BOTM 43 Final Spoiler - Game submitted or abandoned

Mitchum · Jul 13, 2011

Bebekija said:
Mmm...

By Gandhi, I assume you meant Mansa? That or you're in the wrong thread....

Right thread, wrong leader. It's been a while since I played the start... :mischief:

beestar · Jul 14, 2011

1785AD Domination.

I was going for Conquest and I gave away a half dozen cities on the last turn (when I vassalized the last AI left alive), but it wasn't enough - something pushed me over the limit. Very frustrating.

If I have more time I'll write a better spoiler. In general it was a very slow and sloppy game, especially trying to handle huge navies and armies on my laptop during the daily commute to work!

I had some crazy ideas about using Espionage to steal techs from MM, but by the time I decided, I had already out-teched him for anything useful.

The only vaguely clever thing I did was to settle a city on the land near MM, gift it to him, which then created a land border between his wimpy nation and my mighty army. This caused him to peace-vassal to me the next turn! I have learned something from TMIT ...

Redtooth · Jul 14, 2011

Conquest victory in 2010

After a lukewarm start, I finally got to war around 1200 AD, first against Sitting Bull. Fighting was relatively easy, albeit slow as I came in with too few units. Had to peace him before making the next jump over to his main island. Took a while, but eventually capitulated with 2 cities left.

Around 1800 I convinced Shaka to join me against Korea. I was crushing him, but he just wouldn't give in. Then I made my first big mistake, I put my entire fleet into a newly captured city to heal them. I had 2 dozen defenders...all in their transport. I lost almost my entire fleet and half my land strength.

I was already at war with Ragnar when he finally capitulated. Of course, when that happened, Tokugawa suddenly sprouted out of Shaka. One more enemy to fight...

1938, Korea+Vikings capitulate, I begin moving towards Shaka+Tokugawa. 20 turns to finish Toku, and once that happened, Shaka capitulated without a unit landing on his main island.

Although I had been the tech leader all game, at this point Port and Ethiopia jumped ahead. I was much stronger, but they had defensive pacted and were cruising towards space, so I started rushing Port with everything I had. He was a lot weaker than expected, and I was close to a capitulation when I accidentally pressed peace :mad:

.

Took forever, but it was really just island hopping from there. Finally won in 2010.

I noted this in the first spoiler: Also, my computer has managed to crash twice during my playthrough. I thought Buffy auto-saved on exit, but I couldn't seem to find the right saves then. I submitted, but I'd understand if I were DQed.

Mitchum · Jul 14, 2011

Nice win. Way to stick with it!!

Redtooth said:
I noted this in the first spoiler: Also, my computer has managed to crash twice during my playthrough. I thought Buffy auto-saved on exit, but I couldn't seem to find the right saves then. I submitted, but I'd understand if I were DQed.

You have to manually modify your CivilizationIV.ini file (mine is in C:\Documents and Settings\Mitch\My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword) to include the lines:

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

I believe the default value is either 5 (i.e. saves every 5 turns) or 0 (doesn't autosave). In any event, change the value to 1 and you'll be set.

Frederiksberg · Jul 15, 2011

Barely managed to finish and had to stay up late last night to get the space ship in the air :eek:

. But I wanted to get it done so that we could compare games. Ship arrrived in 1816 AD, turn 278. Quite a bit worse than the previous game and for many reasons, let me list a few mistakes:

Oracling MC: Should have gone for CoL to found a religion. Playing a full game with no religion hurts (No OR and Pacifism).
Feeding a settler to the barbs. meant 7 cities instead of 8 at 1AD
Not enoug scouting. Didn't realize early that I had multiple prime city locations on the gems island and that slowed REX.
Bad use of espionage. Forgot to put some culture in the city gifted to Boudica. Religion would have helped here too. Should have consulted the War Academy.
No trade for Computers. I didn't notice that Mansa was building the Internet and my attempt to make him switch to something else failed. Waiting for Computers delayed my final GAge and the building of research labs so the net loss was even more than the 3 turns of research.
Rushing the ending. Normally a couple of turns can be gained by careful planning of the last space parts.

