BOTM05 First spoiler

[blastoidstalker]

My goal in this game is to try to use espionage for once and to play around with corperations, using both of these to help a domination win. This means I will not be winning any time awards, but I am hoping it will help me on higher levels where I feel my late game is lacking.


I settled in place and put my second city in the southern hills to get the gold. Third city went to the east to get copper and be a strong commerce city. I stayed peacefull pre-500 AD, just stealing some workers from Babylon. I build the Great Wall and the Great Library early. and spread out 1 more city to west towards spain, one to fill in the medicre land to the west and one to the SE on the river to encroach on babylon. I also used vultures to take a barb city to the SW. the barbs for once built well asthis became my great person mecca with 3-4 rice, a pig, a bannana, a plains iron and a river for easy irrigation.

I build lots of Zigs early and sturggled some with how to distibute the tech points, eventual choosing to focus all points on one or two civs at once and tech steal. I was able to do this while keeping the espionage slifder at 0.

At 500 AD I am a few hundred pts above everybody else in score and ahead in tech. Spain is fairlhy strong as well but will be target #2 after a weakened Babylon.

 

[classical_hero]

BOTM05 First Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 04, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You must have reached at least 500 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

So how did the vultures turn out? Superpowerful or useless? Did you make use of the ziggurats to finance an early expansion? What kind of difference did having so many AIs make?

I thought this is BOTM 05 that people are meant to be participating in. Some one had to point that obvious error.

 

[AgedOne]

I was very pleased with the first session of this game. I'm sure it wouldn't have impressed one of the world-class players, but I achieved a few things that I wanted to, and it was a big improvement on my recent games at this level.

I couldn't find any compelling reason to move, so settled Uruk in place and went for an early growth burst.
Initial researches went Mining => AH => Masonry => Writing => Myst => Alpha => BW => IW.
Uruk builds went Worker > Settler > Warrior > Settler > Warrior > Settler > Pyramids.
By the time I'd researched Alpha on turn 71, I had 4 cities and had carved out a useful area to operate in.
I had met Hammy, Hattie and Ragnar, and was happy to find that they didn't even have Writing when the tech trading began. Soon after, Izzy made herself known, and then Huayna wandered onto the scene, followed almost immediately by Mao. I felt technologically superior, and tried to keep it that way while still engaging in a bit of trading.
Successfully built the Pyramids, and revolted to Representation and Slavery. Suddenly realising that the Oracle hadn't gone, and would only take 5 turns, I nipped in and built that too - even though a Wonder-fest wasn't really part of my plan. I chose CoL as my free tech.

At this point - 275BC (turn 104) I sat back to take stock and realised I was screaming away at the top of the scoreboard in a very unusual fashion (for me!). However, I had just founded my 5th city, and this looked like the limit that my economy could support. My infrastructure was looking good for running a SE once the immediate problems had been sorted out with Ziggurats and Economics. Sadly, my military was a laughing stock, and that would need a bit of sorting out.

I had just learned Aesthetics, and continued with Literature > Mathematics > CS > MetalCasting.
Finally, I met Brennus (very weakly and bottom score) and Monty (pretty darned high on the scoreboard!).
Concentrated on building up military and economy. Sadly, I didn't quite have enough military - in the right place - to head off a barbarian uprising, so had to suffer losing my youngest city - Ur. Well, for a couple of turns anyway. It was regained fairly painlessly

The same year that CS came in, the Gt Lib was completed. Another achievement.

Just at the end of this early period, things started to look a bit rough in the world. Happily, I wasn't involved, and could watch them fight it out in the knowledge that they were just harming their own chances. I even adopted Confucianism in order to keep in with my near neighbours Izzy and Hammy. My aim was high science and a Space Race victory.

At this point, things were looking on track.

 

[Htadus]

I was very pleased with the first session of this game. I'm sure it wouldn't have impressed one of the world-class players, but I achieved a few things that I wanted to, and it was a big improvement on my recent games at this level...............

Very good game AgedOne. I am no world class player but you have played an impressive first half. Keep it up for the rest of the game and you may get to that class your self.

