GOTM 10 - First Spoiler

[AU_Armageddon]

Yeah. This one's so straightforward it hasn't really been worth a write up. I moved 1se, but as if there weren't enough resources, Beijing discovered a second iron deposit lol. 2 irons and a copper to go with all that food

I made it harder though by being cocky and totally careless and making lots of dumb choices, abandoning my plans and thus failing to get alphabet early enough, failing to build any wonders (though was 2 turns of pyramids ), and generally messing about at whim.

Expanded as everyone else did while zig-zagging to construction as the (in retrospect - vague) goal from the moment I saw elephants. Waited till I built too big a force before attacking though so Egypt had reasonable defences. 10 or even 40+ turns earlier when I could've easily attacked it woulda been elephants against archers.

Didn't matter much though. I'm sitting bottom of the ladder lookin technically bad at 200AD as I launch the war (it's a two pronged attack, another similiar but larger force is about to move south on the west coast):

By around the 500AD zone, Egypt has been wiped down to one distant city and I am at the top of the ladder consolidating 12 or so cities and looking upon the Mongolion lands with envious eyes...

 

[lilnev]

1st or 2nd in all meaningful categories.

In power as well? That's quite a feat if so.

I don't consider power a meaningful category. The AI keeps three times the defence it needs in most cities and not enough where it does need it, and generally overbuilds its military and then uses it poorly. Still, I don't think I was more than 30-40% below the leader.
I meant GNP, production, land, food, population.

peace,
lilnev

p.s. I whipped a fair bit. I've got saves from 85 BC, which I could post, and then not till 770 AD. I think you're right that some people over-value it, but in the right circumstances it's great. In particular, think about the tile you won't be working because of the pop/happiness cost. If it's an unimproved forest or a random coastal tile or something, you're getting a bargain. If you're giving up a resource, not so much.

 

[Markus5]

Settled SE. I could have moved SE again. It seems that all of my other cities are poorly placed. My initial warrior headed east and was mauled by a bear and killed by a panther. My second warrior was staying close to home because a work boat was going to do the scouting, and he was killed by a panther, too. I was without defence for a while and the barbs started appearing. I pop-rushed a warrior and built another and hoped that would be enough until the copper came on-line. The barbs never entered my cultural boarders until significantly later. The crisis never occured. I spread as quickly as possible and have 6 cities in 110 AD. I have room to backfill 3 more. Hatty looks weak in her border cities, but I'm not planning any attack soon. I've tried to keep good relations with the 4 civs I've met. I accepted all demands except 'stop trading' and have kept pace in techs. I'm usually researching techs that have good trade potential. My capital has lots of hammers and should be able to grab some wonders. I haven't gotten any yet. But, I'm pretty sure I can get the Great Library and then the Hanging Gardens. Hanging Gardens is usually an easy one to get. The AI is reactive and doesn't try to build an aquaduct just to build the HG. If it builds an aquaduct because it needs one or because it can, then its will try for the HG. A GP factory will be nice on the island, too.

My goal is to go Diplo. I'm going to play nice fro a while and see what happens.

 

[Tauro]

Just a note for Shillen

I'm going for cultural, as described before.
The timing for the wonders in my game is very strange.

Normal at the start as you can see


and very slow at 500 AD (completed both)




This is my micro empire, I'm paying a lot in terms of expansion; the two barb cities preserve the land from egiptians and I haven't any religion.

My military force is very very poor: six or seven axemen, a couple of warriors, one archer. All are pleased to me.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I think stealing the 2 workers and completely crippling your neighbor in 2920BC is probably what made it easier than the emperor games for you. (My initial warrior died to a lion before reaching Hatty's borders.)

I did the same as ShannonCT - managed to steal 2 egyptian workers simultaneously working a road (despite very nearly blowing it: They were outside Egypt's cultural borders at the time and I forgot to declare war before moving my warrior onto their square! With an Egyptian archer lurking around I feared I wouldn't get another chance [1], but luckily Hatty left them undefended again a couple of turns later. I lost one of the workers to a panther on the way back to Beijing - so very glad I decided to bring them back along separate paths.)

