BOTM 1 Final Spoiler

[da_Vinci]

Well, something has been turned off in the Religious Victory. Haven't you heard about the autovoting rule, the 75% threshold and the joys of going up and down the threshold at will? (it sure reminds me of Sesame's Steet, now I am down, now I am up).

...but I have the feeling that it doesn't explain your situation completely. There was never a resolution to be passed? You know, there has to be a war for the "peace resolution" to be passed, and so on, but none of them is too much. Are you sure you was being elected AP resident?

75% threshold I get, not sure what you mean by "up and down the threshold at will". Regarding autovoting rule, do you mean that all civs must be at least voting members of the AP for a victory option to appear? That I get. Or do you mean something else ... ?

I was the only Christian civ, so the only full member. Resident votes were vote for me or abstain. I got regular victory resolutions, again vote for me or abstain, and was just a handful of votes away on several occassions. Then the victory votes just stopped showing up as a choice, and all that came up were vote for the resident (me or abstain). Those I won every time.

I think that perhaps having entered the renaissance (or maybe industrial) age might have shut off the victory votes. After I got MM, the resident votes stopped as well. I can't think of another explanation.

dV

 

[jesusin]

75% threshold I get, not sure what you mean by "up and down the threshold at will". Regarding autovoting rule, do you mean that all civs must be at least voting members of the AP for a victory option to appear? That I get. Or do you mean something else ... ?

Patch 3.13 introduced the 75% rule, allegedly to avoid autovoting (winning the game after a Victory vote in whcih you were the only one to vote for yourself and won anyway because you had more than 75% of the votes).

However, the 75% threshold is applied the turn the AP resident chooses what to vote, not the turn the voting really happens.

So, there are plenty of cheesy ways to win the game without anybody else voting for you, thus avoiding the 75% rule. For example, you have 80% of the votes. Then you change your religion and wait at least 5 turns. Now you are under the 75% threshold since your votes don't count double now. Then you are given the option of what to vote for. You choose Victory. Then that very same turn you change to the AP religion, going over the limit again. The following turn votes are counted and you win.

It sounds more complicated than it really is.

I was the only Christian civ, so the only full member. Resident votes were vote for me or abstain. I got regular victory resolutions, again vote for me or abstain, and was just a handful of votes away on several occassions. Then the victory votes just stopped showing up as a choice, and all that came up were vote for the resident (me or abstain). Those I won every time.

I think that perhaps having entered the renaissance (or maybe industrial) age might have shut off the victory votes. After I got MM, the resident votes stopped as well. I can't think of another explanation.

dV

When you say you were getting victory resolutions, you mean that you were offered a lot of different voting options and you chose the victory one to happen, don't you? Then, when you say all that came up were resident votings, you mean you weren't offered any options to vote at all, or that the victory option was not between the options you could choose?

No need to say that if nobody is elected resident then no other voting but "choose resident" will happen.

Maybe you got over 75%?

 

[da_Vinci]

Patch 3.13 introduced the 75% rule, allegedly to avoid autovoting (winning the game after a Victory vote in whcih you were the only one to vote for yourself and won anyway because you had more than 75% of the votes).

Now we are getting somewhere ...

1. Where does one find all of these pearls, as the civ'pedia does not have them.

2. You need 75% of votes to win a "theocratic victory", right? Now you are saying that if one person has more than 75% that an option for victory will not appear? That might explain what was happening. This effectively means no backdoor theo ... (see below)

Hmm ... have they killed off backdoor diplos as well? I got mine with the help of some vassal votes, so it was not a test of true backdoor.

However, the 75% threshold is applied the turn the AP resident chooses what to vote, not the turn the voting really happens.

So, there are plenty of cheesy ways to win the game without anybody else voting for you, thus avoiding the 75% rule. For example, you have 80% of the votes. Then you change your religion and wait at least 5 turns. Now you are under the 75% threshold since your votes don't count double now. Then you are given the option of what to vote for. You choose Victory. Then that very same turn you change to the AP religion, going over the limit again. The following turn votes are counted and you win.

It sounds more complicated than it really is.

So there are two 75% rules it seems ... need 75% of votes to win, but can't provide all 75% of votes to yourself. So now, is this cheesy backdoor theo win an exploit? Prohibited or not?

