Civ4 GOTM55 First Spoiler

[leif erikson]

GOTM 55 First Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 55, 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

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Please do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD.
• Please do not name civilizations that requires caravels to contact.

 

[smitsk00]

Settled 1W; Second City by Copper;Third at eastern food site; Fouth an attempt to get Pigs/wheat to the south, but Saladin nabbed the wheat; 5th by sheep/iron; 6th captured barb city 1NE of western horses; 7th to the NE on the coast on east side of river; 8th traveling west towards marble at 1AD.

Tech Order: Ag>Wheel>Pot>BW>Wri>Fish>(Alp)>AH>Alp>[trade for Hunt,Math,IW,Mas]>Poly>PH>Mon>Lit>Const>CoL in 6 turns

Build Order:

Capital: Worker, 7 Warriors, Worker, Settler, Settler, Library, Granary, Archers(HR happy cap)

Copper site: Barracks, WB(explore), Barracks, Ob, WB(fish), Axes/Swords/HR Archers

Food site: WB, Ob, Lib, Gr, WB, NE still working

Pigs/Wheat: Ob, Barracks, Worker, Set, Gr, Set, Set, will build cats next

Sheep/Iron: Ob, Barracks

Barb Horse: Gr

NE Seaside: WB, Gr

My intent at this time is to Sword/Cat rush Saladin and nab a few cities as he does not have metal yet. I also need more workers, though the 3/4? have had no problem keeping tiles improved that are being worked.

 

[Debanad]

Sent the warrior SW, settled 1S. Started with BW and sent the warrior S hoping to meet someone with AG (boo Saladin), switched over to AG to time with worker finish.

Finished BW, chopped a settler to grab the gold to the south. 3rd settler SW to the bronze. Barbs were kind enough to settle good sites on the seafood E and furs W. Both only had warriors defending so they fell to a couple axes. Hindu spreads from Sally, everyone else i've met has adopted it so why not.

Get ironworking, decide mapmaker really doesn't want us doing this game peacefully, send a couple swords to take a barb city between me and Saladin. Right before they arrive city gets captured by Chinese??? Not sure why considering they are far enough away i haven't found any of their cities yet. Decided they are too far away (hopefully) to cause any trouble and I liked the city so I declared, slaughtered a couple of defenders, took the city and got peace.

Saladin has pretty much all the land S of me and i'm out of good space for new cities. He does trade ivory to me so i'm gearing up to whip a bunch of Cats+Phants to hopefully grab a bunch of territory.

Depending on how well this goes I'll decide what VC to go for (think cultural is out due to lack of religions around).

 

[babybluepants]

I settled SSW on the FP, to get the pigs.

After scouting most of the northern land, meeting Saladin and seeing him found Buddhism, I decided to go for a cultural win. Haven't done that in a while. It's been good and bad so far. Oracled COL in the 1200's BC and expanded quite well early, getting 5 cities and 6 workers by 1000 BC. Then I got a bit stuck with the low happy cap and slightly slower tech then I expected. The really bad part is that I haven't gotten Buddhist spread. Sal also founded Christianity about 10t ago, and that spread to 2 of my cities already. I need Buddhism for the copper cathedrals and getting all of Sal, Peter and Fred to high diplo. I also still need Tao - won't be able to bulb it for another 7-8t. Lost Parthenon unfortunately, but building Sistine now (5t from complete). NE is up in the super-food city next turn.

Strategy: The tricky bit is that I still don't exactly know which cities to use for LC. Besides the capital, there's no clear winner, and a few possibles. I've never done culture before with more than 7 cities, but I'm wanting to try 10 here - not use the GP farm and just spam cathedrals.

Then again, if I don't get Buddhism for the next 10t, I might just have to shift gears and just go for a late-start military game.

Spoiler :

 

[shyuhe]

Took the challenger save.

Settled 1S for the hills. Pretty nice spot. City #2 went to the copper, #3 to the eastern gold, and #4 to the fur. The lower happy cap in vanilla definitely hurts the start here.

Poor Saladin didn't found a religion in my game (low culture in cities) and doesn't have metal I guess I'll be blazing the warpath on my game. Mao took a few wonders so I'll have to conquer my way up to him (namely GLH). Still haven't decided on a VC yet though.

