BOTM03 First Spoiler

[Grifftavian]

Didn't think I was doing too good, and after reading these posts, I believe I am correct. Anyway, moved the Warrior 1N to confirm coastline, then moved the Settler 1NE to coastal river tile. Founded Lisbon on 2nd turn, and what do you know, there is everyone's buddy Toku 2E+2NE of my capitol. Researched BW, but no Bronze anywhere. Beeline Animal Husbandry, no Horses close by either. So I figured an early rush was out of the question (see now from the previous posts that a Warrior rush worked may restart the game to try this myself for future reference) Built 2nd city south of capitol, at other end of rivers. Built 3rd city on tundra hill SE of capitol and S of Toku, so I could block him of claiming any of that great land to the west (Don't think he would have wanted it anyway) Built 4th city on plains hill to west of starting location, where others have founded their capitol. Built 5th city out west in tundra to claim only iron nearby, but with the one citizen working the iron mine, this city won't be growing any until I can build some windmills on the nearby hills. Will build walls and barracks here, and just use to to slowly build new military units.

Judaism spread to my third city, but I didn't convert right away because Toku was Hindu, and wanted to keep him cautious for the time being. Was eventually contacted by Monty and Liz. Monty converted to Judaism, and a couple of turns later so did Toku, so that's when I converted. Liz came by a turn of two later and demanded Priesthood, which I refused. I immediately offered to trade it to her for Meditation, but she wouldn't go for that. I then offered it to her for conversion to Judaism, which she excepted. So, for the time being, everyone I have encountered has the same religion. Hoping at this point for a peaceful game for quite a while.

About six good city sites on islands to NW, but need to build some Markets and Courthouses first so my economy doesn't tank; I'm only running 60% science right now, and starting to get behind tech wise. Current plan to to make my 2nd city the Wall Street city, and the 4th city the ironworks powerhouse (and hope DS put some coal somewhere in the vast wasteland I've made home) Don't really have a good city for Ox U yet, may have to put that in the capitol I may have waited too long to go on the warpath, so think I'll try and grab all those islands to the NW and go for Alpha Centauri or diplomatic victory.

EDIT: went back and tried the Warrior rush. Settled NE again, built Worker, then chopped 8 Warriors. Original Warrior had been exploring, came back with two nice wolf pelts and Combat I promo, so I garrisoned him in Lisbon, just in case, and sent the 8 Warriors to invade Japan. By this time, Toku had 2 Warriors in Kyoto, and a third exploring far to the South. Moved my Warriors in over Toku's grazing Cows (who, amazingly enough, had gnawed out "Eat Mor Chickin" in the grass), 4 died while softening up Kyoto's defenders, the 5th and 6th killed them off, with the 5th earning enough XP's for a promo. All this by 2650 BC!!!! Who would have thunk it (not me, obviously). Would have been a much better start than what I originally did. Oh well, at least I've learned something new. Stopped the experiment after this so as not to reveal more of the map that I hadn't already seen in the game for submission.

 

[spacemanmf]

Three things went wrong:

Firstly, having stole a worker from Toku (I settled NE), my 5-warrior-and-1-archer army perished against 3 warriors, losing every single battle. Oh dear. I was getting 70%+ odds for the last 2 or 3. Oops.

Secondly, playing far too quickly and carelessly ('tis only Noble), I left a settler two squares from a panther, with a forest in between. My archer managed to block one path but the panther found the other... Double oops.

Thirdly, my army of city raider swordsmen, accompanied by some catapults, suicided themselves on a load of archers, axes and swords. Triple oops.

They did enough damage, however, so that when I assembled a whole load more catapults (they were the most effective attacker), I finally broke through.

But I'm a wee bit behind now (other people doing the GOTM, that is, not the noble AIs).

On the plus side, I got Metal Casting (I think) with the Oracle and spammed 6 OK cities fairly quickly on the main island (including grabbing the Crabs to the east), despite my setbacks.

And those setbacks have made me angry (not really) and ruthless (it's all relative). It's now units, units, units for a mass rampage.

 

[joespec]

Sloow start.

I settled on the western plains hill, a mistake spurred on by the pre-game discussion. My inclination was to just go 1 turn NE to the coast. seemed a shame as I eneded up just settling my second city there. so wasted the move turns.

settled a third city south near some fur and crabs I think. researched BW but no copper to be found. later on I went on to IW to see if I could find some metal somewhere. . by this time had 4th city over to the far East near a sea resource.

needed another city to get the iron, so settled it next to the iron but still on the sea. so far all 5 of my citys have ocean access, and trade, which is nice.

so finally built up an army of axes and swordsmen and catapults to take out Japan's capital. unfortunately I underestimated his troops, and had a few bad rolls, so wasted my army with no gain. I had to give him a tech to sue for peace.

