GOTM 06 second spoiler - everything else!

[Conquistador 63]

My 2nd GOTM. I played the last one at Warlord level and achieved my only Domination win in my Civ4 history (with a whopping 90k score – for my standards that is ).

From what I read on pre-game discussions, I thought I could follow the warlike path again. But it turned out I still don’t have the skills for it.

Staying middle of the road I neither went for conquest nor did well at building infrastructure: China beated me for all ancient wonders except Great Lighthouse. I also wasn’t able to grab any religion the whole game, I stayed pagan until free religion.

After securing my own peninsula, I started my 1,000yrs war vs Bismarck around 50AD, slowly capturing (and keeping) his cities with swordsmen, catapults and macemen in the end.

After that, some 300 years of peace rebuilding economy I went for Toku, mainly for his happiness/health resources and also because he didn’t like me in the first place! That was lasted from 1400 to mid 1800s IIRC.

In the meantime Qin and Alex were ganging on my poor friend Liz, but I was too busy to help her so she eventually was forced to leave. Mansa, apart from trading me some tech here and there (was pleased with me), had a very limited role throughout the whole game.

As I was too far away from the ~60% land grab required for Domination, from middle ages on my mind was set on the standard, lackluster space race win. I also thought I wouldn’t be able to get a Diplo win, only made it once on my 1st Civ4 game at chieftain level, from that time on every time I tried I had friendly civs abstaining instead of voting for me as world leader…On this game only Mansa and Liz were at best pleased with me, not friendly.

So I ended up researching Mass Media and building UN much later than I could, when I had already a huge tech lead. But in 1896, when I was 6 turns away from launching spaceship (launch date would be 1910), to my surprise I achieved a Diplomatic win (~27k), thanks to Mansa´s help.

I certainly lacked focus, as I could have achieved a faster/higher scoring win, but nonetheless I was satisfied ending the game 6 turns earlier or else I might have fallen asleep over the keyboard as it was 2:30am when that happened…

Many thanks again to GOTM staff and fellow forumers for their insightful comments. GOTM and its practice games is all I play nowadays, I am pleased that next one will be at Prince level so it will allow us no-expert players to proceed gaining experience and knowledge of the game. Also with FIFA World Cup about to begin, June will be a busy month, not enough free time to play Civ4 and watch matches on TV!

 

[Khalid]

My first GOTM and first game on noble.

Finally I was able to win domination in 1802, the last turns took a hell lot of time (I'm just afraid to automate workers). The game was quite steady, not having much trouble with the other civs, never got attacked, only attacking other civs.

I have made Mansa to be my great friend, shared judaism with him (what a surprise that I was able to get the judaism holy city from Toku). We traded techs a lot and Mansa finished second after me.

After making peace with Germany (I wanted to know if I can get something for it and I just offered peace for free ) I consolidated my economy for a couple hundred years. Everybody was pleased with Germany, so I didn't attack again. I traded with everybody else. So I went after Toku with maces and cats. My keshiks came late and they were good only to sneak through the empire and kill some moveing units and pillage. I finished Toku and then Germany.

I really blame me for that peace. If I finished them early, I would know there's passage to china and Quin was quite advanced. He had build almost all the wonders and had a nice handfull of Cho-ku-nos in his cities (in Beijing 20+).

So I went all the way around the world to beat Liz with riflemen and canons (I upgraded in the first conquered city) and then Alex (when I added cavalry). I have brought also 5 settlers to fill the gaps in lands after the war between Alex and Liz. But it took a long time.

The major mistake I think I made is that I didn't bring more reinforcements to the war. MY CRIII maces and riflemen were fighting with 99,4% odds (I was lucky, no one got killed) but it took a long time to take half of the world with only 25 units.

 

[LordKestrel]

Played yesterday and today, picked up a Diplo win in 1968. I could've won 20 turns earlier if I'd build the UN when it was available, but once again I didn't have any real plan when I played, so I kind of just ended up winning without really meaning to.

I wasted an enormous number of turns earlier in the game by trying to get to Communism quickly so I could sign a PA with England, only to find out that PAs aren't enabled in the GOTM.