But anyway: My experience is that stealing workers on high levels doesn't generally cripple the AI (not unless you can follow up with lots of pillaging, anyway), it merely sets the AI civ back a little. I think this GOTM was substantially easier than a typical immortal game, independent of worker stealing. That's partly because our start position was so good, both via the large numbers of resources immediately around the start area, and the availability of quite a few different happiness resources further away but well within the area most players should be able to colonize. Also, nearest neighbour Egypt's position was pretty bad. Hatty had one good spot for her capital, and then almost everwhere else within easy reach for her was covered with jungle: I'd say she was half-crippled from the start just from geography. Plus she had no copper, and her only iron was in the middle of a desert. And that of course means for many players their first war is going to be with a relatively weak opponent. (In my game, most of the cities I took off Egypt were still surrunded by jungle when I took them - she never even managed to clear it.). I'd be very surprised if many people report Egypt becoming particularly strong in their games.

[1] I did idly wonder what would happen if I just declared war with my warrior already sharing the square with those workers, but this being a GOTM and no reloading allowed, I didn't want to risk it. Out of interest, does anyone know what does happen in that situation? Does your warrior capture the workers or does one of them get teleported?

 

[Shillen]

Egypt was strong in my game up to 500AD. She got a lot of the wonders and was caught up in tech. She settled north and east first, though, because of the jungle and desert to the northwest.

Stealing one worker might not cripple them on immortal, but I think stealing 2 of them (circa 3000BC) does.

 

[ShannonCT]

[1] I did idly wonder what would happen if I just declared war with my warrior already sharing the square with those workers, but this being a GOTM and no reloading allowed, I didn't want to risk it. Out of interest, does anyone know what does happen in that situation? Does your warrior capture the workers or does one of them get teleported?

If you declare war while in your victim's borders, you are teleported to the nearest neutral or friendly tile, with no loss in movement points. So it sounds like you could have declared war the turn after you made the mistake and then still captured the workers if they hadn't moved yet.

You can always save and test out a game function in Worldbuilder if you're not sure how something in the game works. It's time consuming, but you do have a month after all.

 

[Redbad]

@ShannonCT

DynamicSpirit stated that the workers were outside the culture. So no teleporting for that reason. His question is: if he declared while sharing the same tile with his warrior and Hatty's workers in neutral terrain if there was going to be teleporting or that he would simply capture the workers.

 

[Thalatta]

This is my first game on Immortal. I've played a couple Quechua-rush Deity games, and can consistently win with ease on Prince, but have never bothered to play a game at Monarch or Emperor past 0 AD. Given the spike in difficulty and the fact that I've never played a GOTM before, I figured now would be as good a time to go after both as any. (I went ahead and played Contender with the HOF mod.)

Initial Goal: Survive until 0 AD. I decided that if I was still alive and a win looked possible, I would re-evaluate at 0 AD. Otherwise I would go all military and try to cause as much of a ruckus as possible.

I started by settling two tiles SE - the Ivory looked too good to pass up. I started with a worker, but let my capital grow to its happiness limit before making my first settler. My starting warrior died in 3460 to a lucky panther and as I'd been putting hammers into a barracks in my capital while letting it grow I let it finish and made some archers. Getting archery early - and making the archers - probably saved me from death by barbarians, which is what I was originally expecting my fate to be. I actually researched archery before fishing...
Further cities founded:
1660 BC - On the gold plains hill to the NE - I hadn't seen the fish and didn't have any way to expand my borders yet anyway, so I figured I'd just connect the resource right away.
1180 BC - One tile N of the horses to the east.
325 BC - Northwest of my capital so that I could work both the copper that I'd moved way from and the two crabs.
I did not get the site with massive quantities of food - Asoka did. However, these four cities were not my only ones. Two barb cities were built exactly where I had intended to settle (one tile SE of the gems to the south and two tiles S of the gold to the east), so I started massing swords to take them, which I did 580 BC and 370 BC. After taking them the barbarian presence in the game became almost nonexistant.
Given that I was making and already had a decent number of swords from taking the barb cities, I decided to go on the offensive as soon as seemed reasonably possible. Hatshepsut was a bit far to my south (she and Asoka were my only contacts until 185 AD), but very lightly defended, so my seven swords arrived on Hatty's borders at 5 AD. I'd discovered Alphabet in 250 BC so had gotten all the techs I already could out of her and Asoka...but she also had a few more I was hoping to snag from a successful war.
I started the war off well, yoinking a worker in 20 AD and then arriving one tile from Thebes (defended by a pitiful four archers) in 35 AD...when Hatty finished The Great Library. How convenient! The Pyramids were also there, so in 50 AD I made a tidy little jump in score. I took Alexandria in 80 AD and finally Memphis in 185 AD, then made peace. I was only able to get Monotheism out of Hatty, but I needed to stop as war weariness was spiking and I didn't have that much happiness in the first place.
Anyhow, Genghis Khan was flashing a worker around my new borders and Hatty and Asoka didn't like him anyway, so I declared war on him in 290 AD. Yes, I am a little suicidal. As an aside, he founded Hinduism, while Asoka founded Buddhism (which he adopted) and Judaism (which Hatty adopted), so none of the AI really liked each other much, though as Asoka and Hatty were more religiously tolerant they didn't mind each other much. I didn't adopt any religion as both Buddhism and Judaism spread and I wanted the culture from both religions.
Anyhow, I took Tabriz in 320 AD and Samarqand in 350 AD, but my invasion force was down to something like six swords and my GNP maybe above 10 (I don't recall exactly, but I was running on high research off of taking cities and didn't learn Code of Laws until 260 AD, so it was in single digits at points), so I stopped while ahead.

