GOTM 08 - final spoiler (free-for-all)

[Thrallia]

I think there is a diplo movie, isn't there? one that taks place just outside the UN with people yelling and hollering?

 

[Yorgos]

I'm actually a veteran modder since civ3 and it's only recently I swiched to civ4. And though I'm playing at monarch (emperor in civ3) I tend to abandon my games during the middle ages, and the few that I go through tend to be won at very late dates. Peaceful style of play and huge maps may be partially the reason. Thus I decided to set a challenge to myself - could I get a decent score in the GOTM, with the world's top players competing?

Considering this I'm somewhat satisfied with my 1974 cultural victory. Usually I aim for the space race, but due to some early game wonders I got three very powerful cultural cities, and I thought that a cultural victory should be easier.

Well, I found out I was wrong. Unlike the space race victories, cultural victories freeze your economy, research and military strength. 60-70% culture rate comes at great cost. My weaknesses became obvious when I was attacked by the Americans around 1920. Though I (barely) managed to defend my cities, and even capture one of theirs eventually, I was unprepared and had most of the improvements near two cities pillaged - if the AI was only slightly smarter it would easily ruin me. Even worse, my frigates were helpless against the numerous American destroyers and many of my cities lost 3-4 population due to starvation. I had to increase research and commerce rate to get destroyers and upgrade my frigates, to stand a chance against them. This probably costed me at least a dozen turns and decreased my final score due to the lost population.

 

[trippstowe]

from my previous posts:

long story short, i was trying for a diplio win. and didnt get it. before you stop reading i will spare you the details, and ask questions how i can improve.

everyone really liked me. but isabella and catherine would not vote for me. i could never remove that "-4 you traded with my worst enemy". how do i get rid of that on this level. i bowed down to their every demand. i stopped trading with cyrus and washington for them. they would always vote my way on everything else. but i just had that one -4. i spent a lot of time working on that. then washington built his first SS part. i tried to beat him to that. i missed it my one part. any hints on how to create better relations????

things i tried:

• had a common war with catherine.
• did not ever trade with any person that catherine or isabella were anoyed with.
• kept monarchy, cause catherines favored civ (had a +4 here)
• gave lots of gifts.
• always gave tributes that were asked.

difficulties:

• no one liked catherine, including isabella, so i was never able to trade with her, or give her things.
• cyrus had a defense pack with washington and even though he liked me better, he would still vote washington, i tried to pull one into a war, but they were never open for that.

does anyone know the rank i need with the ai to get a vote? i had +9 with vic(voted for me), cyrus +8(he had a defense pack with washington), +7 catherine and +5 isabella(did not vote)???

 

[armstrong]

from my previous posts:

everyone really liked me. but isabella and catherine would not vote for me. i could never remove that "-4 you traded with my worst enemy". how do i get rid of that on this level. i bowed down to their every demand. i stopped trading with cyrus and washington for them. they would always vote my way on everything else. but i just had that one -4. i spent a lot of time working on that. then washington built his first SS part. i tried to beat him to that. i missed it my one part. any hints on how to create better relations????

things i tried:

• had a common war with catherine.
• did not ever trade with any person that catherine or isabella were anoyed with.
• kept monarchy, cause catherines favored civ (had a +4 here)
• gave lots of gifts.
• always gave tributes that were asked.

difficulties:

• no one liked catherine, including isabella, so i was never able to trade with her, or give her things.
• cyrus had a defense pack with washington and even though he liked me better, he would still vote washington, i tried to pull one into a war, but they were never open for that.

does anyone know the rank i need with the ai to get a vote? i had +9 with vic(voted for me), cyrus +8(he had a defense pack with washington), +7 catherine and +5 isabella(did not vote)???

Howdy, sounds like you had a rough go. As far as I know, for someone to vote for you they need to be Friendly to you and have a higher ranking with you than the other candidate. I'm not sure how defensive pacts affect the threshold, it might have lowered it - or, Cyrus might have been friendly with Washington despite having a lower total diplomatic sum, as AI's have some built in modifiers to each other that don't show up in the numbers.

One thing about your game that sounds like it was problematic was that you were trying to sway Catherine, but at the same time were trying to sway her worst enemies, too (or at least someone who thought Catherine was their worst enemy.) That strategy is almost certainly doomed to failure. Instead, you want to find the largest bloc of civilizations who are agreeable with each other.

Here's a way to develop a list of safe trading partners. Pick someone you think might be a good ally, let's say Vicky. Who is this Vicky's worst enemy? Okay, they're outside the coalition. Now, look - are there at least a few other civs who don't consider Vicky their worst enemy? If not, try another ally. If so, go through them. Who are their worst enemies? How big of a coalition can you build where no one hates anyone else in the coalition?

Go through all potential allies. What's the biggest group of nations you can get together? Okay, that's your team. Everyone else is on the outside.

Some things you can do to improve relations:

1. Starting a common war was a good idea. Be sure to keep everyone involved as long as possible. Us this to break up defensive pacts, too.

2. Don't trade with their worst enemies! Find out exactly who that is (if you keep asking to meet them, they'll tell you.) You can trade with anyone else. Trading includes things like Open Borders, settlements after war, selling/demanding resources, giving in to requests for help or demands for tribute, etc. If you don't trade with their worst enemy, that penalty will go down eventually.

