COTM 18 - Final Spoiler: End game

[Obormot]

Predator, 20K.

Ancient Times
Middle Ages

Unlike most people i fought my wars mostly in industrial and even modern age. It seems like i am not good enough to work towards fast "peacefull" victory condition (space, 20k) and kill everybody in the MA. I killed Persia with sipahis against muskets (600AD) and then had to stop and build infrastructure because evrybody had nationalism. I only got an edge over the AI after Hoover and factories (like a deity newby ). I killed evrybody else on my continent with artillery and sipahis and later tanks. These wars were quite nasty as i had a lot of science camps and i couldn't protect them all. Sometimes AI captured my towns and this resulted in terrible war weariness. Worst of all was the war with Gandhi when he sneak-attacked me and captured about 20 cities in 1 blow. I only garrizoned the 20k city. The only good thing about these wars was the abundance of leaders: tanks and artillery work wonders as tanks can blitz wounded units and promote to elite immidiately after they are built. I had more then 20 elite victories at some turns. And i never saw so many leaders. I used them all on armies because research rate was the limiting factor in the IA anyway. Domination limit was only reached in 1250AD this resulted in my lowest jason score ever. I didn't do any real milking in the end of the game though, mostly just pressed enter. I was to lasy to fight Theodora and i just cut her from her only uranium source so that she couldn't build her spaceship. She had bombers and even tactical nukes that she dropped on me (no icbms, i checked it with a spy before staring war ). I secured uranium, automated evrything and just pressed enter a lot of times. She attacked me a few turns before 20K was reached, but that didn't matter at that time already.

As expected, of all late MA wonders i only got Shakespear's because AI chose a strange research path But the wonder building in the industrial and modern age went smooth and i got all possible wonders. 20K victory was reached in 1640AD.

Spoiler list of cultural buildings :

2270BC Temple
1450BC The Oracle
1150BC The Mausoleum of Mausollos
630BC The Hanging Gardens
610BC Library
590BC Colosseum
370BC The Great Library
350BC Cathedral
50AD Sistine Chapel
210AD Forbidden Palace
230AD University
380AD Copernicus' Observatory
530AD Shakespeare's Theater
600AD Heroic Epic
690AD Universal Suffrage
730AD Military Academy
780AD Theory of Evolution
850AD Hoover Dam
890AD Intelligence Agency
920AD Wall Street
970AD Battlefield Medicine
1010AD The Pentagon
1100AD The United Nations
1170AD The Manhattan Project
1255AD SETI Program
1290AD Palace
1300AD The Internet & Research Lab
1345AD Longevity
1365AD Apollo Program
1410AD Cure for Cancer
1530AD Strategic Missile Defense

 

[MiniMe]

I had a very decent game going until the Russians attacked me in late BC. Things were going almost to plan except for a couple of cities defecting (one to Korea another to the Russians). I had just built Leonardo and had around 20 horses while building more and researching towards MT. I did not feel like picking up the pieces, so I abandoned. So this was probably my absolutely last game of Civ3.

The main reason of course being Civ4, which turns out as the most expensive game I ever bought. 25 Euros for the CD and 1500 Euros for the computer to play it on
Good thing it also looks so far to be the best game I ever played

 

[Obormot]

It is sad to loose yet another good player to civ4 . I have civ4 and it is working nicely now after the patch, but for some reason (i lay much blame on the silly graphics but maybe it is overall slower pace of the game) i like civ3 more so i plan continue playing cotms for some more time. I will give civ4 a chance though and i'll play civ4 gotm1 too

 

[ionimplant]

the same goes with me. i got my civ4 two weeks ago and am yet to finish a game... but maybe it's just real life... i had to skip the most recent gotm the first time after i started to play gotm.

 

[sanabas]

Similar to Obormot, my wars waited until the IA and Modern Age.

Reached the IA in 560, 2 turns afterexterminating China. Decided to aim for 100k at this point, more in the hopes that noone else does than anything else, as my slow expansion and research through the MA makes a competitive date pretty hard.

570AD: Next war started as I declared on India, I ally in the entire world except the Bzantines
650AD: India is an OCC
660: Research Steam Power, and Persia kills India's one offshore city, eliminating them. My GA ends.

740AD: War with Arabia, as they don't have nationalism yet.
840AD: Arabia dead. In the middle of that war I researched Electricity at monopoly, and traded for Nationalism and 2500 gold, which was used for 12 courthouses.

Previous alliances and AI MPPs made for a nice world war at this point, so I sat back and let the AIs pound on each other for a bit.

900AD: Research Scientific Method at monopoly, but don't trade it. Byzantines won't give me a tech for it, the others don't have techs to gove me.
910AD: Build ToE, take atomic theory and electronics
930: Now I can trade, I pick up Replaceable parts, industrialisation, communism, fascism & ironclads. I have a lot of corrupt cities, and so recruit a lot of civil engineers to build culture. Spent most of the time running approx 100 civil engineers.
960: Now I get sanitation and corporation. From this point on, the tech race sucked. I was too far behind the byzantines to be ale to afford techs from them, and the other AIs were too far behind me and/or researching the wrong techs to get techs off them, with the exception of trading for flight 2 turns before I researched it myself.

