[BTS] BOTM 158 Emperor Zara Final Spoiler, Game Submitted

[Deckhand]

BOTM 158 - Zara

What happened?
What challenges did you face?
What was fun?

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 158 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.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That was a hard map.... Finally won the space race in 1898 AD - just getting in the turn before the 20th century starts! And that was a slog - I was in almost continuous wars right up until the end.

In the early ADs I attacked Babylon and reduced them to one tundra-bound city. That was too easy - basically my trebs against axes and war chariots. Then I turned my attention northwards, taking out Persia (also easy: cannon against longbows), until they vassaled to Germany, and I found myself with a much harder war against cuirassiers. Took me a while to figure out why Germany was able to build them... Of course, he must have demanded horses from Persia, who's tiny bit of remaining territory had them. The wars took forever, but I ended up vassaling Germany, Babylon, and Persia myself around 1500 AD. I wouldn't normally take so many vassals when going for space, but I had basically reduced them to tiny bits of land that posed little threat to my domination land %, and with so few happy resources, I needed all the happiness I could get.

At that point, my I was suffering from a lot of cultural pressure from India, just to the East of my ex-Persian cities, so I decided I may as well take over that entire NorthWestern continent. India had riflemen, and I was still basically fighting with cannon and oromo warriors (with machine guns for defence) - and cannon against rifles = heavy losses. But I figure this would be my last war so I may as well just use my larger numbers of units and take lots of losses to get it over with. The fairly quick result was a fourth vassal , but not much army left.

Unfortunately, I'm so used at this point in the game to just bunkering down and building spaceships as quickly as possible that I'd forgotten how tempting a civ with not much army is to the AI on emperor level. Within a few turns of ending the Indian war, Rome (with their vassal France) suddenly declared war on me, quickly followed by the Ottomans (with their vassal America). Worse, Rome almost immediately landed a sizeable army on my home continent - so it was clearly a carefully planned attack, and what remained of my army was sitting in Delhi, up on that grassy NorthWest continent. Luckily at that point I had the technology to build tanks - just hadn't bothered building any, so I was able to quickly buy enough defences to see off the Roman rifle/cuirassier-lead invasion force. The entire rest of the game turned into basically a continual game of cat-and-mouse, where, it seemed that as soon as I managed to make peace with either Rome or the Ottomans, the other one would promptly declare war on me again. I had enough of a technology advantage to (usually) keep invaders off of my lands, but was too focused on building spaceship parts to be able to make any serious dent into their lands. And once both Rome and Mehmed had destroyers, even sailing troops became a dangerous occupation. In this game, I lost a lot of modern armour at sea, usually on the very turn that someone suddenly declared war on me. On the up side, I did discover how useful fighters are at weakening enemy destroyers just enough for me to take them out with minimal losses to my ships. In the end, my space victory came while I was still in an unwanted war against Mehmed.

Certainly a challenging game! But I enjoyed it. Thanks Deckhand!

 

[Major Tom]

Also won a Sushi and MiningCo powered space, 1894. Great map for that with all the seafood and metal around.
Only 19 cities so think lower score than you, DynamicSpirit. No wars except vassaling Hammy with Oromos (great UU) and cannons. He was not very useful in teching towards space, tho.

Thank you Deckhand for interesting map. Like it when they are unedited and random.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Also won a Sushi and MiningCo powered space, 1894. Great map for that with all the seafood and metal around.
Only 19 cities so think lower score than you, DynamicSpirit. No wars except vassaling Hammy with Oromos (great UU) and cannons. He was not very useful in teching towards space, tho.

Thank you Deckhand for interesting map. Like it when they are unedited and random.

So if my calculations are right, on an 1894 win, you beat me by 2 turns - and I always consider the victory date far more significant as a measure of how well you played than the score!

Thinking about your stats a bit more. If you had no wars other than against Hammurabi, then you presumably cannot have colonised either of the two big continents to the North, because there's almost no way to get to them before the AI. So you have 19 cities spread between the starting continent, the medium-sized island just to the North of the starting area, and a few tiny islands? Yes? That must mean you had your cities packed a bit closer toghether than I did. I ended up with 12 cities on the starting continent, and my vassal Hammurabi had 2, one of which was tundra/ice-bound and no way would I have settled there. 2 cities on the Northern island, and Bismarck has 1, which I only really left for him because it had no food. So I got 14, possibly 15, sites on those two land masses. And maybe you could get to 1 or 2 of the tiny islands before the AI, so 16, maybe 17 cities max. Not a lot of difference between us actually, but a small difference.

 

[Major Tom]

I thought highest score get medals in BOTM?

Yes, I settled also in between mountains and ice to get more metal in the end.

Screenshot:

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I thought highest score get medals in BOTM?

Yes, the 3 highest scores get the medals, and the results are by default ordered by score (although you can change that when viewing the results). But all the fastest finish awards are awarded by victory date. And how you interpret the results is entirely up to you Personally, I would regard a game as better played if it got a faster victory date, even if the score was lower (unless I knew that the person was specifically playing for score). For 'my' games, when I'm writing up the results, I tend to look at both medals and finishing dates in my write-ups, since I'm conscious that different people will find different things important.

