BOTM 88 (Hammurabi) Final Spoiler - Game finished

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 88 (Hammurabi) - Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Tell everyone about your embarrassing defeat...

Unless of course... Uh? you actually won????? Wow! OK, tell us about that...

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[marbe166]

The whole world turned against me, just because I happened to feel that Taoism is a nice religion and that the Tao Holy City was to be liberated from Mao's evil hands. So, I declared war on Mao and invaded, but the invasion was thwarted by two measly longbowmen. And then it went downhill from there. Mao settled a city on the iron on my continent, but that city did not live long. Thereafter I settled there and started building Swordsmen to be used to wipe him off the face of the earth. My Galleys were unfortunately destroyed by his pirating Triremes . And soon everyone else except Joao declared war on me. Frederick the useless git had already become a Vassal of Brennus, and it was Brennus who quickly invaded my continent and took all my cities there, and the end came when Mao took the city of Nippur that I had settled on the island south of the motherland.

 

[Minou]

This game was very engaging, I like the concept of a Deity game with the isolated start. Did not manage to pull off a win, but it was fun.

My first big mistake which haunted me all game was not settling on the coast, which left me to lose the GLH race. Eventually, I launched a successful invasion to steal it from China. Elephants and Catapults took the city in 50AD, lost it, re-captured it with reinforcements, and ultimately I gave Mao Metal Casting for peace and enjoyed the instant +56 commerce bonus.

My second mistake was rushing for the non-existent New World. Not sure if Fractal maps always lack distant land or I was just lucky. I Lib'd Astronomy and sent a set of four Galleons out to claim more land, but they returned several centuries later still holding their Settler/Worker/Longbow cargos.

With no empty land to claim, I decided to attack Mao around 1300AD. The first attempt captured the capital, but was shut down by an AP resolution before I could capture more cities. Once peace expired I launched a second attempt, but (mistake number three), did not notice Mao had become Charlemagne's vassal. Although I captured two more of Mao's cities, a huge stack of HRE units eventually took everything back. This left me falling behind in research, and then only chance seemed to be a UN victory. Joao, Charlemagne and Monte all liked me enough to vote for me, but one would have to be my opponent so I would need a big population boost and a vassal of my own.

Around 1600AD I finished the UN and had Sushi spreading to my cities. My first war went against Brennus went pretty well and I captured two cities before having to sign peace to rebuild. At the same time, Monte switched religion and I lost one set of votes. Things were starting to look bad.

Once the peace treaty wore expired, I launched a second attack to capture the northeast part of the main continent. However, I managed to misclick (fourth big mistake) the unload tile and suicide four transports full of units instead of landing adjacent to a city (which probably would have been captured without a single loss). To rub it in, Brennus suicided about 20 of his units into my frontline city the next turn, which suggests I had a chance at making some major progress.

This was too frustrating to recover from, so I gave up at this point.The game was probably already lost no matter what, as several AIs were building Spaceship parts by the start of the second war. I decided to declare war on everyone to end the game, but the AI is so bad at naval invasions I ended up simply resigning ten turns later.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

My second mistake was rushing for the non-existent New World. Not sure if Fractal maps always lack distant land or I was just lucky.

Fractal maps are random. Sometimes there can be multiple continents, sometimes there's only one. However, it would be rare on a fractal map to have a very large continent with no AIs starting on it. In fact I can't recall ever seeing that on an unmodified map. Small islands yes, but large continents invariably have at least one civ starting on them (Unless the mapmaker starts fiddling with it).

Are you confusing fractal with terra (which always has an unpopulated 'new world').

Glad you enjoyed the game, shame it didn't end so well.

 

[greentea]

Deity is far above my level, so I played the adventurer save. I could have possibly won a sushi-based cultural victory if I had defended myself a little better. In the end the damn celt landed a huge stack near my capital and I retired.

On a second attempt I finished in 1858. I still got attacked by Brennus at some point, but after losing his first stack he just pillaged the seas for a while and gave up. In both games I settled 3E, so I had a monster GP farm in the capital. I also got Colossus rather than GLH, so avoided Astronomy until late in the game.

Overall, a very enjoyable game that helped me improve my Cultural victory strategy.

 

[bcool]

To my surprise after a long time away from Civ IV, I got a deity win. Spaceship in 1834 AD. I decided early on that stretching for the GLH would be too hard and too disappointing if I lost it. I went for rapid expansion instead and the semi-isolated start let me do it. It took me a long time to make contact with the AI and I figured I would be hopelessly behind in tech, but luckily the AI were not as fast as I feared.

