BOTM 74 Final Spoiler

[Deckhand]

BOTM 74 Final Spoiler

,

So how did your game after 1AD go? Tell everyone and discuss in this thread, subject to...

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 73, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

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

 

[nocho]

I had a very enjoyable game, so kudos to the mapmaker.

From the onset I had my mind on conquest, so from the map it seemed likely astro was needed, and therefore for the first time ever I tried to get astro asap by bulbing it. Managed that in 475AD, which surely is beatable, but for me earlier than ever by quite a margin. Since I wanted astro early, the GLH seemed like a worthy wonder to go for, more so given various continents. Stone and marble made the early wonderhogging even more attractive, so by 1AD I had Oracle (MC, towards optics!), GLH, Hanging Gardens (early-ish some health problems, so deemed it worthy) and Great Library in the capital, which I settled 1SE. In Utrecht (1E of stone) I built the Pyramids. By 1 AD I had 7 cities.

I avoided meditation and CS to keep open the astro bulb, which I think I managed around 300AD, but then still needed 7 turns or so to finish it. Of course set out to meet all AIs and circumnavigate asap. Having all these Mansa's around surely was nice for trading. Backfilled CS and feudalism among other techs and then went for the English with trebs and maces. Vassaled after conquering his core. From here switched at times between representation and police state for balancing research and unit production, being spiritual surely helped.

Next up would be the Mongol and Roman Mansas, as they were techwise the farthest. Meanwhile was approaching cuirs after a traditional lib of nationalism and building Taj. Decided to first beeline rifles for cavs before going communism, which maybe was a mistake. Kind of forgot about colonial expenses... After getting the Khan's pretty well developed core and then the Roman core, had some of those larger cities around 50 gpt in maintenance. That meant crawling to communism, but after state property all those worries were over.

Anyway, also vassaled these two which meant game in the bag. Now it was just a question of getting the other 4 asap. I was kind of lucky the Japanese Mansa unvassaled from the "real" Mansa when I started working on them. Was already at war with them as the Khan had bribed them in, but they were even without optics yet so no thread beforehand. Anyway, I just had to take Kyoto from Japan for him to capitulate. Real Mansa took a bit longer to kiss the ring, had to take about 6 core cities. Then just racing towards the Americas where the Americans and the Aztecs had been doing what they always do on Earth, that is, battling it out for ages. The Dutch invasion was impressive enough for both of them to kneel after just losing two cities (be it their capital and nr 2 cities in both cases). So ended up with all 7 Mansa's at the feet of the Dutch overlord for a conquest win in 1450AD, for what looks like a pretty decent score of 319k. Not bothering about Oxford was rather refreshing for a change.

 

[TalladegaKnight]

Yes indeed, kudos to the mapmaker. Great concept and implementation.

Got a 1530 AD UN victory. My best by a mile. And a 425 AD Astro bulb, also my best by a mile. Thank you Great Library and Parthenon. I was able to lib physics at 1190 AD. And used the GM from economics to Golden Age my way through Radio. Great Engineer partially built UN and rush bought the rest of it. Tried my best to stall MUnSA mUSA out of free market so I could get all the votes for UN. He got there, but myself and the rest of the world were in it for awhile. I received all votes except Mansazuma who was a peace vassal of MUnSA. Thankfully he did not go free religion.

Very peaceful game. Mansazuma peace vassaled to MUnSA. Mansagawa peace vassaled to the real Mansa. The only potential foreign war was Mansa Khan and Maesae Caesar but nothing came about. I of course beat up on Mansa the 8th with trebs and mainly crossbows and vassaled him.

I wish I would have gotten a religion early to run pacifism. Oracle would have been nice. Mansa the 8th was useless for trading. He was too busy chasing religions which he never got. It took 2 wars to vassal Mansa the 8th due to my poor troop movement. All of those would have sped up my victory date.

Being a Roman history fan, can you explain the Roman Mansa name Maesae? My small brain didn't get it.

Again great job for the fun game.

 

[Deckhand]

Being a Roman history fan, can you explain the Roman Mansa name Maesae? My small brain didn't get it.

