COTM43 - Final Spoiler

[civ_steve]

COTM 43 Final Spoiler; Game Submitted

Reading Requirements:
You may only read this thread if:

1. You have completed and submitted your game.

Posting Restrictions:

1. None! As long as its related to the GOTM, and within the forum rules!
2. And ... Absolutely NO discussion of any other active 'X'OTM contest!

Probably about time to put this spoiler thread out. As you enter the IA how are you doing? Have you built a substantial lead and left the AI in the dust, or are the AI just gaining their stride now that they have all the overseas capabilities that you've had the entire game? There were a couple groups of normal AI that I allowed to interact with each other from the beginning. One was the Korea-China-Japan group, the other the Maya-Inca-Aztec group (representing the opposite sides of the Pacific ocean and the boundaries of the Polynesians). How did these groups develop and were there major differences between different player's games? How did the European civs impact the game, if in any way? And of course, how did it end?

I hope you enjoyed this non-standard game! I'll probably post a poll in future weeks to gain a sense of how much modding the GOTM community would like to see but COTM43 seemed to generate a lot of interest.

 

[Schalke 04]

First submission!


Diplomatic victory in 1818

Conquest class

Score:
Firaxis: 9424
Jason: 4179


Well this game was absolutely amazing. Definetably the most enjoying game I have ever played. It was like a drug for me. I think that is the reason that I could complete it that fast

Most of the AI civs stayed in AA or early MA. The only serious opponents were China and America. Both have killed their neighbours (Korea and Spain) and so they could reach a bigger size.

Short summary:

AA: I colonized my island in a tight pattern. I built not very much military, but the barbarians stayed calm for the most of the time, so I could concentrate on expanding. Due to the wonderful Polynesian trait, I could achieve all of the contacts. So I was tech leader and only the Chinese could draw level. The only Wonder I could build was the Great Library.
Got Philo and the republic slinghot, and switched to republic because I wanted to research most techs for myself and did not want to face too many real wars.

MA: Then in the MA the Chinese became scientifically dominant. I went on the bottom research path and discovered Chemistry and Metallurgy (50 turner) alone. The rest up to education was delivered by my GL. The palace-prebuild for Leos was not big enough, so the Chinese beat me to it. On the other hand I could grab Newtons a couple of turns before the Chinese, and Smith’s with no danger at all.
After conquering the southern island, I shipped my Marines to the far northwest island. To the south I had a second, half-efficient core. To NW I settled in CxC style to get a wonderful beaker farm.

IA: I reached the IA a little earlier than the Chinese. From now on it was very strange and absolutely different from what I had expected. The Chinese went to the Nationalism / Facism path, which is a normal behaviour. Ma plan was to get ToE, Hoover Dam and later US. Anything was achieved easily… So it was with all of the other techs. I entered the IA, while China and America had just got Industrialization and Electricity (China only) …

Modern Era: Not too much to say here. Fission, UN, and diplomatic victory


Notable things to this game:
Most of the AI were crap (unless you are invading them of course… ). The Chinese could make some contacts, the rest were sitting on their islands and waited for the UN vote

Phony wars became very handy, and the war happiness gave me a lot of happy people for the most part of my game

Ponlynesian Trade was regrettably useless. Many AI did not have writing or map making for the most of the time. Later I could trade with England and India for luxuries, but I had to make peace for that and thus I lost some of my war happiness.

The Raider was not very useful for me too, because he came too early. The many contacts and trade options catapulted me fast into the MA and I had to concentrate on building.

The Marine was slightly better. It was not the amphibious trait, but the enslavement ability that pleased me well. I could generate a lot of workers when I captured the NW-Island.

The European Civs did not play any notable role at all, the aztec group was not better. The gunpowder bonus for England came too late for me cause I already knew it.

The AI seems to hate optionals... Besides the Amercians and Chinese no CIV knew literature. OK let us be fair: some of them even did not know writing...
The only optionals that have been researched were MT and Music Theory by the Americans, and Chivalry by the Chinese.

