GOTM 10 final spoiler
- Thread starter ainwood
- Start date
Jesusin, contender. Goal: fast military victory. Conquest Victory, 1550AD, 167367 points, 39hours, 18 sessions.
Early years in short: Nice start, 2workers stolen, REX at first. GP teching mistakes (please help me, do you know why a Gsci would prefer Philosofy rather than Optics? Or a merchant CS rather than Machinery?) and an unnecessary builder phase lead to other civs having longbows. This pushed back my end date a couple of centuries, I guess.
Used slavery, Vasallage, Hereditary and Free Market all game long.
I had planned to stop research with Cho-Ko-Nus, but my economy was so strong that I went for Guilds. And then for Cannons… Cannons are the big brother of Cho-ko-nus, they conquered the world for me.
Around 900AD my carabels circumnavigated and visited Cyrus. Great people where used for GAs, most of them remained unused at the end of the game.
Killed Hatty, crippled Gengis, killed Asoka and Huaya at the same time (1400AD), killed Catty and Cyrus at the same time (1540AD), killed last Gengis island city.
Wars went smoothly. Every conquered city (kept most of them) produced forge, granary, theater (war weariness reached 20+ at times), barracks and then whipped units, mostly cannons. At the end I was careless:
*3 cities were retaken by enemies the very same turn I took them.
*Kept on concentrating on maximum unit output when I should have concentrated on logistics, unit movement delayed my victory for a couple of turns.
Although I don’t care about points, it has been my personal record. I could have improved it a lot playing the end turns differently:
*Not razing useless cities
*Producing settlers instead of units
*Transporting the GreatArtist to cities where the GreatWork had maximum effect.
*Not disbanding all workers but using them to farm around.
But, as stated, I would never delay my victory one turn, no matter how many points I could win.
As for ainwood's question: yes, I would be glad to play (and probably lose) a Deity GOTM.
Early years in short: Nice start, 2workers stolen, REX at first. GP teching mistakes (please help me, do you know why a Gsci would prefer Philosofy rather than Optics? Or a merchant CS rather than Machinery?) and an unnecessary builder phase lead to other civs having longbows. This pushed back my end date a couple of centuries, I guess.
Used slavery, Vasallage, Hereditary and Free Market all game long.
I had planned to stop research with Cho-Ko-Nus, but my economy was so strong that I went for Guilds. And then for Cannons… Cannons are the big brother of Cho-ko-nus, they conquered the world for me.
Around 900AD my carabels circumnavigated and visited Cyrus. Great people where used for GAs, most of them remained unused at the end of the game.
Killed Hatty, crippled Gengis, killed Asoka and Huaya at the same time (1400AD), killed Catty and Cyrus at the same time (1540AD), killed last Gengis island city.
Wars went smoothly. Every conquered city (kept most of them) produced forge, granary, theater (war weariness reached 20+ at times), barracks and then whipped units, mostly cannons. At the end I was careless:
*3 cities were retaken by enemies the very same turn I took them.
*Kept on concentrating on maximum unit output when I should have concentrated on logistics, unit movement delayed my victory for a couple of turns.
Although I don’t care about points, it has been my personal record. I could have improved it a lot playing the end turns differently:
*Not razing useless cities
*Producing settlers instead of units
*Transporting the GreatArtist to cities where the GreatWork had maximum effect.
*Not disbanding all workers but using them to farm around.
But, as stated, I would never delay my victory one turn, no matter how many points I could win.
As for ainwood's question: yes, I would be glad to play (and probably lose) a Deity GOTM.
JerichoHill
Bedrock of Knowledge
Adventurer
Goal: Culture (avoid war)
Finish: Win, 1732 AD
Score: 16K
Exploited GPP and Pacifism.
Had two religions come to me (Budd, Hind). This delayed my win by at least a century.
9 cities, had planned where the big 3 would be. 2 GPP farms. All total, about 15 GP popped. Most of them Artists.
Never attacked anyone except an initial worker steal from Hatty.
I didn't really need the adventurer bonus. Would have won regardless. Learned alot about MM.
I would play a diety game. I would even play on contender. All that I ask is that the starting location for us be very, very good...I'd like 1 game of hand-holding and then LET ER RIP~!
Goal: Culture (avoid war)
Finish: Win, 1732 AD
Score: 16K
Exploited GPP and Pacifism.
Had two religions come to me (Budd, Hind). This delayed my win by at least a century.
9 cities, had planned where the big 3 would be. 2 GPP farms. All total, about 15 GP popped. Most of them Artists.
Never attacked anyone except an initial worker steal from Hatty.
I didn't really need the adventurer bonus. Would have won regardless. Learned alot about MM.
I would play a diety game. I would even play on contender. All that I ask is that the starting location for us be very, very good...I'd like 1 game of hand-holding and then LET ER RIP~!
Challenger Class
Was extremely nerwous about attempting this, had never won on Immortal before and any test games I tried were dismal to say the least. I was too cautious in my approach in retrospect.
Founded in place and sent warrior wandering. Initial build warrior, initial research Fishing. After warrior work boat, which was whipped once Beijing hit size 2. I did use the whip alot and it enabled me to get some settlers out quickly.
My initial warrior discovered Hatty, Asoka and Genghis before dying.
Didn't even attempt any early wonders as I assumed I wouldn't get them (too cautious... looks like many others got them).
At 160BC I have 7 cities but no religion and Hatty is at my doorstep. She has Alexandria on the east coast near my borders with both Judaism and Hinduism contained within. I send the swords and spears in. I take it in 115BC and raze Byblos, a wrongly placed city on the west coast (I would later settle a better placed city around here). Instead of getting peace immediately I headed further into her lands, with no intention of attacking her cities, which I probably couldn't take. Why? I was fairly broke and beefed up my coffers with pillage money and set her back in the process. I waited until the turn I had researched Currency and got all her cash reserves to boot in 230AD.
.
I had elephants and catapults coming down now and thought about pushing on but (too cautious) decided I would get whipped if I did. At this point i started planning the launch, which was (again in retrospect) probably the hardest victory to get, as our production wasn't great (but research was) and the AI production bonuses would kill me.
So off we went, Catherine beats me to the Great Library by 3 turns
.
I finally build my first wonder in 1040AD, Hanging Gardens and then Sistine Chapel in 1190. I'm first to Liberalism in 1280AD (I take Nationalism).
Huayana beats me to Taj Mahal by 2 turns .
I'm first to Democracy in 1496 and switch to Emancipation, hoping that it'll slow down the AI a bit but Hatty, Huayan and Asoka switch on mass in 1550 (AI tech trading methinks).
In 1652, we're getting to the pointy end of the race. Asoka seems to be my main rival so I bribe Genghis to attack him. Just to be on the safe side I sign a defensive pact with Catherine. This is great but in 1682 Catherine declares on Cyrus so the pact is broken .
I stop trading any techs that lead to Rocketry (or even SS components).
Apollo Program completed in 1768AD, no one else has it yet.
Hatty completes in 1796 and Asoka in 1798.
Hatty and Asoka complete all their casings in 1819, I have um... 1
.
I notice that everyone is at war with Genghis, so what the heck, I'll declare on him as well. Didn't send any troops though
.
I complete Space Elevator in 1825. Asoka now has 2 thrusters. I have um... 1 casing still .
In 1859 Asoka has all his parts except Engine. I have 5 casings, 1 thruster and docking bay.
Never mind, I knew he didn't have Fusion and I had planned all my builds across the empire to come together. I win in 1878, with 18963 points.
If I could have my time again I would have played alot more aggressively as I overestimated the AI here and ended up going for the victory that suited them the most.
As for Deity, why not?
