BOTM 42 Final Spoiler - Game Finished

[jesusin]

Hi Jesusin,
Interesting reading. I'm interested to read about Your Pyramids build (I thought in your guide you didn't recommend that). Also interested to see that you didnd't use as many Cottages as you recommend in your guide, and built a ton of WW (which you also don't recommend in your guide). Is it because of the level?
Also, just wondering what city did you end up using for your GPFarm? I was using my capital mostly, but was getting GPs from a few cities.

In my guide I didn't recommend dividing a cultural game in three phases: research, golf-rushing under US at 100% gold and 100% cultural push. I instead recommend a 2 phases approach: research and 100% cultural push. The use of US is not to be recommended in most (all?) cases.

Pyramids allow for 3 free happiness and our map was short of happy resources. Pyramids allows research based on specialist, instead of research based on cottages and this map was food rich, allowing a lot of specialists.

I built many WW and that contradicts my guide, that's true. Please notice the title of my guide. It is written for Vanilla and for Immortal/Deity. This game is a low level BTS. The particulars of the guide don't apply here. But if you read the guide you will learn how to approach a cultural game and by taking into account the differences (BTS, low level) you will be able to define your own detailled strategy.

All of my cities (but the late ones without food) popped GPs, of course. My GPFarm was the 2 fishes city just East of the capital.

 

[jesusin]

Some spoilers are written more to just tell the story of the events, rather than to analyze the gameplay in detail. Are you suggesting that is not an appropriate spoiler style?

No. Who am I to tell anyone what to write, anyway?
All I am doing is giving a clue to players with a desire for improving their gameplay. If they concentrate on the critical aspects of a game they are bound to improve.

What you are saying is that better players write better spoilers. In particular, they write spoilers that are better (more interesting) to the better players. That is because they know what facts are of interest to the better players (the facts that are most pivotal). If the lesser players knew what game facts were pivotal, their game play and their spoilers would both be better.

That's it. I couldn't have expressed it better.

 

[jesusin]

In your next spoiler, say which benchmark you were aiming for and why you think you fell short (or what else suffered too much when you did so). You'll get tips, I and others will read those tips too, and we'll all gain.

 

[psparky]

As for "better" spoilers, personally I find the strictly factual spoilers kind of dry and have a hard time visualizing how those data were acheived unless there is a narrative that holds it all together. And imo the "better" spoilers are the ones which are both informative and entertaining.

But I value all spoilers, because I mostly enjoy the community aspect that we are all doing something together that we enjoy.

But not all of us are necessarily looking to improve... even a 1-line spoiler saying "I rushed so-and-so but was too late and I quit in rage when I failed" is interesting to me. It indicates we have something in common, a passion for Civ.

Yes, that's pretty much exactly how I feel. Speaking as someone who can't contribute much to the strategy discussions, I try to put a little flavouring in my reports instead. And the feedback I've received has always been helpful to me and maybe will encourage other noobs to join in.

I'm going to try to be more organised in future so I can make better reports. I'm still a bit overwhelmed with all the stuff to think about, and tend to get carried away with the flow of the game.

BTW if you haven't played WOTM 36, there's still time - it's a quick speed game, and well worth a look. We need more players!

 

[da_Vinci]

I don't think Jesusin was making a judgement of what style is "better" or "appropriate" spoilers. He has observed that the players who obtain better game results are more likely to write spoilers that conatin the benchmarks that were critical for the chosen victory.

As for "better" spoilers, personally I find the strictly factual spoilers kind of dry and have a hard time visualizing how those data were acheived unless there is a narrative that holds it all together. And imo the "better" spoilers are the ones which are both informative and entertaining.

But I value all spoilers, because I mostly enjoy the community aspect that we are all doing something together that we enjoy.

No. Who am I to tell anyone what to write, anyway?
All I am doing is giving a clue to players with a desire for improving their gameplay. If they concentrate on the critical aspects of a game they are bound to improve.

I was pretty sure that Jesusin didn't mean to say that non-analytic spoilers don't belong. But I also thought his initial language might be interpreted by some the wrong way. That is why I brought the issue up: to get clarification that has been amply provided.

That and I read Jesusin's comment as I (lesser player) was about to write my own non-analytic spoiler about my worse than so-so win: "Got bogged down fighting Joao, was tech behind when I met the others, had to scramble for a late diplo win."

dV

 

[Arnold_T]

Nice tip on the Pyramids. I don't usually build the Pyramids, but will keep it in mind for next time.