It was the most peaceful game ever for me. I was too chicken to go on a Domination/Conquest-Win, and the AI did not attack me very often. The Koreans sent two single units one time (and gave me a GA at the beginning of the IA ), and the Chinese tried to “invade” three or four times. So I never created a Great Leader…


However Civ Steve, PLEASE don’t consider these points as a criticism. That was the nicest game I have ever played in my civ career! Thanks to you!
I’m seriously thinking of reload the game before the Diplo Vote and try to get an Conquest Victory. It is so much fun, and I do want to play some more turns on this map. Even a (very late) 20k win is possible, as I built most of the wonders in a single city (Apia).

So that are my first impressions after the game. Perhaps I will edit this post and deliver some additional information and pictures.

Happy Christmas Everyone!


EDIT:

some interesting information:

After my diplomatic victory, I tried to conquer the rest of the map. Due to this i had to build a lot of units. At one point, I decided to switch to facism, because it would help me a lot with the cultural dominant opponents. So i ordered a couple of workers in my ics-farming cities, so that they could join my core cities, when the pop-drop of facism occurs. Unfortunately i could not build any units in these. In my core cities it was not a problem.

It really drove me crazy and i made a lot of testing in my game, and some searching in this forum. Now I'm absolutely sure what the reason is:

The total number of units in a game was utilized. (In my core cities, unit production was not the problem, because I disbanded older units at the same time)

The maximum amount of units allowed, is 4096. There are a dozen SID rivals, who are building units, without loosing them in a battle. I made some espionage and any Civ seems to have about 500 units. So the maximum was reached easily.

Anyone else with this problem?

 

[klarius]

Culture 20k victory in 1760.
Didn't want to decide between building boats or settler so played open and built boats .
That worked out nicely. I could buy the needed CB and masonry while min researching writing.
Max philosophy gave free literature.

Early on I had quite a problem with the palace pre-build not growing fast enough. Huge map is a real pain.

Culture buildings:
3000BC temple
1300BC Great Library
1175BC library
825BC Mausoleum of Mausollos
450BC Hanging Gardens
430BC colosseum
290BC cathedral
350AD Sistine Chapel
360AD Heroic Epic (India is the leader training ground)
380AD university
620AD Bach's Cathedral
790AD Shakespeare's Theater
970AD Smith's Trading Company
980AD Pentagon
1090AD Newton's University
1230AD Universal Suffrage
1270AD Theory of Evolution
1310AD Hoover Dam
1330AD Military Academy
1345AD Wall Street
1395AD Palace
1415AD Intelligence Agency
1440AD Battlefield Medicine
1610AD United Nations
1660AD SETI program
1665AD research lab
1715AD Internet
1740AD Apollo Program

In the middle ages and onward only Smith's was a race, everything else I had monopoly tech.

I was at war with everybody except my good friends and research partners Korea and China for most of the time. Only America ever landed on my homeland. A fabulous sneak attack with 1 ancient cavalry, while they had lots of real cavalry running around their homeland.

In the end I had eliminated India, Aztecs, Lapita and Maya (letting hundreds of javelins suicide on tanks and infantry). America got Spain pretty early. Korea did in China in modern age.

 

[Haploid]

Imminent loss. The Americans are about to go 100k culture.

Hey, first time I try a GOTM. I couldn't resist the interesting challenge put up.

Early years I filled up the island, built a dozen boats and started scouting the world as quick as I could. My primary goal was to find islands with luxury resources and claim them as soon as possible. What I hadn't realized is that, even though I could sail to those islands, it would be a long long time before those islands could be connected via harbors to my main island.

I encountered all the other civilizations long before AD and succesfully traded myself to the top of the research ladder. The Americans were very dominant from the moment I met them. They grabbed every WW but one, and eliminated the Spanish early in the MA, making them officially the biggest civ on any chart.

I figured the huge island east of the Inca looked sweet and sent a dozen swordsmen and some settlers to clear it out. Just before I landed there, the number of barbarians suddenly sky-rocketed. Most of my troops were massacred just after being dropped. A few got lucky and settled. For some reason, the barbarians never bothered to attack my towns there. I had stacks of 30+ barbarian horsemen camped outside most of my villages for hundreds of years.

