GOTM-03: Second Spoiler

[ainwood]

GOTM-03 Second Spoiler

The purpose of this spoiler is to discuss the latter part of your game - how you leveraged the position that you set-up for yourself in the early part into a winning position; or conversely; what went wrong that allowed your empire to be over-run or you to be beaten to victory.

To participate in this spoiler, you must have met all the conditions for the first spoiler, [bu]and[/u] either completed and submitted your game, or have reached approximately the 1800's or later (again, we will have a small amount of leeway on this!)

Please refrain from posting pictures or details that may spoil the end-game for any other players.

 

[Mauer]

Ok, I'll go first I suppose. I didn't post in the first spoiler cause I didn't see the need for two post filled with incoherent hardly remembered facts. I really wish I had written things down since it was my first fully completed game. I know I tried my best to get the upper hand on Monty in the early BC's, and succeeded only to halt my advance too early. I let him live, and in the end he didn't let me live. He conquered me about 1615 AD and not a sole would help in a time of crisis, although I helped two others out in time of need. I must say I am really embarassed about my loss with only 290 points to show for it.

In summary, Barbarians got the best of me for A LONG TIME. My technological advances were few and far behind, and the biggest one for me was that I ran out of money about 1300 AD and could never catch up. I would have about 3 units disbanded every turn just about from that point on. This isn't too differrent than Civ3 so I thought I would be good......thought being the key word. I only had 10 cities too.

Next time I'll try to write everything down so you guys can help fix me
EDIT: Forgot to mention I was on Adventurer.....now I'm really embarassed

 

[Nakhimov]

Picking up from my first spoiler:

Had the war begund one or two hundred years earlier, I would have been in much bigger trouble. However, in the early 400s, both me and Saladin had converted to Hattie's founded religion of Buddhism. Being Friendly with both of those two meant that I did not have to worry about being dogpiled from the south. I repelled Monty's initial assault without much trouble, and took a city by the hills north of Kyoto in 550 with an axeman expeditionary force. Following this, though, the war degenerated into a pillaging bloodbath held on my side of the frontier. I lost all my three workers to an unseen chariot, and while my shock-promoted axemen did not have much trouble killing jaguars, Monty had double my cities, and came close to overwhelming me in the 600s. Especially troublesome was the pillaging of my cows and wheat, which lead to crippling health problems for a few hundred years in Kyoto and Tokyo. Tokyo was nearly lost on several occasions, but I managed to hold out, and my quality began to tell, especially as I began to get double- and triple-promoted axemen. I did not have catapults, and could not threaten his other cities, but I did camp out in the forest next to the closest one to me and absorb his oncoming forces while gradually swelling my ranks, as between my cities, I was building axemen at about 1 per 2-3 turns. I finally got machinery around the late 700s, and managed to trade it around to come within a few techs of general parity. I had access to samurai now, but wanted to prepare before I used them. I had adopted Vassalage in 750, and in 800, the First Aztec War ended.

It was only meant as a respite, though. I needed Monty's core cities if I was to have a hope of winning. I spent the next 320 years building up a large force of shock/cover promoted samurai, along with two accuracy promoted cats to go with them. In 1055 I went to theocracy. A shock/cover samurai two xps from starting up city raider is a very powerful unit, as I soon discovered. The Second Aztec War began in 1120. Monty had no chance. My samurai moved through his lands sowing death and destruction, capturing a city every 20-25 years as regular as clockwork. The few losses I sustained were soon replaced by the constant production that continued in my homeland, and soon by the former Aztec cities as they came out of revolt. By the Peace of 1275, it was all over. I had taken every single one of his core cities, only prevented from taking his last city by the fact that it was on a peninsula a good distance away, and I didn't feel like taking the 7-8 turns it would have taken to get there just to wipe him out. By this time, I had figured that the other countries would be upgrading to muskets and soon rifles, and my age of samurai domination would be over.

However, an exploratory probe sent into Inca territory revealed a wonderful surprise. Not only were they still using longbowmen, but they had no copper, and their one iron resource was right next to what would be the first city to fall in the event of war. As if this were not enough, the Incas had been the tech leaders for most of the game, and taking them down would greatly increase my chances for success. As my workers feverishly improved the newly taken Aztec lands, the Inca war began in 1320. I figured it could not be long until they had riflemen, and wanted to make the most of the time I had. Their iron/FP city fell in 1340, followed by five more in the next 150 years. The war finally ended after I spent 4 samurai smashing through their first rifleman to take Cuzco. This was critical to my later success, as it contained the pyramids. Following the peace, they were left with only four or five cities, and were never a major factor in the late game.

This was for the most part the end of my warmongering days. I was too far behind in tech to have a chance for domination, so I began to feverishly build cottages, libraries, universities, and markets in my newly conquered territories, while using the pyramids to switch to representation well ahead of its time. Soon I was researching along at 80%, and coming along nicely. Late in the 1500s, I decided to use some leftover samurai and cats to remove an old enemy. The Third Aztec War lasted only a few turns while I marched through his territory, and then Monty was no more.

