[BTS] BOTM 134 Final Spoiler

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 134 - Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Did you find anything interesting about Pangaea's map or game design?


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Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 134 then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

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• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

 

[nocho]

The nice thing about this map with its sizeable land of excellent quality nearly all over, was that most AIs grew to at least 10-15 cities and were quite strong for monarch.

Unfortunately for me though that also meant I got DoWed unexpectedly by Rome in the early ADs which cost me a city in my thinly defended border to the NE. The other cities nearby held easily, but I couldn't get the city back until much later in the game, just too many praetorians and xbows were parked inside. Somewhere around 500AD all eastern nations went to war with HRE and I happily joined in to get some cities and then HRE vassaled to Bismarck. The german not much later tried his luck on me, but that went badly down the drain for him. It allowed to pick up the rest of HRE and a good chunk of Germany. I vassaled them both, curiously I could vassal Germany when HRE was still his vassal, I think I never saw that before. Meanwhile France and England were battling it out and I came to Louis' rescue and vassaled England, shortly after Louis volunteered to be my vassal too. Julius and his Spanish underlord then declared again, so I conquered Spain in reprisal and got some cities from Julius, who then also kissed the ring. So with 5 vassals only Portugal and the Celts left. The latter eliminated the Native Americans and grew to a respectable 20 cities, the Vikings on their island were basically ignored by everybody. More or less close to domination I worked my way to space. I libbed steam power for the wonderful dikes and founded communist paradise. With 41 cities and various AIs to help a bit with research I had some hopes of getting space before 1700, but alas, Willem reached the stars in 1720 for a 206k score, which for space isn't all that bad.

Very enjoyable game, so thanks Pangaea!

 

[Pangaea]

Congratulations on finishing the game, and I'm very happy to hear it was lots of fun!

I'm intrigued, did you notice anything in particular about the map?

 

[nocho]

Congratulations on finishing the game, and I'm very happy to hear it was lots of fun!

I'm intrigued, did you notice anything in particular about the map?

Well, it certainly looks like having been crafted carefully. The 90º tilt, the enormous amount of land, the good number of rivers and the resource richness are the most obvious. I noticed nearly all hunting resources close to the Native Americans and spices adequately in the east. All the isthmus-shaped land where Spain, Germany, Rome and Portugal started also looked intentional. The whole shape of the land might look to be representing something, unfortunately however I think I'm not quite gettiing what you're hinting at... A Dutch lion maybe? Also all European opponents plus the Native Americans, looks like the list of people the Dutch have quarreled with in their past.

 

[bcool]

Not sure if my game will be accepted, since I had a few problems reinstalling and setting up the game. Regardless it was a fun game with a neat map and interested twist with the always war civilizations. I did go for space and corporations and noticed that there wasn't any oil or uranium in the late game. There was Montezuma's Castle that the English captured before I found it, so I'm not sure what was special about it.

Thanks to Pangaea for making a great map and thanks for putting in the extra effort to make it a unique game.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

The peaceful game that was the BCE quickly changed. While I was preparing to attack Victoria, Julius declared war on me in 50 AD. I gave Isabella and Bismarck two techs, each, to declare against Julius. Aside from gaining allies, this had an immediate effect as Julius turned his invasion stack around to fight the Germans instead of me. Bismarck built the AP and passed a resolution (against my votes) to end the war against him in 500. Julius made peace with Isabella in 680, then an AP vote to end the war against him passed unanimously in 700.

A new round of wars began, with Joao and Isabella attacking Louis in 760 and Julius joining that attack in 960. I attack Victoria in 880 and Charlemagne attacks Brennus in 1010. Then, with that war still in progress, Charlemagne attacks me in 1050! Having captured two English cities, I take a tech from Victoria for peace and turn my forces to deal with the western threat. Charlemagne capitulates to me in 1130.

I attack Victoria again, while Bismarck joins the war against France and the others make peace Louis capitulates to Bismarck in 1280 and Victoria capitulates to me in 1300. I turn south and capture the two Viking cities

Bismarck/Louis DOW on Brennus in 1450 and I join them in 1470. Louis breaks free from Germany and Julius joins the Celtic war. Then Julius attacks Germany in 1520, capturing two cities near my border! Bismarck responds by offering me his vassalage in in 1575, which I accept, bringing me into another war with Julius. Brennus capitulates to me in 1580, and Julius does so in 1620.