Nothing much happened by 500 AD, but at 11 cities and with the highest score of my contacts, I was pretty happy. Oh, and my re-evaluation of my goal? I decided I'd go for a diplomatic victory. Not that I was making friends by warmongering, but with three known AIs to take established land from once I was in better shape technologically I decided that the backdoor domination seemed the best choice, with a true domination or space victory still remaining as options if that should fail.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

Founded 1 SE like most people and expanded SE.
Shanghai 2140BC SE for Elephant, Horse, Sugar
Guangzhou 1330BC along river for Rice, Banana, Gold

These were going to be my three culture cities (cottage along the river).

Nanjing 925BC SE grab the second horse and gems before Hatty
Fifth city on the super food island for a GP farm.

I won a practice game with a cultural victory so that was my initial goal. I had lost wonder races for all wonders in my test games so I didn't bother settling the stone and gold NE until later for a filler city. I never built a city for the coastal gems (I hadn't explored enough along the coast before building Shanghai and there wasn't a good place for a city after Shainghai was built).

At 500A.D., the Egyptians capital and nearby city are gone (declared 400BC and took Thebes 340BC and Memphis 205BC). Hatty is now trapped in a few poor cities between me and Asoka.

Genghis declared on me in 145BC and we fought a meaningless war (he did raze Thebes after sneaking a few galleys past Memphis). I now had to decide if I wanted to defeat Genghis or try a cultural victory with him next door.

The world is split religiously: Asoka is Buddhist and founded Buddhism and Christianity. Hatty founded Hinduism and Judaism. Genghis and Hatty are Jewish. A civ to be named later is Confucian and another Taoist. I think I can start cutting away civs and keep up in techs without too many DOW problems. So I will now try domination rather than cultural.

I have only met 5 other civs, still don't know my last rival. An unnamed civ is the most advanced rival and I may have to spam a lot of cities get domination before it runs away. I'll try to keep their fearless leader as a friend as I gain control of my own continent.

At 500AD I am researching Machinery and building up the cats for a stack of doom for Genghis in Memphis.

Techs:
3760BC Fishing
3160BC Bronze Working
2650BC Animal Husbandry
2380BC Wheel
2080BC Mysticism
1810BC Hunting
1450BC Pottery
1030BC Writing
820BC Sailing (to get a settler to the food island)
505BC Alphabet
475BC Archery, Masonry (trade)
295BC Iron Working
250BC Meditation
230BC Priesthood (trade)
205BC Polytheism (extorted from Hatty for peace)
160BC Mathematics,Monotheism (trade)
100BC Code of Laws
200AD Calender (trade)
380AD Civil Service
395AD Construction, Metal Casting, Currency (trade)
410AD HBR, Monarchy (trade)
500AD Literature (trade)
545AD Machinery

Pretty slow path to Civil Service but I now am ready to start fighting.

