GOTM-02 Second Spoiler

[Shillen]

how did you get the 'score if I win this turn' ?

Hover over your civ's name in the bottom right of the screen where it shows all the civs scores.

From your tech progress, you could also devert your tech pathway to beeline for UN and get diplomatic victory at around the same time with similiar score. 140K+ diplomatic victory...

I think it would have taken a bit longer due to having to actually build the UN also. Although I guess I could have saved that last great engineer to help that along. But I did diplomatic last month and I'm not really a big fan of winning diplomatically via warmongering. I think firaxis had the completely wrong idea basing the voting on population instead of giving each civ 1 vote. If I had won a true diplo victory this month I don't think I'd be pleased to find someone beat me by voting themselves in. It cheapens the victory condition, IMO, as getting civs to like you enough to vote for you is not easy at all.

 

[MaskedFrog]

To quickly recap my previous write up.

Expansion went well expect I had two cities razed at population 5 which slowed down my growth. Since I was going for a Cultural victory I tried to stay at peace with everyone. Unfortunately Monte attacked me early and razed a city but I took one of his and he was never a threat again.

Once my expansion started going my three cutlure cities were London, York near the Gems, and Canterbury founded in the middle of the Jungle SW of York 3 spaces to the left of the bananas. Canterbury eventually became my cultural power house with all the cottages and food bonuses.

As I was trying to build up my culture, Saladin decides to attack. He manages to take my City SE of York, a worker, and pillage a little. I quickly convert the economy to all money and upgrade all my axeman to maceman and crank out some catapults. I manage to take back my city and his near the incense as well as do some pillaging. I then get him to give me some money for peace. I also got my best buddy Mansa Musa to declare war on him and Isabella declared on her own.

I figure I am safe now so I get to democracy and convert to mostly culture. Saladin once again declares war on me and takes back his original city but not without losing a bunch of units to my Cat horde. I turn off my culture and quickly finish Rifling and upgrade all units to Redcoats and crank out a number of them. He tries to raid into my territory but his Camel Archers are no match for my Red Coats. I ask my buddy Mansa Musa to decalare and he starts to complete wreck Saladin. I switch back to culture and have a couple of non essential cities crank out a number of red coats that I station on my border. I make Isabella happy by making a lopsided trade.

As I start cruising towards the Culture victory, I build Missionaries and Temples like crazy to get York and London moving. Canterbury is going to max out on Culture far before them even though it started later. I also plop down a couple more cities within my borders to increase my score. Eventually I am running at 90% culture and for the last few turns I go to 100% culture. I set London to producing GAs and end up with 4 that I can use to culture bomb London and York.

The funniest thing is that Washington comes to me and offers a Defensive pact. I quickly accept. Not that long later Mansa Musa who is not happy with Washington also offers me a Defensive Pact.

In 1888 I win a culture victory after using the 2 GAs each in York in London a few turns earlier. Final score of 11,522.

Final thoughts:

I made a few key mistakes early on that would have allowed me to win sooner.

1. Stupid me forgot that Bronze Working opens up Axeman and I had access to copper. I actually researched Hunting/Archery. I could have researched other things and traded for Hunting/Archery.

2. I assumed Monte would not attack my 1 city with an Archer with his 2 Archers. I had an Axeman that I could have moved to prevent the city from being razed. Granted I did get a little unlucky losing with a fortified Archer but that is how the cookie crumbles.

3. I did not dedicate a city to building a defensive military. I had only one unit in each city and a few units on barabarian patrol. I really needed to keep one city cranking out Axeman for defense early on.

Other than these minor problems I am quite happy with the game. Looking at the scores people are getting for Domination/Conquest, I think the scoring system is heavilly weighted towards those victory conditions. I personally do not care about Score. I usually set out a goal for myself and see how fast I can complete the victory condition.

 

[Roland Ehnström]

Hmm, I'll never go for a Space Ship win again if the scoring system isn't changed RADICALLY. I completed the Space Ship in 1754 and only got 28757 points.

If I had gone for Domination I'm pretty sure I would have gotten two or three times this score. Something isn't right with the scoring. Not sure if I'll bother doing a complete writeup.

-- Roland

 

[Duelingground]

This was my first GotM, so I was a bit overly cautious with my play, which actually helped me in the long run. I dinna keep any notes, wasn't sure I'd do well enough to warrant a write-up.

I settled in place for my first city, and then went on a chopping rampage, quickly turning London into a GP factory. From there, I quickly expanded to 6 cities, with the one south of London becoming a production powerhouse. The barbarians had a city just to the east of London, and began giving me fits. They severely crippled my economy, due to my poorly advanced military, and soon I found myself running 0% science, just to stay afloat. After finally managing to take over the Barb city, I slowly got my economy back in order, though it was several hundred years before I was able to run 100% science again. During this time I also flipped one of Mansa's cities, which became a good source of military units, and very important later in the game.

Was hoping to try for a Diplomatic win, and had been nice to everyone, but when I got notice that Mansa, then a couple of others, were building SS parts, decided to try to head them off, and joined the race. By the time I was ready to begin building parts, several AIs had finished the requisite casings and thrusters. A bit worried, I began cranking out parts in every city, slowly catching up. Still, for all my rushing, they were staying ahead, though Mansa was the closer to completion.