Was extremely nerwous about attempting this, had never won on Immortal before and any test games I tried were dismal to say the least. I was too cautious in my approach in retrospect.
Founded in place and sent warrior wandering. Initial build warrior, initial research Fishing. After warrior work boat, which was whipped once Beijing hit size 2. I did use the whip alot and it enabled me to get some settlers out quickly.
My initial warrior discovered Hatty, Asoka and Genghis before dying.
Didn't even attempt any early wonders as I assumed I wouldn't get them (too cautious... looks like many others got them).
At 160BC I have 7 cities but no religion and Hatty is at my doorstep. She has Alexandria on the east coast near my borders with both Judaism and Hinduism contained within. I send the swords and spears in. I take it in 115BC and raze Byblos, a wrongly placed city on the west coast (I would later settle a better placed city around here). Instead of getting peace immediately I headed further into her lands, with no intention of attacking her cities, which I probably couldn't take. Why? I was fairly broke and beefed up my coffers with pillage money and set her back in the process. I waited until the turn I had researched Currency and got all her cash reserves to boot in 230AD.
.I had elephants and catapults coming down now and thought about pushing on but (too cautious) decided I would get whipped if I did. At this point i started planning the launch, which was (again in retrospect) probably the hardest victory to get, as our production wasn't great (but research was) and the AI production bonuses would kill me.
So off we went, Catherine beats me to the Great Library by 3 turns
.I finally build my first wonder in 1040AD, Hanging Gardens and then Sistine Chapel in 1190. I'm first to Liberalism in 1280AD (I take Nationalism).
Huayana beats me to Taj Mahal by 2 turns
.I'm first to Democracy in 1496 and switch to Emancipation, hoping that it'll slow down the AI a bit but Hatty, Huayan and Asoka switch on mass in 1550 (AI tech trading methinks).
In 1652, we're getting to the pointy end of the race. Asoka seems to be my main rival so I bribe Genghis to attack him. Just to be on the safe side I sign a defensive pact with Catherine. This is great but in 1682 Catherine declares on Cyrus so the pact is broken
.I stop trading any techs that lead to Rocketry (or even SS components).
Apollo Program completed in 1768AD, no one else has it yet.
Hatty completes in 1796 and Asoka in 1798.
Hatty and Asoka complete all their casings in 1819, I have um... 1
.I notice that everyone is at war with Genghis, so what the heck, I'll declare on him as well. Didn't send any troops though
.I complete Space Elevator in 1825. Asoka now has 2 thrusters. I have um... 1 casing still
.In 1859 Asoka has all his parts except Engine. I have 5 casings, 1 thruster and docking bay.
Never mind, I knew he didn't have Fusion and I had planned all my builds across the empire to come together. I win in 1878, with 18963 points.
If I could have my time again I would have played alot more aggressively as I overestimated the AI here and ended up going for the victory that suited them the most.
As for Deity, why not?
bio_hazard
Prince
Adventurer Class- loss, 1890, Russian Space Victory.
I had a blast with this game even though I lost. When I started this game I hadn't even won on Prince yet , so surviving to the end and having a shot was very encouraging for me.
I ended up getting behind in techs so didn't attempt a space race. Instead I went for Diplo (my only real option at that point). I built the UN, and managed to get some techs on the biology-medicine track that no one else had. I passed these around as well as some money, but it wasn't enough to secure a Diplo victory. I dont' think I had a religion either... If I remember correctly, I actually was secretary general after the first election, but then Catherine won the second election. She was fairly close to a diplo victory too, but didn't get it (can't remember the votes sorry).
I had a couple of real blunders in this game. First was in AA, losing a settler to a barb when I'd forgotten his escort had already moved and I sent him alone right next to an archer... Second was not paying attention during what was almost my only war of the game. HC declared on me when I wouldn't give him something or other. Given his distance I wasn't too worried about him. He had a pesky galley that was near my sw-most city south of the cows for a while. I sort of started to ignore the "enemy has been spotted" At some point he replaced that with about 4 galleons worth of soldiers, and landed them right next to my city without me noticing them. I'm assuming I just goofed and didn't pay attention, but i guess its possible that the turn before he was out of my line of sight there... Anyway, my city beat back the first wave, but my injured garrison couldn't hold out next turn, and reinforcements from my other cities couldn't make it until the following turn. He razed my city, although I was quickly able to mop up his troops. I refounded on the same spot, but then had a major problems with Hatty's cultural borders, and spent way too much effort trying to make that a productive city. The worst thing about it was that with Hatty's borders expanding out, I lost the oil well spot, and had to put another worthless city right next to it and pump culture buildings into it just to get oil not that long before the end of the game...
My last major mistake was not being more aggressive with Hatty. Ghengis hated her, Asoka hated Ghengis but I don't think particularly liked Hatty. Near the end Catherine declared on Hatty, and bombed the (*^& out of her. She was pretty sneaky- hiding carriers and bombers in my coastal cities to launch her bombing missions! I didn't know the AI would do that!
After I lost the sec generalship in the second election, I finally got up the guts to attack her just for fun, and took her NE most city on the final turn of the game...
Definitely fun. I might try a Diety game, but without any real hope of winning. I would definitely play Adventurer again.
Edit- One more trivial aspect of my game... I managed to get a goody hut! very late, it was on the small landmass to the north of the continent. Can't remember what year, but definitely AD's and probably past 1000. I popped a WARRIOR... a tech would have been much more handy, or even some cash. At least it wasn't a scout... I had plans to put something up there for the sea resource (was it whales? can't remember), but Catherine ended up settling up there...
I had a blast with this game even though I lost. When I started this game I hadn't even won on Prince yet , so surviving to the end and having a shot was very encouraging for me.
I ended up getting behind in techs so didn't attempt a space race. Instead I went for Diplo (my only real option at that point). I built the UN, and managed to get some techs on the biology-medicine track that no one else had. I passed these around as well as some money, but it wasn't enough to secure a Diplo victory. I dont' think I had a religion either... If I remember correctly, I actually was secretary general after the first election, but then Catherine won the second election. She was fairly close to a diplo victory too, but didn't get it (can't remember the votes sorry).
I had a couple of real blunders in this game. First was in AA, losing a settler to a barb when I'd forgotten his escort had already moved and I sent him alone right next to an archer... Second was not paying attention during what was almost my only war of the game. HC declared on me when I wouldn't give him something or other. Given his distance I wasn't too worried about him. He had a pesky galley that was near my sw-most city south of the cows for a while. I sort of started to ignore the "enemy has been spotted" At some point he replaced that with about 4 galleons worth of soldiers, and landed them right next to my city without me noticing them. I'm assuming I just goofed and didn't pay attention, but i guess its possible that the turn before he was out of my line of sight there... Anyway, my city beat back the first wave, but my injured garrison couldn't hold out next turn, and reinforcements from my other cities couldn't make it until the following turn. He razed my city, although I was quickly able to mop up his troops. I refounded on the same spot, but then had a major problems with Hatty's cultural borders, and spent way too much effort trying to make that a productive city. The worst thing about it was that with Hatty's borders expanding out, I lost the oil well spot, and had to put another worthless city right next to it and pump culture buildings into it just to get oil not that long before the end of the game...
My last major mistake was not being more aggressive with Hatty. Ghengis hated her, Asoka hated Ghengis but I don't think particularly liked Hatty. Near the end Catherine declared on Hatty, and bombed the (*^& out of her. She was pretty sneaky- hiding carriers and bombers in my coastal cities to launch her bombing missions! I didn't know the AI would do that!
After I lost the sec generalship in the second election, I finally got up the guts to attack her just for fun, and took her NE most city on the final turn of the game...
