GOTM #10 *Spoilers* Thread

[ButSam]

I think having a couple lower-difficulty games isn't against the spirit completely, but the average difficulty, if 1 is Chieftain and 6 is Deity, should be at least a 4 (Monarch), and probably around a 4.5-5 (closer to Emperor). We want to get people on-board, but we also want a challenge...even the new people on-board like me

Sam

 

[Dominix]

Just finished mine off 5 minutes ago, winning by Spaceship. Even though the game probably isn't all that special compared to the others mentioned here, I'm particularly happy because this is my first GOTM attempt (and win) and 2nd win on Regent.

 

[MadScot]

Ok, finished the game with a Space race win in 1892. Pathetic isn't it. But I couldn't summon up the courage to go for an all out war after the last war weariness disaster. All the other civs had started on the space race route, and if I'd got stalled and stuck in anarchy they would have beat me to it. Of course, I could have nuked their capitals to disrupt the launches (that does work, i assume?) but that would have turned it into a massive slufest and I wanted to finish.

Entertainingly, while trying to wipe out the Iroquois I was also attacked by the Russians. While stuck in anarchy my people decided to increase the size of my palace
Another interesting observation - a couple of turns before the end I captured Konigsberg from The Americans via CF. What is interesting is that they clearly knew it might happen (would happen?). I spent years chasing American "peace keepers" out of my territory - at the peak I had something like 20 infantry and 10 workers surrounded in my territory by a bunch of Modern Armour. After the flip I took mercy and chased them home - only for them to try it again. The attached screenshot shows the second "US Peacekeepr Storage Centre" - there is a bunch of workers only in the second tile. I guess their ex-Roman city was about to flip?

I probably should have done a lot better - it all went well up to the 1700s then it kind of stalled. Maybe wimping out of the world war was a mistake.

 

[Creepster]

CB & Madscott

Thanks for the info, I will look for it, but I have yet to see exactly what I am looking for. I will just bite the bullet after I finish the current GOTM and start researching it. What I really want is a table with numbers in it. When I get something that is worth publishing I will upload it for review and comments.

As far as the GOTM goes I have finished up the easy part of the game and I am now at the domination point. I am dancing around my culture expansion and trying to abandon cities as I can. America is the only AI civ I have not gone to war with yet. They are almost completly intact and are helping me out by researching old tech lines to completion for me. (communism/espionage).

I am not sure if/when I will take them out. They have some nice land that I would like to move some mountanous cities over to. But they are also acting as a balance on some of my culture. It is about 1550 or 1600 and that is a lot of milking time. This part of the game is more challenging than I thought. Last month I lost due to an accidental domination. The mapstat utility is extremly helpful mainly for the city export ability. With that I am using Excel to help me prioritize which cities need help in growth.

 

[MadScot]

Originally posted by Creepster
Thanks for the info, I will look for it, but I have yet to see exactly what I am looking for. I will just bite the bullet after I finish the current GOTM and start researching it. What I really want is a table with numbers in it. When I get something that is worth publishing I will upload it for review and comments.

Creepster

I knew I'd seen the info somewhere - it's in the FAQ. Good job I remembered where before Killer found a GOTMer asking FAQ questions

Unfortunately, it looks a pretty complex relationship, I'm not sure it will be easy to summarise

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=312795#post312795

edited once I had got the link checked

edit 2: no sooner do I put this up than mydisease puts a new 1.29f version of the formula up:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29485

 

[Wombat_Hair]

Boy did I get my behind spanked!

Civ is a new addiction of mine and obviously I have a long way to go.

Met the Russian's first in 2050 BC. Immediately got off to a bad start with them. Tried the tatic of not giving any of my info away-- no map trading etc. I think the AI had issues with that.
Within 10 turns I was at war with Russia and the English. I had 5 or 6 cities going pretty good with solid culture and military.
Tried to set up a relationship with the Aztecs-- in previous games I have gotten along well with them. No luck this time.
So, I went hard and heavy for military. Soon EVERYONE was in an alliance against me. I was able to drag out my defeat until 570 AD.

Oh well, think that I need to go back and play some of the GOTM on lower levels.
Need to get that learning curve up...

 

[Hurricane]

It is almost always a good idea to accept the AI:s demands, whatever tribute they want. It might be hard on your ego, but it is worth it in the long run.

The thing is that the AI:s will always try to make alliances and gang up on their enemy. So if you are attacked, it is always a good idea to try to ally with your neighbors, if only to hinder them from allying with your enemies.

 

[Dominix]

Originally posted by Hurricane
It is almost always a good idea to accept the AI:s demands, whatever tribute they want. It might be hard on your ego, but it is worth it in the long run.

