GOTM-1: Closing Spoiler

[eektor]

So I made a long post and somehow it wasn't posted. So here's a short version.

Hi everyone! This is my first post and my first GOTM. I enjoyed it a lot. This was my 2nd Civ 4 game and I would be considered a novice in Civ 3 and Civ 2.

My goal was to stay alive. Once I figured I could do that my goal was to win. I won with a SS victory in 2019 AD with a score of 4548 (I think that was it).

I made a lot of mistakes. I got the iron hooked up and made the UU way too late to start an early war. I was behind the Chinese in the tech race. They almost beat me. It was really close at the end. I was scared when the Aztecs declared war and landed with marines, gunships and sam infantries. (I had longbowmen and grenadiers defending the city.) I managed to upgrade my units and defeat their attacking force.

Conclusion: I like the GOTM a lot and plan on playing in the next game. The no save and reloading makes the game a lot more challenging and exciting. (I did that all the time with Civ 2 and 3.) I would do a lot more planning for next game so I wouldn't make too much mistakes. Also I plan on reading all your strategies so I can learn more. Thank you to the staff for this GOTM, I enjoyed it!

 

[Craterus22]

I am consistently the worst civ player of alltime... due to my low spec computer, I had to play the non-discover the world strategy.

I tried for cultural victory, but due to playing quick/small maps - my goal of making 25k was insufficient for the win (*idiot*), so I ended up with a time win.

 

[Psyringe]

Finished my GOTM last night. I wanted to write a full report, but then the game became rather tedious, and didn't continue to play for two weeks ... now I've forgotten most of the early events, but the game wasn't that spectacular anyways ... so here's the short story:

I beelined for iron working, secured the iron to the east and started building Praetorians very soon. With four of them (while building more) I attacked Alexander and caught him off guard. He defended with archers and only managed to build two or three phalanxes later on. I overran his cities before they could get any defensive bonuses, only Athens got +20% defense, but even that's not enough to stop Praetorians promoted for city raiding. I made peace with Alexander two times to extort 5 techs from him (since I beelined, I was missing many basic techs).

I had neglected religions because I wanted to get my Praetorians out fast, and focused on getting Alphabet (for trading techs) afterwards. My plan was to contract a religion from a neighbour and conquer its Holy City later on. Unfortunately Alexander didn't found any religions either, he missed the first ones and afterwards probably focused on military techs to deal with my attacks. I never had a chance to found any of the other religions. Since there's no other civ on the continent, I had to make do without the income that religions generate.

I had focused on building cottages (chopping for building production), which probably saved the economy of my slightly over-expanded empire. I even continued to expand, because the barbarians kept founding cities, and I kept conquering them (I just cannot bring myself to raze cities). This left me with some rather suboptimal city placements. Despite having built *lots* of cottages, my research went down to 50%, even 20% for some turns, while I was now beelining for optics. This way I lost some time while my economy brought itself into shape. After getting Optics I went straight for Astronomy, on which I researched for 23 turns. I wanted to be able to do invasions as soon as possible.

Meanwhile my caravels scouted the oceans, found Monty and Bismarck first, and Isabella and Saladin soon after. I had surrounded the entire large continent before I finally found Mao on his smaller continent to the north. To my surprise I was leading in score, and hadn't fallen back in the tech race. My biggest fear was that while I was alone, some other civs would happily pool their research efforts and leave me behind, but that wasn't the case. This meant that the game was won already, and unfortunately from this moment on the game became rather tedious, because the suspense was gone.

Since no one else had bothered to research optics yet, I kept the tech to myself. Mao was the first of the other civs to discover it, just a while after I researched astronomy. In the meantime I decided that I wanted to win by domination, and that Mao would be my first target, because the biggest challenge would be maintaining the economy while expanding. Mao's empire was small, but rich, and he had founded Buddhism and Taoism. The two holy cities would help me to finance city maintenance. Bismarck and Monty didn't have holy cities, and Saladin was too large for my current army.

Mao got optics some turns after I finished astronomy. I destroyed his caravels to keep him from making contact with the main continent and swapping techs around. (On of his caravels suvived an attack of my galleon and my supporting caravel, and again - while wounded - survived an attack of another galleon, before one of my caravels got it. This effectively delayed my invasion).

