GOTM-03: Second Spoiler

Great game, hendricszoon! I am really glad i beat such a strong player by 7 turns :dance:, though i'm sure i would have had absolutely no chance to beat you had you played this game going for a focused fast conquest right from the beginning.

Your campaign strategy is very impressive and i'll definitely use something similar in my future games. I guess campaign planning will become quite complicated compared to civ3 because of no RoP raping and because slow units are used more often. And once again you make the first step in the right direction (like woth the early academy, the milking strategy and other smaller stuff) and i bet all other gotmers will follow once again. :worship:
 
hendrikszoon said:
The Second Great Scientist

An Academy increased the number of Beakers by 50%. To get 24 additional beakers from an Academy the city have to produce 48 Beakers before the buildings benefit is added. Also if you are playing a Leader with a financial trait and you built Cottages on every tile - what I don't do, I ignore Cottages - it needs a long time until you can reach this value. And just in the beginning you have to care a fast research.

I really enjoyed your spoiler, as always. But I generally disagree with the strategy of placing the 2nd Great Scientist in the capital. I try to have at least 2 really strong science centers if possible. Also, sometimes my capital is not the best science center, so Beauracracy is not as valuable as it was in this game, and placing the GS there doesn't do as much good as placing an acadamy in a better city. (Of course, every map is different and sometimes your capital is your only really good science center, and then placing the GS in the capital becomes preferable.)

Anyway, once you've got 3-5 cities producing over 48 beakers then the decision to create acadamies becomes a no brainer compared to placing the GS as a scientist. (The decision then becomes whether or not to use the GS as a tech boost instead of a acadamy, and that decision depends on the number of turns until end game.)
 
Attention!

For player who uses autolog:
May be I missed something and all other players know it, but I first time used autolog in the game. autolog has own CvUtil.py file (CustomAssets) and in my case this file contains old version of getScoreComponent function so calculation of score didn't include level coefficient.

Now I repair it and my score is 246242 (+40%).
 
yeah, someone mentioned that in the allowed mods thread in this forum...Dianthus posted the correct formula in that thread, so I've modded mine...but my score woulda been correct anyway, since I lost :crazyeye:
 
hendrikszoon said:
The Second Great Scientist

I use my first Great Scientist always to build an Academy in the Capital. In my two first 4otMs I built an Academy in another city to get a second research center. Now I know this is a suboptimal use of the second Great Scientist. It is much better to join the second Great Scientist to the Capital.

After getting Civil Service I always switch immediately to Bureaucracy. Also I have always an Academy, Library and a Monastery in my Capital. So I got a 50% research bonus from Civic and 85% research bonus from Buildings. The benefit of a joined Great Scientist are nine Beakers (and one Hammer). To get the real number of Beakers you have to multiply the "base" Beakers with 1.5 (Bureaucracy) and the result with 1.85 (Buildings). So the final bonus should be 24.975 Beakers. But in the game it is a little bit more complicate: After both multiplications the result is rounded down. So after the first multiplication the result is 13 - instead of 13.5 and after the second one it is 24 - instead of 24.975.

But also this is not the final result. The real benefit coming from a joined Great Scientist depends on the whole Beaker number before he joined. In the worst case the benefit is really 24 Beakers. But in the best case you can get 26 bonus Beakers. But I will use the worst case assumption (24 Beakers) for my argumentation.

Very strange. Bureaucracy has effect on base commerce not on specialists.
You must have only 9*1.85=16-17 beakers from Great Scientist. At least it works this way for ordinary specialist (not tested for GS).
 
Thrallia said:
yeah, someone mentioned that in the allowed mods thread in this forum...Dianthus posted the correct formula in that thread, so I've modded mine...but my score woulda been correct anyway, since I lost :crazyeye:

Thank you for hint, now I find it.
 
Congrats to all the players with scores around 200K!

It my first GotM and I thought my 100K domination victory at 1450 is quite good. Now I know better, thanks for the motivation boost.

