[BTS] BOTM 170 Roosevelt Final Spoiler, game submitted

[Deckhand]

likewise, will update this with usual stuff

Did you have fun?
What challenges did you encounter?
How many wonders did you build?
What events happened that mattered?

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 170 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]

"Do you like to crush easy opponents? That is not the intent for this game."

Words that would serve as a warning and a challenge, in my game...

Up to 1 AD, the game had been peaceful with my only known neighbor, Montezuma. In 100 AD, I met Shaka.

Monty attacked me in 225. I wasn't prepared to deal with his stacks. He and Shaka were pleased with each other, while Shaka was cautious with me. I wanted an ally, and I really didn't want Shaka joining the war on Monty's side, so I agreed to Shaka's price of three techs (including Feudalism) to declare war on Monty. Monty captured Harappan, the barb city I had just captured in 25 BC. I was able to take that back and then captured Calixtlahuaca. Monty wouldn't capitulate to me, but then in 740 he did capitulate to Shaka, despite the fact that Shaka hadn't captured anything!

Great. Now my aggressive neighbors are a team. Maybe the slight boost in relations with Shaka from our "mutual struggle" will help? I built the Colossus, circumnavigated, and met the other AI.

And then Shaka/Monty attacked in 1090. I completed two more wonders that I had under construction, Chichen Itza and Angkor Wat, but Shaka captured Calixtlahuaca and Los Angeles, and then Monty recaptured Harappan. I was almost ready to resign at this point, but by taking that city, the Aztec Empire grew just enough for Monty to break free from Shaka in 1300. I immediately gave him a tech for peace.

Now with muskets, I was able to liberate my two cities from Shaka. He kept marching stacks across Monty's territory to attack me (while I couldn't get open borders with Monty to give me access to a counter-attack), but once I had rifling, I had a clear military advantage over Shaka's units. He signed a peace treaty in 1620.

I attacked Monty in 1625 (hoping for as much success in the war as possible while the peace treaty with Shaka was still in effect). I took back Harappan again, then two more Aztec cities, and Monty capitulated in 1720.

Meanwhile, on the other continent, KK had peace-vassaled to Alexander for a time, before breaking free, again.

Now with Monty as my vassal, I attacked Shaka in 1760. KK joined us in the war, but Napoleon and Alex went to war against KK. He capitulated to Alex in 1842.

Shaka refused to capitulate until I took Ulundi (the fifth of his cities to fall into my hands) in 1856. By that point, I decided he'd serve no purpose as a vassal. I wanted to finish him off and take the rest of the continent for myself. So, in 1864, Napoleon accepted Shaka's vassalage and entered the war against me and Monty. Not good...Napoleon had built up a tech lead while I had been fighting my long wars. I pushed forward with my plan to eliminate Shaka.

But things could get worse...and did. Alexander/KK attacked me in 1876. Foolishly, Alex tries an amphibious assault on one of my cities, without even engaging in a preliminary bombardment.

It's a complete world war, four vs. two. But Alexander wasn't really committed to a long-distance invasion. He agreed to a ceasefire in 1884 and signed open borders soon after. I conquer the Zulus in 1886. In 1904, I take a city from Napoleon in the isolated northwestern peninsula of my continent and make peace. The other continent is still more advanced than I am, their navies are stronger, and I'm in no position to consider invading across the ocean.

This is the point in the game that usually settles down to a space race. Alexander has a big lead in that race, and has already completed several spaceship components. At least I've had the satisfaction of dominating my own continent. Maybe, now that I have a larger population, I can build up my science and economy to close that gap in time?

But as I finish the Apollo Program in 1915, I notice Alex is as WHEOORN. He's pleased with Napoleon, cautious with me. I sense another invasion coming.

So I'm pleasantly surprised in 1919, when Alex invites me to join him in a war against Napoleon. Well, sure, that sounds good to me! At least I can capture the little island between the two continents.

I do take that, but Alex and Napoleon appear to be evenly matched on their continent; neither has captured another's city. I open up a second front, capture two more French cities, and Napoleon capitulates to me in 1929.

