Civ 3 GOTM 7 *Spoilers* Thread

[Gargouille]

You have suffered a humiliating loss
Catherine in Space 1590 AD with 6286
Hiawatha embarrassed with 1328 points, but
Salamanca is 4th in the Top 5 Cities.

In 2630 BC, my Scout woke up a Settler in a Hut and told him to block the choke point: Grand River in 2150 BC.
Around 1350 BC, my Warrior in the East had met Russia, Germany and Persia, while my Scout in the West had met Rome and England; not knowing that the very rich and promising Southern Peninsula has been completely by-passed.
Contacts were traded for all the Ancient Era technical advances.
Great work! Horses in sight, very good! I must build
a Galley for the Iron across Niagara Bay (got beaten by Persia).

I sent my fourth Settler beyond the Oural Mountains and founded
Allegheny in the Russian Steppes in 1725 BC. Finally Horses in
Oil Springs 1250 BC. I am a peaceful genius (expensive but in peace) !
With good news from my Scout, time had come to colonize the Southern Peninsula. Again I got beaten by all the other Civs!!!...
So what? I will beat them with my Spaceship.

First real battle with England in 190 BC (Great Leader for Sistine Chapel). Thanks to Rome MPP, that war was of short duration.
The following 1500 years were researching, trading and paying for Peace.

In 1400 AD, I accepted the Persian alliance against Egypt.
With a gigantic army of 15 to 20 Infantry, I overtook what was left of Egypt in 1650 AD.
Can you imagine, Hiawatha Master of Thebes?
I was researching Motorized Transportation and ready for World Domination!

Six turns later in 1590 AD, I was astonished... embarrassed... humilated... Cathy in Space!!! Impossible... AI is cheating again... may be a computer bug... or a new virus!!!

This is my first GOTM and first time ever in Deity.
A little bit frustrated... but I really enjoyed the game.
Hiawatha Master of Thebes...

 

[Phillip_martin]

Originally posted by BillChin
Not much I can do at this point, except wait for the end. The other civs are building United Nations, Manhattan Project and Spaceship parts, and I am just starting the Industrial Age. The slow start meant I was forever far behind in tech and only two luxuries to ever trade with. The loss of two cities to enemy culture, especially the silk city on a terrible die roll is too much to make up when already far behind.

Germany is already defeated, so I may get my score above theirs before the end..

Well done on hanging in untill the bitter end. You game is very similar to mine (for silk city read diamond city, for Germany read Romans). I am several ages behind the other civs and can relate to boredom. In my game Russia is the domnant Civ and after pulverising England has now chosen Persia as the next victim. They are near the domination threashold.

Originally posted by BillChin
I am not about to stir up a war when all the other civs have Mech Infantry. Maybe someone else will start a war to try and prevent a spaceship launch.

As I watch the tanks roll past my pikeman perched on their mountain hideaways. I also dream of greater things. Hmmmm maybe if offer cities for MPPs with all the other civs, tell Cathy to remove her 20 unit stack from my territory, when the dust settles she will be humbled by the rest of the world, everyone will love me, and the other civ (can't remember who built it) will call a UN election.

Finger is poised above the self destruct button.....

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Phillip_martin
Well done on hanging in until the bitter end [BillChin, et. al.].

Well done indeed! When I first saw the starting position for GOTM7, I assumed that I would soon be defending my capital on a hill from invading hordes bent on my destruction. I was going to build my web-report around honorable death as befitting a warrior. Perhaps, I would fortify and survive to modern times and nuke them as an act of defiance. Perhaps, I would abandon my own country and take to wandering like gypsies. Perhaps, I would join with another Civ so that my people might survive. Perhaps, I would hit the self-destruct button. . . . Perhaps, perhaps.

To face death without blinking, that is the way of the warrior.

 

[Rain]

A picture is worth a 1000 words

 

[Rain]

For the record - I broke zero deals in this game, no violations of Rop, trade or alliances. All wars were declared before entering enemy territory. The Romans did sneak attack me once tho but paid the price with my 5 civ alliance. I could have had a diplo victory roughly 100 years before my domination, but since there's no medal for early diplo i went on for dom. I could have easily milked this game to about 20,000 points, but after milking the last GOTM it just did not appeal.

I also did not sprawl. Well it got a bit ugly on the last few turns as i squeezed out the last few points for dom but the main issue there was a matter of shaving a few turns of the end. As it turned out i probably could have avoided some of that as i went over the dom limit by a small amount.