C U as Indians, Mork.


Btw: Is there a list out there what exactly affects the score?
 
Dynamic said:
Attention!
Now I repair it and my score is 246242 (+40%).[/
QUOTE]

WHAT :eek: :eek: :eek:
That only leave me with 41 points breathing room ;) 246283 vs. 246242

Well congradulations that is score alot more deserving of your great game :worship: (I am still so impressed with the date)
 
Yes, Memphus, you win this battle. As I wrote before, I miss 2 citizens during Hanging Gardens pop rushing. But it's new experience for me and I pay for it.:(
 
Dynamic said:
Yes, Memphus, you win this battle. As I wrote before, I miss 2 citizens during Hanging Gardens pop rushing. But it's new experience for me and I pay for it.:(

Which stems from

Dynamic said:
I just look at my last save for some additional statistics and notified that not all cities got additional pop from Hanging Gardens! 2 cities with pop 1 and citizen as artist stay pop 1. Note, in these cities citizen automation was OFF, so it looks like if you build Hanging Gardens on the last turn you need turn citizen automation ON in all cities or, may be, set citizen on the food tile.

Did you ever look into that? :confused: I.E. ddid they grow with citizen automation on?
If not I'll experiment on it after GOTM4.
I am also learning about many different 'kinks' that need to be carefullu planned out, and which get unexpected resslts.

Well good luck this month :goodjob:
 
I just replayed last interturn twice... And I don't know real reason now.
In one city I simply forgot remove artist, but second must increase borders. Turning ON automation is not enough. I can't find correlation now, need for more experiments...

But when I removed artists in both cities they grew next turn and I got 247875 points. :(
1633 points for 2 pop: oh, no.

P.S. At least, this problem happens very seldom. For first city emphasize food helps, in second - not.
 
Some very good games, and I really appreciate the discussions.

I got to around 1100 AD, and I meant to submit a retired game, but forgot to, so no ~2K points for me. I reached Samurai late (around 720 AD), and started the main wars. Axes had already taken a few of Hatshepsut's cities, and I sent an ever growing stack of them to the closest captured city. It had a Barracks (of course) and when I finally learned CS, I could start the upgrades. Trading Code of Laws around had gained me about 1000 gold, but that's only about 7 upgrades or so. So I kept building Samurai in my core, and upgrading when possible at the border. Eventually took Egypt and Arabia totally out of the game when it got too late to continue.

The late warfare meant the battle environment was changing and not for the good. Longbows were bad, and crossbows positively deadly. The last couple of Saladin's cities I captured with Catapult support; removing the city defensive bonus and reducing the defender's strength by barrage are great. Once Knights started to show up I started building some Spearmen; their +100% anti Horse, with a Combat II and additional anti Horse promotion make them pretty strong, and they can always upgrade to Pikes. Still, to press an offensive war against stronger Knight units, and Crossbows, I would need lots of units, and Catapults, or research to Cavalry. Things I have no time for.

I was very surprised at how fast the economy goes bad during these campaigns. Thanks for all the advice on maintaining it; Courthouses are a necessity, and getting some Merchants going (and I'm sure there's more but I'm still learning this game).

Anyway, my computer is really slow at Civ4. I think next IVotm (India), I'll go a more peaceful route and see if I can learn some more about the later stages of the game. Thanks to the staff for an interesting game, and I hope to get to submit the next one!
 
Game status: Cultural Victory for Japan
Game date: 1670 AD
Base score: 3115
Final score: 52563

I submitted this game "in extremis" and had to scramble to find the time to finish it. I am even more impressed now at DaveMcW last months cultural victory, which not only had a 1490 AD finishing date, but was also played in just a little over 6 hours real time.

I am not sure I will be able to find the time to write a real spoiler, so for now I will just put down some random notes.

