BOTM 10 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[Lexad]

Militarized diplo, the turn before I went and smashed this culture-loving space-probing punk's head right to the arse. So this was all just for the fun of it, showing Deity AI what does SoD really mean (30+tanks, etc).

I didn't optimize much in the lategame as it's half past 2 am here, so 1792AD it is.

 

[jesusin]

Anyway, hello to my good friend Jesusin

Hey! Nice to see you around!

I never got that sub-1000AD cultural victory.
You may want to read HOF Killercane's cultural tries with sushi.
You'll also find BOTM04 interesting, a good number of players went for a cultural victory and we discussed about the differences BTS/Vanilla. Have you noticed all those new WW providing artist GPP?

I hope everything's ok. And I hope you'll show around from time to time!

 

[Gosha190]

godotnut

if it console you I can tell you Jeffa has culture finished faster than your possible date.

 

[Lexad]

Heh, comparing to USun (great game - I've also had a look at your Byzantine game once I finished), I was settling much slower (settled western lands only in 1st millenium AD) and fought too much - from cuirassiers to infantry (despite having loads of tanks, never managed to use one), being just a step ahead of the enemy. I also learnt that even several infantry and ~12 protective rifles can't save you from a double attack in 1 turn - thus I lost Neapolis back to Caeser after the attack of Mongolian and Roman cuirassiers and trebs. But also found that AI slackens in the defense of the maritime cities - so once you have naval advantage (frigates + airships or just destroyers vs frigates), you can arrive with the naval SoD to the enemy city of your choice and raze it in one fell swoop - that's how I forced final vassalage of Julius and Genghis.

 

[Gunner Jones]

@ Lexad What Naval SODs were you using I seemed to try and fail at this. Not enough stack or doom I'm guessing.

 

[Lexad]

I scouted with Airships, removed defense with frigates and destroyers, hit the defenders with airships (built couple of forts to accomodate sufficient numbers of them near border), then attacked defenders (rifles and occasional cavalry/antitank) with infantry from the ships. Lost about 2-3 infantry per city.

 

[Gunner Jones]

Unconquered Sun, many thanks for the explanations. And thanks to the Map Makers this map is proving to be a great test ground against the Deities.

My official submission resulted in a Cultural loss to MM. However, when replaying trying to emulate your strategy - I can safely win the Lib race, but am unable to use the Hammer Economy to out pace the AI, losing the race to Infantry and way out of puff before I reach tanks. I'd be interested in better understanding how you made it to Tanks & Flight before beginning your attack.

Gunner.

 

[karmina]

Unconquered Sun, [...] I'd be interested in better understanding how you made it to Tanks & Flight before beginning your attack.Gunner.

That'd be my question as well. Being able to gift Infantry and 2000 gold to the most advanced AI is just impressive, to say the least.

In particular, I'd like to know
1. how many cities before the war
2. when and why did you decide against a renaissance war?
3. research path from Lib to tanks
4. what did you trade for, bulb, and what did you steal
5. I guess Oxford in capital? when?
6. how to hold Mansa's tech rate and culture at bay?!

 

[Lexad]

If I might say couple of words before USun, you first go to Assembly for Factories and Power Plants, trade for Chemistry and Guilds for extra hammers from workshops, get State Property (USun - for extra food and +10% production, lower upkeep) or Railroad (for Mining Inc - my way, got up to 21 hpt from it), spam workshops in all your cities and start producing wealth&research. Then you go for the Astro-Physics-Electricity line and onwards to Industrialism.

This playstyle also favours castes - for extra hammer from workshops and employment of extra specialists.

I like Free mkt and Mining Inc more than State Property here, because I do not have enough happiness during endless wars to grow cities much above working the tiles, and due to rathaus making Corps even cheaper, as well as "distance from palace" part of city upkeep. Then, however, we had rather different warplans.

 

[Methos]

This one looked like fun and I thought I was doing pretty good out the gate, but things turned bad real quick. The bars plopped a city down very close to me and proceeded to continuously send troops my way. I ended up spending all of my resources fending them off and started falling behind quickly. I probably should have just let them conquer me so that I could at least submit it, but grew tired of the game.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

That'd be my question as well. Being able to gift Infantry and 2000 gold to the most advanced AI is just impressive, to say the least.

Technically, I wasn't a gift, I got Medicine, but consider this:

Assembly Line is the tech I loathe to give to the AI. It's #1 on my No Trade list. AL is a vastly powerful tech, it massively increases MFG, it makes Infantry available, it is the Pentagon tech. Yet the AI does not prioritize it much!

So it really felt like shooting my own leg, giving AL to the Wash whom I planned to invade; Wash also being friendly/trading techs to MM, who happened to be the other AI I wanted to invade. Add cash I normally use for deficit research getting techs first for leverage; add I haven't finished Pentagon yet and there's no telling when the AI pops a GE; add I had no need/plans about Medicine whatsoever; and you'll know why it felt worse than gifting.

In particular, I'd like to know
1. how many cities before the war
2. when and why did you decide against a renaissance war?
3. research path from Lib to tanks
4. what did you trade for, bulb, and what did you steal
5. I guess Oxford in capital? when?
6. how to hold Mansa's tech rate and culture at bay?!