In the meantime I had built catapults, and landed about 6 catapults and 6 Praetorians at Mao's shore. I took Beijing first because it was the holy city of Buddhism, then I proceeded slowly, but firmly, in both directions along the shoreline. Even longbowmen are no match for city-raiding Praetorians after a city's defenses are gone. I had to sacrifice three or four catapults in close battles though. When I saw the first cho-ko-nu, I thought I made a mistake in picking Mao as my target in the era where he had his unique unit, but he had only two of them, and they didn't have much impact.

After China was conquered, I set two to producing buddhist and taoist missionaries only, and kept sending these to my mainland. In the meantime, due to ocean trade I had acquired every other religion except Islam, but I wanted to spread my own religions in order raise my income. I spent some time in peace while my economy swallowed the added cities, upgraded my catapults to cannons, and built my first cavalry units.

With these units, I set over to the large continent and conquered the Aztecs next, then the Germans. My economy was stable enough now to allow me running on 80% research despite my war efforts. I focused on military techs and was always one or even two steps ahead of anyone else. I had many battles of grenadiers, cavalry and cannons against longbowmen and pikemen. My Praetorians were *still* useful, and I only upgraded the inexperienced ones to grenadiers. Later on I switched to infantry, tanks, fighters/bombers, and upgraded some cavalry to gunships.

The fights were a little boring because I was so far ahead in tech that I knew I would win them. I also didn't take many risks, and continued to expand slowly but steadily. I had three cities flipping to third parties because my culture was rather weak though.

After having swallowed the Aztes and Germans, only Isabella and Saladin were left. I was not too far away from the domination threshold, so I attacked Isabella and took some of her cities. For the second time in this game, I lost a battle (first time was a Greek archer or warrior defeating a wounded Praetorian guearding a city) because I overlooked a Spanish attack force nearing on of my weakly defended cities, which allowed Isabella to raze Frankfurt at size 8.

I conquered some more cities and finally triggered the domination threshold in 1920.

All in all, the game went quite well. Things that I could improve upon include:
- founding a religion instead of researching Alphabet
- using specialists (I never used them in this game, and didn't have that much surplus food anyways. If I had had religions, I could have built more farms instead of cottages and made specialists part of my strategy)
- conquering faster (not sure whether this would have been better, because the safe route isn't necessarily a bad route, but since I won nearly every battle, I probably would have survived a little more risk)
- concentrating more on conquest (I kept building my cities instead of producing more units, I guess I'm a builder at heart )
- razing conquered barbarian cities in suboptimal locations
- building wonders (Never felt the need for them in this game, but they would have raised the score)

The game was okay, but would have been more fun to me if it had provided a better challenge. Playing on Noble, with a *very* strong unique unit, and an excellent starting position, made the game too easy this time. I hope for a greater challenge next time, but understand that the GOTM should also be fun for players which would struggle on higher difficulties. Thanks to the GOTM staff for all the work.

 

[Megalou]

While to the superpowers Astronomy was the cue and the key to greatness, to Apollo it was a scrap tech. It is true that parts of Greece were annexed in his “campaign,” but this was only at the last moment, when renegades became bored with the chamber music, the symphonies, the enactments and the artwork, their greatness and immeasurability (well about 800 cpt/city) notwithstanding.

@A'AbarachAmadan
Your 1600 AD cultural victory is amazing! I demand a more detailed spoiler.

@Redbad
Our occasional antagonisms continue. This time you beat me by one turn. Seeing how you handled the religions better - I somewhat anxiously went for max fast expansion and missed all three first religions, Monotheism by 3 turns - I am surprised I came close. I got the other 4 religions of course, but I think the main reason is wonders. I built all wonders. All, up to Taj Mahal, after which I stopped research. I didn't bother about Versailles and Hagia Sophia, though. I think this may have counted for something, even though I'm now pretty sure that research should be stopped earlier to reap the fruits of the cathedrals instead.

@A'AbarachAmadan, Redbad
Thank you! I was going to write a detailed spoiler but, soundly beaten, I will be able to hit the sack at a decent time.

1 AD, Alphabet; only picked this tech because I hoped that Firaxis, in the patch, might have changed the fact that an AI will NOT trade a tech if it thinks it has a monopoly on it. They didn’t, so this research was a waste.

