[BTS] BOTM 171 Charlemagne Final Spoiler, game submitted

Deckhand

Procrastination at its finest
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BOTM 171 - Prince Charles ... Final Spoiler

botm171small.jpg


Did you have fun?
What challenges did you encounter?

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Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 171 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.
 
I did have fun though I was struggled a bit and made quite a few mistakes. Below is how the rest of the game finished.

After the last update the Inca liked us and the french seemed poised to cause trouble. A few years later the french(De Gaulle) declared war on us. We weren't really prepared for a war as we had barely recovered economically and begun rebuilding the army. The empire was in dire straits. Could we survive?

Thankfully as we held the French back by the skin of our teeth the French(Louis), the Americans and the Inca decided they had enough of De Gaulle and all declared war on him! :dance:

With the help of all these nations the French(De Gaulle) began collapsing on all sides and Charles took advantage to actually grow the empire slightly as De Gaulle collapsed completely and was eliminated.
Spoiler :

qY0o8Ww.png

As you can see the area around me became quite messy. The Inca and the Americans both are not in this area except for the one city they each took.


After that we continued to strengthen the empire. As we teched up we realized with horror we had no coal and later no oil anywhere in the empire :(
The AI seemed unwilling the trade either with us, even the Americans who we had quickly become friendly with. We continued to nurture the relationship with America and eventually they traded us some coal for an arm and a leg.

As we slowly used the coal to build railroads we noticed that the far off Egyptian empire was nearing a cultural victory(only 50 more turns!). As Charles tried to mull over his options on how to handle this, the following happened.
Spoiler :

jtnKDzj.png

Wanting to keep friends with America we turned on the Inca, who we had been losing relations with anyways. The Egyptians also happened to be on the other side of the Inca. Perhaps if we could fight our way through them we could stop Egypt...


As the War with the Inca progressed we realized we didn't have the strength to fight them. We had the tech but not the resources, we had no oil and thus no tanks. A while later we realized we also had no Aluminum, for modern tanks. What terrible luck!

As the fight went on we reached a stalemate and no way to get past the Inca to Egypt. Charles navy was a joke and a naval attack was out of the question. With Egypt closing in on the win, Charles came up with one last desperate plan....

While we couldn't build tanks we did have plenty of uranium, a strong military industrial complex and Egypt had just finished the Manhattan project....Was it a sign from above? Charles decided to go down a dark path building nukes, many, many nukes :nuke::nuke::nuke:

As Charles prepared for one last ditch effort the French decided to cause trouble
Spoiler :

fxfVd0C.png

That fool Louis! Egypt is about to defeat us all and he attacks me!


Egypt was within 5 turns of winning so Charles ignored the French and launched over a dozen nukes at the nearest Egyptian city near to legendary culture.
Spoiler :

pOhuZlY.png



While the nukes did a good job, knocking the city down to 2 population and clearing out all defenders, Charles had a pitiful navy and could not land a marine to raze the city. His gambit had fallen short. As a result every civ left declared war on Charles, outraged at his massive use of nuclear arms.

Side Note: I have never tried mass nuking as I did, can you nuke a city into nothing? Or it will always survive with at least one pop?

As enemies pressed in on all side, cities began quickly falling as everyone had advanced tanks and Charles still did not have resources for advanced soldiers. It meant little, the Egyptians finished their victory as the other AI sat and watched, never once declaring war to even think of stopping them. Even refusing to listen when Charles had tried to form a coalition to attack Egypt.
Spoiler :

VEftCJK.png



Alas poor Charles, you were not strong enough....I also can't believe how few late game resources we had, even though I felt I had a good amount of land.

Is there a way to get the AI to do something about someone else winning? Do they just not care? They seemed to make zero effort to stop Egypt.
 
I did have fun ...
Glad to hear it!
Thanks for the detailed report.
There are a few gotm players that lose regularly to AI culture victories. They usually don't provide such nice writeups. I'm glad they finish and submit.
As we teched up we realized with horror we had no coal and later no oil anywhere in the empire :(
:hmm: Sorry. :blush: map was unedited. I didn't check for late game strategic resources. :evil:
A while later we realized we also had no Aluminum, for modern tanks. What terrible luck!
:evil: :hide:
While we couldn't build tanks we did have plenty of uranium, a strong military industrial complex and Egypt had just finished the Manhattan project....
Mighty nice of Egypt to build the Manhattan project when they were about to win culturally. :shake:
Side Note: I have never tried mass nuking as I did, can you nuke a city into nothing? Or it will always survive with at least one pop?
afaik, it will always survive with at least one pop.

Is there a way to get the AI to do something about someone else winning? Do they just not care? They seemed to make zero effort to stop Egypt.
They don't care much. It could depend on AI personality and these were mostly builders (all Industrial).
I've definitely experienced the AI attacking me as I was nearing the Domination limit. But I don't know if they care about culture or space victories.
 
afaik, it will always survive with at least one pop.

