BOTM 58 Final Spoiler

[Jaybone]

Domquest 1836 victory.

My game start was similar to most others I imagine and I posted my micro in the pre-game thread, but rushed great lighthouse and got a settler out by 2000 BC. After that came in, it was a settling frenzy as I tried to get all the good spots quickly. I explored some and noticed the juicy island spot to the SE as well as the NW island visible in the pregame info and decided I wanted to settle those areas quickly for the extra trade routes, they were actually my 4th and 5th cities in 850 and 700 respectively. It took forever for me to be able to find foreign trade routes so this proved fortuitious as Toku wouldn't open borders with me.

Here's my city settling

Spoiler :

Built Great library in 350 BC and Parthenon in 75 BC, had national epic in capital to get a lot of specialists. Toku and Wang Kon were buddhists and so that spread to Cuzco and I converted to keep Toku off my back.

I was able to keep tech parity and decided that the only way to win this game was to go on the offensive. Everybody got longbows quickly so I got Lib and researched for curs, cannons, and astro for mammoth naval assaultage. Napoleon was the first target because he was hindu and I wanted to keep toku (the tech leader and largest army) on my good side and deal with him last. Also, WK and TOku were at war with Nappy and I love a good dogpile. I was maybe 3 turns from attacking Nappy when Stalin sneak attacked by sea in 1130. I crushed him with curs, frigates, muskets, and cannons, took his whole island and he capped in 1360. Nappy was still at war with Toku and WK so I took my whole force and landed on his island in 1410 and took his whole mainland and capped him at 1535. By now I'm up to infantry, cav, cannon, and transports and nearing industrialism. Kon and his measly 7 city empire (already weakened by Alex) are declared on in 1620 and capped by 1635.

Next, after greece with marines, infantry, occasional tank, alexander is declared on in 1645. I eliminate his mainland and he has 4 crappy island cities but refuses to capitulate. Fine! I wipe him completely out by 1795.

Cyrus, who is still defending cities with some longbows and occasional infantry gets attacked in 1806 with tanks, marines, bombers, etc and caps in 1818.

Now, Toku is a tough nut to crack because he has large amounts of troops and has industrialism. Hmmm, good thing I'd researched fission and built the Manhattan project . . . 7 ICBMS soften him up and his 70-80+ defenders up and he caps after losing 4-5 cities in 1836.

 

[Jastrow]

580 AD??! I'm struggling to think of an earlier lib date than that!

I will double check the game log to make sure I did not get it wrong, but that is what my hand written notes say.

I am an immortal player, not a regular deity guy, and I keep reading in these forums over and over that you cannot keep up with the AI without bulbing (I did not bulb here), and that liberalism is always a tight race. With two unknown AI at the time, and lacking the experience, I did not want to risk anything.

 

[Jastrow]

Just to confirm, I have checked the game log and 580 AD is indeed my Liberalism date.

 

[Conquistador 63]

My early game description was posted here.

As someone not used to playing Deity, I learned a few things from this BOTM. However, the most important of them wasn't learned ingame, but from reading the posts here, and that is:

Deity is the difficulty level where RNG luck has the highest influence, so we can't really compare the players' skills based on our results. And by RNG I don't mean battle outcomes, but instead the RNG behind AI DOWs, and also their tech and wonder build choices.

I find it important to ackowledge this before writing about my game outcome: a cultural victory. I think it could have failed to achieve my goal, or at least delayed it by a long stretch, if the AIs had been as ruthless with me as they were with jesusin.

Anyways, the highlights of my game after 1AD were:

. built Sistine in 225AD;
. Christianity spread to my 2crab island city to the SE in 250AD; however I failed to spread it in a timely manner, see below;
. Due to GPP pollution in Cuzco, 3 out of my 4 first GP's were non-GA's;
. A GE was used in 500AD to rushbuild...the AP! Defensive move which would pay off nicely later, but the free hammers in my religion buildings were nice anyways; also it gave me "mystic contact" with WK;
. Taoism spread to a mainland city in 520AD;
. lost Lib by 1 turn to Stalin in 800AD; would have taken Nat
. built my last non-GA WW: UoS
. 1st GM saved to start a Golden Age in 900AD, which then continued by a Taj-powered G.Age;
. culture civics changed and research shut down somewhere along those G.Ages;
. after 1000AD, when I finally met the other blue civs (Cyrus and Alex), the former was already at war with Toku; now I understand that perpetual fist Toku has been showing for ages;
. 1100AD, war trumpets sound, but it was only Nappy going for WK;
. 1200AD, peace between Toku and Cyrus, now I'm the japanese worst enemy, and a new fist appears. Luckily I got Astro from trades, will build some galleons to defend my western borders;
. 1300AD, war trumpets sound again! Hehe, I was too clever and won't be surprised by Toku's ships, I think to myself. But, wait, my crab island city defended by a Q in the SE is being captured by red troops...not japanes, but russian! My old "friend" Stalin backstabbed me! Will I lose the game?
. Back to 8 cities, forget about the 3rd confu and tao cathedrals in the 2nd and 3rd legendary cities. Also no more christian religion for an eventual 4th set of cathedrals.
. All is not lost, I'm AP resident and Stalin is an AP member. With Nappy's help, we win a vote for a peace treaty a couple of turns later. A nice side-effect, no AP member can DOW me for a 10-turn period. And yes, that does apply to you, Mr.Toku.
. Passed a vote to reassign the lost city via the AP but Stalin defies it!
. Lesson learned, fire up research just enough to learn Constitution (shouldn't have shut down research before learning it in the 1st place), revolt to Rep and tech towards Chemistry for Frigates.
. It is now 1500AD, I see a pack of Toku Galleons approaching, but I have a half-decent number of galleons and a few Frigates to intercept them, more war trumpets in 1505AD. Meanwhile, I'm no longer AP resident, so I'll have to actually fight back this time. Oddly enough, Toku has Airships but no Frigates yet. After some heavy fighting, I fend off the troops he managed to unload by the gold city, but I lose the copper island but recapture it just out of pride, in 1565AD.

Not that I really needed it anymore, since with the help of 10 GArtists (0-7-3), I win a culture victory in 1590AD.

 

[lymond]

^^^nice

1730 AD Diplo Win

Feels odd going for Diplo again. Had just as much intent to go with military until I realized soon enough that our friendly mapmaker chocked the map full of nasties.

So, I settled on Marble. Did not really make an attempt at GLH. It's such at tight squeeze on this level and painful if you fail. Interestingly, due to an early event, GLH would have not had a huge impact... more on that...although it is still always good. I did build Oracle. Took Monarch although would have preferred MC. Did trade Monarchy for Alpha early though which is good, but Aesths would have worked fine.

Settled fish/silver second as I think most did. Whipped a few wbs and built several Qs to bust the island. Only 2 barb archers ever appeared which were no match for the Qs, then the island was fully spawnbusted. Also, whipped/built some scout wbs fairly early. Wish I sent both West and North, since the first one went East to nowhere.

Ofc, I lost several seafood to freakin' barb galleys, but did whip a couple of galleys that kept them safe afterwards. (Man, I hate when a barb galley kills a tireme on defense, especially a promoted one....just should not happen)

After Oracle, netting, and spawnbust, I quickly settled the main island. Cuzco took care of the first 2 or 3 cities, then I built settlers in subsequent cities to fill out the island. Next I start settling island to the East periodically.

Met Nappy first as his scout WB dropped by. My second scout WB ran into Toku who had Alpha by this time. (Toku is often first to Alpha in many games like Joao) This was nice as I simply gifted him Myst for OB. Toku was my friend the whole game. I was concerned that he was immediately in Fist mode, but the turned out later to be a war between him and Cyrus.

Eventually my WB made his way to Stalin. Cyrus some time later. Did not meet Alex and Wang until after Optics.

Built the Great Library and was close on Parth. Fell short on most other wonders, but the fail gold was nice.

Nappy was a pain for a long time. We started off ok. I gifted him a tech and had him at pleased, but he targeted me fairly early.

Then the most annoying thing in the game happen, other than his later DOW. Nappy built the AP and had all known AIs close borders with me. I had no foreign trade routes for a very very long time. Gradually getting OB over time with the AIs, but Nappy never OB until much later after our long war.

So, I know Napster is going to attack at some point. Eventually I see a group of caravels/galleons next to my borders. He's not pleased at the moment, so I gift him a tech - I think Philo- and beg some gold to delay the inevitable. I was certainly not prepared for the attack at that point.

The tricky thing when he does attack is that he does not land at the expect places, but instead keeps moving his ships around my island. He drops off next to my far west city and takes it. I take it back soon after and kill all his troops. Another stack takes one of my undefended island cities to the east. I'll take that back soon after too. Meantime I get Military Tradition. Whip/Upgrade Curs and go take 2 of his island cities to the North. However, it takes some time to get peace as I don't have a tech for him and he wants his cities back.

I won Lib taking Nationalism and build Taj easily.

