[BTS] BOTM 148 - Final Spoiler, results submitted

[Deckhand]

BOTM 148 - Final Spoiler Prince Sulieman with a lot of land.

So how did your game after 1AD go?
Was the big world with advanced AIs fun or just tedious?


Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 147 then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

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

 

[MarleysGh0st]

As I said in the first spoiler, the beginning of my game went as well as I hoped for. After that...my warmongering turned into a disaster.

I continued peacefully expanding for a long while. I built the Colossus, was beaten to the Mausoleum, but completed the Hanging Garden, the Taj Mahal, and the University of Sankore. I was first to liberalism, taking nationalism as my bonus tech. I was a little slow in my expansion into the jungle to the north, so Cyrus settled one city among mine, there. I adopted theocracy, preparing for my Janissaries to take the disputed land and push north from there.

I declared war against Cyrus in 1410, when I was the only Confucian, while Cyrus and Sury were both Jewish and friendly with each other. ZY immediately declared war against me. I captured the two Persian cities that were my immediate objectives and paid some gold for peace with ZY, when Sury attacked me in 1575. I pay him a tech for peace, take one more city from Cyrus and make peace with him in 1620. Too much war weariness and too many enemy units facing me to press the attack.

Sury has the AP and I have to defy a series of votes to give back the cities I've captured. But I haven't had enough. I attack Cyrus again in 1710. This time Shaka takes advantage of the situation to attack me, so I give a tech to ZY to declare against Shaka. Then Cyrus volunteers to become Sury's vassal, bringing Sury into the war against me, again. I sign a ceasefire with Shaka, then agree to an AP vote to end the war with Sury/Cyrus.

Now I realize I can't win militarily, so I'll try for space, even though I've lost my tech lead over the course these wars. I continue defying votes to return cities. I'm beaten to a couple more wonders, but I do get Mining, Inc. Too bad I don't have enough metals to make this particularly advantageous. And then, in 1868, there's a random event about an Ottoman infiltrator being discovered in the Khmer government, which automatically makes me declare war again against Sury/Cyrus again!

I give ZY another tech to become my ally in the war, but the enemy have far too many units for me to resist. I give Sury one of my smaller border cities for peace in 1892.

I continue the space race, although I know I can't catch up to Sury, particularly after he completes the Space Elevator. Sury launches his space ship in 1948, long before I'm close finishing mine (I even lost a docking bay along the way to an enemy spy). And then, while waiting for his space ship to reach its destination, Sury/Cyrus declare war on me again, in a cheap, vicious maneuver to run up his score, exactly as I've done, myself, in past games. He captures two of my cities, including one by a massive paratroop drop, before he wins a space victory in 1959.



I was frustrated with this outcome, so for fun I replayed the game from my 1 AD save. Among the differences in strategy this time was building the AP, just to block Sury from getting it, expanding to the north faster, and switching to Free Religion to decrease my negative diplomatic points. I delay war for much longer, while I built my economy and extended my tech lead. Cyrus and Sury sign a defensive pact, while I sign one with ZY. When I finally attacked Sury/Cyrus in 1765, I make a tactical mistake by giving ZY a tech to DOW vs. Sury (forgetting that their defensive pact ended the moment I attacked, so Cyrus remains at peace with ZY). This works out fine, though, when I make peace with Sury in 1804; now I can watch all of his units march by to fight with ZY while I deal with Cyrus.

Cyrus capitulated in 1842. The rest capitulated easily after that: Sury in 1870, Saladin in 1892, Shaka in 1896, and Sitting Bull in 1903. Rather than attack my friend ZY, I take a diplomatic victory with a UN vote in 1905. So it was possible. Just not the first time.

 

[babybluepants]

1080AD Diplomatic Victory, 96k

Looking at all that land made me really reluctant to go to war, so I took the quick and easy way out of this one. In my game, most of the world was Buddhist. Even though Buddhism didn't spread to me until a few turns before the victory, it meant that I could easily build up my plusmods with everyone (gave away a pile of techs, cities and resources). I did manage to mess up some of my city liberation gifts. 1-2 wouldn't liberate, and I lost 1 settler to a barb archer.

After the first spoiler, I finished Education quickly, but it took me a while to build Oxford (completed in 450AD). I saved quite a bit of cash during that time, and ran 100% slider from then on. Looking back through my log, after Oxford I got all of Mach / Music / PP / Compass / Optics / Astro / Sci Meth / Physics / Elec / Lib - Radio in 16t. The map setup was really too generous.

