I was disappointed with this months BTS game. Everything was going to plan I had researched Mass Media in 1320AD, built United Nations in 1330AD (rushed in 1 turn with 2 great engineers). I also had control over the votes, providing that I could gift the UN city to an insignificant civ, thus allowing the second biggest civ to vote for me.
But there seemed to be a glitch in the game (or a game feature) that ruined my attempt for fast victory. On the turn I built UN, the Secretary General vote showed up and the two choices were between me and Charlemagne (2 nd biggest popn). On this same turn I gifted the city to Hatty (who had zero cities at this stage and accepted the worthless UN city). I didnt really know what I should have done; should I have waited one extra turn before gifting the UN to Hatty? I was kind of hoping I could gift the UN city away before the first vote showed up.
Anyway, there was never any result from the first vote. Since Hatty now owned the UN and I had the biggest popn, I can only assume that the initial voting between me and Charlemagne was void. I had to wait something like 30 turns before any UN option came up again, after which I was promptly voted Secretary General and then claimed a Diplomatic Victory in the very next voting phase in 1605AD (39 TURNS AFTER I BUILT THE UNITED NATIONS! waah).
Oh well.
It was still a fun game. I really like the Philosophical trait for diplomatic victory and we had to make some hard choices about expansion and just how much combat would be beneficial.
jesusin, challenger. Goal: fastest religious victory (after having started going for domination and having miserably failed). Result: 860AD Religious Victory.
At 1AD I had built the AP, spread the religion to 3 of my cities and none of AI cities. Everybody in annoyed with me except OCC Darius, who will never be better than Furious.
Fortunately the first 3 religions were founded by 3 different AI. All the non-founders were hindu, like Musa.
At 25AD Darius decides to volunteer as Vassal of Musa and he accepts, dowing me as a consequence. I know there are people that tdislike this type of thing. It is the first time it happens to me. I think it was all my fault:
- Musa had researched Feudalism and I knew.
- I hadnt researched Fuedalism, so no option for Darius to be my Vassal.
- I was continuously at war with Darius (I was trying to avoid the -1 dowing on a friend after FC and new dow).
- Musa was as surprised to be at war as me. He wasnt prepared and it took him 500 years to send his first stack.
Infesting Pacal and Hat was easy, years of scratching their backs gave me OB. She was small and he was a religion founder, so not to much afraid of them spreading my religion to more cities. I always chose the hammerless city to infect, just in case.
Charlem was the next one, since he was a religion founder too. A bit of resource trading and a tech, OB, done.
Then 4 Cats, 4 dogs, 1 Swo and 1 Cha failed to take the 3 Darius lbs. The same unit survived again. And with a GG to go with it. Next turn it was 4.0 and +160%, a Cat and a Dog died without taking a single HP, so I attacked no more. Stop and think. There is no hope Darius will give me OB. So I have to either take that city or gift him Persepolis. If I take the grrrr city, I have to be careful and not raze it, since Musa has gifted him Alpha and he may have a spy, and since this is complete kills.
Darius decides to liberate from Musa just when Musas stack arrived, so I gave him a tech for peace (I was researching seafare techs in order to always have something to trade away). I revolted to hindu, and some turns later he traded OB and was infested.
Being hindu also helped with Hammu, who had joined the war against me, probably because of Musas bribing. Killing 1 of his units, pillaging 1 improvement and running away from him was enough for him to want peace.
Once Darius was no longer Musas vassal, probably the best option would have been researching Feudalism myself and taking him as a vassal in order to infest his city. I rebuilt my army, send a million Swords and some thousand other units as backup and 2 Christian missionaries. I finally took the city, spread APs religion and traded peace with Darius surviving spy, offering him his city back. My people cried and secretly started to plan my murdering, how did I dare to give the city back, after all the blood it had cost us?!
It was too late, though, the next AP cycle I chose Diplo Victory (revolting to hindu had the side effect of putting me under the 75% threshold), revolted back to Christianity the same turn, doubling my votes from 63.5% to 78.5%. Since Sitting Bull is not spiritual, I had not the option to grow another 3pop and to complete the HG the very same turn. The following turn I won, being the only one to vote for me. Cheesy, I know. I fulfilled my goal of winning the game and saving RL time I had set when my Domination plan crumbled.
