GOTM-1: Closing Spoiler

[Bouchehog]

That was enourmously fun, but I think that I need to go for one type of victory condition rather than stay open to anything. I started off with three cities built through an early forest rush. I was going for a slow expansion and lots of wonders, then a space race (my usual plan) but a couple of early tech from huts and a free warrior, combined with a source of Iron and Rome's UU meant that I was well placed to take out Alex.

I crushed him in a couple of turns in the South and sued for peace for all his tech, leaving him with two poor cities in the North. I had pushed ahead in tech on more specific lines despite being at 50% at one point I was still comfortably ahead. He still had a couple of techs that I didn't have, so a I soon went back to war with him, once settling for one tech for peace, then researching them myself, so I wiped him out.

I met China in the North and Monty in the East, but completely missed the others on the continent. I didn't circumnavigate the globe because I didn't realise it gave any advantage.

In the end I achieved a diplomatic victory in 1975 after failing for 75 years to do the same. Monty had just attacked and I drew Mao into the war in the hope that he'd vote for me. I was nine turns away from a space race victory and I was so far ahead in the tech race that I'm sure that I'd have had no problem in wiping out the other nations (only the Arabs had 1st generation tanks).

Anyway, I had a great deal of fun, but it has left me with a whole load of question for how to do better next time. I only scored 9169, but I suppose that it wasn't too bad for my third game.

 

[anidem]

Won by Domination in 1944 AD.

This was my first GOTM. Lurked for a while and played along on some Civ3 GOTMs, but never did well enough to submit. I had a great time with Civ4 GOTM-1, though my game needs lots of improvement.

The Greek war lasted from about 660 AD to 1140 AD, when the Greeks were destroyed by my Praetorians. I now had complete control over the starting continent, which ended up having 15 cities on it. I didn't meet anyone else for some time, until I finally got a caravel up to the Chinese continent in the 1300s or so. I then quickly met everyone else as the caravel sailed around the big multi-civ continent. All the other civs seemed to still have relatively primitive units defending their cities, so I decided to go for domination.

I landed a stack of a dozen or more units in the southeast of the Chinese continent, where there was a desert area not covered by the Chinese cultural boundaries. The stack was mostly made up of Praets left over from the Greek war, but there were some macemen and I was just starting to produce knights. I declared in 1625 AD. The Chinese war took longer than I hoped and I finally destroyed them in 1785 AD.

After a short regrouping, I started working southward from the Aztec area of the big continent. Aztecs were destroyed in 1835 AD, though it was actually the Germans that took their last city. I kept rolling against the Germans, mostly with Grenadiers and Cavalry, but the invasion stalled at Berlin and Essen. I researched Industrialism in 1878 AD and started cranking out the tanks. I finally destroyed the Germans in 1939 AD, then I had to wait a few years for my borders to expand and achieve domination.

I've learned a lot from reading everyone else's posts on this game. I will try to incorporate some sounder strategies for GOTM-2.

 

[whb]

Wow, not only did I finish later in game-years than most, but later in the month too! (Had a week's holiday in the middle).

I decided I'd try for a Diplomatic win by being diplomatic - and never declaring war myself. I didn't decide this from the start - but after my plans to butcher Alex when I'd run out of room on the continent failed because Alex was just being too nice to me and I didn't feel like going to war.

Most of the game was fairly uneventful and a bit of a tech race. Irritatingly I found I missed building Broadway by 1 turn (hadn't thought Mao had reached that tech yet). But suddenly, late in the game, Alex decided to declare war on me despite his having a fairly inferior army IMO. Maybe he just wanted a way to burn up his outdated cavalry because gunships were still a long way off...

That war revealed something interesting: for a very long time, Alex kept stacks of artillery in his port city with a couple of transports (visible to my navy waiting outside), and would not budge them to defend the cities my tanks and bombers were ripping off him. I'm not sure if it's because he had the artilleries in mind as a sneak invasion fleet but didn't dare bring them out with my battleship lurking outside the port, or if he was stuck waiting for troops he considered "offensive" to go with the artillery instead of just infantry. But it sure made taking his cities easier having half of his army locked away in Thermopylae.

