[BTS] BOTM 207: Boudicca, Emperor - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 207: Boudicca, Emperor - 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 207 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.

 

[nocho]

Well this turned into a nice and at times quite brutal slugfest. To make any progress the Mongols had to go, but were by far the biggest and most powerful AI at 1AD. After having settled the elephants in the BCs followed suit with construction and HBR to prepare for the Khan. But as I was sizing the army up, he DoWed me first anyway. Defense was easy enough, but counterpunching over a broad front took more time with his pesky keshiks appearing all over the place. Ended up killing 49 of those! Gradually pushed forward and when he was finally down to 4 cities he bent the knee as my first vassal. Importantly that finally provided me with horses as well.

Decided to follow suit and keep on the war path and pursued engineering and guilds. Pushed further east and attacked the Khmer, who were the most sizeable of the Asian crew, but fell without much problem. Darius then followed. He was by far the most advanced, but under defended. Mansa was also added to the empire without problems, he had been at war before with the Khmer and on the losing side, so after getting two of his remaining continental cities he also called it quits.

So it all looked to go cruisingly, but then Shaka decided to declare on me. He had been having skirmishes with the Khmer and Mansa, so he had a rather formidable force in southern Asia. He funnily quickly lost a city to the Mongols, but then also won one back at their expense. I started to peel off his stack and when that was done went to Africa. I had my northern city on the elephants to ship untis to and the rest went through the Byzantine empire. Must say he defended quite bravely for an AI and I did lose a ton of units. The war dragged on quite a while and finally he gave in when he had just three cities left.

That left Justinian. By now he was ahead technologically, although I had been able to lib MT at some point. He also started settling the new world while I didn't even have astro yet. He also got to SciMeth and even Communism, but I got the more important Rifling. Likely not even necessary, Justinian actually fell quite easily, especially in comparison with Shaka. So got conquest, in 1650AD. At a point I thought I'd get there quite a bit earlier, but Shaka decided otherwise. According to the statistics I lost 50 knights, 40 cuirs and some cavs, don't recall losing that many units for quite some time!

So fun and tough game, thanks DS!

 

[krikav]

Spoiler Game :

I played up until T111 some week(s?) ago, and remember that I think that I screwed up the opening royaly.
I settled on that PH and went for fishing. I think I made that choice because the celts usually struggle with commerce and the seafood helped with that.
After AH I went for sailing of all techs, with the idea to connect with Vienne, and enable settlement on the island early on.
Think I chopped some chops into SH in Vienne for failgold (that was a heavily forested area iirc), and finished a monument.
I stared to feel really bad about the game when I realized I didn't have agriculture for the corn. :|

I was in a very strong position though. Bulbed philosophy, built some shiny wonders (GLib, MoM, Sistine and Taj).
Was in GA for most of the latter part of the game, and in a constant tech lead.
Was first to economics, physics, communism and I won lib and took scientific method.

By a stroke of completely undeserved luck though, Darius had sprinted to alphabet and rescued me.

With all the happyfaces, I decided to give AP a try. I even tried to build AP but lost it by 2 turns or so.
But I got resident and put forth the vote.

Wait.. what? Why can't I win diplo?!
AAaaah, right, everyone needs to have at least one city with the AP religion. Argh!

Well.. I fixed that untill it was time to do the vote again.

But apparantly, by then Kublai had overpassed me as #1 in pop. Aaaaaarhg!!
By now, I have changed course to win via UN instead.

I even got a GEng to rush it abit with.
But since I didn't have that GEng for my 3people GA, that was severely delayed. Should probably just have build UN in some hammer heavy city instead.

I was mostly must mashing "end turn", so didn't notice anyone plotting. I had signed defensive pacts with everyone so this came as a total suprise.
Total world war.
I bribed Kublai against SHaka too, to keep me safe.
I had 1 gallic warrior and one frigatte appart from my lioncloth warriors.

And there we have it.
I think I had a pretty easy game, despite the early screwup. I think most came from settling Vienne as a nice blocking city early on, and after that getting diplomacy under wraps.

I enjoyed the map script alot, well... Except for the new world which didn't come into play much in my game.
But it was way better than Terra, the familiarity of the normal earth was nice.

 

[damnrunner]

Super fun game.

Ended up with a diplo win in 1892 after chasing a religious win for 500 years. Key take away, I need to figure out AP mechanics better.

