BOTM 1 Final Spoiler

[Mwoimp]

Ok well this is my first GOTM in awhile. I finished it a couple days after it was released so I don't really remember it too well, but I'll mention a couple things anyway. So I played on Adventurer, started out without a good idea of what victory condition I was going for. Once I realized that I had a good lead in techs and was successfully building many wonders I built the AP and thought I'd try for a diplomatic victory that way. Unfortunately when I tried to spread the religion to all the other civs I found that the Byzantines (at least I think it was them) had the religion civic that prevents religion spread and apparently it's their favorite one so I couldn't expect them to change anytime soon.

I didn't like sharing my continent with Churchill so when I felt I had built my army up enough I declared war on him and with the help of my eventual Oromo warriors, knights and even later riflemen and cavalry I wiped from the continent. (I'm not good at fast wars.) He still had some cities overseas so I made him my vassal and tried peace for awhile.

My capital had been building a lot of wonders and was well on it's way to legendary culture, and several other cities weren't doing bad either so I decided I'd go for a cultural victory. I concentrated my efforts to increasing the culture of my three best cities as much as possible building eventually 4 or 5 different Cathedral things in each city, and using my military to simply hold of attacks from the civs that would occasionally declare war on me. In the end I lost one city on an island a few turns before I won a culture victory in 1868 AD with a score of 26404.

All in all it went pretty well I could probably have had a better date for my victory if I'd worked towards cultural for the whole game. Usually I play on a lower difficulty setting but after the easy victory at this level perhaps I should move up.

 

[orb]

Spaceship loss to Justinian in 2045.

Bought BTS when it first came out, and after a few short games put it away to concentrate on GOTM/WOTM games, so this game was really a big learning experience for me.

Anyway the plan...Domination victory using the Ethiopian cultural bonus to grab a sufficient area.

What happened....Settled in place, found Churchill quickly, decided to rush a settler to grab the river valley between Churchill and I. - Got it. Then decided to build the empire to a sufficient size to take out Winnie before he got his protectionist Longbows.

First war with Winnie was going well. - My axe's, swords and Horse Archers were whipping his archers, York had fallen, London had fallen, my stack was advancing on Nottingham (on the land bridge) when Justinian called a vote to stop the war with the Apostolic palace???? - WHAT. - But I'm winning? - (My lack of BTS experience meant that the power of the Apostolic palace was showing itself)....

OK build a new stack and attack again when I can.- This time with Cats, this time Winnie has the Longbows that I wanted to avoid. - The attack failed on the walls of Nottingham. - Not enough combat units. - Then Justinian stepped in and ended the war again.

This could get really annoying.

So I'd failed to capture my home continent which had been part of the plan to dominate. - OK. - Switch the the rest of the world...I started to build settlers/ galleys to grab the islands. - No joy...By the time I was ready to set sail some other intrepid gits had beaten me to all the best bits. - I picked up a few oversea's Barb cities but that was it.

Then a bit of a play with spy's and what I could do with them, before another war against the English (with Cannon this time) to try and capture the home island. - This too failed, this too was ended by the Palace, this too saw subsequent palace votes returning captured cities to the English. (I have no idea how to stop this so if anyone has any tips then please let me know)

Then with time running out I attacked Churchill again this time whilst he was Justinians Vassal. - The world went to war against me, but this time my Artillery and Marines did grab Nottingham and Hastings before the palace voted to stop the conflict. - The English only had 1 city left on the homeland.

Unfortunately this war cost me a couple of my own cities in the West. - The Byzantine military was far better than my own at this point.

I played to the end just to get some game practise, but to be honest my game was over by about 1000AD when I realised I didn't know how to twin the game by any victory condition.

A fun first BOTM game to play, looks like the new additions have made the game much harder for me at least.

 

[Harok]

Nicely done Harok. I'm still mystified how people can get so far in tech so quickly...my liberalism date was later than I *could* have gotten it, but I don't think I could have managed pre-1000AD, even with my great economy and running at 100% science (I was at 90 or 100 most of the game).

Also curious, what was your final point score? And one more point, do you think that you could have finished as early without warring Churchill (I chose a peaceful co-existence)?

Final score was around 45,000 I almost never play for a high score, I go for speed. I did have a number of fairly large cities only because I wanted to work all the +3 or more food tiles that I could in my GP farms.

