GOTM-03: Second Spoiler

[hrc333]

Please note, this is by no means a good advice, just some random thoughts which I hope are somewhat helpful.

No this is exactly the type of advice I was looking for. I do have the problem that I like to build everything in every city. So I end up with all average cities. I know this is not a good idea, I just always fall into.

What about workshops, windmills, etc in the later game. Do you change improvments in the later game to any of these late game improvements? Obviously you don't want to change towns, but other that this.

Thanks again for the advice.

 

[akots]

... What about workshops, windmills, etc in the later game. Do you change improvments in the later game to any of these late game improvements? Obviously you don't want to change towns, but other that this.
...

It might depend on the situation in the game. Of course, towns should not be changed. But if you need more gold or food, it might be worth to change a few mines here and there for windmills. If you planning a war and are running short in shields while having enough food, switch these farms to workshops, etc. You can switch them back if required by some changes in the demands of that particular city or the whole empire.

The only improvement which is fixed and which cannot be built easily or destroyed without giving a second thought, is cottages and subsequent stuff which grows out of cottages. Everything else is a fair game imho.

The tundra areas are a specific case. In case of hills, it is usually a windmill and in case of normal tundra it can be lumbermill with forest. If there is no forest, it is essentially useless. But there should be not that many tundra cities in a normal game anyhow.

 

[kingjoshi]

The key to civ has always been the early game.

Aint that the truth. Though I didn't play a good early game (man, I'm still kicking myself over some of my decisions), I got lucky with Bronze working and the early wars with Hatty paid off. I made many more mistakes then others who might've lost, but I did well enough early that I was able to warmonger after some infrastructure set up (after defeating the Egyptians). At that point anyone can just build Samurai and fight.

But some games, I screw up the beginning even more and it's tough struggle all game. But at least that's interesting. When you're ahead and you know you're going to win, it's just a matter of when, the game becomes less fun.

To improve my game, I've been reading various strategies on the opening. It seems I can never start off with as many cities as others do. How the heck do you chop for settlers AND have forests for wonders? Especially if you don't get stone or marble? This game allows for so many different openings (OCC vs mass expansion) that the early part of the game is always interesting.

Even after reading DaveMcW's spoiler, I still can't figure out how he got cultural victory in 1490. The balance of expansion, tech pace, GPs, culture, spreading religion AND having enough units to defend yourself? I realized that warmongering is the easy route in Civ4 and in real life. That's probably why in there are so many wars and people always try to pull others down instead of building themselves up. But that's another story...

 

[ewokimpi]

Starting from where I left off, I'll list off the major wars and major events..

~400AD-~700AD WWI- Tokugawa, Montezuma, Huayna Capac vs Victoria, Asoka
..
~900AD- 1245AD WWII- Tokugawa, Montezuma, Huayna Capac, Victoria vs Asoka
..
1235AD-1400AD Border Skirmish- Tokugawa vs Montezuma
..
~1550AD-1650AD Border War- Montezuma vs Tokugawa, Hatshepsut, Saladin
..
1730-1930 Border Skirmish II- Huayna Capac vs Tokugawa, Hatshepsut
..
1870AD- WWIII- Saladin vs Tokugawa, Hatshepsut, Victoria

My golly, your game had a lot of wars! There were also two earlier wars involving Monty, including the one vrs Tokugawa at around 230BC. And another war against Asoka, I think.

I'm guessing that's why Monty had so many troops when you invaded him. In the first war with you, you were able to reduce the size of his army. In the other wars prior to 1235AD, he was fighting AIs and being on the winning side, probably had few losses, but built a ton of units. So when you attacked, all those units decended on you.

I think all the wars made your game harder than mine.

I'm amazed at the variety of political configurations Civ4 can present, all starting from the same initial save file. In GOTM3, in my game, Hatty founds Judaism, and it spreads to Saladin, they become best of friends. In ronricorum's game, practically the whole world is Jewish, except Hatty, who is Buddhist, so Hatty and Saladin probably aren't friends.

The resulting political variations have consequences for peace and war. Games played from the same save file can be radically different. This is goodness.

 

[ewokimpi]

The key to civ has always been the early game.

What I would really enjoy, (although am not sure if this would ever happen or how it could happen, maybe one month for fun )

Was that if you desired at the point of 1AD you could trade games with another player.

