BOTM 55 - Final Spoiler, game submitted or abandoned

kcd_swede · Jun 17, 2012

BOTM 55 Final Spoiler

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Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 55 (Sitting Bull in "Lakota versus Aliens"), then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

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Posting Restrictions

Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

..........................................

Did you get metals or do without?
Did this help you win faster or slow you down?

Any tips for the less experienced?
Any questions for the experts?

Most of all... Did you have fun?

[img=left]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/botm55civ.jpg[/img]

Greeder · Jun 18, 2012

Nice game, Domination, this time after 1800 AD, but over 100k points - for me it's good result.
I'll give detailed report later.

Later:
Currency -> Construction.
I moved Palace to Mound City, my 3rd city in the middle of continent. It shaved off few coins from maintenance costs. And it was better spot for Bureaucracy cap - 3 Deers, 4 hills and Gems on hill.
Then I researched HBR thinking I could use HAs to take 4xD barbs cities. Stupid idea, but I traded it successfully for CoL, MC and Calendar.
450 AD Peter built buddhist AP. Nice of him as Hannibal has Buddism in capitol.
Literature, final war with Hannibal. I capured his capitol fast, but it took me few centuries to drag my army near his last city and burn it.
700 AD I bribed Peter to attack HC.
780 AD Music+GArt, 800 AD GLib.
Around 900 AD CS, I traded it for Machinery and Feudalism.
Around 1000 AD I finally realized that Doom is a battlefield between Vicky and barbs. It was recaptured 2-3 times before I noticed...
I had 3 or 4 Galleys ready in northern city, I stacked them with units and sailed (paddled) to Doom. Barbs recaptured it 1100 AD and I captured it back from them. I planted there one of my first Longs, CG3 and he defended easily. English culture was a problem, but I had Iron and could produce Knights.
I discovered Paper, Guilds and traded them for bunch of techs, then Banking thinking about GM from Economics, but then I realized AIs are quite advanced and could be first to Lib. So Edu, Philo, Lib and Nationalism from it. Luckily GE popped several turns earlier at 20% odds and I constructed Taj immediately.
Got Gunpowder and Econ from trades and changed civics for 3*Free.
I bribed Peter to go for Cyrrus, Vicky and her vassal Pacal attacked Peter few turns later.
I conquered 4*D, Peter asked me to attack Vicky. I agreed.
Chemistry -> Steam -> Steel and I was ready to invade. About 1500 AD I started 4th GA, got Rifling.
At 1535 I captured Warwick using my 'fleet' of 5 Galleys.
Railroad.
1555 my second army captured Nottingham. I spotted English SoD - tons of Longs, Cats, Elephants and HAs. I lost Warwick and withdrew my forces from York. It was fighting withdraw, but I managed to salvage 2 Cannons. I upgraded some Grenadiers to MGuns, some of them CG3 and Vicky annihilated her stack on them in Notthingam. Pacal did the same

It took me just 100 years to capture 6 more cities and Vicky capitulated. I healed my units and sent them for 6 turns long travel to Pacal's borders. I declared, within 4 turns captured 2 cities including capitol and he capitulated.
My tech pace was nothing good. I used my vassals to invent some nice techs.
Cyrrus capitulated to Peter just few turns before my units returned from second continent. And he already had Infantry. So I waited till Artillery invented by me and ALines by Pacal.
THEN I reailzed I have tiles on that continent - Peter captured few Cyrrus's cities and I had strong culture in 4*D cities. Anyway I had to wait for Combustion now, or they would smash my fleets. Then I put 30-40 units strong SoD on their continent.
I captured 2 Peter's cities, annihilated his puny SoD and he capitulated. I killed Cyrrus, borders popped and I won.

kcd_swede · Jun 19, 2012

Congrats, Greeder on a well-played game. Thanks for the excellent write-up, too! :goodjob:

Greeder · Jun 19, 2012

Thanks KCD. About your questions:

Did you get metals or do without?
As you can read above - I got Iron 1100 AD.
Did this help you win faster or slow you down?
Of course it helped. Vicky managed to muster few Knights, minor problem. I also gave Iron to Peter so he had better chances at stirring things on 3rd continent.
Knights and especially Cannons were priceless. And I used couple of Ironcalnds to protect my Galleys. I had Steam before Astro, and my opponents had Astro first.

Any tips for the less experienced?
One thing I forgot to underline in my write-up: Golden Ages.
I got 4 of them and they helped me immensely with building infra and research. I was behind and GA allowed me to invent soething new fast enough to trade with AIs.

