GOTM-02: First Spoiler:

[Shillen]

This GP strategy is amazing. Never knew this before although I got libary pretty early. Will try out in the following games.

It could have been better if I had built the Parthenon in one of my other cities. I didn't think it was worth it, though, since I didn't have easy access to marble. I know there was some marble in the tundra to the NE but I didn't think it warranted plopping a useless city down up there for a couple reasons. 1) I'm planning to milk this game so I want all my cities in good food locations and 2) since I'll be conquering the world I know I'll have insane amounts of city maintenance eventually and I don't need one more city slowing down my economy. Also, the Parthenon isn't as powerful for a philosophical civ as for a non-philosophical one. And in the end I could always capture it from whoever built it.

But the real power of this strategy is getting the pyramids for representation. Each of those scientist specialists in London is generating 6 beakers per turn. That's better than any tile you can work in the early game except gold/gems/silver. Cottages eventually catch up to that later in the game. And even if you wanted to generate non-scientist leaders you'll still get 3 beakers per specialist so it won't hurt you too badly on the research front.

 

[Canton]

First 4otm game here. I will keep this short, since it looks like somebody've already beaten my domination score by a lot.

Pre-Game:
I tried many monarch level of the lake map playing Liz. Axeman rages and AIs who beat me to most goody huts with scouts. I decided to follow the GP strategy and goes for the domination victory. But I decide to rush stonehenge and axeman.

Research list:
Bronze(to chop)->Mys(for stonehenge)->agri->animal->writing(library)
I then debate whether to research Alphabet or Iron. I gambled on Iron and luck out. Otherwise, I would have to rush Alphabet to trade for Archery.

Build order:
Worker(to chop)->stonehenge(main objective) ... axe ... axe ... axe

Cities
I only have 4 close cities founded by 1AD. I keep them close to reduce maintainance cost. I was surrounded by barb cities, some of those are eventually captured by American and Spanish.

War
Saladin sneak attacked me in 140BC to capture my worker. That settled who I will conquered first.

Religion/Diplo
Did not touch religion. As I result, I was in good standing with most AI, other than Saladin and Monte. However, this caused me to drop my research rate to like 40% at the lowest point.

Mid-game (around 500AD) outlook:
Mali is 2 or 3 tech ahead of me. I can't seem to catch up. Washington has massive army. Surrounded by Spanish, but by adopting they religion, they are my best friend. War plan: Cannons + red coats. I am using Spain as insulator between me and American and Malinese, since Spain has lower tech level than me. The good news is the effect of Liz's trait is starting to kick in.

 

[cp30]

Founded London SE of the starting point by 1. Luckily, this added another hills for production. Can't remember what I researched first, but it was NOT bronze. I built a couple warriors as I had tons of barbarian trouble in practice games with these same settings. I then built a worker and mined the hills to the N. The rest of the beginning sucked - I was consistently in last place, had science down as low as 10% for a long while. Didn't research the right techs so I got to a point where I had no more buildings to build, could not do research or wealth, cities were small due to unhappiness (I had no religions), and my workers could not even access the gems cause it took forevvver to get iron working. The only good thing to come of this was I could only build units, units units, and more units. I had 3 (or 4) chain gangs of 3 workers proteceted by a warrior and an archer or axeman. I had many other military. I stayed in good terms with all AI. I honed my military against the barbs and built many to 10xp. After I sent warrior scouts into Spain and found that Madrid had founded not 1 but 2 religions I TOOK ACTION. Now after making peace with Isabella (she conceded 2 techs and some gold) I am proudly in first place and on good terms with most of the AI. I am a little worried about Washington, but I am preparing my defenses now. I am around 1200 AD and have produced only 2 GP , but I now can see the light at the end of a 3000 year tunnel!

 

[Shillen]

Units, units, units might have been what was killing your economy. Or did you just have too many cities? I know there have been some games where my cities have had nothing to build except units, but my economy was so bad that I didn't even want to build units. Usually if I'm in that situation I switch all cities to max commerce/minimum production and possibly even disband some units to fix my economy. Build cottages all over and even work 1 food coastal tiles if needed.

edit: Another option is to take those units and go raze a couple cities for a huge gold boost. Use that gold boost to get a couple much needed techs at defecit research (code of laws for courthouses if possible).