Definitely fun. I might try a Diety game, but without any real hope of winning. I would definitely play Adventurer again.
Edit- One more trivial aspect of my game... I managed to get a goody hut! very late, it was on the small landmass to the north of the continent. Can't remember what year, but definitely AD's and probably past 1000. I popped a WARRIOR... a tech would have been much more handy, or even some cash. At least it wasn't a scout... I had plans to put something up there for the sea resource (was it whales? can't remember), but Catherine ended up settling up there...
We have a choice?ainwood said:
Adventurer Save
Goal: Cultural win(no wars)
Won in the early 1820s
Mistakes:
I didn't turn off my science fast enough and delayed my victory by a few years through that.
I had 5 religions spread to me, but took too long to build the temples and thus spent waaay too long cash pumping between max science and max culture.
My choice of cultural cities was wrong. One of my three cultural cities had only 500 culture per turn by the end, with 350% modifiers, while a city I didn't use had almost 200 culture per turn with 0% modifiers. If I'd used the latter city, I could have culture bombed my third culture city 2x as often, speeding up my victory by over 30 turns.
Basically, I won because I had an adventurer bonus, the start was very nice, and because of some random luck that Hatty was stronger in my game than most, leading Khan to attack Asoka instead.
As for diety...if we go there, I will play, although I'd prefer the chance to attempt to win a monarch, emperor, or immortal game on contender first(although I've yet to win on emperor in two adventurer tries)
Goal: Cultural win(no wars)
Won in the early 1820s
Mistakes:
I didn't turn off my science fast enough and delayed my victory by a few years through that.
I had 5 religions spread to me, but took too long to build the temples and thus spent waaay too long cash pumping between max science and max culture.
My choice of cultural cities was wrong. One of my three cultural cities had only 500 culture per turn by the end, with 350% modifiers, while a city I didn't use had almost 200 culture per turn with 0% modifiers. If I'd used the latter city, I could have culture bombed my third culture city 2x as often, speeding up my victory by over 30 turns.
Basically, I won because I had an adventurer bonus, the start was very nice, and because of some random luck that Hatty was stronger in my game than most, leading Khan to attack Asoka instead.
As for diety...if we go there, I will play, although I'd prefer the chance to attempt to win a monarch, emperor, or immortal game on contender first(although I've yet to win on emperor in two adventurer tries)
SS Victory in 1917
13192 points after the adventure penalty.
This was my first time playing above monarch and first ever GOTM submission so I played on adventurer and *barely* squeaked out a SS victory.
Early Game
First Egyptian War
Early AD and the Second Egyptian War
The Middle Ages and Indian Containment
Empire Building
The Space Race
Conclusions
13192 points after the adventure penalty.
This was my first time playing above monarch and first ever GOTM submission so I played on adventurer and *barely* squeaked out a SS victory.
Early Game
Spoiler :
First Egyptian War
Spoiler :
Early AD and the Second Egyptian War
Spoiler :
The Middle Ages and Indian Containment
Spoiler :
Empire Building
Spoiler :
The Space Race
Spoiler :
Conclusions
Spoiler :
g0g4zZ@c!v
Chieftain
@ Svelte : Nice endgame - not everyone has courage to sacrifice his capital and other cities just to stop AI building SS components. 
@ ainwood : I'd like to play on deity. And I hope to win
@ ainwood : I'd like to play on deity. And I hope to win
Svelte said:
To get spies in across the ocean without open borders, use submarines (or caravels if you still have them and you're feeling brave
). Both can ignore closed borders, and subs can't even be seen by the other civ, except by destroyers and other subs.Or of course, if there's another civ on the same continent that you do have open borders with, or even some unclaimed squares, you can just drop the spies off there.
I think the limit is 4 spies.
edit: Played contender.
Here are my first and second spoilers. After the second spoiler not much else happened. I pretty much just set my cities to grow as fast as possible while building science buildings and stuff. That is until I learned industrialism and found out that there's no aluminum anywhere nearby. Because of this I had to build a bunch of tanks to take a source away from Genghis (who was way behind in techs). I underestimated the power of riflemen in hilled cities, though, as I thought I could take them with just tanks. I ended up having to build a few artillery as well to bombard with. Anyway the war was really quick and easy. I took two cities from him and waited until he was ready to make peace. The city that got me aluminum actually ended up flipping to Asoka from culture, but by that point Asoka had industrialism himself and two sources of aluminum so I just ended up trading for one of them.
As for the tech race, only Catherine was willing to trade me techs as I mentioned in part 2. So she kept up with me in techs easily as I traded for every tech she learned before me. Asoka and Huayna kept up pretty well, also, but only because I was selling them my techs for all their treasury very often. Cyrus, Genghis and Hatty were all hopelessly behind, but I continuously emptied their treasuries as well.
Technologies
Space Race
I won a space race victory in 1819AD for 41,378 points. 12:25 hours in 5 sessions.
I made quite a few mistakes. I don't think I played this game overly well. For one I didn't attack Hatty early enough at all. I spent way too long with only 7 cities to work with. My next biggest mistake was building all observatories before universities because I had completely forgotten about Oxford University. And I wanted to start second golden age with great people only to realize I needed 3 great people the second time. And a bunch of other little mistakes. So I was very rusty with this game. I spent too long away from civ. Overall it wasn't bad and I felt going in that if I won on immortal I'd be happy. So I am happy with the result.
edit: As for deity I'm totally up for it.
Here are my first and second spoilers. After the second spoiler not much else happened. I pretty much just set my cities to grow as fast as possible while building science buildings and stuff. That is until I learned industrialism and found out that there's no aluminum anywhere nearby. Because of this I had to build a bunch of tanks to take a source away from Genghis (who was way behind in techs). I underestimated the power of riflemen in hilled cities, though, as I thought I could take them with just tanks. I ended up having to build a few artillery as well to bombard with. Anyway the war was really quick and easy. I took two cities from him and waited until he was ready to make peace. The city that got me aluminum actually ended up flipping to Asoka from culture, but by that point Asoka had industrialism himself and two sources of aluminum so I just ended up trading for one of them.
As for the tech race, only Catherine was willing to trade me techs as I mentioned in part 2. So she kept up with me in techs easily as I traded for every tech she learned before me. Asoka and Huayna kept up pretty well, also, but only because I was selling them my techs for all their treasury very often. Cyrus, Genghis and Hatty were all hopelessly behind, but I continuously emptied their treasuries as well.
Technologies
Spoiler :
Space Race
Spoiler :
I won a space race victory in 1819AD for 41,378 points. 12:25 hours in 5 sessions.
I made quite a few mistakes. I don't think I played this game overly well. For one I didn't attack Hatty early enough at all. I spent way too long with only 7 cities to work with. My next biggest mistake was building all observatories before universities because I had completely forgotten about Oxford University. And I wanted to start second golden age with great people only to realize I needed 3 great people the second time. And a bunch of other little mistakes. So I was very rusty with this game. I spent too long away from civ. Overall it wasn't bad and I felt going in that if I won on immortal I'd be happy. So I am happy with the result.
edit: As for deity I'm totally up for it.
The Plan
Well, I started by opening the save file and looked at the possible victory score (bottom left in the screenshot):
I did of course seriously consider a strategy of just winning the game in 4000BC, but when I saw that would lead to such a pathetically low score of 3000, I reconsidered and turned to plan B: Take out the nearest AI to make myself the biggest Civ, hopefully big enough to maintain a science lead, so I could then go all peaceful and cruise to a spaceship victory. (Or do you fly to one of those? I forget).