 

[Mad Professor]

@ShannonCT

DynamicSpirit stated that the workers were outside the culture. So no teleporting for that reason. His question is: if he declared while sharing the same tile with his warrior and Hatty's workers in neutral terrain if there was going to be teleporting or that he would simply capture the workers.

If you declare war while in the same tile as an enemy unit outside cultural borders, you will get teleported one tile so that you no longer occupy the same tile as the enemy. You can then immediately attack, of course.

 

[Shillen]

If you declare war while in the same tile as an enemy unit outside cultural borders, you will get teleported one tile so that you no longer occupy the same tile as the enemy. You can then immediately attack, of course.

Except that he already used his movement point, so declaring would have been bad.

And I guess this game really was easy with all the people who never played on emperor still doing well. I'm starting to wonder if ainwood set the difficulty wrong. Now I'm starting to expect to see a spaceship win pre-1500AD!

 

[zagnut]

This is my first game in GOTM in almost a year. I placed on Contender with the HOF mod. My goal was to survive until at least 1500 AD as I did not anticipate I would be successful in defeating the AI at this level. At 500 AD I’m still in the game even though it is clear that I cannot win.

It’s interesting to me to see how different Egypt was in the various games. They either seem to be quite powerful or almost eliminated. Unfortunately in my game they were powerful. I settled in the hill SE of the start and built up a fairly good civ. At 130 BC I had 5 cities and had secured the gems to the south to assure a bit more happiness for expanding my cities. That was when Egypt really surprised my dy declaring war. I had not neglected my military, and had mainly Axemen and Chariots. Unfortunately, they were no match for the Egyptian War Chariots. It took me a while to figure out that Spearmen were my best unit against them. However, by then Egypt had taken my two southern cities - the one controlling the gems and the one controlling the rice. I took back the rice city but never succeeded in getting control of the gem city.

The war was long since they would not make any kind of peace with me. It lasted until 680 AD (54 turns) and set me back tremendously. After that it was just a matter of surviving, which I have succeeded in doing. However, I am in last place on the hit parade.

On the exploration front, I made the mistake of heading north around the continent. Going that way my Galley ran into the ice flow way, way up north and had to turn around. In retrospect, I would have been a lot better if I had gone south because then I would have been past the Egyptian lands before they declared war on me. As a result I had not made contact with some of the outlying civs by the time I discovered Alphabet. By 500 AD I had only made contact with Egypt, India and Mongolia.

I think the key to this game was attacking Egypt early. Much of the discussion in the pre-game centered around the fact that we were on snaky continents and might be alone on our own continent and be able to grow without fear of immediate attack. That proved to be wrong. This was almost a Pangea map. Attacking Egypt early provided a way to expand to the east and get out of the corner of the continent where we started.

I thing the GOTM staff was correct in giving us additional resources at this level. It provided a way to survive the initial years without getting wiped out too early.

 

[strollen]

Normally I play on Monarch, with the occasional attempt at Emperor. It required a restart but I did reasonably well on last month GOTM.

So I wasn't sure what to expect on immortal. Well it turns out that Immortal=Impossible. Ha Ha just kidding, around 300 BC. I checked to make sure I was actually playing an immortal game.

Here is what I did 1 SE, water, fish, corn!, cows, hills and Ivory close;l awesome start. With Ag+Corn, cow, I built a worker. Research: Animal Husbandry, Chariots are in many ways better than Axes against barbs.(certainly for Warlord this is true.)
Fishing, next with warrior+ fishing boat.
Settler I founded Shanghai near the horses not the optimal place for a 2nd city but I wanted to grab land, not know how aggressive the AI is in grabbing territory in Immortal.
Very little combat, no losses, and no goodie huts
2530BC-1750BC Bronze working, Wheel, Hunting, Mysticism
Founded Guangzchou near stone.
1480 Stonehedge
My timing was not perfect, but pretty good I built a settler, worker, Axeman. (Discover a 2nd copper which didn't even need to be hooked up.) and got my stone hooked almost on time for the building of the Pyramids
1120 BC Naijing near Gold mine and river still expanding south east ward, despite some nice sites closer.
850 BC Pyramids !!, despite the minor nerf still one of my favorite wonders and Representative.
Discover sailing and 430 Chengdu on founded on the island to the east. 2 clams, 1 fish, iron, and grass floodplains! (didn't know they were possible??) Can you say GP farm, yup.
160 BC, Alphabet which gets me reasonably caught up, tech wise, eventually picking up 6 techs for alphabet and other techs that I have like ironworking that not every CIV had.
With Math I start building the Aqueduct with Shanghai with hopes of building Hanging Gardens and eventually I my 3rd cultural center.
Asoka has currency but nobody else does so I start researching that, in the hopes of trading for Monarchy, code of laws etc.
Bejing starts frantically building the Great Library.

