[BTS] BOTM 194 (Lockdown game), Monarch - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

DynamicSpirit

Fear him of the pink tie
Moderator
GOTM Staff
Joined
Dec 23, 2005
Messages
6,849
Location
London, UK
BOTM 194: Lord Lemme-Out!, Monarch - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted
botm194small.jpg


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

Was it easy or hard to keep to the special rules? Did you manage to avoid being offended :mischief:? And did you win?

Reading Requirements
If you are participating in BOTM 194 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.
 
Looks like I'm the first player to submit my game. I'll do a full report later, but I just want to mention that the submission screen displays a lot more data than normally--I guess that's the event log that is used to determine whether I've met the special victory conditions. That's fine, but I also did not get the usual submission confirmation e-mail.

Hoo boy, this was fun! :D


Update: The confirmation e-mail did arrive; it just took longer than usual.
 
Last edited:
Continuing with my Contender game:

With catapults, I finally conquered the Forbidden Fruits in 450.

I used a GS in 580 to start a golden age, converting to caste system to generate some great people. Big mistake here: a second GS was born in 620, which let me bulb Philosophy, but now it was too late to convert to Pacifism. I make another mistake by forgetting to convert to O.R. before the golden age ended, so it cost me a turn of anarchy to do so afterwards. Two more golden ages would follow later in the game.

While exploring the corridor, I found a barb city to the east. Bolsonaro beat me to capturing it by one turn, so I decided to declare on him and take the city from him. I was beelining for cuirassiers at this point, so I wasn't ready to invade his homeland, but I wasn't adverse to the idea of baiting out his army in the meantime. He never took the bait.

Meanwhile, having spotted the Pathogens on an island to the south, I set to work building a galley in the Utility Room (which was built on top of "Exit at your peril") and building a fort to serve as a canal to the southern ocean. The Pathogen cultural borders expanded onto the western corridor and they wouldn't give me open borders (even if I wanted them, which seemed totally contrary to the spirit of this game) so I signed a ceasefire with Bolsonaro and attacked the Pathogens in 1090. I captured the Black Trap Virus and a barb city on that island, then I capture Flu on a second island, but my exploration did not find a coastal link to any further islands. Pathogens can be sneaky! So can DynamicSpirit. :mischief:

Bolsonaro has set up Alexander of Greece as a vassal on his northern island (totally outside the theme of the game--I'll just consider him a Conspiracy Theorist Bot). I've researched the tech for cuirassiers, but I haven't found any iron, so I'm forced to trade for it. Buy-Me-Quick (Sid) charges me Stone, Bananas, Ivory, Gold and 63 GPT for it, but that lets me upgrade a stack of horse archers. Since I don't have astronomy, I resign myself to a second wave of war with the Pathogens and sign a peace treaty in 1190. (The Pathogens were willing to capitulate, but we can't have that, so I take what little gold they have, instead.) The Conspiracy Theorists will be my target, for now.

Bolsonaro seems to have anticipated my plans, however, and on this same turn he launches a surprise attack that destroys my vanguard stack. Then he retreats into Colloidal Silver before I can counterattack. Andrex Puppy (a cultural reference I was unfamiliar with, until I Googled it - awww!) peace vassals to me. The Battle of Colloidal Silver lasts until 1260, the rest of the Conspiracy Theorist cities are captured by 1400. After capturing two Greek cities, Alexander capitulated in 1480.

Meanwhile, I've gone back to war with the Pathogens in 1460, giving the Nurses a tech to become my ally. I conquer the Pathogens in 1515.

Now, it's time to take the Supermarkets, and end Sid's relentless advertising campaign (every turn, he kept demanding that I convert to his religion, although his attitude never changed when I persistently declined). I declare war in 1550, take two cities and destroy his counterattacking stack, and he bends the knee in 1560. Railroads would have been very useful to speed up the redeployment of my forces, but I don't reach that tech until the was was over.

My plan was to make YouTuber my final target on the path to Domination, but now there's a wrinkle in my plans. He's signed a Defensive Pact with Florence Nightingale in 1560! If I declare on YouTuber, Florence would declare on me, so I wouldn't technically be violating the rules. But some things are just WRONG.

