[BTS] BOTM 196 - Gandhi, Prince - First spoiler - 1AD

[Noble Zarkon]

BOTM 66 196: Gandhi. Nonviolence.
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How did you find the unusual game? What cunning strategies did you come up with?

Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD

Reading Requirements
If you are participating in BOTM 196, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD (Iron is OK, coal and oil are not)
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games

 

[Tobiyogi]

I was really thinking about that conquest thing, but it's a BotM and I want to do something I really can, so I go Culture!

And I wanted to play the "early religion"- game which basically never happens in other games, so I bulb Poly and found Hinduism. Then I thought, would be nice to build EVERYTHING with the 25%-bonus from OR, so I research Mono even before Pottery/Writing. 2 early religions and a nice hammer bonus on almost everthing. A bit more difficult to manage the overflow, but ok. Second city next to the stone, where the 2nd artist is settled (takes at least 100 turns to equal the 4000 points of a Great Work, so within the first 100 turns, it's ok to settle them and the 14 points will heavily multiply in the second 100 turns).

No marble on the map, that's the only problem here. I want to build up, build up, and switch to Free Speech/Pacifism/Caste only very late when all the modifiers are in place. Let's see if it works out.

I convert to Hinduism very soon and one civ follows me randomly, two others are converted actively. So Hindu Shrine is worth 20 gpt quite soon. My idea is to settle up to 9 cities and build several temples everywhere and get ideally 3 cathedrals per Legendary City. But Confu somehow does not want to spread, missionaries fail again and again, so I stay with 2 religions in most of the cities.

Wonders built: Stonehenge, Oracle (CoL, Mansa was 4-5 turns late ), Mids, HG, Parthenon was chopped even without Marble, I think that's all in the BC's.

G persons: 1 Prophet (Hindu shrine), 1 artist (settled in 3rd city), 2 GE (1x Sistine Chapel later, 1 will be saved for N Epic which is hard to built in a city with only food + cottages, but I wait for NE because the GP pool is not "clean" yet in Bombay).
I could even get a 3rd Engineer later and have 2 options: Starting a Golden Age (rather late) or building AP. But I don't to mix strategies, a cheesy AP-victory inmidst of a culture approach wouldn't be quite what I want.

At 1AD, my culture output is pathetic because I am only building up. New strategy. Normally I would switch OR + Pacifism but this time I wait for at least 1 cathedral each (and all the ohter buildings) before running culture and several artists.

Spoiler :

 

[MarleysGh0st]

I also decided to go for culture, and I decided that I'd use my GA's to culture-bomb my first two cities to pop my borders quickly, before the AI hemmed me in. So, the first GA was used immediately in Delhi, then the second in Bombay, which I settled 5NE, next to all the river floodplains. (Just before my settler got there, my warrior had to dodge away from a bear, then survive an attack from a panther.) I later discovered iron under Bombay--oh, well!

By 1 AD, I've got seven cities, I've founded Hinduism and Confucianism, and I've built an academy in Delhi. No wonders so far. I didn't fog-bust enough in the south, so spawning barbs became a nuisance that required me to build several axemen. But that may prove useful, because as I reached 1 AD I noticed that Mansa Musa has lost Djenne to the barbs!

 

[nocho]

I vaguely remembered having played the original BOTM 66, but I couldn't recall if I actually finished that game.

This time around I decided at least for the (passive-) aggrssive approach, and settled cities 2 and 3 right in the face of Ragnar and Justinian with 2 GA bombs. Unfortunately Ragnar had founded Hindu so his borders had popped another time before the settler arrived. Then I started to backfill cities, although I put another lock on Justinian and something quite close to the HRE. With the wasteland south and a stone in my borders thanks to the artist bombs, I decided to build the Great Wall, which for a change was actually pretty Great (see pic)! I also got the Pyramids and the Oracle. From the latter I took Alpha to backfill techs and keep research afloat through building it, as maintenance was a bit steep. Also not that much commerce on the map before developping the flood plain area, nor happies. That's why from the mids I actually went HR to grow the cities a bit.

At 1 AD 9 cities, 34 pop and pondering what VC to go for.

Spoiler :

 

[Powerfaker]

On Terra maps I really like to go for Space. After Astro a whole new continent to settle at the kick off of the hammer economy (meaning Communism=> State Property), so you can set it all up as hammercities right away (mills/workshops). Also lots of forest to be left intact. This is all of great benefit for Space Ship part building.

