GOTM-1: Closing Spoiler

[ionimplant]

this gotm is the first civ4 game i finished. achieving a domination civtory around 1930 and getting a mere 5520 score. in retrospect, i have been way too careful in minimizing my casualties. so at the end, i always had about 20 cavalies seiging a single city with 3-4 riflemen. and i always need to wait for two artilleries before actually launching an attack. and those artilleries are so slow..
i do have a few questions from this game.
i got almost no techs (maybe 2-3 techs that i could research in 1-2 turns) from AIs. this's so different from civ3. is this normal? does this mean i should be prepared to research everything by myself? even after i conquered all but the last city of china, Mao still refused to give me a single tech (which i could get from trading from Germany). it really puzzled me. i know the tech trading is modified so that AI won't give you an easy time in advancing. but should they know better to give me a single tech when their capitol is going to fall the next turn?
and can we determine what tech a great people can discover? i was thinking it's like the Scientific method in CivIII. on the turn before its completion, start the research towords a new expensive tech and set research to 0. then next turn you get two expensive techs. this time i did it, it gave me a tech that i skipped before, which could have been researched in one turn... oh, well... there're too many things to learn.. i don't know when i can learn all of them just by playing gotm.

 

[BadAndy]

I get ****load of tech from the AIs...but usually, I'd need to trade tech for tech instead of paying cash for them.

 

[jafink]

This was my first gotm, and i think my results were decent. Started slowly, building up a big army of praetorians. Took over alex, and then settled down for a space race victory. 1969 finish date, 10973 points.

 

[picus]

I had a similar experience to many in this thread - for some reason even though I can solidly beat noble I seemed to get hung up on this game. Maybe it was because it is a GOTM I started over-analysing what I was doing, but in any event after defeating Alexander around 500bc I kind of petered out. I couldn't decide if I wanted to continue warring or if I wanted to go for a cultural/diplo victory or what, so my building was very un-focused. Eventaully around 1000ad (when Mao paid a visit) I decided to bee-line for the UN and win via diplomacy (which would be a first for me). What a mistake. I finally build the UN in the 1600's and had my island fully populated with 13 solid cities. All civ relations were very good (Mao was friendly, something crazy like +20, Bismark was friendly, Isabella was pleased as was Saladin, and Monty was cautious), I figured I was a shoe in for the diplo win.

Not.

I won UN chairman with my vote+mao's+isabella's+bismarks, Saladin was my opponent and Monty abstained, however when it came to picking a winner *everyone* voted for Saladin! What the...? Even Mao, who at that time was an astonishing +20 voted for Saladin (who he was only pleased towards), Bismark was cautious towards him and friendly to me and voted for Saladin. Unbelievable.

So I decided to stir things up by converting Saladin to taoism(everyone else was hindu, I was no state) while converting myself to hinduism. Seems like it would work, right? Isabella was now cautious towards Saladin, bismark was too, Monty was annoyed and Mao was annoyed - this time mao and monty abstained and isabella and bismark (still both pleased or friendly to me) voted for saladin again!

Furious, I decided to wipe them off the face of the planet. To make a long story less long, I won by domination after defeating monty, bismark, and isabella. Hosers. I'll say this - that's the last time I go for a diplo win!

I should have gone for domination to begin with. At 1000ad when I got incontact with all the AI's I was running around with riflemen and they still had longbows. I'd guess I could have won by domination 500 years earlier. Oh well, live and learn.

 

[ExplodingFist]

Long time lurker. This was my first GOTM submitted and I have not played many Civ4-games. Looking forward to the new GOTM-series. To everybody on the staff I just want to say that you are doing a great job, very professional in all aspects. Keep it up...

Won domination victory in 1984 (sic!) - Better late than never I guess...
Score: 12 350
Time played: 19 h 32 min - Still don't trust CivIV enough to handle my workers or cities

I won't post a complete log, rather what I did learn which was a lot. I made some good things and several mistakes. Here goes!

Lessons learned

Play Rome aggressively
With Ceasar and the prats you should be aggressive early.

Use rivers to hook up early resources
I hooked up copper early with my second city on the river. Using rivers to hook up early resources is very good. But, you have to commit to using the resource early too, otherwise what good is it!