Being neither a linguist nor a historian, I was just expanding the a to ae as in Caesar. I overdid it.

 

[ZeekLTK]

I'm not done yet, but am on the verge of losing. This is my first GOTM, and only 2nd BtS game. I also normally play on Prince, so this is a higher difficulty for me too. Here's what happened:

My scout was killed by a bear despite being on a hill during the attack, so I never got to explore much.

I managed to build Oracle in 1560 BC and found Confucianism by getting Code of Laws.

Mongolia built Great Wall in 1160 BC, 3 turns before I was about to complete it.

After that, I didn't see a barbarian warrior standing on the gems (due to resource bubble covering him) and left the nearby city to go defend my capital from incoming archers. He then took the undefended town and it set me back tremendously.

Everyone always talks about racing to Liberalism so maybe I took that too literal and I was beelining for it. I got Philosophy in 300 BC and therefore founded Taoism, which I spread to England to make us become friends.

I also built the Pyramids in 75 BC but that didn't really help much.

I was way ahead of the tech race for a while, but when I was only like 2-3 turns from liberalism, someone else (Rome?) got it. Damn! So then I traded Education to a bunch of other people to backfill techs, but this killed me because everyone else started to pass me and I couldn't keep up so I fell behind the tech race.

There were lots of other things where I was just 2-3 turns too slow and someone else beat me. Much later in the game, England even beat me to settling an arctic city (near fish and iron) when I had a settler on the way! Ugh.

In 760 AD I built the Apostolic Palace, thinking that maybe I could win a diplo victory since I had majority votes. (I'm new to BtS so I didn't know how it works) Turns out can't get diplo victory unless everyone has the religion, so it was mostly a waste since all we did was take turns voting for AP resident, which I won for a while as I had more votes, and then all of a sudden he had more votes and started winning. But it never had any resolutions to vote on.

I then had a Great Engineer build the University of Sankore in 1080 AD as my last wonder. I was hoping it would help me get back in the research lead, but it didn't.

By the time I met other civs, they were as such: Mongolia was a vassal to Rome, Japan was a vassal to Mali, and America/Aztecs had split their continent down the middle.

Rome was the most powerful and remained as such throughout the game.

I kept falling further and further behind the tech tree to the point where my best units were musketmen and I could see England had infantry, while Rome was sailing around with destroyers, so any type of military action was off the table. Everyone had great relations with everyone else, and I had no techs to leverage as bribes, so trying to get anyone else to start a war seemed pretty impossible as well.

At this point I decided to beeline for Mass Media and try again for a Diplo Victory, but before I even started on Mass Media, it popped up saying that Rome had built the UN in 1695 AD. When he tried for a Diplo victory (other candidate: England) the vote was split, 3 for Rome, 3 for England, 2 abstain, so no one won (yet). He hasn't tried it again, but probably will soon.

Rome is also about 40 turns away from winning a cultural victory, should he fail to get a diplo victory before then. Culture count is: 36k, 29k, 25k for him, 12k, 9k, 3k for me. :/

A few civs have built the Apollo project, but as of 1820 AD are still pretty far from completing it (only 1 part built by any particular nation)

So, I guess I'm just biding my time until the conclusion. Would be shocked if anyone besides Rome wins, it's just a matter of whether it's going to be diplo or culture though.

I am mostly just working on spreading Taoism since I don't really have any other objectives. So far I've managed to convert Japan while both Rome and Mongolia, despite having "Free Religion" are spreading it all over their lands. I have an outside hope of getting Taoism to everyone and then maybe trying for AP victory, but I read that might not be possible now that the UN is built. We'll see I guess.

Top 5 Cities:
Rome (Roman)
Karakorum (Mongolian)
Antium (Roman)
Neapolis (Roman)
Tenochtitlan (Aztec)

 

[Deckhand]

I'm not done yet, but am on the verge of losing. This is my first GOTM, and only 2nd BtS game. I also normally play on Prince, so this is a higher difficulty for me too. Here's what happened: ...

In the future, please don't read or post in this thread until your game has been submitted.

