GOTM-03 First spoiler: The early game.

[Adonias]

wow... talk about nice writedowns!

Very powerfull, Rad Chris! Truly, you made my day

 

[-( i )- Mayhem]

My third GOTM, this is the first one where my computer hasn't let me down completely. The first 2 I was plagued with crashes and growing frustration with my pc to the the point where i didn't feel that i should post either of my games (i never bothered to complete them). Although I've only won one Monarch game so far with a Roman Pret rush, I felt that i could do a similar thing here with the Samuri (sp?), although a little later on

Rapid expansion to block off my corner of the world gave me a decent chunk of land, sufficient for 8 cities. I got Judaism with Monty and got really friendly with him with a lot of trade/tech exchanges early on. Decided I would keep him friendly and go on the warpath against Hattie in the South, who had built up a sizeable lead in score. I've so far taken a couple of cities, and with Montys troops this one looks like a foregone conclussion.

Future plans will probably involve me rotating around the map to claim more land and try to go for a Diplomatic victory as I am friendly with everyone else. My only concern is my lack of horses, so I may not be able to conquer enough with my Samuri before I start encountering Knights. Maybe I will backstab Monty after the downfall of Eqypt as he has some horses within his territory, something to think about

 

[Hanky-Panky]

Hi everyone,

(adventurer)

I tried the second GOTM, but didnt finish in time, so this will be my first! (not that I've finished yet, but...)
OK, Im kinda new to Civ4, but not to Civ per see.
I've never been much of a warmonger, instead of a builder with wars for specific purposes, preventing others from winning for example!
and actually never played much on higher levels, in Civ2 I tried monarch a few times, but got annoyed when someone landed on my cute little island with tanks while I had knight.. you know what I'm saying.

ANYWAY: this time I wanted to try something (for me) really different - I was going to behave aggressivly, and quick.

My plan:
really early conquest of at least one neighbour (after all, I am playing adventurer.., but hey, I normally play at prince and find it challenging), not much focus on research, then keep the wars going if it seems to work. Not much of a plan, who knows, it might work.

What happened:
I settled 1E, which I doubt many people tried. Why? well, I discovered the marble north (adveturer, remember) and though my second city would be btw cow and marble, so I stepped 1E instead and came close to those two money-making whatever resources (cant remember their names!) and wanted to pop out a settler really quickly for quick expansion (that strategy did not work I can tell you, my capital develop very slowly du to no food bonus, maybe a bad decision.

research: pottery (for money), mine, bronze working (quick, quick, quick expansion), then writing, iron working and alphabet (I think).

prod. queue: warrior, warrior, worker, warrior ..???? barracks??
why? wanted to take my chances here and make use of the aggressive trait (and the free archer in adventurer class) for an extremely early war to get more space.

I discovered Monty firs to the east, decided he was to be my victim... moved my free archer and a couple of warriors there to take him out directly, only to discover he had hordes of archers already! 2 in city one outside (maybe even three in city..?), so I waited for a couple of more warriors and had a little army going already! so I attacked ... well, mistake. I lost all of them.. when he had only one wounded archer left in his city .. though a fully healed one in the forest outside, so maybe he would have reclaimed his capital anyway (but I could have razed it on the other hand). So, my army annihilated.. what to do. well, I had another warrior on his way to tenochtitlan, his mission was now altered to one of pillaging! I pillaged his mine and his cow-farm/pasture-whatever. And he had no other city appart from his capital. Now lets see how fast you can develop!!

I also discoverd some tasty city-spots to the south and met Hatty there, felt an immeadiate urge to rush my settlers there, but felt it would be unlikely that I would make it before Hatty.

Anyway, next plan was to finish Monty, but after getting axemen.
so, second city should be by copper. I went for the spot on the western edge (with the gold), but realized too late this was probably a mistake, should have been more aggressive towards monty and gone east (but hey, Im still having troubles recognizing flood plains! think they are just piles of sand or desert...). But unfortunately I made my usual mistake with city placement and settled two sqaures from the resource that is the reason for me to settle there, which means that I have to expand the city's borders before I can even improve the damn tile. (me: "oh well, I'll just chop-rush a library/obelisk, It'll just take a few turns extra... it takes ages!!!!! made the same mistake twice in this game!!!)
so axemen came late. built a few more cities in between and fought off barbarians without too much trouble actually, was hoping to get a free barb city in the northeast since I hadnt even explored in the corner, but nope, nothing there. Now I realized I had to expand to block off Hatty and Monty, so I settled Tokyo to the norhteast, by the horses and the Wine (sound like a pub in England to me - "The Horse and Wine"), then settled Edo to the south along the coast, south of incense and wheat when I realized Hatty had grabbed the fantastic spot with the Ivory and Dye and **** long ago.