The thing is that the AI:s will always try to make alliances and gang up on their enemy. So if you are attacked, it is always a good idea to try to ally with your neighbors, if only to hinder them from allying with your enemies.

Yep, both the Germans and Russians made demands, and in each case when I refused, they just declared war. I managed to keep them off my back though by getting the Aztecs, Romans or Iroquois to declare war on them. Funny how that works out. In some cases the civ that I ally with ends up getting some land, whereas in others (ie Rome), they lost every city but their capital (well practically every city). Still submitted to the English when they made demands, but they paid for that in the end. hehehehe....

 

[Creepster]

Madscot

Thanks for the help, this is what I have been looking for, and it will help out a lot.

 

[guardianciv3]

Yea,

My first GOTM victory! The best part is I didn't think I would win. I started off slow as I cowtowed to every major power (Germans and Americans were the 2 empires) I kept building up my culture and was unfortunate to miss every major Wonder I went after by no less than 6 turns. Got Smith's trading post and spent the middle ages catching up on tech. No coal! AAAGH, the game hates me. Finally told the Germans to shove it, WAR. Luckily the Americans were winning big so I proceeded to watch every other civ try to get them. Played it smart and stayed out. Filled in the gaps of conquered cities with my settlers. Got coal, no OIL! AAAGH. Built up defenses as the Aztecs, Russians, and English fell. Germans and Iroquis finally declare peace with me. Made beeline for spaceship, only chance. Got oil. 6 turns before I get last tech I need America launches all out blitz. My citizens galantly give up lives and territory to protect my capital. Rampant unrest, don't know if I can make it. America though sows own defeat by helping me create Napoleon. Yea, turn after laser Napoleon completes last part. BLASTOFF.

 

[Ribannah]

And so it was that in the year 1745, the glory of Paris was celebrated by all the peoples of the world ....

The final score of France was 1120. Germany finished in second place after waging wars against England (coming to the aid of America), Rome and Russia. Nobody ever knocked on the gates of Paris - very wise, were were not the weakest and scientifically always in front.

 

[starbug]

Just finished my 1st GOTM, the result wasn't anything to write here about, but something strange happened a couple of times. Very early (pre 1000BC) I noticed that my income was suddenly very low and looking at the existing trades I saw that the germans were "stealing" 52 gold pr round for some luxury i got from them. I am 100% sure that I hadn't agreed to pay that amount of money in the negociations, so I had to declare war to end that. Some time later the same happened again, but this time I paid the Americans 250 gold/turn, still for a single luxury deal. This was more money than I got from 100% gold 0 % science, but since the Americans were much larger than me and I wanted to keep them as friends I didn't dare to end that deal by declaring war. So, for 20 turns I got no money and no science as I tried to minimize the penalty for not having enough gold. Major drawback in the early stage of the game...

I tried later to offer more gold pr round than I had, but they wouldn't accept it, so how I got the first deals just have to be due to a bug, or?

 

[Ribannah]

You probably entered amounts per turn instead of lump sums by mistake. Who are they to refuse, as long as you can pay up?

 

[starbug]

I first thought that I had gotten the deal by accident too, but in the last case I didn't have 250 gold income pr turn (even at 100% income) and the AI never accept offers of more than I _currently_ have in income. I've several times had to exit negociations and enter the F1 page to increase the income before I could close a deal with the AI.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Well the research during anarchy worked well. I ended up in anarchy only 4 turns which was a surprise to me. After the second turn of anarchy I ended up with democracy, I did not switch governments when asked cause I was already in anarchy waiting to change governments. I then made a scientist specialist, this then let me start the research turns for the next tech. Once two turns passed and I was in democracy I just bumped my research rate up to 60% and finished the tech in 2 more turns.

My game is at 1580AD now, I'm researching synthetic fibers and in 20 turns or so I will have my last two wonders completed Cure for Cancer and Longevity. All my cities with hospitals have mass transit unless they are stuck at size 13 which means there is no benefit to adding the Mass Transit. This of course raises the question as to why I would have any cities with a size of 13? Bad planning or foresight I guess. This was the earliest I ever got to this position for milking, I am currently just switching cities over to produce wealth as they finish the next item that they are currently building. I have plenty of workers sitting ready to clean any pollution and I just need to trim some of my cultural improvement so I don't trigger a premature cultural win. My score per turn is already starting to decline because all my cities are to the maximum population that they can sustain.

I have just investigated the last German city. They cannot grow any further, from size 2 and they are just building caravels that they then hurl against my privateer blockade. This keeps them from producing any other improvements to the city, if that would help them.

I will never even research nationalism, so I never had to draft a single citizen for war or disband them for shields.

CB

 

[cracker]

Well I didn't start off with the plan being total disorder, but after the first two civs respawned away from my attacks and basically teleported contacts to all the other civs I switched to the "keep everybody at war with everybody else strategy."