I would be surprised if any of the top games, maybe those religious diplo games that I don't know anything about, don't rush Churchill early. I would have been way slower if I hadn't taken him out so early. London produced most of my early settlers and workers allowing my other cities to pump out wonders, and then generated most of my GAs. Getting such a valuable city for the cost of 2 warriors is an amazing return on investment. Its magnified by how tough a protective leader like Churchill becomes once they get archers.

As for speed to liberalism, most of my early effort was focused on science and speed to it. I settled commerce cities first and had enough workers to get the land in shape as quickly as possible. I ran 2 scientists early on so I could lightbulb an expensive tech like Phil, and I built the Great Library which is risky in a culture game but with good GP farms it can be done. I built courthouses early on and lastly I had a 15 turn golden age where I fired most of my artists, except for in London, and worked as many tiles as I could with the 1 scientist I got from the GL.

 

[jesusin]

This gave me a culture win in 1630AD.

I made a number of small mistakes and 1 major one which I am almost too embarrassed to admit. When I got Liberalism I decided to stay in Bureaucracy for a little bit so I could get the extra hammers in the capital for the Taj Mahal and a cathedral, or at least part of them. Unfortunately I forgot to go back and switch to free speech for a long long time.

Well done, Harok!

Appart from the forgetting, the decision to keep Bureacracy to speed up a cathedral was a mistake. (And speeding up Taj Majal was a mistake too, unless there was danger of other AI taking it from you).
How am I so sure? Because we had a lengthy discussion about it in GMinor31 thread (the relevant part starts in post 127, I am sure you'll enjoy it).

I don't know how detailed are your notes... could you please try to do a calculation of the return you would have got if you had done an Academy instead of lightbulbing Philo? And, was Philo in danger or could you have got it first if researching "by hand"?

By the way, could you tell us how many multipliers did you have in each city? Thank you.

 

[jesusin]

...This too failed, this too was ended by the Palace, this too saw subsequent palace votes returning captured cities to the English. (I have no idea how to stop this so if anyone has any tips then please let me know)

I am no expert, but I'll try anyway.

I would have spread the AP religion to all of my cities to give me more votes. And addopted the AP religion to make my votes double.

That failing, I would have voted "defy" instead of "no". If "no" wins, then it doesn't matter if you chose "defy" or "no". If "yes" wins, then you don't do what you are supossed to do (you don't make peace, you don't return the city back) but in exchange for that:
- You get 5 unhappy faces in every city EDIT: in every city with the AP religion on it (is it like 5 consecutive whippings?)
- Your votes are not multiplied by 2, even if your state religion is the AP religion, until there's is another voting, that is passed and you have voted yes.

EDIT: maybe razing the AP city would stop the votings (?)

 

[Roland Ehnström]

That failing, I would have voted "defy" instead of "no". If "no" wins, then it doesn't matter if you chose "defy" or "no". If "yes" wins, then you don't do what you are supossed to do (you don't make peace, you don't return the city back) but in exchange for that:
- You get 5 unhappy faces in every city (is it like 5 consecutive whippings?)
- Your votes are not multiplied by 2, even if your state religion is the AP religion, until there's is another voting, that is passed and you have voted yes.

If you defy a vote that passes, I think you only get 5 unhappy faces in every one of your cities that has the AP religion. Correct me if I'm wrong!

 

[jesusin]

If you defy a vote that passes, I think you only get 5 unhappy faces in every one of your cities that has the AP religion. Correct me if I'm wrong!

You are right. Edited above.

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, challenger. Goal fastest Domination. Result: 1250AD Domination.

*The game:

After so many years of concentrating on getting Astronomy asap, I found myself without anything to put on the galleons.
I launched a very poorly prepared attack on Stalin and failed.The Stalin war was slow and sad. I vassalized him in 800AD (and everybody got a -2 against me). I had built HG and FP, what for? I dunno.

About then, all religions spread to my lands, so I built 1 monastery each just in case.

After Stalin I picked Sury, even when he was the only one with Feudalism. Since I didn't know that the AP victory vote requieres 1 city with the AP religion in every civ, not simply in every team, I didn't dare to kill him or vassalize him, so I gave him peace for free.

The turn the AP was built the voting took place. I whipped missionaries and monasteries like cracy and when the first resolution came I revolted to that religion and got more votes than anyone else, being able to veto any decision. That was a good thing, since I wouldn't have defied the resolution because of my ignorance of the consequences at that time.

