Civ 3 GOTM #2 *Spoiler* talks

[Dirty Clint]

Eek, I have over 12000 points and played basically the same as Aeson. What I did was control my culture so that it never hit 100,000 points. ie I sold off all my culture improvements which stopped a culture win. It makes for a boring, high micromanagement game though - but score wise it's the way to go when domination is disabled.

 

[Aeson]

EEK,

I sold all my cultural improvements just shortly after taking over the main continent to avoid a cultural win. Otherwise I would have had a cultural victory by 1900 as well. The only exceptions were libraries I built in cities which hadn't expanded their borders yet, then those were sold as well. At 1900 you still have 125 turns left I think. By that time I was at about 45 points per turn, and still accelerating.

I had a leader I had saved to build my palace on the main continent as well, which helped development times immensly. The final war yeilded 5 leaders, but the only one that really impacted my score was the one for the palace. I had razed every AI city except 3 (kept the pyramids, js bach, and sun tzu's/collosus), giving me around 500-600 captured workers throughout the game. Even with all those workers, the main continent took until 1920 to finish improving. First I had them all on shift-a, then I went through and irrigated all the mines that I could. Once they were done with that, I added them all to my population, and used 10-20 home grown workers to manage pollution on each continent until the end of the game.

When I did conquer each continent, I had enough settlers waiting to colonize about half the land area within the next couple of turns. Both the Aztec isle and the main continent were completely settled within 20 or so turns of conquest. I maximized population throughout the whole game, at the expense of everything else. I think it was about 1800 when I finished off the final conquest, leaving the English with 1 city on the Aztec isle. All the corrupt cities got an aqueduct if they needed it, a library till their borders expanded, and a hospital. Nothing more. Tax rate was 90%, and all the gold was used to rush those improvements. All the cities that had their improvements already were set to build units to be lifted to the main continent to be disbanded. By 2000, every city had every improvement they needed, and I set luxuries to 90% to maximize happiness. The last 50 turns were just hitting shift-p and enter.

One thing that probably is important to the final score. I had conquered the Indians and Germans quite early (1200AD or so IIRC) and claimed all of the Indian territory, plus the northern German empire. This gave me an area about 2 times the size of the Aztec Isle, which was developed early on, helped build up the massive settler force, and added to my earlier scores. My original plan had been to save all captured workers till the end for a massive addition to one city. Having a city at 600 population (or whatever the max pop for a city is) would have been funny. From a scoring standpoint I decided it wasn't the best option though, and added workers as soon as they had completed the tasks I needed them to. Also I was thinking of LOSING diplomatically to the English, I just missed the last vote. If the vote had been on 2050, I wouldn't have lost any points. Is there a way to call up a vote? If there is, I couldn't find it. Final score was 12951.

I think a few things would need to have been changed from my game to make the extra 5000 points possible. One, if there was a way to get a settler from that first hut (should be), lucking into that would have made colonization of the first continent that much faster. Also it would have freed up a city earlier to start on the lighthouse. Trying to switch to communism wasted 16 turns of production in the 1600's. Stopping my Calvary invasion was foolhardy, as I could have claimed most of the former German and French empires if I would have continued on. As it was, I had 50+ Calvary just sitting around for 100's of years collecting dust. Trying to settle all the culture gaps in the English/French conquest of the Japanese/Chinese made England my enemy, and was a waste of 30+ settlers. Waiting until Modern Armor (instead of just tanks) might have also been a blunder, though the leader generation, and the ease of the conquest with the Modern Armor was nice. And trying to relocate the English to the Aztec isle cost me 30 more turns of production for my entire empire. I should have given them the city before the final conquest, instead of waiting until I signed a peace treaty. This meant I had to go through another war period with them, just to take 1 city. Between all of that, I wouldn't be suprised if a 20k score was possible on this map, although to do it all right the first time through would take a lot of luck (early settler) and experience in playing this sort of style. The +5k was just assuming no early settler, and maybe a mistake or two along the way.

ps. While writing this I decided to check if the early settler is possible. Waiting 1 turn before building athens (moving out to build on the sea), and then having your worker pop the hut (one to the north) as soon as he can get there yeilds a settler. You have to have a warrior being built in athens, and researching Ironworking (wait for the popup on the turn after athens is founded). This means it is entirely possible some people will have gotten the settler, as this should be a common build/explore/research pattern.