Early offensive wars require fewer numbers
I tend to build too big of an invasion force. You don't need that many offensive units to go after an early opponent. Just bring enough to seize and hold one or two cities. Allowing Alex to expand to 6 cities when I had only 4 was my first mistake. I should have gone to war with my first group of prats.

With Rome, be aggressive also when expanding
Early granaries and the +2 health bonus that Rome gets gives you powerful advantages in the early game. Another big reason to be aggressive early, not only war-wise, but also expansion wise. The cost of more cities is outweighed to some exent by the fact that bigger cities give more commerce.

With bigger cities I could have afforded to churn out more settlers early, but I did not. That was a mistake since the map gave us a lot of initial land we did not have to compete for.

Early religion advantage for securing continent
I founded Hinduism and Alex did not found any religion. Hindu spread to his cities. This can be an advantage, especially on a continents map. You will have good early relations and you can build up your army and attack for a decisive war when you are ready, not when you have to.

Secure your own continent ASAP
I was late waging war with Alex and did not finish him off until 1605 AD. That was way late. War takes a lot of time/turns in CivIV. Get an early start, you don't have to finish him off with your first war.

Use the right civics when going to war
Make sure you get experience bonuses when building your invation army. Theocracy + barracks, can make a big difference. You need to keep the tempo up when invading, esp compared to Civ3 and having more veteran units than your opponent is the key.

Plan your cities for great people production
I wanted Rome as my science city. Other than that I did not plan for great people, and that really hurt me. I did not get a single prophet and only one very late merchant and only an early artist. Got many scientists and a few engineers, though.

Planning what buildings to build early so you can use different forced specialists in different cities is important.

Plan for your Golden Age
I did not. My real problem was my lack of great people planning. By the time I tried to deal with it it was too late. I did not get a golden age. I mostly got scientists and a couple of engineers and I felt I needed them in use instead of waiting a long time for the next great people (might have been a mistake too).

Continent conquest - Choose your victim by diplomacy
After securing my own continent and building an invasion force I first selected Mao and Bismark as my two allies. I then selected Spain as my first victim since they had bad relations with both Germany and the Chinese.

I sent lots of missionaries to Germany. Then I bribed Bismark to convert and attack Montezuma to keep him at bay. Because of Montezuma being so close to Mao, they were already enemies. I figured that would bring my alliance between Mao, me and Bismark closer together and it worked.

Continent conquest - Use open border with ally
I then used my alliance with germany to land my invasion army and move it in position to attack Spain. The main benefits are that you don't have to attack by sea (big problem) and you can ship over a bigger army with less ships before attacking.

The whole diplomacy to wage war worked beautifully. Just before I was to declare war Spain declared on Saladin, which was a bonus. When I declared a few turns later Spain had no good relations with anyone and it was not expensive for me to bribe both Bismark and Mao to also declare. Now Spain was waging war with the whole world.

After finishing off Isabella i consolidated and then attacked Saladin, which led to domination.

Continent Conquest - Tech pace makes overseas conquests very expensive
This has been covered by others. Go overseas very early or fill your pockets with cash before you do. In short, you will get MANY techs in the time it takes to ship your invasion army to another continent. As it fights it has to be upgraded.

I built my economy with lots of banks before going intercontinental. I also had to drop my research rate before I shipped my army so I could stash cash. Use merchants if you can, I could not (see above).

Continent Conquest - Chose the right unit types
Cavalry used to rock in Civ3, not anymore. If your opponent has gunpowder units, they are very weak for attacking cities. Because of the tech rate problem, do not use horse units if there is any chance your opponent will get gunpowder units before the war is finished. Unless you get gunships, you can not upgrade your invasion army of cavalry.

Choose your victory condition wisely
My conclusion after this GOTM is that on continents, you really have to check your calendar and tech treee before leaving your own continent. If the tech pace is high or if the date is late, don't even think about a conquest or domination victory. I started my war preparations with Spain in the mid 1700s, which was way too late.

Think that's about it. I hope I do better next time.

