BOTM 42 Final Spoiler - Game Finished

Played an awful game, won space 1954AD or some date like that. It was my insistence to rush cho-ku-nus that did it for me, but at least I know now. If there was more than one AI on the island, things would've worked out better.

Thought it would be fun to try and improve my base score as much as possible at the end, got to around 6100. Might be a top-5 cow score at least :p
 
Discover Astro very late: 1020AD :(

Vassalage MM 1220AD, Stalin 1280AD and KK 1380AD

I know I'm late so I try to milk a little balancing on the edge of domination. I give back 3-4 cities to both Stalin and KK. :crazyeye:

Vassalage Wang Kon and Gandhi in 1535AD. The game gives me a conquest victory with 90.00% pop and 70.64% land. :)
 
yuppie!!

my first gotm. won conquest with challenger save in turn 256 (17smth AD).

I settled 7 or 8 cities in the BCs and then teched up.

Libbed astro around 900AD I think. Then went for rifling:

Rifle trebs against joao (killed) while building navy. ->2 turn war against MM, he capped right after losing his capital, rofl. -> then Kublai Khan -> Gandhi -> WK -> Stalin.

Stalin got really powerful despite being awful in tech. he vassaled Gandhi for some 10 turns even and nearly vassaled Kublai...

Nice game, should have pushed out earlier maybe.
 
lost to Gandhi in a space race, January 2027. Mebbe a green ambulance in order? I was in financial trouble after wiping out Joao in 1050, thus got way behind in tech when the others contacted me in 1400. Centralizing my capital did improve things somewhat. Mansa Musa planted a city on my continent. Instead of getting mad, I saw this as an opportunity and ended up stealing at least a dozen techs from him :lol: Mansa also founded four religions and ended up giving me all of them.

But how to win? Too far behind in tech, units are too obsolete, can't get enough wonders (The Great Lighthouse was the only great wonder I got all game) or religions for culture, not big enough for a diplo win, so how do you do it?:dunno:

Stalin ended up being the rogue leader and got dogpiled. I was in no condition to fight; by the time I was, the war was over. For some reason, I was left alone, despite Kublai becoming a military juggernaut, force-vassaling Stalin and eventually peace-vassaling Mansa.

I made a MPP with Gandhi, turned out to be my undoing. Gandhi started wonder & corporate spamming, getting the late cultural wonders, plus founding four corporations in Delhi. I managed to get Sid's Sushi, but it wasn't nearly enough.

When Gandhi launched, I figured at first Kublai would invade since he was so much more powerful than everyone. But he liked Gandhi and wouldn't invade. I had infantry and tanks while Gandhi had mechs, MAs, mobile SAMS, gunships, yada yada. By the time I could conceivably take Delhi it would be too late.
 

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Conquest victory 1640ad, ~139k.

Settled in place and started scouting with the warrior. Ran into Joao after some time, stole his worker and quickly made peace with him. That peace didn't last long as I rushed him chariots when he only had one city. Sadly though he whipped constantly forces and I only got 1 pop city instead of 4 pop. Oh well, I danced on Joao's grave in 1760bc.

Then it was just me and I had time to expand. By 1ad I had 8 cities, managed to get CS sling, pyramids, great lighthouse and great library and later bunch of other wonders.

1490ad: Declared war on Mansa and he capitulated in 1510ad.
1515ad: Gandhi became my vassal peacefully. I didn't know beforehand that this would trigger a war between Stalin, Wang Kon and me, but no worries.
1555ad: Stalin capitulated.
1580ad: Kublai capitulated.
1635ad: Finally King Kon crumbled.
All of this with a bunch cavalries.

Made a few mistakes, primarily with delaying astronomy for too long. Tried to get some extra points with sushi, but managed to spread it only to 10 cities or so. I haven't played isolated games like this that much, so I'm quite happy with the result.

I would have wanted that golden age event, but all I got was an early barbarian uprising, a slave revolt and a volcano. :lol:. And possibly an utterly unnecessary culture boost. Very few events in any case, and none of them actually helpful.

