BOTM 32 Final Spoiler

[Monnet]

I had a really good (for me) and fun game which more than made up for the disaster that was the previous BOTM. I loved the Renaissance start: not only it is much more forgiving of silly early mistakes, but it also saves a lot of trudging through the ages building basic stuff and fighting barbarians which is not so much fun for me because I always end up struggling in the 20th century anyway.

Things I learnt in this game:

- The importance of building tons of workers and that it is not always a good idea to leave on a tile the first improvement built there (i.e. a workshop being replaced by a farm, etc...).
- Although it is a pain to micromanage them, automating workers is not a very good idea.
- Mercantilism plus representation makes a very powerful combination
- I'm getting the hang of city specialisation now (famous last words)
- In a moment of epiphany, I realised the economic importance of religions (shrines + missionaries)
- Promoted pikemen are still very good against late mounted units
- The last military strike was well planned and executed. As for the others...

Things I did not do too well:

- Build too many land units and have them waiting in coastal cities for ages without realising that building a few more galleons/transports would speed up conquest.
- Not taking opportunities to vassalise civs, which end up as vassals of rivals.
- I could have explored the use of espionage much more, and I probably could have had a lot of fun in the process
- I put Nat Epic in the wrong city, using a GE to do so!
- I got ready to upgrade all my cavalry to tanks, saving up the money. When I got the required tech, I realised they can only upgrade to gunships
- I left my military-producing cities on autopilot for too long and they produced far too many units, crippling the economy.
- I asked for a gift of a resource (and was given it) the turn before I was about to declare war on that civ , and then had to wait for 10 more turns.


End result was a 1976 domination victory for about 18000 points, which is pretty good considering my usual standard.

Apart from the above, I think advance starts are great because they take us all out of our comfort zone (if there is such a thing playing Civ IV) and also make for more democratic and comparable games. Thanks to Leif for an enjoyable challenge. More like this, please!

 

[old_civver]

What a difference late start makes! It's almost a whole different game.
First tech gunpowder for Oromo. Meet Charlemagne - open borders in the notion that maybe he will build fewer defenders. Then early rush with 5 LBs and a treb. Aachen defended by only one LB. Has Notre Dame and academy. Nice. 1525 no more Holy Rome and I have 4 cities. Gunpowder in 4 turns.
Next up is Darius. Whip a bunch of Oromos and he goes down easily. These Oromos are tough! 1690 I have 7 cities and the whole continent, well, me and the barbs, who thankfully save me from building so many settlers, which take forever.

Now to fill and develop the place. All this micromanaging of workers takes too much time and they do such dumb things if set on auto. I wish they would be programmable, running off a script or something (Civ5?). Would save a lot of time. By early 1900s I have almost twice the points of next civ. The outcome is not in doubt. No need to put in the hours to finish...

 

[MarleysGh0st]

I immediately revolted to Hereditary Rule, Bureaucracy, Serfdom, Mercantilism and Organized Religion. Aksum went 1SE, Gondar in the desert E of the gold. First tech was gunpowder. I delayed my wars, though, building two of my own settlers, first, to grab horses and the seafood east of Aksum. By that time, Charlemagne had expanded in my direction.

First GE was settled, second started a golden age, which let me revolt to Nationalism, Slavery and Theocracy. I declared war on Charlemagne in 1655; it took me to 1814 to conquer his five cities (and one barb city).

War against Darius was faster, starting in 1828. By 1856, I had his five cities (and one more barb city).

Boudica DOWed against Peter in 1860, with Shaka declaring against her in 1870. In 1880, I went to war with Shaka. After taking four of his cities (and two more from barbs) he became my vassal in 1911. I founded Mining, Inc on the same turn; spreading it gave me another boost to my already dominant production.

Boudica and Peter made peace in 1916, but that continent would not stay peaceful for long; I went to war with Peter the following year. After taking two of his cities, I accepted his capitulation in 1928.