I had great fun. If I had gone for AP from the beginning, I would have spread the religion before building the AP in order to avoid the risk of the AI spreading it internally. And I would have been nice to everyone to easily have OB. I would have been much more boring, though. A BC victory shouldnt be a surprise.
BTS thing I have learned:
1.- If you press capital letters key and then move your unit, you can then press the cancel icon and the unit will be ready for orders. This is very useful to check how long a chop would take, to what city the lumber would go, etc. BUT, if you do this while the game is in pause, the cancel icon wont appear and no matter what you do, the unit will move there when you press pause again.
2.- You cant press control-A inside a city to order all the workers to finish their assigned tasks.
3.- Sometimes cities are connected through river although you dont have fishing. It is very strange and it is related to your borders.
4.- When they catch your spy, they know it is you, and you take a diplo penalty. When you catch their spy, you dont know its nationality (?).
5.- When your spy performs a mission, spyPoints are substracted for the leader you were spying. So you should direct your spyPoints towards the civ you plan to use your spy on.
6.- It is very sad that the choosing of a resolution and the counting of the votes dont happen the same turn. It opens up all kinds of dirty tricks to avoid the new 75% limit rule.
7.- The AP is bugged. All the 75% thing about the Victory resolution works nicely (see the previous point, anyway). But all others resolutions should be there, 75% or not. Even when you are under 75%, they are not offered. In the spoiler you will find my claim of the bug to DynamicSpirit.
Spoiler:
Hi DynamicSpirit:
I have just submitted BOTM2. I have won a religious victory.
I think that the AP is not working as it should. I understand the AP is a new feature for all of us, but I think I am quite knowledgeable about it.
Please share this info with ainwood, AlanH and Denniz (if they are not playing BOTM2) if you think it appropriate, since I am not sure if the problems comes from the patch or comes from the HOF MOD.
I'd like to share this info with the whole community, but I can't do that as the games are still open.
We all know that someone has to build the AP for the resolutions to be available. I built the AP when I had Christianism as my state religion.
We all know that the "Diplo Victory resolution" only is offered when every surviving civ in the game has at least 1 city with the AP religion in it. In my game this was achieved in 760AD, to all civs, no civ was cityless or dead.
We all know the last patch added a "no Diplo Victory Resolution" when you have the votes to win by yourself. This means that when you have more than 75% of the votes (full members count couble, etc) the Diplo Victory resolution won't appear as an option.
We all know that 1AP resident election is held, then 3 resolutions are voted every (9)/10 turns, then new AP resident elections are held (14)/15 turns later.
Ok, what happened in my game:
-AP built 25BC, immediate election of AP resident, as only civ with Christian cities I am autoelected. I am over 75% of the votes (100% in fact).
-Following turn in F8-Members I appear as AP resident.
-10 turns later no list of possible resolutions to pass are offered, nothing happens. I am at war with an infidel, so at least the "peace" resolution should have been offered.
- 5 turns later (15 since AP building) new resident elections are held. There are 4 civs voting now. I am elected AP resident. I am still over the 75% limit.
-10 turns later nothing happens. Why? I can't understand.
- I revolt to another religion. I am still over the 75% limit.
- 5 turns later (30 since AP building) new resident elections are held. 5 civs voting now. I spread the religion to a 6th this turn. I am still over the 75% limit.
-The following turn I am elected AP resident, 6 civs have voted. I am starting to suspect that the 75% rule affects not only "diplo victory resolutions" but just all resolutions! I am now under the 75% limit.
- 10 turns after the last election, I am offered a list of resolutions consisting on 2: "Diplo Victory" or "None". I am under the 75% limit. I revolt back to Christianity. I am over the 75% limit now.
I understand not being able to choose "war resolution" or "peace resolution", since the world was at peace. Why ain't I offered the "OB resolution", when Musa and Charlemagne have not OB between them? Why ain't I offered the "give city to owner" when Persepolis (in my hands) could have been given back to Darius, for example?
