[BTS] BOTM 188 Final Spoiler - Game Over

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 188: Willem van Oranje, Monarch - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, particularly anything after 1AD

Did you win?

Reading Requirements
If you are participating in BOTM 188 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]

So, Xcalibrator complained last week about the lack of posts in the First Spoiler thread, but I see I'm the first with a Final Spoiler. (I've been busy binge-watching the Breaking Bad marathon--what's everyone else's excuse?)

Continuing with my Monarch save report:

I finished the Pyramids in 275 and continued my peaceful expansion. I tried my best to circumnavigate with workboats, but it took caravels to earn that bonus in 760. I finally met Elizabeth in 1040, who's second in score, despite her isolated start. At the same time, Ragnar, who'd become everyone's enemy in the east, capitulated to Washington.

Boudica likely would have been my first target in a war of conquest, but she made the decision for me by attacking in 1090, even though she was pleased with me and considered Washington her worst enemy. I had East Indiamen by this time, which sent two out of three of her invading galleys to the bottom before their troops could land. I capture four of her cities, but she still won't capitulate, so I sign a ceasefire in 1370 while waiting for reinforcements to reach the front. In the meantime, Ragnar has broken free from Washington. Although he still has enemies, none of them go back to war.

I resume the war in 1480, capture one more city, and accept Boudica's capitulation in 1515.

Elizabeth was my next target, in 1535. I have to take six of her cities, including London, before she capitulates in 1640.

On to Ragnar, who bends the knee in 1680, after losing only one city.

By now, Julius has rifles, but I'm up to infantry and artillery. I attack in 1730, capturing Rome and three more cities before he capitulates in 1775. Oddly enough, he had a large army in a city on Ragnar's border which sat in place for the entire war, instead of venturing out for a counterattack.

The war with Joao lasted from 1785 to 1802. Then on to Washington, who became my final vassal in 1812. I liberate five cities various vassals to keep myself under the Domination threshold, and I achieve a Conquest Victory in 1814.

A fun game, although overseas enemies were a lot more stubborn than continental opponents.

 

[ZPV]

There's one thing I forgot to mention in the first spoiler:
500BC: Joao builds the Giant Bullseye (Mausoleum of Maussollos) in Lisbon

From 1AD my timeline went as follows:
Circumnavigated 325
Optics 475
Finished expanding (almost) 540

Spoiler :

Yes, I really am researching Mysticism at 560AD! I didn't want to trade for all the cheap stuff and make everyone hit their We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced thresholds.

Astro (trade) 760
Lib-Chem 820
Steam Power 1090
Steel 1160
Golden Age 1170

Spoiler :

Having so many cities increases the length of anarchy when you switch civics, so I but the bullet and fired off one pre-MoM golden age.
I switched to Caste System, Representation, Free Market and Organised Religion.
Why OR? Simply because I didn't have a religion spread and wanted one. I chose Buddhism for diplomatic reasons, and spammed missionaries at the same time as cannons and ships.

Rifling 1220
DoW Joao 1300

Spoiler :

By 1300 Joao had built me two more wonders: Notre Dame and The Kremlin.
The Kremlin was fairly useful, because just about every city would later 4-pop whip a Factory.
East Indiamen showed their worth in their extra capacity and movement:

I captured Lisbon and Coimbra before he had Rifling, and then took Oporto and accepted capitulation in 1350 when Joao was part-way through upgrading his remaining army.

Joao capitulates 1350
Assembly Line 1360
Communism (trade) 1380
DoW Washington 1400

Spoiler :

Next on the chopping block was Washington.
I'd decided that I'd wait for tanks before attacking Julius Casear, and I really wanted more cities for added production and commerce, so I did it the slow way and captured every city.

Through a combination of Frigate bombardment, amphibious landings (adjacent to his cities, I mean come on, these aren't elephants!) and walking through Portuguese territory, I was able to wipe him out by 1505.

Since this army was mostly obsolete, it then took on the vital task of suppressing revolts in the 6 cities under cultural pressure from Portugal. Religion plays a big part in how many units it takes to suppress revolts, so I spread Buddhism throughout.

Washington dead 1505
Industrialism 1545
Ragnar peacevassals and DoW Caesar 1595

Spoiler :

By 1595 I had built myself a new army, and Julius Caesar was invading Viking territory, when this happened:

When you see someone in trouble, sometimes you just have to lend a helping hand... or tank... or battleship!

After capturing the five northern cities, Caesar capitulated in 1615.

Casear capitulates 1615
DoW Elizabeth 1680

Spoiler probably overkill :

Meanwhile, I had been watching Elizabeth's tech and culture closely, to determine just when I needed to attack her to stop her winning.