I was able to build Scotland Yard, in the city I'd flipped from Mansa, and sent in a spy, who quickly ran around the Malinese territory, checking builds. By this time, Mansa was lacking only one part, the engine, while I was still not close to finishing. My spy discovered Mansa had no ciies building parts at the moment, so I began to relax a bit. As no other civ was close to completion, I scattered spys throughout the Malinese lands, to monitor the situation.

Finally, I began the last part, the Stasis Chamber, but when I checked in on Mansa, he had also begun his last part, and was only 6 turns away! Checking my funds, I saw that I couldn't afford sabotage, so began trading anything I could for gold. Managed to get enough to blow up his engine, but was still going to be short by at least a dozen turns or so. Here's where I nearly lost the game. I decided war was the only way I'd be able to stop him, massed my best forces, and invaded.

Mansa kicked my butt. Not only did he destroy my army, but he then recaptured the flipped city, and then immediately took my second best production city. I saw the end was near, and sued for peace, desperately trying to find a way to stop his build. As I still had several spys left, I planted them all on his SS factory, and dropped my science to 0% again. Within 4 turns, I had enough to blow it up again, with him being a turn away from completion, and it worked. Not only did it work, but my spy survived!

It took 2 more sabotage attempts to hold him off, but thanks to the best spy I ever built, I managed to achieve a SS victory in 1976, just a turn or 2 ahead of Mansa.

This was probably one of the most exciting games of Civ4 I've played, and except for the very end, and barbarians, I never went to war once. I learned a lot about the game, and can't wait to try the next GotM.

 

[Riffraff]

Hi ppl,

first GotM for me since civII - and I must say, it all went pretty smoothly. Had a good start, quickly got a strong military with loads of axemen and then rushed Isabella and took Barcelona and Madrid. I founded only 3 cities myself in the whole game and didnt occupy any enemy town save those two.

The cities were all in great locations, so i quickly pulled ahead in the middle- ages, heading for a cultural victory. Everything was going along very calmly, until Montazuma attacked me with about 20-30 units. I nearly lost Madrid in the battle, but city walls and my newly aquired macemen, managed hold out against his mob of jaguar warriors. Later on he attacked me again, this time with hordes of elefants and catapults - but my redcoats came just in time to thwart this attack. I then decided that Montezuma was gonna continue being such a bastard, so I built an army of redcoats and razed all his cities. At that point Isabella was gone already aswell.

On my way to cultural victory everything had turned out nicely: Barcelona had founded 2 religions, York (which i built directly south of London) had loads of production and was getting much of its culture via wonders. London itself had good production and growth, so it didnt have much problems in keeping up. Had 4 religions spread in all my cities to compensate for the low number of cities.

Towards the end of the game I was really just cruising through - I had formed defense treaties with washington and musa who were the 2 strongest opponents, so nothing much happened in the end. took me about 15 mins for the last 50 or so turns.

anyway i finished in 1873 with 11544 points, coulda gotten quite a few more i reckon, but i decided to stay 6 cities only as im not a great fan of micro-managing dozens of cities.

pic of what my civ looked like in the end:

 

[Bezhukov]

Ended up with an 1842 culture win. Score: 24571. Probably could have gotten in pre-1800ish, but too addicted to factories, railroads, and Statue of Liberty/Eiffel Tower. Even ended up building UN to get the extra trade route passed.

Redcoats were really sufficient for all my military needs, and since I had coreligionists Isabella and Mansa as my personal attack dogs (having a ten tech lead meant they would attack whoever I chose), war was never much of a challenge, and coincidently keeping the rest of the world in a war economy preserved my tech lead.

Had I focused on culture, I could have stuck with my original nine cities (although three were shoehorned in to steal tiles). But I wanted Saladin's coal, and one thing led to another and I ended up with six new cities (including one of Cyrus's) to the southeast (Infantry vs. Longbow), with all the strain on resources new cities bring (16 maintenance per turn!). Then Isabella's cities on my west and Mansa's/Washington's on my east started flipping to me, so workers were busy to the end and focus was lost.

In the home stretch, I ran 100% culture and made up the difference with wealth and specialists. 1500 culture-turn in legendary cities by the end, fueled by max commerce improvements, 6 cathedrals, Eiffel, Rock and Roll, Hollywood, Broadway (all purchased via Kremlin and tech sales). Only used one Great Artist for culture (another one fueled one of three Golden Ages).

 

[Bezhukov]

Images for above post:

 

[Gato Loco]

Part 2

When I left off around 500 AD, I was suffering from miserable production. No city had managed to reach even 20 hammers. If Saladin or Isabella had decided to knock me out then they probably would have succeeded. Fortunately, the barbarians managed to keep the AI distracted and I even got the chance to move in and take over the barbarian-controlled land to the east, as shown below:

Overall, the various nations had expanded into roughly equal areas, though England and Mali are definite leaders (map from 1100):

A “little” war

Given the production difficulties and my success in keeping on everyone’s good side except Montezuma, I was hoping to have another go at a diplomatic victory. Last month I tried for a diplomatic win but accidentally reached domination while eliminating a pesky opponent. With lots of polar ice, the domination limit wasn’t an issue this month.

