BOTM36 First Spoiler – 1AD

[kcd_swede]

BOTM 36 First Spoiler - 1AD

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 36 (Assur of Germany), then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

So… how’s Assur doing this time around? Meet any interesting Vikings? What’s your plan for dealing with them?


Posting Restrictions

• Please do not discuss anything that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do discuss modern era resource locations (iron is OK).
• Please do not divulge your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

 

[billybgame]

Ok, I played Adventurer, and by 1AD I had 4 cities, and with the close border to the East, had eyes on the vast expanse to the West.

Settled in place, and Hamburg went on the river hill SE of there, to cut off the Romans. Then city 3, Munich, went to the far S coast, where horses appeared to make a very nice city site. Then city 4, Cologne, went N/NE, for silver, cows and iron. So, I amassed a wall on the Eastern front.

No wars, by this point, though. Monotheism gave me Christianity. Not surprisingly, even though my Christianity spread to the Romans, and we shared it, he never even offered Open Borders.

I was in 2nd place most of this time, and around the tech lead, I believe. I was planning to shoot for a space victory, figuring I'd be at a disadvantage military wise. Probably incorrectly.

 

[_T_]

I ve played contender save.
At 1 AD I has 8 cities nicely placed equally around capital. I blocked east by one city north claiming iron+copper and 2 cities south from there one with FP second (captured barbarian) at the coast. I plan to build GLib in the FP city, maybe is to late. Then I settled west but didnt get to far west and then it is blocked by English. So the expansion went relatively well (comparing my other games) but I should have push more into neutral territory and leave space for some more cities I will try to get some more cities in the following turns, the east is full but I can squeeze 1 or 2 west.
AI is backwards and I have some cautions relation and some pleased leaders. Met 5 Ais so far. I give away few techs to get the better relations (even open borders with Toku - it cost more than one tech though).
Running HR + SL (switching to CS occasionally) and no religion.
No plans for wining just teching and keeping them away of my borders. Maybe I ll try to get to the UU and dominated with it.

 

[enKage]

Crazy game O_O
Too many wars as for the beginning of a game, and none of them were declared by me !

From the beggining - i settled in place. Secpnd city - on the floodplains southeast to grab pigs as well, third one - east to grab copper, fourth on the southern peninsula with wheat and horses. Later i captured one city west to Berlin, and settled another south of it - so at the time I had those "minimum" 6 settlements.

Techs - fishing -> agri -> bw -> ah -> wheel, pottery --> and so on

I was teching towards catapults, having huge stack of axes and chariots prepared to declare war on Romans, when i was attacked by english, sharing even the same religion as me ! I wanted to keep peace on westren islam block, and concentrate on eastern expansion, but i had to move all my units westside!
The enemy was near Berlin - 2 tiles (none of my cities were settles west) and i have 3 turns to get with my axes there. I had to sacrifice my two workers, to stop them coming (silly computer moved all his stack back, to capture workers :d) This gave me time to locate my axes on the forest, and force his stack to move to grassland if he wanted to attack Berlin.
After several turns i captured their former barbarian city on the river west to Berlin, and then...
Roman declared war at me -_- with nice pretorian stack O_O heading for my floodplain commerce city!

So i have to move again my axes throuaght whole empire and whip, whip, whip my science city to pop 2 ! But i defended myself (ufff with last chariot), then pillaged nearly everything around Rome.

At this time english declared war at me again (whyyy???) - I whipped again but on the other side of empire


During my second war it was obvious - no peace ! never !
I used my prechopped forests near Berlin to build pyramids in 12 (or 15 ) turns and switched to nationhood - if they want war, they will have war !!!!

At the tome around 1 AD I was focusing my research on getting techs leading to maces, crossbows and trebs, meanwhile wanted feudalism to vassalize at least those nasty english. Byzantine are no thread as they are friendly toward me.


The most interesting about this game - are combat odds changed or what ? I lose nearly everything on combatodds about 75%, lose often above 99 (full health chariot vs archer 0,3 !!!) and.... win nearly everything at odds about 40% !! Really strange luck!

 

[kcd_swede]

Crazy game O_O
I had to sacrifice my two workers, to stop them coming (silly computer moved all his stack back, to capture workers :d)

Roman declared war at me -_- with nice pretorian stack O_O heading for my floodplain commerce city!

The most interesting about this game - are combat odds changed or what ? I lose nearly everything on combatodds about 75%, lose often above 99 (full health chariot vs archer 0,3 !!!) and.... win nearly everything at odds about 40% !! Really strange luck!

