[BTS] BOTM 127 First Spoiler - To 1AD

[Deckhand]

BOTM 124 - First Spoiler to 1 AD

Please do not discuss politics in this thread.

Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD!

Did you manage to build any camel archers before 1 AD?
Were you able to keep up with deity civs?
What was your tech path? I expect these will be different from the usual.

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 127, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Please do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD. (Iron is OK, coal and oil are not)
  
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games

Map Editing Contest
I've already pretty much spoiled this one but,
First one to correctly identify the four resource substitutions and one PlotType substitution wins.
sample: stone => marble
Do not edit your post after submitting your guess, or it will be eliminated. You only get one guess. (edit) First to get them all right wins, barring that Closest will win.

The Prize
You get to design my next botm!
Your choice of
May 130: Prince or
Jun 133: Deity

Provide the scenario/map idea with as much detail as you like. I would still build it and you could still play.
thanks for the help

 

[Xcalibrator]

6 cities, 32 pop: 2 setled (SIP and to the east), 3 captured from barbs, one from Persia. I went after two barbs cities to the NW and SW first using cats+, then when I had enough units built up (including two camel archers) I captured a Persian city to the south. I wasn't strong/quick enough to capture a second city (Persia got Feud and upgraded to longbows) so I took peace and some gold and then went after a third barb city to our east. I now have trebs and am just about to lanch a second attack against that other Persian city (SE with stone and cows). It feels like I'm having trouble getting enough production--how do others feel?

I have 38 techs and am part way through Chem, heading toward MilSci for grens and my next military advantage. Without iron for cannon I'm gonna need a lot of trebs for a long time. Once the AI have muskets (and later rilfes and grens) the advantage will be with them on defense so I will probably have to hunker down and try to beat them to... Artillery? Maybe Physics/airships? Hmm, maybe, just maybe, I should consider one of the peaceful VCs. Hah, hah, just kidding! Kinda keeping up with tech but that won't last. (I'll edit later with details about path etc.) At 1AD, 236 bpt@100%, 189 @80% breakeven. 1 Great Sci settled. I have not been pumping out GPs like I should.

Ah, now that I understand the guess-the-substitution challenge I'll think about it...

 

[LowtherCastle]

11 cities, 68 pop. 252 bpt @100%. 126 bpt @50% -7gpt. 2 GSpies. I think others warred faster and better. This is a fun game and I might actually find time to finish it for a change. I settled on the stone, built GW, settled the gems to the SW and then built camels.

Camels + cats do great against longbows. 11 camels and 6 cats so far. Lost 3 and 1, because I'm still assembling a cat stack. Attacked Egypt first for GoldSW but then went down on Persia for the Pyramids+SH+academy+settledProphet in Persepolis. I left him with 3 cities after capturing 5 and he vassaled to Egypt. I'm not CFing because I do't want more negmods with all those Gandhis, so back to Egypt for the Kong Meow city so far. It will produce 26gpt when out of resistance, including two settled prophets. That's where warring now stands.

Rome is researching like a bat out of hell, so I'll probably use both on him and steal some juicy techs. I'm undecided where to go next but probably Rifling+Nationalism and draft a bunch of rifles to reach the domination limit. COnquest would be easy as pie but I might try to run up the score. Depends on my mood and time.

Rifles will be overkill but they're necessary for defense because Rome will have them very soon, I suspect.

Question on the challenge: Plot tile means, for example, grass=>desert?

 

[Deckhand]

Question on the challenge: Plot tile means, for example, grass=>desert?

Nope.

Spoiler example :

Here is a sample tile description from a worldbuilder file

BeginPlot
x=AAA,y=BBB
RiverNSDirection=2
isWOfRiver
BonusType=BONUS_GEMS
TerrainType=TERRAIN_PLAINS
PlotType=2
EndPlot

So, your example was regarding TerrainType

 

[LowtherCastle]

.....