Well, here you go, the 1AD version of my game.

Please don't ask me why the cities are founded where they are, I don't know.

"The Horror, The Horror"

 

[Memphus]

Well, here you go, the 1AD version of my game.

Please don't ask me why the cities are founded where they are, I don't know.

"The Horror, The Horror"

Guess I better follow though and play this

I'll pm my save to you if you want a crack at it (or I'll post it on March 1st if you like )

Wow and I only have a couple of days untill GOTM 4 ...better get cracking

 

[Thrallia]

My golly, your game had a lot of wars! There were also two earlier wars involving Monty, including the one vrs Tokugawa at around 230BC. And another war against Asoka, I think.

I'm guessing that's why Monty had so many troops when you invaded him. In the first war with you, you were able to reduce the size of his army. In the other wars prior to 1235AD, he was fighting AIs and being on the winning side, probably had few losses, but built a ton of units. So when you attacked, all those units decended on you.

I think all the wars made your game harder than mine.

I'm amazed at the variety of political configurations Civ4 can present, all starting from the same initial save file. In GOTM3, in my game, Hatty founds Judaism, and it spreads to Saladin, they become best of friends. In ronricorum's game, practically the whole world is Jewish, except Hatty, who is Buddhist, so Hatty and Saladin probably aren't friends.

The resulting political variations have consequences for peace and war. Games played from the same save file can be radically different. This is goodness.

yeah...if I had known that India was so close to losing(Asoka lost his last 3 cities within 4 turns of each other, 2 turns after I declared on Monty) I would have waited a little longer to build more pikesmen. That ended up being my downfall, I only lost 2 of my samurai taking his first city, but I lost all my samurai and pikesmen to his horse archers and war elephants...he just swarmed them all over me...so even though I had a tech advantage on him and better promoted troops, they just died one after another after another.

I may play your save also...although I'm currently playing through the backlog of GOTM's...I won GOTM handily, although I went cultural victory cause I wasn't interested in overseas wars...GOTM 2 is a bit more complicated as it is prince, which I've only won once...but hopefully I can pull it out

 

[ewokimpi]

Guess I better follow though and play this

I'll pm my save to you if you want a crack at it (or I'll post it on March 1st if you like )

Wow and I only have a couple of days untill GOTM 4 ...better get cracking

That's a good idea, please wait until March 1st to post your 1AD file. Or pm me it if you like.

Please don't feel obligated to play my save through. Afterall, GOTM4 will be coming out on March 1st, and soon we'll all be salivating over the screen shot of the starting position, map settings, and difficulty level!

I really like the notion of posting an earlier version of our completed games. Maybe when we submit our results to the GOTM team, we could have the option of submitting a 1AD game or some other designated date, maybe a save from the date range 200BC to 200AD. It wouldn't be part of the scoring, just there to show how the player was developing their game and what oddities in religions, etc. they were facing.

 

[Thrallia]

hm...oddest thing about my game was that we had 4 spiritual civs, but Buddhism got founded by England lol

It seems Hatty founded either judaism or hinduism in almost everyone's games, but she didn't found anything except Islam in my game.
Saladin founded Christianity, Asoka founded Judaism and Hinduism, Victoria founded Buddhism, Confuscianism and Taoism...she also conquered the Holy Cities for Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity throughout my game.

 

[kingjoshi]

Asoka founded Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity in my game. And Victoria founded Confucianism, Taoism and Islam. Saladin found Hinduism (which I spread all over my empire after I conqured him so I could get some money. I should've fought him earlier). The game's RNG is really random!

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

Spaceship Victory: 1690AD
Score: 59K+

Goal was fastest spaceship, so I gave up a lot on score by not fighting much, but I also made many mistakes so hoping this holds.

Starting out: Moved warrior SW for view and then settled SW,SW like most people. Then I started with a warrior. I sent my original warrior East and my second one South. Nothing spectacular from the huts except Mining (got a little gold, experience and maps).

Initial builds: Warrior, Settler, Settler (note: lost prebuild into 2d Warrior by the time my 2d Settler was built); then warriors from all three cities to view unknown areas and provide protection. I ended up building a total of 11 cities with the slow growth I forced on my neighbors.

Worker wars: Decided to do this, though it did hurt trading later on. Montezuma would trade nothing. I only stole one worker from each of my neighbors. Should have hung out by Montezuma longer so I could get more.