 

[AgedOne]

Very good game AgedOne. I am no world class player but you have played an impressive first half. Keep it up for the rest of the game and you may get to that class your self.

Thanks Htadus!
Maybe, given lots of time, an aged dog can learn new tricks.

(I do know how the second half of the game goes - but I'll discuss that in another thread)

 

[Nioco]

I settled in place, planned to build a settler to get a science city south east (copper rice / elephant) but Hammurabi was faster. I settled my first city east near the copper / Deer / elephant and my second to grab gold and rice south.

I tried the oracle to get a cheap monarchy but was rather unlucky compared to others as it was built in 1400 BCs

I then research it by myself and followed by feudalism (first time for me as I prefer CS usually) for vassalge and in hope to get capitulation from my victims.

I build a large army of vultures and went for Joa as Hammurabi got a less favorable UU for invasion...All went well and I grab 4 cities from him...

Near ~500 AC, he is reduced to 2 but does not want to capitulate. Question ? Do both sides needs to have feudalism to enable capitulation ?

I plan then to go for hammurabi as I got a nice army of catapults / vultures, I lead in score and Hammurabi is already at war...so a nice backstab will not hurt

 

[Mad Dog]

I settled in place, and was pretty disappointed by the nearby terrain. Fortunately the nearby copper allowed some fairly swift dispatching of Babylon. After the first settler to grab the copper, I didn't build another one all game as with no city razing there would be plenty of cities to go around without me constructing any.

The plan was to go the military route, using early feudalism to allow me to use vassal states to dominate. This would hopefully let me get domination without complete crippling of the economy from all the cities.

Babylon fell to a big old stack of barracks promoted UUs, and it was then time to consolidate the new empire to give enough tech for feudalism. I had 6 cities in around 0ad.

Religion wise, a whole bunch of AIs all went one way, so I went the same way to make them more willing to be my vassals.

 

[Half Nelson]

I settled 1W (on turn 2, after a peek from the silver hill), the idea being to maximise the river tiles for another city. I expanded my next 2 cities in a line E, then another in the grasslands S of the hills beyond the marble (which never made it into a BFC). I went straight for MC via Oracle in 1320BC (Stonehenge seeming a bit irrelevant here), heading for a Theology lighbulb (200BC) and onwards to the AP. I noticed that religions were spreading rather slowly through the jungle and, in particular, my neighbour Isabella had yet to declare a faith. My first act on founding Christianity was to complete a road between our territories (why waste a missionary) and she converted to Christianity in a flash. I now had the services of the most reliable religious ally in BTS and planned to abuse her loyalty in extremis. The AI competition (8 met at this point) were an interesting mix with a fair sprinkling of unruly hotheads. Montezuma introduced himself by DoW, to little effect.

So far, things were progressing quite well (infinitely better than last month). The AP was nearly completed in Uruk and I had ivory aplenty for Eles, although iron popped up frustratingly beyond my grasp to S of city 4, within the BFC of a new Babylonian city. I like Gilgamesh:- he has useful traits and UU/UB, even if I had to discover IW to use copper for Vultures (never thought to plant a city on top of the copper, although this would have made my core cities very crowded).

What to do next? The AD500-1500 era is generally my undoing, when a lack of focus/risk leads me nowhere in particular and with much catching up to do before the Industrial Era. Victories by Culture or Religion seem possible, but a prolonged peace to set these up properly seems unlikely on this map and they do not really suit my style:- I love the AP for its production bonuses and Diplo options, but dislike the ploy of gifting weak State Religion cities to competitors for a backdoor win. Domination will be a long plod on a land-only map with no razing. My Tech progress is pleasing so I will plough the Aesthetics – Literature path (to perhaps head for the stars…..?). Whatever option I take, I am going to need more room and an iron supply, so someone has to give way. Hammurabi is the closest, has iron at my border and juicy cities with useful Wonders:- the ideal target!. I tool up for war.

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, challenger. Goal: fastest Diplo victory (UN).

