Civ4 GOTM54 Final Spoiler

[jesusin]

GOTM 54 Final Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 54, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless

• You have submitted your entry
• You have abandoned your game and will not submit your entry

What have you learned this game?
What could your game teach to other, less experienced players?

 

[kcd_swede]

As mentioned i nfirst spoiler, I got a slower than usual start because I had to abort my first war with axes due to high culture defenses.

Beelined Construction and came back at him with catapults. Axes and catapults sufficed to capture all Arab cities. Saladin must have misjudged my treacherous willingness to violate the peace (again), because he failed to build an adequate number of units for defense.

I give tribute to Julius Ceasar and avoid trading with Mansa (his worst enemy) at least until the Arab wars are over. I've built the GLib (in second city, same as where Oracle was built, was also my Heroic Epic city), and the Oracle has given me quite a few GPro's that are settled in capitol. The GLib gives me GSci's too, and I get academy in capitol and settled the rest there as well.

Arab lands make me one of the biggest civs. Inca are also big, but I figured they were only accessible by galleon so I didn't worry about it... had plans to be much bigger before I had to deal with Inca's.

I am first to enable maces, upgrade my best promoted axes to maces, make lots more catapults, and start war with Rome. Damascus (that Arab city I captured, later culture-flipped to Rome) and some city starting with a C fell in first few turns of the war, with no significant losses, just lots more XP. I never saw a Praetorian. Archers, axe, and a few longbows, maybe a horse archer or two. Rome (the city) could have been a problem if it was played properly by the AI. However, lots of glaring tactical errors made taking Rome easy, and with the Pyramids (plus 3 other wonders) I convert to Repr and the game is over except for the shouting. JC has a 1-pop city somewhere in the north I can't be bothered with, so I accept HBR for peace.

I beeline Miltary whatever (cavalry) since the vanilla tech path makes these very attractive. I then went and got gunpowder (duh)... built Cavalry, and...

Take all the holy cities in Mali. When all his mainland cities are mine, I let him give me a northern city for peace... now I have a bridgehead if I ever decide to finish off JC and Mansa. Back to the mainland, Liz is next (cavs, rifles and cannons versus longbows). HC has riflemen, and although the iceball cities are lightly defended, his good cities have many units.

I do a quick calculation that shows I need 78 more tiles for domination victory, that's 4 cities... I can take Mansa's 3 northern cities, plus JC's northern city, plus settle another island to make up for any water tiles. Much easier/faster than going after the Inca's... so that's what I do, and win Domination in 1800's.

Not very fast win... it was all due to that first war failing; that kept me at 3 cities for far too long. So it took me long to get a leg up on the AI. But once I did get an edge, they all fell like a house of cards in a hurricane.

Thanks for the small map, which makes Conq/Dom victories far less tedious (lots of units movements) than they could be.

 

[Silu]

I was one of the lucky ones to settle the PH, meaning I got the Copper even though my Settler was later than Sally's (never thought Monarch AIs would settle 2nd at 2800BC ). Here's a short rundown of my war pace. I think Mansa slowed me down the most.

1480BC - DoW Sally (Axes)
1440BC - Medina taken
975BC - Mecca taken, after tricking some of his defenses out (Vanilla AIs seem to be kinda dumb )

Took peace since I didn't want any of his remaining hill ice tundra craptasticness. Noticed SH STILL wasn't built when Mecca came out of revolt, so started it up since I had stone up. I was shocked to actually GET it in 775BC and be able to forget about Mecca culture problems. So these Monarch dudes expand like a BtS Emperor AI and build wonders like a Noble one?

150BC - DoW Julius (Axes&Cats vs Axes&Praets&HAs)
175AD - Saladin, with his two cultureswamped tundra cities, "circumnavigates".
200AD - Romans eliminated (thanks for the 'Mids), Mansa gets Feudalism

275AD - DoW Mansa (Axes&Cats vs Axes&LBs&HAs)
400AD - Timbuktu taken
840AD - Finally Mansa kicked out of the mainland, peace (damn Vassalage CG2 LBs)

1050AD - DoW Saladin since he's in the way and won't open borders

1130AD - DoW Lizzy (Maces&WEs&Cats)
1140AD - Lib Astro
1380AD - England eliminated

Waited a bit to get a couple of Galleons to pincer HC from the land and the sea.

1480AD - DoW HC (Grens&Knights&Maces&Cats, Cannons after a few turns)
1555AD - Incans eliminated, Saladin eliminated as an afterthought the same year

1585AD - Accidentally trigger Domination, I thought I had one more turn. Was setting up to pick a bunch of Mansa's northern cities on the same turn and get one more tech - cost me 6000 score or so I really suck at milking score


The setup was really interesting, though it's unfortunate how the capital settling can really delay things a lot if the AI grabs the Copper. Anyhow, the game was tons of fun Liked the showcasing of this crazy but nice (makes warfare easy) vanilla mapscript. Also liked the small map size a lot, made the map fun, cozy and concentrated

I think I'm starting to get a hang of this vanilla business. Only burnt myself once here, by taking Calendar in a trade when a couple of cities were few turns from popping borders with their SH-Monuments.

