BOTM 252: Roosevelt, Noble - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

MarleysGh0st

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BOTM 252: Roosevelt, Noble - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted



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

Did you win? Was it a bloody game, or did you break the mold of the movie and find a peaceful path to victory?

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Cultural Victory in turn 330.
It was very pleasant game, all AI civs did SIP.
AI didn't build single WW :wow: I've settled my capital SE from starting point, 2nd city near sugar/clams, 3rd NE near silver. I've build first few wonders there (especially after getting marble) and focued on those 3 cities in cultural progress.
I've managed to found all religions except 3 first, and almost won diplomatic victory - I've missed one vote in Apostolic Palace voting :yuck:. That's because Tokugawa got my religion in on o his cities and immediately spread it across his country. Next voting wasn't that close so I give up this path.
After getting liberalism, when I saw that AI is not doing so great, I've put cultural slides to max, spreaded my religions and build Cathedrals for this sweet 50% cultural bonus.
And rest is history :)
 
An extremely easy game for me.

Once I got Feudalism, the AI had so few cities I could just give them four of my cities and capitulate them with a quick 40 war success capturing my cities back.

England died to barbarians.
Spain peace vassaled since I had her at Friendly.
Ragnar capitulated once I had some War Elephants whipped.
Sitting Bull capitulated after I whipped more Elephants.
And Japan put up a bit of a fight with 6 cities, but gave up after losing one of them.

Whipping military to get the power rating up got me the fast win!, but my score... :sad:
 
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That was the way to go, I realized it too late, trying to just kill-them-all, old-fashioned way. Like LowtherCastle, I suspected it can be done around 1AD that way, but it took me much, much longer :(. I underestimated the ingenuity @MarleyGh0st put into making fast travelling on this map a nightmare, I also guessed wrong some properties of the map. Nevertheless, finding AIs and overcoming all these obstacles was a fun challenge, thank you @MarleysGh0st !

I was also thinking of some shenigans of exploiting AIs low city number to make them accept city gifts from across the world. I was however thinking more about making AI walk defenders there, but since their cities were poorly defended anyway I decided it was not worth the trouble and complicating already complex logistics. Also, in my test game AI was actually not walking any defenders there, although I remember the behavior from my previous espionage game.

Anyway, congratulations to @Kaitzilla on this very elegant and creative conquest win, which I am sure was much faster than mine brute-force attempt. I switched the research off early on not expecting the game to last long and spending a ton of $$$ on effectively scouting with troops also capable of killing AIs if needed. With one AI left to kill, I wondered what to research since there was no need to build troop or anything else, perhaps wonders, but my score was going to be poor anyway. And then I realized I could have feudalism in a couple of turns and realized if I were to beeline it, I would get it much, much earlier and could conquer some Ais remotely instead of covering map with my troop ...eh, we live and learn, maybe another time ...and at least I almost for sure win in the category of most axes build ;)
 
Culture win (old fashioned, no espionage nonsense) on the "Deity" save in 1820/turn 280. My only claim to optimality is that I ended with juuuuust enough cash to sustain 100% culture all the way to the end, mostly by getting lots of failgold from World Wonders (with one of my 3 Legendary cities finishing the Great Artist Wonders early and one of the other Legendaries building most of the other Wonders late so they'd provide culture points (and often failgold) but not too many non-Artist GPs). I ran 3 Golden Ages plus one from the Taj. One of my three cities was on the west end of the Cornucopia island. It was fun to go the Culture route for a change, but having done that I think I'll stick with good ol' "kill 'em all" in the future.
 
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I did Diplo in t250 (1700AD). I had built the UN two centuries earlier, but couldn't get a victory vote because I was too big to fail. So I whipped, drafted, and starved my people, and vassal all but one civ until the vote is possible. Unfortunately, I spent about 20 turns pivoting to a culture VC before I realized that starving 20+ cities to lose 1 pop each for like 6 turns straight was the least messy way to win. Had I gone for conquest, this would not have been challenging or fun, and I'd still finish centuries after the best players. I like building WW too much for my own good. I am most proud that no other civilization built a single wonder in the whole game. Dang... that isn't an award, is it? :hammer2: :dance:
 
Before game
Ind/org America does not really help military operations and, on the contrary, is well suited for a peaceful game. At the same time, the org trait is universal, although it is more useful at higher levels than at lower ones. But on the contrary, ind trait, at the deity level, is usually almost useless - AI builds wonders faster anyway. In addition, on the deity, usually, for a successful game you need to fight a lot.
After studying the ring map, for some reason I was sure that we were starting on the mainland, and cornucopia is located on the central island, So to establish a capital in cornucopia is a bad idea because of the maintenance of colonies. You need to look for a place for the capital on the mainland. Thus, the lack of a clear "fat" start also did not motivate
to play on the deity. Unfortunately, I did not tested how AI would play at such a start.