Next goal was Boudica, then Darius at the same time. Alas! I tried to use the old "pay me tribute - ok - dow anyway" trick. You know what happened? His tribute paying granted him 10 turns of peace. He was researching Feudalism and was 8 turns away. Grrrr. I am glad they put this new rule, it was almost like cheating. I am not glad that the times don't scale, this is Epic speed, it should have been 15 turns!

By 1000AD I had only 450 tiles out of 813 and nobody had Alpha or Aesth yet. Revolted to CS+Merc+HR to hire some artists. In the final turns planted some 20 new cities and won. I realised that the F8 tile count was not equal to the HOF tile count and was not equal to the HOF tile count of 10 turns before either (?). The HOF was the right one.


*Conclusion:

My worst mistakes were not setting up a coastal production city early enough and going into preparation phase for too long.
At the end of the game, after settling 20 new useless cities, I was still doing positive gpt! That's ridiculously inefficient.


*New BTS things (for someone coming from Vanilla):

- AIs whip for their lives.
- CF is almost an exploit.
- Cats have very good luck. It surprised me at first, but then realised that it is much more easier take the other to 25HP than he taking you to 0HP.
- Trebuchets are great.
- Colonies: couldn't try them because the fist sign disappears with the HOF domestic advisor.
- Intercontinental trades: Wow! Currency is superb now.
- Intercontinental city cost. Hmmm, quite high. -15gpt after the CH was normal. It made settling small islands much much more attractive.
- GG: 1 instructor and 2 attached to Axes that were upgraded to Maces for free (4 units affected every time). Help me, please, what's the best use of a GG?
- The AP is not too big a danger, can be controlled.
- I had my first vassal. Please, help, can I devassalize someone and dow him?
- Epic speed and constant Civilopedia reading can steal 34 hours of your life.


* Other mistakes:

- Elephants require HBR too.
- Revolting to Bureaucracy was a waste in so large an empire. Vassaillage or nothing at all would have been better.
- I didn't build a single spy. With all the CH I built I could probably have got something for free. And even worst, I didn't learn anything about them.


* The more important lesson learned:
I am a builder. When I saw myself on a single continent in such a big world, I thought it would take ages to get to domination or conquest. Once you start moving, though, things get done fast. Just build units, they will take care of finding someone to fight. In this game, WW was a worse risk to my economy than a excess of units.


Good luck everybody. Comments on my game are more than welcome.

 

[Trynthlas]

@jesusin

CF is almost an exploit

What's CF? (I'm sure I already know, but the abbreviation is making it escape me)

- Cats have very good luck.
- Trebuchets are great.

Cats are annoying in BtS vs Vanilla, and Trebs are amazing!

- GG: 1 instructor and 2 attached to Axes that were upgraded to Maces for free (4 units affected every time). Help me, please, what's the best use of a GG?
- The AP is not too big a danger, can be controlled.

GG, depends what you want to do - in your Heroic Epic or other military unit city, I would have one of them build an Academy (once they can) and it will give a nice boost to unit production. In any game where I war, I usually build at least one of them.
Usually you want to use one of the early ones to merge with a unit and super-promote it to Medic III, which gives your stack a REALLY nice boost to healing times. The unit then upgrades for free throughout the game so it's easy to keep him modern.
I don't like merging more than one or two GGs total, though, because they can still die fairly easily, so my favorite option is the Instructor for the XP bonus.

- I had my first vassal. Please, help, can I devassalize someone and dow him?

No, if a civ becomes your vassal through capitulation (you were at war and he said "uncle") you can't de-vassalize them. There are some conditions that are possible for you to then lose the vassal, namely if they grow in pop/territory (or you shrink) to a certain ratio; or if in a war, they lose a bunch of territory.


PS - I know my summary was light on details, but since you are something of a culture victory connoisseur, any comments on my victory?

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

.
- CF is almost an exploit.

This was the main thing that jumped out at me, I need to know what CF is!!

I read jesusin's first spoiler and CF is Cease Fire.

 

[Trynthlas]

Ah, yes, I see - well, yeah I think the AI is a bit too willing to sign Cease Fires if it's losing at all. I've never really abused it, but I can see how it could be taken advantage of.

 

[Harok]

Well done, Harok!

Appart from the forgetting, the decision to keep Bureacracy to speed up a cathedral was a mistake. (And speeding up Taj Majal was a mistake too, unless there was danger of other AI taking it from you).
How am I so sure? Because we had a lengthy discussion about it in GMinor31 thread (the relevant part starts in post 127, I am sure you'll enjoy it).