Now, with domination, cultural, and conquest out of the picture, I had to choose between diplomatic and space race. I decided to pin my hopes on diplomatic. Hattie was certainly going to be my rival. Saladin and Victoria were my good friends, and both were fairly powerful. I was by no means sure that I could do it, but I figured that if it proved unattainable, I could try for space race. I started heading straight for Mass Media and began to pray

During the 1600s, several events gave a huge boost to my plans. Not only did I get two great merchants for a net 3500 gold from trade missions, but I beat the world to some important tech (I can't remember what it was). From Hattie, I managed to get two cheap techs and her entire treasury of a whopping ~5000 gold for it, while I picked up several more techs from Saladin and Victoria. This left me with a treasury of over 9000 gold, allowing me to kick science to 90%. The second key event was Victoria going to war with Asoka. While Victoria's vote was a possibility, Asoka's was definately out, so I grinned with delight as Victoria slowly ate away Asoka's core over the next hundred years.

Finally, I reached Mass Media around 1750, and rush-built the UN soon after in 1766. A few years earlier, I got a big confidence booster when Hattie went to free religion. This left me and Saladin as the only Buddhists, and guaranteed me his vote. In addition, it allowed me to drop my defensive pact with him, which had been ticking Victoria off. Victoria had gone from Confucianism to Free Religion since the 1500s, so my Buddhism was not a problem. I had no trouble being elected Secretary-General, and the first vote followed in a few turns. The results were as follows:

For Tokugawa: Tokugawa, Saladin
For Hattie: Hattie, Asoka
Abstains: Victoria, Huayna

Curses! If I had Victoria, I would win, but I wasn't sure how. A few turns later, I suddenly realized how. During the destruction of the Aztecs, Asoka had founded a city among the ruins, and it had been a thorn in my side for a long time. I had thought about taking it out earlier, but it contained a few infantry and a cav, while I did not even have riflemen.

Now, however, the time had come. I moved my old forces into position, called up Victoria, and declared mutual war on Asoka. The next turn, I pillaged a few squares. That turn, the next vote came up, so I voted for myself, ended turn, and prayed. Sure enough, on the next turn, I got the longed-for message:

You Have Won A Diplomatic Victory!!!!

Vicky came through in the pinch, and I squeaked over the threshold by about 15 votes. I won in 1790 with a game score of 26,327, and a base score of 3,062. It was a great finish to a game I had expected to lose for much of the time I was playing, and easily my best score ever. Sadly, I started and finished it on the first, so now I have to wait all month for the next, but oh well. Thanks to all the GOTM staff who make this a great experience!

 

[ionimplant]

contender, domination

this's my third finished civ4 game (except for the handful test game which are always abandoned in ~30 minutes). the nobel-prince-monarch gotm4 are pretty nice a learning experience. it seems we'll take on emporor next time.

as many players outlined in the pregame, by getting bronzeworking and then the upper arm of tech tree, i was able to trade with AI with all the skipped techs fairly early on. and it's really surprising how AI shied away from alphebat. they didn't research it until very very late. i really regretted trading away alphebat in my two previous games so early...

the conquering of the world began as i invaded Egypt. then i switched gear and started a clockwise battle route. first with Samuri and then with knights and finally with cavalries. i never had an overwhelming army and had to sue for peace many times to avoid war weariness...
finally dominated the world at 1676AD. there is really nothing special about my game.
one thing i didn't well at all is to maintain some strategic relationship with AIs. Aztec is the only AI that was willing to ally with me once in the early game. after that, i fought all the war alone because no one wanted to ally with me. i need to choose my religion more wisely... (i was the only one believing Confucian since it was disocovered by me).

 

[beestar]

However, an exploratory probe sent into Inca territory revealed a wonderful surprise. Not only were they still using longbowmen, but they had no copper, and their one iron resource was right next to what would be the first city to fall in the event of war. As if this were not enough, the Incas had been the tech leaders for most of the game, and taking them down would greatly increase my chances for success. As my workers feverishly improved the newly taken Aztec lands, the Inca war began in 1320. I figured it could not be long until they had riflemen, and wanted to make the most of the time I had. Their iron/FP city fell in 1340, followed by five more in the next 150 years. The war finally ended after I spent 4 samurai smashing through their first rifleman to take Cuzco. This was critical to my later success, as it contained the pyramids. Following the peace, they were left with only four or five cities, and were never a major factor in the late game.

I had an identical experience to Nakhimov. Monty was killed quickly, except for that one city on the peninsula to the east that was protected from my troops by the intervening Incas (in my game it was Xochocicla [sic - something which sounded like "Chocolate").

I too decided not to develop galleys to wipe out the last Aztec city, even though I think it would have the advantage of reducing "We long to rejoin the Motherland" unhappiness in the former Aztec cities. Instead, I declared peace to reduce war weariness and declared on the Incas immediately. I too conquered Cuzco for the Pyramids, although I think it must have been a bit earlier because musketmen were just being developed by Saladin at the time. Eventually came back to finish off Monty.

Nakhimov, what were the chances of destroying Asoka in your game? In mine he was a tech leader but way at the bottom of the score and power rankings, so it was relatively easy to go on to attack the Indians. Was Asoka a military wimp in most games?

 

[AU_Armageddon]

Domination; Challenger; 1350ad and ~135k

My game was very straightforward so the result surprised me. Couldn't wrap my head around playing with what felt like an edge so was Challenger for me. Too many years of competitive gaming. I moved to the river square for my capital and from that move on everything felt like I was stuffing up. Bad huts even.