Meanwhile, along with my military campaigns, I've built up my production with dikes (starting in 1510) and Mining, Inc, which I found in 1595. In addition, I've been spreading Hinduism to all of my cities and to one city each in France, the HRE, and Celtia. I'm elected to lead the AP and I figure that a religious victory may be possible, as soon as I finish the conquest of Sitting Bull. I declare war on Louis and make him a vassal in 1660.

In 1670, while Sitting Bull has one city left, I discover that I didn't need to eliminate him to enable a religious victory vote! That election option is given to me, but Joao and Isabella vote for Bismarck, so I fall short of a victory. I conquer Sitting Bull, declare war on Isabella, capture Barcelona, and in 1695 achieve a Domination victory 159,661 points should place me squarely in the middle of the pack, again, I boldly predict.

I'm intrigued, did you notice anything in particular about the map?

Is this an open question?

Maybe I'm just imagining things, but...

Aside from the 90 degree tilt, (or counting that, too, since it certainly must have resulted in strange seasons on this world), I noticed a remarkable similarity to the map of Westeros. Sitting Bull led the wildings through the Wall at Hueco Tanks (a.k.a. Castle Black). Brennus, a follower of the old gods, led House Stark. Ragnar was from House Greyjoy on the Iron Islands. As for the others, more or less, Charlemagne = Edmure Tully, Isabella = Lyssa Arryn, Joao = Doran Martell, Julius = Stannis Baratheon, Bismarck = Robert Baratheon, Victoria = Olenna Tyrell in Highgarden, Louis = Renly Baratheon?

And who were we playing? Financial Willem must be a stand-in for Tywin Lannister, the Lion of Casterly Rock! Apologies to George R. R. Martin for making the war turn out differently.

 

[WastinTime]

I thought I had figured out Hueco Tanks. (a.k.a. TankHole) When I found it, I already knew there was no visible oil, so I assumed oil was hiding in 'tankhole'. Actually for one brief second, I thought tanks were going to start rolling out of there! Turned out to be elephant-hole. And elephants were almost as dangerous as tanks against my HorseArchers/knights. Muskets saved the day. To find oil, I even upgraded a trireme so I could explore the ice south of there, but found none. Not that I had any use for oil.

Fun game, great map. I can't to find out the secrets I missed. Like the castle? where is that?

Wow, I guess the map is a tilted Westeros. I had to google it. Nice eye Marley

 

[Pangaea]

Very well done @MarleysGh0st on figuring out the map. I thought it would be much more obvious than it looks like it was, and I left some clues here and there. Did you find them?

As for the AIs, you got most of them. Some are more obvious than others, like Ragnar = Iron Islands. For our surroundings, however, the idea was that Willem resides in the Riverlands (hence all the rivers in the starting area, trying to mirror the books to some extent). Victoria is supposed to be the "Lions" / Casterly Rock. Plenty of gold there, but I didn't want to go overboard either, and potentially unbalance the map. For some reason she didn't expand very well, but I'm not sure why that is. Charlemagne is supposed to be at the Twins, though it was more a combination of Twins + The Neck. Hence the jungle and lakes, trying to imagine a tough to navigate marshlands kind of area.

Impressive how many cities WastinTime got early on (see 1AD thread). As I mentioned to the powers-that-be, I expected the best players to be able to run amok on the map with HAs, and it sounds like that is what WT did. Glad people appear to have had lots of fun with the map, and that around 10 people have submitted already, with a month to go. Hopefully a fair few more people submit as well. We were a little worried since the map is bigger than normal, but I'm glad it went through as designed in the end

I did a 'proper' playtest until 1AD, and think I had 13 cities. But that was without warfare, because I wanted to see how viable a peaceful approach was. Lots of wars kicked off, which I thought was pretty fitting given the inspirations I assume that is partly due to the fairly luscious land all around, more or less, and ample supply of strategic resources. Religions tended to get spread around as well, which is often a recipe for warfare.

Suppose WT got everybody under control early on, but how did Louis / Highgarden develop? He had a lot of land to potentially expand into. That was on purpose, because I tried to design the map so that some of the bigger guys in the source material would become relatively powerful as well, like Highgarden (great land) and Brennus / Winterfell (lots of land).