The war finally ended when he did slip a ship out of port stacked with troops and landed it near a small and poorly defended city that happened to have a shrine in it... I made a quick call to tell him he could keep his last two cities then

Diplomatic victory took a while because I kept being just a handful of votes short (even with my allies' help), and thinking "never mind, I'll have grown those votes in the next 3 turns or so". I think it took about 7 votes before I finally got it - I should have just put up with losing the shrine and grabbed one of Alex's last two (big) cities which would have put my numbers over the top sooner.

So, at last in 1987 (just 5 years before my spaceship would have launched), I finally got elected. Saladin and Bismark voted for me, giving me one more than the 471 I needed. Isabella voted for herself, and everybody else abstained.

9224 points.

 

[Spoony]

It's impressive that some players managed a diplomatic victory when researching so fast. I managed to conquer Greece by 220AD , but then my economy got really messy . I just pumped out settler after settler to occupy the whole island and this seemed to hurt me.

Also I've noticed that placing a lot of cities in small areas doesn't help greatly. I was trying to take advantage of all that coast, but it really hurt my early economy and proved little use later on.

Finally managed 1928AD domination victory for 23,446

@BradleyFeanor - thank you for such a detailed account, amazingly useful to read and it highlighted many mistakes i made.

First I went straight for Iron working completely neglecting useful research for workers. After that my war was easy, but my economy never recovered!

Secondly in committing to such an early war I didn't manage to build a couple of useful wonders. It cost me later with fewer great people and a poor economy.

 

[Soul oWar]

Hello, this was my first gotm and found it actually challenging and fun. This is actually my second game I finish. No reloading and stuck with the roman was challenging.

Roman as two traits that I doesn't like. And I usually don't like civ that have so earlier UU because I'm not aggressive earlier in the game, but this as changed.

Ok I builded the foundation of my roman empire on the hill in the starting position. I sent my bard to the first hut sout-west and got some gold, by settling I found anothere hut to the east, so sent my warrior there to get my second hut,surprise I get the wheel (if I remember right). Than I decided to explore north, blow me why I decided to go for the jungle instead of the east or south but don't ask me why, luck? Up tehre I found anothere goody hut and it gave me bronze working! change study to iron working since I also learned that the greek where somewhere around. Managed to score iron workign before my first settler... Run to the iron deposit and grab it... Build a few city declare war with a butt load of praetorian and the island is mine in 700ad the exact same date as christianity is founded in a distant land...

Soon after the chinese came to greet me, I think I never traded one tech, or maybe just once to get the german to confucianisme that I founded while whipping the greek. At the point I decided to go for domination, at first I sent my troop to germany to plan a strike against montezuma but decided against it since I have no cultural bomb, reloaded my troops and struck the chinese... Grenadier cavalry and cannon made short work of him and as soon as his land was all min I attacked teh northern land of montezuma figuring that I could destroy each city in time before any flipping. When I totally annihilated him I pushed down hard against my ally to prevent flipping and grabbing more land during that war I updated my troops from cavalry to gunchopper?? to replacement by the first tank to the modern armor. The last bit quite devastating. When bismarck was over I attacked isabella to prevent flipping and lab ensure a faster domination, she was the second power and kept storming my modern tank and finally killed a few and took a city before I coudl do anything riotting ended somewhere and I won by domination in 1953 with 17k some points.

Get the next game earlier or make a gotm1.5

Thank you for your time.

 

[hendu]

Is there and award for lowest score victory? Nothing worked out for me in this game. I was planning on going domination/conquest, but once I realized I shared the continent with only 1 other civ, I gave that up and decided to go for diplomatic. So I shut down military production and beeline for UN, and started kissing major butt to the Germans who were in third place, I figure Montezuma will get the other spot. Well for some reason the Chinese decide to declare war out of nowhere. They land a total of 6 troops at my northern city. I just don't understand why he attacked me, but I upgrade my longbow man to infantry and attempt to repel the onslaught of 2 knights and 4 Grenadiers... um ok. I finished my first destroyer this turn and send it slaughtering the pitiful Chinese navy. I gather my troops spend a ton of cash upgrading and figure I'll just sue for peace because I want a diplomatic victory and the UN isn't that far off. Well Qin won't talk so I get fed up and decide to land at his capitol. Beijing falls, I was going to stop there, but the culture was engulfing it, so I decided to raze the nearest couple cities. I do this and Qin still hasn't called me for peace and I have a ton of units to use up. So I just start ransacking China and eventually wipe it out.