3. As far as giving gifts, you can get a maximum +4 "our trade relations have been fair and forthright." And further gifts past that point do no good. I've found arranging for a lop-sided trade seems to raise this faster than a gift (e.g., sell them an expensive tech for 50 gold.)

4. Make sure you are exchanging resources for the "we appreciate the years you have supplied us with resources." Establish not only open borders early on with those who you know are going to be your allies, but also get a resource trade going (even if you're selling an excess for 1 gpt.)

Hope that helps!

 

[trippstowe]

Howdy, sounds like you had a rough go. As far as I know, for someone to vote for you they need to be Friendly to you and have a higher ranking with you than the other candidate. I'm not sure how defensive pacts affect the threshold, it might have lowered it - or, Cyrus might have been friendly with Washington despite having a lower total diplomatic sum, as AI's have some built in modifiers to each other that don't show up in the numbers.

hmm could be, any modder know? he was friendly with both of us.

One thing about your game that sounds like it was problematic was that you were trying to sway Catherine, but at the same time were trying to sway her worst enemies, too (or at least someone who thought Catherine was their worst enemy.) That strategy is almost certainly doomed to failure. Instead, you want to find the largest bloc of civilizations who are agreeable with each other.

yeah i know, but that is who i was stuck with. i thought it was going to be cyrus and vicky on my side, but i didnt pi$$ off anyone else too, just incase. maybe i should have worked on cyrus a little harder. i gave up after i saw the defence pact.

2. Don't trade with their worst enemies! Find out exactly who that is (if you keep asking to meet them, they'll tell you.) You can trade with anyone else. Trading includes things like Open Borders, settlements after war, selling/demanding resources, giving in to requests for help or demands for tribute, etc. If you don't trade with their worst enemy, that penalty will go down eventually.

i did this, this was my big problem. it just never went down, for over 200 years! it does on lower levels. this being my first monarch, i figured it is the level.

Hope that helps!

thanks!

 

[Thrallia]

from my previous posts:

long story short, i was trying for a diplio win. and didnt get it. before you stop reading i will spare you the details, and ask questions how i can improve.

things i tried:

• had a common war with catherine.
• did not ever trade with any person that catherine or isabella were anoyed with.
• kept monarchy, cause catherines favored civ (had a +4 here)
• gave lots of gifts.
• always gave tributes that were asked.

difficulties:

• no one liked catherine, including isabella, so i was never able to trade with her, or give her things.
• cyrus had a defense pack with washington and even though he liked me better, he would still vote washington, i tried to pull one into a war, but they were never open for that.

does anyone know the rank i need with the ai to get a vote? i had +9 with vic(voted for me), cyrus +8(he had a defense pack with washington), +7 catherine and +5 isabella(did not vote)???

I've found that when two AI have a defensive pact, they will generally vote for the one they have a pact with before anyone else, no matter the current relations. Also, I had Vicky voting for me despite being only pleased.

I myself won a diplo victory, but it took me over 100 years of votes to get the win...I couldn't get Izzy or Cathy to vote for me, and Cyrus and Vicky together weren't enough votes to get me the win(I was always 10-35 votes off). I came up with a slightly different method of getting the vote.

I changed who my opponent was in the votes, rather than wasting more time trying to get Cathy happy with me(Izzy was a lost cause). Everyone that liked me liked Washington as well, but no one liked Cathy....and she was 3rd in population!

All I did was I gifted her 5 cities(which contained almost 4M pop), that put her ahead of Washington in pop, made her my opponent, and gave me the votes of Cyrus, Vicky, and Washington...so I won handily. UNfortunately, it took me over 120 years to decide to do this, so that and my loss of almost 4 million pop dramatically affected my score.(Looking back, I shouldn't have done that, cause I found out afterward that I was only 1 turn away from finishing my last spaceship part!!!)

Anyway, do the things the other guy said, and if nothing else works, try changing your opponent to get more votes, try finding some other way of doing this than gifting cities though...that is really bad for your score.

 

[pnp_dredd]

I also got hit by the -4 trading with worst enemy issue.

As was said, supplying them with resources can get a useful +2 fairly quickly.

Also, spreading your religion to them helps quite a lot, although it takes time. THe religion modifier seems to be linked to the number of cities that they have of a particular religion, so you need to keep pumping Missionaries and sending them over.

The other thing you can do is 'choose your civics wisely', although I think that both you and Izzy would need to be running police state, so you would have to gift her a LOT of techs. I was on my way to doing just that when I got an increase from religion that pushed her to friendly.

Thrallia's solution is ingenious, but will cost you score.

The other option would be to conquer some of Washington's cities until you had enough population to push you over the edge, or to change your opponent. However most people aiming for fast Diplo victory are unlikely to have huge armies lying around.

A final, more risky option is to get them to make demands of you, specifically so that you can give in to them. It may be that you should continue to trade with their worst enemy, in the hope that they demand that you stop, which would give you a +1. Also, trading them heaps of techs might not be such a good idea, as they would be less likely to demand them from you.

The lesson I learnt is to watch your trading partners closely if going for a Diplo victory.

 

[trippstowe]

I've found that when two AI have a defensive pact, they will generally vote for the one they have a pact with before anyone else, no matter the current relations. Also, I had Vicky voting for me despite being only pleased.