I don't know how detailed are your notes... could you please try to do a calculation of the return you would have got if you had done an Academy instead of lightbulbing Philo? And, was Philo in danger or could you have got it first if researching "by hand"?

By the way, could you tell us how many multipliers did you have in each city? Thank you.

Thanks.

I debated it at the time but did no research on which was better so I can easily believe I chose incorrectly, thanks for the thread to look at.

I don't keep notes, I use the autolog, replay, my memory, and saves. Unfortunately I don't have a save near that point to get that level of detail from when I lightbulbed Philo. I easily could have researched it by hand, I just never considered it, as I have never played with no tech trading and the slow AI tech rate continually surprised me. Even if I had considered it I don't think I would have created an academy as I had no single strong science city. At that point all my cities, other than London, were pretty even in science rate, and without a single strong commerce city I don't think the gain would have been that great.

My 3 legendary cities each had 3 50% multipliers and a 25% bonus from a stele. The cottaged city in the floodplains also got the hermitage so 175% for 2 of them and 275% for the other. They of course also got the 100% bonus from free speech when I finally remembered to switch to it.

 

[Harok]

@jesusin
PS - I know my summary was light on details, but since you are something of a culture victory connoisseur, any comments on my victory?

I am far from the culture expert that jesusin is but I'll offer what I think were some of the key differences in your game versus mine.

- Warrior rushing London.

- Too many non artist great people. All those spies and prophets are nearly worthless in a culture game. Perhaps 1 prophet for lightbulbing or a shrine although I think a scientist for Phil, or an academy as jesusin points out in my game, and 1 other for a golden age is fine, but more than that and I think you are just slowing yourself.

- Too many wonders, especially non artist ones/non marble ones. Perhaps the culture once doubled is worth it but I just hate building non artist wonders in a culture game unless I really feel I need it. Stonehenge and Great Wall both seem unnessecary to me for this game and they eat up a lot of early hammers.

- Cities settlement order. I am not sure when you settled near the gold/fish/FP (city 4? 5?) but this was my main early research center. It was the first city I settled, other than the capital and London, I built a workboat in the capital and sent it right after the settler, and immediately mined the gold and cottaged the floodplains. The city worked those 3 tiles, built a library and I hired scientists when it grew. I believe this stagnated it at size 5 which was its happiness limit anyway. All the grassland later got farmed so it could hire artists and its research power disappeared later on, but in the early game it was huge and took very few worker turns, which are valuable early on, to get that way.

 

[jesusin]

Thank you for your answers, Trynthlas.

What's CF? (I'm sure I already know, but the abbreviation is making it escape me)

Cease Fire, the "other" option to make peace. The only disadvantage is that you don't get gold or techs in exchange for it, but in a no tech trading game...

Cats are annoying in BtS vs Vanilla, and Trebs are amazing!

I also suffered at first. In Vanilla your first wars' army is 100% Cats. Then you make it 50% strong units 50% Cats.
In BTS you need at least 66% strong units and only 33% Cats... or at least that's what I am feeling after 3 BTS games.

 

[Trynthlas]

Hm, some good points. I really tried to make good use of specialists, and thanks to that plus the wonders I built, I got many many more great people than I usually do in a game:
Gondar (city 2) had 2 spies and one artist settled
Lalibela (city 3) had a merchant, a scientist, two artists, and 3 prophets settled

That doesn't count the scientist and prophet I bulbed with, or the 4+ artists (don't remember) I used to produce great works. Not perfect, but in any case, it's an improvement for me

On the cities - I settled the 4 floodplain city with copper and clams second, and other than my capitol that was my main science city. I shot off that way to block churchill and nab the copper just in case - didn't find the gold until later. The gold/fish city was my 4th, and was a large one that ran some specialists, but wasn't really a powerhouse for me.

I don't really regret the early wonders, and since I started out with non-artist producing wonders in the capitol, I made my second city the GA farm so I could keep the GP pool clean in that city. Perhaps I should have tried to minimize the capitols GP point output, but overall I was happy with my wonder-happy playing

 

[jesusin]

PS - I know my summary was light on details, but since you are something of a culture victory connoisseur, any comments on my victory?

Please, forgive for not having already done it. The main reason not to jump to the oportunity and analyse your game as I did with Harok's is that your style of play differs so much from mine that I felt insecure, even more this being BTS and Prince (no connoisseur at all in this conditions).

