GOTM 101 Final Spoiler

[DynamicSpirit]

I guess after posting about other people’s games so much it’s about time I wrote up my one. Mine was a late-ish space win in 1874AD (Hey, only 100 years after Jastrow )

A very nice starting area – thanks Deckhand! I settled on the stone for early production, but later ended up moving my capital to a spot to the SW surrounded by flood plains, and made the original capital my GP farm. However I was not tempted to go for the noob award, and built very few wonders.

I resolved to take the entire starting island and beelined construction. The vast numbers of forests around meant I was able to chop an army of around 10 or so catapults before 0BC, and took most of Egypt with them fairly easily. I then attempted to take out Persia, but hadn’t built enough units and – this being immortal level – Persia got longbows quite quickly. So after achieving not much, I pulled my units back, finished off Egypt, and settled a few cities on the nice island to the NW, before returning to Persia with a much bigger army. By 1000ADish, Persia was reduced to a capital on one of the small islands and a poor 2nd city on the landmass NW of our starting point.

With hindsight that was a poor strategy. My focus on warring to take out Persia meant unit upkeep killed much of my science, and I also didn’t notice how many good city spots there were on the big landmass NW of the start, resulting in Mongolia taking a couple of them. The map was generous, and if I’d expanded NW first, I’d probably have become the largest Civ in the game without needing all the units so early.

Now comes the reminder that, despite the generous map, this was immortal level.

Out of the blue, Alex declared war, and landed 3 galleons of mostly cavalry on the NorthWest land mass. There was nothing I could do. I had only macemen and catapults, with grenadiers about to come online. He took the entire southern part of that continent – 3 good cities, destroying most of my army in the process. Luckily after that, he bunkered down and didn’t venture onto the starting continent. I just had to throw everything into researching to cannon and riflemen before I could try and take the cities back. I think by around 1200 or 1300AD I had them back and had got peace. I’m sure that episode must’ve knocked 20 turns or so off my eventual victory.

All was well for a few more turns, until I saw a Mongolian fleet of cavalry-loaded galleons and frigates just off my west coast. PAAANNNIIIICCC! My still smallish army was in the far north, about to finally take out Cyrus. I had no defences on my mainland! A quick round of whipping and rearranging my archers followed. Next turn – uh? Where’ve the Mongols gone? After a bit of searching, I found the fleet peacefully nesting in one of my coastal cities. Then it twigged. They weren’t after me, they were heading for Cyrus’s island capital! My whipping had probably lost me another turn on the victory date and had been completely unnecessary.

Now I thought in 8 years of GOTM playing, I’d seen all there was to see in AI stupidity.

Nope.

Guess what happened next….?

Montezuma declared war on Cyrus (bunch of opportunists, these AIs, aren’t they… Pick on a Civ when he’s down&#8230. He quickly landed his army by Cyrus’s capital – on a tiny island, remember.

Almost simultaneously, Monty captured Cyrus’s capital, and the Mongol fleet arrived. Mongolia declared war too, and landed their troops. I kept a couple of frigates close by so I could see everything.

There was now nothing for the Mongol hordes to do on this island. There was nothing left belonging to Cyrus.

So what did Genghis do? Yep, he sailed his fleet away, leaving his army trapped on their new ‘holiday’.

Ok, so now I know not to be surprised by anything.

After that, I captured Cyrus’s final city, on the NW landmass, then settled down to my peaceful, but late, space race.

 

[Deckhand]

I All was well for a few more turns, until I saw a Mongolian fleet of cavalry-loaded galleons and frigates just off my west coast.

I like seeing what is aboard ships in Vanilla and miss it in BtS.

Montezuma declared war on Cyrus (bunch of opportunists, these AIs, aren’t they… Pick on a Civ when he’s down…). He quickly landed his army by Cyrus’s capital – on a tiny island, remember.

Almost simultaneously, Monty captured Cyrus’s capital, and the Mongol fleet arrived. Mongolia declared war too, and landed their troops. I kept a couple of frigates close by so I could see everything.

There was now nothing for the Mongol hordes to do on this island. There was nothing left belonging to Cyrus.

So what did Genghis do? Yep, he sailed his fleet away, leaving his army trapped on their new ‘holiday’.

This demonstrates what an excellent simulation Civ is.
The units were all just "following their orders".
In age of sail, communication took months. Those ships have to sail home and see what the new orders will be.

 

[Jastrow]

Thanks Jastrow, that's quite informative. So it sounds like, basically you built Oxford so early by prioritizing getting to education over all else right from the start of the game.