I myself won a diplo victory, but it took me over 100 years of votes to get the win...I couldn't get Izzy or Cathy to vote for me, and Cyrus and Vicky together weren't enough votes to get me the win(I was always 10-35 votes off). I came up with a slightly different method of getting the vote.

I changed who my opponent was in the votes, rather than wasting more time trying to get Cathy happy with me(Izzy was a lost cause). Everyone that liked me liked Washington as well, but no one liked Cathy....and she was 3rd in population!

All I did was I gifted her 5 cities(which contained almost 4M pop), that put her ahead of Washington in pop, made her my opponent, and gave me the votes of Cyrus, Vicky, and Washington...so I won handily. UNfortunately, it took me over 120 years to decide to do this, so that and my loss of almost 4 million pop dramatically affected my score.(Looking back, I shouldn't have done that, cause I found out afterward that I was only 1 turn away from finishing my last spaceship part!!!)

Anyway, do the things the other guy said, and if nothing else works, try changing your opponent to get more votes, try finding some other way of doing this than gifting cities though...that is really bad for your score.

good idea! i was at least thinking along the same lines, i gifted my allies everything up to bio, to help out on their pop, but to change the opponent by gifting cities, that is brilliant! i had plenty of cities, i should have done this.

 

[Thrallia]

I was 4th in the world in army size, and Washington was first...if I'd gifted cities to Cathy either just before or just after building the UN, it wouldn't have taken as many cities, cause no one had Biology yet...Ol' George got it just after I did though, so his pop skyrocketed about when mine did...if I'd gifted Cathy some cities sooner it probably woulda taken only one or two of them, and I would have had a much higher score than I did(something like 11k)

edit: and thanks for the compliments I felt my win was rather messy actually, but considering I'd never won anything on monarch, I'm happy with anything

 

[Khalid]

My first monarch game, conquest win in 1640 for 66K (adjusted), although it was adventurer class.

the game on adventurer was fairly easy for me. I had a decent tech lead (mostly military) from the beginning and nobody was able to catch up (Vicky, Cathy and washington tried, but failed)

Continuing from the first spoiler. Washington destroyed in 800AD, mostly to axes and catapults. First macemen in production. Then toku destroyed with maces in 1150 i think. So far, so good. I have build a decent military by this time and decided to destroy Cyrus and Isabella at once, atacking the E and W. The problems was that my army was W and my ships E.

I whipped some ships and army and 5 turns later the attack started. I took their main islands and settled for peace. Finished the lonely cities in strange locations later.

Other thing i discovered during the war with Cyrus. You can enter the ocean with galley when within cultural borders (either yours or open borders). But once you declared war, you cannot enter this square any more. This means I had to travel 13 turns to Cyrus city instead of 1. thats why the brake.

My mistake was that I thought i could get the win with galley and didnt research astronomy soon (I had Collosus). Moving the troops was much harder and was the biggest problems for me. I have used to galleys to transport troops between islands (they did it in 1 turn) and then marched on roads to the other side for the next ship.

But finally, when my grenadiers, cavalry and cannons were ready, I upgraded galleys, took everybody on board and attacked. Isabell destroyed, soon after Vicky and Cyrus. My frigates were mapping Cathy. She had abslutely bad terrain settled, mostly ice. The war started in 1595 and finished 1940, but the last turns my army surrounded her last polar city and waited to pump up score. I messed it. 2 turns before and my score would be higher by 1000 points. Never mind.

Surprises:
AI did not have metals. America, Spain, Japan was finished having only archers and horses.

troop movement between islands

I finished also several other wonders, mainly GL, Taj mahal, HG, versailles.

 

[brianbenedict]

Hi, I started this game, but got bored in 1500 or so and never got around to finishing it. I attached detailed notes. Here is summary info below.