Research: Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Mining (hut), Writing, Bronze Working, Alphabet. I was not the first to find Alphabet. Trading went generally well, but I outstripped them too quickly and everyone decided to stop trading with me. I skipped all techs not needed (except to trade for them). After trades set it up went for Literature next in my Capital.

Wonders: Early ones were Oracle for Code of Laws and Pyramids to Representation. Then Great Library in my Capital. My Capital also build National Epic and Oxford University.

Wars: Against Mont when he declared on me. Against Egypt after everyone stopped trading with me; in fact, they were the only one trading with me for a long time. England joined me and started trading a little again, but I was too far ahead for most trading. England ended up wiping out Egypt.

Mistakes:
1) I tried to set up deep research while trading for lower level ones. Often found myself researching techs since no one would trade. Should have kept more AI with me for longer for better trading. I was planning on skipping Democracy, but ended up having to research it due to unhappiness and the lack of ability to trade for it. Had I just researched it early enough the Statue of Liberty would have earned me my investment. Spent at least 12 turns researching stuff others already had.
2) Research stayed at 90%+. Definitely should have expanded more as I think I could have maintained the same number or more beakers with additional cities and lower science rate. Unknown delay, if any.
3) Forgot Great Engineers couldn’t complete projects. Duh! Also didn’t build the Space Elevator as I was thinking I could build the last part using the Great Engineer. This combined blunder alone cost me 3-4 turns at the end.

I really liked the worker wars, though I didn’t use them to capacity. It really allowed me to expand where I wanted before being crunched by my neighbors, especially Egypt. Next I think I’ll be trying Diplomatic or this again if I see a post blowing this attempted FF out of the water.

 

[Obormot]

I just got finished my game. I researched samurais (in the BCs), engineering for faster movement (somewhere in the 200s) and guilds for knights (see my first spoiler). After that i shut down research (490AD). I started the war against aztecs in 2xxAD with samurais. There was a lot of forest there and i chopped everything for more samurais and more workers. After discovering guilds i switched to building/chopping knights because tof speed. After the aztec war i started wars on 2 fronts against egypt and inca and i had enough workers following my forces to chop all the forests immidiately. I got conquest victory in 890AD for 160K+ points.

 

[MiniMe]

Spaceship Victory: 1690AD
Score: 59K+

Goal was fastest spaceship, so I gave up a lot on score by not fighting much, but I also made many mistakes so hoping this holds.

At least you beat me ... 10 turns (20 years). Ouch. Seems we played fundamentally different games since I was bent on conquest for the first part. So at least I beat you on score. I who thought I had a fair shot at the award ... for a while at least

I avoided democracy by researching rather quickly to build UN. In that way I could change to some of the govs I wanted and I didnt even have anarchy

 

[Ronald]

After the aztec war i started wars on 2 fronts against egypt and inca and i had enough workers following my forces to chop all the forests immidiately. I got conquest victory in 890AD for 160K+ points.

Great game Obermot . The idea to have so many workers is very interesting. By that you could chop new troops very close to the battlefield. This increased your speed enough to get a very early conquest date. Excellent. I was hoping to have a shot at the fastest conquest award, but you have beaten me by quite some turns.

 

[Thomas G.]

I apologize in advance for not including screenies and detailed comments. Ill just write incoherently about my game, story-like.

I got civ 4 on my computer on 21 feb. Played around with it a bit. I completed the last Gotm for training purposes with a diplo victory around 1805. I have played civ 2 a lot, and civ 3 some.

Never won on monarch before.

Contender class.

The awakening
The mighty Japanesequickly settled in place, then started the normal 3-city expansion. Not much of barbarian activity. Egypt south, Aztec east, great.

I guess I expanded a bit too slowly, I was somewhat worried about tax/science rate. But I could most probably have grabbed some more land. I was "sorta" gearing towards domination of the world, topped off by either domination victory or mabye space race. I built up a stack of 10 units ready to go, but I couldn't decide what to do with them.

The big sleep
Egypt founded Christianity. I converted happily, and spread the religion throughout my lands. But then, the Aztec (which had given me no trouble at all) converted too! I had contacts with everyone, and open borders (but I had not scouted out the lands. Dunno why, guess I'm too used to old civ. I mean, my units can go straight through units/cities with open borders? I should probably start doing this, heh.

