BOTM 13 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted or Abandoned

My first xOTM game and first forum post ever =). Conquest victory in 1846 using Artillery/Infantry/Cavalery combo. I focused on securing the copper in the east. After securing the copper, I teched to maces before I hit the AI. In hindsight I should have hit the AI earlier, with archers, and then beeline longbows.

Lesson learned: The AI:s at prince don't seem to trade techs, or they tech _very_ slow.

Best move: After settling first GG, built some Guerilla II archers and shipped them to harass the score-leading AI:s (Toku and Pacal).
 
I'm going to be different and post something not covered yet, a game that went to hell early and finished very late, in 1949 I got wiped. Now lest you think it was because of some late game war, I had LBs and Knights for defenders. The enemy AIs didn't really come after me in force until after 1900AD. Now that's not to say they weren't advanced, they were. I think they just liked seeing me struggle.

I settled on the spot and sent the Warrior West then counter clockwise, confirming my guess very early that we were on an island by ourselves. I met England at this point and knew I 'd have to face her upgraded Archers soon.
I started a Warrior build then Worker. Next I went to Barracks until I had three pop and was able to finish a Settler before any of the other AIs had a second city. I settled due South of Delhi, finding Zara. I settled a third city shortly thereafter in the SW corner of the island. Of course little did I know that was where London was and the culture proved to be a problem.

Research - I started with BW and figured even if I had to travel to get to it, early Axes would help eliminate and slow down the AIs. Ha, Ha. Very funny, on an Island with no Copper. No Copper visible along the surrounding coast anywhere, or the other island. I should have expected that. Did Fishing and Sailing very quick, knowing I'd have to get off this island. Went to IW next figuring that he wouldn't be cruel enough to deny us both Copper and Iron. Close, it was discovered at the eastern tip of the other island and would take two cities to get access. Alright, I'll go Hunting to AH and get Chariots! NFW, no Horses on our island either! ( but visible across the way in Zara's lands and on the eastern island) I then went for Archery figuring when I finished it I'd find that there weren't any arrows on our islands either. lol:

I built a Galley and sent my first two Archers out to get some Workers or a city. Zara was tempting because of the Horses. I found he had an Archer and a Warrior in his Capitol on a hill. I landed one unit to harass him but he got his Worker safely squirreled away. I saw his territory went East, and dropped my other Archer nearby. I had to wait for the second Archer to catch up, then took this city. In retrospect I should have razed it. As soon as I took the city I met Pacal and Tokugawa and along with Zara and Liz, they all sent their Troops there. I held it for quite some time, but both Liz and Tok showed up with Swords and Axes. Before it fell, I had it building Archers, then when I got the Iron on the second Island it built Swords, Axes, and Spears as Chariots started showing up. Tok showed up with a huge stack AND Cats! It was way too early for Cats. I took my force out of the city and headed West for Zara, hoping to take him out. I got to his Capitol only to find 8 Archers there. No sense staying, I kept moving West and figured I'd take his Horse city which I did, meeting Hatty. While all this was going on, I had another small force pillage Liz's Copper, but that force didn't last. I wanted to take Liz's city between London and Zara but it was too well defended with Archers on a hill. I moved my stack west, at the same time Hatty bypassed me and took away my horse city. Both of my stacks moved on London and took it. Just after Liz got HBR. The tech pace seemed to be heating up. I eventually had to evac London as Tok showed up with a large stack. As has been said before, I wish we could abandon cities. I eventually was able to rescue a few of my units and used amphibious attacks to harass the AI, but the game was over for all intents and purposes. This was around 100AD. I tried to tech ahead to get better units (Machinery then Feudalism) but I couldn't get research above 10% consistently. Even though Silver and Gold popped near Delhi, I was losing money. Health was also killing my pop growth. The AI culture was starting to cut into my land. I saw Liz culture bomb her nearby cities with GAs. I started Guilds but didn't finish it until ~1700AD with the help of a GE. I built mostly LBs and XBs. Pacal made one landing attempt with Knights, Trebs, and Cats but I fought it off. That seemed to deter him for a long time. Liz came next with a Redcoat and Trebs. Again I fought her off but lost a lot of units. It did seem to have the effect of deterring the AI from any amphibious landings, but their navies blockaded my ports, pillaged my fish and clams, and cut access to Iron and Horses. As I said, tech was soo slow. It actually helped when Pacal came around 1930AD and started taking my cities. I managed to learn Math, Alpha, and Lit(?) in the last 20 years! WooHoo!!!!!