Game
Therefore, I tuned in to a peaceful game and chose a noble save, what turned out to be the first big mistake. The second big mistake turned out to be that I don't wanted lose 1 turn and not checking the coast near sugar... This is the best place for the capital on the whole map and passing by it I lost a lot at the start. Another mistake was some pattern of my game in the segment up to 1 AD, and a very early (and 20-turns) expansion into cornucopia. After pausing after the first segment, after reading the forum, I realized that I was far behind in expansion and made corrections to my strategy.
As for the type of victory, I considered 3 options: domination, space and culture, but in such a way as to score as many points as possible. Therefore, I excluded domination, since the fastest possible domination will not give a lot of points. And the later one domination is guaranteed to lose to the deity level on points and most likely will not be the fastest. On the other hand, in general, the "sea map" (just one city off the coast), with almost no rivers, is not very suitable for space. I don't think I've ever specifically played for culture before, so I decided this was a good chance for her. culture + points = sid sushi. Actually, the strategy is clear. After medicine and music, stop science, saving money, building cathedrals etc. after then 100% culture.
Initially, I did not plan to fight at all, but at some point Spain quickly built the 3rd city, then the 4th, and ahead of my setler built the 5th, blocking me 2 fat cities. This provoked me to a war, which I decided to carry out with only 2-3 maces, against bows and chariots. But it turned out that bows perfectly protecting from single maces, crossbows and horse archers. And only the appearance of 2 knights allowed me to capture cities. I destroyed 5th city, 2,3 and 4 captured, and Madrid vassalled. Later I captured 3 barbarian cities and that all military actions.
AI has not built a single wonder. Buddhism and Judaism were founded by Spain, which actively sent missionaries to me. Confucianism, Christianity, Taoism and Islam were founded by me. Hinduism was founded by England. In the front-line city (on iron), England had 1 axe and probably I needed to make 5-7 chariots and capture it, but I was sure that Hinduism somehow comes to me. It's only 3 tiles to the my banana-gold city. But it didn't happen until the end of the game. as a result, -50% of culture in 3 target cities. In addition, I was born only 1 artist and a bunch of merchants and prophets. But this is a delay of only 3-5 turns. The spread and maintenance of Sid Sushi in all cities delayed the victory by about the same amount or even more.
Cultural victory, 1580 ad, 303k points.
It is unlikely that I will try to play for culture again in the near future, so I hope to get the fastest culture now. As for points, the result is not bad for a noble level, but there is almost nothing chance versus those who played on the deity.

After game
In general, I have several complaints about this BOTM. the noble and the deity in the same tournament are very unequal
in terms of the result. The second point is the need to look for a place for the capital, everyone who passed by the sugar lost a lot. Well, as it seems to me, the weakness of AI, especially at the deity level, is a controversial decision if it is intentional ...
On the other hand, the game turned out to be very unusual. The fact that there is no point in fighting suits me completely.
Various template actions are not the best for one reason or another. for example, a quick conquest is extremely unprofitable in terms of final points. I had to think more than usual) From this point of view, sometimes such a tournament does not hurt.

Addition to game
Well, to fully understand the situation, I played the 2nd game this time at the deity level.
This time I knew the map (sugar capital), knew how bad AI was and made adjustments for development taking into account the 1st game. It turned out that AI is not just weak, he is even worse than at the noble level. England was killed by barbarians, Spain and Japan spent the whole game with one city. Sitting Bull had 2 cities and only at the end built the 3rd. And only Ragnar at the end had 11 cities and a somewhat developed empire. At the same time, the barbarians did not bother me at all (except for galleys), I built only warriors to disperse the fog.
No any war (only with knights take 7 barbarians cities), domination, 1590 AD, 743k points. Ragnar built a statue of Zeus.
All the other wonders were supposed to be mine, but a turn before the Apostolic Palace was built, I accepted a free religion
and lost the wonder. 4 turn before the end of the game, Ragnar had an Great Engineer born and I was forced to finish the Hanging Gardens, and he built the Apostolic Palace. deity level... really? )) One turn before the end of the game I gave one city to Isabella, but unexpectedly exceeded the limit of domination by one tile (across the strait between north and south, I took it from Ragnar). If another city had presented it, then in 7-8 turns it would have been possible to raise the points to 790k. Then they starts to decrease.