There were plenty of happiness resources in our area and we were protected from an early AI attack, so I developed in relative safety. I didn't adopt a religion for fear of pissing off the AI. They were busy attacking each other and I stayed out of it. I used my first great scientist to bulb philosophy and sold it for several techs. I easily got liberalism ahead of the AI (even held off finishing it for 10+ turns so I could get constitution with liberalism and make an relatively late switch to representation). With all the excess food I ran quite a few specialists and maintained a comfortable tech lead.

I eventually switched into Buddhism (the AP religion and spread it to all my cities after a GA dip into Taoism and organization religion to whip out the universities and Oxford). I almost stole stone from Germany but just missed the opportunity when his borders popped (probably for the best because I was never a land target for the AI)

I went for rifles and drafted an army with trebs that were quickly upgraded to cannons. Went to war with my Buddhist buddies (Monty and Mao) and kicked Charlemagne into submission and got him to be my vassal before the others got him. Got several wonders but by then they didn't make a huge impact (Pyramids, great wall, Sistine chapel, Stonehenge). One city had 5 settled GG which was nice, but didn't really come into much play.

My buddhist buddies decided Joao was next and I grabbed 2 of his cities but I wasn't as lucky as Monty got him as a vassal.

I was living in fear of Brennus since I was convinced into DoW him early on when we were separated by an ocean. And of course he hated me and was a different religion to boot. Brennus got rifles and was looking very dangerous. He luckily spent a long time getting astronomy and chemistry, so I built a privateer navy which killed lots of caravals and galleons which I think helped prevent a naval invasion/attack.

Monty eventually attacked Mao and vassalized him. And then I started getting very scared of him. But I was pleased/friendly and so I begged for some gold when he went into war prep and I believe I diverted him away from attacking me (the fist went away). And before the 10 turn grace period was over he decided to go into war prep mode again and he could only be targeting Brennus so I was saved. (Brennus had vassalized Germany).

I took advantage of espionage (which is the other reason I really stayed competitive with the AI tech wise). I timed a large amount of steals from Mao by gifting him a city during my brief time in Taoism (during my first Golden Age). I spread Taoism to the gift city and gave it to him and stole 3 or 4 mid level techs (after using a great spy to infiltration him). I ended up using another great spy and stole astronomy from him and eventually railroad from him as well.

I eventually got Sushi but was just beaten to mining inc, because of a lack of a great engineer. I probably should have gotten sushi earlier but thought I was going to be able to steal/trade for biology but never was able to.

I thought to protect myself before I was sure of Monty and Brennus attacking each other by getting nukes relatively early, but discovered I had no access to uranium. So I hunkered down and went for space. And no uranium also meant I didn't feel like going for conquest/domination. (as if I could... I've never won a deity game by conquest or domination).

 

[yyeah]

well that was rly nice map tons of recorces and all in diferent religion xD rly fun diplo game but well i lost ;/ was 1st in music i lib steal and went for brenus but unfortunatly he vassel fredrik and got lots of trades of it so 5 turns after he had steall as well so tha push didnt work and that was game, brennus was too big and he start techin like madman if i only met jao ealier he wanted to trade me horses later cavalery was better option i think but well ... i think i just dont have enough expirence with attacking accros sea...

 

[Gosha190]

lost space race to Jao in 1862AD, 12 cities, friendly w Jao, sloppy played, nice map!

Thx to DS for a nice trip in deity world!

 

[Folket]

I was planing to finish the game during easter but I have been sick so I abandoned the game.

Being on good terms with Mao, Monto, Joao and Charlemange it would have been an easy diplomatic victory. But diplomatic victories seems like cheating since they are so easy compared to other victories.

I used liberalism to bulb Rifling and then went to war. But as soon as I entered the war with Germany they vassalized to Brennus. I should have bribed Mao and Brennus to end the war before I declared.

I made plenty of mistakes. I forgot to change my civics at the end of a GA so I had to launch a second GA to avoid 3 turns of anarchy. I never finished my national epic and was building it at 1 hammer a turn. I sacrifices 20 riflemen in a war against the Celts because I could not tell whether they would win or not.

If I continued to play for a military victory I could have defeated both Monto and Mao. But since everyone except Germany and the Celts were Hindu they would peace vassal to Joao which would be quite counter productive.

I have not decided internally to see the game as a victory or defeat since I could easily win a diplomatic victory but have no interest in doing so. If I continued to play the game I would probably have tried to make more wars and lost the game but learnt something from it.