Well not what I had planned, but whatever I have the UN built, but no one will vote for me. I gift tons and tons of stuff to Germany and they still won't vote for me everyone is Abstaining because they hate Montezuma, but I'm not the right religion. So I dump religion and go for no state religion. Still no one will vote for me and I'm about 30 votes away from being able to vote myself in solo. I gift everything to everyone hoping someone will vote for me, nothing... OK I'm mad... Only way is for me to get more pop percentage. I don't have a ton of troops and I've literally spent the past 100 years trying to get voted in. Well... I know one way to decrease someone’s population quickly. I build the Manhattan project and about 40 ICBM's and when the English asks me to declare war against the Persian. I say OK.

Persia becomes a beautifully glowing (and rather sparsely populated) empire. Well now I can vote myself in and I do, I win a diplomatic victory in about 2020, the funniest part was I looked at how my relationship was with Germany, and I had a -33 for nuking their friends. The largest negative I have seen, but they never did declare war on me. My final score was around 8300, the lowest I've seen on a victorious game. So after all the planning and practice for GOTM I ended up using my first nuke ever in Civ 4 and having a really really bad score.

 

[Ronald]

Going for space ship

This was my second game on noble and another good learning experience. I made tons of mistakes:
No good specialisation of cities: All my cities where somewhat mediocre. Half decent production half decent research and somewhat commerce. I have to specialise my cities much more in the future.

Wonder addiction: In civ3 I hardly built any wonders but now in civ4 I am still believing that I need wonders. Probably not really true. I need to more carefully plan what wonders I really want for a certain strategy.

Civics: I still have to find out when to switch to which civic. I need some more games where I just investigate the effect of the different combinations.

Building Appollo much too late: I researched a number of techs before rocketry. I must remember that I don't do it again.

Techs: I am still too unfamiliar with the new tech tree and therefore not sufficiently maneuvering through the techs. I research too many with no clear focus. After a few more games this problem should be gone.

The only phase I managed well was the short war against Greece. Short, sweet, very little casualties. Greece gone by about 400 AD.

I did not fight any war after this one. Peaceful expansion on the nice continent, but research was not well developed.

The AI never came close to my tech pace, trading was not easy. First they hated my religion, then after I switched to free religion they were fighting each other constantly and everybody was angry that I did not join the wars.

Over all I learned a lot during this game, but it will take quite some time untill I feel really confident.

I launched my spacship in 1924 with around 18.000 points

I am looking forward to playing gotm2

 

[Rane Khan]

Space Race victory in 1990, scored 10547. Taking into account that this is my first GotM game (, and this being my first post) and that I decided to try to try and go for Diplo/Space (instead of my normal Domination victory) I think this was a pretty decent score.

My main plan before game was to go for Bronze/Iron earlier then I normally do (all previous games I have played I had concentrated on getting an early religion or two) because that seems to be the strongest strategy at the moment (according to all the choppers on this forum anyway...). I was hoping to be able to conquer (an) Holy Citie(s) from (an) other Civ(s), which obviously backfired in this particular game...

Founded on the spot for historic accuracy, popped more huts then usual. Sadly all maps and gold, which only had one pro: being able me to run 100% research veeeeery long time. Or actually; I also got Bronze but that was due in a few turns anyway so it kinda sucked. I meet up very early with the Greeks which made me think their city was very near. Instead it was mid range and Alexander just went up straight with his scout and simply ignored western or eastern exploration. After a few turns more of finding nobody I figure I'm on a duo continent with a non relgious civ and start beating my head into a wall and cry.

I get a few early wonders, Alex is outsettles me at first but I manage to cut him off from most of the southwestern and north of the continent by strategic city placement. Pick up Christianity and Confucianism (one by Oracle ^^ ) and start thinking about attacking Alex after I have had to tribute him for the second time. Fight multiple Preatorian Wars (in a for the rest pretty boring part of the game in which I lose out on most Wonders because I really need to start learning how to Micromanage better) and finally manage to conquer all of Greece in the 1600's. By then I have contact with all except for Monty.

