GOTM 06 second spoiler - everything else!

[ainwood]

GOTM 06 Second Spoiler

For this spoiler, you must have completed and submitted your game.

With your unique-unit expiring early, had you made good use of it in order to set-up a strong position for the middle to late game? What type of victory were you pursuing?

 

[champinoman]

Not a great result in my first game of the month. I decided to try a conquest victory. I defeated the first 2 other civs that i met pretty early on in the game and was on my way to defeating the third when they got their hands on axemen followed quickly by swordsman. This ended my charge and i never really got back in full swing. The tech race was lost because of my early wars, and i didnt get very far out of my starting peninsula which slowed my advancement even more. All in all it was a pretty poor effort and if we were allowed a 2nd attempt i think i would do alot better, by not attempting a conquer victory. Interested to see how most other players went about winning, and how those players who tried to win through force went.

- champinoman

p.s. first post, woohoo

 

[mike p]

Pretty straightforward game.

Settled in place. Founded Hinduism after popping mysticism.

Founded second city to grab stone, wine and sheep. 3rd city to grab horses. Also became Confucian holy city when I oracled CoL.

2nd city was for building units, capital for cottages along river and some production - mostly wonders.

Built most of the early wonders except for lighthouse and colossus. I think I only founded one coastal city. I only built 5 cities on the Mongolian penninsula, and two of them were just filler anyway. No reason to city spam that area, I can just conquer better city sites. There was probably room for 3 more marginal cities, but what's the point?

Barbs built a city that blocked off my peninsula, so I took that over with Keshiks and decided to head north against Japan. Took a couple of cities and then got all of my elite troops wiped out when I lost 4 battles consecutively at 75%+. So I rebuilt more.

All of my keshiks get wiped out again by horse archers but somehow I manage to grab Kyoto with my remaining catapults. Then peace for a while while I rebuild and get macemen to the front. Japan seriously outrolled me in combat.

Eventually went to war with Toku again and he had only 2 cities left on an island. At about this time I discover Liberalism and take Nationalism. Then I fill in gunpowder and switch to high cash/low research. Upgrade a Keshik or two a turn, then it's all mop up. Mansa gets crushed by my cavalry, then Bismark, then Qin. I talk Alex into declaring on Elizabeth, then declare immediately on Alex and trigger domination a turn before Athens falls.

Over all a boring, conservative domination victory finishing just after 1700AD.

I was able to keep a large empire growing by building two shrines and spreading Confucianism and Hinduism to all of my cities. By the end I was cruising along and got sloppy, just went for fasted domination from cavalry in real world, rather than game time, so I played a pretty ugly end game.

 

[Markus5]

Spaceship in 2001, appropriately. Really tedious at the end, and I was crashing a lot. That's been happening too often lately - crashing. Still, it was fun. I'm looking forward to next month. It should be a step up in difficulty and, hopefully, a different map type. Prince on terra map would be fun.

 

[frealaf-]

My first GOTM and only my second game on Civ4, and not really played any of the other civ's only for a few weeks when they first come out and thats it

Anyway i got a space victory sometime in the 21st century can't remeber when, didn't have an objective in mind, just built cities up, managed to get a city at the choke point from some barbarians and held my side of the continent ended up with around 7-10 cities (can't remember exactly how many) and just built everything in them.

I was bottom of the power score all the way through the game (i'm not a warmonger) avoided war for most of the game, Elizabeth declared on me at some point but she was so far away she never attacked me. Although i did manage to get the second civ (mansa musa) score wise (me and him were top on score nearly the whole game) to declare war on her and they were neighbours.

A bit later Bismarck declared on me and took one city quickly, i managed to build up a defence and then took the city back before getting peace with him.

That was the only war i had the whole game, managed to build manhatten and apollo first, and just managed to beat Lizzie to the spaceship (dunno how close it was) prolly won cause most other civs fought amongst each other and i stayed out of things

enjoyed the game, but after reading these forums for last few days am picking up tips, so hopefully next time i can do it again but with a much higher score

 

[Jove]

Curture Victory, 1880.