Nice move with the workers! Very clever... necessity really is the father of invention.

More dogpiles... I didn't see that in testing, but then again, map pre-knowledge always distorts a game.

And no... combat odds are not altered (I don't think that's even possible without modding). You were just having "one of those days", I guess.

if they want war, they will have war

Now you're getting the spirit! (Maybe they are looking forward to a warriors death which earns them an eternity in Valhalla, where free beer flows from golden goat teets... ...and no, I'm not just making that up).

Good luck! Sounds like you are on track now.

 

[lymond]

You know, I had a lot of terrible combat losses early on to AIs and barbs. It was really strange.

Anyway, my first goal was to take out Toku/Rome. I wanted to put a stop to an inevitable Praet war. I have not played Prince in a while and underestimated the level with aggressive AI. This is not as easy as I thought it would be. I got up a second city near the cow/copper and another one to the west near the FP/silver/horses. I chopped whipped a few Axes to head to Rome. What I found was a much better defended empire than expected with Archers and Axe - already!!!! aaaargh!!! So I turned my efforts toward going around pillaging his iron, copper and then...ugh...horses. He's picked off a stray unit or two of mine, but I'm starting to make headway now that I have cats. Bottom line though is that this is turning out to be a LONG drawn out war that I could have been better prepared for. At least no Praets to be seen.

In the meantime, I built stonehenge for char mons and Oracled Monarchy - I think or maybe it was MC.

Genhis/England declared on me with a small stack that I took care of easily and made peace. I bribed Shaka into war with Toku for some tech trades. Shaka is surprisingly teching very well as is some of the other AIs which I won't mention at this point in case some have not scouted as I have.

Right now, my plan is to finish off Rome which should net me some decent land, although his capital is not that great. Also, some barb cities have popped up in the vicinity which I should be to grab up easily.

After that, I will need to focus on pushing my tech rate up. I had originally planned to go the war route here but the Rome thing has really stalled it. However, based on the current diplo situation I expect some more DOWs on me. I'm trying to butter up Shaka as a trade partner/ally. He seems to have a more gentle demeanor this game, but I'm not sure this early.

I have a chariot scouting east and a workboat scouting the sea. I think I've met every AI.

I have to say I'm still not sure what route I want to take as far as VC. I have to get my tech rate up to see if I can get a military advantage and go that route.

This is a very nasty bunch of Vikes we have here.

 

[mikeocarroll]

Decided to go for a domination victory - Inland Sea, Prince level, how hard can it be, I ask myself?

Moved my scout E-NE and discovered the silver to the North. Explored to see if any food resources up that way but there weren't so after 3 turns settled 1W of the start location, to get corn, seafood & plains hills. Capital to be early production base, maybe later GP farm.

Teched Agri to develop corn, BW to chop/whip & fish to develop seafood. Then AH-Wheel-Writing-Pottery. Founded second city to the west to get Silver & Pigs & 4FP in BFC, plus lots of plains hills. Cottaged the FPs. Founded third city NE to get copper/silver/cow in BFC. Was pretty happy at 2000BC to have three cities up and running, had met English and Romans and had sent warriors off exploring the rest of the map.

After that I lost focus a bit - built a fourth city south to get the wheat and more flood plains, to be another cottage rich city. Spent ages aiming for Oracle in city 3 instead of expanding BFC to get cows/silver, and lost out on Oracle. Didn't really work either silver that much and tech rate slowed a lot, still ahead of AIs though and got a few trades but unsurprisingly they weren't too cooperative. Beelined Construction to get Cats but didn't get it until 275BC. Whipped a few Cats to join a dozen or so Axes I had ready and headed off towards the Romans. 1AD sees my stack on the edge of Roman territory poised to invade.

Overall a bit disappointed to lose focus and probably should have got Constr. quicker and got my first war going faster, especially as I kept number of cities limited to 4 (figured I'd capture some others soon enough). I'm not convinced my force will be strong enough to finish of Romans will probably have to take a few cities then wait until Macemen to take the rest. Luckily no-one has DOWed me yet so fingers crossed my luck in that regard continues.

Good fun map with lots of tricky city founding decisions . Aggressive AI makes me much more uncertain than I usually would be at Prince level.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Crazy map - I like it!

Settled in place, built one city east (for copper), one west (river/flood plains/wine/silver/horses ), captured one south from the barbs (which would turn into a bit of a monster). I settled one south of the west city too though that may have been shortly after 1AD. Definitely space to squeeze some more in but warfare calls me first...

