COTM105 Rome: Final Spoiler: Game Submitted or Abandoned

[mad-bax]

COTM105 Rome: Final Spoiler: Game Submitted or Abandoned

Well, here is the final spoiler for this Roman Deity game.

The simple rule for posting in this thread or reading past this post is that you must have completed and submitted your game, or else abandoned it.


Veni, vidi, vici aut veni, vidi, victum?

 

[greatbeyond]

Will I be the first and last? Not submitting a fiasco attempt at winning.

I expanded what I thought was very quickly, confining the Egyptians to the east. It seemed I was doing really well until I checked the number of cities Egypt had managed to settle. Anyway throwing caution to the winds, knowing Egypt didn't have any Iron, I gathered two armies of swords and attacked. I managed to take three cities before wave after wave of War Chariots appeared and took back one of the cities and then even more War Chariots appeared and reduced my armies to rubble. It was obvious that the end was near and so I tried several replays eventually getting a winning combination going.

 

[Lanzelot]

Very early, sometime before 2500 BC, I noticed a stack of 5 Egyptian warriors marching my way, quickly followed by two more stacks of 4 and 3 warriors. I knew what was coming and tried to prevent it by gifting some gold (embassies were not yet possible, as Writing was not yet finished), but to no avail: as soon as they reached my capital, they declared war.

I was able to fend off the first stack of 5 (having like 3-4 warriors at that time), but the next turn the second stack had no problem killing my remaining two red-lined warriors and capturing Rome. And a few turns later they rolled into my undefended second town, before I was able to build another warrior.

Game Over before 2500 BC. I've never seen such a "determined warrior rush" by an AI before! I guess there was nothing I could have done about it?!

 

[templar_x]

that is hard. such a nice set-up, and then you could not play the game.

i had a big Problem with the time available to Play this. now i rushed through the last few dozen of turns, for sure playing far from the Optimum. i turned all animations off, did not MM any more, only pressing Forward towards the dom Limit.

this i reached in 550ad. really great game, thanks to the Team, thanks guys for that map and fun and postponing the Deadline!!!

t_x

 

[_Legolan]

I won a conquest victory in 1838 AD. The English nearly achieved a 100k cultural victory, ending the game with slightly over 96k culture when I destroyed them.

As I expected, after finishing off the Egyptians, taking over my continent completely by expelling the Persians and Babylonians wasn't very difficult. I originally planned to take the islands in sequence (Babylonians and then Persians) and then invade the English continent (which they took longer to consolidate than I did, although obviously it gave them more territory once they did). But my invasion of the Babylonians just derailed. I was massively behind on tech from my warmongering against Egypt, so I had medieval infantry, musketmen, and trebuchets versus cavalry and riflemen. Unsurprisingly, that did not go well. I managed to take one Babylonian city but then my invasion stalled, and they started winning the war of attrition, so I made peace.

I decided that if I didn't catch up on tech -- and quickly -- I would be doomed. I noticed that the Persians had the Great Library, and I hadn't researched Education yet. I researched until I had Military Tradition, made a bunch of cavalry (including one cavalry army made on their island), shipped them over in galleys, and then launched my invasion. Obviously that meant breaking ROP with the Persians, so I signed ROP with the English and Babylonians first. I took Persepolis for the needed turn, catapulting me well into the Industrial age. The Persians and English were at equivalent tech levels, so I was suddenly equal with the English and Persians and ahead of everyone else. I upgraded more units (I had Replaceable Parts and the Corporation), so I had artillery, infantry, and cavalry to kill the Babylonians with when I broke our ROP. That was a pretty quick war. I originally intended to finish off the Persians, but the English had eliminated the Japanese and Russians, so I decided I needed to attack them. I later brought the Persians into the war as allies, although alliances were broken pretty often.