 

[Sound+Vision]

(she conceded 2 techs and some gold)

Hey cp30, how much did you have to beat on her to get her to give you the 2 techs? I'm currently in a big war with another more advanced civilization, and I'm kicking their butt very very much (they're down to about 3 cities I think), but they still refuse to give me any tech in exchange for peace. How long did it take before Isabella offered you anything?

 

[mushroomshirt]

First GOTM for me. Thought I was behind but maybe I'm pretty much in the middle of th pack. In second place at about 1200AD. I think the trick for me was first losing a settler and a worker to early barbs. Big mistake sending them out unescorted but it caused me to turtle up a bit and make sure I had researched archery and had a decent military. I guess this is what let me avoid being overrun like some of the other posters.

In any case after I founded Confucianism and converted Spain declared war on me and I had to beat them off with my piddling military of archers and a few axemen. Luckily they just pillaged a gem and gold mine and before I was able to bribe them to back off.

Big problem for me early was happiness and research $$. Even with just a few cities and the financial trait I couldn't seem to keep up the research percentages and was consistently last in score. Sometime around 400 AD with currency and my cottages maturing I was able to put a lot of $$ into science and take a few cities from second to last place Monty.

In any case seems like my defensive turtle strategy in the early game served me well since I think I am well positioned after getting liberalism first to get to rifling and start doing some serious warmongering. IN any case a lot more fun that I was afraid it was going to be on Prince level!

 

[_speedy_]

As with some of the earlier posters, I expanded too quickly and bankrupted myself through too many units and cities. I think I had maybe 6-8 military units, 3-4 workers and a settler disbanded due to lack of cash. To reduce expenses I had to abandon a frontier city to the barbarians (I later recovered it), but by around 800AD I was out of trouble - now all I need to do is catch up in tech.

I haven't managed to found any religions yet (Islam and Taoism are still open), and it seems that the spread of religion has been very slow, up to about 500AD I had no religion (and hence no access to temples or monastary) and neither did about half of the other civs I'd met.

 

[Vendeen]

I played a few Prince games on Lakes to see what was up- I knew that the "wrap dealie-thing" would show me where the edge of the map was, and I knew there was a east-west wrap.

My problems in the test games were monetary, and although I did run into this in this game, I was prepared to deal with it (Once I played a great expansion strategy in a test game and was brought to my knees because I couldn't support any more units, I literally dreamed about the game and realized that I needed to focus on early game Commerce production).

I used the starting spot for London, sent the first unit out to explore (west and south), and built another warrior, worker, and THEN settler. Did not try for any early religeon or wonder- just sent out settlers and defenders until I had built up my empire south to Saladin and east to Mansa Musa. Rather than try to deal with the barren lands around the desert to the west, I expanded east to the area between the two large lakes (York was built between the two lakes to the soulth to gain the gems for happiness, my third city was built on the penninsula facing towards London to the East).

Worked on infrastructure, with one strong defender for each city for a while.

BARBARIANS

The barbarians came at me from the west, for the most part. Some single warriors came from the Icy wastes, but that was more of a joke. I could send out axemen or warriors from my cities (taking a turn of unhappiness) to wipe them out before they pillaged anything. By following the barbs, I saw that the loop in that super-long river to the West was a good spot to build and moved over there. I had some archer barbs try to take my city around the gems to the south, but they were all repulsed (they came in weak waves) by my fortified warrior. Finally conquering the barb cities to my west gave me a great western front to go with the settlers I was spreading to the borders of Timbuktu.

POVERTY

About the time I hit 0 BC, I was facing a mutiny, with no money. Because of my test games, I was prepared for this. I went for pottery earlier than I normally would (since I decided to blow off religeons and wonders) and had some cottages developed., I could reassign some citizens to gold production and skimp on growth. I still focused on production to get some courthouses built, but my main focus was staying solvent. At that point, I worked for banking, and traded techs for gold whenever possible. I managed to survive again with no unit dissolution. Once I could trade gold for tech, I did so every time somebody had at least 100 GP to offer, even if it wasn't fair to me. I could upgrade my armies with tech trading. From being last in tech at 0AD, I managed to leverage a rapid expansion and cottages to a tech lead ~1500AD. And I turned every expansion into more gold.

