BOTM 90 (Shaka) Final Spoiler

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 90 (Shaka) - Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Did you win?

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[marbe166]

Those barbs! Gah! Soon after I had founded my second city I was completely swamped by Barb Warriors and later Archers and instead of building offensive and expansive units I had to build Archers to be able to survive. That hampered my development considerably so I was behind in tech. Not good when you consider the warmongering neighbours we were dealt.

Asoka had ran away with most of the wonders, and I realised that if I was going to get this game I was going to have to capture Delhi. So, I set of in that direction with about 10 cats, 6 Swords, some Axes, Impis and Horse Archers. I aimed directly for Delhi and tried to ignore the two Indian cities in between. However, the Indian units in and around those cities were not in ignore mode, so by the time I reached Delhi it was with a crippled force, and the attack on Delhi failed. I was able to make peace with Asoka, but she was ahead in tech, and so were most of the others. At one stage there were three teams ganging up on me; Hannibal with his vassal Alexander (Alex I was on good terms with), Huanya Capac (who also liked me) and his vassal Tokugawa, and Asoka and her vassal Isabella. Asoka and Isabella declared on me soon again, and from then on it was a lost battle for survival, Hannibal declared and took one of my cities, just to be thwarted into peace by the AP immediately after. Towards the end I managed to take and raze one of Asoka's cities, but all the survival wars meant no teching so I fell behind and the final few turns I was at war with everyone and was conquered.

 

[High King J.J.]

Late religious victory.
I managed not to found any religions, a considerable feat for me. Asoka built Jewish AP and I soon adopted that faith. Asoka helped by spreading it for me. After the GWall barbs weren't even the nuisance they were before but I ended up having far too many Gspies which I used to steal techs from Hannibal and Asoka. That rescued my abysmal tech rate after I expanded as far as I peacefully could.
Barbs took Madrid for a long while and also a holy city at Hannibal/Asoka border. I took that city and managed to keep it until the end. First threat was Toku, I had to shift my peace economy to war. Also used some golden ages to change civics and boost production. After Toku finally vassaled he had only 2 cities. Then Alex attacked and he was left with 4 cities as a vassal. HC was plotting war and I even changed to Hindu at his demand to keep peace but he attacked anyway. He had grenadiers at the time, I had riflemen. By attacking his stack and staying on forested hills I managed to reduce his initial stack of doom and even took a border city after a mis-click sent a knight to attack it unintentionally. My vassals suffered some but so what. When HC agreed to talk he already offered me a city to make peace. Instead I kept pumping riflemen and soon HC offered capitulation. By that time I finally had the needed AP votes and while waiting for the vote Hannibal vassaled to Asoka who was the AP rival in the vote. However I managed to keep Isabella happier than Asoka did and her votes made the difference. Isabella still would not even trade maps, saying they just don't like us enough.
Somewhat challenging for a prince level game. Mapmaker.
Maybe I win a shield or something.

 

[WelshGandalf]

1745AD diplomatic victory.

Continuing from my first post.... Catapults came online so I was able to slowly capture the Indian cities. I had such a large force from the initial failed assault that only about a third of my empires were on the war effort whilst the rest focussed on the economy, which was now getting somewhere thanks to the cap increasing, due to Calendar, and later forges.

As the last Indian cities were being taken I noticed that 3 of the other 5 empires were Jewish - and that I held the Jewish holy city. It looked to me that a peaceful diplomatic victory was possible from here. So I converted to Judaism and spread the religion as much as I could.

I now had 14 or 15 cities, including a few ex-barbarian ones, and was accelerating away in the science race. Things were looking good, but the peaceful diplomatic path wasn't looking so great. Of the 3 other Jewish nations, the Carthaginians were the 2nd most populous nation in the world - and hence would be my rivals in the voting - and one of the others (Greek) converted to Hinduism and declared war on the other Jewish nation - the Spanish. At least I could count on the Spanish vote - I think relations with them got to around +19 by the end of the game.

I made a beeline for Mass Media, though I got distracted by DR (The Spanish were researching it, I didn't want them switching religion), Nationalism (for the Taj) and Steel (for cannons & Ironworks to build the UN faster). I took Electricity with Liberalism in 1500AD.

Whilst this was going on, the Japanese declared war on me and sent a feeble stack my way. So I got a bit of an army together - some old axe/sword vets, a few trebs (later, cannons) and some muskets - and went at him. He was ready to capitulate after I took 2 cities, but I wanted some proper revenge so I took 4. I also brokered a peace between the Greeks and Spanish, after which the Spanish peace-vassaled to me.

