COTM88 - Final Spoiler

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COTM 88 Final Spoiler; Carthage, Game Submitted




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Even though this is Demi-God, we will dispense with the Middle Ages Spoiler. You can tell about all aspects of your game - how did your Carthage do? What victory did you pursue? How did you overcome the AI in your way?
 
This is my first submitted game of the month, played in open class and I acheived a 1220AD Diplomatic Victory. I decided on Diplomatic fairly early on, I defeated the Celts and the mongols were defeated quite late by my UN opponents the romans. In the end I even managed to get the the vikings on board who I had a war with. I managed to maintain a tech lead from the start of the middle ages, both scientifics got monotheism and I traded for it, went theology, education, astronomy, traded for engineering, then I cant remember whether I traded for invention or researched it, slight mistake in after TOG, I started on Metallargy which the AI got instead of Magnetism. Also should have started UN Prebuild 2 turns earlier, I would have had 1200AD victory.
 
Wow this game took way longer than I thought it would.
Watched the "replay" at the end of my game and just laughed at how many cities flipped back to their original owners. I might go back and watch it again but I think it was about 20 cities, some may have been more than once.
Garvarg
 
Conquest victory in the 800s AD. I went the long road to cavalry. It will be interesting to see how those who stopped at knights did. Probably better, expecially scorewise since my republic was small for a long time. Tough game, but with the armies you're never in any real trouble. Ottomans reached Industrial ages when they had about 1/3 left of their kingdom but never got to build any riflemen. Elimination order was Rome, Mongols, Korea, Ottomans, Scandinavia and Celts.
 
Conquest victory in the 800s AD. I went the long road to cavalry. It will be interesting to see how those who stopped at knights did.

I stopped at Knights and then did a massive disconnect/reconnect rush, leading to domination in 550 AD.
Interesting: almost all AIs got a wonder-triggered GA in this game! (Except for Korea, I think.)

My game-time was in the PaperBeetle-range this time: ~416 hours... :) The reason is: I played on my netbook during the bus-rides to and from work in the mornings and evenings. Because of the last couple weeks being -15° C I didn't go by bike... This was about the only way I managed to get my submission done in time. I played like 20min, then just closed the netbook-lid when it was time to jump off the bus, and then opened it again in the evening. Worked fine except for 1-2 times, where the stupid Win7 unexpectedly rebooted instead of going into hibernate?! Then I had to pick up from the last auto-save.

One of the rare times where I managed to get the full slingshot on Demigod. But can't remember when that was... (as I can't remember anything else from the game, pretty much rushed it through on auto-pilot, so I'd expect the date isn't that great.)

Why didn't I go for Cavalry? Mainly because I was well ahead in tech by the time I entered the MA and expected to still meet mostly spears by the time I would reach Chivalry. This turned out to be true. Even Rome had only spears (I saw only one single Legion, probably they connected iron only pretty late). In Scandinavia I met a few pikes, and Korea even had muskets, but by that time I had a size-4 Knight-Army on that landmass to crack these nuts.
 
Why didn't I go for Cavalry? Mainly because I was well ahead in tech by the time I entered the MA...
That's good, it's obviously the key. But I had expected you to gift up the scientific civs to reach knights faster. Could it be that you let Ottomans alone? They were the biggies in my game at least, with ToA. They even pestered me with 3-4 sipahi attacks.

Interesting that you talk of 1 knight army as being decisive. I had 9 cavalry armies in total, several of which died as Scandinavia proved much tougher than I expected, even using the beserks the way they are supposed to be used. I had to divert troops meant for the Celts twice to avoid being kicked off Scandinavia.

One problem I had was the starting location and the corruption that entailed. It took too long to go down the cavalry road. Palace flip could have helped but a 500s AD result may have required knights.

Playing 20 minute sittings sounds very ill-advised to me. It should cause you to forget what you had in mind during your last sitting. But maybe it makes no differerence to the big picture since you did so well!
 
Playing 20 minute sittings sounds very ill-advised to me. It should cause you to forget what you had in mind during your last sitting. But maybe it makes no differerence to the big picture since you did so well!

I would have thought a short set (20 minutes) has the advantage that you will think about your overall statergy more and correct strategic mistakes more quickly, leading to a less rushed game.

Interesting that you talk of 1 knight army as being decisive.

I think Lanzelot is talking about a size 4 army, meaning he must have at least 3 armies
 
That's good, it's obviously the key. But I had expected you to gift up the scientific civs to reach knights faster. Could it be that you let Ottomans alone? They were the biggies in my game at least, with ToA. They even pestered me with 3-4 sipahi attacks.
Yes, I gifted the Ottomans and left them alone. (Comparing the dom limit with the sizes of the individual nations showed me, that the main continent + Korea/Mongolia + Scandinavia were more than enough to reach domination.) Additionally, the Ottomans had always been the most powerful AI, so I didn't want to fight them.
I also gifted up the Koreans, because they were only small, and I didn't expect them to cause much trouble. They got Monotheism and Engineering, so I had to complete only Feudalism and Chivalry.

Another thing that helped, was that Rome finished Artemis for me and Entremont the Pyramids...