I practiced with the practice game a whole bunch, so I had a very good idea what I wanted to do at the start--CS slingshot. Found 1W like everyone else. The pigs are the best food resource nearby, so I started with researching Animal Husbandry first and building a worker before researching fishing and a boat. I took bronze working for chop and pop rushes, but with copper in the fat cross, I decided I didn't need to adopt slavery until after the slingshot (in the same revolt turn as I took bureaucracy). Next was writing and chop out a library. (A side-benefit of animal loving is quicker access to writing). I built a settler for my second city down by the marble and Stonehenge to help it grow. Extra forest growths gave me enough production capacity to build a workboat to explore the world--it eventually found Isabella and Catherine and half-circumnavigated. My original script was to take meditation, but since my second city had marble, I chose Polytheism for Parthenon, Great Library, and National Epic. I hit the slingshot in 1400. Researched alphabet next and traded it for my builder techs in 1040. Next was monotheism for Organized religion. Then metal casting for forges (great with the starting gold, and amazing when I built my 3rd city with access to gems). I can see how a metal-casting slingshot would be a good plan too. Next was literature for the marble wonders. I traded for iron working to clear jungle off my gems. The last tech I wanted for my scripted start was machinery for macemen. I founded three cities of my own, and with machinery coming online in 350BC, I had a maceman army ready to go to war with Washington around 1AD. I really liked the way America set up her cities, so I kept all five of them on the continent. Atlanta fell in 50BC, Boston in 50AD, New York in 225AD, and Washington in 350AD. I took a 10-turn break to recover (and extort a tech) before finishing off Philadelphia, leaving America with just a crappy colony city somewhere. I now had 4 religions. I founded Confucianism, Taoism, and Islam, and Washington founded Christianity for me). My GP city was pumping out prophets, who dutifully founded shrines. On a religious kick, I decided to take Isabella next. I figured I had one overseas conquest to make with my mace army before Feudalism and longbows obsoleted it. Isabella was small and I read her for having a couple of ancient religions. It turned out she had all three, including two shrines in Madrid. Madrid (with the Hindu and Buddhist shrines fell in about 1200 and her second city (Barcelona?) which founded Judaism fell in about 1300. At this point, I had over 1500 points compared to Cathering, my nearest rival at 1000. I was vastly out-teching everyone. My shrines and religious spamming and war booty was keeping my economy fairly good despite owning 10 cities on my continent and three over by Spain. I started to mess up when I decided to put off Scientific method until I could get the new religions back to my mainland and build monasteries. Due to my stupidly forgetting that missionaries won't ride in galleys, I wasted a bunch of time. I played for a while into the industrial era and just got bored, so I stopped micromanaging and eventually quit way, way ahead. Someday I'll focus on my end-game, but I'm not there quite yet. It seems that the high-scorers choose a victory condition and start developing their strategy for a quick win in the mid-game. I just run my civ to achieve more and more domination, and usually end up winning by space race. Sometimes I do conquest if I can get an infantry vs. longbows situation, which may have been where this game was heading. Anyway, even though I didn't play to the end, I really, really enjoyed this first GOTM. I'm learning a lot from other people's posts, particularly about the mid-end game. This is also the first time I've taken detailed notes. Just taking the time to do that has improved my play a whole lot--cut down on stupid errors. Now I just make major errors like not building & sending caravels to collect my missionaries that I based 300 years of my strategy around building.


GAME SUMMARY:

Research: Animal Husbandry BC 3560
Fishing BC 3320
Bronze Working BC 2840
Writing BC 2520
Wheel BC 2280
Mysticism BC 2160
Polytheism BC 1960
Priesthood BC 1880
Code of Laws BC 1440
Civil Service BC 1400 (Oracle)
Alphabet BC 1080
Masonry BC 1040 (trade)
Sailing BC 1040 (trade)
Agriculture BC 1040 (trade)
Pottery BC 1040 (trade)
Monotheism BC 975
Metal Casting BC 675
Literature BC 575
Iron Working BC 425 (trade)
Machinery BC 350
Monarchy BC 325 (hut)
Mathematics BC 275 (trade)
Archery BC 275 (trade)
Compass BC 250
Currency BC 150
Meditation BC 125 (trade)
Philosophy AD 25
Calendar AD 100
Paper AD 200
Theology AD 350 (trade)
Education AD 450
Drama AD 580 (hut)
Divine Right AD 580
Feudalism AD 640
Guilds AD 720
Banking AD 780
Construction AD 840 (trade)
Economics AD 880
Nationalism AD 980
Printing Press AD 1020
Constitution AD 1060
Corporation AD 1100
Liberalism AD 1130
Democracy AD 1140 (from liberalism)
Astronomy AD 1140 (hut)



Berlin: Founded 4000BC 1W of start
Build: Worker BC 3400
Work Boat BC 2880
Warrior BC 2760 (with some pre-building)
Worker BC 2560
Warrior BC 2480
Library BC 2280 (with 2 chops)
Settler (Hamburg) BC 2080 (with 2 chops)
Stonehenge BC 1920 (with 2 chops)
Work Boat BC 1800 (with some pre-building)
Academy BC 1600 (by Great Scientist)
Oracle BC 1400 (with 1 chop)
Worker BC 1280 (whip)
Temple BC 1040
Lighthouse BC 975
Settler BC 925(whip)
Axeman BC 900
Granary BC 875
Great Lighthouse BC 675
Forge BC 600 (whip)
Galley BC 575
Colossus BC 475
Great Library BC 325
Aqueduct BC 225 (whip)
National Epic BC 200 (pre-build)
Harbor BC 150
Confucianist Monastery BC 75
Barracks BC 50 (pre-build)
Worker AD 25 (whip)
Maceman AD 50
Worker AD 275 (whip)
Angkor Wat AD 375 (pre-build)
Chechen Itza (lost and cashed out in AD 475)
University AD 520 (whip)
Sistine Chapel AD ???

Hamburg: Founded 2000BC
Build: Granary BC 975 (whip)
Library BC 875 (with 1 chops)
Parthenon BC 700 (with 3 chops)
Forge BC 575 (whip)
Temple BC 525
Kong Miao BC 500
Barracks BC 450
Confucianist Missionary BC 375
Worker BC 325 (whip)
Maceman BC 225 (with 1 chop)
Maceman BC 150 (with 1 chop)
Market BC 75 (whip)
Maceman BC 50
Maceman AD 50
Dai Miao AD 50 (great prophet)
Taoist Missionary AD 75
Taoist Missionary AD 125
Taoist Missionary AD 200
Taoist Missionary AD 250
Taoist Missionary AD 325
Taoist Missionary AD 375
Settler AD 475 (whip)
Confucian Missionary AD 500
University AD xxx