The Start
I settled in place, aiming to use slavery with those food resources. Slightly unusual research path: Went for hunting first in the hope of getting goody huts, but didn’t work as they’d all gone by the time my scout went roaming. I also heavily delayed bronze working because I was worried about attracting barb axemen, and I vaguely assumed that the start location was already so incredibly good that surely Ainwood wouldn’t put copper there too… Plus I had got animal husbandry fairly early to get the cows – and of course that revealed the horses SE, which I promptly settled, and that seemed to reduce the need for me to have immediate axemen to attack other civs with. I actually was so nervous about discovering BW, facing axemen and having no copper myself that at one point I was about 3 turns away from discovering BW but had 2nd thoughts and diverted my science to delay it. Clever strategy, huh! I’ll refrain from describing my feelings when BW did arrive and that copper showed up right next to Beijing. Oooh, and iron too (not getting ahead of myself there…
Egypt
Anyway, onto foreign diplomacy. Very early on discovered Hatty, who had two undefended workers building a road together. Tsk, tsk, very risky that. You never know when a Chinese warrior might turn up to remove them. It was kind of a lesson really. I didn’t have anything against Hatty, just wanted to show her the value of guarding her workers properly. And I was sorry that one of them got eaten by a panther on the way back to Beijing, I really was. I would’ve apologized to Hatty in person but she’d gone off in a strange huff and wasn’t talking to me.
But I digress. Back to the story. I remained at war with Hatty and slowly took over her cities, judging it to be an act of charity since I was obviously better able than her to manage her population and make them happy. Eventually Egypt had just 3 marginal cities that I couldn’t usefully do much with, so I allowed peace to break out. Think that was somewhere around 1000AD.
India
At this point I realized a flaw in my strategy. I had pretty much taken out my neighbour, but I wasn’t yet the biggest Civ, Russia still had that honour. Worse, my next neighbour and close friend Asoka was streaming off in science and looked like, if left unchallenged, he’d certainly beat me to a spacerace victory. Well I couldn’t allow that to happen, I mean he’d probably crash his spaceship on launch, you know how incompetent these AI leaders are. I’d hate to think of those poor Indian colonists, dying inside their spaceship.
So I proceeded to march into Asoka’s territory, even though it pained me to destroy such a good friendship.
I had a plan: I was carving out land heading straight for Delhi, the home of Buddhism, a religion that held sway over 40% of the world. The gold from the Mahabod-thingy must be incredible, I bet that was the reason Asoka’s science was so high. So my troops bravely battle in a couple of wars, ending sometime around 1600 I think when I finally have all Asoka’s territory. Well everything that’s worth having anyway. I am not wasting troops on that size 6 city up North in the middle of the ice.
And - uhhhhh?
bl$£$£ () (fu*2q34!!!
£$* (& ,,, *($£ 324320! The ignorant sodding incompetent so-called Indian leader! @~@@ %!”$ **(&$£
There’s no shrine in Delhi.
OK, mebbe I ought to use the information screens a little bit more often.
I need that shrine. God I need that shrine. (Or do I mean, “Buddha I need that shrine”?). That means I need lots of priests to get a great prophet with. That means I need a city with as many temples and cathedrals as possible. It needs to be something that can build those quickly. And it needs a food surplus. That means – umm – Beijing. Trouble is, Beijing already has the the great lighthouse, the hanging gardens and the great library. (Did I mention, I did some pretty cool wonder-building earlier in the game?). Those aren’t exactly going to help with great prophets, are they.
Revolutions
There follows a sequence of revolutions the like of which you’ve never seen before in any of my games. Organized religion so I can spread as many religions as possible to get those priest-allowing religious buildings in Beijing (I already have scientific method so no monasteries so it’s gotta be org religion), followed by pacifism to up the great person rate. It’s a long time since I’ve spent so much of the middle game running pacifism! I also change to bureaucracy to help get those religious buildings up faster in Beijing, and also build the Spiral Minaret there (=gold + more priests).
It doesn’t work. I get two great scientists in succession from Beijing, despite starving the city so I can run about 9 priests and having a 66%-ish chance of a great prophet. So in the late 1700’s I change tack and give up on the priests in Beijing. By now Delhi has a big food surplus and lots of production. And better still, no wonders to pollute the priest gene-pool. So I start building religious buildings and preparing for a priest factory there instead…
Oh the irony. I finally build the mahabodhi in 1854, with a prophet obtained from Beijing (11% chance of prophet). While almost simultaneously, Delhi gives me a great engineer (all those priest specialists foiled because the b***** game put an engineer there without asking me).
Is this a record for late building of a shrine? Still, it was worth it I think. My gold per turn instantly jumps by nearly 100!
Meanwhile, more Wars…
Through the revolutions I do manage to keep my science ahead. In fact after the Indian wars are over, I’d set most of my cities to maximize pop and through that gradually draw about 15% ahead of nearest rival Catherine in score. In terms of diplomacy, well, Genghis Khan is the only potential threat: Powerful and he’s occupying the same continent as me. If he declares war, he could knock out a substantial part of my empire. Luckily he’s Buddhist like me. I do everything I can to keep him friendly so there’s no risk of invasion.
Not much more happens, I just go on to a spaceship victory. Couple of minor wars but not from anyone who’s capable of posing a serious threat. I have a moment of panic in 1878 when I discover that Genghis Khan has dropped from friendly to pleased with me (I think the reason is he’s moved to free religion). That means there’s a finite risk of him invading me. Worse, in the diplomacy screen, he won’t be drawn into wars because ‘we have too much on our hands right now’. That can only mean one thing…
Luckily, a few turns later, he declares on the remnants of the Indian empire. I’m starting to learn that once you’ve got a civ down to one or two cities, it’s often worthwhile leaving them alive. Gives other, stronger, AI’s someone weak to declare war on later on, so they’re less likely to declare war on you!
Spacerace victory happens in 1897. Cathy is pretty close behind me – she only has one or two parts left to build, but I had spies monitoring her so I know she’s stupidly building them in low-production cities. Even more amazingly, she built Scotland Yard but then didn’t follow up with any spies. So what did she build Scotland Yard for?
Well I’m sure you’re all dying to know what my glorious Civ looked like at the victory conditon (Actually I suspect you all couldn’t care less but I’ll show you anyway):
Well, I started by opening the save file and looked at the possible victory score (bottom left in the screenshot):
I did of course seriously consider a strategy of just winning the game in 4000BC, but when I saw that would lead to such a pathetically low score of 3000, I reconsidered and turned to plan B: Take out the nearest AI to make myself the biggest Civ, hopefully big enough to maintain a science lead, so I could then go all peaceful and cruise to a spaceship victory. (Or do you fly to one of those? I forget).
The Start
I settled in place, aiming to use slavery with those food resources. Slightly unusual research path: Went for hunting first in the hope of getting goody huts, but didn’t work as they’d all gone by the time my scout went roaming. I also heavily delayed bronze working because I was worried about attracting barb axemen, and I vaguely assumed that the start location was already so incredibly good that surely Ainwood wouldn’t put copper there too… Plus I had got animal husbandry fairly early to get the cows – and of course that revealed the horses SE, which I promptly settled, and that seemed to reduce the need for me to have immediate axemen to attack other civs with. I actually was so nervous about discovering BW, facing axemen and having no copper myself that at one point I was about 3 turns away from discovering BW but had 2nd thoughts and diverted my science to delay it. Clever strategy, huh! I’ll refrain from describing my feelings when BW did arrive and that copper showed up right next to Beijing. Oooh, and iron too (not getting ahead of myself there…
Egypt
Anyway, onto foreign diplomacy. Very early on discovered Hatty, who had two undefended workers building a road together. Tsk, tsk, very risky that. You never know when a Chinese warrior might turn up to remove them. It was kind of a lesson really. I didn’t have anything against Hatty, just wanted to show her the value of guarding her workers properly. And I was sorry that one of them got eaten by a panther on the way back to Beijing, I really was. I would’ve apologized to Hatty in person but she’d gone off in a strange huff and wasn’t talking to me.