Luckily I don't have to deal with this ethical dilemma. I've been sending settlers to some empty land in the Pathogen islands, and now I'm just below the land threshold for a Domination Victory. A burst of building culture pushes me over that limit, giving me Domination (with both of the special rules followed) in 1575.

Thanks for a very fun game, DynamicSpirit! It was almost a shame attacking the AI before they had a chance to settle more cities. How else can I discover what creative names you had prepared for them? :cool:
 
I just submitted and got the same as MarleysGh0st must have gotten. A page full of text followed by a notification of an Error.
I am in the submission list anyway, so for others who want to submit I think the Error can be ignored. (or maybe an unpleasant surprise is still possible when files are checked before publishing Results??)
 
I just submitted and got the same as MarleysGh0st must have gotten. A page full of text followed by a notification of an Error.
I am in the submission list anyway, so for others who want to submit I think the Error can be ignored. (or maybe an unpleasant surprise is still possible when files are checked before publishing Results??)

If anyone else gets the same error on submitting, can you PM me a screenshot of the page (or - just copy and paste the relevant text from your browser and PM me that) - and I'll look into it. Thanks!
 
Thanks! I now have copies of the submission page text from a couple of people. There's definitely a problem - when you submit, the page displays a dump of the game logs that it shouldn't be showing. I'll get Alan to look into it.

In the meantime - just submit as normal, and if you don't receive your submission email, just check on the list of submissions that your entry is there. And - no need for anyone else to send me any submission pages now.
 
Apologies! I left some debug lines in the script, now removed.

It looks as if all the submissions have been successful in spite of the error warning. Still investigating that.

I think the confirmation emails should get through OK - MarleysGh0st says his has arrived.. I'll be interested to know if anyone has that problem.
 
Thanks for a very fun game, DynamicSpirit! It was almost a shame attacking the AI before they had a chance to settle more cities. How else can I discover what creative names you had prepared for them? :cool:

Haha! That's a test of your self-control. :D

Once the game is over and the results have been published, you'll be able to download the WorldBuilder file and peruse the city names in it at your leisure.
 
For a game that got quite some attention it's awfully silent on the report front. So here's mine.

With my own area of the map all under my control I moved my attention to Bolsanero. A nice touch of this map is that we lack iron and the only one who can offer it (Supermarkets) demands huge GPT + multiple resources. So no same old same old running for Cuirs. Instead something with trebs and …….. the Musketeer became the obvious choice for the next war (good thinking of the creators :thumbsup: )

Form 1AD on the first priority was to get Eng to start producing trebs in the HE city. This would also unlock Maces after Mach and WE after Constr. Then head on to GunP for musketeers.
940AD it's on. A massive invasion using galleys stripped Bolsonero from his Ivory right away. After defeating his main forces the army steadily progresses towards the much desired Iron. Musketeers prove to be a very comforting unit. With their movement and no hard counter they occupy strategic spots and jump in wherever forces need support. 1210AD his last city is captured and now only revolts and borderpops separate us from our precious metal. Lots of upgrades are waiting to happen. Trebs to cannons and several naval upgrades most importantly. It's amazing how many unit types depend on iron.

In the meantime Andrex Puppy chose to become Lord Lemme Out's Puppy through peacevassaling. Thank you very much.

Moving on with the Pathogens who managed not to settle the eastern Island and built quite a navy of caravels but not many land units, so fell in a remarkably short war. Well, there was one futuristic defender, but airships and a cannon neutralized him and survived.

In the meantime new recruits were sent to the east shore to start attacks on Supermarkets. Cavalry and Rifles now among them, Artillery almost researched. Settling of empty spots already brought the empire very close to domination. When Supermarkets chose to bombard a city of Loo Roll instead of attcking the 4 defenders with his 25 units nothing could delay victory ant longer. Scratching every possible tile into the cultural border together saved Supermarkets from total elimination. 1 turn earlier Dom Victory is achieved.
 
Another game submitted. I'm a huge newbie having fun and making mistakes. Ultimately I ended with a Domination Victory in 1987 on the adventurer save.

I took out the enemies in this rough order. Forbidden Fruits -> Pathogens -> Conspiracy Theorists -> Supermarkets -> YouTube capitulate for the win. Left Loo-Rolls and Nurses alone.
Between Queen / Pathogen / Conspiracy I had a few run ins with Bolsonero.