Religion
I wasn’t going for one of the three early religions in this game, having noted that the AIs usually pick them up very quickly. But, as I mentioned earlier, no one had Judaism at 1280 bc, so I went for it and missed it by one turn. I was, however, going for Christianity and I used the Oracle’s free tech in 1040 bc to get it. I immediately converted to the religion then revolted to Organized religion in order to build missionaries and spread it to all my cities. I was going to convert the Buddhist Greeks as well, but they closed the borders before I could do so (just a few turns after I adopted Christianity).

I was less prepared than you for this annoyance. But I lucked out with Christianity quickly spreading from me to them even without a missionary. (Hopefully I would have sent a missionary...) With the usual licking up I eventually got them to Friendly and they would trade everything. The moment I adopted Free Religion this condescending treatment ended abruptly. But by then Optics was around the corner. It seems to me like you could have finished even earlier if you'd had the same luck, if the extra trading could have been combined with a later conquest of Greece. It's not clear-cut, though, since I assume you got the odd beaker from ex-Greece.

When you say they closed their borders, I assume you mean they adopted Theocracy (The no non-state religion spread civic)? If you mean they wouldn't sign Open Borders, I fail to see why you couldn't just do a little bit of licking up to overcome this.




That's all from where I'm standing at the end of a gaudy, glitter-strewn wonder addiction autostrada. Might try the culture bomb again though.

 

[KevinTMC]

KevinTMC's first-ever GOTM

Diplomatic Victory, 1971 A.D.

I had intended to post something more detailed, but dumb old me upgraded to 1.52 before gathering the data needed, and now the dates in my replay are all screwy and screenshots don't work. So here's a medium-length rambling summary instead.

I founded Rome one step south of the starting position. Next cities were Antium, to the west and a bit south on the other side of the river, and Cumae, on the coast to the east right next to the Iron. I sharpened my swords by capturing the barbarian city of Goth, founded on a hill to the northwest of Rome; then massed some Praetorians on the border with Alexander and declared war.

I hadn't built enough Praetorians, though, and I also left Cumae too lightly defended. Cumae fell twice, but each time I recaptured it within two turns. Corinth, located in the hills to the south of Rome and the desert, finally fell to my forces, and I razed Pharsalos nearby. (This was silly as it turned out, since Alexander just plunked a new city down on the same spot soon afterwards.)

I then lost too many units in a foolish push against Athens and Sparta, leaving Corinth open to barbarian conquest. I quickly signed a peace treaty with Alexander and scraped together enough units to retake Corinth ten turns later, just before the Greeks could get to it. One turn later, I got revenge on the barbarians by taking their city Parthian down in the south-west corner. The founding of an additional city near the wine, by the bend of the river, finished the job of boxing Alexander in down in the southeast. (Except for a city he foolishly founded on a tundra square on the southern coast, behind my lines.)

I then focused on finishing the development of the north of the island, and on wonders. In a short span of time the core cities of Rome, Antium, and Cumae completed the Hanging Gardens, Great Lighthouse, Angkor Wat, Great Library, Colossus, Notre Dame, and Spiral Minaret. Also, during the war Cumae had founded Confucianism, and Antium Taoism; so the Kong Miao and Dai Maio went up in this same time frame.

I had a cultural victory, from these three cities, firmly in mind by this point, so was a touch disappointed when Islam wound up in Neapolis, a newer city on the northern tip of my continent.

During this late-Classical to early-Medieval phase of the game, Isabella declared war once on Saladin, and Montezuma twice on Bismarck; a city or two were captured or razed here and there, but no real change in the balance of power resulted.

By 1500 or so I was ready to pound Alexander with cavalry and cannons. Just one turn after I declared war, I had razed the two worst Greek cities (the one on the southern coast, and one located in the desert southeast of Cumae), and captured Knossos (the city founded in the spot where Pharsalos had stood).

Another half-dozen turns or so, and I had taken Delphi...and then Isabella declared war on me out of the blue. Her target--as Alexander's had been--was Cumae with its Iron. I managed to retreat and rush enough cavalry to keep the city from falling yet again. The Spanish did some pillaging before I wiped out the invasion force; and meanwhile I still had enough units deployed against the Greeks to mop up their remaining cities. The focus then turned to rushing some naval units, to better fend off Isabella; I sank some ships and we then signed a peace deal. At about the same time, Bismarck decided to go after Montezuma.

