BOTM 38 Final Spoiler -Game Submitted or Abandoned

[2metraninja]

Sure? (Never heard of this and never had the impression that something like this is implemented.)

Maybe you are referring to the 20-turn delay before the new territory is counted in your score

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Corporate Greed
I finished my game but it was a pretty late date, so no point in mentioning it. However, my focus was to grab as many Corporation Resources on the map as possible. At the end, I had 29 Food + Hammers per City coming in from my Corporations.

This amount was nowhere near the amount obtainable on the Santa Clause map, but I also figure that it'll probably be the highest amount of anyone's submitted games.


Oh yeah, and I finally tried out those Paratrooper units. Wow, those puppies are incredibly fun and at the right tech level are nearly unstoppable! They simply laughed in the faces of the AIs' Artillery and SAM Infantry. Regular Infantry might have given the Paratroopers a few problems, but none of the AIs were intersted in that tech path. My only regret was that I was too nice to the AIs to throw Nukes at them... the Paratroopers themselves were sufficiently overkill.

 

[Mitchum]

Oh, Dhoomstriker. I really think you should change your avatar...

Spoiler :

Just kidding. I'm still on tilt from when your typical game beat my attempted milking game for the cow a few GOTMs ago.

 

[Fluroscent]

As per the first spoiler, I had a strong position with eight cities and about to DOW Roosevelt. I figured that I would need to decide on a VC then, since the economy would require some work if I intended to go for a space or diplo victory.
But I thought why not just go ahead and get a quick domination win?
So I finished off my side by ~400AD. Economy completely tanked, but I did manage to get as far as engineering with some bulbing and trading, for some mace/treb invasion goodness.
Took a while to move about, particularly getting galleys going, since I had no productive coastal cities close to Asoka.
But as soon as the masses of units were shipped over to the reverse world, it didn't take long to capitulate Asoka, then Lincoln, and finally Pericles (chosen over Ramesses only because we didn't care for his peaceful philosophy!). Capping the false greeks put me over the limit. Date was 1100AD. Good thing it went fast too. You know your economy is strained when you are forced to build wealth in your HE city!

 

[trucha]

Noob here.

Rushed Bronze Working, then headed up to attack Roosevelt for his flood plains. He was the weakest, and hatty had war chariots. Kept filling in on my side of the continent, but was behind in techs the whole games. Hatty had 3-5 tech lead most of the game, so I decided to attack Ghandi (who was about where I was). Build army, get ready to attack... and he voluntarily capitulates to Hatty. WTH. Now faced with whether I want to attack an equal (Ghandi) and the game leader Hatty, I decided to build boats and attack Pericles. Ship the guys over, take most of his cities, leave him with 2 and he capitulates. Start rebuilding economy, then Asoka voluntarily capitulates to Ramses, who attacks me with about 20 infantry + artillery, while I am upgrading curassiers to cavalry. Still behind 4-5 techs, gave up ~1850.

Fun times, this was the first GOTM that I've ever played (long-time lurker here). I felt that I played decent for never attempted monarch before lol. Can't wait for next month!

 

[Mitchum]

Welcome, trucha. Thanks for posting about your game. With help from this community, you'll be beating Monarch in no time. Once the results are posted, be sure to use the replay tool to compare your game to those of the winners. Download the winning saves and take a look at them. Then, if you have time, replay the game using what you've picked up from this thread, the replay tool, and reviewing saves. If you have questions, just ask. I'm sure that someone will give you more feedback than you can handle.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Welcome trucha! I've only been doing this for 6 months & have gotten better in that time, hopefully you will too. I don't think I'd've wont his game 6 months ago, I was more of a Prince-level player.

