GOTM-03: Second Spoiler

[DaveMcW]

I achieved a diplomatic victory in 1360AD.


Research

My research was basically a beeline for Mass Media, with optional techs thrown in if they paid off more beakers before the end of the game. These included:
Alphabet - Trade for all the techs I skipped
Education - Universities and Liberalism
Liberalism - Free Radio

I made a few mistakes, such as going for Drama + Music in the mistaken assumption that the Great Artist would give more beakers than the research cost. And I should have focused on Printing Press before getting Education and Astronomy.


Great Engineers

In a perfect diplo game, you should have 2 Great Engineers ready to build the UN the turn you discover Mass Media. So after the capital got an Academy, I avoided specialists to focus on Engineer GPP. I built the Hanging Gardens and a Forge for 5/turn.

I did get 1 Engineer, but I fell 330 short of getting the second one. I could have squeezed out a second Engineer if I was more careful.
- Get Metal Casting earlier
- Build the Heroic Epic in the Engineer city
- Recruit many scientists in a single turn, to add without affecting the engineer probabilities.

Missing the 2nd Engineer cost me 20 turns on my finish date.


War with Montezuma

Just as I finished building my Samurai stack, Montezuma decided that now was a perfect time to attack the feeble human. Lucky for him I only had 3 hours until the GOTM deadline, or I would have made this war long and painful. But I could only spare enough time to buy every possible alliance and raze one of his cities. He eventually sued for peace.

That war left Montezuma with only one friend in the world, Huayna Capac. So guess who his next target was. Then he decided that one front wasn't enough, and declared war on me too. All those mutual struggles made the diplomatic victory vote easy.


Diplomatic Victory

After the landgrab phase was over, Saladin maintained a comfortable population lead. He also maintained the only Hindu nation, which didn't make him very popular. The final vote was overwhelming.

 

[Dynamic]

- Recruit many scientists in a single turn, to add without affecting the engineer probabilities.

Missing the 2nd Engineer cost me 20 turns on my finish date.

1) What does this method give you? May be I wrong understand the principle of GP point accumulating.

2) 20 turns is too long. What the size has your capital? How much was base production? Did you forced GA on the last turns? Did you use prebuild for UN (it's not mistake, a little prebuild is possible in Civ4)? Had you some forests near your capital at the end of game? And did you use Bureaucracy civic at the end of game?

 

[jar2574]

Missing the 2nd Engineer cost me 20 turns on my finish date.

Buy the UN. Get universal sufferage and build up enough gold to buy the UN. I got lucky and had an engineer last month to help build the UN. This month I bought it. Diplo in 1300.

 

[kingjoshi]

Buy the UN. Get universal sufferage and build up enough gold to buy the UN. I got lucky and had an engineer last month to help build the UN. This month I bought it. Diplo in 1300.

I don't think he built the pyramids (which would given +2 GPP for engineers) or researched Democracy for Universal Research.

though it's still hard to imagine that it would take an extra 20 turns to build the UN on top of a Great Engineer. Only explanation I can think of is that other events happened from the date he got Mass Media to the creation of the UN that delayed the game.

 

[Narakael]

Great diplomatic games DaveMcW and Jar2574,

Dave, I have the same question as Dynamic regarding the point you make about GP:

- Recruit many scientists in a single turn, to add without affecting the engineer probabilities.

This makes me think my assumptions about how the probabilities work might be wrong. I was assuming the probabilities are proportional to the total points contributed from each category. Is that wrong ?

 

[Narakael]

Did you use prebuild for UN (it's not mistake, a little prebuild is possible in Civ4)?

That sounds interesting Dynamic. Are you thinking of using overflow?

 

[Dynamic]

That sounds interesting Dynamic. Are you thinking of using overflow?

I'm not thinking, I used it in 4OTM2 and one other game.
At the end of game it's very easy to get 100% overflow by building series (sometimes 2 is enough) of cheap units. Normally, overflow doesn't exceed 100% of base production but if you still have forests this value could be increased. End when new Wonder stay available you just start it and save 1 or more turns (chopping). Also you can set the city to the negative growth (temporary) for increase hammers.
But never use other Wonder as prebuild - in this case overflow = 0 if you didn't chop forests.

And of course we need biggest possible size of city for using GE. On Epic GE effect = 750 + 30 * CitySize IIRC.

And don't forget about Golden Age...

I not posted about it before because in 4OTM2 it was intuitively and only after end of 4OTM3 I finally understand how it works. I played test game for Diplomatic (can't win) and built UN by 1 turn with only 1 GE on Normal Speed.

 

[Piscator]

Hi Piscator,

I just read your spoiler. I was amazed that you managed to do all the research you did, and finish so early. Your must have played a really excellent game. I stopped my research at:
Nationalism
Printing Press
Liberalism
Corporation

It will be interesting to compare the two games.

Narakael

I had a few science cities producing around 150-200 per turn. Plus I traded most military techs with Arabia (who was friendly trough most of the game). And I did only run 100% culture the last 15 or so turns of the game. I think I should have stopped my research after biology (or perhaps medicine). Going for Communism, Democracy, Physics, Electricity and Radio (about 6 turns per tech) just to get the last few +50% culture wonders wasn't worth it.

I had in my culture cities 6 cathedrals which were already producing +300% plus the +100% from Free speech. In Tenochtitlan I had also the hermitage ( so it was producing +500%). Getting the last +150% from Broadway, Hollywood and the Eiffel Tower didn't bring so much more. And I think I had about 8 great artists or so.

greetz,
Piscator