I made a few beautiful mistakes along the way. The two dumbest blunders were actually declaring peace at the wrong time twice. This was just inexperience. Best example is I'd polished off Covids first island and moved to the second. I'm poised to conquer my first city there. He is severely under teched compared to me and it's really just a formality. For some reason I decide I need to do some trading and I'm cycling through opponents trying to trade. Without realizing this I trade with COVID and start a peace treaty. I'm stuck for 10 turns and get booted out of his territory. I redirect to Bolsonero for some time and return later but it was a big waste of time.

As I try to improve my gameplay I look at this game and I think my biggest issue overall is a lack of early pressure. I didn't declare my first real was until 1190 AD. Comparing other GOTM's from the past it appears the top guys have often already conquered half the map at this stage. I think this is likely because I build too many buildings in my cities. I need to focus on a military presence. By the end of the game I had gone through the whole tech tree and I think this is due to a lack of early pressure. I'll need to focus on that for the next GOTM. Given that it's an always at war map I'll likely need those early defenses.

Overall a fun themed map. Thanks to the creators.
 
I played the challenger save :)

I settled 1W on the plains hill.
I smelled a rat (not entirely justified?) once I'd explored the map a little bit - I could see there was a powerful unit somewhere on the map because my warrior's health bar was really narrow. I think I was also expecting some 4-movement highly promoted bears or the like on the road so I didn't venture out until fairly late.
Therefore I built The Great Wall in 2280BC, before expanding to 3 cities and building the Pyramids in 1280BC.

Some philistines (hording barbarian spearmen) spawned in 675BC, and were so offended by the concept of No-Sex-On-The-Beach that they burned the city to the ground! :mad:

I expanded peacefully, leaving the Forbidden Fruits their quadrant and room for four cities.

Stalin declared war on Isabella in 825BC, and proceeded to march a whole bunch of units through my territory, eventually capturing one city (and leaving tons of units on my doorstep :( ) before making peace in 500AD.
At this point I decided it would be prudent to settle a gift city for Stalin, to get him to Pleased, reduce the chance that I'd be his next target, and give me the option of begging for 10 gold if he looks like trouble.

A few declarations of war later, Queen NO capitulated to the conspiracy theorists in 900AD, one turn after I dogpiled to try and pick up a couple of loosely defended cities.
These units now didn't have much to do, so I sent them to capture Flu, and persuade the Pathogens to give me their world map in exchange for peace - which demonstrated the need for Astronomy the the very least.

Stalin/Bolsanero kept his 35-unit stack right on my borders, so I felt threatened enough to do something about it - in 1140 AD I declared war with Elepults and Musketeers. He obligingly moved his stack onto flatland on my 100% cultural territory, so after sacrificing about 10 catapults, I was able to clean it up for relatively few losses and without a big war weariness hit.
My stack added trebuchets (1160) and eventually cuirassiers (lib->MT 1320).
I wiped out the forbidden fruit on the mainland by 1230, and she unvassaled herself and peaced out, so the rest of this was a question of invading mainland Conspiracia.
The early phases involved bombarding and then pummeling his stacks with my siege, capturing my liberated city in 1320, and his first proper city in 1370.
Once he'd mostly been drained of excess defenders, I was able to switch to two-mover style combat, and captured all his mainland cities by 1470.

I took peace for the low low price of Furs/Whales city The Giant Lasagna (probably my favourite of a good bunch of city names). :lol:
10 turns later I realised my units had nothing better to do than eliminate all the "We yearn to join our motherland" unhappiness, so they finished off both enemies in short order.

Mining Inc came in 1565, Statue of Liberty in 1580, and Assembly Line in 1585. From there it was a steady march to the finish... until the entire world declared war on the pathogens, and were entirely ineffective. :eek:
I finally joined in in 1800, capturing 5 cities on the first turn. I planned to take 4 more on the second turn, and one last one a turn later that wasn't accessible by coast.
However, he vassalled to Andrex Puppy immediately. It would have been awkward if it were the Nurses! :eek: :eek: :eek: :hammer2:

I waited until I launched my spaceship (one engine short, because I messed the timings up), before finishing off the war in 1832-34. Victory came in 1854.