In general I found this game quite challenging for me to "play it well", both in terms of going for a cultural victory and also taking into account the map and starting position. Going for an obvious choice I founded Kyoto on the SW SW plains hill. I am curious to see what other people did. I think I got a bit spoiled by the food rich starting location from GOTM 02 and certainly missed it. And then throughout the game there was this tantalizing gold hill just barely out of reach.

Using the AI units and territory

From this game and some test games I did before I learned a little thing that is quite obvious but that I hadn’t fully realized before. For some things the AI’s units and territory are as useful as my own. Let me explain what I mean.

In terms of lifting the fog of war, enemy units and territory will do the job as well as mine. At an intermediate stage, I took that into account to make sure there was no tile left where barbarians could spawn nearby without having to use too many units. Some tiles were still dark to me, but not for Montezuma for instance.

Earlier on, knowing that an AI unit had just passed a tile, or following it, made it less likely to have a surprise ambush. Even better, in a test game where I was experimenting with robbing workers, my warrior barely survived a retaliatory attack. And then another archer from the robbed AI came after my wounded warrior and the worker. Let’s call this AI1.

I was lucky enough for a unit from a second AI (AI2) to pass by. I did something I am tempted to call “hitching a ride” with AI2. It happened that AI2 was playing after AI1. So each turn I would stack my warrior and my worker on the AI2 unit. Next playing was AI1, which couldn’t attack my units without attacking AI2, then AI2 would play and move, uncovering my units, but too late for AI1 to attack. Basically I got a free body guard, but with no choice of where the ride would lead.

Anyways this is no major breakthrough, but just a little funny thing that can be occasionally useful, in particular for worker robbing possibly.

By the way has anybody information about how the playing order works ? Is there a way to determine it from the Relation screen for instance? Or does one have to take notes from looking manually at who moves after whom?

Building the pyramids

One big challenge for me was the absence of stone anywhere close. For my strategy I really wanted to have the pyramids, to be able to have Universal Suffrage without having to research Democracy.

Not finding any stone, I was thinking I might have to let an AI build the pyramid and conquer the city. But that could mean a lot of trouble: the hassle of having to mount an expedition possibly on the other side of the world, keeping one lone city far away, paying high distance upkeep, and last but not least making an enemy in a game where I would be letting everybody overtake me in terms of research.

So I decided to build the pyramids at full price. I was worried one AI would get it before me so I put quite a bit of energy into getting it fast. I pre-chopped 7 or 8 forests down to 1 turn around my capital with two workers. Meanwhile I geared my research and civics to have both “Organized Religion” and “Bureaucracy” fast. As soon as that was in place I started completing the chops. Now a 45 chop would yield 78 instead.

Religions

For the cultural victory, the type of map made it hard for other religions to spread to my cities. I should probably have built more coastal cities. I did get Buddhism though by conquering Montezuma’s cities, and I did get Judaism in a coastal city. I founded myself Confucianism, Christianity and Islam. I did the mistake of waiting to long to research Philosophy so I missed out on Taoism and had to settle for 5 religions and cathedrals in each of my cultural cities.

Wars and Diplomacy

Robbing the workers was certainly fun and exciting. For a cultural victory though I would be more careful next time, and chose the robbed carefully, keeping in mind the necessity to survive the end phase when everybody overtakes you in research and military power. I got several from Hathshepsut and one from Montezuma.

I regretted a bit attacking Hathshepsut three times which resulted in –9 points. One time was unavoidable as I wanted to get her city south of my capital (dyes, ivory…). I even bit off a bit more than that. But the first two times were for workers. In retrospect I think I should have taken only workers from Montezuma, but that was hard to know while I was playing.

Having Montezuma as a neighbour made it almost mandatory to conquer him. I was too worried he would turn on me in the final phase. Of course he attacked me anyways, when I was preparing to attack him but not quite ready yet. I always tend to be a little bit late in terms of military power. I was able to hold him off and slowly get two of his cities, but I wasted quite a bit of time and production in that war. Finally I made a cease fire, regrouped and the following conquest was easy. I should have made that cease fire much earlier and not try stubbornly to go on.