Meanwhile, doing everything to make nice with the AIs. Wang is the whipping boy as usual. No one likes him and I'm in several joint/fake wars with him that boosts Diplo. Alex will be the UN rival, but I'm even Friendly with him. I run Vassalage, Representation, STate Property for the Diplo (I was in Merc for a while with Toku, but he switched to FM which is kinda odd for him). Never adopted a religion. FR for much of the game.

Liberate a few cities to AIs, including the same city twice to Toku as Wang took the city I gifted Toku and I took it back later.

Tech fluctuated. Somewhat on par early game, then get quite behind mid-game until winning Lib (2 bulb Edu/1 bulb Lib) ...I won it with ease. Then by late game I'm dominating in tech. The no foreign trade routes early really slowed the game down though.

UN was built in 1630AD. I popped an GE fairly early in the game and rushed UN to within a few turns. Nappy was the killer here. I had rebuilt diplo with him over time after the war (I had not diplo maluses with him despite the war and icy relationship). However, he would not adopt Representation bizarrely. Eventually I bribed him into it. My big mistake was not liberating the cities I captured him. Otherwise, I would have won on the first vote. Instead it took 3 or 4 votes to win. I just didn't think of it at the time and felt I'd easily get him to Friendly. Also, despite gifting him many resources, the diplo bonus did not kick in until AFTER the final vote. You will see from the screen below that he is +12 and Friendly, but he was +11 and Pleased when he voted for him. The tipping point this time was a diplo point came for sharing technologies. Whew! I have to say Diplo wins are the most frustrating to me, despite having a pretty good understanding.

Bizarrely, my score dropped 2 or 3 thousand points on the last turn despite going up each turn and getting close to 100K. I was still gaining pop each turn.

I was actually more tech dominant than the screen below shows at the end. I was gifting/trading techs like crazy. Stalin was surprisingly the big techer this game.


Here are some views of my game (notice the fitting amount of Gold at the end, which is representative of the devils on this map...or maybe I'm the devil):

Spoiler :

​

 

[Greeder]

Hell, yes! I won a deity game! Second in my life (not counting test games).
Culture 1860 AD. And I even defended against Toku's DOW!!!
I'm so happy

 

[Mylene]

Afraid i did read some spoilers before scratching up motivation for playing a known map, sorry Lymo no My gotm this time
Gratso everybody who finished this game, Deity is super hard no matter what

 

[lymond]

sorry Lymo no My gotm this time

Ack! I was hoping to see how you dominated this map

 

[jesusin]

@ Conquistador 63

Congratulations!

Would you be so kind as to share your culture output (base and multipliers) at the end of the game?
Did you revolt to slavery and/or Nationalism when you got dowed?
Which were your 3 Legendary cities?

I am a bit surprised that your game features a later Liberalism, fewer GA bombs, yet it finishes earlier, I'm guessing a big difference in base culture.

 

[Conquistador 63]

^Thanks!

As I was anticipating being dowed (but not by Stalin), I had been building a few ships and troops, and also as that war was short thanks to the AP resolution, I didn't need to switch out of FS/CS. I did turn on the research slider for a couple of turns to learn Constitution and revolted to Rep in 1330AD.

Here's the data you asked for, at 1590AD, @100% culture (not sustainable 100% of the time):

City/Base cpt/Final cpt/(GA bombs)
1. Capital/250cpt/875cpt (3cath)/(0 bombs)
2. Silver/134cpt/402cpt (2cath)/(7 bombs)
3. Pigs/177cpt/708cpt (2cath+Hermitage)/(3 bombs)

 

[Jaybone]

Ack! I was hoping to see how you dominated this map

I'm sure it would've been a chariot rush of Toku in 2500 or something equally ballsy

 

[jesusin]

Thanks for the additional data, Conquistador 63. It looks like my late security-first policy (revolting to both slavery and nationhood) cost me a great deal.

Deity is the difficulty level where RNG luck has the highest influence, so we can't really compare the players' skills based on our results. And by RNG I don't mean battle outcomes, but instead the RNG behind AI DOWs, and also their tech and wonder build choices.

I find it important to ackowledge this before writing about my game outcome: a cultural victory. I think it could have failed to achieve my goal, or at least delayed it by a long stretch, if the AIs had been as ruthless with me as they were with jesusin.

I don't think Deity AIs were more ruthless in my game. We both fended off a land invasion, we both lost 2 island cities but recovered one, we both got dowed several times... You just were more efficient dealing with it.

 

[MarkM]

More details when I have more time, but for now...

Finished the ship on turn 255, leading to a late 18th century (1785, I think) space colony and a score of around 120K.