I had researched Mining first and thought screw it, offense all the way and I just went straight for iron working with resignation to pour out swordsman and do or die. Seriously, I didnt build any wonders all game except only one - the library. I did deliberatly cash in on every wonder though, building them for a while here and there when I could afford some turns, as investment cash for the all-game war. Paid off better than I expected as despite a ridiculously big army, I never had to drop my research below 70% at the tightest few times, maintaining it at 90 or 100 for most of the game.

Built my second city in that deceptively good looking but crappy spot northwest next to the copper. Didn't matter as if I recall got iron in capital anyway. Basically, chopped and concenrtated on nothing but swordsmen, and sent them scattered down through egypt. I took and kept every town to the capital. Then turned back and sent everything at Monty and kept pushing clockwise wiping out Monty, the Incans, and India down to England. Looked pretty good on the percentile so I thought domination will do as I just researched Cavalry now closing in on 58% or something - this was about 1200ad. I put every single town on making cavlary, had hordes of cash from pillaging which I used to upgrade my knights to cavalry, and set every town to grow as fast as possible.

Took me longer than it should have and I only took about 3 english towns and 4 arabian towns but domination buzzer sounded 1350 ad. Shoulda been 1250 if I wasnt so all over the place. Score weighed in at just over 135000 which surprised me a lot. I am guessing this means there will be 100 scores of 140k to 350k this time or soemthing.

Luck is funny thing too. GotM 2 I got a seriously crapola score, like 28k or something for a conquest that was as fast as I could manage. It shoulda been much faster but I kid you not, I lost 90%+ of all fights where the odds were in my favour. This gotm, I expected the worst, expected to outfight lose to the comp really, and attacked without considering implications and dumb luck seemed that I was actually winning maybe 75% of the fights where the odds were in my favour. Maybe as many as 10 to maybe even 20% where the odds weren't. Has to be a civ4 record.

I'm just hanging for the next gotm. War is a bad way to go. Means your gotm finishes that much sooner. Shoulda gone for space race to get double the fun hours out of it. Just so hard to go for something you know guarantees a low spot in the competition. THis Gotm took me seriously like 2 maybe 3 hours tops. It says more but I have a wfie and kid who demand me away from the comp a lot and I leave it running. I want an all month game like some have listed that takes 50 hours so I can sneak 2 a night or some such and really get into it.

Sorry for crappy writeup, if I don't finish before spoiler thread one gotm I will make a proper one. Memory too crap for this. Looking forward to reading all yours though.

 

[ohioastronomy]

My game was pretty successful - 1505 Domination, 122K score. I'd like to focus on the sort of things that make a difference for getting a really high score; I expect to not be anywhere close to the top of the pile.

As mentioned in the other thread, I opened with building 2 warriors while waiting for mining and BW. My three warriors did a sweep and played sentry on hills. The initial setup is interesting - my complements to the GoTM staff for a clever configuration. I beelined SW SW and planted my capital there; no resources, but some floodplains and hills, so it was a solid if unspectacular city. There were 2 very good sites nearby; city 2 (gold mine W) founded 2280 BC. City 3 (port SE) founded 1750, razed by barbs, refounded 820 BC. City 4 (excellent site S of capital - ivory, food, hills; my big production city) 1350 BC. Cities 5 and 6 (north and in the corner) founded 480BC, 160BC.
I got Stonehenge in 1350 BC and Saladin (barely) beat me to the Oracle in 900 BC. No other wonders to speak of, nor any needed if you have hordes of Samurais and Knights...

To get a feeling for the timing of wars, they looked like this:

War 1 - 40 AD with Egypt, right after I got Code of Laws. Axe/melee, spear/heal, sword/city raider approach. Ended 430 AD, because I got careless and split my stack of doom, losing some swords to axes; this was followed by a series of snakeyes rolls on attacking the second capital, losing most of my vets. I extorted Monarchy from Egypt and got 5 excellent cities out of this. I got religion from Egypt (Christian), which Saladin also had, and I was on good terms on my southern flank for the rest of the game. I then swung my forces to the other front and pushed in that direction for the rest of the game.

War 2 570 AD Aztecs - Monty was troublesome; he had horses and copper. I knew he had them going in, so my spears took care of most of his horses, but I had trouble with garrisons on captured cities being lost to raiders. I extorted cash and Horseback Riding from him after taking his capital in 920 AD. Catapults and Elephants developed during the course of this war.

War 3 1015 AD Aztecs again - with Samurais this time; flattened Monty by 1060 AD.

War 4 1095 AD Inca - At this point I had a veteran cadre of city raider III Samurais, and I was running downhill from here. Some knights as well. I took the Incas down to one sad city and extorted Divine Right from them in 1230 AD.

War 5 1265 AD India - I rolled India, driving him down to 1 small city (notice a pattern?) and extorting tech/cash in 1355 AD; I wiped the Incas as well in this period. Unfortunately, England dropped a culture bomb in an isolated backfield city between India and Inca, which left me just shy of a much earlier win. And England had an actual army (knights, maces, etc.) Fortunately, I had nothing better to do than churn out gobs of units; I gave up tech after Cavalry/Rifles and pushed my culture slider up to fill empty spaces.

War 6 1400 AD England - I massed my forces, with pikemen everywhere and mobile cavalry to deal with raiders. Some samurais upgraded to rifles. England was eliminated in 1500, and I went over the domination limit in 1505.

No info on advanced resources, as I never saw them, and very little in the way of boats either.