Being diplomatic doesn’t mean being neutral. It means forging a strong coalition. Around 1200, Saladin canceled open borders and dropped to cautions, probably because borders were sparking tensions. He had founded a city right up against my border which was getting culture pressed. Totally 100% his fault, but it still made him mad. I waited to research rifling, upgraded a bunch of old units to redcoats (very useful when you don’t have a lot of hammers), and attacked. I also bought Isabella into the war in the hope of getting a mutual military struggle to secure her vote later on. This was both a good and bad decision. Out of 7 Arabic cities, Isabella captured 2 good cities and razed/resettled a third. This annoyed me as I’d been hoping to get some good production cities out of the war. While I was able to build enough culture to put pressure on these cities, none of them ever revolted to me. With the new cities, Isabella, my supposed ally, surpassed Mansa Musa in population and suddenly became my competitor for the UN vote. Even worse, Persian cultural pressure made my newly captured cities only marginally useful and sparked border tensions with Cyrus, paving the way for future conflict. Once broken, peace is a very difficult thing to repair.

The technology payoff

So far, I’d forgone production and military in favor of technology. I won against Saladin because he hadn’t even reached knights when I attacked. The payoff came around 1550 when I discovered Communism. I’d put off researching scientific method to keep the GL and monasteries in play, but once I was ready, I revolted to Suffrage + State property and prepared to start forging my voting bloc.

Isabella’s sudden rise to the #2 spot was actually a stroke of luck. Mansa had actually cultivated good relations with most other civs and would be a difficult competitor. Isabella, on the other hand, was a more controversial figure, especially since, having joined me against Saladin, she had the same “you attacked our friend” penalties as I did. While she’d spent the last thousand years calling everyone else infidels, I’d been trading with Mansa and Washington, ensuring at least two friends.

Taking stock of my situation, I realized that Cyrus had to go. I didn’t have a very good trading relationship with him, and our newfound border tension made it conceivable that he’d side with Isabella (with whom he had no borders). Also knocking out the obscene border overlap he had with some of my cities would be very satisfying. I attacked him in 1575 at the height of my military advantage. Redcoats were still the most powerful unit in the world, and my cities, with the help of the 1 hammer per town from suffrage and the +1 per mine from railroads, were finally becoming somewhat productive and letting me field a respectable army, supplemented by repeated rush-buying in cities near the front and use of railroads to get units from my core cities. Cyrus actually discovered rifling soon after the war began, but his riflemen just got chewed up by my redcoats anyway. I considered buying in Mansa to improve relations but feared what would happen if he actually took a Persian city or two and reclaimed the #2 population spot.

Unlike the previous war, this war gained me several good cities, including the Hindu holy city. Bizarrely, Cyrus hadn’t built the shrine despite the fact that Hinduism was the world’s biggest religion (I eventually did for 27 gpt). He’d also farmed everywhere, with hardly a cottage in sight:

I sent in my workers to tear up the farms and build workshops and watermills to prepare the area for spaceship-building if my diplomatic plans failed. I then turned my sights to the final target, Montezuma. After sneak-attacking Isabella during the Arabic war, Monty had become little more than a punching bag, fighting nonstop wars first against Isabella, then Washington. I’d also been at war for a while just in order to build good relations. When Washington asked me to redeclare war, I jumped at the chance. Monty hadn’t gotten rifles yet, so my redcoats and infantry plowed through him despite being outnumbered. In one instance, 2 redcoats and 3 cannons managed to take Tenochtillan from a host of defenders while losing only one cannon. Monty did have one moment of brilliance when some macemen slipped past my forces and took back a city, forcing my main army to backtrack and leading to the aforementioned situation where the two intrepid riflemen had to face the capitol without reinforcements. In the end, he simply crumbled, with me taking his southern cities and Washington taking the northern ones.


During this time, I was climbing the tech tree to mass media to build the UN. I had enough money saved to rush-buy it soon after learning the tech, after which I immediately called a diplomatic victory vote. I won the election by a landslide with both Mansa and Washington voting for me. Contrary to other reports about diplomatic victory being harder in Civ4, I found it quite easy to get enough neighbors lined up behind me. It also helped that I had almost enough votes to vote myself in, so I could have made it with just Washington. It felt just as cheesy as it did in Civ3, and I would have gone for the spaceship if I wasn’t going to be busy this weekend.


Victory date: 1726
Final score: somewhere around 4500
Adjusted: 45512

Score graph:

Final Map:

Observations:
Diplomatic victory seems quite easy if you take a bit of effort to cultivate a solid block of support. Normally acceptable behavior like refusing demands, staying neutral in wars, and trading with unpopular pariahs should be avoided. And remember, nothing brings friends together like dogpiling Monty.

Monty pulled ahead to an early lead in score but began to fall behind around 1000AD as everyone passed him. Looking at his cities, it’s easy to see why. He farmed everything and ran a specialist economy, which eventually ran out of steam as everyone else’s cottages matured. I can see why they programmed him to do this – they wanted him to concentrate on early aggression, and getting an early lead through great people could help with this. But in this game he just sat there and didn’t attack until it was too late.

The ultimate industrial-age warfare civic combo would probably be Suffrage-Free Speech-Serfdom-State Property-Theocracy. And redcoats are perfect for a sudden bout of late-game aggression to tilt the UN vote or acquire lots of new cities to build spaceship parts. In reality I ran emancipation because I still had a few towns to mature and free religion because I didn’t want to tick Isabella off. But I wonder, how would such a civic combo look? Serfs get to vote? Free speech for heretics before they get burned?