Here is my game log:

Spoiler :

Good games by bcool and srad :goodjob:

. You were both ahead at 1AD and my mistakes in the later game didn't leave me any chance of catching up. Looks like our games were quite similar: REX - Oxford - War - Corps (Sushi, MInc). Nice that so many participated in this challenge.

Frederiksberg · Jul 15, 2011

srad said:
1. I did not expand further during mid-game (1 - 1000AD).
2. I should have focused a bit more on an earlier Oxford date. This means less expansion during the BC area.

I'm sure you are right about item 1, continued expansion would have helped - in particular with the 75% maintenance reduction of the Rathaus. One reason for warring is getting more resources for corporations. How many hpt did you get from MInc?

Not sure if earlier Oxford was that important. You also have to look at the things you sacrifice for the earlier date. My capital wasn't producing many beakers anyway. Did you cottage your capital early?

@C63 and RRas: Did you use corporations in your games? They were really strong due to the rathaus reducing corporate maintenance by 75%.

bcool said:
After I stole medicine from Boudica's capital I finally remembered I could gift them cities closer to my capital and get massive espionage discounts not only from being closer but by having my culture in the cities I gifted them.

I did the same except that I forgot to put some culture in the city before gifting (should have checked the War Academy first). How big discounts did you get? Did you also spread your state religion? (I didn't have any

) I only got -50% discount from stationary spy and between -25% and -40% from espionage spending. Meant that Medicine cost me ~3600 spy points and Sattelites cost ~4500. So I gained nothing from stealing and could have researched just as fast.

bcool said:
AP 700 AD (you can't beat the bonus hammers from religious buildings built by whipping them under Organized Religion)
U of S 900 AD (combination with AP and numerous religious buildings is very nice)

What is the purpose of the AP? Can you elaborate?

bcool · Jul 15, 2011

Quote:
Originally Posted by bcool
After I stole medicine from Boudica's capital I finally remembered I could gift them cities closer to my capital and get massive espionage discounts not only from being closer but by having my culture in the cities I gifted them.
I did the same except that I forgot to put some culture in the city before gifting (should have checked the War Academy first). How big discounts did you get? Did you also spread your state religion? (I didn't have any ) I only got -50% discount from stationary spy and between -25% and -40% from espionage spending. Meant that Medicine cost me ~3600 spy points and Sattelites cost ~4500. So I gained nothing from stealing and could have researched just as fast.

So if you found a city, wait at least 1 turn and then gift the city you usually get a 50% cultural discount on the espionage. And yes I spread my religion to the AI (At the end I usually am running pacifism until a very late switch to free religion) and had the holy city. If they have a different state religion but your state religion is in the gifted city and you have the holy city, I believe the total discount is 40%. I got the 50% stationary bonus and approximately 40% for spending. And only a ~6% distance cost. So my discount was (0.5 spy) * (0.6 religion) * (0.5 cultural) * (.6 spending) * 1.06 (distance) * (0.8 open borders) = 0.0763 factor of the original espionage cost (which is 1.5 times the research cost of the stolen tech). So I was able to steal techs using espionage points equal to (0.0763*1.5) 0.1145 * the beaker cost. But if you use the same city for multiple steals it is hard to get all of the cultural discount and sometimes hard to have enough spies with 50% discount ready when you are ready to steal it. So my actual costs in the game might have been closer to 0.15 or 0.20 * the beaker cost.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bcool
AP 700 AD (you can't beat the bonus hammers from religious buildings built by whipping them under Organized Religion)
U of S 900 AD (combination with AP and numerous religious buildings is very nice)
What is the purpose of the AP? Can you elaborate?

The AP gives any of its religious buildings a +2 hammer bonus. If you whip out those temples and monasteries with max overflow whips especially during Organized Religion, you can have a large number of those buildings ready by the time you build the AP or shortly thereafter. +2 hammers is large even if you have to sacrifice some pop in the whip to get it since each pop of a city usually can't give you a net +2 hammers. Each pop in a city gives you the difference between the tiles production and 2 food (what it eats). There are not many tiles early in the game that give you a better value than a net +2 hammers.

This ignores the advantages the temples and monasteries give you by themselves. +1

isn't bad and +10% research is decent in almost any city.