Hinduism seems like the dominate religion so when several city become Hindu I switch to it, adopt organized religion and gain brownie points with the neighbors.

At this point I am pretty happy with my position. Admittly my army consists of 5 Axe, 1 warrior, 1 chariot, and couple of swordsmen. But all of my neighbors are reasonably friendly to me, but not always to each other!. I think I have a good shot at getting GL, Hanging Garden, Music, and Notre Dame. Excellent resources, and luxury items and room for 2 more cities. At this point, I am leaning strongly to a cultural win or if can catch up technology to the other Civs, perhaps a space win.

 

[blastoidstalker]

Seems like I am going a different direction than most people
idea is a domination victory with an early economy based on trade routes and sea resources using great lighthouse and collussus.
once military up in middle ages, attack and pray I don't die.


set up went generaly to plan though I also got hit with some bad combat results. Had a barb axeman show uop around 12oo BC and kill a forest 2 warrior and an axeman fortified in jungle in 2 consectitive turns. This cost me my city down by the horsies and allowed egypt to creep closer to me than I wanted. I still have 7-9 cities by 500 BC. have the great lighthouse, collussus and great library in my capital (settled in place). Economy looks good and I have settled in place.

I followed the plan I outlined in the pre game thread expect I put the worker in front of the second workboat (whipped it) and sent the second workboat out exploring. This has been very usefull in this game. I am in the pack with tech and score and trying to get a war party together to knock Hatty down, who is first in score. should have a chance to win I think.

I see the game as similar level to emporer with the good resources but it plays differently making it quite fun.

I will give more detail when i have more time.

 

[MacBalt]

Balthalion: First, thanks for going into so much detail about your game. Exploration is an area I didn't do well. I should have gotten a workboat out much sooner to go exploring. I ended up doing it with a galley, but at 500AD I still hadn't met one of the civs so I obviously could have used a second explorer or an earlier explorer.

Actually, I hadn't uncovered that last opponent by 500 AD either. It's been a bit frustrating, because I feel like I've covered a lot of territory. I was very happy with the early dates of my first contacts though. Same thanks to you for your detailed posts. They -- and others like them -- have really helped me improve my game.

Looking at your tech path I was originally wondering why you didn't do ironworking sooner and when you did get it. But then I noticed farther down that you settled right on top of the gems so you didn't need ironworking to connect them. Still, I'm curious what the situation was that required settling on the gems, as that really reduces the commerce potential of that city. I also wonder how you dealt with all the other jungles in the south without ironworking.

I was able to trade for ironworking in 280 BC, and I was eager to get it -- but I wanted to trade for it as I knew it would probably be a waste of time to research it myself. Every other civ almost always goes for ironworking, so I expected its trade value would be minimal. The city on the gems (Xian) was founded in 325 BC, and putting it on the gems was more an accident (and error) than anything else (although I did need the happy face at the time and was more than a bit surprised and gratified to see it there the next turn back in Beijing). What happened was that Hatshepsut put a city 1S of the cows further down the coast, and I had wanted to take the tile 1NW of those cows. I was a bit miffed -- and worried that Hatty might be on the verge of sending a settler north to claim the sugar & gems and crowd Beijing. Then I got to thinking about defending the city should she send a unit or two that way so I thought about putting it on the hill for the defense bonus. After calculating the fat cross overlap potential with my more important "culture" cities, I just put the city on that hill -- completely forgot about the gems! Probably should have put it 1E or 1SE of where it is, in hindsight. I wasn't so worried about the jungles early, as I had plenty of resource tiles to use and what I really wanted to do was whip out a few early workers to begin cottage spamming. There were enough clear tiles to use without chopping jungle in the early days, and I knew with whipping and happy face issues I wouldn't be able to work many tiles at once anyway.