Back in the early day of Civ4 GOTMs, about 10 years ago, I recall there was once a very intense discussion about whether the results should be presented by score or by victory date, with some very impassioned views on both sides. But in the end we continued doing it by score, partly because there was no obvious consensus to change, and partly because, if you try to go by victory date, you hit the problem of all the different victory types which makes it difficult to fairly present the results as one single list. For example, a good cultural victory or a good religious victory is almost always going to be way faster than an equally good space victory. (On the other hand, the same is true for score: In most cases, a good domination win will produce a higher score than a good space win)

Yes, I settled also in between mountains and ice to get more metal in the end.

Thanks for the map. Ah yes, I see you settled a few places that I'd avoided.

 

[nocho]

Yes, nice map! I won by domination in 1500AD. I ran to cuirs and quickly cavs after that to stomp some AIs. Just as I was about to attack Hammy, he offered himself as a vassal which I took. He proved quite useful for teching after that. So instead of beating up Hammy I shuttled the army over to Persia, who had been a bit of a pain stealing lib right from under my nose (hadn't noticed he had edu) and also had beaten me to several wonders. He didn't quite beat my powdered horsies though and was quickly conquered. The also quite advanced but undermilitarized Germans quickly followed suit. The seemingly universally hated Asoka also didn't last long. That left me a few points short from domination. On the remaining island the Romans were top dog having vassaled both France and America. Hence I chose to attack the Ottomans through French lands, and after the sultan quickly lost 4 cities including Istanbul he kissed the Ethiopian ring which gave domination and a 272k score. Thanks for the game!

 

[mscellaneous]

Just submitted by game, 1410AD domination victory. Was very close to Conquest with Mehmed having 2 and Romans having 3 cities left. Unfortunately I could not get them to capitulate.

I decided to take out Buddhist Hammy with Theocracy-fueled macemen and trebs. On 900AD Hammy was vassaled after taking all but 2 (mediocre) cities. From then on it was a race towards Currasiers and world domination (or conquest ). Liberalism researched at 860AD taking MilTrad. After that my empire (16 cities) only produced Curs and Galleys. The 1-tile island between south of the German/Persian/Indian continent - which I had settled in the BCs - provided very usefull for invasion purposes.

The Germans and Persians were the most advanced AIs so their continent had to be attacked first, it was also the closest which was very convenient. On 1070AD I declared on Germany, invading with 30 Curs and 10 macemen. At 1150 I vassaled the continent, without having to war Asoka. Washington fell in 1230AD leading in the conquest of the remaining continent.

A fun and challenging map, many thanks!

 

[WastinTime]

I went all-out for score from turn 0. Seemed like enough seafood for sushi. However, in the end there wasn't much in the far east. And none out in the ocean after astronomy.
The islands were nicely irrigatable tho. Enough small rivers and lakes.

Weird that I was kinda forced to settle horrible cities the mountains and most of the ice, because....
Julius gave me a rice and I tricked him into giving me all 3 of his 3 fish , so I didn't want to attack him. (plus his land was all dry)
How'd I get 3 of 3 fish?

Spoiler :

JC's culture had just gotten a 4th fish, so he gave me 3 of 4. Then I flipped one to my ownership with my sushi culture. He can't break the fish deals for 10 turns and, in fact, he never did cancel them.

Then, just when I was about to take Napolean's land, he peace vassaled to JC
It was 1270AD when I realized (sorta forgot) that I have to win the game too!
So I went after Mehmed just to be able win by domination eventually.

Drafting Oromo's was fun. With 5xp, they could have Drill IV (4-7 first strikes!). I used that and was not impressed. Mostly equal to the Combat promos.
I learned that Elephants are not immune to first strikes
But Horse archers are and sometimes one of those would defend before a 5.0 health longbow against my Drill 4+cover Oromos.

The AP annoyed me again this game. I'm always working my wars around the vote cus defying can be painful. They either vote for peace or vote for my city to be re-assigned .
I have a new related strategy/trick:
1) before they can vote for peace, cease fire.
2) after they vote to reassign the city, declare war and put units next to the city.
3) when the city is reassigned, your units will not teleport away since you are at war.
4) capture empty city.

Notes:
I failed to get circumnavigation I blew it. When I traded Mehmed for his map, I should not have given him mine!! He didn't have to send out a single exploring boat and he got the bonus.

I was playing for an Astronomy game, but it wasn't needed.
I only finally took it so I could get the Physics GS (4th golden age)
Then go on to genetics (+3 health)

I almost switched to Environmentalism (for +6 health) but it would have cost me 1600+ per turn!
And many of my cities did not need the health. So I came up with a new strategy again:
Now that I have genetics, I don't need to research, so drop Representation for Univ. Sufferage
Now I can buy a harbor for about 150 and grocer : 280. Supermarkets same price.

While on the subject, my other civic was Nationhood. Draft a couple rifles, but the best part is +2 from barracks. Upkeep is much lower than Bureau, so Bureau doesn't have any benefit.

In the end, I failed to get a new, all-time high score. I was not expecting to on this map, but I was close.

Thx for the game. It was fun and I'm still learning new techniques after 12+ years.