 

[zeitkugel]

My first GOTM, and one of the first ones as Noble. Time defeat to China..
Got little left behind in tech race, because of warring against Bismarck. Finally Mongolian - Japanese joint effort destroyed Germans, i managed to conquer most of them, only few northern cities fell to Japanese. China destroyed Greece, so they had quite an impressive empire.
Mali and China finished their Apollo Programs, and I went for Manhattan project, with idea of nuking them into submmission. Mainly because only uranium resources outside the Mongolian borders were held by Japanese and Mali.
Declared war against China, and after fierce fighting in the southern peninsula i managed to conquer few of their cities, including capital. But soon their more advanced techs started to bite, as their Mech infantry and Gunships started to hammer my invasion force, and soon all previous gains were lost, war halted into fighting in southern peninsula. Nuked their new capital, Thermopylae, and few other cities, but it deid not seem to have effect on their military production..
At this point Mali was n. 1 in space race, it was moment for my spies to destroy their uranium mines. I declared war on them, and nuked their biggest cities.. Meanwhile China completed SDI, so there was no use of nuking them anymore, i of course tried, and even succeeded sometimes. So most nuking was recieved by Mali. Japan declared war, and they were punished by nuclear missiles exploding over theis biggest cities..

It is a bit wonder that no-one scored spaceship victory, but game dragged on to time defeat. I was only about ten turns from victory, byt china made an assault to my main continent, and razed two of my poorly defended coastal cities, and my score detoriated badly.. It was my bad to leave those cities undefended. But thats it, better luck (or thinking) next time.

 

[Civgeek]

Hhhmm ... triggered a domination win 4 turns before what would have been a diplomatic win (having eliminated everybody but China). Hate it when that happens!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Hhhmm ... triggered a domination win 4 turns before what would have been a diplomatic win (having eliminated everybody but China). Hate it when that happens!

Tee hee! I never got round to doing a final write-up of my GOTM5 (the warlord, great plains, one) but the thing that dominated that final game for me in that one was that I was trying to go for a cultural victory but kept having to check my position to make sure I didn't accidentally have a domination win. In my having-fun-with-my-cossacks stage of the game I'd nearly gone too far - found myself with 55% of the land area and slowly going up as my borders expanded and several AI cities flipped to me. For ages I even had emergency plans in my mind to gift a city to an AI if I started approaching 64% - I'd even decided which city and which AI and verified he'd accept it - though in the end I didn't need to. IIRC I got my culture win with about 63% of the land.

 

[sgetsuo]

Second submission, first win! (ok - my only other submission was that Emperor game - GOTM3 I think it was - where I had my arse well and truly handed to me by Lizzie )

Standard fare domination victory in what I thought (before reading this thread) was a respectable 1969. Then I see all these victories hundreds of years earlier and think I maybe missed the boat somewhere Definitely need to practice more on the all-out-war front, but as with many people I seem to get caught up with the "think I'll just build x in that city first..." rather than piling out the units for fear of becoming too technologically backward. Although I was never in any sort of trouble during this game there was definitely room for improvement in speed.

Curios:
- Didn't make a single Keshik (think this may have been Mistake No.1 in lack of speedy victory)

- Was so insecure about my ability to conquer that I had a culture-capital ready to go hurling out Artists like no tomorrow in case I had to abandon my Domination plans.

- Only destroyed one nation myself, the Germans. Chinese were finished off by the Greeks (ok I did the bulk of the work there) and the Japanese escaped to an island, their last city was poised to fall a turn after I achieved Domination!

- All the religions were founded miles away, as a result I didn't see the inside of a Holy City until the very end of the game.

Really enjoyed this game and looking forward to a bit more difficulty in the next one. Must learn to be more dedicated to my cause (whatever that is) and not get sidetracked with surplus building works!

 

[topcatdk]

I hadn’t played civ4 for a long time due to computer problems, so I was quite happy when I saw a GOTM on noble, here I might have a chance to do something worthy of submitting. Hmmm, well I ended up with a time-loss to china and an impressive score of 3704, if the note about increasing difficulty in the next GOTM is true then this is likely to be my only attempt….

Anyway: I settled on the spot, had my scout check out the area around the city, got a second scout and a bit of gold from goody huts. Chopped a settler and secured stone, third city placed near the entrance to the peninsula, fourth city to provide horses. A few cities more and a group of swordsmen later Germany declared war, I fought off the attack and took two cities, then forgot to think and simply accepted his offer for piece…

With cavalry ready I went to war with Germany once more and quite easily ran them over, my military production was running smooth but war-weariness was giving me serious problems, I couldn’t find the last enemy city so I declared piece and made the game-turning mistake, I simply just sat back, not knowing if I should focus on military, culture or science so everything ended up half-hearted, when I finally realised my mistake it was too late to do much, I was a bit behind in science and my military wasn’t up for a conquest run. So I just waited out the last 50 turns or so, truing to rush the science to gain a few extra points… Bah…

Think I’ll go back to the end of the German war and try and regroup quickly and the go after another civ.