I actually built many cities, and my ecomony worked out fine, cottaged the land around may capital and my second city, so I got brave and settled even more cities, which was OK too, though for a short while I was hardly making a surplus when at 0% research.. but I planned to go for GP for research, and WARS ofcourse, to make peace for techs, conquer each one in 2-3 steps (this hasnt been very succesful to date... but that was my plan).
Now, next cities to be built was by the marble and cow (which I wanted to be my second city to be built immeadiatly after my capital, remember and one ni the north-western corner, first I wanted to make this another cottage-financial city to strengthen my economy, then I realized it shoulc be my GP-scientist farm!! I built the great library here with the help of marble and chopping!! very quickly once I got marble (had a huuuuge army of workers by now...too many, clearly suboptimal! but convenient at times, think I captured one from Monty early on, but on the other hand, I lost two to barbs and animals very early, must learn to never EVER leave them alone!). So with two free scientists, two specialist scientists (could farm around the river without CS) and the National Epic in same city! 30 GP-points per turns makes it quick in the beginning! (Ive always sucked at GP-farming, but been getting slightly better recently).

Now the time had come for finishing Monty, with swordsmen and axemen, to keep the story short: most of his cities were a piece of cake, but his capital was, once again a hard nut to crack. And I failed the first time again (this cost me alot of time... and production) and Monty could promote his archers.. sigh.. Anyway, after taking his capital and accepting peace for.... uhm.. code of laws? and built my first catapults and could take his last city in the norhtern forest by the gold and iron - without catapults it was increadibly hard, built on hills I think, I wasted perhaps 10+ units on it. So yes, I had made some mistakes in my war against Monty.. maybe these were fatal mistakes that would deny me victory later on??

After Monty I modernized my empire with vassalage, org rel and finally decided to go for Buddhism (founded by Hatty), this should have been done much earlier. And improved my economy, that is, I consolidated for a while. Also founded another city by the two floodplains in the delta by the coast to SE of starting location, this was meant to be a future financial powerhouse, I've built exclusively cottages around it, and the sea nearby, so with time it will pay off ... I hope, not that succesful yet.

Will continue in second spoiler. I am kind of late in techs, maybe 3-4 or even 5 techs after Hatty that is leading, but Now I finally got samuari, way later than most other people in this thread.. But now Im past 500 AD so all I can write about that is that despite my many mistakes Im still competing for the win, unless they out race me completely with techs or everybody gangs up on me together I might win, or maybe not... I started I war against Hatty when I got Samurai with an army of samurai, war elephants and catapults.. but maybe it is too late.. she has just produced her first Knights I realized... so I guess the next 30-40 turns or so can be decisive perhaps.

To be continued

 

[Markus5]

It was a hard-luck story for me.

I played 3 practice games and was very encouraged by the results. I was really set back by the random number generator. I got off to a good start. Warriors explored east and south. I popped a tech, maps, and a scout. I should have built a worker earlier, but built a barracks then an archer then a settler before the worker. I planned to build near the bronze to the east, then mine and chop. Worked well enough. But, I just couldn't get any luck. Barbs and animals killed just about everything they met. All warriors and scouts were lost. One promoted warrior fortified on a wooded hill lost to a barb warrior. Long odds for that to happen. I lost two settlers, guarded by axemen, to barb archers. I lost the capital, guarded by 2 promoted archers, to a single barb archer. Taking it back wasted more time. Eventually, I had 3 cities and no room for expansion. I wasn't in the mood for more punishment and resigned.

I started another game, with the same conditions, and am making acceptable progress. I guess better planning could have overcome the run of bad luck, but sometimes its just frustrating to play this game.

 

[Goodenuf]

Hmm, does this mean that Alphabet was researched before Bronze Working? It could pose difficulties if Axemen and Swordsmen came that late. The AI may decide that you're weak enough to exploit ...