Also got pretty lucky with GPs: low odds (15-20%) GE for UN + 9 total GS, including the freebie from Physics (academy + 7 bulbs + 1 too late to matter) + GA from Music (only detour on the tech tree, for a golden age) + one more GE for good measure on the victory turn.

Fun game. Thanks, deckhand!

 

[Pangaea]

Never did continue after getting a very sore bum by the RNG. Have had a tendency to play games until around 1AD recently, that stretch is simply the most fun, so now I have a good 5-10 games I ought to complete. This won't be one of them, so may as well throw in the towel. Despite the awful luck, it was or could have been a pretty good game, as I had an otherwise good development until 1AD in terms of cities and research (got the GLH if I recall). Looks like some smashing games above though, so probably wouldn't have stood a chance anyway - especially if I had gone for diplo!!

Wish more people wrote about their games. Are you afraid of others reading the threads and gaining useful info?


Tangent warning:
Looking at the picture in the OP, those are some serious hats Must have neck muscles like a thigh.

 

[Pangaea]

Not sure if there is much point submitting these retired games, but did it again. Had to rename the save first... If you have a swear filter, it may have retreated to a corner scarred for life

 

[babybluepants]

Have had a tendency to play games until around 1AD recently, that stretch is simply the most fun, so now I have a good 5-10 games I ought to complete.

That's exactly what I always do.
Too bad. Your game sounded pretty good and I also wish there were more spoilers to read here.

 

[Igetvassaledalot]

So this is first submission to GOTM so I'll keep it short and sweet since I'm a noob. My first civ was 2 and I remember being addicted to that game back in the day. Got the itch to play some civ a few months ago and really got into civ 4. So this was my first game at higher than noble difficulty and it showed. I expanded too slow and got my self boxed in at 15 cities. Sury was at 24 by games end iirc. I believe Zara was around 22. Went no religion most of the until finally Sury and Cyrus Judaism finally spread to me(I founded Confucianism but didn't think it would be wise to convert since everyone else had a religion) Shaka, Saladin, and Zara were Hindu. Made friendly with Sury and Cyrus since they were my neighbors. Sitting Bull was Buddhist and spent the game being Shakas punching bag(he never did conquer him though). Anyway I cottaged the bejesus out of my decent land and found myself with a tech lead over my larger neighbors. If had to do it again I definitely would leverage the philosophical trait more. So basically I leveraged my tech lead and friendly neighbors into a 1921 space win without fighting a single war until the last couple turns when I joined Shaka to kick SB while he was down. I made a ton of mistakes such as not saving my last few GP's for GA's to speed things up. Had a lot fun and my have to do this again when games that are appropriate for my ability level come along. Great map, fun game. GL to all

 

[Deckhand]

Welcome to GOTM!
Glad you had fun.

It's the need to submit that inspires me to finish my games.

 

[LinkDinkin]

That was an epic game. It took me more time to finish than I care to admit. I went the Domination route and I ended up with something like 85 cities at the end. Lots of lag on my old rig towards the end.

After 1 AD I went for Liberalism and got there early enough that I could tech up through Replaceable Parts before triggering it. So I had Cavalry shortly after and switched to Vassalage and Theocracy with Hinduism. Started stomping on Sury who was close and had most of the wonders. I planned it so that I attacked immediately after an AP vote and went right for the city that built the AP to avoid a vote for peace. After that everything fell pretty quick (Cavalry vs. longbows).

I bribed Zara on Cyrus and attacked Cyrus. I later bribed Zara off to avoid Cyrus capitulating to him. Next I bribed Zara on Sitting Bull and attacked Zara. I love how easy it is to bribe Zara! I bribed Sitting Bull off to avoid him taking any Zara cities.

At that point I probably should have kept rolling over Sitting Bull because no one still had Rifling, but I just got Mining Inc. AND Cereal Mills and I had this idea of trying to maximize my score (is that a thing?) before winning domination. Instead, I think I wasted too many turns spreading the corps to nearly all my cities (~80 at that point). Sure, my populations grew a lot, but what I gained in Population, Wonders, and Tech, I probably lost in finish date.

Other mistakes were building too many buildings like Market, waiting for Three Gorges Dam for power, and accidentally getting Medicine when I really wanted to go for Refrigeration (Cereal Mills).

Anyway, I finally attacked Saladin because he had a couple wonders and the Hindu shrine. I took 3 cities and made peace. Then I, turned up my Culture slider to the max, farmed a bit, and let the Dom % creep up to victory (1836 AD).