Thanks for the game, DS. I got quite a laugh out of it.
 
That was perhaps the most creative and fun BOTM in memory! Very timely with the theme, and a lot of fun seeing and playing it.:clap::hatsoff::thanx:

I gotta say, my first encounter with Queen No had me thinking this was the nurses I can't attack. When I later discovered the Nurses, I was already No's best friend, along with Loo Rolls. All three were easily bribed to join the fight against Covid, so I was in a pretty good diplomatic situation. Then, Bolsanaro vassaled Covid, and to continue the eradication I had to take on my toughest military opponent. So I did. I vassaled him after a long slog, then decided that the Sid guy was too big to let him vote in the UN, so vassaled him as well. The vote was against Loo, and the Nurse abstained on the first vote because I overlooked a bunch of negative diplo for still running my religion. Switched to Free Relig and Nurses favorite civ, and easily won the victory.

What is it with Sid? He makes a demand EVERY turn, but never declares war.

Unusual things: lost a city to Loo by culture. That doesn't happen much to me. But it was kinda crappy since she controlled most of its seafood, so let her have it, I say.

BTW-I did a diplo finish in 1860's. -ish.

ENCORE!!!
 
Was it easy or hard to keep to the special rules? Did you manage to avoid being offended :mischief:? And did you win?

I wasn't offended at all! In fact I had lots of fun and was really amazed about our mapmaker's knowledge about the crazy stuff related to a notorious real world "leader" and its stupid theories. :thumbsup:

Upon being met by Bolsanero I immediately planned to destroy him as a personal revenge for all the stupidity its RL counterpart has inflicted on my country. Meanwhile, I got rid of Queen No at home in the BC's.

But later on, I came to my senses and decided it would be easier and just enough to have him as my opponent in the UN diplomatic victory. And that was exactly what happened.
After the real war vs COVID and a phony war (just for the diplo bonuses) vs the most annoying Sid's Supermarkets (although Puppy was getting beat hard in this process, before I had to bribe Sid to stop that war), I had the friendly Nurses, Andrex Puppy and the Internet voting for me against a furious Bolsanero in 1560AD.

Thanks for yet another great game, DynamicSpirit!
 
I wouldn't call it being "offended" but that buy-me-quick-guy was really nerve-recking with his stupid demands every turn.... Not that I bother to click him away, but that sound. Why exactly THAT sound which reminds us of barbs or enemy units approaching a city...? :cry:

Otherwise, really cool concept-game. Thanks a lot!

I won't talk about results, yet, I have finished the game but won't submit it. Because of some back and forth with the Hof/Botm-Settings, I am not sure if I really loaded the exact savegames.
 
This was a seriously fun concept and a memorable game.
For me, it was more of a moral victory than a great finish, but I think I'll remember for a long time because of that.

So, I expanded in the home area without much trouble from barbs. I hemmed in Forbidden Fruits so that they only had 3 cities. I ended up waiting for catapults and a couple elephants before I took them out. That was between about 100 and 500 AD. Fast forward a millennium, and I have Landing out on the east-west roadway. I'm Buddhist, having taken the holy city from Queen NO. The only other civ that is buddhist is Conspiracy Theorists. I've been trying to stay on their good side, but I have the feeling it's not going to work in the long term. I have a power rating of ~0.4 against Bolsanero. I had actually started my conquest of the Pathogens when it finally happened.

I give you the Conspiracy War in 3 screenshots:

StackofDoom0000.JPG

Didn't get the unit breakdown in that stack for some reason. Anyway, that's 18 Cuirs, 18 Grens, 14 Trebs, 3 Cats, and 10 other misc units.

I had Rifling, but with all those Grens, I thought I was screwed. I almost quit right there. However, I saw an opportunity to neutralize all those Trebs by abandoning Landing and pulling back to the jungle tile at the "home" entrance. Switched research to Mil Trad right away, and pushed the deficit research as hard as I could.
Fallback Position0000.JPG

This is after I've built up a force of Cavalry and finally lured Bolsanero into moving part of his stack out of Landing. He now has 17 Cuirs, 9 Grens, 5 Trebs, and 9 misc units. I'm 2 turns from Steel. I think I got up to 10 Cannons before making my move to retake Landing.