P.S. But the way, what is it Espionage Cultural Victory? )
 
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Challenger. What a fun game, with a lot of unexpected twists! Hats off to the staff, including those who pitched in and even to those who simply volunteered to pitch in just to get it all done!

I was going for Score via Sid's Sushi and thus did not get time to finish. Here is my write-up of my unfinished game for the sake of the community.

I had every Sid's Sushi Resource on the map under my control and had Sid's spread to roughly 25% of my 100+ Cities when I ran out of time.

The Domination Land Limit was a constant worry, making turns go slowly as I checked each City for potential Cultural Border pops and gifted Cities to AIs to compensate. I think that I had already gifted more than 40 Cities to the AIs.

Fun things:
I managed to get three Holy Shrines in my Wallstreet City, with those Religions being well spread. Actually, I had all 7 Religions quite well spread, as it took me quite a bit of effort to ensure that my targeted City received the third Holy Site, by spreading 4 Religions to all of my other Cities plus making the targeted City large in population before learning Divine Right. I don't quite know the precise game mechanics to calculate whether having only 3 Religions in all of my other Cities would have been sufficient and thus I possibly went overboard in my Free-Religion-Zealotry. That said, the extra Happiness proved to be particularly useful when Sid's Sushi started kicking in.

Fortunately, I had spawn-busted a path to Isabella early on and she had dutifully spread her State Religion to many of my Cities before I founded my own first Religion in Cornucopia, as her Missionaries had not reached there, thereby giving me the conceptual idea for the Triple-Holy-Shrine City in Cornucopia. I only recall one game where an AI used a Caravel to spread a Religion to one of my Cities, making such a possibility a very rare event.

Sitting Bull made a strong play, capturing Toku's capital and spreading his empire to roughly 13 Cities. I had to detour to unlock Cuirassiers to take Sitting Bull down.

I used the Apostolic Palace to eliminate an AI. That AI Defied the first attempt to give me his last City, but on the second time around, he simply said "No," and the Votes were in favour of me getting his last City.

I worked hard to get a lot of Great People and managed to launch a 4-Great-Person Golden Age on my way to Sid's Sushi.

I eventually settled a City in our original Settler's starting location, as it turned out to be a useful location for a Cultural-Bridge for Galleys.

I still had The Hanging Gardens available to build mostly thanks to the AIs doing so poorly in this game, but also due to having used Surveillance-Capitalist Espionage plus Spies to Sabotage all of Sitting Bull's Aqueducts before capturing his empire.

I "gave back to the planet" by refusing to Chop a lot of Forests and Jungles. I even went so far as to build Forest Preserves on all of the Forests and Jungles within a big-fat-cross before gifting such a City to an AI.

We need to do a lot more for the Environment in real life if we are going to survive as a species for more than another 2 generations. Consider checking food labels and refusing to buy anything that contains Palm Oil. The carbon-capturing ability of Palm Trees is virtually non-existent. Infrared cameras that demonstrate how much carbon a wooded area can contain show that Palm Trees are worse than a field of normal grass, which is already pretty much useless for capturing carbon, while a proper Forest or Jungle that gets cut down to field the Palm Trees is many magnitudes larger in its carbon-capturing ability. Plus, Palm Oil is very unhealthy for your body.

If a food label just says "vegetable oil" without giving details, it likely also is a poor attempt at trying to hide Palm Oil, so, stay away unless the "vegetable oil" is described as what type or types of oil it represents. It means using your brain to shop instead of buying into the concept of shopping-by-popularised-brands, as a large percentage of popular brands of crackers, condiments (such as mayonnaise), bread, and many other unexpected types of products actually contain Palm Oil. Where do you think that they got the money for the large marketing budgets in the first place? Possibly by using inexpensive Palm Oil from Jungle-Destroying Palm Trees as a filler ingredient.
 
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I used the Apostolic Palace to eliminate an AI. That AI Defied the first attempt to give me his last City, but on the second time around, he simply said "No," and the Votes were in favour of me getting his last City.
Voting a civ out of existence?! Hah, never seen that before! I like it a lot! :)
 
Voting a civ out of existence?! Hah, never seen that before! I like it a lot! :)

Yeah, really cool idea, @Dhoomstriker :)

AP generally seems weird, in my recent game an AI DoW me and then proposed vote to end this war and voted for it (me too) but when I offered peace - said only if I pay him (some) gold ...

Another weird thing - non AP related - I recently got AI to super-friendly (+18) and he would still not trade me a tech because "we don't like you enough" - is that some bug in message? +18 should be more than enough?
 
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