In 1929, I went to war with Boudica. Two conquered cities later, she also became my vassal, giving me a domination victory in 1933. Caesar managed to remain peaceful through the whole game, but he'd have been next, if I had still needed more land.

 

[srad]

UN Diplo in 1818AD

The start:
Revolted to HR, Bur, Serfdom, Merc, Pacf.
Scouted with all units. Saw northwest Gold, Settler headed in this direction. Explorer found horses south west, Settler changed direction.
Settled Aksum in place, Gondar on T5 near horses and wheat. Now I have Iron and Horses = knights ... but is there someone else?
Chopped and built seven workers to get the empire running.

Met Darius on T13, traded map. There is also Charlemange. Nice! Time to assemble some knights and grab the land.

The war (1530 - 1585):

Spoiler :

In front of Aachen:

Captured both of Charlemange cities and three of Darius. Then I was alone on my island. Time for teching.

Midgame:
Just teching through the tree and developing the cities. Tech order:
Astro, PP, SM, Physics, Elec, Radio, MM
Declared on Boudica.

Endgame:
Boudica capitulated in 1775 AD.
Had no luck with popping a GE to speed up the UN so I moved the palace to Aachen to get the production bonus when chopping down the forests.
Switched to Free Religion to ensure Peter's vote. I had around 50% of the population + Boudica as Vassal + Peter at +10 -- UN victory in 1818AD.

 

[kcd_swede]

Space 197X.

I had decided on a space game early, but did none of the stuff I'd normally do to make it faster. Late Oxford, too many wars, almost no tech trading. No Liberlaism, no Econ free GM, no free anything, really.

I got distracted hunting down barb cities which was slower than just expanding the normal way. Took gunpowder early and used it instead. I also ran state religion a long long time, since my first GP was a GE and was used to bulb the U of Sankore. Slowed me down a lot by making trades difficult. But only Persia had any good techs, and "We're not ready to start trading this technolgy just yet" was all I get from him.

All that military made for taking barb cities (first barb city had warriors, was taken by mace) was costing, so I used it to war on Charlemagne. I got Aachen (Oromo's)before he had grens to make further conquest too costly. But he DOW'd me later to try and get it back, and I vassaled him with canons/Oromo/rifles after taking all but one or two of his cities (Shaka got one in an opportunistic DOW).

Made DP with Persia, so when backwards Shaka dow's me he faced 3 on 1. Persia got the former HR city after I softened it up a lot , but I got one Persia city on the west island that shaka had taken, so it evens up. I had tanks now against rifkles, and took one Shaka core city before he had artillery and my siege couldn't keep up with the tanks. Boudi dogpiled and got a core zulu city too. I took peace, and the rest was hunker down for space race which was never really contested. 2 AI parts were built when I won, by different AI.

I went a little wonder crazy, and founded as many corps as I could (Sushi, Mining, Std Ethanol, Creative Constr) without spreading them much (Mining I spread to the space building cities). 3 Gorges, Internet, were the only wonders I got anything out of, but both probably slowed me more than sped me up.

Lack of focus, since I played this directly after trying out Final Frontier mod over vacation, and just used the same sort of random play rather than real focus. Nice that it was a low level as I get back into it.

Kind of fitting that I showed the skill of Nelson Mandela...

 

[Lexad]

Played a 1-sit game, sloppy domination with tanks (= unbelieveably slow), no milking, not a thing to remember this game. The setting is quite different from ancient, for sure.

 

[bcool]

Just wanted to post to say thank you to Jesusin, I learned a lot by your post.

In my first unaided by Jesusin's advice I had a Spaceship victory 1944 AD...

And I believe it was my sloppy start that slowed me down, and my not so aggressive conquest of my continent.
I replayed with Jesusin city placement and civic choices in the beginning and an aggressive elimination of my rivals on my continent and got a spaceship victory 1914 AD.