I think this was my first Tectonics map. Despite some tedium towards the end, I liked the map in general because it had some interesting choke points and each civ's land had different pros and cons.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Space win in 1862 AD

1AD saw me with 12 cities, peacefully building wonders. After 1AD. I actually carried on that strategy for ages: The AI were mainly so far away (apart from the Khmer) and the tempting resources that I lusted after so much further away, that it seemed more sensible to just consolidate. So I decided to beeline cannon and only go to war once I had cannon. That happened about 1000AD when I used liberalism to get steel. At the same time I continued to accumulate wonders in the capital, with the aim of having enough great people for a massive golden age towards the end of the game. That plan actually worked – I ended up with a 60-turn golden age, almost perfectly timed to end shortly before I launched the spaceship. Would’ve been better if I wasn’t at war and battling war weariness throughout the entire golden age, but I guess you can’t have everything.

Anyway…

The only downside to my plans turned out to be that the site I’d so painstakingly chosen for my future bureaucracy capital, just south of the Khmer empire turned out to have lots of science but next to no production. That meant that even by 1000AD it still wasn’t worth attempting to build a palace in it. Ooops! But that’s the fun of Civ4 – you have to balance so many different considerations to make the game work.

Soon after 1000AD I went to war, and there came what I think was my first serious strategic mistake. I chose the Khmer as my first target, mainly to relieve cultural pressure on my intended capital. Ideally, I should’ve just taken a few cities before turning my attention elsewhere, to make sure no single other civ became too powerful. But the Khmer’s location on the peninsula meant I had to dig very deep into their territory to open up a land-based passageway for my troops to get to any other AI. And to make things worse, I was getting so much extra commerce from the Colossus that I really didn’t want to research astronomy, so I was stuck with galleys, making large scale water-based troop-ferrying impractical. With hindsight, big mistake. Later in the game, this would have the odd consequence of my being able to build transports and destroyers before I could build galleons. But around 1200 or so AD it meant I was stuck warring against the same opponent while everyone else got stronger and stronger. Of course, cannon against longbows meant the Khmer stood no chance at all, but so much land meant the war took ages. By the time I’d opened up a land-passageway to Cyrus, I figured I may as well just finish the Khmer off altogether while I was there. Unfortunately, the Khmer quickly vassaled to – ummm – Cyrus – so I ended up with a two-front war. Cyrus later vassaled to Zara Yacob, and so the war went on and on almost to the end of the game, by which time I was desperate for peace, partly so I could focus on building this sodding spaceship, but mainly because this was the early hours of the morning with the submission deadline barely hours away, and I was mega, mega, tired. But Zara Yacob simply wouldn’t talk. Was he trying to stave off the inevitable defeat by sneakily stopping me from submitting in time? Was it some evil plan that Zara had hatched in conjunction with Deckhand? We need to know!

It actually turned out quite interesting. I’ve never really warred so late in the game before, so this was virtually the first time I’ve mass-produced modern armour. (They coped admirably when attacked by 8 Ethiopian cannon immediately followed by what seemed like dozens of Ethiopian riflemen trying to take advantage of the collateral damage).

Even more interestingly, this was the first time I made serious use of air units: Usually by that time in the game I’m too focused on the spaceship to want to divert to flight technologies, but this time the war was still going even after I had virtually every spaceship technology so…. It was quite a learning experience discovering how to use airships and bombers effectively. They are quite cool once you know how to use them to selectively damage the strongest defenders in a stack. Would’ve had a go with paratroopers and gunships to see how quickly they could dig into enemy territory, but Zara Yacob became willing to discuss peace terms in time to kill that idea.

I also built a couple of guided missiles, but somewhat embarrassingly I couldn’t figure out how to use them! Every time I tried to get them to do an air strike, all the tiles with Ethiopian units on them got greyed out. All I could do was rebase them every few turns. Hmmmm. What’s going on? No, I’m not really a game designer…

Anyway, fun game. And glad I managed to finish in time.

 

[babybluepants]

The only downside to my plans turned out to be that the site I’d so painstakingly chosen for my future bureaucracy capital, just south of the Khmer empire turned out to have lots of science but next to no production. That meant that even by 1000AD it still wasn’t worth attempting to build a palace in it. Ooops!

