Conquests 01: First Spoiler. End of ancient age.

[dmanakho]

Thanks to the GOTM staff. As I mentioned, this is my first GOTM experience, and while I'm not exactly proud of the performance I put in so far, I am having fun.

No map, I'm afraid, but I'll try to post one tonight or tomorrow.

I think FUN is what matters here.. Performance?? who cares... you play for yourself. If you start playing just to get a score it will stop beeing as much fun but rather become a hard and tedious job..
It is like a difference between playing beach volleyball with friends versus beeing pro athlete player.

 

[SniperDevil]

im still trying to survive on my own continent (in the 1700s!)

 

[Jason Fliegel]

Quick question about the rules for the GOTM -- I went into the preference screen to turn on all my favorites -- color blind help, color discs, prompt for next build, etc. One of the things I turned on was "Notification upon Starting Wonder," which is the pop-up that tells you "So-and-so is building the Hanging Gardens." I didn't think about it until now, but is this kosher? Technically, it could give me some information about who the other civs are. Similarly, am I allowed to look at the "Completed and In Progress Wonders" screen or the "Top 5 cities" screen?

 

[dmanakho]

Quick question about the rules for the GOTM -- I went into the preference screen to turn on all my favorites -- color blind help, color discs, prompt for next build, etc. One of the things I turned on was "Notification upon Starting Wonder," which is the pop-up that tells you "So-and-so is building the Hanging Gardens." I didn't think about it until now, but is this kosher? Technically, it could give me some information about who the other civs are. Similarly, am I allowed to look at the "Completed and In Progress Wonders" screen or the "Top 5 cities" screen?

Please correct me if i am wrong, but you won't be getting "So-and-so is building the Hanging Gardens." notifications untill you meet civilization that builds it. But I think you will receive a notification upon GW build is completed

 

[al_thor]

Sounds right to me. You also don't see any cities from the (F11) Demographics display (Top Cities) from civs that you don't know - right?

Using F7 (Wonders) should only show you Wonders that are:
A) Being built by civs that you know
B) Already built by anyone - even civs you don't know
Same holds true for the Wonder Initiation pop-up.

 

[denyd]

It's already possible to find out who the opponents are (Space Race screen), so that's not a problem.

Normally the only advantages on knowing who the opponents are would be to know how many you need to kill for a conquest victory and what techs are already for trade and what needs to be researched on the first tier of the AA. Knowing who's building what wonder will let you know how advanced some of the tribes are and in some cases allow you to predict upcoming Golden Ages.

 

[Sir Clive]

I normally play on Regent or Monarch and struggle a bit , but this time I seem to doing even worse than usual.

Hopefully thing will improve, but it is still an enjoyable game . I think it is pretty safe to say I will still be qualified to play Conquest level for my 2nd GOTM attempt

Well - I had an absolute nightmare for my first GOTM.

Miserably behind by the end of the ancient age I decided to go to war to try to grab some horses . I normally play a fairly peaceful game but was so far behind I built up a few units and went for it.

End result , annihilated by Arabia and Babylon , no chance for recovery and resigned in 1355 with 4 towns left.

I am going to have to do lots and lots and lots of practice

Anyway hope to make an attempt again for next month's provided it is not Deity or anything stupid.

Now to find out how to submit what will probably the worst score for this month

 

[smackster]

End result , annihilated by Arabia and Babylon , no chance for recovery and resigned in 1355 with 4 towns left.

I am going to have to do lots and lots and lots of practice

Anyway hope to make an attempt again for next month's provided it is not Deity or anything stupid.

Now to find out how to submit what will probably the worst score for this month

Ahh, but you can't submit a resigned game currently. You would have needed to play it out until you lost (or won).

Smackster

 

[Sir Clive]

Ahh, but you can't submit a resigned game currently. You would have needed to play it out until you lost (or won).

Smackster

I'd still like to submit - I guess I will have to go back to my last autosave and try to fight until the bitter end (which I guess is only going to be 1-2 turns ) ?

 

[Jason Fliegel]

Thansk everyone who answered my question -- it's nice to know I didn't accidentally cheat.

 

[AlanH]

I'd still like to submit - I guess I will have to go back to my last autosave and try to fight until the bitter end (which I guess is only going to be 1-2 turns ) ?

Resigning to the bitter end is easy. Declare war on all civs if you aren't already. Disband all your troops and wait for them to walk in.

The stupid AI still seems to treat it like a trap, though, and where we would walk straight over the welcome mat they still feel the need to bombard with everything they've got and assemble a sizeable force before marching over you.

 

[Sir Clive]

Resigning to the bitter end is easy. Declare war on all civs if you aren't already. Disband all your troops and wait for them to walk in.

The stupid AI still seems to treat it like a trap, though, and where we would walk straight over the welcome mat they still feel the need to bombard with everything they've got and assemble a sizeable force before marching over you.

I actually did the opposite AlanH ! As I said before I generally play peacefully and the reason I got myself into this mess to start with is because I got too aggressive with not enough troops. Anyway - I have now managed to make peace with both Babylon and Arabia, and have actually had one Arabia city culture flip to me !