- The following turn I win the elections and the game.
All in all, the "Victory resolution" option worked as expected, but no other resolution was offered in the whole game. There were not reasons for this to happen.
If you read DaVinci's BOTM1 last spoiler you will find the same happened to him.
I will get my own spoiler up later tonight so we can compare better but will tell you that you beat me to the UN but I got done earlier in 1580. In my game I eventually got nervous that I would have to gift the UN away and having never done that I world buildered it to test and the game behaved the same way, after gifting the city there are no resolutions until the next election. I don't know if it is intended or a bug but it seems consistent.
I'm very curious about how much land you took from the neighbors, how early you took it, how many great people you produced and what they were used for.
after gifting the city there are no resolutions until the next election. I don't know if it is intended or a bug but it seems consistent. For me there wasn't even any results from the first vote... everything to do with the UN just went quiet for over 25 turns.
I'm very curious about how much land you took from the neighbors, how early you took it, how many great people you produced and what they were used for.
Unfortunately I didn't have my autolog on for this game.
I took all of Hatty's cities, I think I started the war around 500BC with swords and later added some cats/elephants. Mansa declared on me around 1300AD and took one of my northeastern cities that used to be Egyptian. I had perfect friendly records with Charlemagne, Pacal and Hammurabi (sp?).
For Great People, I think was: GE (Pyramids), GS (Academy in the wrong city), then I had 2 GE's both saved for rushing UN, and 7 or 8 GS's (one free from Physics). I used 3 GS's on Physics, 3 GS's on Electricity and then liberalism->radio slingshot. I think the 1 or 2 other GS's helped bulb either Astro/Education/Printing Press - I can't remember.
Cultural loss to Mali. First time I've seen that. I was a dozen turns or so away from Spaceship victory in the mid-1900s. I didn't build the UN, but had enough territory, population and friends that I was consistently elected. I was never offered the chance for a diplomatic victory. Anyone know why?
Cultural loss to Mali. First time I've seen that. I was a dozen turns or so away from Spaceship victory in the mid-1900s. I didn't build the UN, but had enough territory, population and friends that I was consistently elected. I was never offered the chance for a diplomatic victory. Anyone know why?
I decided to do challenger. Everything was going good until around printing press area of the tech tree and i got a little behind.
Pascal declared on me and a few turns later Hammurabi did the same. I soundly thumped their invading forces for hundreds of years. I built up a small tech lead over those two, and a superior military force. Hammurabi gave me a lot for peace... but pascal had to pay. As my hordes of troops flooded across his border and got into striking distance of his first city..... mansa won a cultural victory. ARGH!
@Markus5 and dfi666: Wow! I'm sure gonna be interested to see your saves - first time I've heard of the AI actually winning a cultural victory (though I'd heard it was possible in BtS).
Out of interest, was it totally out of the blue? Did the victory conditions screen warn you that a Mansa cultural victory was imminent (by listing the top 3 cultural cities)?
Looking at the map closer I notice it hasn't taken long for the evilness of being an admin to catch on to DS.
He set up a trap to get people to go SW with 2 impossibly close civs ready to take all the good land if you go that way. And even if you head to the good land first, those close civs both have far superior early UUs to ours with access to their horses, and some of their best tiles which they would improve first are farther away from us.
Actually, I wasn't aiming to set a trap. I don't consider that rewarding what looks to a skilled player like the best choice with very bad luck would be fair (though I may do it in another game, after all, if I allow my reasoning to become predictable, that in itself could spoil future GOTMs! )
Rather, I'm trying to make sure GOTMs are unique in some way, and I thought starting on tundra would both make an unusual twist. I also want to make sure people are presented with interesting/challenging decisions to make, and I guessed that having a choice between a viable but not outstanding city site and going exploring would make for an interesting discussion. I wasn't expecting many people to opt to settle on tundra, I guessed most people would head for the hills but thought it'd provoke a nice discussion - which it did! (but for people who didn't want to risk exploring, I tried to make sure the tundra site was viable - hence the copper). I slightly boobed by not noticing two of the hills were plains - they were supposed to be all grassland, which would've given a less obvious choice of which hill to go to (And you'll notice that resources and good city sites were visible from any of the hills - I didn't want to penalize people for randomly choosing an 'unlucky' hill). But of course with the plains and river, basically everyone and his dog went for the middle plains hill anyway.