Most critical factor in my game was a hand-built FP and capital relocation. I think i got 5 GL's tho only 2 were very critical - one for the hoover (3) and one for TOE (2). I used the others for Bach (1); UN (4); Manhattan (5 - last turn).

chronology
Capital relocated 1275 BC
War with Russia 190 BC - 230 AD
War with Germany 280 AD - 390 AD
War with Rome 760 AD - 1020 AD
War with England 1030 AD - 1100 AD
UN Victory possible in 1080 AD
War with Japan 1100 AD - 1160 AD
War with Germany 1160 AD
War with Persia - Egypt 1160 AD
Followed shortly by Domination

Score > 10k

 

[Silence]

Well, that was a pretty steep learning curve.

First GOTM...first deity level game.

Sadly, the glorious Iroquis have been beaten into space...
After getting a settler from the first goodie hut, along with a blinding yet sadly misplaced surge of optimism, I proceeded to discover the awful truth about deity level.

My prophets are no good at their jobs.

I spent five and a half thousand years desperately searching for tradable goods with which to buy more tech.
In the middle of the 15th Century AD I was finally in a position to at least think about building the UN...having traded furiously, my reputation was spotless.
All I needed was fission.

1480AD...The Romans have built the United Nations.

It was heartrending...I needed about 5 more turns.

Naturally since they were universally feared and hated, they didn't hold elections.
Things looked bleak until the Romans and Persians entered a massive conflict, resulting in ludicrous stacks of infantry trekking across my borders, pausing to wave at the spearman defending St Regis.

I became gradually more optimistic...surely I wasn't that far behind. This would be just the opportunity I needed.
Sometime around 1700 the Romans and Persians had a massive nuclear exchange...unfortunately from my perspective, this led to peace.
While I needed only a few techs at this point, and even had miniaturisation to trade, my now tattered reputation precluded any exchange of knowledge.

In the aftermath of the holocaust, the devasted and slightly radioactive Romans managed to lauch their spacecraft to start anew.

I finished 4th, passing the Egyptian score by the barest of margins.

Um...deity level is fun.


"I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't live with" (John Cleese in 'Clockwork')

 

[Jove]

Arrrrr, it was going so well. Talk about a space defeat: I totally spaced it! 2009 AD, Germany launches the ship. I never even bothered to put a spy there...why not?
So, it feels like a victory to me anyways, mateys. 8482 points, how bad is that? I didn't get a settler from the goodie huts, or anything else for that matter. I made beelines for the early resources. Rome seemed like the biggest threat to me, so I traded with England as much as possible to treaten them. I traded my only Iron and my second Furs to keep up, and it paid off. War with Russia in 100 AD to consolidate my territory-they never amounted to much after that. Late in the game it was fun to see Catherine scowl from her new captial in Antarctica. Anyway, soon after that, about 1100 years of war with Rome- they were tough-which finally ended after I sent in a 'worm' to eat all his tile improvements. I'd kept good relations with Germany to help me with Persia and Russia. Well, after Rome fell, I got a great leader to build TOE and was never behind again. Persia eliminated Egypt, then I knocked Persia down to 1 city without undue effort and took all his tech. I parked the invading army outside of Germany's best cities as 'war insurance', and proceeded to disable England with about 25 mech infantry tearing up their tile improvements. But, see, here's where my problem was. England was my ally against Rome, so I liked them and only hobbled them when they declared war on me over something stupid. Same with Germany- I wasn't going to give them Aluminum, they wanted to fight about it, and a few turns later most of their good cities were mine. But, see, I only cut a 'gentleman's swath' out of his country, since I liked 'em. I should've pounded them more. After Gemany's 'defeat', I could have launched a ship at any point over many hundred years, but I thought, hey, Deity level, how high can the score get, and tried my first attempt at milking it. I should have suspected more when Persia started trading with me 70 gold/turn for techs. These are pernicious, resilient little guys!
So you can imagine my shock when as I'm precision bombing Japan to head off their cultural victory, the drum beats and 'you have suffered a humiliating defeat'. What? Germany's capital had only one city next to it, everything else was scattered. Dang! But to have Caesar tell me 'All your base are belong to us' was just too much. What the?! All HIS base are belong to US! Anyway, in the end, Hiawatha rules the earth, Bismarck gets to rule the stars, all for the want of a spy in Hamburg! ARRRR!