1. Seventeen plus the oil settlement.

2. When I knew the AIs can't beat me to settling the lands west...it happened over time, bits and pieces of info like the fact it's the same landmass (which I knew from my first city there), the worldspanning pangea confirmation (Mansa circumnavigated ~1000bc), and partial exploration. Why: with 17 cities I didn't need renaissance war to create an economy stronger than the AI ones.

3. Self-research after Lib->Nationalism went something like: Gunpowder (trades for machinery/optics), Printing, SciMeth via traded for Astronomy, Communism, Replaceable Parts, Steam (trading for stuff like chemistry/steel econ/corps and rifling/mil sci on the way), AL, Facism (had to do that early because of the AL giveaway) , Physics, Electricity, Industrialism, Combustion (after RR trade for Electricity and Facism), Flight.

4. I mention trades. From Washington I stole little: Theology and Mil Trad, but I also spend EP on city revolts to lower defenses. Five spies failing at 55% success rate for one of his cities is why the invasion took me nine turns instead of the planned six however. From Mansa I stole much more in beaker value: Mass Media and Computers, and I also used EP to keep him off Free Speech in the end game.

5. About 900 AD.

6. Wars, and bribing/revolting his civics. I had easy time keeping him off Free Speech in the late game and from time to time I was able to create a lot of unhappy faces too.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

...I can safely win the Lib race, but am unable to use the Hammer Economy to out pace the AI, losing the race to Infantry and way out of puff before I reach tanks. I'd be interested in better understanding how you made it to Tanks & Flight before beginning your attack.

Gunner.

By rapidly improving, growing, and building in my new cities.

Most of them had grassland and 1-2 food resources. What I did was grow fast on those food resources with the population on SP food-neutral workshops. Obviously, I had a lot of workers for improvements. Once the cities had the buildings needed, they turned on research, and finally tanks.

IMO the best way to present this is by providing four selected saves.

#1 is 990ad, Communism just discovered and the great spy starts my first Golden Age + revolution to hammer economy civics. You can see that many of the cities aren't even settled yet. Economy is poor overall.

#2 is 1365ad, the cities are grown and building. Economy isn't impressive, but this is misleading: it's most of the hammers going into infrastructure still.

#3 is 1460ad, growing/developing is complete and it's research time. At this point the economy outclasses any AI.

#4 is 1555ad, ready to invade Wash. All the tanks, battleships, marines, etc were build in just 15 turns since 1480ad.

PS. About Democracy in 990ad - The AIs were surprisingly slow with SoL and I was on for a little detour to get this excellent pangea wonder, but abandoned it next turn. I did get Pentagon, Broadway, RocknRoll, Eiffel, and Cristo, and all of them were very helpful.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

If I might say couple of words before USun, you first go to Assembly for Factories and Power Plants, trade for Chemistry and Guilds for extra hammers from workshops, get State Property (USun - for extra food and +10% production, lower upkeep) or Railroad (for Mining Inc - my way, got up to 21 hpt from it), spam workshops in all your cities and start producing wealth&research. Then you go for the Astro-Physics-Electricity line and onwards to Industrialism.

This playstyle also favours castes - for extra hammer from workshops and employment of extra specialists.

I like Free mkt and Mining Inc more than State Property here, because I do not have enough happiness during endless wars to grow cities much above working the tiles, and due to rathaus making Corps even cheaper, as well as "distance from palace" part of city upkeep. Then, however, we had rather different warplans.

I did not expect to survive domination wars unhappiness without the full 100% WW mitigators. Most of the time I was able to sustain big cities under caste without resorting to the culture slider, but I wasn't afraid to use it occasionally (it's a hammer economy after all, not commerce one). With modern happy resources x Eiffel and Cristo it got even easier.

There were two things I didn't manage to do by 1764. The first one was destroying Mansa, the second one was switching to Environmentalism or FM and spreading Sushi (I had like 20 sea/rice). Despite having 40 workers in the end they were too preoccupied with improving my new cities, and I needed all of them back to my core 17 cities for some temporary irrigation while waiting for Sushi executives from the former American cities.

 

[Gunner Jones]

Wow, really appreciate the detail. Thanks again to all this GOTM has really taken my appreciation and enjoyment of the game to a new level.

 

[karmina]

1. Seventeen [cities] plus the oil settlement.

Ah, I see. That's the main difference to my normal play style. I hardly ever found more cities than required to build the national wonders (4 on tiny, 6 on normal). The rest of your strategy looks pretty straightforward.

Lexad, how many cities did you have before attacking the AIs?

Btw, I recently tried a totally peaceful quick tiny space race with Willem on archipelago. Not a chance, despite very early dikes (8 of them on tiny!), a long lasting tech lead, maximum number of warmongering rivals and lots of AI wars. No power plant resources, but aluminium, oil and the space elevator - so you might think I'd outproduce the AI with my dikes. Not so. All AIs researched Fusion in 5 turns (and in bts they do it before Gen. or Eco. just as you would), Isabella built her two engines within 5 turns after Fusion, her ship took an other 5 turns to Alpha Centauri, and beat me by 10-20 turns, before I even got Eco.
Power plants and the Internet might have shoved off a few turns, but probably not enough.

 

[Lexad]

Lexad, how many cities did you have before attacking the AIs?

4 on the mainland (lost 5th to Genghis surprise attack) and some 7-8 on the west land. I.e. it was in the middle of expansion. Should've expanded faster and amassed greater army.