WAR

I was a steady second behind Mansa Musa. I adopted his Jewish religeon, and boy, did the rest of the Civs resent that. Washington was the first to declare. I held him off (most of my cities were hilltop, archer defended cities) and called in Mansa to hit his west side while his forces were attacking me on the east. Washington gave me peace and gold and I focused again on building my infrastructure (focus on gold and happiness) until I got redcoats. Mansa eventually finished off Washington. Some o0f his captured cities flipped to me (almost as satisfying as a barb city in a great location.) I spent (too long) amassing redcoats in my border towns, then declared on Saladin. Cyrus saw a weak spot and declared war after a few turns, and by the end of the genocide, Elizabeth and Mansa were also at the walls. I ended up with 4 of the 8 cities, but gained no wonders. With my cannons and redcoats against longbowmen, horse archers, and catapults, my only challenge was moving through enemy territory without horses.

GREAT PEOPLE

I tried to focus my GP production on London, since there was a lot of Agriculture there, My first two GP went towards science academies, since I knew I would be running at 0 to 10% science production. The next two were Artists to build great works and give border towns (in the SW) some breathing space. I got my first great person around 500 AD and got about 9 in the next 500 years. For the first time, I adopted mercantilism, because my early cottage building could support me, and tried to focus GP production on three cities. London was producing 64 points per turn, but two other cities were producing 36 ppt.London would almost lap the other cities, but since, I was too lazsy to do the math, I kept the three top citites producing GP points as much as possible. I also was the first to Economics (merchant) Music (artist)

As well as I can remember without loading up the game, I got:
Great Scientist - Academy
Great Scientist - Academy
Great Scientist - Academy
Great Artist - Great Work
Great Artist - Great Work
Great Merchant - GOLD!
Great Artist - Great Work
Great Scientist - Beakers
Great Artist - Beakers
(as of 1700 AD)


[screenshots to be added]

 

[domination_diva]

Happy to say this is my first GOTM ever! I was doing pretty well and leading the world by around 1000 AD on a Prince game and thought I could take this on...

This was harder than I expected. I got burned by BARBARIANS and lost several units, including workers, to them. Lots of yelling at the scream I must say. Then, I noticed there were no horses nearby (I assume these GOTM tricks are to be expected? ), and my big problem was happiness. So, I used the stone and forests to rush the Pyramids so I could get to Representation, which boosted me +3 happiness in each of my cities. I intend London to be a GP farm, and I settled another city south of London, where the two rivers meet and there are 2 gems, to become a commerce center. I'm still at 6th place, but I think I'm setting a foundation for further growth. It's 500 AD and I'm having fun!

 

[kenneth]

Well, i finally managed to complete GOTM 2.. Quite a fun game. i spent more time building my economy and making good cities with wonders instead of warring non-stop, won a domination victory on 1720 AD...

Main strat at start.. Go for workers/settlers, minimal defense. Defense mainly was warriors camping at the forests near my cities.. stupid ai likes to attack every enemy they see first, even though they can just rush and attack my main cities.

Strat later on.
Focused a lot of my wonders in London(used my Great engineer to rush build), which had 300% increase in Great Person (GP) rate (pacifism, race, and national epic).. ended up with a GP rate of around 100+ after great library was built.
near end of game(, it was producing nearly 160+ GP points a turn, which meant GP about every 20 turns.) Not to mention 300 beakers (second closest city was about 70.. and about 60 commerces a turn
Started to lead in tech about 1 AD and military units was 1-2 tech level ahead from probably 700AD onwards...

Here's my story.. (taken from the civ4 victory log)
2200-BC- Founded 2nd City.. first to found out of all civs..( (it was
left of my main city.. where there was stone and lots of forest to chop build wonders..



