BOTM03 First Spoiler

[blastoidstalker]

Isn't it noble not prince?

I found this map, interesting and fun to play. I felt D.S. left us several options of how to proceed so I am very happy about it. I feel he was able to make an easy level game fun.

 

[jesusin]

Typically would agree with the comment, but in this application JerichoHill has gone well beyond most others in that time period. What is that anyone can spoil him with? I am pretty sure he has met all the civs we all met in that time period and know the locations of hidden resources that is accessible during this time era. But in principle you are right.

Read his last sentence again. He doesn't know which AI are accesible by galley and which aren't.

See other posts, how some people have attacked the 4th AI with Carracks...

In my spoiler I have stopped at 1AD. Obormot has stopped at 1000BC. There are reasons we have done so. The threshold date for this game is ill chosen. It reminds me of the game where you had to count tiles to know if domination was possible in the starting island or not; once you read the first spoiler you had info that you didn't have in-game.

 

[mabraham]

@ Dynamic spirit
##*@@ì짧 you!
this prince game is a nightmare, i think you exaggerate a bit.
Without those early rushes, you was wiped after 100 turns, if the AI cares something of your pooooooooooooor land.
And this "choose religion" thing is confusing, i think it's another handicap.

If you'd like to post criticism of someone who's volunteering their time and effort to make a good experience for others, at least have the decency to post a coherent argument, and not random abuse.

The game was on noble, not prince.

You've not bothered to say what you think he was "exaggerating".

The AIs don't rush you in this game.

"Choose religion" was clearly explained in the pre-game thread. The only game-play impacts of this option are

• that you can't assume which techs are around from the notifications of which religions are founded
• that you have to check more carefully whether the religion from a tech has already been founded (but there is a generic yellow "religion available from this tech" indicator when you're choosing your techs to research
• that if you're founding a religion, you can choose one whose Cathedral-building bonus resource is one that best suits your resource availability

The above is only a handicap if you don't bother to find it out and then decide to tech for a religion and find yourself without out it and that costs you seriously in the game.

 

[PutCashIn]

Actually, although I'm sure everyones experience will be a bit diferent, but as Im a build-no-troops newbie, and Tokey gets a decent army quickly thanks to traits, I have been on the end of a couple (and so has my partner) of early tokey rushes.

He is also not a nice man when you worker steal him and his power is above yours...you just know hes gonna make this a 4000 year war!

Maybe Mr B was just venting, Id doubt it could be too personal, its a game!

 

[mabraham]

Actually, although I'm sure everyones experience will be a bit diferent, but as Im a build-no-troops newbie, and Tokey gets a decent army quickly thanks to traits, I have been on the end of a couple (and so has my partner) of early tokey rushes.

Any AI will attack you if you don't have enough troops

He is also not a nice man when you worker steal him and his power is above yours...you just know hes gonna make this a 4000 year war!

Err, but you started it, in that case!

Maybe Mr B was just venting, Id doubt it could be too personal, its a game!

"Just venting" is not an excuse for antisocial behaviour. There's a human being on the other end of the vent.

 

[Obormot]

Thank you for the responces. Thanks for the explanation Obormot. I can see how that can be helpful in a war game. I have to see if that theory will be helpfull even for a science game since at this level AI barely help.

I think that rushing may often be a good strategy even in a science or culture game. The choice between conqering cities and settling them depend on many factors, and tech trading isn't the most important factor.

Mostly it is how much it costs to capture a city compared to settling (basicly how many hammers you loose per city) and how good the AI land is compared to the land you can get peacefully.

 

[BLubmuz]

In what way do think I exaggerated?

What makes you think you'd be 'wiped after 100 turns' without an early rush? I can't yet recall reading a spoiler in which anyone has reported even being attacked by the AI without the player attacking first, let alone getting wiped out. Toku is fairly isolationist - you can't normally get open borders with him without gifting him something first, but I've not noticed that he's prone to attacking others early unless you do something to upset him. Monty is the trigger-happy AI who's more likely to attack but he can't get to your homeland without open borders with Toku.