I hunkered down and again worked on wonders, finishing the Statue of Liberty, and then Rock 'N Roll and Broadway on successive turns. Hollywood and the Three Gorges Dam followed soon afterwards. All but the last of these were in my core cities; but even so it was starting to look doubtful that I would reach the cultural target by the time-limit. I think the most significant limiting factor is that there were only the three religions I had founded on my continent, so just three cathedrals I could build in each city.

Bismarck's war against Montezuma was going very well, and nobody else liked the Aztecs any, so I decided to declare war on them for the diplomatic brownie points. I conquered and razed their last city, then returned home; I had no interest in expanding beyond my home continent, especially as this would cause friction with my new best friend Bismarck.

Seven turns later, I won the vote for Diplomatic Victory against Isabella, thanks mostly to the Germans and my long-standing good buddy Mao.

I played a ton of Civ III (especially Conquests) in recent years, and of Civ I and II back in the day too; but this was my first experience with a game of this sort. And it was a ton of fun. My favorite things were comparing my game to others' at the fist spoiler threshhold, and the way the strict no-reload policy focused my mind and improved my play. (In particular, I'm not sure I'd have otherwise been able to resist the temptation to "fix" the problem when I wound up leaving Cumae poorly defended...twice!) Thanks to the GOTM staff who make these things possible; and I can't wait for Civ IV GOTM 2!

-- Kevin​

 

[Redbad]

Thanks Megalou.
I'll be interested to study yours and A'AbarachAmadan's final save (if they can be downloaded that is). Seeing the results both of you made, I get the feeling I overestimated the importance of religions. So I'm anxious to see how your 50K cities and their terrainimprovements look like.

Btw. how many GA-4K's did you use?

 

[Megalou]

What is GA-4K?

Overestimated - I don't know. Probably not. If you have more religions you can build temples faster in your strongest towns, more choices. I had to build several temples in my worst backwater towns. Plus I had to build two mosques without marble.

Edit: Didn't you build the pyramids? It was not listed for your three legendary towns. I hurried lots of stuff with universal suffrage, mosques, spiral minaret, Globe Theatre... Re your earlier question I built cottages on every river tile and most other tiles too, except hills of course. This came from knowing that I would hurry stuff with Universal Suffrage and so wouldn't need the max production. I switched from Representation to Universal Suffrage rather early, before calendar.

In the best of worlds I would have liked to use the lux slider more than the cash slider, but that came later.

 

[Psyringe]

What is GA-4K?

Probably "Great Artist, used to get 4000 culture points in one city"

 

[SwedishChef]

Where did A'AbarachAmadan post the result? I flipped through this whole thread again. Did I manage to somehow overlook it? I was interested in other cultural victories, so I've been keeping an eye out...

 

[AlanH]

Where did A'AbarachAmadan post the result? I flipped through this whole thread again. Did I manage to somehow overlook it? I was interested in other cultural victories, so I've been keeping an eye out...

His only post in this thread is here. Culture victory.

 

[hendrikszoon]

Now I will continue my first my first spoiler, which ended 1AD two turns before Optics was discovered.

Circumnavigating the World

After discovering Optics (50AD) a Caravel was built in Athens. This Caravel sailed East to find the other continent(s), to contact the other civilizations and last but not least to circumnavigate the Globe to get the movement bonus. While my Caravel was circumnavigating the Globe (finished 720AD) it contacted Bismarck, Montezuma, Isabella and Saladin. It was possible to get Animal Husbandry and Hunting from Bismarck. From other Civs (I don't remember from whom and it is not part of the log file) I could get Archery and Horseback Riding. The last contact (Mao Zedong) was established around 900AD when my Caravel was on its second circumnavigation, this time in the Norther hemisphere and from East to West .

Nevertheless it was possible to research now directly Astronomy, the next researched Technology was Civil Service (175AD). To increase again the output of my "science generating monster" I adopted Bureaucracy two turns (was a mistake) later. To get some Gold by trading I discovered Currency in 275AD. 175AD my third Great Scientist was born in Rome. To start my first Golden Age I needed another Great Person. I got this Great Person, a Great Artist, from Music (325AD) and started my first Golden Age 350AD. With Music the intermezzo ended and I went back to the Astronomy research path. After the discovery of Astronomy (500AD) the first Galleons were built.