The biggest thing I did right this time was gaining control over my Great People. Karakorum could produce over 100 gpp's by the end, and the chances were always 100% artist. Another high-producer had some prophet and engineer wonders because of my culture quest, but the rolls followed the odds and I got artists out of that one too. So I was slightly lucky. By the end GPs cost 2800 points. Not the best, but my best so far. Very frustrating though that the game relentlessly tries to force me to use Priest specialists. I'll look in the city screen and there he is, unassigned by me or anyone. Is there any way to stop this!?!?!?!?
The occasional prophet, engineer, and merchant were always useful too. We didn't found many religions (only Christianity and Islam) but the holy cities were within easy reach and we had several shrines by the end. And, does everybody send their merchants on trade missions? I think that +1 food is awesome, and couldn't resist joining mine to Karakorum.
So anyway, this game was more about figuring out the math than conquering the neighbors. I attacked China again later to get some holy cities and to acquire Hinduism. I thought I'd have to attack Alex for Buddhism, but the last Chinese city I conquered had just gained it, so I didn't bother.
By the end our cashflow was over +500gpt, but it struggled for a long time. I just don't have the eye yet for cottage spamming! And I never did get any cities above 1000 culture/turn, 750 or so was about the top. I'll have to look and see how you guys are accomplishing that. I did get all three cities to become legendary within 2 turns...
By the end Mansa was really driving the tech pace, and he and Japan were starting to get dangerous as they pulled ahead. Well, they fought each other. Alex DoW'd us 10 turns from the end, but we had enough to hold him and his cavalry off. So basically leaving everyone alone we cruised to a late culture victory. This one was much more fun in that I didn't go for score, and so didn't have a huge redundant empire to manage.
Probably my 2nd biggest mistake was in not using the Keshiks to their full advantage. I had them early, had I gone on a pillaging spree on land I'd never claim anyway I could have boosted my early science significantly. Oh well, live and learn. 17619 points.

 

[Accurax]

My first ever Gotm .... and my first trip into noble.

I founded my capital on the start square, and immediatly built a second scout, initially i thought i was on a large island, untill the germans appeared, scouted around and uncovered a fair bit of the map.

My second city was founded at the juncture of the peninsular, by the copper, i thought id try to stop any other civs taking my land untill i was ready to build on it. My 3rd went to the stone, and my fourth to the horses.

I didnt build a single keshik (

With 6 or 7 cities on my peninsular, all kitted out with barraks, i began mass producing swordsmen... i gave half the % against archer upgrade, and half the % city attack upgrade.... i threw in a few spearmen medics for good mesure.

Germany fell by about 800AD ... but by this time i had no money and my research was down at 20%, I was second to last.... only alex below me.

I spent the next 1000 years or so working on my science.... in hindsight i think i dallied too long at the start... i wasnt decisive enough... an allthough i was the largest civ... and managed to pull myself up to a clear 2nd... only 300pts behind musa.... i was still technologically backwards... i never really recovered.

My troops were outdated, so conquest was out, my tech was behind so space race looked unlikly ..... eventually musa won it.........

All in all i think i learnt alot.... might try again tomorrow..... see what i actually did pick up

 

[GenMarshall]

For this spoiler, you must have completed and submitted your game.

That I already did two days ago . And it was my first game to compleate and submit .

With your unique-unit expiring early, had you made good use of it in order to set-up a strong position for the middle to late game? What type of victory were you pursuing?

I did not have an opportunity to use my UU. I mainly used a mix of Swordsmen, Archers, Spearmen to expand into the German Empire and then stoped a bit to establish my economic base. After the arival of the Riflemen, Artillery, Bombers, and Fighters. I then spearheaded into the Japanese emire.

The victory that I was hoping to reach for was at first a histogram victory untill China gained more points after squashing the English. Then I made a direction to a diplomatic victory, but then China was elected as the UN secretary. Though I lost via China's spaceship victory .