1070AD: Build Hoover Dam
1130: Persia has been getting hammered, but is now at peace with most people. They don't have infantry, and they don't have horses, so they're the next target. Declare on them, ally the world back in.
1190: Persia is dead, and I've picked up Sun Tzu's in Persepolis, giving me a nice cash influx from all the sold bbarracks.
1200: War with Korea, ally in the world. This was a messy one, as they were just starting to upgrade to infantry, and I didn't have much in the way of artillery, and Sipahi v Infantry is not that much fun.

1255: Byzantines have reached the modern age, and have fission. I still need mass production, tanks and flight.

1280: Korea is dead.
1290: Russia and Byzantines are the two remaining AIs, and MPP.
1295: MPP with both Russia and Byzantines, as I don't want to fight the world
1320: Enter the modern age. I have Ecology, Russia gets Rocketry, Byzantines have all first level techs except Ecology, but won't trade me computing yet.

1330: After two turns of max research on computing, I can now trade for it using my ecology monopoly. Also trade with the russians for rocketry.
1335: Build Seti program, start a new prebuild
1380: Research miniaturisation
1390: Build Internet, Byzantines build UN but don't call a vote. Doubling Byzantines culture will take a long time, even with switching off research and spamming out cities, as they had temple of artemis. It will take long enough that I'll need to prevent them completing a spaceship, so I may as well just wipe them out. So I start stockpiling tanks for upgrade to modern armours

1425: Research synthetic fibres, upgrade 57 tanks.
1430: War with the Byzantines, I still have my MPP with Russia

1435-40 IBT: Byzantines use their 3 tactical nukes on me
1440: Byzantines are kicked off the main continent.
1455: Peace and RoP with Byzantines. I'm about 30ish tiles from the domination limit, and stayed there for the remainder of the game. I've landed some tanks on the Byzantine island already, it's just a case of landing enough to RoP rape them.

1485: 46 modern armours, 25 artillery and assorted sipahi start the RoP rape, only taking 3 cities. 4 sipahi armies pillage all the resources on their main island.

This war had some help, Byzantines were constantly trying to land units on my continent, which involved running the gauntlet of my bombers. I sunk a lot of destroyers and transports. Byzantines had their turn before the russians, so when they did land, the russians would attack them for me.

Slowly scorched the earth of the main Byz island, and rushed a few transports while my productive cities cranked out modern armours and a few armies. They were sent en masse to the outlying islands, or across the channel to the main island.

1620: Finally kill the last Byzantine city on their main island. At the time my culture was 98856, 1300cpt, Byz were at 85405, Russia at 44278.

1625: 100k win. Firaxis score 10453, Jason 7756, nice and low due to the late date. Score before the victory bonus was about 7500ish.

 

[archimandrite]

In 1590 the Byzantines built their spaceship, and your resident newbie struggled home in third place, score 3831 (Byzantines 6974, Russia 4372). So I have learned that a good bit more warmongering is critical at Deity level and the more newbie one is, the more critical it becomes. Here was how the game went.

Globally, my aim on entering the Industrial Age had been to break Arab power and to destroy the synergy between Arabia and Persia that had kept these powers as the tech leaders. I succeeded spectacularly in this, precipitating in 670 a war between Arabia and myself, Byzantium, Russia, Korea and India. Unfortunately, I succeeded rather too well in that neither Korea nor India gained much from the conflict, I myself gained but one Arab city (Xinjian) to my east, and Russia got the lion's share, since they were best placed to benefit from Arabia's catastrophic collapse. A classic case of too much of a good thing. The synergy between Arabia and Persia would now be replaced by and even more powerful one between Russia and Byzantium.

I used a minor incident with China or Arabia (can't remember now) to trigger my Golden Age and spent it building factories and coal power plants. By 1070 I had switched to Democracy. Unfortunately in 1230 Byzantium signed a MPP with Persia and a military alliance with India against the Arabs. This Byzantine-Persian pact was bad news for me as I wanted the rubber near Samaria, but was forced to trade for it instead. By 1260 I had got Fission, but received a message that the Byzantines were building both United Nations and Manhattan Project. Nonetheless, democratic government and intensive trading allowed me to keep up with the AI in the tech race for quite a while.

Finally in 1285 Persia, still at war with Arabia, declared war on Byzantium. This was my opportunity and I signed a MPP with Byzantium. The resulting war with Persia, easy to handle in democracy, gave me three Persian cities and some newly seeded towns in the spaces between. Included in this was rubber, aluminium and--as it turned out--uranium. In 1340 Russia declared war on Korea and India declared war on Russia, triggering my pact with Byzantium leaving me at war with India. Fear of war weariness forced me to make peace with Persia, but I took Bengal, then raised Kolhapur and took Jaipur.