From there on the game is a piece of cake and I decide to try out different 'styles' of cities (which is new to me... *sigh* such a n00b). In the end my northern cities end up being very powerful economicly and after heavily redoing Alexanders old lands his cities (which I all conquered because I was to lazy to make new ones ), became my core 'production' cities. Pick up all wonders after the Spiral Minaret because of this. By the time I'm finished with playing around with my cities I realize I could have easily won a Domination already. ^^

China and Arabia are my main allies (read: 'vassal' states to enable Diplo victory ), especially after I adopt free religion. Both of them have a own religion which alienated them from Spain (Budhist), which ends up being the biggest empire on the biggest continent (but only a fraction bigger then both my friends). Germany (Bud) is on Spains side, and so is Monty (Bud) but in their late industrial age they start fighting among themselfs (which is ignored by the rest of the world).

By the time I have built the UN my only problem in this game becomes clear: I gave China a bit to much help. It has become the second most powerful and thus instead of voting me world leader they vote for themselfs. Knock my head into the wall once more.

After this debacle I decide to leave this world and head for space... Which I do unaposed due to an enormous tech lead.

 

[beestar]

I build the Manhattan project and about 40 ICBM's and when the English asks me to declare war against the Persian. I say OK.

That's quite an adventure you had! I don't remember any English or Persians in this GOTM though ...

 

[Meatbuster]

I think he meant "Spanish (Izzy) against the Arabs (Sally)".

 

[kingjoshi]

Well, I finally finished. It was my first GOTM and only the second cIV game I completed (I've always stopped and wanted to redo things because of stuff I've learned on the forum). I achieved a diplomatic victory in 1884. However, I don't milk for points and I made many crucial mistakes so I know I could easily double my score of 21K if I had to do it over again.

I settled one tile east. I thought the hills would be good, but little did I know that I'd be too close to the shore to create another city to take advantage of the sugar

As my warrior explores, Alex's scout makes contact with me. I decide then that if he's that close, I'll take him out when I get Prats. As my first warrior continues to search for Athens, my second warrior explores the north. I built two workers but got greedy. I sent one out of the cultural border to chop and a wolf comes from nowhere and kills him. Losing a worker that early hurts...

I settled my second city (Antium) on the shore near the horses, clams and pigs to the east (little north of Alex). My third city (Cumae) is way out west on the shore near the stone and copper. They're spaced a little away but I want the resources and to make sure he doesn't get them and I can limit his space.

To my surprise, Alex discovers Hinduism. From my Stonehenge, I got a great prophet and just needed a religion. I pretty much beelined for Iron Working and was happy to find iron inbetween Rome and Antium. I started producing Prats and I was ready for war. With about 5 Prats and an archer, I start the war. Alex had 5 cities already! I get a couple more Prats (one from Cumae another from Rome) and attack from the west. The main group attacks from the north. One city gets autorazed, but I capture 4 cities and then build a shrine in Athens for Hinduism. The Greeks fell on 1 CE.

The barbarians had built one city to the north, which a couple Prats took over. A goody hut earlier showed me more of the map and one tile of the Chinese. They should've been my next target but this is where I screwed up my game.

I was expanding and colonizing the continent. And I didn't handle my economy well. My research was only at 50% and I focused on courthouses and cottages so I could ramp up research. But slowly, I became peaceful and I only built a few more units (mostly for happiness from Hereditary Rule).

I spread Hinduism to all 15 of my cities and went for Organized Religion. However, I forgot to Convert the empire to Hinduism!!! I never did all game. By the time I realized it, I had already gone to Free Religion and didn't want to take a diplomatic hit. Mao had founded Confucianism, Toaism and Christianity. Isabella founded the others. Bismark, Saladin and Montezuma were Buddhists like Isabella.

By now, I was back in the tech lead but knew that taking out Mao wouldn't be enough for Domination. I've NEVER gotten in a war overseas. So I decided to try diplomatic victory or spaceship.