Shockingly, the English were willing to sign a ROP treaty with me. I massed forces in their territory split into four groups. With 8 turns of our ROP left to go, they declared war on me. My forces weren't ready yet, and almost all of them died. I lost two 4-infantry armies, two 1-infantry + 3-legionary armies, and about twenty infantry. I nearly lost my last 4-infantry army that was sitting on a stack of ~30-50 artillery, but the English barely failed to kill it and were willing to sign a peace treaty. I back-stabbed them a bit later (they were still willing to sign ROP with me . . .), and I took London in the first turn. I also took Coventry, which served as my base of operations for bombers for most of the war. I knew I couldn't hold onto the English cities, so I razed them as I took them (capture, sell all improvements, abandon). At the start of the war, I had 28 turns until the English won a 100k cultural victory at their present rate. I recalculated how long I had until defeat for pretty much the entire rest of the game (getting as low as 21 turns or as high as 40+). There were various setbacks as they got Modern Armor before I got Mechanized Infantry (fortunately not too far before), but I eventually defeated them. I had ~60 bombers by the time I had razed one-half to two-thirds of their territory. I also invaded Persia after I was confident in my ability to defeat the English in time, but that war was mostly limited to rebasing 60+ bombers to their island and cratering every tile and killing all the units. For some reason they only built 1 fighter and 2 AA units the entire time.

I did have one question about strategy. I never built a single hospital. I got sanitation VERY late in the game (in the modern age) in one of my peace agreements with the English (that I promptly broke), but I never actually built a hospital in any of my cities. I was always busy producing units to maintain the war front, and I never thought I could devote the research time to sanitation to get it (I needed to get to Flight ASAP for AA, and then to Motorized Transportation for desperately needed tanks, and then to Computers -- I probably could have gotten sanitation before Synthetic fibers, but only because I didn't actually NEED Modern Armor to win). However, I built my cities in what I think is called "loose city placement" -- they each had about 20 spaces to themselves. That meant I left probably well over a hundred tiles on my home continent un-used. Is that foolish? In retrospect I was thinking that more cities all designed to utilize twelve tiles probably would have been best. Is that right?

All in all, this game was a lot of fun. I had never played Deity before, so it was a very gratifying game to win (even if I did resort to some underhanded ROP tricks to defeat the AIs, but they just kept signing them with me . . . and the English even got me with it once pretty badly).

 

[Lanzelot]

However, I built my cities in what I think is called "loose city placement" -- they each had about 20 spaces to themselves. That meant I left probably well over a hundred tiles on my home continent un-used. Is that foolish? In retrospect I was thinking that more cities all designed to utilize twelve tiles probably would have been best. Is that right?

Don't know, whether it is "right", but it's what I do. It is important to utilize every low-corruption tile as early as possible. (Let's say: every tile up to distance 12 from the capital is "low-corruption".) You can't wait for Hospitals to achieve this, so it has to be done using Settlers...

The AI killed Inf-Armies!! I assume they had bombers and yellow-lined them, before attacking with tanks?!

 

[mad-bax]

It was certainly a tough game. A genuine deity game. Often in GOTM the human player start position is enhanced and the AI starts are "deprived". I didn't do that in this game. The only concession I made was to split the start continent up so that contacts were available but with some time available for an average player to build a core. The öther continent was in fact enhanced to increase the tech rate. Hopefully, on discovering the other continent you would have found yourself behind in tech.

I also staged the start position obviously. In play testing, what I found was what I suspected. Settling in place ended up giving me the strongest start. The loss of tempo in moving the settler is significant at deity level (IMHO).

Certainly, if you give up the tempo, then go hard for a 4 turner, and neglect defensive units the AI will react. The AI start with 8 defensive units and 4 offensive units. Egypt had easy access to horses to buid their UU. If they trigger their military GA early you will die.

There is a lot of other stuff in the map which I won't go into. There is no shame in losing this game. I hope people will submit their losses too.

 

[_Legolan]

Don't know, whether it is "right", but it's what I do. It is important to utilize every low-corruption tile as early as possible. (Let's say: every tile up to distance 12 from the capital is "low-corruption".) You can't wait for Hospitals to achieve this, so it has to be done using Settlers...