The UU and opponents were deliberate choices too. Being one of the first BOTMs I wanted to give people a chance to play with a one of the new leaders/civs. I also wanted an early unique unit and building so everyone would get a chance to use them, but - knowing that pangea games with early UU's can be very easy for fast-conquest players, I didn't want a UU that was too overpowered. Sitting Bill and the dog soldiers fitted the bull nicely And I made sure the AIs had early-ish UU's to help stop early conquest being too easy (You may notice some correlation between how late in the game each AI had his UU and how long it'd likely take you to get to them... )
Hatty was another choice designed to force a difficult decision. As several people noticed, her land was rather lush and out of the way of other AIs, giving a big advantage to conquering her, but of course her war chariots can make mincemeat of dog soldiers so war wouldn't be easy. At the same time Hatty is peaceful, so there's almost no risk that she'll declare war on you if you don't declare first or do something else to upset her - so you won't have to face those war chariots unless you choose to!
And yes, Hatty and Darius had most of their land away from you. That was done to try to encourage them to expand away from you, so you don't get hemmed in too quickly, but it had the side effect of making their best tiles and their horses less pillageable. (And you call me evil??? If I'd been evil, I'd have put the horses on their settler starting tiles ) (Now there's an idea for my next GOTM... hmmm....)
And you might notice I did give you iron in a site that was not exactly lush and therefore (I hope) a place the AI would be less likely to settle too early.
Of course, next time I might be a lot more evil.... Or I might not.... Who knows?
This was my first attempt at a GoTM and my first serious attempt on Monarch. I took the Challenger save since it was the first time on a difficulty level and I dont love Pangea or Sitting Bull.
Setting 1NE/1N on the Grassland hill to work more early river, loved the city though after finding all that wine and hills. 2nd city was Tundra Town. With all that early production, I went to war with Darius early, he had 3 settlements; I brought about 10 Dog soldiers and a couple Spearmen. Took all Darius' outlying settlements with little resistance. When I marched the stack to Persepolis, I took some crushing defeats, including 3 85% losses in a row with only 2 defenders left. He whipped a couple Immortals and destoyed my stack and counter attacked.
Was stuck in a stalemate war till at least 400AD. I did eventually end up vassalizing his random scout somewhere on the map in the Renaissance age. But at this point I was definately the weakest opponent on the map and was too far behind in tech.
I only survived the game due to being in a strong religious alliance with Hatty, Pacal and Hammurabi, against Mansa (got in an early war against Hatty/Hammurabi and lost alot of land) and Charlemagne. I saw Hatty ended up owning about the entire eastern 3rd of the map and was just a powerhouse. Her 3 cities went Legendary at about the same time (within 15 turns).
Long story short: An interesting match, but I played poorly and had some bad luck and got stomped.
@Markus5 and dfi666: Wow! I'm sure gonna be interested to see your saves - first time I've heard of the AI actually winning a cultural victory (though I'd heard it was possible in BtS).
Out of interest, was it totally out of the blue? Did the victory conditions screen warn you that a Mansa cultural victory was imminent (by listing the top 3 cultural cities)?
It was unexpected simply because I'd never seen it before. In retrospect, Mali went on a wonder-binge in the middle and late game, so it shouldn't have been a surprise. I didn't pay any attention to the victory conditions screen at all. There wasn't anything there that I would need during the race to a spaceship victory. However, there was lots of cultural pressure from the north and my cities were getting pushed back. I knew that was from the wonder-binging. I was more concerned about troops and techs and production. Everything was setting up for a middle-of-the-pack spaceship victory. And, "Mansa has won a Cultural Victory."