Preparing the Great War

The next step was to train the cargo of the Galleons. But what should be the cargo? I decided to try the invasion of the other continents with Cavalry. Cavalry is fast (very important for my strategy) and so strong that I could be sure to have only a few losses. In all the later wars only nine of them were killed. Nationalism (640AD), Paper (680AD), Education (780AD), Gunpowder (840AD) and Military Tradition (960AD) were the next discovered Technologies. To speed-up the training of my Cavalry I started my second Golden Age using three Great People. While this Golden Age was running The Taj Mahal was finished in Neapolis. So I got a 16 turns Golden Age.

In expectation of War Weariness I planned to increase Happiness by different measures. At first I discovered Monarchy (980AD) and improved a Wine tile with a Winery. Then I discovered Drama (1020AD) and built some Theaters. Between Monarchy and Drama I increased the movement on Roads by getting Engineering (1010AD). Later (1120AD) also Notre Dame was built. Also in most of the cities Forges were built. Additional to the 25% production bonus, the Forges gave me two Happy Faces. Now you will say: "Two Happy Faces? How is this possible? There are Gems on the continent, but no Gold and no Silver." You are right and I have to explain it.


Polycrates

In 720AD (it was the only event I protocolled) I got the message that there was Gold discovered somewhere in my empire. Gold can only appear on Hills which have a Mine. So I inspected all my mined Hills until I found the Gold. It was unbelievable: the Gold was on the Gras Hill of the starting position, North of Rome making my monster again stronger.

In this moment I remembered a ballad written by Friedrich Schiller called "The Ring of Polycrates" (you can find an English translation here). This ballad is about the tyran of Samos, Polycrates, who had so much fortune that the gods became jealous of him. And this had bad consequences for Polycrates. I hope the same will not happen to me.


The Scoring System

Now it's time for a little excursion concerning the scoring system. Most what I write here is well known from other threads, but maybe there are one or two 4otM players who had not read every scoring post. Maybe my summary will help a little bit these players to understand some of my decisions.

There are two different scores: the Game Score and the (Final) Score. For the ranking in the Hall of Fame and also for the ranking of this 4otM - I am sure this will change in the near future - the Final Score counts. Game and Final Score are the sum of differently weighted Population, Land, Technology and Wonders Raw Scores.

The main component of the Final Score - a special thanks goes to Dianthus for his evaluation of the scoring formulas - is coming from Population. In my game 85.2% of the Final Score came from Population, 7.8% from Land, 6.3% from Technology and 0.7% from Wonders. For the Game Score it looks a little bit different (55.6%, 22.0%, 16.1%, 6.3%), but the Game Score counts only for lost or retired games. And I hope that I will never have to submit a lost game.

So you have to focus on the growth of your cities to get a really high Final Score. Land, Technology and Wonders are nice to have, but more or less negligible. For example, in this game at my final turn (205) two cities in resistance (2 Land tiles) with together 20 citizens (contribution to the Final Score: 4477 points) were more worth than 120 Land tiles (1945) + 6 Industrial Technologies (1858) + 10 Wonders (455). I am sure, it is not necessary to say more concerning the scoring dominance of Population.

Another important point is that only the Population, Land, Technology and Wonders at the end of the last turn count. This is completely different to the Civilization III scoring. In Civilization III counts the average of the sum of territory, specialists, content and happy (double weighted) citizens at the end of every turn complemeted by a Date Bonus.

Also very important is to know that the Final Score is calculated in the interturn between your winning and the following turn. After clicking the "End Turn" button or pressing <SHIFT-ENTER> all Beakers, Breads, Notes and Hammers are added. If these additions lead to a new Technology, additional Citizen(s), an cultural expansion (additional Land) or the completion of a Wonder then all these additional Population, Land, Technolgy and Wonder(s) are added to the Final Score.

So the value you see at your winning turn behind "Score by winning this turn = " is in nearly all cases not your real Final Score (normally you will have a better result) when you are really winning this turn. In my game there was a significant difference of 11827 points.

Last Point: How you win your game (Histographic, Conquest, Domination, Cultural, Space Race or Diplomatic) is like in Civilization III not relevant for your score. The scoring formulas are always the same and there is no bonus depending on the victory type added.


Consequences from Scoring Dominance of Population

What are the consequences from all this knowledge? Improvements increasing the food output of a tile like Farms and Windmills have the highest priority. Especially in the late game I built them always. In the whole game I built only one Workshop and never a Cottage. And at 1130AD I started to replace most of the Plantations and Mines by Farms and Windmills (at least one of every resource type was not farmed or windmilled to get the Health or Happiness bonus). Also most (as many as possible) of the Cottages, Hamlets, Villages and Towns built by the AIs were replaced by Farms.