Munich: Founded 800 BC
Build: Granary BC 625 (with 1 chop)
Forge BC 450 (whip)
Barracks BC 325 (with 1 chop)
Library BC 200 (whip)
Maceman BC 125 (with 2 chops)
Maceman BC 100
Harbor AD 1
Confucianist Monastery AD 25
Maceman AD 75 (whip)
Taoist Monastery AD 125
Taoist Missionary AD 300
Lighthouse AD 450
University AD 540 (whip)

Atlanta: Captured 50BC
Build: Granary AD 225 (whip)
Forge AD 375 (chop)
Harbor AD 475 (whip)
Library AD 520 (pre-build)
Lighthouse AD xxx

Boston: Captured 50AD
Build: Forge AD 175 (1 chop and whip)
Granary AD 250 (1 chop)
Confucian Monastery AD 450 (whip)
Library AD 475 (pre-build)
Courthouse AD xxx

New York: Captured 225 AD
Build: Forge AD 425 (whip)
Christian Missionary AD 450
Granary AD xxx

Washington Captured 350 AD
Build: Forge AD 540 (whip)
Granary AD 560 (1 chop)


Religion:
Budhism: BC 3680 (Spain--Madrid)
Hinduism: BC 2920 (Madrid)
Judaism: BC 1920 (Barcelona)
Confucianism BC 1440 (Hamburg)
Christianity BC 300 (New York)
Taoism AD 25 (Hamburg)
Islam AD 600 (Boston)

I didn't realize Spain had all 3 religions until I captured them.

Wonders:
Stonehenge: BC 1960 (Berlin)
Oracle: BC 1440 (Berlin)
Pyramids: BC 975 (Moscow)
Parthenon: BC 725 (Hamburg)
Great Lighthouse: BC 700 (Berlin)
Colossus: BC 475 (Berlin)
Hanging Gardens BC 350 (Russia)
Great Library: BC 325 (Berlin)
National Epic BC 200 (Berlin)
Notre Dame AD 1 (Russia)
Angkor Wat AD 350 (Berlin)
Hagia Sophia (far away)
Sistine Chapel AD xxx (Berlin)

Great People:
Merit Ptah Scientist Berlin BC 1840 Berlin Academy
Moses Prophet Berlin BC 550 Hamburg Kong Miao
Nabu-rimanni Scientist Berlin BC 200 Munich Academy
Xi Ling Shi far away BC 225
Imhotep Moscow BC 225 Notre Dame?
Socrates far away BC 75
Homer Artist Moscow BC 25 (from Music) Golden Age?
Mahavira Prophet Berlin AD 1 Hamburg Dai Miao
Plato Washington AD 50
Zoroaster Prophet Spain? AD 75 ?Mahabodhi?
Euclid Scientist Persia AD 175
Ananda Prophet Berlin AD 250 New York Church of Nativity
Ptolemy Scientist? Moscow AD 300 Golden Age?
Hypatia Moscow AD 540
Mo Tzu Prophet Berlin AD 560 Boston Islamic shrine
St. John Prophet far away AD 600
Zu Chongzi Osaka AD 740
Archimedes Moscow AD 800
St. Peter Prophet Berlin AD 820 Golden Age
Harkuf Merchant Berlin AD 880 (from econ) Golden Age
St. Paul Prophet far away AD 940
Aryabhata far away AD 1000
Al Razi Scientist Berlin AD 1080 ???
Alhazen Moscow AD 1080
Nicolas Copernicus Scientist Kyoto AD 1120


Ancient military history:
My scout went west first, which was a dead end, but he found the corn and fish. Next he went up north on that peninsula. I let him defend a swamp against a lion and he survived. He also saw an American city across the water, so I met Washington, who turned out to be sharing the island. After resting up, he went SE and explored along the south coast and hooked up the east coast. A panther attacked him out of the blue, but he was on a hill and survived. He rested up and finished exploring the rest of the island, making it home in time to board a galley to explore and pop a couple of goodie huts.
My first warrior explored a little bit of dark area to the south that the scout missed. I let him get attacked twice by warrior barbarians on forests. Since he wasn’t really needed for happiness in Hamburg, I kept him camped out on a hill east of the border to keep the fog way back. He defended that hill once and eventually went back to Hamburg to take up police work.
My second warrior was a policeman in Berlin, but he got a chance to sally out once and defend my gold hill against a barb warrior.
Because the scout found a lot of adjacent land, I built the second workboat to explore. It went halfway around the world and found Spain and Russia. My axeman was built to deal with a barb archer coming my way. He defended a hill two squares NE of Berlin.

Diplomatic history:
America (Washington): met in BC 3560 and signed open borders. Washington was my tech-trading partner from 1000BC until 1AD, when I decided I had made him too strong and I wanted his cities.
Spain (Isabella): met in BC 1240 when my workboat found Spain. I was able to get open borders, but then Isabella became annoyed with me over religious differences and canceled the deal in BC 625. She was my second target due to her hostility, her weakness, and her shrines that I coveted.
Japan (Tokugawa): met in BC 1200 when his galley came by. He adopted Confucianism and we eventually signed open borders and traded stuff.
Russia (Catherine): met in BC 775 when my workboat found Russia. Catherine had a good land-mass and was my nearest rival
Persia (Cyrus): met in BC 175 when our galleys met
England (Victoria): met her at sea in 1000AD give or take.