Killed Aztecs in 2750BC with one archer, but they teleported.

I got horsemen in 1600BC with the founding of tours and switched to almost exclusively building horsemen and settlers everywhere.

Killed Russia in 1400BC and got Napoleon to build the FP in Moscow (yes, deliberately used the first leader for the FP.) Cathy contacted Picard and got beamed off to exile in Abe's tundra.

Took until about 1150BC to make sure that all the other civs were at war with each other. This diplomacy image only shows the alliances that directly include France but a number of the civs are at war with each other independently and for no apparent reason other than their angst is boiling over. I think they would be attacking themselves if they could get away with it. I just keep poking them with pointy sticks every 4 ot 5 turns.

Now all I am doing is picking off their troops in the open and gathering cities that get weakened. They attack first and always lose. I attack second or kill the survivors and always win.

Barb farming is giving me about 25 to 50 extra gold per turn. Most horsemen start as regulars but by the time they get to the fronts almost all are at least vets from their barb training experiences.

By 450BC this is getting really ugly. Have been constantly at war with someone and almost all the other civs are constantly at war with each other. No Great Wonders have been built anywhere. Most of the civs are angry, aggressive, and stunted. Every turn has multiple popups of X makes peace with Y, Z declares war on Q, "The treacherous whozits have a secret blood pact with the whatsits.". I am sort of amazed at how one dimensional the game can get once you reduce all the enemies to meth freaks and beserkers while eliminateing all possibility of diplomacy and trade.

The game is starting to crash randomly now because I think its hormones are overheating. I am not sure the program is robust enough to handle cases when you have irrationally (on purpose) created conditions where everyone is furious with everyone else including you. There must be some point in the anger calculations where the system strats dividing by zero or reaching toward infinite fury because this is wierd, frustrating, and sort of interesting at the same time. I can' say for sure but I think I have overloaded the diplomacy and anger circuitry. My machine is big fast and bulletproof so this is the first time I have experienced crashing problems with the game. I wonder if all the previously reported crashing problems came from similar warmongering play styles. (hmmm, very interesting.)

Also discovered that you can teleport workers around the map in mass groups. Just kill off enough of the enemy towns to get right next to their capital and time it so you can jump 6 or 8 workers back into your capital city. Its OK if this movement uses all the workers' move points for the turn. Then make peace with your enemy and take everything they have tech, map and money wise. Give them all your workers in the peace treaty and this will teleport the workers from your capital to theirs. Then stab them in the back and capture the enemy capital and you get all your workers back plus the workers get to move again.

This game play is so out of character with my normal style it feels like smashing crickets of the sidewalk with a hammer. Not sure if the anger overload is going to allow this to be a complete game but I'll see. If I do finish this one it will be over when knights roll around in about 20 or30 more turns.

 

[alexander dumas]

Did anyone else lose their iron source? It exhausted itself in my game early on and no one will build any roads or harbors to trade. I've gone into other civs and connected the outlying cities, but they must not be connected to their capital. It is making for an interesting game.

 

[Ribannah]

Nope, I gained one!

Cartouche Bee,

What would have happened had you chosen to switch governments while already in anarchy? Would it have made any difference?

---------------------------------------------
Here is the history of my OCC game
---------------------------------------------