This is all even better when you combine it with the University of S. (the world wonder than gives +2 research for each of your state religion buildings. (and the Spiral Minaret which gives +2 wealth for each of your state religion buildings-- but I'm not sure divine right is worth researching just to unlock that, but it depends on the timing you think the AI might research it for you)

So now my temples are giving me +2 hammers +2 research and +1

for the rest of the game (basically, U of S. is obsoleted by fiber optics I believe)

My monasteries are giving me +2 hammers +2 research and +10% research until I research scientific method (which does come up pretty fast, so you probably don't want to build these everywhere except in your first 10 cities or so).

Plus the temples at least might give you +2 wealth if and when you build or capture the spiral minaret.

With early planning and building these religious buildings in anticipation of you successfully completing the AP, all of these bonuses make a significant impact on your space games at least. For any other victory condition, I'm not sure this investment is really worth it since the game should end much earlier.

Xcalibrator · Jul 15, 2011

I started out aiming for the Space Race challenge but ended up quitting around 1630 for lack of time. I was on vacation for a week and a half, then had to catch up on the house/yard when we got back, and today is my wedding anniversary so there will be no long last-minute session to finish up the game.

My settling location was, I think, unique. :blush:

I scouted NW-SW and the settler went E-NE the first turn, then scouted W-SW and settled SE on the ivory. It got the fish and ivory (immediately for happiness), and I was trying to be clever by building a culture bridge to the east--a gamble that utterly failed to produce any useful results. I built the Moai there and it eventually became a pretty good capital, but it slowed the start. 2nd city went NW(?) of the stone and became a fine production/Heroic Epic city, though slow-growing.

With my slow start I lost Wonder after Wonder, usually by just a few turns. Oracle went 850 BC--a little on the early side? That cost me MC, so I also lost out on the Colossus. GLH went 575 BC to Shaka. I did manage the Pyramids in 200 BC, but had only 6 cities with 27 pop by 1 AD. I didn't get any religion spread to me until 560 AD. :crazyeye:

Techs were Fishing, Mining, BW, Masonry, Wheel, Sail, Ag, Pottery...
Builds were worker (interrupted once I could build a workboat), 1st workboat, finish worker, 2nd workboat, warrior, settler...

After settling the fishy/copper island I expanded to the nice island NW of Cathy, although I think I may have settled gem island before that (?). I captured a barb city down in the tundra on Cathy-island and gifted it to her. Not long after she DoWed me! :lol:

I was busy preparing to attack Shaka by then with cats and didn't get around to taking back the city I'd gifted to Cathy for awhile. When I did, I gifted it to her again and she became my vassal.

I vassalized Shaka with 1 city (I wanted to leave him alive so I could gift a future tundra city to him and then demand its iron and copper for Mining, Inc.) and then started shifting units up north to go after Sitting Bull. By then I'd added a couple cannon and rifles to my invasion fleet, and soon after got Mguns and artillery. By 1630 I was a couple turns from taking his last city and founding Mining, Inc., and my Iron Works city had nearly finished the Taj. If I'd had enough time I would have attacked Ragnar next, then probably Zara, and maybe Joao, keeping under the Dom limit while I concentrated on Space.

Ah, so that's how we were supposed to handle the Seers! Nice, bcool! I totally forgot about the proximity ploy when gifting cities to minimize EPs for tech stealing. I traded a lot of techs with Mansa early on but opportunities for trades were pretty well nonexistent by the mid-game. I was planning to trade a load of lesser techs for Medicine, etc. when the time came but I don't know how many I could have gotten that way.

Fun scenario, kcd! I wish I'd had more time to play it out. Hmm, without a BOTM submission for this "epoch" of global ranking calculations, I guess I'll just have to get a victory in the Deity GOTM68 to prevent a big slide in my standing. [size=-2](Yeah, right :rolleyes:

)[/size]

lymond · Jul 16, 2011

1802 UN victory

Interesting game. I did not build 1 cottage the whole game and ended up plowing over some in conquered cities. This game was all about the trade routes. GLH was a given and I prioritized it immediately. Started with Fishing>AG>Sailing>Mining>Masonry. The Hunting start definitely helped in this case with all those phants for early production. Therefore, I did not rush to BW.