Those early workers from slavery and aggressively chopping all of those forests into Settlers made a big difference. (As well as not going 100% research until you get the academy)

I didn't follow all of Jesusin's game strategy the 2nd time. There are some WW that are definitely nice if you can get them.

On the replay, I got lucky and captured the AP (or really had the luck that a civilization on my continent built the AP and therefore my captured cities had the religion). The hammer bonuses on those religious buildings really help in a longer spaceship game.

And I also got lucky and captured the Spiral Minaret. That gave me ~70 turns of about 20 religious buildings at 2 gold (* limited modifiers) or 2800 gold.
Assuming you actually need the happiness from the religious buildings that is a nice pay off for 550 hammers even if you didn't capture it.

Compare that to settling a great engineer (+3 hammers * capital modifiers ~1.75 at least, +3,6 science * ~3.25) for ~120 turns. That is ~2385 total hammers and science from the early settled great engineer in the capital. Hmm, I might actually settle the early great engineer instead of instantly building the Spiral Minaret.

Similar argument for the Univ of Sankore.

You can't argue that capturing those wonders isn't a significant boost though.

And of course the early Statue of Liberty is pretty big.

And I think 3 Gorges dam is pretty good too assuming you can get plastics quickly after building the factories. The cost of ~20 power plants is significantly less than 3 Gorges Dam (this is why I always try to build my Ironworks city on a river --not to mention the levee of course). And the 3 Gorges Dam is huge if you consider the health savings (assuming that you build Coal power plants instead). The health savings alone is almost worth the Statue of Liberty because that 2 is often worth an extra specialist in many cities.

There is an additional cost of the 3 Gorges Dam of course. You don't get the benefit of power for ~10 turns (to tech plastics and build it) minus (the time it would take to build coal plants) (or less if you use a great engineer to help). But even if you factor that in the 3 Gorges Dam is very nice in space ship games with a large starting continent.

I'm not sure why Jesusin built Versailles in 1840AD. In my games I go for an early Communism and stay in Caste System for those awesome workshops. So the Versailles is a mystery to me. If you don't use corporations I assumed he had to be in Communism.

In my replay, I took Nationalism with Liberalism instead of Astronomy. I also instantly built the Taj Mahal with a great engineer. Right about the time I was building Universities and Oxford and I was able to tech to Constitution at the same time and make an early (anarchy free) switch to representation during that golden age as well.

 

[jesusin]

Just wanted to post to say thank you to Jesusin, I learned a lot by your post.

My pleasure
I have learnt so much in this site from so many people that I couldn't thank them all.
Many players don't realise that the key to success lies in the first 20 or 50 turns of a game. You can learn more by playing 1 game and then reviewing the first 20 turns in different ways than by playing 100 games without any review.

And I think 3 Gorges dam is pretty good too assuming you can get plastics quickly after building the factories. The cost of ~20 power plants is significantly less than 3 Gorges Dam (this is why I always try to build my Ironworks city on a river --not to mention the levee of course). And the 3 Gorges Dam is huge if you consider the health savings (assuming that you build Coal power plants instead). The health savings alone is almost worth the Statue of Liberty because that 2 is often worth an extra specialist in many cities.

I used to always build 3 Gorges Dam. This game I went for hidroplants and coalplants. When you are going to build your space parts in just 8 or 10 cities and you have researched Plastics late, I think it's more efficient.

I noticed that Coalplants took 4 instead of 2, does anyone know why?

I'm not sure why Jesusin built Versailles in 1840AD. In my games I go for an early Communism and stay in Caste System for those awesome workshops. So the Versailles is a mystery to me. If you don't use corporations I assumed he had to be in Communism.

You are pointing to the weakest aspect of my game, good sight!
I never had the courage to get out of Mercantilism. 1 free specialist per city when in Representation and Pacifism is so good... I often wondered if FreeMarket or StateProperty would had been better.

Now you mention it, I should open an intermediate save and check it myself.