It's my opinion, for what is worth, of course.
I think you did it in denying resources or placing them in a so poor land that the city you settle there wasn't productive at all.
You're right about be wiped, but if you read carefully my post i wrote "if the AI cares something of your pooooooooooooor land".
It's not this the point, it's the unbalancing of the resources.
Think to London, with a philo Leader, in addition.

With all my personal pleasantness for you, since the times you was a simple CFC member and the appreciation for your work as a staff member, i just expressed my thought. I think that a critic can be useful.
It can be a mania of mine, but i insist in my opinion that the level is determined also by the land.

edit
yes, it's on Noble, don't know why i wrote Prince (and i did not noticed).

 

[mabraham]

I think you did it in denying resources or placing them in a so poor land that the city you settle there wasn't productive at all.

Well this is a real issue. Recognising that you have a poor start location and being prepared to move your capital accordingly is a game skill that is worthy of a competition. You don't have to marry your initial city site, you only have to extract enough stuff out of it to move elsewhere, and there were easily enough forests for that. You can even leave Lisbon for the barbarians if you want! Sure, your development timeline probably won't match your best effort on a normal Noble start, but that's not important here - you're being compared with other people who also had a poor start. There's no real sense of being "handicapped".

 

[humbe]

In my first game here, I did not rush the AI. I put 5 cities on our side of Kyoto, and one boated past to get copper. I didn't attack Toku before I had maces. At that time I was in the tech lead, even though my poor land and I had an army the AIs could not match at all. I did not need to attack Toku to be able to win, but I considered it an advantage as I wanted more resources and more land.

By not whipping at all, my capitol did eventually grow into a large city. Marble city SW and clams? city east both had food resources, so grew fairly quick. Even the iron grabbing city out in the ice did have fish resources and had 2 high production hills and a lot of coast tiles that was worth considerably with colussus.

Being noble, I don't think it woulda been much trouble winning the game without ever warring, but I like to do some wars to grab land/resources. Think DynamicSpirit was only trying to give the AIs a little edge as we're on noble difficulty.

 

[oncable]

[challenger]

Ribannah's tactic works quite well. I just thought I would test it to see how it might apply for future games. not to play it past the capture of Kyoto. Here's my experience:
3550 BC stole worker leaving warrior next to city.
3525 worker moves, warrior stays, nothing happens. 2 archers and 1 warrior in Kyoto. I have 1 warrior on cows, 2 warriors next to cow and 1 more on the way.
3500 Jap warrior attacks and dies. Jap archer kills warrior.
My warrior kills archer gets promoted to CR1
At this point only 1 archer left, Kyoto pop still 1. I have 3 warriors waiting for pop to go to 2 so it won't autodestruct.
3275 archer kills warrior. warrior kills archer leaving only one warrior in Kyoto.
3250 I have BW so now can chop as many warriors as needed.
I wait until Kyoto pop goes to 2 then attack with 4 warriors (one is CR1) to attack one warrior.
3025BC Kyoto falls to second warrior (the CR1) and gets a promotion as well.

It's clear the archer-baiting tactic works. I've learned a new trick, thank you Ribannah!

 

[whb]

@ Dynamic spirit
##*@@ì짧 you!
this prince game is a nightmare, i think you exaggerate a bit.
Without those early rushes, you was wiped after 100 turns, if the AI cares something of your pooooooooooooor land.
And this "choose religion" thing is confusing, i think it's another handicap.

I didn't rush early (just stole a worker) and I wasn't wiped out (not by 500AD anyway -- not sure if that's 100 turns). And that was with the Challenger save. And after being suckered into researching BW and AH and finding nothing... I didn't do nearly as well as most of the posts so far here, but I wasn't wiped out.

About the only thing that ran in my favour is that when I got IW, I was in time to settle the slightly nicer iron north-west of Kyoto, rather than lonely iron in the ice. It was still an on-the-edge city, with plains hills, desert, and one flood plain for food, but it was an ok little production city.