1750BC - Stonehedge (Chopped built my trees around london)
1275BC - Founded 3rd City.
860BC - MY first Great Prophet - York..(used later to build kong miao)
850BC- Pyramids chopped built.
840BC - Score started leading the rest.. never fell back to second place.
700BC - Oracle - Learnt metal casing( becoz it was most expensive tech, good for trading later)
Start of some military production cause Barbs getting way stronger..(i.e axeman archers.. ouch)
560BC- Captured Barbarian city NW of london near ice.. (lots of forests too for chop building)
480BC - Found 5th city SE of london, near manna

1AD- Discovered confucianism (teched for code of laws after i had iron working, ignored sailing/horseback riding)
20AD- Kong miao built..
350AD Manna Musa (east of me declares war).. i hurriedly prepared some swordmans/axeman and protected my city closest to his. Stalemated as my swordsman weren't enough to take down his nearest city. Plus, he was really far away from my main production cities.
370- Another GP born
470- Founded Christianity (i think was from GP born in 370, used it to gain tech)
510- Hanging gardens..(chopped built in city NW of london..)

(War stories to come in spoiler 2!)

Moderator Action: Please truncate your post to only include material relevant to the first spoiler phase. People who have not finished come here and wish to play the rest of their game without foreknowledge of your results or your discoveries

 

[kenneth]

Forgot to add them.. here they are

 

[Memphus]

@Everyone who is going broke due to over expansion:
A couple things that help when I expand

1.Remeber your infrastructure in your main cities
Reference London, York at 260 B.C.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3539115&postcount=15
Reference London, York, Nottingham 420 A.D.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3539307&postcount=19

2.Some techs are crucial
i.e. currency for the extra trade root

3.Specialize cities
York==>my only city which make units (unless emergency)
Nottingham==> $$$$ religion founded here this is huge so he spreads it thru missionaries

4.GP save me all the time, especially that first priest, if I have no religion and a high percentage of getting a second one i add him to my production city (York)
--On a side note I had to force a Priest in London to increase my chance of getting a great prophet after my Relgion was founded.

5. Domination: If you start taking cities don't stop, I was running in the red for a long time to maintain the tech lead, but capturing cities gives you $

6. Palace, FP, Versailles, Although I hate palace jumping it is alot better (until state property) to be in the middle of your empire.
BUILD THE FORBIDDEN PALACE, chop it, rush it what ever you have to do but get it built. Same idea for Versailles
7. Didn't notice it as much until this game, but score foreing (sp?) trade routes. On continents they get set up pretty fast automatically (sailing I beleive on Coast) However on a lake map it is alot hard to get connected.
Remeber more money for trading from London to Washington, than London to York. (the game calculates this for you, once the option is available)

Well these are some things that work for me, hope they can help others

Edit: specific numbers removed that pertained to after 500 AD

 

[Memphus]

Moderator Action: Moved from a separate thread. Which part of this post is unclear to you?


Man... You would think with my job I would know to pre type this stuff
and then copy it into the window.

Well anyways here we go for the second time:

CAUTION​

Although I do not believe that there is any spoiler information in this post I may be wrong. I would suggest however that you have played up until the point of the first spoiler because of the small fraction of the map visible (in screen mini map deleted). @MODS delete/edit/redirect this post it if it does.

The pictures included are from GOTM2 and are used to demonstrate the glitch present on Lake Maps, as well as my experience with it.

*Note all relevant (IMO) info from the pics has been removed
(such as city names, game date, my finances, my tech, city size, mini map)

All you know Is I have knights and Crossbows and Saladin has Longbows. And minor map details

That being said the reason for the post:

In a couple of places the Lake Map Scrolling glitch has been mentioned,
And I figured I would clear it up for anyone who has not experienced it.

Now I didn't notice this glitch until later in the game
(I'll mail a prize (prolly a pack of gum ) to anyone who guesses the date

But if you have a look at Pic 1: 'FogOfWar' you can see that I have just captured the city to the SouthEast. Now being crazy I left only one crossbow in the city to the NorthEast just a few turns earlier. While I was bombarding the city to the SE I had full vision of the tiles in question.
(and my knights could come to the rescue). However after Pressing the attack forwards I lost line of sight for a turn.