Welcome to xOTM. Thanks for playing. Hope you had fun despite the difficulty. Pretty good show for only your second game.

 

[ZeekLTK]

In the future, please don't read or post in this thread until your game has been submitted.

Welcome to xOTM. Thanks for playing. Hope you had fun despite the difficulty. Pretty good show for only your second game.

Ah okay, I figured the game was practically over so I thought I'd take a break and post. I have submitted it now though, as I played out the last few turns...

England converted to Free Religion, so in the next AP vote, I was the only candidate and therefore won residency.

Shortly after, Japan either converted to Taoism or went from Free Religion to Organized Religion, but either way, they became a full member by adopting the religion.

I ended up spreading Taoism to America (the only civ who didn't have it) and that allowed me to put up a vote for Diplo Victory via the AP... me vs Japan.

I had checked the member screen and it had said Rome and America were both suppose to vote for me, and therefore it should be close (it had Japan ahead with like 54% of the votes). I figured he would probably get more votes, but that it would be split enough to not end the game (with Rome and myself voting for me, didn't seem like Japan could win).

Well, idiot Rome decided to change his vote and voted Japan. Actually, everyone voted Japan except for me, so he won the election 868 - 174 with America's 53 abstaining. The threshold was 821/1095, so Japan won a religious victory in 1844 AD!

Rome would have easily won culture or UN victory if he had voted for me instead.


As said, I have submitted the save now. Thanks, looking forward to next month. Hopefully barbs don't screw me up too much next time!

 

[LincolnOfRome]

It ended up being a fun game. I got an 1888 space victory—probably mediocre in this group. I am sure I could have done it much faster. I didn’t commit to space until very late, and I haven’t played much space race or corporation powered games lately—so I was a bit rusty. I also took a few detours (like researching Calendar) and didn’t have a lot of focus choosing my tech path. I might have been better off just building wealth in most cities rather than spamming missionaries and corporate execs. I haven't learned that balance. I played to win, and I won. It takes a little more focus to compete with others for the best score.

I seem to have an obsession spreading as much forest as I can over tundra using forest preserves. I didn’t automate my workers because roads cause slowdown in that spread. I am bothered when I see anyone chopping tundra forest in playthroughs. They are one and three tiles with railroad and replaceable parts, but useless if chopped. A little town, surrounded by tundra forests, can make a great national forest town after Sushi.

The game seemed easy for an emperor level game. The extra resources helped the human player build a few wonders. The UB of the dutch is very powerful and steam power can be obtained fairly early. I also think the “no tech brokering” helped keep all the Mansa’s from blowing ahead of the human player in tech. Knowing that every leader was a Mansa also made things easy diplomatically. We all know about Mansa’s peace weight, so I didn't even bother begging before I declared war on Mansa VIII. I was surprised when Mansa I declared on me. Then, four AI's dog piled Mansa I a few turns later. I wasn't expecting there to be so many wars between the different Mansas. Although Mansa can be a great techer, this game was less challenging than if it was full of unrestricted Shakas. It might be deadly sharing a continent with "Shaka Khan of the Mongols".

I settled-in-place and ran bureaucracy on a capital with only eight places available for cottages. I ran bureaucracy from about 100 Ad onwards (except for about ten turns when ran vassalage to whip out an army). I built cottages on all eight spots and used all the food in its BFC. Overall it seemed like a decent spot—though more grassland would have helped. I also built the Parthenon and ran pacifism. I relied heavily on great people. I seemed to be in the lead tech-wise the whole game, though Rome gave me a little competition mid-game.

My second city to the southeast became my Wall Street city after Taoism was founded there. I built the shrine and managed to spread that religion pretty well. The deer/gems/uranium city became my spy city. The city next down the coast became my Moai site. The floodplains along the coast to the southeast became my NE site. I took the civil service route and won liberalism around 1000 AD (I took astronomy for overseas trade routes).

I had one quick war with the English. I used Cavalry (and spies causing rebellion) to take London and a few core cities. London became my HE city, though I didn't war again. I also turned a former English city, surrounded by unchopped forests, into my National Forest city. It may have been producing more great people than my NE city by the end of the game.