Ya, there's some truth there; perhaps next time I'll get Bronze Working before going for Writing/Alphabet so the chop and Ax/Swords will be available earlier. Having the agressive Monty as a neighbour would affect this strategy. I do like getting to tech trading quickly, though so I can harvest everyone else's research.

I do feel, though, that the early struggles came more from losing so many exploring warriors so early. Even if I could retain some of them, I would at least have some better defensive numbers (unskilled, yes, but at least I wouldnt have been overrun so quickly). I would also have hopefully come across a few more huts for some other bonuses (is boni plural for bonus?) if I could have kept exploring.

In any case... !#@$ happens sometimes. I've started again and I'm having much better success this time around.

 

[Enthar]

Caveat:
Downloaded the Contender file. However, the game crashed consistently 2 turns in (right after founding my first city). Downloade Adventurer as an experiment, it worked fine. Played exactly the same moves (both warrior and settler) as in Contender 2 turns, including keeping my bonus worker and Archer near my Settler to not increase exploration. If this still disqualifies me, let me know, but I hope it keeps in the spirit.

I had never played Monarchy before, and have not ended up in the top half of any GOTM (this is my 3rd GOTM, with only 1 successful submission due to patching while playing the first GOTM ).

Summary:
Planned Domination win. Slow but looking good by 500AD



Some details
moved warior south west, which didn't reveal much, moved settler (with worker, and archer trailing) to forested plains/hill. No resources, except gold to the north west and out of city radius. Still, flood plains, bonus hammer on hill, and a river for fresh water made this a very tempting site, so I settled.

Archer then moved to the east, while warrior moved north. First built warrior moved south. Encountered Eqypt and Aztecs early. Focused on getting a good core of cities- first one to the south in that lovely dye/ivory/corn spot, second city to the west for gold/rice (and bronze), third to the north east for marble, fourth to the south east to block off Hatty, fifth to the north west for tons of forests.

Tech Order:
With a worker already available with not much to do, researched Pottery first (for early hamlets and the research boost they would give on those flood plains, a very very nice bonus)

Then it was Mining, Bronze Working, Mystacism (for stone henge to block off creative egypt and aggressive aztec), Masonry (for quarry on marble), Writing, Alphabet. Traded Writing for Priesthood and Polytheism, but still got beat to Oracle. Iron Working finally and the buildup of swordsmen to take out Monty starts. I wanted a religion because Hatty had yet to found or convert to any, and I wanted one safe flank. My race for Code of Laws missed it by 4 turns. Got Literature at the turning point (0 AD).

Monty finally declared war, and I turned up a great prophet and had him get me Theology (and Christianity and useful Theocracy Civic). Holy Warrior Swordsmen began the long march against Monty, while Christianity quickly spread througout my empire and into Eqypt (YAY) without a single missionary. Hatty now likes me.

Destroy a very aggressively placed encroaching Aztec city, and finish Construction. Good thing too, as War Elephants are extremely useful against Monty's swarms of Horse Archers.

Wonders:
Chopped Stonehnge in my capital, missed Oracle, chopped Great Library in my forest rich north west city. Did not seriously try for Pyramids (no stone and low forests) or Parthenon.

War:
Was too busy consolidating my 6 cities to start an early war, which was probobly a mistake. However, Monty obligingly declared on me in 60AD, and my intial wave of Swordsmen destroyed one badly placed city and captured another well placed one.


Status at 500AD:
6 well defended and maturing cities in my core, with one captured city of Montys. Egypt is friendly and my main tech trading partner, especially since she is the tech leader. War Elephants comming on line, along with catapults, means that Monty's Horse Archers are going down in flames very soon.

edit: i did have contact with all the other civilizations, and had decent relations with Indians, Incas, and English. Arabs did not like me due to religious differences.

 

[ducker]

Next month I'll do a complete write up.

I also was on the bonus unit class (adventurer?) My first city I actually settled was 2 turns more to the south... in that "choice" 2 dye/2ivory location. Turned out to be quite the money/research city.

My second City was just to the SW getting the gold and trying to keep Hatty boxed in down there.

I knew about the copper to the north at that time, but I was looking to secure my boarders first. I expanded then to the east... Where the copper was near the mountain range.
There was a really nice spot for a city that would force most of Monty's attackers to take a penality for attacking over a river, I used that to my advantage.

