COTM 112 India - Final Spoiler - Game Over

[templar_x]

As for bonuses, how did they work out?

War Elephants with 1 extra hitpoint and ignore movement costs in Jungle?
Fast Workers, 50% faster than a regular worker?
Taj Mahal, 5% interest on your treasury, 2 content faces per city, cost in hammers, tourist attraction?
Changing India's favorite government from Democracy to Republic?
Changing Tobacco to a Luxury resource?
Optimal city count upped to 24
Did you make wise use of the sacred cows that I added?

My original idea was to somehow bring the British into this scenario around the end of the middle ages, to see if history would repeat itself. Unfortunately this proved too difficult to implement.

Which AI proved to be the most competitive?

thanks a lot for setting up this game! it was huge, in any way.
some features did not work out, though. tobacco was not a lux ressource, as was already said. Taj Mahal did not work in the town it was built in, otherwise was a very strong and cheap wonder.
but the fast worker was adorable. and i liked the elephants as well, including their slight modification.
the cows already were too many and did not do so much if you were not about going for 100k... those in the core were sure nice.

the map was incredible! gave me a feeling of the old Scenarios when i played them the first time.

only the AS should not have been scaled down THAT much i think. they played like Warlord or Regent at best.

first i hated the respawn, but in this game it gave me the extra thrill...

thanks again, enjoyed this one a lot.

t_x

 

[Più Freddo]

I hope that Respawn was an accident. We should make sure not to enable that feature in our games.

Great game, templar_x. As I, in my pedestrian manner, was approaching Domination in the BCs, I knew that you and Kuningas would make the grade.

 

[templar_x]

Sounds like fishing for compliments to me, Piu. You are of course aware that I often can only hope to see your heels when you cross the finishing line...

More specifically for this game, I am really interesting with what Kuningas will show up (and off ). If he stayed with his decision to forgot 100k despite the optimal conditions, his military results will probably show me what was possible on this map.
Because, I am not sure whether Con or Dom was faster achievable. At first I was sure that conquest would be faster, but the respawn feature plus the huge landmass made me doubt again.

For my own game, I was way too impressed by the words of greatbeyond and his warnings in the game description. Therefore, my REX and early war phase was in hindsight not that good. I would not be too surprised if anyone would finish like 10 turns earlier than I did for Conquest.

What again proved important, and here I made some planning, was an early road network. I sent out several worker pairs, two pairs as a team respectively, to several directions to build up a road network all over this huge landmass. this allowed fast movement of the war elephants to nearly every place on the map.

t_x

 

[Più Freddo]

Building a war road is a very good strategy, which I often, like in this game, forget. But sometimes it doesn't work out.

 

[templar_x]

I guess that the road network was far less important for a Dom victory in this game than for a Con victory. especially because the AS really settled till the last edge of land and respawned even further.

until the end, I was afraid that one respawn could take place on Sri Lanka, or, even worse, on another Island I did not know, like somewhere where Japan could lie. Therefore, I had a fleet and some troops around on the southern tip of India, so to get over to Sri Lanka quickly.

However, I "only" had to fight the respawned Sumerians to the very edge of Southeast Asia and drive them into the sea. galleys were going along both coastlines at the same time so to sink a possible settler-on-boat and end this game. Did not happen, though.

t_x

 

[Lanzelot]

Initially I also thought that Conquest would be faster on this map, because of the big landmass and the large stretches of jungle, which slow down AI expansion (meaning less towns for you to capture cheaply...)
But I did not know that "Respawn" was activated for this game! That may indeed tilt the ballance into the favor of Domination?!

Regarding war roads: I built roads from my territory to the borders of the AI nations, assuming that on "Demigod" this would suffice. But as already said, the AI here was muc weaker than Demigod and consequently some of them still had a very poor road network by the time I reached them. I had not foreseen this and consequently my progress slowed down until I managed to remedy this problem with a few rushed workers and captured slaves.

 

[Più Freddo]

That may indeed tilt the balance into the favor of Domination?!

Considering that templar_x was a few turns faster and over 2000 points better than me, I don't think so. My score was below 13'000.

