while, but cottages have won me over. I wish I was Dutch, and I'm glad nobody else is in this game (unless they're isolated somewhere).

I have GL and Colossus in the same city making me a merchant - planning Sushi already - and my Pyramids capital is running a forge-engineer. One of them popped already, and I'll save the other. I basically always play for these two corporations unless I'm trying to win by domination before about that time. This map doesn't look like a good one for domination! I guess I'm aiming for a space win, but I might cop out with a late Sushi-culture win if that seems better.

Oh, and I hated all the different green Civs!

 

[kcd_swede]

Oh, and I hated all the different green Civs!

Thanks! I almost forgot to gripe about that. I agree completely. What a pain that was!

 

[blastoidstalker]

Most of the action came later in the game for me. Pre-500 AD was aboyut expansion and building the best economy possible. Knowing that the game ends about 1900 I decided to go for conquest/domination from the outset.


I settled SE of start and eventual put 3 more cities on the starting island. It became apperent quickly that the homewland was not particulaily production rich, so the sights I picked on the mainland and islkanbds had production in mind. I put two cities on each of the closer islands to the east and one city and caputred a barb city on the mainland (by the cows and bananas.) I cottaged heavily.

I only wnet for two wonders the Greatlighthous and great library and got both. The great lighthouse was key for every city i made was coastal and allowerd me the continue to expand.

SO that is the state at 500 AD, 10 cities spread out on 4 different land bodies I am just stsatrting to get ahead of the computer in tech and looking to pop rifling with liberalism and then march over the other civs.

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, contender. Goal: fastest domination or faster diplo or Gold (yeah, I now, no way to get anything if you don't set your goal early).

Checked that the water NW was sea, War 1SW, settled 1SE.

Production: Worker, Warrior, WB(explorer), Warrior because I lost a 96% fight, Settler. Then WB, War, Set, Galley.
Research: AH, Fishing, Mining (decided against cottages, no pop nor worker turns for it, I deemed getting out of the island more important), Myst, Sailing.

The map setup was wonderful and I enjoyed it very much. I hate how luck affects some games, though. After heavily investing in exploration (1st WB was my 3rd built and didn't improve the seafood, but went exploring) I got less than nothing, because I sent it NE and thought for a very long time that I was isolated. Thus I didn't prioritize Alpha, but lots of small tech I could have got in trades.

By the way, I love isolated starts because they require a real strategy for research. In other games you just research Alpha and then beeline in some direction and get everything else in trades. In an isolated start you have to think hard about the comparative benefits of cottages versus chopping, etc... much more interesting.

So my research was severely hampered. On the other hand, my REXing worked wonderfully, having 8 cities in the islands in 1AD (1 too many, I think) and 11 in 500AD, including 2 barb cities in the mainland.

Wonders: GLH (key to my economy, although a barb city was cutting my international traderoutes for all this time), GLIB, NE(in capital), Parth.

1AD stats: 8cities, 38pop. fhg=120,44,247. 101sust bpt. 2Wor,2WB, 3Cha,4War,1Swo,1Gall. Iron, marble, horses. 2happy, 7 health. 57cpt,4spt, 45GPPpt. 3WW,1NW,3GP,0GG. 24techs: Alpha, Music, no MC, no CoL, Constr. 0reli. 2/3 cottages worked.

No researching MC was a monstruous mistake. Since 2 AI had it, I though I would soon acquire it in a trade, but that was never to happen.

Built Sistine's too to help my domination. More about it in the last spoiler.

I learnt something new, you can whip an Axe the turn before you discover CS+Machi and then the following turn you have no Axe but half a Mace in the queue. Not good for an emergency defensive whipping!

By the way, I had only 2 cities in the initial island. Why would anyone build more? There is much better land available through a short Galley cruise!

 

[Bugg123]

First ever BTS game, Contender save, let's see how that goes

Since I didn't really have much clue playing BTS, I started off without a real plan, and just wanted to see how things looked and worked.