Any questions for the experts?
Yeah, how are you doing that?!? :confused:

Most of all... Did you have fun?
Definitely. Choking Hannibal was an exercise in :trouble:

cruelty

Jester Fool · Jun 20, 2012

Tried challenger save and misplayed the map *terribly*. One picture says it all...

Spoiler :

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway)...abandon ship!!! :lol:

The funny thing is I knew how I would need to play the map (early monarchy/CoL to generate science/commerce) but instead got sidetracked messing with Hani. I did get both horses but way behind in tech and probably can't break the barbs to get metal. I've had deity games where I wasn't as far behind in tech as this game. Messed up the Machinery bulb as a bonus. :mad:

cas · Jun 20, 2012

Eh, add my name to the list of poorly played games. Unremarkable 1695AD Diplo.

Don't recall if I've played Arboria before...maybe once or twice. My early research path was wrong. I didn't play aggressive against Hannibal. Didn't plan well for the lack of commerce. Well, you get the idea.

The sad thing was I tried for a diplo game and the religious spread and population set up nearly perfect for 1100-1200AD win. But my tech rate was way too slow due my early game flubs.

I give myself a big :thumbsdown:

for such a poor showing on Monarch.

The map setup and barb thing was fun.

cas

kcd_swede · Jun 21, 2012

cas said:
Eh, add my name to the list of poorly played games. Unremarkable 1695AD Diplo.

Don't recall if I've played Arboria before...maybe once or twice. My early research path was wrong. I didn't play aggressive against Hannibal. Didn't plan well for the lack of commerce. Well, you get the idea.

The sad thing was I tried for a diplo game and the religious spread and population set up nearly perfect for 1100-1200AD win. But my tech rate was way too slow due my early game flubs.

I give myself a big for such a poor showing on Monarch.

The map setup and barb thing was fun.

cas

Don't feel bad... your "unremarkable" is better than what for me would be outstanding. :crazyeye:

And in testing I found that this game always seems to progress slowly at the start. I'd guess the Arboria map (and lack of experience with it) is why. Plus Sitting Bull.

Jouzou · Jun 21, 2012

I checked the hill 1N to the settler for more seafood and settled to the original location after seeing that there's none. I decided to take a gamble and built the Stonehenge (mostly from chops) after my first settler and 2nd worker. I'd say it paid off because I was able to seal off a nice chunk of land. I also settled a city 3 tiles away from a city of Hannibal and got the important first border pop (although I could've probably just chopped a totem pole - it took him forever to get culture there).

When I found out that I have marble, culture victory started to look very tempting; I was philosophical and pretty much isolated from everyone except Hannibal (if there's any truth to this post, the AI would've been too stupid to build ships because it was technically on the same land mass).

When I founded Confucianism, Hannibal was still without religion, so I quickly converted him. That allowed me to run a state religion without worrying about diplo too much.

My 1st GP was a prophet from SH whom I settled. 5 gold/turn was actually a pretty big deal during the very early expansion and research. After writing, I tried to get a scientist twice, but the RNG gods didn't agree, so two more prophets it was - one for golden age and another for the religious shrine. I took a risk with that one since the holy city was also my artist farm. And sure enough, it popped two more prophets at <10% odds. The rest were purely artists, however.

About wonders, Stonehenge I already mentioned. I made the standard cultural play of getting to music first and building the Sistine. I also took Parthenon since it was still up for grabs. No other world wonders since I really didn't need them. Nat wonders: NE in the artist farm (obviously), Moai statues in an otherwise unimpressive coastal city and HE in my production city (in case Hannibal ever got frisky - a bit of paranoia there).

The music and lib races weren't even close. I was constantly ahead of the AI before I shut my research down. When I met Pacal around 200 BC, he didn't even have agriculture. My uneducated guess is that the abundance of forest screws up AI's early game development.

Finished 1816 with ~35 000 score. As usual, I expect at least jesusin to beat my by a few centuries, but personally I'm satisfied of this result on this difficulty.

Here's a peek of my legendaries:

Spoiler :

I culture-flipped the metal cities eventually and sold the resources for an arm and a leg. It wasn't huge, but it helped keep the slider up. Did it occur to anyone to raze the corner cities and settle one super-city in the middle?

Anyway, thanks a bunch KCD_Swede. This was an interesting scenario indeed.

bcool · Jun 22, 2012

Did you get metals or do without?
Did this help you win faster or slow you down?

I went for a cultural victory and I eventually got the metals with culture. I unfortunately settled in the worst possible spot for this however before I knew the metals were there. So I tried to settle a 2nd city to get more cultural pressure on the cities. It took a long time before I got the metals and like Jouzou I sold most of them.