At this point, I was doing fairly well.. I was trying to build up a strong defensive base, in hopes that no one will view me as a push over and declair on me.

It was then tha Monty declaired on me. He tried quite hard to take down my city on his boarder that was holding on to the copper. (tha city also flipped one of his to the south east... simply razed it, in a bad location)

I love slavery & city walls... he couldn't take that city, he eventually gave up and offered peace.

I expanded to the north to get the marble, as well as the pigs/silver on the North western corner.

At this time I finally made a few open boarder arragements with other Civ's and I got to explore the rest of the map. (I was keeping people out of my area until my culture to insure of no one sneaking in to my "area").

I see that Elizabeth(?) England pretty much have a VERY dominate position in the south east. Taking up more then twice the area of any other Civ currently in the game... I didn't have a good feeling on how this game was going to go.

And then Monty declaired on me - again. I should really get to know these Civ's and their play style better... I shouldn't of been worried with Hatti much at all, and been her friend, and pushed at Monty early.

You can see where this game might be going, but I won't post anymore since it took place after 500AD I believe.

 

[ionimplant]

I lost two settlers, guarded by axemen, to barb archers. I lost the capital, guarded by 2 promoted archers, to a single barb archer. Taking it back wasted more time.

now this's the worst luck i've seen. i only had two warriors (upgraded for 25% vs archery) guarding my capital and a newly found barbarian city sent 1 archers to me every three turn and a total of 4 attempted to take my capital. they never managed to kill a single warrior of mine.

 

[Shillen]

540BC Civil Service *I did it!!! I timed building the oracle perfectly using pre-chopped forrests around kyoto. Never did that before Oh.. of course, revolted to burocracy the same turn.

Funny, the Oracle was built by the AI in 960BC in my game. Quite a difference there.

Not that it matters. I quit this GOTM in frustration in around 500AD. It was unbelievable how many fights I lost with 90%+ odds to win. One fight was a combat 1, shock promoted samurai against a combat 1 axeman in the open. Another one was a combat 1, cover, city raider 2 samurai against a city garrison 1 archer in a 0% culture bonus, 0% terrain bonus city. 99.7% odds and lost that one too. There were many many others in this game, and even the 70-80% odds fights were lost more than they were won. Just extremely bad luck all around and I ended up getting very frustrated despite still being in an easily winnable position. I've diagnosed myself with compicidal intentions and prescribed for myself a civ4 vacation.

edit: Even funnier than the Oracle being built in 960BC, is that Stonehenge was built in the 700s BC. And on top of all this the AI that built the Oracle took Code of Laws when I was 6 turns from finishing it myself. Just an unbelievable amount of bad luck in my game. Despite all that I still had samurai in 300AD and Egypt was virtually conquered in 500AD.

 

[chunkymonkey]

First Monarch game. I expanded too quickly fearing an encroaching Hatty and completely underestimated the barbarian threat. Consequently i left my towns poorly defended. The sight of three barb archers ramapaging around Kyoto pillaging my improvements was too much to bare. I rushed all troops from my 5 cities to try to save my improvements but they were merely sacrifices. I retired in 940BC after Tokyo and Edo had been captured by barbs.

Lesson learnt. At least this gives me time to get an Emperor practise game in before next month!

 

[culdeus]

Pregame thoughts

In the pregame I definitely read the posts here and also did some test games. This was my first game at monarch with more than 3 civs (played some tiny maps before). I learned by playing this map that you had to do the following thing with Toku.

1. The tech path to the UU is pretty specific and deep and does not allow for religion.
2. The starting techs are very poor and must be worked around.
3. The alphabet slingshot is the best strategy by far.
4. Samurai’s r0x0r harder than I ever could have imagined (test game data)

Opening strategy

Now I’m not sure if I should get a DQ or a for this, but the first GOTM I scored enough to put me in the top 20, but I didn’t turn the game in because when I finished and looked at the closing spoilers I realized I couldn’t win any awards so I didn’t turn it in. I didn’t realize there was some sort of multi-month ranking. Whoops. However, I retired last month after getting pwned so I figure I qualified for Adventure as it was also my first large scale Monarch game.