 

[shyuhe]

I noticed that Coalplants took 4 instead of 2, does anyone know why?

2 for power, 2 for the building itself I think.

 

[Lexad]

Yep; in BtS (recent patches iirc, when you can get power with oil) all power brings -2, and coal its regular -2 with coalplant. That's also the reason I dont hook up oil unless I need tanks/destroyers.

 

[lymond]

Sad 1969 AD Diplo..Contender

I look a srad's nice win and laugh. Diplo was not my primary goal. I was in the process of setting up to attack Peter - which would have given my a domination win - when I realized I had a peace treaty with him. I don't even recall why. I had just capped Boudi which I knew would give me Diplo, so I decided to execute the vote. Not used to Renaissance starts. At least I didn't make the same mistake as the Lincoln game. I was winning that game fairly easily, but accidentally voted Mehmed (i think it was him) for his diplo win and my loss - I wasn't paying attention and thought I was voting for the leader.

The timing in Renaissance is what throws me off. I really did not know what would be classified as a good relative time. Overall, things seemed fairly easy at first. Switched to the usual HR>Bureau>Slavery>Merc>OR. I realized later that Serfdom civic (something I never use on ancient start has an advantage here). Anyway I got up a fairly decent empire early. I wish I had taken out Charley a bit earlier but always fear the protective longbows until I have enough siege. Instead I befriended BK for a while. Initial goal was to chop out tons of workers and several settlers to secure my immediate empire. SIP and the Gold city second. Coastal city in NW was nice early and a SW city to get horses. Continued expanding W and N. After making a specific push to win Lib, I lost it to Peter or AC. I'm completely baffled at this. I did everything I could to ensure it.

I was building up to take out BK as I was settling the island to the west (N of Shaka). As usual - and this seems always the case - the AI seems to want to settle a spot the exact same turn as me. I already had 1 city on the island and had a settler and troops ready to settle the sugar but Darius beat me to the spot. However - and I forget exactly the units - but he left it poorly defended, so I attacked immediately and took it. Bribed Charley into war with Darius as a I moved through HRE with my stacks of Oromo/Cannon. Took Persia easily, built up a bit and destroyed HRE shortly after to secure my continent.

In the meantime, Shaka not surprisingly attacked me once. I destroyed his ships before he ahd any chance to land with my frigs. Hilarious. I attacked Shaka with Tanks/arty against his much weaker units and capped him after taking 2 of his cities. Boudi went down with a combo of well everything, including mechs and fighters. So basically I won diplo by war - no one outside my empire voted for me.

Tremendous amount of production on the continent running State Property. My big problem as always is not really focusing on the goals early. I could have easily fought 2 or 3 wars at once if I focused on building more units as opposed to other things. Every VC except culture was at my disposal, but I've got to learn to finish these games out sooner.

Oh ...speaking of jesusin...I reviewed your save for BOTM31. I was just floored at your amazing empire and how you expanded like you did with virtually no warfare. Learned a lot from it but don't know if I could come within light years of producing those results. By the way this quote of yours is outstanding:

Many players don't realise that the key to success lies in the first 20 or 50 turns of a game. You can learn more by playing 1 game and then reviewing the first 20 turns in different ways than by playing 100 games without any review.

I plan to plagiarize it on the strat forum.

 

[old_civver]

Thank you very much Jesusin for your great writeup. It is impressive to see your obvious efforts to help others play better. Along that line it would be very helpful to have access to some of the early saves (maybe turns 10, 20 and 30? or whatever you think most illuminating).

Specific questions about the very early worker actions:
Is it higher priority to get the cottages up and running or to chop? Do you ever set your workers on automated or do you micromanage the entire game? When is the optimum time to "hire" the specialists? In other words, is it higher priority to get the early great person or to get the "x" (university, knight, bank, etc)?

 

[jesusin]

Specific questions about the very early worker actions:
Is it higher priority to get the cottages up and running or to chop?