The lack of copper made building the cathedrals for the confu religion harder. With a cultural victory I decided against rushing Hannibal. I guess I could have done so with the dog soldiers. Not sure if I made the right call there. I did steal a worker from him so he did pose somewhat of a threat to me for a long time until I got him into the same religion as I had.

Any tips for the less experienced?
Any questions for the experts?

Research was painful in this game so I ended up using great scientists to accelerate getting liberalism. I dipped into caste system and got 4 great scientists to bulb philosophy, paper, and I used 2 for education. I'm not sure if this was better than getting 4 artists instead to use as cultural bombs or early settled artists.

I also bulbed theology with an early great prophet from Stonehenge. (I was tempted to use the early great prophet to bulb monotheism since Judaism wasn't founded yet but I could bring myself to do it for such a cheap tech and so Judaism was founded elsewhere).

I used the oracle to bulb caste system and founded Confucianism. I also founded Christianity and eventually founded Islam. Both Confucianism and Christianity were painful because I lacked the accelerating resources for their cathedrals.

I didn't get the pyramids since I didn't have stone. So I didn't have the option to accelerate the cathedrals with gold. I ended whipped and chopping out the cathedrals mostly under organized religion, but it was still quite painful without the resources.
I did have marble so I chopped several marble wonders for their benefits and cultural. I got the Oracle, MoM, Sistine Chapel and the Parthenon. I also built the statue of zeus wihout ivory since it has a decent hammer/culture ratio.

I tried to build confu temples and monasteries as early as possible in my 3 legendary cities so that their Sistine Chapel enhanced culture would be doubled earlier.

I didn't use the capital as one my legendary cities since it kinda sucked. I settle 1S of the starting site so I had crabs and a deer in the BFC. I also used a lot of its forests for Stonehenge so I thought it might make sense to use different sites.

Health was a problem in this game. I even built aqueducts and a grocery or 2 in my legendary cities to help them grow a bit faster.

I got liberalism (and nationalism) on 640 AD. I switched to 100% culture on 860 AD (I thought finishing divine right was better than an earlier switch to 100% cutlure)

I tried to build the Univ of Sankore in a side city so I that could get some research in the later game, but I was beaten to it.

I built the Taj Mahal in a side city while my 3 legendary cities were busy building cathedrals.
I also built the AP in a side city for the hammer bonuses from all the confu temples and monasteries I had.

I did convert a few AI to confu so I had a 2 or 3 friendly AI eventually and so I was able to eventually trade my way the tech tree to Military tradition. With the late acquisition of iron I ended up building a cuirassier army for defense. There was a scary possibility late in the game that Vicky might have come over and DoW. But I think the AI was a bit confused with all the civilizations on the same land mass but without a land route between them. I don't think the AI could plan a well organized war across the waterways. So Vicky sat across the waterway from me with a massive army that eventually included Redcoats. Vicky was hated by everyone except Pacal since I dragged almost everyone into a holy war against her with an earlier AP vote.

I ended up winning in 1605 AD. I'll be interested in seeing how jesusin does. And would welcome any comments that might help my cultural games.

I suspect I end up switching to caste system and pacifism way too late. I end switching 1120 and only then went full out trying to bring great artists into the world. I had 10 great artists 2 prophets 5 scientists. I used one prophet to bulb theology, I used the other to buld the confu holy city. I used 4 scientists to bulb philosophy, paper, and 2 for education, and I used one for an academy (in the capital which was a bad decision I'm sure)
I'm sure I committed a crime when I used a great artist to trigger a 12 turn GA (I didn't get anything else after the switch to caste system and pacifism and I really thought the increase in great people production and hammers/commerce in all of my cities was about equal to one 4000 culture bomb but I didn't do the numbers)
I settled the free great artist from music in my future Hermitage city, and used the other 8 for cultural bombs.

a screen shot of my city placement
Chaco Canyon, Mound City (great person farm who stole towns late in the game for run at Legendary), Poverty Point were my legendary cities.

Spoiler :

Most of all... Did you have fun?

It was a fun game and I mostly liked the twist with the metals except when I realized I would have no hope of getting copper early enough for my Confu cathedrals

happyturtle · Jun 22, 2012

I was behind in tech the whole game, and made all kinds of mistakes. I still thought I could win culture, because 4 religions had spread to me.