Was pretty pissed at this point, and almost quit. but since figured I could probably salvage a win on this difficulty level, so decided to keep on. built up my economy a bit , got a few wonders, and wait to research to Trebs and macemen before trying the attack again.

*edited to remove post 500AD stuff*

 

[Barn Owl]

Being a bit contrary, I moved south and settled where the two rivers meet the sea, my Warrior found Tokugawa quite early and captured his Worker. Seeing his position on the hill with 1 Warrior I decided to attack him as soon as possible. So I sent a stack of 5 Warriors and attacked, unfortunately he managed to come up with a 2nd Warrior and I just failed in my attack. Anyway I came back with 2 Warriors and 2 Archers, he had 2 Warriors again but 1 of them came out and attacked me and died, leaving the City defended by only 1 who I was able to beat quite easily.

Kyoto was Tokugawa's only City so he was destroyed. I kept it and spread north, finding Elizabeth who again I attacked quickly and took London, wiping her out shortly afterwards. I was going down the Conquest or Domination route at this stage, when I came across Monty, so as soon as I could I attacked him too, by this time I had Swords as I'd mined the Iron north of Kyoto. I razed all of Monty's Cities as they were a bit distant and my research was beginning to suffer enough as it was. Monty was destroyed at about 280AD and that was the last significant action before 500AD so I'll leave it there!

 

[MarkM]

Was playing while also staying at my parents' place 3 days straight to help my mom recover from a stroke (she's doing fine), and had a lot of "play a turn or two then get called away for an hour" episodes. This led to me doing a lot of starting research on one thing, then switching to another thing 2 turns later, etc. Already being lame here and making excuses for not playing better on noble .. what a schlemeil I am.

My first session apparently didn't create a log file, I don't know why not. So I don't have any details til around 500bc, and most will have to come from memory.

I settled on the plains hill 1N4W as I stated I would in pre thread. Of course when I later find where we are & where the neighbor was -- and who he was -- I realize he needs to go, ASAP, and I really regret not either settling in place or else moving 1NE. But I still do the same thing, I aim to take him out with a warrior rush, once BW finishes turn 20 or whatever it was and I see I have no copper. I end up chopping/whipping maybe 8-9 warriors, it seemed like it was overkill for his 3 defenders but it turn out I had bad luck and lost 4-5warriors even though my odds wheren't that bad -- so good thing I overdid it, I recall clearly that I took Kyoto with only one of my 8-9 warriors still left to attack. That was still fairly early (wish I could say year but again won't know it til I can run replay, autolog didn't work).

Next I did something I wonder if anyone else did -- I sent my first settler all the way up to way north of Kyoto, to found Oporto at the river junction in the jungle just a bit E of London. My maintenance was significant even with 3 cities on noble, but I just didn't find anything that appealing where we started (even at 500AD I only have one other city on the same side of Kyoto as Lisbon, on the south coast, all the rest of my expansion is north, all the way to the north coast deserts). I immediately plan on attacking lizzy, first I need something better than warriors, when I finally get IW I end up getting it from the source even further north, near the coast north of London. I didn't even bother with founding a city to get the one near lisbon (it would be just a 2-useful-tile city). My four cities are W A Y stretched across the continent at this point, but I figured I could get away with it on noble. I build up a bunch of swordsmen and wipe out Lizzy 50 BC. Maybe could've done it sooner but wasn't organized/focused enough.

Along the way I get beat to a couple wonders such as Oracle or GL. GL in particular I'm still kicking myself -- was building it in Kyoto & could've whipped it for a number of turns, but didn't want to sacrifice so many pop. Well I got what I deserved for being so finicky. Oracle I was just beat to. This also happend to me for AP (though perhaps after 500)

From here on it's ramming horns with Monty, though I believe that starts a bit after 500AD so I can't talk about here. I'm way in the lead in score, but Monty is a lot stronger than I'd hoped at this point, I should have declared an earlier war to at least slow him down a little. I'm confident I'll win, but will take me longer than it should.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

This has been a strange game so far, with the Noble difficulty I've found myself playing the turns too quickly and without enough thought. Like MarkM I'm making excuses for myself before I even get into the spoiler...