So I used the Adventure option because mainly I want to be able to at least get on the board in the GOTM standings now. Knowing this I kept my bonus archer close and let my warrior wander. I settled in the 2S location and let my worker build a road to the distant wheat as there was nothing else to hook up.

I started with a strange combination as a result.

Built:
Barracks
Settler
Warrior
Worker

Researched:
Pottery
Hunting
AH
Writing
Alpha

In the process I popped 3 tech huts for 1 map and 90 gold total. So it goes. I met Monty first off and Hatch who must really have a thing for Asian guys because she was pleased almost right off. I didn’t explore very far as on monarch it’s a death wish for your scouts and I couldn’t waste anybody or any hammers and let the AI come to me. They all did by 500BC.

Having Alpha gave me the following techs within one turn. Agri, mining, masonry, mysti, bronze, fishing. Quite the haul! Others kept pushing for writing for things like MonoT and middle tech stuff and I declined.

I did zero chopping in my first 3 cities which was new to me. I got into one short war with Monty and we made peas for nothing. Sigh.

I now have 4 cities and I am very far behind on production. I am trying to get to samurai as fast as possible though so commerce and cottage spamming is the result of that. I will build another city between the cows and marble soon, and another near iron/pigs also.

I plan on starting a war with monty without Sams to get him down to 1 or 2 cities.

I’ll edit in some screens in a bit. I’d like commentary on my 4th city placement as nobody has picked that tile yet that I did.

 

[RoddyVR]

i settled 1NW of the hill that was 2SW of the start, because i saw the gold and couldnt resist settling nearer to it and hoping to get another resourse out of the darkness.
YUCK was that a mistake...
1. the city's closer proximity to the map edges made placing other cities between it and the map pointless.
2. no other resourses ofcourse.

stared doing some exploring and researching a few worker techs (agriculture and bronzeworking mainly).
one warrior finds the egyptians, and on his second turn walking around their border is lucky enoug hto have their worker step up next to him.
cant resist the bait, and take the worker (starting a war).
the warrior tries to escort the worker back to my city, but they never make it back, because my only city is taken by a barbarian archer attacking my warrior defended (non hill) city.
end of game. got so pissed off at the stupid barbarian archer that didnt even remember to load an autosave to have a savefile to submit.

i'm playing it again for fun though, doing much better this time. but tis so much like other people's game that there's not much point in describing it.
one interesting thing is that for the first time ever i have 3 units that have gotten all the way to over 26 exp. a samurai with city raid 3, the 25% vs melle and a couple strength promotions is one strong bugger. lol.

 

[BSmith1068]

This is the first GOTM game that I actually completed, as well as my first full attempt at Monarch. I tried a couple of test games with similar conditions, but probably not as many as I should have. Unfortunately I did not take good notes so this is a rough summary:

I decided to found the first city W SW, or just north of the hills on the river so that I could have a couple of extra hills to the north for production. This still gave me 1 flood plain and I thought it was a fairly good spot.

Built and sent out a couple of warriors to explore and otherwise keep the barbarians at bay. I never really had much issue with barbs this game, which is fortunate considering what others had happen.

Pottery was first to research to start the cottage spamming.

After a worker, I built the first settler. At this point I had BW and decided to put the second city to the west near the copper. I had not seen the other copper by Monty yet, and had eyes for the third city south with all of the resources.

Unfortunately, about the time that I had settled the second city by the copper, Hatty founded his second or third city on the supreme spot to the south that I had coveted.

This could not stand, so I build a bunch of axemen and sent them south to conquer. I won, but in the process caused our permanent relations to be somewhat sour. Since hatty had no other cities even in sight, I was able to get a peace deal shortly after.

Skip forward a few centuries, Monty is pressing in on the Eastern Front. I managed to found 2 more cities to the north (in the NW corner in the forest, and near the cows/marble) and was able to caputre a barb city NE of the capital.

I am lagging behind in technology, and have not been able to found a religion or to even get any wonders. Hatty's religion has spread within my borders, which is good, but I have not converted yet.

Can't remember, but either I declare, or Monty attacks me from the east. I am ready for it, and take 2 of his cities, one in that crux of odd rivers and 2W of the other copper, and one on the desert hill near the coast just north of the spices (?).

Since I shifted all of my resources towards this war, Hatty took the opportunity to attack me from the south, even though our relations had been quite good ever since my early conqest. Luckilly all she was able to do was to pillage some of my improvements and was not able to re-capture her city.

