Civ 3 GOTM 7 *Spoilers* Thread

Originally posted by SirPleb

I don't worry much about defending against very early barbarian attacks. If they happen, they happen. I figure I'll lose less by letting them hit me a bit than by losing expansion time.
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SirPleb, good point! I fell for building warriors early. (had 4 warriors and 4 scouts at one point). One thing about deity is you have to learn to drop all the bad habits. Only a few hundred more bad habits to drop.

CB
 
Originally posted by JoeM
Surely the AI will attack if you have no military might at all? I mean, when do you start building military units?:confused:
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That sounds like Civ II talk!

The first time I was involved in any war was when I attacked first. That doesn't completely answer your question though.

I'm no expert, but generally I find that the AI will start demanding stuff rather than just attacking. When they start the demands, it may be a bluff, but it may be an indication that they think they are ahead of you military-wise. I usually use that as a cue to really start building my military, if I haven't done so already. Hopefully I've already built some for a pre-emptive strike though :D.
 
From my 'brief' observations it seems that when your military advisor seems to think that an opposing army is strong you will probably receive demands from that civ to pay tribute. But, if on the power graph your civ is more powerful, you can likely decline paying the gift and get away with it. If your civ is strong militarily and on the power chart, you can likely make some demands yourself. ;)

CB
 
Originally posted by JoeM
Surely the AI will attack if you have no military might at all? I mean, when do you start building military units?:confused:
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It depends very much on the map and the situation. I don't build many until I have some idea what I'll be using them for. On this map it became clear fairly early that there weren't barbarians, and that the nearest rivals had to travel a fair distance if they attacked. So I never did build much of a defense. I did give in to all early extortion demands :)
 
Hi all. My first post here, and my first GOTM.

Deity. What a killer. My usual games are at Regent level. I managed to get to the horses and build some MW. My first war was a disaster. I successfully took one of the Russian towns but their counter attack took out my horse resource town. End of game. :(.

However, I then trolled through this thread like a parched sponge and have learnt tons more about this game. Especially thanks to SirPleb. You rock! :)

I've since had 2 more goes at the map (not for submission of course, just for my own learning) and have discovered the joys of expansionist early trading. By sending one scout east and one west I was able to be the middle man on a lot of trading and was able to keep up with the AI up to feudalism at least.

I look forward to June GOTM where I will have a serious attempt to submit a game.
 
Originally posted by Zachriel


I agree with your analysis. Fortunately, the Iroquois are expansionist. I built two scouts and this is what happened. Notice I still haven't headed north, but will let a warrior do that as it will probably deadend in tundra and ice mountains. Well, I was half right.

bc3650.jpg


The scouts will split up, one heading east and one west. I found the chokepoint in 3300bc and met the Russians in 3150bc.
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I made the mistake of having them explore south, thinking there might be room. I saw the bottleneck, but the Russians were hot on my tail...
 
BTW, I also played a 2nd game, and tried a tight-build strat. (seemed to have been working), and sent my scouts towards Russia, hoping to block their iron. I was met with a very early warrior/spearmen rush! (6 warriors, 2 spearmen). I defended it, but one spearmen paraded around my towns and pillaged my roads!
 
Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Good question, Zur.

If the barbarian difficulty level had been set to 'Raging', alot of people would have been in deep trouble. I wouldn't worry about enemy civs, because if they send any units at all, it will be more than just 1 warrior can defend against so the game would be lost anyways (on deity, the AI starts with 12 free military units, so would likely send at least 3 warriors at you).

I got killed in a deity game once, after I had built 2 warriors and had just produced my first settler!
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I had the misfortune of watching half of that force come to my doorsteps. :) (the 2nd time around)
 
I've tried quite a few Deity-level starts, but never even came close to playing a game through before now. It actually went better than I was afraid it would, especially after seeing how small the initial green area was, but I still lost. Two critical mistakes took away whatever chances I might have had.

(1) I got careless with my only galley and forgot I needed to watch and make sure I ended on a coast tile. It sank, and with it a settler, a warrior, and my chance to grab some silk or build any more cities across the bay. (I already had two cities right across from my home area, but they weren't geared for rapid growth and settler production the way Niagra Falls and especially Salamenca were.)

(2) Thanks to tight city packing at home (six cities north of the mountains), I was able to engage in a successful war against Russia from 70-170 AD. I made peace a bit short of taking Moscow, with plans to go back and finish the Russian core off later. But while waiting for the peace treaty to expire, I was crazy enough to think a quick smash-and-grab against Persia might be a good idea. HUGE mistake. I ended up wasting a good chunk of my golden age and most of my military in a hopeless fight trying to fend off cavalry and riflemen with mounted warriors, and only got out alive by bribing Egypt into an alliance and then promptly abandoning my allies. I lost about half of my gains from the attack on Russia, and the loss of most of my firepower made a mess out of my plans to hit Russia again when the initial peace treaty expired. (At least I did still have the gem city I founded to replace a Russian one that didn't survive capture.)