 

[Solyaris]

Retired in 900AD when Brennius attacked with a large SOD. Was going for culture, and probably would have won, but I didn't pay attention and forgot to ask for 5G -> 10turn peace the turn before he attacked. Stupid mistake.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Hey, good to see you again bcool, and welcome to the new kids! As usual I didn't expand as quickly as I should have, particularly with the safe backyard DS gave us to play in, and as usual put more emphasis on production over research than I should have, but it worked out OK. I got the GLH and Colossus and delayed Astronomy as long as possible to preserve the Colossus benefitsm which were pretty big on this map. I was able to Liberalize Steel, captured that Chinese city sitting on MY iron, upgraded all my trebs to cannon, and landed a pile of troops on Mao's mainland. One turn before I was ready to capture a city he got Rifling and upgraded his longbows. D'oh. Taking his hill city was a little tougher but I had still had plenty of units and ferried in more to continue my advance. Then Monte DoW'd me and parked a stack of 70+ units on a hill next to the city I'd just captured. I had about 30, including several Mguns that I'd upgraded from Guerilla II grens. What to do? Monte wanted that city for peace but leaving his stack untouched would just be saving up trouble for later. I let it ride and he wiped out my entire army, losing 40-something of his. I licked my wounds and plotted revenge, staying in a phony war until I was ready to go after Mao again, then gave Monte Liberalism to keep him off my back for 10 turns. This time I was able to take enough cities to get Mao to capitulate and that turned the tide.

Fred was behind in tech and cap'd after losing a few cities. Brennus was quite far ahead of me so I turned to Charlie next. After he cap'd I attacked Brennus. I took about 7 of his 13 cities (4 or so of which he'd captured from Fred) and was stretched pretty thin, while Brennus had just gotten mobile artillery. He had some tanks and planes, too, but I'd pillaged his offshore oil platform early on. I was about to call a ceasefire to regroup but managed to barely take one more city and he cap'd.

My original intention was to cap everybody but wars take soooo long and I had been elected UN Sec Gen after Joao built the UN. Just one city from Monte would give me enough votes for a win, and both Joao and Monte were cranking out spaceship parts, so I took the faster and safer path, captured 3 Aztec cities, and called a vote.

Thanks for the game, DS! If you'd switched our starting position with any of the AI I'm sure I woul d have died early. Oh, and since we're sharing misclicks and brain farts, I whipped a bunch of banks so I could build Wall Street as the HQ for Mining Inc, which I had just incorporated in my capital, and then realized that my cap already had 2 nat'l wonders. As a result I didn't spread Mining very far because of the maintenance costs, only to those cities with big hammer multipliers where it was really worth it.

 

[ShiVvV]

Yes, exactly the same date as bcool's game . There were other striking similarities as well, e.g., both of us taking Constitution as our Lib tech. I am certainly no deity-level player, but, provided you got TGLHouse (1320BC) in this game, it was surprisingly easy to stay competitive or even ahead in tech.

I settled 2N on the plains (Al) hill which turned out to be non-coastal AND killed a potential desert-fish city eastwestwards . I ended up moving this capital to a better cottage spot later.

I won Lib in 780AD (--> Constitution for Rep) and finished Internet in 1680AD. Mining, Inc. was incorporated in 1320AD, Sid's Sushi in 1430AD. Apollo finished in 1630AD (T237) and took me 40 turns to complete all the spaceship parts. Ended up with 13 cities all peacefully built with no land-unit wars the entire game. Monty and I had a rather short destroyer naval skirmish that lasted 15 turns or so--the only fighting I encountered during this game.

With the map setup allowing us to be 'relatively' safe from the AIs until Astro/Combustion, and the strong trade route economy available via TGLHouse, pursuing either Culture or Space seemed like do-able victory types. I dislike the Culture route and play way too many Diplo-type games, so Space it was. Lacking horses for Cuirs, marble/stone for wonders and eventually uranium certainly helped 'focus' a Space victory strategy .

Speaking of diplo...the religious alignments for much of game were Buddhist (Monty, Mao) versus the rest of us Hindus (founded by Brennus). It took a good while for me to finally get Hinduism spread to me (never got Buddhism) and Brennus built the AP. Brennus and Freddie were the best techers and Brennus had the most land. Mao was the most dangerous threat (nearby and declares at pleased) so my strategy was to keep Mao and Monty chasing other war targets which was much easier to do since we weren't land targets. Monty and Joao had a forever-war and I was able to bribe fellow Hindus to war against Mao with tech on two separate occasions. Running OrgRel once I had Hinduism helped tons keeping Brennus at Friendly. I even ran some defensive pacts late in game with Brennus when it was diplo-safe to do so.