Alex still has a tech lead (his territory looks like an angry hornet's next, with all the gunships hovering about) and he still might win the space race. But he doesn't have aluminum, so now I have a distinct advantage with my Modern Armor. And I have two vassals to his one. I attack in 1939, starting with a massive battle for Rhodes, which is defended by a huge stack right on Napoleon's border. That falls, is liberated in his counter-attack, and immediately falls again. With his reserves gone, he can't mount a serious counter-attack again.

I nudge over the line for a Domination Victory in 1960. One turn too soon, as it turns out. KK breaks free from Alex in that same turn. If the game were to continue, they'd both capitulate to me in the next turn.

A very hard-fought--and very unexpected--victory!

 

[nocho]

Around 1AD I had a decent empire of 11 cities, all peaceful with Monty and Shaka battling it out, despite being budd brothers. I did make quick work of controlling elephants from early on as these neighbours looked a bit scary to face with just archers. For a lack of other strategic resources built up an elepult army. As Shaka was getting the upperhand against Monty, soon after 1AD declared and later eliminated the Aztecs. Shaka also got some of the spoils and controlled all iron on the continent. Traded for it during 10 turns for a ridiculous price to build some iron units and then proceeded to eliminate Shaka, which took until around 1250AD, all with slow movers. Meanwhile teched to astro and cuirs and quickly cavs. Invaded the other continent in 1350AD and 150 years later in 1500AD controlled all 3 remaining AIs (first French, then Greek and finally Mongols) for a conquest victory with what looks like a nice score of 346k.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

A game a la Obsolete...

I built every single wonders in Washington (except the ones I couldn't... TGL, Colossus Versailles, and shrines), and settled every single GPs save one for an academy and the fusion engeener which was used for a final GA (went for space to relax a bit and finish faster - in RL time ))

I didn't take notes so I will be quick...

Do you like to crush easy opponents? That is not the intent for this game.

Met Monty and Shaka while building my first settler

So I settled New York by the floodplains/gold site, on a hill. Good move since Deckhand was nice enough to remove copper, horse, and iron

I was lucky Monty decided to attack Shaka first, then Shaka took on me. I trashed his stacks even if I had to smash quite a few before he was ready to accept peace. Then I built a stack longbows/catapults/elephants (traded ivory from Monty) to smash ... Monty. Then I evacuated the Zulu nut, then worshopped myself to space.

But this doesn't matter, since it was a very good Valentine's day!

Spoiler :

That's some beakers...

Spoiler :

That's some hammers...

Spoiler :

That's some wonders...

Spoiler :

That's a nice spaceship...

Thank you Deckhand for the map!

Cheers,
Ras

 

[Pangaea]

Fun and eventful game

No idea how to win yet. Depends what happens, where the others are. But whatever happens, I should probably take over the continent at some point. I'm thinking Rifles and drafting, but we shall see. Been a while since I tried that.

Don't recall too much up to around 800AD when I picked up the game again, as I hadn't played for almost 4 weeks. But from the log we got Oxford in 500AD, which sounds early to me. Probably whipped hard.

Shaka waged war on Monty and tore him to pieces. Took the city right on the one-tile intersection, but thankfully they settled their feud then. I was worried Shaka would wipe out/vassal Monty and then come for me. A while later Shaka went to war against Monty once again, when I was almost ready to take them on myself. Didn't have much of a force atm, however, but I did have two trebs and a few elephants and longbows (that I also used to attack with), so I hoped to snag some cities from the north while Shaka was wreaking havoc in the south. I did take one city, and was about to take another, but sadly that very same turn Monty vassaled to Shaka and I got kicked out I figured if that happened they would declare on me, like often happens, but they didn't. Brushed off the initial disappointment and got Rifling and started producing the killbots. A bit later we got Nationalism and could start drafting rifles (changing civics when launching the first golden age).

Shaka was no push-over though. At this point, when I invaded, Shaka was sitting in Monty's former capital. I didn't expect Shaka to instantly come for my gold city. I therefore pulled back out and went to defend in my area instead. Didn't want him to park a stack on the gold (hill) and be hard to counter, so I put one stack on the golden hill and another in the city.

Spoiler :

Think you all know who won that bout, but it was still exciting. I have slow combat on defensive fights, and it's always a hoot to see one attacker after the other get slain

Should also be said that prior to this pretty crucial event in the game, Monty was stalking back and forth while plotting, and I was worried he was going to declare on me. Hence why I initially produced those longbows and the odd musket. Maybe he couldn't decide, and in any case Shaka made up the decision for him.