Around 500 AD Mansa Musa began having soldiers trickle into my lands a little NE of my capital. I figured the Buddhist founder was coming after Hatty who was the only civ not Buddhist besides me, I hadn't declared a religion yet, and Hatty was Hindu. As a matter of fact the main reason I opened borders with him was so he could spread it to me, I had kept closed borders with everyone before that because my 4 cities were guarded by a total of 5 warriors and to avoid people demanding I cancel trades. Mansa's army was about 6 cats and 3 longbows. In 600 AD when I have about 7 maces built all in my closest city to Hatty ready to declare war, I hear the war declaration sound and figure MM has declared on her when his face pops up on my screen showing that he has declared on me. This is followed by Hatty declaring on me, I assume being bought into the war by MM. I had been scouting Hatty with a spy, she was weakly defended and a surprise attack on her would make it very easy to grab some of her cities, now she would be building units non stop while I was busy eradicating MM's attack. To further add to my surprise, Mansa's units all transported near my NW city and would reach it the next turn.
I didn't have Feudalism at the time, wasn't in slavery, and all my maces were on my eastern front, leaving a lone warrior to defend against Mansa's stack. I made the decision to just abandon the city as opposed to upgrading to a mace or seeing if I could get a lucky roll and take out a cat or longbow being fully fortified and with 40% culture bonus. My biggest fear was that he would raze the city, but luckily he captured and kept it. I upgraded a couple of my warriors and moved the maces I had already built across my lands to take back the city a few turns later losing a couple of buildings and some GS points. He never sent any more units at me and I got peace with him after a little while.
My soldiers healed up and moved back east towards Hatty but she had now strengthened her defenses a lot and picked up Feudalism, probably in the deal to get her into the war, so taking some of her land was about to be way tougher than it should have been. Add in a couple of ugly 95% losses and taking 4 cities of hers, 1 autorazing as it was just founded, took way longer and more resources than it should have. She refused to become my vassal and war wariness was mounting so I gave her peace. A few turns later she became a vassal of Charlie who I had invited into the war for the relationship bonus and he never sent any units at her. What a great deal for him as I gave him a tech to get into the war and he ended up with a vassal without having to do anything, who says the AI is dumb? :laugh:
This war had slowed me down considerably instead of speeding me up as I had planned but I was still in a solid position having picked up some decent cities and having great relations with most of the world. That is until Mansa again decided to make things more difficult by vassalizing to Darius. A little while later Hatty declared independence from Charlie and in the same turn also vassalized to Darius. Darius had been the largest civ out there with me slowing Hatty at the beginning of the game he had expanded E/NE to a large sized empire. I had been fine with this figuring he would be my rival in the UN elections but thinking I would get everyone but his and Hatty's vote. Now I would also most likely lose Mansa's and I got scared he would convince someone else to also become his vassal meaning I would no longer have enough votes.
On the tech side of things I was 3 turns from completing Optics at 500AD and then burned 1 GS on Astronomy. I self researched all of Scientific Method so the GLibrary would stay in the game as long as possible, then used Liberalism (1080AD) to get Physics. Next I burned 3 GS on Electricity which researched most of it. It took forever to get Radio and then got Mass Media. I would have liked to use Liberalism on Radio but all my tech trading had me scared I might lose out to Mansa or Darius if I tried to go that deep. I had traded around techs enough that people, mostly Mansas, was getting to techs I could trade for, especially Democracy for universal suffrage.
My plan which didn't include any GE to build the UN, although I did try to get a couple of low chance ones without luck, meant I had picked out my best production city and left it with a number of trees to chop before buying the rest. This was the city NE of the capital with the 2 pigs and lots of hills and a number of trees, but because of Darius's vassals I became scared that I might have to gift the UN away after all. So I changed my mind and built it in Egypt's former capital with its iron, horses, 4 hills, and a few trees I could chop. I had also saved a couple of great people for a golden age to speed the build, raise more cash, and allow me to switch civics without anarchy. My city NE of the capital was around size 16 while Memphis was around size 7 so if I had to gift it I wanted to keep the additional pop. And at that time I wasn't even #2 in pop so I started building settlers to fill in the land wherever a food resource was available or could be borrowed for quick growth. I finished it off in spending around 5500 gold. I started racing towards Biology and preparing to farm over the few cottages I had, I got a final GS which I thought would go towards Biology but instead wanted to help with Fission so I just joined him to the capital. I went back and realized if I wanted a GS to help with Biology I would need to have picked up Chemistry before doing Electricity, I always seem to mess this up, and doubt it is worth worrying about.