Some centuries later, in the early AD's, my second batch arrived at the island east of the Inca and I spent a few dozen turns completely clearing it out. Built my FP in the center of it, in a town running WLTKD.

When the FP was finished, I had about 20% of the world pop and landmass and was 1st in almost every stat, except disease and literacy. Probably good enough to win by normal means, except ... the Americans had well over 70K culture
already and were set to win in 30 turns.

Only way to win now is if I could stop the Americans from reaching 100K. That meant eliminating most of their cities (or all).

Despite having more land than any other civ, I had no access to Saltpeter anywhere and no one would trade me for it. That means my strongest troops would be 4 power. The Americans had just gone into IA, and I was 4 or 5 techs behind them. I figured that it'd take me more than 30 turns to get Nationalism, so that wasn't an option. The Americans probably had it or almost, anyway. So my 4 power troops would be next to useless.

I resigned. The Americans win in ~30 turns, and I can't stop them.

In retrospect, I should've taken the fight to an AI instead of settling an unused continent. Supply lines would've been much shorter and it'd probably have taken about the same number of troops.

Also, in retrospect, I seriously underestimated the barbarian threat a few times and that cost me troops (and settlers) that shouldn't have died. I'm guessing there's a period where barbarians proliferate (like the fungus in Alpha Centauri), probably at a set time. Need to look that up, so I can see it coming next time.

 

[Schalke 04]

Hi Haploid,

the victory condition for a cultural win on huge maps is 160k, instead of 100k. Moreover one needs to have double the culture that the strongest opponent has. In my game China and America have been equal in culture strength. So it isn't necessary to retire. When China has 90k, America would need 180k, and so on.

 

[Haploid]

the victory condition for a cultural win on huge maps is 160k, instead of 100k. Moreover one needs to have double the culture that the strongest opponent has.

Hey, that's good news. I guess that puts me in the clear then; it'll take them over 90 turns to win by single city culture. That should be more than enough for me to rally against at least that one town.

I'm gonna try to finish this one then, but I won't be submitting, of course.

 

[ThERat]

First of all, thanks for sponsoring such a nice game, quite addictive.

It was clear for me, that I am going for domination, slogging wars all the way. I won in 1844AD.

I played open and initially settled the main Island. Having no opponent but barbs, let me go for settler gambit. I built some boats as well and started to explore the world.
After settling the initial Island, I started to expand to the empty Island south and sent some settlers to the smaller unoccupied Islands as well. This also included settling the big Island way north with gems and incense, too good to miss. It cost me quite a few units, that I lost against stacks of barbs, but ultimately I owned the Island alone.
Time to try and expand. Knowing that SID Civs have humongous amounts of units, I decided to go for Spain/America. before that, I kicked off my Golden Age taken a flipped town back from Lapita. I had chosen republic though this meant short wars. I tried to get some American cities, it worked only in the north and ultimately I lost them again later on. The crusade against Spain was a flop as well as America took everything while I was stuck behind monster stacks.

Decided to go after the Atzecs next, as I could settle there on a hill and try my luck with leader generation there. This worked out much better and I crippled them gaining some armies. This was when I had cavalry already, while the AI was really slow in research. Lucky, I never even bothered to build the Great Library.

Next, was Korea, that had declared war on me before that. I shipped my armies over and took out some of their cities in th center, while they were happily fighting the eternal war against China. After a while, I ran out of steam and made peace with them, getting a RoP and going after China. The combined forces left China with no chance and soon they were gone while I settled tightly, leaving Korea their core in the south and some land in the north (I missed access to dyes and had to rely on trades with Korea). From there, Korea was pulled into all big wars I fought. I kept them a war with America all the time to slow both down in techs.

I took a part of India with the luxes in the north, but failed to grab the whole Island due to overwhelming numbers. It's very tough to get the cities. You need to lure their units out of the town and try and keep them stranded. Not easy and I failed both with India and japan to take their whole Islands. Due to republic, I was also forced to fight short wars.

After those mis-adventures, I took Netherlands and part of Maya land and Menehune. England was next and I already had tanks to help out. I was very successful this time also due to tanks and took the entire English Island. During that war, I decided to revolt to monarchy and go for an all out war with whoever I fight. Surprisingly there was hardly any problem with anarchy. having 6 luxes simply helped a lot.