With that in mind it was my intend to claim as much land as possible on the starting continent too, and faster than normal. That resulted in a rather messy play. I neglected my workermanagement a bit. At the stone/flood plains site I lost 3 warriors to animals, and a worker and a settler in the process, in an attempt to speed up settlement (as city 4).
Nevertheless I have 10 cities at 1AD.I built GLH. Actually 100AD is more of a milestone date with 4 more cities followed by HG completed and GLib hurried by a GE due to Mids. I culture bombed one of the newest cities to influence 2 AI cities to culture flip. I'm curiious how that will go.
Teching with this land and this size of the empire is awkwardly slow. Currently crawling through CS that should normally be in right now. If it weren't for Mansa I would have been much more backward. He may turn a real live saver here.

@nocho
That is one mightly long Wall. Shaped like this you would think it's designed by drunk architect.

 

[Xcalibrator]

10 cities, 49 pop, with Great Wall, Oracle (for Monarchy), Mids, and Hanging Gardens in 5 turns. I bombed the two Great Artists, one in a city by the iron and floodplains, and the other north of that to confine Justy to what I futilely hoped would be a small peninsula. I've concentrated on settling as close to the AI as possible, just because I want to push them around. I'm not sure what to do, but it seems like conquest might be fun to try for, even if I don't really know how. My "plan" is use Great Artists to culture bomb my frontiers and try to flip AI cities. That probably won't work because they're already too established. The other part of the plan (hat tip to WastinTime recounting his BOTM66 conquest win) is to build the AP and use that to assign AI cities to myself. And maybe I can get peace vassaling to work. Of course, the odds of getting this to work will be much higher (higher, not high) if I can confine the AI to our original continent. Privateers could buy some time. If I manage to open a huge tech lead I could try running Sushi for more cultural pressure, but the danger is winning by Culture before Conquest. I suspect I'll end up submitting an incomplete game, but it's the journey, not the arrival, right?

 

[SittinDown]

I went max land-grab, similar to @nocho - except I forward-settled a bit more towards Mansa, and a bit less to Justin. I did grab that 3 gem spot.

10 Cities, not sure total pop.

My economy was slow. And I was dumb and lost my West coast crab city to a wandering Spearman before realizing I had a minor barbarian problem to the south, which I fixed with a couple of axes.

Mansa got to CoL first, and spread his religion towards me, so I math-chopped-OR-+Stone the pyramids pretty fast once I went for it. Just got CoL, and bulbed Philo. A few cottage cities, rest are going to go heavy into specialists. Going to probably head towards a State Property hammer economy. I have more fun going to space than winning culture.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

I thought that key decision for this game will be: what to do with our 2 Great Artists? For the Always War BotM, I did a lot of testing of trying to flip cities by settling nearby and culture bombing - and the results were underwhelming. So I decided not to do it. First Artist: I was a bit spoiled since the previous Always Peace BoTM was mentioned, before this one was announced, I looked it up, managed only to see that @WastinTime settled on T6 . I was very tempted to try it, although it is rather risky. The problem is not locating 3-tile away position from an AI capitol to settle, that was not a problem in my test games. Problem was to flip the capitol: there is 1 in 3 chance an AI will found buddhism/hinduism. Even without early religion, revolt is always just a chance and if the AI builds a couple archers, it does not work, even with double-GA bombing Also, our starting spot is super sweet, 3 food super-tiles. So I resolved to be reasonable, and play it safe and developed a carefully micromanaged plan for SIP. Then I started to play the game late at night - and decided, what the heck? We live only once, right?

LOL, I was lucky, it actually worked - and Nidaros is mine I was very lucky, Ragnar found no religion in my game - or maybe was trying but I got him too fast? Do not have early saves . Anyway, I lost 6 turns and most importantly the starting position next to Vikings - there was just one choice for optimal culture bombing - was much worse than our original starting point. So I am not sure if that was really worth it, probably was, since we start from a better position, closer to good city spots North. And was definitely fun to get another capitol, just like that

2nd Artist: I decided to go non-traditional and use him to bulb Monarchy. This I think worked great, HR is really useful on this map, and I was doing Oracle anyway (for Alpha), so it was not required any extra techs, but solved happiness problem early on. I also settled stone as my 2nd (actually 3rd) city and got GW early.

Working on a couple GS to bulb Astro, being careful with the tech bulb not to ruin the path. I am not sure if New World + land I got will be enough for domination, likely not/ Culture flipping cities looks like a ton of work, and you need >50% culture in a city for AP resolution (I think?), so I am planning to use peace-vassals. Especially Mansa should be easy, will peace-vassal at cautious and it is easy to be his land targets. Anyway, it seems to be synergy between building an army to conquer a New World and getting your soldier score high to peace vassal AIs. So I plan to get Feudalism early to be able to use my hopefully high soldier score, should be easier to have good ratio early on (or not?). I never played the Terra Map before, so I am very excited to see the New World, ruled by barbs!