I wanted to try and win victory on the first UN vote, so set about maximizing my votes by increasing my own population. Farms were build, biology researched, new rather useless cities were built. Then I spawned a great engineer - so the UN was built 10 turns quicker than it might otherwise have been. The numbers were looking close. I declared war on Greece and took 2 cities on the turns leading up to the vote. Would I have enough votes to win first time round....?

 

[evil_spock]

Ahoy there. I'm back by unpopular demand. 275 BC conquest. Boom shakalaka.

 

[Kennigit]

Super late space race.

Because of no copper or anything didn't really want to go to war early. I also am really bad at any true early game wars, generally only feel comfortable with macemen + catapults (or swordsmen/axemen and catapults). I never can get just axemen and chariots to work well.

Barbs were no problem, had mostly effective fog busting (actually, I think I hooked up horses right when axemen showed up, so a chariot or two kept me safe). I did a silly thing and got the gold/silver/floodplains/sheep to the east as second and third cities. Probably a bit far away when there were fine spots nearby.

So blazed through the game and eventually--though quite late--tokugawa was of course happy to declare war on me. He was actually the weakest civ in my game. Everyone else seemed to be a vassal of Hannibal at the time and a few turns after that the entire world declared war on me.

However, it was right when I got industrialism and so I just rolled over everyone with tanks. I should look at how many calvary and cuirassier I killed.

Would have won with domination but I wanted a space race so I actually gifted back 2 cities to avoid the land area amount lol. Think I had ~75% of world pop and within 1% of the domination land requirement.

 

[lymond]

Ahoy there. I'm back by unpopular demand. 275 BC conquest. Boom shakalaka.

hey evil, yeah conquest was quite easy on this map. The Ais were terribly nerfed. I kinda wished I just went for that instead of trying for a cow. Heck, after taking out Hanny, Asoka, Inca and Alex - easily - I ran up some HAs to look for Izzy. She just had one city..ha (edit: wait..forgot she settled a new city right went I got there so I waited for it to grow to 2) I estimated BCs victory at that stage.

Instead, I pushed for a milky domination in hopes of getting a cow. Unfortunately, I once again went over the land limit far far far too early. At that turn I knew a border would pop - and I expected I'd have to gift cities to Toku (only AI I left alive but PiA getting to Friendly) - but didn't think it would put me over that turn...ugh. I had a lot of wonder about to complete as well including Taj. I had planned on going to Cereal Mills and riding that out a bit.

Asoka and her

Asoka is a

anyway, I recommend hitting the Strategy & Tips forum a bit. Losing on this map should just not happen

 

[greatbeyond]

Losing on this map should just not happen

The attached screen shot should tell you how losing on this map could happen. This occurred as my stack of Archers were getting ready to eliminate Hannibal. Instead he had to be allowed to live so I could deal with the barbs. Ultimately he vassaled to Asoka, ensuring his survival to the end.

This also eliminated the city where I was close to completing the Great Wall. Instead someone else did and then the Flood (oops, I mean Barbs!) became relentless.

While it may not have been an immediate game killer, the cumulative effect was what did it. I managed to struggle slowly gaining ground but ended up losing a space race to Asoka, who apparently because of his location didn't suffer as much from the Barb swarms.

 

[Minou]

Cultural Victory in 1550AD

My three Legendary cities were the capital, the Floodplain/Silver/Sheep site and a GP Farm city on the south coast with 2xClam and 2xCorn. Most of the game was peaceful, with occasional ill-planned attacks by AIs, which benefited my by giving me their cities with needed religions. At the end I regretted using the GP farm as a Legendary city since it was slowest by far, and also felt I should have worked on cottages earlier in the game in the capital.

Not sure, but think I generated 10 Great Artists by the end, one of which joined an extra Great Priest for a Golden Age, plus one Great Engineer from Pyramid GP pollution who I used to build a random late Colossus. The Legendary cities each had 6 or 7 cathedrals by the end and I was able to easily keep culture slider at 100% by pillaging the AIs and building Wealth.

I'm interested in the very early Conquest strategy - how long did the AIs have Warriors guarding their cities?

 

[lymond]

... as my stack of Archers

sorry, but wha?! Seriously though, if ..and I say if...you want to improve your game I encourage you not to run around with stacks of archers or even tech Archery for that matter. If you want TGW, then go for it. On this level you can get your food and BW then Masonry and have TGW by circa 2000BC or earlier. (in my case 2200BC - not one barb entered my borders) TGW can often be the first wonder built on any level and even on Prince there is a chance it can go fairly early...so if you want it, prioritize it. I recommend spending some time over in S&T to pick up some pointers...if you want to improve, that is.