I settled on the hill to the east to get the corn. Got 2nd and 3rd cities fairly fast by the river to the east and up in Scandinavia. Then got boxed in fast by Mongols who snagged the copper city further to the east. Forget the timing but they also got a city to claim the wine to the south (and Italy) before I did (granted, other than the resources not the best spots). I built one more city to the west (had the whales) and then captured a barb city that popped up in Spain. Also built a city on the UK island.

I then settled near the elephants in north Africa, captured another barb city on the coast to the west and settled another city to the east (had seafood in the BFC though was not able to use it early on as it was in Byzantine territory).

I was super far behind in tech but was able to do some smart tech trading by teching compass/optics (later also was able to trade around Astro).

I decided to go after Byzantines since they were fairly weak (early wars with Zulu kept them small) and had an insane capitol which was the Buddhist holy city and would be a good econ boost + Buddhism was the AP religion (I was Jewish mainly to keep the mongols happy).

Zulus were fortunately distracted by land wars in Asia--they randomly captured a crappy city on the Persia/Mongol border and ended up at war with both if I recall and had to keep a huge army out there for defense.

I had a decent set of axes/Gallic swords/spears from taking barb cities and just building defense and built up elephants and xbows as I got the techs to do so. Once I got engineering I built/slaved a force of trebs and attacked in 1350 ish. I burned a meh city, then had to rest what felt like a long time to heal as I didn't yet have a GG, captured the capitol after a fairly long siege, then took a decent Suez type city at which point Byzantine became a vassal.

During the war I also sent a caravel to explore the new world. Amusingly I wasted time looking for the NW passage. But was able to circumnavigate with a map trade with Mali who was exploring the west coast where I had an explorer running around.

At the end of the war I flipped religion to Buddhism thinking I could soon win via the AP (right before the war I sent missionaries to ensure both Persia and Mali had at least one Buddhist city). So wrong. I had just missed the AP resident election and was ages before I could set the agenda. I also had to defy a stop war against byzantine vote which meant I lost the hammer bonus for all by Buddhist buildings (and I was not able to get it back until the 1800s). By time I could set votes, Zulus were no longer voting for me and Cambodia had filliped to Buddhism and with their large pop I couldn't get over the top.

While I was botching the AP. I masterfully settled north america. towards end of war I pre-built some settlers and LBs for defense and when I got astro I was able to snag 4 great cities almost immediately. Shortly thereafter I sent over some of my victorious army to capture 3 more in quick succession. Then a turn after getting rifles I gave them independence and my new ally Churchill went on to capture 2 more barb cities if I recall.

I later captured a barb city in South America to claim an oil resource which I kept. I later settled a 2nd city nearby to claim coal and incense. While I could get coal from England but wanted my own. I also had coal on Mongol border and while that was clearly mine by end of the game, at this point it was not and I was not sure who was winning culture war.

Interestingly Mali's colonies in Australia were given independence (as USA) but quickly ceased being his vassal. Mali later asked to be my vassal and the USA asked for a defensive pact so I was a close ally for both of them. This increased risk of war with Cambodia, but they were super happy with me and I figured I could use AP to stop a war before they could cause too much damage.

I figured only way to win via AP was to make Zulu a vassal and capture their votes. But they had huge armies. So I delayed until I had infantry, machine guns, and artillery (got there with some trading and some GA's using old Byzantine capitol as an ideal great person factory) which still met a lot of resistance from rifles, cavs, grens, and cannons. After some quick wins (3 cities) I got over extended and they retook one and I lost a stack on the way to the 4th city I wanted. Reason for this was I had to also defend Suez city from the large stack that was still in the city they had captured in the Mongol/Persia border. The Zulu's also captured the one Byzantine city in the middle east. After I burned the Byzantine city under Zulu control I was able to send in a 2nd stack and recapture the city I had lost and also get the 4th one I wanted. By this point I was also starting to make some tanks as well which helped. I then waited a few turns before accepting Zulu's capitulation so that I could also "win" and AP vote calling for peace and turn back on production from Buddhist buildings (not totally needed, but more wanted to see if it would work). It did work and weirdly you can take the vote for peace, then accept capitulation and get them to become a vassal, and then "win" the vote for peace when votes are counted the next turn even though it is no longer relevant.

After winning this war I also gave the two South America cities independence as I had oil from Zulu lands and the coal I was worried about was clearly in my territory at this point too (maybe also got some from zulu, but dont recall).

I finally thought I could win via the AP at this point, but I had forgotten Persia had granted independence to its north america colonies (Alaska/Canada) and they had no Buddhist cities. And to make it worse, it was the Arabs who never switch out of Theo and I was not able to get them to accept any cities as gifts.