Nice try for the military win. If you read my post, I had mixed success in my initial attacks also, so then switched to a space win. As I had more land than anyone else, I could make this happen with good use of my land plus a fairly benign diplomatic situation. Going off to attack the other island sounds like a brave move. What was the political situation on the other island - perhaps the DOW from Rameses was somewhat inevitable, or maybe you could've staved it off diplomatically? Sounds like your economy did better than mine though, mine crashed horribly (maintenance costs were crippling - this due to toroidal map??) and I was some 10 techs behind the leaders at times (I got 9 techs from the internet I think).

I would also say, although the Egyptians had war chariots, we had phalanxes which kinda negates the power of the war chariot, so you could've attacked them first all else being equal.

 

[trucha]

Thanks for the welcome guys! I've been reading in the war academy, and wow, never realized how complex this game can be

To answer Gandalf's questions:
- To be honest I didn't really want to go for a military victory, but I felt that because I was behind in land and techs, if I could take over another civ, the extra cities would help me increase research/economy and I would be able to maybe get a space victory.
- Attacking Greece on the other island seemed like a safe move. He was at the bottom of the ladder, no allies, and was right across the channel from me. Lincoln was small, but he was the tech leader (probably 6-7 techs up on me) and had enough advanced units to make attacking him impossible. He was rolling w/ free religion, I was Jew with Hatty and Ghandi to keep her from attacking me. Ramses was the land leader on the other continent, he was buddhist and got Asoka to become his Vassal. So, yeah, it was probably inevitable that either he or lincoln attack me. I was hoping to have enough time to rebuild the economy over there and then build military, but obviously that didn't pan out too well lol.

I think the areas that I could have done better at would have been (1) leveraging the Philosophical trait better, I had a GP farm up north on the flood plains, but I could have made a couple more in retrospect, (2) prioritizing techs better, (3) more aggressive attacking, earlier in the game. I should have attacked Hatty before she could get so far ahead of me and it became really difficult.

Can't wait to see some savegames for this. Am I allowed to replay the map and try to submit, or is it one and done?

 

[Mad Professor]

I think the areas that I could have done better at would have been (1) leveraging the Philosophical trait better, I had a GP farm up north on the flood plains, but I could have made a couple more in retrospect, (2) prioritizing techs better, (3) more aggressive attacking, earlier in the game. I should have attacked Hatty before she could get so far ahead of me and it became really difficult.

I think good use of the philosophical trait was a very important factor in this game. Running Caste System and Pacifism in a high food city somewhere with a long list of spcialists was a good ploy, especially when combined with the National Epic. It spat great people of your choice out very fast. It my case scientists allowing me to speed through towards Mass Media which was my tech goal for a diplo victory - there are a lot of scientist bulbing techs on the way from philosophy to electricity! I think if someone didn't make really good use of the philosophical trait in this game they were disadvantaging themselves.

If you were going for a military victory, good early use of the UU would have been very important too, though in my case, I didn't raise a weapon in anger the whole game, going for a very peaceful diplo victory.

 

[kcd_swede]

Can't wait to see some savegames for this. Am I allowed to replay the map and try to submit, or is it one and done?

You may only submit your first attempt at playing. However, AFTER YOU HAVE SUBMITTED that first attempt, we do encourage you to replay for your own benefit, and you are welcome to discuss how your second game goes in the appropriate spoiler threads.

Welcome to the Game of the Month!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

You may only submit your first attempt at playing. However, we do encourage you to replay for your own benefit

Just to make this point absolutely clear, you are only allowed to replay parts of the game or all of the game AFTER you have submitted your first attempt. Before you submit your first attempt at the game, you are not allowed to replay any turns, even if you do not plan to "play forwards" from your reloaded game.


For example, you are not allowed to play up until 1 AD, then go back and load your game from 1000 BC "just to see what happened," even if you plan to later continue play from your 1 AD saved game. If you were to go back and load your game from any prior point in the game, then your submission would be disqualified.

So, to be on the safe side, I always play my game through to completion, upload my submission, and only AFTER submitting my final saved game will I consider reloading my game from a previous turn (which might or might not be 4000 bC) just to "try out a different strategy."