 

[The-Hawk]

All I did was I gifted her 5 cities(which contained almost 4M pop), that put her ahead of Washington in pop, made her my opponent, and gave me the votes of Cyrus, Vicky, and Washington...so I won handily.

Outstanding idea! Not sure it will apply in many situations, but I do appreciate out-of-the-box thinking!

 

[kingjoshi]

Contender, Diplo victory in 1896, score 29,036.

Things started well. Oracle in 1360. Machinery in 550BC. But I decided to go peaceful this game. I imagined domination to be difficult in this terrain. But even if I wasn't planning on that victory route, I should've fought some wars, or got the AI to fight some. Big mistake.

So I got a big tech lead (which I, barely, kept throughout the game) even though I barely built cottages or anything. The AI seemed helpless in this map.

I was just getting along with everyone. No one disliked me for most of the game. Washington was +9, Cyrus was +9, Vicky was +9 and Catherine was +9. But none were friendly with me. Here, I made another mistake of not thinking about how to sort this out. I just hoped that by the time I built the UN, things would sort themselves out. Luck favors the prepared, but I wasn't.

I got Mass Media in 1665. Really expecting an early diplo vicotry. I was a couple turns away from a GP. But it turned out to be a Great Prophet (33% odds for GP, 33% for GE, 16% for GM and 16% for GS). That delayed the UN another 17 turns. At the time I was upset but considering I didn't win for another 200 years, in the long run, it seems inconsequential. But for future games, I must have a better strategy then having some trees in nearby areas already pre-chopped except for the final chop.

Catherine liked me. Who can resist. I'm handsome. That's why Vicky liked me too. And they couldn't stand each other. It created problems for me and I tried to keep them both happy. Bad strategy. Gotta pick one over the other early. Though Cat is kinda cute, I went with Vicky who picked me for every tech I had by the time I won.

Growing up together, be and George got along. But because we got along and traded info, he got better too. And so when the UN came around, even though we didn't even have border tensions and he was +9 with me, he wouldn't vote for me because he was looking after himself. Me and Cyrus got along too, but I didn't know that Cyrus always looked up to George more.

So on the first vote, I was shocked when George got more votes then me. Having planned a diplo victory and even beginning to assume it, I was not prepared at the time to fight anyone to gain territory.

Since it was still early (before 1700) and the AI is not good with water, there was still territory to expand to. I hurried to biology and started growing as fast as I could. Eventually got to 35% fo the world pop. I got in a defensive pact with Cyrus and even then he would vote for George. He also would have every tech I would by the end of the game. Though I always made sure to stay a couple techs ahead of him and Vicky before I was confident I'd win 'soon' by the UN.

Catherine holds a grudge when you don't join her in battle so that was the deciding factor between her and Vicky. Also, both Victoria and Cyrus like Representation and I jumped ship from Monarchy to Rep to get that extra push to Friendliness. With their support, it still wasn't enough.

So finally, I got to Panzers and started taking down Toku. After a few cities fell, game over. It was never in doubt, but the finish was poorly done.

Thrallia, very creative idea to gift cities. If I did that to Isabella, I might have won earlier. I'll play with that later.

 

[llib_rm]

Contender: 2050 Time Victory (9981 pts)

CS slingshot due in 1; Oracle built 1200BC by England. Looks like the slingshot was hit or miss for most players.

A conquest victory was not in the cards. I could have had a domination in 1970's, or a diplomatic in 1980's, but I never had a time victory before. If it wasn't 2am I would have spammed farms and gone for the .

 

[Obormot]

Contender, going for Domination.

I feel that I played quite a good game this month, so I'll put up a more detailed spoiler then usual time. Don't know how it compares with the best games of the best players though since they don't post spoilers. Hopefully it will be usefull to some people. I got a domination victory in 1220AD using knights. Most of the time I was fighting only archers, propably the slow AI tech pace was a result of archipelago map. I expect my date to be beaten if somebody is brave enough to try a domination win with swords/cats/elephants because the AI were weaker then I expected. But we'll see.

The strategy.

Rolling several test maps had shown that it is unlikely that Astronomy is required to achieve domination. But the logistics is quite tricky on such maps, which may be a problem, especially on normal speed (I am more used to epic). So I decided that I would need somewhat more advanced units then axemen/horse archers to win, either macemen or knights supported by catapults.

The path to macemen/knights is not that long though, especially with some shortcuts provided by GPs. So the bottleneck will be food/hammers, not beakers. Because of that I decided not to go for the CS-slingshot. It would require slowing down my expansion too much, ignoring essential techs and squeesing out every single beaker to get CoL early enough, and I did't want that. There is also another big disadvantage of CS-slingshot: learning CS unlocks the path to Paper, Eductaion and Printing Press, each of these techs having a higher priority for a GS. Not being able to take a shortcut to Astronomy offsets the research bonus of bureaucracy, so even if galeons are needed to win, not going for the slinshot is not a very bad thing.