I settled Aachen 1E to pick up the fish and more jumbos. I continued filling out the main little continent - 3rd city Vienna on the copper island - and the island just west in which I built Maoi (pretty good site for it). I settled Vienna on copper island not so much for immediate copper but for the extra trade route income. Ultimately with most my cities overseas and an Astro Lib, I was producing a very nice beaker rate mid game. I also built Mids, so running Rep helped with some of that as well, although I didn't exactly emphasis running specialists. No city was really that great for food.

So by 500BC, I had 6 cities up. Can't recall why, but I went about 500 years before settling another city. I must have been focused on research. Anyway, I did some fast expansion though between 1AD and 1000AD, creating 13 or 14 new cities on the landmass to the SE and W, including some islands. Once Astro rolled around, I settled cities on various islands around the map. Zara beat me to a couple simply as he could reach via galley. At this time, I started prepping for war with Shaka who was in Weehorn for a very long time. Actually several AIs were in fist mode for 1000 years like Joao, Wang, and Rag. Only Rag was a concern though since his meter was high, but as a civ on this map he was rather nerfed for some reason - he was the only AI not pleased with me for much of the game. Didn't matter - I completely wiped him out near the end.

Although Shaka went down fairly easy to my superior units, it was a bit of a drag as he whip castles everywhere when I land. I had quite a few trebs, but it still took quite some time to lower defense. Also, he had a double hill promo LB in one city that literally was not scratched as 4 or 5 trebs died on him. Anyway, he finally went down around 1100 AD or so, so that mild threat was eliminated and it gave me more cities and pop.

Initially, I thought about a Dom win or even Conq, but these maps can be a drag for warfare. It took forever to get over to Rag without the Circum bonus, which shocked me that I didn't get easily, then realized that Boudi had Satellites. Two wars were enough for Diplo and everyone else was pleased. Zara being the competitor in land pop.

I beelined MM and Medicine to gift to SB for diplo. I then trade for him to switch into it. I ran SP for some time before that though. It didn't matter at that point. Despite running Rep the whole game, I gifted Lib to Joao and switch him into FR to reduce his friendship with Zara due to religion and switched into HR for extra diplo. Wang was already close to friendly with me. I was running a double golden age at the time with MoM I took from Shaka, so anarchy free. Can't recall if Joao ended up voting for me as Zara and I were about tied at that point, and with hidden modifiers that usually goes to the AI. Still, with all my land and definite votes from SB/Wang it was enough to get the win on the first vote.

In hindsight, space would have been fun here with taking advantage of the Seers' advanced techs. I did get some techs from them which was nice, but I really didn't use them all that much. I did not even think of taking there workers which was kinda stupid. It was interesting to read other players approaches to the Seers.

fun game, kcd....thanks...now no more islands for a while

RRRaskolnikov · Jul 18, 2011

Frederiksberg said:
@C63 and RRas: Did you use corporations in your games? They were really strong due to the rathaus reducing corporate maintenance by 75%.

Nope but I should prolly have as you say. I went for the lazy combo of workshops + caste/state property.
I was afraid at first there weren't enough resources to have a correct return from the corps (sushi/mining) but didn't went into the numbers. My end game here wasn't really a model... don't pay too much attention

Frederiksberg · Jul 18, 2011

bcool said:
So my actual costs in the game might have been closer to 0.15 or 0.20 * the beaker cost.

I had to steal without the culture and religious bonus and got a price around 0.5*beaker cost which made it basically have the same cost as researching due to the research multipliers of ~2.

bcool said:
With early planning and building these religious buildings in anticipation of you successfully completing the AP, all of these bonuses make a significant impact on your space games at least. For any other victory condition, I'm not sure this investment is really worth it since the game should end much earlier.

Thanks for explaining about the AP hammers! I agree that you can get your investment back with interests in a Space game and perhaps also in a Diplo game. For a spiritual leader this would be even more profitable due to half priced temples.

BOTM 43 Final Spoiler - Game submitted or abandoned

Mitchum

Deity

beestar

subdeity

Redtooth

Chieftain

Mitchum

Deity

Frederiksberg

Deity

Frederiksberg

Deity

bcool

Deity

Xcalibrator

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

lymond

Rise Up! (Phoenix Style!)

RRRaskolnikov

Goldfish

Frederiksberg

Deity

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