All of that said, after you have submitted your final game, if you want to replay parts or all of the game, you are both encouraged to do so and to share your findings in the same game's Final Spoiler thread! A discussion of how things went poorly the first time and how they went a little bit better (or worse) in your after-submission replay can be an instructive learning opportunity for everyone.

 

[kcd_swede]

Just to make this point absolutely clear, you are only allowed to replay parts of the game or all of the game AFTER you have submitted your first attempt.

That is absolutely correct.

 

[trucha]

Excellent. Thanks guys

 

[Conquistador 63]

After recovering from the economic crash in the late BC's, when I conquered Egypt and India, I finished the job eliminating Roosevelt, then my 20-city empire cruised peacefully to space.

Noteworthy was getting Bio from Lib in 1250AD, and Communism a few turns later. I had considered the corps route earlier, as I already had built a lot of courthouses, but being able to eliminate the distance maintenance completely seemed better to me (also less micromanaging involved for the executives).

Nothing much to say here about my game, except from congratulating kcd_swede for the interesting set-up. It would be interesting to know if the distance maintenance costs were inherent to the map script or due to the toroidal wrap.

Edit:
An interesting detail of my game: on the "parallel universe", Pericles liked my idea about Greece conquering Egypt, and declared on Ramesses in 600BC. Too bad for him that war took almost 2000 years, and worse yet, he ended up capitulating to Egypt.

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

i was defeated....... i was stuck at 4 cities and quickly started to fall behind in tech.

i launched 3 attacks vs roosvelt (phalanx), (macemen+trebuchets), (curraisers) all of them failed..... the 3rd attack weakend me so much that the other continent assault team consisting of marines killed me.

its really hard for me to find the balance between overexpanding and underexpading at early game

 

[Mad Professor]

its really hard for me to find the balance between overexpanding and underexpading at early game

That problem was made worse in this game by the quickly escalating distance maintenance costs. Currency fairly early helped me a lot.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Currency fairly early helped me a lot.

Exploring along the Coast with a boat until you found a path to the other continent helped, too, particularly if you had a way to connect your Cities to overseas Trade Routes, such as by having a Coastal City connected to your other Cities via Roads and Rivers. That way, you could have gotten Foreign, Overseas Trade Routes.

i launched 3 attacks vs roosvelt (phalanx), (macemen+trebuchets), (curraisers) all of them failed

Try bringing more units next time. If an AI City has 2 Archers before I attack, I expect that it will have 2 additional Archers by the time that I will get there, so I'll want to bring at a minimum twice that expected value (two times 4) plus one. So, in this case, 9 units, just to capture that first City.

If the AI has similar tech, such as Roosevelt having Iron for his own Axemen, then I'd either want a mix of units (Axemen--aka Phalanx PLUS Chariots) or else I'd want an even LARGER stack of units just to take that first City, since I'd assume that he'd be defending with 2-3 Archers and 1-2 Axemen.

And that's just for capturing one City.

Other tactics exist, such as fighting against the odd AI unit that wanders into your own lands while you remain at war and build up your forces, but I like the idea of mixing troop types a little bit more... enemy Axemen get eaten alive if you can get your Chariots to attack, while Chariots also have a chance of wounding defending Archers and retreating... by themselves, Chariots would not have worked, but supported by Axemen (aka Phalanx), the could have made things easier for you.


Since you were going to have so many wars anyway, perhaps a goal of capturing a single City would have been sufficient for you for each war, in which case as long as you brought a couple of extra units to defend for a few turns until you got Peace, then having enough units to take a City plus to have a couple of extra defenders could have kept your army large enough to make progress but not so large as to halt your economy.

Declaring war with, say, 7 or less Phalanxes sometime around or later than 500 BC, though, would have failed, on average, against all but the weakest of junky border Cities. So if that's the kind of size of army that you were bringing, plan to bring a lot more troops next time.