I took the contender save (clearly in this game it made things a lot easier). I made the perfect opening move (but it was a fluke!) by moving the settler east and settling on the plains hill next to the clams. This allowed the best set up for warrior rushing Toku and I had 5 warriors to his 1 in about 25 turns. Just as I moved in he built a second warrior. I attacked anyway hoping that an unfortified defender would be easy to kill. I lost all my warriors. Doh! I wish I'd signed a cease fire and waited until his 2nd warrior left the city to explore. I tried another warrior rush, and failed again, Doh! I was cutting the odds too fine and continuing to attack even when the first units died without even scratching, Doh! On my 3rd warrior rush, once again playing the odds very fine, somehow I ended up winning and finally claiming Kyoto, 2200BC. My game would have been toast if I stuffed up my 3rd attack.

From this point on I settler spammed north of Kyoto and stole workers from Liz. I went for London in earnest once I had copper connected and took it around 50BC. I finished off Liz in 450BC. My techpath has floundered in different directions, my economy has tanked with 11 cities and not many cottages, and I'm about 1/3 of the way through Machinery. Techtrades are non-existant but I'm hoping to get a few filler techs once I finally get to Optics.

I have been too afraid to settle any of the islands because of the maintenance cost, I think this is another mistake. I know it has been increased for BTS, but is it really bad enough to stop me settling there?

Thanks to all the spoiler writers, it's nice to learn from all those who are doing well in this game.

PS: Respect to those who pull off an early conquest from the challenger save.

 

[JungleIII]

EDIT: went back and tried the Warrior rush. Settled NE again, built Worker, then chopped 8 Warriors. Original Warrior had been exploring, came back with two nice wolf pelts and Combat I promo, so I garrisoned him in Lisbon, just in case, and sent the 8 Warriors to invade Japan. By this time, Toku had 2 Warriors in Kyoto, and a third exploring far to the South. Moved my Warriors in over Toku's grazing Cows (who, amazingly enough, had gnawed out "Eat Mor Chickin" in the grass), 4 died while softening up Kyoto's defenders, the 5th and 6th killed them off, with the 5th earning enough XP's for a promo. All this by 2650 BC!!!! Who would have thunk it (not me, obviously). Would have been a much better start than what I originally did. Oh well, at least I've learned something new. Stopped the experiment after this so as not to reveal more of the map that I hadn't already seen in the game for submission.

Would like to hear from moderator on this... wouldn't going 'back' and working a parallel game mess up the replay and the gamers ability to submit the game??? I think it is a good learning tool - and presumably from his post he didn't replay past where he was up to... but, I had never thought of doing this....

NOT Trying to get anyone disqualified, but hard to see how it wouldn't be caught anyway...?

 

[bcool]

jesusin, challenger. Goal: fastest conquest.


The brave Portuguese explored the world from their ships. The galley missed the connection to the N initially, but they troups were unloading-loading everyturn, they saw it and I decided that moving N was more important.

Ah!!! I totally missed the connection to the north, that would have made a huge difference. I waited until my capital borders expanded three times! Oh well, must pay more attention in the future.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Would like to hear from moderator on this... wouldn't going 'back' and working a parallel game mess up the replay and the gamers ability to submit the game??? I think it is a good learning tool - and presumably from his post he didn't replay past where he was up to... but, I had never thought of doing this....

NOT Trying to get anyone disqualified, but hard to see how it wouldn't be caught anyway...?

You shouldn't replay any turns until you've completed and submitted your game - because of the obvious possibility of (accidentally) learning spoiler information. I don't really want to comment on individual entries in a public forum (both for obvious privacy reasons and because we might not yet have the submitted game to assess), but in principle if you replay turns before you've submitted your entry, even turns well before the year you had played up to, you're opening up a strong likelihood of your game being disqualified when we examine it.

 

[Twahn]

Okay, my first attempt at BOTM (or GOTM or any of the OTM's )...

To Begin...
I figured that my immediate surrounds were probably just as crap as what was initially visible, and a quick check from my warrior to the west revealed very little (can't see the woods for the trees). I decided to settle straight away as at least we were sitting on a plains hill.
As soon as I settled, Tokugawa's border was visible to my East. My warrior headed over there slowly as he tried to explore a little. Found the Marble and arrived at Toku's border just as his worker finished building a road to the Cows... couldn't resist the worker steal and I was already building a stack of warriors for a potential rush anyway (also I didn't really have anything else to build yet except workers, and Toku was giving me one of them! ).

To War!

Built 4 warriors and moved on Kyoto. I wasn't sure about attacking him with only 4, but he still had only 1 warrior so I went for it and only lost 1 warrior. Kyoto was burned to the ground and the Japs were no more.