I settled a couple of cities on the island to the southeast of the English, and another city near Mansaham Lincoln. I used the latter to airlift Sushi and Mining execs until the thirty or so cities on that continent were all Sushi and Mining. By the end, I was making about 500 gold-per-turn even with a 100% science because of all the corporations I spread. Along with Oxford, I built Ironworks in my capital as well. Powered by Sushi/Mining, it was fun popping out space-parts in a couple turns there.

At the time I won, Mansa Caesar was about thirty turns from a culture victory. Most were far behind technologically and were finishing their Apollo programs after I had launched. I really didn’t trade many techs (I stole some techs though) and that might have slowed down tech progress in the game.

 

[whb]

Late UN victory again. "Proper" diplomacy this time though (as opposed to lining up vassals at gunpoint).

I had a 700 year war with the English as I very slowly crunched through them, followed by a glorious everyone's-a-Mansa peace around the world. There were no other wars anywhere in the game, and as I'd declared on England before the rest of the world met us, this was the first game I've had where no team had a "You declared war on our friend" penalty anywhere.

Upon meeting everyone else, I was way behind on tech, but "no tech brokering" sorted that out pretty fast as it makes it so easy to trade to parity. From there on, it was all consolidation and tech-discovery.

I still had a habit of missing everything -- having missed three different religions by 4 turns or fewer each (leaving our continent bereft of any religions), plus missing Oracle, Notre Dame, Broadway, Rock'n'Roll, Hollywood, Eiffel Tower Three Gorges Dam all by similarly small margins, I then hit a snag on the UN -

- Although I'd built it, America was so much more populous than the two southern continents that I would need every other team bar Aztecs (who were vassalled to America) to vote for me. And even though I could get Mongolia to have a higher + score with me than with USA (and no negatives at all), he was still friendly to them and only pleased with me, giving his votes to USA and leaving me a handful short.

Eventually (after much too long) I managed to convince all the teams apart from the USA to go to Free Market (the USA conveniently picked Environmentalism), and the + points for wisely picking my civics came into play turning every team friendly with me, and winning the game by a late vote in 1806.

(Which again took less time than playing out the couple of dozen or so turns still needed to win the space race)

Only my second emperor win, so I look forward to (probably) receiving my second "slowest diplo win" prize -- the first having come some years ago where there were only 2 diplo wins and the other guy was a tad faster.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Late UN victory again.

How late, whb?

My game sounds similar to yours. I kept missing the great wonders I tried for by a handful of turns. I went to war against Mansa VIII in 1380 (by which time I had cannon and rifles) and conquered him in 1660. Caesar was the only AI in contact with Mansa VIII when the war began, so he was the only one mildly annoyed by it.

With the war over, Caesar was pleased with me and all the other Mansa clones were friendly. I concentrated on building my income and manufacturing, with the longterm goal of winning the space race, but when Caesar built the UN in 1780, I was easily elected Secretary General and was then given a Diplomatic victory in 1808. Only Mansugawa voted for Caesar, everyone else voted for me.

A very interesting set-up. And such a nice, friendly game!

 

[Chris1229]

Well I surprised my self by managing to keep up in tech. I was able to Vassal Mansa VIII. I was so proud of myself it was going to be my first emperor level win of some kind as i was climbing up in power and was getting ahead in tech.

That is when I got sloppy I decided to sail over to the real mansa and mansagawa first since they looked like they would be easiest to vassal while I built up my troops to take on the more powerful mansa's on the other two continents. I declared on Mansa I first. Oops he had a defensive pact with Mansa Ceasar with whom my power ratio was .6. Still the opening turns of the war went splendidly as i brought the hammer down on an unprepared Mansa I. Then it went south as Mansagawa was bribed into the war against me and my army was trapped and on the verge of annihilation.

I abandoned my game at this point as all of this DOW shut down my trade wasted my army. I have very mixed feelings now, as this was my first relatively competitive effort at emperor level, however i really feel like could have won if i hadn't lost focus and made such a bone headed mistake.

 

[whb]

How late, whb?