It's situational. In a cultural game whit plenty of space, where you don't plan to go beyond 6 cities, cottages might be more important. Generally it's more important to get another city or another worker, so chopping takes precedence.

Do you ever set your workers on automated or do you micromanage the entire game?
)?

Never. Ever.

How would they know what I want them to do?
Have you ever noticed AI's worker behaviour? Any human with automated workers will find hard to beat noble AI.

When is the optimum time to "hire" the specialists? In other words, is it higher priority to get the early great person or to get the "x" (university, knight, bank, etc)?

I guess your examples are taken form a Rennaissance start...

If your goal is conquest then you don't need an Academy. At all. Maybe you want to bulb your way to Astronomy. Even then generally you are not in a hurry to get your GP. Build units.

For any other type of victory, get your Academy asap. What did you build your Library for anyway?
If you are not going to work towards your academy, forget about universities and banks (you're a builder! ain't you? ), get another settler.

 

[old_civver]

Thanks again Jesusin. You're one of the masters of this game, so I appreciate your clarity and experience. So you never, ever automate workers. Even towards the end. hmmm.. that makes for a lot of fussing with their movements, but I guess there is no alternative.

The other point I would appreciate hearing your opinion on is when to hire specialists. Assume you're going for space victory so you want as many bpt as possible, but you also want to grow the population as well. At what city population do you like to "hire" a scientist? (from game start)

I thought your technique of turning off research completely at certain points until, for example, the academy is built, or Oxford, was quite a revelation for me. I had always played simply researching to the max. Have your ever replayed a game with all other choices the same just to see how much difference this tactic makes?

 

[The-Hawk]

I think I played the early game pretty well. However, I got overly cautious before attacking Boudica and Peter. Built too many units, wasted too much time. I also was waiting for Rifles to come in so I could upgrade some of my well promoted Oromos. Once I sent my forces overseas, it was pure overkill.

Final result was Domination in 1916 for 22K points. Could have been better, feels like I lost a chance at a top finish.

Enjoyed the game... nice to play some non-standard games.

 

[jesusin]

Thanks again Jesusin. You're one of the masters of this game, so I appreciate your clarity and experience. So you never, ever automate workers. Even towards the end. hmmm.. that makes for a lot of fussing with their movements, but I guess there is no alternative.

Thanks for your kind words. I should mention that my way of playing is not for everyone. I've been known to have changed the slider 4 times in 10 turns in the beggining of a game just to get 1 extra beaker. The spreadsheet calculations associated took me some 15 minutes... I can understand that not everybody is ready to pay the price of "the beauty of seeking perfection".

The other point I would appreciate hearing your opinion on is when to hire specialists. Assume you're going for space victory so you want as many bpt as possible, but you also want to grow the population as well. At what city population do you like to "hire" a scientist? (from game start)

Wow, that's a question.
One city will sacrifice everything early in order to get the capital's Academy as early as possible.

Appart from that, I won't hire any specialist in the early game (say 1000BC or 1AD). In general, till NE is built.

The NE city (the GPFarm) will hire a lot of specialist as soon as possible. GreatPeople are worth a lot.

Then, for the other cities, if the city is going to be able to pop a GP, I value the specialist a lot. The 3GPP are worth a lot more than 3bpt.

If the city has no chance of ever popping a GP, then the specialist is "just another tile". If you are in Representation, there's no difference between hiring an scientist or working a dessert incense tile. Hire your specialists as you would work dessert incense tiles.


Of course you can invest hours of your life for extra efficiency here too: sometimes it is good to unhire a specialist for 1 turn just to get your next pop growth 1 turn sooner. Or in a food-stable city which won't pop a GP, you can work extra sea tiles (at the expense of specialists) for accumulating food while in GAge, then spend that extra food in extra specialists (at the expense of other sea tiles) while out of GAge.

