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