After the English war, I was ready to invade America.I stared from the southern peninsula, cutting it off from the rest of their empire. Then I rolled in from the north, bombarding and razing all their core cities. American had hug numbers of rifles, that they threw against my ToW armies to no avail.

Getting closer to domination, I took Moriori after settling and losing a city there. Again, luring out th units from cities was an issue. You cannot try and kill all their units inside towns as they tend to have hundreds of them.

I then proceeded to try and take out Inca, who had declared war on me ages before. This was th hardest nut to crack. With no obvious landing zone, I stared to drop tanks on mountains, but they simply ignored them. When I moved onto hills, the tanks were shredded to pieces. Amazing.
I founded a town on a hill twice, but the overwhelming forces took them out including the tank armies inside. The help of modern armor (he last tech i researched) was needed to wear them down eventually. By that time, American was steamrolled and I rushed many temples.
I ended the game with 216 towns

Below the final image
green shows the peaceful expansion, red the initial wars, getting darker the latter the years. (not that Korea and myself are hard to separate in colors)

 

[civ_steve]

...
The total number of units in a game was utilized. (In my core cities, unit production was not the problem, because I disbanded older units at the same time)

The maximum amount of units allowed, is 4096. There are a dozen SID rivals, who are building units, without loosing them in a battle. I made some espionage and any Civ seems to have about 500 units. So the maximum was reached easily.

Anyone else with this problem?

Check out Bamspeedy's Beyond Sid thread in the Civ3 Stories and Tales forum about a modified PTW game he played where the AI had production and growth set to 10x that of the player! The AI reached this maximum total unit # very rapidly! And he will discuss some of the effects of this at various points in the thread.

 

[pearpenguin]

Submitted an incomplete game, since I have to overseas soon and have no more time to complete the game. It was a nice and interesting game, but the wait time inbetween turns was none that I had ever experienced before, as this is my first COTM and huge map with SID.

Originally the plan was to go for a research game and win by Space Race/Diplomatic, but my AA tech trading was nowhere near good enough and as a result I entered the MA way too late compared to other players. Taking too long to research techs I realised the only way I was able to win is to switch to Communism and begin expanding in order to try and quicken the research. By the time I was able to do so I think I only less than 200 turns before game end.

My first target was India, fortified 20 Riflemen on a hill against melee troops, thinking that was enough. Turned out I grossly underestimated their numbers, and unbelievably the riflemen got slaughtered. By the time I was able to send in another batch of troops they had almost every coastal square covered with troops. I got Infantry and finally found an opening to land my troops, and started painstakingly and slowly conquering their island, trying to ignore the hundreds of pikeman standing around. By the time I had finished, and turned to the Americans who had conquered Spain long ago, I had only 100 turns before game end.

Against America this time I had one or two Infantry armies to defend the initial city, however once they had the brunt of their force on me it took quite awhile to get the second city using artillery. I had to divert their forces into one city then suddenly changing directions to attack another city. Once I had taken over most of the cities, I begun to evaluate my options. I had only 60 turns left before the retirement buzzer and I was still one tech away from Modern age. Now the only possible option is a Diplomatic Victory, as it was taking me more than 10 turns per tech and China's score was 2000 above mines. As all the other civs are either at war with or annoyed with me, the chances for Diplo victory are pretty slim. I considered taking China's pop and territory to under 25% so they will not be eligible for UN secretary, but apparently some people said that there will be at least 2 candidates, no matter what. Based on the impossibility of victory I resigned.

This has been quite a good experience for me to see how other players play this game. I will definitely play more COTM's in the future.

 

[donsig]

Generally my wars were not successful and so I eventually became a democracy and used theory of evolution to regain my tech lead - which had been lost to Korea. Evidently Korea ousted China from their shared island. China remained a strong power and took over most of the large NW island. Korea and China were almost always at war. Korea attacked me once and took over the old Lapita island - and I could do nothing about it. There was to be no space race in this game as the techs would not be researched in time. Korea was a cultural powerhouse with ove 200k culture but I had 135k so wasn't worried about culture. I figured I'd go fo a time victory but soon after 2000 I realized my thin lead over Korea was evaporating too fast. So I did what I could (changed scientists to clowns, joined workers to cities, squeezed in a few more towns, did not renew my lux sales to Korea, sold motorized trans to China). My score lead stabilzed around 2027 AD - I was up 51 points.