Early miscues and mistakes are killer in an AW game. If I had gone straight for Archers instead of BW, I could have taken out most Civs very early. Maybe I'll replay.
 
First AW game for me, i think my Strat was a little lame, seat of pants job.

I got killed by maintenace on the main contients, even with the GLH from Zara's cap still scraping by on plunder/pillage gold.

Liz was dispatched early, followed by Zara. toku was a pain. Pacal fell easily, then toku decided to spam settlers, took an age to clean him up, Haps was wiped with cannons and grends. then i found Willy. you clever bugger map maker!

Wiped him out in 1854, thought i'd done well before reading this thread!!

Many thanks for the game, it was educational and possibly even fun!!
 
...
What I learned: Without a coastal city on East Island, there’s no sharing of trade routes or resources, etc. I needed the iron (After all, foreign spies had replaced the copper on the southwest tip of my home island with copper-colored dye!)

What happened: By the time I built a coastal city (wrong placement) enemy culture blocked it from my home island coastal cities.

...Adama

If you don't have a coastal city you can build a fort on the coast and it will act as a port. If you have a road going from the iron to the fort then you will be hooked up to the other island.
 
This was a really fun game. Even without the competitive challenge of comparing games with other people this was so much more fun than your basic random game.

I tried a couple of test games in all war prince and just couldn't figure it out. But I figured I would do my best with this. Once I saw I was on an island I didn't bother getting archery early. It didn't occur to me to wipe out other civs with archers vs warriors. I didn't find the iron on the east island until Pacal had already put a city on it, because of poor scouting. I was able to take that with two axemen that I built the few turns that I had a city on the continent to the north that hooked up the copper.

About 1050 I was ahead tech wise but with no real clue what I should be doing. Then I realized I needed a magnet city and put one on a hill on the north continent. That was the crucial thing that I did right. It gave me enough GGs to turn out some killer units and kept the enemies armies trimmed. In medieval times I attacked Hattie and then just worked my way counterclockwise after that.

It was never in doubt once I took a few of Hatties cities, but being me the domination win wasn't until 1942.
 
At 500 AD I was in a naval arms race with the English and Ethiopians recovering from a crashed economy. I knew every AI had out-teched me after the great economy crash of 400AD. I prayed I could at least get monarchy to bump my happiness cap, establish a decent SE and keep ahead in naval tech. Ethiopia briefly held the tech lead (trireme v galley) then I won it back (caravel v trireme) then evened it out (caravel v caravel) then got a massive jump with 2xGS (frigate v caravel). The enemy ships kept coming and coming. By 1700 I'd killed around 100-150 enemy ships and earned 3 GG's purely through naval combat. Once I peered into an English city which had around 15-20 caravels all waiting to unleash hell when the AI figured it could defeat my two blockading frigates.

At around 1700 Ethiopia got frigates and those anti-frigate ships (something-of-the-sail) and it was all over. Racing to get Oxford and SoL up but their navy wiped my and I resigned. Through the whole game I only had units on my land once I was stuck in a constant naval battle for 1500 years.

When I resigned I could count at least 40 enemy ships flooding out of the AI's 3 coastal cities.

Bearing in mind I usually play on prince, it was my first BTS game, my first serious xOTM game, my first epic game and my first always war game I'm happy with my performance but looking forward to the next one - I was so nervous about "always war" I totally failed to take the war to them always waiting for it to come to me.

My key mistakes:
-Irresponsible REX crashed economy
-Too passive when it came to conquest
-Spent too long sitting on a low happy cap when I should have been whipping troops
 
...and I'm astounded at how people can kill most of the AI's by 1AD...astounded.
 
...and I'm astounded at how people can kill most of the AI's by 1AD...astounded.

Me too, to be honest :eek:
I would really appreciate real walkthrough of such play - is it somewhere in civfanatics ?

Have also struggled in this BOTM, will write some about it later - i lost beeing conquered in 1965, have played till bitter end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KkarMNlTzY
(link about bitter end ;)
greetz
 
Cammell - would you want to have a look at a sav file from 500 BC with only 1 enemy left (the Dutch)?
 

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I made a some attempts to this game, after a decent start (reading this thread) but not considering it a winnable game, i gave up and tried some different strategies (not submitted).