 

[damnrunner]

I tried to grab Buddism at the start and missed it by one turn. In retrospect I think I might have grabbed it if I had not started on a worker at the beginner. If I had built warriors my city would have grown to pop 2 and I could have boosted my bpt a bit. I am curious if anyone did pull this off.

Anyhow, this delayed my start a bit. I got in an early war with Saladin and hit his archers with tons of axes. I took some really heavy losses at the start but managed to capture 3 cites. I was moving in on his well defended capitol when I was offered a very good peace deal and I took it.

My plan will be to go back after Saladin with elephants + catapults. But that won't be for a while. In the h meantime I consolidated my control of the land with a bit of settler spam - though I was not hugely effective in taking the barb city the spawned on the NW corner of the island. I actually captured and then lost the city. In the meantime an AI settled nearby which stole some good land.

Overall I had a pretty poor econ, but I have huge growth potential as my cities start to grow cottages. I did manage, however, to get alpha 1st which I was able to trade around a bit. I had some other success with tech trading but I can't actually recall which techs offhand.

 

[kcd_swede]

I started my settler northwards, but didn't have the guts to keep going that direction, which was too bad since there was a nice spot up there. Instead I went back south where my warrior was uncovering decent cottagable land. I took a coastal spot (on turn 4) that maxed the number of floodplains, had lots of forests for chopping, but not much else to speak for it.

When I met Saldin, I knew I didn't want to go after his protective archers with axes again, so I decided to aim for space. Saldin should be ripe as a target about when cavalry/cannons are done. But Saldin, Mao, Peter, and I were Bhudist... and up to 1AD I don't think I had any contacts with anyone else. But since we have a little love-fest going, I'm sure we will be doing well in the tech race until I backstab them.

My second city Bombay was settled way the F up in the northwest by the furs. Why? I don't exactly recall. I'm guessing that's where the horses were and I needed barb control. Madras (is that 3rd?) was settled in the wheat/fish spot, which was such an obvious city spot I'm sure everyone got it. This blocked off the land to the north, which I proceeded to settle haphazardly. Call it 6 or 7 cities by 1AD.

Anyhow, despite my wanderings and settling at far distances from capitol, I was able to get to alphabet first. I am able t otrade to tech parity and even find myself slightly ahead of Mao at 1AD... first time I am not in last place. Note, I am still in about 7th place in every demographics category. But when you've got friends, none of that matters.

I feel confident I should be able to pull out a victory, unless I mess up the vanilla tech paths in some way. But this won't be a medal-winning performance by any stretch. But then again, I haven't done any medal-winning performances in like 3 years of playing, so it would be odd to expect a medal now.

 

[babybluepants]

When I met Saldin, I knew I didn't want to go after his protective archers with axes again, so I decided to aim for space.

Someone's been playing too much BTS.

 

[kcd_swede]

Someone's been playing too much BTS.

No no no... its not possible to play too much BTS! There is no such thing as too much BTS.

I think perhaps my problem lies in playing too little Civ4 (vanilla).

 

[Grifftavian]

Adventurer save. Settled 1SW, 2nd city between Copper & Wheat.

Lost Settler & escorting Warrior when they wandered into a Barbarian City's BFC on goto orders.

Captured & razed that Barb city, then replaced it with a nice new Indian city.

DOW on Saladin, and captured 2 of his cities, including the Confucian Holy City. Saladin asked for Peace Treaty, and I signed to consolidate my gains. But it doesn't appear that Saladin has anything more powerful than Archers (so far) so another war of conquest may be on the horizon.

Six cities at 1 AD.

 

[Deckhand]

Similar to those above.
No Religion on the continent for the longest time. Hoping for Taoism, but found in a distant land (500BC).
Peter finally founds Christianity (250BC), so maybe we all (Saladin, Peter, Mao and Asoka) will be able to adopt it.
2 turns from Great Library, only wonder for me.

Wandererd south and built capital on seaside hill with pigs and corn.
Sal beats me to gold site
2nd city to west (like everyone else) for fish and copper.
3rd to be GPF with 4 food and gold.
4th captured barb city S of furs.
5th to get marble and horses.

Also first to Alphabet and traded it around. Then Literature for GL and Monarchy for happiness.
No idea how I am going to win this game or if I even can. I feel I'm not very good, but y'all have very similar starts.
Except those bold enough to go to war. I think I will wait for cannons.
Plan for Path forward: Civil Service, Paper, Liberalism, Nationalism, Taj Mahal (since I have marble).