 

[Nakhimov]

Nakhimov, what were the chances of destroying Asoka in your game? In mine he was a tech leader but way at the bottom of the score and power rankings, so it was relatively easy to go on to attack the Indians. Was Asoka a military wimp in most games?

He was one of the tech leaders, but was still 3 or 4 on the score list. He evidently wasn't that strong, though, judging from the way Victoria rolled him up. The key was that he had riflemen and I didn't. If I had gone for rifles and military tradition, I probably could have taken him fairly easily, but I was beelining for Mass Media via mostly peaceful techs. The most powerful units I ever ended up fielding were a few cavs just before the win.

 

[Zeepsel]

After setting up my military factory as described in spoiler 1, I had enough axes to strike Hatsepsut, she was biggest in score, but I didn't think her military would be ready for Axes... I was a few turns away from samurai, so I figured I could take 1 or 2 cities, upgrade some axes to samurai and send more reinforcements later.

I didn't need the reinforcements... as about 10 axes(which were later partly upgraded) with city raider 2 could easily take out her archers.

Once I thought I had all her cities, she was still alive... ok, so she has a city somewhere else, made peace and started a nice little war on 2 fronts. On 1 receiving end there was Monty... Who didn't like the samurai that much... On the other end was Saladin, who gave a little more trouble with his longbows and high culture.

I dedicated 1 city to build nothing but Cats to help fight longbows and once I had the army running I didn't look back...

Made a few mistakes later on, cos I hadn't promoted samurai too anti-horses and I didn't bother building elephants...... so that delayed victory by abou 10 turns or something like that... my research halted because of civic upkeep... I traded for Guilds and started to build Knights and anti-horse samurai.
I also didn't milk the game, so I feel my score can be beaten easily and the date can be beaten as well...

Ended up winning by domination in 1300 AD, with a score of about 131K...

 

[shadow2k]

Challenger Class -

Well, I will say that starting with zero techs really sucks. Really changed my plans, as I doubted I'd be able to accomplish all that I needed, and get Oracle + Stonehenge in the same city now for a Civil Service slingshot that I'd toyed with. To top it off...

I moved the settler two SW to the forested hill, and wasn't happy. But, with no real better options in sight, I stayed there. Not any bonus resources, not many trees. Yeah, not happy at all, but oh well.

There was only one real great city site that I liked, to the south, which is where my 2nd city went, 3rd went to the copper. I didn't have any issues with barbs, having sent warriors to all city sites well before the settlers were built for them. That means that hardly any barbs spawned. I did see one barb axe in the N while my best units were still warriors, but I led him over to Monty with a spare warrior.


Research Path:
Agriculture
Mining
Bronze Working (nearby bronze allowed me to ignore archery)
Animal Husbandry
Writing
Wheel (Put this off too long, and almost got burned by it. Bronze doesn't help when you can't hook it up.)
Mysticism (Chopped Stonehenge)
Meditation
Priesthood (Oracle completed the turn before I even learned this)
Hunting
Alphabet

Now I normally never trade Alpha, but surprisingly, it was the only tech I had to trade. So I did.

Alpha + Meditation to Inca for Fishing + Archery + Mathematics
Alpha to Asoka for Poly + Pottery + Masonry (Yeah, no cottages yet)
Next turn, Alpha + Pottery to Saladin for Iron Working + Sailing

310AD learned Construction first. Traded it around and I got Code of Laws, Calendar, Monotheism, and a bunch of gold for it. I could have improved my tech pace by spamming cottages early, but I wanted to kill things, not research techs.

I stopped keeping track of techs at this point. In the end, Cavs/Rifles/Grenadiers were my most advanced units available. I did learn Biology, but only on the winning turn, so it made no difference...not like I was going to milk anyway, too boring for me.


Cities:
3960BC - Kyoto
1925BC - Osaka
1100BC - Tokyo
720BC - Edo
280BC - Satsuma
120AD - Kagoshima

All other cities were captured. I auto-razed two cities though.


Civics:
Once I got the option to use these, I never changed from them...

Hereditary Rule + Org Religion + Caste System + Vassalage + Free Market

OrgRel seems odd at first glance for a warring civ, but it helped me get newly captured cities up to speed, and I felt it was more valuable than turning 6xp into 8xp with Theocracy. Quick Courthouses would be more important to me. I'm usually a big fan of Bureacracy, but the capital sucked, and I didn't feel like moving the palace.


Religion:
I adopted Buddhism after Monty/Hatty/Sal/Vicky did. I kept it the whole time, even though Sal and Vicky eventually converted to other religions. I didn't found any religions, but I captured 3 shrines.


Wonders:
I built Stonehenge in 1525BC, but the Oracle was built by Hatty in 925BC before I even had the tech for it. I was hoping to get both of those...Oracle for CoL, and Prophet for Civil Service, but that just wasn't going to happen. I pretty much ignored most wonders after this. The only others I built were the Taj Mahal, Hanging Gardens, and Versailles.


Great People:
Well...I didn't take any notes on GP's. I turned Thebes into a GP factory. I know I used five GP's for two GA's, two Scientists for Academies, one Merchant for a trade mission. The other handful of GP's researched techs for me.