I started to play without a plan. I won't do it again. Without resources in the visible start, I settled 1SW, with marble and rice in the fat cross. Right then and there decided I wnated a slingshot. What for? I yet don't know. I picked MC from Oracle, but it was useless in the short term. My explorers dying to lions didn't help.

Becasuse of the stupid Oracle I got:
- Hamm getting the deer SE, which made it impossible to settle around any of the golds in a sensible way.
- A GPro which I had no use for, ended up settled in the capital, delayed my Academy for ages.
- Ridiculous growth in the capital, as I wanted an engineer at the forge in order to get a GE for the UN.

Then I got the copper E and the iron S, I thought who to attack. IMHO taking Hamm food-rich lands was the best idea. But alas! I decided to attack Joao, because Hamm favourite civic is Bureaucracy and I need someones votes to win.

At 500AD I realise that Joao won't capitulate until I get Feudalism. Doh! I'm on my way to the slowest Diplo Victory...or will I really win?


Does anyone know what the probability of a slave revolt ending on its own is? I had never tried that option and it took 7 turns.

 

[Heroic]

I can only speak from experience, as I usually do choose that option. I have rarely ever had it go longer than 3 turns (only once - 5 turns). Typically I get at least 2 turns.

 

[Cletus]

Thanks for everyone's posts. I usually don't do very well on the GOMs, but still trying to learn. Now trying to figure out the BtS changes/implications. People's clues I've read here have really helped. In this one the game crashed (as these GOMs often do for me) and I forgot to reload from the autosave before playing another game. I was doomed anyway.

...
I'm sure the maths weren't working right, because Spain's Chariots took our my Vulture with too much ease (in attack they were fine, but defense, even on a jungle-hill, with 2+ promotions they always got wiped out). ...

I just noticed that Chariots get +100% v Axemen. When was that added? I don't see it in the manual that way, and don't remember.

As far as the Vultures go, i didn't notice.

 

[Jbourne]

Going for UN.

First XOTM for me but have been playing for a while. So here goes.

Settled on the spot and the warrior went SE by accidental click. No big deal. Continued SE past the lake and started zigzag east. Met Hammie and bunch of others soon and started to like Izzies land.....very much. She look nice...got to have her the cave man style.

Learned to build camps, pastures, mines and quaries. Then it was off to get the Oracle built. Tried to build a City by Hammie's deer but he beat me to it. So the settler founded a hill city on the lake to SE of capital. Founded two more cities to claim the Marble and gold, and copper and deer. Started building UU's when a stray barb archer showed up by the waterfront hill city and claimed it. Luckily we had pulled out an archer and a warrior from the other cities to reinforce the hill city warrior and they were able to take back the city from the barb archer before he fully recovered. Our archer died but the warrior was successful.

Capitol built the Oracle and got MC for it and later built the GLib. The Marble city built the Mids but forgot to switch to Rep for a long time. The reclaimed hill city built the ToA. Just about when the Glib was done two Barb cities popped northeast of Spain and 4 vultures and 2 archers took both cities w/o any losses. We founded one more city to the west before attacking Izzy who was a part of the Jewish federation. We took 4 of her 6 city empire some time after 500 AD.

In the mean time 4 barb swords showed up by copper city and fortunately we had 2 vultures nearby and another heading that way toward Spain. The city had no defenders and the 2 Vultures could only kill two swords. Popped a Vulture in that city but could not hold back two swords. Our highly promoted vultures took back the city.

In a show of how much smarter the BTS AI are, in the 12th century Izzy took back her capital with LB's when I tired to take her new capital to the east. She waited until I nearly emptied Madrid and then popped 3 LB that can get to either the forested tile or the mine E and SE of Madrid. I placed one Vulture on the mine and two on the forest (it should have been other way around). She killed my Vulture on the mine and when the culture popped back to Spanish, the 2nd LB killed the spear in the city and the last one moved and fortified in the capital. Another LB was popped next turn. Now that is cool and shame on me. She will be mine.............my vassel. Next the purple wonder and his Gem mines.