But I digress. Back to the story. I remained at war with Hatty and slowly took over her cities, judging it to be an act of charity since I was obviously better able than her to manage her population and make them happy. Eventually Egypt had just 3 marginal cities that I couldn’t usefully do much with, so I allowed peace to break out. Think that was somewhere around 1000AD.
India
At this point I realized a flaw in my strategy. I had pretty much taken out my neighbour, but I wasn’t yet the biggest Civ, Russia still had that honour. Worse, my next neighbour and close friend Asoka was streaming off in science and looked like, if left unchallenged, he’d certainly beat me to a spacerace victory. Well I couldn’t allow that to happen, I mean he’d probably crash his spaceship on launch, you know how incompetent these AI leaders are. I’d hate to think of those poor Indian colonists, dying inside their spaceship.
So I proceeded to march into Asoka’s territory, even though it pained me to destroy such a good friendship.
I had a plan: I was carving out land heading straight for Delhi, the home of Buddhism, a religion that held sway over 40% of the world. The gold from the Mahabod-thingy must be incredible, I bet that was the reason Asoka’s science was so high. So my troops bravely battle in a couple of wars, ending sometime around 1600 I think when I finally have all Asoka’s territory. Well everything that’s worth having anyway. I am not wasting troops on that size 6 city up North in the middle of the ice.
And - uhhhhh?
bl$£$£ () (fu*2q34!!!
£$* (& ,,, *($£ 324320! The ignorant sodding incompetent so-called Indian leader! @~@@ %!”$ **(&$£
There’s no shrine in Delhi.
OK, mebbe I ought to use the information screens a little bit more often.
I need that shrine. God I need that shrine. (Or do I mean, “Buddha I need that shrine”?). That means I need lots of priests to get a great prophet with. That means I need a city with as many temples and cathedrals as possible. It needs to be something that can build those quickly. And it needs a food surplus. That means – umm – Beijing. Trouble is, Beijing already has the the great lighthouse, the hanging gardens and the great library. (Did I mention, I did some pretty cool wonder-building earlier in the game?). Those aren’t exactly going to help with great prophets, are they.
Revolutions
There follows a sequence of revolutions the like of which you’ve never seen before in any of my games. Organized religion so I can spread as many religions as possible to get those priest-allowing religious buildings in Beijing (I already have scientific method so no monasteries so it’s gotta be org religion), followed by pacifism to up the great person rate. It’s a long time since I’ve spent so much of the middle game running pacifism! I also change to bureaucracy to help get those religious buildings up faster in Beijing, and also build the Spiral Minaret there (=gold + more priests).
It doesn’t work. I get two great scientists in succession from Beijing, despite starving the city so I can run about 9 priests and having a 66%-ish chance of a great prophet. So in the late 1700’s I change tack and give up on the priests in Beijing. By now Delhi has a big food surplus and lots of production. And better still, no wonders to pollute the priest gene-pool. So I start building religious buildings and preparing for a priest factory there instead…
Oh the irony. I finally build the mahabodhi in 1854, with a prophet obtained from Beijing (11% chance of prophet). While almost simultaneously, Delhi gives me a great engineer (all those priest specialists foiled because the b***** game put an engineer there without asking me).
Is this a record for late building of a shrine? Still, it was worth it I think. My gold per turn instantly jumps by nearly 100!
Meanwhile, more Wars…
Through the revolutions I do manage to keep my science ahead. In fact after the Indian wars are over, I’d set most of my cities to maximize pop and through that gradually draw about 15% ahead of nearest rival Catherine in score. In terms of diplomacy, well, Genghis Khan is the only potential threat: Powerful and he’s occupying the same continent as me. If he declares war, he could knock out a substantial part of my empire. Luckily he’s Buddhist like me. I do everything I can to keep him friendly so there’s no risk of invasion.
Not much more happens, I just go on to a spaceship victory. Couple of minor wars but not from anyone who’s capable of posing a serious threat. I have a moment of panic in 1878 when I discover that Genghis Khan has dropped from friendly to pleased with me (I think the reason is he’s moved to free religion). That means there’s a finite risk of him invading me. Worse, in the diplomacy screen, he won’t be drawn into wars because ‘we have too much on our hands right now’. That can only mean one thing…
Luckily, a few turns later, he declares on the remnants of the Indian empire. I’m starting to learn that once you’ve got a civ down to one or two cities, it’s often worthwhile leaving them alive. Gives other, stronger, AI’s someone weak to declare war on later on, so they’re less likely to declare war on you!
Spacerace victory happens in 1897. Cathy is pretty close behind me – she only has one or two parts left to build, but I had spies monitoring her so I know she’s stupidly building them in low-production cities. Even more amazingly, she built Scotland Yard but then didn’t follow up with any spies. So what did she build Scotland Yard for?
Well I’m sure you’re all dying to know what my glorious Civ looked like at the victory conditon (Actually I suspect you all couldn’t care less but I’ll show you anyway):
Just to add to my report, here's a couple of things that amused me during my game:
First up, here's Hatty's declaration of war in 1382.
What a threat: "Soon, my numberless minions will destroy you all". Now look at her score (443) and my score (1547). Hatty has three cities, all either on marginal land or unders severe cultural pressure (that's why she still has them: I didn't want them!).
Hmm, hang on a moment, if I move my caravel I'll be able to see all three cities. Oh look! Her 'numberless minions' consist of four longbows, one axeman and one spearman. Oh, and a galley and a worker. Terrifying. I'm quaking in my boots. (Correction, a few turns later: My invasion-India force discovers two Egyptian archers (now deceased) roaming around India.
btw I guess the worker's on extended sick leave since he's spent the last couple of centuries sitting in Hatty's 1-tile island city of Giza (screenshot, from later in the game but you get the idea).
(Does the AI not understand how to use galleys to transport workers to where there's something for them to do? Hatty’s had that galley for ages).
Fast forward to 1730. Ah, evidently Hatty's numberless minions are more terrifying than I thought. They've obviously severely fazed Genghis Khan:
I should mention that at this point, Hatty is down to one city: her island capital, Giza, now defended by two longbows and a spear. Genghis needs my help to deal with that???? I can only guess the AI doesn't know how to attack straight from the sea.
Finally, this was fun: Later on Huayna Capac declared war on me. This screenshot shows my frigate leading two of his frigates around the world.
Huayna didn’t land any troops during the war, just went round pillaging a few of my sea-resources, which he could do because besides this frigate, I had next to no navy. At some point it became evident he’d reassigned these two frigates to try and destroy mine. God knows how he thinks he can catch me, I mean my frigate can go as fast as his. Well, suits me. As long as they’re chasing me, they’re not pillaging! In fact, I’m actually having to refrain from using my extra first-to-circumnavigate movement point – after all, I want Huayna can keep up so he doesn’t give up on the chase!
First up, here's Hatty's declaration of war in 1382.
What a threat: "Soon, my numberless minions will destroy you all". Now look at her score (443) and my score (1547). Hatty has three cities, all either on marginal land or unders severe cultural pressure (that's why she still has them: I didn't want them!).
Hmm, hang on a moment, if I move my caravel I'll be able to see all three cities. Oh look! Her 'numberless minions' consist of four longbows, one axeman and one spearman. Oh, and a galley and a worker. Terrifying. I'm quaking in my boots. (Correction, a few turns later: My invasion-India force discovers two Egyptian archers (now deceased) roaming around India.
btw I guess the worker's on extended sick leave since he's spent the last couple of centuries sitting in Hatty's 1-tile island city of Giza (screenshot, from later in the game but you get the idea).