 

[lymond]

I decided fairly early that I wanted to try a slow Domination game. Even though I've won Dom many times, I've never really tried to score milk, i.e., try to make the most of my land and Sushi to get as high a score at a later date. In practice, it was a good idea, but I didn't get the results I was expecting. I have seen players do this with later finish dates, but they come up with much higher scores and I'm not sure why. I ended up with a good 83% or so of population in 1872, but my score was very low - around 103,000.

Took out Joao very early and then pretty much rexxed the land and wonder whored while focusing on Astro. I think my early game was a bit unfocused though and I rush some things, but overall I expanded quite fast and filled up the land with little economic issues. I can't even remember what I used Oracle on, probably MC. As for Lib, I think I went steel.

Then I focused on corps and Sushi to get a lot of growth, while capping Stalin and Wang. Stalin killed off Mansa before I attacked him. My plan was a focused attack to take Gandhi's wonder and shrine cities and then cap him. However after taking a couple of cities - not yet his wonder cities - Kublai decides to attack Gandhi as well, which surprised me. Gandhi was already willing to cap, but i was going to take more of his cities. The Mongol DOW on him threw off my plans as I certainly did not want him to cap Gandhi. However, maybe I should have take the risk. Regardless, I capped Gandhi that turn. Oh..I did think about bribing Kublai out of the war but he was asking an arm and leg.

At the end - after waiting many turns to grow cities and build wonders and spread sushi - I DOW Mongols to take a few cities to get the land % I needed. 1872 was the date. I could easily have finished this game several centuries earlier with a conquest or even Dom, but that is what I wanted to do. What I learned though is that I don't yet know how to balance domination wins. Fun game, but disappointing results.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Challenger Apostolic Palace Victory

It took me a while to get going against Joao. Actually, I found that he was expanding to mostly the City locations that I had already dot-mapped, so I was happy to let him keep exapanding. When he started to mess up the placement at the south-west end of the continent, his usefulness was outlived and he had to go.

I did not finish him until after 1000 AD and did a late Astronomy Lightbulb to get some overseas action. I declared war on Mansa pretty much on sight: I wasn't sure what my victory condition was going to be at the time but I figured that with Mansa teching away merrily, my possible chances for victory would be reduced for all but a tech-trading-powered Space Victory, and I've had enough of Space games of late.

It took a while, since I landed Chariots + Axemen + Catapults while Mansa had Macemen and War Elephants and soon picked up Longbowmen, but it wasn't long before I was fielding Macemen, Trebs, and Cho-ko-nus. Protective Cho-kos proved to be a lot of fun and they mostly went up the Drill line, to act as makeshift siege replacements.


Mansa had owned The Apostolic Palace (in Buddhism) but Kublai was the one to have been elected the Resident. It took me until 2 Resident Elections later before I finally had enough votes to become elected and from that point on, it was just making sure that I played nicely towards the two AIs that had the most Buddhism in their Cities (Kublai and Stalin).

Stalin decided to go for Gandhi (even though it was Wang Kon that had earlier declared war on Stalin, not Gandhi) so I joined in and brough Kublai in for the dog-pile.


It was a bit hairy for a while, as Stalin switched to Hinduism to match the rest of the world, but then Kublai went into Free Religion, allowing me to join everyone else in a Hindu love-fest. As the Apostolic Palace owner and with no AI in Buddhism, I was the only candidate for Resident and the only candidate for Religious Leader, so it turned out be a trivial win--it was more in the setup and then having the patience not to anger certain AIs while I waited for the long voting cycle waiting periods to finish.


It was a fun map, with a nice selection of AI Leaders.

I didn't actually see any particularly amazing AI land, despite what the Archangel went on about (except for Mansa's capital which was spectacular and came complete with multiple settled Great People, an Academy, and The Great Library). Gandhi really got the shaft with a ton of grain-based Resources but little to no irrigation access for them.


Normally, the Astronomy-only-accessible islands have a few decent Resources, but unless there were a lot of late-game Resources that I did not reveal, these islands were surprisingly barren for a change. It's nice to see changes like that, particularly in an easier difficulty game like this one where it would have been all too easy to otherwise spam Settlers and found a bunch of Resource-rich colonies long before the AIs even thought about using spyglasses (i.e. long before they decided to learn Optics).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Mongol DOW on him threw off my plans as I certainly did not want him to cap Gandhi. However, maybe I should have take the risk. Regardless, I capped Gandhi that turn. Oh..I did think about bribing Kublai out of the war but he was asking an arm and leg.