A good stress free game. Thanks for that :).
 
this game was very fun. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but with marble and stone and an industrious leader on a low level, I just built every wonder I could for the hell of it, even silly wonders like Chichen Itza and the like. It felt nice to be able to leisurely build wonders just to do so. Anyway, eventually I realized in about 800AD that I was too later to start going cultural and I wasn't sure what to do, so I figured I'd just go for domination. Killed off joao with chokos and then teched to mil trad and astro (building lots of wonders along the way) and just dumped whipped units on everyone. Eventual domination win in like 16--AD.

Very unfocused game but being a builder is fun
 

Feedback on the game concept and map are welcome



The map was great fun, thank you very much.

We builders really love isolation games.
The lack of happiness resources was a good thing, to force everybody to find a solution to the problem.

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I kept a "game log" during play. This helped me to play more disciplined, avoiding very long turn sets and unfocused play. For those interested in more details its here:

I also do keep a log while playing. I recommend it to everyone.

The shape of the log doesn't matter, mine is very different from yours, but I also write a "what to do next" between sessions and keep notes on the relevant facts of the game.

While I'm playing I write my log over the log of a similar game (that would be another Monarch cultural game in my case, or another isolation-so-get-Astro-asap game in your case). This way I can see what I did in the other game, if I am behind or ahead of that game and that's very useful to "guess" key future facts of your game.


___________________________________________________________________

I have just read all the spoilers, one after the other. And I have got an impression I'd like to share, cause it might be useful for a lot of players. Please, if I criticize your particular spoiler, don't get angry with me. My intention is to help you and everybody else to become better players and all comments are written with a constructive mindset.

The impression I'd like to share is that, by reading the mentioned facts of a spoiler (even without reading the actual data of those facts), I can say if the game was lost, was won with a so-so date or reached an impressive result.

Let's see an example:
<< I settled in __ because blah blah I prefered WB over Worker cause blah blah my victory condition will be blah blah by 1000BC I had __ cities blah blah beelined Optics and reached there in blah blah >>
This is the typical impressive game I can learn a lot from.

Let's see other example:
<< My warrior killed a barb Axe, can you believe it blah blah I was friends with blah blah such and such shared the same religion blah blah my tanks blah blah >>
This is the typical bad game where I feel like helping the player with some advice but I can't, because the facts that are provided are moot and the key data about the game is missing.

I guess it's just a question of focus, those who can focus their spoilers on key facts of their games probably have played unfocused games.

 
jesusin, contender. Goal: fastest cultural victory. Result: 1370AD cultural victory.

I consider I had a high performance in this game. The first part of the game seemed close to perfection to me. Then I had a bad middle part. And a very good last part of the game, in spite of the persistent bad luck with GPs. There seems to have been a lot of players going for culture, I am willing to compare the key facts of my game with everybody interested.



Cultural strategy: This was clearly a hammers game. My capital never ever stopped working all of its mines. I used a GPFarm separated from my Legendary cities, which allowed for WW in all 3 while not stopping GA production.

Legendary cities:
Capital, in place, hammers city, with Moai, many WW and also specialists in the end. No cottages.
Lisbon, hammers city, many WW, 5 cottages, some specialists.
Marble city, cottage city, some WW, 10 cottages.


First part, 4000BC-1000BC:
I settled in place and started researching AH and producing Worker.
Then I disposed of Joao in a convenient way.
Then I expanded up to 7 cities. The strategic theme of this game was the lack of happiness resources. My main goal, then, apart from REXing, was Pyramids for happiness and research power. I felt alright with this part of the game.

1000 BC Stats: 6 cities, 17 pop, 6workers (most of them are very young), settler, 7units(2Cha), 4 strategic resources, 0 luxury resources, 5 health resources, 0 great persons, 1 world wonders, 0 national wonders, food/production/commerce=56-40-22, 9 sustainable beakers per turn, 5 culture per turn, 2 great person points per turn, 140 gold, 4monu, 2Gra, 1lh. 1 religions, 0/2 cottages used, 13 Techs: Wri, Sail, CoL, BW. 1 civs killed. 5 hours played.


