BOTM 57 Final Spoiler - game submitted or abandoned

[shakabrade]

@Mylene
Yeah, it seems we rushed unnecessarily.

I don't think those trade cities would make much of a difference. If my initial plan went well, my contact with AIs would be my throngs of cavalries marching into their cities putting a quick end to beautiful fairytale.


@kcd

I'd love you made some deity maps. This one was actually very fun until I became spoiled child. I really like modified maps.

 

[Sleepless]

Well have to submit my first incomplete game. I left it with Hattie as a vassal, a big stack of units in Pacal's lands with the aim to capitulate him. Other than that no idea how I was going to finish the game... Probably via the UN but ran out of time to finish the game.

 

[lymond]

Short story short...I bagged the game about 1800AD after a) failing to get any GEs b) missing out 2 diplos votes by that which you can count on your hand. I would have quit after the first vote but thought I could pump out a few more pop before the next one...no dice. Bahstahd Pacal!

Interesting to see, though not surprising, the generally later dates for this game. Of course, there's always the all-stars who don't ever report.

The real kicker is if I had the GEs about 1500 to 1600AD I know I would have won the vote. Popped GMs, GSs anything but. Didn't even get a Great Artist I wanted to bulb MM. The real issue though is not having an ideal GP farm, instead building NE in Dam as I built TGL there. Helped with early Astro, but mucked things up later.

SIP and actually start GW on a whim for fail gold waiting for GLH to come online. After some scouting I realized that barbs would be a big problem, so I pushed out the GW. Glad I did. And then GLH.

Expanded out along coast, building roads beforehand to get trade routes set up. Trade routes are still coastal despite the necessary road connections due to ice.

Probably built at least 3 caravels that ended up heading to dead ends. Find all the AIs after Astro, which I double bulbed fairly early in the ADs.

I really wished I either went the war route here or just went for Space, which I rarely do. Thing with diplo when I bagged it is that I would have had to gear up for at least one war, probably Stalin. Wished I did so much much earlier when I had a killer tech lead. I gifted/traded a lot of techs away for diplo.

I'll post a pic of my empire later. I did not submit. Disappointing game for me, but it was a fun and interesting map. I just bollocks it up. I had Shaka, Rag, Mehmed and Pacal at 16+ diplo, but Pacal was the rival. With the votes I had and my strong pop, I was just literally a handful of points shy. Too bad Stalin is so terrible at war or he might have knock Pacal down to size a bit earlier in the game, in which case Hatty would have been rival. Hatty was difficult to deal with because a) I never adopted a religion except for a brief GA spell in Pac b) everyone else hates her.

 

[keiselhorn13]

I wasn't able to finish due to lack of time, yet I submitted my 1822ad retirement.

It was a very nice map and I got to learn a lot about barbarians and also how the AI was unprepared to trade with me due to lack of ports... only Stalin could trade after I got astronomy...

Things were pretty dull and I was struggling to reach techs like PP and astro that would give my economy a much needed bounce. Too late I decided to cottage most of the non-hammer/resource tiles, and too late I decided to build FP in a central floodplain city... maybe I should just have moved the palace there...

First contact zulus in about 1500ad, due to zulu border expansion. By then I saw some light in the end of the tunnel... they didn't have Paper, which I had... Still considering the game as good as lost, I did a trade of Paper for WM + 120gp just to know what the map was all about... was surprised that they knew only the Vikings and their shared continent... only then the penny dropped and I understood the mapmaker's trick

Followed on with caravel + explorer plan, had to use explorer to contact vikings... saw a bit of Egyptian territory, navigated east and found the rest of civs... obviously far ahead and heavily armed, and no trade possibility, my only choice would be tech trade my way to space... but that was too ambitious for the backward situation I was... still kept going... FP and PP earlier mentioned helped boost tech rate a bit, but every city I founded brought that back down. Occupation of home continent almost completed by 1800s

Unfortunately I had to retire, but still submitted just to be scored... first priority on the next BOTM: do some proper fog-busting.

 

[WelshGandalf]

The trade routes thing was interesting, because it needs cities on the coast and wotnot.

I think the only route abroad was via Russia. So long as you were not at war with Russia (you don't even need OB) you can trade resources and have trade routes with Egypt and Maya. I think from there, there was a water connection to the Ottomans and from there round to War Island (Zulu/Viking). All very roundabout!

There was another way round though, north-west, you could get to the Mayans that way if you settled 2 junk islands. I did this in case I needed to invade that way. Still, I think you needed to be not at war with Stalin to get through to Ottomans/Zulus/Vikings in any case. Unless you managed to settle on war island, like some did.

 

[Manco Capac]

The trade routes thing was interesting, because it needs cities on the coast and wotnot.

Not true. I learnt from this BOTM a new thing I did not know by experimenting.
Hatshe refused to found a city on the desert strip, so I decided to build a fort and a road to her lands. It worked marvellously.

Take that fort+road behaving like a river+delta.
Of course, that fort cannot be used for easy dispatch of troops without your own culture onto that fort.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Yeah, I know forts can work like cities... shoulda mentioned that. I wasn't sure if it would've worked outside anyone's culture but apparently it did. Personally, I just founded a city there myself, it had seafood so wasn't too bad, and it helped with the invasion.