 

[dalamb]

I gave up and retired in 1520. I was holding my own by several of the measures, but was down to 20% research with most of the other civs having 6-8 more techs than me. No way for a conquest victory, and everything else seemed unlikely also. I see many who went to war just did it to get some better cities, eg with wonders and religions, rather than to conquer the world; I hadn't thought of that.

I mentioned several of my early mistakes in the 0AD thread. Wrong tech picks, put a city too far away (to get marble I never used). Waited too long to start Oracle, so lost a free tech. Probably also waited too long to build an army to go after Germany, the closest civ; I thought I needed to wait for Feudalism and/or Theology, but with Aggressive and a barracks in each city maybe I could have attacked sooner. I never did make any good use of Keshiks; I may have paid too little attention because in my one game as Mongols, they weren't good city attackers and I hadn't learned about the benefits of pillaging.

I've never played Noble before, and didn't know about a few critical techniques such as 'cottage spamming' that would have made a big economic difference. I've learned some things from reading the other posts in both spoiler threads, but for a lot of the postings "I just can't see how s/he did that!" Like I said elsewhere, I have a lot to learn.

I may try a replay at some later date. It would be hard to do worse.

 

[ngraner42]

I have played a few GOTM, but had not resisted the urge to go back a few turns to correct mistakes. In fact this is probably my first solo game of Civ4 where I did no backing up. It was a disappointing first GOTM.

I started out well, carefully managing my cities and analyzing my moves. By 500BC I had 4 cities nicely established with Karakorum working on the Pyramids with the intention of getting cash (see the screen shot with 54 turns to completion), but somehow I actually finished them. I was pleased, though the experts have probably conquered the Germans by this point.



By 900AD I had reached the height of my progress controlling the best spots on my subcontinent.



By 1220AD I had taken my first Japanese city. I decided to go after Japan rather than Germany to keep good relations with the Chinese, who were pleased with Germany.

I worked my way through the Japanese empire, eventually conquering it all. There final city was on an island. It took 15 turns to bring my one galley up to shuttle a cavalry and a catapult over to take the city.

At this point I started to drift. I got bored and started automating my workers. I went into empire consolidation, which would have been fine as a financial civ, but silly as Kublai. Eventually I realized what I was doing and went after the English.

At some point the Chinese just took off with their GP and Power graphs shooting up. When they declared war on the Greeks, I joined in to share in the spoils.

I traded techs freely with Mansa, since he was relatively small and not a factor. In 1912 I took the UN victory with Mansa's assistance, though a few more turns and I could probably have voted myself in.

I made a couple bonehead errors. I should have delayed the Oracle by two turns and could have got Civil Service instead of the Monarch that I took. I ended a war, entered a golden age and forgot to turn my culture slider back off for several 4 turns, but the biggest disappointment is how slowly I managed to take war to my opponents.

 

[drkodos]

Kublai Khan teams with Ralph Kramden, Goes to The Moon !!
A comedy of errors, techinal improwess, and violence for 6,000 years.


Well, it was my first GOTM and I made plenty of mistakes, including how I loaded up the final saved game submission, but I think I got the replay loaded correctly. As for the game itself, I managed to squeek out a Spaceship victory in year 2047! (while maintaining a slight lead on the hitsograph for 2,000 years).

A disappointing finish to a strong start.

A tough middle game tooks it toll both on the Mongolian Economy, Kublai's meandering startegy and exposed gaping holes in my tactical prowess.



I had to play research games at the end to pull it out:



Trying to Play Catch-up in The Space Race


I came out of the start pretty well. Had the Keshik pipleing running well, but i ran out of steam. War weariness starting getting ridiculous. (It ran +18 at one point). I had to call offf the hounds a few times when I did't wan't to but needed to economically or because my populations were suffering.

It was tight and tense the entire time. Cut and slice, thrust and parry. Everything I hoped it would be (except for my own performance ).