1130AD was not a random date, it was the date I discovered Biology. Biology is the Population (and so also the score) booster of the game especially together with Granaries. Some of you will say: "Biology adds only one Bread to every Farm tile. I can not believe that this makes a big difference." But it is. I will explain it with the following example. You have a city with a Population of fourteen and a Granary. The city growed the turn before and there was no overflow. So 24 Breads are needed to get the next citizen. There are irrigated Farms on at least fourteen city squares. These fourteen tiles produce 32 Breads (e.g. four Gras tiles and ten Plain tiles). Together with two "City Breads" the city is producing 34 Breads and consuming 28 Breads. Without Biology the city needs 4 turns to grow. With Biology the city is producing 48 Breads. Because the consumption is the same, now the surplus is 20. So in this case only 1.2 turns are needed. In result the city will grow more than three times faster with Biology than without.

But this is only one side of the medal. More important is the other side. With Biology it is possible to support significantly more Citizens. In the best case (20 irrigated Farm tiles) it is possible to support ten additional Citizens. These ten Citizens are more worth than 60 Land tiles + 3 Industrial Technologies + 5 Wonders (see above). And this is only the contribution of one city.


Boosting Population

But now back to the game: Everyone should understand that Biology was my next research target. I needed Printing Press, Chemistry and Scientific Method to reach this target. So the next technology to research was Printing Press (discovered 1040AD). Because Chemistry obsoletes The Parthenon, I researched this technology only until one turn was necessary to get it, switched then to Liberalism and did the same. Then I researched Scientific Method until it was possible to finish it with a Great Scientist, went back to Chemistry, discovered it in 1110AD. In the same turn I used the Great Scientist to get Scientific Method. The next step was Liberalism (discovered in 1120AD). My choice of Free Technology was - what a surprise - Biology (1130AD).


Final Wars

In 1110AD the invasion of the 4 civilizations continent started with a war against the Germans. I fought only against Warriors, Archers and Axemen. Eight turns later the German civilization had been destroyed. To destroy also the Aztecs I needed only five turns (1200AD - 1240AD). The Spanish war started in 1250AD and the Arabian one in 1300AD while the Spanish war was still running. Spain was destroyed in 1330AD and Arabia in 1380AD. While this wars I destroyed a lot - but not enough - of small AI cities without a big growing potential to prevent an early Domination Victory. The attack on China came too late (1440AD) to result in a significant improvement of the score.

While war was going on, I discovered Feudalism (1130AD), Guilds (1150AD), Banking (1160AD), Economics (1190AD) Communism (1230AD), Replaceable Parts (1280AD), Physics (1340AD), Divine Right (1350AD), Electricity (1370AD) and Rifling (1450AD). Most of these Technologies were only discovered to get some more points for the Final Score. Only Communism gave additional profit: In 1240AD I adopted State Property to reduce the amount of Distance Maintenance to zero.


End of the Game

To take the most possible advantage of the Population increase initiated by The Hanging Gardens, it is necessary to finish this Wonder in the last turn. In my test game the AI finished The Hanging Gardens in 1540AD. Because at 1380AD only one opponent - China - was alive, I believe it was a calculated risk to wait. So I build The Hanging Gardens in Athens until only one turn was necessary to complete it. Then I started to build something else (don't remember what). The Hanging Gardens trick works only on lower levels (Settler . . . Noble). Also in a future scoring system, when maybe the average will count, the trick will make no sense anymore.

In 1450AD when it was clear that the game will end with this turn, I finished The Hanging Gardens and set Culture to 100%. The high Culture value lead to an expansion of the borders of 12 cities. So in the last interturn the population increased from 454 to 500 and the number of Land tiles from 549 to 632. With the new patch v1.52 the "culture trick" will not work anymore.


Game Analysis

In the retrospective view it was a mistake to use Cavalry for the invasion of the two other continents. I lost too much time until they were available. Knights would have done the job in the same manner and later it is possible to upgrade them to Cavalry. The better strategy seems to be to occupy around 50% of the world (more can end in an unexpected Domination Victory) before Biology is discovered. Then after around 20 peaceful turns (used to boost your Population) you have to get the last AI cities as fast as possible. Please notice that this is only a strategy to get a high score, it is not a strategy to win an award. Also this strategy fits only with the actual scoring system.