Did you enjoy the landscape? If not, blame the map generator, because the only modifications from a random spawn were:

Spoiler :

2-tile wide land bridge between continents replaced with coast; gems added to start position and corresponding tile on mirror.

I meant to mention the fact that I noticed that there were some differences in Resources. Particularly, Ramesses got two nice Corn Resources that were conspicuously missing from a barren patch of land near our starting location.

I recall seeing a couple of other minor differences but I forget their exact nature. However, most of the differences were around the centre of the continents, at the locations that were the hardest to visually compare to each other.

At the edge of the continents, where one could visually compare them with either map visibility or as the Map Designer, with the World Builder, were quite well matched-up.

Maybe the differences, particularly the missing 2 Corn Resources, were intentional, and they weren't the end of the world, but it was interesting to find that in this case, "the Grass(land) was greener (cornier?) on the other side."

Actually, now that I think about it, the difference is probably the result of the map script itself improving an otherwise poor AI capital, which just goes to show that "Mirror" maps aren't going to be identical unless you World Build them to be after they are generated (which you won't do in a normal game that you start yourself, so you have to expect some minor variances).

 

[Xcalibrator]

Civ Wars Episode 5: The AP strikes back

[From BOTM37:] I got a Religious win in 1395. I never get Religious victories, and it drives me absolutely nuts when the AI does this to me.

"And isn't it ironic? A little toooo ironic."

Yes, life has a way of balancing things out. I was steadily marching across the other continent toward a respectable early-1800's Dom win when an AP vote popped up. First one of the game, and I'd completely forgotten about the AP since that religion (Buddhism) never spread to my continent. Of course, once I started taking cities on the other continent that meant that all the (surviving) civs now had Buddhism, so Ramesses could call for a Religious Victory vote. Being the only full member, he was the only candidate and his American buddy and Indian vassal voted for him. Game over, 1795. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Religious victories? Yes, I thought I had.

I "finished" this game quite awhile ago but was in no rush to post, so my memory is foggy. I settled on the river grass. From the past several games it seems that some of the better players have put more emphasis on hammers and/or specialists by putting down farms instead of cottages so I figured I'd give that a try in this game. It didn't work out too well, judging from my unimpressive tech rate. I guess the problem is that there wasn't enough food to run specs to make up for the lack of cottages? Silly me.

The AI beat me to Henge but with the stone I got the Great Wall, Pyramids, and Hanging Gardens. With a settled Great Spy I managed to steal 2 or 3 techs from Roosey and another couple from Gandhi before I wiped them out. I started on Roosey first in the ADs, then Hatty, and finally Gandhi (whom I probably should have just vassalized instead of eliminating--the coward volunteered to be my vassal before I'd fired a shot). After cleaning up the mess I'd made on our continent and concentrating on growth and teching for a bit I paid a visit to Pericles. Ram/Asoka DoWed me before I'd completely finished off Perry but it wasn't a big problem. The warring was tedious but I was getting close to the Dom limit, and then that dang AP vote come up. Bah. Congrats to the winners--some very impressive wins, as usual. Looking forward to the next BOTM.

 

[kcd_swede]

Dhoomstriker:

I meant to mention the fact that I noticed that there were some differences in Resources. Particularly, Ramesses got two nice Corn Resources that were conspicuously missing from a barren patch of land near our starting location.

I'm pretty sure I didn't do that. (Unless I was possessed by satan at the time, in which case I wouldn't recall).

Not sure about the high distance maintenance costs either. I have to admit I noticed the economic difficulties during testing, but didn't recognize it as distance penalty costs being unusually high. It could be due to the torroidal wrap, but it could also be the map, which is designed to be balanced in a team game (hence I wonder how that corn did not get balanced ). Being a teamer map, there were a lot more strategic resources than you'd expect on another type of map, which might explain why AI miiltary were tougher than what would normally be expected for those leaders at this difficulty level.