I had a prebuild going for SETI and decided to shut off research once I got computers. Then I'd upgrade to mech inf and finsih off the Dutch to ensure my score lead. I had invaded the Duth before with infantry and cav armies. Took Amsterdam but it was tedious. Didn't have battlefield medicine so I had to move hurt units to ships to rest them. Well, the Dutch hordes overran Amsterdam!!! Luckily when I sued for peace they were willing to give it back. That's when I switched to democracy. When trying to ensure my score lead I realized I couldn't attack Korea so I chose to go after the Dutch again. I had flight and built lots of airports. Airlifted infantry left over from the Korean war as well as newly built tanks. Transported some old arty and some empty armies. Once I got computers I upgraded my infantry and attacked. Made good progess in just a few turns.

Korea built Manhatten and was working on the UN. I was a bit worried but stayed my course.

Then I was shocked to see that I suffered a cultural defeat in 2034 AD. It appears the long forgotten Menehune managed a 20k cultural city.

It was a fun game but I can't imagine trying to play Sid on a normal map. Don't know how you guys do it.

 

[Haploid]

Continued from previous post.

Diplomatic victory in 2049 AD

After learning that an American cultural victory was not quite as imminent as I thought it was, I reevaluated my position.

I was the largest in terms of pop and land mass, a half a dozen techs or so behind on the Koreans, Chinese and Americans, and with a reasonable army size. Certainly not in a position for domination or conquest victory; cultural victory was certainly out of the question. The tech rate was nowhere near high enough to get to a space race.

That left two possible victory conditions: score or diplomatic. In other words, sailing it out until 2050 or until the UN was built, whichever came first.

There was only one thing standing in my way: even though the Americans wouldn't be winning with global culture, they were still set to reach 20k culture in Washington in about 60 turns. So I set all my towns to build an army capable of laying waste to Washington. Not capture it, just raze it and get out of there.

The army ended up consisting of:
4 Armies (3x Infantry, I wouldn't be able to ship a full 4-size army in any ship)
2 Armies (3x Cavalry)
60 Infantry
12 Cavalry
150 Artillery

The cavalry were remnants of the conquest of the Lapita, that turned out to be extremely useful. Thanks to them I was able to take out a few units per turn until the stack was small enough for my artillery to bomb them all.

I had a few infantry armies roam around disconnecting Washington and any resources that were easy to get to. America never attacked any of my units in their territory; they just won't attack any stack covered by a strong army. They easily had enough troops to get to my artillery a few times, but never tried.

Washington fell, and I took out Philadelphia as well, to get the Americans to sign a treaty and hand me a size-1 town that had Ivory in its city radius. Sweet! The whole thing was over before my republican people noticed there was a war going on.

One thing I learned from this game is that it's pretty much impossible to trade the AI at Sid level for techs once you get behind. Also, trying to research anything myself didn't work at all. The cheapest way for me to get techs from late MA on was the steal them. Sure, it can be bothersome if you get caught, but that doesn't have to be a problem.

After Washington fell, I had absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the game. All my cities were completely Sim City-ed, just everything. At 100% tax, I'd make 3000 gpt. But with no way to spend it, I just gave my people a fun time and put the luxury slider at 80%. And then just clicked OK at whatever came up for two hours.

All in, this was a very educative game for me. I learned some aspects that I never really played with much before, such as tech stealing and using artillery stacks to crack a massively reinforced town.

My computer isn't really up to dealing with a Huge map, especially with Cid level civs building zillions of troops. AI turns started taking a few minutes near the end. That's the main reason I didn't consider a military campaign, to keep the game time low. Didn't quite work out as I hoped though, since I had to play to 2049 AD to finish it, heh.

 

[civ_steve]

There's still 2 weeks left for folks to finish the game, so I think you did pretty good for time to play, although 2049 is cutting it quite close!