Wars:
580AD - 840AD I declared on Hatty first. I wasn't worried about Monty declaring on me, he and I were pretty decent friends at this point, and I was sure he'd go for the Incas first. Hatty had the Buddhist Holy City though, which is what I wanted, as she was spamming missionaries. I captured five cities, auto-razed one, then sued for peace, getting Drama + all her gold. I captured Parthenon and the Buddhist Holy City (with Shrine worth 22gpt).

1105AD - 1150AD Declared on Hatty again. Captured last two cities. She'd founded Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. She'd even made a Christian Shrine for me. I also captured the Great Library in her last city, Memphis, which also had almost 10 workers in it as a bonus. Hatty pretty much built my civ for me.

1185AD - 1220AD Monty had started a war with the Inca like I'd predicted, and the Inca asked me for help. I wasn't exactly ready yet, but I wanted one good friend, and this was my chance. Unfortunately, most of my army was in the S, and intended to stay there for a visit to Sal. I did capture two cities from Monty with some crafty moves, and declared war on Saladin during this time as well. Monty had way more troops than I did in the N, so I sued for peace and took what little gold he had.

1195AD - 1325AD As I said, I declared on Saladin while warring Monty. I captured five Arab cities, including his capital. I took Music + Gold for peace because Victoria declared on me.

1325AD - 1425AD Victoria sent a total of one Knight at me. Scary stuff. I couldn't get to her at all (because I'd made peace with Sal), unless I shipped an army by boat. So I just let her rot for a bit, and finally got peace by starving her coastal cities with a couple galleys. She gave me her gold to go away. I was busy up N anyway.

1370AD - 1445AD Declared on Monty again. I'd started a GA by building Taj Mahal just before this, and extended it to 20 turns with GP's. Captured seven cities, left him with that peninsula city that I didn't want to bother with at the time. All his gold for peace.

1445AD - 1500AD Declared on Sal again. Captured his last three cities, Sal is dead.

1500AD - 1580AD Declared on Monty and Victoria to kick this off the same turn I killed off Sal. Finished off Monty in one turn. Declared on Asoka a few turns later when my troops crossed Incan lands and reached his borders. I also started a third and final GA in 1505AD. I captured all but two of Asoka's cities, and left Victoria with three. Got everything they had for peace. All I needed was a couple of cities to come out of resistance now, and expand borders once or twice.


Final Comments:
The Incas were the only civ I never warred with. I usually try to make one good friend in every game, and he was the lucky one here. Somewhere around +15 or so.

I really wasn't impressed with the starting land, especially for the capital. I did enjoy the map overall, I'd not played a full Inland Seas map game before.

My tech pace was rather slow, as I only had two commerce cities out of my first six, both on the West side where nobody could pillage over borders. I could have easily improved tech rate by spamming cottages, I just find that strategy to be too simplistic. I was still able to gain a sizable tech lead through good trading, cash from capturing cities, and a few key GP. I think I only had 4 commerce cities, one GP city, and the rest just cranked out units.

The only navy I built was a few galleys to keep a lookout, leaving almost every city but border cities guarded by a single troop, a warrior in many cases. This allowed me to build a large army and attack in the N and S, instead of just one way.

The two obvious things I could have done to improve the results would have been cottage spam and milking. I don't like either though.

The End:
Domination in 1600AD
5017/108,378

Some pictures as well...

The six cities I built.


Messing with Monty.


End of Sal, and declaring on Vicky. I was going to wait a turn to consolidate troops, but the borders of her city would expand the next turn. By declaring on this turn, I was able to move the cats next to the city without trudging across expanded borders.


End of the Wars, 4 turns before win. I was at around 60% here, just needed two cities to come out of resistance and get a couple borders expanded.


Some final numbers.

 

[Russe]

contender, domination 1560AD, 133732 score.

I really didn't expect to get that much score because in test games I was barely able to catch up with the AIs. The smart thing that I did was giving up building pyramid. This decision saved me a lot of shields to build my army. The only wonders I've built were oracle and GL ( I wanted stonehedge too, but was beaten to it by Hatty ). I was focused on army from early on and decided to take o Monty first because I just hate him SO much.

330AD - 850AD Aztec war. Wasn't the hard one, allthough Monty had managed to recapture Tenochtitlan once.

1005AD - 1180AD Incan war. I've got Samurai just after Monty's defeat so Incas were slaughtered fast and with almost no losses. And this could be even faster because I had to bring some cats to take the capitol.

1270AD - 1390AD Egyptian war. I've decided to turn back and conquer Hatty and Saladin because my empire became big and it was taking more than 10 turns before newly built units arrived in the battlefield, which was unacceptible to me.

1435AD - 1515AD Arabian war. Saladin was weak so no problem here.

1525AD - 1560AD I was very close to the domination limit by then and wanted to capture some big fat tasty looking English cities to add population and score. A serious mistake. As I conquered two border cities an English stack of doom containing ~15 grenadiers, some musketeer and few cavalries and knights appeared out of the darkness. The majority of my cavalries was wiped out next turn ( they were damaged, most <10 strength ) and Hastings was lost. I've recaptured it 2 times before I set the culture slider to 100% and finished the game.

I think could add another 5-10K to the score if I micromanaged workers and cities. But it is very boring so I just automated workers and set cities to emphasise growth. And I should have beelined for biology right after military tradition to allow cities to grow even bigger. I expect to see some >170K scores here.