Eventually Brennus ended up with Joao and a now-Hindu Mao as vassals and Freddie even vassalled Monty ! Sushi helped me keep my pop large enough to compete for control of AP/UN and to ban nukes (altho Charlie did hit Monty with at least one prior). Basically I just tried to get off the planet before a cautious towards me Mao broke free of Brennus--which he could have done for a very long time--and nuked me to the stone age.

A fun game, DS--thanks for the map. Oh, almost forgot, that 1F2C coastal-jungle tile on NE of our home landmass was too weird !

Zoomed out pic of end screen attached.

 

[Jastrow]

I managed to find time to finish, and ended up with a decent space ship date.

As excpected from the first spoiler, Oxford came around turn 145. AI kept being useful trade partners, and by T150, I had been able to trade for Engineering, Optics, (Monarchy), Feudalism, Nationalism, Astro and Replaceable parts.

I was able to lib Biology on the way to Sushi, and incorperate it on T156 (~920 AD) followed by Mining inc on T171 (~1110 AD), and spread both to my 15 cities.

Appolo came in around T222 (~1560), and I started building the ship, and launch (With all parts, but only one engine) on turn 245 (~1675) I think (I dont have exact notes, but it should be within a turn or two of that, meaning a T257 (1735) landing)

 

[ShiVvV]

Congrats, Jastrow--nice job libbing Biology (and you were concerned earlier that libbing SciMeth might be a bridge too far) .

It appears that my SpaceRace tech path/parts construction micro might need some streamlining.

Jastrow's game--> Apollo T222, launch (all parts but one engine) T245--so ~23 turns for building ship.​

My game--> Apollo T237, launch w/all parts T277--so 40 turns spent building.​

Since we both had Mining and I'm assuming similar tile improvement conversions in part-production cities, we probably had roughly similar hammer capacity. (I did probably leave the towns in my cap for too long instead of workshopping them though). And I'm pretty sure we were both running US. So, how the heck did ya finish the parts in roughly half the time I did??? (Don't feel obliged to reveal any trade secrets however ).

Do you remember how long the travel time was with just the one engine btw? Was it 15 turns?

 

[Jastrow]

I dont particularly remember the travel time, but I am 99% sure it is 10 turns default, and +2 turns for each missing part, so with an engine missing it should be 12. I think that is what it was...

Yeah, I was surprised to be able to lib Bio, and indeed, with some risk, I might have gotten Medicine, but some AI were getting close, so it was not safe. I am very surprised how slow the Diety AI were this game??

I was running Rep for much of the built. Switch to US only for the final 3 turns when I was done with research. I never switched out of cottages in the cap. I was running a golden age for the final 3 turns, so a US cottage in GA in Beuro-capital was producing 3H each for the final part.

12 cities were involved in building the ship. All these had MinInc (for 7 or 8 hammers), factories and cold plants, and research labs.

10 cities built one part each needing between 6 and 15 turns for this. Those needing 15 of course started on earlier parts.
The capital built a cassing, organied for max overflow, so that one research was done, this overflow would go into life support. This allowed me to finish Life support in 3 turns after Eco was researched

IW-city, which was the city on the main island, in the SW corner, had time to build the 3 heavy pieces. (Stassis, Docking, Engine... It also built appolo of course). It was producing about 210 hpt for pieces without the resoure, and 270 with. This means:

Engine 7.5 turns
Docking 7.5 turns
Stassis 6

Total = 23

There was no reasonable city to build another engine. If I remember rightly, it would have added 4 turns to the launch date, but maybe it was only 3.

Built time was research limited. I could have knock a couple of turns off building if the research techs had beed done in time.

Other than the 3 pre-builds, the other 12 parts finished on the turn of Launch.

My tech path was: Satelite, Composit, Computer, Fibre-Opt, Fusion, Eco. 3 or 4 scientists were bulbed in this tech period, to cut 2 or 3 turns of the research time.

 

[ShiVvV]

Thanks for the detailed answer, Jastrow.
I'm thinking the problem for me was tech path and not even considering setting up good overflow for big, non-resource boosted parts. I know for a fact that I built some labs in the southern island cities that never even built a spaceship part--these cities should've just built wealth/research instead. The only cities that built parts were the 6-7 cities on the main landmass.

I wanted that final golden age but I unfortunately got a duplicate GP. I ended up settling 2 GEs in good hammer cities late game.