 

[SamE]

I finally finished a brutal game. It was brutal for many reasons. First, Alexander declared war on my on three separate occasions, the first two of which were the most devastating and the last of which I finally got my revenge. He took Cumae and my iron, I took it back and he destroyed it. He also razed two other cities not even close to his border. Horse Archers are a real pain! I ended up killing 60 of them in all. Beat that! But anyway, his pillaging and worker-killing and razing left me 2 whole ages back in the tech race. But as I said, I got my revenge, and took Sparta and Pharsalos from him (which were in the middle of the continent) and then just relied on my humongous size to research everything quickly and catch up. I never led score-wise until the final turn, in 2041, when I had 3325 to Isabella's 3321. The differentiating factor, it turned out to be, was one population point that I had messed with the land working to starve one city and get the other city the 3 food it needed to grow in the last turn. That was one awesome game!

 

[autopsy-turvey]

I just won a 63000 points domination victory in the 1750s. It was mostly a matter of beelining caravels, galleons, knights, and calvery and then being constantly at war. I could have probably gotten the score up to 70000 by turning down culture long enough to finish off the arabs, but by that point I was seeing double from too much civ IV.

Is there a thread where the scores so far are posted? i want to see how good I did relative to everyone else.

Strategy-wise I'm surprised to see how small the people in this thread kept their cities, and how few cities you had on your starting island. I generally build lots of farms and only a few towns, and then build new cities until I have to keep money at around 70 percent. At that point I start conquoring, and use pillage and the loot from capturing cities to keep science spending at 100 percent at a deficit.

I finally finished a brutal game. It was brutal for many reasons. First, Alexander declared war on my on three separate occasions, the first two of which were the most devastating and the last of which I finally got my revenge. He took Cumae and my iron, I took it back and he destroyed it. He also razed two other cities not even close to his border. Horse Archers are a real pain! I ended up killing 60 of them in all. Beat that! But anyway, his pillaging and worker-killing and razing left me 2 whole ages back in the tech race. But as I said, I got my revenge, and took Sparta and Pharsalos from him (which were in the middle of the continent) and then just relied on my humongous size to research everything quickly and catch up. I never led score-wise until the final turn, in 2041, when I had 3325 to Catherine's 3321. The differentiating factor, it turned out to be, was one population point that I had messed with the land working to starve one city and get the other city the 3 food it needed to grow in the last turn. That was one awesome game!

why were you playing so passivly? The greeks were at your mercy, after getting copper or iron you should have gone for the jugular. I was at war with alexander since like turn 20, when I snatched a free worker off him with and exploring warrior. I don't think I fought a single battle with him where I wasn't attacking and he wasn't defending.

 

[Mike Lemmer]

Since I'm usually not a warmonger, I decided to try a Domination victory. I finished in 1991 with a score of 13,162.

Lessons Learned:
Don't make friends with people you plan on conquering: I was good friends with Alexander before I finally declared war on him. War Weariness started at 3 off the bat and reached 9 by the time I wiped him off the map.

Ironworks + Heroic Epic: You want a city to crank out units every 1-2 turns? Build this combo in a hammer-rich city. Combine it with an Airport and you have a giant troop funnel to any city you want.

Choose your friends wisely: I made friends with Bismarck to gain a foothold on the other continent, but his peaceful ways weren't useful to me in the endgame. At least he softened up Montezuma for me.

Bombers slaughter cities and Stacks of Doom: I had Flight. Isabella didn't. Our ground forces were even, but my dozen bombers turned the tide by weakening her stacks. She wouldn't attack my fortified forces with 50% health stacks.

Follow bombardments with First Strike promotions: Add 3 First Strike promotions to a unit and it'll barely lose any health if it attacks a bombarded unit. Useful for blitzkreigs.

Culture is key: By cranking my Culture to 40% when my newly-captured cities were about to flip, they started out with a level 2 border area. Useful for expanding your new borders quickly and preventing your new cities from starving. Theaters also do wonders for reducing war weariness, giving you double the happiness from your Culture investment.

The computer loves putting settlers in nooks: Every time I conquered a continent & there was a bit of land available, Bismarck immediately made a town there. He kept stealing my land and complaining our close borders sparked tension! Did he really think he could get a foothold on my continents?

Combat settlers are good: An extra city can do wonders for establishing borders fast in conquered territory.

 

[AlanH]

Is there a thread where the scores so far are posted? i want to see how good I did relative to everyone else.

Only this thread, where some players have chosen to post their scores. We'll publish the full results list when the game is over.

This is deliberate, as otherwise some players would delay their submissions and adjust their play or victory conditions depending on the results posted to date. That would be unfair to players who submit early.