When you say you were getting victory resolutions, you mean that you were offered a lot of different voting options and you chose the victory one to happen, don't you? Then, when you say all that came up were resident votings, you mean you weren't offered any options to vote at all, or that the victory option was not between the options you could choose?

No need to say that if nobody is elected resident then no other voting but "choose resident" will happen.

Maybe you got over 75%?

First, after AP built, vote for resident (like sec gen of UN). Then, three or so cycles of vote on a resolution ... chose among victory, stop war, trade embargo, etc. (if available). Then fourth or so vote is again vote for resident, no other resolutions to choose from. IIRC, I always won the resident votes.

But going over 75% seems like the explanation of why no resolutions came up between resident votes ... no other resolution types were available I would suspect, and over 75% stopped victory resolutions.

Is the religious flipping cheesy theo victory any more cheesy than the "Big Pig Diplo Gambit?"

dV

Edit: Hunted down a patch thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=245912

It says that can't vote on winner if one person has all votes needed to win ... did not specity AP so I assume this applies to UN as well (if that had also failed to give me win votes, I would have busted something up!). So you might need a vassal for these backdoor theo and diplo wins in the new world order.

dV

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Is the religious flipping cheesy theo victory any more cheesy than the "Big Pig Diplo Gambit?"

My game was a religious flipping cheesy theo victory

 

[da_Vinci]

My game was a religious flipping cheesy theo victory

"religious flipping cheesy theo victory" ... that is a kind of catchy name, don't you think?

Since I did not know about the patch change to self voting victory, I spent that portion of my game flipping the bird, rather than flipping the cheese ...

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

With the mutual struggle bonus pushing our relations up to about +16 (compared to +12 for Stalin) the Khmer started voting for me again. And in 1495 AD this was finally enough to get me a Diplomatic Victory. This happened to be the same turn I researched Liberalism—which I’d put off for awhile—and took Physics as my free tech.

Since I assume you got this "diplomatic" victory via the AP and not the UN, let me encourage the use of the term "theocratic victory" to distinguish it from the UN "diplomatic victory". If the theocratic victories start to move into the late game (1600 or later), the term diplomatic victory may have some ambiguity otherwise.

dV

 

[jesusin]

Now we are getting somewhere ...

1. Where does one find all of these pearls, as the civ'pedia does not have them.

2. You need 75% of votes to win a "theocratic victory", right? Now you are saying that if one person has more than 75% that an option for victory will not appear? That might explain what was happening. This effectively means no backdoor theo ... (see below)

Hmm ... have they killed off backdoor diplos as well? I got mine with the help of some vassal votes, so it was not a test of true backdoor.

1.- HOF forum. There are threads devoted to this. Also one of the Beta Gauntlets.

2.- Right, you need 75% of the votes to win the religious victory.

3.- I *think* the rule applies to UN too.

4.- I personally consider this a bug. If the 75% checks was done the turn of the voting, not the previous one, there would be no catch. It is accepted in the HOF as legal gaming.

 

[orb]

This surprised me... I did not think the AI were teching fast enough to get anywhere near space before time ran out... I am curious as to wether they accelerated, or if they teched faster in your game then mine? Do you happen to know where on the tech tree they were in say 1000AD? Mine where picking up things like CoL, and starting Metal casting.

Heh Jastrow. - I've gone back to the save files. It's a bit patchy, but here's what I could get.

745AD - Justinian ?, Stalin (Metal Casting), Zara (Feudalism), Suryav..(Currency), Churchill (Poly), Boudica ?, Darius ?

1385AD - Just (Compass), Stalin ?, Zara, (Engineering), Suryav..(Banking), Churchill, (Civ Serv), Boudica (Engineering), Darius (Optics).

1742 - Just (Sci M), Stalin (Nat), Zara (Chem), Suryav (Sci M), Church ?, Boudica (Guilds), Darius (Bank)

1762 - Just (Communism), Stalin (Mil T), Zara (Chem), Suryav ?, Church? Boudica (Nat), Darius (Edu)

1822 - Just (Mil T), Stalin?, Zara (Mil T), Suryav (Demo), Church?, Boudica (PP), Darius (Nat)

Beyond that it gets very patchy.