I have a save from just before Apollo completion (so will go back and try to optimize things) and will do some digging around forum for SpaceRace info. I seem to recall that a HoF game by WastinTime has some good detail/advice specifically about optimizing Space.

Thanks again and gg.

 

[c00per]

3rd try at deity. Expected more/less cruel defeat or a loss sooner/later. But it turned into unbelievable space race victory in 1838 AD!

So I have to ask DS, was this really deity? Because this felt more like a monarch or emperor at most. Of course everything in this map was made as comfortable and easy for peaceful builders as possible. Separated from cruel AIs, unlimited peaceful expansion (though that mountain was annoying!), decent land, plenty of resources and so on. But what I can't understand is why AIs were so slow at research (or maybe I was that fast? ) Most of them were constantly at war with Monty and Brennus, so that might be it. Due to AP votes to declare on infidels I was forced to declare on them as well. During our "intensive" wars I lost 2 caravels and 1 ironclad at 90% odds. That's all

I guess that TGLH and Colossus on this watery map really made it easy. Medicine from Liberalism (quite a long shot at deity) helped as well. Pity that I messed up like Xcalibrator and incorporated Sushi in a city without Wall Street. Mining Inc. came very late because I wasn't able to get GE for a long time. I also was short on 5th golden age to get a better date.

What I learned from this game - it's better to build only 1 engine for 2 additional turns if you have only 1 good production city (forgot/didn't know that mission success doesn't suffer from missing engine).

Anyway, thank you, oh glorious and kindhearted DynamicSpirit, for making this deity so easy. My CIV career is now complete and I'll be able to brag to everyone that deity difficulty is no challange for me at all

Spoiler :

"Muhahahahaha. Good luck, sucker" my @ss

BTW, near the end of the game, Uranium popped in capital's BFC plains hill. Since I had no use for it, traded to my buddy Mao for some corporation resources and gold

Oh, almost forgot, that 1F2C coastal-jungle tile on NE of our home landmass was too weird !

Yeah, what's up with that tile?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

3rd try at deity. Expected more/less cruel defeat or a loss sooner/later. But it turned into unbelievable space race victory in 1838 AD!

So I have to ask DS, was this really deity? Because this felt more like a monarch or emperor at most. Of course everything in this map was made as comfortable and easy for peaceful builders as possible. Separated from cruel AIs, unlimited peaceful expansion (though that mountain was annoying!), decent land, plenty of resources and so on. But what I can't understand is why AIs were so slow at research (or maybe I was that fast? ) Most of them were constantly at war with Monty and Brennus, so that might be it. Due to AP votes to declare on infidels I was forced to declare on them as well. During our "intensive" wars I lost 2 caravels and 1 ironclad at 90% odds. That's all

Yes, it was really deity. As far as I recall, the map generator produced a map with everyone on one big continent, but with the player stuck out on a peninsula, connected to the mainland only by a couple of desert tiles. I decided to give you all a decent chance by deleting the desert tiles, turning your area into an island, and then added a few more islands and resources to give you space to expand if you wished to do so without going to war - which obviously made it a bit easier for you to play. I didn't edit the main continent with the AI on at all. So I wasn't expecting the AI to tech slower than normal, and don't know why that happened. But I would suspect it was a case of, everyone on the same continent with deity-level aggression would have lead to a lot of wars.

 

[Jastrow]

@Cooper

When did you lib Medicine? I am surprised you were able to get Medicine from lib, but launhed in the 19th Centuray.

 

[c00per]

Yes, it was really deity. As far as I recall, the map generator produced a map with everyone on one big continent, but with the player stuck out on a peninsula, connected to the mainland only by a couple of desert tiles. I decided to give you all a decent chance by deleting the desert tiles, turning your area into an island, and then added a few more islands and resources to give you space to expand if you wished to do so without going to war - which obviously made it a bit easier for you to play.

That was very kind of you. Thanks again for the map

When did you lib Medicine? I am surprised you were able to get Medicine from lib, but launhed in the 19th Centuray.

T180 (1200 AD). I guess that's a pretty bad date because you got Sushi 24 turns earlier by libing Biology. And I got Mining Inc. only in T211 (1505 AD) - that's 40! turns later than you.
Completed Apollo in T239 (1645 AD), launched with all parts in T279 (1818 AD) - that's 40 turns, just like in ShiVvV's game, only 2 turns later.
The reason I launched so late is very simple - I suck at CIV
BTW, did you build that wonder (MoM?) that gives 50% longer GA and how many GAs did you have?