But then I lost Sistine by 2 turns. So I retired. :hammer2:

I might play it again though. It's a fun concept and an interesting map.

matthew9890 · Jun 23, 2012

So here is what happened in my game. I decided I didn't like the initial position so I wandered south and founded my first city 1W of the wheat resource, so that my city had 2 Deer and the wheat, as well as being connected to the fresh water for the health bonus. Then I went:

Hunting (for the deer of course) -> Myst -> Poly (trying to get early religion) -> mining -> BW

I built a second city to the east so that it would get 3 deer and the gems, then built a third city a bit SE of the second city, trying to block in Hannibal in (My early warrior died, so I'm not sure, but Hannibal didn't look like he had much space). I then built a barracks and totem poles in my cap and second city, then chop rushed out 9 dog soldiers and attacked Hannibal. I raised one of his cities, and then attacked the cap (which someone put on a hill :wallbash:

) His cap had 3 archers on it and I only managed to kill 1 with my entire stack (and I lost a battle with a 98% chance of victory :mad:

) And that is when I rage quit, not saving, so I can't actually submit a retired game

So now the question is, how do you do a good rush on Monarch? I'm sure that going get Hinduism was a mistake (I missed it by 4 turns, which was less time than I spent getting hunting) and I don't usually do early rushes and I don't usually play on Monarch, so all in all it was a pretty bad idea, having little experience with either. My attack was on turn 78 and I had 9 dog soldiers. How early should I attack and how many soldiers would I need? I might play this game again, the idea is good, and it seems like it would be fun to play.

kcd_swede · Jun 23, 2012

matthew9890 said:
So So now the question is, how do you do a good rush on Monarch? I'm sure that going get Hinduism was a mistake (I missed it by 4 turns, which was less time than I spent getting hunting) and I don't usually do early rushes and I don't usually play on Monarch, so all in all it was a pretty bad idea, having little experience with either. My attack was on turn 78 and I had 9 dog soldiers. How early should I attack and how many soldiers would I need? I might play this game again, the idea is good, and it seems like it would be fun to play.

Dog soldiers are only strength 4, so you want maybe twice as many as a normal axe rush if you are facing archers. Think of them as slow chariots that are not immune to first strikes.

The deal with Dogs, though, is that since you don't need to find and mine copper, you can start building them faster than axes, usually (and in this game, a LOT faster, :lol:

). If I was planning a rush, I'd go (food tech first, which would be hunting or fishing... you start with fishing so I'd settle on the coast and just go mining-bronze working directly. Build workboat first, then 2 workers, and start choppiing out dogs, with a few whips when pop gets too high.

The thing with a rush is that you have to really rush. The sooner you go, the fewer you need. But with dogs, I'd play caution and go with 8.

But... if you spent turns going myst-poly-hunting... you aren't rushing. You'll need more since you will face culture defenses that are 20-40%!

If you are playing along and then decide you will attack in a not-rush mode, scout what you are up against and plan appropriately. Maybe plan 2 wars, one to take a city and weaken him, then another later to overwhelm and finish.

That's my advice. But I would seriously doubt its cost-effectiveness when using dog soldiers. Worker steals, yes... then wait for catapults or horse archers to go for the kill.

nocho · Jun 23, 2012

cas said:
Unremarkable 1695AD Diplo.

Unremarkable 1685AD Diplo.

Fun map though. Flipped 3 of the 4 barb cities, conquered the last one. Decided for diplo, but needed Hanni's land for a larger base so whiped him away with cuirs. At the time everyone but Vicky and Pacal where hindu, which was good for diplo, but bad for declare on friend demerits. I also hadn't noted Hanni had a DP with Peter when I declared. :smoke:

Anyway, got Peter nearly back to friendly, but lucky me, Pacal dropped bud for FR and since I had been in HR since time immemorial favourite civic did the rest. Just when I finished UN Cyrus switched out of Hindu for Islam, but he could be bought back into the hindu fold. Also gave some cities away near the end, including Death and Doom. Peter was quite happy with the City of Death. :lol:

But not enough to vote for me. Vicky was the largest AI by far, so conveniently my UN opponent and a universally despised jew at that. Pacal's, Cyrus' and Capac's votes sufficed for the win.

Manco Capac · Jun 24, 2012

Went for dom or conquest thing again. Half-assed play though...knowing I can't beat those two freaks.

1100 AD domination with something 210k of score.

Silverbow · Jun 26, 2012

Remarkably bad 1900s culture. Incredibly bad, even.

I settled just 6 cities, and with 4 religions spread to me, decided to 'play' (I use that term loosely here, it was more like blunder moronically) for culture, as I almost never get that win.

