COTM52 - Final Spoiler

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COTM 52 Final Spoiler; Game Submitted




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I've always favored Commercial civs for late game victories such as Space Race or UN - reduced corruption is very helpful for the required research. Any Space or Diplo Victories out there? Late military victories? Or did you go cultural? Last chance to describe your game!
 
Open. Conquest achieved at 780AD, with Jason 9988.
Yes, it's been tempting to play research game but I'm on a conquest streak right now. :)

The game was pretty easy after we entered MA, built a lot of Horses and traded for a lot of money to get Elephants. We built FP 7 turns into GA, and we had so much revenue left in GA after upgrading all Horses that we decided to research further to Cavs.
We finished all but Shumerians and Portugese with Elephants, and fthose two last guys were finished with Cavs, which was good as they had a lot of Muskets by the end.

One major gaffe of the game: we captured ToA from Shumerians and rejoyced, but then we captured GLib from Turks the very next turn, and forgot that Education will stop ToA effect, so we kept GLib. D'oh!
 
Settled in place and started on Writing. Thought that with that many flood plains a granary was not that urgent, and this being pangea I would be able to trade for Pottery soon enough.

3450BC: FP disease struck Delhi! Here I already feared the worst, but as far as I remember, this was the only time in the entire game.

In 2390BC Writing was discovered and I was able to sell it to the Hittites for Pottery, Warrior Code and 18g. (Fortunately I had not yet read Più Freddo's advice about NEVER selling Writing before you have CoL... :D)

1600BC Code of Laws, 1350BC Philosophy & Republic. Got two turns of anarchy (I thought, religious civs always get one turn anarchy?! :confused:) and established the Republic in 1300BC.

How did Più Freddo manage to get there 9 turns earlier? I thought I didn't commit any mistakes for the first couple of turns... And that FP disease can't have had that much of an impact, can it?

Anyway, here are a couple of milestones of my game:
QSC stats:
7 towns
21 pop
2 granaries
18 techs (Currency & Construction missing for reaching the MA)
Incense hooked up
4 contacts, 3 embassies

I got one warrior past the choke-point, which met England, France and Sumeria and was met by an Osman and a Scandinavian unit. But I didn't meet Portugal until I sent a curagh around to them.

The Middle Age was reached in 670BC, Chivalry in 190BC. Had 10 horsemen at that time, but didn't start military action, yet, because of the high upgrade costs. Instead I aimed for Leonardo's, which was probably a mistake.

Invention discovered in 50BC. Can't remember now, why I didn't have a pre-built set up, probably always had more important things to finish... Anyway, now I figured that by the time Leonardo's would be ready, I would probably be close to Military Tradition, so I decided to do my conquering with Cavalry.

50AD Karachi completes the forbidden palace. Upon discovering gunpowder I realize that the closest saltpeter is in England :mad:
210AD: the Hittites attack and one of my two hand-built war elephants triggers the GA. As I have plenty of money now and need something to teach the Hittites, I decide to upgrade 6 horsemen anyway. My 8 elephants take 2 Hittite towns, and in 250AD they are willing to give me two more towns and 6gpt for peace... What had been their idea behind attacking me? :confused:

Leonardo's is finally finished in 300AD and Military Tradition in 330AD. Research is stopped and money used for rushing infrastructure around my FP. In 360AD I decide not to wait for the peace deal with the Hittites to expire, and 23 elephants attack them. 390AD they are gone... Unfortunately Hattusas had to be destroyed, as it had built the Great Library.

I rush a settler, which settles down next to England's saltpeter, rush a temple there and complete a few roads, and in 460AD I finally have Cavalry! It takes 6 more turns to position them and the remaining elite elephants on strategic positions inside England, and in 520AD I cancel our ROP and take all but one English city. (We had a long going alliance against France, and the British had just taken Orleans the previous turn, so I had to make the difficult decision of either waiting a couple of turns longer and bring the necessary extra units down to Orleans (which would be quite a while, as they had to come all the way from the Indian core) or start the attack as planned and take Orleans later.) Orleans (and England) was gone in 540AD.

As I had long going wars with France and Sumeria, which had been providing war happiness for centuries, my army now turned south east. The plan was to drive through France and take Sun Tzu's and Artemis in Sumer and Ur. Then finish the remaining French and Sumerian cities on the way back (except for one city each to keep the war happiness coming in). This plan was followed through with one modification: in 580AD the Ottomans signed peace with France, which auto-canceled our peace treaty. Therefore the Sumerian war happiness was no longer needed, and I decided to eliminate them completely in order to avoid any trouble with ToA or Sun Tzu's flipping back to them. (Sumeria was the strongest nation culture-wise and had about twice the culture as me.)