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by Zachriel


Everybody should have got the first settler, at least.

I never got a settler out of the goody hut... I almost never do. (more in Civ2, though)

 

[Merle Corey]

Defeated, 150 ad...

& after reading some of the aar's from here I'm ashamed that I didn't put up more of a fight.

My top three mistakes, in order:

1) Thinking "Deity?? Crap, I'm gonna get dusted". So I did...

2) Popping a settler from a goody hut near horses and *not* using it to found a city right there!

3) Telling Cathy to stuff it when she demanded all my gold and my world map.

Five turns after that last the entire world was gang-banging me. In another twenty five turns I was toast.

I am a mutt...

 

[Lucky]

Well, I did start and hope I´ll finish in time.
I´m now at 10AD, all is rather going well, except the speed of science. The AI are already researching Magnetism and the like, a few more turns and they´ll be in the industrial era! At 10 AD!!!
Anyway, I´m far behind, but not too far. Right now I´m "only" at war with the Russians and I even started this war myself. No other war has happened, that I know of. This is probably the reason for the ultra-fast development.

My primary objective was and still is to build as many settlers as I can. In the beginning I sent my first scout southeast, discovered the isthmus and the hilly passage to the Romans. I build 2 cities there asap to block off any land passage to that subcontinent. Worked pretty well until the AI started sending lots of ships that way. Anyway, I now control most of that continent.

The second objective now is to start crippling the AI, beginning with the Russians. The war started pretty well, stacks of Mounted Warriors, defended by some pikemen started taking the first cities. 3 of them fell in the first turns, but unfortunately that was the point when everything came to a halt. Now I only have a small part of my invasion force left, but I also defeated all counter-attacks. 2 more cities on the subcontinent will also fall soon and I might take one or 2 more in the heart of Russia.

I´m in my Golden Age, of course, and I also got one Great Leader, which is travelling to a city in the south of the subcontinent right now to build the Forbidden Palace.

I only researched 2 techs in the beginning myself. But the most awesome experience on Deity (which I have never played before, as the GOTMs are the only Civ3 games I have time for) was the rate the AI were building Great Wonders. Every second turn or so, a new popup will appear, telling me they started this or that wonder. And every 10th turn or so, someone completes a wonder. Many of them are done, with Russia having 2 or 3 for me to capture!

I hope it works.

 

[Klem]

Lessons learned

I lost to the Romans (space ship, evidently), but it was a good game and I learned a bit from it.

I like lots of cities, but I don’t practice ICS. My city sites are picked with some purpose in mind and I spread out in order to control geography and to get resources as the game moves on. Most captured cities I keep as is, or raze them if it seems likely I won’t be able to hold them, or if they’re too far from my palaces to be useful. So, the attached map shows a good bit of geography under my control.

After sending my scouts through the mountains, I found Germany and Russia, then I sent the scouts south through the choke point and started exploring some really fine land. I got a settler out of a goody hut and founded a southern city in the middle of nowhere and then used a GL from fighting Russia, to build the Forbidden Palace. At this point, I was growing from two points.

The bad luck is horses needed for the mounted rider. In my game, horses showed up in the mountain foothills NW of the choke point (where I founded Oil Springs) about 1100 BC, but I didn’t notice them until 400BC. I save about 1 game in 5 and couldn’t believe I missed them the first time through - I didn’t. The horses showed up after I built my road. I could have had mounted warriors much sooner, a Golden Age sooner, etc. I consider an early, but not too early, GA to be an advantage because the affect is multiplied on into the future. My GA finished about 300 AD. Although I used it to take out the Russians, I lost valuable time by starting it later than I should have.

The other thing I learned, but not until about 550AD, was to not research anything. Take the money instead and buy the advances. It’s quicker. In general, I could buy an advance every 5 or 6 turns and still have some money left for hurrying an item here or there.

I like railroads. They add to the gold and greatly improve both offence and defense. So, I was delighted when I finally bought steam power. Then I didn’t have any coal! I bought a world map off the Romans and after studying, found an island with 4 cities, half way around the world that had accessible coal. It was sitting under the Roman city of Syracuse. In my world, Rome was the MAJOR power. I had to have coal, or give up. I build my first ships, 3 galleons, loaded them with cavalry and musketeers then shipped them off. Back at home, I built up my strength for the coming war with Rome.