As for the combat... yeah, think we got out on top there

Spoiler :

Haven't gotten two GGs from such a bout before, probably thanks to the Great Wall. The one Rifle we lost was to a War Elephant, who amazingly didn't suffer any damage at all.

At this point I had already met the other AIs. Everybody were good buddies -- I thought. Suddenly Alex declared on Kublai, and after a while managed to take a city. Kublai took it back, though, and I imagine they lost a huge amount of units as the war dragged on and on. I had an Explorer in the area and it was quite fun to keep an eye on it (although he should have been exploring more, haha). Alex was leaping ahead in techs, but they peaced out without any vassaling as it was basically a draw.

On my own continent the war went rather well, now when Shaka didn't have that 30-unit stack any more. He had another stack too, though, which he was nice enough to suicide too. One-movers take time, and he had tons of culture, but I took one city after the other. Also landed some units with galleons, and sniped a couple of coastal cities. Don't know about you guys, but Shaka looks a little angry to me -- and isn't very realistic either.

Spoiler :

The power spike from drafting and producing rifles is kinda nuts. Add cannons later, and the AI will not love you.

Anywho... Monty got wiped out and Shaka was in dire straits. Eventually he bent the knee, but he sure took his sweet time. Didn't have to take his capital, but it was next on the chopping block. During all this I had started making some galleons (okay, rather a lot) and move units towards the east coast in the north, closest to Greece. The bulk of the army was in the south though, so I was producing some galleons there too. Initial plan was to attack Alex heavily, but I changed plans to attack both Alex and Napoleon. Paris was not in a protected spot, with a hill right next to it. The perfect setup. Assaulted Alex first, and when the other stack of galleons + units got across, Napoleon got a surprise outside his balcony window. Apart from around 99 caravels, he didn't have much of a force there. Looks like he was mainly teching hard, and he had never been in a war (oooh, the irony). Paris fell, and another city too in the same turn. Overwhelming forces is fun.

The chips would fall quickly now. Alex begged for mercy after losing just one city, and then suiciding his quite big stack against the taken city, defended by rifles. I lost a few guys and a cannon mainly due to a horde of catas and trebs. They must have had horrible odds, but with enough of them they can still do good damage. Overall he got screwed though, and was willing to cap right after.

The turn after it was Napoleons turn. Paris and some other city had fallen to the invading barbarians, and with Alex too among their ranks, Napoleon saw no other solution. Well, what is this? Kublai has a (former barb) city on the west coast. Shall we pay it an ever so friendly visit? I think we will.

His city promptly fell, although it was a close shave. He had a bunch of dudes in there, and I took it with the last man standing, attacking directly from a galleon (probably shouting profanities with a cool hat). Looking at the names of saves, I actually think all three capped within two turns combined. Napoleon and Kublai in the same turn.

The way things turned out, I was going for a Conquest win. But would it hold?

Spoiler :

Hit next turn and wait for what happens, after micro-ing cities, trying to squeeze out the odd growth here and there, and building Research to finish Railroads.

Spoiler :

Should be said that the AI must have felt it somewhat unfair to be defending with Longbows and Maces, and get assaulted by Artillery and Rifles -- what it sometimes feels like for me when taking on run-away Deity AIs... -- but I was surprised by the amount of losses.

I wasn't able to wonder-whore as wildly as @RRRaskolnikov, and certainly not in just one city, but we did build a couple of shinies too.

Must admit I had hopes of finally getting that darn gold as I got a pretty nice score of 330-ish thousand, but I see somebody are already ahead. But the main thing is that I had a lot of fun with this game. Thanks for the map, and the unusual situation.