I will try now, but please, take my ideas with a grain of salt.

- What on Earth did you want the GW for? There is a fixed number of GPPoints you will get along the game. If you waste your points on a GSpy, that's one less GA you will get in the end. Ok, I see that other GL are more useful in BTS than Vanilla and I see that your stile of play was a WW powered cultural victory, which I have not tried. But, please, tell me, how many GArtists did you get?
- London is a great city. Churchill is a Prince AI. I think the decision to share the continent was wrong.
- Once decided to share the continent, I would have prioritized my settlers. GW before the first settler makes me shudder.
- Did you use your spys for something useful? As I read your spoiler I find that you emphasized increasing your spionage points, but I can't find the rewards you got from doing so.
- Did you hire artists in your NE city or did you always work the mines?
- Nice job grabbing most (all?) the WW.
- Looks like you had very few cottages. If you want some homework, try to get Liberalism 1000 years sooner next game.

Now that I have writen all this, I have the feeling that my words won't make your cultural games better, but more similar to my own...

EDIT: crossposted with Harok's comments on the same game. I see he is also a "keep my GPpool clean" fanatic, did I mention that our playingstyles resemble a lot?

 

[Trynthlas]

I got something like 8 artists total, settled 3 and used the rest to make great works, although GA number 8 came the turn before I won

I actually built the settler from chops while I built the great wall, by switching the production around. The settler finished several turns before the GW was done. On the espionage points, I believe I stole a tech or two from Churchill, but mainly I was able to use them to gain information on all the other civs. With enough of an espionage point lead on a civ, you can see all the demographics about them (which aren't visible in BtS unless you spend EP on that civ), what they research, and eventually you can push back the 'fog of war' into their territory and are able to watch their progress and movements much more closely. Also a bonus, I never had to worry about barbarians once I had a city built, since it prevents them from entering your cultural borders. (GW is one of my favorite wonders). In this game specifically, I got more spies than I expected, especially since they all came from the whopping 2 GPP/turn towards a spy - the first one was good, second was fine, third was a big surprise. I usually like one, two at most (obviously that's if you aren't playing an espionage economy game)

I did indeed hire artists in the NE city, but usually only had between one to three of them, max, until much nearer the final push.

On liberalism - will do I could have gotten it somewhat earlier, but for some reason (don't remember now) I chose not to beeline to it. I'm still definitely working on always building enough cottages.

On sharing the island - in hindsight it was probably a mistake, but despite my barely pulling out a victory in GOTM25 and my relatively easy (though not perfect) victory in this game, I'm still not entirely confident at Prince level. GOTM26 turned out quite poorly for me (but then again, it was monarch and a map style I'm rather horrible at so far).

Thanks for the pointers

 

[SpeedyKQ]

1897 Space Race for me. I made some mistakes, but it was my first pre-1900 spaceship so I was still pretty happy.

I really should have gone for cultural, I could have won sooner, but my last game was a cultural win and I wanted a change of pace.

I waited too long to attack Churchill. I had a small stack of elephants and cats to attack his archers, but I held out for a big stack long enough for him to get longbows. I still wiped him off the continent, but it took much longer than it should have. If I were smart I'd've gone after him with axemen when I saw I was alone on the continent with him.

I don't know how people circumnavigated with workboats. I tried like hell to wrap around with galleys and I couldn't make the ends touch. I must have missed something. I ended up getting the bonus much later through map trading.

Anyways, 'twas fun. A fairly gentle initiation into the world of GotM. Even though I never really reload anymore, knowing that I absolutely can't reload no matter what did make me play a bit more carefully and more conservatively.

 

[JazzTheo]

This was only my 4th or 5th game of Civ4, so I had no real focus on what type of victory I was going for. I made so many mistakes that I haben't much to say. I'm learning from the posts and can only get better. I lost a space race to Justinian in 2021. I was doing ok early on, but I got into a long border war with Churchill over the river valley. I had fun playing though, and did a lot better on Prince than I thought I couold. I've never won a game on Noble as of yet. Oh well, back to the War Academy.

 

[jesusin]

I don't know how people circumnavigated with workboats. I tried like hell to wrap around with galleys and I couldn't make the ends touch. I must have missed something. I ended up getting the bonus much later through map trading.

My workboat also missed that tile the first time. That delayed my exploration a lot and was partially the reason I went after Astronomy.