Gotta love those workshops. 90% of useless AI-built farms should become workshops or watermills when captured in the industrial age.

My score was near the bottom until a sudden jump around 500AD, which coincides with the building of the great library. Was the Library really such a turning point in my game?

Once you conquer one enemy in the late game, you’ll face cultural pressure from another civ, who you’ll then be tempted to go after, and so on. Late-game wars are really quite addictive.

What is it the AI sees in those polar icecaps? Are furs and oil really worth it?

Venice’s answer to the “L”:

 

[Olmo]

I probably managed to achieve one of the most miserable spaceship victories possible.
Early expansion and defence against barb attacks went quite well. I built several wonders in London (Lighthouse, Pyramids) and my econmy was slowly improving.
I converted to Isabellas religion and from thereone we were friends during the rest of the game (well, not exactly, but see below).
I kept peace with everyone, while the others ganged up on Montezuma and then on Cyrus.
As soon as I had redcoats I decided it was time to expand in order to have o better production base for the space race. I first attacked Washington in the west whose cities were really close to mine. After having razed to smaller cities on not too good locations and after having captured two other cities Mansa took the opportunity and attacked me from the east.
I quickly made peace with Washington and diverted my remaining forces to the east front. I could however not avoid the capturing of Hastings which on the south end of the big lake separating me from Mansa's territorium. But later on I managed to get his one city on the west side of the lake.
I made peace again and after rebuilding attacked washington again to get access to the aluminium tile in the north.
After having conquered the aluminium city and another one I made peace and focused on building spaceship parts. I had about 10 cities at this time.
So far so good.
I was slightly ahead in research and after having the last tech needed I started to build the last part in London (6 turns to complete), the second last was already in production in York still 8 turns to complete.
The other civs were also building spaceship parts but were slightly behind so spaceship victory seemed very close.
But then disaster started: Out of the blue, Isabella declared war and invaded with a 20+stack of panzers, helicopters, infs, etc..
I tried to fend her off as well as I could but she soon pillaged my tiles back to stone age and spaceship part production was dwindling.
Isa took 2 cities in the following turns and to make the catastrophy complete, Washington decided it was time for payback. He took his original cities soon after.
As soon as possible I made a peace treaty sacrificing the rest of my money. I only had 3 cities left, 2 of them building the last spaceship parts.
Now I built about 6 workers to reimprove my devastated territory and to accelerate spaceship building again. I managed to finish my spaceship a handful or terms before time would have ran out with a score of about 3000.

At least this was a realistic scenario for a spaceship victory. Surrounded by mighty enemies, most cities in enemy hand, the countryside devastated by war, the best opportunity for the English people was to leave earth and make another start on another planet. Too bad for those who had to stay behind.

This was my second GOTM and again I learned a lot.

 

[Shillen]

Observations:
Diplomatic victory seems quite easy if you take a bit of effort to cultivate a solid block of support. Normally acceptable behavior like refusing demands, staying neutral in wars, and trading with unpopular pariahs should be avoided. And remember, nothing brings friends together like dogpiling Monty.

A couple notes about this:

1) The later you win the easier this is. If you win in 1410 AD like Yurian did last month it's quite a bit harder to get them to like you that quickly without having defensive pacts or things like that.

2) It's easier on a map where you have contact from the beginning of the game. Once again what made Yurian's last month so impressive is he probably didn't even meet the other AI's until 4-500AD, yet still got them to love him by 1410AD.

3) Different games all play out differently. Sometimes the AI's are all too busy hating each other you can only hope to impress one other civ.

4) It's only prince level.

 

[Trash]

Seems everyone's favourite this month. I got a Diplomatic victory in 1912 with about 22k points.

I was lucky to win this game. I started like alot of people exanding too fast and unestimating the barbs. Got attacked by axeman while i had only warrior units. Manged to only lose 2 cities to barbs, and save my game.

Due to my large empire and my lack of wanting to give up any city building oppurtunities I fell behind in tech quite badly. I manged to detroy Spain and Aztecs when they attacked me, but the rest were too advanced for me to win against. In the end I snuck in with a diplomactic victory before, about 3 other civs built spaceships

My saving grace in this game was that I fluked getting juddism without trying, and got an early wonder to get a Great prophet. By the end of the game EVERY city in the world was jewish hehe. Which solved my money problems.

 

[Xevious]

After giving up on GOTM1 about half way through, I decided to make sure I finished this one. I've started a number of Civ IV games, but this was the first one I've finished. I have limited notes as it is very tough to switch between Civ IV and notepad on my system. I may have to actually go out and get a better system if I want to continue playing.