Second part, 1000BC-1AD:
Went up to 9 cities and beelined Calendar, even before CS, for increased happiness. Built 6 wonders and popped 2 GP: Oracle (CoL), SH (just because I could, I wish I had gone for it before, I had already 6 Monuments), Pyramids (key!), GLH (just nice), Moai, HG. GS for Academy and GM when I was hoping for a 84% Prophet to bulb Theology.

I felt quite incompetent in this part of the game.

Small disgusting things:
- 6 monuments built when I got SH, some of them recently whipped.
- Might have got a much better result if I had oracled CS. Now, the risk was very high, as losing Oracle and CoL would have left me practically religionless.
- Delaying the use of the free missionary.

The real reason for my contempt:

I stayed in slavery when I revolted to Representation and didn't change into Castes till I got a useless GM and MoM built, 50AD. I thought about revolting to Castes many times in this period, but I insisted on saving that 1 turn of anarchy.

This hurt my Liberalism date (and my cathedrals building date, and what not) enormously. Having to research CS myself for security reasons, having to research Theology and Divine Rights for 3rd and 4th religion, failing to bulb Education or Theology due to unexpected GPs... all that meant I needed an extraordinary amount of research (for a cultural game). Then, later, I had an unusual high number of non-artist GPs. I should have revolted to Castes and hired artists everywhere, accelerating my research and improving my chances of GAs (the factor of other cities taking over the wonders cities would have been even more important than the factor of improved probability in the wonders cities).

The worst about it was that all signs were evident: my capital even run out of things to build, which is a clear indication of insuficient research power.

1AD Stats: 9cities,set, 71 pop, 7workers, 10units (1Axe), 4 strategic resources, 4 luxury resources, 6 health resources, 2 great persons, 5 world wonders, 1 national wonders, food/production/commerce=197-80-182, 74 sustainable beakers per turn, 89 culture per turn, 11 great person points per turn, 200 gold. 1 religions. 6/7 cottages used, 19 Techs: BW, CoL, Mono, Calen. 1 civs killed. 10.5 hours played. reli/city, temples, caths== 5,5,0


Third part, 1AD-1370AD:
I'm quite satisfied with my endgame, although the second most important mistake of my game was produced here, it was my avoiding Currency.

I make this same mistake every single game. This time I thought I had the perfect excuse: without neighbours I wasn't going to get money for resources nor maney for techs, so the single 1gpt additional trade route per city wasn't enough to pay for the cost of the tech itself. Right? Right?

The fact is that I had also ignored Alphabet and as a result my auxiliary cities were unable to build weath or research when they had finished their temples. Bleh. This impacted negatively in my Liberalism date and in my expending 7 turns at 100% gold. By the way, that was another small mistake, it should had been just 3 turns. I had money to spare in the end.

I built MoM 50AD, launched a Golden Age to revolt to Castes and OR (later, in the same GAge, to Pacifism) and hired 13 artists.

Settled cities 10 and 11 with 1 clams and 1 hill each, for temples distribution. Ignored the third single clams site.

Founded Christianity 75AD, then later Tao and Islam. Built 3 pavillions and NE before 500AD. Popped Prophet after Prophet at 20%, 40%, 12% and 18% odds.

Reached Liberalism 980AD (oh, so late!), could have been 1 turn sooner but I wanted to wait for a new GP to launch the Golden Age that would allow me to revolt to FS... of course it happened to be another Prophet and I had to use a Great Artist in the 2GP Golden Age. I made a bunch of numbers to take that decision, the risk being that I could end up not having enough GAs to even out my 3 cities Legendary-dates. This calculations were of great use, as I realised that a city would never pop its GA unless starved immediately... which I promptly did.

1000AD Stats during GAge: 11 cities, 141 pop, 9 workers, 13units (1Tri), 5 strategic resources, 5 luxury resources, 6 health resources, 10 great persons, 14 world wonders, 2 national wonders, food/production/commerce=292-222-2300, 167 sustainable beakers per turn, 2100 culture per turn(1300 useful), 469 great person points per turn, 700 gold. 4 religions. 12/15 useful cottages used, 34 Techs: Music, Liber, Natio, DivRi, no Curr, no Machi. 1 civs killed. 18.5 hours played. reli/city, temples, caths== 35,24,5

Built many more WW (17 plus 3 NW). Built all cathedrals and revolted to Mercantilism in TajMaj Golden Age by 1170AD. By teh way, I used 20% research for 1 turn to accelerate Mercantilism. Popped 18GP (and got 2 more for free).