 

[Civgeek]

Tee hee! I never got round to doing a final write-up of my GOTM5 (the warlord, great plains, one) but the thing that dominated that final game for me in that one was that I was trying to go for a cultural victory but kept having to check my position to make sure I didn't accidentally have a domination win. In my having-fun-with-my-cossacks stage of the game I'd nearly gone too far - found myself with 55% of the land area and slowly going up as my borders expanded and several AI cities flipped to me. For ages I even had emergency plans in my mind to gift a city to an AI if I started approaching 64% - I'd even decided which city and which AI and verified he'd accept it - though in the end I didn't need to. IIRC I got my culture win with about 63% of the land.

Forgot about gifting a city. Strayed to close to the line, hovering around 63.7% (kind of like seeing how far you can go when the gas gauge reads E) while building the UN. In hindsight, probably giving China one city was all I needed to do. Ended-up with ~40k in 1816 Domination; would have had Diplomatic in 1824(?), so no big woop anyway.

 

[MiniMe]

I discarded Keshiks from the beginning, and I went my 'standard' route to CS and Metal Casting to build Macemen. In the very few games I previously played as Mongols the Keshiks looked utterly useless. Well, I guess I was wrong...

Going Macemen means concentrating a bit on economy in the beginning so I lost much time. I got Domination Victory in 1350AD with 98K points. Hanging Gardens on the last turn gave more than 10K extra points.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Going Macemen means concentrating a bit on economy in the beginning so I lost much time. I got Domination Victory in 1350AD with 98K points. Hanging Gardens on the last turn gave more than 10K extra points.

Out of interest, how do you guys who milk using hanging gardens on last-ish turn deal with the risk of the AI building it first? Do you just take a chance that you might get beaten to it, or do you rely on attacking every AI civ in time to turn each civ's mind away from wonder-building?

 

[schmiddi]

Spaceship loss

My whole game was doomed when I lost two early settlers due to my idiocy.
I catched up during the ADs, but did not get close enough.

 

[Harok]

First Spoiler

Quick Recap:
Trying for fastest domination with no concern given to score. Started ok but with a few mistakes due to poor scouting and needing another worker or 2. Bismark, Japan, and China are gone and just declared on Mansa in 500AD.

The rest of the game:
Wallata which is just north of the old German lands is autorazed in in 500AD. Then I captured Djenne (520AD) and made a blunder next when I let a pair of warriors take Tokyo as I had one unit attack them without realizing there was 2 warriors. If I had noticed there was 2 I could have just moved the Keshik into the city and it would have easily defeated both warriors. I took it back the next turn but lost its barracks in the process. Back in Malinese lands I captured Kumba Saleh (560AD), Timbuktu (620AD), and Gao (700AD).

During this time I also declared war on Alex in 600AD taking Thermopylae (680AD), Sparta (800AD), Corinth (860AD), Athens (860AD), Sakae (940AD), and Delphi (1020 AD).

About halfway through these wars I switched from Keshik production to Settler production and founded 14 new cities between 980 and 1090 strictly to get more land. My money problems finally became too great with all these cities and units started going on strike in 1040AD and stayed that way until the last turn. On the last turn I realized I had enough land but had a stack ready to start invading Lizzie so I went ahead and declared taking a city for the fun of it which netted me enough money to get units out of strike for the final turn. I was close to going on strike earlier but demanded money from Liz and Alex a couple of times each and they gave in.

Final Result:
Domination win - 1100AD
Score - 59464

 

[MiniMe]

Out of interest, how do you guys who milk using hanging gardens on last-ish turn deal with the risk of the AI building it first? Do you just take a chance that you might get beaten to it, or do you rely on attacking every AI civ in time to turn each civ's mind away from wonder-building?

I have read in the previous spoiler threads that some people look for AI cities with aqueducts (visible in graphics) and then attack those first. Also I think its a general observation that AI does not really prioritize the Hanging Gardens. Also the level and maybe also the map itself made AIs very slow to build wonders. Except the Chinese of course who had an exceptionally good starting location, and who built several wonders.

But personally in this game I didnt do any long term planning to prevent the AIs from building HG. I just built it late and hoped for the best, so there was an element of luck involved. My goal was 'quick' domination and not milking. As it turned out my domination was not very quick, but I cannot blame anyone but myself for that.