There was a slight irony in the island cities being food-rich,production-poor and the continent cities being food-poor,production-mediocre.

Choose religion is a bit of a handycap - but I think most people here planned on capturing a holy city rather than founding one.

 

[whb]

He is also not a nice man when you worker steal him and his power is above yours...you just know hes gonna make this a 4000 year war!

It doesn't really matter with Toku though -- he's unpleasant enough not to open borders, not to trade techs, and to build lots of troops even when at peace. If you're at war with him, at least you can send galleys / decent troops through his territory to meet the other AIs the other side.

 

[Ribannah]

It's clear the archer-baiting tactic works. I've learned a new trick, thank you Ribannah!

You're welcome.

After the early conquest, we entered a building phase to get our economy running. Until 500bc, we founded three more cities, leaving room for one other before the anarchy period would jump to two turns.

1475 Evora (marble, fish, fur) south of Lisbon
1375 Lagos (cow, gold) north of Lisbon
1200 Braga (in a location not to be revealed in this spoiler)

After Braga, the economy came to a complete stop, earning zero gold at 0% science. However, this changed when the wonders came online.

Wonders
1000bc Moai Statues (London)
950bc Oracle (Guimaraes)
825bc Great Lighthouse (Cuzco)
675bc Colossus (Cuzco)
650bc Temple of Artemis (London)
500bc Pyramids (Tenochtitlan)

Meanwhile, we chose Islam (founded in Cuzco by he Inca) and Organized Religion. Barbs became a pest, popping up everywhere; fortunately only Warriors until this point. We employed several Chariots to hunt them down.

Technology
1350bc Monotheism
1200bc Priesthood
950bc Metal Casting (from the Oracle)
625bc Mathematics

In 500bc we were researching Currency to further boost the economy (then at 40% science).

We had known one of the remaining civs since 1175bc.

Stats at 1000bc: 11 cities, 37 pop, 122 food, 65 production, 45 GNP, 12 workers, 430 score.

 

[hellwitch]

Hi.
For difference i beline archers this time and "arch rush" Toku England and Monty

 

[LowtherCastle]

Challenger save. Gauntlet. Excellent start, did everything right. After some excellent REX, I decided Toku had to go. Reserached archers and built 7 of them. I was planning to have 9 but he sunddenly only had 1 archer in his capital. I moved. Next turn he had two. I knew I needed 4 attackers per archer, but went for it anyway. My first archer caused zero damage... THen I became idiotic and continued. Lost all my archers and got his damage down to about 1.3 ....

Game over. Ain't playing that $h!t no more...

 

[kcd_swede]

My first xOTM, I was going to play intermediate level (I usually play emperor level and figure Noble would be too easy if I got the extra tech and unit too) but loaded the "beginner" level by mistake. I played(am still playing) it anyhow, not wanting to compound my error by breaking rules.

Settled in place - coudln't see any immediate advantage to moving one way or another, and figured that only gave me at best a 50% chance to actually improve the crappy start position, and a 50% chance to make it worse. Even w/o BW quickly had an "awesome" stack of 3warrior which wiped out Toku in one shot, got his worker but city autorazed (pop1). Resettled it nearby, then quickly settled two more at a fair distance in order to get resources. Figured I'd backfill later, but never got around to it since other conquests were so temptingly easy. By 500AD I have eliminated Toku + Eliz, and vassalized Monty. My economy is pretty sucky, though since I am so spread. But I am #1 in every category, at least 4-5 techs ahead of the next best, and trying to figure out fastest way to win... and to come up with a coherent strategy rather than the ad hoc sh*t I've been doing so far. Only way I think I could lose would be a religious victory, unless someone far away starts romping his neighbors, which I will prevent with judicious trades/gifts of techs & resources... so my next conquest is clear. Domination looks like fastest way to victory, but Epic feels so slow, and my economy is too, I am sure others of you will manage this feat a lot earlier than me (those of you who tended your economy properly must be way ahead).