 

[PutCashIn]

I went to war with saladin first, like the others here. Somehow I just couldnt get his territory to be productive.

I went for Julius in a delecate moment just between medieval units became gunpowder units, which went sucessfully.

However my research rate was too slow through out all this, and mansa and Hyana had pulled slightly ahead.

So I went for Lizzy, but by the time I finished that war I was now 2 or 3 techs behind the other two.

I strived to make tiles productive but possibly I had lost heart and was subconciously dooming myself to failure. Eventually Hyana invaded with oil units when I was 2 turns from combustion. I rage quit and called it a day.

Interesting set up, I like maze maps, first time Ive played a five tile width one though!

 

[Mad Dog]

Domination in 1822.

After the Romans, bar one city which was somehow off the mainland, my military took out Sally and got the Colossus.

Next on the list was Mansu, though he had longbows, so I had to wait a little to get sufficient forces together and roll over him with sheer weight of numbers. He also had off-mainland cities so wasn't completely extinguished.

On the tech side I was behind. I had been slacking on my economy, building the forbidden palace way too late, and underestimating the effect of maintenance on the small map. I was also a bit slack with my GPs, popping too many great prophets.

As a result, Liz beat me to liberalism by a few turns, and got astronomy - which had been exactly my plan for early domination. Without astronomy, I was forced to either attack liz or wait for astronomy for an off-mainland attack, so I went for the former option. Liz fell fairly quickly to knights, war ellies and cats. My economy was still iffy until I finally built the forbidden palace and went up to 80% science.

That left HC and the remains of the other civs on the other main landmass, which I couldn't easily invade without astronomy (actually, I guess I could have done with galleys...but decided that the effort in building a navy and transporting across was worse than just piling my forces onto HC. I waited to get cavalry first, so further delay there, upgraded a few knights, and laid into him. He grabbed rifles, slowing things down further (sigh).

So, domination in 1822. Would have been quicker if I'd capitalised properly on my good start. Not enough attention to the economy meant just losing liberalism and astronomy which would have meant conquest hundreds of years earlier.

An interesting game for Monarch; the tight start forced warmongering, and ruined my original CS slingshot plans. The small map made the game less of a long, drawn out, grind to victory than your average Monarch game, and meant that I could register a domination win without giving up several days of my life.

 

[Fluroscent]

Conquest 1645AD

I did not bother being careful, and so lost several newly capured cities because I forgot to move the stack in . Also had my supply line severed and lost several catapults when I forgot to fogbust the south properly. Suddenly several barbarian HA's were roaming around picking off my waypointed units.

HC took a while to dismantle due to the distance and that I somehow though galleys could get across
He was also ahead in tech mostly, but mass cannons did the trick in the end.

 

[mushroomshirt]

Conquest victory for me 1700. Very sloppy game on my part but I feel pretty good that I managed with all the challenges of this adulterated map

Never teched past civil service / machinery.

Took out Saladin early with an axe rush (he kindly built SH for me, which was nice) and took out lizzy with axes and catapults. Hooked up her iron and took on JC with swords and catas. He had pyramids so I could switch to my favorite civic - police state.

By this time HC and MM were already in the middle ages with LBs & knights. Had to take a break to tech for macemen. I was really hoping to get everyone with swords. Anyway their superior intellect was no match for my puny weapons and I eventually beat them with sheer numbers, but it took much longer than it should have. Stack management really got me since I put too many troops on the HC front and it took MANY turns (without engineering) to get in the game against MM.

This was a lot of fun! (probably because I was lucky enough to survive the early game) Thanks to the mampaker for such a fun GOTM.

 

[magicgunnar]

Settled on the plain hill. Saladin settled on a hill 4 squares south of my capital. Lucky for me I got the cow and copper with my second city and started churning out axemen. I didn't see iron anywhere, but since Saladin was so close I threw all my axemen at him and learned how difficult it is to capture a city on a hill with only axemen. I succeeded with heavy casualties. I should probably have scouted out both Caesar and Saladin and attacked the one with iron in close reach and without cities on hills.

At last I captured Mecca but didn't dare to declare war on Caesar, probably a mistake as several others have reported a lack of Praetorians, and since I only had 4 good cities at this point.

I started building up, but had too few cities, and were lagging back in technology. I managed to circumnavigate with a scout, and was the first to Astronomy thus getting 3 cities right to the north.

I was a couple of tech behind until I researched fiber optics and built the internet. Building a lot of tanks and maxing out gold while building the internet, I could upgrade all Tanks to Modern Armor the minute I finished Composites.

At this point Mansa had only one spaceship part left to build, so I declared on Julius, Mansa and Elisabeth in close order, and finished the game in 2034. Too bad I didn't have time to take on HC before getting a domination victory.

 

[Arnold_T]

Conquest Loss 2008. Got tagged-teamed by Julius and Mansa. Don't know why they decided to take me out when it was the Aztecs who were going to win with their spaceship. Wouldn't it make more sense for the A.I to join forces against the leader to prevent him from winning?