Anyway, I tried to read as much of the strategy forums as I could before starting this game, and so set up a GP city and a couple science cities, as well as a production city. I went for hunting first and built a few scouts to go out and explore. I popped three or four huts but no free techs. I founded London 2 S of the start to get on a river and give me room to build another city further north. The problem is, I never built that northern city until well into the ADs. I used chops to get libraries and other improvements rather than to rush out settlers. I made sure to keep up in military to fend off the barbs and ended up taking a couple barb cities. Eventually I got to 5 core cities (2 science, one GP/science, one prod and one mixed bag). I eventually realized that one production city is not really enough to go war mongering, so I played a relatively peaceful game. I used the great scientists from my GP city to build 3 academies and the rest were used as super specialists. I realized much later that I should have put these guys in the city where I would build Oxford. Instead I put them in the capital since I was running beurocracy(sp?) most of the game. I think I had six of them by the end of the game. I was behind in tech until I traded for Alphabet and then I traded around, gaining all (almost) the techs and gold available. Suddenly felt like a CivIII game. I still had no religion at that point. I managed to get Theology first, giving me Christianity, but I never spread it as much as I should have. I was using Buddhism at the time, which was by far the majority religion. I didn't want to change as it kept me in good graces with almost everyone. The only civ that I was really at odds with the whole game was Montezuma, but they were far away and hence not a bother. After getting the tech lead I kept it for the rest of the game, though Mansa Musa was a close second. I continually made trades with him for new techs and gold, and often sold older techs to other civs for their gold so I could keep my tech pace up. These continual trades kept my relations up, and eventually most were pleased or friendly. I was actually able to get horses for free a couple of times just by asking nicely. I used those time to rapidly punch out knights the first time and upgrade them to cavalry the second time. I also built a large number of redcoats once they were available. I never attacked another civ (though I did agree to join wars against Montezuma a couple times). As the game got further on I was getting tired of the slowdowns. My system just can't seem to handle this game well. I decided since everyone was so friendly I would try for a diplomatic win. I actually had to hunt around to figure out what tech allowed me to build the UN. I finally found it and headed for it. Once I got there I found it was going to take a good while to build the UN. I used by loafing workers to start switching tiles to be more productive in the capital, at the expense of food, aloowing the UN to finish a few turns sooner. I had decided at that point to stop researching and just bump all my other towns to culture. Once the UN was built I voted myself as ambassador, and got elected. When the vote came up again, I picked the diplo win, and just barely won with about 430 votes (needed 415), in 1710AD, for around 37k score. I was kinda surprised it was so close.

I really learned quite a lot in my first full game, and hopefully I'll be able to transfer much of it to the next game. By the end of the game I had 8 cities, and had just caused one of Americas to revolt. I think I will need to work on better expansion next game.

 

[robboo]

My first completed GOTM..(I hate Lakes but still tried it)

Lasted till 1674...it was over in 1505 when 3 civs declared war on me. Isabella attacked when Sladin and Montezuma decided they had enough of me. Then to top it off around 1670 Washington decides to join in and he takes my last city.

I held on and gave a good fight but in the end their combined forces were too much for me. Nice game. I think I lost it early on when I expanded too quickly and had to drop to zero sci. I made a dash for the copper to my south and that is what caused my downfall. I was too dar behind in tech to mount much of a fight...Longbows vs muskets and conquisdors.

It wa fun..I will be in the bottom I am sure. bring on next month.

 

[STowey]

My first win of Civ 4 on Prince level. I always build a strong empire but I have problems with time at the end it just seems to slip by so I won in 1955 by Domination with a score of 15890 my highest score to date.
I had problems with cities flipping to other civs with each 2 or 3 I conquered 1 seemed to flip. I lost several cities by flipping to both the Americans and Spaniards. But Montezuma fell 1st to the sword. From then on continuous war 1 after another only Spain was spared the sword as she started her Spaceship last and to late.
I just wish I could figure a way to play a better early game and maybe compete with some of the 1600 area domination and conquest victories I have seen here.
Talk to you all next 4OTM. Cant wait to try my hand again.

 

[diamond geezer]

Hmm, I'll never go for a Space Ship win again if the scoring system isn't changed RADICALLY. I completed the Space Ship in 1754 and only got 28757 points.

If I had gone for Domination I'm pretty sure I would have gotten two or three times this score. Something isn't right with the scoring. Not sure if I'll bother doing a complete writeup.

-- Roland

That explains my score as well then.

 

[shadow2k]

Well, I hadn't played GOTM in a LONG time, so I gave this one a go. I did not post in the first spoiler thread, because I did not bother to look for people's borders. I never saw the borders of Cyrus or Monty until I traded for maps in 1090AD, missing the Spoiler#1 cutoff by a bit.

I kept an SG like turn-log, but even I don't really want to read it. So I doubt you do either. So here are some brief summaries of the major points.

The start:
I went BW first. worker/settler/worker/warrior was queued up. Original warrior explored W about 10 tiles, then S to a few tiles below the stone resource, then E where I found my second city site (copper), then waited there for the settler. My capital was undefended during this time, because there's no need to have it garrisoned this early. I had my second city down, and two workers out before I ever built a warrior to garrison the capital.

The first worker was timed to come out one turn before BW, by switching off the lake and corn. I chopped the settler/worker, overflow created warrior, and I was off and running. No huts found, no civ borders found. They all found me. I don't care about scouting, I just want to find my second/third city sites, and get them down ASAP. I get axeman before barbs start appearing, an easy way to take care of them. I completely ignore archery when there is copper close enough to hook up in a reasonable amount of time.

I built 4 warriors total, 1 archer, 1 spear...and the rest of the ancient age military was all axes.

