BOTM 28 Final Spoiler

[srad]

Can we have another Deity game, I mean a 'normal'?

Normally the difficult levels drops after Deity down to something like Noble and it will take a few months to feel the thrill of a Deity game. And this one was probably not above Monarch. So maybe, GOTM staff ?


--------------------------
Space in 1830 - needed to force myself to play this to an end - should have target a military victory for some more entertainment ...
The start was interesting. Settled near gems. Half researched Alpha until I was pretty sure that there is no one to trade with. Placed my second city on the stone to the south to get a workboat out for exploration.

Very nice space date Ribannah ! And with a tech path that is really interesting for me.

 

[Mutineer]

I will second that, this one did feel as monarch game. For got sake, the best tech I traded from Original AI was replaceable parts. They simply had nothing else until the end. My self created vassals did better

 

[RD-BH]

Motion passes.

 

[babybluepants]

Domination 1770 AD, 240k

After meeting the AIs circa 600AD, I didn't really feel like continuing this. Felt silly. Then I played through a long unfocussed session into 1200's one night and decided to finish it after all... Ended up slogging my way through a (very sad) late attempt at milking score. Never done that before, and I obviously don't know what I'm doing. Lots of mistakes...

I'll second a motion for another deity BOTM soon. I haven't played one of these in a while, and was really looking forward to it. Majorly disappointed. I skipped last month's, which seems to have been quite good.

 

[Ronnie1]

I just want to say that "concept" for this Botm was thought out fairly well. If the player/AI's had been in opposite starting positions, I think it would have played out quite differently. I just think the AI's were a little too cramped, and if they had had a bit more room to expand and trade, it would have been a nice challenge.

 

[Mutineer]

Have to agree, there a lot of ocean around. If AI continent would be 2-3 times bigger it would be more fun.

 

[Jbourne]

Have to agree, there a lot of ocean around. If AI continent would be 2-3 times bigger it would be more fun.

Now that would have been a challenge. All AI with room to expand and an isolated start for the Human on Deity Level. Winner will get the gold medal, cow and the award assuming anyone can win it.

 

[Mutineer]

It would not be that big challenge... Home landmass is soo good...

That is not typical isolated start, in my experience map algorithm create 2 happiness resources per civ on continent. We had 6 different happiness resources available on continent and 2 islands.

 

[Silu]

It's not the resources, it's the absence of barbs With barbs this game would be a different story...

 

[Sleepless]

It's not the resources, it's the absence of barbs With barbs this game would be a different story...

I agree having the barbs in would have been better. Would have saved me a fortune in settlers/workers and netted some good income from taking there cities. Can you imagine what the North island would have looked like.

As long as you were prepared for them.

 

[Xcalibrator]

1710 Domination

Not much of any interest that I can add, although I did enjoy the thrill (rare, for me) of bribing the AIs into war a couple times, which was amusing. I had Gilgamesh attack DeGaulle, which set the whole continent aflame. Pericles went bye-bye in that one. My beeline to Astro worked out pretty well. I was missing quite a few techs but quickly traded for them once I met the AIs and more or less held tech supremacy from there on. I attacked Monte with transports/artillery/infantry about 3 turns before he was going to get Assembly Line and just missed knocking him down to the stone knives/bear skins level before he finished that off. Didn't matter, though, as I vassalized him, then DeGaulle for the win. I fully settled the 3 home islands, using privateers a few times to thwart approaching galleons, although I don't know if they had any settlers or not.

I am again in awe of better players' tech progress and finish dates, particularly Silu and (as usual) Ribannah. How do you do that? It can't just be settler spam, can it? Do you whip before the 10-turn expiration in some cities? Do you emphasize land grabs, or pack in cities with significant BFC overlaps? Where does your National Epic go? Early in capital or in an absolutely dedicated GP farm? Where do you run specs and how intensely? (It seems Ribannah doesn't always use her first Great Sci for an Academy.) What's your early bulbing strategy, and how does it work with the various tech slingshots? I suspect I tend to overemphasize production over beakers, but there are obviously some key concepts I'm missing. I can usually win on Immortal, but it's a struggle. You guys/gals can clearly win on Deity, real Deity, without much trouble. And 2.5 hours playing time for Silu? I was 10x as long.

Add my vote for another Deity game in the near future. On a small map, please?

 

[Silu]

I am again in awe of better players' tech progress and finish dates, particularly Silu and (as usual) Ribannah. How do you do that? It can't just be settler spam, can it? I suspect I tend to overemphasize production over beakers, but there are obviously some key concepts I'm missing. I can usually win on Immortal, but it's a struggle. You guys/gals can clearly win on Deity, real Deity, without much trouble. And 2.5 hours playing time for Silu? I was 10x as long.

Hmm... I don't think my game was anything special, as probably half a dozen of the Domination wins already posted in this thread have more score than me. Plus at least half of those could have beat my finish date had they not went for settling the north continent to get score and had went for Conquest instead (As noted I didn't bother reading the non-obvious XoTM rules before playing )

But since you asked, and since I think some of my answers won't necessarily be what you expect... Anyway, all the below for "just win" play, I really don't know anything about milking score.