 

[kcd_swede]

Wouldn't it make more sense for the A.I to join forces against the leader to prevent him from winning?

Perhaps it would make more sense... but to me it appears that AI are programmed to prevent you from winning, rather than trying to win themselves. You can use that to your advantage sometimes, though, because the AI victory dates are generally slower than you can acheive if you are fcoused on a specific goal.

 

[kkatta]

1927 Domination win. My first victory in a GOTM (maybe i'm improving my skill... thanks to TheMeinTeam video's). I went for conquest, but before taking the last Mansa City, one city pops and I exceed tehe domination cap.

Anyway, I think I lost a lot of time in a war against Saladin (my first attempt with axes failed), then my mystake is waiting too long before declaring the other civs.

 

[cas]

2042 (43?) space VC. Built the capital on the blue circle 1SW. No other cities. Leveraged Philo with Pyramids/Rep/farms. 7 settled GE, 6 GS, 1 GM...4 GA

Saladin gave me a little bit of culture pressure early, but not bad.

Crowded map / partial rocky-tundra land made for an easier game than normal Monarch.

Barbs were never a problem due to our start position and hemmed in from the west and south. I didn't have access to the sea, so no worries on galley pillagers.

Didn't meet HC for a long time, but once I did, I just kept him at constant war with others which kept him off my back...and others occupied with him instead of my low power rating. HC landed a few sacrificial units on my soil, but I had troops fortified on the east coast tiles next to the capital so his landing spot was a plains tile to the south and easy target practice.

Odd map. Haven't played maze before. Enjoyed this one.

cas

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

Spoiler :

I lost two stacks of 15 and 20 axes on Mecca battle. He didn't want peace after this, and Julius made me accept Islam, but he declared war anyway

I guess the step from nobler to prince is too harsh, now onto the emperor botm, XD

anyway how do you make final save? I have posted the last auto save, probably the one before I lost final city.

 

[Deckhand]

Domination 1939.

After my two cities survived Saladin and Caesar 's attacks,
built a lot of catapults and destroyed Saladin with cats and maces. Then on to Julius with Rifles and Cannons. HC was invading England, so that made it a little easier to attack in the north while his army was in the south; cannons and infantry liberated Incaland.

Conquered England (4 cities) to get rest of land for domination. Thought about building the UN and self voting the victory, but not sure how much population is needed and Mansa plus Liz would probably have enough to stop me.

MM built Apollo the turn before the end. HC was leader most of game with many wonders and lots of land. MM was fastest techer (of course) and had most of the overseas land. JC only had 3 cities (oh, and two more across the water). Saladin and Liz were big but had lousy land.

 

[da_Vinci]

Thought about building the UN and self voting the victory, but not sure how much population is needed and Mansa plus Liz would probably have enough to stop me.

I am pretty sure you need 62% of the votes (maybe 61.8% in reality ) ... whenever I get the vote screen and I do the division of number needed divided by total votes, it comes out between 61% and 62%.

Glad you didn't go the UN route, because I did ... is there another "hit 'em where they ain't" in my future?

Hope to get my full details up tonight or tomorrow.

dV

 

[smitsk00]

Slow 1882 domination victory. Almost all with siege. I built enough choks/grenadiers to occupy cities. sal first, then julius, mansa, back to sal, liz, hc. Took a big break in the middle, came back and noticed i had way too many cottages. No more drinks with xotms!

 

[Sleepless]

Well I doubted I would have time to finish this one but stayed up till 3 this morning to finish it. The idea was always to head for a UN victory. After killing off JC I took all of Mansa's cities on the mainland leaving him with some on the Northern islands. Adopted Sal/Liz religion along the way. Made sure to gift them techs and by the time I had built the UN both were at friendly with HC going to be my opponent. Tried my best for a GE to help build the UN but missed out but was able to run a GAge to help a little bit. So managed to win on the first vote in 1740AD.

 

[Deckhand]

Well I doubted I would have time to finish this one but stayed up till 3 this morning to finish it. ... So managed to win on the first vote in 1740AD.

Well done, Sleepless.

 

[Sleepless]

Well done, Sleepless.

Just living up to my name.

 

[Grifftavian]

Adventurer Save; First Spoiler post >>here<<

Finished off Caesar's cities on main landmass, but he had built a city on the eastern tip of the northern landmass. Started working on Cultural Victory, but it looked like Mansa was heading in that direction as well, and he had founded 5 of the 7 religions, so switched gears and decided to take him out. Sent 4 Galleys with a Maceman & Cat each up to finish off Caesar first, then invaded and conquered Mansa.

Sent all my veteran troops to the border with Saladin, but switched gears and spent about 1000 years working on Cultural Victory again, before deciding to invade and conquer Saladin. Then it was back to the final push for that Cultural Victory.

20/20 Hindsight: too much gear switching on my part, as I think I could have achieved a Domination Victory much earlier if I hadn't waited so long to invade Saladin.

End result: very late Cultural Victory in 1992 AD. At the end I was well over the population limit, and ~ 56% of the 66% for the land area domination requirement. Maybe I'll replay the last part just to see if I could have gotten that Domination victory