BTW--I hate naval UU's, consider them a waste of time. And a custom house UB? C'mon... by then it will be all over but the crying. I say this knowing my strengths and weaknesses: Culture victories I've never managed at any level above settler, Diplo victories I only managed once at Noble - nobody usually likes me because I am stingy and bellicose. So for me it usually comes down to Space Race or Conq/Dom or Time. And by 500ad I haven't seen any real military or territorial challenges yet, and my biggest enemy is the clock.

 

[Harok]

Sadly I won't get to finish this game as my computer died after starting and I can't recover any files from the old hard drive to continue it. The good news is with a new PC future games will run much faster. For what it is worth here is what I remember from my game.

The unofficial gauntlet finally matched the victory I wanted to play for so I took the challenger save. From the game description I guessed we would be surrounded by pitiful land so no need to move around and I just settled on the opening spot to get the extra hammer from the plains hill and get started trying to overcome those archers for the closest civ. First I built a couple of warriors and researched mining > BW. BW seemed the obvious choice as the only good thing about our land was all the trees to chop. I scouted those red borders that were visible right away and discovered that Gyathaar's evil twin, I mean, DynamicSpirit had thrown us 1 helpful feature, a cow on our side of Kyoto that the Japanese would want to develop. Must have been an oversight or mislick on his part while altering the map. I waited for a worker to show up and then declared and stole it. I was able to lure out and kill 1 archer and a warrior but not the second archer.

After BW I researched Hunting > Archery. I built a worker after the warriors and then a barracks. I then chopped out a bunch of archers and finished Toku off. Next I took out the English and then settled in to building a base of strong cities. I founded NE of Kyoto near the clams/copper/cow, in between Kyoto and London with the cows/gold/floodplain, and to get Iron/pigs? in the middle of all the other cities. I chopped out Stonehenge and Oracle, grabbing MC, in the capital and this is about where my game got to.

Future plans included finishing up farming a couple of scientists for Compass and Optics from Kyoto and London while taking out Monte and HC with axes/swords. Then conquering the world with cats/maces/Carracks. I thought I was doing well but appear to be well behind some (4 AIs gone from warriors with challenger save ) and even if I was ahead I'm sure I would have been out manuevered by many as my water invasions are only slightly better than the AI. I normally avoid them whenever possible as I get so bored with ship chaining, only our UU convinced me to go for it in this game.

Good luck to all those in the gauntlet, it will be an interesting second spoiler.

 

[ArcadicGamer]

This Game has been excelent, thx.

Arcadic: Contender Goal: Space.

I explored with both the settler and the worker until returning to the start point and settling in place. Should have settled the coast. Met Toku on the PH, and my first target was acquired. I had planned for a warrior rush anyway, so i had 3 warriors enrout to kyoto, and one more in the que waiting till the pop burst to 2, so i could keep it. Meanwhile i settled 2 cities, W on the PH by the coast/river, and E on the PH coast. Attacking toku shortly after, he built an extra warrior the turn i was about to attack. Then a surprise. He attacked my stack of 4 fortified warriors with on of his defenders. It went down easy, and the stack took kyoto.

I focued on peaceful expansion from there out, settling the rice sugar city on the river, the gold city to the west, and all the way by the copper, clams, and more hills than ever before. Preped an army of Mace's for Liz, since she was closest. Monty declared the turn before i did, so i waited for him to ask me to join, which i did 4 turns later, taking london. Liz is gone. I kept up the treb/mace production, and built the FP in the rice sugar city. I was ready to declare on Monty @~ the spoiler time.

meeting HC greatly helped my tech pace, as i was able to backfill alot of techs i had passed. I hope to cripple monty so as to be able to safely persue a space victory, but it wont be a good one i think.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Before you make any generalizations, I'd check the WB save after it's posted and test this out on games not doctored by DynamicSpirit. Archers built by the AI can have different assignments and we don't know which assignment DS gave to Toku's 'defenders.'

 

[Ronnie1]

That is a very astute notice from LtC. There are many options for AI unit behavior settings.