Went for CS sling, got fairly close, was 9 turns away from finishing maths (already had CoL - founded Christianity) and 1 turn from finishing Oracle. Still, 140 or so fail-gold helped keep my tech rate up

Not too much war happening but far too many "we have enough on our hands..." going on... I don't (& can't currently) share religion with anyone I turn up at Cumae (SW of Rome) just as 1AD approaches, declare war with my axe stack, with a few spearmen & chariots thrown in. They have praetorians though which is sad. In contract to some other people's luck, I send in 2 axemen at 15% chance of victory to soften them up.... and win both of those battles! Bonus

Plan - get to catapults (nearly there already), duff up the Romans some more, maybe vassalise them... get bureaucracy soon too, I have mines & cottages galore in preparation.

What will happen.... everyone declares war on me & I die horribly

 

[ElWanderer]

Good fun map with lots of tricky city founding decisions .

Agreed. I kept finding sites would be one square off from a river/coast, or else would miss out on useful resources/land.

I founded my capital on the hillside river 2S of the start point. City 2 was in the SE to get wheat and pigs, city 3 to the west to get the horses, silver and wine (one square away from the river ) and city 4 was in the NE by the copper and cows. More cities would have been nice, but I was distracted by wars.

I founded Christianity (Oracled Code of Laws) and it helpfully appeared in city 2, where I wanted the culture to keep the pigs from falling into Roman hands. Cleverly, or so I thought, I sent the missionary SE to Comrade Shaka, to convert him. On the way, I passed a stack of 6 units headed the other way, but I figured they were after a barbarian city...

A few turns later, Comrade Shaka's stack had captured the barbarian city and continued marching up to my borders. Uh-oh. City 2 had a single warrior and a couple of chariots in attendance, with a third training - the attacking stack had two spearmen, two chariots, an archer and an axeman. At this point I was just about to connect up the iron, but I hadn't done it yet. How embarrassing, I thought as the war-horn sounded... this can't end well

Yet I was very lucky. For some reason Shaka's stack marched right up to my city then detoured onto a nearby hill to capture two of my workers. With the iron just hooked up, that let me chop an axeman (the workers were able to be captured because they had no movement after taking down the forest). Then, bizarrely, the stack moved onto another adjacent square and pillaged a cottage, which let me whip a spearman. Only on the next turn did he finally decide to attack the city, at which point he lost badly.

As I mopped up the remnants, two interesting things happened concerning my neighbour Consul Tocugaia. Christianity spread to him (hooray) and he declared war on me (boo). At 1AD, I'm at peace with the Russians, but a small Roman stack is camped out on one of the floodplains by City 2, where hopefully I can smash it.

 

[Ronnie1]

First, I want to say welcome to some of the newer names posting in this thread. It is great to see new people coming to the game of the month!

Second, Nice map Swede, great effort for you first time out!

The most interesting about this game - are combat odds changed or what ? I lose nearly everything on combat odds about 75%, lose often above 99 (full health chariot vs archer 0,3 !!!) and.... win nearly everything at odds about 40% !! Really strange luck!

You know, I had a lot of terrible combat losses early on to AIs and barbs. It was really strange. YES, Me too

Not sure about the low odds winning (I didn't get that end of the luck,...but I was SCREAMING at my monitor after about my 100th LOSS (OK, maybe not a HUNDRED, but still) at better than 70% odds. They say aggressive setting makes no difference on combat results...but I have my doubts.

 

[enKage]

(.........)

They say aggressive setting makes no difference on combat results...but I have my doubts

never trust mapmaker ?

kcd_swede, be honest, what have you done?

 

[kcd_swede]

never trust mapmaker ?

kcd_swede, be honest, what have you done?

Its magic. I have curse all who have failed to salute Oden and Vahalla. You shall die an ignominious death.



But when I someday figure out how to manipulate stuff like combat odds... *


*never trust a mapmaker.

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, contender. Goal: fastest cultural victory.



The plan: kill my most feared enemy soon, play a relatively slow cultural game with extra emphasis on staying strong.




Up to 2000BC:

Scout SW, sees silver, then SE to find out if 2SW of the settler is interesting. It is not, settle in place because of superior food.

Techs: Agri, BW, Fishing, Pottery, AH, Wri

Production: Worker, Warrior, WB (whipped), Warrior, Worker (1chop), Warrior, Settler (1chop), Granary (whipped).