Do you whip before the 10-turn expiration in some cities?

Of course, if the payoff beats the cost. Having hard rules about not doing stuff like that is shooting yourself in the leg - clearly there are times where having 2 key buildings faster outweighs a single extra red face for a couple of turns.

Do you emphasize land grabs, or pack in cities with significant BFC overlaps?

Well normally against actual AIs landgrab is an obvious priority. In sandbox, overlap is really not a factor at all to consider for me. I overlap if it's the best city spot available (also considering stuff like fogbust, resources for other cities, maintenance, easiness of defense in addition to raw benefit), grab land if that leads to getting the best available spot.

Where does your National Epic go? Early in capital or in an absolutely dedicated GP farm?

There's really not a hard&fast rule here. In this game I did not build it at all. Of course I should have, if only for the wonder score boost... In normal ("just win") games I think it's way overrated, and often best built in a captured 10-wonder AI capital later on, if not playing a strategy based around GPs.

Where do you run specs and how intensely? (It seems Ribannah doesn't always use her first Great Sci for an Academy.)

With a FIN civ, generally very few, in a random city that won't suffer from stagnation and not working tiles. In this game, I got a total of 4 GPs, one being the Economics GM. Capital academy with the first, two GAs with the other 3.

What's your early bulbing strategy, and how does it work with the various tech slingshots?

Didn't bulb at all this game. Saved a GS for Edu, but put it on sleep and forgot to use it... Ended up being the first GA launcher.

 

[Fluroscent]

Domination ~1650AD ish. Score ~200k

Nuked every AI city twice, then took one vassal, which put me over the dom limit.. A bit annoying since I wanted to throw some more nukes.

Played too sloppy in the midgame (forgot to switch to bureau for around 30 turns..) to stand any chance of a competitive finish, so just went ahead and played around a bit.

Fun game setup, but maybe the AI should have been given room for at least 5 cities each.
2nd request for a real diety game before going through the cycle of low difficulty games first.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Domination ~1650AD ish. Score ~200k

Yet another game I'd love to watch being played. In the absence of that, I'm replaying to 500 AD with even more emphasis on cottages and expansion than before. If I try this 5 or 6 times maybe I can learn something. Managed to get the Oracle this time, but Pyramids still went insanely early.

 

[The-Hawk]

I decided to try culture. Was horribly slowed by three issues:

• Missed Parthenon by a handful of turns.
• Missed Sistine by a handful of turns.
• Shaka DOW'd me when I was in full culture mode. I lost a bunch of turns with culture slider on 0 while I cash rushed an army to deal with him. After the war, I decided to keep the troops, so this slowed my culture rate (unit cost made me turn culture slider down).

In hindsight, it was a big mistake not hooking Marble earlier. Not sure what I could have done with respect to Shaka, I had maximized my friendliness with him when he attacked.

Culture win in 1822 AD .

 

[Xcalibrator]

2nd attempt, at 540 AD:

The situation still isn't as good as the big boys and girls got, but it's close. Of course, this time I knew that we were isolated, but I don't think that had too much effect. Much more emphasis now on getting out settlers and workers rather than perfecting fewer cities. In comparing to my original game I see that I had run out of things to build in many cities because I didn't have enough techs. Another big difference is that now I have a religion (Confu from Oracled CoL), and a shrine to boot. Also got Taoism so I could run Pacifism to boost GP production for awhile.

New game                    Original attempt (Domination 1710)
------------                ---------------
100% science:
    369 bpt/-113 gpt        260/-56
0%:
    11/+153                18/+164
breakeven:
    226/-7 @60%             212/0 @75%
Cities:   13                    8
Pop:      67                    65
Techs:   26                     20
Relig:    2                     0
Wonders (all in Persepolis):
    Acad                       Acad
    Oracle                     Chichen Itza
    Great Lib
    Parthenon
    Nat'l Epic
    (Confu shrine in FP/gems city)
Great People:
    4 + Music Artist         2
    I ran the Music GA for a Golden Age, and have another GA (from 1% National Epic 
contamination :mad:) and an Engineer on ice.  Currently building Angkor Wat, and 
then I have plans for Hagia Sophia; I'd like to save the Eng for the Taj, but we'll see; 
there's only 1 more forest left around Persepolis, so wonders are going to start taking 
longer.  Expecting another GP in 4 turns.

I've just crammed in a 3rd city on the SW island (on the western hill with fish and copper) to see if I can turn it into a Deity-powered colony/vassal, as someone suggested might be good for trade. I guess I'll have to use my espi points to see what they're researching so I can tech something else and trade, yes? I've just started settling the NW island and will probably do the same thing up there. I've very rarely freed colonies so this is yet another learning opportunity.

My overall population isn't much higher than what I had the first time (and nowhere near the 85/90 that some people had at this point), but I have a lot more cities that should soon start pulling me ahead of the AI on techs. I'm therefore delaying the Optics/Astro route this time, since tech trades will be of less use, and I have my own religion(s). Resource trades (with me getting gpt) would be nice, but I'll get those with my future local colonies/vassals. The extra wonders, with Parth and earlier Nat'l Epic, and earlier Pacifism, are seriously boosting my GP production compared to last time, and since I'm doing better at techs I should be able to snag even more Wonders (thoughtfully chosen) before the AI.