 

[Aeson]

Ugh, I just noticed that in an earlier post I said a conquest was possible by 1000BC, of course I meant AD (1000BC point bonus would be ~12200). That being said, by using city trading(pre-patch, should be considered an exploit), the only real limit to an early conquest would be getting contact with the Aztecs and the main Continent. Probably putting it somewhere near 500BC (~10000 pts). That would still put it far behind the scores for building.

Just saw your post Clint, VERY interested now in what your 12000+ score is

 

[Dirty Clint]

Ok then, you revealed yours so I'll set a target for Eek. I scored 15445. It looks like the earlier the conquest the higher the score. Not sure if 20k is possible but I was heading for 18k at one stage until those Germans got all uppity. The Germans were down to 1 city at 1435AD or thereabouts. Perhaps if I had then put down cities at a 3 apart Borg style then 20k might have been possible.
I got that early settler but under different circumstances than your test Aeson. I tested later and got a settler under different circumstances each test - exiting the game and reinstalling the 4000bc save seems to reset what you get from each hut. I see that Apolyton leaves huts out of their games but I don't like that idea much. I never reload games to get an early settler but I suppose people do it. Certainly made less of a difference than in GOTM01 but it did free up Athens for an early attempt at the Lighthouse when I discovered I was on an island.
I'm playing a Deity level, huge map, 2civ game now, to see if it's possible to beat the deity level 3950BC conquest victory score - early guess is yes it is but it could be a long game, LOL.
Do I have a life? Yes, but my wife says not for much longer!!

 

[Aeson]

Ouch, Nice score Clint, I'll be lucky to place this month... I was doing the same thing with the 2 Civ/Huge/Pangaea/Deity/No Domination/ No Spaceship/No Culture. Left diplomatic, so I can still lose with a huge score It's taking forever just to explore everything with scouts. Chose to use the Iroquois, for religion and expansion. Figure I can get 5+ settlers from huts with that much landmass. Chose the Indians as opponents, because they always seem to be the nicest, along with the Chinese. If there is a difficulty modifier on population and territory (should be) then 36060 shouldn't be too hard to beat. Even on Monarch and those map settings it might be possible. Also I'm playing the GOTM over to see how early I can achieve conquest. Have all the other Civ's down to their capitols at 600BC, probably won't make the 500BC estimate, but close. Definitely have to use pre-patch city trading to come anywhere near that though.

 

[Cruise]

Great score guys, i am looking at a 8500-9000 finish score. I knew i'd hit the culture victory, but then again, i wanted to reach that limit because i didn't feel like waiting 3 minutes every turn for my workers to fool around. :crazyeyes

An early settler would certainly boost expansion early on. I didn't get one. This gotm was way too time consuming for me. Those who got the highest scores here REALLY deserve the medals here, it's a hell of a job.
I am still happy about my score though, and i don't think i am doing too bad as a newcomer to the civ online scene

I hope the next game will be somewhat shorter, early conquest seems to be my favourite style About the no-huts.... i kind of like it, but it also takes away something from the game. tbh, i wouldn't mind if occasionally there is a no-hut game.

 

[Smirk]

Aeson, I did step to the coast for athens, I didn't get any settler though with my worker.

I usually always will go a for a coastal and river square if I see it when I start. I usually also tab to me worker to move him so more chance of getting a better start. I wonder how much that effects your score, I notice there is that blip on the score in the beginning.

Why no marketplaces Aeson? Seems to me that you get more points for real happy people that content and specialists, am I wrong on that?

Anyway good job Dirty Clint and Aeson for that hard *work* of growing that game to 12k+.

Got a 11k conquest yesterday playing the egyptians on small monarch pangea. Year was about 600BC, what calculation were you referring to when you spoke of conquest by 1000AD?

 

[Badluck]

Hello,i am kinda new at this forum and my english isn'T very good
i started GOTM2 today, it'S my first game at monarch level,and my third game of civ3 but up to now i managed to survived
some big horde of horse started attacking me, woa, i wasn'T prepared, so i lost 500 gold.
I really wasN'T lucky whit the hut.
first hut: 2 Sarmatian Conscript attacking me
second hut; 3 S.C. attacking me
third hut : 25 gold
fourth hut: 3 SC attacking me
Fifth hut: 2 SC. attacking me

Anyway i managed to build some archer and attack the roman, and forcing them to give me 1 citie after first attack and 2 cities after the second attack so they are left whit one capital but i just saw one of theire settler going somewhere to make a town...
so i guess in 3 or 4 turn i will have finish them up and now i finnaly got iron.