(Does the AI not understand how to use galleys to transport workers to where there's something for them to do? Hatty’s had that galley for ages).
Fast forward to 1730. Ah, evidently Hatty's numberless minions are more terrifying than I thought. They've obviously severely fazed Genghis Khan:
I should mention that at this point, Hatty is down to one city: her island capital, Giza, now defended by two longbows and a spear. Genghis needs my help to deal with that???? I can only guess the AI doesn't know how to attack straight from the sea.
Finally, this was fun: Later on Huayna Capac declared war on me. This screenshot shows my frigate leading two of his frigates around the world.
Huayna didn’t land any troops during the war, just went round pillaging a few of my sea-resources, which he could do because besides this frigate, I had next to no navy. At some point it became evident he’d reassigned these two frigates to try and destroy mine. God knows how he thinks he can catch me, I mean my frigate can go as fast as his. Well, suits me. As long as they’re chasing me, they’re not pillaging! In fact, I’m actually having to refrain from using my extra first-to-circumnavigate movement point – after all, I want Huayna can keep up so he doesn’t give up on the chase!
Meatbuster
formerly Robo Kai
Contender level, loss.
I made a couple of "mistakes" such as losing my initial warrior to a panther (that guy was fortified in woods and STILL died![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
) which didn't give me chance to steal Hatty's workers. Also, I built the Pyramids, which is probably what made me lose the game, since I could've just built axes with all that production and gone after Hatty earlier. I did get the GL and three academies too. After taking over all of Hatty's land on the continent, I warred with Genghis for a while. After taking some of his land, I bottled up and decided to go for cultural.
In the 11th century I met the incans and russians. Cathy was demanding left and right and I refused them all, which is probably the mistake that cost me the game. In the 16th century she declared war and 5 Grenadiers 2 cats and 2 Knights showed up along with 2 frigates and 3 galleons, losing me a few cities. Hey what can I do? I only have Elephants... and I'm ALMOST to Chemistry. !@#%^!@#$!@%^@$@...
So I retired.
My first attempt at Immortal, I must admit, I was sweating all the way throughout this game (and not just because it was hot in the afternoon). I was surprised I was ACTUALLY able to fight and win two wars; I had high expectations for the AI's military and low expectations for this game.
Lessons:
1. Learn what the AI generally researches for and avoid it
2. Don't increase culture slider too early; build more advanced military
3. Try not to lose initial warrior
4. Fortify cities better (yeah, I lost a barbaian city to barbarians)
I made a couple of "mistakes" such as losing my initial warrior to a panther (that guy was fortified in woods and STILL died
) which didn't give me chance to steal Hatty's workers. Also, I built the Pyramids, which is probably what made me lose the game, since I could've just built axes with all that production and gone after Hatty earlier. I did get the GL and three academies too. After taking over all of Hatty's land on the continent, I warred with Genghis for a while. After taking some of his land, I bottled up and decided to go for cultural.In the 11th century I met the incans and russians. Cathy was demanding left and right and I refused them all, which is probably the mistake that cost me the game. In the 16th century she declared war and 5 Grenadiers 2 cats and 2 Knights showed up along with 2 frigates and 3 galleons, losing me a few cities. Hey what can I do? I only have Elephants... and I'm ALMOST to Chemistry. !@#%^!@#$!@%^@$@...
So I retired.
My first attempt at Immortal, I must admit, I was sweating all the way throughout this game (and not just because it was hot in the afternoon). I was surprised I was ACTUALLY able to fight and win two wars; I had high expectations for the AI's military and low expectations for this game.
Lessons:
1. Learn what the AI generally researches for and avoid it
2. Don't increase culture slider too early; build more advanced military
3. Try not to lose initial warrior
4. Fortify cities better (yeah, I lost a barbaian city to barbarians)
Pious_Pete
Warlord
Culture victory 1811 (Contender)
I was quite pleased to have gotten a win on Immortal, but a little disappointed with the year. A few things went wrong.
Firstly, the placement of cities 2 and 3 weren´t great. I quickly grabbed spots that gave me a) gold for happiness and commerce and b) pushed back the fog of war. Unfortunately, these sites had no food, and neither city grew beyond size 4 the whole game. Had I explored a bit better, I may have chosen fractionally better spots - but I can´t get too het up about this because my warriors were far to pre-occupied holding back the fog of war around my borders to go wandering off exploring.
After that, things went quite smoothly until around 1500. I was more or less friendly with everyone, largely by not adopting a state religion. Then Gengis showed up and suggested that I adopt his. I thought long and hard about this. I had absolutely no army to speak off (a warrior in every city, and that´s about it). Hatty would have been a buffer between me and Gengis, but somehow I didn´t fancy my chances. I suspected, pleased or not, Gengis being Gengis would have decared war and marched straight over.
I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and acquiesed in Gengis´s demand.
The next turn Cyrus turned up, and he had already gone cautious on account of my heathen religion. He demanded something or other (I forgot what) which I duly caughed up; but this gave me the willies.
Instead of stopping my research at printing press or whatever, I actually continued to get riflemen. As it happened, I didn´t really come under any immediate military threat after that, but who knows what could have happened.
I´d be interested to know what others would have done in similar circumstances: would you have given in to Gengis´s demands? Would you have continued without military to get an earlier cultural win?
Another question I´d ask is when would people stop whipping? Following the guidance that some people profered in the pre-game discussion, I whipped much more agressively than usual, and I think generally to good effect. However, I continued whipping to quite late into the game, whipping a few cathedrals and a few national wonders as well. Was this wise? I had to lose a lot of population to achieve this, and the cities took some time to grow back. I´m not convinced that I wouldn´t have been better off just constructing these buildings without whipping.
The final thing that went wrong was - I admit - an out and out blunder. I would have gotten a cultural win in 1790 - except that instead of creating Great Works I created Great Artists instead. Doh!
I must say that I was sorely tempted to reload at this point. However, I didn´t - though we´ll never know whether this was down to moral virtue, or the fact that I was using the HOF mod!
Actually, once I finished, this wasn´t the end of my woes. I´d saved the game, but not uploaded it, and went off to make a cup of tea. There was then an enormous explosion in a near by sub-station and the power went out.
Five hours later when the power came back, my computer wouldn´t reboot, and I was beginning to fear the worst i.e. that I´d lost my Civ save. (Sod the boss and the report I was supposed to be writing).
Well, I´m not quite sure what happened; but after unplugging everything and plugging it back in a couple of times, the problem seems to have sorted itself out.
So I submitted my GOTM save (and the boss got his report).
As for Diety - bring it on, that´s what I say.
I was quite pleased to have gotten a win on Immortal, but a little disappointed with the year. A few things went wrong.
Firstly, the placement of cities 2 and 3 weren´t great. I quickly grabbed spots that gave me a) gold for happiness and commerce and b) pushed back the fog of war. Unfortunately, these sites had no food, and neither city grew beyond size 4 the whole game. Had I explored a bit better, I may have chosen fractionally better spots - but I can´t get too het up about this because my warriors were far to pre-occupied holding back the fog of war around my borders to go wandering off exploring.
After that, things went quite smoothly until around 1500. I was more or less friendly with everyone, largely by not adopting a state religion. Then Gengis showed up and suggested that I adopt his. I thought long and hard about this. I had absolutely no army to speak off (a warrior in every city, and that´s about it). Hatty would have been a buffer between me and Gengis, but somehow I didn´t fancy my chances. I suspected, pleased or not, Gengis being Gengis would have decared war and marched straight over.