 

[LowtherCastle]

My guesses:

Spoiler guesses :

horse => cow
copper => silver
iron => gold
ivory => gems
hill => plain

 

[lymond]

stopped @ 100BC .. this is a crazy game

Not looking at save, so forget # of cities, but should be about 12 or 13. I settled only one city (just E of cap) and captured a barb city to the NE due to annoyance. I took all of Persia, but peaced out for some techs since he had an island somewhere. Capped India, Egypt(peace vassal..ha.right as I was setting up for attack), and Khmer. So Rome and Greece left. However, I don't know if I want to swoop in for quick Conquest or do something different. I'm close to Liberalism.

Everything done with the Camels so far, and should have no problem taking Rome or Greece with Camels too. The talk of Rifles is pretty surprising already above..not that they are that far away I guess, I still have an advantage with the humpbacks.

Barbs were a pain early, but handled them fine with Archers. Definitely worse than usual on a Pangaea map with all that space to the N and E.

India was the fastest techer early and reach Feud long before anyone, but was still able to take down the LBs with the Camels and grab GLH for the effort. I was going to take all of India, but he had one city nearby with like 10 LBs spammed in it so I left him 2 cities and then fed him some barb cities.

Cap (SIP) allowed for decent early teching and trading..which I did fairly liberally. I did try starting toward Music but tracking India at the time lead me to believe that it was fruitless. I actually teched a good bit of Feud myself (unusual) as path to CS while taking Persia out first, but knew I'd get CoL in peace..not really a better option in tech at the particular time..

ugh..I hate the old same leader for all civ trope..ha

 

[nocho]

Sounds like a great game, lymond!

I SIPped, expanded to 5 cities initially and was happy to have gone archery quite early as the barbs were rather annoying indeed. Looking at lymond's report surely went for HBR way too late, but still got it early enough to do some warring. Captured 2 barb cities first, then set my eyes on Egypt. Captured 5 cities and then vassaled him. Managed to build the Pyramids, but not really making use of it yet. At 1AD I have 97 pop, but some will be whipped away shortly in the rather big former Egyptian cities. 13 workers, 331 bpt at 100%, about 190 sustainable. Tech is up to paper, philo and machinery. Rome is also the best techer in my game, up to nationalism already. Probably should be warring a bit more, probably have been too cautious not whipping more camels, but of course they will still have their use.

My guesses:

Spoiler guesses :

horse => cow
copper => silver
iron => gold
ivory => gems
hill => plain

Spoiler guesses :

I think LC probably nailed it, but for the sake of saying something else I'll invert copper and iron replacementes.
horse => cow
copper => gold
iron => silver
ivory => gems
hill => plain

 

[Minou]

Weird and fun game. Six Gandhis, dozens of extra gold, and no metal or even hills for the defenders? Should be some fast Space Victories.

I settled in place and etched Agriculture then Archery. Even then, it was a slog to beat back the waives of barbarians. City 2 went by the Cowx2+Stone+Wheat area and City 3 at Gems+Corn+2 Gold. Some challenging times ~3000-2000BC, as barbarians pillaged two mines and settled a poor spot that overlapped with the city 3 spot, slowing expansion.

Went for HBR early and built Camel Archers almost exclusively till around 1000BC. Persia and India were rapidly conquered down to 1-2 cities each, though annoyingly they each settled a city after peace that together cut off the eastern peninisula from the core of the empire. Didn't want to declare again to wipe them out and suffer a -4 penalty with my trade partners (at least not yet).

Rome reached Feudalism around 750BC, which was cause for some alarm. Luckily, they did not trade it to the other AIs right away and so I was able to push into Egypt without encountering Longbows. This was a fun war - they only had 2-3 Archers and a Catapult in most cities, whereas my Camel Archers were often up to Combat IV. I grabbed 5 cities in 5 turns, plus a ton of gold, 6 Workers, Theology+Construction, and most importantly the Pyramids (satisfying as they beat me to the wonder by 4 turns). After Egypt was reduced to island cities, I stopped the warring since the other AIs had Longbows and I was starting to get overexpanded.

When I fired up the game again around 250BC, the Khmer asked to be a Peace Vassal, which I decided to accept. Rome has better land to conquer anyway, and I am glad to direct the research of a decent AI. Unfortunately he plopped a city right next to where I had burned an Egyptian city to replace with one on the river that would be a great Levee town, and not I cannot get rid of it.