Elizabeth met me soon after with one of her touring warriors and I started moving my own warriors north to see what the lay of the land was. Meanwhile I rebuilt Kyoto. Finding London, I was confronted by another worker in the fields. I took him. Sorry Lizzy.

To War... Again!

As I moved in to her lands to take him however, I got a glipse of the city. 1 warrior? This was too tempting a chance to give up surely? I had 6 warriors now and they quickly descended on London, praying they'd get there before she built her defences. Just as the last men arrived and we were about to attack, her garrisoned units moved to 2... damn. I looked to see and discovered ithe second unit was a worker! Huzzah! Sounding the battlehorns we moved in and took London too.

Somewhere around 2,000BC. England, no more.

Moving on...

Since then I've colonised the entire southern continent all the way to London. I made 'New Kyoto' my new capital for some time but have now moved it to London.

I've got about 12 cities and am now wondering in what direction to take the game. A bloody war across the globe maybe? Not really a leader suited to it, but I suspect I'm at the point now where my power far eclipses any of my competitors... I'm at the point in the game where I tend to lose focus and just amble along dominating the competition in a mediocre fashion...

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Okay, my first attempt at BOTM (or GOTM or any of the OTM's )...

A great start for your first game of the month! Two AI's gone by 2000BC.

Also, a worthy first post (almost a year after joining civfanatics)!

Seems like warriors are the unit of choice this month.

 

[Htadus]

I'm surprised so many warrior rushed Toku.. Personally I waited for catapults..............

As it's such a setback failing the rush having wasted a lot of production and not built any settlers, I find it strange that so many goes for this. Do you manage to promote your warriors before attacking? ........

.....But alternative seems very risky to me.

When I first saw Toku I had already built a few warriors (an overreaction to GOTM27 barbs) one had CR thanks to couple of barb animals. I already had plan to rush the nearest civ (DS almost wanted us to) but did not know where and who for a long time while exploring west. Then I watched the Japanese city. Every time I could see the city it only had one warrior and IBT the second one would show up. He never fortified. The warrior ran out to cow and ran back to the city for several turns until my six warriors gathered. Two turn before we dowed, he built the 3rd warrior and I said crap . But to my amazement he sent the new warrior to explore our area...Thanks Toku . When I attacked the city there were only one fortified warrior and one rover. I expected to have only two warriors left but I got lucky and ended up with 2 highly promoted warriors and one unharmed.

The risk was worth the reward. I also had a contingency plan to send 3 set of warriors and settlers to the north via boats and settle near productive and copper or horse tiles away from toku and let him take the capitol. luckily I did not have to test it.

BTW had the second warrior been fortified I would have waited untill next two came and joined the six. Use of overwhelming power is my style since I seem to have bad luck with RNG. Also I did not use any forrest chops since that was reserved for power settlers.

 

[mabraham]

BTW had the second warrior been fortified I would have waited untill next two came and joined the six. Use of overwhelming power is my style since I seem to have bad luck with RNG. Also I did not use any forrest chops since that was reserved for power settlers.

Leaving those forests alone is a big risk. Tokugawa's first archer is the kiss of death for your warrior-rush. Getting quicker access to Kyoto and beyond is worth a few forests not being available for settler-rushing. For starters, you get Kyoto's production+commerce more quickly.

 

[mabraham]

Warrior rush Lizzie - now that's thinking outside the box!

Indeed, props to jesusin. At challenger level, this kind of approach may even be necessary to do well. There's a clue in the scenario description - only the closest AI gets the archer bonus.

I found in my game that Lizzy was hopelessly underdefended, and that seems like consensus of people's experience. Thus a slightly delayed, boated warrior rush seems like a great opening for challenger.

 

[Grifftavian]

You shouldn't replay any turns until you've completed and submitted your game - because of the obvious possibility of (accidentally) learning spoiler information. I don't really want to comment on individual entries in a public forum (both for obvious privacy reasons and because we might not yet have the submitted game to assess), but in principle if you replay turns before you've submitted your entry, even turns well before the year you had played up to, you're opening up a strong likelihood of your game being disqualified when we examine it.

I hadn't considered the possibility of messing up the replay file. Wasn't trying to gain any advantage, just trying out a new tactic. I can see where this move could be considered questionable, so to keep things above board, I will refrain from submitting this game. Good luck to all! (gee, I've learned two new things from this game )

 

[Htadus]

Leaving those forests alone is a big risk. Tokugawa's first archer is the kiss of death for your warrior-rush. Getting quicker access to Kyoto and beyond is worth a few forests not being available for settler-rushing. For starters, you get Kyoto's production+commerce more quickly.