Then I was shocked to see that I suffered a cultural defeat in 2034 AD. It appears the long forgotten Menehune managed a 20k cultural city.

Oh no!! It was great to see your spoiler entries, donsig, so I'm sorry to see this result.

This may come as a surprise to most players here, but donsig has submitted a game result in all 73 Civ3 GOTMs to date and quite a few of the Civ3 COTMs as well! I thought I'd take this opportunity to recognize such long standing participation in the GOTM.

 

[tao]

Finally: Conquest in 1832ad. The sheer number of AI units to kill was a new experience.

Examples:

• The Menehune managed to kill 3 fortified size-4 infantry armies with their swords, archers, and maces.
• My spy told me about 921(!) Mayan units.

I went republic and stayed in it thru the game - sometimes needing as much as 50% lux tax to fight war weariness. As even successful defense agains AI units adds ww points. It was mostly logistics, as I got a significant tech lead in the early Industrial Age. No other civ ever learned flight. I stopped research (too late) once I had computers. My earlier idea of going nuclear was abandoned because of the tremendeous Modern Times tech costs. And because I had to spend 750+ gpt on unit upkeep.

 

[Neo666]

I reached the industrial ages together with Korea in 720AD after I just finished off Spain. All others were way behind:
10 were still in the ancient ages
3 in the middle ages
1 dead

I initially went for a diplomatic victory so I went for full scale research. But because the wars went pretty well I decided to try a domination victory but still kept up researching in case I needed tanks against for example England or Korea (in the end I only lacked flight and motorized transport) and never needed a tank.

The first war in the industrial ages was against America, taken their final 2 cities in 780 AD therefore controlling the entire island.

After this I shipped a party (containing of 3 settlers, a couple of musketman and a couple of marines) to colonize the island in the north-west. I build the first city there at 850AD in the south-east of the island near the incense. At that time Korea already settled 4 cities on the island. My 2nd city was in the center of the island and my 3rd city was by the gems. The marines took a lot of slaves which were used to connect the cities and all the luxuries.

The most difficult war was the war against India, it took about 60 years to take their first city. But after that it took only about 100 years (900-1060AD) to take the rest of their cities. After this war I had 2 very easy ones, namely:
Aztec; 1170-1190
Dutch; 1230-1250

After I wiped out the dutch, the Koreans attacked my city near the incense, because they tried with only 1 cavalry they failed! Because I was close to the island between the aztec and maya island which was colonized by the Koreans I first conquered those cities. I also send as many cavalry as possible from the core-island to the incense/gems island and also made an alliance against Korea with Japan and Lapita.

Because my big army was to far I decided to conquer the maya island first (1290-1320), after which I send the big army to the incense/gems island taking all but one Korean city. Peace was restored in 1365 AD at that time the war weariness became pretty bad after 200 years of almost continuous war and I stopped research for about 10 turns, so I let them keep the last city. War weariness was almost never a problem, I always had 7 or 8 luxuries and got a lot of war hapiness. During our war Korea was also in war with China which they finally finished off in 1370AD

After the Korean war everything went back according to plan:
Inca; 1400-1430
Japan; 1465-1485
Aborigine; 1575-1595
Moriori; 1605-1625
England; I conquered 2 cities in 1645.

Domination victory in 1650 AD with about 250 cavalry and 90 infantry running around at the England-island!
Firaxis score: 12471
Jason score: 7188
Time played: 104:53:36

Definitely a great set up by civ-steve!! Although very time consuming, I really enjoyed it!

 

[pol1]

Histographic victory here.

just few quick notes now :

@tao : in my game, about year 1900 China had 2210 units... and the unit limit was reached earlier.

preventing China from achieving 100K and/or 20K victory was the challenge till the end, with diplomatic VC there was smaller problem : during last 60-70 turns they were at war with everyone (i just kept renewing alliances over and over again). anyway UN wasn't built in time.

mobilization and unit limit were great advantage for me, indirectly, cause AIs were handicapped by them...

great game!