I got TGW (obviously misjudged the map), TGL, Parthenon and Sistine. Lost lib somewhat closely, but it's not like it mattered. I just spread my religions, built temples and pumped culture. Of course my city governors kept hacking my artist production, but all seemed well, I culture flipped three of the barb cities, and three of Hannibal's... then he declared on me when I was about 40 turns off win. He had arty and infantry. I had... dog soldiers, which I upgraded to maces, and muskets which I drafted after I switched into nationalism. Really, he was cautious and plotting, but with me in DP with Cyrus and Pacal, who both were stronger than Hannibal, I felt safe. Stupid me. I lost two of his former cities. I lost my capital. And worst of all, I lost one of the legendary cities. I managed to get peace for one of the former barb cities, and then just narrowly beat Pacal's culture bid, thanks to bombing my new capital twice to catch up.

Utter crap of a game. :lol:

MarleysGh0st · Jul 1, 2012

A horrible game with all sorts of early mistakes, including letting my attack against Hannibal run out of steam because I diverted resources into building Moai, and letting my economy crash because I didn't get cottages early enough.

But in return for playing the game instead of quitting, I did finally destroy Carthage (in 1540). And after seven centuries of war with Victoria (who never mounted an amphibious invasion despite an incredible tech lead--she satisfied herself with destroyers sinking fishing boats and bombarding shore defenses) I became Secretary General and got the UN to force a peace treaty on her.

And then, in the middle of a general space race (that I still wasn't ready to begin) Pacal scored a Cultural Victory in 1945.

Oh, well, maybe there's an ambulance in it for me.

sossos · Jul 2, 2012

This is the first time I join BGOM. To avoid reloading, I didn't exit the program for the whole game long even when I went sleeping. Though it makes a pure game of 1 session, is there altenative ways that HOF mod can help? Can it differentiate normal reloading from cheating?

Spoiler :

Fortunately or unfortunately, I hit the conquest condition and the domination condition at the same turn. Guess what happened?

happyturtle · Jul 2, 2012

I don't know how the BUFFY mod works, but I've gotten all my games accepted without playing one long game. All you have to do is always load from the last save. That's not considered 'reloading' since you aren't playing any turns over again.

Xcalibrator · Jul 2, 2012

@sossos: Like happyturtle says, loading is fine--it's just reloading to replay that's a no-no. My games typically span weeks, with tens of hours of actual play time, so doing it all in one session isn't an option for me.

Good to have you join the xOTMs!

Like many others, I wasn't thrilled with my play, and I had more trouble than expected for a Monarch game. Hanny beat me to the marble spot. I eventually captured it, and its culture flipped Despair to me, but not until around 1200. I dropped a couple muskets in it and that was enough to hold off the barbs until I could bring over more units and wipe them out by 1250. As LC and others showed, that could/should have been done many hundreds of years earlier.

Once I had metals, though, things went swimmingly.

Actually, by that time I was past the metal bottleneck, having teched to muskets, but cuirs were handy until I got to cavalry. Being able to build cannon later was also nice.

Around the time of the oblivion of the barbs I vassalled Hanny, and then HC peace vassalled to me. :confused:

He was 2nd in score and had a ton of wonders, so that was a pleasant surprise. Things went quickly after that, as I pursued the Dom/Conquest/vassal path with the AP as a backup. I didn't have the AP, but I liked the extra hammers, so I spread its religion everywhere, including to my vassals to get more votes. Vicky fell, then Pacal, and then Cyrus, in quickly accelerating order. Peter was the only independent AI left when I hit the Dom limit, some time in the late 1500's.

I had a LOT of forests left at the end of the game--not sure if that was wise or not. Opinions? I cottaged around my capital and a commerce city or two up north, farmed around my Nat'l Epic city, and mined/windmilled all hills, but my big Heroic Epic/production city (several tiles S of the marble) and a couple others kept nearly all their forests, I think. During Golden Ages, even before railroads, the HE city was pumping out well over 200 hpt. Since my games tend to go for mid-to-late Domination, this worked pretty well for me, but I could see that earlier remorseless chopping could make for a much quicker game. I just don't have the hang of it.

Thanks for the game, kcd, it was fun! Having to schlep around so many units on galleys was a bit of a pain, though. Horsies need to run free!

sossos · Jul 2, 2012

@Xcalibrator & happy turtle

Thank you for the reply.

I like to play civ 30 min a day, so finishing a game in one month is preferrable to me. Only in occasional cases like this holiday, I can finish a game in 1 session.

I'm just curious about how the HOF can tell the difference between replaying and loading. I always play without s/l but I'm always questioned why there are so many sessions. I sincerely hope that HOF can help on this.

Spoiler :

BOTM 55 - Final Spoiler, game submitted or abandoned

Jag är Viking!½