I may still try to build the Oracle to take advantage of the industrious trait, but I will definitely not sacrifice growth in favour of research in the early game. The best tech to take for free in this case is definitely Metal Casting providing access to the Colossus wonder and cheap forges and shortening the path to knights. Cheap forges and cheap granaries together with the slavery bug are very powerfull. Other two wonders that are even more important then the Oracle are the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus. They will allow me to research Guilds at decent speed while still expanding rapidly and later in the game will help save me from an economic collapse. Another synergy with my overall strategy is that these 2 wonders both add great merchant points. So a city with only these two wonders and an engineer from a forge is guaranteed to generate either a GM or a GE. Either of these will shorten the path to Guilds by researching either Machinery (GE) or Guilds (GM) for free. Once I found marble I decided to also build the Great Library and National Epic to fully take advantage of the industrious trait and set up a nice GP farm. I decided to place Colossus and Lighthouse in one city to guarantee getting at least one GE or GM and all other wonders with National Epic in another city to maximise the GP points there. The other GPs may be used to research Astronomy faster (most of them should be scientists) or to start GAs.

Early expansion.

By expansion I mean not only settling, but increasing my total food/hammer output by any means, either by building or capturing new cities or by growing existing ones, improving land tiles, building granaries/forges, etc. To expand at the fastest possible pace I need to always invest resources into things that pay off the investment in the shortest amount of time. Usually building a settler to found a city near a bonus resource is better the growing to get a +1 food/hammer tile, about equal to growing to work a +2 tile and worse then growing to work a bonus tile. For Bismark building a granary and a forge is better then building a settler, etc. With military units it is a bit more tricky: 2 axemen won't get you anything, but a dozen axes is better then 5 settlers (and cost the same), so building units is better then expanding by normal means, but only once you are ready to produce them in relatively big numbers. In the early game I always tried to estimate the payback time for each choice and pick the best decision. Of course there were exceptions, for example you cannot delay building wonders too much even if it is good for the expansion since if you don't build them early you won't get them at all. Of course high-commerce tiles like the gold hill are worth being worked even if they slow down the expansion. The theory can also be applied to chopping. Without bonuses chopping provides 20 hammers, with math and a forge it will give 37 hammers. But hammers now are more important then hammers later due to exponential growth. It is quite difficult to estimate whether it is better to chop now or wait for math, whether it is good to build another worker exclusively for chopping, etc., so I made these decisions simply "by feel". The general idea though is that chopping is good when you are far from learning math and when you have just learnt math. But it is bad to chop shortly before learning math.

OK, now i'll tell the actual story. I settled 1W of the start like most people did. The build sequence in the capital was worker, workboat, warrior, settler (capital was at size 4 as it started pumping out settlers working fish, pigs, gold and copper). Early research sequence was AH, Fishing, BW, Wheel, Agriculture, Pottery, Mysticism, Polytheism, Priesthood, Writing (order may be wrong). I did not beeline to Alphabet because I thought that the AI won't trade with me if they are isolated. I may have been wrong because when I did get Alphabet they did trade with me. If so this was propably a mistake that slowed me down a lot. I researched Polytheism and not Meditation because Polytheism unlocks Philosophy which would have made my backup plan of getting Astronomy with GSs useless. First city was founded near the cow to the SE, second near corn to the NE, third near corn and fish in the west. In 1600 I already had 4 cities and all the bonus tiles near them improved (except the fish in the west). Because of fast expansion and scouting (Berlin also pumped out a few warriors between settlers and grew to work more hills) I didn't have much problems with barbs. After settling these cities I built the Oracle in the capital. Marble was not yet connected because I wanted my second city with the cow in the first radius and on the coast. It was completed in 1480BC and I took MC. After that I invested into forges and granaries in my cities and later into axemen. My second city built Great Lighhouse (800BC) and Colossus (650BC). At this point I still didn't build lighhouses and didn't work ocean tiles and was mostly geared towards production. I wanted to conquer America ASAP since they were relatively close and had 3 gem mines, so I figured that their cities will boost my research rather then slowing it. The capital built a library though as soon as I got Writing and hired two scientists.

I attacked Washington in 550BC with about about a dozen axes and steamrolled him easily since he had nothing except archers.In 150BC he was down to one city at the northern tip of his island and I made peace with him to extort Calendar. During this time I also settled the rest of the starting island. After that I slowed expansion for a short while to get Guilds sooner. My old cities and the newly aqquired ones built lighhouses and grew in size to work the ocean tiles. I was researching at about 50%, but my GNP was by far the highest in the world, so as expected the conquest of America was great for my research. My research path after Writing was Math, Alphabet, Literature (to build Great Library), Monarchy, Feudalism, Guilds. Machinery was researched by the GE as planned. I traded for HBR, Construction, Currency and Calendar. In 350AD I discovered Guilds and switched off research forever. During that time I built boats for exploration and chariots for MP and upgrading later. I have explored most of the shorelines with my boats and circumnavigated the globe by 300AD. Great Library was built in Berlin in 75BC and NE shortly after that. Berlin became my main GP farm. By 400AD it generated a GP and a GS. Since it was already evident at that time that Astronomy is not needed for domination, I used them for a GA to mass produce knights and galeys. I also used my whole gpt to upgrade chariots. I planned to use next 3 GPs for a second GA, but when the third GP was born I was already about to win.

The main wars.

After that it was just a matter of transporting knights by galley chains and crushing AI civs one after the other, which proved to be rather tedious on this map. I didn't settle towns on empty islands untill late in the game because I could claim them quickly in the last 20 turns or so by mass producing settlers in home and in captured lands. In my game most of AI civs only had archers, so military expansion was definitely more efficent then peacefull settling, but I think that it is also true for better defended cities.