I thought your technique of turning off research completely at certain points until, for example, the academy is built, or Oxford, was quite a revelation for me. I had always played simply researching to the max. Have your ever replayed a game with all other choices the same just to see how much difference this tactic makes?

You mean, being ineficient on purpose just to measure how smart I think I am?
No, never.

 

[toller pretzl]

I tried to follow Jesusin's blueprint for winning in 70 turns with these settings. I didn't quite succeed (85 turns, 1800 AD Conquest).

How the fastest conquest game should be played:
T0- Revolt to slavery. Other civics too, you say? As you wish, it's optional. Research set on Astronomy.
T2- Settle 1 city near iron, the other near horses.
T3- Worker first, whipped, improves 1 food tile and many mines.
T20- 4 Knights built (chopped)
T25- Isabella is dead
T50- Astro in, slider to 0%, 12 or 16 knights built, whip 1 Galleon every 2 turns in Madrid.
T60- 2 civs have been vassalized after only taking 1 city. Dow all other civs just to let the time to be able to talk to you pass.
T70- All civs are vassalized, after losing something between 0 and 2 cities each.

Some differences between my game and this excellent plan :
T0- I started with Serfdom, didn't go to slavery until towards the end. I think that was a good change from the plan: our map wasn't food-rich enough to make early slavery as good as serfdom
T30- 4 knights built (+10 vs the plan)
T48- first civ killed (+23 vs the plan) (second civ killed on T52)
T57- Astro (+7 vs the plan)
T71- first overseas civ vassalized (+11 vs the plan)
T85- Conquest victory (+15 vs the plan)

 

[Mad Dog]

I went for space for a change to relieve the tedium of domination. I decided to milk a bit instead of going for pure speed; not really the sensible strategy in retrospect as despite my 100 million population when my spaceship arrived in 1987 the score was only about 15-16k adjusted which doesn't seem too good. Suspect my main problem was slow conquest of my initial continent together with drag of military support on science rate.

Renny start was interesting, having never completed such a game before. I should have used slavery more at the start to chop up military and settlers but instead went for some early gps and conquered the local continent.Once that was done things were pretty peaceful until Shaka DoWed. Despite him suing for peace shortly afterwards I decided to wipe him out anyway given my vastly superior military techs.

I liked the variety of the start; it made it a very different game, although not one I was familiar enough with to optimize the start, or indeed the finish, well enough. The late start also meant I had enough patience to play the later game with a little more attention than usual.

 

[jesusin]

I tried to follow Jesusin's blueprint for winning in 70 turns with these settings. I didn't quite succeed (85 turns, 1800 AD Conquest).


Some differences between my game and this excellent plan :
T0- I started with Serfdom, didn't go to slavery until towards the end. I think that was a good change from the plan: our map wasn't food-rich enough to make early slavery as good as serfdom
T30- 4 knights built (+10 vs the plan)
T48- first civ killed (+23 vs the plan) (second civ killed on T52)
T57- Astro (+7 vs the plan)
T71- first overseas civ vassalized (+11 vs the plan)
T85- Conquest victory (+15 vs the plan)

Excellent game, toller pretzl


I'd like to contend that slavery T0 is best.

Both cities start with 2pop. The second one is useless initially, as there are no good tiles to work. So whipping them into workers is much more efficient. With forges (and Bureaucracy) they are almost worth a whole Worker each. The faster Worker means faster availability of improved tiles. With the free granary you will recover your pop fast enough.

Maybe you are right that once you have some 5 very fast-got Workers, revolting (again) to Serfdom may be well worth it.

 

[Sleepless]

Well game started off badly as forgot to change civics straight away. That and very sloppy play lead to a conquest victory in 1916. First was Charlie with Oromos. Got to love them. Then Darius, capitulated both of them as my tech rate the whole game was pretty poor. Next of was Shaka and vassal number 3, Julius vassal No 4. Peter had already capped to Boud so wiped him out, capitulated Boud which lead to the conquest win. Still makes a change from my usual spaceship victories.