3950 BC Founded Paris on the hill even though it cost a few turns to get the food supply going. This in fear of barb hordes; it turned out to be a great spot for production!
3750 BC Warrior built, goes south. Paris starts to prebuild the Pyramids
3600 BC Furs connected
3450 BC Paris expands and a Settler emerges from the nearby village to immediately join the grand city
2150 BC Our Warrior meets a neigbour: the Aztecs. Villages on the way have given another Settler (too late to make a big difference, but still nice) and two conscript Warriors as well as Mysticism. The Aztecs already have contacts with four other tribes
so we turn our Warrior to barb hunting
2110 BC The Oracle is completed, the first of 14 great wonders. We discover Writing (40 turns) and start dealing
1990 BC America sells us our first slave worker, the first of an army ...
1950 BC Paris builds a Temple, and we gain contact with Rome
1910 BC We have a Spearman, just in time to ward off the first gang of barbarians
1575 BC Germany completes the diplo screen. We are solidly in last place which will stay so until the day of our victory ....
1325 BC The nearby Horses are our first strategic resource
1225 BC The Great Library is ready, won't give us much tech but the culture starts building up fast now. From here on it's good barb hunting (keeping active also to hopefully prevent the hordes to appear)
1150 BC Library (cut down the last forests)
1125 BC 3 Workers (1 our original one) join Paris
690 BC Paris, already size 12, builds The Pyramids - without ever intending to fill the foodbox
570 BC Colosseum
490 BC Here be the Middle Ages!
390 BC France discovers The Republic and merrily changes to a new government in two turns
330 BC The Great Wall is completed, there was nothing else to build
130 BC Silks and Incense colonies established
90 BC The Hanging Gardens, unhappiness is in the past now (100% science)
30 BC Cathedral
10 AD Marketplace
190 AD Horses Colony established, turns out nobody needs any ...
230 AD Wines Colony established, we create embassies and start including ROP's in our deals to keep them polite
270 AD Iron colony established, we get to keep this one for a long time ...
370 AD Dyes Colony established
410 AD Sistine Chapel
420 AD We lose the Incense Colony
430 University
490 AD Losing the Dyes (that was fast), from here on our army of warriors is making connections where the AI forgot so we can trade for all the resources we need
520 The world trembles: England declares war on America!
590 Copernicus' Observatory. Science was slowing down, this was just in time ...
630 AD We lose the extra Horses, no prob
730 Krasnoyarsk desperately wishes to join our empire, we refuse. Riga, Detroit and Brandenburg (several times) will also try but to no avail
830 AD JS Bach's Cathedral
860 AD Gems Colony in the far south
870 AD Germany declares war on England. The Germans appear to be master warriors in this game. They take a few cities fast and then quickly make peace, only to do the same to another rival after rebuilding their army. Eventually this would cost them though, lagging in tech as nobody is eager to trade with them. Good programming here, Firaxis!
900 AD Paris builds a Bank
920 AD Aztecs take away our Silks
950 AD Germany makes peace with England, America follows five turns later
1100 AD Wines gobbled up by the Aztecs
1110 AD Germany starts on Rome
1120 AD There go the gems (Iroquois expand)
1140 AD The Smith's Trading Company starts France's Golden Age!
1150 AD Barracks constructed. With nothing else on the menu we start producing Pikemen and Knights. We don't want to look like easy prey either ...
1270 Germany grants Rome peace
1300 AD The turn after the Golden Age ends: Shakespeare's Theatre. In Paris - who'd have thought ...
1320 AD France enters the Industrial Ages
1380 AD Newton's University - speeding ahead again
1410 AD Germany takes over our Iron
1420 AD Germany declares war on Russia. This is the big one, Russia puts up a great fight. Hordes of Knights and Cavalry will pass through and by Paris' lands in two directions. Eventually Russia gets crippled, but Germany's economy will suffer bigtime.
Paris builds some Riflemen and a Cannon ...
1490 AD Hospital, 8 selected Slave Workers join Paris
1495 AD Coal Colony established, one of the last free spots in the world!
1520 AD Factory
1535 AD Coal Plant. We make 100+ shields. Pollution can only pop up in one square a turn / city, right?
1575 AD Universal Suffrage
1595 AD Intelligence Agency (Why not)
1615 AD Scientific Method discovered, for the first and only time science is set at zero. Not that we really need the money
1640 AD Theory of Evolution gives us Atomic Theory and Electronics, for which America is willing to pay Refining, $335pt, Oil and some petty cash. Meanwhile, a fresh source of Iron pops up in France, already connected
1675 AD The Hoover Dam is putting an end to constant clean-ups. Germany and Russia finally come to an understanding
1685 AD Police Station (makes no difference, as it appears - waste and corruption stay exactly one each). Oh well, we can also build lotsa Infantry ... 12 more of them until the end of the game
1740 AD Radio discovered. The very first news program proclaims that France had reached a culture of exactly 12,000. Paris has 29 points less ...
1745 AD Victory!!

 

[alexander dumas]

AARRRGGGHHH!!!!

No majority vote in my 1520 UN election. GRRRR...

About 30 turns before I realized I wasn't going to get a Golden Age. So, wanting to get involved in a ware without declaring one, I sign a few MPPs (I know now: total bonehead move). Anyway, WWI breaks out and I end up breaking two MPPs because so and so attacked so and so. Well, that ruined my previously spotless rep. At one time I had three Civs gracious toward me. Oh well. I've gotten my money's worth out of this GOTM. It is now time to crack skulls.


...and I was going for the early diplomacy game.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Ribannah
Nope, I gained one!

Cartouche Bee,

What would have happened had you chosen to switch governments while already in anarchy? Would it have made any difference?

Hi Ribannah,

I had already selected to switch governments and had been in anarchy for 2 turns. When I discovered Democracy, I was given the choice to switch goverments but I declined because I was only 2 turns from ending anarchy. When anarchy ended I was then able to choose democracy. If I would have selected to switch govenemts while already in anarchy it would have just started another full cycle of anarchy.

Nice job on your OOC. I think I will try one for fun. I'm about done with this GOTM anyway.

CB