560AD: the first MGL! At the end of the game I had 5 Cav Armies, which sped up victory a bit. The Herioc Epic was finished in 640AD, but I didn't feel much of an effect in this game. Unfortunately the Pentagon and Academy were simultaneously about to finish in 740AD, one turn after the end of the game... :p

Sumeria was gone in 640AD, and then my army headed back. In 710 I took the last French city, expecting that this and a couple of culture expansions would push me over the dom limit, but it was not yet enough. So domination was finally reached in 720 for a victory in 730AD. I could probably have reached domination one or two turns earlier, if I had also taken a few Portuguese cities, but they had been my true friends for the entire game, so I didn't deem it fair...

Well, my first victory ever before 1000AD, but if I look at the spoilers of some of you guys here, there's still room for improvement... :) :hatsoff:

A special congratulation to Paul! Looks like you got your Domination medal! (Unless klarius unexpectedly resurfaces the day before submission deadline and says, ätsch-bätsch, I happened to also go for domination and got it in 440... :crazyeye: )

Lanzelot

Thanks to PrinceMyshkin for telling me how to do these:
attachment.php
 
Open, domination in 300AD

I discovered Construction in 800BC reaching the Middle Ages.

Lucky, lucky, lucky; after reaching the MA I gifted both Sumeria and the Ottomans and they got Feudalism and Monotheism :D!!!After trading for both technologies I then started on Chivalry at half speed so I could build a little stack of Horsemen. I absolutely LOVE the extra HP of the War Elephant but absolutely HATE the fact you don’t need iron for them (the connect-reconnect trick is HUGE imo for an early Domination victory, I always prefer this above just buying the militairy)

The age of the Elephants
When I say half speed I really mean half speed!! I discovered Chivalry in 490 BC having a stack of 17 Horsemen and immediately upgrading 5 of them. Stopped research.

I started my first war against the Hitties in 450BC having 7 WE which of course started my GA. I made peace with them in 350BC for a couple of cities leaving them with 2.

The next target is ofcourse England starting the war in 230BC. The count: 32 WE and 1 horseman (which was still scouting the most western parts of the map). I made peace with the English in 130BC for 2 cities leaving them with 1.

I also started war with the Vikings in 130BC getting their gems city. I also did some spying to see how the building of the TOA went. After seeing that the Sumerians only needed 26 turns to finish it I assigned some extra workers to the southern infrastructure.

70BC; started war with the French
50AD; made peace with the Vikings, leaving them with 2 cities
50AD; started the war against the Ottomans
50AD; started the second war against the Hitties
110AD; fnished the French
130AD; finished the Hitties (they had a wondering Settler)
170AD; declared against Sumeria
190AD; peace with the Ottomans, 1 city left
230AD; started war against the Portugese
250AD; captured the TOA in Ur
280AD; finished the Sumerians
290AD; finished the English
290AD; made peace with the Portugese, 2 cities left
300AD; going 264 tiles over the limit with 6 cities not under my control and 3 foreign tribes still alive. :woohoo:
 
(the connect-reconnect trick is HUGE imo for an early Domination victory, I always prefer this above just buying the militairy)

I never quite understood the purpose of the disconnect trick. Perhaps someone can shed some light on why it is so useful? Isn't rushing even more effective? (Or at least can be more effective in certain circumstances?)

Let's say your town makes 12 spt. When using disconnect-reconnect, you wait three turns, get the horseman, and then in the 4th turn you pay the equivalent of 40 shields to get the Knight. When rushing the Knight right away, you wait three turns (= 36 shields), then short-rush to a temple (or granary/harbor, if you are religious), which takes 24 shields, and the next turn you get your Knight.
So when upgrading, you pay 3 * 40 = 120 gold, and when rushing, you pay 4 * 24 = 96 gold.

I can see the benefit of disconnect-reconnect only for those towns, where short-rushing doesn't work (<10 spt), or if you have Leonardo's.

Lanzelot
 
Let's say your town makes 12 spt. When using disconnect-reconnect, you wait three turns, get the horseman, and then in the 4th turn you to pay the equivalent of 40 shields to get the Knight. When rushing the Knight right away, you wait three turns (= 36 shields), then short-rush to a temple (or granary/harbor, if you are religious), which takes 24 shields, and the next turn you get your Knight.
So when upgrading, you pay 3 * 40 = 120 gold, and when rushing, you pay 4 * 24 = 96 gold.