Tight Race for 6,000 years


The Bloodbath that was 500 AD onward cripled my economy. 1,500 years of war with Japan. War with Mansa Musa. War with England. War with Alexander. At several points, war with three Civs at a time. Rarely was there more than three turns of peace. And when there was, I kept building the wrong things.


No Rest for the Weary



I had a chance with my Cavalry (I had them early) to really take over and attack the Red Dragon, but I got gun shy. I was continually behind them in techs and arms. They kept reminding me at our border with nice displays and parades of their newest toys each time they would pop one out of that Hammer factory that was Bejiing. (I needed to capture that darn town ! -- doing so early, instead of razing the Germans would have changed the world and made my path much easier, I think) Either that or a quick strike into Chinese territory in the early 11the century would have been decisive.



Lost Opportunities


It was a blast, but very tedious to keep it going.

I kept China happy until the late 20th century when they finally attacked. I barely staved them off.

Mistakes I know I made:

~ Not agressive enough. Too often took too long to start the attacks.
~ City placement was poor. Too many compromises.
~ Ill defined long term goals (tech tree). Not sure to go Military or Culture.
~ Not comitting to full fledged genocide when needed.
~ Not getting the right Wonder (Pyramids) at the beginning, or in the middle game (Great Library).
~ Drifting focus in the middle ages.
~ Not pillaging enough!! Need to get better at figuring out more precise move sequences for more efficient raiding.
~ Not changing civics! (If i didn't make the change when first prompted I forget until so many turns went by it was disgusting). It cost me dearly once I got a religion. If I had changed when I first got Monarchy, and again when I acquired some religion I know things would have been much better. A number of times I would forget to change the slider bar of research (which got me more money, but slowed down my tech development).


I bookmarked four major points in history that I will replay. Two times when I had the slight tech and military advantage and didn't press it.

The first pivotal moment wast is the opening. I am convinced that the first city placement is great just one square removed (NW) from where I settled (it would put FIVE resources inside the Capital City FatCross). I have already started a reply game with this improved site and the results are a dramatic improvement in terms of opening economy (commerece) research etc..

When all is said and done, getting Kublai to the Moon is a decent enough acheivement for me to feel good about:





Overall, I'd say an excellent GOTM. I look forward to ltrying another one. I can usually win at this level (Noble) so I really enjoyed the brilliance of this game in frustrating me by eliminating my usual tactics and strategies.


OVERALL: I really liked the Mongols and like the UU. Will definitely play them again in my own games.


Many Thanks to staff for such a great opportunity to play and learn!

~drkodos

 

[BSouder]

Picking up from the 0AD spoiler...

I came into the ADs with a floundering economy from overexpanding and trailing in the tech race. My short term goal was to stabilize my economy with an acceptable loss per turn at 70% research before starting my war of domination.

While I was waiting on courhouses to complete I sent out the Keshiks to scout a bit more. Amazingly I stumbled on Tokyo in barbarian hands with 1 axeman at 0.2 health in it. So, naturally I killed the axeman and razed the city. That left a huge hole in Japan's cultural border, effectively cutting his empire in half. I went ahead and pillaged the roads there too to finish the job.

As I said in the first spoiler, evidently I have been more spoiled by Financial lately than I thought. It took quite a while to fix my economy. Luckily as I built my economy I was also able to catch back up in the tech race by beelining to a couple of techs and trading them off. I tried to avoid trading any techs to England or Mali since they definately didn't need the help.

Finally in 1370 (sad, sad) I declared on Japan and razed his first city the next turn. I took 3 more of his cities (razed 1, kept 2 incuding Kyoto) before running into an interesting situation. Japan had never recovered from the loss of Tokyo earlier and there was a huge gap in his empire still. It was going to take 8 turns to get my injured troops to their next targets. So, I gave him a break and made peace. I re-declared on him in 1575 and immediatley all my cities picked up +8 war weariness. I was surprised by the severity of that and ended up having to give him one more pause when most of my core cities started starving from massive unhappiness. I finally wiped him out in 1735.