Ah, looks like I might have just missed the slowest diplo prize too then . 1806.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Being neither a linguist nor a historian, I was just expanding the a to ae as in Caesar. I overdid it.

Well the first 'ae' in Maesae works OK as a Latinization of Mansa. The second 'ae' is even better because changing a final a to ae in Latin can be the equivalent of adding 'of' in English. So Maesae Caesar could quite naturally be read as 'Caesar of Mansa').

The only thing is that it would probably be rather more common to do that with the 'ae' ending if Mansa was - ummm - a woman.

To get back on topic - I ended up using this game to play around with replaying different starting strategies, so obviously am not going to submit. But I thought it was a great idea for a game. Mixing 'no tech brokering' with every AI willing to trade monopoly techs was brilliant. Ms Mansa Caesar - just the icing on the cake

 

[Deckhand]

I ended up using this game to play around with replaying different starting strategies, so obviously am not going to submit.

You know, you could: finish the game, submit, then play around with starting strategies.
But I'm not one to talk. I haven't finished the test game yet.

But I thought it was a great idea for a game. Mixing 'no tech brokering' with every AI willing to trade monopoly techs was brilliant.

Thanks!
My test game is at 1585 and I'm behind in tech (see screen shot). So, I added the no tech brokering and the gold & gems.

edit: there is no pleasing you DS - you whine about golds and gems and I give them to you, you always go to space and I give you dikes; and then you mess around in the beginning and don't submit. You get nothing in GOTM99, nothing!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You know, you could: finish the game, submit, then play around with starting strategies.
But I'm not one to talk. I haven't finished the test game yet.

lol, sorry, I probably should have done. But by the time I got to - if I recall correctly, some time after 1000AD, the lure of 'what if I'd expanded a bit more quickly' and 'what if I'd used spies more aggressively' was too strong. You can actually thank yourself for this: Until you joined the GOTM staff I didn't often get to play BtS games right through because I was so often setting them! Now I finally get to discover in detail how BtS espionage works! Corporations next (if I can manage to pull myself away from State Property, which is going to be hard...). I am as a result just starting to fully appreciate how much improved BtS is compared to vanilla in the subtleness of the strategies.

By the way I settled in place, and was very happy with that in the end.

edit: there is no pleasing you DS

Oh yes. On the topic of never pleasing me , food in the immediate vicinity seemed a little on the short side... I ended up settling two cities without a food resource (on the flood plains to the East and south of that to get the horses).

 

[haphazard1]

This was my first xOTM in a long time, and ended up being a very enjoyable game. Thanks to the map maker and xOTM staff!

I played an almost entirely peaceful game, focusing on tech, wonders, and trading with all the Mansas. The only war was very short -- less than 10 turns -- when Mansa VIII declared on me in 1200 AD due to my very low power rating (about 1/2 his). But I had foreseen the war and had a few up to date units on hand, and the English were not very serious about the war. They sent a lone catapult (killed by my knight) and a lone pikeman (killed by my mace), then offered peace. I considered continuing the fight to claim Mansa VIII's land, but decided I was better off staying peaceful. I was worried that had been a mistake when oil was revealed to be two tiles inside English culture, but I ended up not needing it thankfully.

I wonder spammed in my capital (settled SE) using Bureaucracy hammers and ended up with 14 world wonders there, plus Oxford, NE, Apollo, and lots of SS parts. My second city at the gems/stone site built 4 more world wonders, plus Manhatten (for fun on the last turn before the space ship arrived) and lots of SS parts. My Ironworks went here. The mass of flood plains ESE of the start was my third city, which ended up as cottage cheese for massive commerce and eventually tons of hammers with dike and US towns. Confucian shrine, Wall Street, Mining Inc HQ, and Sid's Sushi HQ all were here, funding most of my empire. The city was producing over 600 gpt at the end at 100% science. The Confucian shrine was up to 58 gpt by the end, as I spread the faith to all AIs and they then spread it far and wide for the AP boosts. I kept the corporations to myself, as many of the AI had more resources than I did.