Cities:

01 in place. Legendary wity because of its hammers.

02 S: with wheat, pig, 4FP, river. Meant as the GPFarm



This game I preferred a Settler sooner than a Granary, but somehow I feel now when reading what I did that I wasn't specially fast with my first settler.

Upon seing East Marble I decided Toku had to go, Protective or not. Marble is THAT important in a BTS cultural game.





Up to 1000BC:

03 NE: with lake, copper, cow. Auxiliary city only to connect copper. It will mostly build units.

04 W: on wines, with pig, silver, 4FP, many hills, without horses. Legendary city because of its hammers and his few cottages.

Research: Sailing to connect copper, Alphabet.

Worker steal Toku (quite late, he has 2 cities). If I'm going to eventually kill him, I'd better keep him weak. Get peace soon.

After the 4th city, I have two options,

a) settle more cities W and S of the 4th one while building Libraries, etc or

b) prepare for war and take out Toku.

I choose the latter.

1000 BC Stats: 4 cities, 14 pop, 6workers, 6units(6War), 1 strategic resources, 1 luxury resources, 4 health resources, 0 great persons, 0 world wonders, 0 national wonders, food/production/commerce=44-21-45, 29 sustainable beakers per turn, 5 culture per turn, 6 great person points per turn, 40 gold, 2gra,1monu, Lib, Barr. 0 religions, 1/2 cottages used, 13 Techs: Alpha, BW. 0 civs killed. 4 hours played.





Up to 1AD:

Dow Toku again for a double worker steal (on his copper tile again). Get peace soon.

Research: Trade for Myst, Medi, PH, CoL from Oracle to get a religion and close the door to another one. Then 0% towards Currency to pay for the war.

Religions: 1 infected, 1 from CoL.

GPs: GS for Academy in capital.

Starting a second session makes me good: I was farming my 4th city instead of cottaging and I was not scared of Prats. I have 1Axe close to a Toku mine in a plains tile. I have not units enough.

Accelerate my dowing Toku for good (mistake). 2Axe enter the Iron tile and get smoked by Praetorian and Axe. Main stack has 6Axe+Spear+Archer and is followed by reinforcements (1Axe per turn), it heads for Toku's capital. Since I haven't disconnected Iron, Praetorians are whipped every turn.

First attack fails by so little...if I hadn't had that bad luck...

Next turn there's still a chance because 1 Praetorian has gone after my offered Worker... attack, bad luck, 1 unit survives. I feel like abandoning.

Next turn the Praetorian has gone further away after my offered warrior (the great worker-stealer) and there are no reinforcements from the city, I take it and barely keep it.

A bit later the Praetorians stack kill 1 Axe each, but I can kill all of them the following turn. Why on Earth did the game choose my CR3 Axe as a defender, having other not promoted Axes around?

Accept peace for one tech, in order for Toku not to build units while I reinforce seriously. He's got 4 more cities now. This is not going to be a clean war.



I use the 10 turns of peace to prepare 2 Settlers, to build an invincible army and to take it East. Gengis comes with 3Axes and 3Spears from the West. I whip and send the minimum needed units there. Then I stupidly chase the offered Spear and lose my first Axe (bad luck again), kill with the second one... 2 less Axes in the city and some bad luck make me lose my city. I am as stupid as the AI. I retake the city the following turn, but the Monument, part of the pop and 2 temples are gone. Big big loss, if you consider the effect of Sistine's in 1000 years old temples in the future.

The other effect of Gengis dow is to disturb my settler, who ends up settling with stone and 3 FPs. Which is not a bad thing at all, anyway. Come to think of it, my economy is in ruins, I have cottages in just one city (the capital is only working hills), the beakers from Representation would be my way out: I'll shoot for a late Pyramids.

So the 10 turns are over, My stack of 3Swords, 1Spear and 16Axes is truly invincible and rolls over everything in sight (take 2 cities before 1AD). Pity Toku's city settling has been so bad. I keep every city I take, I'll probably be glad to have a lot of unit producers sometime in the future.

1AD Stats: 8 cities, 34 pop, 10workers, 30units (3Swo), 3 strategic resources, 1 luxury resources, 6 health resources, 1 great persons, 1 world wonders, 0 national wonders, food/production/commerce=95-43-35, 0 sustainable beakers per turn, 31 culture per turn, 2 great person points per turn, 780 gold. 2 religions. 4/8 cottages used, 19 Techs: IW, Alpha, CoL. 0 civs killed. 9 hours played. reli/city, temples, caths== 3,1,0



Plans for the immediate future: finish off Toku, connect Marble, get out another 2 settlers, work on my economy, pray for Pyramids success.