Sadly I found no women. Bad news for the other continent. Here comes a love-sick dude across the ocean, and you have no women either? Die, you so-and-so

 

[Frederiksberg]

When we left off at 1 AD I was preparing for war. Monte is a unit builder and had 3-5 units in every city plus a stack of loose units so I decided to take my time building a substantial army of WE's and cat's and around 500 AD the war started. As soon as I entered Aztec land I met Shaka indicating that there had to be a landmass to the south. The war was hard fought and the Aztec spears did some damage to my elephants. In 640 AD peace was agreed in return for tech. Monte was down to one city and Shaka was to be next on the menu. This war was going to be even harder. Shaka had lots of WE's and a much larger empire (13 cities) than Monte. With the Aztec copper in hand I could start building maces and add these to my army and around 800 AD hostilities started. Shaka had a quite large stack of 10+ units that constantly threatened counterattacks and at one point in the war I had to abandon a recently captured Ulundi in order to recapture a couple of turns later. This recapture also marked the final demise of Shaka's stack and from then on it was smooth sailing. During the Zulu war my armies killed 17 We's, 32 impi's and 25 longbows plus a large number of swords and axes. More than 50 american units were lost in the two wars. The wars combined added 18 cities to the American Empire that reached a size of 36 cities total. Concurrent with the war Optics and Astro was learned and contact established with the other continent. Nappy and Alex were at war at the time of contact despite the whole continent being united under Judaism. Soon after contact the Nappy/Alex war ended and Alex declared on Kublai who turned out to be a much weaker target. I wanted to get some dividends from my veteran army that was now spiced up with some Cuirs and the only target was Nappy because he had the AP. Fearing a religious victory resulting from the capture of cities with Judaism (With Shaka and Monte dead only the Americans were without Jewish cities), I decided to capture and raze the AP city (Paris). The war with Nappy went fairly fast. He had joined the war against Kublai and his main stack was conveniently far away in a captured Mongol city. When it finally returned I had a machine gun and many cannons in my stack and it was easy to destroy his last offensive capabilities. I had to gift several of the french cities to Alex because they were under severe cultural pressure but also because I was getting close to the domination limit. After Nappy was gone I turned the attention to Kublai. He had lost half of his cities to Alex before he managed to get a peace treaty. I took the other half and razed all of them except Karakorum and a couple of southern cities that I gifted to Alex. With Kublai gone there was only Alex and me left in a peaceful world. The American Empire was 55 cities strong and Alex had 23 but was far behind in tech. The end game followed the standard corporation strategy: Going for Mining Inc and later Std Ethanol. In the early game I got 3 GE's, two of them at low odds, and I saved two for building the Three Gorges Dam that provides power for all cities on the same continent. This gave a nice boost to my hammer economy but the slow tech pace in the beginning meant that the final date of the Space Victory ended up in the mid 17-hundreds.

All in all a challenging and fun map and the early wars were very tough indeed

 

[pomthom]

Will not submit as I will not rush the ending but was fun while it lasted, my first game in years

Stopped at 1110 AD with 31 cities after having conquered the entire continent by 1030 AD. Basically I tricked Monty to trade me Elephants early by gifting him a city and then got the whip out and destroyed him super fast with Elepults. Pushed on to Shaka while continuing to whip like crazy, mainly HA because they are cheap and can rush to the front. Shaka got to Feudalism barely around 1000 AD but it was too late. By then most of my cities had each 6/7 unhappy citizens due to whipping

Got Optics soon after killing Shaka and met other opponents which are all friends and not very bright. Triggered a GA with a leftover GProphet which allowed me to switch to Rep + Bur + CS + Pacifism giving me crazy output and other GP. With 30+ cities it would be easy going from there, I already have Education and 99% of Lib so I can just milk my tech tree to get to Astro and MT and then storm the other continent quickly with Cuirs upgraded from leftover stack of Phants + HA via Galleon tchoo-tchoo.

Too bad I can't finish as I think I would have had a decent score, having controlled the continent so early. Oh well

 

[Pangaea]

Ooooh, that's pretty hefty hand-gestures Sorry to hear you're not able to complete it in time. There is still 28 hours left as of this post, but I know that isn't much in between real life stuff when there may be lots of gameplay left. Please submit it anyway though. I've done that quite a few times. Feels a bit weird, but I think the staff appreciates seeing the 'real' number of people playing any given map, even if they don't get to the finish line one way or another.


Speaking about interesting events, this one certainly was! Never seen it before (but then I basically never play with events on)

Spoiler :

It was so late that it probably had zero impact on anything, but still a cool event, and I love the text

Got a quest as well, to take control of a horse resource next to the Aztec capital. Shaka captured the capital, but the borders never expanded, so it was in play. I took the capital way later and thought the quest would complete, but sadly it ran out before borders could expand (or maybe I hadn't quite taken the city yet, I don't recall). It had a 100 turns limit, so it simply expired.