I was thinking I could capture and convert the single Mongol city in eastern Canada that they might accept as a gift, but before I got to that point I won via a UN election which Persia had built.

Anyhow, super fun game. The dynamic of all the colonies was new and it was cool to have 4 more civs by the end of the game. Also interesting was that Mali (Chile/Argentina) and Byzantine (Brazil coast/Venezuela) moved their capitols to their new world cities by the end of the game. If they hadn't, likely could have easily had 2 more colonies pop up.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

I tried grabbing the ivory to the south--had an archer and a worker waiting for a settler--but Justinian beat me to it. So I really was blocked from expansion without going to war against more powerful neighbors.

Wars started breaking out between the AI. Shaka attacked MM. Sury attacked Darius, then Shaka made peace with MM and attacked Sury, and both KK and Justinian attacked Darius. I attacked KK in 960 and captured two cities. The AI started and stopped a couple more wars, then in 1110, Darius passed an AP vote for war against KK, bringing MM, Justinian and Sury into that war. I capture two cities, but KK brings back a big stack and recaptures them. Eventually, the other AI (except MM) make peace and I take two more cities.

In 1530, another AP vote to declare war on KK is held. I vote in favor of it, but then I make peace with in exchange for Guilds. I wasn't sure of the mechanics, but I thought that either I would be drawn back into the war by the AP vote, or I could rebuild my economy and forces while the other AI weakened KK. Big mistake! MM also makes peaces with KK that turn, thereby cancelling the AP vote. Shortly thereafter, MM peace-vassals to Justinian.

KK attacks me in 1610. I manage to capture another city, but that only prompts KK to peace-vassal to Sury, who joins the war against me. Sury's stacks of grenadiers and ballista elephants outnumber and outmatch my maces. I lose a border city, and I can't convince anyone to join my side of the war. It's hopeless. I retire from the game in 1705.



For fun, I replayed the game from before the 1530 AP vote, this time staying in the war. And this time, the vote passes and Darius, Justinan and Sury rejoined the war. MM and KK made peace, then KK peace-vassaled to Shaka. Another AP vote in 1580 for war against Shaka brings MM back in. KK is destroyed in 1600 (Justinian took Karakorum, I took most of the rest). I played a phony war while the AI dealt with Shaka, but Shaka had the upper hand. He took Constantinople and made peace with Justinian, leaving that garrison cut off from reinforcements, so I sent my inferior stack in and captured Constantinople (with Pyramids, the Great Library, and Great Wall) from him. But then I saw that he and Justinian had open borders, so I was in danger to a counterattack. I paid 600 gold for peace.

As I tried to rebuild my economy, Shaka would force MM to capitulate, and Darius would bend the knee to Sury. I've played this out to 1860 so far, where I'm third in score and still far behind in tech. I still don't think there's a path to victory, but this replay has been much more interesting than the official game.

 

[Pangaea]

Sorry for having to do this yet again, but I just handed in the incomplete game. Apparently hadn't played this save since 3 February. Loaded up the save now to check on the situation, and it looked decent enough, but the map is way too large with too much to play to stand a chance to complete. Will take a desperate stab at 206 instead. May not be able there either :-|

Spoiler :

The start was bad, tho, going so far out for the 2nd city and too late realising there is ZERO commerce here. Economy crashed earlier than expected and it took a long time to recover. I settled inland, which looked okay, but maybe coastal would have been better. At least a little commerce from seafood and such there.

Grabbed a city from Kublai. He never wanted to settle for peace after I stole a worker, which really surprised me, and eventually attacked with swords. JUST in time we got out an axe. Otherwise we'd have been boned.

There is essentially a world war, with Shaka possibly in the process of killing Mansa. He took a city, and Mansa only had 3.

 

[krikav]

@Pangea Nice of you to share anyway.
I have had alot of problems finishing BOTMs too, I still feel bad about abandoning that Bismark game after the early DoW.
206, thats the Viking game, right? I'm extremly proud of myself for ironing on with that one... Oh my god what I suffered.

 

[Pangaea]

I keep doing the same mistake. Start the game and play more or less continuously to 500AD or 1000AD. Ish. Then do something else, like err, Deity raging barbs for example, and don't go back to the BOTMs for 3 weeks. By then it's often too late to finish. Or I may be able to finish one game in a chaotic fashion.

I do try to remember to submit my halfdone attempts. It looks crap on various scoreboards, but at least it's one more entry *shrug*