So to punctuate your point about bringing along a chariot to make your life easier... if nothing else it makes it simple to pillage those resources so they are whipping archers instead of axe/spears.

Great discussion, btw.

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, contender. Goal: fastest cultural victory. Result: 1600AD cultural victory.

After my failed war I was stuck with just 6 cities and bad research.

Finished MoM, Parthenon, HE and got infected with another religion.

400AD finished Sistine's and bulbed 8 turns of Education.

500AD: 72 bpt at 0gpt, 6cities, 4 religions, 0temples, almost Educ.

Dow Roosevelt for the second time. I bring in 1lb,1chariot,7Phalanx,5Swords and 8 Cats. Find only 3 units in capital this time and he whips nothing (?). Took the city without losing nothing but the suicidal Cat.

Continued to take cities with ease.

All Indians voluntarily vassalized to Egyptians.

First missionary build 600AD .

Finally accepted Roosevelt capitulation when the 2 remaining cities where useless. Had I known I'd got a -1 attitude hit with everybody else, I wouldn't have done it. Why did that happen, if this was my first vassal?
Deleted 12 units to save on maintenance costs and went into builder mode with my 9 cities.

Just before getting Liberalism I used a GA in a Golden Age to save the anarchy when revolting to slavery, religion, FS. I had had good luck with GA, so no other GP to burn.

Liberalism and first cathedral built 960AD.
Run out of money, completed Hermitage.

1000AD Stats during GAge: 9 cities, 68 pop, 8 workers, 12units (2Swo), 5 strategic resources, 5 luxury resources, 6 health resources, 6 great persons, 5 world wonders, 2 national wonders, food/production/commerce=187-159-604, 150 sustainable beakers per turn, 441(361 useful) culture per turn, 76 great person points per turn, 1100 gold. 4 religions. 4/6 useful cottages used, 41 Techs: Music, Liber, Natio, no PP, no Guilds. 0 civs killed. 16 hours played. reli/city, temples, caths== 26,9,1


1050AD: revolt to Castes and Pacifism. I have 3 of the religions in all 9 cities.

1100AD finally NE in the great GPFarm. Pity it was a mistake. Had I built it in the FP city I took in the first war, I would have been using it for centuries. In addition, my GPFarm had the GLib, polluting my GPFarm with many GS points.

Run some 5turn periods of slavery+OR.

1200AD go to 100% culture at last (I was at 0% because of lack of funds and lack of cathedrals). First estimate says there are 63 turns to go yet and the capital will finish long before the others. Time to do some serious work. I have 9 cathedrals and finished with missionaries.

Lose the race to Economy.

TBC... (sorry I ran out of time)



EDIT: Sorry for the delay, continuing:

As soon as I got Mercantilism I launched a GoldenAge with GS and GPro, to get immediately in Mercantilism, although the GoldenAge came a little too soon for my GPFarm.

This early go for Merc together with accelerating other cities to delay the most-probably-not-a-GA of the GPFarm helped a lot for the 2 cities to catch up with the capital. However I had bad luck with my GAs; has 2 GS at 22% and 77%. Then I let 2 cities starve one pop each by mistake

All cathedrals completed 1300AD.
At 1400AD I was doing 1920cpt in my 3 cities, 631GPPpt civwide.
At 1500AD I was doing 2000cpt in my 3 cities, 663GPPpt civwide.

Capital went Legendary 1555AD :Blush:
Bombed 6 and 7 GA in the other cities to win a cultural victory 1600AD




Key data:
4 religions, 12 cathedrals.
Base culture output: 200 130 120
Multiplier: 5 4 4
Bombed GA: 0 6 7
21GP in all(1for free): 2GS+1GPro bulbed, GPro+GA+GS for 2 GoldenAges, 2GS useless, 13GA bombed.

Slow finish date due to lost war in the beginning.