Settled with 4 hills in the capitols fat cross (with production and cottages), only filled up with 2 more cities on the mainland (1 east (GP farm 3 foods), 1 west(cottage)). Got 2 cities on the island directly to the east, and got my last city eaten by a barb swords on the bigger island further east.

Didn't get a beachhead on the mainland due to barb cities there and no real army, so researched for the better part of the early game, while exploring the mainland with galleys and a spy.

Got Pyramids and Lighthouse, missed all other wonders. Missed Col by 2 turns etc .. and only researched alpha real late. Despite this I easily found myself techleader at 505AD even though I only had philo at that point and just started education. Never really adopted a religion.

The problem was I wasn't much of a military power at this point. This was balanced by pretty good relations all around, so this being my first BTS game (just got the CiV Complete DVD) I decided to work more towards something peaceful and "known", like Diplo.

 

[Half Nelson]

I settled SE on the coast and developed a solid empire with 5 cracking core cities (2 mainland, 2 on island E (including a Moai Statues powerhouse) and 1 on mainland (on the 4-food spot). Everything screamed “culture” (Ind, marble, islands) so, although I usually give it a wide berth, I made early steps for pursuing a Cultural victory. I built the Parthenon, along with the GL and GLib as early wonders, all by 35 BC. I was first to Alphabet then took the Music/Drama path. I accumulated religions (5 eventually, although I founded none), set out to built the Sistine Chapel, theatres and temples whilst continuing as a Tech leader. I was part of a strong Buddhist block including Fred / Peter / GK and the other AI were reasonably friendly. Things were looking fairly good at 500AD:- I had a small but high-quality Empire, a reasonable-sized military and a strong GL-based economy. I was actually leading in Tech and score. This all-round “strength” was of course a weakness in terms of focus and I was already reverting towards the likelihood of a late Sushi-fuelled Culture victory at best. I was also beginning to notice that both GK and Fred were pressing at my S borders and spamming settlers on the surrounding islands. No real cause for concern as yet. After all, I had 750 turns to sort it all out, didn’t I …. ?

 

[MarkM]

By the way, I had only 2 cities in the initial island. Why would anyone build more? There is much better land available through a short Galley cruise!

Same here. I did build a 3rd & 4th to the W later on, but only after settling the nearby islands first.

 

[Harbourboy]

I was going for Cultural but I will probably not make it. My isolated island strategy was flawed from the outset and I had no idea how to research quickly without tech trades. I did manage to build Pyramids, but really slowly because it took me forever to hook up the stone. Now I am really just waiting for some evil foreign empire to come in and conquer me.

 

[oncable]

I started this game thinking I would like to try a different type of game rather than the cultural that I have been doing lately. I simply got tired of spreading religions and building all those temples/cathedrals. So even though this game seemed to be a natural for the culture game I am trying the warpath. Stonehenge seemed worthwhile for the French, so I built that in the capital. Did the Oracle - Civ Serv thing to get maces asap. Meanwhile an exploring work boat showed some excellent building sites due south so I parked a chariot down there to hold it from the barbs because I thought I'd skip swordsmen altogether and go straight to maces. While researching the required techs I built cities on the islands, alternating for happy and healthy resources . As for wonders: G Light, and Colossus are holding up the economy with a few cottages. I considered the G Lib but decided I needed the maces and cats more urgently. By 160AD the first 2 maces took the barb city further south by the banana and earned some nice promotions that turned out very useful. By 300 AD it was on to Genghis with the maces, cats and a crossbow. I was wondering about which strategy to use, weaken Genghis sufficiently then attack Pericles before he got too strong or whether to finish off Genghis altogether, then take on Pericles. I chose the latter approach. By 500AD I had a total of 12 cities, 6 of which had former owners. As for which game I prefer, I am by nature more suited to building and the culture game but I have to admit the warpath has it's thrills.

 

[oncable]

By the way, I would like to thank the Civ BOTM team and in particular DynamicSpirit for a great map. I had a lot of fun with it!