 

[pol1]

some more things :

i had a lot of units, quite high unit support costs. OTOH unit limit prevented China from building new ones, so they didn't have any bombers or IA naval vessels....
which leads to the number of workers that AIs had - from some point (after i stole espionage) altogether... 6 including 4 slaves... all of them were Chinese.
their island was full of pollution :

Spoiler :

the way to prevent Bejing from achieving 20k was to dogpile them, so AI entered into mobilization mode. in fact i was renewing alliances next turn after they were broken, cause that caused China getting out of mobilization... in the end Bejing was just few hundreds cp from 20k...

earlier, to avoid 100k loss i had to construct lot of culture buildings... i assumed that other civs were just to small to have more than half culture Chinese had.

 

[PrinceMyshkin]

Predator
Diplomatic Victory 1796AD
Firaxis:9674
Jason:5251

After a fairly strong start, reaching the MA with 18 cities in 1050BC, the MA took a very long time. I spent 20 turns on Polynesian Trade and another 20-turns on Republic before going after the upper tree in the MA. Tech research times took very long and the IA was not reached until 1100AD even though I got feudalism, engineering, invention, gunpowder, chemistry, and metallurgy from the ai. Mostly Korea and China. During this time the Americans destroyed the Spanish and I lost my entire army in a failed war against the Lapitans after landing on their iron mountain. I also settled the soutern wine island and the gems, incense, and saltpeter island in the northwest although the Chinese and Koreans had a number of cities there also.

At the start of the IA, I was the tech leader, and started slowly researching to combustion while the ai's did the bottom part of the tree for me. Korea decided they wanted some of my fresh settlements on the NW island and dow'ed me early in this period. With MA's in place with the rest of the world against them, I managed to capture their three towns on this island and the Chinese and Americans proceeded to destroy the Koreans. I was able to get medecine, scientific theory, replaceable parts and flight as well as all optional techs from the ai's after getting an irreversible tech lead with the ToE. I finally figured out how to attack the ai's with amphibious assaults on their cities before they could retaliate. The Lapitans, Aborigines, Aztecs, and Dutch all fell in one turn wars to my Polynesian Marines. The Maori and Menehune fell in two turn wars and the Maya lost three cities before I ran out of these wonderful units. Tech times in the IA were very long and it was not until 1768AD that I reached the modern age. I was going for domination, but the opportunity to win diplomatically came first and I swithced a Palace pre-build to the UN after taking 14 turns to research fission in the modern age. A very fun game that only took 76 hours, thanks Civ_Steve!

 

[Lanzelot]

Now that I managed to finish COTM44 just on time, I finally have some spare time to write my last report about COTM43. First of all: thanks, civ_steve, for this great game! A game like I've never played before and lots of fun, even though there was quite some hard and tedious work involved...

I made mistakes, I tried strategies that didn't work out in this kind of game and had to be given up/replaced by something else, but I think I've learned another thing or two about Civ3. And I also tried a couple of things that did work out ok, so in the end I finally had a pretty good idea how such a game can be won. (I guess, what Winston Churchill once said, describes my style of play in this game pretty well: "The Americans always do the right thing -- after exhausting all other options...")

Things that didn't work:

1. The Great Library. Despite the high number of AIs, I didn't get much out of it. Probably around 4 techs. I still had to do my own research, while I had it, as otherwise I would still have been in the stone age by 2050AD... And after I gifted it away, I still did a lot of research (basically everything that does not depend on Education), because I needed those techs for making progress. And then I waited much too long before taking it back. It's true, I saved a lot of money, which I was able to invest in infrastructure, but it took such a long time and threw me so far back in terms of tech, that the UN and Spaceship victory conditions became impossible.
   A funny note on the side: I did not have to retake my city with the Great Library from the Lapita people -- it flipped back to me all by itself... . In fact I had to refuse their offer to join my empire three times! When they came the fourth time, I finally accepted and let them flip...
   