After that point, I was just waiting for one of the AIs to finish me off, trying to run up as high a score as I could in the territory I had along the way. But they didn't finish me off, and by the end of the game, my nation was actually first in GNP and Manufactured Goods. (Along the way, I'd founded one city on unclaimed land along the Russian-Persian-Iroquois border, had one of the cities Persia took from me after I took it from Russia flip to me, and founded three other cities in razed territory north of Rome.)

Japan finally launched its spaceship in 1630 AD, just as I finished the Apollo Program. (Coincidence, or not? I got the message that I'd lost between the time the game handled the between-turns stuff like giving build orders when a city finishes building something and the time my turn started, so there SHOULDN'T have been time for Japan to see that I'd finished Apollo and decide they needed to go ahead and launch. But given how long Japan had had the key technologies - I'd expected the space race to be over much sooner - I can't help but wonder.)

In any case, my score of just under 2000 isn't bad for a loss. And, perhaps more importantly, it's given me enough confidence that I'll probably try some more experimenting on Deity instead of giving up in frustration at how far behind human players pretty much inevitably seem to fall on that level in the early game.

Nathan
 
I found that just because you control 74.9% of the world the game isn't over. I thought I could just mop up the Japanese and get on with milking but they managed to get 4 techs ahead of me. I figured I would just go over there and raze all those big cities and get a bunch of workers. Actually I had to build a bunch of one-way transports after researching combustion because they had this huge fleet of ironclads and battleships. Then I had to pound away with 10 artillery until the cities were shattered and very little was left. I got tanks a while after I was done finishing them off. I had 10 armies of cavalry but they were always sitting around healing. On the plus side I got those 4 techs + free artistry later off the Japanese which saved a fair amount of research. I spied on their cities and they had 80% entertainers because they were a democracy at war for a long time before I forced them to declare on me, but yet the cities weren't shrinking and they managed to put out substantial amounts of military.

I went back and beat down the English and the Romans who had been warring each other for a while because they were messing up my empire. Now the English are stuck in the north and the Romans have a single land locked city.

I think I have halted the tech development of the computer at this point and in 24 turns I'll have genetics and those two helpful wonders then I'll discover aluminum and uranium then move on to Modern Armor in case the computer gets any ideas.
 
I've finished my game:

At the end of my previous post I had taken out much of Russia (with Mounted Warriors), most of Germany (with combined MW+Knights), and had just launched a Cavalry assault on Persia. Rome was very strong in the west but was blocked from coming east by a city on the south-central bottleneck.

The world had just entered the Industrial Age at this time. The research rate of the other Civs had slowed (partly because Russia, Germany, and Persia no longer had much research capacity, partly because research now required a larger effort.) I joined the research race, intending to learn new technology from this point onward as well as getting some from the other Civs. My Cavalry were no longer very strong. I had only about 20 left and Riflemen were now appearing as defenders.

I took a couple more Persian cities. As soon as my MPPs with Egypt and Japan lapsed I gave Persia peace. I flipped to Democracy and began a builder phase. It was time to build railroads!

I learned Scientific Method before the other Civs and rushed Theory Of Evolution with the leader I'd saved. This gave me my first significant lead in technology. I began trading technology while continuing to build and to research. Only Rome and Japan were useful trading partners - all other rivals were too weak at this point to keep up. I built Hoover Dam.

Japan declared war on me during my builder phase. I gave up an island town and took one of her two mainland towns with my remaining Cavalry. Aside from those events this war was uneventful and Japan soon agreed to peace.

As soon as I learned Motorized Transportation I began building tanks. I slowed research to a crawl and focused on hurrying tanks and factories. I wanted to attack Rome before she could also build tanks. As soon as I had about 25 tanks I took MPPs with Japan, Egypt, and England, and then launched an assault on Rome.

I captured the chokepoint at the NE of Rome's homeland then spent many turns defending it. Rome had a huge military and sent some large stacks of Infantry, Riflemen, and assorted weaker units to try to recapture the chokepoint. During this extended battle I got three Great Leaders. I used them (and almost all subsequent leaders) for armies. Tank armies are a great way to attack large cities defended by Infantry! During this phase I began researching again. I also switched back to Monarchy when war weariness became substantial.

After finally destroying Rome's huge assault stacks I began the invasion of Rome. This was uneventful. Our culture had grown enormously during the builder phase so I captured cities instead of razing them. There was one culture flip back to Rome but it was easily recaptured. I continued the assault until Rome was entirely destroyed. Near the end of this phase I built the UN.

Next I took all remaining Persian cities, then all remaining English cities. These were easy, neither had any real strength.

Next I landed an invasion force in Japan, razed and replaced a few cities, then rushed an airport and played defensively in that region until Japan agreed to peace.

Egypt was next. It took a long time to take the majority of Egypt due to the mountainous territory. But the outcome was never in doubt.

After giving Egypt peace I gifted Japan a town surrounded with Mechanized Infantry in the mountainous ex-Egyptian territory. I then launched a new attack on Japan.

I mopped up the remaining opposition. I razed cities in Japan's case instead of capturing because I would be leaving Japan in the game with one city during the milking phase.