In the end I was able to stay kind of neutral with mostly everybody but Hathshepsut. I was most worried of Huyna Capac, who was now a neighbour after conquering Montezuma. At some point he was at war with Victoria, and I kept seeing these big stacks crossing my territory… It was a bit scary. I have to confess I promptly obliged to most of his requests, letting down Asoka who had been the nicest to me, giving tribute when requested...

The way of the cultural victory is certainly unusual.

Voila, Congratulations to everybody
I have yet to read the spoilers

Thanks to the GOTM team for another great game
 
Narakael said:
Game status: Cultural Victory for Japan
Game date: 1670 AD
Base score: 3115
Final score: 52563

:eek: You beat me by four turns, the luck! To quote myself, I shouldn't have fiddled so much at the end of the game. :cry: Quite useless now my 118k. Ah well...

Anyway, congrats. :goodjob:

btw, I did the same as you. Getting the Pyramids was a key to cultural victory for me as well.

greetz,
Piscator
 
Narakael said:
So each turn I would stack my warrior and my worker on the AI2 unit. Next playing was AI1, which couldn’t attack my units without attacking AI2

I remember this being something I wanted to check up on. In a previous game I had units 'safe' in a friendly neighbour's city ready to raid in a planned war. AI got in ahead of me, DoW early and killed my ambush units inside the city. No war declared on my neighbour and no diplo penalty.

Did Narakael just get lucky with his escort strategy - walking in front of units that could actually have attacked him if they wanted :mischief: - or are units in a city different? Any clues?
 
civ_steve said:
Axes had already taken a few of Hatshepsut's cities, and I sent an ever growing stack of them to the closest captured city. It had a Barracks (of course) and when I finally learned CS, I could start the upgrades. Trading Code of Laws around had gained me about 1000 gold, but that's only about 7 upgrades or so.

Here's a tip that you may not realize, since you mentioned needing a barracks for upgrades...in Civ 4 you don't need a barracks to upgrade your troops, you only need access to any resources required for the unit you are upgrading to, and the cash, of course. In fact, your unit doesn't even have to be in a city, only within your cultural boundaries, and the nearest city needs to have access to the requires resources...that might help you out in future games :)
 
Piscator said:
:eek: You beat me by four turns, the luck! To quote myself, I shouldn't have fiddled so much at the end of the game. :cry: Quite useless now my 118k. Ah well...

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
 
ScubaRoo said:
I remember this being something I wanted to check up on. In a previous game I had units 'safe' in a friendly neighbour's city ready to raid in a planned war. AI got in ahead of me, DoW early and killed my ambush units inside the city. No war declared on my neighbour and no diplo penalty.

Hi ScubaRoo,

You make me wonder if I just fooled myself into thinking I was safe. It happened only once in a test game, so it's a while ago and I don't remember the details. I wonder if maybe I was always just one tile ahead from the pursuing unit. I'll try checking this if I can.

Probably my mistake.

I think the more easely useful aspect of AI units vs barbarians should hold though, maybe not to keep you safe but at least to draw attacks if ahead and to clear fog of war.

Narakael
 
Thrallia said:
Here's a tip that you may not realize, since you mentioned needing a barracks for upgrades...in Civ 4 you don't need a barracks to upgrade your troops, you only need access to any resources required for the unit you are upgrading to, and the cash, of course. In fact, your unit doesn't even have to be in a city, only within your cultural boundaries, and the nearest city needs to have access to the requires resources...that might help you out in future games :)
Whoa .... my head is feeling faint! Thanks for the correction! (It would have been a long time before I figured that out! Still, the extra 4 experience from that city was nice as well.)
 
no problem...I always used the upgrade everything shortcut, when upgrading stuff, so it wasn't until my first game on prince that I really realized that you could do that...it was really nice when I realized that
 
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