So now I am posed with a dilema: Do I send another unit back?

This is when the glitch happened, I scolled back to my city in the NE to check if the crossbow had city garrison 2 or not, when BAM the Fog of War was removed Pic 2 "Fog of War Removed, Lake Map Glitch".

Now I am into another dilema... a moral one. I know now that my city to the NE is ok and no one will attack him next turn but at the same time I shouldn't have known that. So I moved a wonded soldier backwards onto a hill Pic 3 'A Move I would Normally Do to Reveal Terrain' to feel honest about my game.

So that is the glitch, However for anyone else I am almost positive it would be impossible for the GOTM staff to impose any type of rule on this because it is a video glitch (it might only be native to my configuration settings) So if it happened to you, oh well

There is pretty interesting 'cheating'* potential as imagine if you got there (edge of the map) in the early game?
Reveal Terrain, scroll North South and look for huts

*I use the word cheating liberally, because to each is own and for me it would be (by my obvious move of the knight in my game).

Finally the kicker is I REALLY NEEDED THAT KNIGHT A COUPLE TURNS LATER*

Haha oh well fun is fun.

*Yes I know knights move fast and he had no problem getting to the battle front again, but it was not being with the medic for those turns that killed him

Edit: Sorry now I feel dumb, I forgot about that one, Thanks for fixing my mistake.

 

[hurricane766]

@hurricane766: Let me try again:

The paragraph I deleted described your final victory condition and score. If everyone did that, all the results to date would be on show here on a rolling basis, visible to other players who have not finished yet. The first player to get here has none of that information. The last player to reach this stage in the game could potentially see the entire leader-board here, and could then decide on her best victory condition to secure an award. That makes the playing field uneven, with more information available for later players. We are trying to keep the playing field flat.

Ok, makes sense

 

[solenoozerec]

I decided not to look on your images just in case if they have some spoilish information and I am very early in the game.
However, I experienced something strange as well, I've seen a vertical line far from the land I explored that reveals some jungle tiles, it does not show entire squares, but at least it is clear what kind of terrain is there.

Edit: When I qualified for this spoiler and visited this thread, I was very surprised to see that I already have a post here . Later I realized that it was moved here together with above. Below is a vertical line which I was mentioning in my original post. It shows only jungles and forests and is visible only at a certain zoom.

 

[Sparts]

Pretty straight forward game, nothing fancy; no highest score, but my first GOTM anyway.

London founded, which was screaming GP-factory. Especially since there was was little river around. Founded York to the south (near two gems, turned out to be my top city later), founded Nottingham to the West, near stone, some hills and some food resources, not ideal like you all did, but ON the wine resource > to become my production city. Third (or second can't remember) settler - warrior pair was ambushed and brutally killed by two barbarian archers when trying to found a city to the east (near the river + rice + clams). When the next settler reached the destination it found a barbarian city present.

We quickly sent in some archers, who did the job. Decided to raze the city (since it was not taking full advantage of the spot), and used a settler to found a city. As you can imagine, there was much rejoicing.

Meanwhile, London was chop-rushing the Pyramids and succeeded. Even more rejoicing occured when we realized this meant two things:
- a great engineer to finish the Great Library
- no need to convert to a state religion due to an early access to representation (or what's it called again) civic. Hence I was doing great in the international popularity contest throughout the game. Later London proceeded building the great Lighthouse, Great Library and National Epic. Which incidentally meant that with all those scientists (and representation) and water tiles it stayed my top research city for a long period of time.

Unfortunately by the time the Pyramids were finished, most good spots (most notably the river sites close to Izzy), were taken. A few sub-optimal swamp sites were left, but I was able to squeeze in a city between the Americans (pleased) and the Spanish (cautious) which turned out fine. A few bribes here and there kept my neighbors busy attacking eachother and once again there was much rejoicing.

Izzy however was not amused and decided to cry havoc. Unfortunately for her I was by that time only 6 turns away from acquiring civil service. When our couple of +2 city raider swordsmen were promoted to macemen, we made quick work of the spanish cities. In the process freeing up space for that squeezed in city, by razing one of izzy's. In a devastatingly surprising move, Mansa Musa came in and gave his good (though atheist!) friend construction, giving my non-barracked cities something usefull to do: building cats.