I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and acquiesed in Gengis´s demand.
The next turn Cyrus turned up, and he had already gone cautious on account of my heathen religion. He demanded something or other (I forgot what) which I duly caughed up; but this gave me the willies.
Instead of stopping my research at printing press or whatever, I actually continued to get riflemen. As it happened, I didn´t really come under any immediate military threat after that, but who knows what could have happened.
I´d be interested to know what others would have done in similar circumstances: would you have given in to Gengis´s demands? Would you have continued without military to get an earlier cultural win?
Another question I´d ask is when would people stop whipping? Following the guidance that some people profered in the pre-game discussion, I whipped much more agressively than usual, and I think generally to good effect. However, I continued whipping to quite late into the game, whipping a few cathedrals and a few national wonders as well. Was this wise? I had to lose a lot of population to achieve this, and the cities took some time to grow back. I´m not convinced that I wouldn´t have been better off just constructing these buildings without whipping.
The final thing that went wrong was - I admit - an out and out blunder. I would have gotten a cultural win in 1790 - except that instead of creating Great Works I created Great Artists instead. Doh!
I must say that I was sorely tempted to reload at this point. However, I didn´t - though we´ll never know whether this was down to moral virtue, or the fact that I was using the HOF mod!
Actually, once I finished, this wasn´t the end of my woes. I´d saved the game, but not uploaded it, and went off to make a cup of tea. There was then an enormous explosion in a near by sub-station and the power went out.
Five hours later when the power came back, my computer wouldn´t reboot, and I was beginning to fear the worst i.e. that I´d lost my Civ save. (Sod the boss and the report I was supposed to be writing).
Well, I´m not quite sure what happened; but after unplugging everything and plugging it back in a couple of times, the problem seems to have sorted itself out.
So I submitted my GOTM save (and the boss got his report).
As for Diety - bring it on, that´s what I say.
I left off my first post in the midst of preparations for war with Egypt. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185039&page=2) As planned, I generated a GE in Beijing and used it to hurry along Machinery, which I discovered in 635 AD. I had some War Elephants and Catapults ready, and started building a group of Cho-Ko-Nus while researching Civil Service, which I completed in 860. I spent the rest of the game running Bureaucracy, and started adding Macemen to my force mix.
Domination?
Around 1000 AD, I had my army ready and launched into 700 years of near continuous warfare. Egypt was my first target. They’d expanded mostly east. There were only 4 cities on “my” part of the continent, the others were further afield. My goal was to capture all of these except the capital, regroup, and then finish Egypt off. I took two pretty easily, although I found Cho-Ko-Nus rather unimpressive against the Longbows I was facing. I ended up relying more on Macemen.
Before I could take my third target, India declared war on me. I made a temporary peace with Egypt and redirected my forces to capture the Indian city of Bantu, the formerly barbarian city that had arisen on the ashes of my own long-lost city near the Bananas. After taking Bantu I made peace with India while I captured three more Egyptian cities. I then joined Genghis in a war on Asoka, capturing 2 more Indian cities.
All of these conquests took my empire from the smallest to one of the world’s largest. And I’d managed to keep my economy and research going strong throughout the fighting. After Civil Service I’d made first-to-Liberalism my goal, hoping to get Nationalism for free and from there get to Military Tradition for early Cavalry. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get anyone to trade me Philosophy. Having to research that myself slowed me just enough to lose out on Liberalism, by three turns, to the Incas in 1316 or so. I gave up on the Military Tradition idea and headed for Chemistry instead, which I discovered in 1424. While all this was going on, the two civs I had yet to meet: Catherine and Cyrus, found me. I decided to go Free Religion at this point, and was rewarded with excellent relations with Catherine and HC, very good relations with Genghis, and decent relations with Cyrus.
With the help of a Great Merchant my Macemen were upgraded to City Raider Grenadiers. I fought a third and final war to take Egypt’s last two cities, on the southeastern part of the continent. It was now 1538, and I was feeling pretty confident in scoring a Domination victory. India would be no problem. After that I figured I could take out Genghis, consolidate, and then use a modern army to take whatever other territory I needed. Or maybe just score a Diplomatic victory with my votes and one other civs.
A more skilled warmonger probably maybe would have made this strategy work, but I’m more of a builder-type player and I couldn’t pull it off. I think one mistake may have been to finish off Asoka immediately after Egypt, instead of going straight for Genghis. India wasn’t very strong, but he still held a lot of territory and by the time I’d driven Asoka off the continent it was the 1630s. Plus this gave me two borders I had to defend against Genghis. On the bright side: I’d developed and implemented State Property; I was now the only player with Infantry, and; the cities I’d captured in my earlier wars were pretty much all fully-devoted to military production.
I had several captured Indian and Egyptian cities right on Mongolia’s borders, so my plan was to declare war, defend them for several turns and let Genghis deplete his available troops, then push into his territory. It took awhile to build up my forces, but in 1700 I declared war, and discovered that Genghis had just invented Artillery. Not good. Things still went as planned at first. I held my cities against some pretty strong attacks. But when I moved my field army into Genghis’s territory, he plinked at it with one an artillery or two a turn, weakening it to the point that it wasn't strong enough to capture the city I'd targeted. My offensive was a failure, and it had ruined my relations with Genghis for the rest of the game. I had to fall back and fight defensively until Genghis was willing to talk to me again.
Space Race Again
A new strategy was in order. If I couldn’t even take out Genghis now, then there was no way I’d be able to mount a sea-borne invasion of the even stronger Huayana or Catherine to put me over the top later, even if I eventually triumphed on my own land mass. Diplomatic victory was out of reach as well now that Genghis hated me, because even though HC and Catherine loved me, they liked each other even better and one of them would surely be my opponent in a vote. That left Space Race. Accordingly, I retooled many of my production cities to boost science output, while keeping several strong production sites to build parts.
I was behind in many Space-Race-oriented tech areas, but ahead in the race to Computers and associated techs. And my production capacity dwarfed that of other civs. I figured that the best way to take advantage of this was to:
a) Stop tech trading;
b) Ignore Rocketry and the Apollo Program for now, and;
c) Beeline to the Internet instead.
The idea behind all this being was that even if the AI had their spaceship halfway finished before I built the Apollo Program, I’d be able to build the Program quickly and then churn out many parts at once. And, unlike all of my other plans up to this point, this worked perfectly. I built the Internet in 1834 and acquired all of the space-race techs that anyone else knew, while I still had a monopoly on crucial techs like Robotics and Fusion. Furthermore, following this path enabled me to build Three Gorges Dam in 1820 and set me up to finish the Space Elevator in 1839. It also let me keep a few cities devoted to producing military units, which came in handy when Genghis attacked in the late 1700s. I beat that attack off without too much trouble.
The Apollo Program was completed in 1852, and I immediately started building parts in cities across my empire. My two best production cities made two parts a piece, all of the other parts were produced in different cities. The spaceship launched in 1876. My spies told me that Catherine was at least 18 turns away from her own launch.
Final score: 4529 / 31231 (Contender)
Domination?
Around 1000 AD, I had my army ready and launched into 700 years of near continuous warfare. Egypt was my first target. They’d expanded mostly east. There were only 4 cities on “my” part of the continent, the others were further afield. My goal was to capture all of these except the capital, regroup, and then finish Egypt off. I took two pretty easily, although I found Cho-Ko-Nus rather unimpressive against the Longbows I was facing. I ended up relying more on Macemen.
Before I could take my third target, India declared war on me. I made a temporary peace with Egypt and redirected my forces to capture the Indian city of Bantu, the formerly barbarian city that had arisen on the ashes of my own long-lost city near the Bananas. After taking Bantu I made peace with India while I captured three more Egyptian cities. I then joined Genghis in a war on Asoka, capturing 2 more Indian cities.