The AI killed Inf-Armies!! I assume they had bombers and yellow-lined them, before attacking with tanks?!

That makes sense about the city placement. I'll have to try out some denser settling in the future.

Yep! And quite a number of tank armies. They did bomb the infantry armies (they only had tanks at the time), but once they had modern armor, they killed multiple tank armies without any prior bombardment. They were also entirely willing to attack Fortified infantry armies in a city with civil defense when I didn't have many softer targets available. I hadn't really experienced losing an army to AI attacks unless the army was massively technologically outdated before, so that was kind of interesting.

 

[greatbeyond]

templar_x you can't just leave us hanging on how you achieved such a "non optimum" victory of 550ad on Diety. I reread your first spoiler and it sounds like your game had stabilized after a brush with Egypt. Can you elaborate on events that lead to your win?
Sometimes bad luck can be overcome by much better game play which you have shown to have. Any tips?

 

[supersova_SU]

Domination 1280 AD
Firaxis score: 8901
Jason score: 9132

 

[templar_x]

templar_x you can't just leave us hanging on how you achieved such a "non optimum" victory of 550ad on Diety. I reread your first spoiler and it sounds like your game had stabilized after a brush with Egypt. Can you elaborate on events that lead to your win?
Sometimes bad luck can be overcome by much better game play which you have shown to have. Any tips?

i will try to give some Information. unfortunately i did not take any notes in that game also, as a part of the Efficiency program that allowed me to finish that game before my holidays at all.

after the expansion phase, a good Portion of my eastern productive lands were in Egyptian Hands. however, they were the strongest civ at that time in nearly any aspect. and i was still despotic, so i for sure did not want to use legionaries against them yet and Trigger my GA. so i gathered, like, 15 horses, and attacked. this brought me some good space. still i had to pray not to lose it all again with my Slim Forces when Egypt fought back with immense force. i could get peace i believe on even Terms. so far for the first Roman-Egyptian war. if i remember correctly, that one already go me an MGL. i believe that first one was used to rush the FP in the new-found FP town in the eastern core, which seemed to be a nice spot.

my exploring galleys and curraghs had in the meanwhile contacted everyone. on the other continent Rep was discovered, making it a bit cheaper for me. if i remember correctly, i already Triggered the next war and my GA during the anarchy phase, but i am not sure about it. anyway it was a very practical Situation with loads of Egyptian Units in my land, and I asked leave or declare. (they were at war with Babylon, which had founded a town on the tip in the south)

this time i could decimate their Forces considerably. still it was quite the fight. like, two nations in war during their Golden Ages. i got like 2 more MGLs and iirc destroyed Egypt after two more wars. during the last days of this war the one against Babylon was prepared. unfortunately, Egypt built hardly any wonders, and no useful ones.

Research was practically stopped, i "traded" for techs from now on.

in the war against Babylon, mostly horses were used, again. they were relatively weak and fell easily.
not so Persia. maybe i should have let them alone altogether. i upgraded my force to Knights, but still their immense number of troups made Progress difficult. not the walkover that would have freed the troops up there soon.

a second fleet hat been prepared for the Moment when one of These Events should happen: "trade" for the caravel tech, or conquest of the Persian TGLighthouse. Astro came first. troops were assembled and i destroyed by then already weak Ottomen. English were much harder though. good i got MT rather soonish, i upgraded again and again made Progress.

most of the time i was at war with everyone. and kept them at war with each other at the same time. makes playing much easier, AW for everyone.
Money was used to shortrush and fully rush troops.

what went well was that i got the first 3 MGLs relatively early. Long pause after them, iirc.
what did not work out was the slingshot-gamble. and of course my lack of time.

t_x

 

[greatbeyond]

Thanks for the reply write up. I see from the results you weren't the only one to have fantastic results for this game.