Well, thanks for the info. Guess I won't try a desperate nuke them into dust strategy next time.

They don't care much. It could depend on AI personality and these were mostly builders (all Industrial).
I've definitely experienced the AI attacking me as I was nearing the Domination limit. But I don't know if they care about culture or space victories.

It's obvious they were in league with Egypt with such an attitude! :backstab: Launch all nukes, Charles the Great shall never fall!:nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke: :D

Again, thanks for the info :)
 
Hello,
this is my first post here and also first GOTM I played. I did some foolish things like axe-rush on Incan holy city without cats:hammer2: Nevermind, it created just small (relatively:lol:) delay attacking Korean and then Roosvelt. Meanwhile Ramsses tried win culturally, so I had to react and declare on Egypt...few turn later I looked at victory screen and need medical help :D Because instead of :egypt: was there Luis in culture...so I grap half of my mighty army, finished Roosvelt and go after French...modern war in two fronts took so long, ach...fortunately, Stalin who before thought I ´m his worst enemy was pleased with me thanks to our mutual struggle(s):lol: So thanks to my huge military production Holy Roman Empire overhelmed both French empires and Egypt which leaded to domination win in second half of 20th:) That was my second prince game ( higher I played only once on monarch with Ghandi, where I won dimplomatic (AP) after nuking Hatschepsut:nuke::crazyeye::lol::lol:).

Amazing job with this, only regret not finding this forum and GOTM sooner:)

Some screenshots (I forgot doing screenshots during game, so this is after win).
Spoiler :
20190315090011-1.jpg

20190315090109-1.jpg


P.s. I built only 4 wonders, but in the end I had 32:rotfl:
 
Nice job. Glad to see you were able to win. Looks like De Gaulle(French) survived in your game, he got mobbed by everyone and torn to pieces in mine!
 
Woot, I managed to complete a game again! :)

Excellent write-ups @Berolsaurus and @Anatoly. Sorry you got into trouble Berolsaurus, but you probably learnt a lot for the next games.

I fiddled about not really quite sure what to do after killing off some AIs with Horse Archers. However, at some point I decided to try to grab domination, as it looked possible without finding the last AIs. The run-in can be such a slog, so I'll just be brief here. I Libbed Mil Tradition and slaughtered everybody with Cuirs. Yeah, kind boring and traditional, but it seemed like the best bet on such a gigantic map. Ended up with 89 cities, killed over 230 units, and only lost 31 combined. Not bad. :devil:

Economy wasn't exactly in great shape, but on a higher difficulty setting such an empire would have probably been impossible. The costs would have been through the roof. Rathouses certainly help, although I didn't build all that many of them.

Got a low-chance Great Engineer towards the end, so I blew him on 1-turning Ironworks in the Moai city (think it was on the turn I won, so not all that useful :D). What was more useful was having a spare Great Artist. Took a while until I could punch a way through Egypt for him, but eventually he settled himself on a barstool while playing guitar and singing his heart out in a recently captured Egyptian city, which instantly put it out of revolt and spread the borders a fair bit. Would have won that turn anyway as we ended up with almost 66% land, but I've never used a GArtist like that, so I wanted to try it out when the chance presented itself.

10-11 turns of a Golden Age left over when I won, so it could have been timed better... :crazyeye: Some things never change.

Big map, but nowhere near as awful quality land as Tectonics sometimes throws at us. Despite ending up with 80 workers or thereabouts, there was still a good bit of jungle left, and unimproved tiles. Way too much stuff to do. There were even forests left over! :eek: (the AI really does suck at dealing with forests).

Oh yeah, and we never fought any Longbows! :goodjob: The last three AIs all tried to tech it, but with fewer and fewer cities they never got there. :sheep:

Fun game, thanks for the map :)
 
Nice job. Glad to see you were able to win. Looks like De Gaulle(French) survived in your game, he got mobbed by everyone and torn to pieces in mine!
yes, but only because in the end I didn´t need to finish him...he had luck - this time:lol: I´ll try next game but I only had ever tried emperor where I gave up on about T200 (epic speed), because I was behind in everything, so I ´m curious about immortal:woohoo:

P.S. for bad grammar I´m sorry, I´m not native speaker and still learning:)
 
... though the next game is immortal difficulty :run:
so I ´m curious about immortal:woohoo:
We are currently running two botms each month. One at noble/prince/monarch and one at emperor/immortal/deity difficulty levels.
Sometimes we create an Adventurer level save at a lower difficulty level. The current immortal game has an adventurer save that gives you a worker at the start (still immortal though).
The adventurer save isn't eligible for medals nor first place awards.
The game scheduled to start 1April is Monarch.

welcome to gotm! :band:
 
I destroyed the Inca in 225. A bad economy definitely prevented me from settling the the land that opened up as rapidly as I'd have liked. HC had done a good job of spreading Buddhism to my cities, and I now had his religious capital, so I converted. Sadly, all the other AI I've met were Hindu.