Moderator Action: Paragraphss deleted. Please keep late game details for the final spoiler.

 

[diamond geezer]

It seems that there are lots of people ignoring the spoiler rules. What is it with you guys? Can't you read?

Anyway this was only my second try on Prince (first was the Beta HoF, which I never even completed) and first on Lakes (and it is much harder than the Panagea that I did the HoF game on). I don't have a great deal of time for Civ so I haven't played that many games.

I buily my start city on the spot. It seemed good enough and I didn't think it was worth losing any time. I think that was the right decision on this map. Although others have had success after moving the Settlers, my opinion is that this was in spite of their opening gambit.

I moved my original warrior in a zig-zag west and the next one built to the east. I found a few huts and was lucky to pick up a tech at one.

I can't quite believe people who say they didn't see Barbarians. I found that they were incredibly active compared to the other map-types I've played on. Luckily I'd read the pre-game discussion and realised that they would be an issue and made sure I had my cities defended and fortified units on hill/forest squares at the borders by the time the animals switched to warriors.

I founded York to pick up the Copper that had been revealed by Bronze working. Possibly I should have gone for the stone, but I wanted to be able to combat not only the next wave of Barbarians but also because I knew from experience that we had two of the most prone to war AIs (Izzie and Monty) with the former on our very doorstep. If I'd have had Horses I would have attacked Izzie - probably should have done so anyway. Elizabeth is not the best leader for early operations however.

I only build two cities early, capturing the rest from the Barbarians (although 1 I had to raze and then re-establish due to it seeming to stay size 1 forever). So I have Minona, Tartar and Nubian as three of my core 6 cities. Due to this slow expansion I was able to keep tech at 80-90%. Even with this I was at the back end of the pack until I built the Oracle, when I took a narrow lead that I never lost, although it was close for some time. Earlier I built Stonehenge, which I find a great help if you don't have the creative trait.

Tech-wise I went for BW early, then Alphabet/Writing so that when Oracle was built I could get Code of Laws. I then back-filled with Iron Working. London was producing GPs fairly regularly: these were generally used to get techs after the first. By judicious trading and choosing tech tree depth, I was able to keep ahead of the AIs (but only just of Mansa Musa).

I managed to spread Confuscianism to several of my nearby neighbours: Washington, Saladin and Izzie, but two of them then founded their own religion and switched, and then Washington (who I had been very nice to as well in the tech trading) switched on me as well. I don't think I'll bother with this again.

I managed to keep cautious relationships with most of the AIs despite this and refusing to pay tribute (how else to keep my tech edge?). Monty was far enough away to not be an immediate worry, but Izzie was beginning to be a problem, although she was slipping down the leaderboard, possibly thanks to me not trading techs with her). I def should have spanked the biatch earlier...

Soon war was inevitable, but that's after 1000 AD so it's too late for this thread. Here's a pic from 760BC (oops it's a bit big - first attempt here):

 

[Memphus]

@diamond geezer:

You stated:

It seems that there are lots of people ignoring the spoiler rules. What is it with you guys? Can't you read?

Which may make people feel belittled if they broke the rules.

And then your posted right until:

Soon war was inevitable, but that's after 1000 AD so it's too late for this thread. Here's a pic from 760BC (oops it's a bit big - first attempt here):

So I direct you to:

Yes - its very difficult to get a sensible cut-off - a specific tech could be bee-lined to; ditto for an age. I'm trying not to be too prescriptive. Dates could be a good cut-off. 1 AD is probably a bit early - 500 AD?

Now by now means do I get off the hook here either as I just got a Mod action for creating a new thread with GOTM pics in it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3544647&postcount=93

 

[Hegix]

Well...I loaded the save, then my gf told me to turn the computer off and spend time with her. Session 3 started in the first turn so I wont be submitting this game

 

[AlanH]

Session 3 started in the first turn so I wont be submitting this game

You really think we are that evil? C'mon!