One of these scenarios produces a knight every 3 turns (even though it takes 4 turns to produce one, the next one is already 1 turn on the way when the previous one is finished, ie. can move after being upgraded), the other produces a knight every 4 turns. To speed up the latter you have to short-rush after two turns of construction for 4 * 36 = 144 gold.
 
A special congratulation to Paul! Looks like you got your Domination medal! (Unless klarius unexpectedly resurfaces the day before submission deadline and says, ätsch-bätsch, I happened to also go for domination and got it in 440... :crazyeye: )

300AD; going 264 tiles over the limit with 6 cities not under my control and 3 foreign tribes still alive. :woohoo:

:gripe: As we see not only Klarius can say ätschi-bätsch to me... :hammer2:

At least I know what to do in Cotm53...
It seems to haunt me that I did not go for ToA decisive enough... :wallbash:

:hatsoff: congrats Neo666.
You should consider playing predator... :huh:
 
Lanzelot,
Your absolutely right in your example, but as you already mentioned this doesn't go for cities producing <10 shields (the rush method takes an extra turn) -> when I'm in full war mongering mode I tend to almost exclusively build horsemen in my core cities (RCP3 up to RCP9), of course most of them tend to produce less than 10 shields.

And of course for cities producing exactly 10, 15 or 30 shields the rushing costs (almost) an extra turn (you should be able to move the horsemen 4-5 tiles to another barracks-city before upgrading) with no cash benefits.

Another + for the connect-disconnect is the flexibility it provides -> you can always choose to rush in some cities and other just build horsemen and upgrade.

Paul#42
thanks and maybe you're right...... :-) I just tend 2 take the easy route so don't count 2 see me playing predator soon...........
 
Entry class: Open
Game status: Domination Victory for India
Game date: 310 AD
Firaxis score: 7868
Jason score: 11125
Time played: 04:38:24

Not quite as fast as Neo666 :blush:.

When I finished Ottoman and Portugal each had a city left and sumer with 10 cities or so. It would be have sooner if the AI had built ToA earlier. I waited forever and even kept some AI cities alive hoping they would finish it soon. At some point sumer finally did (210AD) and I managed to capture it fairly quick (260AD), despite the majority of my units being far away, as I was hoping I didn't have to fight sumer (enkidu+ga = bad), but it was not to be.

Ended up having 3 workers and 63 elephants left (joined workers towards the end).

This was the first time I started "exploiting" the AI big time. RoP rape on England and Ottomans, demanding cities and then killing them (france+vikings+portugal). Now I just need to learn how to exploit gpt deals haha :p

I will continue where I left off in first spoiler thread. After I had entered middel ages in 900BC, I started on feud. On 875BC the AI entered middel ages, well at least ottomans did. I think he was trading with someone else, as he got both currency and construction that turn. Either way he got mono. I finished up feud quickly and traded it to ottoman in exchange for mono. I then researched chiv while building up a few horses. I ended up with 15 horses, but I only had like 600 gold and it cost 1800gold to upgrade all of them. So I upgraded 5 of them and attacked hitties. Unfortunally hitties were worthlessly bad and had basically only size1 cities. I captured 2 of his cities and let the other 4 burn :(. I should probably have foreseen that his road system was non-existant, so It took quite a while to get over to England, but I eventually did. Signed a RoP deal and then positioned my units, took most of his cities on one turn and then went directly on to vikings and france. They both went down rather fast as the end of my GA production was finally starting to come over. Vikings and France were kept alive for a long time, because they were building ToA, but they never did finish it, so I killed them after demanding that they give me their size1 towns :). As the Vikings were going down I signed another RoP with ottomans and did the exact same trick as I did on England, positioned my units and took most of his core cities on 1 turn. I also kept one of his cities alive because it was building ToA. I eventually attacked his last city but lost 3 elephants to 1 spear :(. At this point in the game I was sending units towards sumer, because I thought I might have to win on conquest, but fortunally Sumer finally built ToA in one of the cities close to his boarder. I attacked him just before he completed the build, losing quite a few elephants, when he completed the built I sent whatever elephants I had in the region to take the city where ToA had been built.