One thing which might have influenced the speed of AI teching...Justinian was vassalising lots of the other AI's....He even convinced Suryavarman to become his vassal when Sur was the second largest nation.

 

[da_Vinci]

2.- Right, you need 75% of the votes to win the religious victory.

If it really were a religious victory, you would be winning it with saints like Mother Theresa. But I think it is more likely that it is won by warlord clergy, hence theocratic victory is more fitting.

dV

 

[MarkM]

Brief summary of first spoiler: very early warrior rush to take out Churchill in 2875BC, then teching/infrastructure building. Goal: dink around & experiment with BTS because I've never played to modern age (to that effect I even avoided going for diplomatic win when apostolic palace gave me the chance in the 1600s or 1700s).

I end up founding 5 religions & 4-5 corporations (can't remember which), and was working on future tech 7 when I unexpectedly went over domination limit (I went from 58% to > 62.2% of land in one turn!). I was expecting it to end a few turns later, I was poised to take out 4 cities the next turn alone, also build UN and Hollywood with Gr Engineer (I'd held off getting mass media as long as possible to keep apostolic palace, i love that +2 hammers!). I stayed peacful until the mid-second millenium, when Bouadica declared on me, then Justinian, I took them both on simultaneously & wiped them out I thought I'd have to spin off that western continent as a colony because of maintenance, but fortunately I had not built forbidden palace yet so I was able to keep expense relatively managable by building there. After finishing those two off. I waited to DOW on Survaranam til I got tanks and paratroopers, I wanted to see how well those would work (had never played with them before), very rapidly took out Sury & then half of Stalin when he took Sury as a vassal & DOW on me. In between & in that later war I was having a lot of fun experimenting with corporations, paratroopers, using espionage to take down city defence instead of artillery, etc. Learned/refined some nice new tactics. My conquests was so fast that I only had a handful of Sury's cities come out of revolt by the time I finished him off & also took out about 1/4 of stalin's cities. Was even thinnking about spinning off a colony to keep playing some more, but then I got surprised by the Dom win like I said. But it was starting to get old, I hadn't even played for a week until I finally did last two turns today, so maybe for the best -- this way I get to finally start BOTM2

It was a lot of fun & I'm glad I did it that way, but next time I think I'll take the earlier win when I chave the opportunity. My machine was really slowing down in those final turns ...

 

[Lexad]

Challenger game for BOTM Gauntlet, 1060 AD Domination win (Hastings, hahaha).

Settled on elephants, started with warrior as worker would have nothing to do till AH. Soon found Churchill on non-hill tile - built second warrior and captured his capital with 1 warrior inside.
Techs (in somewhat loose order) - Hunting, AH, Bronze, Myst-Medi_Phood (for Oracle), Sailing, Agri, Wheel, Pottery, Writing, Maths from Oracle (yeah, too bad), Masonry, Construction, HBR (for Elephants), Currency, CoL - then went for Astro line as managed to miss the way to Just and Biddy with my scoutboats. Full stop and money collection at start of Machinery when I confirmed there's galleyway to everybody.
Populated home continent, assaulted Stalin with mass of elephants, cats and axes - my pervious game in BtS showed me how quick the enemy rushes defences, however it was overkill at Epic Prince. Captured most cities, then killed Sur and Darius (made sneak sea attack to capture Persepolis with GLighthouse). Then just populated home continent and islands with ~40 settlers.

Mistakes:
1. Shouldn't have gone for Oracle - wasted more than gained, also by getting first GP instead of GS.
2. Should have started the war earlier and not make libs and hire scientists to lightbulb Astro techs - however, didn't know whether Astro is required for Dom.
3. Lost city to barbs in the very beginning - barb warrior killed 2 my warriors in 2 turns.
4. Instead of populating with ~ half of settlers produced 4-7 tile plots and islands, should've just built more troops and wiped out Galls.
5. Miscalculated by 1 the required number of settlers - lost 7-10 turns on it.

P.S. Yep, and the first 4 random events I got was demolition of the same horse pasture at the capital. Then I got +1 commerce for oasis. And that's it for random events.