I am willing to compare the key facts of my game with others. Here they are.

Key data

Inital research and production: AH and Worker

Joao is dead date: 2200BC

Number of cities at 1000BC, 1AD and total: 6 - 9 - 11

Workers at 1000BC, 1AD and total: 6 - 7 - 9

Research (bpt) at 1000BC, 1AD and 1000AD: 9bpt at 0gpt - 74bpt at 0gpt - 167bpt at 0%research

Religions and last religion adquisition date: 4, last one 680AD

Music and Liberalism date: 500AD - 980AD

First, 6th and last cathedral building date: 640AD - 1020AD - 1170AD

Culture produced in the 3 cities just before Liberalism, at 1000AD and in the end: 500cpt at 0% culture - 1300 cpt at 100% culture - 3000cpt at 100% culture in 1370AD

Base culture in the 3 cities in the end: 225 - 200 - 160 in 1370AD

Was Hermitage built in the best base culture city?: Yes

Was your GPFarm one the the 3?: No

GPs and culture bombs: 20GP, 1GS, 4GPro, 2GM, 13GA. - 12 culture bombs distributed 1 - 5 - 6

Victory date: 1370AD, turn 197
 
As I wrote in the 1AD spoiler... I go everytime for domination/conq...

got conquest 1620 AD, which is unspectacular and as it seems i chose wrong unit type :-D

i went with cannons+muskets (later added rifles). I think i did 1 thing wrong, I attacked Stalin and Mongols at the same time. Which lead to Stalin being affraid of enemies.

Mongols put up a fight delayed me a bit too much.

Cannons seemed more logical due to chemistry being frigates...which were totally unneeded ;-).
 
I got the Tornada event twice too!
Plus the Volcano Eruption event twice for added fun! :)

Went for Cultural, but only got two religions. so it looked like I was behind India in the race for CUltural Victory, but in the end my nine Great Artists got the victory for me in 1922. (26K points I think). Sushi helped a great deal I think. Though I think it would have been best to spread sushi just to the lengendary cities, since spreading it elsewhere impacted the finances, which impacted the amount I could move the cultural slider.
Fun game, thanks DS!
 
I tried about 4 more times to win cultural. Critical thing was to finish Jao early. I played challenger, so he had Archers early. In my successfull game I attacked him at 1000 BC and captured Lisbon 3 turn later. Last city was razed at 250 AD.
This time I built 9th city about 800 AD and was more focused on building temples. Didn't switched to culture immediately but researched to Constitution and switched to Mercantilism+Representation. That way I got Rifles and Cavalary during getting-to-Legend period.
Khan invaded me in this game also, but this time earlier and I finished his several Catapults in no time. I won at 1921 AD.

So my advice is: first read Jessusin's guide then try to win cultural not the other way around.

Playing the same gane several times and comparing different strategies is a great way to progress! :thumbsup:

Why don't you try attacking Joao around 3000BC? 4 warriors or 2 chariots will do.

With this level low maintenance you should really try to have 9 cities by 500BC. Concentrate on it, you can do it.

Representation is good to have, but delaying FS and 100% culture to research Constitution is a bad idea. Why don't you build Pyramids somewhere between 1000BC and 1AD?



If you would let me to throw out a wild guess, I think you might have a problem with your initial research and builds. If you describe those first steps in detail you can get a lot of help from other people.
 
First go at BtS (after 7 Vanilla, 2 WL) so went with the Adventurer save. It seems I forgot to activate autolog so no details available, but luckily not much happened!

SIP, planning this city to be my GP farm (which it was - usually any plans go out the window after a few turns, this one made at turn 1 lasted the whole game :))

Jaoa seemed like he might be a bad opponent to be so close as it seemed he was likely to expand and box me in. Time to read up on rushes. Bit late for a chariot rush so axes it was, with chariot reinforcements built to arrive at Lisbon at about the same time. Turned out they had axes, so the chariots were the best weapon. Threat eliminated.