With the Pyramids in hand I popped a GP for a Golden Age at 250AD to swap to Representation for a Madrassa-fed boost of about 60 beakers per turn. During this period I swapped first into Hinduism, widely spread in my own empire, to get some OR hammers towards Forges, National Epic, MoM and Parthenon. Then, a quick switch into Buddhism at the end of the Golden Age in order to get the diplomatic bonus with the remaining powers and hopefully take advantage when one of them builds the AP.

The 100% research party started to come to an end around 100BC as the pillaging gold ran out. I'm planning to use religion/resources/trade to keep the tech trades going with the 3 strong AIs and eventually conquer Rome before going to space.

At 1AD I have 16 cities with 84 pop, 39 techs (just finished Education with the help of one bulb, and should get Civil Service and Philosophy next turn from trades).Tech is at 106bpt at 0% thanks to Representation, would be 348bpt at 100% but I can only afford about 20% now. MoM and Parthenon will be built next turn barring very bad luck.

 

[voglchen]

Second try on deity and it didn't work at all. I'm just too slow to get up an army and pretty much everyone is gone for feudalism till I can attack with a decent stack. Need a few more games on Immortal first...

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Normally, I wouldn't even attempt a Deity level game, but the promised advantage of early camel archers was enough to convince me to give this a try. And when I learned that all of my neighbors were Gandhi, I was further encouraged. Was it even possible to provoke the AI to declare war against me? I decided to test that theory.

After settling in place and building two more cities, I reached the tech to build camels by 1960 BC. In 1080 BC, I attacked Egypt and captured three cities before giving them peace for Metal Casting. I then captured a barb city before attacking Korea in 275 BC. By 1 AD, three Korean cities are mine.

Starting with Guilds allowed me to trade for a number of other techs, but I know I'm not keeping up with the AI in tech and so my camels won't be at an advantage for much longer.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I started this game with the same plan in mind as LowtherCastle: Get a GSpy from the GWall and use it to maintain tech parity while expanding through war. I also considered settling the nearby stone but noticing that most civs were close by and that the Egyptians had early stone I decided to gamble and go straight for Camel archers expecting to capture the GWall.
Early expansion was SIP followed by two additional cities in the flood plain area to the south (pigs+cow and cow+wheat). Early tech path included mining, archery, BW, AH, pottery and HBR setting everything up for whipping (with granary) Camel Archers early.
My gamble paid off and Egypt built the Wall. Thus they became the target of the first war where I took 4 mainland cities. The remaining where all on islands and without Sailing continuing the war wasn't possible. Peace was made in return for a few techs. The Romans seemed to be teching fast so I decided that they should be my preferred "friend" and target for the spying operation. This made the Khmer Empire the logical next target for my Camel Archer army and 6 cities were captured before peace for techs were agreed. This coincided with the Greek learning Feudalism so I rushed my army to Persia and managed to capture 4 cities before they got longbows. Egypt was still without Feudalism and I decided to stop the Persian war and resume the war against Egypt. Perhaps a mistake, because only two Egyptian cities could be accessed without crossing through Persian territorial waters.
At 1 AD i have 20 cities with 109 pop. I have all the important techs like Currency, CoL and Litterature but nothing fancy. Instead I have 2000 gold and a GSpy has already infiltrated the Roman city of Ravenna. In addition to the GWall I have captured the ToA, The Pyramids and The Kong Miao. The plan is to stay flexible: Extort techs in peace deals and steal techs from the Romans. I also plan to move the Palace closer to Ravenna and spread Taoism there (captured the Taoist holy city). This should ensure big discounts on the tech steals and combined with growing a second GSpy it should be easy to achieve tech parity along the way. Probably I will only use the tech slider for a few key techs to get cuirs.
I think the game is winnable with Camel Archers alone but I have already invested in courthouses so fast domination or conquest seems compromised. Well, any win on Deity is fine in my book and it's more fun to tech rob the Romans blind .