 

[Gnejs]

BOTM gauntlet, challenger domination victory in 1610 AD

My first BTS game. Walked NE with my settler to the corn and marble. Had I settled one further north I would have gotten sheep and ivory as well, but this was anyway a pretty decent site. Found London with an early warrior, waited for my second warrior to arrive on the scene, and captured London in 2375 BC. Great fun so far.

Then I built the Oracle just because I could. Took Metal Casting since I didn't even have writing when I completed it. I had workboats scouting everywhere and when I knew the lay of the world I realized that playing for domination would be an immensely boring time spent on optimizing logistics. There and then I gave up on trying to compete on the fastest domination. Instead I set up London to be a monster GP farm using a horde of wonders and specialists. I saved a couple of scientists for lightbulbing Astronomy in the early ADs.

I had a pretty nice random even happen to me. I had recently built the Confu shrine in London when suddenly four of mine and four of the blue guys cities get autoconverted to Confucianism. I got an unexpected instant income boost and a new friend.

I then went after Stalin with maces and cats vs. archers and axes. Surprisingly enough this wasn't the walkover I expected. Almost all cities were on hills and the AI used the right mix of defenders and promotions. This slowed down my conquest of Stalin considerably. When the blue guy offered to voluntarily and peacefully vassalize to me I gratefully accepted fully knowing that this would only give me half his land and delay my domination. So what, it save a lot of RL time for me. I vassalized Stalin as well for the same reason.

Then I spent a bunch of turns learning about the BTS maintenance and getting the economy back in shape. I kept on researching and building shiny wonders, promising myself not to fight another war unless I had a about two eras of tech advantage. I finally went after Justinian with Knights/Cuirassiers and Oromo warriors and subsequently Cavalry and Rifles vs Boudica and her longbows. I also captured a bunch of barbarian cities and settled a number of totally uninteresting little islands. Finally, in 1610 AD, the nightmare ended.

 

[Lexad]

Outstanding result from Obormot, as always! I'm impressed.

 

[bcool]

BOTM gauntlet, challenger domination victory in 1859 AD

Just wanted to support the BOTM gauntlet idea with my post. I clearly have a lot to learn about winning quickly. I've learned a lot with other people's posts, but have little to contribute since I played this game so long ago, and foolishly didn't save the game at the recommended dates.

Made almost all civilizations vassals instead of conquering them all, seemed so much faster. Built too many wonders, didn't make an early rush on Churchill. But the early Mausoleum lead to many long Golden Ages that allowed me to make the best advantage of civics without anarchy. Probably not worth the cost if you're going for quick games, but the power of golden ages definitely changes my game in BtS. Never seemed worth it in other versions, except in rare situations. A golden age at the right time, saving you anarchy and boosting your production and research definitely is better than getting a one tech. Especially if those production bonuses are multiplied by stone/marble for another wonder. Which is probably why I spent so much time building wonders...

Other lessons, I didn't scout the other civilizations. After vassalizing Churchill, started with the closest civ, Russia which slowed me down. And I didn't settle any poor cities to push me over the limit, just conquered other civilizations' cities once I had vastly overpowered units.

Looking forward to learning more in the next gauntlet.

 

[Lexad]

Welcome to the club!

 

[Erkon]

I....must....not....quit...argh....

What a shame. Retire the Gauntlet... But the game was not fun at all after 500 BC, just a tedious practice session in logistics.... I took out the Persians in ~500 BC, and started to plan the expansion. When I realized I had 30% land in 900 AD after capturing most of Stalin, I gave up. I could not justify spending more hours to complete this game. Sorry. Kudos to those who completed.

Thanks to the staff anyway and keep up the good work!

 

[Obormot]

I....must....not....quit...argh....

What a shame. Retire the Gauntlet... But the game was not fun at all after 500 BC, just a tedious practice session in logistics.... I took out the Persians in ~500 BC, and started to plan the expansion. When I realized I had 30% land in 900 AD after capturing most of Stalin, I gave up. I could not justify spending more hours to complete this game. Sorry. Kudos to those who completed.

Thanks to the staff anyway and keep up the good work!

That was my fault, should have predicted that domination will be so tedious under such settings. Conquest would have been much better.