Tech path (early part anyway):
BW (for chopping, but really, to see bronze so I can skip archery)
Agri
Wheel
Myst (chopped Stonehenge)
AH
Pottery
Poly
Writing (to build Libraries)
Priesthood (chopped Oracle)
Metal Casting (from Oracle)
IW
Sailing (more food for capital with lighthouse)
Masonry
Alpha (my favorite tech. I held onto if for a long time and traded everything else. Reminds me of the old Civ3 Map Making trading round)
Currency
Music (for Great Artist)
Feud
From here, I went for military techs, I don't want to list them all in order. The last tech I researched was RR, then I pretty much shut down research. I didn't list techs I traded for, because I did a lot of that, and forgot to write it all down.

The key part of my game (in almost every game) is due to the fact that Alphabet > All else! Don't trade it away...ever (unless you need to in order to catch up). Let every civ research it, while you continue to broker techs and leap ahead. If you hold onto it, you can trade for techs from one civ, and the next turn, trade them to another, and round and round like that...because they cannot trade with each other. This is a KEY spot in the early game.

Early Cities:
London founded on the spot.
2440BC York founded 5 tiles due S of London for the early copper.
1400BC Nottingham founded 5 tiles due W of York.
*720BC Aryan captured from Barbs, 7 tiles due W of London, perfect spot.
*120BC Barcelona captured from Spain
250AD Hastings founded 5 tiles E of London, across the lake.
270AD Canterbury founded SW of York.
780AD Coventry founded N of London by the silver...I hate Ice cities.

That's basically it. All the rest of my cities were captured (and a couple flips) after 1265AD. I only built six cities.

Religions:
I didn't found any religions. I didn't open my borders until pretty late, starting with Mansa (my pawn through the later ages). So I had no religion for a long, long time. I ended up capturing a few Holy Cities, the main one being Judaism from Izzy, and I built the shrine there....she'd already done a great job of spreading it around, as always. I did not adopt Judaism until 1250AD...my first and only religion, never dropped/changed.

Wonders:
I normally play Emperor, so I went a bit nuts finally getting time to build wonders. I'm ashamed that I built so many, so I'm not going to list them. I never noticed this before, but capturing the Pyramids knocked Washington into Despotism. Good times.

Great People:
I got mostly Great Prophets (on purpose), the first in 340BC. I joined most of them to my Capital, except for one to create the Temple of Solomon in the Jewish Holy City captured from Spain, and a couple to start a Golden Age to get Factories/Coal Plants chugging, as well as a GScientist to create an Academy in London. Couple Artists for CBombs as well.

Below are pictures of my Great People factory and London. The GPFactory came online kind of late, because it was a captured city from Saladin...the bastard stole the spot I wanted. London, also pictured below, has most of my GPeople joined into it, mainly Priests. They give 5gpt and two hammers each, because I built Angkor Wat in anticipation of this. I also built Oxford and Wall Street there, add in Bureaucracy, and the city really powered my economy.

Wars:
800BC - Izzy declared on me, so I took Barcelona from her, then kept her at war until 250AD when I learned Alphabet. Then I made her give me Hunting, Meditation, and Monotheism (a monopoly tech) for peace. I wasn't really doing anything to her at this point, I was building infra after taking Barcelona.

1125AD - Monty declared war on me, and ran 25 assorted axes/jags into my souther border, with reinforcements behind that. Honestly, I've NEVER seen the AI declare and have a force like that ready. I got a picture of his SOD after my first shot at it posted below...mainly because I was so surpised to see it that I forgot to take a screenie at first. Luckily I had been preparing a "Kill Saladin" force in the city Monty went for, so his force died quickly. I bribed Mansa to declare on him, because Monty wouldn't give me peace, and I could not get open borders with anyone that would allow me through to go raze Monty's cities. Monty comes begging for peace about 10 turns later, as predicted.

1250AD - Declared on Saladin right after peace with Monty. I capture five of his cites (one later flips to Cyrus, after I debated razing it because I thought it might), using Maceman and Cats. I normally start an Axe, or Axe/Cats war, but I got wonder crazy in this game. I made peace with Sal in 1385AD. Not because I wanted to, but again, I could not get to his last city because of border issues. Actually, I could have gone through Spain, because...

1315AD - Izzy declares on me while I'm still at war with Sal. He had one city behind her main lines, which is why I made peace with him. I captured nine cities from Izzy, burnt two to the ground (one would have flipped to GW, one was Ice), and also killed off Sal along the way. Sal died in 1550AD. I was actually at peace with him here, but he had a settler going somewhere, and it was too juicy to pass up. Izzy died in 1595AD. Maces/Cats still being used.

1658AD - THE BRITISH ARE COMING! Promoted my maces with City Raider, and upgraded to Redcoats, bring a few cavs along with the trusty cats. Declare on Monty, and bribe Mansa to join the party. I capture five cities, Mansa captures two, and I raze the final city (Susa, which pissed off Cyrus, would have flipped to him), killing Monty in 1690AD. I also has a Persian city flip to me during this war.

1706AD - A lot of decisions leading up to this. I'm at about 42% land. After a lot of though, I bribe Mansa to declare on Cyrus. I, however, declare on George instead. Mansa is my puppet, and this keeps everyone else occupied while I run wild. Nine cities captured, one auto-razed. George dies a horrid death in 1744AD. Some Redcoats have been upgraded to Infantry now.