"Small words of encouragment, small hours of the night,
small wonder you feed my discipline, feed my twenty thousand
reasons to fight, small change in your pocket, small victory songs,
small steps in the right direction make more sense than a
thousand big ones in the wrong."

 

[Aeson]

Actually I did build marketplaces in all of my cities, forgot about that. It really does help with happiness, and when combined with the 90% luxury rate, I think every citizen other than specialists were happy. Probably one or the other would have worked almost as well, but I had all the money and tech that I wanted. Besides, future tech's add almost nothing to the score is seems.

I'm not sure about the Settler patterns, to me they are always repeatable, even when exiting Civ 3 and starting again. Every little difference does change the outcome though. As I said, even the current build in Athen's changed what I got from the hut. What I was researching also changed it, as well as when I started researching. I think huts add too much randomness to people's scores. But since the administrators like to play the game as well, there really isn't an option to take them out of the GOTM's. On this map it certainly wouldn't have made as much difference as on the first GOTM, so thats not a big deal. Usually the corruption barrier would be reached before contact was made with any of the other landmasses, making the early expansion bonus less critical. It certainly would have made the Romans easier to deal with though.

 

[Smirk]

Only thing I noticed was build time seemed to change the huts. Not sure why, I messed around once with a map with a hut real close that I got a settler out of. I was trying to see if I could get a warrior made and get another hut in the same turn to see if I could get 2 settlers, no matter what I did, if that warrior was made before I hit the hut with my worker it would change.

Of course much later I realized my plan wouldn't work anyway since when you get the hut it then moves the rest to a new thing.

I think they should disable the huts for GOTM, I don't think they add much to game play. And they have the potential to greatly ruin it for competitions like this, if you fail to get the early settler and others do get it.

 

[Matrix]

I finished my GOTM. I lost; smacked down by the Romans in 1375 AD. Got 571 points.

The funny thing is: I also met the Aztecs because of a lucky trireme who didn't even reached their shore (but sank) but I did saw a city of them. And they contacted me. Not very realistic, seen the fact that we actually can't even reach each other normally.

Furthermore, I figured out the Romans and me were the only ones on a continent shortly before they wiped me out. If I had known that from the start I would've tried to eliminate them from the beginning. But I though that everyone would be on the same island since it was a pangaea. Tough luck I suppose.

Also funny that all the other Civs all had their own story without me ever knowing it. I saw how they managed in the repeat. It's a bit like America and Europe in the real world. But that's also the thing I like about the map maker of Civ3.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Well, I was feeling pretty accomplished when I killed the last Roman city . I thouroughly settled my island and then moved to the main island with 2 settlers. I only had space for 1 city so I added the 2nd settler to the city. I built a temple and defected a small Indian city which was built about 10 turns after the temple's completion. However, after receiving my troops reinforcements from the mainland, i wasn't able to take more than 5 cities. I nearly had the indians killed when everybody was busily signing alliances against me. I got greedy and took every soldier of every kind from my continent and was doing great when an indian horseman landed near my capital. I was out of money because of my large army so no rushbuild was possible. They took my capital.

Then, the indians took my entire continent, so I took them off of theirs. The only problem was my lack of iron and horses. I could not build any more adequate forces and the nations of the world eventually defeated my armies. My great leaders all died. I couldn't even sue for peace to stop the onslaught. They took my whole empire from under me. My last city was built by a settler 1 turn before they finished off the other cities. Tooo late! They found my one humble little size 1 city. They killed me.[punch]

I don't think I'll submit this month. Maybe next month's will be easier.(hint to Matrix)

 

[Nelson Minar]

Secured Iron 290AD.
Met Aztecs c. 900AD.
Met rest of world c. 1100AD.
Conquered Romans 1360AD.
Established airport in Eurasia 1750AD.
Launched my spacecraft 1842AD.

I had originally given up on this game after getting stuck with the Romans in a stupid war of attrition neither of us could win. But once I realized the situation with iron it was clear what to do. I put a city near the iron (after three settler parties died in the attempt!), made peace with the Romans, and quietly gathered my forces for a killing blow.

My primary concern was to establish peaceful relations with the rest of the world while ensuring they did not ever get my map. This was difficult; if the Romans ever met the others I felt sure they'd sell my map out. I met the Aztecs early, the rest of the world later, and was careful in trading never to sell my maps nor contact with the Romans. Clever trading brought me from my utter lack of technical skill to a wealthy scientific power. I was one turn from wiping out the Romans entirely when an English Galleon stumbled on the last Roman town. I never did find out if they sold me out or not. After controlling the whole continent it was clear I was in a winning position and the only thing to do was sit tight, trade aggressively, and grow.