No need to rush the settler in Epic, so i sent the warrior N and the settler on the forest S. Seeing the 2nd gems, decided to settle in place.
Fishing as first tech, and this was the first mistake.
When i've seen marble in the island E, and realized i was alone on a island, went for sailing, sent a settler to grab it.
Built Oracle for MC, built the GLH, then switch to units.
Despite my naval superiority (noone else has triremes), Liz sent 3 galleys to take my one-archer-defended city on the West Coast, while my army was almost all close to London.
Managed to take that city back, began producing cats, but the stacks coming from everywhere suggested me to abandon the game somewhere around 500 AD.

Same - roughly - strategy in 2nd attempt, no GLH, city on the E island placed to grab both marble and iron, MC from Oracle, 2 archers sent to pillage London's copper, took Zara's capital with GLH, but no way to resist to the infinite stacks approaching.

Sincerely, i'd like to see how someone can have beaten this one... and i'm a Quattromaster, too.

All the settings was acceptable, but i think that not placing copper on the starting island was too much for the average players, or for the unlucky ones.
 
Very poor strategy by me....did not think I could take and HOLD AI cities with just archers (obviously proven wrong).

Settled 4 more cities on main island and 2 on other island.

Retired in 1850AD....
 
Very poor strategy by me....did not think I could take and HOLD AI cities with just archers (obviously proven wrong).
...

For me, I figured there won't be more than 1 archer and 1 warrior defending each city. So I brought 4 Archers for each attack and did not even have to use all 4. It really is an eye opener. So in the future games I will likely use archer rush on all but Mansa. Something about his archers still scares me :p.

Also I think the level had much to do with it. I was actually expecting two warriors actually and found only warriors until attacking Hatty. She did have at least 3 archers and grew to a whole bunch so I would just pillage with my units. Also once Hatty had 4 archers and I left one of my archers behind, she would attack. Toku would attack with just one extra unit to spare. Interesting guy. Well that nation did introduce kamekazi bombers. :crazyeye:
 
I'm amazed at how well so many people did on this one too. With all the warnings in the pre-game thread I even did my best to be careful -- at least in the early game. Still being a mere mortal though, later on I overextended my troops several times and the troop losses slowed me down considerably. Anyway, I settled on the warrior hill, did a CS-Sling on turn 102 (1450 BC) after bulbing Math, and proceeded with a good tech lead :), but no early civ kills :(. Expanded to the hill 1S of the West copper (instead of east -- never did settle the other island) and later took Aksum as my second hard point. The rest was just slogging it out getting lots of war experience. ;)

Conquest Victory on 437/1847 AD.

Some brief details for anyone still interested ;):
Spoiler :

Key Dates:
City #2 - 57/2575 BC
Library - 68/2300 BC
GMan #1 - Great Scientist - 81/1975 BC (Bulb Math)
Civil Service - 102/1450 BC
City #3 - 104/1400 BC
GMan #2 - Great Scientist - 104/1400 BC (Academy)
Academy - 104/1400 BC
Liberalism - 294/1370 AD

Tech Path:
014/3650 BC - Agriculture
032/3200 BC - Animal Husbandry
052/2700 BC - Writing
069/2275 BC - Bronze Working
075/2125 BC - Meditation
080/2000 BC - Priesthood
081/1975 BC - Mathematics (BULB)
102/1450 BC - Code of Laws
102/1450 BC - Civil Service (from ORACLE)
104/1400 BC - Fishing
113/1175 BC - Iron Working
118/1050 BC - Sailing
119/1025 BC - The Wheel
121/975 BC - Pottery
122/950 BC - Hunting
124/900 BC - Archery
131/725 BC - Calendar
140/500 BC - Metal Casting
142/470 BC - Masonry
147/395 BC - Monarchy
159/215 BC - Feudalism
174/10 AD - Machinery
181/115 AD - Construction
192/280 AD - Compass
221/715 AD - Optics
229/835 AD - Paper
263/1180 AD - Education
277/1285 AD - Philosophy
294/1370 AD - Liberalism
294/1370 AD - Astronomy (from Liberalism)

Great Person Totals:
Great Scientists = 8
Great Generals = 8
Great Prophets = 4
 
Goal: just win. No unneccesary risks.
It turned out to be easier than I expected, and I could have been more ambitious.

At 500AD, I was making 130bpt, and my best units were catapults and experienced swordsmen, Music and CS were just around the corner.
I had captured London, and reduced England to just one city on a hill between me and Zara Yaqob, and had destroyed most of Hatty's units, razing a couple of cities.

I had two stacks, one in Egypt, which needed a little reinforcement, to capture cities, and one just east of London, waiting on the hills and hitting stacks out in the open (I was just starting to see some 6-8 unit stacks from Toku, and smaller ones from the others.)