By this time I was WAY in the lead and the outcome was a foregone conclusion. But, of course by this time all the land was settled and a domination victory meant a LOT of land had to be conquered. I was never at peace for more than a couple of turns again and that was just to let the siege weapons catch up to stage for the next victim.

I mostly wiped out Germany next, but didn't finish him off since he had 3 cities way on the far side of the world too far away to worry about yet. The third victim was China who had been my closest competitor points wise all game. He actually put up a surprsingly good resistance for a bit. He staged 2 counter-attacks with impressive SoDs that really did hurt, mainly because about 80% of the units in the stacks did some type of collateral damage. I actually had to pause to bring up re-inforcements for a few turns 1 city short of his capital. I also didn't quite finish off China but left him with 2 cities on a distant island.

The most annoying part of my conquest happened around the end of my war with China. One of my captured Chinese cities culture flipped to Mali. That really annoyed me since it should have been a great little science city. I thought about using that as an excuse to wipe out Mali next and his culture was causing issues with 1 other ex-Jananese city. But, my border with him was just huge and his military tech was equal to mine so I didn't want to deal with the pillaging and counter-attacks he would be doing.

I ended up by destroying Alexander and finishing off Germany for the heck of it. I had the land I needed without finishing off Germany once the Greek cities came out of revolt, but he ticked me off by plopping a city down between 2 ex-Greek cities that were still in revolt. The final result was a domination victory in 1951.

Other than my own poor management of my economy early, the thing that slowed me down the most was simply the logistics of getting troops to the front. The large land mass coupled with us being on one exteme end meant an extended trip for newly created units from the core production cities.

 

[blastoidstalker]

Contender domination in 1760 around 56,000 points
most of the game was pretty strightforward. I settled 1 W, put my prodction city in the usualy spot to the east oif the capital. I made a city to grap the resources W/NW of the capital and put a Great person city on the narrow neck of land connecting our subcontinent to the larger landmass. the rest of the cities were minor commerece builds or production centers.
I doid not go to war until macemen, because there was nobody close worth going to war with. Focused first on getting a strong base economy. Missed out on Confucian by 2 turns so picked up Christianity and its shrine for some money but realy kept my empire afloat by running caste system, setting around 5 merchants in my GP city and sending the great merchant to london for 1700 each. This and putting almost any available GP as a merchant kept me around 70% research most of the game. When I did go to war I took out Bismark with no fiht then planned to lood around the inland sea. Mao offered some resitance and Alexander was very backward so was easy pickings. Was preparing for a big war with Mansa when Toka declared on me out of the blue. I took him out and waited a few turns for boarders to expand. EKept frientdly with elizabeth mainly because she was in the perfect spot to land a great merchant.
Used one Keshik who dies quickly, with starting war so late they really were not usefull to me.
Interesting experiment in trying to run an economy with GP, mertcanilism and caste system it seemed to work pretty well, but I think some of the better players will finish the job off much quicker

 

[pnp_dredd]

I went for a cultural victory this time round, but with some early conquest to grab land and build populationa nd points. I took out Germany fairly early, and went through Japan with keshiks and 3 cats. That got some nice land to start building population on, once my worker army cleared it. Unfortunately the revealed grassland needed mainly cottages to support my economy, rather than farms to boost score.

Three cities on the starting subcontinent, including my capital, were my culture producers, so they got some early cottages. In hindsight I should have gone full cottages here, but I do like to have a couple of high-food squares to assist early population growth. By the end, these cities were producing around 400 culture per turn at about 80% - the upkeep from all those other cities really hurt a fast victory. I should have tried to build more culture-multipliers in these main cities rather that going for early hammers -> culture. I got Hermitage and Liberalism then turned research off. Had most religions at the end.

A city in the cleared jungle was my GPP city, and I had 11 artists to throw onto the pile at the end.