I now have 5 citites , am making +37 gold per turn , have the whole world map and am not at war with anyone so that it is hell of a lot better than a few turns ago. My priority is still survival (remaining as peaceful as possible )

If I can make it until someone else reaches victory and I am still on the map I will be happy. That for me will be a mental victory

 

[AlanH]

Well done! Now you just have to wrest victory from the jaws of defeat and you'll contend for spoiler of the month

 

[denyd]

A couple of things to try to steal a victory

Research as fast as possible to espionage (via nationalism)

Turn off all science and plant spies in the overseas tribes

Setup a single city to start building another palace (UN prebuild)

Try to steal your way to the UN, one tech a time

If you happen to get a war declared on you, try for an ally local to your enemy so he has someone else to shoot at.

Right before you finish the UN setup MPP's with the all except the leading AI, then declare war on him. Once he attacks your territory everyone will declare on him. When the UN vote comes up, since you built it, you are part of the vote and your opponent should be the one everyone else is at war with and you stand a pretty good chance of getting all their votes and winning.

 

[knacki]

These C/GOTM are SOO addictive ... It's been four days I come home after work, eat a nice little ham / cheese sandwich, and play play and play Conquest again. Never ever played the hittites so far, never finished any conquest game, this will be the first...
So addictive that I even forget to save (forget about those 2000BC, 1000BC, 10AD, I save when I realize I've forgotten to save earlier...), and forget to note anything in order to write a cool adapted summary of my game, like so much people manage to do (btw it's always a pleasure to read all of these stories, even if it's all from the same start, they can be so different).

So from what I can remember (just like in my previous and first GOTM - 31) :

- that is not a nice starting location, but I can't wait 10 turns before settling, so I move my worker / scout, finally decide just to settle on the river... I'm not sure this game will please me...

- so, we're expansionists ? let's build scouts, then... like many people told I had one free town (near the gems), but before that a settler to found Tarsus (which will I think eventually become my more productive city), some techs, maybe 2 (CB and WC ?), and some conscripts

- I usually don't build scouts, now I think I'll do that more often : I know my neighbours, our island by heart, and know where to settle (actually I know that we may have the worst start on this island), try to build something which could look like to a settler factory in Tarsus (not really a very effective one, but it'll be OK...)

- who's the first ? Arabs ? not for long... build some swords, and go for a little crusade . Not long before I get a leader, nice, go to capitol please, u could rush some interesting wonder, coz I've got no shields to waste !

- tech pace is slow but I'm leading... I decide to try this philo combo thing (I'm new to conquest), no problem, and I take litt for free (OK, maybe that wasn't the better idea ), hey after all this leader will be useful, but.... dammit, now I remember something about leaders in Conquest, GL, SL that kind of thing, not rushing wonders... then there's only one solution, and more arab cities become hittites thanx to my sword army !

- Arabs left with only 3 cities are not in good shape, and very far behind, so not very useful. And they declare war on me, just because I don't want to give them whatever they wanted. Finally they got what they didn't want... extermination

So now I've got a strange empire, with, two bab cities in the middle of it (on east coast, one in the mountain desert) and some sumerians cities on the coast (north, west) and in the desert. These are strange location for cities, my dear IA Could there be anything interesting there, by any chance ?

My neighbours are polite towards me, but not for long. We'll see that in the next spoiler...
Now I know I have to take screenshots at the end of every era , cause a story without screenies cannot be entertaining !

 

[AlanH]

cause a story without screenies cannot be entertaining !

Well, I thought it was great. It certainly held my attention

 

[Mauer]

can someone help me with my picture? I tried to upload one to my post, but it was HUGE. Not the picture itself, but it was a huge white border with a little bitty picture in it.??

 

[champain]

I had that problem in paint, not sure why it happens. What I did was to just resize the picture in paint by dragging diagonally in from the corner until the white was gone. To check if the white is gone, try opening it in windows picture and fax viewer. Of course you'll then have to upload it again

 

[gozpel]

Open

I hope it was worth downloading the patch 1.22 for an eternity. We'll see.

Initially my dim-sighted scout didn't see anything but desert and lousy terrain, so I moved the worker E, found a plain and the settler followed. Next turn I moved the worker again and hey!, a floodplain creeping out of the fog and the settler founded Hattusa? next to it. Very clever I though, just to see more floodplains nearby. There went my settler factory.

I built 4 scouts who found a bunch of goodyhuts, which gave me 5 techs, a settler, a warrior and some gold and maps. The settler built a town on top of a goldhill next to a floodplain and I didn't react at first what effect this had. As I went for Writing at max, I saw that this new town cut research by a healthy 15 turn!

I met the other civs early and did trade/give Alphabet and Masonry. I was hoping they could either build something nice for me or at least do some research. They weren't very good at anything so I continued to gift techs to them, as I researched Writing in 2390bc, CoL 1625bc and Philosophy 1425bc. I chose Republic of course and was in this new government by 1350bc. The AI researched IW, Maths and MapMaking for me as I researched Currency and Construction, but I had to spend 6 turns on Polytheism.

Around 1000bc I had an even dozen towns and added only 2 more before I entered the Middle ages in 710bc.

 

[conehead234]

Predator

I didn't really take that many notes but here is my Minimap from 310AD, when I entered the middle ages.