At first I expanded in the eastern direction, conquering Japan in 680AD and Persia in 840AD, later I opened a second front and attacked England and Spain simultaneously. Spain was destroyed in 1060AD, England was a bit tougher, they even had a few pikes, so they survived up to the end of the game. I also had a brief war with Russia, conquering a couple of poorly defended islands, but I made peace with them quickly and never attacked their mainland.

At 1000AD or so I started mass producing settlers to fill all the empty islands using galley chains to deliver them to even the most distant ones. I had a GA born in Berlin and planned to use him for a culture bomb in the last turns to claim some land in England without waiting for the resistance to end (or razing/replacing), but I messed up the english campaign. I didn't notice that the distance to their main island from the outlying islands is minimum 2 tiles and I couldn't reach it. I lost lots of time transporting a settler and waiting for the borders to expand to make a culture bridge for my boats. I also made peace instead of cease fire and lost a few more precious turns waiting untill I could cancel the deal. And by the time it was cancelled Victoria researched Feudalism which made it impossible to conquer her fast. Because of that I won by domination a turn before I could have used the culture bomb. In the end I had three unused GPs (the third one was born shortly before the victory) - very poor efficency

I stayed in slavery/HR/vassalge for most of the game, switching to caste system for the last few turns to expand borders of newly settled cities quickly. Before this game I prefered caste system rather then slavery, but the combination of cheap granaries, cheap forges and the slavery bug is just too powerfull. I have never used religious civics in this game and never even had a state religion. I decided that the lost turn is not worth the bonus.

In cities that I conquered early I built granaries, culture (obelisks and later theaters), forges, lighthouses and courts, so my economy was doing OK for the most part of the game. I built the FP in Osaka which was also a great boost, but I think I would have been better of building it in New York which was not that optimal, but could be built much sooner. After foundng lots of crappy towns in the end game my economy was ruined of course, but it didn't matter anymore. In the end I had about 1000 gold and -100 gpt.

1000BC


1AD


500AD


1000AD


1220AD

 

[armstrong]

Thanks for the detailed writeup

did not beeline to Alphabet because I thought that the AI won't trade with me if they are isolated. I may have been wrong because when I did get Alphabet they did trade with me.Contender, going for Domination.

This is generally true. Basically, an AI won't break a monopoly on a tech (with some caveats, not all of which I understand) so if they only know only one other Civ they will generally not tech trade.

However, on this map, since everyone met everyone through galleys, there was no "isolation" - most Civs knew at least 3-4 other civs, giving plenty of opportunities for trades.

 

[Lobsterboy]

I got a domination victory in 1220AD using knights

In my game (failed attempt at a diplo victory on contender class), I didn't even discover Guilds until 1350 AD!! One of these days, I've got to figure out how to play this game...

 

[civ_steve]

Nice write-up, Obormot! And a well-thought out use of the Oracle, along with GP use.

I ran out of time last night, and eventually submitted a retired game in the 1890's. Too late, and too slow on my computer.

My concept for the game was to experience some of the later parts of Tech research, and since we had discussed the effects of Permanent Alliance's in our SGOTM Thread, I wanted to try to set one up just to see how it worked. Therefore, I decided to make my way towards a Diplo attempt, without too much idea of how to get there.

My early game wasn't stellar. I did make contact with everyone by 500 AD (I built a 2nd Work boat and it 'eventually' circumnavigated the globe), and when Cathy's Judaism spread to me, I chose her to be my eventual Permanent Ally and adopted Judaism as my state religion. We eventually left everybody in the dust, except for Victoria who was close by, often with 1 or 2 unique Techs. George made it to the Iron before me; a short war around 300 AD gained me the Horses and Iron resources. A 2nd war with Knights and Catapults pushed George to the upper part of our land mass, around 1200 AD.

Meanwhile I researched and developed my cities, and traded often with Cathy, and whomever. Unfortunately, I was forced to drop some trades, and got caught up in a few other wars. I researched Mass Media sometime in the late 1700's, early 1800's; Cathy was +27, with one -1 effect (I declared on Japan, her friend, at one point), and while I could get her to sign Defensive Pacts, I never got the option to sign a Permanent Alliance. For vote purposes, she always supported me, but Vicky was my opponent, and she garnered enough support from the others that I never got voted in as SG.

So I started researching the SS techs, and had gotten to where I could build Apollo, but I really needed more production, so I needed to do more research ... and my computer was running fairly slowly ... and it was almost 2 am (2 hours to go) ... so I punched out.

I was in the process of taking out America's last few cities in the north (taking his 40 points would put me ahead of Vicky for SG voting, but I would need a lot more points to actually win the Diplo vote), and SS was a possibility, but I was just out of time. Disappointed I wasn't able to set up the PA - any suggestions?

 

[armstrong]

Disappointed I wasn't able to set up the PA - any suggestions?

First off, the option needs to be specifically enabled - by default, PA's are disabled. I don't recall that being mentioned in the opening thread... so that's a big obstacle right there.

If they are enabled, you can usually get one after you've had a Defensive Pact with an AI for a signficiant amount of time (40 turns?) or are fighting a mutual war.

 

[akots]

... One of these days, I've got to figure out how to play this game...

You are not the only one here.

Seems like a great game, Obormot! Really well thought through and planned!