Regarding trades, your approach is interesting compared to mine. I will very rarely research a tech that the AI's already have if I can research something they don't have. I understand that you can research them faster if the AI's have them already, but researching yourself instead of trading leads to a slower research pace. I wanted a quick pace so I very often traded techs that were worth 3-4x the value of the tech I was getting in return. Therefore, the tech pace in my game should be really accelerated compared to yours. I'll be interested to see how far along in techs the AI's are in each of our games in spoiler thread #2.

I make no claim to be an expert on trading. That's part of the reason I'm so surprised it seems to have worked so well for me so far in this game. I can tell you what I was thinking, though it might have been wrongheaded. I really wanted at least iron working -- and hopefully even mathematics -- for alphabet, but when I checked the trade screen I was so far behind that I worried they might all just give me the peanut techs and keep one like ironworking and/or mathematics. I thought if I could isolate the last leader I approached in such a way as to make sure that all he had left to trade with me was one of these good techs, then I would be sure to get it. Given how many techs I would have had to acquire to do this, I thought the extra turn or two it would take to knock off "hunting" myself would be worth the risk of someone else discovering alphabet. Maybe it was a foolish risk to take, but this time it worked. I got iron working from Asoka in 280 BC and mathematics from Huana Capac the following turn. (After that I celebrated a bit!)

Was Genghis at war with Hatty? If she was then the copper most definitely helped. Spearmen are perfect against Genghis' keshiks. She does have iron nearby but I don't know how early she researched iron working.

Several wars were fought by the AI civs, but unfortunately I didn't write them all down. The first one began in 865 BC and was Genghis v. Asoka, but I know someone took on Egypt not long after. It may have been HC though. Even if the copper could have helped aim Genghis at Asoka rather than Hatty, I think it would have been worth it. I noticed that in The Mad Professor's game Asoka was able to build the great library as early as 200 AD. If Genghis' war slowed Asoka down in my game, so much the better.

 

[Thrallia]

As requested(and now that I've got time), here's a more detailed write-up.

Unfortunately, techwise I have no record of when I researched what, what I traded for what, or anything...all I know is I started with BW since I did the adventurer save and started out with Fishing.

I did make moderate use of slavery, mainly to get obelisks built in all my new cities once they reached size 2(also to get other buildings in some of my production poor cities), but once or twice on a worker or axeman. However, it has not had much effect on my population, as my smaller cities just happen to be my slower growing cities, while my larger ones are actually the ones that rushed production more often.

Finally, my planned Cultural cities are Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, with Hangzhou also being my GP farm.

Cities Founded:

4000BC- Beijing(Current pop: 2.4 Million/16 pop)
2830BC- Shanghai(Current pop: 340k/8 pop)
2560BC- Guangzhou(Current pop: 50k/4 pop)
2050BC- Nanjing(Current pop: 340k/8 pop)
1690BC- Xian(Current pop: 150k/6 pop)
1030BC- Chengdu(Current pop: 1k/1 pop)
445BC- Hangzhou(Current pop: 630k/10 pop)
110AD- Tianjin(Current pop: 50k/4 pop)





My enemies' empire sizes:
Khan- 10 cities
Hatty- 10 cities
Asoka- 7 cities(yet he's the tech leader)
Huayna capac- 8 cities

Wonders built:
Pyramids(Beijing- 775BC)
Great Library(Shanghai- 275AD)

Failed Wonders:
Parthenon built 3 turns before Shanghai would have finished it
Sistine Chapel built 11 turns before Shanghai would have finished it

Score:
Currently last among the 5 civs I know, but only 7 points separate me from 3rd place.

Diplomatically: I am the only one with 3 people pleased with me, Khan has 2 pleased with him, Hatty, Asoka, and Huayna have 1 each.

 

[Shillen]

Ooh, I like your foreign advisor screen. What mod is that?

 

[Dianthus]

Ooh, I like your foreign advisor screen. What mod is that?

It's the Exotic Foreign Advisor, which is included in the HOF mod.

 

[outlawtorn]

I have found where I can get the HOF mod, but can't seem to find anywhere on the formums a decent explain for what each part does. Can someone provide a link, or do you have to look for each part seperately like the exotic adviser link above?