I dont know if I got really lucky or what, but for whatever reason the warmongers all left me along the entire game. Indeed, the overall game was very peaceful. At some point, someone (Maybe Nappy or Alex, I dont remember) decided to declare on Wang, and I joined in and bribed in a couple of others (for mutually struggles). I never even saw a single unit for Wang, and that is the only hostilities I was involved with. Indeed, it was the only war at all until a few turns from the end, when Wang (now a vassel of Alex) was declared on again. This time I stayed out of it.

With no war action, I was left to tech, build and trade at my leisure, and this resulted into a trade economy powered run to space. The race was suprisingly not close, and I was rather surprised how slow the AI was techning. Maybe the island maps really slows them down??

Nice. I basically spent the entire second half of the game at war, in succession with different AIs. For the longest stretch, every time I got out of a war, I found myself in a new one within a couple turns, so very little breathing room. In part that happened because I was watching the threat levels, and when I saw WHTMOOHRN msgs in the dipl screen for declaring war on 3rd parties with someone, I rushed to get peace in existing wars ASAP, to avoid being the victim of an irreversible dogpile slide. I believe every AI but Cyrus DOWed me at least twice. Toku and Alex wars were the worse nail biters, I nevert actually lost a city on main island, but I came VERY close against those two (and I lost more remote cities a number of times). For some reason, despite proximity, I had less problem holding Nappy at bay each time he attacked, although I also didn't gain much from him either. I think it's because he had only frigates, and I'd just gotten the tech to upgrade to destroyers at the end of one of my Toku wars, plus flight. I remember my stats page at the end of game said I'd killed 117 frigates! Toku I eventually vassalized, after goblbing up the east half of his island (incl Kyoto -- sweet city sites he had!!!) Also gained in my conflicts with Stalin, after turning the tide of his initial invasions in our 2nd war, I persisted and gobbled up a lot of his island cities to the east. Might have kept going like I did with Toku, but I got distracted by another DOW lol, and thought it prudent to take peace immediately & pivot to the newest threat.

I think you might have been lucky as you say, but maybe also smart to join in on that low risk war against WK (who was so far away anyway) and get the diplo bonus for mutual military struggle. I probably had a similar opportunity -- WK was vassalized pretty early to Persia, after getting dogpiled if I recall correctly -- but I wasn't as smart as you. I had a pretty good early game I thought, but made a lot of late game mistakes, in part due to not having played a full game in years. One of the final ones was finding resources during the wars to position myself to build space elevator first, having an engineer saved up & all ready to go, then discovering that all the cities on the starting island were too far south! Oh well. That plus a lot more dumb miscalculations led me to a much later space victory, in 1947. My biggest one overall might have been not just building up my military from the start, to avoid being such an attractive target. Those AIs were constantly on me past ~750ad like flies on scat, and not giving in to every demand just started a vicious cycle of bad relations that I just could not escape, for most part. Still, a fun game. If I play again I should do better. though with the botm59 description out, it looks like I may go on BOTM hiatus again (hopefully not two years this time!)

Regarding the appropriateness of the game, frankly I would have preferred a "normal" one. But that's because I went on hiatus from Civ a couple years, so a regular game would have still been fresh. But if I had been playing all along, I think I might have found this "advanced start" type scenario more appealing.

ADDED: I just noticed you said the AIs were not having wars between themselves either. So there was more going on than just your decisions here. Interesting, in my game there was almost constant warfare between third parties too. "Hot" wars too, notices of Great Generals came constantly -- I got at least 7 (maybe 8?) GG myself. I'm curious, how diverse were the state religions in your game? In mine every nation had a different religion, including me. In hindsight, might've been a bad move grabbing Islam, but I was getting so slow a spread, wanted to run OR, and never got Toku's Judaism to spread to me, which was the one I really wanted, and like I said, every other AI had a different religion, so there was no alternative option that would have helped me in diplo more than marginally. Judaism was the only one that appealed, i would have loved better relations with Toku (never even got offered open borders by him until after I'd vassalized him!), but it just never spread.

 

[Jastrow]

My "decision" may have played a big part in reducing Ai-Ai wars as well. When I joined in, I also brided in others to make it a full global dog-pile. This means that:
1- All Ai are busy for a while, and not plotting against anyone else.
2- Everyone is building up mutual struggle bonuses which other, so everyone is more likely to get along.

One other point... It looks from your post like you where planning to use the space elevator... In BTW (unlike in Vanilla), the space elevator is simply a god-awful wonder. Infact, it is extremely, extremely rare that it saves even one turn on the space-ship date, in indeed almost always actually slows you down. The reason is that its position in the tree is a tech that you never learn for an optimal space-race, and in almost 100% of cases, tech rate is the ultimate limite, not space ship production.