Anyway, everything was peaceful in the world, up to 400 AD. The holy christian Aztecs wanted me to go to war against the indians, and I accepted. I was thinking about building a christian alliance against the world, and I didn't want to let down Aztec. I sent my stack around the world, scouting as they went, and managed to take Dehli (Buddhas birthplace). I also settled 2 more cities, but lost one to culture shock to England. Aztecs got one city down there.


Anyway, I researched my way. Kept pace with the rest so I could trade techs. Everything was fine in the world until...

The big fat kill
About 1400 AD I was getting behind in score. Aztecs converted to hinduism, so I decided to take them out. I had muskets at this time, so I started producing them. Once I got rifling I did 2 turns of gold, upgraded and launched my assault. I had about 10 rifles and 6 cats at the start. I was attacking longbowmen and pikemen. After taking 2 cities Monty got cavalry and we had a bit more fun fight (I had no horses). I still had research pretty high during the war, and soon my far cities were back to building city improvements. The aztechs begged for peace, but had nothing to offer, so I wiped them off the face of the earth.

The day after
However, after the war I had equal lands to england (largest civ), but I was behind in tech. Never managed to catch up, and I was too afraid to go up against technologically advanced opponents. I guess I had a kinda small military as well, my power was low too. I decided to go for a diplo win instead. I managed to build the UN (using 3 turns of cash to buy it) but I never got more than 1 other to vote for me to win.

England won space race in 1890.

What I should have done differently:
* Wipe out Aztecs earlier, using samurai. (I never used Sams, waited for rifles)
* Expand more after economy is settled. Gear for war production earlier.
* Taken more breaks. I played this game in 2 sittings, and I tend to suffer from civ-weariness (start to automate workers, building improvements in stead of units that need orders, neglect scouting, fail to seize opportunities because "they make the turns take longer")
* Fail to specialize cities. My capital became both science and GP city, but still was a productive city. Wasteful.
Anything else?
I build the Great Lib and UN great wonders.

Thanks for reading, Ill try next game and spend more time on it.

 

[totororo]

Is shutting down research only usefull when you've completed the pyramids? Am I missing something? (apart from upgrading some old units)

 

[KindOfBlue]

I never thought I could win a game on that difficulty.

Just for curiosity I gave it a try: When first I met Montezuma it was crystal clear to me that this pain in the ass had to be deleted! No matter if this was my only success in this game. So my strategy was to stay friendy with all the others, give them whatever they demand so that they just leave me alone with my mission.

Shortly after Monte was done they voted for my diplomatic victory. Sweet.

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

I avoided democracy by researching rather quickly to build UN. In that way I could change to some of the govs I wanted and I didnt even have anarchy

Now that is a neat idea I hadn't considered!!

 

[MiniMe]

Now that is a neat idea I hadn't considered!!

I actually did it mostly for the extra trade route. I also realized I could change to emancipation and other neat things wiithout anarchy. You of course either needs lots of population or good friends...

 

[Memphus]

Entry class: Adventurer
Game status: Diplomatic Victory for Japan
Game date: 1860 AD
Base score: 3168
Final score: 16613.25

I did not deserve this victory, but did work hard to be in position to win if a break went my way.
…
I have 6.74559% of the points Memphus does. Why did the rest of us play?

Followed by:

Was that if you desired at the point of 1AD you could trade games with another player.

So in this case at 1AD ewokimpi gets my save and I get his, then we both submit our game and our score gets put together.
The catch is you have to trade game with someone on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Finally I get my chance as now my foot is in my mouth so I have to play it

Well, here you go, the 1AD version of my game.

Please don't ask me why the cities are founded where they are, I don't know.

"The Horror, The Horror"

So I gave it a crack, decided to follow suit and stay with a diplomatic victory
and here is how I did:

Game status: Diplomatic Victory for Japan
Game date: 1640AD
Base score: 3957
Final score: 71587
Oh wait Adventure class was ewokimpi's start file so
Final Score: 60489

I don’t have time to do a spoiler (GOTM4 ) with what I did from his start file at 1 AD but I attached 3 screen shoots

Pic1: Score Breakdown
Pic2: Relations Monty
Pic3: Relations Huyana
All I can say is wow I can’t believe I had to befriend Monty…but not only that he voted for me

Now I can get ready to prep for GOTM 4