TideHasTurned0000.JPG

So, I lost 6 Cannons in the process, but not many other units. The power rating has now gone all the way to 1.27 in my favor. I went on to take Living Elvis. At that point, he finally got Rifling, which gave him Cossacks. Those are a seriously good UU. I decided to end the war and get back to destroying the Pathogens.

So after that excitement, destroying the Pathogens was easy. I decided to work toward Diplo victory, since the Nurses had a Defensive Pact with Loo Rolls. I had the UN 1 turn from completion and finally had to admit there was no way for me to win if I built it myself. The Nurses were 2nd in population even though they were 3rd in score. I got a GE at 55% chance, and I sent him over to Supermarkets. I gifted them Mass Media, but didn't see the UN getting started, so I sent him the other way to Bolsanero. Finally, I found him building the UN in Trump City and I directly finished construction (I didn't actually know you could do that as opposed to gifting the GE, but I guess you can). Won on the first ballot in 1880 AD.
 
This game was a tale of mistakes. For some odd reason I assumed that "The Nurses" were all the female leaders in the game until I read somewhere - perhaps in the first spoiler - that people had declared war on Queen No! That amounted to a fair delay in the attack on her. Next mistake was failing to register Bolsonaros war prep. I had settled a city right next to his territories to get the coastal gold and filled it with the veterans from the war on Queen No. Unfortunately they were mainly offensive units like cannons, knight and elephants and even this sizeable stack of 11 units could not hold the city facing two SODs of close to 40 units, mainly Elephants, cats and knights. While researching MilTrad in order to launch a counterattack someone snatched Liberalism. In the end Bolsonaro was eliminated and so were the Pathogens followed by a rather late 1826 AD space victory.

Played the challenger save since I really like the immortal difficulty level. In the early game I settled on stone for fast development and built the GW.
 
Was it easy or hard to keep to the special rules? Did you manage to avoid being offended :mischief:?

I misunderstood who "The Nurses" were and thought it was all female leaders in the game. Perhaps because I'm used to SGOTM which often has some very challenging restrictions. Not attacking a single Civ is only a problem if you want to win conquest.

I enjoyed the city names and the element of political satire :mischief:. You must have spent a lot of time on that. Well done! :thumbsup:

@Conquistador 63 : I also felt a special pleasure eliminating Bolsonaro :lol: . Let's hope this will happen for real in 2022 :thumbsup:
 
Settled 1N to cover the worthless spot and benefit from the mountains to do some fog busting. Then explored and had fun.

Expanded as quickly as possible. Met Queen No! Didn't attack her just in case she was a nurse. She expanded where I wanted to, but I kept my calm.

Met many more neighbors, then met the nurses. Didn't change my peaceful mind and decided to focus on the pathogens. Hoped to get a religious victory after that.

The conquest was OK until I arrived near the capital with my stack. Then the infantry appeared. It was quite a shock. I retreated to another target, and the pathogens got one of their cities back. The conquest was delayed.

The supermarket was quite annoying, but I found a solution without even trying: Loo Rolls asked me to stop trading with him, and I accepted! From this moment, the supermarket refused to talk to me, and that was quite a blessing!

Once the pathogens were eliminated, I tried to get the religious victory. Unfortunately I didn't switch to a rare religion and it never worked. I decided to be more aggressive and attacked the conspiracy theorists. It wasn't that hard, but it took a long time. I completely eliminated them because there was only 2 cities left and I didn't want the diplomacy penalty nor the unhappiness.

The new plan was to build the UN. I selected the more productive city in the F1 screen: it turned out to be Donald Trump City.

Then I attacked the supermarket in spite of his defensive pact with the buzzwords. The supermarket capitulated quickly... and started talking to me again, asking for tech every turn! I always accepted, wondering when he would get tired and stop. It never happened.

A few turns after the quick capitulation of the buzzwords, the domination victory was triggered.
 
@DynamicSpirit - thanks for a really great game! I played this over a couple of nights to about 500 AD and was really enjoying it, but I didn't finish it. I got a lot of laughs out of it, and it was odd enough to present a novel challenge.
 
Back
Top Bottom