410BC: Start war on hitties and enter ga
310BC: Destroy hitties
110BC: Start war on England and take out core cities.
50BC: Start war on France, taking 2 cities
30BC: Start war on Vikings, taking 1 city
150AD: Start war on Ottoman, taking 5 core cities.
190AD: Start war on Sumeria, taking 1 city. Destroy England
210AD: Sumer builds ToA
250AD: Start war on portugal, taking 1 city
260AD: Capture ToA, destroy Vikings
270AD: Destroy France
300AD: Status: 1 ottoman city left, 1 portuguese city left, 11 sumerian cities left
310AD: Domination Victory



 
First submitted COTM since over a year or so...

Domination victory in 1000 AD, which is ok. I should have beelined for Monarchy instead of taking Republic with Philo slingshot. In the end, I didn't research past Chivalry and that is what I should have aimed for from the beginning.

Started conquering after I got War Elephants.

Met Sumeria quite late...
 
Open Class
Conquest win in 1140AD
Firaxis 5433 / Jason 9078
Time 17:27

Pretty brief thoughts here, as there was a two week gap between the start and the end so some of my recollections are pretty hazy. Early expansion was relatively slow due to the shortage of food. Got a couple of warriors out early, one went south and just found barbs, one went west and found the Hittites (who weren’t much better). They declared on me very early:eek:, before 2000 BC, but after I took out a few units they would throw a town in the peace deal peace so I took it:). It was a bit east of the choke so gave me an idea of the land - I then set my next couple of towns next to it in a line to stop the Hittites coming into what by that point I knew was my peninsula, and sent off a curragh south to explore. This slowed my early expansion down a bit (I only had 7 settlements by 1000 BC), but left me free to settle where I liked with minimal military - I tend to like this kind of approach as it’s less hassle, but am not sure if it’s the best:confused:.

I also got the slingshot, so was in a republic by 1000 BC, which then sped things up quite a bit. The Hittites declared again soon after when I asked them to leave, so I again took out a few units before getting another town in the peace deal:). Around 500 BC my curragh had met the English, French and Sumerians and reached the bottom of the southern land mass, so I started trading - got many techs for republic and entered the MA. At this point I had my happy bit of land pretty much settled (20+% of world area & 25+% pop), and fancied a peaceful victory:cool:.

A break of two weeks put an end to that peace nonsense and I decided I had to wipe everybody out quickly:scan:. First plan was to do it with the elephants, but I started building too late and didn’t have enough before everyone got muskets, so held off. However, I did finish off the annoying Hitties in 280 AD and triggered my GA. Core cities were then set to produce lots of elephants ready for mass upgrade to cavalry (by keeping a bit ahead in tech and trading a lot I was raking in cash). When I got gunpowder I found the nearest saltpetre was in England, but managed to trade with the Ottomans for a temporary supply.

Finally, after a quiet 600 years of building & trading I got to cavalry and the end came pretty quickly. Declared on England 880, wiped out 930 - declared on France 940, wiped out 980 - declared on Sumeria 990, wiped out 1030 - declared on Vikings 1050, wiped out 1130:D. Cash rushed temples in the conquered cities got me to the area limit in 1140. Kept research going during the wars as I had a ton of cash, so had a rudimentary rail system in place and had just got Nationalism by the end.

In general the AIs seemed to have developed quite badly - most had very poor road systems (I actually had to build some for England early on so I could trade with them), and the Vikings in particular seemed to have put their settlements miles apart. Suffered from a lot of annoying resistors who wouldn’t quit, a couple of culture flips and even an amphibious assault by Viking Berserks on an undefended coastal city (must remember that!:crazyeye:), but took them all back immediately.

Think I got one MGL in each war, all of which became cav armies. Very little wonder building which is unusual for me - nothing at all in the AA, though Delhi did do Copernicus and Knight’s Templar around my GA (when the FP also got built about 10W of the capital). Towards the end I also built Shakespeare’s, Heroic Epic and Newton’s in Delhi and Smith’s in the FP city - they weren’t really around long enough to do anything, I just fancied having them and didn’t have much else to do!:king:
 
Open
Game status: Conquest
Game date: 380 AD
Firaxis score: 7571
Jason score: 10905

Yilar =
fantastic result !
Time played: 04:38:24
very speed game...
 
Military victory to the elites... I went for space, but ending up at war 95% of the game, which really hurt my research. I didn't do badly, but very much mediocore results. At least I shouldn't get any ambulances, which is my normal goal... :D

Entry class: Open
Game status: Spaceship Victory for India
Game date: 1872 AD
Firaxis score: 3763
Jason score: 4963
Time played: 66:35:35
 
Peaceful Gandhi went for domination in this game.