1758AD - 61.1% won't do. Bribe Mansa to declare on Cyrus again. I declare in 1760AD. I capture three cities from Cyrus, one city auto-razes, and I win a few turns later. Redcoats are fun, as long as you're the one building them.

The End:
Domination in 1766AD
5,364/48,855 scores


And for the people who like pictures...

 

[Johan511]

Well I just finished the GOTM 2. I had finished 80k score on the first GOTM this time I did tad bit better toping that score and coming in at 89k Dunno if it'll be enough for the top 10 this time but I hope so! I haven't really had time to put my conquests in the spoilers since I've been playing tons of multilayer games in my spare time, since I finally got my computer to cooperate with CIV4. In the past few weeks I've been playing tons of games in multilayer and single player, and if you want a top shelf tip I would say work with combat a lot at first so you know how the units interact with each other. It doesn't matter if you play offense or defense your going to need to have a good feel how the units react on the battlefield to understand in more detail how your science should be developed.

 

[J_RocKeT76]

Gday,

This was my 1st GOTM and first serious attempt at prince level. Did not set out with any Victory plan, probably why I lost but my aim was to mainly survive and see if victory was at all possible.

I had a "tremendous" start to the game lost my warrior in 3640BC and my worker in 2120BC to of all things bloody wolves. I also was changing Science investments with 1 turn to go to try and some extra cash and forgot to take it back to 100% for about 20 turns this confirmed to me that a victory was outta the question.
Monte went to war twice with Washington, on the second attack I joined in against the US, trying to pick some crumbs up. Tried to unsuccessfully take US Cardoba ex- barb city situated away from Washingtons main empire. Peace declared.
Decided to try and have a go at Isabella. Set up troops outside Santiago, waited for Monte to blow his horn and then sent my troops in while she was busy defending him. Captured Santiago and Barcelona and by that time Monte just about had her gone.
Was lost then, Mansu was way out in front in Tech and Monte had a bloody big army. Was behind in Culture and when Mansu built Apollo Program 38 turns before me, I just tried to better my score and keep Monte happy so he didnt wipe me. Was please to keep all originals citys, gaining two from Isabella.

This was my first prince game and until last night I had not won on Noble.
With the start I had I was just happy to be able to finish the game without being wiped and without coming last in game. Was a learning experience and I look forward to another attempt at GOTM2, with a better bloody start adn can't wait for GOTM3. H
Have to say thanks to Alanh and Ainwood (& others) for the work they do and for sending me the GOTM unprotected file.

By the way Mansu won by Space Race in 1961AD, I finished with a game score of 2999. Just a few more points would of made it look oh so much better.
Cheers.

 

[Cromwell]

That was fun. My first Prince game, first GOTM. 2005 space ship loss.

Lost my first settler to barbarians. I had an escort warrior ready, but they were killed by lions just before the settlers were ready to set off. Ended up with two cities, surrounded by 3 barbarian settlements. After being rescued from the barbarians by other powers, I captured 2 cities in a brief war with Spain and America. At my zenith, I controlled all of 8 cities. Was in last the entire game. Managed to keep up militarily through shameless technology trading, but then around 1700 Arabia invaded, taking my commerce city with the gem mines in the original offensive. 200 years of defensive war. On epic. LOTS of camels. Every city I owned was captured at least once; When Persia finally wiped Arabia out around 1900, I was holding on to 5 cities without a single developed tile. Never built a unit after Redcoats. When Mali finished their spaceship in 2005, I was a third world country, just adopting modern farming and democracy, and rebuilding after centuries of war.

So, escorts shouldn't wander around in the desert while waiting for the settler. And You should always assume there's a army of camels just over the horizon, and garrison accordingly.

 

[Grogs]

Diplomatic Victory, 1686 AD, 66891 points, In-game score 5271.

My first spoiler (up to 1 AD) is here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3539171&postcount=17


I tried to play a 'balanced' game. By balanced, I mean I tried to do everything well and not take too many risks. Of course that means that I did nothing spectacular either.

I had 4 cities in Anno Domini 1. I had also constructed the Pyramids, and the Oracle (CoL -> Confucianism,) and I had fought a brief war with Spain. I founded a 5th city in the jungle, near the bananas, then a 6th on top of the marble across the lake from London. Around 500 AD, I captured 2 more barb cities on the east side of the lake. That ended my 'peaceful' phase. My early research was worker techs, then bronze for defense/chops, then writing->alphabet->literature with a few stops in between. Getting alphabet first allowed me to get to tech parity+ with the AI's in a hurry, and since I didn't trade alphabet and no AI's researched it for a very long time, I was able to grab the Great Library easily.

Religion: Isabella had founded Hinduism and Bhuddism, while Montezuma had founded Bhuddism and converted Cyrus, and I founded Confucianism. I waited a good long while to swap to confucianism. While I was waiting, I managed to convert Washington, Mansa Musa, and Saladin to Confucianism. The jungle start really helped out a lot with this, since it was a long time before the AI's had trade routes with each other, and thus Hinduism/Bhuddism didn't spread much. Once I was able to convert other civs to Confucianism, I switched in 390 AD. One aspect of my strategy was to found all the religions after Confucianism so that none of my friends founded their own religion and switched. Mansa surprised me by using a Great Scientist to found Islam, but luckily he didn't convert and it hardly spread at all.