Finally a milking phase. This went fairly quickly because I'd been splitting effort between war and ongoing builder activity for a long time during the final wars. I could have finished off the opposition a fair bit earlier if I hadn't overlapped the beginning of the milking phase with the wars. This overlap made things more interesting though, and I think it improved score a bit.

This map has a lot of coastal tiles! So the domination threshold looks as if it is very high - it is possible to take a very large percentage of the actual land without triggering domination.

I ended up with a pretty good score I think. Sure was a challenging and fun game!
 
Great story SirPleb & congratulations on what sounds like a solid game. Other than that, I've only read Zachriel's game so far - I haven't read anyone else's post here cause I'm not finished my game yet.

I'm in 320 AD & things are going pretty bad. I will likely not win this one so finishing is quite unlikely. It is my first Deity game ever & needless to say, the starting position was not helpful.

My 3 or 4 scouts did pretty good mapping out the west & gained maybe 3 or 4 techs (both the wheel & horseback riding real quick!). Then, of course, I had to scramble to get the horse, which I was able to do eventually. Shortly after hooking it up, Russia declared war on me & because one of their towns was in between my horse & capital, my trade was severed. Having mainly just built military units thus far, I had enough to raze their town to restore my road route, but because of some sort of bug, the horses were shown as "unconnected" for 3 turns before they were magically connected again. This put me off for the match & I don't think I mentally recovered from it.

I made a bad move switching to Monarchy during the Russia war, because my unit support was cut in half & I was paying over 20/turn for units! I disbanded my explorers & sold my granaries until later I just moved back to Desp, which is what I am in now, to pay for my army.

Short wars were my style up to now, taking 1 or 2 cities and then settling for peace for a handful of tech. I am currently researching Chemistry at 10% while the AI is past Nationalism. I had extended myself down to the gems but never could get past the AIs' superior units very much to really take out any more.

I have iron in the land just west of the capital, but no harbour there yet - I'm working on it. Of course, I have no saltpeter either. My poor spearmen :(. I might get Nationalism before I get iron or saltpeter! Without iron though, my MWs just don't cut through fortified riflemen too well and my spearmen aren't much against cavalry. It is the first game I have the next resource before I hook up the previous one to use!

Since I am resource & tech challenged, I don't think I can do much - hence, continuing is in doubt, unless I just go for some survival strategy, which I may to play out the game, but I see little point.

Anyway, I learned:
- I should have used a military alliance or 2 to get the AIs to help me take out targetted civs. Russia kept barely overpowering me. 1 helper would have probably licked them for me.

- Watch the unit support before switching govts. I was lucky we were Religious this time!

- Taken a better look at hooking up iron earlier. My focus was somewhere else, I guess.

Good luck, and cry the name of your fallen comrade, "chiefpaco", when your warriors go to battle! Avenge my shameful attempt at a conquest!
 
I just wanted to thank all the veteran players who posted detailed descriptions of their game. They are extremely helpful to us novices :) I know they took an enormous amount of work to put together. Rest assured - it is appreciated.

Thanks
 
The game started off on a good note, popped a settler from my first goody hut. My capital started with the classic scout, warrior, granary and my newly formed second city was targeted to be military production center. I quickly produced a number of scouts and sent them out exploring. My first two settlers were sent out to grab the horses and gems that my scouts had discovered. A conscript warrior that I had popped from a hut was sent to hold the choke point.

Discovered the Russians and managed to trade for some techs. I quickly discovered the English, Romans and Germans and managed to buy/trade a number of ancient techs. My scouts continued to explore the world, and I sold my world map to whoever wanted to buy it. During this exploration period, numerous civs came to me with demands that I could not refuse :mad: (give us tribute or we wipe you from the face of the earth), being smart I did not refuse (on deity, payback usually comes later ). During this time I revealed a large portion of the map and determined that I would like to settle the large area of land to the south, it had resources and luxuries :D . I sent a number of settler/spearmen combos down south to try and grab as much of that land as I possible. After grabbing as much of that land as possible I put my next plan into effect.

First portion of the plan, was to start building the FP next to my capital, the second step was to prep a city down south to get the Palace when I abandoned my original capital. The third step was to start a war with the English who had an outpost city on one of the silk cites just to the west of the choke point. Well I managed to accomplish my goal, win a battle, trigger a golden age, finish the FP and then relocate the palace. It worked like a charm. I made peace with the English for a few techs and proceeded to live a peaceful existence until I discovered motorized transport. With this discovery, I started to build tanks, lots of tanks :tank: ^10, to go along with the infantry and artillery that I had been stockpiling. Hey boys and girls, what time it is? "It's payback time" (see note above) and the Russians were the first to suffer my wrath. The Russians were followed by the Persians, Egyptians and then the English (Germans, Romans, and Japanese had already been taken out by the AI).

In conclusion, "He who demands a territory map and 17 gp last, laughs loudest" :lol:
 
It is nice to read all the ways people played.

I'm just too Civlizied, Perfectionist of a player.

But i was wondering.

Did anyone else have to resort to Nuclear weapons to stay alive?
 
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