To put this in perspective, even on this generally poor production, high commerce, water map, I finished my ship and launched either 3 or 4 (I cant remember) turns after researching the last needed tech for a space ship part. At most, the space elevator would reduce the last build time by one turn, but there is no way I can ever hope to tech robotics in one turn. That is how bad the space elevator is. Even it it cost exactly ONE hammer, in 99% of games it would be a mistake to build it!


And just noticed your question on religion... I dont remember in detail, but I think there was about 4 different religions out there. I did NOT adopt one at any point. I had an early liberalism, and went straight to free religion. I felt the 10% science boost empire wide had more value than the like one extra GP that philiosophical would have netted, and no religion was spread sufficiently to make OR attractive.

 

[MarkM]

Thanks for the reply Jastrow, food for thought. But maybe one reason you didn't need the production bonus from space elevator was because you didn't need to crank out military units instead of spaceship parts some of the time

Seriously, I couldn't even afford to start the Apollo program right away when I got it, and even after I did, I was forced by necessity to 1) not build it in my main production city, since it was dedicated to cranking out military, 2) interrupt it even in the other city at least once, to build a unit to help repel invasion of my mainland (I think around that time was when Alex DOWed on me again, and the same turn a naval stack with 2 BB, 4-5 DD, and 7-8 transports appeared one turn out!)

But you are right, all that probably came about because I missed the diplo opportunity that you pursued ...

 

[Jastrow]

The space elevator issue has been discussed quite a bit. Players like TMIT in particular have made this point quite extensively, but there are almost no situations where it is a good idea, irrespective of your situation.

Yes, building millitary will slow the entire space race down, that is obviously clear. The question however remains wether the space elevator helps to speed it back up. The key point to appreaciate it is that the space elevator does not speed anything up except for parts you are building after you finished researching the last spaceship part. The rest if added production (but not that much), but does not add to speed.

What year did you finish researching your last tech needed for a spaceship part? That is the key question.

The other point is that the space elevator is not that big a production bonus at all. The 50% extra production is on the base. Every city building space ship parts should have at least: Forge+Factory+Power+Lab, which means it is prodcing at 2.5 * base hammers (two cities will also have IW or Bauracracy bonus, but I will ignore those for simplicity, they make things worse still for the elevator.) In addition, most parts have a resource bonus of 100%, so those move to 3.5

This means that production goes up with the elevator by a ratio of 3/2.5, which is 20, not 50 %. Parts with a resource bonus (most) are then 4/3.5, which is 14%

Indeed, assuming you have the elevator completed before ANY parts are started (extremely unlikely), building a full ship with one engine, the elevator saves you about 2800 raw Hammers and costs 800 to build. The savings is 2000 raw hammers at the very bests, and you needed to invest in a what, 8000? beaker tech, to get it. SO even in its best (and rediculously overoptimistic case), the return on investment is simply dreadful.

 

[Greeder]

150 AD I converted to Judaism, it was Toku's religion and I needed badly some boost in relations with him. 225 AD University of Sankore has been built, mark the date, I was discovering Compass then for trade.
275 AD I settled my 9th and last city. I had 7 cities on mainland and 2 on Crab islands, just E from mainland.
300 AD Toku built AP, bless him. Those additional hammers were priceless.
In 425 AD, 150 years after discovering Calendar I constructed MoM.
660 AD CS and revolt to Bureaucracy.
740 AD I discovered Paper, 500 years after UoS was constructed. One turn before Toku revolted to Mercantilism=he had Banking already. But strange enough, nobody had Edu. So I decided to attempt a Lib race.
840 I traded Optics and something for Feudalism and Theology. 880 AD circum bonus. Luck again, earlier I traded maps with Cyrus, my galleon reached west end of Toku's land, all I need was to reach it from E. I was 2nd or 3rd to Optics and I made Caravel a priority.
920 AD Edu, I immediately traded it for Engineering and Philo. 2 turns later Artist was born and he fueled my first 12-turns long GA.
1010 AD I was first to Lib! I took Nationalism from it and started TajMahal in capitol. GE helped to finish it next turn. I discovered and traded for a bunch of techs. I needed Banking especially, to befriend with Toku.
But 1110 AD he attacked and captured my border city. I kept there 2 Maces and Quecha. Well I switched from religious building to building army.
I recaptured Huamanga 1200 AD and took his city on my continent 1230 AD. AP vote popped next turn and we both agreed on peace. As his city was surrounded by Japaneese culture I gave it back.

1280 AD I started my 3rd long GA. I had 3 religions and Buddism in island city. I labourosly spread all religions, built temples and Cathedrals. I never switched research off for good, being afraid of AIs. But they fought each other and I reached Culture Vic 1860 AD.