I was able to make peace with both of them and attempted to re-build my strength. I think that around this point I was around 40% research, and not catching up to many of the others. Main goal: get Samurais and then continue the conquest.

Ufortunately Monty kept building up his forces so I had to keep building up mine in the eastern city I had captured from him. This became somewhat of a stalemate for quite some time. I had fewer units, but he was slightly less advanced than me (the only one), so mine were more powerful. Skip forward to the next spoiler and I'll let you know how it finished.


[EDIT] Forgot to mention, I played on Contender [/EDIT]

 

[Memphus]

Contender class

I adopted Memphus' idea of not doing the obvious, and sent the warrior NE. Showed me marble, so I decided to settle 2N - immediate cows, lake & marble. However, in hindsight it proved to be a rather unfortunate decision:
1. nearly no initial commerce
2. Egypt took that great location with 2 dyes and several other resources
3. Egypt finished the Oracle before I was even able to build it.

Oops ...sorry about that

As for my game: Contender Class
I would like to try Challenger...but I am curious if in the future when the pregame discussion comes out if the class definitions could be included, as in this case I had played a practice game with the Contender settings and felt comfortable with that. If I had known ahead of time I could have practiced starting with no techs...

I also moved NE first, saw what was available but then still opted for the plains hill SW, SW, assuming there would be at least one flood plain (hopefully more as there was..but only two not 3 or 4 ) as
DaveMcW pointed out.

at this point I looked at the river and it was flowing SE confirming that we were somewhere in the NW corner.
So I decided to head to the East with my warrior for exploration.

I will do a complete log up to 1 Ad once I get home, but my game is going very well. That being said it has a LOT to do with luck

Sorry Shillen, it seems as you good all the bad and I got all the good (probably cause I was playing on my birthday ), maybe next time the Civ Gods will flip?

From memory I found 5 huts (going east was backwards from initial assumption and there were alot of huts that direction. Then again maybe there was alot of huts to the south?)

The funniest was the one hut right by Kyoto, which was just out of popable range with one border expansion. coincidence? I think not.

In any case I decided to wait for a produced warrior to go and pop it
(keep in mind this would be 15 + 9 turns away, built a worker first) so this was risky, but like I said my other warrior was going off to the east.

Anyways the rest of the spoiler will come later when i have dates and my notes at hand.

 

[Celebithil]

Shillen, please note that the probabilities shown in the game are not accurate, indeed shown probabilities larger than 100% can occur. I haven't investigated this thoroughly but I think the calculations for units with first strike is off and gives units with first strike (such as samurai's) too large a probability to win. If I calculate things correctly your odds of winning that 99,7% battle were only 99,3% (i.e. the chances of losing were twice as big). Still pretty bad luck, bad maybe not as bad as the in game probabilities would make you think.

As another note I would like to urge you to continue playing. Victories obtained after facing adversity taste much sweeter than if everything goes your way.

 

[Sparts]

Contender

Well since I'm normally non-agressive, I decided to play this game aggressively. In order to not do that unprepared I did a few test runs with the same parameters. I learnt that in almost all cases I was able to steal at least one worker (but often) two, since it was relatively easy to predict where other civilizations were located. Generally these workers were back in my territory before bronzeworking so could chop my second worker and settlers.

We planted our first city following the beaten path to the plains hills. A bit disappointed about the lack of forrests, but decided to stick to the plan. Started building a couple of warriors and researching mining and bronze working. Warrior set off to the south. The nearest hut gave me an explorer. There was much rejoicing.

Unfortunatley the bold explorer was killed not three truns later by a particularly nasty bear.

The warrior advanced further south, quickly trailed by another warrior 'automoving'. Finally the horizon revealed the border of Hatseput's territory. As the warrior got closer, again much rejoicing occured as he discovered an undefended worker constructing a road to some obscure place.

At this point, the warrior had the choice of either snatching the worker immediately, or first take a peek in the hut that would othewise be lost to an Egyptian archer heading for it.

We decided to take the gamble, after all we had another warrior as a backup. As a result the military staff of the juvenile Japanese Empire was decimated when an enraged emperor cut off the heads of no less than three advisors. Due to the fact that, much to his dismay, the hut revealed no less than six (!) barbarian warriors. To make matters worse, the auto-moving warrior trailing the first conveniently automoved to border three of them.