 

[ajil]

I just won a 63000 points domination victory in the 1750s. It was mostly a matter of beelining caravels, galleons, knights, and calvery and then being constantly at war. I could have probably gotten the score up to 70000 by turning down culture long enough to finish off the arabs, but by that point I was seeing double from too much civ IV.

Is there a thread where the scores so far are posted? i want to see how good I did relative to everyone else.

Well this was my first gotm, and I finished with a domination in 1750 as well. Unfortunately for me, my final score was around 45k. I suppose population is a big factor, since I only had around 10 cities on my original continent, and you apparently had a lot more. For some reason, once I had elimanated greece, I stopped expanding on the original continent. I think I was worried about having too many cities and paying big maintenance. I am in the process of replaying the game just to see how much better I can do. On a side note, how on earth do you guys manage to spend 20, even 30 hours on a standard map of noble civ 4? I finished with a game time of something like 7 or 8 hours.

 

[Rane Khan]

Well this was my first gotm, and I finished with a domination in 1750 as well. Unfortunately for me, my final score was around 45k. I suppose population is a big factor, since I only had around 10 cities on my original continent, and you apparently had a lot more. For some reason, once I had elimanated greece, I stopped expanding on the original continent. I think I was worried about having too many cities and paying big maintenance. I am in the process of replaying the game just to see how much better I can do. On a side note, how on earth do you guys manage to spend 20, even 30 hours on a standard map of noble civ 4? I finished with a game time of something like 7 or 8 hours.

I'm only guessing here, but I'm pretty sure that 20/30 hour games involve a whole lot more of micromanaging cities then you did in your game. Do you automate workers by any chance?

 

[bradleyfeanor]

I just noted that Dynamic and hendrikszoon have submitted their games. I wonder if we will see a summary of a pre-1000ad victory soon...

 

[Dynamic]

I just noted that Dynamic and hendrikszoon have submitted their games. I wonder if we will see a summary of a pre-1000ad victory soon...

No, no bradleyfeanor, this time I go behind you.
This is my first civ4 game so I discovered the new world of civ4 via this game and can't get very good result. I finished in the 1560AD by Domination with 81K+ points but I played without any risk and got enjoy from simple playing...

 

[bradleyfeanor]

No, no bradleyfeanor, this time I go behind you.
This is my first civ4 game so I discovered the new world of civ4 via this game and can't get very good result. I finished in the 1560AD by Domination with 81K+ points but I played without any risk and got enjoy from simple playing...

As I recall, the only other time I finished before you was when it was your first time to play Civ Conquests, so I will enjoy this while I can.

The peaceful part of the game in Civ4 is quite fun. I think the changes they made to economy (expenses being based on number of cities, civics, etc.) are quite interesting. As a result, warmongering is more of a balancing act than it used to be. Hopefully it will remain challenging for a good long while.

If you decide to post a summary, please try to include when you hit astronomy and optics. StanNP uncovered a rather interesting similarity in some games, with domination being reached in each game about 45 turns after researching astronomy.

 

[SamE]

The major reason why I didn't finish Alexander off was because of war weariness. I got to the point where Rome took 10+ turns to build a unit because it had 3 to 4 unhappy people. To add to the mess, I even switched my capital to Antium, the Jewish holy city. Rome was my biggest currency city, and it was good at that.

 

[Dynamic]

As I recall, the only other time I finished before you was when it was your first time to play Civ Conquests, so I will enjoy this while I can.

The peaceful part of the game in Civ4 is quite fun. I think the changes they made to economy (expenses being based on number of cities, civics, etc.) are quite interesting. As a result, warmongering is more of a balancing act than it used to be. Hopefully it will remain challenging for a good long while.

If you decide to post a summary, please try to include when you hit astronomy and optics. StanNP uncovered a rather interesting similarity in some games, with domination being reached in each game about 45 turns after researching astronomy.

Yes, I got much more fun from peaceful playing civ4 then civ3. And wars in civ4 are slower especially without my favorite RoP abuse.
My story is not ready yet, but I discovered Optics in 560AD and Astronomy in 1200AD 42 turns before Domination. I started my first war against Greek in 1250AD so my war time was 37 turns. In civ3 on the same map it could take up twice less time, hmmm.