 

[BSmith1068]

So at this point I have an uneasy stalemate with Monty to the East, and fairly good relations with Hatty to the south. I have converted to christianity (Hatty's religion, which she so happily spread in my territory with missionaries). The +4 for same religion far outweighs the -3 for you attacked me.

Monty and I keep building up our forces. The border of the city that I attaced is right next to the city becuase Mony has a large culture monster nearby, so he is able to have his stack right next to my city.

By the time I was able to get Samurais, most everyone else had knights or other powerful units, so my hopes of conquest were a little dashed.

Monty's stack had at least 20 knights and who knows how many other units in the mega stack of doom outside my city. (is there any way to find out how many total units are in a tile, or is all you have to go with the "..." at the bottom of the 20 or so units it will display?)

I have maybe 10 elephants, 8 or so Samurai, 5 cats, and have started to build musket men and grenadiers, and finally riflemen.

At 1700 AD I decide that it is now or never. Either I take out Monty's stack (and hopefully break his back), or I will lose pittifully.

I attack.

By now he had 3 or 4 riflemen in his stack as well. After attacking with my cats in an attempt to get as much collateral damage as possible, I go in with my grenadiers and elepants. Not going to happen. He has too many units. So I decide to stay in my city and let him attack me (heck - let me get all the culture and defensive bonuses - hopefully he will not prevail!)

Wrong. He must have had 80+ units in that stack. It took at least 10 minutes just for him to attack my city with units in that stack. He had at least 20 cats, more than 20 knights, riflemen, elephants, you name it.

Suffice to say, I lost. He was able to capture/destroy 4 of my cities and almost all of my improvements over the next 100 years or so. I just kept producing riflemen to attempt to stem the tide. When I only had 4 cities left (and by now knew I was going to lose), his drive finally petered out.

At this point I wanted to get it over with, and would rather that Hatty or some other civ would get my cities instead of Monty, that I declared suicide war on everyone else.

It was not much longer than that that I was eliminated. Final score around 820. Year was early 1800s.

So now I have a noob question on submission files. I may have screwed up here and prevented myself from submitting my game:

See, I didn't save the game in my last turn (dumb mistake - didn't even think about how to submit the game). Since I lost by conquest, there was no option to play one more turn and save. I might have my replay file that I could submit, but here is the other idiot thing I did - I started a new game the next day, so I probably don't even have the autosave files from this game. Is there any way to submit this game? If not, I guess I'll just have to wait until next month...

 

[Dalex64]

lessee...

was beset by barbarians early and often.

they kept me down, and I couldn't produce enough to defend 3 cities, so I fell back.

Just as I had regained sufficient strength to hold off the barbarians and start turning back towards production, the guy in yellow decided he wanted my little kingdom and stomped me.

Game over, about 250AD.

p.s. playing single player I can only beat noble about 20% of the time.

 

[Sparts]

Contender class (that's the middle one right?), Domination victory 1640, 125k

Nothing special about this win.

Declared war on Montezuma in 430 AD with swordsmen or Samurai, I can't remember, the Aztec Empire was sacked by 640 AD.
In 770 AD, this time with catapults, Huyana Capac was next on the list, the Incans were gone by 1040.
Meanwhile Hatseput got axed in 1130 AD, after war started in 800 AD.

Good old Asoka, with his nine thousand shrines, followed suit. In a war that lasted from 1055AD to 1310 the Indian empire ceased to exist

Next on the list was tech and point leader Saladin, in 1060 AD war was declared and the little bugger held out to 1355 AD

The only one left was Victoria. By 1380 she knew what was coming but could do nothing about it. My first batch of Axemen were by that time Grenadiers with 3 city raider promotions, the anti-archery promotion and the anti-gunpowder promotion, so even the handful of musketeers that she had invented couldn't turn the tide. In 1455 AD my two big army (clockwise and anti-clockwise) groups merged in London after capturing it. Victoria was down to one last city in 1455 and I decided to give that whole milking concept a try.

Now as I understood correctly the key to milking is to not produce any culture in the bulk of your cities, and research Biology asap. So I didn't and did. However, to my horror I saw that even state religion produces culture, so I quickly converted to Free Religion as you then do not have a state religion. The cost was 3 or 4 turns of anarchy, but it was worth it I guess. Unfortunately with Free Religion, instead of only your state religion producing culture, ALL religions produce culture. So I changed back to Paganism (3 turns of anarchy) and then switched to Judaism (3 turns of anarchy) as I only had one city with that religion.

By that time I was basically fed up with the game, but decided to ride it out. I researched biology and waited for my population to boom. However another factor I was not taking into account was culture provided by specialists. As cities harvested all their fields (or rather all fields with food on them) the remaining citizens became specialists. Long before my optimal points I hit the 64% land area threshold and consequently a domination victory. Not that I would have had a particularly high score otherwise, but I am still wondering what my highest score would have been.

Lessons learned:
1) Inland sea + monarch dificulty = relatively easy domination victory
2) Milking is something I can probably learn how to do well, but won't want to. If anything fancy I'll go for earliest domination win in the future.
3) When suing for peace civilizations are unwilling to give you more than their lowest technology, when you previously razed 6 or so of their cities.

 

[rguymon]

Contender class

This was my first Monarch game and my first GOTM submission. I lost to the Inca on space race in 1915. I think I had a fairly sound strategy I just made some major timing errors and did not pursue some wonders that could have helped.