I won in the 1800's with around 25k points.

 

[zerza]

Am I the only one that played Challenger?

The lack of starting teks really set me back, I kinda bunged up accomodating it, so I had spears blocking before I had any real keshiks. Still managed to kill Germany with axes (well maim, cut em in half and let the ai feed on the rest after I took berlin)

This really thru me back economicly, so I stopped to eco. Got liberalism first and grabbed astronomy to build observitories. About then I sent Cavalry and went to town on the Japanese until the Chinese came in from behind.

I ended up winning with Domination with not many turns left, shrewd negotiating had the ai pretty far behind in teks. So I waited until modern armors just for the fun of using them

 

[RobertTheBruce]

Continuing from the previous spoiler:

War with Germany was quick with axes and then axes/swords in the early AD's. I stupidly kept all the german cities after filling the peninsula which dragged down my research and delayed my final cavalry charge. I always seem to find reasons to keep cities. Bismark had just linked a desert city (can't remember name) to iron so I kept it since I was kicking myself. Settling 1W meant my capital was too low to work the nearby iron and I had founded my second unit factory at the chokepoint to the peninsula 2 turns before IW. I had selected the southern shore to avoid the desert and get the wine in my working radius and was still steamed when the iron appeared. Berlin was the only really good German city, Hamburg served as a chokepoint for the chinese and the rest I don't know why I kept them. After a short rest and some mace upgrades in was time to add my friend Mansa's cities to my empire.
I swept through most of Mali until he upgraded to longbows. Djenne was the only city left (he had a second city behind the English but I couldn't get to it) and I declared on China and swept through Shanghai quickly with a second SOD.
Then a bloody setback, I attacked Djenne (4 long bows) with my stack of elite maces and cats and lost 2 cats and 8 maces without killing any bows. the cats were fodder, but I then lost a series of 70 and 80% battles followed by 2 90% battles in a row. Since reinforcements had been being diverted to the second front I had to sue leaving Masa on a hill with a stack of city defender*3 bows. On the same turn my other stack of maces and cats with a few cover units stepped next to Beijing. I should always move a scout unit first. Beijing was filled with cats and cho ko nus. Press end of turn and wait and wait and wait as the carnage continues. Most of the badly damaged remainder of a proud stack were slaughtered by cho ko nus during a disorderly retreat toward Shanghai. I had to whip a series of musketmen and then cavalry in Germany to turn the tide and save Shanghai. That was pretty much the entire Chinese army and a solid AI tactic.
Rebuild stack and cavalry now push through China. Only problem, small stack takes a Chinese city on the western side of the inland sea and the Greek borders expand and cut off reinforcements. Have to declare on Alex and fight two fronts for a while as I clean up China.
Then finish Mansa since Djenne has too much culture and prepare for Japan. Sweep through Japan and Greece (most cities never clear anarchy) for domination in 1818.
I kept too many cities and economics was always a problem. I had the confucian shrine and stayed in theocracy most of the game. I had agressively spread religion to newly conquered cities and built spiral minaret since I needed temples for my constant war but I still had slow research. Should have kept fewer cities and backfilled near the end of game.

 

[aviator99_uk]

Retired incomplete in 1988.

Normal speed is a travesty and should be deleted.

 

[Xerol]

Well, my first ever loss on Noble. Waited too long to decide on going for culture, and got spaced out by China about 20 turns before the third city would've become Legendary. I didn't expand too much (only 2 wars I had were both with Japan) so I don't even think I'll be in competition for an ambulance.

 

[dalamb]

Normal speed is a travesty and should be deleted.

A serious question and a snarky one:

1. What's travesty-istic about it? I'm fairly new and don't understand this comment.
2. Even if it is a 'travesty' for you, how can you justify taking it away from other people?

 

[GenMarshall]

Mistakes I know I made

I have no clue on what mistakes I have made, then again I am still trying to learn how to win at Noble