The votes came in and as expected Hatty, Mansa, and Darius voted for Darius while the others voted for me. Checking the resolution screen showed I had just barely enough votes for the win but by the time I got to put the UN win up I could easily drop too low. I emphasized growth everywhere, shifting food resources to cities who could possible grow before the vote and was lucky that I did because the other voting clan also went up some. This gave me a diplomatic win in 1580 AD.
Looking back I think I could have gotten a faster date by not trying to play peacefully. And even with that goal I could have been faster by settling more cities early SE of the capital. The thing that slowed me down the most was the Mansa surprise war, I shouldn't have opened borders with him until I had more military, I didn't really need the religion bonus anyway I was just anxious to join in the Buddhist love everyone else was having. And lastly I should have made it so I could use Liberalism to get Radio which is just a pain to research by hand or even with a GA or 2. My decision on the UN is certainly questionable but I think the early tech advantage from CS instead of going for a GE comes out about even as it only took around 10 turns to chop/build/buy it and could have shaved 2 or 3 turns off that if I had built it where I originally intended.
I had a total of 10 Great Scientists, 2 of them were too late to lightbulb anything worthwhile though and got used for a golden age and 1 joined the capital really late. I also got an artist and merchant for golden ages.
A couple of pictures at the end
Spoiler:
I was close to #2 so I could gift the UN if needed, Biology would get me there and it was 3 turns away at the end.
I would prefer you didn't write this kind of posts.
I don't think there is a reason for you to justify your map-making decisions. The game setup was fantastic and we had a great time playing.
And more importantly, I don't want a BOTM03 pregame thread guessing the reasoning and the personal preferences of the mapmaker. I want people talking about objective facts and reasoned decisions.
I had a total of 10 Great Scientists, 2 of them were too late to lightbulb anything worthwhile though and got used for a golden age and 1 joined the capital really late. I also got an artist and merchant for golden ages.
A solid game there Harok, and a good story to go with it. Mansa was a slippery fella wasn't he?
I wonder what early strategy was best? Your CS slingshot or my early Pyramids/Representation?
I think my game was more streamlined towards getting Mass Media (what date did you build UN?), shame it got ruined by the unexpected disappearing resolution twist. Perhaps in BTS you can't simply gift the UN away without that long time penalty, or maybe I just have to figure out a good work-around method.
I think my game was more streamlined towards getting Mass Media (what date did you build UN?), shame it got ruined by the unexpected disappearing resolution twist. Perhaps in BTS you can't simply gift the UN away without that long time penalty, or maybe I just have to figure out a good work-around method.
Can you reload and try gifting the UN not the turn it is built but a couple of turns later? The SG vote will be agianst the bigger AI, but if you get elected then you should get the victory vote in the normal date and it would be against the small AI. That's what I would expect, in any case.
Although conquering Egypt early on and all her nice land, Charlemagne was always #1 in food with less cities. MM was always #1 in knowledge, although on avg having only 60-70% of my gold output in middle of game. In the end he sped away with some vassals I suppose and took the cultural Radio etc much quicker as I could research. In hammers I always was #1.
Surprisingly, after my self started Egyptian war the whole game I had peace, despite sticking to my own religions (3) and having avg 50% of power vs. strongest. In BOTM01 I always was strongest, and still I was attacked. Must be the long resource trading......?
Another (strange?) thing I noticed was the AI (Pacal) spending GL's on culture in the middle of the game, although already miles behind me?
Anyway, a fun game again, tx.
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)
And I made sure the AIs had early-ish UU's to help stop early conquest being too easy (You may notice some correlation between how late in the game each AI had his UU and how long it'd likely take you to get to them... 
) 
) (Now there's an idea for my next GOTM... hmmm....)