Earlier I told about warriors suddenly getting upgraded shields, so being stronger against archers. Since we didn't have any metal that was kind of a waste, but about 9000 years later I remembered it again, and produced a Mace to see if it stuck to all melee, or if it was just for warriors. The mace got it too, and I upgraded it to a Rifle. Poor chap barely saw any action, but still. Same with a super attacker. Always lagging behind the action.

My Explorer, however, saw more action than he cared for. Out of the blue, a little while after declaring on Alex, Kublai cancelled all our trade agreements and even open borders. At the time I thought that was pretty cool, imagining it was an independent action because I was suddenly his worst enemy. But ofc it must have been Alex bribing him. Especially because I also noticed Napoleon had done the same Which brings me back to the Explorer. He got bumped into a somewhat precarious situation.

Spoiler :

 

[voglchen]

The second part starts of with Monty DOWing on me and moving behind my two defended frontlinecities to pillage marble and more... Didn't expect that, but my whipped longbowmen+cats crushed him and I bribed Shaka on him to get out of the war myself. I built up an army but Shaka crushed him to hard, that I missed to conquer Montys double holy city double shrine capital Was allways thinking of attacking him just for this city with probably 50-60 gpt in the end.

Then it was a lovely neighbourhoud with Shaka until I met the others. I had a huge techlead and a lovely quiet friendly Shaka. I even conquered barbcity with iron northwest of Shaka (Again a sign that I should have killed him, especially after getting cannons with lib... But I wanted to go space.
Alex and KK were friendly but the weakest of the 3, Napoleon DOWed me. I bribed Alex and his peacevassal KK in and didn't fight him at all, except killing two cuirs and one treb that captured my fish island (I had no defender there ). Napoleon quickly vassaled to Alex. I was still thinking of a peaceful spacewin after everyone loved each other. Out of nothing, Alex invades me and conquers New York in the first turn (again badly defended by only 1 Archer). I draft and whip mech infantry, defeat him on my land and for one tech I get a peace treaty. Alex is back at friendly. After that Alex is plotting again, I beg 1 gold for 10 more rounds of peace and after that Alex DOWs me again without a fist... At least I have my defense in every city, defeat his invasion force again and start my spaceship for a, I think, 1954 spacewin.

I'm really rusty after a year or so not playing... But lessons learned, allways kill them all if you are in a good position... I had such a huge techlead, libbed steel, even got iron myself (Shaka demanded 190 gpt for trading it to me before ) and could have easily killed Shaka with cannons and then moved on to the others. I will replay that scenario from my savefile where I decided to go space and crush them all!

Was a fun map to play but I knew it could get annoying after Monty and Shaka started with a -2 as first impression

 

[pomthom]

But lessons learned, allways kill them all if you are in a good position...

Cannot stress this more. Best course of action here was to conquer your own continent as soon as possible with Construction.

But yes a good rule of thumb is to kill as many as possible as soon as possible

 

[voglchen]

But yes a good rule of thumb is to kill as many as possible as soon as possible

Should have done that the first time. I replayed from the stage I made the wrong space decision and had a Conquest victory with cannons+muskets against shaka and added cuirs+cavs against the rest for a 1725 victory date with 171000 points vs the space 1945 with 23000 points. Could have been so much easier

 

[shakabrade]

I picked up this game one day before deadline and had to sacrifice 2 nights of sleep to somehow nab 7 hours of effective playtime. I realized that going for space would be the least consumption of RL time as you can simply spam workshops. Of course, we needed some land as space always does and Monty was obliterated with elepult (funny, he was just about to attack me) and Shaka was vassalized with cannons and muskets plus some Knights. Had 22 cities after I returned 3-4 to the Shaka so that he could help me with research. In the end he only managed to get me Fission (and I gave him 100 gpt to increase his tech pace). Basically, from start to finish this was no tech trading game as AIs were so damn slow. I got 1804AD space race victory, kissed wife and kids for good morning and went to work as a zombie.

In the end, I am really disappointed with such a late space, but I haven't played below Deity for probably 8 years, so don't really feel the timings. It is so much different game, I'll give more GOTMs a try definitely.

And really fun mapmaking decisions, kudos to The Mapmaker!