2. My first military attempts. As I described in my previous spoiler, conquering the Aztecs (which were the weakest opponent on the map) was still possible by "normal" means. However, already when I tried it on a medium opponent (India), it failed utterly. Taking a city was no problem. But then hundreds and hundreds of archers threw themselves at my defences, and it was impossible to hold the city, even with 20 muskets. I lost a lot of units that way. I knew from SirPleb's article, that you need to use the "Funnel of Death" strategy in these cases, but alas, I was lacking the necessary number of Armies... (Or rather, I had enough Armies, but shattered across three continents. Like SirPleb I could not afford to keep them at size three, they would have been too weak that way. And transports were still far far away - see point 1.)
   In the end I just took the city with the dyes and immediately made peace.

Based on these experiences I tried two other strategies:

• Take over far way island the AI has settled. This is "quite easy", probably because corruption affects the AI as well, and they are not smart enough to ship defensive units to these islands. That way I was able to throw the Chinese off the NW colony and take over a medium island from America, even though these two were the two powerhouses (China having taken over Korea and America having wiped out Spain).
  
• On the AI's home continent: capture a city. Then when the monster SODs start approaching, move all your units out of the city (to avoid them getting butchered). The AI will then take the city back and fill it with only ~20 units, the rest will go away again (provided your own SOD is protected by an Army). Then wipe out those 20 units and retake the city. Repeat as long as necessary... An improvement may be to do this at two opposite ends of their continent. (Razing the cities may also be a good idea, but I don't like razing, so I almost never do it.)
  This strategy seems to work ok and may be a decent substitute for SirPleb's FOD, if you lack the necessary number of Armies. (But at least one Army is required.) Unfortunately I was not able to take it to its final conclusion, as I was running out of time. (Had this idea only two or three days before the deadline.)

In the end I had to submit an incomplete game, but I had the largest population and my score lead was rapidly increasing. The natural outcome of this game would probably be a histographic win, because I don't think any of the AI will be able to get to the UN or to Spaceship parts on time. And even the most powerful AI will not get its legions rolling and attack me on my home continent.

In retrospect I think the following general strategy would be best for this game:

• Explore quickly and get your trading going. Accumulate tech and wealth. (In the beginning the AI is still very powerful in researching!)
• Once the AI reaches its unit limit and "suffocation" sets in, stop trading with them and start researching yourself full speed. You should already be tech leader by then, and this lead should rapidly increase. Except perhaps for one or two AIs, which have rolled over neighbours, all AIs will remain in the Ancient Age for ever.
• If a strong AI has far away colonies, attack there. Every city you take from the AI, will dramatically decrease their free unit support! So eventually even the powerhouses will "freeze" and stop researching. (At least in this special game, once every AI is isolated on one continent, they will no longer loose units, as there are no "real" wars with high casualties any more.) Another important factor here may be the 4096 unit limit. Perhaps this can be used to keep the AI sitting on out-dated units, while you keep upgrading to the latest weapons? In this case Leonardo's is important to get.
• Also attack weak AIs using SirPleb's strategy or the "move-in move-out warfare" above.

Any comments? What kind of military techniques did those of you apply, who managed a Conquest or Domination victory?

Lanzelot

 

[PaperBeetle]

It was very educational wasn't it? I wish some of the advanced tactics that come out of games like this would be of use in lower level games, but they really aren't... there's no need for subtlety when you can just whomp the AI with a steady stream of knights or cavs.

I think the most powerful strategy I settled on was not the Funnel of Doom, but the oscillating bait gambit; two towns on their continent, alternately left undefended and blocked by armies. Meanwhile, at the other end of their continent, an attack force can land, guarded by an army, and travel from town to town, razing as it goes. Mind you, the sid AI does have a tedious habit of refounding towns very quickly. It doesn't matter that these towns are rubbish, because you aren't worried about the AI's per-turn production capability, but about the vast backlog of units that it built since the beginning of the game.
Anyway, my problem with the Funnel of Doom is that it is mainly about killing large numbers of AI troops. That is far too much like hard work, compared to taking all their towns while the bulk of their military chases shadows. In fact, I was using armies to block my bait towns, but I actually came to resent their Zones of Control, because they damaged a lot of AI units, which then headed back to town to heal up; the last place I wanted them to be!

 

[civ_steve]

Interesting. So an army in the field is just too strong to attack and will block the AI, but an army, and any other number of units, in a city, must be attacked en masse! Very tough when your strategic decisions are hard wired!