 

[WastinTime]

Everyone was not under control in my game. I was beating on Celts and Germans when suddenly they both became vassals of Rome and I was instantly at war against Praets. And, JC gave them longbows JC didn't plan to attack me so there was no stack immediately on top of me, but all over my empire, his roaming units suddenly invaded from all directions! He razed one of my newly settled size 1 cities and I strategically let him take one of my size 5 cities so I could counter-attack. I had to spend $$$ to upgrade chariot-> knight and warrior->mace. 200 for just one chariot.

Louis's land was tempting, but he was in love with me, so I left him alone. Isabella too. I thought I'd peace-vassal them later, but they wouldn't. "I've grown too powerful for them"
I also ignored Joao. I settled a city on top of incense and gifted it to him so he'd trade me incense

 

[WastinTime]

As I would expect from Pangaea, the map seems to be perfect for Space. I really wanted to do dikes. I wasn't aware they could be built on lakes. However, I just didn't want to invest that much time. But I also didn't want to turtle up and do religious, culture, espionage, or diplo. When someone puts such an effort into a map, those VC's don't really let you discover all the secrets/surprises.

So, I tried a style of game I've always wanted to test. A Biology beeline for score. When the game started and we were promised great land, I first thought I'd do a Cereal Mills beeline, but I wasn't seeing much grains and Biology seemed like less work. Later, I could see sushi, as usual, would have been the way to get max score, but I wasn't playing to do another sushi game.

After 1 AD, in only 15 turns, I got Biology T130. That's:
Machinery, Theo, Currency, Monarchy, Construction, Paper, Engineering, Lit, Music, Education, Gunpowder, PrintingPress, Chem, Feudalism, Philo, SciMeth, Liberalism, Biology.
18 techs in 15 turns
I had to get Civil Service after Bio for irrigation spreading.
Farmed everything in site. Then windmills on the hills.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

I thought it would be much more obvious than it looks like it was, and I left some clues here and there. Did you find them?

Well, The Wall was the biggest clue for me. It was much too far away from our starting location to be a mapmaker's device to steer the game play in some way, so it had to be a "historical" recreation. I also noticed the Native American bear on that island, which I thought odd, but my faulty recollection was that Bear Island was on the eastern (northern) coast of Westeros, instead of the western (southern) one, so I missed that one. I also thought having ivory in the tundra was odd; given the map's background, those must have been mammoth. I never noticed Montezuma's Castle, so I don't know what that was about. I don't know what other clues I missed.

We had a GOTM (BOTM?) based on Westeros several years ago, that I quite enjoyed. I'm glad the world has made another appearance, even if all the characters were in disguise.

 

[Pangaea]

We had a GOTM (BOTM?) based on Westeros several years ago, that I quite enjoyed. I'm glad the world has made another appearance, even if all the characters were in disguise.

Yes, I noticed that after having designed pretty much the entire map, and it was rather disappointing. But I went ahead with it after all, since it was many years ago. This one is also different in terms of AIs, and starting location, and although it's a bigger map than normal, not nearly as gigantic as that one was.

There were a few other clues, but more subtle ones. The Wall was the biggest one, and rather hard to miss if one are familiar with the books or TV series. Obviously some aren't, which is partly why I didn't want to tell that in the announcement, as it would give some people an advantage and impact how people played it.

 

[WastinTime]

Handmade maps tend to use mountains to hide various things (I assumed oil). Often there's a single city tile you have to pass thru. So I didn't think there was anything to deduce when I saw the mtn range. Might have clicked in my mind if the wall was north. which reminds me...why did you tilt the map? Just cus it's a cool idea you wanted? You didn't want to save that trick for another map? Or is this your first and last mapmaker service?

And while I'm asking. When there is a city blocking a single tile like that I'm never surprised to see a castle worldbuildered in. Happy not to see one this time, but why didn't you put one there since it's Castle Black? I suppose you figured that'd give away your secret. You could've even named it Castle Black. and I'm not sure I would have figured the rest out. Probably with the help of google.

 

[bcool]

Sorry to throw anyone off, I guess it was a random city name "Montezuma's Castle". I hadn't ever seen that before so I thought it must have been a map feature, but apparently not.