I lost my source of coal the first turn I had Steam Power, a situation that made me economic hostage to the Chinese for nearly four hundred years. The Aztecs kept trying to attack me, but it was easy to fend them off. The rest of the world was distressingly peaceful. Happily, envy overtook the Christmas spirit and soon the rest of the world was at war, leading me to build in peace.

I even managed to get onto the major other continent in the process of the war; Germany was losing cities quickly leaving territory unclaimed. A rush-built airport allowed me to funnel many tanks to the new world, but I chose to stay a peaceful course (other than picking at the dying corpse of the Germans). My cultural skills rewarded me; I assimilated four cities without firing a shot.

The unsportsman like ending of this game has me firing off nine ICBMs at all of my rivals just as I launch into space. There is something satisfying about dropping those smug capital cities in half. I chose to go after the space race victories after I did had not enough friends at the UN and not enough patience for a military victory.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Nelson, that is truly inspiring. I especially liked the nuke idea. I'll have to give that some serious consideration in my future games. One question, I'm having big problems with not getting enough science whereas in Civ2 I was great at getting science. What is the trick to getting science in civ3?

 

[Matrix]

Originally posted by gonzo_for_civ
I don't think I'll submit this month.

Why not? A lot of people say they don't submit when they haven't accomplished enough to their standards. But that's not the point. We all want to know how others did in relation to our own score. So please submit.

 

[bst1]

There is really no way to be isolationist and out-science everyone else like you could in civ2. You have to play the tech broker game if you want to keep up. If you have a fairly large, well developed empire you can generally start to "inch away from the pack" during the industrial age. But if you haven't been the tech dealer up until that point, chances are you will be hopelessly behind. The way that the AI civs rampantly trade techs, and therefore all stay on equal footing in tech is kind of disappointing. To me it just seems to smack as a way to cover fundamental shortcomings with the game AI. (not that I could do any better )

 

[Smirk]

Most of the best approaches in Civ3 revolve around the idea of building up yourself, at the same time knocking down your opponent. You can tech broker and be ahead in the 2nd and 3rd age (something and industrial?, dont remember the names), only slightly ahead, but if you beat down the tech leaders, the ones most likely to sell their techs you can expand that lead.

Also once the world has MPP and breaks down into 2 "teams" tech trading goes down. In this GOTM I easily was level with tech before the industrial age and past them in the middle towards the end.

You can also play catch up, since once everyone else has a tech, it becomes much faster to research it. In GOTM after I made contact with all the other civs, I was behind in tech but I was able to catch up and outpace them during that one age. I usually do not sell my techs unless I see they want things like 3 steps back in a path (and are rich). In gotm I was in modern and most of the civs still wanted things like electricity, and the rest steel etc.

 

[Spoonman]

ahhh just finished gotm2

had to finish today too before i go away for new years, dam these games can take ages

anyway was the most hardout civ game i've ever played
dam romans had taken all my cities (including athens) except for 2 around the 750ad mark

in my final move before i wouldve been crushed i used a great leader to capture one of my cities back, then sold it back to the romans for peace

gradually my old cities returned to me thru culture, and i managed to cling on to the science leaders so i could end up winning the space race

biggest kick was living long enuff to see the roman scum be burned from the face of the earth a few turns before i launched my space ship in 1992

awesome.

 

[Magnum]

Well, I've just finished mine in 1872AD with a space launch.
This one was too time consuming. Destroyed the Romans and decided to conquer the Aztecs (I was paying a fortune to the Indians in exchange of oil). It was easy to conquer Aztec cities with my huge army of tanks (upgraded to modern armor) and Mech Inf.

My score was not a good one - 2604. I also believe that the guy who did all the micromanagement deserves the gold medal.

The problem with this game was that you spent most of the month playing GOTM and don't have time to play other games and learn more about CIVIII.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Played the whole game version 1.16f. 5200 years of peace. Boxed off the Romans early, culture-captured six of their cities. Never left the continent. Never fought anyone except barbarians. The Romans have been my trusted allies the entire game. Traded luxuries and technologies. Railroaded my entire area by 1200 AD. Quit because I don't have time or patience to micromanage the remaining 850 years when it's obvious I will win. I'm 15 technologies ahead of the pack and double the point total of France (which is in second after wiping out the Germans). I got a late Golden Age by building Adam Smith's and used it to build factories in all my cities and also got the Hoover Dam. Fun, but what's the point of continuing?