My next two wars were against China, with Louis and Stalin joining in against me at different times, but to little effect. China was finally conquered in 1630.

I then attacked DeGaulle, reducing him to 2 cities before making peace in 1838.

Stalin was my next target...conquered in 1892. Louis and DeGaulle now had a defense pact, so I went to war with them. DeGaulle fell in 1898 and Louis fell in 1914.

By this point, I was very close to the Domination land threshold (and past the population threshold), but I was pretty sure this late date wouldn't win any awards. Perhaps everyone else had avoided Conquest, because of the difficulties posed by the map? I decided to try for that, while also running up the score for a possible Cow. By this point, I had Mining, Sid's Sushi, and Cereal Mills, and I spread them far and wide.

Ramses and Roosevelt had a defense pact, so they had to be fought together. One by one, their cities were razed. Once I got really close to the Domination threshold, I began giving French cities to Bismarck (who I had bribed into joining my wars and was now friendly) to stay below that 58% figure. Egypt was destroyed in 1942, and America in 1943.

I attacked Rome in 1939, keeping only one city (Cumae) as a base on that isolated peninsula. The rest of Rome was destroyed in 1946.

Finally, I attacked Bismarck in 1947. I captured and held Hamburg in 1948. Cumae was two turns away from coming out of unrest (and I didn't want that extra land triggering domination) so I evacuated all of my forces from that city, inviting Bismarck to march into it. And so, Bismarck's two infantry units sitting on a hill three squares away (with an open railroad running into the city) promptly took that railroad off into the wilderness for no apparent reason. :confused: They refused the Cumae Gambit! :mad: And, therefore, in 1949, I crossed the Domination Victory threshold with 58.05% of the land. Are you kidding me!?!? :eek: That one square from Hamburg must have done it. :rolleyes:

Well, my base score might still be enough for a cow, if nobody else had the stamina to run out the clock.
 
Oooof, that's bad luck @MarleysGh0st :sad: Would you have been able to gift back another city to stay on the safe side?

Still a good win though, and sounds like you may grab the cow. Moooh! :D
 
Would you have been able to gift back another city to stay on the safe side?

Yes, I could have done that before the war started. Or even better, I could have decided on my bloodthirsty strategy earlier, before I was so close to the threshold. :cringe:
 
Hi, this was my first BOTM, and it was definitelly fun, one of the most interesting games I ever played :)
I submitted an incomplete game (1934 AD), but I finished the game after the deadline for a 2012 AD Space Loss to Egypt..

I tried to attack the Chinese first (with axemen), but I came too late to be able to capture Beijing (i only got their city nr. 3 Guangzhou), and things didn't look too well around 1 AD

Spoiler 25 AD :
Civ4ScreenShot0013.JPG


Then I took Cuzco from the Inca around 1000 AD, but was not able to go much further into Inca lands (and had to defy AP resolutions to return it to it's "rightful" owner all over again. From time to time, the French guys and/or China and/or Inca and basically just about everyone declared war, but no much really happened until I realised I have neither coal nor oil :) I tried to push further into Inca territory (since around AD 1830s), took Machu Picchu but was not able to push any further, so I ended up just one tile away from one of their oils.

Spoiler 1876 AD :
Civ4ScreenShot0056.JPG



The Russians got wiped away by Egypt, and later Americans were destroyed by French and Inca.
I traded oil (for Uranium) from de Gaulle and I finally managed to conquer China in 1930 - 1949 (and one of their cities near the south pole had oil, so I finally got my own). Still no coal for most of the game, though :)

However, by this time Egypt was too far ahead, launched in 2001 AD and got their space victory in 2012 AD (I would have been able to launch my spaceship some 20 - 25 turns after they launched)

Spoiler power graph 2012 AD :

Civ4ScreenShot0166.JPG



One last thing - it's unbelievable how my final world differs from the ones others have shown :)

Spoiler 2012 AD :

Civ4ScreenShot0161.JPG



..so a great game, and I have already started BOTM 172 (even though that probably won't last long as I have never played on higher than Monarch :D )
 
One last thing - it's unbelievable how my final world differs from the ones others have shown :)
Aye, it's the "snowball" principle that can be so important. With a strong opening position it's easier to push on from there into the mid and end game -- if you can excuse the pun :D

One example, since I found a picture from my game: I see you have 23 cities above. In 425AD I apparently completed the Hanging Gardens, and got +25 pop from the 25 cities. That's a pretty big deal. But better luck next time, it's all about learning and improving and these games is good for that.
 
:D well, I didn't really mean the extent of Holy Roman Empire that differs so much among these maps, rather that in some maps De Gaulle got wiped out and Americans and Russians prospered, while in my map De Gaulle is doing fine while Americans (and Russians) are gone :) But you're definitely right about mistakes and learning and that stuff :goodjob:
 
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