Interesting that you talk of 1 knight army as being decisive. I had 9 cavalry armies in total, several of which died as Scandinavia proved much tougher than I expected, even using the beserks the way they are supposed to be used. I had to divert troops meant for the Celts twice to avoid being kicked off Scandinavia.
I got 4 MGLs in total: one Army helped mopping up the Romans, the next one I transferred to Scandinavia and another one to the Mongol/Korean continent. (Of course, as I had only galleys, once a continent was finished, the Army was stuck there.)
I got the last leader in Scandinavia at a time, when the Vikings were already down to 2-3 cities. I figured that another Army would not be needed here and that transferring it to Korea (the only other place where fighting was still taking place) would take too long to have an impact on the game. But that was around the same time, when I started meeting muskets in Korea and had some losses. The second Army had just finished the last Mongol cities and was ready to move on to Korea. So I decided to use my 4th leader to rush the Pentagon in Scandinavia, fill a 4th Knight into the Mongol Army and fortify my Knights in Korea until that Army arrived. Using that approach, I was able to kill the 1-2 muskets usually defending a Korean city with the size-4 Army and then finish the remaining spearmen-defenders with ordinary Knights.

Playing 20 minute sittings sounds very ill-advised to me. It should cause you to forget what you had in mind during your last sitting. But maybe it makes no differerence to the big picture since you did so well!

I am used to doing (most of) my "big picture planning" at night after going to bed, before falling asleep... So this wasn't a problem for this game. But the precision of my tactical execution clearly suffered from the lack of concentration in these short 20min sessions: many times I lost a Knight here and there because of careless moves...
Therefore I'm quite surprised that you consider 550 AD a good date?! When I came here, I already expected to find 200-300AD finish dates from you, Memento or Neo666... ;)
Perhaps the good date is due to the fact that for the first time in my Civ3 carreer I applied a trick that Spoonwood recently explained to me: when a horseman finishes in the interturn and the popup for the next build project comes up, it is possible to enter the city screen and upgrade the Horse to Knight, and the Knight will already be able to move right away in the next turn! Previously I had done the upgrade after the build-phase, losing an entire turn's movement.

Another unusual thing I did: I traded Scandinavia a lux and iron for two luxes for most of the game, right until the point where I attacked them. By the time I invaded Scandinavia, I had so large numbers of Knights, that the few pikes I met did not really make a difference... But the huge amount of gold I gained from these two extra luxes allowed me to have like 7-8 cities produce a Knight every two turns:
  • Turn 1: produce 10 shields, short-rush an archer for 40g
  • Turn 2: 10 more shields to finish the Horse, then upgrade to Knight for 120g right in the same interturn
Also I had enough ship chains in place, so my Knights were never "idle", moving from one theater of war to the next one without delay. (Will post a map later this evening.)
 
I think Lanzelot is talking about a size 4 army, meaning he must have at least 3 armies
You're right, but he also tallked about the one army in Korea as being decisive, whereas I lost two armies in Scandinavia, created yet another one there, and had another one transported there after trading Magnetism for galleons in a bogus peace treaty with the Celts. Since Lancelot was nowhere near Magnetism (and the galleons needed to transport size 3 armies,) I take it he only had that single army in Korea. Cf
Of course, as I had only galleys, once a continent was finished, the Army was stuck there
The main question is of course the relation knights : AI defenders :: cavalries : AI defenders.
 
Yes, but that single Army was all I needed. I had only a small force in Korea, and bringing reinforcements took a long time, because they first had to travel by land for 3 turns. Therefore it was vitally important to avoid losses there. And for this it was very nice to have the size-4 army to take care of the handful of muskets, while the Knights could deal with the remaining spearmen.

Ok, I had promised to post some maps. My wars basically were conducted in three phases:

attachment.php

In the first phase I concentrated everything on Celtia, using the first 1-2 galleys to get my troops from the core there faster, while the troops from the FP traveled by land. I dashed through right towards Entremont, ignoring any size-1 tundra towns on the way (got them in the peace deal).

attachment.php

In the second phase I shipped the Celtic troops over to the Mongol/Korean settlements on the main continent, while the core troops where ship-chained along the Roman western shore directly towards Rome (capturing the coastal towns on the way), while troops from the FP area traveled by land to hit Rome from the south. (A road was built through the marshes, which was to be reused for Korean reinforcements lateron.)

attachment.php

In the final phase, the troops from the Roman campaign were partly shipped over to Scandinavia and partly to Korea, while the troops that had dealt with the Mongol/Korean colonies to the southeast of Rome were shipped over to Mongolia.
Reinforcements from the core area where ship-chained to Scandinavia and also (together with reinforcements from the FP area) traveled by road to the harbors on the eastern coast, from where the ship-chains to Mongolia and Korea were operating.

As I was importing 2 important luxes from Scandinavia, I waited with the attack until I had 30 Knights in place to immediately take those two luxes and two harbor towns, and then RoP raped them... :evil:
 
I was pleasently suprised to pull of slingshot, especially with alphabetic civs who knew writing when I met them and huts.

Normally in a demi game where I want to pull of slingshot I dont have huts and no alphabet opponents.
 
Way to go supersova_SU
You beat me by a turn but I beat your score. The Victory is yours.




Entry class: Open
Game status: Domination Victory for Carthage
Game date: 1090 AD
Firaxis score: 8826
Jason score: 9569
 
Garvarg=

For me honor to render to you resistance - but in the total table you stand above - the victory for you means also...
 
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