 

[templar_x]

now imagine what I would have reached if I had gone for Dom!
seriously, I could not say which one would turn out faster on this very specific map. as I said, Kuningas´ result may tell us...
t_x

 

[templar_x]

i forgot to mention just how bad the AS was in this game: as can be seen in this post above they could not come up with Eng for the entire game - on DG!
t_x

 

[templar_x]

After the contest has closed, how about a challenge for anyone else to take Ditch's final save and see if they can somehow eek out a win?

feel sorry for Ditch also that he could not bring his epic game home. will chicken out however on that contest, for the same reason why I did not try 100k first place.
t_x

 

[bbrady413]

I'm here to declare VICTORY!!!

I've played a few GOTMs, but have never been successful. I've actually never won a game even at Emperor.

Well, I guess all of the reading on the boards and the war academy finally paid off, netting me my first Demigod victory. It was not extremely efficient by some standards, but I got a domination victory in the late 1700s. I think I could've done it sooner, but I started out going for a cultural victory, and as I was expanding rapidly and steadily taking over other civs, I switched to military. Although another 40 turns or so, and I would've had the 100k victory.

This was a fun map! I had a great time playing.

The only thing that will be a problem for me is re-wiring my brain to tell it that workers ordinarily only have 1 movement point! What a convenience that was though!

 

[supersova_SU]

Domination 410 AD
Firaxis score: 13132
Jason score: 11242

 

[templar_x]

congrats bbrady, on your first DG victory!
t_x

 

[bbrady413]

congrats bbrady, on your first DG victory!
t_x

Thanks! It feels pretty good. I thought I'd never make it past monarch!

I really applied a lot of advanced game theory though.......Settler factories, technology sling shots, savvy trading, strategic alliances. It just shows it really works.

 

[Memento]

Firaxis score 14969

Nice

Jason: All time highest?

 

[templar_x]

i did not think about that at all!

honestly, i forgot what the Jason score was. something starting with 12... . but in any case, now i feel that i had not thought about that, because i could so easily have increased my score, simply by planting a few more towns and adding score for land tiles... if i missed that limit it is quite likely that this failure did cost me the all time award.

t_x

 

[Memento]

12... is very good.

I miss the highest diplo by few points, but maybe i beat the fastest diplo.

 

[templar_x]

shouldn't you already know whether you beat it?

for conquest, it was also India and COTM15 which holds the #1:
Conquest hendrikszoon 820 AD 12772 C3C COTM 15 India Monarch
it's been a while...

i need to check at home what my Jason is. and then...

Spoiler :

i won't tell you

t_x

 

[greatbeyond]

Conquest and domination seemed to be the preferred choice of our most skilled participants. They did so much faster than I thought they would. The AI on the other hand were disappointing. Perhaps I should have given them an extra settler or two?

One goal I had was to make this game satisfying for those who wanted to go the peaceful route as well as the warmonger. It has always been my opinion that the AI, game mechanics, and scoring have always been tilted in the direction of warfare, even where there weren't any environmental pressures to make war a good option. How many times have you been in a game where you let your power (military) fall behind the AIs only to have your "friend" declare war?

I remember playing GOTMs where the aggressive AIs would make a beeline for your capital and attempt to exterminate you before you even got a chance.

The trick was trying to let the AI get strong enough so that they weren't a pushover. Judging from the results, I didn't accomplish this. Makes me want to make up for it in a different game ( hee, hee, hee )

The respawn was not intentional. Checking the Biq file I found the problem. The "default game rules" setting for the GOTM biq in the scenario settings has "respawn AI players" checked by default. So if you are creating a game for GOTM/COTM uncheck default rules and delete this option.

The tobacco was meant to be a luxury resource as I felt extra happiness might be critical for the human player. Apparently at some point I must have inadvertently changed it back. It appears that it wasn't necessary anyhow.

Anyhow, on to making the Celts GOTM. Thanks for playing and commenting.

 

[Più Freddo]

The respawn was not intentional. Checking the Biq file I found the problem. The "default game rules" setting for the GOTM biq in the scenario settings has "respawn AI players" checked by default.

Thanks for pointing this out. I think usually this setting is masked by your personal preferences in the game itself when you load the .biq file to create the .sav file. Only if you press the "use default rules" button does the .biq content come through. That's why we didn't realize that the setting was incorrect. I had no idea it existed at all.

Thanks for playing and commenting.

Thanks for making the game!