Part of my problem is I never had a real strategy and my techs aren't geared for anything. I'm always like, "Oh, maybe i'll do this now" or whatever. But I never have a plan I try to implement. I have general ideas and backup ideas, but nothing concrete. So my thinking was, diplomatic, but if they don't like me, then spaceship or domination. With a tech lead, either one is possible.

I had developed a good rapport with Mao. Me not being a heathen religion helped. But as soon as I met Monty and crew, Isabella didn't like me. However, Bismark and Monty had fought and I was cool with both. I could see the tension. Saladin and me were fine, but he's religious and is following Isabella.

I won the first election for Secretary General with Mao's and Monty's help. But I knew that wouldn't be enough for Diplomatic Victory. I tried it and saw no one else voted for me

I should've went for Free religion right away, but didn't. Passed single currency and stuff. It's so easy to get distracted and forget a lot during the game.

Next election, Bismark and Saladin still didn't vote for me! How was I to win their votes?

I got Bismark to fight Monty. I didn't join the war when first asked because I had neglected my miltary. But I knew that Monty couldn't attack me so I took a hit from Bismark for nothing. Next time, Bismark asked, I jumped at the chance. I also got Mao to attack Monty. I helped Mao, Bismark and Saladin almost every other turn. I passed Free Religion. Now, Bismark and Saladin didn't have that close a relationship with Isabella. I didn't think I had done enough, but I was pleasantly surprised when I was voted the victor. Heck, I had just sent 6 Riflemen next to Tenochtitlan and was prepared to go the Domination Victory route.

I learned a lot from this game. It's been useful and interesting to learn from others here. Especially reading all the different styles of play. I wonder how much I can absorb and use and not forget during the game.

 

[lukasbradley]

I was going for my first Cultural victory ever, but ended up with a diplomacy because I could get it faster.

1955 AD with 16813 pts

I would like to thank Harkonnen for the memory fix, for without it, I wouldn't have been able to finish the game.

 

[Jove]

This was my very first game of Civ4, outside of the American Revolution mod, so I can't say I did anything particularly clever.
My first move sent my settler out of the start area because I thought right-clicking the wheat would bring up some info, civ3 style. You can imagine how the rest of the game went...

We got lucky with a hut and a free tech in the beginning, ended up founding Hinduism and Judaism. Had a nice time spreading Hinduism, thought we might go for a cultural victory, realized we didn't know how to plan for a culture victory, decided on space.

We didn't conquer the starting continent until the mid 1800's. China was eliminated in the 1940's, Aztecs in the 1970's. Space victory in 1986 with a score of 12650.

Defininitely a fun game. Can't wait until I know what I'm doing!

 

[Gato Loco]

Finally, after repeated CTDs and 10-minute long turns, I managed to finsh this game. I really need a new computer.

At the end of the previous spoiler I had eliminated Alex and was just sending out caravels. I met all the other civs in short order, only to find that the large cotinent was filled with violent religious zealots who didn’t like me at all. Actually, from reading other spoilers I can see that Bismark was also on that continent, but Monty had already knocked him off by the time I arrived. Isabella was in the process of being eliminated by Saladin. I believe that this war was started by Saladin’s habit of converting back and forth between Buddhism and Judaism. Mao, on the other hand, was friendly enough to sign open borders and let me convert him to Christianity. My first act upon getting astronomy was to load up some praetorians and grab the last of Issabella’s cities, including the Jewish holy city. I ended up with three cities on the edge of the tundra and space to found a couple more.

The residents of the large continent were all very backwards when I met them and stayed that way for the rest of the game. I believe that this was caused by all those wars denying them the opportunity to cottage spam properly. I on the other hand, turned my island into a giant urban sprawl:

The south was somewhat less developed, but still much the same idea. Given my tech lead, I should have rushed to Rifles and cannons and won by domination. However, I decided that it would be more fun to play at diplomacy and try to get a UN victory. The biggest challenge was the “Buddhist Block” of Monty and Saladin, both of whom were rather annoyed with me. Switching to free religion helped this problem somewhat, but I still had to deal with the fact that Monty would be my opposition for the UN vote and Saladin would certainly vote for his brother in the faith. Saladin’s propensity to run theocracy menat that I couldn’t convert him to anything else to break up their solidarity. The solution to this problem was simple. Montezuma must die.


My infantry slowly but surely gobbled up the Aztec empire. Monty had actually gotten feudalism and civil service by this point, so I faced longbows, macemen, horse archers, and elephants for the most part. I never really put too much effort into the war because I was merely planning to knock down the Buddhists’ voting power and have a mutual military struggle to up my relations with Mao, so that I could get elected in the UN with Mao’s help. There were a few setbacks in which large numbers of Aztec troops were able to take down small numbers of my infantry, but even those ended up as pyrrhic victories for Monty. I finally eliminated him 5 turns before the UN would be built, just in time to sign a defensive pact to further raise relations. Unfortunately I forgot one very important thing:

Absorbing the Aztec empire was more than enough to get me over the top for a domination victory, mooting the UN. Ugh. Mao and Saladin’s borders covered lots of ocean tiles, which lulled me into a false sense of security and kept me from relizing how close to domination I was. If I’d wanted domination I would have invaded in force rather than cranking out universities, banks, wonders, and such in my home cities.

Oops, wrong Caesar.

Another oddity about this screen.. The save game records my score as 5590, while the Augustus screen gives it as 37300. Is that all from the time bonus? If so it appears that Firaxis overcompensated for the inadequate time bonus in Civ3 and now makes everything depend on victory date. Which was I supposed to report in the submission form? I reported 5590, since I just wrote down what appeared in the in-game score listings and didn’t notice the other value until later.


Observations:
It takes 2-3 elephants/macemen to take down an infantry. This is pretty reasonable and answers my worries that the Civ4 combat system would make strong units too strong. The damage system is a good implementation as it means that both quantity and quality can be important depending on the situaton.

The AI still can’t fight a war to save its life. Granted, I had the advantage in every war, but the AI just curled up into a fetal position and waited for he inevitable. It seems from my experience that the AI only wins wars when it manages to get the jump on an underprepared human. Even when it has the advantage it still tends to do dumb things. In another game I got jumped by a huge stack from Monty, who quickly grabbed my holy/forbidden palace city. The massive Aztec army then proceeded to sit there and wait for me to build up my army and whittle them down until I had the advantage and took back the city. If they’d done this intelligently they could have taken 2-3 cities and possibly forced a peace treaty.

Cottages rule. At least on an island. It’s a builder’s game.

By the end of the Aztec war my war exhaustion was forcing me to run 10% culture and actually build happiness improvements. I even built a couple jails. On Noble, fighting a pushover opponent. Exhaustion seems to be a bigger deal now. I actually avoided plastics to keep furs from going obsolete. No health problems though.

3 holy cities seems to be the limit for real usefulness. I did fairly well spreading Christianity, Hinduism, and Confucianism, but left Islam and Judaism mostly untouched.

This game was my first use of a culture bomb. I’m really surprised Saladin didn’t try to retaliate.

 

[Shillen]

Another oddity about this screen.. The save game records my score as 5590, while the Augustus screen gives it as 37300. Is that all from the time bonus? If so it appears that Firaxis overcompensated for the inadequate time bonus in Civ3 and now makes everything depend on victory date. Which was I supposed to report in the submission form? I reported 5590, since I just wrote down what appeared in the in-game score listings and didn’t notice the other value until later.

You were supposed to report the 37300, but I guess they extract the correct score from the save anyway. Also, I want to say that the victory bonus is not too large in civ4. If anything it's still too small. The victory bonuses don't seem to be additive things, they're more of multiplicative things. I don't know the exact formula, but if you had a 3000 game score when you won then you would not have gotten a 35000 victory score. It would have been much lower than that. On the other hand, the game does reward having a large empire over a fast victory far too much. Any game where you reach the domination limit or close to it is going to score very highly, no matter what date you win on.

It takes 2-3 elephants/macemen to take down an infantry. This is pretty reasonable and answers my worries that the Civ4 combat system would make strong units too strong. The damage system is a good implementation as it means that both quantity and quality can be important depending on the situaton.

I would be surprised if 2-3 elephants/macemen could beat infantry very often at all. It is definitely possible but from my experience it would be fairly rare, especially if that infantry has any defensive bonus at all. Did you do this more than once in your game?

The AI still can’t fight a war to save its life. Granted, I had the advantage in every war, but the AI just curled up into a fetal position and waited for he inevitable. It seems from my experience that the AI only wins wars when it manages to get the jump on an underprepared human. Even when it has the advantage it still tends to do dumb things. In another game I got jumped by a huge stack from Monty, who quickly grabbed my holy/forbidden palace city. The massive Aztec army then proceeded to sit there and wait for me to build up my army and whittle them down until I had the advantage and took back the city. If they’d done this intelligently they could have taken 2-3 cities and possibly forced a peace treaty.

I agree with all of this. I find if the AI declares war on you then it will be a difficult battle since they will build up their military before declaring. In that, they're improved from civ3. But if you declare on them when they were milling along peacefully then they will be fairly defenseless. If you built up your army before declaring then it will be very easy to sweep over their cities. They tend to get lulled into complacency and neglect their military when they're not involved in any wars for a while.

 

[AlanH]

I guess they extract the correct score from the save anyway.

Yes we do, but we only recently achieved this reliably. That's why we've asked you to provide the final score (it *is* spelt out as clearly as I can on the submission form) so that we could develop, and now confirm, the software we are using to do it.

In future we won't ask. We'll extract the data silently and tell you what score you attained, what victory condition, and what size shoes you were wearing at the time .

 

[Gato Loco]

You were supposed to report the 37300, but I guess they extract the correct score from the save anyway. Also, I want to say that the victory bonus is not too large in civ4. If anything it's still too small. The victory bonuses don't seem to be additive things, they're more of multiplicative things. I don't know the exact formula, but if you had a 3000 game score when you won then you would not have gotten a 35000 victory score. It would have been much lower than that. On the other hand, the game does reward having a large empire over a fast victory far too much. Any game where you reach the domination limit or close to it is going to score very highly, no matter what date you win on.

Ok, that makes sense. So the real way to score-mlking is to win an early domination in which you grab lots of land and population. And to manage that without going broke, the best trait is...Organized! So it's not useless after all.

I would be surprised if 2-3 elephants/macemen could beat infantry very often at all. It is definitely possible but from my experience it would be fairly rare, especially if that infantry has any defensive bonus at all. Did you do this more than once in your game?

You're right that it's partly luck of the draw. I think a lone infantry will hold out ok until its first unlucky battle, at which point it's the beginning of the end. That could be the first battle or the fifth. The case in which I observed this specific matchup was indeed a result of a dumb move on my part. I accidentally let a rare city raider III infantry wander too far into enemy territory unaccompanied and get attacked. What was especially painful was getting repeated CTDs at this point and having to deliberately make the same mistake over and over to avoid cheating. The infantry had no defensive bonus and no relevant promotions. I don't know what promotions the elephants had, but they probably had at least 2 given that Monty was running a theocracy at the time. Assuming Combat II that would be strength 9.6. Assuming Combat I and Pinch that would be 10.8. I also noticed infantry getting pretty damaged from attacking units in cities, even to the point of going down to under 10 strength, in cases where the odds were in the range of 22 vs. 12. Now a stack of 3 infantry defending a hill, especially upgraded longbow infantry with drill II-III, could take down quite a few elephants. In fact I never noticed the AI even trying to attack my well-formed infantry stacks with anything but a catapult.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Yes we do, but we only recently achieved this reliably. That's why we've asked you to provide the final score (it *is* spelt out as clearly as I can on the submission form) so that we could develop, and now confirm, the software we are using to do it.

In future we won't ask. We'll extract the data silently and tell you what score you attained, what victory condition, and what size shoes you were wearing at the time.

Well, there goes my plan to submit the next game while wearing pink polkadot panties with matching pumps.

 

[MikeH]

My first move sent my settler out of the start area because I thought right-clicking the wheat would bring up some info, civ3 style. You can imagine how the rest of the game went...

You cab still use right click in the Civ 3 way, but you have to check an option to do so.

 

[AlanH]

Well, there goes my plan to submit the next game while wearing pink polkadot panties with matching pumps.

We won't tell anyone ... promise