I fought by Knights against Greek and Cavalry against German Spain and Arabs. Never built Catapults and other siege weapons as well as other slow units exept warriors in the beginning of game. I missed Praetorians - when I decided to start preparing for war they were obsolete.

My main mistake I think was underestimating Currency effect (around 200AD) - it slowed down my ecomomy growth.

In other hand I started fight and capturing cities so late and never had significant effect of maintenance cost (in % of my economy).

 

[Sirian]

So I decided to play the GOTM.

Noble? Romans? Not my usual fare. (Been quite a while since I've done something on this order with Civ4, actually. Been inhabiting higher levels for most of this year.)

I moved the settler one tile east to settle and went Worker First, with Agriculture as first research.

I used two early forest chops to speed along Granary and Barracks.

I had two workers and Rome to size 6 before I started my first settler.
I built my first Praet before I trained my first Archer.

I cranked three settlers in a very short span.
Then it was Forge, Oracle (Philosophy), and Library.

I warmed up against the Greeks by training my Praets against Barbs, including one city capture.

Then it was time for war. I lost eight Praets in the fight.
Captured five cities, doubling my city count. Great Lighthouse taken in Athens.
Greece eliminated in 325AD.

From there, it was a wonder building bonanza. I had fun even though it was a steamroll.
Noble is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here!

I decided to aim for early Diplomatic victory, see how early I could push it.
I was well on my way! I converted both China and Germany to my faith.
They were closing in on Friendly terms and a very likely vote of support.
I'm sure that would have been enough to get the vote.

But at this point I had a change of heart.
I could cruise to a vote win in the early 1700s, or...
Or I could set the competition aside and try something else interesting.

So instead of pushing toward Mass Media, I went toward Railroads and prepared for a factory run.
I haven't fought "AI-Best-Unit = Longbows" with Tanks since the AI was in early development.
(It's not much of a contest!)

So here's the challenge: Could I win by Conquest without any gimmicks? No razing. No anarchy.
"Beat the clock" so to speak, on trying to take all the cities before I trigger Domination.
Have to go very very fast for the end run.
It's certainly made harder with Sistine and Eiffel in place, too.

So I built up Airports galore and started cranking the tanks.
It's all pedestrian stuff until I start to approach crunch time.

Wouldn't you know it, the ONLY unit killed in the entire war...

A Camel Archer and two Jumbos had softened it up first, of course!
Still, it's funny every time I see one of those pikes stabbing a tank and the tank blows up!

So here I am taking out the last of the Arabs.

I'm in a race. I only need three turns to conquer all of Germany. Three!
(I've got forces transporting down from China, and coming from three other sides.)

Blah. Didn't make it. Two turns short.

Hamburg and Munich would have fallen the next turn.
Sail transports in to Munich, unload, and drive tanks inland to Cologne.
Two separate task forces closing on the last city in the south.

What tripped me up was two mistakes.
1) I had captured two Academies intact in China. Blah.
2) I overlooked a city that was running high culture.

Academy plus Mercantilism/Sistine is 6 culture per turn.
+1 for State Religion.
+50% for Broadcast Tower (Eiffel).
That's 10 cpt. That's an automatic border pop!

So three cities I didn't expect to pop did, and that was that.
I would have had to go to Anarchy to revolt out of Mercantilism to get the win.
But "no anarchy" was one of the restrictions I put on myself.

Anyway, I had fun with the game, and with the twist of a challenge at the end.
Submission is a somewhat pedestrian Domination Win.
I didn't read all the way through the spoiler thread, but I saw that...
...some folks concentrated on military and got it done with Cavalry.
I've seen Aeson do that before, so I knew that was how the military side would go.
Maybe I should have finished off the diplo win just to see where it would have ended up? Too late now, though.

Civ4 plays faster for me than Civ3, so maybe I'll have the time to play some more Gs OTM in between my regular activities.

How are you all liking Civ4 so far?


- Sirian

 

[ainwood]

Good to see you dropping by, Sirian!

 

[Sirian]

Good to see you dropping by, Sirian!

Thanks.

I'll do it again some time. Not sure when, though. Might be a spur of the moment decision!


- Sirian

 

[Mike Lemmer]

A glorious, wonderful way to make 20 hours disappear. The number of obscene scores in these GotMs is intimidating, though. At least I can console myself by saying it's the "barely won" games that make the most interesting reports.