We need to have a crowded game with nasty neighbors and raging barbs next time to make everything I'm learning here useless.

BTW, Eul_Bofo has started an excellent strategy discussion thread.

 

[beestar]

If it's a vassal, just instruct them what to tech. It's under 'We'd like to discuss something else'

It would be interesting to see whether spinning off colonies is a winning play in this game. It never really occured to me to do so but maybe having your own pet tech bloc is worth the loss in land.

 

[Lexad]

I did not understand what I was playing. I figured out something was cheesy by 2K BC when I was 3rd in food. Played in 1 day, lots of mistakes, think I won't play score games for a while. Had I known the setup, would've just went for Astro and mace-rushed the AI.

Hoping to see a decent game next month, the last two weren't really up to the announced level.

Edit: my initial 2500 years were much like Duckweeds, even the cities located same way. Didn't have that much warfare outside, so my settling on stone didn't bring me Pyrs or HGs.

 

[neilmeister]

Well, I for one appreciated this Monarch game in disguise.
First ever Deity win. Spaceship in 1916, which will place me about 30th, judging on the dates I have seen above.

I created a colony on the northern island, but he took forever to get up to speed. I only got 1 tech out of him.

Monti killed off a few of the other AI's before I got there (circa 600ad), and was a monster. I was seriously paranoid about getting stomped as soon as they/he got Astro, so wasted lots of time & effort on building a military & navy.

The Sumerians were heading for a cultural victory and I had an armada of destroyers & tanks heading over when Monti killed him off. So the navy just sat of Monti's coast instead, until he DOW'd me in the early 1800's and landed a stack on my mainland. Needless to say I razed a few of his cities as punishment (he just had so much military I didn't think I could hold any of his cities).

 

[lroumen]

I was uncertain on how to start and I had to spread my game out across several days of around an hour of play so the development of my empire was far from optimal. I started out to spam a few warriors and a cautious settler before remembering the no-barbs and aloneness part of the game. Then I switched to a full-out settler spam. Not all cities were placed optimally in hindsight, but okay, I think expansion was quite okay.
At some point I did run into a cashflow problem but luckily I got to found Confucianism in my second or third city (near the floodplains to the east) and with careful control managed to make it a nice wealth-city. Yej me, I could expand again.

I was smart enough to go for a few galleys and I moved over a lot of settlers to the north island first and used the marble I found there to build some wonders (I think I had built the taj with it). I did again run into problems with wealth so I made that a colony (saladin) and went on to settle the bottom island. After settling 3 cities I created another colony (joao) and spent a long time prepping my own island with cottages, chopping jungles and forests, breeding science everywhere. I was soon on my way in teching and then started to think about victories. A bit late and at one point when I continued that game after a week of not playing I even couldn't remember what I had decided on.
In any case I soon figured out that with all the wars in the east I might have to build a few army units to protect my cities from foreign invasion... though silly enough I found out that I was far more advanced than them. With a few zepplins I scouted the ocean whilst I kept teching to space. That sadly took far too long for comfort so I switched tactics and built more units to go for an invasion. At first I thought about France since they settled on a blind spot on my northern island where Saladin had not settled himself, but then I decided to put monty out of his misery. He was doing well in the land area part, but not so good with teching and would be an easy target for riflemen. I got him easily enough feeling some culture pressure from the zulu. Got some tanks in the meantime to help me on my way, and then I immediately travelled through greece and russia (both vassals to the zulu) to france and sumeria. I think decided on france... but anyway, the point is that he (whoever was my next target I can't remember) had 2 cities with cultural pressure from his neighbours and a few coastal cities. Perfect for a fast take over. With now infantery and tanks.
Heh. Sumeria fell next and as I started to contemplate whether to declare now or the next turn on the zulu I tripped the domination limit.

Domination, 1900AD exactly, 6612 base score, 90509 total score.
Saladin and Joao as colonies
Montezuma, Gilgamesh and France killed off
Never even met Suryavarman who was killed by Montezuma or the Zulu
left: Zulu with vassals Russia and Greece

I cannot say that I did not enjoy this game, but it was mainly due to the fact that expansion went so easily with Darius. I don't think that I would have done as well without some of my decisions along the way either. I made good decisions to colonise both the northern and southern islands, even better decisions for scientific expansion to give it to saladin and joao, and I was smart enough to spread confucianism to all of their cities (and mine). I did good wealth-wise and I was able to found mining inc, cereal mills and in one city sids sushi (since the AI was getting close and I made it to deny them).
If only I can pass these things in a normal emperor game... I can only barely do this stuff in monarch. I don't think I match up to the others here, but I do learn a lot of new things when trying to cope with these problems.

I did not learn anything about diplomatics this game, except for with colonies.
I did not learn anything about espionage this game.
But I did learn about expansion and balancing my wealth better.