Warmonger:I knew now that I was a heathen, Isabella was coming for me sooner or later, so I decided to go for her first. I attacked in 730 AD with swords/cats. I left her with 2 sorry excuses for cities in 920 AD, which Mansa finished off shortly after. My economy was pretty crippled with 5 new cities, but thanks to some courthouses and the Forbidden Palace in Madrid, it recovered in less than 10 turns. With Izzy gone, I now had Montezuma to my west. I bribed Mansa and he invaded Monty in 1090 AD. In 1120, after letting some of Monty's forces move West towards Mansa, I attacked. I razed 2 of his cities and captured the rest. Monty was destroyed in 1265 AD.

A bit more warmongering: Izzy and Monty were easy choices to go to war with - nobody liked them. After that, Cyrus was the only heathen left, but everyone generally liked him. Fortunately, greed got the better of them. In 1270 AD, I bribed both Mansa and Saladin to attack Cyrus. Not only did they distract him, they beat him up pretty good and even managed to grab a couple of cities each. I declared in 1290 AD, grabbed ~ 6 cities from Cyrus, including all of his core cities and he was destroyed in 1370 AD. Here are some minimaps of my empire:

730 AD, at the end of my expansion phase:

1100 AD, after wiping out Spain

1300 AD, after destroying Montezuma:

1400 AD, after conquering Cyrus:

1686 AD, the turn after I won:

Peacemonger:At this point, short of a really boneheaded move on my part, the game was locked up. I owned about 45% of the map and was double the nearest civ in both score and power. The only question was how to win. By this point, I was quite worn out with the game, so I decided to turtle up and go for a peaceful victory. In 1485, I signed defensive pacts with Mansa and Saladin, which allowed me to largely ignore my military for the rest of the game. This upset Washington for some reason (even though he was +7 or so with both,) but I truly didn't care.

Sending it home:I hurried towards biology to increase my population, then made my way towards Mass Media and the UN. Actually, 'ambled' is more like it. I researched a lot of things that weren't strictly necessary for a UN victory, specifically: Constitution/Democracy; gunpowder -> railroads; and Replacable Parts -> Assembly Line. I did this because I wasn't 100% certain I could pull off a diplomatic victory, so I wanted a good tech/industrial base for a space race victory if the diplomatic option was a wash.

One thing that concerned me was that I couldn't tell who would be my opponent in the election since all 3 of the other civs were constantly flip-flopping into and out of 2nd place population-wise. Looking back, it really shouldn't have concerned me. I had ~50% of the population, so I only needed 1 other civ (they each had ~16%) to vote for me. Mansa and Saladin both loved me. If Washington was 2nd, I could expect Mansa and Saladin's votes. If either Saladin or Mansa were 2nd, I could expect the other one to vote for me. As it turned out, Saladin was #2, and Mansa voted for me, both for election to Secretary General and for a Diplomatic Victory. His 102 votes, combined with my 386, got me 488/726, with 450 required.

Diplomatic win in 1686 AD, 66891 points.

Financials in 1686:

@90% science: 2878 bpt; 1241 cpt; 470 gpt; income: 500gpt; expenses: 565gpt; 2999g in treasury.

Final score graph:

Observations/notes about the game:

- This game really wore me out, taking over 50 hours to finish. I suspect a domination victory would have taken me at least 80. I think the epic is partly to blame, but more the lakes map. Lakes maps have more land tiles than say, a continents map, so the AI's have more cities, and you have to have a lot more cities to reach the domination limit. More cities means more micromanagement (for me at least) and that equates to a slower game. I'd like to try an epic game on continents and see if it plays better. I generally do like the epic tech pace though.

- This is my highest scoring Civ4 game, edging out a 50K Prince domination win that was topping my Hall of Fame.

- This is the first time I've ever had all 5 of the 'top 5 cities' in any Civ game, which is ironic because I really wasn't focusing on culture, except to expand cultural borders of cities.

- I renamed my first warrior 'warrior1.' He survived the entire game, spending the first 200 or so turns exploring the globe, then as a fog buster on the northern ice. After 5000 years of faithful service, I upgraded him to a pike and he served with distinction in both the Aztec and Persian wars.

Strange/buggy things I noticed:

- As soon as I discovered Alphabet, an AI popped up wanting to make a trade. It happened several more times before any of the AI's discovered alphabet. As it says in my log: "how the heck does that work?"

- There seems to be some lag between when the AI discovers one tech and the follow-on techs appear in his trade window. For example: on turn 1, I look in the F4 screen and see that Mansa Musa lacks education. On turn 2, I check the F4 screen, and he now has education apparently. However, I don't see that he lacks liberalism and economics until ~ 5 turns later. This gave me quite a scare a couple of times, thinking the AI had somehow caught up about 6 techs in a couple of turns.

EDIT:

During this time, I was climbing the tech tree to mass media to build the UN. I had enough money saved to rush-buy it soon after learning the tech, after which I immediately called a diplomatic victory vote.

Boy do I feel dumb after reading that. Switching to Universal Suffrage and rush-buying the UN would have shaved 14 turns off my finish date.

Here's my detailed turnlog if anyone wants to know more: