GOTM-1: Closing Spoiler

[Dumple]

My mid-to-late game was a learning experience. I think I'm ready to "graduate" from noble now.

Mid-game diplomacy:
I was great friends with Germany, so-so with China. Montezuma and Isabella and Saladin were annoyed due to religion. I traded for open borders, and sent out missionaries, before checking everyone's civics. Then I learned that everybody was running theocracy! Too bad, because I ended up with the shrines for Chrisianity, Hinduism, and Islam.

War 1: Aztec campaign
I decided to take on Montezuma. I took his four southern cities easily using cavalry. Suddenly, Isabella then declared war, and sent in surprisingly large stacks of units via Germany! I lost two of my shiny new cities, razed, before I convinced Isabella to make peace. Saladin sneaked some settlers into the vacuum, founding a "beach-head city". My new cities were nearly swallowed by Germany's culture, even after I dropped in a great artist. Those cities never became very productive.

War 2: China campaign
I neglected the defense of one of my cities (One archer? in 1900? Dumb!). China, apparently deciding that city was a "renegade province", blitzed in and captured it. Qin, you were at +2 with me, you jerk! I retaliated by sending piles and piles of barrage artillery to ruin Qin's day. I eventually captured all of China. Satisfying!

Endgame:
My big strategic mistake was splitting my attention between domination and the space race. If I'd focused on one objective, I would have finished quite a bit earlier. Still, I had a lot of fun, and along the way I conquered Greece and China and the Aztecs.

--Dumple

 

[Qpdaj]

I won the Space Race in 1956, for 14153 points.

After destroying the Greeks (by 810AD), I avoided war and focused on getting the most out of the starting continent. By the end I had 20 cities, ranging in pop from 8 to 25. The other Civs spent a lot of time and effort fighting amongst themselves, allowing me to keep and increase my tech lead.

When I launched, no other civ had bulit a single spaceship component. In fact, I don't think anyone else had even built the apollo wonder. My tech lead was impressive...

I did build the UN in 1935, on the off chance the other fools might vote for me, but since I'd never really tried to be nice, I didn't win that way. This was alright, as I was really going for the Spaceship anyway.

I rarely had more than one military unit in each of my cities the whole game; until I had Infantry, I didn't even bother to upgrade from (mostly) Prats, with a few axeman and at least one warrior still doing duty. My financial situation was such that I was confident I could buy my way to a decent defensive force with very little warning. Towards the end, I started building battleships (for lack of anything better to build) and setting up a defensive array a bit further out from my shores.

This little move paid off, as Spain declared war on me late and sent four or five ships to my west (!) coast. I had most of my ships on the east and north coasts, but I was able to bring them to bear quickly enough that she only managed to land one stack. She was invading with one catapault, and three grenedairs (or something like that). Since I had upgraded every city to Mech Inf by this time (while saving my experienced Prats for emergencies), that stack went down fast.

No one else ever dared my tech lead.

One other note: I automated all my workers once I had all my cities connected by road. Maybe if I had been a bit more anal about their actions, I could've finished a little earlier, but I was pretty satisfied.

Edit: Just noticed my left over sig from long ago when I was playing conquests; guess I should update that

 

[Dumple]

...
1750 AD: S & M (Scientific Method)

Ah...from the abbreviation, I thought that was some sort of tech that reduces unrest due to whipping

 

[HeadBlend]

Going for a Domination Victory.

Early game went slowly - I lost 2 settlers and an early city to wolves and barbs! - I must get used to escorting them!

Following that, I left it too long to start war on the Greeks. Belatedly finished them off and had the continent to myself.

Looking at the other civs, Mao was the bigest threat as he had a slight tech lead, all others were several techs behind. Go to war with Mao and persaude Bismark to join me. Wipe them out in the 1900s somewhere and by then I know I am unlikely to pull off a dom win. If I had another 100 years....

AI civs destroyed Isabella. I started on Montezuma. Took all his cities except one on a island, made peace and waited for a low scoring time win.

Late in the game, I discovered why my production inhaled sharply. I my previous game I had set the option for workers to prevent them from changing improvements. On this game after railroads, I automated the workers and didn't notice they were clearing forests/lumbermills and turning mines into windmills! No wonder I had problems building wonders!

Lots of lessons learnt and only my fourth C-IV game. Haven't had a loss yet but this felt like one.

 

[Taronas]

Having spend too much time fighting against the greek the only thing left was to try the space race.

It was a close call - too close. Me and the Chinese completed the space ship in the same turn! Now I wonder whether I have won this game or not? Compare the top right message vs. the text on the bottom.

klick here for the full 1600x1200 screen to read the text

I did select "Victory" in the submit form but was that wrong?

 

[Vardis]

I knocked off the Greeks just before 500AD. Finding the rest of the contintent empty, I just expanded and built up my cities. Once I made contact with the other Civs, I had a huge tech lead and no one tried to push me around. I continued to push to maintain my tech lead, and when I built the UN, I had enough votes by myself to elect me.

Only Germany supported my diplomatic victory at first, and so I decided to beat up on China, even though they had be friendly. Waves of Modern Armor demolished them (they had a few planes, but mostly longbowmen), leaving one little city near the south pole that I didn't feel like going after, so I got Germany to finish them off.

I screwed around for a while after that, just continuing to build stuff rather than going for the kill, which was perhaps a mistake. A few resolutions later I noticed I could just vote myself a diplomatic victory without any help, so I did so in the mid 1900's, ending up with a score around 18000 or so.

 

[karmina]

...Once the Aztecs were completely destroy my War weariness vanished, even though I had no turns of complete peace between the Aztec and Arab wars. So WW was specific to each Civ, not simply a binary function.

That's a very important find indeed! In my game I thought that switching to Police State did the trick (before that some cities had iirc 17 WW-unhappy, starving with 20+ lack of food, and all that's after less than 10 turns of war...), but it might well be that I conquered the Arabs just in time.

Anyway, here's a short rundown of my game:

- 960-1090 AD: The Greek war. Pretty simple, I just waited with my initial attack until I got enough Praetorians. From that on, Rome was *way* ahead of everyone, with about thrice+ score and pop of anyone else.

After that, a long, peaceful era followed, I quickly populated the rest of our continent and headed straigthforward for maximum tech overkill, without producing any military until the modern age.

I didn't head for a specific victory condition until maybe 20 turns before the end - deciding earlier might have saved me quite a lot of turns; especially regarding all those useless wonders I built. Finally I went for Conquest (btw without West Point as I failed to get my 17xp unit in the Greek war ).

- 1720: Pentagon built.

- 1835: Three Gorges Dam built. As always, I didn't build any power plant before.

- 1860: UN built. Tried a diplomatic victory twice, without success, as nobody voted for me. I found it very hard to please even a single rival, because practically everyone got angry for me trading with his enemies and having the wrong religion.

Soon after, I decided to go for Conquest and started my 2nd GA as Modern Armors were only couple of turns away.

Moved 2-3 full transports accompanied with some Destroyers and Battleships to the borders of China, Aztec and Arab territory.

- 1888: Declared war on Montezuma and Saladin. Should have started to crush Mao, too, but I feared my naval presence was to weak there. In hindsight, surely it wasn't.

- 1888 - 1898: Aztec War. 3 cities captured, razed the others.

- 1888 - 1904: Arab War. 3-4 cities captured, in order to make use of my homeland airports. Discovered that the target city does *not* need an airport!

- 1894 - 1906: Chinese War. BTW Mao & Bismarck were the only enemies who already had Riflemen and some Artillery.

- 1906 - 1910: Crushed Spain, even without healing some of the wounds of the former wars.

- 1910: The Chinese veterans arrive at Berlin. War declared. One turn later, in 1912, the last German city falls.

Conquest Victory in 1912/1914 (why do you officially win one turn later?).
Firaxis score: 31683

Final military:
46 modern armors
36 workers
22 Stealth Bombers
15 Transports
14 Mech.Inf.
8 Marines
7 Artillery
6x Gunships, Destroyers, Battleships

My experience from this game is that Artillery is practically obsolete when you have Modern Armors (w/Coll.Damage), Stealth Bombers (GREAT coll.dam. w/o ANY RISK), and Destroyers/Battleships (reduce city defenses).
Artillery might still be necessary when non-costal cities are defended with Mech.Infs. (Although a decent Stealth Bomber attack should be still much better than Artillery reducing city defenses.)

/EDIT:It's also worth noting that crushing the Greek took 14 turns, but crushing everyone else took only 13 turns, even though they were on two different continents. Further evidence that the initial expansion and tech speed is extremely important.

Great GOTM!

(And congratulations to Shillen for your 1615 Diplo Victory - obviously my tech pace was far from optimized, not to speak of all those missionaries I never built. And of course also congrats to Roland&StanP: 1510 AD is outstanding!)

 

[Warden USA]

Taronas what does it say in your personal HOF?

 

[Chopperhead]

Just finished my today this was my very first GOTM ever.

Anyway I had built about 9 cities so I had a good chunk of the continent under my borders. I whent to war with the Greek about....... cant rember exactly but 1000BC maybe earlyier. that accoplished nothing. Next time was around 10AD ish i think and that time I took 2 cities and made peace. There was a long standing peace untill the late 1800's when I attacked him again except this time I destroyed him. Now while I was doing this Mao attacked me when I had one Greek city left he managed to destroy one city then built his own where it was. we made peace after that as I did not have the resources anymore to fight a war. anyway it was now about 1930. I was WAY behind in tech I was still using grenadiers and rifleman when Mao was using infantry. During my war with the Greek I had moved my science slider down to 50% to pay for my Army but now all my captured citys started growing again etc so I started poping out banks and librarys/universities etc to restart my economy and slowly but surley my economy came back science took over as my number one priority as I knew Space Race was the only way I could win. So I started flying threw the tech tree focousing on tech that equals parts for space ships. anyway I won with one turn left.

Issebella had also declared war on me during my time of science but nothing came of it. she landed a bunch of tanks once which i destroyed then I killed her ships with battleships and destroyers before she even got the chance to land them.

some interesting things:
- First Naval unit was built in the early 1900's lol. I just traded for a world map and saved me the trouble of doing it myself.

- I had never been to another continent during the whole course of the game.

- every single other civ except Germany was either annoyed or furious with me from the moment I met them. I think I got Mao to cautious with me for a few turns then right back to annoyed.

anyway ya this was fun. I can't wait to see the results. When will the results be released???

 

[remconius]

After the first spoiler, killing Alexander, I decided to go for the Space Victory.

Focused on production and science. Built lots of cottages to optimize science, running 80%+ and even 100% in the end with only -30 gpt.

I finished by 1932, but feel I should have done better. My last parts, engine, statis chamber and life support were almost built in sequence. 8 turns each. Had I been able to build these in parallel, I would have finished 10-15 turns earlier. Guess I should have waited building the silly parts like casing, and have these cities focus on research longer. (still have an old save, might replay from 1850 to test this). Casings take like 5-6 turns in average cities. If you start to build them later, you might have more techs to run the whole thing in parallel.

Another glitch... My power production city (150 odd shields) was building apollo and expensive parts, but I forgot to build the lab in it. OUCH. That would have saved 3-4 turns at least.

I rocked in production, score, population, etc, but had was equal on the power graph (unit count I guess).

It was a good and fun game, but a little easy. ;-) Good practice on space race.

Anyway, as I said builder game from 1400AD -> 1932AD, when I won by space victory scoring 18565 pts.

EDIT: replayed from 1840, with different strat, same result... 1 year earlier, 200 pts more... lol

 

[Taronas]

Taronas what does it say in your personal HOF?

I let the replay play to the end and there is written:

2036: Julius Caesar has won Space Race Victory Yes!

No mention of Mao Zedong at all


thanks for the hint

 

[AlanH]

Having spend too much time fighting against the greek the only thing left was to try the space race.

It was a close call - too close. Me and the Chinese completed the space ship in the same turn! Now I wonder whether I have won this game or not? Compare the top right message vs. the text on the bottom.

I did select "Victory" in the submit form but was that wrong?

It looks like you were in a dead heat for that space race. The message you received center screen is one for Take2 to investigate. Your replay file gives the following events for turn 426:

Germany: Bismarck signs defensive pact with Saladin!
Rome: Julius Caesar has won a Space Race Victory!!!
Rome: Time spent: 10 hours, 8 minutes
Date: 2036 AD
Score: 5404

I believe this would be what your on-screen replay would show.

The save file shows an additional event after these for China's space launch in the same turn, and credits him with the win, so the software failed to deal with a photo finish effectively, and has confused itself on-screen and in the save file.

I propose to award you the victory.

 

[Taronas]

... photo finish ...

I propose to award you the victory.

Will I get a special prize for that photo finish?

 

[AlanH]

What more do you want? You very nearly lost! Actually, I'm probably doing you no favours if it's awards you're looking for. An only-just-lost space race is probably a good way to qualify for the highest scoring loser's Green Ambulance award. Whether or not you qualify for a lowest scoring victory award, only time will tell

 

[Grogs]

Ah...from the abbreviation, I thought that was some sort of tech that reduces unrest due to whipping

Well, it may be one of the most painful techs for me to research. If I've got a lot of religions and monasteries in all my cities, I'll lose a lot of my research capability (possibly > 25%) when I research Scientific Method.

Mainly though, I just thought S&M was a little bit more catchy (and provocative ) abbreviation.

 

[Grogs]

I finished by 1932, but feel I should have done better. My last parts, engine, statis chamber and life support were almost built in sequence. 8 turns each. Had I been able to build these in parallel, I would have finished 10-15 turns earlier. Guess I should have waited building the silly parts like casing, and have these cities focus on research longer. (still have an old save, might replay from 1850 to test this). Casings take like 5-6 turns in average cities. If you start to build them later, you might have more techs to run the whole thing in parallel.

I'm curious why you were building the last few parts in series rather than in parallel. Was it because you were literally building the parts faster than you could research the techs for the next one? I'd be curious what your research order was for the modern age techs. While I wasn't completely parallel, I probably had 2-3 of the latest parts (after thrusters/casings) going at any given time.

 

[Frodawg]

Conquered greeks in bc times but didnt have the path to optics meorized so i went across the sea late. Had plenty of funding by founding confucianism christianisty and islam.

Germany had already been conquered by Spain. Took out Aztecs followed by Spanish to get domination in 1845 29775 score

 

[bio_hazard]

I'm on dial-up so haven't read everyone elses posts, so not sure if I'm the first bonafide loser to post here. I didn't have much of a strategy, but to give myself a break, this was the first game I'd actually finished, and I'm playing with the black terrain bug.

I lost by time- Isabella won in 2040. I was actually 4th in score, also behind Alexander, and Mao was about 25 pts ahead of me. Final Score 3225.

I half-heartedly went for Culture- thinking I needed 3 cities with 20,000 pts. Apparently its 50,000. I did have the 3 top cities and 4 of the top 5, but nothing more than about 30,000 culture in Rome and Cumae.

I built the UN too, and narrowly lost the Sec General to Isabella (by about 30 votes I think). She passed 3 resolutions before time ran out.

One thing I noticed is that you can wait a heck of a long time for foreign cities to flip. I had several of Alexanders cities within my cultural boundaries for most of the game. I got one flip early game that Alex took back in his short war with me, and another one in about 2030 that was originally a barb city.

Alex declared war on me when he was still pleased with me. Not really sure why, although we were neck and neck in the lead point-wise at that time. Took a couple of really nice city from me but I was able to get peace before he took rome (after several rounds of bombardment had almost wiped out rome's defenses). He had enough military to wipe me out I think, but did give me a break, and eventually even voted for me!

It was fun even though I lost. I'll probably replay this and try to see whether I can wipe out Alex, and maybe try for a late-game victory also. I'll be happy when the mac version comes out so I can play this on some better hardware!

 

[MikeH]

After the war of annihilation against Greece the second part of my game was a bit of an anti-climax. Having sailed west with my caravel (I always choose the wrong direction), the first people I met were the Arabs, very quickly followed by the rest. Looking at the negotiation screen, I saw that I was way ahead in the tech race and was 2-3 times bigger than any of them. I decided to stay on my own little continent and head for space and the next few hundred years had me beelining for Rocketry, which I got around about the time my friends on the other continent were discovering the delights of Liberalism. I launched my spaceship in 1956 for a score of 13,504.

The only exitement arose after I'd started building my Spaceship and Isabella (who else?), declared war and landed a small stack on my western shore. Well infantry are no match for tanks and frigates and galleons are no match for submarines and she was quickly despatched. I then bribed the Germans and Chinese to declare war on her. Once they'd got her down to 4 cities she came back with her tail between her legs and offered me her entire trasury for peace, which I graciously accepted.

 

[Goodenuf]

Hi All,

This is my first crack at a GOTM, and I found it a real blast... have to come back for more! Next time I will keep better notes so that I can have a better detailed analysis of the game.

Short summary: I found that this game was a case of too many wasted chances on my part. I play pretty conservatively, and I feel that I should have seized more opportunities than I did.

I waited until I had catapults and quite a few prats before going after Alexander. I pretty much plowed him over by the time China came calling for the first time. That was the end of the first 'spoiler'.

After that, I concentrated on culture, research, and spreading my Hindu religion. I held a large scoring lead for pretty much the whole game. I didn't have any further battles until quite late, when China likely figured I was getting too big of a lead and came after me. He didn't come very strong at all, and I pretty much held him off until I finished the space race in 2021 (ya, that late... told ya I was conservative), and no one else was even close to building a spaceship.

In retrospect, I should have countered China more instead of just trying to hold him off at the end. Then the empire could have spread further and I could have had much more of a powerhouse economy and therefore finished earlier. In fact, I probably should have taken the game to him at first, but I was concerned about time running out before I got to the Space Race win.

Oh well, live and learn... next time I know better

Greg