[BTS] BOTM 291: Louis XIV, Prince - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

[kcd_swede]

BOTM 291: Louis XIV, Prince - Final Spoiler - Game Submitted

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

NOTE: if you finish your game before the server is back online and thus you cannot upload your "game over" save in the usual fashion,
please submit it to me (kcd_swede) as an attachment to a PM, and I will upload it when the server becomes available again.

Reading Requirements
If you are participating in BOTM 291 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.

 

[Mitchum]

Game submitted via PM to kcd_swede

Like C63, I went for a Culture victory, not because it was the fastest in number of turns, but because the game setup seemed ideal for it (i.e., no early access to metals, no early access to a rival, etc.).

This was definitely an interesting game. I did notice that Peter and Sury were a team BUT neither one was a minor civ (i.e. we could enter diplo conversations with both of them). I guess that means that they were able to trade with each other. I'm not sure if that is a bonus or if it was a negative because they may have had to pay the double the price to research a tech (team game) with only half the beakers of a normal team. In any event, when I met them, they seemed to be on par tech wise with the other AI so the effect must have been minor.

For a Culture victory, I had a bit of bad luck. As soon as I met the AI, they all hated me due to running a different religion. Three of them went WEHORN and Peter + Sury declared war about 15 turns from my planned finish date. Each city was still being guarded by a caveman; the extent of my army was 9 warriors, all on MP duty. Peters 3 galleons were right outside one of my auxiliary cities but he hadn't unloaded the troops yet yet. I switched all builds to archers (which I could upgrade) or redcoats. I then played games with leaving one city or another undefended which caused his galleons to sail back and forth a couple of turns without unloading. This gave me time to move all of my cavemen to the vulnerable cities, build a few new units and to upgrade all that I could afford. By the time he finally unloaded, I was able to wipe out his stack without much trouble. He did bombard city walls for a turn which gave me even more time to prepare. Luckily, the AI don't know how to find amphibious wars.

Another bit of bad luck was getting a non great artist at low odds with about 12 turns to go. I had to rejigger my cities to crank out 3 Great Artists in the last 5 turns. Had I gotten the great artist I planned on, I could have finished 3 turns sooner.

Lastly, I was only ever able to get 2 religions in my cities. "We" founded Islam but Charly got it and of course, he never spread it to me because it wasn't his state religion. So I wasn't able to build as many cathedrals as I had hoped.

Other than that, the game went about as expected. I cultured bombed my legendary cities 1 - 5 - 8. They were doing 797, 560, 356 culture/turn respectively. The last city was my GP farm so almost all of its culture came from the artist specialists.

All cities were bombed to legendary status in 1655 AD and I got the victory screen in 1660 AD. Not that great a date but not horrible considering the DoW and the lack of religion due to the challenges faced with trying to get a minor civ to cooperate.

Thanks for the great game, kcd_swede! It was indeed a nice change from a normal game even though it was frustrating at times.

 

[nocho]

Enjoyable game! I had reached 1AD with 13 cities and proceeded to expand to 18 cities on our team's quarter of the map, Charlemagne eventually managed to squeeze in 8 cities on our initial turf. When I finally got Astronomy, city 19 was obviously settled on the little strategic island in the middle of the map. I got to Astro by libbing it in 1030AD, which felt a bit late. Maybe I should've tried the bulb route, but I never think of that before getting to CS so that was out of the window. Anyway, with iron and horses I built my invading forces initially with knights but soon substituted by cuirs and later cavs. I finally declared in 1280AD, but of course the horse army cut even better than usual through our largely resourceless competition, although the Indians had two iron sources, maybe popped or not substituted by the mapmaker. I took out Japan/Maya first, left Toku with 3 cities when they capped. Next came the German/Indian combo. I had to take 11 German cities and 3 Indian ones before they would talk and accept being our underlords. Lastly the Russian/Khmer team folded quite soon, just after taking 4 and 2 cities respectively. I ended up with 50 cities and a 1505AD conquest victory.

By the way, I noticed that the 3 minor civ team mates, HRE, Maya and India, had non-standard city naming or order. Do minor civs go inversely through the city-name lists or something?

 

[kcd_swede]

@nocho
Mapmaker is not infallible. Ghandi (or Sury) was meant to be a minor civ. I had trouble getting the game to recognize the text-edited worldbuilder file, went through 4 versions before figuring out some glitch in the file naming that I was doing... so that somehow was overlooked in the final version. But heck... it was the same for everyone so just an unexpected challenge for you to adjust to, perhaps.

However, I did recheck the world builder save and there were no iron on the Indian start continent. So I guess they must have popped it.

I don't know about the city naming order... my guess perhaps is that city names are chosen from a list from the founding civs' city list but based on a number of the team totals?

Glad you enjoyed the game!

 

[Mitchum]

@nocho
However, I did recheck the world builder save and there were no iron on the Indian start continent. So I guess they must have popped it.

I actually popped Iron (or maybe Copper) with 10ish turns to play in my Cultural victory. It wasn't useful for me since it popped after the Peter/Sury DoW and I was building city defender units that don't need metal anyway.

I'm actually glad the AI didn't have any strategic resources. If they did, I would have been dead with the late-game DoW. As it was, the stack that landed was easier to manage.