The English were already at war with Rome, so I joined them when my ships got to Syracuse. The island city was no sweat and I captured the it with the harbor intact. At home, a quick strike got me 3 Roman cities, only one of which I had chance of keeping. I gave two cities to the English (let them take the loss) and hunkered down in the third city looking for a way to end the war - Roman units were coming in like a flooding river. The city was well defended and my other cities were far enough away to be safe. The Roman’s first assault produced a Great Leader. I built my first army ever, with the hope of improving poor odds. The next turn, I got another Great Leader (after using up the first one for the army) and the Romans gave me peace and a small tribute. I used the new Great Leader to move my capital to Moscow - I was too far behind in the tech race to ever build a Great Wonder. I built the Heroic Epic, but never saw another Great Leader. Later, I built the Military Academy and several more armies, mostly for the novelty. After using the Armies, I don’t consider them to be worth the price for the typical game. However, I would do the same thing again in similar circumstances. I lost more time getting coal.

After the Roman war, there was a period of peace and my economy was strong. I was behind on techs, but not enough to hurt. By the time the Persians picked a war with me, I had tanks, infantry and artillery, relatively even with them on military terms. I was able to capture a few of their cities including one with the UN, Sistine Chapel and Magellan’s voyage before war weariness caught up with me. With the UN, I thought I was a covered and could go for a domination or space ship victory.

An important note about artillery for those new to the game. It weakens units, but it also can be used to reduce the population of enemy cities so that you have a chance to hold them once captured.

I didn’t have a clue the Romans were building a space ship until I lost. A mistake on my part. I should have tried for a spy, which I’ve never done in the lower level games. Even if I had known, I had to keep a heavy garrison against the Persians and it’s questionable that I could have stopped the space ship even if I had been aware of it.

After I lost, I replayed some of the later turns, placed a spy in Rome, then checked out the space ships. The ending just said I had suffered a humiliating defeat, but not how. At first I thought they had a cultural victory, which was strange because the graphs showed Persia to be the high culture civ. Anyway, there’s something to be said for spies.

This was my first Deity game and I learned enough, and came close enough, to try again.

The save is just before my defeat.
Klem

 

[ainwood]

Well, I too lost.

I lost when the Romans launched a spaceship in about 1550 IIRC.

At the time, I controlled more land than anyone else following successful campaigns against the Russians (very early) and the Germans (a bit later).

The thing which ruined my chances was the inability to trade techs with the AI. I found myself way behind in tech, and could not trade luxuries or gold for anything. I actually went to war with the Germans to try and swap techs for peace - but no: They were down to two cities, and would sooner give me a size 5 city than even one measly out-of-date tech.

I built lots of libraries and universties, increased my population by WLTKD, and managed to really accelerate my research, but I was still falling way behind.

After I lost, I reloaded my save game, and found that I COULD trade for techs, but at ridiculous prices: 205 gold per turn for medicine or communism, when all other civs had them, and all other civs were in the modern age (I was the only one still in the industrial age).

What I would appreciate is some feedback on whether these tech prices are reasonable on deity level. By the way - my reputation was not that bad - most civs were polite or at worst annoyed with me (except Japan which was furious). I didn't intentionally break any deals, except making peace once whilst in a MPP with Germany against Japan. I gave germany one of their cities that the Japanese had conquered back, and they were much happier.

 

[Rain]

200/turn is pretty high for that type of tech. Thats 4000 gold. By comparison I was able to buy flight for 2040 and radio for 2300 which were 3rd civ prices at the time, those were not available for per turn buying. Those were the only techs i bought for lump sums after the early days. The mod era techs could not be bought in my game. I stole fission for about 3300. It was the only mod tech i got. I could have swapped fission for rocketry straight up at that point. A typical price i paid for late industrial tech was about 50/turn plus 2 lux/resources. Thats just an estimated average; some were more or less. There seems to be a point at which the ai will not sell for per turn anymore. So its possible i could have bought mod era for lump sums if i had had enough of a bank account - maybe 6000 would do it for example.

I notice some others commented on the difficulty of trading for tech as well, but as i had little difficulty doing it i can't really offer any explanations. I did go out of my way to make sure i broke no deals and at one point had several civs gracious to me, so i may have been overpaying for some techs early. I also traded resources when i could. They pull more weight than lux. I think civ attitude may affect prices tho thats just a guess. I spent much of the game in mpp's and alliances which kept relations on a high note.

For example in my war with Rome I had 4 alliances and a mpp.
War with england i had 3 mpp. War with Japan i had 3 mpp. Its just a guess but the combination of alliances mpps and vitually continual trade may have kept my prices down. Plus of course not breaking any of those deals.

Edit: One thing i have noticed is once you go to war with a civ its very very hard to improve relations again. SO i try to make a policy of not having little wars. If i go to war I make sure that civ is crushed to a point of having no impact in future.

 

[Sullla]

ainwood, I must say that I encountered the same prices as Rain for tech. Seeing as how I had a very small civ, there was no way I could have stayed caught up otherwise. I wonder if the "preserve random seed" being off had anything to do with it. I also think relations had something to do with the prices, as I was polite or gracious with all civs for the whole game. It's still strange though that ainwood was seeing prices of around 4000g for early industrial techs that I was buying for around 1200g by my estimate.

The one thing I would most like to see though is how well everyone who fought an early war (just about everyone except me ) would have done if we had been a civ without an early UU. Things might have been harder if we had been England or America in this game, I imagine. But at the same time I can hardly blame others for making good use of the Iroquois' strongest advantage.

 

[Zachriel]

In my game 1400 AD (the year I completed the Iron Works), I was making 190g/turn and had 1482g in the bank.


For 1482g, the Japanese offered

Communism (790g)
Atomic Theory (630g)
World Map (11)

Or 1482g plus 126g per turn is what they asked for

Free Artistry (8g)
Communism (790g)
Espionage (360g)
Corporation (790g)
Atomic Theory (630g)
Replacable Parts (1130g)
World Map (11g)

If they don't trust you, the per turn price is much higher. Sometimes they won't extend credit at all -- COD only.

In this turn of 1400 AD, I completed the Iron Works, purchased all my techs, started upgrading to infantry, my 40 workers were just finishing my extensive rail network, and I was just a few turns from Electronics and the Hoover Dam at Smolensk. By purchasing my techs, on credit, from different civilizations, it meant they had an incentive to not attack me. If they did attack me, I would profit as my debt would be wiped out.

 

[ainwood]

Thanks for the feedback.

My relations with other civs weren't that bad. I never got to gracious, but did get to polite. And i hadn't intentionally broken any trades, although the AI doesn't care whether it is intentional or not....

Does the speed at which you can research your own techs have any effect? Because I had cranked up my libraries and Universities quite a lot to try and catch up.

Anyway, I guess this shows me that I need to work on my trading game.

 

[Rain]

I don't think research rate has any impact. Mine's 0 for 99% of the time.

 

[Lawrence]

ainwood, I am quite surprised, thought you would get a domination or conquest victory!

I broke trade deals in the game, quite early. After my newly taken spice city St. Peterburg flipped back to the Russians, all deals involved was 'intentionally' broken, so nobody would ever trade anything for my luxury.

I started my own research in 800 AD. Didn't made major trade with money, but was still able to trade much with techs. I traded my Electricity for Sanitation, Industrialization and Nationalism, Replaceable Parts for Refining and Steel, and eventually Flight for Atomic Theory, Electronics and Motor Transportation. 204 per turn IS an odd price for me. Never saw it in the game, maybe you got a bug?

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by Lawrence
ainwood, I am quite surprised, thought you would get a domination or conquest victory!

I was too far behind. I had cavalry, the AI had mech infantry. Conquest was not a viable option, although domination may have been (but difficult). I was building lots of artillary, and was planning to use them with infantry and cavalry to try and take persia, and them perhaps Rome.

The real problem was because I was so far behind in tech, I was going to need a MPP or alliance to take any more territory. The concern was that the AI would capture rather than raise, so I end up only marginally better off. And Rome were just way too big (they took all of england, and quite a bit of the centre lands).

I was therefore going to get tanks and combine them with artillary so that I didn't have such a reliance on Alliances. I was researching motorised transport when Romew launched a spaceship.

In hindsight, I should have "started" wars simply to slow the AI down, even if I wasn't ready for a full-scale war.

What really did surprise me was that a "dead" germany would still not give trech for peace.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Well, I blew it! I could have played my game through to the 2050s if I hadn't chickened out with the early diplomatic win. The Egyptians would have declared war on me and with my MPP with Germany and Japan I would have cleaned them out in another 100 years after my original finish. Then I had an easy upper hand. A little more bravery next time I play deity will pay off. :soldier:

CB