Another mistake in my game was the conquest succession. To start with Germany was o.k. But then Spain, Arabia and Aztecs had to follow. With this succession I would have had my troops very close to the last enemy. With the chosen strategy there was a peaceful break of six turns. This time was needed to transfer my Cavalry from the former Arabia to China. So when I started the Chinese war, the resistance in the Arabian cities was ending, the borders were expanding and catapulted me over the Domination limit.

Next time I will do it better.

Result: Domination Victory in 1450AD with a Game Score of 6556 and a Final Score of 130454.

 

[Redbad]

@Megalou
Sorry about the cryptical GA-4K , it is as psyringe guessed.

Our games differ much in how we played. My legendary cities didn't hurry a thing, but hammered all improvements. So the surroundings were mostly mines and farms. It was not until reletively late (somewhere after going culture) that I started to emphasise cottages somewhat more. My 5 GPP-cities had little cottages too of course, so on the whole I had relatively few cottages.

By playing so differently, you could very well be right, that is wasn't the religions that were overestimated. Mind you: it wasn't pleasant to establish religions in 9 cities that already had 4 or 5 religions.

I'm at work now, so I don't know exactly which wonders I had build, but the Pyramids were not amoung them. The wonders I mentioned in my spoiler are probably all I build.

 

[Obormot]

Well, i was going to play this game, but cotm19 took me even longer then i expected (i am struggling to complete before the deadline) and also some RL stuff kicked in at the end of the month so i had to give up 4otm1 . But for the next month i intend to play 4otm2 before starting the cotm , so i'll definitely be able to play. Not that i like civ4 more then civ3 - i didn't really play much yet (played many openings and a one or 2 games up to early MA. I particulary don't like the slow wars in civ4), but it'll be fun to compete with all the strong players that dropped civ3 gotm.

I have skimmed through the spoilers for this game and it was a very interesting and enlightening read. Special thanks to hendrickszoon for his detailed strategy analysis . I also expect to learn a lot from DaveMcW's final spoiler . Hope he'll be able to submit before the deadline.

A few thoughts that came into my mind while reading the spoilers. Some of them are taken directly from other people's spoilers (this may be obvious to the strong players already, but note that i am yet to complete a game of civ4):

1. Research is even more important now even for a military victory because if you are at tech parity with the AI you need catapults and other slow moving stuff. It is only possible to fight civ3-style blitz wars if you manage to outresearch the AI. It looks like most military games should be played like civ3 "ottomans on deity" when the most efficent way to conquer the world is to beeline to sipahi.

2. The key decision in a civ4 game seems to be determining the "OCN" for your particular goal and also the choice between cottages and specialists. For example DaveMcW said that 2 cities are needed to get Astronomy quickly, but in a space-race game in the HoF forum he built about 10 towns after initial expansion (and judging from his other posts he played a fair bit of civ4 unlike most other civ3 veterans). Hendrickszoon's strategy of creating a super-science city in the capital is also very interesting. I'll have to analise it a bit more as it seems counter-intuitive for a civ3 player. It looks like other civ3 veterans have overexpanded a bit for this game. I intend to do some calculations for the following game to see how many science cities are optimal and then expand to such size as fast as possible. Other cities should be geared towards production to build units when the necessary military techs are researched, and will be built after the science centers are set up.

 

[Dynamic]

Great analyse hendrickszoon! While I read your post It seems to me you already played Civ4 full year! But of course, it's "simply" your strong analytical brain. Magnificent!

 

[remconius]

In the whole game I built only one Workshop and never a Cottage. And at 1130AD I started to replace most of the Plantations and Mines by Farms and Windmills (at least one of every resource type was not farmed or windmilled to get the Health or Happiness bonus). Also most (as many as possible) of the Cottages, Hamlets, Villages and Towns built by the AIs were replaced by Farms.

This quote intrigues me. I thought the more cottages, the better science rate. But you seem to have a very high research pace without cottages. Is it due to focusing a few cities on science alone? Is that enough?

 

[Sybot]

Phew, finally got this finished with a few days to spare. I'm no GOTM master so I merely got a Domination Victory in 1878 with a score of 26599. My biggest mistake was not beelineing for Astronomy, which set back my invasion of the main continent a huge number of turns.