One thought is that since you were going to declare war on Kublai later anyway, would it really matter if Gandhi capitulated? Had that even happened, and had you had sufficient forces, you could have just immediately declared war on Kublai and then attacked whichever Cities (Kublai's or Gandhi's) that you preferred to attack first.

A possible downside is that you'd be suffering from all of the War Weariness against Gandhi while also facing a new opponent and a new potential source of War Weariness, but if there hadn't been a lot of warring against Gandhi to date, or had you had a large supply of Happiness Resources, then it might not have been much of an issue.


Again, a third option would have been to have taken Peace with Gandhi and then declared war on Kublai BEFORE ENDING THE TURN. Had you taken Peace, it would have been enforced for 10 turns, meaning that Gandhi would have been unable to capitulate to Kublai for 10 turns (as capitulating would mean that Gandhi would be forced to accept the Master's war and peace statuses, meaning that Gandhi would have been required to declare war on you)... and since declaring war on you would have been impossible, Gandhi would have been prevented from capitulating for 10 turns (as long as you remained at war with Kublai), such that you would not have had to fight both of them at once while still keeping open the possibility of taking Gandhi's Wonders later.

Of course, Gandhi could have potentially Peace Vassaled to someone else in the meantime, but then that AI would have had to have declared war on Kublai, giving you another war ally... since taking on a Peace Vassal is kind of like the opposite of taking on a Capitulation, in that the Master has to take on the wars that the new Peace Vassal was already involved in. Yes, it can get very confusing if you don't work through the logic (pencil and paper help here).

Vassals can be a tricky concept to master, but the mechanic seems to do a very good job of keeping you from picking on an AI that has basically already been defeated. So, one way to avoid being taken advantage of by this game mechanic is to try and play the way that the designers/developers seem to have been pushing us towards playing and instead of continuing to pick on a defeated AI, making Peace with said AI and declaring war on a tougher AI target.


You still would not have gotten Gandhi's Wonders immediately, but you would have at least had Gandhi as a war ally for 10 turns while having the option to take his Wonders later (an option that you gave up by taking him on as a Vassal). Sometimes, it can pay a lot to play this kind of "triangle diplomacy" aka "stab your ally in the back before they stab you by stealing your conquest target as their Vassal" in a game where Vassals are enabled.

 

[lymond]

Yep, that's a good idea and part of the problem is I was basically rushing toward the end. I need to give those war/diplo decisions a bit more thought. I'd vassal everyone else at this point. The problem though with declaring on Kublai at this particular point is that although I was far superior military wise at that point, my armies were not comfortably position to handle is very large SoDs that I saw perched outside our borders. Yet, I'm thinking I still probably could have handled him okay.

 

[jesusin]

I decided fairly early that I wanted to try a slow Domination game. Even though I've won Dom many times, I've never really tried to score milk, i.e., try to make the most of my land and Sushi to get as high a score at a later date. In practice, it was a good idea, but I didn't get the results I was expecting. I have seen players do this with later finish dates, but they come up with much higher scores and I'm not sure why. I ended up with a good 83% or so of population in 1872, but my score was very low - around 103,000.

...

What I learned though is that I don't yet know how to balance domination wins. Fun game, but disappointing results.

What I remember form my gold medal attempts:

- Score declines with time. It declines slowly up to a point and really quickly after that. That point is around 1600AD. So you have to have a won game around 60% land by 1000AD or 1200AD (the sooner the better) and milk it up to 1600AD, when you win.

- The sooner you get Sushi the better. It is the key point of your game. If you can get it very early, your cities will have stopped growing one pop a turn by 1600AD. If you get it late, you will have to end the game before your cities have grown all they can.

- You have to pack cities as close together as you can. Build settlers and more settlers and settle them inside your territory, in ridiculous places if need be. The new cities don't really need to work any tile at all. All they need is a granary, a Courthouse and sushi infection.

- In short: all you need is a hundred fat useless cities as soon as possible.

This game is difficult for high scores, I think, becasuse no tech trading will delay Sushi and isolation will delay your acquisition of 60% land.

Did your game focus on these things? When did you get Sushi? How many cities did you have at the end?

 

[wwassme]

Aaargh - lost the space race to Kublai Khan by one lousy turn. I hadn't even realized he had launched.