 

[Barn Owl]

Never really looked like winning this one, eventually lost to a spaceship victory by China. My belated attempt at conquest was eventually repulsed by Bismarck and China was always ahead of me in Technology so I built the UN, but China as too dominant and carried too many votes, Bismarck and Toku both hated me anyway, the best I could do was to get them to abstain, Alex was gone and Elizabeth and Mansa both supported me, but it wasn't enough.

 

[Barn Owl]

Many thanks again to GOTM staff and fellow forumers for their insightful comments. GOTM and its practice games is all I play nowadays, I am pleased that next one will be at Prince level so it will allow us no-expert players to proceed gaining experience and knowledge of the game. Also with FIFA World Cup about to begin, June will be a busy month, not enough free time to play Civ4 and watch matches on TV!

Just wanted to echo Conquistador's comments and say the same goes for me too.

 

[chunkymonkey]

Pretty standard space victory really, I doubt it will be the fastest. I originally set out with a mind to getting fastest diplo victory so I concentrated on getting an early religion, spreading it and teeing up a Great Engineer Factory for the end game.

Unfortunately, after realising how unfriendly the other civs were with allowing me to spread Hinduism to their cities through open borders, this led me to cast doubts upon my ability to win Diplo without some major aggressiveness. So i decided to switch to a fast Space attempt.

Tried to set up a Great Scientist factory, but it was tainted with Artist points and I always ended up getting artists rather than scientists which was frustrating (will teach me to specialise a bit more with wonders in future). The Pyramids (Representation) helped me research reasonably quickly. A Great Merchant and flogging off techs to the others (who were backwards all game) kept me at 100% research all the way from Currency onwards.

Bismarck declared on me once, as did Qin, but I took part in only two or three skirmishes before they both realised my penisula was impregnable.

Towards the end of the game I lined up a couple of Engineers to rush Space Elevator. The rest was just optimising production with a bit of starving here and there to get the remaining SS components as quickly as possible.

Spaceship Victory - 1926AD
Final Score - 12629

 

[reker]

I finished the GOTM an hour after the deadline so could not post. And I lost a time victory to China by 4714 to 4700. In 2049 I was ahead by 50 points, but China did something to get a spurt in the final year (probably completed UN) and regained the lead he had for almost the whole game. I wiped out Germany first, but kept four cities so had to go deep into technology funding to balance my budget. Aborted wars with China and Japan left me further in hole. Tracked behind China by 200-300 points for most of game. Caught up in last 50 years when we both wiped out Mansa (after wiping out Japan with Mansa), but I got more than my share of cities despite weaker military. Thought I was going to have a spectacular come-from-behind victory, and getting repassed at the end was a big blow.
Does anyone know of a sadder Civ story?

 

[DaddyMac]

Domination by tanks. It's not a great score - but it was lots of fun.
I avoided conflict w/ Mansa since he was roughly equal in tech and ended up owning a "U" shape on the continent.

 

[magritte]

Woohoo! My first completed GOTM--and only a few months late. Anyway, I got a Spaceship Victory in 2002. It was my original victory plan--although I really just kind of take a builder's approach through most of the game and Spaceship falls out. However, it took a bit longer than anticipated for a couple of reasons.

My strategy was to head straight for robotics, and build the space elevator immediately along with laboratories everywhere to get the ship built as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, my ironworks city turned out to be too far south to build the spaceship elevator in, so it had to be built in a much less productive city and came in about 10 turns after my Apollo program instead of before, as I had been trying for.

The other delay was because I freaked out when Mansa Musa built his Apollo program before I had even started mine. I decided to try for a diplomatic victory and picked up the tech mass media and built the UN. I had not had any real wars all game long so I thought I could probably swing it. My only war had been with the Greeks in which no actual battles occurred and, in any event, Alexander was long gone. Unfortunately, two turns before I built the UN Tokugawa decided to attack me. Apparently, he didn't like the hit musicals I was sending him for free. That kind of mucked things up and I could never swing quite enough votes for diplomacy. I perhaps could have tried eliminating or weakening countries that didn't want to vote for me, but by this time I'd noticed Mansa Musa's tech progress had slowed WAY down, probably because he was in a protracted war with Elizabeth. So after taking a couple cities from Tokugawa, I made peace and returned to my space race strategy.

As soon as I had ecology, I turned my research off to build up a warchest to kill off Mansa Musa's spaceship parts with spies, but I didn't really have to use it. He was still about 10 turns from the engine when I won.

I think I'm going to start trying to play at prince level now.