Naturally this meant that a third warrior had to be sent south to steal the worker, but by this time, bronze working had been researched and the Japanese Empire was stagnant for several turns, where it should be flourishing.

Fortunately this one act of war marked the future insignificance of Egypt on the world stage and we could divert our military attention to 'good-old' Montezuma.

As the Japanes Empire founded a couple of cities, most notably one to the west near a lucrative gold resource [Tokyon in Culdeus' screenshot above], one to the north as production city, one to the east near the floodplained river [more or less Edo in Culdeus' screenshot above] and one to the south-east (production), we researched mysticism, the worker techs and started on writing alphabet and iron working. Heavily cottaged the non-production cities of course.

After Iron working the first swordmen were built. Three were sent to the barbarian city that was located to our south (where most players actually built their second city, near the ivory) [Osaka in Culdeus' screenshot above].

Statistics told me that each of my three swordsmen would have a 79% chance of winning a siege against those two fortified archers. The emperor decided that a further reduction in (and of) military advisors was in order as two swordsmen were lost. Fortunately the third swordsmen succeeded and got his second city raider promotion.

This was only the first of many, many battles that were lost against such odds, Code of laws being researched by another civilization the traditional one turn before we would, the Oracle being built three turns before we'd have chopped it and generally just bad luck (looking at Shillen's write-up we might have been playing the exact same game). However as Samurai and started to appear, and Bureaucracy was implemented, the inevitable did happen, a boring military campaign against the rest of the world marked my first actual domination victory. I even tried a bit of milking at the end.

 

[solenoozerec]

I agree with ewokimpi and solenoozerec. Perhaps we could post all of the spoilers at once.

I think I was misunderstood. I plan to post my spoiler here, I hope “not gone past 500AD" means that we cannot post information after 500AD, but we are still allowed to post here even if we finished the game.

I am not going to post my spoiler now only because it will take time to write one and I want to finish the game first ,since I have no idea how much RL time it will take. I am not even sure that I will win.

A very unusual (though very nice) event happened early in my game (I did not know that this is even possible in civ4, it wasn't in civ3). I think that this event could be a game-breaking event in hands of a top player and I feel like I have to share my experience with the community as it might have implications to the design of future 4OTMs. Stay tuned

 

[shadow2k]

Shillen, please note that the probabilities shown in the game are not accurate, indeed shown probabilities larger than 100% can occur. I haven't investigated this thoroughly but I think the calculations for units with first strike is off and gives units with first strike (such as samurai's) too large a probability to win. If I calculate things correctly your odds of winning that 99,7% battle were only 99,3% (i.e. the chances of losing were twice as big). Still pretty bad luck, bad maybe not as bad as the in game probabilities would make you think.

Oops. The bug with first strike odds is a known one. But I don't think any of us really thought about it, so it never got mentioned in the pre-game I don't think.

 

[Shillen]

Shillen, please note that the probabilities shown in the game are not accurate, indeed shown probabilities larger than 100% can occur. I haven't investigated this thoroughly but I think the calculations for units with first strike is off and gives units with first strike (such as samurai's) too large a probability to win. If I calculate things correctly your odds of winning that 99,7% battle were only 99,3% (i.e. the chances of losing were twice as big). Still pretty bad luck, bad maybe not as bad as the in game probabilities would make you think.

As another note I would like to urge you to continue playing. Victories obtained after facing adversity taste much sweeter than if everything goes your way.

I had heard about the probabilities shown in game being off. But regardless I knew just from having played so many games of civ4 that my chance of losing such fights were nearly non-existent, let alone losing several such fights. I honestly thought there was some bug in the game because the RNG could not possibly be so bad. I could go back and count, but I'd guess that out of 50 fights where the odds were in my favor I probably lost 2/3 of them.

But I didn't quit the game because my luck was bad or that I was doing poorly. I was still doing quite well despite the bad luck. The reason I quit the game is because I was getting extremely frustrated. Likewise the last SG I played was an AW game that I also got extremely frustrated playing during my last set of turns (mostly due to the inability to retreat workers). So if I'm getting frustrated by the game, I'm not enjoying myself, and the best thing I can do is to stop playing the game until I can enjoy it again. So I'm not just quitting gotm3, I'm quitting civ4 entirely for at least a month so I can get back to the fun instead of the frustration.