FWIW my experience matches yours a little. I've never got close to your date, but a couple of times in various games (NOT this one btw) I've managed to research education by 500ADish, by following a similar approach. However after doing that a few times I figured it wasn't that helpful. Partly that's because I found getting to education so quickly generally meant I didn't have enough cities powerful enough to quickly build universities. And partly because I got to education so quickly by staying small, which would mean I then needed to prioritise production and expansion. As a result, my science rate would invariably drop just as I'm finishing Oxford, basically nullifying its benefits.

Yes, like everything else in civ, it is all about trade-offs. My BC Oxford was was allowing me to produce sustainable (i.e. while paying my bills) 200 bpt. That allows me to push quicky through techs at that point in the game, anf for example get to cannons by turn 150 (800 AD). That if quite nice for taking cities, since it was before any AI knight, or anything else that can really challenge them. 800 AD is however quite late for your expansion phase.

For the end game to get a pre-1800 space, you need to be pulling in of the order of 4000 beakers per turn (at least during a GA). (I usually get up just past 5000 bpt when I can pull the date down into the sub 1750 range.)

Where do these beakers come from? A typical capital will work in the end game 21 squares, 2 or 3 of which are food squares, and 4 or 5 production squares. That leaves 14 commerce squares, most of which will be towns, some with rivers, and in a GA, the produce 7 gold... 14*~7 =100. Add the palace and typical trade routes for an extra 30, and include the beuracracy bonus, gets you to 195 commerce. Its production squares will get you some 20 hammers (40 in warlords, in vanila they are halved) to add to that, so that is 215 coins which go through the science multipliers. Add to that maybe a settled super specialist and 2 scientist, for another 20. Library +university +lab +acadamy +Oxford means 235*3.25=some 760, maybe a bit more or less. A really great superpower capital might get up to a thousand, but no matter, you stilll need to find another 3000+ beakers per turn.

Now, we need to look at a non-descripte, standard, run of the mill city. Lets make it on average size 12. It works 10 squares + city tile and turns two scientists. Lets call the average yield of a late game square 6.5 (F+H+C) in a golden age. It produces about 71, but needs to use 24 to feed its population, and 6 to pay its upkeep, leaving it with 41, plus the 6 from the two scientist. Run these through a library, and each extra city is worth about 60.

Getting 20 of these cities would get you up to 1200.

Now we need to add the production cities. In addition to the capital, we need 12 of these. These will be around size 20, and will get forges, factory, labs, power, etc... While they are building researched, these guys will be producing of about 150 apiece instead of the 60 from the generic cities, so they add 1500 to the pot.

1500+1200+800 (capital) is "only" 3500, so still not enough.... Yes, the GP farm will get you a bit extra, and so will the Iron works and similar, but what we see here is that expansion to 30 cities total, with these cities dellopped to the point that the last 20 average size 12 is not quite enough...

In other words, getting pre-1800 launches requires you to get to 35+ cities early enough that the last of these have a chance to get to size ~10.

So, building up the science very quickly (as an ultra early Oxford does), helps make the war machine more efficient. However, if it delays the war machine too much, then you are talking in the last cities too late for them to contrubute, and no matter how amazing the capital is, without the 30 city empire to power the research in the late game, the early research will no be enough to matter in the end date.

I have been tinkering with the right balance for about a year now... Before that, I was doing space races without a full expansion, trying for early education, a very science focussed empire, but with a maximum size of say 18 cities... I was pulling in dates in the 1850 ranges mostly, and getting beaten in most games by 20+ turns.

Mitchum then showed me how much better you could do by taking one of my post education cames, and going to war to grow to double my size before turning to full research. He knocked something like 10 turns of my date, and I was amazed. I then started to try to optimize the balance between expansion to the domination limite and research, and indeed am still trying to work out the perfect balance.

This game, I am now pretty sude I put too much emphasis on research... I research did get to about 4200 bpt in my golden ages, so it was not bad, but the cities came on line fairly late. I am pretty sure that I could have traded a 20 turn delay in oxford for an at least 15 turn earlier war completion, and I suspect that would have knocked almost 10 turns of my finish date.

So bottom line... while oxford in 25 BC is certainly a nice date (BTW, it would have been 50 BC if not for a miss-click which cost me one forrest going to the wrong city), I am not particularly happy with it, not because I think I can improove on the date, but because I think building it that early was a sub-par decision.