 

[Pangaea]

Handmade maps tend to use mountains to hide various things (I assumed oil). Often there's a single city tile you have to pass thru. So I didn't think there was anything to deduce when I saw the mtn range. Might have clicked in my mind if the wall was north. which reminds me...why did you tilt the map? Just cus it's a cool idea you wanted? You didn't want to save that trick for another map? Or is this your first and last mapmaker service?

And while I'm asking. When there is a city blocking a single tile like that I'm never surprised to see a castle worldbuildered in. Happy not to see one this time, but why didn't you put one there since it's Castle Black? I suppose you figured that'd give away your secret. You could've even named it Castle Black. and I'm not sure I would have figured the rest out. Probably with the help of google.

I had various naughty things in mind, but also wanted a more 'normal' map, so basically didn't do anything too fancy apart from designing the map itself from the ground up. No cities were pre-placed, so I couldn't put castles or such there. Don't think I would have done that anyway. Naming the cities was a thought, but I wanted people to have an equal starting point, so to speak, and not give people familiar with the source material benefits in terms of where this or that resource is likely to be (gold being the most obvious). That's why I didn't name the cities Winterfell and so forth, nor put labels all over the map.

In hindsight, however, it seems like I over-estimated how obvious the inspiration would be.

As for the tilting, I was worried people would be clued on too easily what the inspiration was, so that was one reason. Another was simply practical. I started the designing with a normal map, which are wide. Changing that would have been a nightmare, as every single tile is given several lines in the code, with X-Y coordinates. The minimap might also look out of sorts, which would quickly get annoying on a rather large map.

Haven't planned to make more maps than this one, but you never know. It was fun. Also discovered some neat tricks that apparently haven't been used in previous maps. They weren't implemented in this one though.

Sorry to throw anyone off, I guess it was a random city name "Montezuma's Castle". I hadn't ever seen that before so I thought it must have been a map feature, but apparently not.

During this process I learnt that Minor Civs don't get their normal city names in the normal order. Both Ragnar and Sitting Bull got a range of different names for the capital in different tests (plus their other cities ofc). Seems like for each city they found, it is given a random name from their eligible names. Think I saw Montezuma's Castle too in one of the tests, and had never seen that before. It's probably way down the list.

 

[Pangaea]

Hah, I actually found it in the XML files. Montezuma's Castle is pretty far down the list, but not near the bottom. Some others I saw in the tests, which could tie your tongue in a knot.

ESTIPAH_SKIKIKINI_KOTS
SHAUGAWAUMIKONG

Another name is actually Hueco Tanks, since it was mentioned previously. Hadn't heard about that place.

 

[WastinTime]

Another name is actually Hueco Tanks, since it was mentioned previously. Hadn't heard about that place

wow, that's so funny this city name became such an obsession with me. And what a strange coincidence it was on a map with no oil (no tanks).
I was 100% sure you picked that name and city placement.

 

[Deckhand]

Followed my usual pattern of starting game and playing to about 1AD, then setting it aside and finally rushing against deadline to finish it on time to submit. Some post 1 AD highlights and lowlights:

100 AD Lose Pyramids to Rome by one turn.
200 AD HRE is no more.
400 AD Rome declare war. Peace in 620 AD.
475 AD Celts declare war. Peace in 680 BC.

720 Rome declares on France; 780 Celts declare on Rome; 860 I declare on Rome; 1020 ad Rome capitulates.
1120 I declare on Germany; 1170 Germany capitulates.

move my army of trebs and maces to the west
1280 declare on Celts; two turns, move two stacks next to two cities; 1290 AP votes to "stop the war against Germany" - forces peace [thanks Vicki]

leave one stack in west; move other stack to east to attack France, the biggest AI and only non Hindu
meanwhile learn MT followed by Rifling; now I have a stack of Cavalry along with the Trebs and Maces ready for war on two fronts
1380 another AP vote, now I'm a candidate and have the votes to win (no more messing with my war plans); 1390 peace treaty ends
1390 AP election results: WTH I didn't win the Residency, I won the game! 1400 AD Diplomatic Victory. [thanks Vicki]
well, that will save me a day of RL rushing to finish conquest by vassalization

Fun map. I never uncovered the west edge, my scout was killed by the natives.