Thereupon Korea attacked the Byzantines, leaving me at war with Korea too. By 1410 I had taken Hyderabad, Punjab, Tatung, Namp'o, Pyongsong and Ulsan, so I possessed the immediate south of my part of the continent. All of these cities proved usable in democracy, corruption being far from total. By 1450 I had captured P'yongyang and the Sistene Chapel, but war weariness necessitated my making peace with India and Korea in turn. By this time the Byzantines already had 4 spaceship parts built. In time Persia, India and Korea were eliminated by Byzantium and Russia.

In 1460, I am left wondering whether I should attack Russia, but some calculations of likely Russian strength and behavior deter me from risking it. I have been playing a sort of "parallel" game for Deity practice (since I have absolutely no experience apart from a single Regent run-through) and in that game the Russians do tend to build more offensive units than many and can attack quite aggressively. Unfortunately I have let them grow far far too powerful in the main COTM game, and I cannot seem to drive a wedge between them and Byzantium. So I carry on building some military and do what I can to maximize my tiny little score in the time remaining.

My strategy had been to survive. Well, at least I met that all-too-limited objective. May thanks to Karasu for a superb game--wonderfully balanced and somehow genuinely redolent of geography and time--and to Megalou for the kind words of welcome. You were quite correct of course. My approach throughout was far too conservative and I squandered any chance that the Sipahi would have given me. All the same, this was great fun and Civ III proved a worthy successor to my old favorite from years back.

Sid? What's Sid?

*some time later...*



Oh well, I'll give it a shot, but probably the bonus version this time.

 

[DaveMcW]

I got Military Tradition in 30AD and I figured a fast conquest win was inevitable. Then I got distracted playing Civ4. So early in the morning of December 1, I was racing against the clock to conquer seven deity AIs on a 60% water map. I was pumping out 6 horsemen per turn, which upgraded to 6 Siphai per turn when I temporarily connected saltpeter. And then lack of sleep took its toll, and I began to make mistakes.

I captured the Great Library, which got me Astronomy and Banking but also Chivalry. I didn't bother to disconnect all my iron, so I lost the ability to upgrade horsemen. I thought the game would soon be over, but I didn't anticipate this "pangea" map having a whole archipelago of 2-tile islands. And the AI was evil enough to block both tiles. After suffering many culture flips to AIs hiding on islands, I finally figured out that I need to raze cities instead of capture them. In 580AD I extorted the last 2-tile island from the Byzantines (I had to starve it down to size 4 first), then swept my 8 armies through their continent for a 610AD conquest victory.

I'm sure I could have finished earlier (RL and ingame) if it wasn't for Civ4.

 

[civ_steve]

Those pesky Russians cost me about 15-20 turns! They declared on me right at the end of the Middle Ages (130 AD); looks like they wanted to capture Coal, even though they didn't know Steam Power yet.

So I had to go to complete Gold mode, and upgrade my Horsemen to Knights. I held back the Russians, then did a 10 Knight on 2 Rifles and a Cossack to capture the Saltpeter to the NW. This allowed Sipahi, finally, and by that time the Russians were on the defense anyway; I'd gotten the Persians allied with me. I didn't learn my first new Industrial Age Tech (Industrialism) until 450 AD; 26 turns after entering the Age.

The rest went fairly smoothly. Warfare raged across the continent, which except for Russia I avoided entirely. Byzantines were good researchers, and lead me initially. My first Unique Tech was Electricity, and I started trading to take GPT away from the leading AI (Byzantines and Persia; the rest were falling far behind due to all the wars.) Later on I let them keep their GPT to assist me. I built ToE early, getting Atomic Theory and Electronics. Near the end the Byzantines researched Replaceable Parts just on Schedule, and Flight to coincide with me learning Motorized Transport. They got Fission and I got Rocketry, and I was able to wrangle a trade to switch my pre-build over to; the extra Gold I'd accumulated came in handy. 2 turns later the UN was built, and I won (vs Byzantines) 5-2-1.

Funny Thing: DJMGator13 and I had exact dates: 1010 AD! Too bad Chamnix has already reported an earlier date.

 

[DJMGator13]

Funny Thing: DJMGator13 and I had exact dates: 1010 AD! Too bad Chamnix has already reported an earlier date.

Slightly different paths to the same date.

I knew that date could be beat because I never reached the 4-5 turn research rate in my game. I needed more cities and did not have the milkitary to acquire them until it was too late. But it was a fun game.

 

[civ_steve]

Yup. And I'm pretty sure you'd have taken the tie-breaker; with your larger empire (I never got a 1000 shield Palace) I'm sure your Jason score is higher.

Submitting with 2 hours to go, I'm just happy to get the game in the books. A nice Deity level set up on Karasu's part!

 

[Paul#42]

Took a couple Persian cities, including one that had Sun Tzu. Had I known, I would've sold off barracks for cash beforehand.

You can still sell them later - they are just more difficult to find...