 

[Erkon]

That was my fault, should have predicted that domination will be so tedious under such settings. Conquest would have been much better.

Yes, conquest would have been better. It would still require a bit of logistics with the galley chains etc. Anyway, I learned a lot:

The AI uses a good distribution of units. Not only archers for defense, but also axes and spears.

The AI have very different opinion of what "good enough defense" is. Stalin was crazy, only settling on hills and archer-spear-axe combo in each of them . Others however were very weakly defended, such as London.

You don't need open borders to connect a city to your capital. I noticed that a satellite city had access to resources passing through coast through a civ I did not have open borders. I have a vague memory this has happened in either vanilla or warlords, but I was still surprised.

Don't demand gold the same turn you plan to declare. It happened to me twice. With the same AI. In a row It delayed me attack with 10+10 turns Actually, all deals impose a 10 turn peace treaty, yes?

Stalin was prepared to speak after a few turns, while the Boudica war lasted for >15 turns. And the Cease Fire is very close to exploitation in some cases.

I focused on exploration very early instead of REX. This was apparently a mistake. I still haven't understood how to REX properly without crashing the economy

The AI whip more aggressively. From pop2 to pop1 for example.

Proper settler spamming is handled by stationing settlers in fog busting position and leave them non-escorted.

My idea to use the starting continent for generate cash that funded off-continent settlement was not very clever. Instead I should have razed all the cities and resettled later. It's just so hard to raze a juicy, fat city

Obermot, is early domination your specialty? You spanked us good in the Cyrus WOTM-immortal game as well. I replayed my save from that game a long time ago, and I was not that far behind compared to this game

Summary: there's a lot to learn with BtS...

 

[Obormot]

I still haven't understood how to REX properly without crashing the economy

I think it is OK if Your GNP drops to zero or even becomes negative (compensated by gold from plundering cities) as long as You have all the techs You need. In the worst case You can start razing cities.

Obermot, is early domination your specialty? You spanked us good in the Cyrus WOTM-immortal game as well. I replayed my save from that game a long time ago, and I was not that far behind compared to this game

Fast domination and fast conquest. I didn't play that much civ4, maybe a total of ~15-20 games including incomplete games and SGs, but about 80% of them were fast conquest or fast domination. On the other hand I don't have much experience with the peacefull VCs, in fact I am yet to complete a space-race or culture game. So beating me in Gauntlet #2 will be easy.

 

[dalamb]

I should have listened to Vegetius: If you want peace, prepare for war.

Miraculously, I stayed in this game all the way up to 1756, whereupon the English captured one of my 3 Culture cities, and thus IIRC wiping out all those expensively-constructed culture buildings. Miraculously, instead of exiting in a fit of pique, I carefully saved the game and then exited. I decided that, despite what many would say here about what I'd learn by continuing, I'd learn more and have more fun by starting one of the other xOTMs, so I retired and submitted.

Plus, in parallel I'm working through learning to warmonger at the Noble level, where I usually play (currently with Boudica on a small Highlands map).

I neglected to wipe out Churchill early in the game, despite the advice to "conquer your initial continent ASAP." He's the one that zapped me, as one might expect -- even if the AI can now effectively invade overseas, they all have a harder time that someone on the same continent.

I compounded my mistake by:

• Failing to note that, when I was intercepting unnamed spies, that they probably came from Churchill.
• Failing to build up a suitable defensive army, leaving me highly vulnerable.
• Failing to cave in to Churchill's demand for most of my cash, when I should have realized he was militarily stronger than me.

I could have kept going -- I had just recently lost first place on the power graph to Justinian, who was friendly -- but figured given the difficulty of continuing for a cultural win, my personality type, and the availability of other games, I would enjoy things more (and perhaps learn more) if I worked on a different game.

With a cultural victory goal, I should have hooked up the marble earlier, but IIRC I didn't decide on cultural early enough.

I find that if I save the game and wait/sleep overnight to resume, overnight turns into multiple days which turns into losing interest. Do experienced players manage to finish in a single session, or do you spread it over several days too?

Edit: sounds like Harbourboy wound up with a similar Churchill-vs-underprotected-culture situation.