Evaluation: Starting a war with or without 3 more units ready makes a huge difference. I shouldn't have dowed so early and unprepared. I risked losing the game. Now I know I'll win, but even without more wars (which probably won't be the case) it won't be fast at all.

 

[Ronnie1]

I love your write ups Jesusin! Better than reading a novel!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It's certainly a fun map so far, although I'm playing with the Challenger game and the AIs are pretty scary.

I think that the most frustrating part is that some of the Diplo screens aren't set up very well--you have Leaderhead picture to go off of, but when you look at the Score listing, you can maximally only see the Leader Name and their Civ Name. Well, let me tell you that with the COMBINATION of renamed Leaders AND Randomized Leaders, it is very hard to keep track of who is whom. I keep double-checking for just about every interaction. I think that I'll have to write a list down on a piece of paper as to which Leaderhead picture matches up with which Leadername + Civ.

Anyway, it is certainly a crazy host of characters that will not make winning easy.


City placements have so far been very Hammer-focused, far from my normal approach. I feel totally out of my element, which is great for this kind of a role-playing Vikings game and of course that means that I am really loving the experience.


It was neat to include a "dotter" Leader. I'd love to hear about the historical significance of these Leaders... perhaps in the Final Spoiler thread.


I don't know what to say about my game, really, other than the fact that war is very hard against an AI with tech parity for Military Units and better promotions... facts that are probably leading to people experiencing more combat losses than normal.

 

[Htadus]

Kudo's to KCD on making a non always war game a potential always war game

Psychotic Vikes . I guess I have to be one too now.

Settled on the spot after dismissing the silver as a trap by the never trustable mapmaker. And i am glad I did since the site is a power house.

Once I met Rome, my immidiate plans were drawn to take him out, axe/chariot rush style. By then we were a fishing and farming community about to learn BW. Thanks for the copper. Toku with Preats. Nice touch KCD. A DoW waiting to happen.

Capital built a worker, wb, warriors X2, Barracks, worker, settler before going into building 6 axes (untill copper was online for 3-4 turns, cap built SH for failure gold). City 2 was founded 1 tile west of copper on T45. It too would build 2 axes for the assult.

T75 declared war and next turn lost 3 axes capturning Rome.
T80 lost 2 more axes capturing Antium. He had 1 axeman.
T85 I saw he had a settler built in his third city and 3 archers. So I got cease fire.
T88 ReDow Toku and capture Cumae next turn. His last city did not fit with my dot map so I razed it on T94 (525 BC) and Rome is gone.

During this time we build The Oracle for Philosophy on T92 in copper city and start the Mids in the Capital. This was completed in T112 (75 BC)

Near 1AD I was teching Math and will head to Lit. Then MC, Currency, Construction and CS. Have 8-9 cities and tech rate on 10% but have several merchants and scientists. In the process of building CH's. By 1000 AD I intend to have the empire built up to about 15-20 cities.

I did not have a plan for this game but plan to go for a war game or my favorite: Space.

I intend to Dow next with Maces and cats unless some one beat me to it.

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Very interesting neighbors in this game! My goal is to channel the spirit of my Viking ancestors to achieve a military victory.

I settled Berlin 1W of the starting position and began with building a worker. I had a very early scare about being conquered by an exploring Roman warrior in the neighborhood, so I lost some time switching between building that and building a warrior (which wouldn't have been completed in time, in any case) before the Roman wandered away and let me finish the worker.

At 1 AD, I've got four cities and I've agreed to join Harald in a war against Röde, but I intend this to be a phony war on my part, simply to build Harald's good will. Otherwise, all's still peaceful.

 

[mabraham]

A bit later the Praetorians stack kill 1 Axe each, but I can kill all of them the following turn. Why on Earth did the game choose my CR3 Axe as a defender, having other not promoted Axes around?

In my experience, it always chooses the unit with the most XP from among those with equal odds. So make sure you keep an axeman with combat in with your CR3-axemen in the early game.

 

[jesusin]

In my experience, it always chooses the unit with the most XP from among those with equal odds. So make sure you keep an axeman with combat in with your CR3-axemen in the early game.

Thank you. My experience is just the same... but the algorithm is 100% wrong. With the same chances it should choose the least experienced one.

I had one combat one Axe there... but there were more than 1 Praetorian.