I got a gift from THE SID in the form of extra food and a coin on the forrested grassland very early in the game. So I was making 10 hpt very quickly while my worker was roading to Toku. Also AI at this level usually go after the techs they need to improve the land around them. I bet he was very close to getting AH when I attacked.

My turn log tell me that I dowed on turn 50 and attacked on 54. I was looking for the worker and hoping he would attack. But no luck there but my 3rd warrior had 3% chance and won with great amount of luck. He was given combat 2 next turn. It was basically luck of the draw at the end.

But you do have a point. Faster rush may have been more helpful.

BSmith1068
Warrior rush Lizzie - now that's thinking outside the box! .

I had two highly promoted units when stealing the english worker and Liz had a puny warrior. My third unit was nearby, but I needed her to build some acadamies for my science game. Only time will tell if it worked.

 

[Twahn]

A great start for your first game of the month! Two AI's gone by 2000BC.

Also, a worthy first post (almost a year after joining civfanatics)!

Seems like warriors are the unit of choice this month.

Thanks.

First time poster, long time reader.

2 Civs by 2,000BC! BOOM! I know. I don't think I've ever done that before. I rarely even attack anyone much in Civ early, concentrating more on aggressive, and often misguided, land grabs.

With only 3 resources for your entire empire though (no, maybe 4, or 5 with the frozen iron (which I still haven't bothered to get in my game)) this game pretty much leaves you with no option but to attack Tokugawa or else maybe colonise the islands (which I'm surprised nobody seems to have done? Everyone who's gone the sea colonisation route seems to have launched from the southern ocean up East past Tokugawa...).

If I hadn't have attacked Tokugawakes, I would have ended up settling all over the archipelago to the West, which might have made for a fun little sea empire...

 

[jesusin]

I have been too afraid to settle any of the islands because of the maintenance cost, I think this is another mistake. I know it has been increased for BTS, but is it really bad enough to stop me settling there?

I am a BTS newb, but in my 7-games-experience I have found that founding 1 city in an island is not different than Vanilla and doesn't hurt your economy. When you put 2 cities in the same island, then an additional cost factor is added and that's different from Vanilla. With two cities it is not so bad, but I fear it anyway so I have become a 1 city per island fanatic. I have to change that, a second city would be useful most of the times.

 

[azzaman333]

I am a BTS newb, but in my 7-games-experience I have found that founding 1 city in an island is not different than Vanilla and doesn't hurt your economy. When you put 2 cities in the same island, then an additional cost factor is added and that's different from Vanilla. With two cities it is not so bad, but I fear it anyway so I have become a 1 city per island fanatic. I have to change that, a second city would be useful most of the times.

I thought it was 3 cities triggers colonial maintainance, and two triggers the ability to create a colony?

 

[Obormot]

Challenger, BOTM Gauntlet.

I settled in place, because the warrior move didn't reveal anything of interest. The starting position wasn't that bad, because of all the forests. Building a worker and going mining->BW was a no-brainer for me. After the worker was done, I let Lisbon grow to size two, so that it could work both green hills. Worker mined the hills & chopped the forests.

After examining the land on our peninsula, I decided that rushing Tokugawa ASAP is a must, even with the extra archers in the challenger version. Even the southern spot with fish & marble wasn't good enough to justify building a settler before troops in this case, because for conquest we need very powerfull production cities, and that city would have only added a tundra quarry and a single plains hill.

After finding out that we don't have copper, I decided to go for an archer rush. Another possibility was to go for AH, but the map looked to evil to hope for finding horses. I built a second worker for more chopping while waiting for the archery tech to be discovered, after that I built barracks and troops.

By 2475BC I had 7 archers & 3 warriors. Toku only had one archer in Kyoto, I attacked him and took the city loosing only two archers. I then advanced to Osaka and took it in 2375BC. Japan eliminated. At this point I already knew that there are more AI civs on our continent, because I had more espionage points then Toku. I also knew that the other civs started without the bonus archers. So I sent all of my surviving units into different directions, looking for AI capitals. Soon I found London (which was Elizabeth's only city), collected several archers and attacked. The city was defended with warriros only, so I took easily.

I also settled Oproto in the east, to grab the copper & the top-notch production spot for future wars. Now with 5 cities it was time to think about reaching optics ASAP, so I started building infrastructure: monuments, granaries, etc. London became my research center where I whipped a library and employed two scientists. I also cottaged the river banks in Kyoto & Osaka. I chopped all the remaining forests near Lisbon to build the Oracle in 1125BC, taking Metal Casting.

Stats at 1000BC: 5 cities, 25 pop, 54 food, 52 production, 62 GNP, 7 workers.