Interesting. Yes, that site is very poor - zero hammers and just the one 5 food tile. It would take forever to get going. I almost never move my capital and almost never cottage, but I think I would want to settle such a future capital early and with some production capacity. You need to get it rolling early, so you can potentially build some wonders, grow it large by the early AD's and build an early Oxford there. Your Bursa as a second or third city might work for this? It would get 5 river-grass cottages that it can work early, has two power tiles in post-CS corn and grass cow and 3 GH mines. If you go settler first, settling it as a third city after your Edirne makes the most sense. My third city went 1N of there, founded in 2760BC, and it was a pretty nice pop-10 by 1AD. Your Bursa site is better if you want the extra cottage - I preferred the extra hills and forest for my game.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Interesting. Yes, that site is very poor - zero hammers and just the one 5 food tile. It would take forever to get going. I almost never move my capital and almost never cottage, but I think I would want to settle such a future capital early and with some production capacity. You need to get it rolling early, so you can potentially build some wonders, grow it large by the early AD's and build an early Oxford there. Your Bursa as a second or third city might work for this? It would get 5 river-grass cottages that it can work early, has two power tiles in post-CS corn and grass cow and 3 GH mines. If you go settler first, settling it as a third city after your Edirne makes the most sense. My third city went 1N of there, founded in 2760BC, and it was a pretty nice pop-10 by 1AD. Your Bursa site is better if you want the extra cottage - I preferred the extra hills and forest for my game.

Wow, impressive that you evidently studied my screenshot in the first spoiler so closely! Nice to know that posting those is worth it

I did look closely at Bursa (by the river SW of our starting point) because, as you say, it does have good production capabilities, but ultimately rejected it because I felt it didn't have enough riverside tiles or enough tiles that could grow to towns. I was also a bit concerned that it was right on the periphery of my empire so would cause significant distance-from-palace costs. Malatya had the same problem but at least looked like it would become more central once I'd captured some Khmer cities. But ultimately, I think you're correct that Bursa would have made a better choice for a capital because it could get going much earlier. I suspect one of my weaknesses is that I look too much at the long term - always thinking too much about what this city will be like in 200 turns, rather than what it's going to be doing in 20 turns

(Footnote: I just re-opened my final save to look at what Malatya was doing and realised - irony of ironies - that I'd given it some workshops to give it at least some production - and forgotten to change those back to cottages once I was running emancipation. Which meant it never even achieved its full potential! Aaaargh!)

 

[Pangaea]

I also built a couple of guided missiles, but somewhat embarrassingly I couldn’t figure out how to use them! Every time I tried to get them to do an air strike, all the tiles with Ethiopian units on them got greyed out. All I could do was rebase them every few turns. Hmmmm. What’s going on? No, I’m not really a game designer…

I've had the same problem, also with nukes. Try to fire off these things and every tile is greyed out. What gives? (Hopefully Trump has the same 'problem').

I almost never move my capital and almost never cottage

Would you mind elaborating on that? Don't you get into trouble with lack of commerce if you just farm and mine and largely ignore cottages?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Not sure if there is much point submitting these retired games, but did it again. Had to rename the save first... If you have a swear filter, it may have retreated to a corner scarred for life

Oh, it's always worth submitting retired games.Most obviously because it's a lot of work to put games out, and one of the main markers by which we on the staff judge whether it's worth the effort is by the number of submissions each game attracts. If you don't submit, we don't know you played it. I think it's also nice for the other people who do submit and win (or lose, or even retire), that they can see that they were actually competing against quite a few other people. Ditto for why it's worth submitting if you lose (although understandably, many people who see a loss coming up will choose to retire rather then fight their way on in less-than-enjoyable circumstances).

On a more practical note, if we release a game where for some reason the settings make the game take too long to play, and people who don't complete still submit retired games, so we see many more retired games than normal, that gives us a pretty big clue when we look at the submissions a few months later what the problem was. If people who retire don't submit, then when we look back at the game a few months later, we're more likely to assume there was some reason why people didn't want to start playing that game. That might mean we make less good decisions on what games to release in the future.

(Obivously we do see the feedback in these forums for each game, but if when we're looking back at games from a few months ago, what was said in the forums will be half-forgotten, whereas the data on who submitted is permanent).

 

[babybluepants]

Would you mind elaborating on that? Don't you get into trouble with lack of commerce if you just farm and mine and largely ignore cottages?

Sometimes

I don't know if this is the place for the old SE/CE/HE/etc debate. I used to be vehemently anti-cottage years ago, but I try to adjust my play to the specific situation nowadays and I do think they do have their place in some games. Generally speaking, I value > > . Also, I value having more stuff sooner. Cottages are really painful to work until they mature, and at a time when you can really use food/production to develop your empire. Specifics like FP and FIN make a difference, though.