The game continued like this for some time, until I finally defeated Hatty in 835AD, uniting my stack to capture the rest of the continent in a sweeping fashion, with Elizabeth eliminated in 920AD, followed by Zara Yaqob in 1265AD.

By this time, I was getting my first Knights, and so I had one stack of Cats and crack CR3-Cover Maces to take out the tough cities with walls on hills, and used the knights to mop up the smaller cities with outdated defenders.
I worked my way up through Japan, sending Tokugawa to his grave in 1445AD, and then Pacal folded easily, unable to match my overwhelming numbers, biting the dust in 1520AD.

At this stage, I applied a small amount of low-calcium milk and MMed my cities for maximum growth while the Mayan cities came out of revolt. The end of these regolts didn't quite push me over the domination limit; I was a few tiles short, so I pushed the culture slider, and backfilled techs like Monotheism and Archery.

I won a domination victory in 1555AD with a score of 144k

Apart from my lack of ultra-early aggression, I made two really big errors.
1) I let Tokugawa build the Statue of Zeus. Fairly self-explanatory. :rolleyes:
2) I didn't relocate my capital. This cost me hundreds of gpt, but as I didn't have a huge economic crash, I didn't think of it long before the end.
 
This was my first Epic speed game and first Always War game, but when I saw that London was defended only by a single warrior I realized that this might not be as hard I feared (normally I play on Monarch).

The dawning realization that we had been robbed of Copper, Iron, and Horses made me so nervous that I settled my first mainland city directly on the iron to the west, but the conquest was actually straightforward. My axemen captured London, destroying the English Empire. (London was the only English city - I think they must have had some cities razed by Egypt or Ethiopia?). Ethiopia was next, then Egypt, and then the lands to the east. I constantly felt that I was teching too slowly, and my huge and thinly-settled empire cost me tons of maintenance until I moved my palace to London. Fortunately, the AI research rate was even slower than mine.

Eventually got Astronomy and sailed to the Netherlands. I was afraid that Willlem would be an isolated tech monster - he had six or seven wonders - but it was knights and trebuchets easily rolling over longbowmen and macemen.


Mistakes
- Couldn't figure out why my settlement on the eastern island wasn't delivering any resources. I didn't know about the coastal fort thing, which cost me many turns of horselessness.
- Wish I'd thought of the clever idea of a connector city/fort linking the inland ring sea with the ocean, I could have pumped out galleons from my core cities.

Successes
- Settled a city on the mainland as quickly as possible
- Conquered London with axemen and gained Stonehenge, the Buddhist Holy City, and the Great Lighthouse (!).
- Remembering to move the palace to the mainland saved me >100 gpt
- I think I only saw one AI galley, and they never tried to land on my islands.

Questions
- Did anyone spin off a colony? I was thinking it might be possible to get intercontinental trade routes with the home islands, but decided it wasn't worth it.
- How much did the AI fight each other in your game?
 
If you spin off a colony in AW it will immediately renounce your protection and declare war on you. So not a good idea, at least not if you want trade routes. ;)
 
Cammell - would you want to have a look at a sav file from 500 BC with only 1 enemy left (the Dutch)?

I watch your gamesave. It looks so unusuall to me.
More ruins than cities, existing cities even with no cultural borders connected. Deserted, empty lands. Not so big military, but definately victiorious.

I suppose you attacked english with just archers, and after taking london you gained access to copper. Then went after other civs. 3 first civs had only one city founded.
I have just one question, how is that possible :) Will try today make such game.

Pity, that civ doesnt have replay mode, like Star Craft for example, would like to see it :)
Maybe its possible to record it with fraps ?
Is anybody eager to make such lesson ? Youtube civ lesson one "Killing civs in a blink of an eye"
 
My first uploaded game in GOTM.
Pity but lost one, have struggled till bitter end in 1965.
Have explored little, and attacked just once during that all time.
Have founded 4 cities.
Dehli 3875BC, Bombay – 2675BC, Vijayanagara 2075BC and only one continental an heroic continental Pataliputra 335BC.

Have founded hinduism in 3525BC, then went researching what needed for resources, and military.
Razed only one Egiptian city, first was too coutious to attack, later on, to busy for anything else but defence. Pataliputra was magnet city preventing AI from attacking home island, after fall in 1876 things went worse. In 1965 I lost last city in unequal fight with Mayan tanks, and mech infs.

Now i know, you have to be aggresive like psychopath :)
 
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