Began to suspect there was nobody else around, but it took a while to confirm it and check what turned out to be an island to the north. Time to read up on isolated starts.

Decided to go for culture win. Time to read up on culture victories. Three cities are Bejing (GP), Lisbon (Cottages) and a production city near the marble.

Might have been a bit slow expanding - the lack of commerce resources pre calandar made me worried about going broke. Eventually had 13 cities.

Built a ton of wonders, including AP, UoS and SM, and lots of religious buildings. Got three religions for cathedrals. Teched to Lib, took Nat for Hermitage. Went to 100% culture, but still had about 200 bpt at breakeven, so eventually got to rifling.

I heard rumours of wars across the ocean, but astronomy was only discovered late in the game, so I peacefully got my culture win in 1775. All three cities hit 50000 on the same turn, sadly more by luck than planning.

The way I played it, it was not quite as much fun as some other GOTM - mostly I played in fear :scared: of powerful enemies arriving and wiping me out. Also, I didn't really get to explore the BtS features. Still good though, and I enjoy reading what others did with same setup. Jesusin's report in particular highlights many ways I could improve my game. Also liked Conquistador63's game - lots of food for thought there too.

Thanks to DynamicSpirit and the GOTM team, the Civfanatics who wrote the guides and info I used and everyone involved with BUFFY, which I found to be most excellent. :goodjob:
 
Contender, Cultural Victory, 1530 AD. I did couple mistakes, I can't help it. Wanted around 1400 AD, I'm missing something. :dunno:

I'm sure Jesusin will come up with something killing like 1200 AD. :cringe:[/SPOILER]

That's a very good date. Wouldn't you like to compare our games?

What was your GPFarm? Did you use it as Legendary?

I don't think 1200AD is really possible, considering there is no tech trade and no religion infection.
 
First go at BtS (after 7 Vanilla, 2 WL) so went with the Adventurer save.

Wow, that was a very good result for a first BTS game. I hope you noticed the importance of Sistine's Chapel and the incredible doubled-after-1000-years culture that temples and monasteries of your religion provide.

Please notice also the no-anarchy-if-revolting-during-a-Golden-Age feature.
 
@jesusin

Thanks for the comments. I'm still a noob, albeit one turbo-charged by Civfanatics (I've probably spent more time on here than playing), so any win is good.

Had a bit of a panic over your comment re SC, as I knew there was one popular wonder I didn't build - but I'm pretty sure that that was Notre Dame, which didn't look so good for a culture game.

One point I've picked up on is the use of the GP farm as one of the legendary cities might be bad - time for another search of the forums....
 
One point I've picked up on is the use of the GP farm as one of the legendary cities might be bad - time for another search of the forums....

Hmmm, difficult question. Lately I'm using my GPFarm as Legenday in 80% of my games.


The problem with GPFarm as Legendary is that building cathedrals (mines) and popping GPs (specialists) are incompatible.

It is the ideal solution when land is limited and you don't have 9 cities but 6 (thus no cathedrals for your GPFarm).


The problem with a separate GPFarm is that you are wasting the culture from the NE and from the artists, precisely in the city that can hire more artists.

It was ideal in BOTM42, because with the slow AI you could build dozens of wonders and you wanted your 3 cities working mines non stop for wonders and cathedrals.
 
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.
 
The impression I'd like to share is that, by reading the mentioned facts of a spoiler (even without reading the actual data of those facts), I can say if the game was lost, was won with a so-so date or reached an impressive result.
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.

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?

dV
 
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?

dV

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. It seems pretty obvious that this should be the case, and you recognized why:
If the lesser players knew what game facts were pivotal, their game play and their spoilers would both be better.
However, I would rephrase it to say their game results would improve, and their spoilers would begin to indicate more pertinent data to enable others to help them improve their gameplay even more.

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.

The advice to players looking to improve their game: read the spoilers of the winners of each award. What did they prioritize? What benchmarks did they try to acheive? how would I acheive that? What would happen if I ignore everything else and just aim at reaching the most important benchmark? If you are having trouble imagining it (or have tried it and still can't see how its done), ask them. You still probably can't replicate it, but you are sure to gain some insights. 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.

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.
 
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