My basic strategy was to establish 3 or 4 citys then hit Monty and take his territory and advance to the east. I hoped to gain enough territory and land to jump ahead in economy.

I attacked Monty before I had a large enough army to complete the objective. I was only able to take out 2 of his cities and had to sue for piece. I started shoring up my boarders and started to focus on the economy again. I established 2 or 3 cities in land that I had blocked out up in the upper west. I was a bit behind in tech and was tying to figure out how to improve.

The Icans asked my help to take Monty out a bit later. Although, I did not have strong military, I accepted, because I need more land sooner or later. Monty hit me hard the next turn and took over three of my cities. I went to full war mode and took them back and took out about 4 of cities to include his capital. Monty was gone. During the war I fell further behind in tech. I had to turn off science to upgrade my units to survive.

With Monty gone I evaluated my changes to go after the inca or Hatty I felt I was too weak. I was behind in tech and with new citys I had a lot of unhappy people. I just stayed in build mode the rest of the game. I did not have the land to get a good enough economy to win.

I think If I had tried for the orical and

or the GL I might have done better. I also need to make a bigger army before I head to war.

 

[sooooo]

Adventurer class, died in 270AD to Montezuma.

I went for mysticism and polytheism and founded Hinduism in 3000 BC. Found Osaka south near the ivory and dyes in 1975 BC. Research towards animal husbandry, then archery, mining and bronze working. Found Tokyo east of Kyoto in 900 BC, in hopes of hooking the copper up. Monty then converts to Hinduism, my religion. I found my fourth city, Edo, on the coast east of Osaka in 180BC, then Montezuma declares war on me in 60 BC. This is from being pleased and sharing a religion, and also before I can utilise my newly connected copper to build axemen. My copper gets pillaged and my archers get run over by infinite chariots and axemen. Final score of 229.

What did I do wrong? Maybe I should have not gone for hinduism and instead gone for bronze working to see where the copper was, and founded my 2nd city near it instead of my 3rd. But then I didn't know I was next door to a psycopath like Monty! If I'd have gone to the long game, my Hinduism would have been excellent because Hatty converted to it by the end too. Any tips would be appreciated.

 

[warren peace]

I played contender class.

Basically I did the standard opening, moving my settler to the plains/forest for my first city. I founded five cities by 40BC and developed infrastructure and explored until 120AD when I attacked the Egyptians. They had the highest score at the time. I took five cities by 640AD and then declared peace.

At this point I decided not to go for a conquest victory as I did not have horses. Instead I thought I would go for a space race victory. My only problem was a series of wars with Montezuma, but as I had a tech lead I was able to fend him off without too many problems. My biggest competition was with Saladin, but I was able to launch my spaceship in 1902 for a final score of around 18,000.


Not a great game by some standards, but for me a Monarch level win is pretty satisfying.

 

[beestar]

Contender, Domination - my first Monarch game!

As noted in Spoiler 1, I played conservatively with a giant net of warriors to keep back the fog of war [first attached picture below]. I also learned the Alt-S shortcut for placing labels on the map, which made it much easier to plan where to put cities, and what improvements still needed to be made.

Strategically, I was friends with by fellow Buddhists Hatty and Saladin throughout the entire game. I swept the Jewish infidels going clockwise from Aztecs, Incas, India, and England. It was all really easy because I didn't have to worry about Egypt and the Arabs.

One big question I have is about bringing allies into war. Even though I was constantly at war, I never brought Hatty or Saladin in with me. For one, I figured it would take too long for their armies to get to the front, even if they decided to send any. Second, I didn't want my allies capturing any territory that I wanted for myself. Finally, I didn't want them to develop too large a military in case they decided to turn on me.

Was this a good idea? Maybe I could have slowed down Hatty and Saladin's economic growth if they were busy fighting some wars with me - as it was, they were a solid #2 and #3 for the whole game.

In the end Saladin switched to Free Religion, and since I had nothing better to do, I used this excuse to bribe Hatty into attacking him, just to keep those two busy. I have no idea if this was a good idea, or even if it actually did anything.

Final result, domination by 1600 with ~80,000 points [second attached picture below]. That Egyptian blob in the southeast is the result of them conquering a barbarian city and then capturing one or two cities from the Arabs in that last, pointless war. I haven't yet learned how to expand fast enough to dominate the world by 1300 - how do people get Code of Laws so early?!

 

[Adonias]

first spoiler

So, did the "worker wars" (-hendrikszoon) pay off?

Yup, but I screwed up.

Al AI's were crippled as it seemed, just by crippling three of them by stealing a worker each. They were backward, I could finish the orracle in 560BC, and they never got the chance to go to war with me. On the downside, I have never, ever even seen a cautious face throughout the game (well... the first encounter was coutious). Mainly due to me being Confu, and because monty asked me to stop trading with the civs that I didn't steal a worker from, so there was a -1 from them too (I did what monty said to get him to like me enough so I could start the war, and not him).

As for barbs, I've never seen them throughout the game (well, in the later game I had some open because of razed cities where the occasional longbow would spawn, but nothing serious) The trick really is to just bust that FoW. Find those hills, and bust the FoW to the boundaries of the map or the boundaries of you're neighbours, and you're fine. Really, nothting to it.

So, as for the game after spoiler one.