Her 3 highest-culture cities read 17, 20 and 52 turns when I dumped this on her shores:

For anyone who doesn't want to count, that's
10 Battleships,10 Destroyers, 2 Attack Submarines, 30 Transports, 8 Carriers, 24 Jet Fighters,
65 Tanks, 22 Marines,15 SAM Infantry (including 2 unpromoted Great Generals), 10 Infantry (including 2 Super Medics), and 8 Workers

Elizabeth capitulates 1690
DoW Boudica 1710

Spoiler :

Boudica was last to go. The only interesting part of this war was the fact that she had quite a large navy.
Therefore I sneak-attacked 3 of her rally-point cities on the first turn of the war (I built those marines for a reason!) and sunk most of her ships in the harbour, losing a good handful of my own units in return.

She wouldn't talk to me after I did this, so I had 3 more turns of mop-up before she was completely vanquished.

Boudica dead 1725
Conquest victory 1730 (2 tiles short of domination)

This was a fun game - thanks DynamicSpirit for hosting it
Netherlands + Archipelago + No Barbs means it's really Deity-lite, but you still have to play decently well to stop one of the AIs running away with things.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Congratulations, ZPV.

First, I read your post and resigned myself to the fact that you beat my Monarch-level time by 84 years, even with the Deity level handicap.

Then I opened the spoilers and noticed size of your armies!

 

[krikav]

I had a hard time staying motivated in this game I'm afraid. After the initial excitement trying to build GLH (T55 / 1800) and the first landgrab up to 1AD I didn't get back to the game for many weeks.
And after just a short session I had to put the game on hold again, picked it up again today but I can't seem to muster up the motivation to keep it going, terribly sorry about that!
Resigned now at T165 and look forward to the next game instead.

Spoiler Screenshots :

I'm still settling cities like wildfire at T165. ^_^
Just landed a settler on that 1tile island in the middle of the AIs big ocean, would have been a nice outpost later on.
Settlers are on their way to the spice-island too.

Thought about going for sushi and space, and the pain of spreading missionaries in the early game would be tenfold increased when spreading executives, and I think the anticipation of that was what made my psyche say NO!"

Still no problem keeping up in tech, even though all new cities put a cost of about 10gpt.
All cities are so small too, due to whipping the necessery infrastructure.

Diplomacy is easy, and the eastindiamens I have for spreading settlers can defend against some stray privateers, should be no problem just continuing development calmly.

 

[nocho]

With the deadline looming and after having had the game rest for some weeks, I diverted to a peaceful religious game, no time left for naval warfare. Got there in 1200AD in a not very optimal way, but with what felt like a gloriously fortunate last turn. I had built the AP in confu and then switched to buddhism, the majority religion shared by the Portuguese, Romans, and Amercians. The Vikings however were actually confu and despite being a vassal of Julius, represented a too big voting block as a full member. So after spreading confu everywhere, I had to spread buddhism to Ragnar's cities to get him out of his confu ways. Portugal by then was friendly, but their vote wouldn't be sufficient anyway, while Rome and America were still just at pleased. The same turn after the religious vote came up, I managed to get Ragnar in the buddhist fold, diminishing his voting block while just at the same moment both Rome and America bumped to friendly, which turned out to be just enough for the win.

Thanks for the game.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Sorry, I couldn't finish in time. Not clear if I could have won this Deity-lite or not. Just as I had my levees in place to start a real push for either war or space, Boudica attacked, so I had to deal with that. As others noted, Boudica is extremely reluctant to capitulate, so it took awhile. Having made a substantial investment in military units, I figured it would be a good idea to go after Liz, who was very big but a little behind in miltechs. Mistake. I took one city and then started marching toward the next. She assembled her forces from all over her large island and wiped out most of my stack, which I should have expected. Then Wash DoW'd me. I made peace with Liz and took an American city on an island I shared with them. Then JC and his vassal Rags DoW'd me. I made peace with Wash and started to whittle away at the Romans (he opened the war by wasting at least 4 transports full of troops on an amphibious attack on my remotest island city) but ran out of time. Certainly a winnable game even for me if I'd played better. My perpetual problem is not having enough units to properly crush enemies--don't know how others do it. Maybe I spend too many hammers on buildings. Kinda late to learn at this point.

 

[undead]

From memory:
- contender save (Monarch)
- starting island without any neighbor
- no need to expand to "astronomy islands" (most/all the resources were in the neighborhood)
- no tech or maintenance problem, as expected (TGL, colossus, state property)
- attacked Boudica, but Boudica capitulated to Elizabeth
- attacked Elizabeth, but Elizabeth didn't capitulate until Boudica got free from Elizabeth (should have eliminated Boudica first?)
- attacked by Washington who capitulated quickly
- attacked Joao who capitulated quickly
- attacked Julius (and his vassal Ragnar)
- domination/conquest victory