At the start I decided to do a military strategy. I went straight for Iron Working and settled Antium directly on the eastern iron supply. I could of attacked Alex sooner, but I waited for Catapults. Anyway, my army destroyed him by 820 AD. Another mistake I made was to take time out from getting Astronomy to get a religion (Christianity). I never got a Great Prophet so I never got to build the Shrine so apart from some production bonuses it was worthless. It just became a matter of building up until I had Astronomy. I sent out Caravals and met Mao first, then Germany, then Monty, then Izzy and Saladin. I saw Germany was the weakest, furthest behind in tech and luckily right across the water from me.

My forces lanched a surprise attack and took Berlin in 1560 AD. I swept through Germany and wiped him out in 1660 AD. In 1650, Monty (who had become my friend, strangely enough) asked me to help fight Izzy. I accepted, since I had almost finished Germany at this point and was shipping over the first Cavalry, and had a significant force in place to take Hamburg (Aztecs took it from Germany centuries ago, then recently Spain took it). What followed was a bloody and vicious battle that saw Izzy throwing her entire offensive force at the city. I lost it once, but was able to retake it quickly. There were huge casulties on both sides, but my Cavalry won through in the end and Izzy was put on the run. The Battle of Hamburg cost me even more time, as I had to wait until 1730 to assemble a decent enough army to march into the Spanish heartland.

With most of her offensive force trashed, Izzy stood no chance against my Cavalry hordes. I got held up a bit thanks to her having Chichen Itza to boost her defenses. Despite her best efforts, Izzy was wiped out in 1840 AD. Saladin was natrually the next target, having more than enough territory to trigger domaination victory, plus his cities were annoyingly putting huge cultural pressure on my new Spanish cities. War was declared in 1854, and my Cavalry were unleashed, taking Mecca in 1860. Despite a scare when Saladin managed to mass two large stacks against me, I was able to get enough territory for a Domination win in 1878 AD.

 

[hendrikszoon]

This quote intrigues me. I thought the more cottages, the better science rate. But you seem to have a very high research pace without cottages. Is it due to focusing a few cities on science alone? Is that enough?

You are right: Cottages can help you a lot to get a high research pace. But in my game I decided not to build them for several reasons:

1. In the starting phase (4000BC - 500BC) a high research pace and a fast Population growth were necessary. Cottages accelerate research, but do not support Population growth. For the Population growth Farms are needed. With the Gem tile and the four Silk tiles close to Rome in my opinion there was no need to build Cottages in this game. It was possible to get a science pace which was high enough without them.

2. In the late game (1130AD - 1450AD) - after Biology was discovered - a high research pace was not necessary. In this phase only Population growth was important.

3. I built Farms at the beginning and I needed again Farms at the end of the game. It would have been not very effectice to replace the Farms by Cottages and later to replace the Towns by Farms. I needed my Workers for more important tasks.

I hope nobody will misunderstand me: It is not a dominant strategy to build no Cottages. In 4otM-01 I didn't need Cottages for the realization of my strategy, so I didn't build them. In 4otM-02 it looks a little bit different: I am sure that I will build some Cottages, especially on river tiles.

 

[Methos]

I hope nobody will misunderstand me: It is not a dominant strategy to build no Cottages. In 4otM-01 I didn't need Cottages for the realization of my strategy, so I didn't build them. In 4otM-02 it looks a little bit different: I am sure that I will build some Cottages, especially on river tiles.

This is what I like best about CivIV. There is no defining strategy that will always be played out.

Great game Hendrikszoon! Nice to see you migrate over.

 

[eldar]

So... as ever Food=Power. Set your cities up to grow as fast as they can to their current health/happy limit. I'm gradually getting this idea myself.

So much of this game is about picking the right path through the tech tree to balance your needs, and emphasise your strengths - both natural, and inherent.

Very nice analysis on maximising score at the end, though, I suspect it'll change soon with a new (Jason II?) scoring system sooner.

 

[Megalou]

@hendrikzoon - fascinating stuff...

@Redbad
Great Artist= 4000c, it's obvious if you think about it. After I overestimated the cultural power of Rome (no cathedrals until 1500 something) I saved perhaps 5 turns with an artist. I would have saved ONE more turn had I got an artist and not a prophet the last turn! (edit: but your score was higher than mine)