From 300BC on I started massing samurai. I built 3 stacks, each with one medic+march, one or two potential "captured city defenders" (City garisson I+II longbows), and for the rest cover and city raider I promoted samurai. Also from 630AD on, the stacks got upgraded with two or three colateral I and accuracy promoted cats. Oh, and of course two workers per stack to chop courthouse and longbows in captured cities.

First off, I had to have Jute, a barb city on the best spot on the map (plains hill smack in the middle of the ivory and all the other goodies). I captured it in 540AD.

Then finally in 780AD, it was real war time. I declaired on both hatti and monty in the same turn, both having nothing but archers. I destroyed Giza that turn.

In 900 AD Thebes fell, and I took a breather to replenish the stacks and build defenders. The same held after capturing Teotihuacan.

In 970AD I had guilds, and horsies from the aztects, so mass production of saumarai switched to knights.

In 1010AD it was war time again for hatti and in 1180AD she was down to 0.
In 1055AD it was war time for monty at which time he had longbows, but he was gone in 1125AD. She never saw a longbow of her own.

In the turn I killed hatti, I declared on HC capturing 2 cities in 5 turns. (Corihuayrachina in 1200AD). One turn later I discoverd chemistry, and slowly started upgrading my cover+shock+combat II, cityraider III samu's to grenadiers.

By that time my economy was a mess, and with science on 0% I only did 60 to 70 gpt.

1265 AD: War with saladin. Up against war elephants and longbows and I was a bit weakened from war with hatti. He recaptured one of his cities, costing me an aditional couple of units to get it back. I sued for peace and techs, and the next turn he had a golden age...

Around this time things started going baddish. Not as bad as it could be, but I got slow, war weariness was a big issue, my economy was a mess (no discoveries for centuries at the time). I lost a lot of time waiting for the 10 turns of peace to get over and getting enough city garisson over to the new cities so the city raider grenadiers could join the front again instead of polishing there granades...

It was only in 1510 AD that HC and Saladin were finaly destroyed (just seeing their first muskets).

Meanwhile back in 1385 I declared on Asoka, while waiting to be able to go to war with HC again. I never destroyed Asoka, but did get his holy holy city (Christianity and Islam).

Saladins territory was mostly taken by the English, who were quite powerfull by this time. They had grenadiers and knights as well, and because my economy was so bad, I would never be able to get them. In time, so I stopped research forever (after having biology for a little bit of population growth in 1550 AD.

The last couple of turns nothing much happened. I wanted the game to be over so constructed lots of theatres and finally:

Turn 352, 1610 AD:
Tokugawa has completed The Hanging Gardens!
You have constructed The Hanging Gardens in Alexandria. Work has now begun on a Theatre.
The borders of Khurasan have expanded!

Turn 353, 1615AD:
The borders of Byblos have expanded!
The borders of Alexandria have expanded!
The borders of Vitcos have expanded!
The borders of Ollantaytambo have expanded!
The borders of Huamanga have expanded!
The borders of Vilcas have expanded!

Turn 354, 1620AD:
The borders of Kushans have expanded!
The borders of Kolhapur have expanded!
The borders of Teoihuacan have expanded!
The borders of Bombay have expanded!

Turn 355, 1625AD:
The borders of Memphis have expanded!
The borders of Mecca have expanded!

Domination with <90000 points. Hmm.. not too much, but hey, it's my first domination ever

Some nice screenies to finish off with:
1: lonly settler... wtf??
2: The aura of the sungod?
3: Mountain temple.. nice!
4: I win

 

[damnrunner]

My initial plans were to go for the domination victory. THings got off to a slow start though and some great land for expansion to the south was taken up by Egypt. I got the Great Lib and was able to keep a slight tech advantage until I went to war with the Aztec.

They attacked me several times which slowed my growth and without any horses I had to chase down their pillaging chariots and horse archers with spearmen. Once I finally got my offensive underway it was around 500AD and I had to bring Catapults along with my samuri. It was a slow going war which devastaed my economy and set me very far behind in tech. I previously converted to Christianity and changed civis to theocracy and while the vetrancy was a bonus it might have done too much damage to my economy.

By the time I had the Aztecs to two cities I had to make peace due to crippling war wearyness. As I built a new bunch of cataputs to take their capitol Egypt decarled war on the aztecs and set a huge army of rifemen and knights through my lands. I joined in and was able to take the capitol while egypt raised the 2 cities it captured.

Although I had planned to attack egypt next, and I really wanted the Christian holy city just south of my borders, I realized that Egypt had an army that was both larger than mine and more advanced.

It looked like my best option now was diplomacy. I had excelent realtions with Egypt due to open borders and shared faith as well as good realations with the Arabs. Since the Incas had recently surpased Egypt for having the most points I figured I could benefit form my good realtions and win against the inca's with the UN

With some shrewd use of Great people I was able to trade for some technonogy and by swiching around my civics I was able to get my science rate from 60% up to 90%.

I was also able to further strenthen my realtions with Egypt and Arabia by signing defensive pacts. By wooing England I hoped to get her votes as well and after bribing her to convert to christianity I was able to get a defensive pact with her as well.

In the mid 1800s I rushed the UN with GP engineers and took enough votes for a 19,000 point win.

By the end of the game my miliatary was a joke of a few dozen samuri while SAM inf were all over the place. Also I was losing a cultural war with egypt as their holy city to the south was really pushing back some of my borders, even 2 great artists seemed to have no effect.

A shoddy win but I will take it. I need to get better at