(anyway, Asoka and Hanny served as my worker farms...just using my initial warrior, and had not much of anything going before I erased them early)

I'm surprised seeing folks run around with axes and catapults when there were horses right there.

 

[evil_spock]

Cultural Victory in 1550AD
I'm interested in the very early Conquest strategy - how long did the AIs have Warriors guarding their cities?

In my game it was 275 BC and Izzy still had her warriors and nothing else. Had I known this, I could have won a few turns earlier. Everyone else had archers though.

There wasn't much of a strategy to be honest. The standard "beeline to horse archers, get enough workers for chopping and build a few squads" tactics worked well enough. Maybe the only nonstandard thing was reserving a few workers for building massive roads around the globe just to get reinforcements across the harsh eastern terrain faster. Getting the great wall from Asoka did not hurt either .

 

[greatbeyond]

Lymond

The biggest point I was trying to get some empathy on was the victory of a Barb warrior over my archer at 99.8 odds! Sometimes I don't know how the rng can get it so wrong. Seven successive strikes by the Barb warrior, omg..

yes it was late for TGW but it was almost done. Barbs were not a problem up to that point. I was thinking to expand by taking AI cities instead of building my own, thus after teching BW and finding it far across the map, I went with IW and AH.

evil_spock
275BC!! I can't wait to see how you accomplished it.

 

[lymond]

empathy..

there's no empathy, great, because it was irrelevant to your loss. We all lose to BS odds all the time..it's part of the game. (attacking Hanny with Archers in 1400BC seemed like a quixotic effort at best anyway)

As for TGW, "almost" is the same as nothing. You either go for it or ignore, spawnbust, and like evil did, capture it.

What I see with your game, and in other write ups, is a fairly significant skill gap in your play. So I'm trying to help if you want.

Archery is a bad tech in almost every situation, except after HBR for HAs

You mentioned BW not revealing Copper so you "went with IW and AH". First problem is that AH should be your first tech of the game if you settled next to the pigs. This is absolute. As for IW, it's a bad tech in most games and very much a last resort. It's something you trade for later. You wasted a very considerable about of turns teching stuff you should not tech and I don't think you yet realize how catastrophic that is in this game. So these are very bad plays and the reason you struggle with the game and lose a Space Race on Prince. Just even a few small changes to your game and you will destroy Prince level AI (and barbs)

cheers

another little hint: Horsies rule CivIV (they also run away from barbs )

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The biggest point I was trying to get some empathy on was the victory of a Barb warrior over my archer at 99.8 odds! Sometimes I don't know how the rng can get it so wrong.

I can offer you lots of sympathy and empathy, and well done for getting through the game and thanks for writing it up.

But I don't think the RNG would have got it wrong. 99.8% odds means a 0.2% chance of losing - so with those odds, your archer will lose once every 500 times. I would say when I play a full game, there will typically be many hundreds of battles. More than enough battles for me to actually sometimes see my units losing at >99% odds.

 

[greatbeyond]

At last, moral support! I may yet play again..

 

[Solyaris]

Very late (1500 something) diplomatic vicotory. Was heading for space, and probably would have gotten a decent date, but due to exams I had to rush for something easy, so diplomatic it is =) 170k points

 

[whb]

Late conquest, with the last vassal also putting me over the domination limit.

 

[Htadus]

Finally managed to complete a BTS game in a long while. I was aiming to score higher than my current highest of 201k points and was doing well until accidently went over the domination limit well below the target. Oh well there is always next game.

I failed to build the GW and had a bit of issue with barb. Mainly loosing chariots to barb warriors with likely very low odds. But when Asoka build the Mids to go with the GW, I changed my plans.

My original plan was to take out useless Toku and expand fast toward Alex and Hanny but leave Asoka as a trade and tech stealing partner but that did not work out since I was planning to use the Mids and Rep to get to Bio fast. So instead of playing peaceful, I had to go into war mode by 1AD.

Cats, chariots and impi took out all but 1 of Asoka's cities and took him as a vassal, then it was Hanny's turn followed by Copac. Then I got greedy and dowed on Toku and accidentally hit domi. The score was going up by about 2-3k points each turn.

Thank you for the cool map DS. This was one of my favorite in a long time. Loved it for not being flat.