All of these conquests took my empire from the smallest to one of the world’s largest. And I’d managed to keep my economy and research going strong throughout the fighting. After Civil Service I’d made first-to-Liberalism my goal, hoping to get Nationalism for free and from there get to Military Tradition for early Cavalry. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get anyone to trade me Philosophy. Having to research that myself slowed me just enough to lose out on Liberalism, by three turns, to the Incas in 1316 or so. I gave up on the Military Tradition idea and headed for Chemistry instead, which I discovered in 1424. While all this was going on, the two civs I had yet to meet: Catherine and Cyrus, found me. I decided to go Free Religion at this point, and was rewarded with excellent relations with Catherine and HC, very good relations with Genghis, and decent relations with Cyrus.
With the help of a Great Merchant my Macemen were upgraded to City Raider Grenadiers. I fought a third and final war to take Egypt’s last two cities, on the southeastern part of the continent. It was now 1538, and I was feeling pretty confident in scoring a Domination victory. India would be no problem. After that I figured I could take out Genghis, consolidate, and then use a modern army to take whatever other territory I needed. Or maybe just score a Diplomatic victory with my votes and one other civs.
A more skilled warmonger probably maybe would have made this strategy work, but I’m more of a builder-type player and I couldn’t pull it off. I think one mistake may have been to finish off Asoka immediately after Egypt, instead of going straight for Genghis. India wasn’t very strong, but he still held a lot of territory and by the time I’d driven Asoka off the continent it was the 1630s. Plus this gave me two borders I had to defend against Genghis. On the bright side: I’d developed and implemented State Property; I was now the only player with Infantry, and; the cities I’d captured in my earlier wars were pretty much all fully-devoted to military production.
I had several captured Indian and Egyptian cities right on Mongolia’s borders, so my plan was to declare war, defend them for several turns and let Genghis deplete his available troops, then push into his territory. It took awhile to build up my forces, but in 1700 I declared war, and discovered that Genghis had just invented Artillery. Not good. Things still went as planned at first. I held my cities against some pretty strong attacks. But when I moved my field army into Genghis’s territory, he plinked at it with one an artillery or two a turn, weakening it to the point that it wasn't strong enough to capture the city I'd targeted. My offensive was a failure, and it had ruined my relations with Genghis for the rest of the game. I had to fall back and fight defensively until Genghis was willing to talk to me again.
Space Race Again
A new strategy was in order. If I couldn’t even take out Genghis now, then there was no way I’d be able to mount a sea-borne invasion of the even stronger Huayana or Catherine to put me over the top later, even if I eventually triumphed on my own land mass. Diplomatic victory was out of reach as well now that Genghis hated me, because even though HC and Catherine loved me, they liked each other even better and one of them would surely be my opponent in a vote. That left Space Race. Accordingly, I retooled many of my production cities to boost science output, while keeping several strong production sites to build parts.
I was behind in many Space-Race-oriented tech areas, but ahead in the race to Computers and associated techs. And my production capacity dwarfed that of other civs. I figured that the best way to take advantage of this was to:
a) Stop tech trading;
b) Ignore Rocketry and the Apollo Program for now, and;
c) Beeline to the Internet instead.
The idea behind all this being was that even if the AI had their spaceship halfway finished before I built the Apollo Program, I’d be able to build the Program quickly and then churn out many parts at once. And, unlike all of my other plans up to this point, this worked perfectly. I built the Internet in 1834 and acquired all of the space-race techs that anyone else knew, while I still had a monopoly on crucial techs like Robotics and Fusion. Furthermore, following this path enabled me to build Three Gorges Dam in 1820 and set me up to finish the Space Elevator in 1839. It also let me keep a few cities devoted to producing military units, which came in handy when Genghis attacked in the late 1700s. I beat that attack off without too much trouble.
The Apollo Program was completed in 1852, and I immediately started building parts in cities across my empire. My two best production cities made two parts a piece, all of the other parts were produced in different cities. The spaceship launched in 1876. My spies told me that Catherine was at least 18 turns away from her own launch.
Final score: 4529 / 31231 (Contender)
MacBalt
Learnéd Fool
Contender, HOF mod
Goal: Culture
Finish: Cultural Victory, 1810 AD
Score: 24K
Detailed Posts: (1) Early Game & (2) Mid-Late Game
I'd play diety -- expecting to lose badly, of course. Still, I was expecting to lose badly this time. Maybe if Ainwood lets us start on Treasure Island this time...
Hats off to everyone who won a peaceful victory...
Stunned silent awe @ jesusin and anyone else able to win a conquest or domination victory at this level.
@ DynamicSpirit: Enjoyed your zesty write-up, pics & humor. Keep it coming!
Goal: Culture
Finish: Cultural Victory, 1810 AD
Score: 24K
Detailed Posts: (1) Early Game & (2) Mid-Late Game
I'd play diety -- expecting to lose badly, of course. Still, I was expecting to lose badly this time. Maybe if Ainwood lets us start on Treasure Island this time...
Hats off to everyone who won a peaceful victory... Stunned silent awe @ jesusin and anyone else able to win a conquest or domination victory at this level.@ DynamicSpirit: Enjoyed your zesty write-up, pics & humor.
Keep it coming!Theophilus
Chieftain
I survived! 
OK, I lost the spacerace to Asoka. On Adventurer level. But I was at least there to see it happen! This was my fourth C-IV game ever, and my second to make it to the modern ages, so I was happy with my loss.
I attempted the GOTM last month, but threw in the towel early when the barbs took my capital. This time, I used two fog-busters to successfully hold the hordes at bay. Yes! I can be taught!
I was staying up with everyone tech-wise and score-wise until the late 1600s, when Cathy, then Genghis, declared war on me. Cathy eventually asked for peace after doing nothing more than sinking my fishing boats, but my saga with Genghis lasted quite a while. Eventually, I got the upper hand in techs and started taking some of his cities.
Genghis and I eventually smoked the peace pipe together, but I was behind Cathy, Asoka, and Huayna in techs by that point. Asoka and Huayna were not willing to trade techs with me any longer. (Can anyone explain why they wouldn't trade but Cathy would? It sounds like Shillen experienced the same thing.) It wasn't until algore and I invented the internet that I regained tech parity, and of course by that point it was too late.
It was a fun game, and I learned a lot. I look forward to next month! Deity is fine with me, as long as I get to start with a couple of tanks and a B-2.
OK, I lost the spacerace to Asoka. On Adventurer level. But I was at least there to see it happen! This was my fourth C-IV game ever, and my second to make it to the modern ages, so I was happy with my loss.
I attempted the GOTM last month, but threw in the towel early when the barbs took my capital. This time, I used two fog-busters to successfully hold the hordes at bay. Yes! I can be taught!
I was staying up with everyone tech-wise and score-wise until the late 1600s, when Cathy, then Genghis, declared war on me. Cathy eventually asked for peace after doing nothing more than sinking my fishing boats, but my saga with Genghis lasted quite a while. Eventually, I got the upper hand in techs and started taking some of his cities.
Genghis and I eventually smoked the peace pipe together, but I was behind Cathy, Asoka, and Huayna in techs by that point. Asoka and Huayna were not willing to trade techs with me any longer. (Can anyone explain why they wouldn't trade but Cathy would? It sounds like Shillen experienced the same thing.) It wasn't until algore and I invented the internet that I regained tech parity, and of course by that point it was too late.
It was a fun game, and I learned a lot. I look forward to next month! Deity is fine with me, as long as I get to start with a couple of tanks and a B-2.
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