Chivalry was learned ASAP in 470BC and research was shut down to use funds for shortrushing Elephants.
Temple of Artemis was handbuilt in 70 BC.
Early on 2 worker crews (3 workers each) were sent to road towards backward AI's.

And a short turnlog for anyone interested:

775 MA entered; gift Ottos, they get Feudalsim, but won't part with it for Republic

590 learn Monotheism; trade Mono+90gpt for Feudalism with Otto's; declare war on Ottos;
start Chivalry, due in 7

530 galley sees Sumerian borders

510 meet Sumerians, they are backwards; bring them to MA, they get Monotheism, I was looking for Engineering which could speed up conquest a bit

470 Chivalry learned, swap 1 prebuild to War Elephant; at this date we have 12 horses and 2 chariots to upgrade;
misclick and lose one turn; next turn will attack Hittties;
at this date we have 16 towns, 70 pop, 8 towns with barracks and reasonably good production to churn out WE's

430 2nd WE built; upgrade one more WE; now will accumulate cash to upgrade horses;
extort some gold and a town called Ankuwa from Hittites, but still declare war;
WE victory and we get a Golden Age; income improves a bit and we are making 200gpt
2 Hittite towns captured;
4WE's

410 5WE's

370 10 WE's (mix of upgraded horses and shortrushed)

350 peace Hittites for 3 towns leaving just capital for them, gained 6 towns in this war;
15 WE's

330 18 WE's; redeclare on Hittites, capture Hattusas, kill settler and destroy the Hittites

270 25 WE&#8217;s

210 30 WE&#8217;s;
Notice rivers are slowing us down so start researching Engineering;

190 Oporto completes Collosus :D

170 Ottomans have Engineering, buy it for Chivalry;
Sell Chivalry to England for some gold (none of these civs have resources to produce knights);

150 36 WE&#8217;s...blah blah, from then on many ROP rapes, backstabs, many towns burned and:

Entry class: Open
Game status: Domination Victory for India
Game date: 230 AD
Firaxis score: 8246
Jason score: 11430

War Elephant is great unit, that extra HP really helps; lost just 9 of them in this game
 

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Game status: Domination Victory for India
Game date: 230 AD

:eek: :wow:

And I had thought my 4xxAD was competetive... :rolleyes: :shake: :cry:

Impressive games, guys. I need to keep learning and improving... :blush:
Maybe I'd better play my builders' games again... :mischief:
 
Another peaceful victory checking in here. Gandhi's such a nice person, even on predator.

The mouth of the river was a bit further to the northeast than I expected, so I didn't get to settle until 3800 BC. Once settled down, though, things seemed to go smoothly.

Hittites blocking the isthmus made the game a bit annoying early on, but eventually a warrior made it through. Contacts showed up rather slowly, taking until 1625 BC to meet Portugal.

I was surprised that the GOTM staff rigged this game to make the seafaring civs start inland. As a result, I managed to nab Great Lighthouse, but it is really useless on a Pangaea map (still a decent tourist attraction, though).

Scandinavia and Sumeria got very powerful during the middle ages, tearing apart England and France, respectively. Elizabeth was the first to exit, but Joan had a single colony stuck behind Hittite territory that managed to stay out of reach while Ragnar and Gilgamesh fought over the spoils of war.

Having missed the religious wonders, I ended up building a few elephants to destroy the last French city and get a GA, which was spent building Universal Suffrage and Theory of Evolution.

1450 AD, Ragnar demands Electronics. I call his bluff and end up having to ally the world against him. Ottomans and Portugal had sat out for most of the game so far, so they had plenty of units to let loose at this point and were able to counterbalance the otherwise overwhelming strength of the Vikings.

I was a few turns behind the AI's in getting to modern era (1715 AD), but Osman picked up Ecology as his free tech, so I beelined for Fission. Even after Colossus went obsolete I could still get 384 beakers/turn, mostly because of 4 tourist attractions.

The flat terrain left me with only 60 shields/turn, and the biggest prebuild I could use was a police station, but I managed to keep a monopoly on Fission. Osman backstabbed Henry shortly before killing off Ragnar, and the world arranged itself into Hittites + Ottomans beating up Sumeria + Portugal. Gandhi ultimately got elected Secretary-General without even having to bother with alliances -- just a few gifts of gold were enough to get the favor of the AIs.

Entry class: Predator
Game status: Diplomatic Victory for India
Game date: 1808 AD
Firaxis score: 1137
Jason score: 2993
Time played: 02:57:50

 
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