 

[Gato Loco]

This month the GOTM was made specifically to get people to fight. We get a warmonger leader on a warmonger map. However, Tokugawa is somewhat hampered by the fact that he isn’t really good at much except warmongering. Aggressive and Organized don’t help you one whit before you go to war. This wouldn’t be a problem if his UU were an axeman with 2 first strikes. However, his UU happens to be a maceman replavement, meaning that you have to actually do research to get it. To top it off, Japan’s starting techs don’t lend themselves well to early expansion, as your workers start out able to do nothing but build roads until you research something for them. In particular, the lack of mining makes early chopping a bit harder. The other big challenge was the lack of resources in the most tempting city spot. Like most other players, I founded on the river plains hill S,SW of the start, missing out on cows, gold, and wheat, but getting two floodplains.

Early Expansion
In response to the challenges mentioned above, there were two possible responses. One that I see other people trying is the oracle slingshot to civil service, research to machinery, and warfare to make up for a slow start. Since I’m not a big oracle fan, I went for rapid settler chop expansion instead. It was a bit painful sacrificing growth in my first city, but I managed to get 5 cities out by 600 BC and cut off both Hatty and Monty’s expansion along a reasonable border. Being organized also helped a bit now that civic research has been increased in the patch.

Barbarians
After betting barbed to death in a couple test games I made sure to keep plenty of warriors and later archers patrolling the fog of war to discourage raiding. I had 14 barbarian encounters before 900 BC, at which point barbs were mostly extinct in my part of the world. The AI didn’t fare as well, and I saw several barbarian cities established in the more distant corners of the map.

Research and religion
Something weird happened in this game. Asoka founded all three early religions. That’s right folks, Monty didn’t found a religion. And so he didn’t become his usual warlike blustery self. Asoka eventually adopted Judaism and spread it to Huyana and Monty, but only later in the game. I eventually adopted Confucianism from Saladin after spending the entire early game without a religion.

My research order in the BCs is written below:
3520 BC - Mining
2760 BC - Bronze Working
2440 BC - Hunting
2080 BC - Archery
1775 BC - Animal Husbandry
1475 BC - Mysticism
1300 BC - Pottery
1000 BC - Sailing
500 BC - Iron Working
320 BC - Writing
220 BC - Meditation
160 BC- Priesthood
250 AD - Alphabet

I also got agriculture at some point, probably before pottery. The initial research path was meant to get BW quickly to chop settlers, then go for hunting to work ivory, archery to fight barbarians, and AH to work the cows. After that I went for generally necessary techs such as mysticism for obelisks, IW to chop jungles, writing for libraries, and code of laws for courthouses. During this time I was a bit behind the AI in research due to early expansion and upkeep costs. Also note that Monty built the pyramids in 80BC. 80BC! Why didn’t I go for it myself? At least it’s near and convenient to take for my own use.

The first war
In 200AD I invaded Monty with an army of axes and swords. The war was fairly short and I ended up taking two cities and razing another. I called a cease fire because I didn’t have catapults to take the capitol.

The Quest for the Holy City
Circling the world with a galley, I noticed a surprising thing. Not only did Asoka have all three early religions, he managed to found them all in one single city:

Of course, Delhi must be mine. The details of that campaign will follow in the second spoiler.

The attached file shows my initial cities as of 240 AD. The cities are:
Kyoto - founded 3960 BC, the capitol, no resources but at least I have two floodplains. I actually built some farms here to let me better work the hill tiles.

Osaka - Founded 2040 BC, a no-brainer. I suspect everyone founded a city here. This city has ivory, corn, dyes, and cows and is also on a river. This was consistently my highest production city.

Tokyo - Founded 1375 BC, This city was founded to grab copper and cut off Monty’s expansion. It’s also a pretty good city in its own right, with hills and floodplains within easy reach.

Edo - Founded 1050 BC, This city was only to cut off Egyptian expansion. It also gets wheat and incense.

Satsuma - Founded 920 BC, The second city cutting off the Aztecs.

Kagoshima - Founded 600 BC, gets copper and rics, along with some floodplains, hills, and grasslands. I probably should have founded on this spot earlier.