I tried to tech deep into sections of the tree and then trade to backfill, and it worked very well. I am not even sure how many techs I got in trade -- 25+ in total. The Mansas did a good job teching, so I was still getting useful techs quite late: Lasers was the last after the ship launched, but I got Fission, Combustion, Artillery, and Flight from the AIs.

I started really pulling away from the AIs around 1300 AD with a pair of Maussolos-boosted golden ages (the second from Taj), so I think peace was the right choice. I was able to get all the later wonders and "first to" bonuses, and used the various Hit resources to trade for more fuel for Mining Inc and Sushi which really helped my 11 cities. Several AI had more cities (Mali had 20) but mine were better. Two more extra-long golden ages late boosted the final space ship push, and I launched with 1 turn of golden age left so I was pretty pleased with the timing. I was producing just over 4000 bpt at the end, with positive cash flow at 100% science.

Space Race victory, 1814 AD.

I did get a 12th city after the ship launched when Oxford flipped to me, giving me control over the oil. Not that I needed it by that point. Five turns before my space ship reached Alpha Centauri the AIs -- who had been peaceful all game -- went nuts. Mansa Musa I of Mali declared on Monsazuma, which triggered defensive pacts from Mansa Caesar and the American Mansa. Mansagowa was vassal to Mali so he was in the mix. A turn later Mansa Khan and Mansa VIII joined the fun. Great generals were popping up all around the globe. I just watched the chaos and waited for my ship to arrive, while turning down 6 (!) different requests to join the fighting over the last two turns. Peace was the way. My total losses from the final statistics screen were 2 warriors (lost early to barbs) and 1 caravel (picked off by a privateer).

A very fun game, and a great concept.

 

[haphazard1]

Oh yes. On the topic of never pleasing me , food in the immediate vicinity seemed a little on the short side... I ended up settling two cities without a food resource (on the flood plains to the East and south of that to get the horses).

I ended up with 4 cities without food resources: the two you mention, plus one for the whales up north (I don't consider whales a food resource), and one east of the flood plains by the oasis (oasis does not count either). All were valuable cities, and with some late game Sid Sushi help ended up size 20 or larger. I was amazed how much use I got out of such crummy land.

 

[Tempesta13]

I went for culture and built all kinds of wonders. Fun game but I didn't get too many artists so that cost me another 40 turns or so. Not the greatest at culture but wanted to try one of these games. 2 hours game time , there should be an award for that! Finished in 1800AD - don't think I've ever had a pre-1800s culture win.

Went with six cities and only had Confucianism and Taoism. Taoism was founded by English, I immediately stole the tech but auto-spread didn't happen for a few hundred years. Thought I was doing a 1 religion culture game for awhile. Ended being 2, still not great. I got two engineers, two prophets, and one or two scientists i didn't need. Too much GPP pollution. Building wonders is fun though.

Edit: Since this was my first game I've submitted just want to check if i did it right. DL'd and installed Buffy HOF mod from the GOTM page. Ran Civ4 as administrator, advanced>load a mod to load the Buffy mod, then loaded save. Everything seemed to work right.

 

[Deckhand]

Edit: Since this was my first game I've submitted just want to check if i did it right. DL'd and installed Buffy HOF mod from the GOTM page. Ran Civ4 as administrator, advanced>load a mod to load the Buffy mod, then loaded save. Everything seemed to work right.

Looks good to me.

Welcome to BOTM!

 

[Jastrow]

I went to space ( surprise ), and got there in 1670... Solid effort I think, tho I did it with one continent... I fear that taking a second continent efficiently might take another 10-15 turns of this date. My research maxed out at about 6200 bpt, which is probably not quite enough to be optimum.

Having said that, the end game was fast... At turn 195, I estimated my finish date, and though I would struggle to make turn 140. I decided to hold of on my 36-turn triple GA until turn 204. By turn 203, I was worried that I had been to pessimistic, and started it a turn earlier than planed, which turned out to be 4 turns too late!! I launched with 4 turns of GA wasted (perfecting timing probably would only have saved 1 turn, so it is not that bad, but that is the first time I ever underestimate that badly.)